Chapter Text
Remus can’t contain the firestorm of hope in his chest as his first third-year Ravenclaw-Hufflepuff class enters the room. Harry is walking with this class, although he only turns his head a little, politely, when he sees Remus, and then goes right back to talking to the boy beside him.
Remus bites his lip. Maybe Harry doesn’t like him, won’t acknowledge him, but maybe he will. Remus has listened to some of the other professors’ stories about Harry in the few weeks he’s been at Hogwarts so far, and all of them talk about him as an intelligent and quiet and responsible young man.
He has friends other than the Black Widow’s son. Maybe, if Remus impresses them, he can show Harry that he’s someone to be trusted.
Remus smiles at his students as they line up in front of him and says, “Take your wands out, please. Our lesson today is a practical one.”
There are murmurs of excitement and interest from the other children, but Harry only watches.
It seems that word of the lesson he had with the Slytherins and the Gryffindors hasn’t had time to spread, then. Well, to be fair, he did only conduct that lesson a few hours ago. Remus takes a step back and reveals the wardrobe with the boggart trapped inside. A few youngsters jump when it rattles.
“A Dark creature is locked inside here. Can anyone tell me what they think it is?”
A forest of hands goes up among the Ravenclaws. Remus smiles. It’s a nice contrast to the way that the Gryffindors and Slytherins acted, with only Miss Granger really wanting to volunteer her knowledge.
He deliberately nods at the boy Harry was speaking with when they walked into the classroom. “Yes, Mr…?”
“Goldstein, sir.” The boy lowers his hand and stares at the wardrobe. “Is that a doxy?”
“Not quite. Miss—?”
“Patil, sir. Padma Patil.” The girl’s face has a slightly pinched expression, as if she’s already thinking that Remus is going to mix her up with her Gryffindor twin. This is one of the few times that Remus wishes he could tell someone he’s a werewolf. He never mixes up twins, not when their scents are distinct. “A boggart?”
“Yes, indeed! Five points to Ravenclaw.”
That gets him a beaming smile. Remus shoots a sidelong glance at Harry, sure that it’s subtle enough not to be noticed. But it is, if not by Harry’s friends. Harry is staring at Remus with polite, empty disinterest.
Remus swallows and faces the wardrobe. Maybe seeing Harry’s boggart will allow him to connect with the boy.
“Who can tell me what a boggart is known for? Yes, Mr.—”
“Smith, sir. It embodies one’s biggest fear.”
The Hufflepuff boy’s voice is flat, his eyes locked on the wardrobe. Remus softens a little. He knows there were attacks on the Smith family during the war. He reckons it would be difficult to face one’s biggest fear in front of one’s classmates, especially if those fears are Voldemort or a Death Eater.
But it will do the boy good, in the end. One can’t hide from one’s terrors. And some people don’t even know what theirs are. Looking at a boggart gives them a harmless chance to find out.
“Yes,” Remus says. “The boggart is a shapeshifter, and will take on the shape of the thing that the person facing it most fears. But, of course, there is a spell to defeat it. What is the opposite of fear?” He looks around the room.
“Courage?” one Ravenclaw who’s standing a little apart from Harry and his friends offers.
“Not quite, Mr.—”
“Corner, sir.”
“No, courage is still an aspect of facing one’s fear, of feeling it and overcoming it anyway. This is a separate emotion.”
The students exchange uncertain glances until one Hufflepuff girl with pigtails raises her hand, identifies herself as Hannah Abbott, and asks, “Happiness?”
Remus smiles at her. “Laughter, in particular. Correct. Three points for Hufflepuff.”
He turns to face the wardrobe and listens to the banging inside. He knows what he will see, but he doesn’t know the fears of most of these children, other than perhaps Smith’s. It will be interesting to see.
“The spell that can fight a boggart will turn it into something you find laughable,” he tells the students. “Its incantation reflects this.” He demonstrates the wand movement, slowly so that all the students can grasp it, and then adds, “And the incantation is Riddikulus!”
“Riddikulus!” shout seventeen voices, and Remus nods and smiles to them. At least Harry is also imitating the wand movement, although Remus can’t actually tell if he’s saying the incantation.
“Excellent! Now if you will stand back while I open the door—Miss Abbott, perhaps you would like to go first?”
Miss Abbott squeaks a little, but maybe because there are no Gryffindors in the class or because she earned them points, her Housemates nudge her forwards. She straightens her shoulders and says, “Ready, Professor.”
