[Children of the Sun series]: Silver Shadow Snake, gen, PG-13, 18/?
Part Seventeen.
Part One.
Title: Silver Shadow Snake (18/?)
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Pairings: Gen other than background Lucius/Narcissa
Content Notes: For this part, mild angst
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Harry wasn’t sure when he first started noticing the odd doubleness of Professor Quirrell’s familiar, but he had no doubt it was there. And since no one else was doing anything about it, he thought it was probably up to him.
Author’s Notes: This is the beginning of a longer story arc, which will be updated every Saturday. You should read the other fics in the series first: Children of the Sun series.
Thank you again for all the reviews!
Part Eighteen
“The necessary witnesses for the trial of Albus Dumbledore are present.”
Albus calmly ignored the glares he was getting as the Aurors escorted him to the chair with chains in the middle of the courtroom. Fawkes perched next to him, head drooped to examine the band around his leg. Albus shot him a small glance. Fawkes ruffled out his feathers and shook his wings, which meant he hadn’t figured out a way past it yet.
Yet, Albus repeated to himself, and looked at Amelia Bones as she strode into the middle of the floor in front of him and turned to face the gallery.
“Esteemed members of the Wizengamot, witnesses for the defense and the prosecution, members of the press and the Ministry,” she began, with pretentiousness Albus could have taught her to lessen. “We are here today to try Albus Dumbledore on the charge of leaving Harry Potter with abusive Muggles.”
“I thought you already did,” someone yelled from the gallery.
“This time, we have all the people needed to testify,” said Amelia, and then glanced over her shoulder. Albus felt a shiver of premonition even before he turned his head. Yes, Harry was walking towards him with his golden snake slithering beside him.
Albus noted that the boy wore no suppression cuffs of his own, much as the snake wore no cuff around his neck. He wanted to shake his head, but refrained. They would most likely learn better later, to their detriment.
One of the Aurors brought a chair, and the boy settled into it, looking somberly at Albus. He was small enough that Albus sighed. Yes, the Dursleys had not been good to the boy. But Albus had been sure that they would be. There was no reason for him to be tried.
“Harry Potter, before we begin we must ascertain some basic facts,” said Amelia. Her voice was softer than before, and her tiger sat with his tail simply wrapped around his forepaws, not on the verge of lunging forwards. And she still thinks that she is not influenced by the boy’s spreading magic? “I want you to tell me if any of the questions make you uncomfortable, and we will come up with a different way for you to answer them.”
“Yes, Madam Bones.”
“You lived with your aunt and uncle, Petunia and Vernon Dursley, at Number Four Privet Drive in Surrey?”
“Yes, Madam Bones.”
“And you did not have your golden familiar when you were first taken there?”
“I don’t really remember, Madam Bones. I’ve had Golden as long as I can remember.”
“Perhaps I may be of some help?” A figure stepped forwards from the cluster of witnesses standing off to the side. “I was with Albus Dumbledore when he dropped off Harry as a baby on the Dursleys’ doorstep.”
Albus felt his eyes widen. He masked it in the next moment with a smile, but he knew he would not forget Minerva’s treachery. Or the way her familiar was puffed-up and glaring at him and Fawkes, for the matter. As if Malkin had the right.
“You are Minerva McGonagall, Professor of Transfiguration at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry?”
“I was. I am now Headmistress, since I was Deputy Headmistress.”
“And why would you have been with Albus Dumbledore when he dropped a baby off at his Muggle relatives’ house?”
“Because I was also a member of the Order of the Phoenix, a group that Albus formed o fight against You-Know-Who in the war.”
There were sharp gasps from several different directions. “The vigilante organization?” a woman in a heavy purple hat demanded.
“Yes,” said Minerva. Albus felt a little better knowing that at least she was incriminating herself as well. “James and Lily Potter were also members. Albus asked me to keep an eye on the house of Lily’s Muggle sister and her husband before he brought the child there, in hopes of finding out what they were like.”
“And what did you say?”
“I thought they were the worst sort of Muggles. I told him so.”
Albus shook his head sorrowfully. “They were not the worst sort of Muggles,” he told the Wizengamot members who turned towards him, obedient as usual to someone who had a golden familiar. “They were very ordinary Muggles. Harry’s blood family. Of course I could not have known they would be abusive, but they were the right people to bring him up.”
“Albus Dumbledore,” said Amelia, standing with her arms folded and her legs slightly apart, “we have established that you ignored the Potters’ wills and went against their express wishes to place Mr. Potter with his Muggle relatives. He had several magical families that were both willing and permitted to take him.”
“He needed to grow up out of the limelight of our world, given his fame.”
“Who are you to decide that?”
“The only other person in Britain besides Mr. Potter who has a golden familiar. Are you questioning as to whether I would know what was best for him?”
That caused a few members of the Wizengamot to hesitate, which made Albus smile. But Amelia kept glaring at him. “Honored members of the Wizengamot, Harry Potter was fifteen months old when he was placed on the Dursleys’ doorstep. His familiar had not yet manifested. There was no way of knowing that he would have a golden one and that that would make him akin to the only person in Britain at the time who did have one.”
Albus shook his head a little. “I could sense his power then.”
“I do not believe that,” Amelia said simply. “It goes against all the accepted canons of magical theory and against all the history we have, in journals like Merlin’s, that tell us the abilities of someone with a golden familiar.” She turned back to Harry, and her face went softer than Albus thought it should. He considered telling them all the truth about Harry’s scar, but he doubted they would believe him at the moment. “Now, Mr. Potter, please tell us more about the abuse that your relatives inflicted on you.”
