Chapter Thirty-Four of "The Art of Self-Fashioning"- Meanwhile, Back at Hogwarts
Chapter Thirty-Three.
Title: The Art of Self-Fashioning (34/?)
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Warnings/Content notes: Angst, canonical child abuse, animal harm in the first chapter, AU, violence, gore, torture, gen (no pairings)
Rating: R (for violence)
Subject: In a world where Neville is the Boy-Who-Lived, Harry still grows up with the Dursleys, but he learns to be more private about what matters to him. When McGonagall comes to give him his letter, she also unwittingly gives Harry both a new quest and a new passion: Transfiguration. But while Harry deliberately hides his growing skills, Minerva worries more and more about the mysterious, brilliant student writing to her who may be venturing into dangerous magical territory. Ravenclaw!Harry, Mentor!Minerva.
Author’s Notes: This is going to be a fairly long story that will update every Thursday. The first few chapters will take place in Harry’s childhood and first year; then it will skip ahead to his fifth year. It’s heavy on the angst and gore, but heavier on the magical theory.
Chapter One.
Thank you again for all the reviews!
Chapter Thirty-Four-Meanwhile, Back at Hogwarts
“Do you think Umbridge did something to Professor Snape?”
Neville caught himself automatically shaking his head, and then coughed a little when he saw Hermione staring at him. It was always more awkward disagreeing with her than saying he didn’t know, because she would demand where he got the knowledge.
And he couldn’t exactly reveal to Ron and Hermione that Harry had told him something about what was being “done” to Professor Snape.
“Did you hear something, Neville?” Hermione leaned forwards until she was almost falling off the couch in the Gryffindor common room. Neville sighed moodily and looked at the fire.
Hermione was the one who had helped him start the Defense Association. She still sometimes came up with strategies that relied on people outside the school, and he knew that she counted on him to pass those on to Harry and Black. She had hunted down Rita Skeeter, revealed the secret of her Animagus form, and blackmailed her into writing a good article about Neville for once.
But still, Neville sometimes wished he hadn’t chosen to bring Ron and Hermione with him when he went to meet Harry and Black.
“I didn’t really hear something.”
“You read it? A letter? From Potter?”
Ron winced a little and raised a Silencing Charm around them. Hermione would have done that, Neville knew, but when she got excited like this, she wasn’t discreet.
“I know that Snape went away to do something to Harry,” said Neville, deciding that vague would at least reassure Hermione that Snape wasn’t going to come back and either help them or hinder them any time soon. “Harry caught him and stopped him. He and Black are dealing with it.”
“Are they doing something illegal?” Hermione demanded promptly. “I could see that Harry didn’t like Professor Snape. And Black seemed like someone who disdained all forms of authority. Professor Snape isn’t all bad, really. How are we going to pass our Potions OWLS without him?”
“And now we come to the real reason you’re worried,” Ron muttered, rolling his eyes. “Besides, it might be good for some people’s OWLS that he’s not here.”
Neville saw the way Ron glanced at him, and couldn’t help nodding a little. Even with all the extra training Snape had given him, Neville had never been confident around Potions. Gran kept telling him he should be, since he knew all about Herbology and had received knowledge on cauldrons and stirring rods and proper brewing procedures since before he came to Hogwarts.
But the plain and simple knowledge was that he wasn’t. And he thought he would relax a lot more if he could take his Potions OWL and study for it without Snape peering over his shoulder and shaking his head in disgust.
“But who are they going to get to teach Potions, if Professor Snape doesn’t come back? And Professor McGonagall! Who’s going to teach Transfiguration?”
“I think Professor Dumbledore is doing pretty well at that, Hermione…”
Neville leaned back in his chair and let their bickering drift out of his attention while he stared down at Dapple. The way the cat was sleeping right now, one leg dangling down his shoulder, comforted him. Even though Harry had created Dapple so that he was only loyal to Neville, he would probably yowl or make some sign if Harry was in danger or hurt, right?
Or dead.
Neville swallowed as the thought drifted through his head. No, he wasn’t going to think that way. He was going to keep hoping that Harry would do well with Black and Professor McGonagall-Neville knew she was there-and could handle Professor Snape on his own. He had other things to worry about.
