[From Litha to Lammas]: Potens, sequel to Princeps, PG,-13, gen, 2/3
Part One.
Title: Potens (2/3)
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Pairing: None, gen
Content Notes: Angst, AU, time travel, present tense, violence
Wordcount: This part 5900
Rating: PG-13
Summary: AU, sequel to ‘Princeps.’ Harry has changed time in a way he never anticipated, and now he has to deal with followers, assassination attempts from Voldemort, questions from Dumbledore, and being Hogwarts’s first returning Defense Against the Dark Arts professor in a decade.
Author’s Notes: This is one of my “From Litha to Lammas” fics being posted between the summer solstice and the first of August. It’s the sequel to my fic “Princeps,” posted last year, and you really need to read that one first, as, among other things, this fic spoils the ending of that one thoroughly. This will have three parts, to be posted over the next few days. The title is the Latin word meaning “powerful.”
Thank you for all the reviews!
Part Two
“What happened to Mr. Prince?”
Harry doesn’t look away from Severus as he answers Albus’s question. He doesn’t want to leave the hospital wing until Severus wakes up. He did leave briefly early this morning, to Apparate Regulus to the Decoy House, but that was all. “He got cursed and tortured. Riddle grabbed him in an attempt to make up for his pathetic failure with most of the other young Slytherins.”
“And you got him away with such slight wounds? I find that hard to credit, Henry.”
Harry rolls his eyes at the far wall-knowing he probably only gets away with it because Madam Pomfrey isn’t in the infirmary at the moment-and answers in a monotone. “He was tortured. That’s not slight.”
“I shall require a full report.”
Harry shakes his head without looking away from Severus. “I’m not part of the Order you run, Headmaster. I don’t give reports.”
“I must know how you were able to defeat Riddle.”
“I didn’t defeat him. I didn’t fight him. I went to rescue someone who swore an oath to me, and that’s all.” Harry turns his head a little, and Albus steps back, with the first look of remorse on his face in-well, Harry doesn’t think he’s seen one since the night the other timeline’s Albus told him about the prophecy. “Now, please, sir, back off.”
There’s a long silence, and then Albus murmurs, “Of course, my boy,” and he leaves.
It’s perhaps an hour later when Severus opens his eyes. He gasps for a second, as though expecting his captors to be there, and then grasps Harry’s arm and relaxes. “Professor Salvare,” he murmurs. “What happened?”
“I got you back from the Death Eaters who foolishly thought to kidnap you.” Harry touches his arm and smiles. He’s glad that it doesn’t seem as though Severus’s arms will suffer from being wrenched up over his head. “Can you tell me what happened? Mr. Rosier didn’t give me a clear picture.”
Severus nods with a swallow. Harry conjures a glass of water for him, and Severus takes it with a grateful sigh. “We were walking along the edge of the Forbidden Forest-Evan and I-to find Potions ingredients that I can’t harvest easily over the summer. Someone must have Apparated in and been waiting for us beyond the wards with a Portkey. I don’t know who it was. Death Eater mask over their faces makes them all look the fucking same…” He trails off.
“It’s all right,” Harry says, but he makes a mental note. “Is there anyone else in Slytherin House who would need the same ingredients?”
“Julius Flint said that if I could find some wild heart’s-mallow, he’d appreciate it…”
Severus trails off again, staring at Harry in horror. Harry pats his arm. “Yes, I’m afraid so. He probably set you up. It’s simply too much of a coincidence otherwise that someone would be lurking around the Forbidden Forest just far enough out to not be detected by our wards but waiting to grab someone with a Portkey.”
Severus shuts his eyes. “What are you going to do to Julius, sir?”
“Intimidate him enough that he doesn’t think working for Voldemort is a good idea anymore.” Harry studies Severus. “Are you all right with me leaving you alone? Do you need me here?”
“No, sir.” Severus smiles a little and eases some of the lines of strain in his face. “I’m all right. Go catch Julius before the Hogwarts Express leaves.”
Harry clenches Severus’s arm one more time, says, “You were very brave, Mr. Prince,” and leaves the hospital wing with Severus’s wondering gaze on him.
*
It’s no trouble to find the Slytherin common room. Harry doesn’t know the password, but that doesn’t matter. A subvocal hiss to the carved snakes around the torch sconces, and one of them tells it to him.
