A Soulless Angel

My thanks to Terra King once more, and I hope you enjoy this chapter.

-8-

Jacob Macmillan stared at the other members of the Alliance, his expression a mixture of the same pomposity his son had grown up with and concern. "Thank you all for coming. What I've got to say to you all is a matter of concern for the future of the Alliance," he said.

Adrian Greengrass was not in the mood for melodrama today. "Get on with it, Jacob," he snapped, flooding some emotion into his otherwise calm, expressionless mask, the same mask he had taught his daughters to show when in public to protect them, "We all know what this meeting's about, can you just get to the point?"

While Jacob steamed, Augusta Longbottom decided to just get to the point as well. "Yes, please do, for all our sakes, Jacob."

Jacob had hoped to get to the point slowly, ask a few questions and get some opinions and then go on from there. "Look, some of us were there in the Courtroom at the Ministry when those memories of You-Know-Who's ultimate defeat. Is there any way we can reach out to Mr Potter?"

The Alliance members had been in discussions like this for days now, ever since Harry Potter had been declared free and innocent. For the last year, the Alliance had been so convinced of Harry Potter's guilt, that they had cut the Potter family out of the Alliance. One of the reasons why Amelia, even as the Head of the DMLE had not pulled strings to make the trial follow protocol was not just because she had needed to play Fudge's game, which was what she needed to do on a daily basis, as the current Minister for Magic had a nasty habit of interfering in her department, and inventing reasons to release prisoners, forcing her to play games with him, but in truth Amelia had genuinely believed Harry was guilty.

They had failed him.

They all had.

As with pureblood marriages and relationships, the Potters were allied with dozens of magical alliances. They were made with families to provide political strength, and as with all of their allies, the Potters could serve as the go-between between the different alliances, looking for favours or looking for dirt.

But in the last decade, they'd been forced to make do without the Potter family's resources, and they'd been waiting for Harry to become of age to take over. But after he was thrown into prison, it began looking like the alliance would lose an important and valuable member. And it was not just them, there were dozens of other family alliances that were in trouble, too.

With Harry now freed and proven innocent of mass murder, and the fact he was going to leave Britain for good, many were desperate to keep him. Some people had their own plans for the young Potter heir, but it hadn't occurred to any of them that Harry might not actually care about the alliances.

Amelia sighed under her breath. "I don't think he's interested," she told her fellow 'Puff.

"But he must!" Jacob said. "The Potters have been a valuable ally of ours in the past, he must stay and do his duty-."

"Duty to whom, and to what, Jacob? I was there in the courtroom. I saw the way our own children from the Alliance, Jacob, and after the way, he's been thrown in Azkaban because of Fudge and how we didn't even demand he was treated properly as the Heir of an old family, why should he even speak or trust us?" Adrian interrupted sharply.

Augusta sighed at Adrian's lack of tact, but she could see where he came from. There were so many ways they'd all failed Harry Potter.

"Do you think Harry knows about the Alliance?" Augusta turned to Amelia, knowing the boy was a Slytherin in many ways.

"It's hard to be sure," Amelia replied.

From what she'd seen of the memories, Harry had condensed his experiences at school and the magical world, so there was no telling if he had learnt about the Alliance or not. But even if he had learnt, he would likely have waited for them to contact him, only to see how Susan, Neville, Daphne and Ernie treated him.

"The only way we can ever discover the truth is if we ask him," Amelia finished.

"How can we contact him?" Jacob demanded, making Amelia and Augusta sigh irritably while Adrian wondered about the IQs in this room.

Amelia frowned at him. "We could just send him an owl," she said practically. "But what we've been debating about for weeks now is what we're going to say. How do we approach him? Unlike you, I've actually met him; he's powerful, resourceful, magically brilliant with a strong chance he's taken all of You-Know-Who's magical knowledge, and he's a terrifying duellist, and he really does not care about the magical world. What makes you think he's going to care about our alliance?" She speared him with the same look she reserved for criminals. "And who will stop him?"

Jacob wilted, but his pride refused to back down. "Harry Potter must join us; his desires are irrelevant."

"I dare you to say that to his face, Jacob," Adrian Greengrass replied. "I was in the courtroom myself. I was curious about the fall of the Dark Lord and I wanted to see what happened then. I think we're being optimistic about our chances of roping Harry into the fold."

"Why do you say that?"

"Harry wants to leave the magical world, and emigrate to the MACUSA where a branch of his family will be. Put yourselves in his place, and think; What do you think is going to be more attractive; leaving to be with family, or being forced to play games after being abused and abandoned by so many, including peers who are the children he should have been associating himself with? I know which one I'd prefer," Adrian said brutally.

-8-

"Well?" Ernie said.

Ernie MacMillan, Neville Longbottom, Susan Bones, and Daphne Greengrass were currently listening in with listening charms on the meeting from the other room. Their parents and guardians, especially Amelia Bones and Adrian Greengrass were smart, cunning and realistic enough to keep check of such spells, but that only applied to meetings that were confidential, and they guessed this one included them.

