Q: What do a deceased Pureblood supremacist, a magic-hating Muggle, the Half-blood Head of Slytherin, and a naïve boy steeped in family prejudice, have in common?
A: No, no, you had the correct answer: nothing at all. Don’t be silly!



Chapter Summary: Severus manipulates another boy.

( This potion )

Sorry to those who have commented in the last two weeks; I work at a retail nursery, and I've been working six days a week this month. Then I decided to honor Mother's Day (our single busiest day of the year) by starting in on an epic cold. (If I told you that one day my workplace sent me home EARLY--in MAY--that would suffice to tell you how sick I was, could you but appreciate it.) And respiratory complaints, of course, activate my sometimes-asthma.

I have been working on both Unlikely Allies and Headmaster Snape chapters, and I've read everything anyone had posted. I'll try to reply coherently when I'm once more capable of coherence (if ever, don't say it!).

Thanks for the comments, even though I've not yet honored you with direct responses.

“That which does not break us makes us stronger.” Muggle saying, author uncertain.

For a given definition of strength.

( The Blood Quill )

The first was written largely in response to smallpotato’s response to my fiction “Liberacorpus”, and examines canon parallels to the actual actions we see James take.

The second re-examines James after Snilysocanon took me to task for being unduly unsympathetic.

“James the Bully: Canon Parallels”

( We are privileged )

The Children of Privilege: Reconsidering James and Sirius as Tragic… Whatevers.

( Um, sorry )

If she went at all, she would likely want to hide it from her family. A day trip, then, by train and bus, after the boys were away.

Snape asked, “Does your cousin’s new school start the same time as Hogwarts?”

Harry looked up from teasing Elsie. “Smeltings? Two days later, I think. Why?”

“Idle curiosity.” Elsie snapped the stick in half, and Harry was diverted.

The first Saturday after classes started, Snape walked to Hogsmeade, then Apparated, Disillusioned, to his real destination.

A wilted bunch of white hothouse lilies. How conventional. He would have expected nothing else from her.

*

A/N: This is an epilogue of sorts to “The Awful Boy and the Muggle”, Chapter Two of “Unlikely Allies”.

Q: What do a deceased Pureblood supremacist, a magic-hating Muggle, and the Half-blood Head of Slytherin have in common?

A: No, no, you had the correct answer: nothing at all.

Chapter Summary: Severus manipulates the boy.

( Chapter Three )

Q: What do a deceased Pureblood supremacist, a magic-hating Muggle, and the Half-blood Head of Slytherin have in common?
A: No, no, you had the correct answer: nothing at all. Don’t be silly!

Chapter Summary: Severus bargains with a Muggle.

( Chapter Two )

Q: What do a deceased Pureblood supremacist, a magic-hating Muggle, and the Half-blood Head of Slytherin have in common?

A: No, no, you had the correct answer: nothing at all. Don’t be silly!

Chapter Summary: Severus asks a Pureblood supremacist (deceased) to help protect a Half-Blood.

( Chapter )

i.

“No, Dumbledore must be mistaken, that’s all, Padfoot. Probably Lily let something slip accidentally to that Mary. It couldn’t be one of us. We’ve all been best friends for ten years!”


“But… Moony has seemed a little distant lately, hasn’t he?”


“But then, even at Hogwarts, he always hung back a little, didn’t he? Kept trying to talk us out of our best pranks, criticized us for jokes, even pulled prefect on us once or twice…. And after all we Marauders did for him!”


“No, Moony never really appreciated you and Prongs. But I still can’t think he’d betray us.”

*
ii.

“James and Lily have to move again, Padfoot? You-Know-Who almost found them? That’s terrible!”


“Dumbledore wants them to use what? A Fidelius Charm? Never heard of it—tell me how it works.”


“Dumbledore wants to be their Secret-Keeper???”


“Well, yes, I suppose using Dumbledore makes sense. But—you and Prongs and I, we fooled Dumbledore for three years at Hogwarts. In fact, he still hasn’t caught on that we’re Animagi, has he, Padfoot? And everyone says You-Know-Who fears Dumbledore. So if you can fool Dumbledore, you can fool You-Know-Who. And no one would expect it—it would be safer, really.”

*
iii.

“Well, it’s really a matter of outsmarting everyone, Padfoot. If the Death Eaters ever hear that Prongs’ family is protected by the Fidelius, of course they’ll first expect Dumbledore to be the Secret-Keeper. But sooner or later the word might get out. So who will they look for?”


