Chapter 52
"Mrs. Greengrass, I… don't quite know how to respond to all of this, but… why are you willing to do so much for me?"
I addressed the witch who was watching me with patient expectation, still processing the apprenticeship offer she'd just made — my thoughts moving a little slower than usual.
"Harry, I asked you to use my first name," Agatha said, shaking her head with mild disapproval, in no particular hurry to answer my question directly. "And I don't entirely understand your surprise. The question isn't pressing right now, but you are — genuinely — an advantageous match for practically any young witch of the current generation. Given that, it's quite obvious that I would want to do everything in my power to ensure the terms we've already agreed upon are honored as fully as possible."
I see. She's afraid I might eventually break off the engagement with her daughter — accept the minor magical backlash and pay whatever compensation is owed to the family, and simply walk away. I turned the situation over in my mind, still not entirely certain where my apparent value on the wizarding marriage market had come from.
Well — I understood it, more or less. A great many people took an interest in the so-called hero of the war against Voldemort. And the lingering legacy of House Potter drew considerable attention on its own. Despite the family's practical destruction, there was still something left behind my name: property, savings, frozen business interests, ancestral patents, and a reputation that hadn't entirely faded.
The original Harry Potter — the one from the history I remembered — probably hadn't attracted that kind of pursuit because of his own behavior, his close and conspicuous friendship with the Weasleys and Granger, and the simple fact that Voldemort's tyranny had resumed. In the end, Dumbledore and Sirius weren't entirely wrong — in recent times, families had tended to arrange betrothals at a somewhat more mature age. The serious maneuvering in that direction, as I understood it, usually began around fourth or fifth year. By the time that arrived for the original bearer of my name, his reputation had already developed in directions that weren't particularly helpful.
His conflict with Malfoy and practically the whole of Slytherin, for one, spoke for itself.
"Ahem… But isn't personal apprenticeship already beyond what the situation requires? I have no intention of withdrawing from my betrothal to Daphna regardless. And how would my training with you even work, given that I'm still a student at Hogwarts?"
I made myself collect my thoughts and voice the question, without for a moment actually considering declining the offer. I had some uncertainties about what was being proposed — but the past week had given me ample evidence of Agatha's extraordinary competence. Any question I raised about Charms or magic in general, she answered with remarkable ease and clarity. Far more clearly, in most cases, than Sirius managed — and that was saying something, given that my training with my godfather had its own particular charm of irreverent enthusiasm.
"From the moment of our first meeting, and once you and Daphna expressed your readiness to formalize the betrothal, I began thinking about taking you on as an apprentice," the pleasant-looking witch said with an easy shrug, still regarding my barely-concealed figure with a degree of focused attention that continued to unsettle me. "The idea was to train you toward mastery in Charms — or perhaps help you toward mastery in Transfiguration. Originally, I conceived of such training as a kind of compensation for your willingness to care for my daughter and serve as consort to my House."
And it would suit you very well to be giving your daughter's hand to someone who was at minimum a journeyman wizard — and who would almost certainly attain full mastery in time, bringing the Greengrass family considerable political capital. My origins would stop being a question anyone bothered to raise. My mother was a Muggle-born witch, which technically makes me a half-blood, but for someone who has achieved mastery in some aspect of magic, that stops mattering quite so much.
I quietly constructed the likely shape of her reasoning, fairly confident I wasn't far off.
"Now, of course, with the revised contract and your new guardian's involvement in the terms of your betrothal, that particular form of compensation from me is no longer strictly necessary." She smiled at me — warm, with just a hint of playfulness. "But I find I've grown rather interested in teaching such a gifted young man regardless."
The smile very nearly made me feel like a harmless kitten cornered by a formidable tigress.
Still, I understood my probable future mother-in-law's motives — or at least I hoped I did. Agatha regarded me as a serious, talented, and self-aware individual — but ultimately as an adolescent. She saw no adult, no fully formed mind behind my eyes, and because of that, she wasn't making any particular effort to conceal certain things from me.
Or, more likely, she'd never intended to conceal them at all, because at this particular moment our interests and desires were very nearly identical.
What she allows for is the possibility that adolescent stupidity might still get the better of me someday. Which is why she's quietly, quite reasonably, and to considerable mutual benefit, wrapping me in her attention and her influence from every available angle. So that even if I decided in a couple of years to bolt over some sudden infatuation, I'd find I had nowhere left to go.
I kept turning the possible motivations over, careful not to fix on just one interpretation.
"I understand, Lady Greengrass," I said at last, dipping my head slightly without any rush to climb out of the near-boiling cauldron. "And I would be very glad to learn from your wisdom."
I did my best to convey genuine respect, because — try as I might — I couldn't identify any serious catch in what she was offering. Later, I would need to go through the apprenticeship contract carefully and thoroughly. And consulting Sirius was essential — formalizing personal apprenticeship without one's official guardian present wasn't entirely proper. But in general terms, I simply couldn't see a realistic reason for Agatha Greengrass to be working against me.