The Alliance children had grown up together and they interacted with one another, to train them how to handle the running of their alliance.

But they were missing one member, who had been for nearly two decades.

And it was starting to look as if Harry Potter would never be included, the way things were going.

Susan and Daphne stared at him. "Well, what?"

Ernie looked ready to rip his entire head of hair from his scalp with his bare hands. It was as plain as day that he had not been having a good time at all: one did not have to look closely to see the furrow of worry that was permanently etched into his brow, or the violet bruise-like shadows of consistent nights of either nightmares or sleeplessness under his eyes, or the tension that lived in his arms and shoulders, or the way his fingernails were bitten to the quick.

Susan, Daphne and Neville weren't that far behind, although Neville looked reasonably healthy. Then again, was there anyone who had been having a good time?

"You know what I mean!" Ernie snapped, almost hysterically. "What are we going to do about Harry's return to Hogwarts?!"

The two young witches exchanged a glance, and Susan sighed and said, "What is there to be done, Ernie? We'll have to try to apologise to him."

Ernie stared at her as if she had suddenly proclaimed that she was Voldemort's and Bellatrix's secret illegitimate daughter. "Are you kidding me?! Everyone knows that the instant he sets foot in the school, every single one of us is done for! He will not spare any of us for what had happened! He-,"

"And there is absolutely nothing that can be done about it. Absolutely none." Daphne interrupted, her voice as dry as a desert, her countenance and her entire demeanour dripping the stoic indifference that was a trademark of the Greengrass family, though she was as pale as a corpse. "You know it. I know it. Susan knows it. Goodness, the whole wide world knows it! Every single one of us is literally and wholly in his hands now. He can do whatever he wants with us whenever he wants to, and there is absolutely nothing that we can do about it. No. Not when we as a whole have screwed up this badly."

She sighed, inwardly rebuking herself and her family for the goodness-knows-what time for the past, especially where Harry was concerned.

If only...no, as her father had so grimly and so brutally pointed out, "if only" would only be "if only", and there was no point for the dragon to cry over how the treasure it had been guarding was stolen due to its carelessness and its arrogance. "We do not even have the right to breathe his air, let alone apologise to him and try to make amends."

"We should have approached him ages ago, but that stupid Weasel and that jumped-up Mudblood bitch Granger got in the way, likely on Dumbledore's orders," Daphne went on, brutally railroading over their pro-muggle and pro-light stances. "And we always went with the flow, listened to the opinions of others. That was a mistake; Ernie, even if we spoke to him, tried to reason with him, from what we know, Harry is going to try to leave the magical world the first chance he gets. I can't blame him, either; Daddy showed me the memories from the trial. They didn't conjure up any good pictures in my mind."

"When we speak to him," Susan gave Ernie a pointed look which made it clear this was not up for debate, "we will apologise to him, properly. Especially you, Ernie; you did blame him for that parseltongue incident in the Duelling club. You did wear that Potter Stinks badge in our Fourth Year. That means we have a lot to make up for."

Ernie looked away, hating to admit his own faults and failures.

Neville, who'd been silent up until that moment, spoke up, "We're wasting our time, guys. Take it from me, I wish I could have spoken to Harry, but he was never around, and Granger and Weasley, being hot-tempered bullies, kept threatening me to keep away, telling me the Alliance is dead, and that Harry won't ever be a part of it. Looking back, I was so uncertain because of the way my parents were tortured and were left barely able to live, and I just barely cared about it… but I know this, Harry Potter is not really forgiving. In our third year, Granger told McGonagall about a Firebolt sent to Harry as a Christmas present. She didn't even bother asking him for his opinion. She just tattled, and Harry and Weasley just ignored her. Harry let her back in, but I knew he did it for much better reasons than Weasley; he did it because she had gone behind his back.

"During the Triwizard Tournament, that was when he'd really had enough. He cut himself off from everyone, and he began going to the Chamber of Secrets, and to the Room of Requirement to train. He likely decided he didn't have anything to lose. And he did lose, in a big way," he added morosely, thinking about how Harry was just callously treated by everyone.

Susan, Daphne and Ernie shared looks. For every twenty people who believed Harry was truly guilty, there were only two who believed in his innocence. In the Alliance, Susan, Daphne, Ernie, Adrian, Augusta, Jacob, and Amelia believed in his guilt. Neville had suffered because of it. Personally, Neville didn't care about leaving the Alliance; in fact, he would welcome it. He had never wanted to be in charge of the Longbottom estate, it was a duty forced on him by protocol, tradition, and his grandmother. The last year had changed Neville. He was no longer the shy, insecure, haunted boy he had been. No, he was tougher after spending a whole year being bullied for his views relating to Harry.

A cruel part of him wanted nothing more than to gloat he had been right, they had been wrong.

"Y-you know him better than us, Nev," Susan flinched at the glare she got in return, realised it might not only be the Potters leaving the Alliance, which would be a double blow, "is there nothing we can do?"

"No," Neville stood up. He wasn't going to bother with them. He had said his piece, he had been ridiculed by them so many times, so why should he help them?