The Miserable Existance of One Harry Potter
Luckily, Hedwig did bring back help in the form of a concerned Aurora Sinistra. Harry had been worried at first about the mess he had made on the floor next to his bed, but Sinistra had just vanished it with her wand without a comment and went on to check on Harry with practiced movements, checking his temperature as well as tucking him in under the blanked he had been lying on.
Harry had been too warm already before being tucked in, but hadn´t protested at all, as it was strangely comforting to be fussed over in such a manner. Sinistra wasn´t pushy in her care either. She simply checked him over, tucked him in, and then put some distance between them to settle into the chair, taking up a book that she had selected from Harry´s bookcase to start reading to him. The Gryffindor was carried to sleep that day from listening to Inspector Gnome getting chucked over the garden fence over and over again while he tried to solve his case.
The next day, Harry woke up to the chair still standing next to his bed, the book closed upon it, but Sinistra missing from his room. He wondered what had woken him up – he thought he had heard something – until he saw the door opening and Aurora Sinistra coming into the room, a tray filled with breakfast in her hands. It was just porridge and tea, as far as the Gryffindor could see, but his stomach revolted at the smell nevertheless. Sinistra sighed, checked his temperature again and went to find Snape.
“He´s fine”, Snape stated, not five minutes later. “A stomach soother will do just fine to make him eat, but I´m afraid, I cannot do much for most of the symptoms as they are the natural reaction of his body to the vaccines. Call for me again if his fever gets any stronger.”
“You could be telling this to the boy, too”, Sinistra scolded Snape lightly. “I´m sure he´d like to know just as much as I do.”
“Well, he won´t be doing much thinking with the strength of his symptoms. I´m sure you´ll be telling him my findings repeatedly within the next hours.”, Snape defended himself, a scowl on his face.
“Ugh”, Harry said. “This is normal?”
“The healer told you you´d be miserable, Mr. Potter.”, Snape told the teen drily. “He meant it.”
---
Harry couldn´t do much that morning aside from reading his letters and writing some replies. That is, he dictated Sinistra his replies and she wrote them down in her flowery script, adding a note at the end that she had written them out and why, so that Harry´s friends wouldn´t wonder too much about the handwriting. The Gryffindor didn´t keep much of what he was reading though, so Sinistra wrote him a note, too, about whose letter he had gotten and whom they had sent replies already. At midday, though, the professor had to leave to continue grading a photography contest of some sort that Harry thought she might have told him about, but didn´t remember much about it either.
Later, the Gryffindor woke up again to someone coming into his room with a tray of food and putting it on the desk. He slowly opened his eyes, blinking away the dizziness that still held him in firm grip. The figure didn´t look like Sinistra, Harry could tell. Even blurry, he could see there was a distinct difference in the build of this person to his earlier companion, so he scrambled up to grope for his glasses, which he immediately regretted as another wave of dizziness hit him. Honestly, he was just grateful that he wasn´t nearly as nauseous as he had been the day before or he would have emptied out the contents of his stomach. Again.
“Are you alright?”, the concerned voice of Professor Babbling asked, as the blurry figure came closer, making Harry relax slightly. “Wait, let me help you. Do you want to try going to the bathroom first? I can float you along, if you feel you can´t make it there on your own.”
“I don´t – I mean, I´m fine”, Harry said quickly.
“Hey, it´s fine. We all needed to be floated some time when we were really sick. It isn´t the end of the world and I promise not to tell anyone, if that makes you feel better”, Babbling told the teen kindly, sitting down at the edge of his bed instead of the chair to check his temperature. “Yeah, you´re doing a bit better, finally. You had us worried an hour ago, you know?”
Harry blinked at him confusedly: “I did?”
“Yeah”, Babbling said. “Your fever suddenly skyrocketed and set off the monitoring spells we placed to check your condition. Sev got a Fever Reducer into you real quick but it took half an hour to go down anyway.”
“I…”, Harry started, then trailed off. “Yes.”
“Yes?”, Babbling asked, not sure what the teen meant.