His fingers wandered towards the back of his right hand, and he pulled them away before Hermione could notice. So far, Umbridge’s detentions hadn’t scarred him, the way they had other people. Neville knew enough about Murtlap essence and the other plants he could mix with it that that wouldn’t happen unless she kept him writing lines for seven hours or more.
But she was still there. And no matter how much Neville tried to talk to Professor Dumbledore, especially now that he was teaching Transfiguration, it never worked. Dumbledore simply turned away as if he didn’t see him and walked out of the classroom, or started talking to another student.
Even when he handed Neville’s homework back, he never looked him in the eye.
Neville sighed, and tried to concentrate on the harmless conversation Ron and Hermione were having now, about schoolwork, without rubbing either the scar that might form someday on his hand or the one on his forehead that sometimes bled, and sometimes burned. He couldn’t think about his duties all the time, or he would go mental.
*
Like old times, Albus thought, as he shook his head over the frankly atrocious spelling errors in the Gryffindor essay he was correcting right now. It was a little hard to have House pride when they insisted on doing things like that.
He looked sideways at Fawkes, who had gone to sleep about halfway through the marking process. Albus had to smile. He liked to read aloud particularly bad sentences and shudder through them, but his phoenix found it less entertaining.
Not even when Albus stood up and walked over to the fire did Fawkes stir. Albus sighed and raised the fire with a flick of his wand. Then he called a house-elf and asked for a mug of hot tea, and bundled a blanket around himself when he went back to his chair, but no matter what he tried, nothing made him warm.
He suspected he might have lost the loyalties of both Severus and Minerva, and there would be little more devastating to either the Order of the Phoenix or the war effort, except Neville’s death before his time.
And over Harry Potter. Albus simply had to shake his head. Severus had reason to hate the boy, but Albus had never thought he would defect in his favor.
And Minerva?
Albus sighed again and stroked his beard for a moment, looking at the essays without seeing them. He suspected that Minerva had simply allowed her protectiveness for Harry to overcome her common sense. She had forgotten there were other students who needed her as well, Neville Longbottom not least among them.
I was excited when I discovered how promising a student Minerva was in Transfiguration, but I never lost my head over her.
Then again, Minerva had sentimental connections to James and Lily Potter that Albus had had to overcome. Of course he had grieved when he heard what had happened to them, but he had done the same thing when Frank and Alice Longbottom died. He was a general in that war the Order of the Phoenix had fought almost alone against the Death Eaters. He couldn’t allow personal concerns to cloud his mind.
If Minerva had gone and wasn’t returning, and Severus wasn’t, either, whether he had gone to join Minerva and Potter or had joined the Death Eaters in truth…
Making arrangements for a new Potions professor-right now, the classes were being taught by a rotating schedule of Aurors and experts from the Ministry who were only too happy to have the opportunity to snoop around Hogwarts-was the least of his worries.
*
“I don’t know what’s going on with you, Terry. But get your head in the right pace, or you’re going to fall all your OWLS. Let alone probably get kicked out of the Tower.”
Hearing such words from Michael, of all people, was what had really pulled Terry up short. Michael had told him that and then stormed upstairs. Or not stormed, really. Simply run away before Terry could say anything. Even though he was doing pretty well in the D. A. and dating Ginny Weasley of all people, Michael was still timid.
And Terry had to consider that his advice was pretty good advice, as he slumped in his chair in the Ravenclaw common room, biting his lip and staring into the fire.
He’d been upset when Harry left, and people were sympathetic. A lot of them thought it showed that Harry had never been his friend, running off like that without a word to him, and so they nodded and offered advice on mental healing books and covered for him when he skived off a couple of classes.
But now they were impatient. They thought he should be over it by now. Terry had even been asked by a few snide sixth- and seventh-years if he was in love with Harry or something, the way he grieved over him.
It wasn’t easy when he sat in an armchair that was so comfortable, but Terry’s hands slowly made fists.
It was simpler than that. It was a lot simpler than that.
Lots of things had been happening with Harry that Terry never knew about. He hadn’t asked questions because he’d thought that was the best way to lose Harry’s friendship. He’d just waited and assumed that someday Harry would tell him the truth, because no one could keep secrets all the time.
Instead, Harry had run away. And sent one owl that said, vaguely, he was okay, and Terry shouldn’t worry about him or try to search for him.
