Dungeon

Chapter 9 - Unleashed

Harry sensed something was wrong in his first class of the day: Charms. Flitwick kept giving him sorry little glances, which Harry bluntly ignored. He concentrated on their assignment, which was charming a statue of a ballerina into dancing the ending of swan lake. It took a lot of steps to make it work. Harry's ballerina looked pretty jerky. Hermione had worked out most of the transitions and had a pretty realistic looking dance from her statue. Ron couldn't get the statue to limit its movement to human-possible ones so his statue looked like a rag doll when it moved.

At lunch the teachers were slow at coming in, and after the food arrived, Harry finally snuck a peek at the head table and lunch felt like lead in his stomach all of a sudden. Two chairs were empty: the Headmaster's and the Potions professor's. Harry stopped eating and stared at his plate, his vision was trying to shrink to a little dot as he stared at it.

"Harry?" Ron asked.

"Not feeling so hungry," Harry explained. Ginny looked up at him and Harry very subtly nodded at the head table. She waited a decent pause and then glanced that way casually. When her gaze returned to Harry it was full of sympathy.

In a true moment of deja vu, McGonagall came down their aisle and tapped Harry on the shoulder. "Since you are finished eating, I want a word with you."

Harry scowled at her tone, wondering if he really understood what was happening, and nodded before stepping over the bench. He glanced at his friends as though for the last normal time. "Don't wait for me," he said quietly before following McGonagall out.

He didn't catch up to his long-strided Professor until she waited at her office door, holding it open for him. Harry slipped inside. The door closed with a loud click.

"Why didn't you tell me, Potter?" she asked him, her tone hard-edged.

"McGonagall has a hold of the boy, already." Snape rubbed the bridge of his prominent nose as he sat in Dumbledore's office. "He wishes to know what he should tell her."

"He reaches you that easily?" Dumbledore asked in surprise.

"Yes. And in fact I cannot block him out, even if I try," Snape stated tiredly. "Minerva is in need of sensitivity training, I should think," Snape then commented. "She is handling him very poorly."

Dumbledore frowned. "Tell him to give her a sketchy version of events as though they were true."

Snape shook his head. "It does not matter at this point. He has gone on the offensive and most probably won't tell her anything."

"Why didn't I tell you?" Harry asked with a sarcastic tone. "Have you lost count of how many teachers in this school have either tried to injure or kill me? I can take care of myself, thank you." He sat back in the visitor's chair and crossed his arms.

"I am sorry, Harry. I am not handling this properly."

Harry shot her a look that said he'd noticed that. He was deadly curious about what she had been told but with effort he kept his Legilimency to himself.

She started over. "Professor Snape has-"

"It wasn't that big of a deal," Harry interrupted, sensing that things needed to be minimized. His own emotions were a morass, so he was all for minimization.

"What he did was inappropriate."

Harry hedged, "Yeah, well. The Order kind of needs him, right?"

Her gaze darkened. "Not at that cost."

"I can take care of myself," Harry repeated. He sat back with the intent of not saying anything else.

"He is stonewalling now," Snape said, "perhaps you should send for him."

"He can go to class. The Ministry won't be here for a little while."

Snape's gaze came up sharply.

"Because Harry is involved, they are insisting upon investigating," Dumbledore stated. "I view it not as a problem, but as an opportunity to manipulate things appropriately. I am to hold you here until they arrive, so I have assigned Wiggins as a substitute for your afternoon classes."

"I have class, ma’am," Harry pointed out.

McGonagall stared at him over her glasses and crossed arms. "Go on, then," she said flatly.

Harry hurried out. He had to get his books from his dormitory and still try to make it on time. Everyone still in the corridor watched him as he ran past. It seemed terribly important that everything appear normal, so he loathed to be late.

He closed the door to Astronomy just as Sinistra was handing back assignments. As he sat down, he answered Ron and Hermione's questioning gazes with a frown and a shake of his head. A kind of latent panic still gripped him as he took out his parchment and quill, and buried himself in his note taking.