“Yes, I´d like your help to go to the bathroom.”
---
Wednesday passed in a similar fashion, though it was predominately Babbling and Snape checking up on Harry regularly. If Harry wasn´t so busy wondering just when this would finally be over, he would have been baffled by just how often someone was spending time with him while he could do nothing more than lie in bed and read, on a good hour, or toss and turn, on a bad one. Some time in the evening, Hedwig had flown out to hunt and left Harry alone with Professor Snape, who for some reason had decided to read the Self-Updating Lexicon of Potions Ingredients to him. He had been out very fast after that.
On Thursday morning, Harry was feeling marginally better, making the trip to the bathroom without any assistance. By the time he was back, Sinistra was waiting on him in his room, his breakfast tray already sitting on his desk. The professor was standing by the owl stand, softly stroking the snowy owl, which was hooting at her in delight.
“Good morning, Aurora”, the teen greeted her, smiling at the sight before him.
“It is, isn´t it?”, Sinistra said, smiling back just as warmly. “I see you are feeling better. Are you up to coming down to the living room then or would you like to stay in your room for another day. We could also set up in the winter tearoom instead, if you´d like to look into the garden.”
The Gryffindor shuffled towards the bed to sit down for a moment: “The living room is fine, you don´t have to bother. I just… Could you show me the way?”
“Of course!”, Sinistra answered immediately. “You´ll likely need some help either way, it´s a bit longer than you should be walking right now, I imagine, though you´re welcome to try.”
“Thanks”, Harry mumbled, blushing lightly.
Ten minutes later, the Gryffindor was very grateful he had taken up Sinistra on her offer to help him down the stairs as he settled down onto a comfortable couch completely exhausted. Surprisingly, there was a TV within the room, currently visible as the magical roll-up screen it had previously hidden behind was fixed to the top of it´s frame. This was the second muggle appliance Harry had seen casually displayed within the house. He wondered faintly, just how comfortable his professors were with muggle technology. Maybe Muggle Studies did have a good curriculum, once upon a time?
Fireplace and floo powder were stuffed into a side corner of the room. It sat alone behind a strong ward-line, the wards continuously giving off a faint buzzing sound.
“Someone doesn´t like guests”, Harry thought to himself. “I wonder who it could be?”
---
“How is our favourite ward doing today?”, Professor Babbling asked cheerfully as he came into the living room, clutching some letters.
“Uh….”, Harry started, wondering if his professor was being serious.
“You´re doing it wrong”, Babbling told the gaping Gryffindor. “You´re supposed to say: I´m your only ward.”
“Oh dear!”, Sinistra half-cursed, her tone bothered. “Did we forget to talk about that?”
Babbling blinked, thought for a moment and then pulled his fingers through his mane: “I think we did, Aura.”
“Let me just get Severus, then”, Sinistra said, quickly casting her Patronus to send a message. “Darling, could you come to the living room for a moment. We have a situation.”
The ethereal fox did a kind of half bow before bounding off out of the room, leaving the three magic-workers alone again. Harry was still gaping at Professor Babbling, though his eyes were flickering between Babbling and Sinistra in quick succession. A thought came him…
“Wait! Darling?”, the Gryffindor screeched, then collected himself with a cough. “Should I be concerned about your sanity?”
“Generally? Yes. At the moment? Not particularly”, Sinistra stated, her eyes locked with Babbling in silent communication.
“So…”, Harry started tentatively, still unsure. “You´re really my guardians?”
It wasn´t that he didn´t like the professors, but he would have liked to know from the get-go. He also wasn´t sure at all just what kind of relationship the three professors had with each other. For once, could something please not be confusing? When it came to whom had power over him and why, Harry preferred a clear picture, even if he had to content with his relatives or, heaven forbid, Albus Dumbledore, whom he had come to dislike just as much after the last school year. Trying to threaten Leon and Warrington really hadn´t endeared the headmaster to him at all.
“Well”, Sinistra said, sitting down next to the teen. “Technically, Severus has been your guardian since the court date in January, but the two of us signed an additional agreement as secondary guardians for you, since we wanted you to be ours as well.”