That was weeks ago now.
Terry was in Ravenclaw for a reason. He was observant. He saw the way that Neville went around with his head drooping for a while, and then one day he walked into the Great Hall and he was smiling. He sat down and laughed and joked with Weasley and Granger, and everything was fine.
He’d heard from Harry. More than that he was okay, because Terry knew the other boy well enough to realize such shit wouldn’t have satisfied Longbottom any more than it would have satisfied him.
But when he’d tried to speak to Longbottom in the DA meetings, he got lots of stares and mumbles about, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Then Longbottom had assigned someone else to teach him the Shield Charm, as if he assumed that would satisfy Terry or had even been what he was really asking about.
It didn’t.
Terry had had enough of being left out of things. He’d held back and tried to find out secrets just by searching for them, and listening to the right conversations, and talking to the right people. And look where it got him. Trapped in a school among a lot of increasingly paranoid Ravenclaws, some of whom Terry thought would already have gone to Umbridge if not for Granger’s threats.
The only real knowledge and training in the school was happening in the DA-which couldn’t meet all the time-and in Gryffindor House. Terry wanted to survive and know that he’d done something grand. He wouldn’t get that if things just went on as they were.
Oh, and he wanted to find Harry and ask him what the hell was going on, so he would know if he was stupid for having been his friend for so long. Terry hated wasting his time, but he hated not knowing if he was wasting his time even more.
The Hat wanted to put me in Slytherin for my ambition, Terry thought, as he sat up in his chair and gave a nod. A few people glanced at him, but not for long. He’d developed a reputation as someone you didn’t want to bother.
All right, then. Let’s go about doing this.
*
“I want to be included.”
Neville paused. Terry Boot had walked past their table, which was an everyday thing, and then stopped, which wasn’t. And he was glaring at Neville and Ron and Hermione as if they had started a secret DA and then not invited him to the meetings.
“What?” Neville asked because it was the only thing he could come up with to say.
Boot unfolded something on their table. Neville leaned over to look in spite of himself, because it looked like a runic circle. Hermione did the same thing on his other side, and then gasped and stared accusingly up at Boot.
“What did you do?”
“You’re not the only one who can modify common charms when you’re really desperate, Granger,” Boot shot back, his eyes narrowed. He kept his voice low so as not to attract attention, but Neville thought they would already have it, except it was too early for Umbridge to be up. “And yes, I eavesdropped on your conversations by casting the charm on a runic circle and putting the circle in your bags a few times. So. I know you know where Harry is. I want to know, too.”
Neville swallowed. He didn’t understand all the implications of what Boot had done, but he also knew they weren’t going to get rid of him easily, the way he was standing there with his arms folded, bulking like Crabbe and Goyle.
“He was already upset because I brought Ron and Hermione in. I don’t think he’ll want me to tell you.”
“Too bad.”
“Why don’t you just owl him?” Hermione demanded. “There’s nothing preventing you from doing that, and that way, you would actually know where he is, and you don’t have to involve us.”
“With the way that she’s standing ready to intercept the outgoing owl post? Not as smart as you look, Granger.”
The next instant, Boot sat down beside Ron, his head ducked. Neville followed the line of his gaze and saw Umbridge coming in at the entrance to the Great Hall. She didn’t seem to see Boot, probably because he’d chosen to hide behind the tallest of them. But she did catch Neville’s eye, and smirked.
“Go about your business, students,” she said in her false cooing voice, and then turned and walked out of the Great Hall.
“If you stay around us,” Neville said, leaning over to whisper to Boot, “then you’re going to get in trouble.”
“Give me a secure way to contact Harry and do whatever you’re planning, and then I won’t bother you anymore,” Boot said instantly. “Or I can fight beside you and tag after you and probably get you in trouble because I can’t take all the precautions you know to take. Your choice.”
Neville stared at his friends. Hermione drew her wand and mouthed “Obliviate?” at him.
But Neville shook his head instantly. The last thing he wanted to do was become like Umbridge and all the other people who would probably think that was a good idea. It wasn’t Boot’s fault that he’d got frustrated and come to look for them. Neville would probably have done the same thing in his place.
At least I know more of what’s going on because I’m the Boy-Who-Lived.
It was the first good thing Neville had ever been able to think about it.
