Chương 3: Chapter 3
Minerva McGonagall walked briskly to her quarters and taking an old chess set flood to Snape's quarters in the dungeons. She had been watching Harry since he had come back from the Department of Mysteries and she was very worried. Albus now-a-days seemed so uncaring of Harry, especially this fifth year when Harry was already having to deal with too much in her opinion. While Harry may have not noticed anything out of the ordinary she had, and she had been very concerned.
She had not liked any of the things Albus had done in Harry's case, she now realized as she stepped out of the floo and brushed her robes. He had left Harry with uncaring people and she had watched him come back to School undernourished and edgy. She was related to the Potters distantly and she had been one of the wizards and witches who had volunteered to take care of Harry, and she had pushed hard to gain custody.
Albus had not budged, though and Harry had gone to those pathetic muggles. Now as she greeted Snape with a smile, she knew he was not deceived and he was on full alert as he looked at her warily, helping her set the chess set. While they played regularly and with Albus's knowledge, in fact he joined them on many occasions, today was not about a chess game and both of them knew it.
Minerva on her part knew what she had come here to say while Snape only had his suspicions. Both of them were silent at first and the Minerva started the conversation.
"Thank you for seeing me under a pretext of a chess game Severus. While I do not usually hide any thing important from Albus, today I wanted to speak to you about Harry and without Albus's knowledge. Your quarters are so completely warded, I felt safe in coming here."
"Well," Snape drawled, very surprised, but not showing it, "You speak as if your own are not so clean. I know that you are as paranoid as I about your privacy from an old coot that both of us know as the Headmaster." He finished as he handed her a drink.
She smiled her thanks, took a sip and making her first move on the board spoke to him, "Yes, Albus is notoriously inquisitive about all of us and while I know it is for the greater good and generally tend to agree with him on many issues, what he attempts to do with Harry is not what I agree or approve of."
Snape made his move swiftly as he spoke, "Why Minerva, I am surprised. You of all people are speaking against Albus in this matter and so far as I can see, Albus has done a little too much for that ungrateful boy and Potter, I think is wholly undeserving of it in my opinion." He finished acidly as Minerva contemplated thoughtfully both Snape and the chess board as she made her next move.
"You couldn't be more wrong Severus. You taught him Occlumency. Surely you must have had an insight into what type of muggles those people are, the Dursleys, I mean."
"Yes," Snape told her, "I did see Minerva. But that is no excuse to disobey or disregard the rules and your elders or to poke your nose into things that are not of your concern." He told her unable to keep the coldness from his voice as he remembered the pensieve and his utter humiliation that Harry had witnessed what had been his most mortifying moment of his School years.
She smiled once again, moving her knight into an attacking position, "You are offended that Harry went into your pensieve and he saw you hanging upside down showing your knickers?"
Snape started, surprised and then shocked. So Potter had broadcast it to one and all. His face became very bitter as he thought of all the students knowing about his degradation and he retorted sharply, "I might have known Minerva, Potter could not keep such a fact to himself. Why have Albus and the other Order members not enquired of me and ridicule me about it I wonder?"
Minerva looked up startled now as she heard Snape's bitter voice and his assumptions. "As far as I know not even Ron and Hermione know of this. He apparently asked the Twins to create a distraction and went into Umbridge's room, highly foolish in my opinion and called for Sirius and Remus and then flayed them."
Snape stared at her obviously dumbfounded at the statement that Harry Potter should flay anyone let alone Black about his mortification, "Why? It was such a glorious thing wasn't it? Snape the greasy git humiliated and showing his knickers to one and all." He replied flushing bitterly as he thought of that day.
"Ah! You see Severus, Harry did not feel so. He ranted at them and told Sirius that James was not much better than Dudley his cousin, whom he despises and when Sirius told him they were all very young and impetuous he told him that he, Harry was fifteen and he would not do something so degrading even to Malfoy." McGonagall laughed softly at Snape as he gaped at her open mouthed, unable to comprehend the Harry Potter he knew and the Harry Potter Minerva was talking about.
"He told them he felt ashamed and he could not believe how arrogant James had been and had implied that all of us had been lying about his father as a wonderful person. Sirius had apologized then and had tried to pacify Harry. He confided in me and at the next meeting that we had and asked me to look out for him as his Head of House and he said that was planning to show Harry a lot of good memories of his father, the good things he had done so that Harry would not feel let down by James's behavior, that Harry had been unfortunate to witness. But now he cannot as he too, is gone." she finished sadly.