The panic was just loosening its grip when the door clicked open fifteen minutes before the end of class time, just as they were calculating the interacting orbits of Jupiter's moons. Everyone turned to watch the headmaster step in and over to Harry. He bent over and whispered that he had to come with him.

Harry slid out of his desk and said to Ron, "Can you take care of my books?"

"Sure," Ron said and looked very worried.

Dumbledore walked back to the entrance hall with his hand steering Harry by the shoulder. They stopped before the staff meeting room. Dumbledore bent down. "I am going to let you do this alone, Harry. Talk to Percy, that is," he added at Harry's confused expression. "Do the best you can, Harry. I think you understand the situation and I will be upstairs with Professor Snape."

Harry nodded and took a deep breath before he knocked on the meeting room door. As the door opened from the inside, Harry glanced over at Dumbledore's kindly face as he paused at the bottom of the stairs.

"Well, it is about time," Percy said in a snit.

Harry stepped in and sat at the table. The same two assistants were with Percy. They both were taking notes. Percy clenched his hands together which still left them to shake slightly. Harry wondered if it were from rage or something else.

"So, Potter. A few of Professor Snape's students have told the administration that he has been stepping outside the bounds of propriety and that this started . . ." He picked up a parchment and glanced at it with intense eyes. "On the Fifteenth of September. Given your and Professor Snape's histories the Ministry cannot leave this uninvestigated."

Harry still couldn't get a hold of what was up with Percy, so he hesitated responding.

"It is all right, Son," Rankin, the plump, friendly looking assistant said. "We are here to help."

Harry said calmly, "Yes, that is probably the right day. I have remedial potions two evenings a week."

Percy looked at him strangely. "Why are you still in Potions if you require remedial help; it is not a required class. In fact it is an advanced class."

"Hermione wanted someone to take it with her, and I thought I was being nice to Ron since she was strongly insisting he do it." Amazingly, this statement seemed to unsettle Percy more.

Percy's hand still wasn't steady as he set the parchment back in front of Jeeves. "So what happened on the evening of the Fifteenth?"

"He came on to me, I guess you could say." Harry shrugged to buy himself time. He was glad he had already told Ginny, as it made it much easier this time. "One of the Slytherins wears a poison tipped ring and got me with it earlier in the day. It wasn't healing from Pomfrey's salve so I showed it to Snape." No one corrected him. "He had me take my robe and shirt off and he treated the cuts, which was much nicer of him than normal, should have been a tip-off I suppose. Then he knocked me unconscious."

Percy's expression became even more strained. Harry began to suspect that he was recounting one of Percy's worst nightmares.

Harry leaned forward and talked just to him. "Then he must have carried me to his bed, because that is where I woke up." Definitely, Harry thought with cruel amusement. Percy was now breaking out in a sweat and breathing harder.

"Did something happen while you were asleep?" Rankin asked.

Harry turned to the rosy-cheeked man. "I don't think so--he was still spelling the doors locked when I woke up."

Percy made a small squeaking noise of distress. Harry pretended not to have noticed. The other man, Jeeves still stared levelly down at Harry. Percy tried to cover by flipping through the parchments before him again. At that distraction Harry tried to feel his way into Jeeves mind. What he found was just a plain sense of bureaucratic order and a desire to make this abused boy feel that responsible adults were taking charge. Harry backed off.

"And then what?" Rankin asked.

"He basically just stood there and told me what he was planning. That I was too pure and need corrupting or something like that." Harry waved it off.

Rankin appeared to be salivating as he asked, "How far did it get?"

Percy stared at his assistant and said, "I am questioning the boy, if you don't mind."

Rankin bowed his head supplicatingly and waited.

"I'll answer it anyway: Not far. I told him to leave me alone and he did." Harry said this with some conviction.

"How do you know you weren't made to forget later or given something to fog your mind?" Rankin asked.

"I'm pretty sure I wasn't," Harry said, trying to sound like maybe he wasn't so sure, for Rankin's sake.

