Legally Binding

Chapter 5


Severus walked down to the next bedroom, he figured if he at least put the two together he would be able to keep tabs of them. Well at least keep tabs of them in this hall at least. He had already sat down the rules of no wondering off to the other side of the Manor, he wasn’t about to let them get anywhere near his personal quarters. Severus knocked on the door and opened it up. Potter wasn’t anywhere to be seen. He entered the room; the door to the loo was open part way and the shower was just being turned off.

Severus said the spell that caused a box of Potter’s petitions to be placed in the room. Severus still had to go over a few of the box’s abilities now. The one he placed in the room was the master box, with all the others tied to this one. Whatever Potter didn’t want in a mate it would be taken out of this box and moved to a box that was in the Ministry of Magic. Potter would only have to deal with one box and not the multiple ones he had accumulated.

“I think you need to get back in the shower, you missed a rather large spot on your side there.” Severus heard the enchanted mirror speak to Potter.

“Shut up, I didn’t miss a damn thing.” Potter hissed back.

“Not a pureblood are you? Such manners.”

Severus moved so he could get a view from the reflection in the mirror, he saw that Potter’s rib cage was black on his left side it faded into purple, green, and yellow towards the middle of his chest. He stepped over to the door and opened it. Potter was messing with the towel trying to find a position for it around his waist that didn’t come in contact with the bruise when Severus did this. Potter jumped at the sudden movement from the door and the towel dropped to the floor exposing his whole body. Before Harry could cover himself Severus noticed the scars. The young man before him had broken ribs and had not bothered to tell anyone. His legs were riddled with scars, some long, some short, some only having pinpoints. Potter turned his back on Severus, which in Severus’ opinion was the wrong thing to do. It only allowed him to see that much more of what he’d been through. Potter had more scars on his body than Severus had, and that was saying a lot. He managed to get the towel around himself rather quickly then.

“Keeping secrets are we? Stupid boy. Had you have had any brains in your head you would have told someone about this, and been removed from that house immediately.”

Harry turned toward Severus, his eyes filled with anger, clutching the towel. “I begged to stay at Hogwarts. It wasn’t like I didn’t tell anyone. The Weasleys knew the Dursleys weren’t feeding me right. They even asked if I could stay there during the summers, but that was even denied. Why say anything when I had to keep going back there?”

“You should have tried harder! All that Gryffindor Courage, and you said nothing. Pathetic.”

“Like this is all my fault? Whatever happened to teachers noticing things? It wasn’t like I never told anyone before. The last time I ever said anything nothing happened. So why do it again, no one ever gave a damn.” Harry looked past Severus, he wanted out of the room. As it was he felt trapped and he didn’t have his wand.

“Now you’ve moved on to blaming everyone for your misgivings. Grow up Potter, the world doesn’t revolve around you, as much as those petitions say so, you are affected just like the rest of the damn world. Deal with it!\"

“My misgivings? Fine everything is my fault, you happy? I don’t give a rats ass about those petitions, you think you know what is so damn good for my life then you pick my choice.” Harry glared at the man, loathed for the fact that, he Snape, would never acknowledge that none of the professors didn’t see what was happening right under their bloody noses.

Snape was shocked by Harry’s outburst, why the hell would he trust him to take care of the petitions? Or even pick for him? “Why would I want to pick for you? We could leave it up to your dreadful relations. I’m sure they’d pick a fine wife for you.”

“A fine wife? I would trust your choice over theirs. They wouldn’t pick a wife, they would pick a slave task master, one that would be befitting of the house-elf that I was to them.”

“How sweet, you’d rather trust a greasy git than your relations. You know well enough Potter that I cannot. I am not the head of your family. I am only for myself and Sarin.”

Harry knew Snape couldn’t, it was more wishful thinking on his part. His anger was still riled, riled with himself for even allowing Snape to find out about what had been happening to him. He was so close to not having anyone find out about this secret, this one secret that he had lived with. He sat down on the toilet that was in the loo, it didn’t look like Snape was leaving anytime soon, and the pain in his side wasn’t helping his attitude either.

“It doesn’t matter anymore, nothing does.” Harry closed his eyes and gritted his teeth in pain.

