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Harry hid behind the corner of Number 6 and watched as Dudley and his gang went pounding by. He felt as though someone had filled his veins with lightning; he knew he was safe, but he wanted to run and run and run.

A small noise came from behind him, and Harry leaped and spun around, coming down with his heart pounding crazily. He was always doing that, no matter how much he tried to be normal. He didn’t react to anything normally, and jumped when people coughed or laughed or rustled papers or touched him.

The touching was the worst.

Harry swallowed loudly when he saw the bird sitting behind him on the pavement. It was an owl—he thought it was an owl. He could have been wrong. Dudley and Aunt Petunia were always saying he was wrong, and Uncle Vernon would just laugh if he tried to say something about being right.

The owl hooted and moved towards him. Something was attached to its leg. Harry flickered his eyes between the thing and the owl, wondering if it was injured and had come to him for help. If it had, it was probably just another thing that he would mess up.

But the owl kept moving towards him, and then halted decisively in front of him and stuck out its leg. Harry blinked. This time, he was able to see that the thing attached to the owl looked like…a folded piece of paper? Attached with twine, or something like that? Maybe the owl had flown through a garbage bin or something.

Keeping a careful eye on the owl, Harry removed the paper. The owl shook itself when he took it off, but it didn’t leave. It flew up to the top of the fence around Number 6 and settled on top of it, as if to wait.

Harry glanced cautiously at the piece of paper in his hand. It wasn’t crumpled, the way he’d assumed it would be if it was rubbish. Instead, it had a thick seal on it, and writing that drew his attention, because it was his name.

Mr. H. Potter

The Pavement

Behind the Hedge

Number 6 Privet Drive

Surrey

Harry’s breath caught in a whistling gasp. He stared up at the owl, who shifted back and forth and peered down at him in what looked like irritation. Keeping a careful ear out for Dudley’s gang, Harry slowly opened the letter.

He peered at it, and read it, and reread it, feeling a floating sensation of disbelief in him. It was an invitation to—Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry? And some kind of supply list? Harry shook his head.

It might make some freakish things he had done, like ending up on the roof of their school, make more sense, and at least he understood what “await your owl” meant. The owls were evidently like carrier pigeons that Harry had read about in a book once.

But he didn’t know who would invite him. He wasn’t someone who was posh or had money, like the Dursleys did, to go to a fancy school. Harry thought the only reason the Dursleys were paying to send him to Stonewall was that it would probably look abnormal if they didn’t.

“Sorry,” Harry whispered, trying to hand the letter back to the owl. “I can’t afford this.”

“There’s the freak!”

Harry immediately whipped around and began to run again, crumpling up the letter and stuffing it into the pocket of Dudley’s oversized trousers. He heard the owl screech angrily behind him as the fence made a bouncing noise, and he supposed some of Dudley’s gang must have slammed into it. He hoped they didn’t hurt the owl.

In the running and the cowering against a wall and wishing he was invisible that eventually made Dudley and his gang run right past him, Harry forgot all about the letter. He remembered it when he was lying in his cupboard that night nursing bruises and an aching, empty stomach, but he only shook his head.

Magic was real. But money was realer, and he couldn’t afford to go.

*

“Get OUT!”

Harry winced as he stood in front of the bacon, carefully trying to make sure that it didn’t burn. He had never heard Aunt Petunia sound like that before. Uncle Vernon was usually the one who did the yelling in the family.

He glanced over his shoulder, but of course, he couldn’t see anything from inside the kitchen, and Uncle Vernon was there to glare menacingly at him. Harry bowed his head and tried to tell himself that it was probably only Mrs. Number 7 come to nag Aunt Petunia about Harry’s clothes again, and how it was a disgrace to the neighborhood for a boy to run around like that.

“I will not, Tuney. Let me see Harry.”

The voice was one Harry didn’t know, a clear, ringing voice, definitely not Mrs. Number 7. Harry kept his attention on the bacon, but it was really difficult.

And someone asking after him? Harry couldn’t imagine who that could be. But he kept cooking until the point when someone came into the doorway of the kitchen behind him and gasped, making Harry spin around.

There was a pretty woman standing there. Harry noticed two things about her right away. One was that she had long, pretty red hair. The other was that she wore some kind of odd dress that seemed to flow about her and fall to the ground, bright green, with lots of buttons. It wasn’t like any dress Harry had seen before.

Then the woman whispered, “Harry?” and made Harry look into her face, and he realized something else. She had bright green eyes, the same as the ones he saw on the rare times he got to look into a mirror.

He stared at her. This had to be a relative of some kind, maybe an aunt or a cousin or something? But why had Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon never mentioned her?

“Get out!” Uncle Vernon yelled now, standing up, but not as loudly as Aunt Petunia had yelled. Maybe she was related to Aunt Petunia, then, Harry thought. “We don’t want your kind here!”

The woman didn’t even act like she’d heard Vernon, which was pretty impressive. She whispered, “Harry? I’m—I’m Lily Potter.” She swallowed. “Your mum.”

Harry stared at her. The letter was one thing, magic might be real, but this? “My parents are dead,” he said, eyes darting back and forth between her and Uncle Vernon.

The pretty woman looked like she might cry. “No,” she whispered. “I’m sorry, I didn’t know they would tell you that, they were supposed to explain—” She swallowed. “I’m Lily Potter, your mum. Your father, James? He’s alive, too. And your brother, Felix.” She looked sideways at Uncle Vernon as if she wanted to make him disappear. “You’re magical, Harry. A wizard, like your father and brother. I’m a witch. I didn’t… they said they would tell…” Her voice trailed off.

Something turned over, cold, deep in Harry’s stomach. He had a mum and dad, and a brother, but he was here.

It was just the way Aunt Petunia was always saying. Even his own family didn’t want him.

“Why would we tell him?” Aunt Petunia snapped, pushing past the pretty woman into the kitchen. “We thought he might be normal, and you just dumped him on the doorstep with a note that you couldn’t keep him. We thought you were dead. Or couldn’t keep him because he was normal.” She flicked Harry a glance that made him flinch. He hated that, he thought he should be used to it by now, but it always happened. “So, yes, we told him you were dead.”

Lily was weeping silently. Harry thought she would probably be one of those people who were pretty when they cried. Harry never was.

“Harry,” Lily whispered. “Please. I’ve come to take you away from here. We thought you would respond to the owl, but—”

“What owl?”

Aunt Petunia’s voice was sharp and suspicious, and Harry flinched again. Lily ignored her. She gave Harry a trembling smile and held out a hand. “Would you like to come with me, Harry? You’ll live with us from now on. I promise. Your father is waiting to meet you, and your brother Felix—he’s your twin. He’s so excited at the thought of having a brother. Please?”

A twin brother. I don’t know what that’s like.

But Harry was sure of one thing, at least. Lily talked nicer than Aunt Petunia. And maybe she would just cry and be upset instead of yell and swing frying pans at her head. Harry knew which one he preferred.

He stepped away from the stove and put his hand in hers.

*

Lily stared at her older son, feeling sick. He hadn’t raised his eyes to hers once since they left Privet Drive, and he had only answered with nods or shakes of his head, or other silent gestures like clutching her hand.

She had thought—

She had told Petunia in the letter to tell Harry about magic! To tell him where he came from! And she’d thought Petunia would do it. Lily knew Petunia had always resented Lily having magic and leaving her behind. Harry would be a little piece of magic in Petunia’s everyday life. Lily had thought it was the best return she could make, even though that wasn’t the actual or main reason she had left Harry with her sister.

Lily closed her eyes and drew Harry close to her. He was trembling, she realized. Inside the huge, ratty old clothes that were obviously the only ones he had, and he had been standing in front of the stove and cooking bacon as if he was a house-elf—

Lily shivered. Albus had talked about how a Muggle-raised twin to the Boy-Who-Lived could bring their worlds closer together, by being able and willing to talk about his positive experiences among Muggles. That obviously was not going to happen.

But somehow, it would have to. Preventing another war was a larger goal than any single life.

Her stomach still churning with sickness, Lily Apparated home with her son.

*

“Harry!”

There was a hand moving towards him. Harry pulled away from Lily, even though he was still dizzy from the disappearing they’d done, and whirled around so that he was in a corner of the big room they were suddenly in and away from the hand and his—

His mother.

“Harry?” The voice sounded a little like his own, but it was hurt, bewildered, small.

Harry blinked and looked up. Another boy who looked like he was his age, but was taller than Harry, stood there, staring at him. His hair had a redder tinge, Harry thought. And he didn’t wear glasses, and his eyes were a bright hazel.

But otherwise, they looked a lot alike.

“Why are you wearing those clothes?” the other boy asked slowly. He glanced back and forth between Lily and Harry. “I thought you’d be wearing—clothes with the name of some musicians on them. Or a film.” He pronounced the word proudly, like someone who was speaking a language he didn’t hear often. He looked again at Harry, then turned to Lily and asked in a loud whisper, “Are you sure you got the right one, Mum?”

Harry flinched again. Lily’s eyes closed, and she exhaled slowly. Then she said, “Yes, Felix, this is your brother, Harry. I’m afraid that your aunt and uncle weren’t—kind to him.”

“Oh. Oh.” Felix leaned forwards, his smile strained and anxious, and disappearing altogether as Harry stared at him. “I’m sorry,” he whispered. “My friend, Neville, has a great-uncle who isn’t kind to him, either. He tried to throw Neville out the window and drown him to get his accidental magic to appear.”

Harry shuddered. At least Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia had never done that.

And that made him feel a little braver. He half-smiled at Felix and said, “They never did anything like that. Just made me do a lot of chores and. And they yelled at me and my cousin chased me a lot.”

“But you know that all Muggles aren’t like that, right, Harry?” Lily asked, sounding as anxious as Felix had a minute ago. “That there are plenty of people who are just nice and normal and not terrible?”

Harry hid his flinch, thinking of the neighbors who had sneered at him and the teachers who never believed him if he did well in school or said that Dudley had done something, not him, and Dudley and the other kids who had chased Harry with him.

But he could already see, looking into Lily’s eyes, that she was like one of the nicer teachers in primary. She didn’t want to hear that Harry had never met a good person except in the books he sometimes read. She wanted to believe that—Muggles?—were good people mostly, and the Dursleys were the exception.

So Harry just gave her a shy smile and shook his head and said, “I know there are plenty of people who are nice. What’s a Muggle?”

“Someone who’s non-magical.” Lily’s voice was a little brisker, and she smiled at him, although her eyes lingered on his clothes. Harry tugged on his sleeves self-consciously. He could see that Felix was wearing the non-dress dress like Lily was, too. “Well, that’s good that you know that, that you can’t judge all people by a few who are terrible. Come on, your father’s waiting to meet you.” She gripped Harry’s shoulder and steered him through the enormous, bright room, which seemed to have books all over the walls, towards a set of stairs.

“I’m glad not all the Muggles were mean to you,” Felix whispered, trotting beside Harry. “I’ve never met one, but some wizards are good, and some are polite, and some are rude, and some are funny but you wouldn’t want to spend all your time around them. Mum and Dad always told me that wizards and witches are just like Muggles that way.” He beamed at Harry. “I’m glad you don’t judge people just by a few. That’s wrong.”

I’m glad you don’t judge people just by a few. Harry carefully memorized that. It was obviously going to be one of the laws of his new life.

*

Lily was like one of the nicer teachers in primary, and Felix was like a mixture of her and Harry, but James, his father, was like a kid who’d never grown up. Maybe someone nicer than most of Dudley’s friends, but still.

“Hi, Harry!”

James had his arms held out. Harry steeled himself and went closer. James hugged him and patted him hard on the shoulder, and then a loud noise sounded in Harry’s ear and he promptly leaped backwards, out of James’s grasp, and came down in a position where he could defend himself.

“Harry, look! Look! It’s just a prank!” James was laughing and holding a long stick of wood, waving it back and forth. “I cast a charm that made a loud noise when you weren’t looking, that’s all!”

Harry managed a smile and a nod, but his heart was pounding wildly, and he didn’t like the way that he’d jumped, or the way that Felix stared at him, or the way that Lily strode over and whispered something to James. The words were sharp and hissing, and a second later, James’s face changed color.

“Oh,” he said, looking guiltily back and forth between Harry and Lily. “The Muggles weren’t—nice to you?”

“Just some of them, like the Dursleys,” Harry said, smiling the way he knew he should. James might be annoying, but these people were loads better than the Dursleys. Even if they had left him with the Dursleys for ten years. Well, James and Lily. Harry couldn’t really blame Felix for that. “I don’t like loud noises right close to me.”

“Right.” James nodded. “That kind of prank is out, then.”

But not others. Harry picked up on that, and his hands balled into fists under his long sleeves, where no one would notice them.

“But come on, we’ve got to show you your room!” James stepped back and waved his hand around the large room they were standing in, which Harry hadn’t even focused on because he’d been paying so much attention to the man with glasses and messy dark hair and even a face like his. “What do you think of the house so far?”

Harry thought it was huge, mostly. The entryway that they’d gone through downstairs with the books would have swallowed the Dursleys’ kitchen, and this was an even bigger room, floored and walled in bright, sparkling stone of creams and golds and pale browns, with huge windows that the sunlight came through. Harry looked around and decided that it must be a dining room, or maybe a combination dining room and drawing room, given the way that the huge table of dark wood with old-looking chairs around it stood right next to a fireplace with softer chairs and stools drawn up in front of it.

“I like it,” he said. “It looks brilliant.”

James’s smile widened. “Well, then, Flea, why don’t you show Harry to his room?”

“Don’t call me that, Dad, Merlin,” Felix said, but in the tone of someone who’d heard it so many times it didn’t really bother him anymore. “Come on, Harry, let’s go!” He ran towards a doorway off to the side of the room, next to a window so bright that Harry hadn’t even noticed the corridor.

Harry followed his brother, ignoring the way that he could hear James and Lily whispering behind him. Adults always whispered about him. At least right now, it probably wasn’t about how he was a freak or a thief.

“Why does he call you Flea?” Harry should probably call James Dad, but he wasn’t sure he could yet.

Felix’s cheeks turned bright red. “His dad—our granddad—was called Fleamont. And he decided a while ago that my name is enough like his, because they both start with F, to call me that.”

Harry supposed he should say something about that, but he was stuck on—“Fleamont? Why?”

“His mum’s family name, they didn’t want it to die out,” Felix said, and then flung open a door that could have been the second or third one in the corridor; Harry was so dazzled by the light in the huge room that he couldn’t have said for sure. “It’s awful, but if you show Dad that it bothers you, he just keeps doing it. Here’s your room!”

Harry decided to remember that about James, and then he stared around the room and his jaw just about fell off his face.

It was like a smaller version of the big room where James had pranked him, or at least it sort of looked like that. There was a small fireplace, and the floor and walls glowed with the same kind of stone. But there was a huge cupboard filled with the same kind of dress-like clothes that Lily and James and Felix were all wearing (robes?), and a cupboard that had a bunch of what looked like slowly moving toys on top of it, and a whole shelf of books, and—

A bed. A bed of his very own.

It was huge, and round, and had a canopy hovering over it that didn’t have any support that Harry could see. It was covered with small round golden pillows and a red blanket that looked like it was as heavy and warm as fire. Harry couldn’t care less about the colors. He hurled himself at it, and bounced on it, and laughed aloud as he rolled on his back, waving his feet in the air.

Felix was grinning at him when Harry looked his direction again. “Like it?”

“God, yes. It’s great.” Harry flipped himself over so that his feet were up near the pillows and his head and arms were dangling off the end.

“God? Oh, like Merlin?”

“You swear by Merlin?”

“Well, yeah. Merlin was the greatest wizard!” Felix leaned a little nearer and said in a loud whisper, “And Mum doesn’t like me to swear by him, which is even better.”

Harry nodded. He could remember that. All of it. He rolled over on his back and stretched his arms out so that his hands brushed the pillows, arching his spine. It felt like the bed was so soft that he would probably never get a backache from sleeping on it the way he did on the cot in cupboard.

“Harry?”

Harry sat up and blinked. That didn’t sound like Felix. And it wasn’t, although Harry hadn’t noticed before how much James’s voice sounded like Felix’s. And maybe like his, although Harry didn’t make a habit of listening to his own voice, really.

“Enjoying your new bedroom?” James’s grin was blinding, and pretty brilliant when he wasn’t smiling at Harry jumping like a rabbit.

“Yeah. Thank you!” Harry smiled, and did his best to keep the smile from slipping off his face, because something about the way James was standing in the door told him that things were going to change in a way he probably wasn’t going to like. “Is everything okay?”

“Well, actually…” James rubbed the back of his neck. “Albus Dumbledore is here, and he’d like to speak to you.”

“Who?”

“Family friend!” Felix said at once, bouncing around in front of Harry as if someone had attached kangaroo legs to him. “And the Headmaster of Hogwarts, where we’re going in a month! Come on!” He waved his hand at Harry and ran out of the room.

Harry met James’s eyes steadily, because it seemed odd that a Headmaster would come to speak to one student. Well, maybe not Felix, if he was a family friend, but it wasn’t like he knew Harry.

“Lily said the Muggles told you nothing.” James sighed. “Please come, Harry. He’ll explain to you some things you should know about our family, and…and why he thought it was a good idea to have you stay in the Muggle world.”

This, Harry definitely wanted to hear. He slid off the bed and followed James.

*

Dumbledore impressed Harry as a tall man, with a huge white beard, and a kind expression on his face. But as he began explaining—seated across from Harry and Felix on a squashy blue chair in front of the fireplace—Harry realized that the kindest person he’d ever met was also probably the most ruthless.

“Eleven years ago, Harry, our world was in the middle of a war. And although I don’t know how much Muggle history you may have studied, you can probably imagine how much worse wars can be with magic.”

Harry imagined something like people lighting each other on fire with magic, shuddered, and nodded.

“The leader of the Darker wizards was a man who called himself Lord Voldemort, and he was magically powerful enough to attract many followers.” Dumbledore peered at Harry over his glasses. “I don’t know if you’ve felt someone else’s magic radiate around them?”

“No, sir. I didn’t meet any other witches or wizards that I knew of until today.”

“All right, Harry. Let me concentrate a moment, and I’ll give you a demonstration.”

Dumbledore closed his eyes, his brow furrowed, and then the air in the room shifted. Harry gasped. It felt as if a heavy, warm snowfall was pressing down on him, and it was both constraining and welcoming. It seemed to whisper to him, the way Harry had sometimes heard the telly when just Aunt Petunia was watching, and tell him it would take care of everything, he could just stop thinking and give in…

Harry shook his head a little, and the sensation vanished. Dumbledore leaned back in his chair.

“Our culture as a whole has prized magical power over many, better qualities, including kindness, logic, intelligence, and justice.” Dumbledore shook his head wearily. “That means that many of our political structures, even though they seem different now, were founded on the idea that one wizard or witch who was magically powerful supposedly deserved to lead, and to receive all the benefits that came from that. We have a Minister for Magic now, but many people still defer to them the way they would to a Lord or Lady if they found one.”

“Sorry, sir? A Lord or Lady? Is that like the House of Lords?” Harry could only remember vague references to that right now, but he was sure that he’d heard of it.

“In a way, in a way!” Dumbledore chuckled, and his eyes twinkled. “But no, in practice there isn’t a magical aristocracy in the way that Muggles mean it. The title Lord or Lady is granted to those powerful wizards and witches I’m talking about. Unfortunately, we haven’t got rid of the idea that power means following someone else and not having to think. There are huge problems with corruption in the Ministry of Magic, and many departments where the members follow the Department Head without much thought of the consequences, political power substituting for magical power.” He clasped is hands in front of him. “I have had pressure put on me to declare myself a Light Lord, but I have resisted.”

Harry nodded slowly. “Because it would be a bad idea?”

“Exactly. Both for me, and for the people who would follow me.” Dumbledore leaned forwards intently. “Voldemort did not resist the temptation, and became a Dark Lord. He gathered so many people to him and kept so many others from fighting him out of fear that it seemed he would win the war.

“But then he attacked your family, Harry. He carefully chose a time when one of your parents’ closest friends, who turned out to be a traitor to our cause, was watching you and your brother, and would step aside to let him strike at you unimpeded.

“But then, the kind of tremendous magic that no one person can hope to understand washed through the room. When it faded, it had destroyed Voldemort’s body and left both you and your brother alive. Unmarked. Or almost unmarked.”

Dumbledore gestured at Harry’s forehead. Harry’s hand flew up and clasped the lightning bolt scar. He had wondered a bit about where that came from, but honestly, he had assumed it was from the car crash that the Dursleys claimed had killed his parents.

Who were sitting alive behind him. And had sent him to the Dursleys anyway. Harry breathed through that and listened to Dumbledore.

“From a reconstruction of what happened, I learned that Voldemort had unleashed the Darkest of magics against you and your brother, Harry. The Killing Curse.” Dumbledore’s expression was so serious that Harry shivered. “A spell which, while it does not kill as violently as some others, is considered Unforgivable because there is no counter to it, no shield that can stop it. But somehow, the two of you did.”

“The two of us?” Harry asked quietly, and glanced at Felix. His brother had a lightning bolt scar, too, he saw now, maybe not identical to his, poking out from beneath his dark red fringe.

“Yes. I don’t think it could be anything else, when both of you bear the scars.” Dumbledore smiled at him. “And that is the reason why Felix is known as the Boy-Who-Lived. While of course no one understood exactly what happened, of course they did notice that Voldemort was gone, and one of the two boys who did it was hailed as the one responsible for it.”

“One of the two,” Harry said flatly.

Dumbledore’s smile faded a little. “Yes. I—unfortunately, Harry, I must tell you that you became a casualty of politics, and I cannot emphasize enough how sorry I am.”

I’m sorrier, Harry thought savagely, and waited for the explanation.

“Lord Voldemort found a cause, and followers in the first place, because of the division between the magical and Muggle worlds.” Dumbledore spoke softly, his eyes fastened on Harry’s. It was probably the first time that an adult had ever spoken to Harry like an adult, but he was still angry. “We have a law, the Statute of Secrecy, that punishes people who perform magic in front of Muggles unless they are one of the very few permitted to know that magic exists. Some politicians do, for example, and the relatives of people like your mother, called Muggleborns, who come from non-magical families. But precisely because of that separation between our worlds, wizards and witches who call themselves purebloods—supposedly because they have no Muggle blood—hate and fear Muggles, whom they do not understand. Voldemort indicated that he would allow them to kill Muggles and Muggleborns without restraint, and practice magic in whatever form they liked, whenever and wherever they liked.

“Lord Voldemort fell, but that division only festered, especially as many of his followers pretended simply to have been coerced against their wills by his tremendous magic. I am afraid of what will happen if it continues.

“So I sent you to the Muggle world because I saw an opportunity to soften that division and bring our worlds closer together. A magically-powerful twin, one of the two who doomed Voldemort, growing up in the wizarding world, and one growing up with Muggles, would prove that we are not so different from each other after all, that we are all human. You two could speak from two different backgrounds, but still both building on the values of justice and compassion.

“I seek, too, to rid our world of Lords and Ladies, to rid it of constant, passive, helpless dependence on the magically-powerful to lead. As I mentioned, the powerful are not always intelligent or kind—in recent history, rather the opposite. If we could have two Lords who would, between them, work to dismantle the basis of the Lordship system and lead us towards a bright new day where we will need them no longer, I could not give up the chance.”

Harry lowered his head. He thought he was doing pretty well downplaying his emotions, but then the fire in the fireplace roared up the chimney and burning embers leaped out onto the carpet.

“Harry!” Lily kneeled in front of him, reaching out as if to place a hand on his arm, and then pulling it back. “Baby, are you okay?”

No one had ever called Harry a pet name like that, and he blinked and felt his anger slip away. “Yes,” he whispered. “I just—” He glanced up and made himself turn to look at Dumbledore. “They abused me.”

It wasn’t a sentence he had ever said aloud before. He had already known it himself, and what good would saying it to Muggles have done? The Dursleys knew and reveled in it. His primary school teachers and other kids would have probably thought he was lying.

Dumbledore sighed, a long sound that seemed like it was on the verge of tears. “I know, my dear boy, and for that, I owe you a debt I can never repay.”

But, Harry thought. There’s a but coming.

“But in the long struggle between our worlds, well—I hate to say it this way, but preventing the war is more important than any of our individual lives. Or our comfort levels.” Dumbledore gave Felix a somber look. “There have been people, mostly Voldemort’s former followers, seeking to kill your brother since the night Voldemort fell.”

Harry turned to stare at Felix. His brother nodded to him, eyes quiet and dark. “It’s mental, Harry. People follow me when I go out in public. People have cursed me and put me in St. Mungo’s—that’s magical hospital—five times. I basically can’t accept any post from anyone I don’t already know without casting detection charms on it. I get marriage proposals and death threats and everything in between on a daily basis. They write newspaper articles about me.” He shuddered. “I have to go to Ministry parties and smile at everyone, and I know some of them are the people writing those articles or sending those proposals or trying to kill me. It’s mental,” he repeated.

“I fought a Dark Lord several decades before the war with Voldemort,” Dumbledore said quietly. “At one point, I loved him and considered him closer than family. I had let him go out of sentiment. I know now that that was the wrong thing to do. The blood of the people he killed, the war he led, is on my hands. It is imperative that we end the mindless following of Lords and Ladies before we do anything else, Harry. If we have to sacrifice our own well-being, that’s what we’ll do.”

But you didn’t ask me or Felix if we wanted to sacrifice ours, Harry thought, feeling his mouth take on a hard twist.

As if answering his thoughts, Dumbledore nodded. “I appreciate that you were too young to be consulted,” he murmured. “But this—I would never have placed you in the home of Muggles I thought would abuse you, Harry. I wish you had had the safe and carefree childhood I thought I was acquiring for you, at the expense of your brother’s.”

