Raised to the Third Power

Harry nearly fell down the stairs that led away from Dumbledore's office, Quidditch reflexes be damned. It can't be true he thought to himself. Tomorrow, I'll wake up, and I won't have thought that, and he won't have said that.

He stumbled down the hall, ignoring the students who called his name in greeting. He overheard snatches of conversation.

"He's so cute."

"Do you think I could get a spot as a beater?"

How can they talk about crushes and Quidditch when we're in the middle of a war and the person who apparently has the ability to stop the one causing all the pain has no idea what to do?

"Three witches died, somewhere near Stonehenge. Yes, the Dark Mark . . ."

I take it back. It's worse to hear people talking about the war. They think they understand. I don't.

He was nearly running, now, though he was not sure of his destination. He needed someone who could explain.

He needed a parent.

Luckily, by the time Harry became aware of this fact, his feet had already brought him to Sirius' door. He knocked loudly, not caring who saw or heard, not caring that his last non-school-related conversation with Sirius had gone badly.

"Come in," called Sirius.

Harry entered. Sirius looked at him for just the smallest fraction of a second before pulling him further inside and reaching behind him to lock the door.

"What happened, Harry?"

"Three witches died near Stonehenge," Harry replied mechanically.

Sirius nodded solemnly. "I know." He eyed Harry critically. "Did you know one of them?"

"No. I don't think so-- people are dying every day!"

"I know," said Sirius gently.

"Why-- why-- why--" Harry began to sputter uncontrollably. "Why hasn't it been stopped?"

"We're trying, Harry."

"Not all of us are. I'm not."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean, Voldemort is mortal to me and I haven't killed him."

"Where did you get that idea?"

"Dumbledore. I talked to Dumbledore. He all but said he's been arranging the meetings between me and Voldemort, and I haven't done what I was meant to do."

"Harry--"

"Do you know why Voldemort wanted to kill me when I was a baby?"

"His supporters killed many children of his enemies."

"But he came after me, personally. He wanted to kill my father and he wanted to kill me. He didn't care about my Mum. He only killed her because she got in the way. And there's a reason, but no one will tell me, and Dumbledore didn't think enough of me to tell me what I was supposed to do with Voldemort, so I haven't defeated him, and he's out there killing more people every day--" Harry's voice broke off in a dry sob, but he recovered. "And I didn't even notice what Dumbledore was doing to me. It's like Barty Crouch said, decent people are easy to manipulate! Dumbledore probably sent me to live with the Dursleys instead of someone who cared about me because that way I'd learn not to be decent, but I failed there, too! And I feel bad because I'm supposed to defeat Voldemort, but I DON'T WANT TO DIE, SIRIUS! My life doesn't matter, it shouldn't matter, but it does to me and if it didn't, how many other people would still be alive?"

"Harry," Sirius repeated. "Harry, your life matters. You matter. Dumbledore was not behaving like Barty Crouch--"

"You knew too, didn't you?" asked Harry, his voice rising. "You know more than you'll tell me. You were my father's best friend, you *must* know what Voldemort wanted with him."

"I'm still not entirely sure of what you're talking about."

"WHY DID VOLDEMORT KILL MY FATHER?" Harry shouted.

Sirius winced and cast a silencing charm on the room. "Can you slow down, Harry?" he asked in a carefully-controlled voice.

Harry glanced wildly about the room for a short moment before consciously taking a deep breath and willing himself to calm down. "I don't know what to say," he admitted.

"Start at the beginning."

"What beginning?"

"When did you get this upset? When you went to see Dumbledore?"

Harry nodded stiffly. "He called me up to his office because of . . . ." Harry trailed off. This was not going well. The screaming had been much more effective.

"Because of Snape?" Sirius prompted gently.

Harry nodded.

"That was what you saw in your dream?"

Harry nodded again. "I would have told you, Sirius," he said pleadingly.

Sirius waved him off. "I shouldn't have behaved the way I did. I was distracted."

"Why?"

Sirius smiled ironically. "Can we save that for later?"

"Okay."

"Can you sit down?"

Harry was not sure why Sirius was phrasing everything in the form of a question, but he sat down without comment in a nearby chair. Sirius pulled another chair close to Harry's so that their knees were nearly touching. Sirius looked expectantly at Harry as if waiting for him to begin.