It turns out to be “Sacred Honor.” Harry allows himself to sneer at the irony as he stalks into the common room.
Far more students are awake than would be usual for this time on a Saturday, but they’re leaving for the summer today. They go wide-eyed and silent when they see him. Harry’s glowing with blue again from his wand, and he makes no attempt to subdue it this time.
“Where is Julius Flint?” he asks, when he glances around the common room and doesn’t see the tall seventh-year.
“I-I think he’s still asleep, Professor.”
That’s Tiberius Wilkes, one of his, but someone who seems to be intimidated by his light show. Harry nods to him and tries to calm down a little. “Thank you, Mr. Wilkes. I’ll just call him down here then, shall I?”
Most of the common room shifts in anticipation. They want to see a show even if they’re partially frightened of one of the people participating in it. Harry holds back his eye-roll.
Teenagers. So dramatic.
Harry lifts his right hand in front of him and crooks his fingers. It looks dramatic, but the real work is being done by his wand, which is low and flicking back and forth at his side like an angry cat’s tail. Harry brings it around at the same time as he moves his fingers in a gripping gesture, and says, “Bring me Julius Flint!”
The spell rips away from him, traveling fast enough that he shudders from the wake of it, and hits the door that leads up to the seventh-year boys’ bedroom. It is gentle when it grabs Flint and brings him down the stairs, though. Harry still doesn’t want to hurt a student.
He just wants to impress the hell out of them and show them that they shouldn’t be depending on their Dark Lord to save them.
Flint, a tall boy with some of the same troll-like features that Harry remembers from his distant cousin Marcus, floats down the stairs, staring at Harry. Harry wrinkles his nose a little when he feels the Dark Mark on Flint’s arm. The stink isn’t as bad as the one on Abraxas Malfoy’s, given how new Flint’s Mark is, but it’s not pleasant.
Harry uses the spell to sit Flint down in a chair in front of him, and Harry takes the one opposite. People around him draw in their breaths. Harry supposes they expected a more violent confrontation, and instead they’re getting one that looks like a professor having a conversation with a disappointing student.
Harry did that on purpose, of course. He doesn’t want to create a situation where people on the fence of following him or Voldemort are afraid to come to him.
Or one where hotheaded idiots think challenging him is a good future move.
“You suggested that Severus Snape and Evan Rosier go to the Forbidden Forest to look for heart’s-mallow,” he says.
Flint’s dark eyes dart around, apparently looking for some sign that one of the other Slytherins is going to help him. But here’s where the nature of the House works in Harry’s favor instead of Flint’s. Everyone else sits still and watches.
Finally, Flint swallows and says, “I n-needed some for the summer.”
“You’re leaving Hogwarts permanently,” Harry corrects softly. “You should know that your plan didn’t work.”
Flint stares at him. Harry tilts his head so that Flint, if no one else, will know that Harry is referring to the Mark on his left arm. “Perhaps you might want to choose your allegiances more carefully, Mr. Flint.”
“I-I-I-”
Harry lets the boy-because he is still that, adult in the wizarding world or not-stutter for a moment, and then nods. “Well. This is a reminder, and a warning. I would have given you help if you’d come to me. I think your Head of House would, too.” Slughorn isn’t great, but he tries to help most anyone achieve their goals, because it helps him forge connections in the future. “Don’t act against Mr. Prince or Mr. Rosier again.”
He thought about telling Flint not to act against anyone under Harry’s protection again, but he doesn’t want to reveal every single person who swore to him. Some of them want to stay private, and some of them aren’t at Hogwarts.
He stands up and turns towards the door of the common room.
“Sir.” Wilkes steps in front of him. “Do you require an escort?”
Harry smiles at him. He has to maintain a delicate balance between protecting his people and preserving their pride. “No, thank you, Mr. Wilkes. I’ll be going directly to breakfast.” He glances around the common room. “I suggest that some of you finish packing and get food in you.”
There’s a scramble behind him as Harry walks through the common room door. He hopes that Flint, at least, isn’t going to be a problem for him anymore, or will think twice before he makes another stupid move like that.
Not that Harry can preserve him from the stupidity of taking the Dark Mark.
Harry sighs, and goes to breakfast.
