The King
The army’s math had always been, like, if you had to conquer this land, or kill this person, or break through this defense, and this many soldiers would die for every hundred meters of progress or whatever, then how many soldiers would you need so that some of them lived to accomplish the mission? On even worse days, the math would get more complicated. They’d consider what resources would be needed to solicit “new recruits” (read: children) to join the army, always with the goal of providing as little as possible, preferably the bare minimum needed for the soldiers not to starve to death. Harry had once overheard Marcus lament a strong economy in the outer lands because it became too costly to recruit people to their death. There may be things to discuss and debate, but the goal was always simple: see people as disposable things, worth less than animals. Worth less than the food needed to sustain them.
They never taught Harry why the mission was worth more than the lives lost to it. Everyone just took that for granted. The king said fight so they fought and they died and it must have been worth it. There wasn’t even a token explanation. Some obscure threat to overcome. Some needed resource. Just the king’s will. The king’s will could kill a kingdom’s worth of boys and no one would question it.
Harry’s will was that they’d have enough food for every person in the north to survive winter. He wasn’t the king, but he wrote it on a board in the tall tower room. It took awhile because he was bad at letters, but each block of text was carved out over the board and everyone assembled watched. Lupin, obviously. Ron, of course. Dennis, because Harry trusted Dennis. Michael, who once had his heart broken by Ron’s sister and who Ron said was alright. Ernie, who’d trained with Cedric and the same reverence for Lupin that Cedric had. Six men in a tower staring at scrawled letters spelling out a new math problem. Harry’s will defying the king’s.
It should have worried Harry, how they didn’t question him. Maybe they would have questioned it on another day. But Harry showed up sober. He came to them. He asked for their help. And no one questioned a thing. Not why Harry was taking charge. Not the puzzle Harry put before them.
They pitched ideas and Harry wrote each down in his lopsided, misspelled script as they bickered over how it wouldn’t work. Each time Harry finished his slow scrawl the group would move onto the next idea. Either at Harry’s abrupt command or Lupin’s gentle suggestion. Lupin never interceded when Harry spoke. He never bickered with the others. He watched thoughtfully as he had when he left Harry to learn to lead all those months ago in the south. He spoke only to create subtle space for others to share their thoughts. More often he stayed silent and offered those warm and encouraging smiles.
Lupin tried to hide it, when those smiles were meant for Harry. Lupin had tried to hide his surprise, too, that morning when Harry showed up at his door. He’d adopted a thoughtful face when Harry mustered enough confidence to ask Lupin for help. It hurt a bit, Harry figured, watching Lupin not react to the question. Probably it was because Lupin didn’t trust Harry. Harry thought for a moment Lupin had. Maybe back at training, when he saw leadership in Harry even if Harry didn’t want it. It seemed to Harry though that since then Lupin had gotten to know him better and realized Harry wasn’t good enough. And Lupin had needed better people by his side, like Michael or Ernie. Harry couldn’t blame Lupin. Harry knew he was a mess. He just didn’t want to have to be seen that way. Sirius hadn’t… it didn’t matter how Sirius had seen him. It didn’t matter that Harry had lashed out when Lupin tried to comfort and support him once Sirius was gone. It didn’t matter how now Lupin was afraid to show any affection at all lest Harry lash out again.
Harry hid how he noticed. Every single time.
It took days to work through all the ideas and settle on a plan. They all agreed it was a very bad plan. Except for Lupin. Lupin brooded over it and refused to cast judgment. Harry knew Lupin stayed up late each night, scouring notes from their meetings and brainstorming additional thoughts to try to find something better that might work. By the end, he was voicing his own ideas. Each morning he came with a list of things they hadn't thought of yet and everyone dutifully considered the options. They weren’t any better than their very bad plan. The very bad plan that was still better than going west, where everyone would die. Still better than staying north, where everyone would die. When the options were death, the alternatives… had to have the chance of being better.
Better wasn’t enough. Harry had named the goal. Keep people alive. Keep all of his people alive. To everyone’s chagrin the goal got bigger each morning. It started with the soldiers. Then the farmers they needed in the spring. Then all the townspeople they relied on for goods and services. Then all the children too young to offer anything, but who Harry absolutely wouldn’t let die. Or worse, sign up to die for the king because there were no other options for them. Harry’s people weren’t just the ones behind the wall of the fort. They were the shopkeepers and the factory workers and the street orphans and the whores. He needed to keep them all alive. He needed it in ways he couldn’t express because he didn’t have the words to describe his desperation to see it happen.
All of Harry’s life he had done what he was told. He accepted that when bad things happened it was his fault. He hadn’t questioned whether it made sense that it was his fault. People just blamed him and he knew deep inside it had to be true. If he’d been a better child then Uncle Vernon wouldn’t have gotten angry and beat him. If he had been a better soldier it would have been him who stepped in front of the blow that day and Cedric could have been the war hero. If he’d never gone to Sirius for help Sirius wouldn’t have walked into the trap that killed him. A lifetime of nightmares reminding Harry how he wasn’t good enough for all the people he’d wanted to please.
