Chapter Fifty-Five of 'Other People's Choices'- Unpredictable Gifts
Chapter Fifty-Four.
Title: Other People’s Choices (55/?)
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Pairing: None; this is a gen story
Content Notes: AU of CoS, angst, present tense, violence
Rating: PG-13
Summary: AU. The Sorting Hat doesn’t just let the Sword go when it falls on Harry’s head in the Chamber, but also Sorts him again, this time into Slytherin. Harry is furious and terrified, and the adults aren’t helping much.
Author’s Notes: This began life as another of my Advent fics in response to an anonymous request for Harry being re-Sorted into Slytherin when the Sorting Hat hits his head in CoS. The title is based on Dumbledore’s quote: “It is our choices, Harry, that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities.”
Chapter One.
Thank you again for all the reviews!
Chapter Fifty-Five-Unpredictable Gifts
Blaise knows the truth now, but he still wants to test it out some more before he shows it to anyone.
So he goes to the library on a day when the study group isn’t meeting because Granger has dragooned most of them into studying for exams instead, and waits until he sees a small table of Ravenclaws getting up to leave. They’re mostly fifth-years, which will be an interesting challenge for his ability given that students older than he is may also have more practice resisting magic. He focuses on the book in front of him, and then reaches out with his Gift and tugs hard on the attention of one tall girl in a sloppy robe.
She turns around to look at him curiously. Blaise lifts his head and smiles at her. Her skin is a little darker than his, and her hair is braided around her head in rows he hasn’t seen before. He lays his book down.
Her friends are waiting for her. Blaise presses down a little harder on her will, and she makes her own excuses. “I forgot a book that I want to get out.”
“Well, just hurry to dinner, Melinda. You need to put some meat on your bones,” chides another Ravenclaw, and they leave.
Melinda, apparently, walks across the library without hesitation and sits down across from him. Blaise smiles a little more. That’s the exact chair he wanted her to take.
“Who are you?” Melinda asked. “How are you calling me? I felt this call.”
Blaise increases the pressure of his will. The victims of his mother’s Gift don’t feel that way. They only feel that they’re drawn to the beautiful woman in front of them, the most beautiful woman they’ve ever seen in their lives, as the one before Bernard said, and consorting with her is all their own idea.
Melinda’s eyes widen a little more, and then she blushes. “How is no one sitting with you already? You’re-handsome.”
Blaise sighs and gives her a winsome smile. “Alas, my mother believes in arranged marriages. Hers wasn’t, but she thinks the element of control will make me happier. And it will definitely make her happier.”
“You poor thing.” Melinda takes his hand, and promptly gasps and looks a little dazed. “Isn’t there something someone can do for you?”
“Well,” Blaise says, and looks around self-consciously. He doesn’t want to increase the pressure right now. It would take Melinda too long to recover after she goes back to Ravenclaw Tower. “I mean. There’s something one person could do. I’m sure that your family is wealthy, and it’s only Galleons that will let me escape my mother and come to live in Britain. I live in Italy right now.”
“Of course my family is wealthy! How much do you need?”
“It can’t be huge amounts at first, or my mother would notice and take it away. What do you think about five Galleons at a time? To start with? Could you manage that?”
Melinda beams at him. “Of course I can. Can you meet me at the last staircase before the one that actually goes up to our Tower at seven this evening? I can’t meet before that. You heard Elysia. She’ll notice if I miss dinner. But-please be on time. I’ve never met anyone like you before.”
Blaise hesitates. “Well, I would hate for you to get in trouble. Elysia might be too suspicious if we meet tonight. What about tomorrow? Same time and place?”
“I can do that, too.” Melinda leans over, blushing furiously, and kisses him on the cheek. “I’ve never met anyone like you in my life,” she almost hisses, and then she takes off from the library, running straight towards the Great Hall.
Blaise swallows and leans back, letting the concentrated surge of will fade. He has no desire to be like his mother, controlling people into giving him their fortunes and their hands in marriage and then disposing of them.
But he can use his Gift to protect him and those who matter to him, and he will.
*
“What are you doing?”
“Reading.”
Harry can feel the way Theo rolls his eyes from across the library. Theo walks swiftly over to his table, not the same one the study group tends to meet at, and sits down next to him. Harry looks at him a little sternly. When he sits here, he wants to be alone. Most of the study group has managed to figure that out.
Theo only smiles at him. “Back issues of the Daily Prophet?”
“Yes.” Harry hesitates once, but in the end, he does need to share this with someone, and Hermione is busy creating an immense study schedule for the end-of-year exams that everybody can use and won’t be available until tomorrow. He turns the paper so that Theo can see the photograph on the front page.
“Grindelwald. Do you think the Dark Lord’s return is going to resemble his?”
“No. I’m looking up the articles that got published after Dumbledore defeated him.”
Theo blinks hard at him, and then looks back at the article again. “So it is. But what do you think they’re going to tell you? You could hear about Dumbledore’s defeat of him from almost anyone. They’d be happy to tell you.”