*
“I don’t want people to think I’m abused.”
Harry regards Severus over the breakfast table. “It’s your business what you tell them about that, Mr. Prince.”
Severus toys with his food for a moment in a way that makes Harry frown. He’s already too skinny. “I mean, because I’m living here, they’re going to think that I’ve been abused.”
Harry looks for a moment around the large dining room of the Decoy House. The ridiculous dining room table came with it, and could seat sixteen. Harry kept it in case he ever does need to offer shelter to that many followers at a time. The walls slope up to a ceiling that looks like one in a cathedral, except made of wood, and have shining metal sconces for torches that used to be carved in the shape of the Selwyn family crest. Harry had fun redesigning them so that they now bear a medley of family crests, including ones that come from France and Germany.
Most of the light is actually provided by the chandelier overhead, which Harry keeps supplied with candles charmed not to drip. Harry looks back at Severus and smiles a little. “You don’t think they’d envy you for living here instead, able to use your wand during the summer and brew in the Potions lab whenever you want?”
Severus smiles, but it’s a tense thing. “Please, Professor, I don’t know how to handle this.”
“I would handle it by remembering the difference between thought and deed. Or between thought and word, for that matter.”
“Sir?”
“People can think whatever they want about you.” Harry twirls a strand of porridge around his finger and sucks it in, ignoring Severus’s slightly horrified glance. It’s one of Harry’s strategies to make sure that his students don’t idealize him too much. “But unless they’re insulting you to your face or otherwise taking action against you, what does it matter if they think you’re abused?”
“But actions influence thoughts.”
Harry conceals a smile. Severus is getting into the spirit of academic debate now, his eyes alight. “That’s true. But you can’t be sure that their thoughts directly influence their actions unless, as I said, they’re showing you. In that case, you can just come equally directly to me. And you’re overlooking something else,” he adds, because Severus is opening his mouth to argue again. “What do you think about all the rest of the people who’ll be here?”
Severus clamps his mouth shut. Then he says, “I don’t think I should go around insulting them to their faces.”
Harry grins. “Good choice.”
*
“You’re that Henry Salvare.”
Harry glances up from the display of beetle eyes in front of him. He invited Severus to come with him to Slugg and Jigger’s, but although the boy has relaxed about what people living in Decoy House might think of him, he doesn’t yet want to be seen in public with Harry.
Harry is now grateful that Severus elected to stay in his temporary home. Standing in front of Harry is Walburga Black, her arms folded and her gaze so hostile that Harry doesn’t want his students exposed to it. And it’s possible Walburga might know who Severus is, or recognize some feature of his mother’s in his face.
Harry glances around surreptitiously for Orion Black, but doesn’t see him. The shop is filled with people gaping at him and Walburga, which is bad enough. Harry just focuses on her. “Yes, I am. Defense Against the Dark Arts Professor at Hogwarts. How can I help you?”
“You took my sons away!”
Harry is a little surprised that Walburga is pressing the situation in a public place like this, but then, maybe she thinks people will join in shaming him, and she has to suspect he wouldn’t have accepted an invitation to Grimmauld Place. Harry widens his eyes a little and shakes his head in mock despair. “What? I didn’t kidnap them.”
Walburga draws herself up, and her fingers twitch in a way that says she’s thinking about her wand. “You encouraged them to abandon us.”
“No,” Harry says, and makes his smile sharp. “You did that yourself, Mrs. Black.”
“They will do as they are told!” Walburga is yelling now, although luckily not as loud as Harry remembers from her portrait. “My worthless elder son is at the Potters’ house, and my younger is who-knows-where! All because he couldn’t take a bit of discipline!”
Harry winces internally. He really didn’t want the abuse Sirius and Regulus have suffered to be revealed like that, but on the other hand, he didn’t seek out this confrontation, and the accusation of kidnapping is one he’d have to face. He regards Walburga coolly and says, “Discipline that cost me my children, should I be lucky enough to have any, is discipline I would question.”
Walburga screams at him, no words this time, and draws her wand.
Harry Body-Binds her in seconds, making her drop the wand, and kicks it back towards her. He stares at her, ignoring the persistence silence and stares from around them. No one’s called the Aurors, he thinks wearily. No one’s moved to help.