Harry was so, so good at doing what he was told. But it wasn’t enough. It wasn’t enough to do anything. And it wasn’t enough for him. For the first time in his life he looked at the orders he was given and rejected them. There had to be a better way.
And while Lupin clearly hated their very bad absolutely horrible idea, he never said a word against it. He just looked at the goal Harry had written up on the board and made peace with Harry’s will.
Somehow, so did everyone else. Since when the recruiter came back with his loafs of bread, not a single man went with him. Dennis had talked to the soldiers, and they had talked to their families, and everyone across the fort and the town and the farmland beyond collectively made the choice not to go.
Harry asked Dennis how he did it. Of course, Dennis shrugged. Then he said, “You’re the better bet, Harry” Such unearned confidence. Or maybe desperation. Since doing what they were told wasn’t an option anymore. Not if they wanted to live.
The very bad, absolutely horrible, dog shit plan forced Harry into the most well pressed uniform of his life. He could die today, but he’d die like a proper southern officer. In style. Harry had been told style mattered. Appearance mattered. First impressions would matter. That’s why Dennis had polished Harry’s silver buttons until they shined. Polished boots. Stiff trousers. Medals pinned to his breast, which Lupin insisted Harry had earned. It was like being back in officer training, when Harry just wanted to strip out of the clothes and show the world he wasn’t any of this. But he didn’t, because of the plan.
When Harry marched into the throne room he did so alone. He had few companions for the trip south, and those that came with him had already fled. It was madness to have come at all. Everyone knew, King Voldermort was vengeful. The king’s advisors enabled him. What would a man who forced political rivals to watch their sons die in his wars do to nobodies who dared challenge him in court?
And Harry was a nobody. He was announced as Harry Evans. A northern soldier allowed to rise above his station because of his dark hair and southern features. A northerner who’s emerald eyes would always mark him for what he was. Someone who had no right to address the king.
Harry didn’t remember what he said. Lupin had written a speech for him. It had been relatively short and painstakingly simple. Harry had practiced it the entire trip south. He’d rehearsed and memorized and practiced sounding confident and commanding. Maybe he even said it when the time came. Or maybe he said something different. Maybe, just this once, he stood in front of all the fancy southern people who looked at him like he was a curiosity, a small amusement, and he actually found his own words. Maybe he looked into the eyes of the king, a pale and sickly man with stringy hair and a reptilian face, and told him all the things Harry wanted to say. He stared down those black, beady eyes behind gaunt southern features and said what he felt for the first time with absolutely no fear.
How Harry had been a loyal soldier. How there were loyal soldiers left. How they had fought and died and served in the name of the king. How they had watched everyone they cared for and loved die around them in the king’s name. And now they were starving. Now they needed the king to see them as humans and fulfill the promise he made when they pledged him their loyalty. How the king would be beloved by the north forever for just three hot meals a day for all the boys who managed not to die when sent to fight off giants.
Harry spoke to the king and the king alone. Not to his silver-haired advisor, or the courtesans, or the children brought into court, dressed like real men, who were blessed not to have been born in the north where they already would have died at war. Harry looked only into those pitch black eyes and swore there was no soul behind them.
King Voldermort did exactly what the very bad, absolutely horrible, dog shit monstrosity of a plan always counted on. He ordered Harry to the dungeon for daring to question the will of the king.
Harry smiled. Warm and encouraging. Like he was Lupin, sending a message to anyone in the throne room who needed to see it. Because all the king could do was try to kill him. Maybe painfully. Maybe bad enough Harry would regret giving the king a chance to kill Harry by the king’s own hand. But, ultimately, Harry was already dead. How many of the courtesan's in the room had living, breathy family that they knew were already dead? How many just needed to know that someone believed there was another way? How many needed hope?
Harry Evans was nobody. But who was Marcus Flint? Who was Terence Higgs? Ronald Weasley? Neville Longbottom? Old family names with old family connections who everyone in the room knew. Where were these boys the king sent off to lead his army? Which of them had been sent north to starve? Which had been sent west to die? What was King Voldermort doing to your children?
A guard hit Harry over the head to silence him and it hardly shocked the room. Cruelty was routine in King Voldermort’s court.
In the hours Harry spent in the darkest bowels of the castle, he never lost hope. He might have. His head ached fiercely. The pitch black robbed Harry of sight and he felt bare stone and cold metal bars. The silence was broken only by scurrying critters whose noises echoed menacingly and the pained moans of those who’d already faced the king’s wrath. Time stretched until Harry was too weary to know how much time had passed. Until he was loopy and jumping at every skitter. Until a reasonable man might have given up on anyone coming to save him.
