Chapter 48: Perceptions
'So far so good,' Harry told himself, as he paused to sip his drink.
It was true; he was doing a much better job on this date than he had his last one. No disturbing cherubs flew overhead, his companion did not burst into tears, and he was not a stuttering mess at a loss for what to say; he had been certain the ease of their impromptu date after the prank in the library had simply been a fluke brought on by the hilarity of the shared experience, but this was just as enjoyable. Maybe it was just because he didn't actually have any feelings for Alfie, but this seemed no worse than when he came to Hogsmeade with any of his friends.
Admittedly, none of those trips had been dates.
Regardless of the circumstances, Harry found Alfie fine company, easy to talk to and quick to laugh. This had turned into a surprisingly fun day. He just wished they could move the conversation along. It had been nothing but talk of classes and Quidditch so far. While such matters made for easy discussion, it didn't get him any closer to learning what he needed to know.
The boy opposite stopped speaking to drink his Butterbeer, giving Harry the chance to redirect their topic of conversation. "So have your family always been in Slytherin?"
Alfie nodded. "Since Merlin was in short trousers. We had one Hufflepuff, but no one talks about her."
Harry had to smile. "Her name the worst insult in the family?"
"Oh yes," the boy agreed, his voice going nasal as he impersonated some member of his family. "You are just like Great-Aunt Imogen; we should send you to the kitchens to toil with the house-elves." He rolled his eyes as if it were something he had heard countless times in his childhood. "My mother actually followed through once. She sent me down to the kitchen dressed in a pillowcase just to make me appreciate how much better things were upstairs." He paused when Harry didn't laugh, "But you're Muggle-raised, so you wouldn't know much about house-elves."
He shook his head. "No, I've met a few. My sister thinks it's horrid how they're treated, but most I've talked to can't imagine being free."
"We did our job well," the boy said with no small amount of pride.
"Huh?"
"My family was the first to succeed in taming the house-elves. Others had tried, but their magic is quite strong. It was surprisingly easy, if family lore is to be believed. Only took some clever mind games."
Harry sat back, staring in horrified wonder. "The house-elves were free once?"
The boy laughed. "They're free now! They just don't know it. There are no spells forcing them to work; they do it because they want to just as they always did. Like in that silly Muggle tale of yours about the shoemakers. That's how it had been for a thousand years, elves popping in to do the work we couldn't. Some families were better at manipulating them into doing jobs we simply didn't want to do. My family was the best, obviously."
"Obviously," Harry echoed dully before he schooled his face into innocence to mask his true opinions. He couldn't afford to offend him, and this seemed like the sort of talk that could easily lead them into an in-depth discussion of magic, the dark sort, specifically. "So if all it took was some mind games to make the elves think they had to work for a family, why did it take so long?"
Alfie turned his face toward the ceiling, eyes all but vanishing as he squinted at some spot that wasn't there. "Early days, I suppose," he said with a shrug. "Wizards were just more eager to exert their power back then and kept using magic to do the job. Some people only think of power in terms of brute strength."
"Not you?"
"Not me," he agreed, a slow smile pulling across his mouth making him look every bit the dangerous creature Sirius insisted him to be.
"Where do you think power comes from then?"
"Perception."
"Perception?" Harry repeated, beginning to feel slightly uneasy.
"Yes, perception," he practically purred the word. "Someone is powerful because others perceive them as being powerful. The more people believe it, the more true it becomes. The more people follow him, the more powerful he appears."
This all sounded disturbingly like something Voldemort might have said. He supposed it was a common concept among purebloods. Really, what was purity of blood but a perception of being better? Both Harry's parents were magical, so by rights that made his blood pure, too, but according to everyone he was just a half-blood because his mother had not come from a long and ancient line of magic. It was rubbish, but he would not alienate his companion by saying as much. Instead, he paraphrased an old adage his Aunt Petunia often quoted, "Power is in the eye of the beholder?"
"Precisely," Alfie smiled charmingly as if he had been paid a compliment.
"Which is all well and good until someone who actually is more powerful turns up," Harry said with a smile verging on smug.
The boy shrugged. "With enough people following, it doesn't matter how powerful one single opponent is. But this has turned far too serious." He paused a moment as if searching for a new subject before reaching across the table to push the fringe from Harry's forehead. "How did you get that scar?"
"That would be another serious topic," he hedged, more concerned with the Slytherin's proximity and wondering how he had noticed the scar than with deciding exactly how much truth to infuse into the fiction he was about to spin.
"Go on."
"Someone tried to curse me," Harry began, pausing to allow Alfie's questions to dictate the direction the story would take.
He was surprised that the other boy didn't offer any sympathy or concern, didn't question what curse it had been, who had performed it or why. He simply nodded his understanding, a completely opposite reaction to Sirius offering to avenge his injuries for him.
"Is that why you're so interested in hexes and curses now?" Alfie asked.