Snape was very still as he heard Minerva speak and he was totally astounded. Potter had defended him? That alone was enough to give him nightmares; over and above that he had been sharply critical of his father. Black would have cringed at the thought that Potter would think so less of his father and his friends. Well, that had been a revelation of a very confusing nature.
It presented Potter in a different light and Snape while had seen enough of his memories to realize Potter had less than a comfortable home life, he had thought him rash and disobedient.
"You call him impetuous Severus, but Harry has hardly any opinion about authority. To him, elders are not necessarily betters and authority probably means suppression. He is so used to relying on himself; to accept help for him is a sign of weakness he cannot afford to have."
She was pleading now, "Look at it from his point of view. When has anybody consulted him on anything concerning him? When is he Severus, even respected as a boy in his own right? Severus, Harry has no one to call his own.
"Even Neville has his grandmother to come for him and ask questions if anything goes wrong. Can you step out of your limits with Ron? No because Molly will lynch you. But Harry? He has no one to talk for him, no one to care for him and now he has no one he cares about." She stopped there unable to go on for a moment, so angry she was.
"How dare Remus say those words at the Order meeting?" she was ranting now, her eyes furious and sparkling with anger and unshed tears.
"We ask so much of the boy, we tell him to face and defeat You-Know-Who for us, but what do we do in return Severus? Nothing, Sirius was right all along. He wanted Harry to have more information; information if Harry had had would have made him more cautious. But none of us told him anything and he had to act with what little he knew. He only knew Sirius was in danger and he was likely to lose the one man who represented not only his parents and family, but a normalcy he was never blessed to have, a man who did not expect anything from him, who cared for him and who saw him only as Harry." She wiped her eyes and sniffed and calmed down visibly.
"Now I know why you came here. You wanted to get it off your chest." Snape told her attempting to calm her down, his own thoughts in utter chaos and swirling with confusion.
"Sorry, Severus. I had no right to let go like this and I did not come for this alone."
Snape smiled at her, "You wish to rant and rave some more. Be my guest."
She was deadly serious, though. "I want your assurance you will keep what I say in confidence as well as what I just spoke, well all right ranted and raved to you?" seeing him nod his head, she smiled.
"I am distantly related to Harry." Seeing his shocked look, "yes, not many people know of it, in fact apart from Albus you are the second person to know. I pushed very hard for custody of Harry. Artemus Potter, Harry's great – great grand father and my great grand mother were first cousins.
"When James died, I told Albus that I would resign my job here and take care of Harry. Albus refused and I went to see and scrutinize the type of people that would have custody of Harry. I spent a whole day there before Harry came that night and I spent the next week there as a cat, Severus, they were horrible. That is the word I would use. That woman used to change him only once a day and she would feed him only twice." Minerva stopped there unable to go on.
"They were horrible." She whispered again and stopped.
Snape was silent as was Minerva for a long time. Then she spoke again, "I came here to ask you to go softly on Harry. He will disobey you, especially now that his lack of Occlumency skills for which he alone is responsible has cost him Sirius. He will try to take it out on you as he does not understand you or particularly like you very much and in all honesty you have not helped as well. Please Severus, understand. If you don't then, well thank you for at least letting me get his off my chest."
She stood up and with a flick of her hand packed her chess board and smiled at Severus once again, nodded and left.
Snape sat there for a very long time staring into the fire and sipping his drink.
----------------------
Harry woke up with a purpose as he thought of unlocking his magic and gifts. Who knew this could be the power the Dark Lord knows not. May be this could even speed up his spell casting and concentration and other things that he was so lacking in.
Hermione had told him that the two potions that would unlock his suppressed magical powers and the other that would unlock his gifts would take a few hours to brew. It would take the whole of today and Harry wanted to tackle the issue of going to Gringotts before going to the Dursleys.
He came down to find Hermione was not there. He waited for a few minutes before Parvati Patil came down with Lavender Brown. "Hey is Hermione still upstairs?"
Both of them giggled and Harry was baffled at that as he had not asked anything remotely funny. "No, she is not upstairs Harry." And giggled again and went down to the Great Hall.
Harry also shook his head and went down to have his breakfast. He saw Hermione sitting there pouring over her books, earning a lot of incredulous looks and sarcastic comments from their classmates.