His snake reared up and danced for a moment beside Harry. Harry put his hand on the snake’s head and calmed it. Albus sighed again. He would have liked to see it lash out and cause havoc. Perhaps that would remind those who were inclined to favor Harry exactly what Voldemort’s familiar had been like.
“They didn’t like me eating. They kept me in a cupboard under the stairs. My cousin tried to shove me down the stairs, and punch me, and beat me up with his friends.”
“Tried?” asked the woman in the purple hat who had commented before.
“Most of the time, Golden stopped them. He prevented me from falling or he got food for me. And he did a few other things, too. One time, he turned the car my uncle was driving into a donkey.” Harry smiled a little as some of the Wizengamot members laughed in what sounded like surprise. “My uncle was pulling into the driveway too fast and he was going to hit me. But Golden stopped him.”
That made sympathetic looks bloom onto most faces around the room. Only Albus seemed to hear the most important word there. “So they tried to hurt you, Mr. Potter? They didn’t succeed? That is not abuse.”
Amelia turned around and treated him to a cold look. Her tiger surged to his feet and prowled a step forwards, his eyes fixed on Albus and his body coiling as if he would spring.
“That would still be abuse,” said Julian, the man with the bronze monkey. “Comparable to the sort of abuse that people tended to give children in attempting to see if they were Squibs or not. Just because a child doesn’t drown when forced into a lake or bounces when dropped from a window does not make it not abusive, Mr. Dumbledore.”
Albus saw Harry start from the corner of his eye, as if he had realized something. Albus could not waste time pondering what it was. He shook his head. “But we are here to try actions, not intent, as Madam Bones has so carefully reminded me. Is it not actions that matter? And the Dursleys did not manage to lay a hand on Mr. Potter.”
“Having him sleep in a cupboard is still abusive,” Julian said in a clipped voice. His monkey sat up on his shoulder and chattered at Albus, which made Albus think how much better Fawkes’s control was. “Calling him a freak and telling him that his parents were useless drunks who died in an accident they caused is still abuse.”
“It leaves no marks.”
Julian gave him a flatly disbelieving look that Albus found insulting, and turned to face Madam Bones. “I didn’t mean to take over Mr. Potter’s testimony. I hope that you’ll forgive my interruption.”
“You were speaking from the point of view of a man trusted by Mr. Potter with his secrets,” said Amelia. Julian nodded and went back to his seat, but not before he gave another nod to Harry, one that was deep enough it could have been a bow with the angle slightly changed.
Cold shot down Albus’s spine and made Fawkes shift on his perch. Did that mean that Harry was accumulating followers around himself? Ones who might bring back the outdated idea of Lordship for those with golden familiars?
He is far more dangerous than I thought. I must somehow persuade someone to put Harry in suppression cuffs until his seventeenth birthday.
“Mr. Potter.” Amelia sounded soft and condescending. “Do you want to confirm for us that Mr. Kindle’s words are correct?”
“Yes, they are.” Harry sounded sad, and somehow distracted. “They told me that I was a freak all the time. I didn’t know why, because they didn’t tell me about the wizarding world. I knew Golden must be magic, but not-not how he worked, or that there were other wizards with familiars out there.”
For some reason, Amelia stilled. Then she murmured, “So you came into our world without knowing anything about the hierarchy or the familiars, Mr. Potter?”
“Well, Mr. Hagrid-the Hogwarts gamekeeper-explained a little about it to me when he came to take me to Diagon Alley. And I met Draco Malfoy in the robe shop, and he explained a little more.”
Albus shook his head. Hagrid hadn’t told him that they’d run into the Malfoy boy in Diagon Alley. Then again, it was possible that he wouldn’t have seen him unless he peered hard into the interior of the robe shop.
“But you didn’t know anything about what having a golden familiar meant, or what people might expect of you, when you stepped into Diagon Alley?”
“No. I understand more now, Madam Bones. I’ve been reading and studying at Hogwarts with some of my friends, and some of the professors have been very helpful.”
“You should still have received instruction in such basic matters.” Amelia sounded upset.
Albus cleared his throat. “I wished Harry to grow up away from his fame. The furor would have increased if he’d been raised in the wizarding world, once his familiar manifested. You cannot deny that I have succeeded. He is a modest boy.”
Amelia looked at him once. Then she turned away dismissively, while her tiger continued to regard Albus and Fawkes, a low rumble coming from his throat, too continuous to be called a snarl.
The rest of the questions went as Albus would have expected, with Amelia drawing more details of his “abuse” out of the boy, and questions about where he would go after the trial, and what he had known and not known about before Hogwarts. Albus listened and said nothing more. This was not the right audience, which he should have known. He would wait until Harry was not in the room and there was no way for his innocent face to sway the masses.
But he would persevere. He knew what the others did not: that the Horcrux in Harry’s scar had doubtless influenced his familiar, both in causing it to manifest as a serpent and making it golden. Voldemort’s silver serpent plus the silver familiar that Harry would likely have had without his influence-since both his parents had been born to the silver-had made it gold.
Harry had to die for Voldemort to perish. It was a tragedy almost beyond enduring, but Albus had known others.
And he would not allow someone who had no true claim to the status of a golden familiar to influence the world around him.
Part Nineteen.
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