\"Giving up now are we Potter? The Dark Lord couldn\'t break you, but a little law that effects the whole world manages to break your spirits.\"

His eyes snapped back open. \"I had a prophecy hanging over my head, at least I knew the outcome to that. It was either kill him or die. I knew who I was fighting against. How the bloody hell am I supposed to marry someone now when I don\'t even know if I want that? I want to make a choice for once in my life that was my own and not anyone else’s.\"

\"You have a choice in front of you if you\'d open up your bloody eyes and see it. You won\'t have the Dursleys pick for you, you know I very well can\'t even if I wanted to.\"

Harry shifted his weight around, his ribs were killing him. Don\'t have the Dursleys pick for him, well Fudge did tell him he could compromise. But he didn\'t understand everything about head of family that the law called for. \"What\'s the head of family, how does that work in the wizarding world? Is it like your parents?\"

\"Yes and No. If there are no living parents then it is the eldest of said family, if there is someone in said family that is young and needs to be cared for. I am the head of the Snape family because I have to care of Sarin.\"

So he couldn\'t be a head of the family that left that option out. He just didn\'t think he could trust Fudge or the courts enough to choose for him. The pain was starting to derail his thinking. He knew he was going to have to ask, \"Professor Snape, do you have any potions that I can take that can fix my ribs?\" He kept his head down not even daring to look up. It was the first time he ever asked anything of him. Well the second, he knew Snape couldn\'t choose for him.

Severus nodded and left the loo for a moment, returning again with two bottles in his hands. \"Take this and it will mend your bones. Apply this to the bruised area.\"

Harry took the ointment and the potion. \"Thank you.\" He drank the potion down and gave the bottle back to Snape who had his hand out waiting for it. Harry wanted to groan but decided not too, it wasn\'t like he wasn\'t going to take the stuff after he asked for it. Even though y aly always had to force things down him. He was able to rub the ointment over his chest and side but he couldn\'t quite reach his back. He was just staring in the mirror and took a glance at Snape to see what he was doing, he was watching him like a hawk like he did in potions class.

\"If you think I am going to rub that ointment on your back you\'ve got another thing coming.\" Snape stated, indeed watching Harry closely, as he had done so for the last five years.

\"I wasn\'t going to ask you, but you are in the way of me getting some clothes on.\" He wasn\'t about to ask Hermione he didn\'t want to explain things. And with Snape being who he was, he was sure Sarin would hear about it. He was just loathed to ask any bloody Snape male or female.

“Dinner is at six, don’t be late.” Snape turned and left the room.


*******

Hermione was nervous, last night hadn’t gone as well as she would have liked. She still had several hundred petitions to go through. The dent they asked for in the petitions was small and she barely reached it. She had taken off everyone who wouldn’t be of age when she would be, that had gotten rid of quite a few of the petitions, considering when they had placed her birthday on the parchment. She also slowly reached a cut off age for how old she wanted the wizard to be after she found one who was at least a hundred in the box. She finally lowed that age to fifty, but she was thinkif lof lowering it again.

The other choices had been hard, she had written on a piece of parchment of her likes and dislikes from anything ranging in the Muggle world to the Wizarding World. For one she really wasn’t a great flyer, so she had taken out the love of flying from the pile. She was slowly working through all of those, trying to cut the pile further, but now she couldn’t even do that. She was standing outside one of the courtrooms in the Ministry, her court hearing was this morning. It was the one that Mr. Weasley had told her about while she was still at the burrow, her parents were supposed to attend this one, but now they weren’t even here. She had become unsure of herself, she had always had her parents and now she didn’t even have them.

Harry’s court hearing was to follow hers in the same room. Hermione was watching Harry, he had grown rather quite. He had been that way all morning like he was trying to work something out. Hene fne figured if anyone would be able to get out of this law, it would be Harry, and she figured he was trying to find a way around it.

“Do you think they’ll release you from this?” Hermione asked him. “You have been able to get out of everything else.”

Harry’s green eyes looked over to her, the vacant expression he had earlier was gone, and it was now replaced with anger. “That is wishful thinking. Sure I’ve gotten out of a lot of scraps, survived things most people haven’t. How would it look if I were released from this law? It would be one more thing for them to tack on me, besides it wouldn’t be fair to everyone else, Hermione. I’m not infallible, as much as I would like for that happen, it would be even worse for me if it did happen.”

Sarin had been watching the two, she was leaning against the wall. Two Auror had been placed at either end of hallhall. This hearing was going to be a closed hearing, no papers would allowed anywhere near this all. Severus was reading the ‘Daily Prophet’ beside her. She noticed he glanced at Harry after what he said and went back to the paper. She noticed this young man had a lot of pent up anger and frustration. Severus had told her Potter was spoiled, careless, and selfish, brave and fool hearty at the same time. Foolish she saw right away, it had been rather stupid to place yourselffronfront of a press conference the way he had done; even knowing who he was. How they would treat it.

