Chapter Twenty-Seven of 'Kairos Amid the Ruins'- Diverse Alarms
Chapter Twenty-Six.
Chapter One.
Title: Kairos Amid the Ruins (27/?)
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Pairing: Harry Potter/Orion Black, Albus Dumbledore/Gellert Grindelwald, mentions of various canon pairings
Content Notes: Time travel, heavy angst, Harry mentoring Severus, violence, gore, minor character deaths, AU
Rating: R
Summary: Harry’s attempt to time travel and fix the past went badly awry. Time shattered, and the various pieces of the universe clung to each other as best they could. Harry finds himself in 1961, with Albus Dumbledore the Minister for Magic, Gellert Grindelwald his loving husband, Voldemort newly defeated…and Severus Snape being proclaimed the Boy-Who-Lived
Author’s Note: This is going to be a long story, focusing on Harry mentoring Severus as the Boy-Who-Lived, with flashbacks to an alternate World War II. The Harry-Severus mentorship will remain gen. However, the romantic pairings are a prominent part of the story. The word “Kairos” comes from the Greek, meaning a lucky moment, or the right moment, to act.
Thank you again for all the reviews!
Chapter Twenty-Seven-Diverse Alarms
Harry eyed Aethelred Potter. The boy had shown up at his office door and knocked and asked if he could come in. Harry made a quick decision, but kept his wand loose in his sleeve as he stepped back and allowed his young-cousin? Uncle?-into the room.
No, he’s really not related to you. The Potters want nothing to do with you, remember?
“How can I help you, Mr. Potter?” Harry kept his voice calm and neutral as he went to sit behind his desk. He often talked to his other students from one of the chairs in front of the desk, but he thought Aethelred could use some extra “help” remembering who was in charge here.
Aethelred flopped down in the nearest chair and stared at him for a second, then shook his head. “Look, can we speak without bollocks here or not?”
Harry remained silent, watching him. He had learned last year how effective silence was as a weapon. It drove most students mad, and they’d scramble to fill in the gap, often confessing things Harry hadn’t even been aware of because they thought, from his quiet, judging stare, that he already knew about them.
Aethelred was no different. He gave a loud sigh and jammed his hands in his robe pockets. “Okay. Listen, Mr. Evanson, all of us know that you’re a Potter. It’s there in the lines of your face. And your hair.” He pointed his finger at Harry’s forehead, and Harry had to fight to control his own reaction. It was a finger, not a wand, he reminded himself.
“You know very well that I am not Charlus Potter’s bastard son, and that I have no intention of claiming your money,” Harry said. “And I hardly think anyone would make the argument that I favor you in class.” The tide of pink that surged up through Aethelred’s face and neck made him blink and wonder, for the first time, if part of the boy’s resentment was that Harry didn’t favor him based on family resemblance. “So what is this about? What is the point of acknowledging it?”
“Who are you?”
“Harry Evanson.”
“You’re more than that. You must be. There are all sorts of rumors circulating about how close you are to Orion Black, and there’s no way that he’d adopt the son of a Muggleborn.”
Harry had to bite his lip against his own laughter, wondering what Orion would think if he heard his intentions referred to as adoption. “What Mr. Black does, of course, is his own concern,” Harry said, with a little shrug. “And I don’t owe you the story of my parentage.”
“But where did you come from? There aren’t any Potters left unaccounted-for, as far as my aunt and uncle can tell. And the only chance that you could be a bastard-well, the Headmistress says you aren’t.” Aethelred kept staring at him. “Where did you get that hair?”
“I don’t know. I’ve had it all my life.”
“Look, professor, can we please just cut the bollocks? Like I asked.”
“Language, Mr. Potter.”
Aethelred let out a harsh breath and sagged back in his chair. “I don’t understand why all adults lie and keep secrets from teenagers. Do you all think that we’re just going to go out and do something stupid with the knowledge?”