“But see, no one knows just how good an Occlumens you are, Padfoot. In fact, no one but us knows you’re an Occlumens at all. And you can always hide in your animal form. So they’ll think you’re easy pickings, they’ll think they can find and squeeze you, and they’ll be wrong.”

*
iv.

“A double feint? That makes sense. But what do you mean?”


“ME? As Secret-Keeper?”


“Padfoot, Prongs, you know I’d do anything, anything at all, for either of you. As you would do for me. But—I’m not as strong as you. You know that.”


“Oh—that makes sense. Both of us go into hiding, and Padfoot would draw them off if You-Know-Who ever realized the Secret-Keeper was a friend. Of course they’d go for him first; who wouldn’t? And then he could escape as a dog, and that would give us time, if they ever did get that close again.”

*
v.

“Lily wants to put extra wards up? Doesn’t she trust Padfoot?”


“Well, young mothers are easily frightened; that’s natural. But really, it’s an insult to Padfoot—and to your plan, Prongs. Even if the absolute worst happened, if the Death Eaters captured Padfoot, obviously he could hold out against them long enough for you get away. It’s actually an insult to both of you.”


“But you shouldn’t upset Lily, Prongs; all this is hard on her. She’s a Gryffindor, but given her background, there are things she can’t understand.”


“Maybe you should just tell her you’ve put up additional wards.”

*

A/N: Many thanks to randomneses, whose challenge about my reaction to James’s fecklessness in relying ONLY on the Fidelius spurred me to write this. I started to think, what if Wormtail had encouraged James to rely on Fidelius only? Jodel had already suggested that Wormtail might well, mmm, have had conversations with Padfoot which featured fingering Moony as the traitor, and substituting a Secret-Keeper.

Disclaimer: not mine, all hers. Wildly AU, but I’m trying to comply with the canon back story and relationships.

Q: What do a deceased Pureblood supremacist, a magic-hating Muggle, and the Half-blood Head of Slytherin have in common?

A: No, no, you had the correct answer: nothing at all. Don’t be silly!

Unfortunately, Severus has to get them (plus a spoiled prat, a drunken seer, a cowardly hedonist, and more) all working together if he’s to have any hope of saving Lily’s child from both Riddle’s machinations and Dumbledore’s.
It is said that a Slytherin will do ANYTHING to achieve his ends. We’ll see how true this is.

“You speed by with your camera and your spear
and stop and ask me for directions

I answer there are none ...

Once, when there was history
some obliterating fact occurred,
no solution was found

Now this country is underwater;
we can love only the drowned”

Margaret Atwood, “Interview with a Tourist”

What if one didn’t accept the obliterating event as fact?

( Prologue )

The Feast of All Hallows

Disclaimer: not mine, all hers. Canon compliant, where canon gives details. Some dialogue is lifted directly from the Prince’s Tale in DH.

Summary: A dead man has a pitch-side seat for the aftermath of Voldemort’s (first) downfall.

Rereading Jodel (The Red Hen)’s essays alongside canon in the course of writing “Too Much There” and the sequel I’ve started, “Unlikely Allies,” inspired this work. First I started thinking about what Phineas could tell Severus if they ever talked without reservation. And then I thought, don’t write a retroactive conversation recapitulating what Phineas might have witnessed years ago.

Write what he saw.

Write what he sees.

So this is dedicated, with respect, to Jodel, and to Jo. For the record, all opinions and ideas expressed below are those of the narrator, one P. N. Black, deceased.

( Say what you will )

“He doesn’t even look at her because there is too much there, and he’s afraid. She is his first child, his favorite, every mistake he ever made.” Barbara Kingsolver, Animal Dreams

Summary: Normally Hogwarts sends a Head of House to explain matters to Muggle parents and guardians. For this visit, Dumbledore has given quite particular instructions. Unfortunately, his emissary makes the mistake of looking at the boy.

( Chapter Three )

Too Much There

“He doesn’t even look at her because there is too much there, and he’s afraid. She is his first child, his favorite, every mistake he ever made.” Barbara Kingsolver, Animal Dreams

Summary: Normally Hogwarts sends a Head of House to explain matters to Muggle parents and guardians. For this visit, Dumbledore has given quite particular instructions. Unfortunately, his emissary makes the mistake of looking at the boy.

( Chapter Two )

The Girl and the Boy

Summary: Some have compared the opening chapters of Harry Potter to the Cinderella story. But Petunia is living out a much older, darker tale.