The doors to the court open, the attending witch looked around. “Miss Hermione Granger.”

Hermione looked over to the woman. “Yes.”

“They’re ready.”

Hermione looked back over to Sarin, “You’re going in with Severus. Go.”

Severus had the paper folded and was to the door, Severus followed her in. Sarin had agreed before hand, that Severus would go in with Hermione while she went in with Harry. She couldn’t be in two places at once, and Harry had more threats levied against him than Hermione had. Harry’s vacant expression came back to his face after the doors closed. Sarin had noticed he had taken to doing this, he did it most through dinner last night and breakfast all this morning. From all the things she heard and read about Harry Potter, his legend was bigger than what he looked.

His hair had that perpetual wind kissed look, his facial features were hidden behind those black-rimmed glasses that he wore. She figured he would look better without those glasses, his eyes stood more than any other thing she noticed. Those bright green orbs looked as if they could weld magic themselves when his anger had come to the forefront. His clothes were hopeless, they swallowed him, and why he dressed in clothes that didn’t fit him she didn’t understand. It wasn’t a fashion statement in the Wizarding world, she wondered if it was some sort of statement in the Muggle one. Sarin reasoned he wouldn’t be bad looking if he was cleaned up some, put a little bit more weight on his frame and get rid of those glasses. If those things came about, he might actually be handsome.

********

Severus followed Hermione inside. She was wringing her hands behind her back, from what Severus had gathered at the last court session, her parents disowned her. Hermione had been told if she left the Wizarding world she would still fall under the law, so she really had no choice in the matter.

“Have a seat Miss Granger.”

Severus stayed back by the door. They had been told before hand that Hermione and Harry would be accompanied by an adult for means of protection to and from the courts and while they were there. Hermione took her seat and looked up at the full Wizarding board.

“Miss Granger,” the wizard in the middle began, his beard was gray, not the silver that Dedoredore had, nor the twinkle that always shone in his eyes. “We’re here to discuss the effect of the time-turner, as seeing as you are without guardian representation at this time, you will now be a ward of this court, until you are wed. Is that understood?”

Hermione nodded her head.

“Good. Now as you know, the time you used has been added to your age, and as such, it has placed you in the year of betrothing. Being as you are now a ward of this court, since your parents disowned you the last time they were before us, we will be doing the choosing instead of your parents.”

“Will it just be one of you or all of you?” Hermione asked.

Whispering started going back and forth across the wizards who sat on the panel, a total of thirty of them to be exact. Nodding and shaking started going on, then everyone fell into a hushed silence as the main speaker turned back to her.

“There will be a contingence of five wizard who will choose for your behalf.”

“So I won’t have a choice at all in this.”

“We didn’t say that, you have been making choices already. You have been choosing where you want the wizard to come from, an age range,” he stopped to look over some parchment. “Let’s see, also someone who doesn’t like flying, you picked at least a certain level of OWL and NEWT requirements. I assure you, you are making choices in this matter. When you have made it down to a chosen number of petitions that we will specify to you then it will become the courts job to choose from those who you will have the opportunity to court you. The court will have the last say.”

“And what if I don’t like who the court has chosen?”

“It doesn’t matter if you like it or not. You are a ward of this court, every petition will be weighted and a chosen match will be set. As for the courting, that will begin the first weekend in September after you are settled in school of course.”

Severus saw Hermione straighten her shoulders even more, he could tell they were riling that Gryffindor anger in her.

“What if I don’t like who you’ve chosen?”

“You are allowed to turn them down. However, if we feel this wizard deserves another chance they will be given one, several if we feel it deems necessary. That is all, you are dismissed.”

Hermione rose from the chair with her fists clenched and her jaw set. She spun around and headed back to the door. Severus arched an eyebrow at her, surprised she had held her tongue given that the court had so much control over whom she saw. Severus pushed open the door and followed her out in the hall, he paused slightly when he saw Sarin. It had been quite a while since he had seen that look in her eye, it was one of puzzlement. Not to many things puzzled her, in this case, he was even more curious as to why it would be Potter that had her in this state.