Harry lowered his head and sat there again. He wondered if he would rather have had Felix’s childhood than his. At least he wasn’t in danger of his life from anyone other than Dudley or Uncle Vernon.

But then he thought about how he hadn’t known magic was real, and thought his parents were dead. He thought of the cupboard, and the frying pan, and the starvation, and the chores, and the way that he flinched whenever someone moved too loudly or too close to him. And he thought that, yes, actually, he would rather have grown up like Felix did.

“Now, however, that the past has occurred and cannot be changed,” Dumbledor said, sounding kind but ruthless again, “I must ask that you keep what happened with the Muggles as quiet as possible, Harry. There are people, again mostly former followers of Voldemort, who would seize on it if they knew of it and use it as propaganda, further excuses for why Muggles are beasts or worthless and our worlds must be separated.”

Harry shivered. Then he said, “So one way I’d be used to cause bad things, and the other way I’d be used to cause good ones?”

He saw Dumbledore flinch. But then he whispered, “Yes, Harry. That is the size of it. I’m sorry to ask it of you.”

But you’re asking it.

They sat there in silence for a moment. And Harry thought about it. He supposed in one way, it wasn’t such a big ask. Revealing that he’d been abused would probably make a lot of people laugh at him and think he was weak, anyway, the way kids at school laughed when Dudley and his gang beat Harry up.

But there was a much bigger consideration that made Harry nod and agree.

I have to do this or my parents won’t like me.

*

Harry lay in bed that night, the big, soft bed that he’d never thought he would have in his life, and squeezed his eyes shut to keep the tears from falling.

His parents had smiled and hugged him after he’d agreed that he wouldn’t tell anyone the truth about living at the Dursleys. Felix had smiled, too, and clapped him on the shoulder. Dumbledore had smiled and said that Harry was very mature for his age, and that he would arrange the right situation to introduce Harry to the public the next day, when they’d go to Diagon Alley for their wands and school supplies.

At least there wasn’t going to be a big public birthday party for them. Felix had said that James and Lily had always insisted on having a private day to celebrate with Felix and to supposedly mourn Harry, who’d been presented to the wizarding world as dead.

Harry had a lot. He had magic. He had the knowledge that there was a whole world of people out there like himself. He had a brother, and parents.

He even agreed with Dumbledore that it was stupid for people to just mindlessly follow along with Lords and Ladies because of their powerful magic and do whatever they were told. It would be a good thing if he could be part of ending that. Dumbledore thought he would be both powerful enough and good enough as a person to overcome his past and be a good leader, which was a compliment no adult had ever paid Harry before.

Harry had a lot.

And if all it meant was keeping a secret he probably would have wanted to keep anyway, what did that matter?

Why was he struggling not to cry? He didn’t even understand himself, and he lay there and breathed and forced the tears away and told himself it was stupid over and over and over and over again until he went to sleep.

Chapter Text

“Well, yes, unusual, very unusual, I don’t think I’ve seen one like this case before…”

Harry sat staring at his fists, which were clenched in his lap. That the lap was covered with a proper robe—the real name of those non-dress dresses—didn’t matter. He heard everything the wandmaker, apparently named Garrick Ollivander according to James and Lily, wasn’t saying.

Even in the magical world, Harry was still a freak.

Lily knelt in front of him, her eyes bright and desperately sad in the light of a Lumos Charm on her wand. “Harry, sweetheart, it’s all right,” she whispered, stroking his right arm. “I promise. We’ll find you a wand that works for you.”

Harry managed a small smile, but no more than that. His family had told him that morning about the distinction between wand magic and accidental magic. The things Harry had done like shrinking Dudley’s jumper or turning a teacher’s hair blue—or making the fire flare up last night—were all accidental magic. He hadn’t specifically wanted that result, and he couldn’t channel the power that did it with any sense of control or direction. It was all emotion-based and immature, something to be got past.

Real magic was performed with a wand, which Lily and James and Dumbledore all had, and which he and Felix had gone out that morning to get.

Except that none of the wands in Ollivander’s shop—not even the holly-and-phoenix-feather one that had chosen Felix right away—responded to Harry at all.

Harry had picked them up and waved them, and then tried with Lily’s and James’s wands. Nothing. The wood sat like, well, wood in his hand, and there was no sense of connection with the cores, no sensation of warmth shooting up his arm like Felix had described, no sparks the way James and Lily had both said they’d had when their wands chose them.

Ollivander had looked delighted, and said that the only thing for it was to craft a custom wand for Harry. He’d brought out blocks of wood, then boxes of phoenix feathers and unicorn tail hairs and dragon heartstrings, arranged them on the counter in front of Harry, and told him to indicate when he had a warmth or other response.

Nothing.

Ollivander cleared his throat now. “I can only surmise that Mr. Potter may have a rare disease I’ve seen once or twice, and that my grandfather saw more than I did, because children get their wands younger now than they did in his day,” he murmured. “The child’s magic gets so used to running in channels formed of will and emotion alone that it’s extremely difficult for it to adapt to a physical, external channel like a wand. The condition is curable,” he added, probably because Lily was looking alarmed. Harry just felt a deep, cold sickness in the middle of his stomach. He hadn’t even done magic all that much… “But it takes practice, yes, lots of practice with the wand.”

“You mean—like Remedial Charms at school?” James asked. He was standing behind Harry with a hand on his shoulder, and had been for nearly half an hour while Harry tried the woods and cores. Harry supposed he would have appreciated it if he could feel more than his own throbbing nausea.

“Yes, that will help,” Ollivander said. Harry had the feeling that he was trying to be kind as he stared at Harry, but also that he didn’t have a lot of practice. “Also Remedial Transfiguration and Defense. I’m sorry, but it will be basically every class that involves a wand.”

Harry took a deep breath. That left four classes that didn’t: Potions, History of Magic, Astronomy, and Herbology. Well, Felix had told him that Potions and Herbology sometimes had magic involved in them, but it was the kind that no one would get to practice until at least third or fourth year.

He could do this. He wasn’t as powerful as everyone had thought he was. He wouldn’t be able to be the kind of leader that he’d thought he would have to be to maintain his parents’ approval. He wouldn’t make friends because people would pity him.

But—

He could survive this. It was still better than the Dursleys’, and would be unless he ended up in a cupboard again.

“It’s all right, Harry,” Felix offered, hovering anxiously next to his chair. “Mr. Ollivander, I know you said that you didn’t see a reaction, but I was watching pretty closely. Harry had a slight tug of warmth towards the ebony block on the end of the third row from the top in that box, and that phoenix feather that’s in the second row from the top.” He pointed.

Harry blinked at him. “How did you remember that?”

Felix coughed, his cheeks turning pink. “Sorry, it’s something that I forgot you wouldn’t know…I have an eidetic memory. Not for everything,” he added hastily. “But for patterns and words. I couldn’t tell you everything about the clothes that people wore past us in the street today, but I can remember what order people touched objects in, and I have books memorized after reading them once.”

Harry just nodded. He supposed he could feel a sort of weak, spluttering jealousy. He was less powerful than Felix, and Felix had a special gift.

Technically Harry did, too. But Lily and James had told him more about Voldemort that morning, and one of the things they’d mentioned was that Voldemort was a Parselmouth, able to speak to snakes, and that was one of the things that both proved he came from Slytherin’s bloodline and that he was a Dark wizard.

Harry had promptly and carefully buried his idea that he could tell his parents about speaking to the snake at the zoo on Dudley’s birthday in the back of his head. It was something he couldn’t tell them.

And it wasn’t much use, anyway, was it? How often was there actually a snake around? And what would you do if there was? Just use it to impress people, the way it sounded like Voldemort had used it?

Harry shook his head and paid attention to Felix as Ollivander set about crafting the ebony wand. “You really saw my hand sort of steer towards them?”

“Yes.” Felix stood taller and gave Harry a smile. “I promise, you’ll eventually be able to get past this and use your wand.”

“That’s right,” James added, sounding more relaxed. “I remember a girl in our year who had trouble using her wand. Remember her, Lily? Lacey Macdougal. But after a year and a half of practice or so, she got it, and she was able to use her wand for everything that mattered.”

A year and a half.

Harry told himself that a year and a half didn’t matter, not really, when he had lived ten years with the Dursleys. He had to be careful, so careful, not to annoy anyone, but a disease wasn’t really his fault. His parents and Felix didn’t sound like they blamed him.

Felix seemed to see that he was still upset, because he grinned at Harry. “Don’t worry. We’ll go get owls next. There’s bound to be one there that likes you.”

*

The minute Harry stepped through the doors of the pet shop they’d chosen, an owl flew at his face.

Harry ducked frantically, feeling the talons scrape through his hair. At the same time, the dodge brought him near a cage with a small brown owl in it, and the bird screamed and attacked the bars like a mad thing, stabbing its feet and beak frantically towards Harry.

Harry stepped away from that, and got stabbed in the back by an owl sitting on a perch. He was going to run out the door, but Lily grabbed him and curved an arm around his shoulders, swishing her wand over his head. Harry sighed as he felt the small wounds he’d sustained heal at once.

He looked around the shop. They had animals other than owls, but all of them were reacting negatively to him. The toads huddled down in their tanks. The cats were pressed against the backs of their cages, hissing at him. Even the puppies with forked tails that he had learned were called Crups barked frantically, some of them lunging forwards against the front of the cages.

“Mrs. Potter, Mr. Potter, I must insist the boy leave at once if he’s causing this level of chaos!” bellowed a man who looked like he was the owner of the shop, waving his hands.

“I’m sure someone cast a charm on him to make the animals react that way,” Lily said in an unsteady voice, and passed her wand over Harry’s head again. “Finite Incantatem!”

Nothing happened. The owls and toads and cats and dogs still made frantic noises, and the owner pointed towards the door. Harry went out with his head hanging, trying not to show it. Lily accompanied him, while James and Felix stayed in the shop to buy Felix an owl. Harry was sure they would have no trouble finding one.

“I’m sorry, baby,” Lily murmured, touching Harry’s hair again. “Someone must have cursed you and we never noticed. We’ll take you to the Dark Arts experts at St. Mungo’s.”

Harry nodded and tried to look grateful, but he had a private theory. The animals had reacted to him the way a lot of them probably would have reacted to a snake. Birds and toads were prey. Cats might hunt them, for all Harry knew, but all those cats were kittens and small enough to be prey, too. The Crups had acted as if they wanted to fight him. Maybe non-magical dogs didn’t react that way to snakes, but they sure did.

If he was right, that meant there was nothing the Dark Arts experts could do. Harry didn’t have a real wand, and he couldn’t have a pet.

It is better than the Dursleys. It just might not be always that way.

*

“And we have a special announcement for you on the day of the Boy-Who-Lived’s birthday. His twin brother, Harry, survived that night as well, and was reared by Muggles!”

The people staring at him and Felix as they stood in the front of Flourish and Blotts made Harry uncomfortable. But he did his best to hide that as he waved at them. There were lots of little kids, and their parents, and some people with arms full of what looked like textbooks who were probably Hogwarts students, and a man in a pinstriped suit who Harry had learned was the Minister for Magic, Cornelius Fudge.

Fudge was the one who bustled to the front of the line now, eyes wide. He winked at Dumbledore in what was such a tell that Harry thought he only got away with it because his back was to the crowd. “But why did you tell us that Harry Potter died if he lived, Albus?” he asked, with slow and exaggerated caution. “That seems rather unfair of you!”

Dumbledore smiled back at the Minister. Harry wanted to turn his head and check if he was right that Dumbledore’s face showed that he didn’t like the Minister much even though he was smiling at him, but he had to stand there and smile at them all, or at least give the half-smile that was as much as he could feel right now. Felix was waving madly next to him, grinning, which he had told Harry was his “public mask.” Their parents stood behind them, Lily with her hand on Felix’s shoulder and James with his hand on Harry’s.

“Of course we didn’t want to separate the twin brothers,” Dumbledore said smoothly. “But the original choice to say that Harry had died actually wasn’t mine, or James and Lily’s, either. And I’m sure that you don’t blame Felix, who was only fifteen months old at the time!”

A lot of people laughed. Harry concealed a sigh. Well, Dumbledore had warned him about how stupid these people were who would follow almost any leader.

“It was people who had followed Voldemort who decided to spread the word that at least one of the twin boys was dead,” Dumbledore continued, ignoring the way that half the crowd flinched at the name. “I suppose they wanted to declare that he had claimed some victory, since he obviously hadn’t destroyed Felix. And then, well, we thought about what a security nightmare it would be, to have two boys who were famous overnight to protect. The Aurors and the Potters have done their best, of course, but Mr. Felix Potter has been in hospital before, as you know, Cornelius. We decided that we would keep Mr. Harry Potter safe as a matter of security, and incidentally keep Mrs. Potter’s Muggle relatives, who could have been targets of Death Eater vengeance as well, safe at the same time.”

Some of the crowd nodded wisely. Harry thought about how the Dursleys had evidently been safe from Dark wizards or Death Eaters, and he hadn’t been safe from them, and—

A flicker of movement out of the corner of Harry’s eye made him realize that a corner of Dumbledore’s robe was on fire. He hastily pulled back his anger, and the fire burned out, dying in a rush of smoke.

No one else appeared to notice. Harry stared at his clenched fists and thought about how he had magic, he just couldn’t force it through a wand, and despair neatly took the place of rage.

“But did it have to be in the Muggle world?” asked someone’s voice Harry hadn’t heard before. He looked up and saw a tall man standing close to the stage, wearing dark, soft blue robes that Harry knew were probably more expensive than anything his family owned. He had long blond hair and a cane he was slowly twirling between his fingers. “That is what I wonder, Dumbledore. Surely, ah, we could have kept such a talented and important boy closer to home?”

The man’s gaze fell on Harry. Harry stared back, numbly, and the man tilted his head as though thinking about Harry as possible prey. His cane even had a snake as the topper, Harry saw.

“What I wonder, Lucius,” said Dumbledore with a faint smile, “is why you think the Muggle world would have been an inappropriate destination for him.”

“It’s an inappropriate destination for any wizard of any birth or talent,” Lucius, apparently, said, and his mouth curved in a small smile. “And since the Potters have succeeded so admirably in keeping one son alive…”

“I was in hospital five times so far!” Felix yelled, face flushing. He started to say something else, but Lily bent down and hastily whispered to him, and he subsided.

This Lucius was a Dark wizard, then, or a Death Eater, Harry thought. Mostly, he felt a little surprise that the man was walking around in public instead of in prison somewhere, but maybe the magical world thought prison was something that happened to other people.

“Ah, but in hospital is not dead, Mr. Potter,” Lucius responded at once, and his eyes gleamed. Harry had the sense that he had hoped to bait Felix into saying something like that. Which means I’m just a distraction for him. “And who knows what consequences might have come to your twin from being in the Muggle world? Perhaps worse ones than hospital, who knows?”

“Who knows?” Dumbledore echoed, his voice subtly mocking. “Why not ask Harry?” And he turned and motioned Harry forwards.

Harry walked slowly over to stand next to Dumbledore, looking out over the crowd and remembering the way that he’d smiled when someone asked him if things were going well at home. The smile might be a little fake, but most of the crowd was at a distance from him, anyway. They probably wouldn’t notice.

And Harry wasn’t Felix, who had to play up to the public. The people he had to convince were his parents and Dumbledore, so he could stay in the magical world.

“Muggles are pretty amazing,” Harry said in a soft, eager voice. He had already decided that when someone tried to ask him about specifics of the Muggle world, he would reference things they’d made and did instead of the people he’d lived with. Why wouldn’t it work? Most wizards and witches knew nothing about Muggles, that was becoming clearer and clearer. “Did you know that they’ve invented instant communication that doesn’t depend on owls or fireplaces?”

“They have not,” Lucius of no apparent last name said with a slight sneer.

Harry turned to him with wide eyes. Helpless, just a little boy. I’m not the Boy-Who-Lived. Don’t look at me except as a reflection of him. “Oh, but they have, sir. It’s called a telephone. As long as both people have one, one of them can just pick up a portion of the telephone, enter a series of numbers, and immediately contact the house of the other person who has a telephone.”

Lucius stared at him as if he thought Harry was making it all up. Harry widened his eyes even further and nodded. Then he turned back to the crowd. Some people were whispering furiously to each other and others were already staring at him, but it was fairly easy to make them shut up and look at him just by coughing a little.

“They don’t have moving portraits the way we do, but they have films that are sets of moving pictures with stories that can be repeated over and over again,” Harry told his audience. “And they can fly with machines called planes—”

“Do you despise brooms, then, Mr. Potter?” Lucius interrupted him.

Harry managed to grab onto his hysterical giggle before he could escape. Felix had tried to describe Quidditch to Harry that morning, but hadn’t got much further than describing the balls and that it was played in the air before they had to Floo to Diagon Alley. Holy shit, it’s really played on brooms?

“No, sir,” Harry said, peering up at him. “But I think a broom can only take a few people at a time, right? A plane can take hundreds of people. Thousands, if it’s big enough.” He didn’t know that last part for sure, but it sounded brilliant.

And Dumbledore was smiling and nodding behind him, and steering him backwards with one hand on his shoulder. Harry gladly retreated to stand near James. It seemed that his part was over.

Dumbledore and Lucius went back to sniping at each other, and Harry wasn’t sure which one would win that particular confrontation. He didn’t think it mattered. He had survived his first time talking to people about the Muggle world, and that had to be enough.

*

“Happy birthday, Harry and Felix!”

Felix watched the way Harry’s eyes widened as he stared at the pile of presents on the table, wrapped in bright red paper with golden brooms and Snitches all over them. He acted like he’d never got presents before.

Then Felix thought of what he knew about the Dursleys Harry had lived with, and sighed. Yes, probably, he hadn’t.

As they moved through their gifts, and Harry unwrapped extra history books, Quidditch gloves, a Gryffindor scarf, a wand holster, and new glasses, Felix felt as though his heart was stopping. His brother just looked so happy. Whether he’d ever got gifts before or not, magical presents had to be better.

Felix tore open his own broom care kit and resolved that he was going to make things even funner for Harry. The minute they were done eating cake, they were going to fly. That was the way it was. Harry might not have known enough about brooms to answer the Death Eater’s question today, but he was going to know all about them by the time he and Felix were done.

*

“And we really fly on brooms?” Harry was trying to get better about saying “we.”

Felix nodded and shoved the broom at him. Harry took it cautiously. It was something called a Cleansweep, from the name along the handle in golden letters. But other than that, it was, well, a broom. Maybe prettier and cleaner than the ones that Aunt Petunia had made him use to do the sweeping, but still a broom.

“Yeah!” Felix stepped back from him. They were in the large garden behind the house that Harry had glimpsed through the windows, only now he realized that there were poles with hoops on top of them on both sides. The small shed to the side had turned out to contain brooms. “Come on, give it a go!”

Gingerly, Harry slung his leg over the broom. Inwardly, he was wondering if this was going to be like the wand and he’d never be able to use it. But there was something trembling in the broom underneath him, a kind of lightness that he’d never felt with the wand.

“Rise a little!”

Felix was bouncing up and down. Harry gave a deep breath and kicked off from the ground.

The broom soared.

Harry heard someone whooping and realized it was him. He steered the broom in a huge circle, and it answered him like it was a bike, only better. Harry aimed it upwards, and it zipped up, and then zipped back down when he asked. Harry leaned to the right and left, and it leaned with him.

This he could do, at least. This was wonderful.

“Hey, Harry!”

Harry looked down with a grin. Felix was hovering on the second Cleansweep he’d got out of the shed about a meter below him, grinning too. He held up something small and golden. Harry narrowed his eyes. The sun flashed from it, but all he could make out was the color and a pair of furiously fluttering wings that stuck out on either side of Felix’s fist.

“This is the Snitch I was telling you about,” Felix explained. “The Seeker has to catch it to end the game. But it’s the smallest and fastest of all the balls, so it’s hard to spot. Want to try and catch it?”

“Yes,” Harry said, and everything inside him had merged into mindless happiness, as airy as the broom’s magic.

Felix threw the Snitch into the air with a whoop of his own, and it streaked out of sight. Harry promptly rocketed after it, and heard Felix coming right behind him. Eventually he caught up with Harry, and smiled at him sideways as the wind whipped his hair around him.

Harry smiled, too, and then concentrated forwards again and kicked the broom harder. He had a brother to beat.

*

“I’m glad they’re getting along so well.”

Lily nodded against James’s shoulder as they stood next to the window that overlooked the pitch, watching both their sons chasing the Golden Snitch around. Lily could feel a lump in her throat. It was a sight that she’d once believed she would never see. There had been so much uncertainty right after that night when they’d placed Harry with Petunia. Lily’d been unsure it was the best idea, despite the fact that she did think Harry might reconcile her sister to magic. There was so much that could have gone wrong—

But besides the fact that, yes, Death Eaters might have gone after Petunia and her family and the strongest protection that Albus could place on a non-magical home was tied to blood and had to have at least one magical person living there, things had been touch-and-go with Felix for nearly a year. Harry had come through that night healthy and strong, with only a bit of a curse scar and apparently this disease that meant he would have to work harder to use a wand, but Felix…

Lily swallowed. Her younger son had been in hospital five times that he remembered. Luckily, despite his eidetic memory, he didn’t have any recollection of the eleven months he had spent in and out of St. Mungo’s as a toddler, his magic rebelling and his little body on the verge of shutting down.

His name had never seemed so well-chosen to Lily until then. Felix, fortunate, lucky, happy in Latin. Yes, they’d been so happy when they held him for the first time, she and James, without the fear that he’d simply shriek and go limp in their arms.

And after that year had passed, when her mind had turned back to Harry, it had seemed—not good, but easier to accept, that he wasn’t there. Would she have had the time for him? She honestly didn’t know.

Would Harry have grown up resenting his brother if he’d stayed, Felix’s fame and the amount of time that their parents had to spend with him until a few months after he was two? Lily shuddered at the thought. Maybe it would have made her feud with Petunia look mild.

And of course, there were so many other reasons, good and bad and intertwined, that she and James had agreed to the plan that had placed Harry with Petunia.

It wasn’t fair to him, Lily thought, as she shut her eyes. James’s arms tightened around her. I wish there’s some way that we could make up for it, and for what will probably happen to him in the future, in Felix’s shadow.

But war wasn’t fair, and even the great sacrifice Harry had made couldn’t delay it forever. The most they could do was ensure that their sons survived, both of them.

At least he’s home now, and happy.

*

“Er, hi, Harry. I’m your godfather, Sirius Black.”

Harry shook Sirius’s hand and tried to smile politely. Lily and James had told him about Black a few days after his—their—birthday, and explained that he’d be by when he’d given the Potter family a chance to get used to each other.

From the way James had described Sirius, he was another prankster, but also the one who’d first come to the house after the destruction of Voldemort and killed the traitor who had been babysitting them. Harry had asked for the traitor’s name, and only got “Wormtail” before everyone looked very uncomfortable and changed the subject.

In person, Sirius had grey eyes and black hair and a smile that was probably charming most of the time. It was pretty strained when he looked at Harry.

Violent prankster who wants to make it up to me wasn’t much of a godfather, in Harry’s opinion. But on the other hand, Lily and James were worse, since they were actually his parents and had abandoned him in the Muggle world.

And anyway, this was, basically, a sort of delayed birthday celebration-slash-celebration of Harry returning to the wizarding world that was happening a week after his birthday and Felix’s, and Sirius was far from the only person invited. Even the Death Eater named Lucius—whose last name was Malfoy—was there with his family, because, Lily and James had explained with distaste, he was one of the people who had claimed that he was forced to act against his will because of Voldemort’s powerful magic. They couldn’t disprove it, and socially snubbing him would look worse than inviting him.

Sirius was already shifting from foot to foot, looking in James’s direction, and Harry just nodded. “Thanks for introducing yourself. Maybe we can talk later?”

Sirius gave him a relieved smile and nodded. “Of course! And don’t worry, I’ll make sure that you have a broom you can sneak into Hogwarts if you want.”

“Er. Thanks, Sirius.”

Sirius waved to him and bounded away. Harry stood back in a corner of the big, blue drawing room on the ground floor that the Potters apparently kept for entertaining, and looked around.

There were people standing in clumps everywhere, some of them wearing fine robes like Malfoy, and some wearing the kind of shapeless children’s robes that Felix said he had worn until two years ago, and some of them in shirts and trousers that looked almost like Muggle clothes. James and Sirius, who were slapping hands with each other in a corner, both wore those.

Harry had on a pair of the most ordinary black robes from his bedroom cupboard. He didn’t want to stand out. And it seemed to be working. All kinds of people gave him curious looks—he was the “rescued” Potter twin, after all—but few people approached him.

“Harry!”

Harry turned with a small smile as Felix came running over, a red-haired boy who looked about their age on his heels. Harry had seen a whole family with red hair come in earlier and had heard Lily say they were the Weasleys, but he hadn’t heard any of the children’s names.

“This is my best friend, Ron Weasley,” Felix said, and clapped Ron on the shoulder hard enough to make him stagger. “He’s going to be in Gryffindor with us!”

Harry grinned. The expression felt more natural on his face the more he practiced it. “Hey.” He held out his hand, and Ron shook it enthusiastically.

“It’s going to be weird having two Potter twins around when it was always just Felix,” Ron said, with a grin that took any sting out of the words. Harry thought it was pretty weird himself. “What was it like living with Muggles?”

Harry started talking about films and telephones again, but it seemed that Ron was really interested in rubber ducks for some reason. “Dad’s mental about them,” he confessed, when Harry asked why. “About all kinds of Muggle things, really. He thinks they’re used in some kind of religious ritual?”

“Um, no,” Harry said, wondering whether he wanted to meet Ron’s dad or not. “They’re just little toys that kids can play with in the bath.”

