Like A Phoenix From The Ashes
Chapter 4
By Kinsfire
During the feast, the girls chattered with each other, getting to know one another and beginning to overcome House boundaries. Harry remained mostly silent, lost in thought. Finally, as the pudding course was served, Harry stood and walked up to the head table. There were murmurs around the Hall — this was never done by any student! He could hear quiet statements of "Look at him — little bastard loves the spotlight, doesn’t he?" "As if he’s got important business with anyone there." "I hope Dumbledore tears the little wanker a new one for this."
Harry heard this and ignored it as best he could. Dumbledore rose from his seat and walked to the end of the head table, stepping down from the raised dais so that he and Harry could speak quietly.
"Professor Dumbledore," Harry asked quietly, "could you meet with me and Professor Snape as soon as possible? Like, before everyone has to go back to their dorms?"
"Might I assume that it has something to do with your current situation? More precisely, what may happen to Miss Parkinson?" Harry nodded. "Has it occurred to you that the others may well be in danger, if your feelings are correct?" Harry started at that, and Professor Dumbledore nodded. "I shall have the heads of your respective households meet in my office roughly twenty minutes after the feast is completed. I would not complain were you to be there early." He smiled widely. "Bring your entourage as well," he laughed softly.
Harry returned to the table and sat heavily. "What’s wrong?" Susan asked in alarm.
"Tired. Seeing is taking a lot out of me, I find." He sagged slightly. "Hermione? I’ll need your guide dog services. I’m going to drop the sight for a while. Besides, this way, everyone can think that Dumbledore gave me bad news, since they want it to be the case so badly." He allowed his vision to fade.
"Did you lose your vision when Ronald struck you?" Luna asked, sounding surprisingly normal.
"Apparently. Irritated the injury from when Charlie hit me in the head with a chair."
"To think that I was attracted to Ronald," Luna said sadly, the dreamy quality slipping back into her voice. "Is it permanent?"
"No, fortunately. But it will take a while to come back completely, so until then I’m using magic and Hermione’s good services."
He heard murmurs of sympathy around the table, and Hermione suddenly said very quietly, "Harry! Take off your glasses. We’ll get the headmaster and Madam Pomfrey to say that they were charmed to let you see, but that they’re tiring, or hindering your recovery, or something. That explains why you were looking at people, but still need me to guide you."
"You’re right," he murmured in response, taking off his glasses and pocketing them carefully. "Just taking the glasses off will lead them to think in that direction." He smiled. "It’s nice having one of the most brilliant witches around as a friend."
"Thank you, Harry!" Susan laughed, to which he snorted his own laughter.
"Oh, ladies?" Harry said, when the laughter had ended, "we all need to go to the headmaster’s office after the feast is over. We’ll be talking with the heads of the households."
"Why?" Pansy asked.
"Because of you, actually. You’re my friend, Pansy, and I really don’t want to attend your funeral. I wouldn’t put it past Malfoy to have you killed now that you’re coming out on my side. Dumbledore realized that something might need to be done."
Sobered, they all picked at their puddings until the feast was over.
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They entered the headmaster’s office, unsurprised to discover him already there, despite having left the Great Hall before he had. Hermione began to explain her thoughts concerning the glasses, but he stopped her. "Excellent thinking, Miss Granger. Leave it to me. Since we will be talking to the heads of each House, they can pass word on to the students." He paused. "I know how the summer went for both Mister Potter and Miss Granger. My condolences on the loss of your grandfather, Miss Parkinson. Beyond that, how was your summer?"
"Quite nice, actually. I spent it with my family in a little vacation spot we have access to." Harry could hear her loading the statement such that Dumbledore would know exactly where she referred to. "Quite pleasant out there."
"Excellent. How was your summer, Miss Bones?"
"Same as it ever was, sir. Some fun, some heartache, some sunburn," she laughed.
"Except for the heartache, I am glad to hear it. Ah, I can hear that our professors are here."
Harry could hear people shuffle into the room and take seats. He reached carefully for his glasses and put them on, and then focused on seeing. "Professor Snape," he said, looking at his Potions professor, "now that I can use these glasses to see, I’m going to give you a proper apology."
"There is no need, Mister Potter. I understand your reasoning."
"Still, sir, I feel a need to do it properly. You were right — you do deserve to be looked in the eye when someone apologizes for being a jerk. I was frustrated with the treatment I had been receiving from the Weasley family, and took it out on someone with no connection to the situation. I apologize."
"Thank you, Mister Potter. Perhaps we can talk at some point about some of the points that you raised during your cathartic experience — talk like reasonable adults."
"I’d like that, sir. Now, if none of you mind, I’m taking off the glasses again." He slumped slightly as the weariness struck him.
"Mister Potter’s glasses are currently charmed to allow him sight," Dumbledore explained, "but it requires concentration, which can be tiring, as we all know. Please allow him some latitude until his sight comes back. Poppy is quite certain that it will."
"The reason for this gathering, however, is to discuss strategies for dealing with the potential backlash that these four may receive for siding with Mister Potter. We believe Miss Parkinson to be in the most danger."
She spoke up. "Sir? I don’t know if you know it, but Draco is a Death Nibbler — sorry, a Death Eater. He doesn’t have the tattoo, having successfully argued that it would cause difficulties here at the school. But his loyalties, as far as I’ve ever known, are solidly behind his father, who is solidly behind Voldemort. I have no intention of carrying on the charade from last year any further. I lo … like Harry a lot, and intend to support him fully. Given the situation with his supposed friends, even pretending would disrespect a man who did not have to help myself and my family, but did anyway." He heard her sit back in her seat defiantly.