Remus smiles and unchains the door.
*
Harry watches with cool eyes as the boggart comes forth.
Lupin is right. It has no defined shape, only a swirling mass of black light and cloud, until Abbott gets close enough to it. Then it snaps into a form that looks like a looming werewolf on its hind legs, with long claws and bloody fangs.
Harry has to bite his lip to keep from laughing aloud at the expression on Lupin’s face.
Abbott looks for a second as if she might faint dead away, and then again as if she might simply run off. But then she firms her stance and lifts her wand and manages to stammer, “R-Riddikulus!”
For a second, Harry doesn’t think it’s going to work, with how weakly Abbott is casting the spell. But then it does. The werewolf trips and then mutates, its grey fur replaced with white and black spots. It’s a toy dog on two legs now, looking extraordinarily ridiculous.
“Good, good, five points to Hufflepuff!” Lupin says. “You next, Mr. Corner!”
Michael Corner moves forwards with his skin a sickly green color, and the minute the boggart fixes on him, all traces of both dog and werewolf vanish. Now it’s a tall man with long dark hair and a bloody knife. Harry doesn’t know who it is, but Corner does, if the way that he’s turning even greener says anything.
Still, he manages to cast the spell and turn the knife into a balloon that pops. The man staggers back and trips over a banana peel, falling on the floor. The boggart turns back into its unfinished shape when Corner shouts with laughter.
“Harry!”
Harry narrows his eyes at the name that Lupin is using, but he doesn’t see the point of confronting the professor right now. He steps forwards, his wand aimed at the boggart, which is shifting back and forth as if it doesn’t know which of his fears to pick.
Harry knows he has fears. It’s just that maybe one of them isn’t stronger than the other.
Then the boggart seems to choose, and snaps into Blaise, standing there with his arms folded and a slight, disdainful frown on his face. He turns it on Harry, and Harry feels his breath coming short for a second.
“As if I would ever bother being friends with you,” Blaise sneers.
Harry has a horrible moment when he struggles against self-doubt and wondering if maybe this is reality somehow—
And then he thinks of something, and shakes his head. Blaise would never stop being friends with Harry so quietly. He would instigate a confrontation, and spread the word of Harry’s Parseltongue all over school, and basically do everything he could to hurt Harry for the crime of no longer being his friend.
So Harry is able to smile and lift his wand.
“Riddikulus!”
It doesn’t matter that he’s weaker with wanded magic. The spell works the first time, riding Harry’s utter certainty that this could never be his best friend, and slams into the boggart-Blaise. It rocks on its feet and turns into glass. Then it falls over and shatters.
Harry laughs.
He’s the only one laughing in the silence that’s fallen over the classroom.
Lupin clears his throat. The boggart is still struggling weakly among the shards of glass on the floor, probably because Harry is still the one standing closest to it. “It, I, ah, that was—impressive, Mr. Potter.”
I suppose he can call me by my last name when I show how dangerous I am. Well, maybe I should just keep proving how dangerous I am, then.
Harry smiles lazily at Lupin and takes a step backwards. It still takes Lupin a second to call Padma up. He’s watching Harry, shaken.
What did you think I was? I told Black that I hated him, I would have fed him that Dark magic you sensed, and you still think that I’m harmless?
Harry raises his eyebrows and holds Lupin’s gaze until Lupin stares at the floor. And then Harry takes the chance to watch out for the fears of the other students, memorizing as many of them as he can.
All information is useful information. Harry has only come to believe that even more after his years in Ravenclaw.
“Why was he calling you by you first name?” Anthony asks after the lesson, when they leave the classroom.
“Oh, he knew my parents,” Harry says casually. “He came to visit with another friend this summer, but they didn’t have much to say to me, and I didn’t have much to say to them.”
“Not about…” Padma’s eyes dart to the robe pocket where Artemis is currently asleep. Harry’s sure that she would have had some comment on the boggart lesson otherwise, but that wouldn’t have been a good idea where Lupin’s sharp ears could hear her.
“No. I don’t think it’s a good idea to reveal that to people who spent all their time questing for an end to the war instead of just staying here in Britain to raise me and fight for one.”
“They left you?”
Harry nods and starts to tell them a little of the story of Remus Lupin and Sirius Black, as it relates to him. He ignores the way that he can feel eyes on him.