“Wow! Weird.”

“What’s weird, Ronnikins—”

“Is the fact that you haven’t yet devoured half the food on that table in the corner.”

“Geroff,” Ron mumbled, turning bright red.

Harry looked warily at the two older boys who had popped up behind Ron and Felix. They looked probably thirteen, had lots of freckles and almost demented grins, and they were obviously twins, to the point that it made it a lot more obvious how much Harry and Felix didn’t look like each other.

Harry wondered if he would like them or not. They sounded like bullies, and he was pretty determined not to like anyone who sounded that way.

“Hi, I’m Gred and this is Forge!” said the twin on the left.

“No, I’m Forge,” said the twin on the right. “He’s George. Tragic, isn’t it, when someone forgets their name?”

“Tragic, Gred,” said the twin on the left tragically.

Harry smiled, a little bewildered. Felix seemed to notice. Harry had seen that his brother was pretty good about things like that.

“Their names are Fred and George, although even their mum has trouble telling which is which,” Felix said, rolling his eyes. “Come on, Harry, let’s have some cake.” He started dragging Harry in the direction of the table that held a huge chocolate cake that never seemed to run out no matter how many pieces were cut.

Behind Harry, something that sounded like a firework went off. He leaped into the air and turned, one hand poised to hurl magic—he could feel it sparking at his fingertips—before he remembered, and dropped it and fumbled for his wand. He kept forgetting that he had to channel it through the wand or it wouldn’t do what he wanted.

The Weasley twins were looking at him sheepishly. They had purple dust on their faces, and so did a circle of younger children around them, but at least they weren’t laughing like hell at Harry’s reaction.

“Sorry to startle you, mate,” said possibly-Fred, his eyes trained on Harry. “Don’t like loud noises, huh?”

Harry gritted his teeth and said nothing. The twins were both watching him now, and their eyes were sharper than Harry liked to see. Sure, maybe they weren’t laughing now, but what if they decided to do it later? Especially since he thought he remembered Felix talking about them now. They were the ones who liked pranks and spent a lot of time with James and Sirius.

Bloody great.

“Don’t like them much,” Harry said, when he realized the silence had gone on too long and even Ron was watching him curiously. “My cousin used to yell day and night about wanting more food and presents and anything else that caught his fancy.”

“Cousin?”

“Muggle cousin, he was a little spoiled,” Harry said quickly. The last thing he needed was for them to get curious about the Dursleys.

“Well, we’ll be a bit quieter—”

“Even though we might die an early death if we are—”

“Sacrifice for the cause!” both twins chorused at once. “We must all sacrifice for the cause!”

Harry choked on some laughter despite himself. It sounded like exactly something Dumbledore, or maybe the Weasley parents, would say.

“Very funny,” Felix said, rolling his eyes, and led Harry towards the table to get some cake again. Harry went with his brother, ignoring the way that Fred and George were watching his back, or it felt like they were.

He’d have to get used to people staring at him like that. If nothing else, once it came out that he couldn’t use a wand the right way and people’s pets didn’t react well to him either, then he’d get the pity and the stares and the whispering.

Still better than the kind of worship and death threats Felix gets, Harry told himself sternly, and accepted a piece of cake from Felix with a smile that got easier every time.

*

“Can I sit down, Potter?”

Harry raised his head sharply. He’d retreated into the library after another hour of endless partying, and he had assumed that someone would come and get him if they really needed to “present” him to the partygoers-slash-potential audience for something. But this sounded like another kid.

Yes, it was a tall, pale, lanky boy, who still looked about Harry’s age, with dark hair and grey eyes that bulged a little. He was wearing plain black robes a little like Harry’s. And he was watching him with a calm, blank expression on his face.

“Sure,” Harry said, with a shrug, and went back to reading about the history of the war with Voldemort. Despite the fact that he would have to have remedial lessons with so many different kinds of magic, Lily and James had said this was the most important thing for him to know.

The boy sat down on the other small chair in this alcove of books, and took a book out of his robe pocket. Harry didn’t say anything, but it made him frown a little into his own book’s pages. He’d assumed the boy wanted to read something from the Potter library. Why would he need to sit with Harry to read something he’d brought with him?

Well. It was probably none of his business. Harry flipped a page and continued reading about the Black family and how many members of it had devoted themselves to Voldemort. Maybe there was a reason that Sirius was so loud and a prankster, after all. Harry had a hard time imagining Death Eaters being fond of pranks.

*

“You didn’t ask my name.”

Harry blinked and glanced over from the history book. They’d read in silence for at least thirty minutes, and he’d assumed it would go on like that until he either had to leave or the boy did. Instead, the stranger was now leaning forwards over the top of his book—

Which he was holding very carefully so that Harry couldn’t see the title. Huh. Interesting.

“I assumed you would have told me if you wanted me to know it,” Harry replied.

The boy stared at him a little harder. “You don’t know who I am?”

“I’ve been back in the magical world for just over a week, after never knowing magic existed for ten years before that,” Harry snapped. “Sorry, no, I don’t know who you are.”

He winced a second later. He probably shouldn’t have said that. This could be a kid from a family Lily and James liked and wanted him to impress, or someone they didn’t like, like Malfoy, but needed him to get along with.

However, he got a narrow smile instead of an angry reaction. The boy held out his hand. “Theodore Nott.”

Harry recognized the name “Nott” from the list of suspected Death Eaters in one of the history books Lily and James had assigned him. He knew his smile was strained as he shook Nott’s hand, but he assumed Nott would know the reasons for the strain and not mind them. Or he wouldn’t have come back here to start a conversation with Harry, would he?

Nott leaned back in his chair with raised eyebrows, as though evaluating Harry’s reaction. His sleeve slid down from his left arm, though, and caught Harry’s attention more. There was a large, ugly mark on Nott’s arm, a black-and-purple bruise.

Shaped like a hand.

Harry snapped his gaze back to Nott’s face at once. He obviously knew what Harry had seen. He’d gone still, eyes fixed on Harry as if deciding whether he needed to hurt him.

“Your father?” Harry asked quietly. Normally, he wouldn’t have. He certainly hadn’t said anything to the other Muggle kids at primary school that he’d sometimes seen bruises on. Mostly because they wouldn’t talk to him because of Dudley. But Nott had come back here and started this weird interaction. Harry somehow felt like he could say it.

Nott drew himself up. “No.”

“Fine,” Harry said, stung, and turned back to his book. That’s what you get for reaching out, he told himself.

“I meant,” Nott said, his voice still sharp but not sounding as though he was about to get up and storm out of the library, “that I was removed from my father’s care last year and put in the custody of a couple named Figg.”

Harry blinked, recognizing the name from the woman who had taken care of him when the Dursleys went somewhere. But that didn’t seem like the most important thing to ask about right now. “Why? They did that?”

“They did that.” Nott nodded sharply, looking at Harry all the while with eyes that somehow made Harry feel more watched than he ever had. “And they believed—my mother died, and they thought my father had murdered her and I was next.” Nott’s face grew sharper and sharper, as if a light Harry couldn’t see was casting shadows over it. “It didn’t matter how much I said that wasn’t true. The Wizengamot and bloody Dumbledore ruled that I had to go to someone else’s care, and it was Harris and Vanessa Figg.” Nott’s eyes glittered, his lips sliding back from his teeth in a way that reminded Harry of Ripper, Aunt Marge’s dog.

“What do they think of you?”

“They think I’m a Death Eater’s kid, and they’re going to get it out of me any way they can,” Nott said simply.

Harry flinched. The words came roaring back to him. Work the freakishness out of you.

“You know what I mean,” Nott said, leaning forwards. “I saw you jump when the Weasley twins set off that firework and I knew.”

Oh, great. Harry stared back at him, hands clenched around the sides of his book. “Go ahead and tell people,” he said. “It’ll humiliate me, but I’m already going to be humiliated. And it’ll probably make things worse for you, because my parents and Dumbledore will be upset.”

Nott’s eyes widened for a second. Then he gave a soft, dark laugh.

“You’re more interesting than I thought,” he said, giving Harry some semblance of a smile. “Look for me on the train.” And he stood up, slid his book back into his robe pocket—Harry wondered now if it was something he didn’t want his guardians to catch him reading—and walked away.

Harry stared after him, shaking his head a little. Emotions dashed back and forth inside his head like waves. He felt sorry for Nott, and wanted to help him, and thought trying to help him would be useless because Dumbledore had put Nott with those people, and wanted to know more about the Figgs, and thought he should tell someone anyway because Dumbledore and his parents might be horrified that the Figgs were actually abusing Nott…

And then he thought about the way that his wand wasn’t working for him and how Felix’s snowy owl, Hedwig, tried to attack him every time he got close and how secret he needed to keep his Parseltongue and his abuse, and anger replaced the other emotions.

I have enough to worry about, just fighting for myself and trying to make sure the Potters keep liking me, Harry thought. And looking for Nott on the train? Is he mad? He’s probably going to end up in Slytherin, and being friends with a Slytherin when I have to be a Gryffindor would be mental.

Harry turned back to his book.

Chapter Text

“You know we’ll be proud of you no matter what House you’re in, Harry, don’t you?”

James smiled as he said that, ruffling Harry’s hair. Harry gave a small smile back. He had discovered that small smiles were better than bigger ones, because it was harder for his parents to see that they were strained and ask what was wrong.

They never wanted to hear what was wrong, and he wasn’t about to make himself a burden by making them too uncomfortable.

“Of course,” Harry said quietly. “But I really want to be in Gryffindor with Felix. It sounds like it’s the best House.”

That made James grin and go off on another one of the stories that he had already told Harry about pranking Slytherins. Harry listened in silence, except for the expected gasps and, once, a sharp whistle thrown in to show that he was listening. He was still learning how much of that kind of thing his parents wanted to hear from him; he’d got a few weird looks from Lily last week when he’d tried too hard to show that he was listening to a story.

“Go on to bed, kiddo,” James said, at the end of the story. “You’ve got a big day tomorrow.”

Harry smiled and hugged James and then trotted out of the dining room towards the corridor that held his bedroom. Felix was already in bed, because he had said that the earlier he went to sleep, the earlier the morning would come.

Harry made sure to open and shut his door. Then he turned and crept back towards the dining room, concentrating as hard as he could on being invisible. His magic formed around him like a cocoon for a moment, then disappeared. Harry hoped that meant it had worked.

“You think he might not be in Gryffindor, James?”

Ah. This was what he had come to listen in to. Harry settled against the turn of the corridor and listened.

“I just don’t know, Lils.” James sounded exhausted. He never sounded that way when he was talking about Felix, Harry would bet, and fear bit at him with sharp teeth. He might be sent back. “Being sick like he is and not able to use a wand, and not having Felix’s memory…he might feel like he has something to prove, he might get sent to Slytherin…”

“That’s not going to happen.” Lily moved around from the noises Harry heard. She was probably dragging her chair over to sit closer to James’s. “I told him all about Snape and how I lost my friendship with him. Harry’s not going to end up in his House.”

“But if the hat looks into his brain and says he belongs there, how can he keep from going?”

Harry half-smiled. Yes, it had been worth listening in. Lily and James had kept the mechanism of Sorting from him and Felix, since they’d said it was traditional to do that. But if it was a kind of hat that looked into your brain, then it was less challenging than Harry had been picturing.

“You know your choices influence who you are. I think Harry’s a Gryffindor, anyway. It would have taken so much courage to grow up with my awful sister…”

If you think that, why did you leave me there?

But that wasn’t the kind of thing he could ask his parents. Harry crept away from the corner and back to bed again, and lay there with his hands behind his head the way he often did, if a little more than a month could be counted as “often.”

They sent me to live with the Dursleys for reasons I still don’t understand. They could send me back there for reasons I still don’t understand. Better not to make waves. Better to be as normal as possible, according to them.

Harry hadn’t been able to be normal with the Dursleys because of his magic, and he knew he wouldn’t be perfectly normal here, either, what with his problems with the wand and animals. But he could still make sure that he was in Gryffindor and give his parents less reason to worry about him or wonder if he really fit with the political image the Potter family wanted to project.

Besides, I don’t think I want to be in Slytherin with people like Malfoy’s son who would hate me on sight and hate me more for coming from the Muggle world.

Become a Gryffindor, keep his head down, work as hard as he could on the remedial lessons for wand magic, not tell anyone about being a Parselmouth. That sounded doable to Harry.

*

“I don’t care how late at night you get away from the feast, owl us about your Sorting as soon as you can!”

“James! Do not encourage them to break curfew!”

James pretended to stagger backwards as if shot in the heart. Or cursed in the heart, Harry supposed. Felix laughed, and Harry joined in a minute later. Luckily, no one seemed to notice that he was a bit behind.

“Okay, owl us about your Sorting as soon as you can, even if that’s the next morning.” James reached out and gathered both Harry and Felix into a hug. “We love you, okay? Make sure that you stay away from future Death Eaters like Malfoy and Nott and Crabbe and Goyle and…”

“Dad, they’re all going to be in Slytherin anyway,” Felix said, with an enormous eyeroll.

Just one more reason not to go there, Harry thought, and firmed his resolve. If he had to shout at the hat in his mind to make sure that he went to Gryffindor instead, then that was what he’d do.

“Well, you never know.” James gave them each an individual hug, and then stepped back so Lily could reach them.

“I love you boys,” she said, softly, steadily, settling her hands on their shoulders, and although Harry thought she was mostly talking to Felix or about loving the idea of Harry instead of the reality, it was still nice to hear. “Be careful, have fun, be safe, and always remember that you can owl us at any time.”

“Mum,” Harry said, because he had adapted easily enough to calling her that even though he never thought of her that way, “what will happen with the owls and me? They always attack me, so…”

Lily pursed her lips and looked unhappy. Their visit to St. Mungo’s hadn’t uncovered any curse that Harry had been under, not that he’d really thought it would. It was still worth not telling them about the Parseltongue.

“Have your brother send them,” Lily said finally. “Hedwig could use the exercise, and if she’s gone, there’s always school owls he can use. Or you can have one of your friends send them, Harry, I’m sure they’d be happy to.” She smiled at him.

“I don’t want Felix to have to—”

“I had ten years where I couldn’t do anything for you,” Felix said fiercely under his breath. “Come on, Harry, let me do this.”

That startled Harry so much that he shut up. He still didn’t feel as if he really understood Lily or James or Dumbledore, and Sirius was actively avoiding him, but Felix was—something else.

“Yes, please let him,” Lily said, smiling at Harry and touching his shoulder extra-hard for a minute. “And if you ever need something from one of us, too, just ask.”

You wouldn’t say that if you knew who I really am.

But the whole point was to keep anyone from having to know, so Harry plastered a happy smile on his face and nodded. “All right.”

Behind them, the whistle of the train blew. Felix promptly started slapping his robe pockets and checking that he had Hedwig’s cage and his trunk and the extra bag of sweets Lily had given him. Harry already had all his stuff tucked away in his trunk, and he watched his brother with a slight grin.

“We love you!” James said, waving madly as Harry and Felix ran for the train.

“Stay safe!” Lily shouted.

“Break curfew to owl us about your Sorting!”

The last thing Harry saw as he and Felix waved from the train was Lily slapping James on the side of the head.

*

“Excuse me. Someone said I should come to this compartment to meet the important people on the train.”

Felix sighed as he glanced up from the chess game he was playing with Ron. He and Harry had grabbed a compartment, and Ron and Neville had found them immediately. Fred and George had looked in, but although Felix thought a tarantula sounded brilliant, he knew Ron was scared of spiders and wouldn’t come, so he’d stayed, too. Neville and Harry had apparently hit it off and were talking quietly about what Potions was going to be like with a professor who was as prejudiced against Gryffindors as Snape was going to be.

Someone else had to have sent this particular bushy-haired girl in search of them. It might be the twins, but Felix thought it was more likely to have been someone like Malfoy. The twins wouldn’t have been able to keep straight faces if they’d tried a prank like that.

“Probably someone meant that they thought you should meet me,” Felix admitted. “My name’s Felix Potter. But famous isn’t the same as important—”

“I read all about you in The Rise and Fall of the Dark Arts!” The girl promptly stepped into the compartment and flung herself down on the seat beside Neville, who gave her a nervous sideways look. “How did you defeat You-Know-Who? Do you know? Is it true that your scar is the only trace that was left of him and they couldn’t figure out exactly what happened? Is it true that you have a brother who grew up only in the Muggle world? Why did your parents do that to him? Why did—”

“Calm down,” Ron snapped. “Let him get a word in edgewise.”

The girl turned to him, bristling. “Well, excuse me, I’m sure.”

“You were talking so fast that I couldn’t answer your questions, though,” Felix said, trying for easy and calm. He didn’t recognize this girl, which probably meant she was Muggleborn or a half-blood raised out of the magical world. He didn’t want to insult or upset her. But she had been talking too fast. “Anyway, I don’t know exactly how I defeated Voldemort, no.” He ignored the way that Ron and Neville flinched. They would just have to get used to that. “The scar is the only trace left of him that I know about. And my twin is Harry Potter, who can speak for himself.” He tilted his head in Harry’s direction and waited.

Harry’s mouth twisted for a second, as if he thought the girl was so rude he didn’t want to talk to her. But he nodded. “My parents had me raised in the Muggle world for safety reasons.”

“But that’s stupid. What safety reasons? I would have always wanted to live in the magical world. I’m the first witch in my family, no one else has been magical, so I couldn’t, but I would want—”

“I’m not you.”

Harry’s words were flat, and for a moment, the walls crackled, hard, with magic. Felix winced a little. His brother’s magic was powerful, there was no doubt of that, but the longer he kept wielding it like a little kid, wandless and accidental, the longer it would take him to learn how to use his wand like an adult.

Felix himself had picked up his parents’ wands from the time he was young, because he had had to start learning early how to defend himself. He could guide his magic through them easily. If anything, Felix thought he probably had the opposite problem to Harry; he’d never had an accidental magic outburst.

“I know that.” The girl flushed. “I just wanted to know what the reason was for your being left in the Muggle world, and why—”

“You know it. Safety concerns. And you haven’t even introduced yourself. Could we do that before you start arguing with me about something I only learned a month ago myself?”

*

The girl opened her mouth, closed it, flushed more deeply, and then nodded. “Fine. Hermione Granger. Why were you left in the Muggle world?”

“Safety concerns,” Harry repeated blandly, and had to admit he enjoyed the way that Granger’s cheeks turned pink with annoyance. “If you want to know more than that, you’ll need to take it up with my parents. They have their own reasons, and they don’t want me to talk about it in that much detail.”

He caught a sharp glance from Felix. Harry raised his eyebrows at his twin, and had to admire the way that Felix clenched his jaw on the retort he obviously wanted to give, and nodded instead. It was true Dumbledore, Lily, and James didn’t want word of their plan to bring the Muggle and magical worlds together spreading to random people just yet.

“I would have asked them.”

“I’m not you.”

Granger looked like she might explode. Felix intervened, which Harry was glad about. Even though Granger had been raised in the Muggle world, like him, Felix was definitely the one who had more experience dealing with people demanding answers they didn’t need to know. “Look, Granger, this is still kind of a sensitive subject for us. Please don’t make my brother feel bad about not knowing every nuance of why he was left in the Muggle world. All I can say is that our parents did have good reasons, but they also don’t feel that they can explain them all to us yet.”

Harry gave his brother a smile of thanks as Granger sat up and turned back to Felix. He didn’t bother paying attention to their conversation, because it was either going to be more of the same or Felix telling Granger things Harry already knew. He picked up his book on history again.

He had to know all the things that people raised in this world did about the war and the history of the last ten years. Sure, Muggleborns got along without that, but everyone would expect Harry to act as if he’d been raised in the magical world just because he was a Potter. He wasn’t going to fall behind.

He got so involved in the book that Nott’s voice came as a surprise. “All by yourself, Potter?”

Harry looked up and blinked around. Huh. Yeah, the compartment was empty. He knew that Felix and Ron had discussed going to catch up with some other friends at some point, and Neville had probably gone with them. Harry supposed Granger had been kicked out or flounced out at some point before then.

“I’d like to join you.”

“Fine,” Harry said, feeling one of his eyebrows creep up. Nott was one of the weirdest people he’d met, for how little they interacted.

Oh, wait, of course. He was probably thinking that he could score some kind of political points if he made good with the Boy-Who-Lived’s brother. Well, unfortunately for Nott, Harry was utterly uninterested in that kind of thing. He turned back to his book, reading about the political maneuvering the Wizengamot had undergone to try and expose the Death Eaters in their midst.

“I suppose you know what House you’ll be in.”

Oh, great, he wants to talk. “Yeah, of course,” Harry said absently as he flipped the page back and forth to compare a written description of the robes the Wizengamot wore with a photograph on the next page. If anything, the description was too restrained to do the picture justice. “Gryffindor, where all Potters go.”

Nott laughed the way he had when they were in the library. Harry rolled his eyes and gave up on trying to get the book to explain the richness of the robes, skipping to the next section.

“You’re a Slytherin if I ever saw one.”

“Why? Because I have a few similarities to you?” Harry sneered at Nott, lowering his book enough to do so. Nott was leaning forwards, sitting in the seat that had been Felix’s, and almost vibrating with something that Harry didn’t think was the rush of the train. “Yeah, sorry, that’s not enough to make me Sort Slytherin.”

“Because you’re a survivor,” Nott said, starting to tick points off on his fingers. “Because you don’t seem to particularly value bravery, or you would have tried to conceal your reaction to the Weasleys’ prank. Because you’re immersing yourself in more ways to survive by reading history. Because you’re an outsider to the little Gryffindor world of your brother’s friends. Anyone can see it,” he added dismissively.

“I’m not going to be a Slytherin, Nott.”

“You say that. I say that you are. I don’t wager, but I will say that I’m very confident in my claim.”

Harry sneered again, and decided that he might as well reveal something the whole school would find out about anyway the minute he was in Charms, Transfiguration, or Defense, the classes that required a wand. He flared his magic between his fingers, a leaping array of sparks that made Nott blink and shut up. Then he took out his ebony wand and waved it.

“Not a spark,” he said. “Notice that?”

“Yes,” Nott said slowly, clearly wondering why in the world Harry was talking about this.

“Because I can’t use a wand,” Harry said. He leaned forwards a little, and noticed with satisfaction the way that Nott flinched and drew away, as if he couldn’t help himself. “I have a disease of some kind that means I can’t use a wand and I’ll need remedial Charms lessons and lessons in whatever other classes we have that use a wand. Frankly, I consider myself lucky to be able to ride a broom. I’m the weak one, Nott. The one who has all sorts of vulnerabilities that someone could easily prey on. So you’re bloody wrong. I am not going to be a Slytherin, where I’d get eaten alive for being a Potter and Muggle-raised even if I didn’t have this problem with my wand. Watch me, because I am going to be a Gryffindor. You might as well back off now, because trying to be close to me is going to hurt you, too.”

*

Theo felt as if his tongue was stuck to the roof of his mouth. He stared at Potter, who stared back with the kind of eyes that were always watching for some way to hurt someone.

Because he’s been hurt himself.

But Theo had already known that. This—this was another thing altogether.

When he didn’t say anything right away, Potter gave him a gloating smile that mocked his own pain, mocked all the world, and picked up his book again. “Have nothing to say to that, do you?” he murmured, and turned his shoulder to Theo.

Theo took a deep breath. Yes, he had thought that Potter was different from most of the other children in their age group, including Felix Potter. He hadn’t known about this, but he could still make a point that Potter didn’t seem to have considered.

“What if your magic’s just wandless?” he asked quietly.

“Yes, I know it is,” Potter said, and rolled his eyes in a way that finally sparked Theo’s irritation. “Immature and accidental, and it won’t do what I want. That means I need remedial—”

“No, you idiot,” Theo snapped. “What if you can’t use a wand because your magic is meant to be wandless?”

Potter snarled at him, and an invisible force lashed towards Theo, pinning him to the seat. It felt like enormous fingers, pressed all along his chest and his throat. Theo fought the sickening jolt of panic that filled him whenever he encountered something that felt like a spell the Figgs had used on him, and laughed aloud.

“Oh, okay, so you learned to be mental from your father before they took you away.”

Theo hissed despite himself, and Potter’s magic let him go. Potter was leaning forwards, eyes very bright, fingers twitching as if he meant to defend himself with wandless magic when Theo attacked.

If Theo attacked. Which wasn’t going to happen. He sat up and made a show of brushing imaginary dust off his robes. Potter watched him intently, with eyes so cold that Theo wondered for a moment how no one in the Potter family could have figured out that he wasn’t the good little boy he was trying to portray himself as.

But that wasn’t Theo’s problem. Theo’s problem was securing a tolerable Housemate who could be of great help politically in a few years, and someone who could understand him in a way precious few people would.

“Do you realize how rare what you just did is?” Theo asked Potter softly. “Wizards train all their lives to be able to do something half as strong as that.”

“Because they’re adults who can use wand magic,” Potter said instantly. “When they were children, they probably did this kind of thing, and people thought of them as pathetic and immature.”

“Accidental magic can’t be directed like this, Potter.”

“It’s still accidental.”

“Stop acting as though you want to be underestimated,” Theo said, irritated again. “It’s stupid when I already know how strong you are, and it’s going to get people trying to attack you or make you reveal yourself in Slytherin.”

“Where I’m not going.”

“I might have thought Ravenclaw, with all the books you read.” Theo gestured to the one in Potter’s lap, which he recognized as one that his father thought was fantastically funny in the way it framed the war. “But there’s too much about you that’s perfect to make you a snake, as I already listed.”

Potter looked stricken for a second, although Theo didn’t know why, because he hadn’t said anything different than what he’d already said. But Potter’s jaw hardened in a stubborn mask Theo supposed he would become familiar with over the years, and he said, again, “Watch me.”