“Okay”, the Gryffindor said, biting his lip. “Can I think about that for a bit? I´m not sure I´m physically able to do so now. My brain is really slow right now. Like a snail. Wait, was the word snail?”
A shadow darkened the doorway before black robes came into view. Snape stalked into the room, a concerned scowl on his face. He assessed the room quickly with his eyes, before relaxing and putting away his wand, which Harry just now realised he had been holding. Locking his eyes with Sinistra, the two of them seemed to have a whole unspoken conversation going on. Finally, Snape nodded slightly, then turned to Babbling and did the same thing with him. Harry was both curious, what they were doing, and creeped out by the whole “we casually have unspoken conversations that actually work” thing.
“I see”, Snape now said, turning to Harry. “It seems I seems I have been doing you a disservice, Mr. Potter. My apologies.”
---
“The day after Samhain, Luna and Solana Lovegood came to my office”, Professor Snape told Harry in a calm tone.
They had made themselves comfortable, Babbling and Snape curled up on the couch next to the one Harry was lying on and Sinistra on the big armchair that she had dragged over from the corner, so that she could sit closer to the Gryffindor. The smell of freshly brewed tea wafted through the air from the cups standing on the side table in between the couches, making the Gryffindor wish he had his cup already in hand, so he wouldn´t look quite so awkward listening to Snape. The letters lay forgotten on another table.
“I didn´t believe them, of course, when they told me I had to check up on your homelife, but I did so nevertheless”, Snape continued.
“Merlin knows it was the right decision”, Sinistra chimed in now, smiling lightly at Harry. “I shudder to think how much damage they could have done in another summer.”
“It wasn´t that bad”, Harry mumbled, blushing a bit.
“Yes, it was, dear”, Sinistra returned mildly. “Go on Severus. You were saying?”
“Very well.”, Snape continued. “I challenged guardianship and the first court date was set for December. They fought harshly, of course, trying to blame their disastrous behaviour on you, but the judge wouldn´t have any of it. Then, once I was awarded guardianship in January, the muggle government decided to take action and charge your relatives with child abuse.”
“That´s why they´re in prison?”, the teen asked, fiddling with the hem of his tunic, his fingers following the embroidered patterns.
“It is”, Babbling agreed.
“So…”, Harry started hesitantly, unsure whether he truly wanted to know. “What about Dudley?”
All eyes in the room focused on Snape as neither of them answered quickly. The man seemed to be thinking, his face more open than Harry had ever seen on his Potion Professor. Now that he was looking, he was generally much more relaxed, too, sitting there with his immaculate posture and having Professor Babbling curled up around him, drawing soothing circles into the other man´s shoulder.
“I´m afraid I do not know”, Snape finally concluded. “I am willing to find out, however, should you decide you wish to know.”
“I´ll let you know”, the Gryffindor mumbled.
“Indeed”, the Potions Master agreed, before extricating himself from Babbling, getting up and straightening himself. “I believe I have a potion to tend to. See you for dinner Mr, Potter.”
The man whirled around and started to walk away, but was stopped by a hesitant call from his ward, making him turn around and raise a questioning eyebrow: “Snape! Wait! Uhm…. I´m still not sure how I feel about you not telling me all of this much sooner, but uh… Call me Harry? Please.”
“Very well”, Snape agreed, inclining his head, before turning around again and stalking away dramatically.
“One flair point to Professor Snape”, Harry sighed.
---
Friday found Harry observing his new guardians more, trying to figure them out, but not having much luck. Snape proved elusive, spending much of his time in the potions laboratory, brewing healing potions for Harry, according to Sinistra. Babbling spent hours fiddling with a box, carving runes and turning parts, until finally, something clicked loudly, and he ran off cheerfully to his own laboratory to finish whatever it was. Sinistra, still, was spending much of her time with Harry, showing him the winning picture of the photography contest she had been grading as well as talking with him about novels he had liked and which ones from their library he might enjoy as well.