“I know, but do you think that’s the real story? The full one?”
“Neither are the articles in rubbish like the Prophet.”
Harry shakes his head impatiently. “I know, but I can at least start putting things together now. And I can’t start asking people about that story until I think up a good excuse. I don’t know many people who were around at that point, anyway.” He does think of Madam Macmillan in the next second, but the fact remains that she’d want to know why he was asking.
“Well, what details do you need to know?”
“We need to know how Dumbledore fights. What kinds of strategies and tactics he uses. And how he convinces people to believe in him.”
Theo blinks. “And are you going to spread these stories around when you learn about them?”
“No. I’m going to use them to figure out how his mind works and the best ways to move against him.”
Theo studies him. Harry reads through two more articles before he finally snaps, “What?”
“You just seemed so set against being a leader for so long. I was wondering what had changed your mind.”
“The fact that people won’t stop pushing me into this position. And the way that the school isn’t functioning like a school, the way Zach said. If I want to do something about that, then I have to be a leader. But I don’t have to do everything that you think a leader should do,” Harry adds hastily, because a nasty grin is beginning to spread across Theo’s face.
“Oh, I know that. If you didn’t have a mind of your own, you wouldn’t be someone I wanted to follow.”
“Then why are you grinning like that?”
“Because you’re going to upend so many of Dumbledore’s plans.” Theo says it with a soft, almost reverential note in his voice. “And so many other adults’ plans, too. Like my father’s.”
“Why do you hate him, Theo?”
“My reasons are my own.” Theo studies him for a second more, then nods and says, “While you work on our plan from that angle, I’m going to look for material on Grindelwald himself. There are books about him in the Nott library-journals, rather, written by relatives who fought with him.”
“Will your father send them to you?”
“Nott house-elves can bring them to me.”
Harry didn’t even think about that. “Wow, you must have a good relationship with them.”
“It’s special.” For some weird reason, Theo is smiling again. “And don’t let anyone tell you that you need to stop or slow down, Harry. You’re doing things in a way that’s going to make me proud to follow you.”
Harry looks at him suspiciously, but Theo only pats his shoulder, and then gets up and walks towards the shelves. Harry has better things to do than stare after him, so he returns to reading and taking notes.
*
Severus jerks out of sleep. For long moments, he doesn’t know why. Harry hasn’t been in trouble in days. Black is acting civilly enough, and Severus has magical protections up that would make it impossible for the idiot to break into his quarters anyway. Lupin is in another part of the castle and it’s far from the full moon-
Then he feels as though a fireball has landed on his arm, and he claws at his robe to remove the sleeve. The moment the skin is exposed to the air, the fire cools.
No. The moment the Dark Mark was exposed to the air, the fire cooled.
Severus stares down at the gleaming black shape on his skin. It doesn’t look exactly the way it did during the first war-more a sort of murky black than Stygian-but any change from dull grey is cause for concern.
He stands up and reaches for the Floo powder from force of habit before he pauses and closes his eyes. No, he can no longer go to Albus as if he was simply a spy from the first war and nothing else. Albus distrusts him too much. Even if he did not, he will use the information Severus gives him for his own purposes, and he will not inform Severus of what those are.
It is a strange thing; Severus used to accept that. Now he cannot imagine what he was thinking.
He sits down and writes out his observations of the Mark, including the contrast with what it used to look like. Then he puts the parchment aside to share with Harry in the morning.
He knows he cannot treat Harry exactly like the semi-omniscient leader Albus has made himself out to be, but he can trust him, and this will be one of the first demonstrations since he became Harry’s guardian.
*
A brush against the wards brings Tarquinius springing out of sleep. He raises his hands, and the shadows boil into the shape of sleek panthers, scarlet eyes gleaming at him out of every face. Tarquinius jerks his head towards the disturbance in the wards, and they flow off.
As he dresses himself rapidly and steps out of the bedroom, another shadow takes flight over his shoulder, this one owl-shaped. Its talons are solid, however, diamond replicas that Tarquinius spent nearly a year shaping with his magic. He hopes his visitors will not try to argue.
He arrives at the front door to find the shadow-cats stalking slowly in circles around his visitors. The owl sits on the lintel, watching them.
Tarquinius, however, calls his beasts off with another wave of his hand, and bows. “Speakers,” he says. “I did not realize that you would appear before the end of Mr. Potter’s school year.”
“Why would we not?” The first figure moves forwards slowly. Tarquinius twists his hand, and a lamp set in the wall above the door flares to life. He doesn’t dare cast a spell, not right now, during the first delicate moments of negotiation. “You promised us a young serpent mage. We wish to view your memories of him and determine what his strengths are. You are the one who measured his skills with the Silver Hourglass.”
Tarquinius nods, watching the Speaker. Her face is narrow around the edges, and her hair gleams black with a metallic green shade to it. She has chosen to arrive in her half-form, so beneath the waist a long, muscular serpent’s body of the same color as her hair replaces her legs. She also has a forked tongue, vertical pupils, and a swift flicker of clear eyelids that Tarquinius finds difficult to concentrate on, so quickly do they move up and down to shield her gaze.