He lifted the book in front of his face after that, so obvious a dismissal that Theo thought it would be stupid to stay in the compartment. He shook his head and left. His father had thought the tradition of concealing the Sorting mechanism from the students ridiculous, and had told Theo about the hat. The hat saw what was really within you, Belisarius Nott had impressed on Theo, and that meant that, if Theo wanted to be in Slytherin, he had to think like one and value what they valued from his earliest years.

But Potter was a natural Slytherin without thinking about it, with every breath he took.

Good. I can’t imagine having to put up with no one but Malfoy, Crabbe, and Goyle for seven years in the same room. Potter will be tolerable once I work on him a little.

*

“Isn’t it beautiful?”

Felix’s voice was hushed as their boat drifted towards the castle. Harry glanced at his twin and nodded. It was hard to take his eyes from Hogwarts, though, or to stop the whirlwind of awe and wonder and anxiety taking place in his head.

I need to prove that I belong here. I can’t let them find a reason to kick me out. I can’t let Lily and James find a reason to pull me out.

Harry strengthened his will, and climbed out of the boats at the landing where they were being handed over by the big man—Hagrid—to Professor McGonagall, a stern woman with hair pulled back so firmly Harry wondered if she had cursed it. She thanked Hagrid and guided them into a small room where she gave them a small speech about the Sorting and left.

Harry made a point of smiling at Granger, who he’d had that disagreement with on the train. She was chattering about wanting to go to Gryffindor, and he would have to get along with her if they were Housemates. “It’ll be okay.”

She started and turned to look at him. “You don’t think the Sorting’s—risky?”

“No, it can’t be. Professor McGonagall just warned us because she’s stern and doesn’t want us misbehaving, I think—”

Loud screams erupted from behind Harry, making him leap. He turned around to see ghosts drifting through the wall. He settled himself, shaking his head. Lily and James had warned them about the ghosts, and although it was unnerving to see the Gryffindor one with his head dangling half off his neck and others with wounds bleeding silvery blood, they were harmless.

“You jumped pretty high,” said Granger, watching him with eyes that Harry thought were too shrewd.

“I don’t like loud noises,” he said, and then the doors of the Great Hall opened and they marched in, and Harry had other things to think about. So did Granger, from her comments on the enchanted ceiling.

Harry ignored the floating candles and the night sky overhead and the staring students and fastened his gaze on the ragged old hat sitting on a stool near the front. As it began to sing, he gathered his magic closer to him. Yes, he would have to use a wand to belong, but he definitely had the ability to compel the hat to put him where he wanted to go. This would be the last time that he ever used his wandless magic for anything big, he vowed to himself.

Just let me go where I need to be. Just let me be normal.

*

“Nott, Theodore!”

Theo lifted his head and stepped forwards, ignoring the speculative stares and whispers and the jeers that were breaking out at the Gryffindor table. They didn’t matter. Nothing mattered except the hat in front of him and his strong desire to go straight to the House that best suited him.

As he put the hat on his head, he felt a brief, fleeting touch on his mind, like Legilimency but gentler. There was a little silence, and then the hat said, You think you already know where you want to go?

Yes. I want to pay them back. I want to show them that I can be great, no matter what they think of my last name. I want to show them—

“SLYTHERIN!”

Smiling slightly, Theo left the hat on the stool and ignored the Gryffindors making gagging noises as well as the Slytherins clapping for him. They included Malfoy, who he could tolerate but not like; Crabbe and Goyle, who were pretty much non-personalities; Daphne Greengrass, whom Theo had thought would go to Ravenclaw and was therefore slightly interesting; Millicent Bulstrode, who was staring at her plate; and Tracey Davis, whom he didn’t know. Theo was pretty sure that Pansy Parkinson would end up here, too, but the Sorting he was most interested in would happen just a few after hers.

He sat down, nodded in greeting to Greengrass and Malfoy, and fixed his attention on the hat, clapping absently for Parkinson as she joined them. Potter was standing behind his twin, his arms folded and his stare as intent on the hat as Theo’s had been.

You can’t trick the Sorting Hat, Theo thought, something his father had told him. You can choose, but you can’t trick it.

And if Potter really belonged somewhere else, Theo would eat the Sorting Hat himself. Without butter.

*

“Potter, Felix!”

Felix did his best not to grimace as the whispers broke out around him. What they thought wasn’t of any consequence, Felix reminded himself pointedly. He understood now, a lot better, what Mum and Dad had been hinting at when they said the Sorting mechanism responded to your own choices and beliefs.

He sat down beneath it and felt the ruffling touch of its thoughts on his mind. The hat seemed about to speak aloud for a moment, and then paused and said to him silently, You know that you have enough determination for Hufflepuff and enough intelligence for Ravenclaw?

I know, Felix responded. He had half-expected this since he saw the hat and realized that some people were taking longer beneath it than others. But I really do want Gryffindor.

Why?

Because I’ll be comfortable there. And because I can help other people. I know that Mum and Dad and Dumbledore are the ones who came up with the goals to connect the Muggle and magical worlds, but I believe in them. And I need a good political base, but that means not startling or upsetting people too much at first. I need a House that supports me so I can start reaching out to those who don’t.

“GRYFFINDOR!”

Felix smiled, whipped the hat off his head, and put it back on the stool. He glanced towards Harry, who was watching him with big eyes and that kind of stillness he got when he didn’t know what to do next, and nodded encouragingly.

He would make his House a welcoming place for all sorts of people, and that included any welcome that Harry needed.

He ran towards the cheering Gryffindor table.

*

“Potter, Harry!”

Harry took a deep breath and tried to ignore the stares that crawled along his skin. It wasn’t one-tenth the attention that Felix would get, he reminded himself. Or even that some of the Slytherin students probably would.

Or that he would if he went to Slytherin.

With that reminder of what he would suffer if he let the hat send him elsewhere, Harry managed to walk forwards at a fairly normal pace. He saw Professor McGonagall regarding him thoughtfully as he dropped the hat on his head and the brim dipped over his eyes a little. Lily and James had said she was the Head of Gryffindor House, hadn’t they? And the Transfiguration teacher. He hoped she would like him. They’d be spending a lot of time together, given the remedial lessons he would need in Transfiguration.

The hat pressed against his mind like a cool wind. Then it murmured into his mind, Your determination to survive and the kinds of secrets you’re hiding would give you a good place in Slytherin.

Harry sneered, unable to help himself. No, they would pick and poke at me to get the secrets out of me. And the House is full of Death Eaters’ children, anyway. I might not actually survive.

I need to place students where they would most thrive, Mr. Potter. I do not believe your physical safety would be in danger in Slytherin. But you would have the chance to grow apart from the shadow of your family and achieve your future as an individual person.

And my family might actually think I should go back to the Muggle world during the summers or something. No, thanks.

You are not suited for Gryffindor.

Yes, I am. Harry gathered his magic about himself, a buzzing crackle on his skin that he hoped he would be able to hear but Professor McGonagall wouldn’t. I’m brave to come here and let myself get stared at by everyone, aren’t I?

You are not suited for a house that prides itself on bravery and chivalry above all else, the hat repeated. And Hufflepuff’s friendliness and work ethic…no, you are not that kind of person, either. I might place you in Ravenclaw, but the study you have done has always been so that you can survive, especially in the last month. There is only one House suited for you, Mr. Potter.

You’re not going to put me there.

You don’t have a choice! I’m the Sorting Hat.

Watch me! Harry snapped, and whipped his magic around the hat as it tried to open its brim to shout out Slytherin. I can do this all fucking day!

*

Theo leaned forwards, staring. He had been sure, for a moment, that the hat was about to shout something out, but it appeared to have shut its brim again and was—wriggling back and forth on top of Potter’s head?

He could feel the restless stirring at the other tables. This had already taken longer than the Longbottom boy’s Sorting, which had been the longest before this. And Theo was sure that he saw a gleam of white light around the hat if he narrowed his eyes far enough.

A gleam centered around the brim, in fact.

He’s—holding it shut? What the hell? Merlin, Potter.

*

You have to let me put you in the House you’re suited for! I’m the Sorting Hat.

I’m not going to let you put me where I’d be an outcast, Harry panted. He was weakening faster than he’d thought he would. Wandless magic was childish, after all. But he continued to hold and pin the hat’s brim shut so it couldn’t speak, and the hat made a spitting sound that, a second later, Harry realized was completely in his head.

Stubborn child!

That’s right. You don’t get to just put me where you want.

You won’t grow in Gryffindor the way you would in Slytherin. It would bring out the best parts of you, the ones that right now you don’t understand or fear.

I don’t care about growing! I want to make sure that I can stay in Hogwarts and the magical world and with my brother. And my parents are going to hate me and worry about me if I end up in Slytherin.

That would be their fault!

I don’t care.

The hat went on struggling, but desperation was fueling Harry’s magic now, and he pressed down until the hat groaned into his mind. You’re going to tear me apart if you keep this up, and there are other children waiting to be Sorted. All right. All right. But don’t come back and blame me when you’re miserable.

I would probably be miserable anywhere I go, Harry thought back, and released his hold on the hat’s brim, although he was ready to attack again if it shouted out anything other than the House he wanted, the House he had to belong to to survive.

“GRYFFINDOR!”

The Gryffindor table promptly burst into clapping and cheering, and two people who sounded like the Weasley twins were shouting, “We got both Potters, we got both Potters!” In the chaos, no one noticed Harry’s hands shaking as he lifted them to take the hat off his head, or the hat’s final threat, hissed into his head.

If I ever get a chance to sit on your head again, Mr. Potter…

Harry ignored the threat and dropped the hat back into Professor McGonagall’s hands. She was smiling at him. Harry nodded at her and trotted shakily over to sit down at the table next to Felix, who pushed a bigger boy down the bench and scowled when he looked like he was going to complain.

“All right, Harry!” Felix ruffled his hair, and Harry leaned against his brother for a second, before he straightened and watched as Lisa Turpin went up to be Sorted into Ravenclaw.

One of the twins leaned around Felix to wink at him. “Knew you’d be here with the lions where you belong, mate.”

Harry smiled back. At the moment, he thought he could smile for a month and never get tired of it.

*

He just forced the Sorting Hat to do what he wanted.

Theo clapped mechanically for the last person to be Sorted into Slytherin, Blaise Zabini, someone Theo hadn’t anticipated meeting here because he’d thought for sure that Zabini would be attending a magical school in Italy. Then Dumbledore stood up to make some kind of absurd speech, and food popped onto the plates. Theo served himself with the same kind of mechanical movements he’d used to applaud, still watching the Gryffindor table.

Potter was eating some mashed potatoes and beaming. But Theo knew it wasn’t his imagination that Potter kept some space between himself and other people at all times, even his brother, and that he whipped around when someone at the Hufflepuff table cast a charm with a loud bang.

I have no idea how or why he did that, except that he’s that powerful.

“In love with a lion already, are you, Nott?”

Theo didn’t jump at the words. This was the kind of challenge he had expected in Slytherin. He turned his head and stared at Malfoy with a flat gaze, and Malfoy began shifting in a second or two.

Lucius Malfoy never taught his son true strength, Theo thought, and curled his lip a little, then returned to eating without a word.

The conversation went on around him without anyone speaking directly to him, except when Parkinson asked him to pass the butter and Zabini engaged him in a short, testing, probing conversation about Arithmancy. Theo handled that easily. It was so short that it wasn’t a real challenge.

His gaze went back to the Gryffindor table one more time when they rose to have the prefects escort them to their beds. Potter wasn’t looking at him, and as far as Theo could tell, he hadn’t looked once all evening.

It’s still worth remaining close to someone who has such powerful magic that he could force the Sorting Hat to do what he wanted, Theo decided on the march down to the dungeons. And someone who…understands.

*

Harry lay in his bed, staring up at the canopy. Around him, other snores sounded.

It was lucky that the five boys he was sharing the room with didn’t have any pets except a toad and a rat, who just tried to cower away from him, Harry thought tiredly. There had been spitting and hissing from the cats in the common room when he’d walked in with Ron, Felix, Neville, Thomas, and Finnegan, Granger, Brown, and one of the Patil twins trailing behind. No one had seemed to connect it to Harry specifically, especially since there had only been two cats and they’d both retreated into their humans’ laps after a minute. But Harry wasn’t looking forward to the owls bringing post in the morning.

It was something else to be endured. Just like the remedial lessons he’d have to have in wand magic and the way Finnigan stared at him when he thought Harry wasn’t looking and the dynamics Harry could already feel forming around them just in the few words they’d exchanged before bed.

Felix was the leader. Ron was his best friend. Finnigan and Thomas were shaping up to become best mates, too. Neville would hover a little awkwardly between the pairs, but he knew both Felix and Ron and would be welcome there.

Harry would have to be the hanger-on, the loner, because he was a weaker wizard even than Neville, who had talked about his wand not suiting him but could still perform a charm through it after five tries. He’d attract Granger’s pity and offers of academic help, probably. Felix would include him, but as one with Ron and Neville, not above them. Brown and Patil would probably ignore him, along with Finnigan and Thomas when they got used to him.

But that’s still better than it would have been if you’d listened to the hat, Harry reminded himself. It said that you couldn’t go to Hufflepuff, which is the friendliest House, and Ravenclaw probably isn’t much better. And Slytherin…

Harry shuddered. Better overlooked and in his brother’s shadow than constantly bullied, or challenged, or sneered about, or hexed.

Harry drifted off to sleep, and dreamed of a dark forest with paths running through it, lit by an orange moon hanging above. There was someone waiting at the end of the path, Harry knew that, someone in terrible pain he could help. But the price for helping them would be more than he could bear.

He walked down the path, moving endlessly forwards, but it led nowhere, and it faded when he woke up, ready to face his first full day as a Gryffindor.

And compose a letter that Felix would send with Hedwig, the triumphant news of his Sorting.

I’ll survive. Far better here than anywhere else.

Chapter Text

“Harry, come on! What are you waiting for?”

Harry clenched his hands for a long moment and glanced at his brother. Felix was looking back at him with a small frown, obviously not understanding why Harry might be reluctant to step into the Great Hall and expose his head and eyes to the owls darting around delivering the morning post.

Then Felix followed the direction of Harry’s gaze into the Hall, and grimaced. “Oh. Um, yeah. Why don’t you wait ten minutes or so and come in, then?”

Harry nodded. That sounded good to him, even if that would only leave him a few minutes between the departure of the owls and the beginning of their first class. But Harry had spent a lot longer than that going without food. “Yeah, thanks, Felix.”

“What’s going on, mate?”

Felix started explaining to Ron and Neville in a low voice as they entered the Great Hall. Finnigan, Thomas, and the girls were already in there, and older Gryffindors streamed past without noticing Harry. Harry sighed and leaned on the wall, watching intently as the owls darted among the students, dropping off what he knew must be the Daily Prophet or letters, and then soaring out through the windows.

“Something wrong?”

Harry glanced over his shoulder. Nott was standing behind him, dressed in black robes with green edging and a serpent crest. Harry shrugged and looked away, not wanting to look at the snake and accidentally start speaking Parseltongue. So far, it had only happened that one time with a real snake, but why take chances? “Waiting to avoid the crowd so I can eat.”

“I don’t think so.”

Harry stiffened and gathered his magic close to himself, then tried to relax. He knew someone else would have drawn their wand, and he had to remember that! He’d promised himself that he would stop using his wandless magic for big things after the Sorting Hat.

“You’re going to prevent me from eating, Nott?”

“Not what I meant, Potter. I just don’t think you’re standing out here because you don’t like crowds.”

“You’re way too obsessed with me, Nott. Do your Housemates know about your crush on a pathetic little Gryffindor?”

Nott moved into sight, although Harry hadn’t planned to look at him. He was standing against the wall next to Harry, examining him intently. Harry turned his head away again.

“One of them said something like that last night,” Nott murmured. “Blond prat named Draco Malfoy. See him at the table there?”

Harry let his eyes drift to the Slytherin table, and sneered automatically when he saw Malfoy, whose hair looked a lot like his father’s. His magic shifted around him and uttered a crackle.

“I was right. You did use magic to compel the Sorting Hat.”

Harry made his eyes as cold as he could and glared at Nott. He would have to intimidate him without using magic. “Who cares? No one in power’s going to change their mind on the word of a kid most of them think of as a Death Eater in training, are they?”

“I wasn’t planning to use it against you, Potter. Only to say that I was right. The hat did want to put you in Slytherin, didn’t it?”

“It doesn’t matter if it did. It said Gryffindor.”

“What the hat says isn’t always what matters.”

Harry laughed aloud at that, although he stopped himself when he heard how shrill it was getting. He tapped the lion crest on his own robes. “I think a lot of people would disagree with you, especially in your House and mine.”

Nott gave him a smile that didn’t seem to mean anything at all, or be happy or angry or mocking, no matter how Harry looked at it. “See you in class, Potter.” And he levered himself off the wall and walked away.

Harry shook his head and examined the Great Hall. Most of the owls were gone, and the few that were sitting on the tables and hooting softly as their owners fed them were nowhere near the Gryffindor table. Harry took a deep breath and walked in.

There was a deep-throated scream from a large black bird sitting near Malfoy on the Slytherin table, and it turned towards Harry, feathers fluffed out and talons rasping back and forth on the wood as if it wished it had Harry’s skin underneath them. It leaned a little forwards, and its wings started to spread.

Harry brought his magic up around him and made it flash once, briefly, something that would probably look like light flashing off something metal he wore to most of the humans around him.

The black owl continued to stare at him, but its feathers went down. It seemed to recognize a predator who could hurt it if it came close. It bowed its head down to take some bacon from Malfoy’s plate, eyes still fixed on him.

The other owls in the Great Hall seemed to have seen the same thing, or decided the same thing. They went gradually back to eating, and Harry sat down next to Felix and reached for a bowl of porridge. He put brown sugar and raisins on it and ate slowly, despite the fact that other students were hurrying through their meals. A prefect, Ron’s older brother, was going to take them to their first class. Harry wasn’t worried about getting lost.

“Here’s your timetable, Potter.”

That was Granger, sounding as though she meant to be helpful, so Harry smiled and nodded at her and reached for it. He scanned it and sighed a little. They had Potions on Friday, which meant he could put off any sort of confrontation with the man that both Lily and James had described as a bully, but they had Transfiguration first thing today. Then Charms. Both wand magic classes, and where he would have to speak to the professors about remedial lessons.

“Felix was saying something about how you can’t use your wand?”

That was Ron. Harry nodded to him. “I have a disease that happens sometimes with students from the Muggle world,” he said, and swallowed what was left of his porridge. “I have to make sure that my magic comes through my wand instead of from outside.”

“I read lots of books that said wizards work for years to learn wandless magic.”

Granger. Nott had said the same thing. Not that Harry planned to pay attention to what someone who was weirdly interested in his life thought. He nodded to her. “Sure, but that’s after they learn to follow the rules by using wands first.”

That was the right tactic to take with Granger, as Harry had thought it might be. She nodded and turned away to begin bothering Finnigan about something.

“I’ll be right there, okay, Harry? Anything you need to tell the professors, I can back you up on.”

I should be able to manage by myself.

But Harry knew he couldn’t, and Felix had a lot more standing in this world than he did. The professors would believe him even if they were skeptical about Harry really needing remedial lessons. So Harry smiled at his brother, and nodded, and stood up to follow Percy Weasley to Transfiguration.

*

“All right, Mr. Potter.”

That was the only thing Professor McGonagall said when Harry told her that he’d need remedial lessons in Transfiguration, Felix was glad to see. He was hovering behind Harry in case his brother needed support, but it turned out he didn’t. Harry just nodded to the professor and then glanced over at Felix and smiled a little.

“See, I told you that you didn’t need to come.”

“I wanted to,” Felix said, falling in behind Harry as they left for Charms. And he had. He didn’t want Harry to feel like he was stupid or pathetic or—or lesser just because he had this sickness he needed help to cure.

Professor Flitwick, who taught Charms, squeaked and toppled off his pile of books when he called Felix’s name. Felix sighed a little, and Ron choked on laughter next to him. Harry just smiled and shook his head when Felix looked at him.

“Rather deal with what I have than that,” he murmured, and began taking notes as Professor Flitwick gave them a lecture on Charms theory.

Felix thought about that as they went to lunch, especially after Harry’s discussion with Professor Flitwick about needing extra lessons just produced a bit more of a reaction than his discussion with Professor McGonagall had. What would Felix choose, if it came to going to hospital, listening to people squeak or yell or cheer in reaction to his name, and having Death Eaters after him, or having a disease that prevented him from using a wand right away?

Maybe I would take the disease. After all, it wasn’t as though Harry’s problems with the wand were going to last forever. Mum and Dad had both said so. Once he had some remedial instruction, everything was going to be better.

*

“If it isn’t the weaker Potter.”

Harry watched Malfoy with as calm a face as he could. He couldn’t be sure it was showing no expression, but he was trying. And of course Malfoy would show up while Harry was standing outside the Great Hall to try and wait the few owls in there out.

The Slytherins had evidently had a class outside, probably Herbology, and were trooping past Harry into the Great Hall without a second glance. Well, mostly. Malfoy’s goons seemed eager to go eat, and two girls Harry didn’t know ducked past chattering, but a blonde girl gave him a curled-lip stare, and there was a girl who’d waited with Malfoy openly laughing.

Nott came to a halt a few meters behind Malfoy, with a dark-skinned boy next to him. Both of them were watching Harry with the same kind of blank expression that Harry had thought was just Nott’s game but seemed to belong to some other Slytherins, too.

“Better weak than having a Death Eater for a father,” Harry said softly.

Malfoy stopped laughing as if someone had strangled him. The girl next to him gasped. Nott and the other boy drifted a little closer.

“What did you say?” Malfoy growled, one hand darting into his sleeve for what would probably be his wand.

Harry coiled his own magic close to him. Nothing big, nothing like the Sorting Hat. He’d promised himself. But it was pretty easy to do something small. “Imagine, having problems with your ears, too.”

Malfoy’s wand came whipping out—

And soared out of his hand as Harry slid just a little bit of his magic around it and tugged. The wand clattered into the far corner of the entrance hall, bouncing off the stones as it went. Harry glanced in its direction, then turned back to Malfoy with as much fake concern as he could come up with. “Problems with your fingers, too? Wow, Malfoy, I’m sorry. Did your father torture you until you have tremors? I heard that’s a side-effect of the Cruciatus Curse.”

Malfoy’s face actually could get whiter, it turned out, but high spots of pink burned on his cheeks a few seconds later. He threw himself at Harry with something like a shriek emerging from his lips.

Harry dodged. He had plenty of practice doing that with Dudley and his gang. And even though the girl who had been standing beside Malfoy was exclaiming, hands on her cheeks, “Draco! Oh, Draco!” and Nott and the other Slytherin boy were staring, none of them were actually moving forwards to try and help Malfoy.

“What seems to be going on here?”

The voice was exceptionally cold. Harry hoped he hid his flinch well enough, but he wasn’t sure. He was sure, even before he turned around, that this was the Potions professor Lily and James had warned him to avoid.

The man was taller than most of the other faculty, except Dumbledore, standing with his arms folded and his black robes half-billowing around him. He had a piercing gaze, black hair and eyes, and the face of someone who would probably curse first and ask questions later, if at all. Harry drained all his emotion into a small corner of his soul at once.

It doesn’t matter what he says. He’s not your Head of House. He’s only a teacher. He can give you detention and take points, but his opinion of you as a person does not matter.

“Potter called my father a Death Eater, Professor Snape!”

Interesting that he didn’t mention the other things, Harry thought, and just stood there. Snape seemed to notice at the same time as Malfoy that Malfoy’s wand was still lying on the floor. He strode over and picked it up, then flicked it back to Malfoy. At least the git was smart enough to catch it.

“Go to lunch, Mr. Malfoy. And remember, no magic in the corridors. I would like a word with Mr. Potter.” He turned his head to take in the other students. “Mr. Nott, Miss Parkinson, Mr. Zabini, if you would follow Mr. Malfoy.”

Malfoy went off, muttering something under his breath about gits and Potters, and Parkinson went patting his arm. Neither Nott nor Zabini lingered, although Nott kept watching Harry like he was the most interesting thing around until the corner of the entrance into the Great Hall cut off his gaze.

He’s really weird, Harry thought, and turned to face Snape.

*

The second Potter child was strange.

Severus’s reaction on first hearing about him had been blank surprise, and after that, rage as to neither Albus nor Lily ever telling him that the Potters’ second son had survived that night. But no, apparently every piece of information about the boy would have been a “security risk.” In fact, the existence of the twins had been so tightly guarded that Severus hadn’t even known for sure which one had supposedly “died” at first.

Nor did he know where in the Muggle world Potter had lived, not for certain. But Albus’s mention of Lily’s Muggle family members…

There was only one choice, really.

Potter’s eyes were blank, and his face meek. He stood there as if awaiting punishment. Severus took a deep breath and tried to decide what the best course would be here.

He had heard the brat’s savage words to Draco, and normally Severus would have assigned a detention based on them alone. But he had also seen Draco draw, and then lose, his wand, and Draco was the one who had waded in with fists swinging. Severus would never take points from his own House, of course not, but his colleagues were aware of Potter’s problems with a wand, and penalizing Gryffindor as many points as he wanted to for words alone…

Severus and Slytherin House and possibly Draco would look like the losers in that situation, much more so than Potter deserving the point loss.

“I wish to know why you spoke the words you did to Mr. Malfoy, Mr. Potter,” Severus said, and kept his voice calm and controlled.

From the way the boy blinked, he hadn’t anticipated that. But he said only, “To get him to leave me alone, sir.”

Severus paused. Then he said, “There are less painful things you could have said.”

“Not if I wanted him to leave me alone, sir.”