“All right, Boot,” he said, and leaned over to whisper, just in case Umbridge came and peered back in. “You can know a little of what we know, but there’s no way that I’m going to tell you everything. I don’t know how discreet you can be.”
Boot just nodded, eyes calm and focused. Neville paused. It wasn’t really the look he would have expected to see from one of Harry’s friends who had just been told how to contact him. “Do you want to talk to Harry that badly?” he added.
“I’m really angry at him,” Boot said simply. “I’m looking forward to a chance to tell him how angry.”
Neville swallowed, and decided that he wouldn’t get in between Boot and Harry. The most he could do was prevent Boot from causing trouble.
Well, maybe not the most, he thought, as he began to write down directions for Boot to meet them in a specially-transformed Room of Requirement later. Maybe the most I can do is give us another ally and Harry another friend to count on.
Maybe. After Boot is finished yelling at him.
*
Albus paused when Fawkes abruptly poked his head out from under his wing and crooned. He hadn’t done that in almost a week. Albus stood up and walked over to the door, hand on his wand just in case. Fawkes and he sometimes had different ideas of who was welcome in the Headmaster’s office.
But when he opened the door, he saw that they’d been in accord. Minerva was standing there, bedraggled but smiling.
“Albus,” she whispered, and then all but collapsed into his arms.
Albus immediately bundled her to a chair and helped her sit down, casting Warming Charms on the blankets that flew over to wrap themselves around her. Minerva grasped and drank the cup of hot tea he ordered from the kitchens, too. Albus reached out and tenderly took one of her hands.
It was so cold that he almost dropped it again.
“My dear, what happened?” he whispered.
Minerva looked up at him, and for an instant her eyes were hawk-like, piercing. Then she said, “Albus, swear to me-tell me-that you didn’t know Severus was loyal to You-Know-Who.”
The stomachache Albus had experienced sometimes in the recent past when he thought of Harry Potter converting both Minerva and Severus to his side redoubled. Perhaps he should have hoped for that.
“What?”
“You didn’t.” Minerva slumped in the chair and stared down at her hands, clasped around the teacup. “You didn’t,” she repeated in a dead voice.
“I need you to tell me what happened.” Albus didn’t like the flutter in his voice, as if he was the fledgling phoenix who had landed on Minerva’s shoulder. He sat down. “Tell me everything, my dear.”
Minerva took another long, fortifying swallow of tea. After how cold she had been, Albus could hardly blame her. And then she continued in the same dead tone. “I followed Severus when he Apparated because there was-an air about him. Most of the time, when I see him in the corridors-I suppose I should say when I saw him-he’s hurrying to his office or to meals or making rounds to catch students. You know how he moves when he’s doing that. Striding or stalking. Preoccupied.”
Albus nodded. He had tried to encourage Severus to take an interest in more than the round of daily life at the school. It was one of his notable failures.
“This time, he was walking as though he didn’t want to be seen. Not the way he would sneak about to catch students, either. As though he didn’t think he had a right to be where he was. And then he did cast a Disillusionment Charm on himself.” Minerva swallowed again, this time without the benefit of tea. “I followed him as a cat. I was able to hang on when he Apparated. Onto his robe,” she added, with a brief smile that flickered and died before Albus could try to warm it back into life. “He never noticed me.”
Albus managed a smile himself, but it was shorter than hers. “And then?”
Minerva’s hands shook. She closed her eyes. “I never knew that he hated the Potters so much.”
“What?” Albus breathed, and felt a dark, sick wave break through him.
“He was plotting with another Death Eater to set up an ambush outside the Potters’ hospital room. The other Death Eater seemed like Walden Macnair to me. And apparently he’d already alerted Harry that he should come there, that there was a threat to his parents.” She looked up, her eyes burning. “He was planning to ambush a fifteen-year-old, Albus.”
Albus wanted to say that the boy was no ordinary fifteen-year-old, but the words died on his tongue. Hadn’t he already decided that Harry had Lycaon’s Syndrome? Which meant he was, in essence, a sick animal. There was no threat in that, no hope of revenge. Severus had done something petty and underhanded, terrible, for revenge on an animal.
It was a worse failure than I realized.
“And then what happened?” Albus whispered.