My paranoia, naturally, continued sending its usual signals — nothing could possibly be this straightforward, it insisted. And yet even my paranoia wasn't pressing particularly hard this time. Strange as it sounded, my habitual tendency to treat almost everything connected to the wizarding world with suspicion wasn't weighing on me very heavily right now.
I'd even checked my own mind a time or two for signs of external interference, run my emotions through their paces from different angles, and thought carefully about why Agatha had chosen to visit me specifically during one of these "restorative baths." Nothing extraneous. Nothing genuinely suspicious.
So I hadn't refused the offer. Even if I still wasn't entirely certain how studying under her would coexist with studying at Hogwarts.
The answer to that, as it turned out, was fairly simple: it wouldn't. Not in any real sense. Agatha Greengrass couldn't conduct proper training with even her own daughters at a distance — though she did have methods of staying in contact beyond owl post and official correspondence. But still.
Teaching magic at a distance was no trivial problem. She'd immediately promised to share a two-way mirror for communication with my new mentor, which would allow me to consult one of the most knowledgeable witches I'd yet met — not only on the curriculum she would design for me, but on any aspect of magic at all.
That alone was worth an enormous amount. Especially given that a mirror capable of functioning reliably within Hogwarts's dense, somewhat chaotic magical field — generated by hundreds of young witches and wizards in close proximity — was no simple object. It was a genuine artifact. Proper, full-scale training under a renowned Charms master would only begin the following summer.
This year, what awaited me was preliminary practice, some introduction to Greengrass family affairs — the bare minimum needed to ensure I didn't accidentally make unnecessary enemies at school — and preparation for two events planned for this summer.
Sirius's firm intention to attend the Quidditch World Cup, happening this very year, I received with a mixture of mild indifference and genuine unease. My knowledge of how events had unfolded in canon gave me reasons to be cautious. But the vision correction I had scheduled at St. Mungo's for this same summer — that I anticipated with everything I had.
Seriously. Being a blind mole who couldn't navigate a room without glasses was not something I had any fondness for. Even the fact that I'd long since replaced my original lenses and enchanted the new ones rather well — and had grown quite comfortable with them — changed nothing. The memory of what it felt like to simply see was too vivid, too appealing, to let the matter rest.
Fortunately, I'd had my initial consultation over the Christmas holidays, and was already fully prepared for what lay ahead — both mentally and physically. I'd spent nearly the entire past year on a course of specialized potions, required to ensure that once my vision was corrected, it wouldn't simply deteriorate again rapidly.
The underlying condition wasn't the simplest — it was entangled with magic in ways that complicated things — but nothing critical. Nothing irreparable. It would simply cost a fair amount. Not that I would be paying it. That would be Sirius, who had refused with absolute stubbornness to let me spend a single Knut from the Potter family vault. Those savings he had left deliberately untouched, for me "to spend on sweets."
The money behind those words would have comfortably purchased a couple of flats in London, or a decent parcel of land in the wizarding world. Left to a young boy, for his entertainment.
And somehow, here, that was simply how things were done. Malfoy spent Galleons without a second thought. My other friends from Slytherin weren't much more restrained. Daphna and Astoria ordered new robes delivered directly to Hogwarts with perfect regularity. And they didn't hesitate to pull in someone less well-off — someone outside our circle — when they needed something handled.
I remembered Astoria once tangling Ginny up in some scheme of hers for a modest coin. But I kept myself well clear of those affairs. The girls had their own swamp of plots and schemes. My situation was different — I was a Ravenclaw, and I'd managed over the past years to establish myself reasonably well in the social landscape of the school. No one came for me particularly, which left me free to immerse myself in magic and my own development.
Though even I occasionally pulled in the Weasley twins to deal with someone who'd made themselves a nuisance. George and Fred were capable, inventive, and cheerfully reckless. They needed ingredients, and they were never unhappy to have willing test subjects for their latest creations.
I, in turn, occasionally acquired someone's ill will — or, on the opposite end, found myself approached by people who wanted an introduction to someone outside our House. In that regard, my reputation at Hogwarts had taken on a somewhat peculiar shape.
On one hand, I was a true Ravenclaw — practically a living embodiment of the House's reputation for keeping to itself. On the other hand, I had long since settled into the role of informal authority among nearly all the lower years, including students a couple of years above me. A modest demonstration of magical ability went a long way toward that.
I also had an unusually wide range of acquaintances outside my House. More than that — I had connections in both Slytherin and Gryffindor simultaneously, two Houses that traditionally had very little common ground with Ravenclaw. Our House's natural affinities tended toward the Hufflepuffs. Which made my particular position not only unusual, but genuinely useful.
It let me keep a hand on the pulse of things — to quietly observe what was happening in the castle and track the more noteworthy developments in the lives of the more interesting figures at Hogwarts.
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