It makes sense that if Lupin is in the castle, Black is, too. Harry doesn’t know exactly what role he’ll be playing yet. Maybe he can be Madam Pince’s assistant and do more research about whatever he was researching while getting in the practice to ignore Harry.
Harry takes a deep breath and forces his resentment away. It’s natural that he feels it, he believes that with all his soul, but he also won’t let it control him.
He has more important things to think about than Lupin and Black, like his lesson with Steel tonight.
*
“How did it go?”
“His worst fear is his friend Zabini betraying him.”
Sirius blinks. He—didn’t expect that. On the one hand, he thought Harry was too firmly attached to the Zabinis to ever fear betrayal from them, and maybe this shows that he still has some good sense.
On the other hand, Sirius also thought that maybe Harry would have either him or Remus as a worst fear, them leaving him behind again.
Sirius sighs and shakes his head. He doesn’t know us well enough for that yet. “Anything else interesting in the boggart classes?”
Remus smiles at him as he shuffles what looks like a stack of essays from the upper years. Sirius is grateful to Albus for giving Remus this job, grateful that they’ll get to stay in the castle and be close to Harry, but he isn’t looking forward to the small professor part he’ll have to play. “Mr. Zabini’s fear was quite strange. A purple light beaming from a gap in space, shining down on him.”
“Huh.” Sirius thinks about that, then shrugs. It probably isn’t anything they can use against the Zabinis. “What about Neville’s?”
“You-Know-Who.”
Sirius nods grimly. Well, it would be strange if You-Know-Who wasn’t Neville’s greatest fear, considering that Neville doesn’t even know how he defeated him. “All right. What do you need me to do as far as covering for you on the full moon days?”
“Come over here and start helping me mark these essays.”
“Moony! I thought I would only do that on the actual days!”
“It doesn’t really matter what you thought, Sirius.”
No, it doesn’t, Sirius thinks, sulkily, as he leans over to take a stack of parchment from Moony. Moony and Harry are alike in that way.
*
“Are you all right, Mr. Zabini? You seem shaken.”
“You heard that the new Defense professor was teaching third-years the Riddikulus incantation? He had everyone face and defeat their boggarts in front of everyone else. That means he saw mine,” Blaise adds, when Professor Babbling looks at him for a second as though she doesn’t see what the problem is.
“Ah.” Professor Babbling leans back against her desk. “I think I did hear something about how there was a conflict with Professor Lupin and Harry Potter.”
“Yes. And me by extension.”
Babbling considers him for long enough that Blaise thinks she isn’t going to say anything else about it and will go back to discussing the materials and properties of knives. But instead, she leans forwards and says softly, “Consider it a wound he inflicted on you that will scar.”
“Scars limit movement.”
“And?”
“They show enemies where you were wounded in the past.”
“Yes. And they also keep you from being hurt as much if you’re wounded in the same place again. You know to expect it. You know exactly how much pain you’ll feel, and you can come back at your enemy that much harder.” Babbling gives Blaise a glittering smile that reminds him of some of the knives they’ve been discussing. “And I think it extraordinarily unlikely that Professor Lupin would manage to use the knowledge of your boggart against you.”
Blaise isn’t as sure of that, but it’s true that Harry already knows about the Suns and why Blaise might fear letting one get out of control. Theo doesn’t, but Lupin entirely ignored Theo and his boggart—a yawning pit—in their class yesterday.
He straightens his shoulders and nods.
“Good.” Babbling lifts a lazy hand, and a knife spins into being in front of them. Blaise finds his breath catching as he leans forwards. He doesn’t know why, but this blade calls to him as none of the ones they’ve looked at so far do.
On the surface, it’s a fairly bland knife, a small dagger with a black hilt. But Blaise is sure that it’s special.
“Yes,” Babbling says, without a smile, but with burning eyes. “I thought this one might appeal to you.”
“What is it?” Blaise asks softly.
“A dagger that the Masters of the Sapphire Order usually use to initiate students. Most of the time, it’s not used for anything else.” Babbling splays her fingers out and passes them through the illusion. Blaise jumps. He actually didn’t really grasp that it was an illusion at first. “It causes blood to pour out of the wound and not stop until a healing charm specific to our Order is applied. And it also means that if someone makes you a promise before or while you heal the wound, they can’t break it.”
She spreads her hands. There’s a long scar across the middle of her left palm. Blaise stares. From what Babbling has taught him so far, he wouldn’t think that was a good place to have a scar, that it would impair the handling of the blade.
“Do you get a choice about where they cut you?”