"Kind of," Harry agreed, all the while studying the boy opposite. He had seemed pleasant on first acquaintance, but the longer they talked the more Harry was convinced that Sirius might have a point. Even if the boy opposite wasn't dangerous, he was certainly not the jovial saviour from Slughorn's party; Alfie was leaning in too much, tilting his head so his best side was lit by the fire and nodding so vigorously that the thick waves of his hair fell just right across his forehead to make someone want to push them away as he had just done to Harry's fringe. His icy blue eyes never warmed when he spoke of something he claimed to enjoy. His smile was somehow too perfect.
Perhaps it was the tone the conversation had taken, but he was beginning to distrust Alfie Quintain more than just a little, and did not want to offer up his most vital clues to getting home for fear of what the boy might do with the information. So despite having an easy opening to discuss obscure spells and mention the Split-Apart curse, Harry chose to move their discussion to something else, something that might get the other boy to open up a bit more and even the informational odds.
"Sirius came to talk to me after I asked you out."
"I can't imagine he had many polite things to say about me."
"Nothing too bad."
Alfie scoffed. "Please. I know him better than that. Did he tell you we grew up together? Of course not, why would he?" The older boy leaned even further across the table as if bringing Harry into his confidence. "We were friends once, best friends I thought. I spent more time at his house than at my own. We played together every day."
Harry frowned. That couldn't be right. Sirius cursed the boy every time he said his name. Friends don't do that.
"It's true," he insisted. "There was a time I thought we were brothers, but by the time he got to Hogwarts thing weren't the same."
"What changed?"
"He did."
"Why?"
"I suspect," he said, shifting his chair over so he could whisper to the curious Gryffindor, "that he was jealous."
Harry found it hard to believe Sirius would ever be jealous of anyone, perhaps in matters of having a pleasant and supportive family, but that was the only place where the tall, handsome boy might ever be considered lacking. He tried to keep the sceptical scowl off his face, but he must have failed because Alfie was leaning closer to whisper again. "His parents made it plain to him that I was the son they had always wanted, that they found him nothing but a disappointment. I tried to talk sense into him, but he took their lack of love out on me."
"I can see that," Harry agreed.
It made sense, but not in the way Alfie meant it. Harry knew just how much Sirius hated his family; if this boy was everything that they wanted their son to become, then Sirius would certainly have spurned him, cut him from his life as a surgeon would a malignant tumour. Was that what Alfie Quintain was: a disease killing with smooth words and good looks? Once again Harry had to admit that Sirius was right to warn him if even half of the story was true. Anyone the tyrannical Walburga Black would approve of was not someone to be trusted.
"I'm tired of talking about this," Alfie admitted in a quiet whisper.
"What would you rather talk about?"
"Actually, I'm tired of talking all together." With that he closed the miniscule space between them and pressed his lips to Harry's.
It was a shock to say the least. He had not intended to take any of their dates anywhere close to the kissing stage. Instinct had him wanting to shove the boy off and give him a hard punch to the jaw, but he managed to keep from doing anything so stupid. This boy, with his tongue teasing at his lips, had information he and Hermione needed to get home. He had to keep the ruse going. It didn't mean he had to like being kissed by another bloke, though.
Closing his eyes helped. With nothing but his sense of touch and taste telling him what was happening, he found it no different than kissing Cho. Well, no, it was rather better than when she had manoeuvred him awkwardly under the mistletoe, considerably better actually. Still he hated the idea that it was Alfie's lips and tongue he was enjoying.
'Sirius hates him,' he reminded himself.
At the thought, an image of the other boy sauntered up, confident smile on his face, shoved Alfie off and took his place at the table and on his lips. The idea that it was that smirking mouth on his spurred Harry to grasp the boy's face, raking his fingers through his hair, as he matched his every move with alacrity.
It took some time but they finally broke apart, gasping for breath and hurriedly setting their hair to right when they realised they were still at a very public table in a very crowded pub.
"You are one hell of a fast learner," Alfie grinned.
Harry flushed. "Are you still tired of talking?"
A smile pulled across his lips, which were still wet and swollen from their hard kiss. His icy eyes shone with the first real emotion Harry had seen since meeting him. "Ever so tired of it," he replied, his voice growing deeper until he sighed. "But I suspect your friends don't appreciate having to watch us."
He jerked his head to the side, telling Harry which way he ought to turn his eyes.
Blood flooded his cheeks to see the small pride of Gryffindors he called his friends and family clustered around a table across the pub. There were so many students crushed between them that he was hoping they had not managed to witness everything that had just happened between the pair, but seeing a red-faced Sirius being restrained in a headlock, he knew at least one of them had seen. He dropped his head onto the table with a hard 'thud'.
"Next time we'll go somewhere more private," Alfie decided and patted him on the back.
"Next time?" Harry asked, his voice lost against the table.
He was sure his date hadn't heard his words, but without warning he felt lips brushing his ear. "Do you honestly think I'd let you slip away after a kiss like that?"
Somehow the feeling of the boy's lips and tongue on his ear made him flush deeper than their kiss, and Harry had to fight to keep from turning his face to claim the mouth that was so skilfully teasing his earlobe. Oh, Sirius was right. Alfie Quintain was dangerous.