"Harry, look at her, OWLS are over and she is still pouring over her books." Dean laughed as Harry came and sat down, smiling a little at the others.
"'Morning Hermione, what gives?" he asked nodding at the books.
"I am just looking through our NEWTS books, Harry. NEWTS are so much harder than OWLS and I want to start right now." she replied amidst sniggers from the others.
Harry smiled a little at her knowing that she was doing something else entirely and he was proved right, when she huffed a little and muttering angrily about nothing and got up abruptly, "Bye Harry I will be seeing you, may be at lunch." And Hermione left the Great Hall to most likely go to the library.
"Can't you guys go easy on her? You know she likes to study." Harry glared a little at all of them. Dean just shrugged and looked uncomfortable and they turned to other things. Harry once again wandered aimlessly, thinking hard.
He finally went to the library and sat down there waiting for Hermione to either call him or come down. Waiting for lunch time to come, Harry was bored. He went to lunch and Neville told him, she had come had lunch hurriedly, muttering about something to do with elves and had left.
Harry had not wanted to do any referencing in the library as he did not want Dumbledore to get suspicious, so he stayed in full sight, slightly sullen and grieving which he was, really.
After lunch he took a walk outside around the lake thinking hard and getting his thoughts into perspective. It was so sad he had no one to trust and no one to call his own. Even Remus thought him to be responsible for Sirius. Why did they not understand that if only they had told him something about what they were guarding and some real information about the scar link, he would have been a lot more cautious?
Dumbledore, why did he not want Harry to live? Even if Dumbledore thought Harry was truly powerful; so what about it? He had to be concerned only if Harry was bad or evil or dark. Just because he was powerful did not mean a death sentence did it? Perhaps he felt that Harry would surely turn dark because he had this link with Voldemort?
Well, even if he had Dumbledore had no right to make unilateral decisions about anything. Even if he wanted to do away with him, he had to wait and see if he would turn dark, before plotting and planning to kill him.
It was dinner before he saw Hermione and she was looking very pleased with herself. She nodded to him and whispered as he sat down next to her smiling reluctantly.
"Both the potions are finished Harry and you will take it tonight in your dorm, okay. I will come in at about eleven, so hand me your invisibility cloak and open the door as if to go out to the common room for a minute at eleven, okay?" Harry nodded his head still looking sullen, but his eyes were sparkling for the first time since Sirius fell through the veil.
They had a leisurely dinner chatting, rather Hermione was chatting with Neville, Dean and Seamus her anger of the morning all forgotten and Harry was listening.
After all of them left in a group to the Griffindor common room and continued their chat. Slowly all of them left one by one and Harry too, went to bed, though he did not sleep.
Exactly at eleven Harry went yawing and stretching to open the door to go to the common room and he felt something brush him by. He went down, stayed for about five minutes and then came up to apparently go back to sleep.
He opened his curtains and shut them tightly and turned to find Hermione standing there in her night clothes and wand in her hand, busy casting silencing charms and securing the curtains to stay shut. Then she once again took Harry's invisibility cloak and went to each of the beds and cast a sleeping charm on all of them.
"There, all of them will sleep till tomorrow morning. Harry, there is one thing you must be careful of though. You may fall unconscious as the magic unravels in you and if you don't wake up before five tomorrow morning, I will alter the aura as you sleep and you must say that you had a Dreamless Sleep potion that put you off like that."
"From where did you get that?" Harry was taken aback at what Hermione was saying.
"I bought it at the apothecary the other day. Now come on, let me check on your aura once again and then you take the first potion that is the one which will release your suppressed and bound magic." She ran her wand over Harry and re-checked his aura and then with a shaky smile opened it and gave it to him.
Harry drank the shockingly normal tasting potion and a second later slumped down on his bed. He woke up three hours later and stretched and found Hermione snoring slightly, sleeping in a sitting position, her head on the head board of his bed.
Harry felt so light. That was the word, he felt so light and so fresh as if a huge burden had been taken off him. He nudged Hermione and she woke up with a start and squealed when she found Harry was awake.
"How do you feel Harry?"
"So light and good Hermione, so good it is as if a heavy backpack has been lifted off me." She grinned delighted.
"Great Harry, now let me test your aura and also change it to blue, that was the color Dumbledore gave you." She cast the aura spell and then gasped.
"What?" Harry asked her anxious. He had been hoping for a green aura and praying that magic would come far more easily to him now.