The best parts of his Friday by far were finding the library, after having been told where it was by Sinistra, and finally being able to keep down more than soup. The simple chicken sandwich tasted heavenly to the Gryffindor and the apple pie after that was great as well. Thinking about it from that perspective made the teen very glad he didn´t live with the Dursleys anymore, though he was still angry about not being told such a thing until it was absolutely necessary. Hedwig, too, seemed to agree with Harry that he should have been told from the start, or at least gotten a notice for the court dates, but maybe they had gotten lost in the transition between muggle and owl post?
After dinner that night, Harry sought out the library again, looking for the novels Sinistra had mentioned to him earlier in the day. There were a lot of them in the section right next to the door, sorted by author, not by genre or contents. Even here, the Gryffindor found muggle novels in between the wizarding ones, not differentiated in any way, shape, or form. Checking his short list of titles that he had written down, Harry picked Of Time-Travelling Trolls and Magic Muggles by Theodor W. Rowland, as well as Morgan le Fay – The War Mage of Camelot, a detailed biography written ty one of their descendants, Oswald M. le Fay.
Saturday morning had the Gryffindor bleary eyed, having read all through the night. He started getting up, before deciding that no, he didn´t actually want to be awake right now, turning around, and going back to sleep. When he finally stumbled down to the kitchen in the afternoon to maybe get some breakfast or whatever they were willing to give him at this hour, he found his breakfast under stasis charm on the counter, as well as a glass filled with a smoothie of some sort. Taking it with him into the living room, Harry stopped dead at the bizarre sight of Snape sitting on the couch, crocheting, and watching muggle television.
Looking up, the dark-haired man nodded to the teen: “Finally awake I see.”
“Yes, sir”, the Gryffindor agreed, sitting down on his couch and putting his tray on the table in front of him.
It wasn´t unpleasant, sitting together quietly watching television, while the two of them both did their own thing. Harry soon found the letters he had left lying around for the last few days and set to reading and answering them quickly, then set them aside to bring to the owlery later. Maybe Hedwig would like to deliver the one to Neville, she seemed to like the shy boy. Or more likely, he just had better treats than some of his other friends.
“Harry.”
The Gryffindor jerked his head up, looking at Snape wide eyed. Sure, he had asked him to use his first name, but he hadn´t thought he would actually do it! Come to think of it, the man had been speaking for some time now and Harry had missed most of it. Again. Maybe he´d just agree and the man wouldn´t be angry? What was he thinking, of course, he´d be angry. He hadn´t been listening after all…
“Yes?”, the teen said quickly, though even he could tell it sounded very unconvincing.
“Come along, then”, Snape told him drily, leading the way out of the room and towards the gardens.
“Where are we going?”, Harry asked, now more curious than worried.
“To the gardens”, was the immediate retort. “If you had been listening, you would have known that we, that is, Aurora, Bathsheda, and I, usually duel every Saturday evening. I thought you may be interested in watching, and, once you are entirely well again, join in in the practice.”
“I…”, Harry started. “That sounds great, actually.”
“I thought so”, the Potions Master agreed.
They reached the wide open field that was the middle of the garden, flowers, and herbs far off from the duelling grounds, which were obvious, now that Harry knew what they were meant for. Sinistra was already waiting for them, her robes much more practical than the ones she usually liked to wear even within the house. Babbling, however, still wore his usual get-up, though the open robes were fixed on his shirt with buttons on the edge.
“Only five minutes early, Severus. That´s almost five minutes late for you”, Sinistra teased the Potions Master.
“Keep that for the duelling ring”, Babbling interjected. “Hello Harry, observing today? There´s a rock over there that’s encased in protective runes for just that purpose. You don´t want to be in the way of any stray spells.”
“Yes, sir”, Harry said eagerly, turning around to search for the aforementioned rock.