"Well, my first year Ron and Hermione and I— Dumbledore was hiding the Philosopher's Stone in Hogwarts. We thought Snape was after it, but it was, well it doesn't even matter. All the professors did something to protect it, but Dumbledore made sure that the obstacles were things Ron and Hermione and I could get past. There was a chess set because you know how Ron is with chess, and there was a logic puzzle because Hermione's good at those. But Dumbledore left. He let us be the ones to protect the stone, and I was alone after Ron had to let the chess set take him and Hermione had to turn back after working out the puzzle. Voldemort was weak and almost anyone could have kept him off the stone. But Dumbledore let me do it. He destroyed the stone right after he kept Quirrell from killing me, but he could have done it before. He wanted me to meet Voldemort. I thought . . . I told Ron and Hermione at the time that Dumbledore thought I had a right to take on Voldemort, but Voldemort hurt almost everyone in the wizarding world, and I was ELEVEN. I was small and skinny and hardly knew any magic at all.

"Then, last year, they re-instated the tournament even though people have died. There were 'spells' on the Goblet so it would be hard to sneak a name in— but no one actually monitored it even though they knew it was dangerous. Moody was acting strange, but Dumbledore didn't notice even though he's known him forever. You knew something was up with Moody and you had hardly any information. No one double-checked the maze or the cup, and when Voldemort got me again, he took my blood, and he touched me. He couldn't touch me the first time, you know? And when I told Dumbledore that Voldemort touched me, for just a second, he looked, I don't know, victorious. Triumphant. Like maybe he'd wanted Voldemort to bleed me. Like maybe that was the plan the first time, but Voldemort was too weak or I was too weak, I don't know.

"So I asked him. I asked him today, and he said that Voldemort is mortal to me. Only to me, I guess because he has my blood. He still won't tell me why Voldemort wanted me dead in the first place. And meanwhile, there's a war going on out there even though I'm locked away in this safe little castle. There are people DYING out there, dying faster than I can count, and I don't know what to do to help— and I CAN HELP! There's something about me, and I don't know what it is!" Harry at last stopped to draw breath.

Sirius regarded his godson solemnly. "Harry, I know you trusted Dumbledore—"

Harry snorted, but Sirius ignored him.

"And in a time like this one, you want someone to trust. I don't think Dumbledore wants to do you any harm. I do think that he will use any means necessary to keep Voldemort from gaining more power."

"And those means include me! That's what I'm saying, Sirius! This is my fault! If I'd known what was going on, I could have gone ahead and stopped the war!"

"How?"

"Killing Voldemort!"

"Very ambitious of you."

"Sirius," Harry moaned desperately.

"Harry, you cannot take responsibility for this. We've talked about this before."

"I don't know what to do."

"You're fifteen. You don't have to do anything."

"Yes, I'm a normal, run-of-the-mill fifteen-year-old."

"No, but none of this is your fault! None of it! You should be protected, not the protector!"

"Every time I see the Daily Prophet, someone else has died! Who IS protecting them?"

"Many people are trying. I am."

"YOU'RE DOING A LOUSY JOB!" snarled Harry. "IF YOU'D JUST DESCEND TO TELL ME WHY VOLDEMORT IS AFTER ME, MAYBE I'D BE ABLE TO HELP! I DON'T— WANT— TO— DIE, BUT NEXT TO THIS, MY LIFE IS WORTH NOTHING!"

"Your life is worth everything, Harry. It's worth everything to me. It was worth everything to your parents."

For a fraction of a second, Harry began to relax. Even if he could no longer trust Dumbledore, he could still trust Sirius. Sirius would make everything better.

But everything wasn't better. Everything hurt.

"You killed my parents," Harry said coldly before he knew he had opened his mouth.

Sirius stood, turned, and, for the second time in as many days, closed a door between himself and his godson.

In his small bedroom, he sank to his bed with his head in his hands. He had expected to fight with Harry when he had taken his rightful place as his guardian. Parents and children fought. Period.

He had not, however, expected their first extended argument to drift into Harry's saying something obviously calculated to hurt him. The conversation Sirius had had with the ghostlike image of James, partially at Harry's behest, had convinced him at a deep level that he was not completely responsible for the events of that Halloween so many years ago. He had done the impossible and spoken to the dead.

Now, speaking to the dead seemed to be the least of his problems.

Why was I dwelling on killing Pettigrew when I should have been dwelling on Harry? He's alive, and he's depending on me, and I certainly know how he feels because I don't know what to do or what to think, either. We don't know why Pettigrew was even here.

Sirius rose from his bed and began to pace across the room as his self-loathing increased.

If I had been paying more attention to him as this went on, he wouldn't have gotten this far. He wouldn't have gotten to the point of saying things like that, when he doesn't say things like that. But I don't for the life of me know what to say to him.