Some of that might be fear of Voldemort, but not all of it, even if the Blacks are widely-known to follow him-and Harry’s not sure that’s the case. So many people just sit back and gape and point and pretend that a violent confrontation with a woman who abuses her children has nothing to do with them.
“Don’t come after me again,” Harry tells Walburga’s staring eyes. He flexes his magic around her a little, and her eyes grow wider still. “You can feel my power,” he adds, lowering his voice. “Tell your Lord whose behalf you did this on that I can deprive him of all his followers if I feel like it.”
He uses the scoop to pick up beetle eyes, and takes a small jar to the front of the shop to pay. Maybe they aren’t perfect, but he’s sure that Severus will find a use for them regardless.
*
“I heard my mum confronted you in the apothecary a few days ago.”
Harry puts down the book he’s studying-a tome on curses that he has spelled so only he can touch it-and instead studies Regulus, who leans against the doorframe of the library. He’s kicking at the carpet like a boy much younger.
“It’s not your fault,” Harry says, the most important thing he can say now, he knows.
“But she came up to you and embarrassed you like that.” Regulus sighs. “I’m sorry, Professor Salvare.”
Ah. That threat of embarrassment must be something Walburga used to use on Regulus, and it probably worked even better than most physical abuse because Regulus is so proud. Harry nods to the chair across from his at the library table. “Please sit down, Mr. Black.”
Regulus does, but keeps his eyes aimed down and crosses his legs like he’s done something wrong. He’s getting lanky, Harry notices absently. He never saw any pictures of Regulus except the little portrait on the Black family tapestry, so he doesn’t know how tall Regulus will eventually get, but it should only matter as far as teaching him some kinds of dueling spells. Harry already has plenty of food available at the Decoy House.
“It’s not your fault,” Harry says. “You can’t control your parents’ actions. You can’t make up for what they did to Sirius. You can’t change things if you go back to your house now. You can’t do them proud by taking the Mark. Their expectations are unreasonable, Regulus, and they always will be. I want to make sure that you have the chance to do what you want and make yourself proud, but it’ll be a lot harder if you insist on taking your parents’ actions on your shoulders.”
Regulus stares at him with wide eyes. “How-how did you know I was thinking of all that, sir?”
Harry sighs and decides the time has come to reveal a little personal information. No one knows who he really is, after all, and even though they know he’s a half-blood and that “Salvare” is obviously a fake name, that’s not the same as being able to connect him to an actual family history.
“I had a home life that wasn’t the same as yours, but was similar in some ways, Mr. Black.” He’s been calling “Regulus” by his first name too often, and although he feels for the kid in a lot of ways, he also wants to step back a little when talking about something so personal. “I spent years assuming it was my fault that my family hated me. Actually, they hated my magic. I would have had to make myself into a Muggle to please them. And probably, not even that would have helped. They also hated my parents for leaving them with a ‘burden.’ So I had to accept, in the end, that nothing I did could change things.”
Regulus swallows, a loud sound in the silence that’s fallen. Then he glances down at his hands. “I don’t want to accept that,” he whispers.
“I know,” Harry says gently. “I wanted that control of knowing I could affect things and make them different, too. But it just led to years of my battering my head against a wall of stupidity and insensitivity. In the end, Regulus, it will be so much better for you to let this go, and say that your family abused you and that’s the end of it, and you bear no responsibility for it.”
Regulus closes his eyes. Then he nods. “It’ll take me a while to really accept that, sir. But I can see the sense in what you’re saying.” He forces open his eyes and smiles a little. “And I think it’s the first time that someone has ever spoken sense to me about my family.”
Harry smiles at him. “Good. Now, are there any Black family members you would trust, who you could talk to about this and tell your location, who aren’t your parents? I know their reputation, but not if all of them are truly followers of Voldemort.”
“My grandfather, Arcturus Black, isn’t,” Regulus says. “Although I think it’s only because he’s so old and sick that the Dark Lord would see no value in him. And I know that he deeply disapproves of harsh treatment of children because he thinks it kills magic. My parents just never listened to him because of his age and illness.” He sighs. “That’s not great, is it?”
Harry shakes his head. “It isn’t, but if you think you can bear a conversation with him-if you want to have a conversation with him about this-then I think it would be worthwhile. I can set up the Floo connection securely so that you can call him, assuming that you have access to his Floo, without him being able to know where you are.”