Harry never lost hope. Because Lupin told him someone would come. And Lupin hated this plan with such fury that he had bottled up deep inside him over the days they planned out every piece of it. Lupin was terrified Harry would die. As if with Harry would go all hope. So much time alone in the dark gave Harry space to think. What was it that Lupin actually believed? Lupin had never spouted politics, or joined in on theory of ancestry and lines of succession. But he’d given Harry warm and encouraging smiles. And sat with Harry for hours, coaching him on tools to control his anger. And he’d tamped down all of his thoughts and feelings when he thought Harry wouldn’t accept them so that Harry would let him stay and be there and help. Harry didn’t know what it meant, to be treated as a human first instead of a thing.
Then Lupin had let Harry go, alone, so that Lupin’s presence wouldn’t incite a swift and brutal murdering spree. Which Lupin hadn’t so much expected from King Voldermort as he did from the king’s advisors who were quick to eliminate rivals. Harry knew Lupin would have still come himself, if he wasn’t absolutely sure someone else would care as much as he did. If he hadn’t found a way to believe in this very bad, absolutely horrible, dog shit monstrosity of a somehow optimistic plan.
Someone did come. A light in the darkness. A beacon of hope.
That asshole Severus Snape.
It made sense that Harry didn’t immediately get up and go with Snape. The older man was a walking embodiment of a trap. From his beaked nose to his billowy black cloak flaring villainously behind him. Like a dark and unguarded fort, more suspicious than it was tempting. The man had beaten, mocked, and derided Harry for months. He represented everything wrong with King Voldermort’s army.
And somehow, Snape managed to glare and smirk simultaneously while drawling out that he’d be perfectly happy if Harry refused his help and instead faced a brutal death. Damn, the man looked gleeful. He really, really wanted Harry to refuse.
Instead, Harry plodded after him. Snape didn’t lament Harry’s choice. He just led with precision. They went from hallway to hidden passage to hallway to hidden passage. No words exchanged. No questions asked. At least not until a passage stretch on far enough Harry thought it safe to inquire about why the castle had so many hidden passageways anyway.
They were all escape routes, Snape claimed. Not one of them would get you inside the castle. At least not without a spy on the inside opening the door, and even then you’d need multiple people to hold open each transition point. Which is why King Voldermort killed everyone who knew the passages existed. Snape said that last part in a dark tone and with a brow arching up to his hairline. As if to imply it was Harry’s knowledge that would get him killed. Instead of, you know, all the other things.
Laughter bubbled out of Harry because it just wasn’t scary.
Snape’s expression changed in a flash to one of loathing. He turned in an instant to face Harry. Before Harry knew it, he was slammed into the wall. Snape loomed over him, his scowl taking up Harry’s entire line of sight. Harry had long since been stripped of weapons. He was tired and his head injury made him woozy. Snape had every advantage, and if he had a trap now was the time to spring it. Snape could kill Harry in this passageway no one knew existed and Harry’s body would never be discovered. To the king’s court, he would have magically vanished. To Harry’s friends, he would have tragically never appeared.
Harry met Snape’s eyes without flinching. Harry braced himself with gritted teeth, reading for a blow. He had faced death a thousand times and had made peace that it would one day find him unexpectedly. For years, he thought he might as well already be dead.
There was no peace, today. He could stand tall and perhaps even brave, but while Harry stared down this ridiculous old man he also realized he didn’t want to die. If he died, he couldn’t bring the north food. If he died, he couldn’t help Ron’s or Neville’s, or even Cedric’s, families stay safe from the king. If he died, he couldn’t tell Lupin sorry. He’d die with lupin thinking Harry wouldn’t stand him if Lupin so much as offered an encouraging smile.
Snape didn’t kill him. To Harry’s surprise, Snape was never going to kill him. All the anger and loathing came out as thin and harsh words. Hissed history and derogations about James Potter. A lifetime of resentment and skepticism, and the absolute conviction that the Potter clan would not have what it takes to tear Voldermort from power. He called the king Voldermort. No title or honorific. Like the king didn’t deserve better. Snape’s rage magnified as he ranted about how Harry could lose everything to the man Snape loathed more than even Harry.
Snape ranted until Harry found his own temper and shouted back in his face, “I just don’t want my people to starve.”
Abruptly, Snape released Harry from his hold. Snape regained his reserved composure before Harry had even found his footing. “What does it matter if they starve to death or die in war?” Snape sneered.
Harry pinched his lips. “Neither needs to happen. I’m done with war. I’m done with fighting.”
“Done with war?” Snape mocked. “Tonight you, Harry Potter, defied the king. You declared war on the entire kingdom.”
Harry lifted his chin defiantly “Bullshit. I just did enough so they’ll talk to us in the midlands. We’ll be able to trade for food.”
Snape’s nose scrunched up in disgust. “How extraordinarily like your father you are, Potter.” He made the word a smear, as if it were no better than bastard. “He, too, was exceedingly arrogant.” Snape looked Harry up and down, sneering at his now wrinkled and dirty uniform. “You’re as bad as him, trying to make yourself king.”
That was the last word. Snape marched away while Harry was left gaping. Left alone in a pitch black tunnel to see himself out.