In the front room, nameless dread filled Harry. He knew very little at that moment; but he did know that he did not want to leave the room and return to his dormitory and four well-meaning roommates. Emotionally confused and oddly physically drained, he remained in his chair and waited for Sirius to evict him from the room.

Presently, Sirius appeared. He appraised Harry as if he were a racing broom or a cloak behind a store window, and casually drew his wand. Harry could not find the energy to wonder what spell Sirius meant to cast, and was only mildly relieved when the chair melted into a small bed beneath him. Checking his work and not finding it lacking, Sirius flung open his front door, and called to Daniel, a solemn-looking ghost who often haunted this corner of the castle.

"Would you go to one of the Gryffindor boys and let him know that Harry Potter will be spending the night with his godfather?"

"Certainly," Daniel agreed courteously.

"Thank you," replied Sirius. He shut the door once more, spared Harry a final, detached glance, and returned to his bedroom.

Harry sat on the chair-now-bed for perhaps an hour longer before deciding that, as darkness had fallen outdoors, he might as well lie down. He woodenly removed his clothing, save his boxers and t-shirt, and slid beneath the sheet and blanket provided for him.

His head throbbed as it touched the pillow, and he found that muscles he had not known he had ached from long hours of tension. He enjoyed the pain. He relished it. He had grown used to physical pain-- didn't his scar hurt almost constantly?-- and he preferred it to harder-to-control mental pain.

Curling on his side in the unfamiliar darkness, he found himself irrationally wishing for the cupboard beneath his uncle's stairs. The cupboard was small and cocoon-like and intimately familiar. Best of all, the cupboard had kept Harry from the rest of the world.

May you live in interesting times.

Harry knew full well why this was a curse in some ways as frightening as any in his spellbooks.

The war, with its constant promise that people about whom Harry cared would die, had been bad enough.

That afternoon's realization that the greatest wizard in the world felt something like helplessness in the face of Voldemort and had so used Harry as a pawn was in some ways worse.

Harry's berating of Sirius had been the worst of all. He had spoken in haste and for reasons he did not entirely understand. Had he wanted to ruin his relationship with Sirius before Sirius disappointed him as well? Had he been upset that Sirius had wanted to make him feel better when so many others were more deserving of comfort and had none? Had he just wanted to see someone else hurt like he was hurting? Was he, deep in his heart, simply mean?

Harry shifted uncomfortably. Since he had begun to study at Hogwarts, he had been told on a daily basis that he was "his father's son." That he was "growing up to be a man just like James." One of the few things that Harry knew for certain about his father was that he had been brave. Even Voldemort admitted that James Potter had been brave.

He swallowed hard. Brave men did not react to problems by curling up and hiding and . . .

Tenuous, budding machismo took a backseat to overwhelming confusion and pain, and one tear leaked out of each eye. Harry quickly pulled his pillow over his face to muffle the sound of a choked sob that was rising in the back of his throat. Somehow it seemed that he had been transported back to Privet Drive after all. He had known from a very young age that he must not make any noise, and crying had been a secret, silent, late-night event.

A shudder ran through his aching muscles and, for a fraction of a second, he forgot Dumbledore, forgot Voldemort, forgot Sirius, forgot everything except that he was in pain and he wanted the pain to go away.

He nearly jumped out of his skin when a hand came to rest on his back. He had not heard Sirius enter the room, but then, Sirius had not come by his childhood nickname by mistake.

"I'm so sorry, Sirius," he choked out almost incoherently. His voice rose and fell wildly, a thing with a mind of its own and no connection to Harry.

"I know," Sirius whispered. Harry felt the bed shift beneath his godfather's weight.

"I didn't mean it." The warmth of Sirius' body drew Harry like a magnet, but he did not give himself the pleasure of creeping closer. He was not five years old. Enough was enough.

"I know," Sirius repeated. He moved closer to Harry and pulled him gently, though awkwardly, into his arms so that Harry's head rested on his chest.

"I love you," Harry added, choking on the words in part because he was sobbing openly now and in part because the words were not easy ones to say.

"I love you, too."

"No--" Harry struggled to sit up more, and anxiously tried to see Sirius' face in the almost complete darkness. "I said the worst thing I could think of to say this afternoon and I don't even know why."

"It's all right."

"It's not all right."

"We are all right. I love you permanently and no matter what. I know you didn't mean what you said. You've shown me that before."

"I-- I-- I don't want you to die. I'm so scared, and everyone's dying. More people will die soon. Today. Tomorrow. It's just luck that it hasn't been you." The shaking became worse, though Harry would not have thought it possible. "I haven't died yet, and maybe because I haven't other people have, and I deserve it for saying what I said to you!"