“I’d like that, Professor Salvare.” Regulus stands up. “Can I ask you a question?”
“Of course, but keep in mind that if it’s about my personal background, I may not answer it.”
“I know.” Regulus clenches his fists for a moment. “Why are you so kind? Why do you care? You’re exactly what I need, and what so many of the other Slytherins need, but where the hell did you come from?”
Harry nods a little. He supposes that he should have expected this to come up earlier. “Well, some of that I can’t answer. My personal history, you know. But I can tell you that having grown up in that kind of environment, I don’t want to see other children grow up in it.”
Regulus checks a little, maybe at the implication that he’s a child. But then he says, “All right, but why did you decide that becoming a Defense Against the Dark Arts professor would be the best solution?”
“Pure-blood strangleholds on law and the Ministry mean that I wouldn’t have got very far trying to just change their idiot families’ take on the situation,” Harry says dryly. “And the political way would have taken too long. I wanted to make a direct intervention before a new generation joined Voldemort. The Defense position was the only open one at Hogwarts that fit what I had in mind, as well as my skills.” He studies Regulus, who juts his chin out and looks back. “And I highly suspected I could break the curse Voldemort had left on the post, so I could go back next year.”
“So you’re here for us. The Slytherins.”
“For you, largely, but not just you. Or did you not notice that I spent a lot of time tutoring all the students in Defense?”
Regulus smiles reluctantly. “Yes. Including my idiot brother.” He looks away. “Sirius is at the Potters’ house.”
“Ah, you hoped he would come here and you could be together, right?” Harry shakes his head a little. “I’ve made an impression on Sirius, I hope, but not so much so that he would choose staying with me during the summer over staying with his best friend. But I’ll be happy to make the same arrangements for you to Floo him that I would for your grandfather, assuming the Potters will give us access to their Floo.”
“I-I don’t think I want to talk to him right now. Maybe Grandfather.”
Harry nods. “That’s fine. Just let me know if I need to send him an owl.”
*
“Oh, fuck, not you,” Harry blurts out when the Floo call he accepted thinking it would be Arcturus Black turns the flames green and he sees Lucius Malfoy’s face in them.
Lucius stares at him, eyebrows raised. He’s young, but he already graduated from Hogwarts before Harry came here, and Harry’s sure he bears the Mark. Which means this is some kind of intimidation or even recruiting effort from Voldemort, Harry thinks crossly. Stupid bastard.
“I was unaware that you knew me, Mr. Salvare. Or that I had offended you.” Lucius gives a deep nod of his head that’s almost a bow. “Thank you for permitting me to Floo you. I represent a business interest that-”
“A business interest?” Harry laughs in spite of himself. “Is that what he’s calling his enterprise enslaving people now?”
Lucius draws himself up a little, or as much as he can appear to while presumably kneeling to look through a fireplace. “This has nothing to do with that. My Lord would never expect you to take his Mark.”
“Yes, yes, I’m not worthy.” Harry waves one hand. “But I don’t see how we have anything to talk about. One of his followers kidnapped my follower and was torturing him. A sixteen-year-old, might I add. I took him back. Now we’re as even as we can be.” Not hardly, but Voldemort doesn’t need to know Harry’s coming for him until he does it.
“My Lord does not see it that way, Mr. Salvare. He’s most anxious to speak to you and give you the opportunity to make amends.”
Harry snorts. “I have no interest in making amends with your Lord, in following your Lord, in serving your Lord, or in allowing my people to be tortured. And those are the only things he would be interested in.”
“My Lord admires your prowess, Mr. Salvare.” Lucius is speaking as though he’s having trouble with his tongue now. “He merely wants to assure you that there’s no need for you to be on opposite sides. It’s not as though you follow Albus Dumbledore or work for the Ministry.”
“No, I just work at Hogwarts, with the children he’s trying to corrupt.”
Lucius freezes. Harry doesn’t know why, since that’s hardly anything compared to what he already said. But then Lucius breathes, “You really do believe that.”