Minerva laughed. “I made myself visible to him. He-didn’t like that. From the way he attacked me, I am absolutely certain that he no longer considers us on the same side.” She wrapped her arms around herself, nearly upsetting the cup, which Albus rescued. “And since I’m hardly a secret member of the Order of the Phoenix…”
Albus nodded somberly. Most of the Order members understood that Severus might have to take extreme actions to maintain his cover, and in front of another Death Eater, that would ordinarily count.
But he had always alerted Albus when that had to happen. And this wasn’t a raid, or a battle. It was a secret ambush that had probably been set up with some hope of revenge in mind.
“What was his motive for setting up the ambush?”
Minerva looked at him and smiled without humor. “He blames Harry for Lily’s madness. He thinks that if the boy hadn’t existed, she wouldn’t have fought so hard to protect him, and the Death Eaters wouldn’t have tortured her in the first place.”
Albus hid his head in his hands. That perhaps wasn’t a common Death Eater motive, but it was-it was one. There was nothing Harry could have done to earn this, except being born and being the son of a woman, it was clear now, Severus had never stopped obsessing over.
“That was the only reason?” He still hoped, somehow, to hear something that would redeem Severus.
“I heard something he mentioned,” Minerva said, and her voice was reluctant, slow. “It might have been just a show for Macnair.”
“What was it?”
“That Harry is Neville’s friend, and that he might bring the boy before You-Know-Who so he could learn more about Neville’s weakness. Or torment him with it.”
Albus’s head drooped. Yes, that was the kind of excuse Severus would invent for cover.
Except that he shouldn’t need a cover for ambushing a student, or former student, in the first place. Except that Albus was so far from authorizing this that Severus must have been deranged.
Or, perhaps, so damaged that he had never even considered whether his vengeance was worth the cost.
“What happened then?” Albus asked wearily. He had to know the story, had to experience the worst, but he almost wished he could stop, and leave what had happened in the past.
“We fought,” Minerva said. Her voice trembled. “It was an exhausting battle. But he didn’t succeed in hurting Harry. I think that maybe Harry was never even fooled.” Now there was a note of pride in her voice, and Albus considered telling her about Harry’s disease, but decided that, in the end, her delusions would hurt less. “After that…well. I wounded Macnair, but not Severus, not badly enough.”
Albus studied her trembling hands. “You’ve been in hiding, haven’t you?”
“Yes.” Minerva sighed out the words and bowed her head. “More exhausting work. Severus has evidently invented some interesting potions, and I didn’t know that so many Death Eaters could Apparate so fast.” She looked up at him and offered a tremulous smile. “I’m sorry, Albus. I would have contacted you sooner, but with that pink woman here…”
“Yes.” Albus made his decision. He had been trying to go along with Dolores and the Ministry for now, lest his real plans for the Order attract too much attention. But this had gone far enough. “I plan to do something about dear Dolores.”
This time, Minerva’s smile was real. “Thank you, Albus. I think Neville and the other students need her gone more than they need anything else right now.”
Albus pulled her to her feet and hugged her. She was still trembling against him. “Rest for now, my dear, and for the next day. I’ve been covering the Transfiguration classes, and Horace has agreed to come out of retirement for Potions, for me.” He hesitated once more. “You don’t think Severus will ever come back, do you?”
“I think it’s safe to say that no, he won’t.”
*
Minerva straightened her shoulders and sighed down to the bottoms of her toes. The real exhausting performance had been walking the thin line in Albus’s office, convincing him to accept her back so she could help Neville and the other students here, and yet have enough flexibility that she could leave to tutor Harry when he needed her help. She had told Albus that she still wanted to see Severus punished, and might leave on his trail sometimes.
Albus had been disturbed, but he had let it go for the same reason he had let Severus’s obsession with punishing students go unchecked for so long.
And she hadn’t been able to lie. Mostly, one couldn’t, not to a Legilimens. But some careful wording, some stating of facts that Albus had thought were answers to questions, and she had danced with the truth just enough.
Of course, it’s easier to fool someone who already trusts you.
Minerva sighed and leaned against the wall as she rode the staircase down. Time to think about other things, like how Black had been so certain she wouldn’t be able to lie well enough and she’d done it anyway.
And the lessons she was going to continue to teach Harry.
Chapter Thirty-Five.
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