"Harry--" Sirius began, but Harry would not allow him to speak.

"You've been hurt enough. I shouldn't have anything to do with you, not when I hurt you more, like I hurt everyone. I want to steal a time-turner and go back and fix everything. I want to make you feel better. I want to rip Azkaban out of you!"

Sirius, who had been feeling surprisingly confident in his parental role, suddenly shuddered himself. He felt his own eyes growing wet and thanked Merlin for the darkness that surrounded him as he half-rested his head atop Harry's. "Are you for real?" he breathed, not able to stop himself from speaking his thought aloud.

"Are you?" Harry answered shakily. "It all seems like an illusion, still. It seems like I should wake up in a Muggle hospital and hear someone say that I've had a fever and imagined a whole world where everyone knows my name and someone mysteriously appeared to be my-- my father. And Uncle Vernon will yell 'Boy, I told you not to get sick, we don't have that kind of money for you,' and I'll be back under the stairs."

"I know it feels that way," Sirius whispered hoarsely, still hoping to hide his own tears from the too-old child he cradled nearly in his lap. "I know I expect to wake up in Azkaban, but I won't, and you won't wake up with your aunt and uncle."

Harry sniffed loudly. "I'm scared," he repeated. Tears were streaming steadily down his cheeks, though his trembling had stopped.

"I know. And I'm here," Sirius answered. It was the only answer he could give though he would have spent a hundred years in Azkaban to be able to tell Harry that everything would be fine. His own cheeks had grown solidly wet and he found that he didn't mind as much as he had expected to. "Do you want a drink of water?" he asked Harry.

Harry's hands tightened on one of Sirius' wrists. "Don't go," he said with naked pleading in his voice. "Don't go. Stay here."

"I'll stay here for as long as you want," Sirius assured him. "All right?"

Harry sniffed again and nodded against Sirius' chest. Sirius let his free arm idly rub circles on his godson's back.

"What happened?" asked Harry unexpectedly.

"What do you mean?"

"When I first came in here, you said you'd tell me later why you were distracted when I had the dream the other night." Harry was unnerved to feel the hitch in Sirius' chest.

"This is a secret, Harry. You can't even tell Ron and Hermione."

"I won't."

Sirius sighed deeply once more. "The other day, I killed Peter Pettigrew."

Harry nearly left Sirius' embrace in shock, but Sirius held him tight, like a child clinging to a favorite toy. Harry did his best to return the reassuring hug. "Does Dumbledore know?"

"Yes. And McGonagall and Remus. Maybe Snape. That's it."

"And?"

"I dreamed of it for so long. I craved it, I wanted it, I could taste his blood. And when the time came-- at the last minute-- he wasn't the rat. He wasn't the one who destroyed your family, your shot at happiness-- he was Peter Pettigrew, who sat next to me in class and laughed at my jokes and made me feel important. I'm guilty now, for real, of ending someone's life, and I just can't believe that I have and used that power."

Sirius blinked. He hadn't been able to articulate his unexpected reaction to Dumbledore or even to Remus, but in the darkness, here, his lack of glee made the tiniest bit of sense.

"You aren't like them, Sirius," Harry said earnestly. "You can't just *kill* someone, especially someone you knew, and not even think that in some ways you're doing the same thing as he is."

"The same thing as he is," Sirius repeated.

"I said 'in some ways.' I know that you saved a lot of peoples' lives when you did it. I should have let you do it when you first wanted to."

"No, you shouldn't have. You don't know what would have happened if I had killed him that time or if I hadn't killed him this time," Sirius said firmly. Harry shrank away slightly but did not leave the circle of Sirius' arms. "But you know what?"

"What?"

"Neither does anyone else. If someone tells you, or if the Daily Prophet or Wizarding Radio says, that something you did or didn't do caused this war to go on longer than it would have, remember that they're full of shit. Okay?"

Harry nearly laughed. "Okay."

"Do you want to try to get some sleep? You have classes tomorrow." Harry shrugged uneasily. "I'm not going anywhere," Sirius added, correctly guessing his godson's anxiety. "Stretch out." Harry disentangled himself and did as he was asked. Sirius followed suit and lay down next to him.

"Sirius?"

"Yes?"

A million potential responses flooded through Harry's mind. "I love you," he settled on at last.

"Love you, too, Pronglet."

This time Harry did laugh. "Didn't you promise not to call me that?"

"Yes, but you said you would answer to it."

"I guess I did."

"You should be careful what you say."

"I know."

"That wasn't what I meant."

"I know," Harry admitted.

"Good night."

"Good night."

They fell into a surprisingly peaceful sleep.