“Yes, of course I do.” Harry rolls his eyes a little when Lucius goes on staring. “He’s pulling children into a war and trying to make them slaves for the rest of their lives by branding them. He does nothing for the good of his followers, only for the good of his insane cause. And part of him has to be aware that it’s insane. He’s a half-blood himself, he knows that power and intelligence doesn’t follow bloodlines.”
“Good speaking with you, Mr. Salvare,” Lucius says faintly, and then shuts down the Floo.
Harry jerks his head up as he hears the chime from the walls. The chime of history, of Time trying to reassert itself. It sounds smug, he knows it does.
“What the fuck do you even want?” Harry demands softly. “I know it’s history that Lucius Malfoy was a Death Eater. Well, he’ll stay one. That’s fine. Why would this mark a return to history’s path?”
The chime sounds once more, and then falls silent. Harry scowls and stands up to make lunch. Bloody forces of the universe, so dramatic.
*
It wouldn’t be easy for most people to find out what happens to a prophecy when the timeline before it is changed and the person it concerns most might not even be born, but Harry isn’t most people. A quick note to the Department of Mysteries sent by the anti-Patronus that only an Unspeakable can conjure, and Harry has a consultation with one of his colleagues who studies prophecies.
They meet in the center of the shelves with the orbs humming around them. It’s a bit hard to ignore, but then again, Harry has also ignored many temptations to endanger himself or be irritated since he returned to the past. He keeps his eyes on the Unspeakable, who wears a heavy hood like everyone does here.
“We do have dead prophecies,” the Unspeakable says, in a calm, confident woman’s voice which might be theirs or might not be. Harry doesn’t care, if they can give him the information he’s looking for. “But those are ones where someone who is important to the prophecy dies. In other words, it has already been made, and then circumstances change.”
Harry nods. “And this one hasn’t been made yet.”
“Yes, exactly.” His colleague’s fingers twitch a little, and Harry recognizes research excitement. “You have brought us a most interesting question, Mr. Salvare.”
Harry smiles. The Unspeakables know full well that his name isn’t Henry Salvare, but that’s the one he chooses to be known under in this time, so that’s the one they choose to go with. “Would you need some months to find out?”
“We would need some months to investigate.”
Harry knows what that means. They can’t promise him an answer at the end. He just nods. “That would be fine. Please let me know anything you find out.”
“Or we could do it inside a week using the Time Chamber.”
Harry inclines his head. “What kind of price would I pay for that?” He recognizes their tone of voice just as he recognizes the twitching fingers. Unspeakables will indeed work for the public, or people who want the answers to questions, but there’s always a price.
“A full copy of your memories of your original timeline, placed inside a crystal jar.”
Harry considers it for several moments. It’s true that he could make the copy without pain, and it would be valuable enough for the Unspeakables’ work that he might even get the answers to several questions. But it also opens him up to someone else not liking the direction he’s taken, and traveling in time to undo his changes.
Someone might do that, of course, whether or not he knows it. But he doesn’t have to help them drive people like Severus and Regulus back into the arms of the Death Eaters.
“No, thank you. Several months should be sufficient.”
“We will notify you of the results, Mr. Salvare.”
Harry nods, shakes the hand of his disguised colleague, and leaves the Department of Mysteries. Now he needs to investigate the whereabouts of the Horcruxes.
*
Harry sits on the stone at the edge of the sea, ignoring the way the foam leaps and whirls around him. When he’s this deep inside his own head, casting yet another spell that came with him out of the Department of Mysteries, he doesn’t feel the cold or the wetness anyway.
He drifts through his thoughts and then slowly out, under and down, through stone and water and the requirements for blood, and surfaces mentally inside the cave where Voldemort’s put the locket Horcrux.
He shivers in disgust as he passes through the lake full of waiting Inferi. The taint of the necromancy that created them is worse than the corruption surrounding the Dark Mark.
When he passes out of the lake and onto the island, Harry pauses. The basin that contains the deadly potion is still there, but the reek of even stronger corruption that he expected with the Horcrux isn’t.
Sighing, Harry floats his astral body towards the basin. He knows what he’ll find, but he would feel stupid coming all this way and then not checking.
Sure enough, the basin contains the potion and a gleaming golden locket that’s better than the fake the original Regulus in his original timeline left there. But it’s not a Horcrux. It doesn’t even float up and down in the heavy potion in the same way.