Severus might have nodded in agreement if this was anyone else. Draco, unfortunately, had none of his father’s subtlety, or knowledge that sometimes one needed to retreat and pick a battle at a different time and place. He would probably strike at Potter as hard as he could if Potter did not strike back first.

Not that Severus could condone what Potter had done. He said, “If you say such words again, you will have a detention with me. Trust me, Mr. Potter, you do not want that.”

The boy’s eyes seemed to focus on him for a moment, instead of staring into whatever blank distance they had before. Then he nodded. “Yes, sir. I won’t say such words again.”

Severus frowned. That sounded much less like agreement than it would have from another student.

He needed to understand, so he pressed. “You should know that you will not receive such support as my colleagues have promised you in my class. You do not need your wand to do well in Potions for the first three years. I expect you to make an effort whether or not you are sick.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And I do not care what your father has told you. Pranks are not tolerated in my classroom.”

“Yes, sir.”

“If you attempt to sabotage another student’s cauldron, Slytherin or Gryffindor, out of jealousy, then you will receive that detention I have promised you.”

“Yes, sir.”

What will get through to him? Severus had expected some response, at least, even if it was just Potter rolling his eyes or acting bored or scowling rather than firing up in defense of his father. But he stood there and responded like he was a homunculus someone had forgotten to spell with a Human-Like Charm.

“Get to lunch, Mr. Potter.”

“Yes, sir.”

The boy turned around and walked away without looking back. Severus stared at his back and wondered if that was really what ten years of life with Petunia Dursley would do to a child. There was a sort of churning sickness in his stomach.

But, on the other hand, Albus certainly hadn’t said that anything was amiss with the boy. Perhaps he was simply the kind of spoiled hothead that his twin was, but without anyone to indulge him in acting like that for the ten years he had spent in his Muggle world, so it had twisted around and spiraled down into him.

Yes, that’s it, Severus decided as he made his own way to lunch. He’s acting like this in the hopes that someone will start asking questions and coddling him and giving him whatever he wants.

Severus half-sneered as he sat down and asked Minerva to pass the potatoes. The sooner the boy learned that the world didn’t coddle people, the better.

*

“All right, Mr. Potter. Feet spread apart, right underneath your shoulders. Arms loose. Breathing regular.”

Harry did his best to copy Professor McGonagall’s instructions, letting his breathing get as calm as possible. He lifted the ebony wand in his right hand and waited for her to nod to him. She had shown him the wand movements and the incantation already.

“Commuto!”

The spell did nothing. It was mere words leaving his lips. And there was nothing down the wand, not a spark.

Professor McGonagall glanced at him. “All right, Mr. Potter. What did you feel when you cast that spell?”

Blank despair rose up inside Harry for a second, making him feel like a sheet of parchment scrubbed clean. He almost wished he could be, that he could get rid of his memories of the Dursleys and his fear of Lily and James and his bloody disease and just be someone who had never existed before, the person they all wanted and needed.

But he couldn’t, and he knew it would be a bad idea to lie to Professor McGonagall. He shook his head and whispered, “Nothing, Professor.”

“Not unexpected for a first try. Try again. Concentrate on the image of the beetle that you want the button to become.”

Harry nodded, and aimed his wand again, trying to overcome his fears that the ebony would forever remain a piece of dead wood in his hand, that he would always be a freak even here.

“Commuto!”

Even though it would. Even though he was.

*

“Ah, Mr. P-Potter. You s-suggested that you n-needed extra lessons because your wand is not working properly for you?”

“Not so much the wand as my magical channels, sir,” Harry said as politely as he could. He had a pounding headache. The smell of garlic that filled Quirrell’s classroom went straight into his head and seemed to linger there. It was weird, because he hadn’t ever had an allergic to garlic when he lived with the Dursleys.

On the other hand, he’d never been around this much at one time. Neither Uncle Vernon nor Dudley really liked garlic that much, anyway, so he didn’t make a lot of food with it.

“Yes. You have King Canute’s D-Disease, I b-believe?”

Harry blinked once. “I didn’t know it had a formal name, sir. Mr. Ollivander said it was rare, so I thought—”

“It is b-becoming m-more common, Mr. P-Potter.” Quirrell crossed the classroom with surprising speed and plucked what looked like a thick book from the shelf. It was dark brown and had red lettering on the spine that Harry couldn’t read. “D-do you know who King C-Canute was?”

Harry shook his head. The name sounded a little familiar, but not enough to be going on with.

“He was an early British monarch.” Quirrell put the book down on the desk in front of Harry and traced his finger over the page he had opened it to. Harry leaned closer. It was a crude illustration of a man with a crown on his head and several others standing on the edge of a beach with waves curling in. “King Canute, to il-illustrate his hu-humility, showed his p-people that he had no c-control over the waves on the shore. It has become s-somewhat changed in the way that magical p-people relate to it, of course. For someone with King Canute’s D-Disease, it means that they have no c-control over something that should be el-elemental to a wizard.”

Harry buried his bitterness. At least having a name for his sickness would make it easier to look up in the library. “Yes, sir.”

“You w-will need more wand lessons in D-Defense, I think you are saying?”

“Yes, sir. Only if you want to give them, of course,” Harry added hastily, because asking Quirrell for extra lessons felt worse, for some reason, than it did when he’d asked Professor McGonagall or Professor Flitwick. “I know it’s going to take a long time. My wand doesn’t respond to me at all.”

Quirrell looked up from the page of the book that he was still staring at and gave Harry an intense look. “Not at all, Mr. Potter?”

“No, sir.”

“Then, ex-excuse me, Mr. Potter, but how did you b-bond with it?”

“There’s no bond, sir. The only thing that could be done was for Mr. Ollivander to find the wand core and the wood that reacted to me a little and make a wand out of those.” Harry tried not to resent the length of dead wood stuck up his sleeve. It wasn’t the wand’s fault, after all. It was just the way reality was. He was sick, and he had to work to overcome the sickness.

Quirrell leaned slowly backwards. “That is not the usual p-presentation of King Canute’s D-Disease, Mr. Potter. Usually it would simply give a slowness in working with the wand, not a complete lack of bond with it.”

Harry met his eyes evenly, ignoring the way that it felt as if his headache increased. “I know, sir. But my parents seem convinced that I’m not a Squib.”

“Not a Squib, no. But do you have King Canute’s D-Disease at all?”

“I don’t see what else it could be, sir.”

Quirrell went on looking at him as if he was the Potions professor and Harry was something he intended to pickle for an experiment. Then he waved a hand. “You may b-borrow the book, Mr. P-Potter. Perhaps it will give you some insight into your condition.”

Harry doubted it, but it was at least a book that meant he wouldn’t have to find a tome about King Canute’s Disease in the library. So he said, “Yes, sir,” and scooped up the thing to place in the bag over his shoulder.

“And I have t-time for the extra D-Defense lessons at six-o’clock this evening, Mr. Potter, if you are interested.”

Harry doubted they would have any more effect than the Transfiguration and Charms lessons had, so far. But he formed his face into a grateful smile. He was getting pretty good at those after practicing them for an entire month this summer. “Yes, sir,” he said, and slipped out of the classroom.

*

Potions on Friday looked like it was shaping up to be a disaster the moment Harry walked in.

Slytherins and Gryffindors sat on opposite sides of the classroom, scowling at each other. And everyone was paired up, at least among the Gryffindors: Felix and Ron, Finnigan and Thomas, Granger and Neville, Brown and Patil. Inevitable, since there were nine people in his year, that someone had to be left out and he would be that one, but Harry couldn’t hold back a sigh as he went to set up his cauldron on an empty table.

Someone’s cauldron crashed down next to him. Harry looked up at him and scowled when he saw Nott.

“Get out of here,” he hissed under his breath as he set out his ingredients and kept an eye on Snape pacing slowly back and forth in front of the classroom.

“There are nine first-year Slytherins, too,” Nott said softly. “And Professor Snape will make us pair up, anyway. He thinks three working together are going to cheat.”

“We could work alone!”

“I don’t want to.”

Harry would have snarled something at Nott, but Professor Snape began to speak then, and Harry turned back towards the front. He thought he saw Nott smirk from the corner of his eye. Harry didn’t hex him, or even try, but he wanted to.

“You are here to learn the subtle science and exact art of potions making…”

The speech was a good one, which probably meant that Snape recycled it from year to year. Harry maintained a complete blank expression on his own face. He could see from the corner of his eye that Granger looked excited, Felix a little bored, Ron cautious.

Malfoy was smirking about something, but he stopped that as he caught Harry’s eye.

“Potter! The younger! What would I get if I combined powdered root of asphodel with an infusion of wormwood?”

Felix blinked once, then straightened his spine. Harry wondered if he should be trying to send his brother subtle encouragement or not. He decided that he wouldn’t, because he had no idea whether Felix knew the answer or not.

“The Draught of Living Death, sir,” Felix said, voice and eyes steady.

Harry experienced a moment of surprise before he wanted to sigh at himself. Felix remembered everything he’d ever read. Of course he would know the answer to questions like that.

Snape narrowed his eyes a little, and Harry wondered if he knew that about Felix’s memory, too, or if he’d even been told about it. Then he spun around to face Harry. Harry straightened as much as he could.

“Potter the older! Explain to me what a bezoar is and where you would find it if I asked you to look for it.”

“It’s a stone from the stomach of a goat, sir,” Harry said. “You can use it to treat a lot of poisons.” In reality, he only knew that because he’d seen the word in one of the history books Lily and James had told him to read, got curious about what it was, and gone to look it up. But why did it matter how he knew? Find out and survive, that was the important thing.

Snape definitely looked disappointed now, and turned away to question Neville about plants. Harry went back to arranging his ingredients.

“Impressive.”

Harry didn’t pay attention to Nott’s words. He wanted something, or he wanted to make some trouble for Harry. That was what pretty much everyone who had approached Harry in the first week aside from Ron, Felix, and Neville was like. Nott, admittedly, probably wouldn’t be like the giggling Hufflepuff girls who had asked if Harry could introduce them to Felix.

Harry half-smiled at the memory, and Nott leaned forwards. “Something funny? Can you tell me?”

Harry just shook his head, and looked up at the instructions Snape had made appear on the board. They were going to be working on a Boil Cure Potion, evidently. He turned towards the storage cupboards.

“Let me do that,” Nott murmured. “It’s less likely that someone will try to ruin the ingredients or jostle another Slytherin, and you can watch the cauldrons and make sure no one flings anything into them.”

Harry let Nott go with a shrug. The division of labor made sense to him, he supposed.

Even though he distantly wondered how in the world Nott thought Harry would be able to prevent someone from throwing something into their cauldrons without using a wand.

*

Theo checked the dried nettles over carefully as he made his way back to the table he was sharing with Potter—the interesting one. Yes, there were half again as many as they needed, in case someone did manage to sabotage the ingredients or they ended up rendering some of these unusable.

Theo put them down on the table and nodded to Potter. Potter nodded back and considered the fire under the cauldrons, which Professor Snape must have lit, for a moment before glancing at Theo.

“Did anyone try to jostle you or sabotage the ingredients?”

Theo smiled. “No.”

He hoped Potter would smile back, in acknowledgment of his cleverness, but more and more, it seemed that the responsive, powerful Potter on the train might never have existed. He nodded and studied the instructions before beginning to crush the snake fangs.

Theo worked slowly, spending as much time on observation of his partner as he did on the ingredients. This was a simple potion, one he had prepared for the first time when he was eight. He didn’t need to pay much attention to know what needed to be done.

Potter returned constantly to the instructions. He deferred to Theo when Theo suggested something. He didn’t answer any questions aloud, just nodding or shaking his head.

And he didn’t even make a motion for his wand during the class, as many of the magically-raised students did, as Theo had to prevent himself from doing, whether it was to adjust the temperature of the fire or float the ingredients into the cauldron.

Theo frowned to himself as he stirred the crushed snake fangs into his own cauldron. It didn’t make sense that Potter would be afraid of Theo or Professor Snape, even if he was afraid of his own parents. He would probably tell Theo off the way he had Malfoy if Theo annoyed him. And Professor Snape wasn’t his Head of House or someone his parents would particularly believe if he complained about Potter.

Yes, he can assign detentions or take points, but so can any professor. And I can’t believe Potter is this way with all of them.

“Have you made any progress on using your wand?” Theo asked, making sure to keep his voice low so that the clatter of cauldrons and Weasley and Potter’s brother arguing over whether their snake fangs were correctly crushed would cover it.

Potter’s head jerked a little towards Theo. Then he shook his head again and checked the instructions.

My fault for asking a question that can be answered by yes or no. Theo acknowledged it with a slight grimace and said calmly, “Let me phrase that another way. What’s the hardest thing about using your wand?”

“All the people who bother me about it.”

Theo had to smile. “Oh? I would have supposed taking remedial lessons is the hardest.”

Potter didn’t respond, but checked the instructions again and carefully lifted his cauldron off the fire before adding the porcupine quills.

“I really doubt it doesn’t bother you, to take remedial lessons,” Theo said, still keeping his voice pitched low, but now making it casually inquiring, innocent only to someone who wasn’t listening hard.

There was a sharp snap of magic around Potter for a second, and Theo blinked dazzled eyes. That had been like—tame lightning, as if it was curled up invisibly around Potter’s shoulders, and had flashed into existence for a second.

“It does, doesn’t it?” Theo pursued. He felt a touch of exasperation that he had to press this hard to get a basic conversation going, but he was bored to death with his roommates—all except Blaise—and the basic classes and spells and homework, and he still wanted someone who might understand. “You think—”

“I’m sure it was pretty hard to grow up with a Death Eater father, too.”

Theo paused, remembering now how he had seen Potter take Malfoy apart that day. But Theo wasn’t Malfoy, to lose his temper because of words. “Yes,” he acknowledged calmly. “Because he had political enemies, and they were always trying to find some way of taking me away from him. They succeeded finally, as I told you.”

“And you don’t think that maybe they were right and he did abuse you?” Potter kept his voice low, too, but Theo had what he’d wanted, all that attention focused on him. Potter was leaning forwards enough to press his stomach hard against the edge of the table, but he didn’t appear to be paying any attention to that. “He would have kept you away from most people, right, because they weren’t good enough for him. That kind of thing can stunt someone’s growth. And he probably didn’t see anything wrong with killing and torturing people—”

Theo felt his temper cresting. “Watch it, Potter.”

“Back off, Nott.”

And perhaps Theo even would have, now that he thought about it, but Potter turned around and hopped up on his stool, which was so bizarre that Theo shut up and blinked at him.

*

Harry had a splitting headache, worse than he’d ever had in Quirrell’s classroom, and could only suppose he was allergic to some ingredient in the potions, too.

Weak, pathetic little Potter. Can’t use his wand, gets attacked by animals, gets abused by Muggles, is allergic to everything at his magic school—

Now white stars and speckles were starting to fill his vision. Harry had no idea what was going on, but he hated the way that Nott’s words seemed to dig into him and pull at his bones and pry at all his secrets and—

From the corner of his eye, he saw a gout of potion leap out of Neville’s cauldron.

Harry leaped up on his stool without even thinking about it. Snape had been growling dire warnings as he swooped about the classroom, although he’d kept away from Harry and Nott, apparently because he wanted to just ignore any Gryffindors working with his Slytherins. One of those warnings had been about how much the potion could hurt if you got soaked with it.

Of course, once he was actually on top of the stool, Harry had to realize that no one else had apparently noticed Neville’s potion spilling. Nott was staring at him. So was Felix, craning his neck. Someone who sounded like Parkinson giggled. Malfoy outright laughed.

Snape spun towards him, looking as close as he probably ever came to smiling. “Potter, get down this instant! Ten points from—”

Then another, probably bigger gout of potion leaped from Neville’s cauldron, and this time, everyone saw it, and the smoke that followed it. It soaked the floor and the legs of the table and poor Neville, who groaned as boils started popping up all over his skin. Harry grimaced in sympathy and ignored the way Nott was still staring at him. After all, hopping up on the stool had been the right thing to do. The potion swept by right where Harry would have been standing, although it stopped short of Nott’s feet.

“Stupid boy!” Snape was descending on Neville, and he was berating him with all sorts of words about porcupine quills and fire, but what Harry thought, as he watched the potion seething, was that he felt better. His headache was gone, and so were the white speckles in his vision.

Huh. Maybe he’d been allergic to the fumes that Neville’s botched potion was putting out, then, instead of any one ingredient. Harry climbed down on Nott’s side of the table and retrieved his cauldron to finish the final steps.

“How did you know that you would be in danger from the potion?” Nott whispered to Harry as they put together small vials of their potion for Snape to mark.

Harry shrugged. “I didn’t know for sure. But I saw the potion react the first time—”

“The first time?”

“A gout of it came out of the cauldron before the one that soaked Neville. Just because you didn’t see it…”

Nott looked as if he wanted to argue, but he had been facing the wrong way, and Harry had only seen it from the corner of his eye. He ignored Nott as he handed his vial to Snape, who glared at him, and began packing up his cauldron. He would have to clean it without magic later, but then, a lot of people would have to. If anyone in their year knew the Vanishing Spell yet, Harry would be pretty surprised.

“Come with me to the library, Potter.”

Harry peered at Nott as they walked out the door. “Why?”

“It’s hard to study in the Slytherin common room, what with Malfoy constantly bragging. I was thinking it would be quieter to study in the library.”

Harry snorted. “I couldn’t help you, Nott. I’m struggling with the essays as it is, and I can’t help you practice magic.”

“You could,” Nott hissed, unexpectedly quiet and unexpectedly vicious. “If you would admit the gift you have, which is not a bloody disease!”

Then he turned and stormed in the other direction. Harry stared after him as he joined Zabini and stalked towards the Great Hall. Harry shook his head a little. Nott must not know much about King Canute’s Disease.

“Hey, Harry. Everything okay?”

Harry glanced up with the little smile that had become automatic when Felix asked him something. “Yeah. I just partnered up with Nott in Potions because there were an odd number of both Houses, and now he’s angry at me because he might not get a perfect mark.”

It was so easy to lie, Harry thought. He had never practiced it that much at the Dursleys’, because they never believed him anyway, no matter what he said. But he had known it would be necessary at the Potters’, and now he was pretty good. People’s assumptions practically made up half the story for him.

“Huh.” Felix scowled at Nott’s back. “Yeah, sounds like a Slytherin. Come on, let’s go back to the common room. Ron said that he knows this trick with a deck of Exploding Snap cards that…”

Harry walked beside his brother and listened and made noises in the appropriate places. He really wasn’t left out as much as he’d feared in Gryffindor, he thought. Felix always tried to make him feel included. And when he was watching people play chess or joining in a game of Exploding Snap, he could forget that he was weak and sick and had to lie all the time.

Weak and sick and lying and allergic.

Harry added another thing to look up to his mental tally, besides more information on King Canute’s Disease, wandlore, the history of the war with Voldemort, and all the topics their professors had assigned for homework. If he could find some commonality between garlic and one of the ingredients in the potion today, then maybe he could understand his headaches and the white speckles in his vision.

The last thing he wanted was to faint in either Potions or Defense. He put up with the rest of his weaknesses because he had to, but this, he thought he could probably do something about.

Chapter Text

“Good. Concentrate on your b-breathing for a m-moment more, Mr. P-Potter.”

Harry did his best. He had spent the entire first lesson with Quirrell doing nothing but breathing, and he’d been worried the second one would go the same way. But it seemed that they were finally going to be moving onto something else. He stood there with his eyes closed, ignoring his headache from the garlic, and breathed.

“Very g-good. Open y-your eyes.”

Harry did. Quirrell was standing a short distance from him, bending down as though peering into Harry’s eyes would tell him something about King Canute’s Disease. Harry stood still and let him do it.

“You feel nothing from your wand?” Quirrell whispered.

Harry shook his ebony wand out of his sleeve holster. He held it up and tried to concentrate on the wood and the core the way that he had on his breathing. He buried his despair at the dull feeling and shook his head. “No, sir.”

“Try mine.” Quirrell held out a wand that looked a little like the holly that made up Felix’s wand, although it probably wasn’t the same wood. Harry knew he wasn’t an expert on wand woods or—anything, really.

He picked it up obediently and waved it around a little when Quirrell gestured for him to. Nothing happened, not the least ripple of warmth or spark. “No, sir.” He held it out, and Quirrell plucked it from his hand.

“C-curious, most c-curious.” The professor folded his hands behind his back and paced back and forth in front of Harry for a minute. “I know that you h-have read the book on King Canute’s D-Disease, Mr. Potter.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And what did it say about students who take a while to bond with their wands?”

Harry swallowed. He’d been afraid of this ever since he had read that section of the book and begun to wonder if King Canute’s Disease was what he had after all. “It said that such students usually feel some kind of warmth or draw,” he whispered. “It said that usually their wand wood or their core is right for them, but not both, and even if one of them is swapped, the wand doesn’t work exactly right. They need to get used to forcing their magic through whatever doesn’t work, the wood or the core, and depend on the strength of the thing that does work for them.”

But neither his wand wood nor his core really worked for Harry. His magic was totally wandless. He was dreading what that meant, what Quirrell would say now about whether he had King Canute’s Disease. What if Harry didn’t, but some kind of untreatable sickness? What if he was a Squib?

“Why do you k-keep trying to b-bond with your wand, in that case?”

Quirrell only sounded curious. Harry told himself that the professor probably didn’t care that much about Harry’s progress in lessons or why he couldn’t be a normal wizard, and that helped. Harry didn’t want other people peering and muttering at him. “I don’t have any choice. My parents told me about wizards and witches with wandless magic.”

“What d-did they say, Mr. P-Potter?”

“That people who can’t use wands are childish and immature. I don’t want to be childish, sir. I want to catch up to my peers and be a normal wizard.” And that was true now as it had never been when Harry was with the Dursleys. He couldn’t fit in there.

Here, he could. And while part of him would have liked to stand out and be special and perceived as special, he knew it wouldn’t happen, especially compared to Felix. Harry didn’t have Felix’s fame, or instinctive command of wanded magic, or eidetic memory. That meant being normal was as much as he could hope for.

Quirrell said nothing for a long moment. Harry glanced up at him. For some reason, the professor was sitting there with his face like a mask.

“Sir?”

Quirrell blinked, and the mask disappeared. “J-just thinking, Mr. Potter,” he said with a small smile, which Harry doubted, but let go. “Sh-show me something you can do with w-wandless magic.”

Harry eyed Quirrell cautiously as he tucked his wand back into its holster. He didn’t especially want to show off with wandless magic, in case Quirrell carried a report back to Dumbledore or his parents.

On the other hand, he could do small things with wandless magic, too, like making Malfoy’s wand slip out of his hand. Or lighting someone’s robes on fire.

Yes, that should do. Lighting something on fire was something a first-year could do with a wand, at least if they concentrated hard enough. It wouldn’t look strange or like something Quirrell had to run away and report.

Harry focused on the corner of his robes where they lay on the floor. He’d sent out the pulse of magic before he could wonder if maybe it was the best idea to just glare at it. Maybe he should have gestured with his hand or something, maybe that would seem more normal, but he had no idea what Quirrell would think of as normal—

The corner of his robes lit with a whoosh of flame bigger than Harry had meant it to be. But even as he thought that, the flames sank a little, and the heat became more comfortable. Harry tilted his head. He thought he could keep this burning without burning through the robes at all.

Quirrell caught his breath. Harry glanced up. “Sir?”

“I d-do not think it is the whole r-reason why you cannot use a w-and, Mr. Potter,” Quirrell said, his eyes fixed on the flames. “Unless this is the only thing you c-can do?” He glanced up at Harry.

Harry shook his head, perplexed. Quirrell looked as though he didn’t know what to say. Harry wondered, wearily, what bad news an adult would have for him this time.

But Quirrell settled back in his chair, a small smile playing around his lips, as if he thought that Harry was an important audience or something. “I believe you may be an elementalist, Mr. Potter.”

“A what, sir?”

“It means that you can wield the forces of the four elements. Air, fire, earth, and water.” Quirrell glanced pointedly at the small fire still burning on the corner of Harry’s robes. “You’re controlling it right now so that it doesn’t burn all the way through the cloth, aren’t you?”

“Yes, sir.” Harry noted absently that apparently Quirrell’s stammer disappeared when he was excited about something.

“Yes,” Quirrell repeated, and his fingers tapped together. “We have spells that mimic the effects, of course. Any wizard or witch with a decent level of power can use Aguamenti to conjure water, can use Incendio to begin a fire, can summon a wind with Ventus, and so on.”

And I don’t have a decent level of power.

“But that still requires a wand incantation and a wand movement. And it is fairly standardized. For example, the spray of water conjured by Aguamenti is always the same size. A different spell is needed to summon more. A fire lit by Incendio is as hot as an ordinary hearth or campfire, not hot enough to consume bone.” Quirrell gave him a sly smile. “Whereas you, Mr. Potter, can make your fire burn as hot as you desire, unless I am mistaken?”

Harry’s heart was pounding so hard he was dizzy. If this was true, it was the first good news he’d heard about the magical world since he’d realized he would have a bed. He extended his hand and concentrated for a moment.

The flames leaped up, roaring, and floated off his robe. The robe looked singed, but nothing more than that. The fire swayed back and forth, burning on air, not touching anything else, not needing any fuel. When Harry gestured, a gust of wind blew out of nowhere and spun it back and forth like an ornament on a string.

Harry stared at it, and shivered.

Then he looked at Quirrell. “If that’s true, sir, does it mean that using elemental power is all I’ll ever be able to do?” He suspected it wasn’t, since he’d managed to tug the wand out of Malfoy’s hand and press Nott against the seat on the train, but even those could have been wind or something.