He was watching Harry from the corner of his eye, obviously waiting to see if any of this would have an effect on him. Harry remained calm, although that appeal might have been more effective than most, considering how he had once felt about Dumbledore.
A Dumbledore who was gone. In a world that was gone.
Harry folded his hands on his desk. “I consider my family an inappropriate subject of discussion between a professor and a student, Mr. Potter, especially a professor and a student who have already had some trouble between them. Now, do you have a real question, or should I dismiss you back to Gryffindor Tower?”
“Look, all my aunt and uncle want you to do is renounce any claim you have to the Potter fortune.”
“I’ve already done that. I sent them an owl where I did that.” Harry had fought with Mariana about that, with her telling him that he never knew what use he might have for the fortune in the future. Harry had ignored her. He was quite sure that this fortune would never matter to this future.
He hadn’t bothered to inform Orion about his intentions. The man would have taken them both into a snapping, snarling argument that neither of them wanted.
Aethelred paused for a long moment. Harry watched him and waited, something he had become much better at ever since he’d adopted his current profession. Had his aunt and uncle not told the boy?
“That’s not a formal renunciation,” Aethelred said at last, sounding subdued.
Harry shrugged. “I don’t know what could be more formal. An ad in the Daily Prophet?”
“No!” Aethelred blurted, making Harry hide a smile. The Potter family wanted to avoid publicity, of course. “But-we need a contract. To make sure that you won’t go back on your word. A contract that’s legally binding and magically binding. You’ll need to sign it in blood and give us some of your flesh to guarantee it.”
Harry leaned slowly back in his chair and stared at Aethelred. The boy met his eyes for a moment, and then looked down.
“Whose idea is this?” Harry asked pleasantly.
Aethelred flinched, even though he wasn’t looking at Harry’s face. Presumably the rage in his voice was enough. “It’s the way things are done,” he whispered. “It’s not anyone’s idea. It’s the way legal renunciations work.”
“I wrote to them,” Harry said. “They know that I’m not who they feared I was. I have no desire to live under any name but Evanson. Tell me why they need me to make a formal denial like this. Tell me why they need my flesh and blood.”
“You-you can’t break the contract if we have your flesh and blood.”
“That’s one question answered. Tell me why they need the contract.”
Aethelred was shrinking against the back of his chair now, and part of Harry felt bad for scaring him. The rest of him didn’t give a shit. Frustration and anger surged through him, tinged with the kind of hurt he’d felt when he’d learned that Seamus believed the stories in the Daily Prophet during his fifth year.
“They’re starting to ask about you,” Aethelred mumbled.
“They could have bloody well replied to my owl-”
“Not my aunt and uncle.” Aethelred looked up, met Harry’s eyes, and hastily decided he was better off looking down again. “Other people. People who have noticed that you look like a Potter. They’re calling on Uncle Fleamont and Aunt Euphemia to make it right. They think that you’re either a bastard Potter child who was neglected or a family member who was exiled for petty reasons.”
Harry closed his eyes. All right. So this wasn’t a real betrayal. The Potters just cared more about their social standing than they did about him. That was totally fair.
“I’m not willing to swear that contract,” he murmured. He would never give his flesh and blood to anyone else, not after the kind of studying he’d done in the last few years that revealed what they could be used for. “But I’m willing to make a formal renunciation of every scrap of the Potter fortune if it can be done in another way.”
“There’s no other way my aunt and uncle will accept.”
“Then I suppose they’ll have to live with the rumors,” Harry said evenly.
Aethelred stood and glared at him. “You don’t know what you might be costing us!”
“No, I don’t. Why don’t you explain it to me?”
Instead, Aethelred banged out of the room. Harry closed his eyes and took a few deep breaths.
Aethelred would be in his class in a few hours. No matter what his aunt and uncle had told him, no matter what the odd changes in his behavior and emotions meant, Harry still had to treat him fairly, like an ordinary student.