“Yes. I chose this to show that I would be able to do my duties and kill whom I chose to kill no matter where the scar is placed. Make no mistake, Mr. Zabini. It is not blades that allow us to kill, in the end, but magic.”
Blaise nods slowly. He can see that, and he can also see that this study is going to be more complicated than he thought.
“Can you call me Blaise?” he asks.
“If you wish. You should call me Bathsheda, if you are comfortable with that.”
“Yes, Professor.”
Bathsheda’s—it will take some time to get used to that—amused smile flashes at him, before she turns and reaches into a drawer of her desk. She pulls out a blade that looks exactly like the one in the illusion. Blaise’s hands twitch. It’s so hard to keep from reaching for it that he’s a little stunned.
“Yes, you have empathy with this knife,” Bathsheda murmurs.
Blaise forces himself not to reach for it. Bathsheda already knows that he wants that particular blade, but he doesn’t need to act like a toddler reaching for a sweet held out of reach. “Empathy?”
“It’s a concept that our Order has studied with blades. I’m unsure how far anyone else has extended it.” Bathsheda concentrates for a moment and passes her hand across the knife. There’s a feeling like ants walking on Blaise’s skin, and he shudders and tries to concentrate. “But certain people are drawn to certain blades. Magical ones, of course, which is why the students here don’t find themselves fascinated by the knives they’re using to cut their meat.” She looks up at him with a faint smile. “I didn’t know it would be this particular knife, but I brought along a selection of different blades, just in case.”
She tosses the dagger to Blaise.
Part of Blaise wants to yelp and scramble out of the way at the thought of catching a knife that could make him bleed forever, but his hands are already up and out. The knife knows where it’s going, and it wants him to catch it.
It lands.
There’s a trembling, pulsing feeling spreading through Blaise, as if he’s in the middle of a flowing stream of magic. He holds the dagger and stares at it with his mouth slightly open. The hilt is slick to the touch, cool, but Blaise knows he can hold it. He knows the dagger’s blade is made of steel infused with magic, and he knows—
You are for me.
There are two voices speaking simultaneously in Blaise’s head, one from him and one from the dagger, and the blade settles more firmly into his hand as he recognizes that. He takes a deep breath that’s filled with pure joy and lifts his head to stare at Bathsheda.
She salutes him, eyes bright. “Congratulations. I’ve never seen someone bond with that particular kind of knife before. There’s one Master in our Order who has a bond with the one used to initiate our students, but that’s apparently a secondary bond forged when he lost his primary blade a century ago.”
“What do you think this means, then?” Blaise can’t keep his voice from being breathless even though he tries.
Bathsheda leans towards him, still looking him directly in the eye. “Oh, there can be no doubt. You’re going to do great things, Blaise.”
*
“Show me what you can do with non-living materials.”
That was all Steel said, before they stepped back from the pile of glass and feathers and small pieces of metal and beads and shells and many other things in the middle of the dungeon classroom where they’re meeting with Harry. Harry squints at the pile for a long moment, ignoring Artemis’s little worried hisses.
“Will they be upset if you don’t do something soon? You should do something soon.”
Harry doesn’t know Steel very well, but he has the distinct feeling that Steel won’t be impressed by rush and fuss and hurry.
He finally extends his hand towards the pile and concentrates, hard. The shells whirl, picked out of the rest of the material by the force of Harry’s magic. Steel tilts their head like a grasshopper but otherwise doesn’t react as Harry makes the shells dance around each other, preparing to do something he’s only daydreamed about before instead of accomplishing.
Not that he hasn’t tried. But he’s determined to actually finish this task for the first time in front of Steel.
The shells wind on streams of magic until they’re forming a hanging clump of colors, mostly white and red. Harry closes his eyes and strains, pouring more power into the formation. He can do this. He knows he can.
But he needs a few more things from the pile that Steel’s provided, so he lets his magic wander through it and scoop up the appropriate materials.
Threads, soft cloth, glass. Harry brings them to the shells and wraps them around some shells, leaves them dangling free in other places. The threads especially muffle and shield the shells, and then Harry steps back and releases an explosive breath.
In between him and Steel, a living model of the solar system hovers. The planets spin around the sun in the center that blazes and writhes with heat and life, made of cloth caught on fabric. The other planets shine the colors that Harry has learned are right for them in Astronomy, and Mars is bright red and clouds trace across the surface of the small Earth and Pluto is a lonely lump of rock-encrusted shell.