“When the time comes to you at which you will be forced at last to utter the speech which has lain at the center of your soul for years, which you have, all that time, idiot-like, been saying over and over, you’ll not talk about joy of words.” C. S. Lewis, Till We Have Faces

A/N: I challenged readers of my essay on the Dursleys who thought Petunia was abusive to try to convince HER, not me, that she should have treated the boy differently. No one took me up on it. Well, as they say, if you want a job done right….

But first, someone has to finally hear Petunia. The world looking out from Petunia’s eyes is a narrow, nasty, mean sort of place. Sorry about that; not something I can alter. But please don’t give up after Part I; it’s not meant to stand alone without Part II.

*

Part I: Petunia sets the record straight about the boy.

“She stopped to draw a deep breath and then went ranting on. It seemed she had been wanting to say all this for years.” J. K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone

“The complaint was the answer.” C. S. Lewis, Till We Have Faces

( It started )



Part II: The boy and the girl try to set Petunia straight.


“... oh, you'll say (you've been whispering it to me these forty years) that I’d signs enough ...,
[that I] could have known the truth if I'd wanted.

But how could I want to know it?

Tell me that.”

C.S. Lewis, Till We Have Faces

“[my sister]… who has, in my mind, waited in a fury of righteousness, cleaning and polishing, all these years.” Marilyn Robinson, Housekeeping.




( Closure. )

Summary: Harry at least gets a holly-and-phoenix wand. Petunia faces the forces of darkness and disorder armed with a spray bottle of disinfectant.



Invisible things that can harm her family.

Germs. Germs, she can fight.

She can’t go to sleep until she’s protected her loved ones. One last time.

They can hide in the crevices. They can breed.

She has to stop them.

Vernon makes her start wearing rubber gloves; her hands are cracking.

She wipes and wipes again.

She watches the ads on the telly. She buys all the newest products. The scientists tell her what to do. She can fight this. She can. She can protect them.

She can guard them from the invisible danger. She must.

No one else will.


*


A/N: the Petunia who can’t rest until she’s wiped down all the kitchen surfaces is first seen by us after the Dementor attacks on her son.

Hit a nerve, did I?

First off: Petunia Dursley was a bitch. A narrow-minded, mean-spirited, gossiping, nasty bitch.

And little Harry suffered at her hands.

(Actually, at her son’s hands, physically. But at her tongue, at least, on that we all agree.)

There.


Everyone feel better now?


You don’t need to persuade ME of either of those things.

If I had been given Harry to raise, however grudgingly, I would never have treated the child (or any child!) that way. On the other hand, I’m privy to quite a lot of information that Petunia never had.

For if Petunia was a bitch (and she was), she was a bitch who worshipped at the altar of respectability. Respectable, decent people don’t flagrantly abuse their nephews.

Really, they don’t.

If only because the neighbors would talk.

So if Petunia treated her nephew a particular way, it was in the full certainty that the neighbors would approve, insofar as they understood the situation.

Petunia could only act that way because she was perfectly convinced she was right to do so.

So stop trying to persuade ME, Terri, that it was wrong to treat Harry like that.

I’M not the one who’s doing it; I’M not the one you need to convince.

Instead, address your energy to my ARGUMENTS, as to why PETUNIA, situated as she was, with the knowledge and prejudices she would have acquired in her life to date, would have thought her treatment of her sister’s son eminently appropriate.

Change Petunia’s mind.

Now that would be an interesting conversation.

Someone write it. Please.

Raison_gal (in "Ode to Petunia" http://community.livejournal.com/hp_essays/tag/characters:dumbledore+family:albus ) makes a good case that Petunia merits all possible accolades for courage in allowing her sister’s lightening-rod son protection under Petunia’s own roof.

But any praise for Petunia is muffled by the criticism that the Dursleys have abundantly earned, for the abuse Harry suffered before ever we met the defenseless child.

Except—did he? What goes unquestioned is whether the Dursleys really did abuse Harry, at least from their best knowledge of the situation. At best, the discussion gets bogged down in trying to draw distinctions between abuse, mistreatment, and neglect.

It’s absolutely clear in canon that Petunia disliked and feared her nephew, that she favored her son shamelessly over her nephew, and that Harry both disliked her and had cause to do so. It’s less clear that Petunia ever did anything at all that, in her mind, could possibly have been tagged as abusive. Once you remember that Petunia never once thought that, with Harry, she was dealing with a normal child.

( She )