And that wasn’t just for Aethelred’s sake, or because Harry held himself to high standards as a teacher. He didn’t want to reveal too much to students hungry for gossip, students who might write to their parents and increase the rumors swirling around him.
I just want to be ordinary. Left alone. Why does that never happen?
*
“Interesting rumors about our Mr. Evanson. Have you heard them?”
Albus blinked and looked up from the stack of proposed legislation in front of him. For a moment, his brain swirled and mixed facts and figures, so he thought someone wanted to educate pigs. Then he got Gellert in focus. “That he is an escapee of some kind from the Potter family, or mistreated by them? Yes, I’ve heard them. What of it?”
“Nothing.”
Gellert was smiling the kind of smile he used when he thought he’d got away with something. Albus sighed and put down the parchment he was still absently half-holding. He had to be careful not to put it on the plate of small sandwiches Izzy had left in front of him. When she thought he hadn’t eaten enough, she left food about under a Preservation Charm, and also charmed to float at his elbow from room to room. “Come, Gellert. We’ve argued enough about Mr. Potter, I hope. What good can he be to you now?”
“He came from another timeline, and people believe that he’s a scapegoat for the Potter family, and you can ask that?”
“Well, yes,” Albus said. He turned fully to face his husband, and the plate scooted across the table to still sit right in front of him. It didn’t matter to house-elf magic that it was sitting on air. “I don’t know what you mean, and you know the truth now. What else can you do to the poor child?”
“That poor child was accepted as a worthy successor by Aurelius Greyhand.”
Albus shrugged, and the plate of sandwiches floated out of the way of his elbow and then came back. “So he’s a good duelist. You still can’t rebuild your lost war on his back.”
“There is so much more I can do.”
Albus sighed and rubbed his forehead. He wanted to finish the reading he had to do and go to bed, and at least that bed had been much more comfortable of late with Gellert next to him. He tried to summon some enthusiasm to his voice. “What?”
“I really thought you would figure it out, as soon as I told you about the rumors concerning the Potters.”
Albus rolled his eyes. “If you think that Fleamont and Euphemia will aid you in your plans to bring Harry forwards, I don’t think they will. They would much rather that he isn’t in the public eye at all. They won’t do anything that would give him unnecessary prominence.”
“You assume I want to bring him forwards.”
Albus felt as though someone had brushed his back with a cold feather. “Gellert,” he said softly. “You don’t need to-bother him. You’ve done enough to disturb him and make him think badly of us. Leave him alone.”
“I know that what I did in his timeline is not what I want to do,” Gellert said, totally ignoring this. “But there are other ways. Many other ways.”
“Leave him alone, Gellert.”
“Or what? You’ll leave me? You’ll put alarms in your mind that warn the Wizengamot when I’m discussing something treacherous?”
“I chose not to do the first one. Do you want me to?”
Gellert paused, staring at him. Albus stared back. At the moment, he had no idea what was going through his husband’s mind. Did Gellert think that Albus would never leave him, so he was safe, or was he planning something else, something that included that possibility and would use it as a weapon against Albus himself?
Cages within cages. That was how one of Gellert’s followers had described his plans in the days when he had been a Dark Lord. It had always stuck with Albus, simply because it was different from the usual ideas of wheels or circles.
Gellert shook his head abruptly and stalked from the room. Albus watched him go, and wondered if it was possible for a man’s plan to cage himself.
Then he smiled bitterly. Of all people, I should know.
*
“Will you pass the salt, my dear?”
Mariana flickered suspicious eyes up. Seneca was smiling at her across the breakfast table, a sight that made her flinch before she reached for the salt. Seneca took it from her with a little chuckle and a small touch of his fingers to the back of her hand that was unusual enough to be alarming.
“What are you doing?” Mariana whispered.
Seneca heard her and let his shoulders rise and fall. “Sprinkling salt in my food,” he said, and did it. “The house-elves have left it underseasoned this time.” He put the saltcellar down and picked up his fork.