"Oh Merlin, Harry Dumbledore has done you a great injustice. Your aura is a beautiful sheen of silver with green and golden lines. Near your temple is a very, very small dot of Black, where your scar is. It is like a mole almost invisible." She hugged Harry who was so shocked that he could not answer.
Silver with green and golden lines; that were amazing and far more than he had hoped for. Harry desperately prayed that this be the power the dark lord knows not.
Hermione was already bringing his aura back to blue. "Okay now that is done, let us try the next thing. We'll see what kind of gifts are there for you. All you have to do Harry is to drink this and place a drop of blood on this parchment and your gifts and the magical abilities for which you have special talent will be known. I am also going to try this and here, yours."
Both of them drowned their potion vials that tasted like dead frogs and retched simultaneously. Giggling both of them pricked their thumbs and let a drop of blood fall on to the parchment.
Aura sight
Wandless magic
Parcel magic
Potions
Animagus
Spell crafting
Runic magic
Dark Arts
Blood magic
Elemental magic
Harry looked at the list in a daze. What the hell was this? He looked at Hermione and silently held out his parchment. She took it and gaped at it and then at him.
"Wow, Harry someone up there likes you. This is an impressive array of gifts,"
"And it might have saved Sirius if only I had this power unlocked and these gifts properly trained." Harry said bitterly.
Hermione paled and then looked very sad. "Yes. Now, though, we will use it to destroy Voldemort who killed your parents and use the power to deal with Dumbledore who wanted use you and then throw you away. Now let us get to sleep and we will discuss in the morning."
"The Dark Arts Hermione, maybe Dumbledore had a point to kill me off if I had a tendency towards the parcel magic, Dark Arts and Blood magic." Harry was shocked that he was a Dark wizard as he knew the Dark Arts, blood magic and parcel magic were extremely dark.
Hermione shook her head, "You couldn't be more wrong Harry. These arts are dark only if you use it in that way. Remember what McGonagall told us in our first year there is no light or dark magic there is only magic and there is the intent that makes the magic light or dark.
"The dark arts or blood magic can be performed by very few wizards and witches who are powerful as blood magic involves blood as the basis of magic and for the dark arts more power is required in the spells; also the type of spells that are cast, are cast slightly differently from ordinary spells and both requires extensive cleansing afterwards. It is only when you don't do the required cleansing that the dark arts and the blood magic can harm the caster. That is why it is not taught commonly and is not encouraged by everyone."
"Wow Hermione when did McGonagall say all that? Well, I certainly feel very relieved now." Harry told her dazed at her memory and very relieved at the information that his gifts would not classify him as dark.
"What gifts did you receive?" she held out her parchment and Harry saw that she had runic magic, animagus, potions and charms.
"Great Hermione." He smiled at her and then as Harry was about to use his wand to inflame the parchments, Hermione stopped him. "Don't do any magic Harry till we can get to the Room of Requirement and test out your strength, okay?"
Harry nodded his head as she burned the parchments and left saying she would return his cloak in the morning. Harry woke up just after breakfast the next day and ran to the Great Hall. All the professors were there and so was Hermione.
He sat down and started piling up on his plate and soon was eating to give Ron a run for his money. Hermione smiled at him. "Come on, we have work to do. How do you feel today?"
"Very light and very fit, amazing really." Harry told her smiling.
"Okay finished? Come on, let us go the Room of Requirement and check out your strength."
They went to the Room of Requirement and this time Hermione walked to and fro and soon they entered a room that looked fortified. "I have also set alarms and so when Dumbledore comes anywhere near us there will be alarms and this time follow my lead if I say something sensitive."
Harry nodded his head and Hermione asked him to start with the very first charm they had learnt wingardium leviosa.
Harry pointed his wand at a feather the room had provided and said, "Wingardium leviosa."
The feather went zooming up and hit the ceiling with a force that made Harry blink and Hermione squeal with delight. "Oh this is great Harry. Now start with the same spell," she told him frequently consulting a huge book she had, "try the same spell and till you are able to get it up gently, without rushing it."
Now Harry had to do the exact opposite. Instead of trying numerous times to get it right, he had to try numerous times to make the magic that seemed to be singing along his entire body and rushing with great force to stop and come slowly and less fiercely.
The leviating spell alone took an hour and both Harry and Hermione were exhausted. They decided to take some rest till lunch and then come and try out again.