Quirrell chuckled. “Indeed not, Mr. Potter. That is the reason I do not believe that your elemental powers are the sole reason you are not able to use a wand, although they are part of it—your affinity for the elements is so strong that it is partially blocking your ability to use normal spells. So, for example…you have been working on elementary Transfigurations in Minerva’s class, I imagine?”

“The others have, sir.”

Quirrell waved a hand. “You will surpass them soon enough, Mr. Potter.”

This time, Harry’s dizziness came from joy.

“But it does mean that—well, if you think of each person’s magic as a series of segmented boxes, rather like the boxes in which Ollivander keeps his wand woods, ha, you can envision each person having a certain amount of each kind of talent. So one person’s box of Charms is overflowing, Minerva’s Transfiguration talent box is oversized, some people have a huge segment of their Defense spell box devoted to shield spells and almost nothing at all to countercurses. Can you picture this?”

“Yes, sir.”

“You have four large boxes in your soul, then. One for each of the four elements. But I believe that you likely have boxes corresponding to talents in ‘ordinary’ categories of magic like Charms and Transfiguration as well. It is simply that they do not have, ah, shall we say, compartments in the same size as ordinary spells. I believe that you will eventually be able to conjure a Lumos, but there is no saying that it will be exactly the same intensity or size as the Lumos Charms that others are creating. Likewise, you might Transfigure a matchstick to a needle, but take longer than others, or have a needle with a unique pattern on it or a unique eye size. It is hard to say without actually seeing your powers in action.”

Harry hesitated.

“Yes, Mr. Potter?”

“I—I don’t know if my parents will be very happy with this, sir. They already tell me a lot that my wandless magic is childish and immature. It might reassure them a little to know that some of that is because of my elemental powers, but…”

“You are not childish or immature, Mr. Potter.” Quirrell leaned forwards, and his face had subtly altered. He looked like a hunting cat, Harry thought, a little alarmed. “You have gifts. And the ability to do most, if not all, things that a practitioner of wanded magic can do, simply in different ways. Would you feel contempt for someone who could fly without a broom, simply because they are not using a broom to do it?” For some reason, he chuckled after that last sentence.

Harry looked up at him with wide eyes. That was exactly the sort of thing that he had been hoping to hear from someone. Well, maybe he had heard it a little from Nott.

And right after hearing Quirrell say it, suspicion rolled through Harry like oil.

Why was Quirrell complimenting him? Did he think it would win him some kind of political advantage with the Potters? Maybe it would if he was just saying Harry was good at wanded magic or he was complimenting Felix. But like this, Harry couldn’t see what Quirrell was getting out of it.

“Why, Mr. Potter. It appears that you are suddenly guarded again. Why is that?”

Quirrell’s voice definitely had a mocking edge to it. Harry fixed his eyes on the man and said flatly, “Compliments aren’t free, sir. I know that Professor McGonagall and Professor Flitwick are helping me because they pity me and think it’s their duty. But why are you telling me this and helping me?”

Quirrell stared at him in silence for some time. Harry stared back, not moving. His headache was worse, but so what? It wasn’t like the smell of garlic fumes in the classroom had dissipated, either.

Quirrell finally began to laugh, quietly. “You are beyond interesting, Mr. Potter,” he murmured. “You know, I thought I saw something strange the night of the Sorting.”

“Oh?”

Harry’s shoulders hurt with how stiff they were, but Quirrell just nodded with an amiable smile that was almost like the smile he gave to students in class. “Yes. The Sorting Hat took a long time to place you in a House, of course. But it didn’t react the way it usually does when sitting on the head of someone who takes some minutes to Sort. Miss Granger, for example. It appeared to be struggling. Trying to say something and being prevented. I wonder who could have done that?”

“I have no idea, sir.”

“I wonder what the Sorting Hat would have said if it hadn’t been prevented?”

“I have no idea, sir.”

Harry’s hands were clenched together behind his back, and his palms were slippery with sweat. His fingers hurt with how hard they were folded, but he didn’t care. Of course, he was in Gryffindor now, but if Quirrell told Felix or his parents about Harry almost being Sorted somewhere else…

Harry didn’t think they would hate him. He wasn’t that dramatic. And they weren’t the Dursleys. But they would look at him with disappointed eyes, and he had enough disappointment in his life.

“I think you do,” Quirrell said, very quietly, with a little smile on the edge of mean. “But I can be reasonable, Mr. Potter. I will keep your secrets for you if you agree to do something for me.”

“What, sir?” Sharp thoughts flashed through. Harry’s mind, and he waited to see what Quirrell would say. But he was also thinking about how fast he could probably make human skin burn if he had to.

“You will continue to work with Minerva and Filius on the lessons that are most likely going to be useless to you,” Quirrell said. He leaned back and examined his nails for a second. Harry’s fury boiled inside him, but he didn’t move. “You will pretend to be having trouble in their classes, even though I believe that you could grasp the spells with a little more concentration and your acceptance that your wand is simply useless. And you will keep coming to our lessons.”

“You want me to be weak, then. I can do that, sir.”

“In public, of course.” Quirrell gave him another smile, meaner and bigger than the last one. “In private, I want to see you demonstrating your elemental powers, and working towards recreating the spell effects of first year with wandless magic.”

“And…what will you get out of that, sir?”

“Is training a powerful young protégé not enough, in your opinion?”

“For you? I don’t think so, sir.”

Quirrell threw his head back and laughed. Harry watched him. There was—an odd edge to the laughter. It was almost as if someone was laughing along with him, mixing his amusement with Quirrell’s until they both came out strangling each other.

“You are right,” Quirrell said, shaking his head as he looked back at Harry. “But for now, I think you must allow me to keep this to myself. I certainly do enjoy knowing that people like your parents and Albus and my dear colleagues do not recognize the prodigy that they have in their midst. That they are focusing all their energy on the wrong twin.”

Harry’s breath caught. Something ached under his breastbone.

And then he told himself, violently, that this was wrong. Quirrell was manipulating him. Using Harry’s longing to be out of Felix’s shadow against him.

Even if Harry was able to tell everyone about his elemental powers and wandless magic someday, he would never be out of Felix’s shadow. Harry didn’t have Felix’s fame or his memory. His parents would probably still see wandless magic as childish no matter what Harry was able to do with it. And he couldn’t be famous if he wanted to, because that much scrutiny would uncover his Parseltongue.

“You are such an unusual child, Mr. Potter.” Quirrell sounded beyond amused now. “I can only think of one other I would have met who would not have lapped up such praise immediately.”

“Theo Nott, right?”

Quirrell’s eyebrows rose. “He is interesting, yes. Have you had dealings with him?”

“He told me wandless magic was a gift and I should stop hiding it.” Harry was still struggling between his desire to believe what Quirrell said and his conviction that Quirrell had said it to get some sort of political in with the Potters.

“I am afraid that I must require you to hide it for now, but I am curious why you immediately disbelieved Mr. Nott?”

Harry shot him an incredulous glance. “With King Canute’s Disease and all the people around me using wands? Did you know that Felix has never had a burst of accidental magic in his life? He could immediately use our parents’ wands from the time he was really little.” Harry was sure that information was public, so he didn’t mind saying it. “I didn’t want to be—I don’t know, an accidental, confused little kid! I want to be normal.”

“When your twin is powerful, and I must imagine you envy him for growing up in the magical world?”

“I know I can never be as powerful as he is. I know that if I start growing out of his shadow, most people are going to see it as me trying to compete with him or being jealous. So I have to stay in the shadows, but I want to be normal for it if I have to. At least normal levels of power.”

“Believe me, Mr. Potter, you will be far beyond normal.”

“A freak, is that what you’re saying?”

Quirrell’s hands came together in a sharp clap. Harry leaped, and gestured for his fire, still burning on air, to charge Quirrell before he thought about it. He barely managed to pull it to a stop a few inches away from the professor’s face.

“You will have to get over that reaction,” Quirrell said softly. “It is a weakness. An interesting one, like everything about you, but a weakness.”

Harry clenched his fist, and his fire vanished. “You still haven’t made it clear why you’re interested in helping me.”

“And I have said—”

“If you don’t give me at least a reason, I’m going to walk out this door, go straight to Dumbledore, and tell him everything you said.”

The slight widening of Quirrell’s eyes was his only reaction. “And you believe that you could get through me?”

“I believe,” Harry said, “that I could distract you.” And he glanced at the books on the shelves around Quirrell, and flicked his fingers. Small flames appeared behind each spine, turning in place.

There was a long pause that felt as if Harry was standing on the edge of a field of shattered glass, and then Quirrell gave his strangled laugh again. Harry watched him, trembling from the power of the magic pouring through him, but still willing to use it.

“Mr. Potter, you are remarkable,” Quirrell said, and wiped something that might have been tears away from his eyes. “Let me say that you remind me of—myself. Someone forced to conceal his strengths from everyone around him. Someone f-forced to play the p-poor, st-stuttering M-Muggle Studies and then D-Defense Professor. It will be interesting to train you, and believe me, I am beyond bored at this job.”

Harry weighed that. Of course he knew it wasn’t the whole truth, but it did sound like Quirrell wasn’t prepared to hurt him in the ways that he’d been worried about.

“If you try to hurt me,” Harry said quietly, and made the flames vanish, “I’ll try as hard as I can to kill you. I don’t know if I could, but I think I could cripple you.”

Quirrell’s smile twisted. “That I know, Mr. Potter. I have no intention of being either killed or crippled, and no intention of hurting you at all. These lessons surely could be enjoyable for both of us, no? Interesting and intriguing for me, and a chance to show your real self, for you.”

Harry studied him some more. He supposed that Quirrell was right, to an extent, and it would be no worse than other things he had endured since he had been here. Maybe better.

He nodded, and they both worked out the schedule that would allow them to continue working together on Harry’s wandless magic in private. Quirrell also told Harry about a few places he could go in the school to practice that should be private.

“And one thing, Mr. Potter,” Quirrell added as Harry opened the door. “I will make an exception to the secrecy I demanded. You might consider taking Mr. Nott into your confidence. It sounds like he already suspects something might be off about your magic, and it is better to choose how your secrets reveal themselves than to be forced into it.”

Harry left without answering. He didn’t trust Nott enough for that.

*

Theo paused when he came around a corner of the Transfiguration shelves and saw the interesting Potter sitting by himself at a table.

Theo hadn’t tried as hard as he could have with Potter after their first Potions class, although they had remained partners. If someone could go so far as to deny the bloody obvious, the way Potter had with his wandless magic, Theo had to wonder how smart they were in other areas of life, and whether they would be a good associate for him.

But Potter had remained interesting. He trailed after the other Gryffindors and laughed when they laughed and listened to them, but it was clear he didn’t fit in with them. He spent a lot of time by himself. He avoided animals at all costs, something that Theo wanted to know the truth about even if he thought it likely that would frustrate him.

And now, he was by himself without trailing after another Gryffindor like a duckling for the first time that Theo could remember.

He took a chance, and sat down at Potter’s table.

Potter glanced up at him, and Theo didn’t miss the stir of flame around the corners of his glasses for a moment. Real, actual flame. Theo forgot what he’d been about to say, and stared.

“What do you want, Nott?” Potter sounded wary, but contained. Not the way he had spat at Draco during their few interactions that Theo had witnessed.

“I wanted to talk to you about studying, but it seems you’ve been doing some on your own,” Theo whispered. He wondered if Potter had found books about wandless magic in the library, and if Theo might convince Potter to lend them to him.

Potter nodded slowly. “I have. You were—you were partially right about my wandless magic.”

Theo smiled, delighted down to the core of his bones. It was partially happiness that he was right, partially just the thrill of going to school with someone who could have a skill as legendary as this. “What part wasn’t I right about?”

Potter extended his hand, and the fire moving around his glasses shot down and glided into his palm, forming a dancing flame there that touched nothing.

“You’re an elementalist.”

“Yes.” Potter glanced sideways at him as he waved his fingers and made the flames vanish. “Why do you sound like I just hit you?”

“I—it’s rare. Rarer than wizards and witches with King Canute’s Disease or who establish some measure of control over their wandless magic. What kinds of elements can you command?”

Potter stared at him unblinkingly. Theo stared back in the same way. Yes, he knew he was asking for a trust that Potter might not have extended to anyone else yet. He still wanted to know.

And hell, he had trusted Potter with the truth about the Figgs. That secret was a lot more damaging.

Either Potter had remembered that, or he decided for reasons of his own that he could tell Theo, because he said quietly, “All four.”

Theo felt winded again. Elementalists most often connected with fire or water, then wind or earth, then either fire or water and one of the other elements. To be in the presence of someone who could wield all four…

Potter, he realized abruptly, was blushing, the red crawling all over his face and making it as red as Weasley’s got on a regular basis from Draco’s taunting. Potter looked away and muttered, “Stop looking at me like that.”

Theo grinned a little. He’d never had anyone he could tease before, but he decided to try it out. “Like what? Like you’re powerful?”

“Like you—you’re gaping.”

“Because you’re powerful.”

Potter flushed harder still and scowled.

Theo leaned his elbow on the table. “At least now you know that you aren’t abnormal or whatever it was that you were worried about. You can tell your brother and your parents that you can use the elements, and—”

“They were the ones who said that I was childish because my magic was wandless. Do you think they’ll accept this?”

Theo paused. His mind had gone back to Father and what he would say if he’d found out that Theo had command of all four elements. But, of course, Theo was being an idiot if he thought everyone would react that way.

Still…

“I know that your parents and the Potter-Who-Lived have political ambitions,” Theo said carefully. “I can’t say I know the nuances. But they need powerful allies. They’d be thrilled that you’re powerful, wouldn’t they? It wouldn’t matter so much what form it took, would it?”

“I don’t know.” Potter yanked viciously at his books. “And I don’t want to ask them and find out, in case they…”

“In case they what?”

Potter stared at Theo, and the fire swirled up higher and harder. Theo remained as calm as he could. He really didn’t think Potter would hurt him. Not really. It would be out of character. Theo sat there and tried to look open.

“In case they send me back to the Muggles.”

Theo opened his mouth to laugh, and then closed it again. That would be the worst thing he could do, he was certain, and would ruin any chance he had of making friends with Potter.

But he could say things. “Are you insane? Why would they do that?”

Potter paused. Theo waited. He had no idea what Potter would say next, and he had no idea why he wanted to hear it so much, but he waited.

*

He won’t tell. He doesn’t have any reason to tell. He’s not friendly with my parents or Felix or Dumbledore, and if he tells Malfoy’s dad or something about it, they’d probably have figured it out anyway.

And, well, one thing Quirrell had said was true. Harry did want to tell someone. And Nott at least seemed like he knew how to keep secrets.

“They wanted me to do something important and political by tying the Muggle world to the magical one,” Harry muttered, leaning a little forwards. Nott copied him. Harry wished he knew any privacy charms, but he didn’t. Low voices in a lonely corner of the library would have to do. “But I didn’t turn out the way they wanted. No wand magic, and not as friendly as they wanted, and jumping at loud noises. I know that they’re already worried about the fact that I’m not as powerful as they wanted, because it seems like people here don’t listen to anyone who’s not magically powerful, and that means people won’t listen to me about the Muggle world being all right. If it comes out that I’m an elementalist or that I might never be able to use a wand, what will happen? Maybe they’d be so disappointed that they’d just send me straight back to the Muggle world.”

“Every sane magical parent—”

“Do you know a lot of those?”

“My father.”

Part of Harry burned with envy. Even if Mr. Nott was a Death Eater, if he loved Nott for what he was and not what he wanted him to be, he would count as a pretty good parent, in Harry’s book.

“I don’t think they would send you back.”

“You didn’t see how disappointed they were when I failed to bond with a wand,” Harry said flatly. “I can’t take the chance.”

“But what are you going to do?” Nott settled back in his seat and looked more intrigued with the question than Harry thought it really deserved. “Sooner or later, they’ll expect you to catch up with the rest of us in Charms and Transfiguration and Defense, and when our third year comes, you’ll have other classes you might need to use a wand in, too.”

Harry wanted to say that the person who had told him he was an elementalist had thought he might be able to access other kinds of magic eventually, but that would mean he was admitting he hadn’t discovered the truth on his own. Harry didn’t need yet another person staring at him with pity.

And besides, a simply brilliant solution came to him just then. One that would give him more of a choice about what to do in the future and not just leave him blindly dependent on Quirrell’s advice or his parents’ good will.

Harry smiled, and Nott raised his eyebrows. “Yes?”

“I think I might know a way around the problem of looking like I have to use a wand,” Harry said, and didn’t answer when Nott pestered him with more questions. But Nott didn’t seem irritated when he got up to walk away from the table. In fact, he gave Harry a smile like the kind that Dudley used to share with Piers. Harry supposed Nott probably liked that he knew about the elementalist secret.

And, Harry had to admit, it was the longest and nicest conversation he’d had with anyone except Felix since school started. That had to count for something.

*

Okay. I’m ready.

Harry took a slow step back from the wall of the abandoned classroom Quirell had told him about and stared down at his useless ebony wand. He wondered if it would always be useless, but he’d pretty much accepted Quirrell’s words that it would be. He’d kept working at the exercises with McGonagall and Flitwick, but there was never a twitch or a spark. Flitwick seemed as cheerful as ever, but Harry knew from the way Professor McGonagall’s lips pursed that she was getting worried.

So. There was really only one choice if he wanted to make sure that his parents wouldn’t give him back to the Dursleys, and if he wanted to keep his elementalist powers secret, and if he wanted to look like he was catching up normally, not just whenever he mastered the other kind of wandless magic Quirrell thought he had.

Harry lifted his wand. After the drills with Flitwick, he had incantations and wand movements down pat, even though he’d never managed a charm. “Lumos!”

As he spoke, Harry conjured a bit of fire and floated it carefully into the air, aiming it more towards the tip of his wand.

The fire lingered on the tip of his wand, and didn’t burn it, because Harry was willing it not to. It also looked almost like a Lumos light would, almost the same intensity and brightness. Harry carefully altered a few things about it so that it looked even more like that, and then slowly, slowly, nodded.

He would have to be careful. He would have to get used to conjuring the effects he wanted instantly, and making them look more like the spells they were supposed to mimic. He would have to come up with some solution for Transfiguration, where his elementalist powers would help less. And he would have to make sure that he always performed the right wand movement and spell first, which, after his private sessions with Quirrell, would probably be the hardest thing of all.

But Harry could disguise his elementalist powers and make himself look like a normal wizard. He could ease the worried tone that was always in Lily and James’s letters whenever they wrote to him. He could make Felix smile at him and play chess or go flying with him instead of offering only to practice spells with Harry all the time.

He could keep his secret.

Harry moved his useless wand and let go of his will, and the fake Lumos faded. Harry took a deep breath. Sometimes he thought he would collapse beneath the weight of the secrets he was carrying. His Parseltongue, his abusive childhood, his weird magic, his private lessons with Quirrell, that the hat had wanted to put him in Slytherin. Maybe a friendship with a Slytherin, too, if that worked out.

But at least he knew that as long as he could keep them, he had choices.

Chapter Text

“And now, Mr. Potter. Let’s see you.”

Professor Flitwick had a very special voice when he was talking to Harry, Felix had noticed. It was softer and he turned as if he wanted to shield Harry from the rest of the class. Felix watched his brother worriedly as he drew his wand. Harry really hadn’t made much headway in the last four weeks.

But now, Harry looked at Professor Flitwick and said, loudly, “Lumos!” at the same time as he flicked his wand.

Ron gasped next to Felix as the tip of the wand lit up. Felix stared at his brother, feeling his heart pound wildly. It was working! Harry had finally bonded with his wand!

“Excellent, Mr. Potter!” Professor Flitwick hopped up and down in place, clapping his hands, more excited than Felix had ever seen him. “Oh, well done! Take ten points for Gryffindor!”

“Excuse me, Professor Flitwick,” Granger said in a loud voice. Felix grimaced a little. He knew Granger was smart, and he knew she probably hadn’t had many friends in Muggle primary with the way she acted, but she was still annoying. “Why does he get so many points?” It was more points than Granger had earned this week, Felix knew.

The Ravenclaws rustled in the corner of the classroom as if agreeing with her, but Professor Flitwick just beamed at Granger. “It’s taken him a long time, Miss Granger, but he managed it! Look at the way his charm is glowing!” And he gestured to the end of Harry’s wand, which was blazing with a light as brilliant as fire.

“I didn’t know he could do that,” Granger said, folding her arms. “He didn’t do that last class, sir.”

“And that’s precisely the reason why it’s worth celebrating now,” Professor Flitwick said, with a firm nod. Although he was always polite. Felix sometimes got the impression that Granger got on the professor’s nerves, too. “Continue practicing, Mr. Potter! Try to catch up to the other charms the class had tried.”

“Yes, sir.”

Harry sat back down. He was next to Neville, who gave him a timid smile and whispered something Felix couldn’t make out. Harry nodded back and replied, but Ron started talking then, so Felix missed what he said.

“You were right, mate. He just needed a little time to adjust.”

“Yeah.”

Felix said it absently, eyes fixed on Harry. He must have been practicing a lot by himself. Come to think of it, Harry hadn’t been around the Gryffindor common room much in the evenings for the last week or so. Of course, some of those evenings, he had remedial sessions with the professors, but not every day. Did he go off and practice on his own?

Felix wanted to tell his brother that he didn’t have to do that, that he could always practice in front of Felix if he wanted to.

Well, he would. Right after class.

*

“Congratulations, Harry! Did you start getting the spells last night?”

It was odd, having his yearmates pay this much attention to him, Harry thought. Well, sometimes he got that kind of attention from Nott, but not from most other people. The other Gryffindors surrounded him in a cluster as they left Charms, though. Patil and Brown were whispering, Finnigan clapped him on the back, Neville was still smiling, Ron grinned at him and mouthed something Harry didn’t catch, Thomas lingered near the back and looked as if he wanted to come up, and Granger had her arms folded and was huffing again.

But of course, they all fell silent when Felix said what he said.

Harry smiled at him. “Thanks. Yeah, I did.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I wanted it to be a surprise.”

“Okay, but you can always tell me, you know that, right?”

Harry nodded and smiled some more. Of course he knew he couldn’t. He was lying to everyone right now, creating the supposed Lumos Charm that had appeared at the end of his wand with his fire magic. But did it really matter? Felix no longer looked worried, and the only person who seemed unhappy with him was Granger.

“But how did you get it?” Granger burst out. “I was tutoring you, and you didn’t tell me you got it!”

Harry held back his snort. Granger had offered her help with a lot of things, but it was mostly essays. And even the one or two times they’d sat down so she could help him with spells, she tended to get distracted by someone doing something against the rules in the common room and start scolding them. “I also had tutoring from the professors, Granger,” Harry said politely. “I think it finally paid off.”

“Professor Flitwick gave you a lot of points!”

“It’s not every day that someone stops needing remedial Charms tutoring. I’m sure that he’ll give you more next time.”

That seemed to be all Granger had needed to hear, because her expression cleared up and she headed off to lunch. Thomas took the chance to come up to Harry and murmur, “Your Lumos was pretty strong today. You must have practiced a lot.”

“Yeah.” And Harry had practiced, although it was at making the fire look more like light and hover near the tip of his wand than anything else.

“Do you think we could work together in Charms on Friday?”

Harry blinked, then smiled tentatively at Thomas. It was the first time that someone had offered to work with him other than offering to tutor him. He and Neville sat next to each other most of the time because everyone else had more or less pushed them together. “Sure, all right.”

“You can sit by me, too, Harry,” said Finnigan quickly.

“Thomas asked first.”

“Call me Dean.”

Something inside Harry relaxed. Maybe he would never fit as well into Gryffindor as Felix did, but Felix was beaming at him, and the others seemed friendlier now that they knew Harry wouldn’t be costing them points in class or be embarrassing because he couldn’t get something. He could have people who liked to be around him.

Maybe friends?

Harry was a little doubtful about that. Friends seemed a step too far. But as he walked into the Great Hall among a chattering, laughing group of Gryffindors, he thought it might come to that in the end.

*

“Congratulations.”

Despite what seemed to be Potter’s newfound popularity in Gryffindor House, it still wasn’t much trouble to catch him alone in the library. Theo watched Potter stiffen for a second before he turned away from the history shelves and nodded to Theo. He had a thick book in one hand that Theo didn’t recognize.

“Thanks, Nott.”

“Tell me how you did it?”

Potter watched him for a second in a way that reminded Theo of a wild animal. Then he relaxed, or apparently relaxed, and gave Theo a wide, happy smile. “It was nothing more than practice. That’s what the book on King Canute’s Disease said would do it. I practiced until I got it.” He shrugged a little.

“Bollocks.”

Potter’s eyes widened. Then he said softly, “Whatever you think you know, Nott, you should keep your mouth shut.”

“Of course I know. And I’m willing to keep it it quiet. But I just wonder what you’re going to do in Transfiguration? And if you’re ever going to tell your parents and brother the truth?”

Potter was still. Theo wasn’t bothered by that, though, not when he was like that himself a lot. He waited, and Potter finally snapped his teeth and said, “Not that it matters, but no, I’m not.”

“Why not? You don’t want them to respect you for what you can do?”

“I don’t care about respect, Nott. I care about survival and staying in the magical world.”

Theo blinked. Well, that explained a lot of things he had wondered about Potter. “I know you do. But you can go beyond that. Once you get your parents used to the idea that you’re capable of magic, just not the kind they thought you were—”

“Oh, and you’re such an expert on a good relationship with parents, are you, Nott?”

Theo swallowed his blinding anger, which he knew would give him a headache if he let it go on too much longer. “My father has never treated me like either your Muggle relatives or your parents treated you, Potter.”

Potter regarded him with brilliant green eyes, and then inclined his head slowly. “All right.”