Mariana glanced at Severus, who sat at the end of the table and was watching his grandfather intently. Severus only shook his head at her, indicating that he had nothing to do with the taste of Seneca’s food.
If Seneca was acting ordinarily and almost pleasantly…what did that mean? Did he believe that he had gained some advantage over her, or had he found out about the way she had affected his mind, or the attack a few years ago had?
Mariana finished her meal in a distracted frame of mind, and stood. She had been going to spend the morning writing out the next set of lessons she wanted Severus to complete, mostly looking for facts in the history book he was reading and accurately describing them to her, but she thought writing a letter might be more important.
“Indulge me in a walk in the garden, my dear.”
From the look in Seneca’s eye, the last thing he would accept was an objection. Mariana just nodded and glanced at Severus. “Go to your lessons, Severus. I’ll join you when your grandfather and I are done.”
The wary black eyes that met hers broke her heart; this was the first time in months that Severus had looked so like Eileen. But he nodded and put his porridge spoon in the bowl, then clambered down from his chair and walked towards the study. He knew better than to run in Seneca’s sight.
“He is a much different boy than he was when we first claimed him.”
“Yes,” Mariana said lightly, turning to watch her husband watching Severus. “So much smarter and capable of showing it. I thought at first that Eileen might have ruined him with the spells she performed on him, but she did better than I thought.”
“I have no wish to speak of our Muggle-loving daughter this morning.”
Mariana inclined her head and walked towards the edge of the garden, between the beds of nodding white flowers, her hand slipping down her side as if she was scratching an itch. In reality, that made it much easier to draw her wand. She stared into the distance as if contemplating the clouds, and ignored the way that her entire skin prickled as her husband drew nearer and nearer to her.
“Did you really think you could get away with it forever?”
Mariana felt as if the air in her lungs had turned to stone. She didn’t turn back to Seneca, because it was wasted motion, and gripped her wand.
“Or that you can resist me, now?”
He lunged at her, trying to take her wand, but Mariana whipped to the side and faced him with it drawn. Seneca stared at her as if he was puzzled. Mariana didn’t know why. Maybe it was because, at least in his conscious memory, she had so rarely resisted him before.
Then Seneca’s face hardened, and he shook his head. “You took the memory of how you assaulted my mind from me, but that doesn’t matter. I will still kill you.” And his hand came up gripping his wand.
Mariana breathed again. Severus wasn’t the only one who had learned from the lessons Harry taught, and while Seneca was a creative and clever duelist, he didn’t know that she wouldn’t be dueling. She would be fighting for her life and the life of her grandson.
“They gave it back to me, my allies,” Seneca muttered. “And they told me everything I need to know about the time traveler, Harry Evanson.”
Mariana jabbed her wand and released the spell silently, so as to give him no chance to defend against it. Seneca staggered, shaking his head, his eyes blurring with what seemed like tears of pain, but didn’t fall, and Mariana followed him, concentrating all her desperation and belief into the spell.
Obliviate!
This time, it hit squarely. Seneca made a guttural noise and swayed back and forth, and then the blankness Mariana had been looking for came into his eyes. She didn’t know how long this would last, given that he apparently had “allies” who were skilled in mind manipulation, but she didn’t care if this lasted forever. Only long enough for her and Severus to get away.
“I agreed meekly to everything you proposed, and then said that I was taking Severus on a holiday,” she whispered. “You agreed. You were glad to have us out of the house, in fact.”
Seneca licked his lips and whispered, “Holiday?”
“Yes,” Mariana said, and then she whirled and ran back to the house. She called for the house-elves the minute she was inside, and told them to pack Severus’s clothes, toys, and books. There was little else here that he would need.
Severus was already waiting for her, it turned out. He flung himself into her arms and buried his head against her chest, but not in such a way that he muffled the question he asked.
“Where are we going to go, Grandmama?”
“Grimmauld Place,” Mariana said, and ran to do her own packing.
Chapter Twenty-Eight.