They walked out and made sure to be seen walking in the sprawling gardens talking softly about how they would escape detection and go over to Gringotts.
"I can't believe Ron, Ron who came with us to the Department of Mysteries would take money for spying on you and Ginny, Ginny was going to try and lure you this year? How could they? Has she forgotten about how you saved her life in the Chamber? And she repays you like this?" Hermione was very angry as she spoke about what Harry had shown her in the Room of Requirement for the first time. Harry still could not get over Ron's betrayal.
"I really don't know Hermione. I had thought he saw beyond all that and while we had our fights and sulks, we were friends through and through. Now, it does not look like that, though. I never looked at Ginny that way and she has another thought coming if she thinks she can be my girlfriend." He said all the bitterness he had pushed inside pouring out of him.
"I really, really liked Ron you know," Hermione told him, her voice very low and pained. "I really liked him so much."
Harry looked at her aghast. "Merlin, I am so sorry Hermione. I never suspected anything and I am so sorry."
She looked up at him angry and puzzled, "Why are you sorry Harry? It is he who has to repent, not you. Not you at all." She shook her head at him reassuring him she wasn't upset with him in any way.
"Er, because I told you, no I showed you, I am sorry," he was cut off as Hermione turned to glare at him.
"You don't get to apologize for his mistakes or for his stupidity and having known all this had you just let me be and not help you; you would not have been my friend. So don't do that Harry. I cannot lose you too." Her eyes were bright with unshed tears as they went inside hand in hand to have their lunch. After lunch they went to the Room of Requirement and started again.
This set the tone for the next week and Harry was only now getting a hold of his power when he suddenly remembered the wandless lumos he cast on his wand when the dementors had attacked him at Privet Drive.
When he told Hermione she had squealed and had started him off on wandless magic. Again they started slow and with the levitation spell and they had decided to work their way through.
It was another three days before Harry got the concept of wandless magic and Hermione was ready to beat him with a club, when the total frustration of not being able to leviate a feather coursed through him making the feather go up for a second before it fell flat.
Once he had done that he was jubilant and started earnestly, listening to Hermione about the theory and getting a hang of it and started casting basic first year spells for very short times.
They were very careful to mingle and also talk a bit about Ron and kept the conversation at normal levels. Hermione also made him read Occlumency and Legilimency openly, reading along with him, knowing that no one would ask anything as Harry was most likely doing this assuage his grief. She was right and Dumbledore never came near them.
Harry found that reading and understanding everything came very easily to him and now he was able to comprehend the phrase, 'clear your mind' better. Hermione told him that Harry needed books form the basics to the advanced for the other gifts and they should be very careful while getting it.
They had been to the Room of Requirement to find the best books available on all of his gifts and had make a comprehensive list of names of books and authors. Harry also decided to study aura scanning and how to see them without casting the spells as he had the gift.
He started concentrating hard on his classmates staring hard at them, inviting rather obscene comments and after a particularly lewd remark, he took his invisibility cloak and sat down in his common room when ever he had the time and practiced. The first aura he saw with the naked eye was that of a second year old girl that was pink in color. He was jubilant and practiced harder.
He found Snape always glaring at him or looking at him speculatively, but did not bother. He understood the basics of Occlumency and had a shaky shield in his mind and was forever strengthening it. He still not talk much and his thoughts when not occupied by the new purpose as he and Hermione had taken to calling their studies, went straight to Sirius and a feeling of sorrow and guilt would rip through him.
Hermione would try to keep him on track, but sometimes, the grief was too much and the loneliness very hard to bear. Still he had Hermione and he was terribly glad that he had one of his best friends with him at least. But she was not Sirius. She was not the father he had secretly thought Sirius would be, a parent to whom he could be happy, sad, nasty even and downright rude when angry and still be loved.
In the ten days he had been there after the horror of the Department of Mysteries Harry had begun to see auras now and then, when he concentrated hard, had the basics of wandless magic firmly in his grasp and was also going through Occlumency and had started practicing Legilimency first on Hermione and then on random people, taking extreme care to see that he would never peep into their private thoughts.
Legilimency came far easier to Harry than Occlumency, which he still struggled with not able to completely close his mind and shut of his rather turbulent emotions.
Two days before they were about to leave, Harry was called to the Headmaster's office by Dumbledore. He was accompanied by an impassive McGonagall and they reached the office, and went inside to face a smiling Dumbledore and a scowling Snape who was sitting there glaring at him.
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