Severus shook it off. He didn’t want to dwell on any of this, it wouldn’t help. The way the law read, if the head of a house was unwed when the law was enacted, anyone under the head of house could not be wed until the current head of house was married. Besides in their family it had always been done this way. Severus hadn’t wanted to get married, but he hadn’t thought as to whether if Sarin ever did. He watched as she followed Potter inside the court after they were called. The one thing Severus would have to do if he did decide to get married now, he would have to look for one who was Muggleborn or a percentage thereof. He was from a pureblood family and one of the ones that had a longstanding line of purebloods.


*******

Sarin stood by the door as as Severus had done, when Potter was told to sit he had refused to do so. Even gave the chair a wary glare. Sarin had seen enough convicts to know that the chair itself made one more nervous. It felt like it would hold you there at the mercy of the court. Sarin didn’t know if Potter was to brave for his own well being.

“Very well then, remain standing. We have heard from Cornelius Fudge, that you would rather have someone else choose your betrothed other than your legal guardian is this correct?”

“Yes, sir.” Harry’s voice was sure, not wavering.

Sarin noticed that Harry wasn’t like most people appearing before the court, most would be too scared or nervous before a full panel of wizarding judges.

“Care to explain why you would take your own life if your guardians chose?”

Sarin raised an eyebrow at the back of the young man, this was surprising. Potter didn’t seem to be the type that would do such a thing. Gryffindors had just as much self-preservation in them as Slytherin.

Harry didn’t stay still be the the court but took a different stance than most he started pacing looking at each wizard on the panel as he talked. “The Dursleys, my legal guardians are Muggles. Being as such, they don’t understand our world, they don’t understand our way of doing things. To them Magic does not exist, even the type of magic that Muggles normally accept.” Harry paused making sure every witch and wizard was paying attention and that he had their interests. Some who had been whispering back and forth stopped and now sat up straighter. “Magic is as foul a word to them as Mudblood is to a Muggleborn. They abhor anything and everything that is contained in that one word, including our kind. I understand that the law states that it is the right of the parent to choose for their child, but my parents are not here to choose for me. I was placed with the Dursleys for protection, from someone I need no protection of anymore. When I left for Mr. and Mrs. Weasley’s residence all ties were severed between my legal guardians, and myself they said I was on my own, that I was old enough to fend for myself. I took them at their word and therefore they have given up all rights as being my guardians.” Harry was back in the middle of the room when he stopped talking.

Whispering broke out among the panel. Harry stood calmly waiting. Sarin watched him, forget the court, it didn’t matter what they said anymore. This was no mere teenager standing in front of them. Severus told her that if Potter ever applied himself, and thought before he spoke or acted, he would be one wizard that would be hard to defeat. Sarin watched as Potter did just this.

A wizard from the rear stood and threw out the next question that seemed to be the debate among them. “Mr. Potter, are you claiming to be the head of your house?”

“How can I claim to be something that I am not. While it is true, that in the wizarding world one can quit school after OWLs are taken, and be on their own, but they would still fall under the head of the family. There is no head of family in the Potter line, I’m just the last remaining heir, and can’t be called as such until I have an heir for myself,” Harry paused and looked at Sarin then back to the court. “Or I have someone under my care that would place me in that position.”

Sarin almost wanted to laugh at some of the faces sitting on the panel, the question was to trip him up. Yet Harry had slipped out their grasp with that answer. No longer were the whisperings quiet, a dull roar started after his little speech.

“Mr. Potter, if you are not the head of your house, yet you stand and tell us the Dursleys have released you from their guardianship, then how do you propose whom chooses your betrothal when you cannot do it yourself?” The witch who asked this question had led more than a few would be victims into hanging themselves. Sarin had seen enough trials to know.

She watched as Harry turned his back on the court for a moment. His eyes were back to that vacant look he had this morning, then she saw a spark of quiet controlled mirth swell up in them; he raised his head and look at Sarin, arched an eyebrow as if to say ‘Why the hell not’.

Harry spun back around, “The professors at Hogwarts. While in school at Hogwarts, you are fed, clothed, cared for, and protected. Much like a normal head of family would do, inasmuch, just like any normal head of family, they offer guidance as well. Not only that but they teach, as it is any students ability to learn as to what is being taught, just like a student. Anyone under the head of the family must learn from them also. Who better to choose for me than my extended family at Hogwarts.”

Silence went through the panel as Harry stood before them.

“Very well, you’ve presented a very good argument young man. You’re compromise is accepted. Dismissed.”

Harry let out a breath of air and spun where he was and started walking to the door to leave. He came to the door and opened it and motioned for Sarin to go through before him. She gave him a slight nod and walked out, he had kept his choice away from the court, which is hard to do. Sarin had to admit, she was impressed.