“And my father would tell me to show off my magic if he knew that I had the gifts you have,” Theo said, his voice still a little rough with anger. “What happens if you keep pretending you’re just a wizard with King Canute’s Disease? Who’s happy?”

“Lily and James and Felix, because they think I’ve recovered and I’m a normal wizard.”

“But not you, I notice you’re not saying.”

“I don’t actually know what it would take to make me happy.”

“That’s—pretty sad, Potter.”

Potter shrugged and shoved past Theo, heading for the table in the library they had been sitting at when he told Theo about his elemental magic. Theo followed him and sat down across from him. “What are you going to do about Transfiguration?”

“I haven’t decided yet.”

Potter seemed to be absorbed in his history book, so Theo took out his Herbology essay. He sighed a little as he wrote it. He enjoyed the practical side of Herbology, and Sprout was a fair enough professor, not unduly taking points away from people or granting them just for someone she liked existing in her vicinity. But he didn’t see the point of writing essays that the professors could probably predict with their eyes shut.

And all on the same subject, too. Wouldn’t they get bored reading them?

Theo never wanted to be a professor.

“What do you know about the Imperius Curse?”

Theo glanced up carefully. Potter had turned to look at him, and the way he was looking didn’t tell Theo a thing about what he already knew.

Theo decided to answer honestly anyway, because he was coming to the conclusion that he wouldn’t learn much from Potter unless he took some risks. “I know that it can control someone’s will and it’s supposed to feel like the most pleasant sensation you’ve ever experienced, while someone whispers instructions in your ear. I know that certain people in the last war claimed to be under it.”

“Claimed.”

“That’s what I said, Potter.”

“One of them being your father.”

Theo smiled, and knew it was in no way a pleasant expression. Unlike almost everyone else he’d shown it to, Potter didn’t back away. He just tilted his head.

That impressed Theo enough to answer, “Yes, that’s what he said.”

“But you know the Imperius Curse doesn’t really work like that. Someone can’t just command someone to do so many complex tasks of the kinds a Death Eater would have to perform. They’d have to stand right next to them and keep holding it. Or they’d have to give them one command and then let them go after they’d finished that. Even someone as powerful as Voldemort.”

Theo hated the way he flinched at the Dark Lord’s name, but he calmed down as much as he could and took a deep breath. “If you know that much, Potter, then I’m surprised that you’re bothering to ask me.”

“I know what the books told me. But I’ve also noticed that some of them contradict each other.” Potter shrugged and leaned back in his chair. “Especially when they start talking about the way Felix defeated Voldemort.”

Theo was ready for it this time, or sort of, and only flinched a little. “I don’t think anyone really knows what happened that night, except perhaps the Dark Lord.”

“Too bad he’s not around so we can ask him.”

Theo choked on his own spit. He stared at Potter, who looked back at him with glittering eyes. Theo chuckled without meaning to.

“What are you laughing at?”

“Just wondering how you’ve managed to keep your cover around the Gryffindors,” Theo said, and made sure his voice showed his honest admiration. “How many times do you have to stop yourself from saying what you really think? How many times do you roll your eyes when they do something stupid?”

“They’re not always stupid. Granger’s plenty smart.”

“Not what I meant, and you know it, Potter. They’re not like us. They talk about childish things, and fight about childish things, and they’d be horrified if they knew you were even contemplating talking to a Death Eater’s son about the Imperius Curse, or saying it’s a shame we can’t ask the Dark Lord a question.”

“You don’t think I can ever be childish, Nott?”

“I know you can if you think it’d be useful. Otherwise? Give me some credit, Potter.”

*

Harry honestly didn’t know how he would react to that until he smiled.

In some ways, it was—it was refreshing to have someone like Nott that he could talk about these things to. He thought Nott was wrong about how every single person in Gryffindor would react to talking about the Imperius Curse. Some of the older ones, like Percy Weasley, would probably think it was interesting or at least lecture him about it instead of refusing to discuss it.

But he also knew what Nott meant. Harry had to watch every step he made, every word he said, in Gryffindor. He didn’t want people to think he was too weak, or too strong. They couldn’t think he was abused, or it would hurt the Potters’ long-term political goals for integrating with the Muggle world. He had to hide his elemental magic and his Parseltongue. He had to make sure that people saw him smiling and playing Exploding Snap and not reading about things that might be questionable, at least not when the whole book was just about that. He could read histories of the war all he wanted.

There was nothing to watch around Nott, because he already knew two big secrets about Harry, and he didn’t seem to care if Harry said the “wrong” things or smiled too coldly or speculated about things that weren’t true. Harry leaned a little back in his chair. “Yes, all right. I’m not—much like the other Gryffindors.”

“You should have let the Hat put you into Slytherin like it wanted.”

Harry rolled his eyes, even as he tensed. But he really thought one of them would have noticed if someone was standing close enough to hear that. “And had a miserable life with my parents suspecting me of evil tendencies and Dumbledore probably calling me into his office for a talk. Yeah, that would have been a great idea.”

“What about your brother?”

“I don’t know how Felix would have reacted. I don’t—feel like I know him well enough yet.”

“But you don’t want to lose him. Because he can run interference with you for your parents?”

“Not just that, you berk.” Harry thought about reaching across the table to shove Nott’s shoulder, but they weren’t close enough for him to chance it. “Because he’s my brother, and he was nice over the summer, and he can’t help it that he’s famous.”

Nott managed to put more skepticism into an eyebrow raise than Harry had known existed. “All right. And when the moment comes that you can’t conceal who you are from him any longer?”

“Then I’ll have to hope that we’re close enough that he’ll overlook it.”

Nott nodded, looking thoughtful. “Well, it’s your game, and I suppose that you have less ridiculous motivations for playing it than I thought you did.”

“What about you, Nott? Why are you so intent on following me around and partnering with me in Potions?”

“You’re the only slightly interesting person here besides Blaise Zabini. I expected to be bored at Hogwarts, but not this bored. It would be better if I could write to my father, but.” Nott shook his head.

“What? Why can’t you write to him?”

“Because the Figgs have a spell on me that monitors my post. They have lots of spells on me.”

Harry stared at Nott, appalled. He had acknowledged that the possibilities of people hurting you were worse with magic; he’d thought about what the Potters could do to him compared with the Dursleys. But he hadn’t known for sure it was happening to Nott. The bruise had made him think the Figgs hurt Nott that way.

“What other kinds of spells?”

Nott stared steadily at him for a long moment, then pushed up his left sleeve. Harry leaned closer. There was a bruise on Nott’s arm, a dark one that looked almost exactly the same as the last one Harry had seen.

“Are they coming here and abusing you?” Harry demanded softly, and a curl of flame came to life near his shoulders.

Nott’s eyes widened and darted back and forth between the flame and Harry’s face. “No,” he said softly. “They—they have a spell on me that renews the bruises whenever they start to heal. Along with the spell that brings all my post to them, and one that scorches my tongue whenever I say something critical about them or Muggles.”

“So your tongue is scorching right now?”

“Yes.”

Harry felt as though someone had filled him with boiling water. This was terrible. It didn’t matter that the Potters and Dumbledore might not know about this. The Figgs were still doing it, and that made them terrible people.

Nott had the courage to talk badly about them anyway, and seek Harry out, and poke and prod him for secrets. He was braver than Harry.

Harry took a deep breath and made a promise to himself. He was going to get Nott out of his situation. He was going to get him home to his father. His father couldn’t be a good person if he’d been a Death Eater and got out of being punished by claiming the Imperius Curse, but he wasn’t going to hurt Nott. Making things better for one person was all Harry thought he could probably do.

And, well, he’d made things better for himself already, hadn’t he? He had made the Potters and Felix and Dumbledore think he was normal. That meant they probably wouldn’t send him back to the Dursleys or despair of him and pull him out of Hogwarts.

He could try to help someone who understood him better than most people, who had some of his secrets and hadn’t betrayed them, and who was suffering some of the same things Harry had.

“I’m sorry, Nott,” Harry said quietly.

Nott sat up and stared at him. Harry waited. He thought he knew what Nott was looking for. Pity, or something like it. Harry would have been upset by pity, so he understood where Nott was coming from.

Harry just looked back at him, and understood.

Nott finally gave him a thin smile and nodded. “And, by the way? My name is Theo.”

Harry half-smiled. “Mine’s Harry.”

*

“You have not told me what your plan for Transfiguration is yet. You cannot use elemental magic to transform one object into another.”

Harry sagged against the back wall of Quirrell’s classroom, panting. Quirrell had just run Harry through a hard drill where he’d summoned fire and water and wind and made the stones in the floor of the classroom shift around. It had proven that Harry’s weakest element was earth, at least according to Quirrell. And it had made Harry’s stomach throb with what felt like a combination of pain and hunger.

He didn’t know if he was close to magical exhaustion, which some of the books had described, but it felt like it.

Quirrell was still waiting for an answer, staring at him with that cold, direct gaze he used whenever they were alone. Harry straightened up and managed to answer without his voice shaking. “I’m going to use illusions, sir.”

Quirrell’s eyebrows shot up. He smiled, but it wasn’t a nice one. “Accepting that you have other kinds of wandless magic beyond the elemental kind, Mr. Potter?”

Harry nodded.

“Show me.”

Harry half-closed his eyes and pictured the bruise he had seen on Theo’s arm, which was seared into his memory. Then he pulled up his left sleeve and turned his arm to show the bruise he’d imprinted there with magic to Quirrell.

Quirrell stood up and paced towards him. Harry coiled his magic around him and kept it humming just under his skin. He would strike if Quirrell tried to cast a spell on him or did anything else. Quirrell seemed to be teaching him because he was bored, just like Theo. But he wasn’t honest about his own secrets, the way Theo was.

Quirrell poked at the bruise. Harry jumped. Quirrell drew back with a faint sneer on his face.

“The jump would convince someone the bruise is real and you feel pain,” he said. “But it doesn’t feel any different from your skin. How are you going to make a matchstick feel like a needle, Mr. Potter? The moment Professor McGonagall picks it up, she would know that it is not the real thing.”

Harry licked his lips. He had hoped illusions would work well enough. “I don’t know, sir,” he said stonily.

Quirrell stepped back and considered him for a moment. “It may be that you don’t have the talent to get yourself out of remedial Transfiguration lessons this year, Mr. Potter.”

“Maybe not,” Harry agreed. Lily and James had written back to him sounding overjoyed about his performance in Charms, and in Defense, where he could use little blasts of wind to imitate Tripping Jinxes and the like. But if illusions weren’t going to be enough, he didn’t know what he would do about Transfiguration.

Quirrell rocked back on his heels and studied him. “I expected it to bother you more, Potter,” he said softly. “Have you no pride?”

Harry didn’t see what pride someone could have when they were struggling to survive, but he didn’t say that. Quirrell didn’t know about the Dursleys, or not more than the things he might have been able to pick up here and there. There was no reason to tell him.

“You have to learn to have bigger goals,” Quirrell said abruptly, in what Harry had privately decided to call his “lecture-voice.” He lectured all the time in class, but the stuttering made it hard to listen to there, and a lot of the time in private, he just gave Harry instructions. “You have to learn to think beyond the immediate day’s needs.”

“Why, sir?” Harry asked quietly. “I might have elemental powers and not King Canute’s Disease, and other kinds of magic, but why do I need to think ambitiously?”

Quirrell paused. His smile came and went. Then he said, “What do you think is the end purpose of these lessons, Potter?”

“To keep you from being bored, sir. And to have a secret that you can hold over other people’s heads.”

Quirrell’s eyes widened as he stared at him. Harry stared back, and kept his magic coiled. He could still burn Quirrell’s books if he tried to hurt Harry. Harry was getting pretty good with fire and conjuring more than a little coil of it.

Then Quirrell threw back his head and laughed. Harry lasted through it, although the sound was cold and unpleasant and made him feel as if his skin was coated with a thin layer of slime.

“That is the truth, Mr. Potter,” Quirrell agreed at last, as he finished chuckling. “But I also am interested in seeing what you will become, when you leave behind some of the clinging beliefs that make you weaker than you are.”

Harry watched him and said nothing. He didn’t know if Quirrell meant he wanted Harry to act more Slytherin, the way Theo did, or if it was something else. Sometimes Harry thought he would never understand the world he lived in now. His parents had abandoned him, Dumbledore wanted him not to tell anyone about the abuse, he had Parseltongue so sharp that other animals hated him but he couldn’t tell anybody, and the people who knew the most secrets about him were someone his parents would hate him being friends with and an insane teacher.

“You have given into the idea that your power must be used solely to defend yourself,” Quirrell said. “Who told you that?”

“No one, sir.”

“Then why do you behave that way?”

“I’m already lying to people. I’m lying to people about my elemental magic and how much I belong in Gryffindor. If I—I don’t know, try to be famous like my brother or something, then people are going to start paying enough attention to me to uncover my secrets.”

“There is a middle ground, Mr. Potter, between what your brother has and what you could have. You could become an accomplished dueler or an Auror or a magical theory researcher. Have you thought about what you might like to do after Hogwarts?”

Harry stared at Quirrell. The thought hadn’t so much as crossed his mind. Not really when he was living with the Dursleys, either, and didn’t know magic was real. He wanted to survive, that was all. And have a place where he could get enough to eat and have a bed he could sleep in and wasn’t mistreated. Then, when he found one, he knew what the Potters planned for him and assumed he would have to go along with it. What he “might like to do” hadn’t entered his head.

What did it matter what he did when he was seventeen or after, if he had to spend all his days in misery until then?

“You have not.” Quirrell was close to glaring at him. “Mr. Potter, I insist that you start thinking about it.”

“Am I allowed to think about how to make sure that I survive first? Sir.”

“Of course.” Quirrell stepped away and turned his back, and Harry felt the odd tottering sensation he often had when the professor did that. Harry was braced for what felt like a fight, and then Quirrell just—dropped it. “But I hope that you don’t intend to be another of the boring children who never think beyond Quidditch and their childish friendships and rivalries from school.”

What friendship? Harry nearly said, but that wasn’t true anymore. He felt like he had a friendship with Theo, even though it felt like a fragile one. And he had one with Felix, even if it was based on secrets and lies. And maybe Neville, too, and Granger wasn’t so bad as long as Harry let her tutor him. Neither was Ron if Harry wanted to play endless games of chess.

Rivalries, though…Harry didn’t have any of those. Most people didn’t notice him enough for it. Now and then Malfoy glared at him because of what Harry had said when he’d taken the git’s wand, but he didn’t come close. And Quidditch was a little thing, too little to care about.

He half-shrugged and said, “All right, sir.”

“Good. You will write an essay for our session next week in which you discuss at least two roles that an elementalist wizard could play in our world.”

Harry grimaced, but nodded. Sometimes Professor McGonagall set him extra homework, too. At least this essay sounded a little more interesting than just Professor McGonagall’s usual, “Tell me what went wrong with this Transfiguration.”

“And, Mr. Potter?”

Harry turned back from the door. Quirrell was watching him with a strange smile, a quill twirling in his hand.

“You might consider what others would gain from an elementalist wizard being widely-known and developing the other forms of magic he commands. What favors they would gain from him, or conversely, why they feel that they should push him into developing his talents.”

Because you’re bored and weird?

But Harry had the sense not to say it. He just nodded agreeably and let the door fall softly shut behind him.

*

Theo scowled as their potion swirled a dusky red color, definitely not the way that a good Short Sleep Draught should look. And this was a simple, straightforward potion, too, one that he’d practiced plenty of times brewing with his father in the days before everything.

It’s this damn day.

Theo did his best to ignore the gossiping and whispering from Finnigan and Thomas at the table nearest his and Harry’s. They were talking about the sweets at the Halloween Feast and whether anyone would eat so much they would get sick. And whether the pumpkin juice would be sweeter than usual. And whether Filch would keep his promise to confiscate any of the decorations left hanging up the next morning.

Theo’s mind was full of memories, his mother’s bright smile and the way she had laughed a few minutes before she died. On Halloween. A year ago. The beginning of everything horrible in his life, given that he had been snatched from his father’s care right after that, on the suspicion that Father had murdered her.

All anyone else could think about was that it was a stupid, childish holiday with sweets and bats and pumpkins and the like. Or they thought about it as the day the Boy-Who-Lived had defeated the Dark Lord.

Does Harry think about it as the day his life turned horrible, too?

Theo glanced up. Harry was looking at him, his fingers steady as he stirred the rod through the potion and tried to coax it back to looking something like it should. His face was a little less closed than normal.

“Are you all right?” he whispered, one eye on Professor Snape, who was at the other end of the room berating Longbottom at the moment.

“It’s the day my mother died,” Theo said softly. He glanced at the potion and swore, then reached out and snatched up a chunk of glittering obsidian from the table, casting it into the cauldron. He noticed the way Harry tensed, but he didn’t move away. The color of the Short Sleep Draught inched a little back towards rose.

“I’m sorry.”

Theo nodded. He already felt as though someone was jabbing shards of glass through his throat, the way he always did when he confessed anything personal, and he wondered if Harry would try to use it against him.

But he seemed to be sincere about saying he felt sorry. And Theo carried secrets of Harry’s that were more damaging than this. Probably even some of the Gryffindors would just have felt awkward and muttered soft little things if Theo had told them the reason he hated Halloween.

Not that he intended to find out.

“What about you?” Theo asked as he threw a handful of rose petals into the potion and watched the color settle a little.

Harry blinked and shifted his weight. “What about me? Nothing horrible happened to me on Halloween night.”

“That was when you got attacked and—things changed.” Theo lowered his voice and glanced towards the side of the room where Harry’s brother was frowning down into his potion. He usually did well at following the instructions, as far as Theo could tell, but he seemed to mess up on the number of stirs and grinding his ingredients regularly. And Professor Snape criticized him no matter what happened.

“Huh.”

Theo turned back to Harry. Harry was looking at him with clear eyes.

“I never thought about it that way before,” he said. “I didn’t know the date that I got—left. I suppose that I don’t think about it much now, either. It’s just too new.”

“Mr. Potter.”

Harry didn’t leap, but it was a near thing. Theo thought he saw their cauldron rattle on its base before Harry turned around and glanced up at Professor Snape. “Yes, sir?”

Professor Snape curled his lip a little at Theo. Theo had the feeling that he’d rather sunk in the professor’s estimation ever since he’d decided to work with Harry. It didn’t matter much, though. Professor Snape was boring, too, in the predictable way he took points from Gryffindor and ignored Slytherin mistakes. “Why are you stirring in that pattern?”

“To try and make sure the rose petals blend smoothly with the water, sir.”

“To try and make sure the rose petals blend smoothly with the water,” Professor Snape said in a high, mocking voice. “The point of this stage is not to blend rose petals with water, Mr. Potter! It’s to create an acidic base that will dissolve the rose petals completely. Or did you think yourself too high and mighty to pay attention to the instructions?”

Harry blinked a little. Theo had never seen him folding so much of himself away before, but then, he’d never got Harry to talk to him like this in the middle of class, either. “Sorry, sir.”

“You didn’t answer my question, Mr. Potter. Do you think yourself too high and mighty to pay attention to the instructions? Or don’t you?”

Harry shook his head. “No, sir. Sorry, sir.” His voice was a monotone. He stood there looking at the table and his feet, and if he didn’t look ashamed of himself, Theo thought it was the next best thing to it. He would have put a lot of money on Harry not being ashamed, though. He just tried his best to keep his head down, literally, and get through Snape’s classes like he did with everyone else’s.

“Detention, I think,” Professor Snape said in a slow voice. “Tonight, at six-o’clock.”

Theo winced, despite his hatred for the holiday. He didn’t want Harry to miss the Halloween Feast, probably the first holiday he’d ever had, because those awful Muggles wouldn’t have wanted him to celebrate it.

But Harry just nodded as though it didn’t matter and said, “Yes, sir.”

Professor Snape scowled and stalked off. He never tormented Harry for long, Theo had noticed, probably because Harry didn’t give satisfying results. Professor Snape preferred the people who turned red, like Weasley, or snapped back, like Harry’s brother, or almost reached tears from how unfair everything was, like Granger.

“You don’t mind not going to the feast?” Theo asked under his breath as they went back to trying to salvage their potion.

Harry looked at him and blinked. “Not really. Why would I?”

“I thought—since you said it wasn’t a bad day for you, that you would want to celebrate.”

“I mean, I sort of do?” Harry dropped some more rose petals into the water and stirred it again. “But it’s not that big a deal, Theo.”

“It should be. He shouldn’t just be able to—”

“It’s not as big a deal as sleeping in a cupboard.”

Theo stared at him. Harry just nodded to him, which meant he had deliberately said that, not that Theo had suspected anything else. Harry didn’t let little details out like that accidentally.

It performed its purpose, anyway. It kept Theo from asking any more questions until the end of class, when Harry looked at him and said, “Well, you know where I’ll be. Where will you be, since you won’t be at the feast?”

“Probably on the Astronomy Tower, watching the stars,” Theo said quietly. His mother had loved Astronomy, and had been teaching him the stories of all the constellations when she—died.

Harry nodded to Theo. “Then I hope you have a peaceful evening.” He turned and began to pack up his Potions kit, answering some questions from the other Gryffindors with the kind of smile that only Theo ever seemed to realize was mechanical.

Theo slipped out of the classroom and walked back to the Slytherin common room. Blaise kept pace with him, darting glances at him until Theo asked, “What?”

“You seemed to be having an actual conversation with Potter back there.”

“He knows how to hold one, unlike a lot of people at this school.”

Blaise rolled his eyes. “Maybe you think that now, but what will you do when it turns out that he’s serving his parents’ agenda to try and remove certain Dark spells from existence? Certain Dark families from existence?”

Theo very carefully did not roll his eyes back. “That’s your mother’s paranoia speaking, Blaise, not yours. But even if that was true, wouldn’t you think it was worthwhile to try to turn someone away from that goal? To our side?”

Blaise looked disgruntled but said nothing else as they entered the common room. Theo looked around and saw more than one person turning to stare at him. They thought they were being subtle, but they looked exactly like the people who were forever gaping at Felix Potter.

Theo just shrugged at them and marched through the common room to dump an armful of books on the bed. He wanted to get to the Astronomy Tower sooner rather than later.

*

“I must admit that I am disappointed, Harry, my dear boy, and we must adjust our plans.”

“I’m sorry, Headmaster.”

Albus shook his head a little as he settled into place behind his desk. The boy sounded—defeated. That wasn’t the way Albus wanted him to sound. After hearing about the horror of a childhood he and the Potters had inflicted on Harry, however unwittingly, Albus had wished for him to have some happiness at Hogwarts. “It’s not your fault, Harry. I daresay that no one could have predicted the consequences of living in the Muggle world.”

“No, sir.”

“Many of the Muggleborns we have come from very happy homes, as I’m sure you know.”

“Yes, sir. The Dursleys are an anomaly.”

Albus smiled. It warmed his heart to know that Harry, as abused as he had been, could at least grasp the fact that his relatives were not emblematic of all Muggles. “Given that, I wonder if you would be—” He groped for a word for a moment. The weakness of Harry’s magic and his extremely meek nature meant Harry could not serve as a leader or Lord to attract people who would listen to him about the Muggle world. But Albus did not want to use the word “resigned,” given that Harry had never chosen that role in the first place. “Amenable, to talking about the goodness and inventiveness of Muggles a little more in your common room?” There must be a spark of courage in the boy, at least, or the Sorting Hat would never have chosen him for Gryffindor.

Harry blinked. “I can do that, sir. I don’t know if the others will really listen to me, though. And Hermione and Dean could probably tell them more than I could.”

Albus nodded slowly. He could see that. Miss Granger was already a powerful and outspoken champion of Muggleborn rights in her own way, insisting on being seen as equal to purebloods. And Mr. Thomas was close friends with Mr. Finnigan and someone who, if Albus was right, was already being drawn to Felix’s power in a way that might make Felix his Lord. “All right, Harry. Then what role do you see yourself playing in the war?”

Harry looked at the floor and fidgeted, a little. Perhaps he was more average than Albus had thought. “I don’t know, sir. I just—right now I’m still trying to get used to the magical world, you know? It’s hard to picture anything even a year from now.”

Albus swallowed. He had known that everyone would have to make sacrifices; he had known it when he started down this path. His main goal had been to prevent those sacrifices from being unwilling or done with eyes less than wide open. It was one thing to know what you were doing and embrace it, the way he and James and Lily had done. It was another to simply be a casualty of politics, the way Ariana had been.

But he’d had no choice but to make Harry and Felix sacrifices. They’d been from the moment Voldemort had known about the prophecy. He’d thought he would at least be able to give Harry a healthy and safe childhood at a distance from the fanaticism of the magical world regarding his brother, but even that hadn’t worked out.

Surely, given everything he had demanded from Harry, and given that Harry wasn’t a powerful Lord who would have to be handled carefully and folded into their plans because people would be unconsciously drawn to him in any case, he could let Harry go from their plans as much as possible? Only demand the bare minimum, the kind that would be demanded from anyone growing up in this time, and otherwise free him?

“Of course you are, Harry,” Albus whispered. “Of course you. But please do feel free to come to me or your parents with any questions. I hear that you’re doing much better in Charms and Defense. Still no progress in Transfiguration?”

Harry looked up and shook his head, dropping his eyes again a moment later. It caused Albus’s heart hurt to think what experiences might have made Harry so cautious about looking an adult man in the eye. “No, sir. Sorry. I can make something look like something else for a little while, but I can’t actually transform it.”

“Not to fear, Harry, the time will come.” Albus sat back with a small smile. “Now, I wouldn’t want you to miss the Halloween Feast!”

“Actually, sir, I will. I’ll be in detention with Professor Snape.”

Albus stared at him. Granted that he had paid much more attention to the way Severus interacted with Felix than with Harry, the words were still unexpected. Harry was so quiet that Albus couldn’t picture him snapping at Severus in defense of someone else, the kind of thing that earned Felix detention almost every week. “My dear boy, what happened?”