“You did not warn me of your intention.”
The Speaker pauses for a moment. Then she says, “A mistake. I apologize. My name is Lyassa. These are my companions, Rizzen and Asheren.”
Tarquinius nods to the other two Speakers, one of whom looks almost human except for the features that Lyassa has above the waist and the other of whom is in the form of a shining, enormous serpent, at least five meters long, with scales as blue as the more valuable sapphires in Tarquinius’s collection. “If you will come inside, I will show you the memories. A moment while I permit you passage through the wards.”
He steps to the side, so that he will not be turning his back to the Speakers, and swirls his hand through the required patterns. Like Harry, the Speakers will have passage into the house, but that passage will reverse itself and call forth vicious defenses if they attack him.
“Interesting protections,” Lyassa says softly as she slithers past him. Asheren, the blue serpent, paces her on her other side, with the human-looking Rizzen not far behind her. Tarquinius sees a blaze of gold for a moment in Rizzen’s otherwise dark hair, which is really strings of plaited scales. “You fear violence from us?”
“I anticipate violence from everyone.”
That appears to be acceptable. Tarquinius has reason to be grateful for the size of his entrance hall, which would otherwise look small with the Speakers lounging in it. He calls his Pensieve and places the appropriate memories of Harry’s testing in the Silver Hourglass into it.
Lyassa enters it. Asheren curls up with his neck folded on his coils and watches her. Tarquinius notices the narrow head of a pit viper and shifts so that the vial of antivenin in one pocket rests a little closer to the pocket’s opening.
“How did you find out that Harry Potter was a Parselmouth?”
Rizzen’s voice is less sibilant than Lyassa’s, perhaps because he is not in half-form. Tarquinius faces him. “He proclaimed himself as such last year, when he commanded a summoned snake to stop it from attacking another student. He also killed a basilisk last year, after the monster had spent some time terrorizing the school.”
Asheren lifts his head and hisses something in Parseltongue that makes Tarquinius wish again, fiercely, that he had already learned the language. Rizzen hisses something back and then says, “He commands and kills snakes?”
“He does not seem to have any animosity towards them,” Tarquinius murmurs. This is a question he was prepared for, ever since he realized what Harry’s record with snakes might look like to the Speakers. “He is a defender, a protector. He would stand up to me or you if we attacked those he cared for. And he has battled the Dark Lord Voldemort more than anyone else.”
Rizzen and Asheren have another conversation. This time, Rizzen simply nods instead of saying anything. Tarquinius turns back as Lyassa lifts her head from the Pensieve, and replaces the memory in his own head. He dislikes the sensation of having them outside, no matter how useful Pensieves are.
“He is talented,” Lyassa says at once. She glances at the other Speakers and seems to trade messages in a silent language of flicking tongue and eyelids before she speaks to Tarquinius again. “Or he will be. He has received woefully little instruction so far. Where did he live before he came to Hogwarts?”
“With Muggles. They are no longer a problem.”
“But they were.”
“Yes. As I was telling your companions, Harry Potter is a protector who is sometimes overzealous in the risks he runs. He will need assurance from you that you will not attack his friends.”
“Or prevent them from visiting, I suppose.” Lyassa taps her fingers on her arm. A faint pattern of scales run beneath the skin when Tarquinius glances at it. Her fingernails themselves are clear and glossy, looking as if they are pearl decorations more than real. “We rarely permit entrance into our lands for non-Parselmouths, but we are already making exceptions.”
Tarquinius lifts his eyebrows politely. Lyassa ignores the implied question as politely. “And he has received adequate instruction at Hogwarts?”
“Not in Defense Against the Dark Arts. A new professor arrives every year due to a curse on the post.”
“But there is no class in serpent magic there. Or one that would teach him respect for the creatures in the magical world other than humans.”
Tarquinius thinks about how Harry treated the house-elves last summer. “I do not think he needs a class for that. Even house-elves, he holds in respect, and he killed a basilisk only because it was targeting him. He will have, at the least, wariness around your power.”
The three Speakers hold another conversation in Parseltongue and in that silent language, or at least Tarquinius assumes that is what they are doing. Then Lyassa turns to him. “We will require your hospitality only for this night, Mr. Nott. Then we will go to Hogwarts and watch our possible ward from a distance.”
“I thought you did want the chance to train a Parselmouth. A serpent mage?”
“But as well as making sure that we can be worthy of him, we must make sure that he is worthy of us.”
Tarquinius simply smiles and watches as one of his elves escorts the Speakers to the guest rooms on the ground floor-necessary since Asheren and Lyassa would find it hard to climb the stairs. They are out of sight and, he hopes, scent and hearing before he begins to cough, and spells the blood off his hands and the floor as it flies out.
He will need to visit a Healer tomorrow, he thinks with supreme distaste. This condition is becoming annoying.
Chapter Fifty-Six.
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