"What were you going to say?" he whispered to her.
"Never you mind, Harry," she said. He was confused by her tone, which sounded vaguely embarrassed.
"I am reluctant to take action on such, with only an accusation," Professor Snape said. "However, I know the little … I know the child's proclivities, and while I do not believe that death would necessarily be the result, there are things far worse than death to commit upon someone. If only to protect her virtue, I believe that we should find her a place to stay for this year."
He was answered with a snort of amusement from Pansy. "A little late for that. Whatever virtue I had is long gone."
"Excuse me, Pansy," Harry said. "I'll not have you insulting any of my friends."
"Harry," she said, "you know my history with Draco."
"So you were into bestiality and slept with a weasel for a while. So did I. At least you did it to save your life. I was foolish enough to think it was love." At the sharp intakes of breath in the room, he shook his head. "I'm sorry, everyone. I'll take the detention."
He heard McGonagall start to speak, but Dumbledore cut her off. "Given what the Weasley brothers caused the family to do to you, it is quite understandable. Please do curtail it if possible, however."
McGonagall finally spoke. "Do you intend to sit there and tell me, Albus, that William and Charles intentionally … "
"Exactly, Minerva. Harry allowed me into his mind in order to verify the truth of the situation. I was truly in his mind, Severus — it was no constructed memory. Miss Parkinson can confirm her side of the supposed … ahem … transaction."
"Harry has never touched me in the manner that the eldest Weasleys accuse him of doing. If he had, I think I'd have remembered it." Harry could hear the slight smile at the end of her statement, and chuckled.
"I'd hope I could make it memorable," he murmured.
"That's why what they did was so unforgivable," Hermione said sadly. "It was. She loved him and was sure she'd found her future husband. They damaged both Ginny and Harry. She just hasn’t realized it yet."
Harry came to a decision. "Pansy — you're moving into my Head Boy bedroom, and I'm taking the couch in the small common room that Hermione and I share. Professor Dumbledore? Get Dobby to move her things that are still in one piece to the Head Boy room. Please."
"Harry, you can't sleep on a couch all school year," Susan said.
Harry snorted. "I spent ten years in a cupboard under the stairs at Privet Drive — I think a couch will be easy to handle for my last ten months here." The silence at his simple statement was palpable. He paused. "No, wait. Just having her there would confirm the rumors, since she’d be in my bed. People would carefully ignore that I was nowhere near the bed during those times. "I suppose we could move her in with Hermione, but they’d be kind of cramped." He ‘looked’ at Pansy (he hoped) and said, "Sorry. I’ll try to think of something else."
"You really slept in a cupboard?" Susan asked in a small voice.
"Yeah. I don’t anymore. Well, I didn’t since the first Hogwarts letter, but I definitely don’t since my seventeenth birthday, when the Dursleys kicked me out and the provisions of both my parents’ and Sirius’ wills came into effect. I’m a homeowner now, and all the headaches that come with that are actually kind of fun to deal with."
"How can you be so calm about this?" Hermione asked. "You never even told Ron and me about your living conditions. I mean, I knew that they hated having you around, but a cupboard?"
"It’s what was necessary to keep me safe. The blood protections were paramount — there was no one else to even contemplate switching them to, even if they could be. And I haven’t been killed by Voldemort yet, so it obviously worked. Where’s the worry? It’s in the past. Couldn’t change it, so why tear myself up over it?"
The room was silent for a while, before Professor Sprout spoke. "I can only hope that Hufflepuff House will treat Harry fairly. I'll keep my eyes open for unsavoury things."
"So will I," Susan said sternly. "Harry's my friend, and we Hufflepuff are known for loyalty. I'm also fairly respected, so I'd like to think that I can sway a few of the members of my household, if not all of them. I may be premature with this, but our little group may want, once a week or so, to sit en masse at the Hufflepuff table, if I'm right about how my House will react."
"I'm just glad I don't bring anything truly valuable to school," Luna said in a soft voice. "For such a brilliant group of minds, the Ravenclaws often do not think, and thus lose friends."
"Do you think they'll actively destroy your things?" Hermione asked.
"I wouldn't be surprised. I've always been their goat as far as pranks go, but now they'll decide I've gone too far." She sighed. "Any excuse, really. Cruelty comes so easily."
"So we need to worry about Luna, too," said Harry, scrubbing his face tiredly with his hands. "I’m about out of ideas. Anybody?"
He felt a faint flare of magic around him, and he heard the thump of a book hitting the floor. Robes rustled as people turned to see what had caused the thump and Dumbledore rose from his seat.
"How interesting," Professor Dumbledore murmured a moment later, after apparently picking up the volume that had fallen. "Here is a map of Hogwarts, and it appears to show two separate rooms near the Head Boy’s and Head Girl’s rooms, which connect to the common room that the Head Boy and Girl share. The common room for those suites appears larger than I remember, as well." He chuckled. "It appears, Harry, that the school likes you. It has rarely ever intervened this directly. Dobby?"
A popping noise sounded. "How may Dobby help, sir?"
"I need you, if you would, to have the house elves move both Miss Parkinson’s and Miss Lovegood’s possessions into these rooms, respectively." Harry was sure that Dumbledore was pointing at his map.
"Dobby had wondered why those rooms had appeared, sir. Dobby will be glad to do this for friends of Harry Potter! Dobby will do it right now!" He popped out of the room again.
"Perhaps we should get you to your rooms, then," Professor Dumbledore said with a smile evident in his voice. "By the time we reach them, the house elves should have finished with their work."
We learn something when Harry gets something back that he lost...