Trust the bastard to get smart and move his damn Horcruxes when he feels threatened, Harry thinks, as he retreats to his body and then stands up carefully on the damp rock to Apparate. Then again, he probably was more sane before he was disembodied.
Dark Lords. So dramatic.
*
“…And I know we said that, but…”
Evan Rosier shuts up the minute Harry walks into the lab at the Decoy House where Severus has been spending most of his days. Harry raises his eyebrows a little, but he doesn’t think any of his followers are truly plotting against him. He turns to Severus. “You didn’t come to lunch.”
“Um.” Severus’s cheeks are flushed. “I didn’t know if Evan could come with me.”
“Of course. Anyone sworn to me is welcome here. And other people might be, as long as you ask me first.”
“Right. Of course.” Severus shoots a glance at Evan, but Evan is staring at the ceiling with his mouth firmly shut. “Did you want to come to lunch, Evan?”
“You’d be welcome, Mr. Rosier,” Harry adds, when Evan shoots him a desperate glance as if he doesn’t know who or what to listen to.
“Um. Thanks. Right, Professor Salvare.” Evan smooths one hand down his robes and nods. “Thank you. But I did want to talk about something with you. Could we do that while Severus goes to lunch?”
Severus makes a face at Evan, but doesn’t seem inclined to stay. He just hurries out of the room. Harry shakes his head. “Please tell me this isn’t about your OWL results.” Severus was devastated, when they came two days ago, to find out that he’d got an EE in Transfiguration and Charms instead of the O’s he was confidently expecting. Harry pointing out his Outstandings in everything else didn’t seem to soothe him.
“I know you said you weren’t going to be a lord,” Evan begins, careful.
Harry sighs. “Is this about the way I commanded you to go back to the Slytherin common room the night Mr. Prince was kidnapped? I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to be so forceful. I was simply worried about his safety, and yours.”
“Partially.” Evan stands very straight. “It just seems to me that you are our lord. Even if you’re not going to brand us.”
Harry smiles a little. This is where being an Unspeakable with a knowledge of British magical history comes in handy. “Did you know that there are specific magical requirements that come with being a lord in Britain?”
Evan’s eyes widen. “There are? I thought it was a title that you-declared, and people supported you or not.”
Harry shakes his head. “That’s the way it can work in some other countries, always assuming that people follow you when you declare yourself a lord or lady instead of calling you a fool. But because the British magical world has no magical nobility, it means that we adopted different standards instead. The potential lord-or lady-has to reach a specific level of magical power, demonstrated in front of a crowd of at least a hundred; claim the title; brand his or her followers to show that they actually have a group of people bound to them; and choose a magical affinity.”
“Choose a magical affinity? People are born with that one. Sir.”
Harry snorts. “Not your fault that you’re one of the many who believe that, Mr. Rosier, but it’s not true. Probably related to the abysmal lack of proper Defense education around here in the last few decades. You can make yourself Dark or Light-or Twilight, or Dawn, or any of a other half-dozen shades on the spectrum that aren’t acknowledged in Britain-by choosing to cast some kinds of spells, and perform certain rituals. You can shape yourself. Obviously Voldemort’s chosen the Dark. And he branded his followers, and he claimed the title, and that library he blew up in Wales counts as his test in front of followers and the public.”
Evan keeps blinking. “I had no idea. I thought our oaths were sufficient.”
“No.” Harry smiles at him. “I promised that I wouldn’t be your lord, and my promises included no branding. I’m not about to break them.”
Evan hesitates, then says quietly, “Certainly, sir, at some point, does it matter if you fulfill the formal requirements? If you fulfill the most important informal ones?”
“What are those, Mr. Rosier?”
“Saving your followers. Protecting them. Caring for their well-being.”
“That, Mr. Rosier, is what any competent mentor or leader does. It saddens me that it has been so rare in your life-in the lives of most of the students at Hogwarts-that you don’t recognize it as such.”
Evan sighs a little. “As you say, sir.”
He looks disconsolate as he leaves the lab to join Severus for lunch, but that’s not enough to make Harry change his position. He meant the promises he made, and the formal requirements are real and no joke, and involve far more control in the lives of his students than he would ever want to assume.
The chime of Time sings, low and sweet, from the walls.
“Oh, shut up,” Harry tells it.
Part Three.