Percy interrupted in a loud, slightly quavering voice. "And this was repeated how many times?"

Harry pretended to be working that out on his fingers at the same time as he opened his mind to Rankin. The first brief glimpse of the man's utter lapdog-like obedience to Belletrix Lestrange made things clear. "Three times," Harry replied, proud of how smooth it came out.

"And had your fellow students not reported it, what would you have done?" Percy asked, he looked like he regretted eating lunch.

"Nothing," Harry shrugged. "I can take care of myself. I don't trust the teachers in this school," Harry added, thinking of McGonagall's initial reaction as he did so. "He always stopped when I told him to," Harry reinforced this. "He never really did anything other than insinuate stuff with words, but he is always cruel to me in class and out so it’s just one more thing, really." He stopped there, worried he had stepped off of the tightrope he was balancing on.

Rankin smiled at him in a twisted friendly way. "You poor boy," the man said.

Harry blinked at him and dropped his eyes to avoid giving anything away.

"All right then, Mr. Potter. You may go," Percy said. "Can you tell your Headmaster that we are ready for your Professor?"

Harry would have retorted that Percy didn't sound ready at all, but he nodded obediently and went out.

Harry stepped into Dumbledore's office and took the open visitor's seat. "Percy said he wants to see Professor Snape now, sir."

"How did it go, Harry?"

"Like tightrope walking."

Dumbledore gave him a small smile at that as Snape stood up and went to the door.

"Oh, and Professor?" Harry said and turned around to look up at Snape. "Percy is halfway to disbelief based on his own sheer horror of the very notion of what he is asking about, so he could be pushed the rest of the way. And Rankin is Belletrix's lapdog." Harry shuddered at that now that he was free to do so.

Snape stared down at him with a raised brow.

"I didn't tell you to do that, Harry," Dumbledore chided him.

Harry turned to him. "You told me to do the best I could," he pointed out.

"Yes. Yes, I did,” Dumbledore admitted. He clasped his hands and unclasped them in thought. “So, given that, what about Jeeves?"

"A career bureaucrat moving into a power vacuum," Harry stated. "Seemed like a nice enough man."

Dumbledore's eyes flicked up to Snape's. "You didn't tell me he was this good."

"You didn't ask," Snape commented dryly.

Harry looked up at Snape again. "You were right, Professor--eye-to-eye is much easier."

"I have not trained him in that," Snape pointed out as though Harry wasn’t there. With a last glance at his student, Snape departed.

Dumbledore sat back. "While we are waiting for Professor Snape, I want to try some things with you."

Harry shrugged.

"And I also want to warn you that you can be very badly injured doing Legilimency. So you must be careful."

Harry nodded, though he didn't understand.

"Perhaps it is something you will have to learn for yourself," Dumbledore commented. "Well, let us try something then, see what you've got."

Harry sat up, eager to show off.

"When I say, 'go' I want you to try to get into my mind," the old wizard said. He closed his eyes a moment and opened them again as he said, "Go."

For a moment, Harry couldn't decide which version of Legilimency to try. He fell back on his more practiced one and closed his eyes. It took nearly a minute before he could feel Dumbledore in front of him but he couldn't grab a hold of any thoughts.

"Try it with your eyes open, Harry," Dumbledore suggested.

Harry did so. "That is harder, sir. I lose what little sense I have of you." He hesitated but then said, "You don't seem to really be there."

"That is the point I have gotten you to as well, Harry."

"I'm glad, sir. I didn't realize I was doing that well."

Dumbledore stood up and came around the desk. He put a hand on Harry's shoulder. "Harry, do not use this Legilimency skill unless it is essential to your survival, all right? I do not want anyone to find out about it, and I don’t want you hurt."

Harry nodded. "I have been resisting the temptation, sir."

"Good. I am glad to hear that, my boy."

"I'm not really a boy anymore, sir," Harry pointed out.

Dumbledore smiled. "To me, young man, Professor Snape seems like a boy." The headmaster chuckled and patted Harry's shoulder before he stepped back around the desk.