“Why did you not simply make Pluto a stone by itself?” Steel asks, still with their hands folded.
This is a question Harry was half-hoping the vampire wouldn’t ask, not because he thinks that it’s too hard to answer but because he doesn’t know if he has the words to answer it. He gropes for them for a bit, and finally gives up and says, “Because it would be too hard to maintain something dead at the edge of something alive.”
“Meaning?”
“A stone is dead, not alive—”
“More properly, it has never been alive, so it cannot be dead.”
Harry supposes a vampire would have opinions on what life and death mean. He nods. “It’s too hard to include something that’s never been alive in an assemblage of things that are.”
“Mmm. But while the shells in your array once sheltered living creatures, and the thread was spun from plants, the rest of the materials—like glass—have never been alive, either.”
“I’ve combined them. Woven them together. And it’s easier because I’m maintaining them on threads spun of my magic rather than something like metal strips or hooks. They all come together better when they can combine that way than if I were to just try and make everything out of stones.”
“Or other materials that were never alive. Like glass.”
“Yes.”
“Mr. Zabini showed me his dragon. That is made of glass.”
Harry stifles the temptation to say that Steel shouldn’t talk about Ignis like he’s an it. “I know, but I committed more of my magic to Ignis, just like I did with Artemis. That means he can survive and move on his own and listen to Blaise’s commands, if Blaise has them, instead of just mine. And Blaise doesn’t need Parseltongue to communicate with him, either.”
Steel claps their hands. It makes a muffled sound and causes Harry to start. “Well done.”
“Huh?”
“You have reasoned out that there are orders of your talent, different commitments that you must make of your magic. Your snake and your friend’s dragon represent the highest order. Your creation here is a combination of magic and materials that came from living things and materials that have never lived. You can also create simple creatures that are like one of these planets here, rather than the whole system.” Steel extends a hand to touch the edge of Earth’s moon, a white shell ornamented with small holes, in Harry’s model. “And there are possibly even simpler ones that you can make, simple flickers of magic and life not contained in models.”
“Why is recognizing the different orders important?”
“Because it will allow you to recognize that there is an appropriate form for your gift to take on each of several different occasions. Why did you make the glass dragon for your friend?”
“A Christmas present.”
“And the snake?”
“Because I was lonely.” Harry doesn’t like to think too much about the memories of making Artemis, honestly. When he touches them, they throb like a wound, hurting even more than Neville’s betrayal.
“And this system?” Steel turns to face the little model of the solar system without touching it.
“To impress you.”
Steel pauses for long enough that Harry wonders if the vampire was looking for a different answer instead. Then their smile dashes across their face, revealing the fangs that look as if they’re made of metal, like their hair. “Very good. It is essential that you recognize your own motivations. Your creations will respond to those motivations, even if you are unconscious of them, and creations may do unexpected things as a result.”
“Do some of yours?”
“Indeed. Although I have never committed so much of my magic to a single creation, the way you have with your Artemis.” Steel stretches their hand in front of them and wiggles their fingers. Harry can see that his intuition when he first met Steel was right, and they really have sharpened their fingernails into metallic claws.
A swirl of blood soaks out of Steel’s skin and dances up into a red loop. A perfect copy of Ignis forms in it, beating small wings. When the little dragon lands on Steel’s wrist, it stretches its legs and yawns at Harry.
“That’s brilliant,” Harry says, and he means it. He doesn’t think he could exert that level of control over a liquid, especially to form the sharp points of the tiny fangs and claws.
“What do you think I wanted the dragon to do?”
“Rest on your arm?”
Harry can hear the question in his voice, because he knows that’s the wrong answer, but he honestly doesn’t know what the right one would be. Steel smiles, showing their fangs over the top of their lips. “No. I have two desires in mind right now. One is for the dragon to turn and flee. The other is for it to attack you.”
Harry flinches instinctively, and Artemis rears her head out of Harry’s robe pocket, hissing.
“Peace. It will not attack you. It rests here.”
“Okay, but why?”
“The two desires cancel each other out, and so the dragon chooses to do nothing.” Steel tickles one finger down the dragon’s back, and then snaps their fingers. It dissolves into blood that soaks back into their skin and vanishes. “You must be sure you know what you want.”
Harry nods. “It would be terrible to be in the middle of a fight and not be able to control my creatures.”
“Exactly. Now, I am interested in seeing what you can make out of dust…”