It wasn´t hard to find as the wards were giving off an audible hum that led Harry towards his destination quicker than spotting it alone would have. Come to think of it, was it normal that strong wards always gave off the same sound? Did that mean Privet Drive didn´t have any or had he just not heard the sound there because the wards were of a different nature? Setting the matter aside in his head for the moment, Harry vowed to himself to write to Susan about the matter. She should know such a thing, shouldn´t she?
Snape and Sinistra had now started circling each other, while Babbling stood next to the duel on the lush grass to intervene, should anyone break the rules. Soon, the first hex shot through the air and the match was on. Harry followed the duel attentively, but as they mostly cast nonverbally, he couldn´t tell most of the spells used. Some were obvious, like Reducto and Protego, but others had effects that the Gryffindor had never seen produced by a spell, like a wicked looking icicle shooting spell that Professor Snape seemed to favour.
The duel was quick-paced, spells shot one after the other in quick succession. More than once Professor Babbling had to use a shield charm to protect himself, as a spell shot wide of it´s target or the target simply moved out of its way.
“They´re good, aren´t they?”
Harry twitched, discomforted that he hadn´t noticed Babblings approach. The Rune Master was now standing next to him. A fireball thrown at Snape drew the teen´s attention back to the duelling area. The fireball was quickly redirected, however, and answered with whirlwind of flying stones and small rocks picked up from the surrounding garden floor.
“To be honest, I can´t compete with them at all, so their duels are always much more vicious than they need to be to let off some steam. Vicious, but also impressive”, Babbling now told Harry, pushing his mane of hair out of his face to pull it back into a ponytail. “They never truly hurt each other though and occasionally, Aura even wins.”
Harry blinked, then turned to the man standing at his side: “Occasionally? Isn´t Snape a Potions Master?”
This drew a laugh from Babbling: “So what? We all fought in the war, you know? There wasn’t really an option not to, so those who survived tended to be the ones who were either intelligent or very powerful.”
The Gryffindor twitched, feeling very uncomfortable in his skin: “I didn´t know it was that bad. They really expect me to fight You-Know-Who? How am I supposed to do that if so many experienced fighters stand in my way, never mind the seventy plus year old bastard that I´m supposed to kill.”
“We don´t, at least”, the jade-eyed man told the teen. “That´s worth something, isn´t it?”
“Yeah.”
---
Later, at dinner, Harry remembered something else. Something that had bugged him since earlier, but he hadn´t thought about it too much.
“Uhm…”, he started, unsure.
“Yes, Harry?”, Sinistra asked, putting her fork down and looking at the Gryffindor curiously.
“Isn´t Bathsheda a girl´s name?”, the teen asked, his tone careful.
Snape choked on his tea, coughing repeatedly to clear his airways. Babbling continued eating calm as a cucumber, a small smile on his face. Sinistra, too, looked mildly amused. She patted Snape on the back to while throwing a meaningful look to Babbling, making him sigh and put down his fork as well.
“It is”, the jade-eyed man agreed.
“So, why are you named that, then. Did your parents hate you or something?”, Harry asked, baffled.
Babbling snorted: “No, they did not. To explain that, you have to know that I was not born a man, though I have always been one in mind.”
“The muggles might put emphasis on such things, but changing one´s gender is not such an unusual thing in magical culture. In fact, Morgan le Fay and Aveline Travers would be two famous magic-workers who have done such a thing, multiple times in Warmage le Fay´s case”, Snape interjected, finally having stopped coughing.
Harry had read about that. Morgan, or Morgana, the name switched every now and then, even in the biography, had been a shapeshifter who had used their ability to switch their gender however they thought themself to be on any particular day. He had read about it, yes, but he hadn´t thought about at as much as he maybe should have. One thing though…
“Why keep your previous name?”, the Gryffindor asked, leaning forward slightly in his rapt attention.
“It is a beautiful name, is it not?”, Babbling asked, a mischievous twinkle present in his eyes.
“Yes”, Harry said, unsure how that had anything to do with his question.
“Then I believe you have the answer to your question”, the Runes Master told him seriously. “I didn´t see a reason to change a name I liked, even though it didn´t fit with what other would see of me. It is my life, after all, not theirs.”
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