“I ruined my potion, sir.”

Albus nodded. It seemed that they really did need to let Harry free from their plans. If he could not command strong magic even in classes that didn’t require a wand, he would never draw any particular followers. “Of course. Well, do try to do better in the future, won’t you, Harry?”

“Yes, sir.”

Albus watched Harry trot out of his office, heart still filled with a light ache. The boy had suffered beyond almost anyone Albus had ever known.

But that suffering was in the past. What Albus could do was safeguard his future, by ensuring that he would never again have to undergo something like that without protection.

*

Harry shook his head as he stepped out past the gargoyle that guarded the staircase to the Headmaster’s office. He hadn’t lied to Professor Dumbledore, but he wasn’t going to volunteer to tell him about the elemental magic, either. He thought Professor Dumbledore would have tried to make him into a Lord or at least some kind of war-leader, and that was the last thing Harry wanted.

He wanted people to leave him alone. He wanted to prove—to himself, and to people who already knew about it, like Theo and Professor Quirrell—that he wasn’t as weak as other people thought he was. But he knew if he looked strong, even if people did believe that he was more famous than Felix or something, he would just have to be in the war.

He didn’t want to be anything. He wanted to live and be safe and have some nice things.

But he was weak, and at the moment, his body was proving it again. Harry was in a wide-open corridor, and there wasn’t even anything to be allergic to here, but his head was aching again. And the white speckles were swimming at the corners of his vision, the way they had in Potions. Harry grimaced and rubbed his eyes. What was he allergic to? The stones of the castle? He didn’t understand.

Something almost yanked him off his feet.

Harry spun around with a snarl, one hand flying up so that he could call fire against whoever was trying to prank him. But the corridor was empty. And when he felt the yank again, he realized that it came from the center of his chest, and seemed to be aiming him towards a staircase at the end of the corridor.

Harry grimaced and rubbed his chest. What weird thing was happening to him now?

The white speckles crowded around his vision until they almost blinded him. And then Harry could see something in the middle of them, as if he was looking at a blank piece of parchment and seeing a picture sketched on it.

It was Theo, lying motionless, with his chest caved in. Harry gagged. He could see the bright white edges of broken ribs through the blood.

The picture faded. His magic yanked on him again.

Harry swore under his breath and began to run. He would have to worry about whatever odd thing was happening later. Theo needed his help, or he was going to die.

*

Theo had ended up wandering out onto the grounds for a while to look up at the sky from there and think about his mother. He hadn’t wanted to visibly turn away from the stream of Slytherin students going to the Great Hall and head for the Astronomy Tower. Someone from another House might follow him and taunt him.

Sometimes it seemed as though the whole world except Mudbloods knew about the fact that Theo had been removed from his father’s care for suspected abuse.

He ended up turning around and beginning the climb once he was sure the feast had begun and no one notice his absence. He sneered a little to himself as he pictured Felix Potter in the middle of all that, laughing and eating sweets and not caring about anything else.

Father had thought of the boy who had defeated the Dark Lord as an enemy. Theo couldn’t. He was just so—careless. So small. So uninteresting.

Theo was on the second floor when he heard a crash from behind him, and smelled a scent so foul that his knees buckled for a second. He whirled around, snatching his wand out and aiming it back in the direction of the threat.

Father’s voice drifted through his head. When you smell a mountain troll, which you will know by its scent of goo and vomit, run.

What was a mountain troll doing in Hogwarts?

But it didn’t matter. He had to run. Theo turned around and ran.

*

Harry followed the pull down the stairs as fast as he could without actually tumbling down them. He’d reached the second floor when his nose crinkled from a foul smell and the magic yanked him sharply right.

It tried to make him keep going past the corner where the smell was coming from, but Harry was too cautious for that. He crouched low and edged to it, then peered cautiously around it and nearly screamed.

There was a huge creature with a tiny head and a club lumbering through the corridor. After a struggle, Harry remembered seeing an illustration like it in a book on the history of the war. Voldemort had convinced trolls to support him for a few battles. But they weren’t great allies because they were so stupid that they kept forgetting orders and wandering away.

Why was one in Hogwarts?

Harry shook off the thought as his magic yanked at him again. At least now he understood the picture he’d seen. A club like that could crush Theo’s chest if it hit him.

Of course, there was the question of why he’d seen the picture at all, and what kind of magic that was. The headache and the white speckles had dimmed, but the tugging was still there, though. So Harry would have to consider it later.

The troll turned its head up and down the corridor and stopped walking for a minute. Then it faced a door on the far side that Harry thought was a boys’ bathroom and ducked a little to get through it.

The tugging in the middle of Harry’s chest nearly pulled him off his feet again.

Harry ran after the troll.

*

Theo was cursing himself for his stupidity as he crouched behind one of the loos. He hadn’t thought he’d make it if he tried to get to the stairs, either going up or down; the troll could have seen him from a distance and thrown something at him that would have crushed him. So he’d chosen the first door he saw and assumed he would get out of sight, probably be able to hide behind a desk in an unused classroom.

Instead, he was in a bloody bathroom. And the loo wasn’t high enough to conceal him from even a troll’s weak eyes, although trying to hide beneath a sink would have been worse.

A huge shadow darkened the door. The troll was coming in.

Theo closed his eyes. His regret was fierce. There was so much that he’d wanted to do with his life. See Father again. Become an expert in Ancient Runes. Try to make sure that he had a position of power and no one would be able to hurt him again. Do so well in Transfiguration that he earned points from McGonagall herself. Have more conversations with Harry and try to figure him out.

His only chance now was to possibly duck beneath the sweep of the troll’s weapon or arm and then run out the door. Theo opened his eyes and watched for his chance, doing his best to isolate himself from the reality of his shaking hands and his own sharp panting.

*

The troll was in the bathroom. Harry skidded in behind it, never doubting that Theo was there too since the pull in his chest had brought him straight here, and set fire to the troll’s skin with a shout and a slash of his hand.

Well, he tried. The fire only sparked for a second before it stuttered to a stop. And Harry remembered abruptly that the book that had mentioned trolls had said how resistant they were to any kind of magic.

The troll turned around, more puzzled than angry it seemed, treading heavily on the stones.

Harry blocked up in front of it, eyes darting back and forth. Fire was really his best element. He couldn’t do anything with the stones of the floor, he couldn’t call a wind strong enough to knock the troll from its feet and there was no guarantee that would stop it anyway—

So it’ll have to be second best.

Harry took a deep breath and shouted, “Come to me!” as he shot his magic towards the loos and the sinks. Water blasted out at high speed, and Harry aimed the jets as hard as he could at the troll.

The troll staggered again, continuing to look puzzled as the water pinned it to the wall with pure force. That was what Harry had been hoping for. Trolls might be resistant to magic, they wouldn’t be resistant to just hitting them with something, even if the something was powered by magic.

Harry whipped his head around and caught sight of Theo crouching beside one of the loos, peering out. “Run!” Harry yelled, raising his voice over the splashing of the water. “I’m not sure how long I can hold it!”

Theo luckily believed him and ran hard for the door. Harry relaxed a little, until there was a yank in his chest and a silent scream in his mind.

Theo’s feet slipped on the water-soaked stone. He rolled over on his back, gasping with pain and clutching his side. And the troll managed to turn in such a way that the water wasn’t holding it anymore—or maybe Harry had got distracted by watching Theo’s accident and wasn’t trying hard enough—and grunted, raising its club high.

“No!” Harry shouted.

He clenched his hands, and his magic whipped around him and rose like a hurricane. The jets of water redoubled in force, concentrating all their strength on the troll’s face.

Harry was sweating, slumping against the wall as he focused fiercely. Theo pulled himself back to his feet, although he was hobbling and clutching his side, and darted out of the bathroom.

Harry narrowed his eyes. He had to make sure the troll wouldn’t immediately follow them.

He cracked his hand upwards. He wanted the water to slam the troll back into the wall and knock it unconscious, so he and Theo could get away and hide any trace that they’d had anything to do with this.

The water rose and roared, and Harry watched in relief as the troll’s head sagged back. There was a sharp crack, and it rolled down and to the side. Harry released his control of the water with a sigh. What was left slowed down to a splashing trickle right away, and a slowly spreading puddle formed under the sinks and next to the loos.

Harry glanced at the troll, and paused. Its chest wasn’t moving.

He swallowed and glanced over his shoulder, but he couldn’t hear anyone coming yet. Theo wasn’t shouting for him, either. Hopefully he’d got out of sight and could go back to the Slytherin common room and hide there.

Harry had to know, even though the tug in the middle of his chest and the voice in his head had both fallen still.

He walked a little closer to the troll, holding his breath against the smell, and crouched down to be sure. Yes. The troll’s face was bloated and swollen, and its eyes stared glassily up at the ceiling, and it wasn’t breathing at all.

He’d drowned it.

Harry knelt there staring, while a funny little feeling trickled through him. He had killed something. Someone. Were trolls someones? He had no idea. He only knew that he hadn’t meant to kill the troll, but he had.

Then he snapped himself out of it. He could think about it later and figure out what had happened and how he felt about it. Right now, he had to go. The adults were probably looking for this troll, and they’d want to ask him all sorts of questions if they found him here.

Harry left the bathroom, trying to make sure that his clothes weren’t too wet, already planning to blame his lateness to Snape’s detention and the wet clothes themselves on a prank someone had played on him. Then he paused. Because Theo hadn’t gone to the common room after all and was leaning against the wall near the top of the staircase to the first floor.

Theo stared at him. Harry stared back. He didn’t think Theo would betray his secret, but it was better to be cautious anyway.

“You saved my life,” Theo said, and performed an odd gesture, half-bowing with one hand extended towards Harry. “I owe it to you.”

Harry stiffened. He didn’t want—he didn’t want Theo to owe him anything. What they had already was more than enough.

But he would probably offend him if he said there wasn’t a debt. Theo seemed like one of the purebloods who were like that.

“Then I ask you to be my friend,” Harry said hurriedly. He thought he could hear shouting coming from near the bottom of the staircase. “And keep my secrets, including what happened tonight.”

Theo half-smiled and dropped his hand. Now he looked normal, Harry thought with relief. “Your secrets are mine.”

They hurried away, taking another staircase that Theo knew about which would get them past the shouting professors, and Harry explained his idea about the prank. Theo nodded and said he would go to Madam Pomfrey to tell her about his aching ribs, and blame it on the same prank, done by people they hadn’t seen.

Before they parted so that Theo could go to the infirmary and Harry could make his way to the dungeons, though, Theo reached out and grabbed Harry’s arm. Harry turned to face him.

Theo squeezed hard, once. Then he nodded and headed off.

Harry took a deep breath, wrung his shirt out once more, and wiped the stupid grin off his face. He’d have a lot of explaining to do if Snape saw it there.

It kept wanting to come back, though, all the way down to Snape’s classroom.

Chapter Text

“Why is your shirt wet, Potter?”

Severus glared at the little miscreant as Potter flinched and bowed his head. This Potter was quieter than his brother, but no less arrogant. He acted as though there was nothing he had to learn about brewing, and, given that Severus knew he had grown up in the Muggle world, that was hardly true. He spoke to Theodore Nott as though he was challenging him. He was weak and still had to take remedial lessons with Minerva but tried to hide it behind a pathetic show of strength and indifference.

Severus could have borne the boy a lot better if he had admitted to his weakness and that he wasn’t perfect. But such an admission, of course, was impossible for a Potter.

“I was on my way down from Professor Dumbledore’s office, and someone pranked me,” Potter whispered.

“Really. And you are sure that you were not the originator of that prank?”

“No, sir! I promise! They pranked Nott, too. Shoved him down the stairs at me and then cast some kind of water charm on both of us.”

“Some kind of water charm,” Severus said, for the pleasure of watching the boy flush a dull red. “Who were the perpetrators of this terrible prank, Mr. Potter?”

“I’m sorry, sir, I didn’t know. I didn’t see them.”

Severus rolled his eyes. At least the boy was smarter than to blame one of his Slytherins to the Slytherin Head of House, but Severus had seen how this Potter interacted with Malfoy. He probably would have done it if he was talking to someone other than Severus.

He said nothing about whether Potter had been the one to play the prank, though. If he had been, Mr. Nott was smart enough to see through any pretense, and the way he treated Potter the next day would confirm it for Severus. If he acted the same, then perhaps Potter’s story was true.

“You did not know about the troll?” Severus demanded as he unlocked his office and stepped inside, Potter following him.

“No, sir. There was a troll?”

Potter’s eyes were wide and his voice on the edge of nervousness. Severus snorted. His younger brother would have already been trying to find the troll so he could fight it. That this Potter hadn’t presumably meant he was a little smarter and therefore a little more tolerable.

“Was a troll being the appropriate word,” Severus murmured as he gestured Potter towards the stack of dirty cauldrons he was to scrub. “Someone killed it in a bathroom on the second floor.” Killed it with such violence that Severus would have suspected some of his own Slytherin students with Death Eater sympathies if he hadn’t known they were all ensconced at the feast and then in the common room or too young.

“Oh.”

Potter’s face had turned pale. Severus shook his head a little. A Gryffindor who isn’t interested in rushing off to do daring deeds? Will wonders never cease?

“Scrub those, boy. And make sure they’re gleaming by the time nine-o’clock comes, or I won’t release you even then.”

Severus expected some sort of protest about how Potter would miss dinner, but he only nodded and turned towards the first cauldron, studying the stains on the inside for a moment before reaching for the scrubbing brush and barrel of water standing ready. The barrel was charmed to fill with water endlessly so that Severus need not deal with refilling it or with students attempting to finish the chore early by wasting the water.

Potter didn’t look at Severus as he began scrubbing, running the brush under the rim of the cauldron with hard strokes and then reaching for the scoop that lay beside the barrel. Severus watched him for a minute or two. Potter gave no indication other than slightly tense shoulders that he knew this.

He knows how to scrub. I wonder—

But Severus rolled his eyes a moment later. He found it hard to believe that Petunia Evans would have been kind to the boy, but that she had apparently taught him to scrub didn’t speak of harsh treatment, only a kind of pragmatism that Severus imagined he would have used himself if he was saddled with someone else’s unwanted child.

By the time he began marking the essays that badly deserved his attention, he had almost forgotten the boy was there.

*

Blaise looked up when Theo made his way into their bedroom, his eyebrows rising as he looked at Theo’s wet shirt and the slight tear in it where the edge of a stone had caught it. At least Madam Pomfrey hadn’t had to tear it more in order to heal the bruise that had formed over his ribs.

“Prank,” Theo said shortly, and went to the bathroom to wash and then to the common room to eat some of the remnants of the feast that had been brought there. Part of him still would have liked to go up to the Astronomy Tower, but there was no way he was going to chance it now.

As he sat and ate a slightly stale pumpkin pasty, Theo let his mind turn, slowly, back to the events that had just happened. It felt as if a whirlwind had picked him up and deposited him in a new country, the events and memories were so blurred. But the last moments—the ones when he had reached out to Harry and Harry had accepted his friendship and asked nothing onerous of him—still blazed in his mind.

A friend. I have a friend.

It was the sort of thing Theo had hoped for without believing he would ever have in the exact same way other people did. A friend had to be someone who understood him, but there were few people who would really understand what it was to be a Death Eater’s son and not turn away from him. Or, in the last year, people who would see the Figgs’ abuse and not react with pity or uncomfortable silence.

Harry had accepted both. Harry was there. He was utterly committed to his own survival, yes, but to Theo’s survival as well.

He saved my life. He told me right away what the life-debt payment he wanted was, and he isn’t going to hold it over my head.

Theo didn’t even know what had surprised him most: that he was still alive, or that he wouldn’t suffer because of it.

And Harry’s magic. He had taken down the troll in a way that would never have occurred to Theo, and in a way that took less effort, in one way, than an adult wizard with wand magic would have had to use, no matter how much strength it took. The adult wizard would most likely have used Cutting Curses, and had to use multiple ones, given a troll’s thick skin and magic resistance. In the meantime, the troll would have been striking back, and could have killed someone. Harry had simply stepped around the problem and used his magic in a way that the troll’s abilities couldn’t protect it from.

Theo realized he was smiling, and Crabbe and Goyle, who sat in the chairs across from him right now, were giving him uneasy looks. He bit back the smile as much as he could, content to bask in his own memories.

Harry was cold and calculating—in a way. He would follow the Gryffindor image and do what his parents wanted from him—in a way. He was Theo’s friend, and there was no “way” about that, it was simply true.

But most of all, he wasn’t arrogant. It wouldn’t occur to him to carry himself as above others, at least not right now, no matter what kind of magic he had that they didn’t. Theo thought Harry could stand to work on his pride a little, but arrogance was something he would happily help Harry avoid.

All his life since he’d really begun to understand history, Theo had accepted he would follow his father into the Dark Lord’s service. The determination had only hardened after the Figgs took him away from his father and tried to force him to convert to their side.

Now, though…

Maybe I’ve found my own lord. A better one.

*

Harry didn’t come back to their room until it was almost nine. Felix was on his feet in instants and running to meet his brother. Harry blinked, looking a little unnerved as the bedroom door fell shut behind him.

“Felix?” he asked.

“Where were you? You weren’t at dinner and there was a troll in the school and I didn’t know where you were!”

“I had detention with Snape.” Harry’s eyes were still wide, and he moved as if he thought Felix was going to whip out his wand and curse him. “Remember? He assigned it in class today. At six, so I’d miss the Feast.”

Felix swore and collapsed back against the wall. He hadn’t remembered. He didn’t have a perfect memory for things he heard, just things he saw—mostly things he’d read. And Harry had said something about it, he thought, but he’d been talking to Ron and then they’d played chess and then one of the third-year girls had come bothering him about whether he remembered facing Voldemort on that Halloween ten years ago and—

He’d just forgotten.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered. “It must have been scary. Are you all right?”

“I actually never even heard there was a troll in the school.” Harry shook his head. “Professor Dumbledore wanted to talk to me about how things were going, and then on the way down from his office to Professor Snape’s detention I ran into Nott, and then some people we didn’t see pranked us—”

“How did they prank you?”

“Sprayed water at us and tried to shove us down the stairs. Nott fell and bruised his ribs a little, so he went to Madam Pomfrey. But I didn’t fall.”

“Who were they?” Felix scowled. He would go and bring down the wrath of the Boy-Who-Lived on them so hard. People shouldn’t mess with his brother just because he was a firstie or he was weak in magic.

“Didn’t see them.” Harry’s mouth flattened out, as if he was angry about that, but didn’t know what to do. “Who knows? They could have been Slytherins, or Hufflepuffs or Ravenclaws for all I know.”

“They could have been Gryffindors, too,” Felix said reluctantly. He didn’t want to make it sound as if their House was full of idiots, but, well, some people were idiots in every House. And other people weren’t idiots but used their intelligence the wrong way, like Percy Weasley. “Maybe they were trying to get Nott and they got you. Or maybe they think—sorry, maybe they think you’re costing us points because of the remedial lessons.”

Harry took a deep breath. “Even though Professor McGonagall never takes points from me?”

“Yeah, sorry. I just—some people are idiots.”

Harry’s smile flashed then. “Yeah, you’re right.”

“Oh!” Felix abruptly remembered the conversation he’d wanted to have with Harry after Charms the other day, but which he hadn’t because they always seemed to be surrounded by other people. Well, right now everyone was distracted by the feast that had been set up in the common room. “I wanted you to know that you don’t have to practice spells on your own. The way you were doing with Charms? You can practice with me. Especially now that you’re still struggling with Transfiguration, and I’m good with Transfiguration.”

An odd expression crept over Harry’s face for a second, and then he nodded. “Okay. But, Felix…well, sometimes I have to practice on my own.”

“Why?”

“Because I get tired of failing in front of other people. Because you’re good at it, and I’m just—not.”

“I won’t poke at you or anything.” Felix said it softly. He could see how Harry was ducking his head and turning away. He must be thinking of what Mum and Dad would say if they could see him now, and thinking Felix would say the same thing. “I know it’ll take a while. You got Charms and Defense. Transfiguration’s harder. You just need some help. I want to help you.”

“You already are, though.”

“How?”

“By sending the owl post and things like that, so I don’t have to interact with Hedwig or go to the Owlery.” Harry rubbed the back of his neck. “By being friendly and including me in your conversations with Ron. By standing up for me the other day when Granger got a little overbearing.”

Felix snorted. He liked Granger as a person and thought she was really smart, but she still didn’t know how to make friends. “A little overbearing” was stretching it, even. “Well, I want to do more than that.”

“Look, Felix, it wasn’t your fault that I got stuck with Muggles for ten years.”

Felix felt as though Harry had punched him in the stomach. He coughed and said, “It wasn’t—it isn’t about that.”

“Isn’t it?” Harry gave him a highly skeptical glance, his eyes shining green and then red for a second in the firelight. Felix wondered absently if Muggles’ eyes did that on a regular basis. “I think it is. Anyway, Mum and Dad apologized for that. So you don’t have to worry about it.”

Felix twisted his hands awkwardly together for a second. He wanted to defend Mum and Dad, but he thought what they’d done was wrong. He wanted to say that he could still help Harry, but Harry had refused his help.

In the end, he said the only thing he could think of. “I know you missed the feast. There’s still food downstairs. Want some?”

Harry gave him an uncertain smile. “If you’re going to be there? Sure.”

Felix was glad, as they left the bedroom and went back down to the common room, that some things still made sense.

*

Harry had lain awake in bed for hours before the first sob worked its way up his throat.

Harry rolled to the side and turned his face into the pillow. He flicked his hand, not bothering with the wand when he was the only one there to see, and the equivalent of the Silencing Charm closed around his curtains.

He might have to cry, it might feel as though the sobs were forcing their way up through his chest like piercing lances, but no one had to know about it. No one had to know how weak he was.

*

“Did you think that you could get away with it?”

Harry had known that going back to Quirrell for a lesson after the death of the troll would be hard. He had gone in with his back hunched, his magic gathered under his skin, as he was learning to keep it constantly after his constant need in Charms and Defense to be ready to perform a “spell” with his “wand.” But he hadn’t known what that voice full of cold fury would sound like.

As it was, he ground his teeth and said only, “The only thing I cared about then was surviving.”

Quirrell spun around. He’d been facing the far wall of his office, and when he turned, the impact of his rage-filled expression was like a blow, but still better, somehow, than facing the back of his head.

“Why were you near the troll at all? Why were you not in the feast with the rest of the stupid children?”

“Snape assigned me detention, but Professor Dumbledore wanted to see me before that. I was on his way down from the office when I ran into the troll.”

“What did Dumbledore want to see you about?”

Harry stared at him in silence.

“Answer me, boy.”

“Why in the world would you think I’d answer you?” Harry snarled softly, watching the way Quirrell’s eyes widened. He could feel his magic humming under his skin, edging more and more towards coming out. For some reason, though, he didn’t feel like calling fire, even though it was the thing he could do most easily. It was—it was as if his magic had tilted towards water after the encounter with the troll. He could sense water in this room, somewhere, and he could reach out to touch it. If he touched it, he could use it.

Killing the troll had killed something in him and scarred something else, but it had awakened something, too. Harry knew he still needed to pretend around most people. They wouldn’t understand, or they would be able to kick him out of Hogwarts and back to the Dursleys if they wanted.

But around people who knew better, like Quirrell, Harry thought, I can kill people now. I could do it again if I had to.

“Your magic,” Quirrell whispered. “What did you do?”

“I thought you knew perfectly well what I did. I thought you were going to punish me for it.”

“Not the troll. The troll is a minor detail. What did you do?”

Harry didn’t have any idea what he was talking about, but that was probably a minor detail, too. He kept watching Quirrell, and his magic kept watching Quirrell.

Maybe that was what the professor meant. His magic had awakened, too. It had teeth and claws, and it crouched on Harry’s shoulder like the owl he would never be able to have, watching everything and everyone around him. The only person it relaxed around was Theo. Harry thought that made sense. Theo was his friend. Theo kept his secrets. And Theo had been important enough for his magic to send that vision, so that must mean his magic liked Theo.

“You have no idea what you did, do you?” Quirrell finally asked, sounding resigned. He rubbed his hand across his face, a gesture Harry had never seen him make, and sighed. “I wish that elemental magic was not so little understood.”

Harry chose not to answer that, either. Maybe what he had done was bad—bad for his magic, not morally bad, which Harry was more inclined to worry about right now. But he would still take the ability to protect himself over not having done anything to it.

And if he hadn’t battled the troll, he would have died, and Theo would have died. Maybe other people.

“Did you intend to drown the troll?” Quirrell finally asked, sounding a little exhausted.

Harry thought about the question and decided that it couldn’t do much harm to answer it. “No, sir. I wanted to knock it unconscious by having the water slam its head into the wall.”

Quirrell nodded, his eyes distant. “That may be part of the reason for the change in your magic,” he murmured. Then he abruptly started and clapped a hand to the back of his head. “Leave me now, Mr. Potter. We will skip the lesson for tonight, and I will contact you when I am ready to resume them.”

Harry half-shrugged and slipped out of the room, although he made sure never to turn his back completely on Quirrell until the door fell shut behind him. His magic gripped his shoulder with invisible claws and looked around alertly.

That was another change. Harry found himself awake if one of his roommates woke up during the night, even if they were able to creep around quietly, like Neville did. He knew when someone was moving towards him, him specifically, around the Gryffindor table, while his magic didn’t react if someone was aiming for another person. The Weasley twins had seemed a little startled when Harry turned to face them before they announced themselves in a corridor the other day.

But it was a change Harry rather liked. He wouldn’t have to jump or flinch from loud noises and sudden sounds if no one could get close enough to him to make those sounds without him knowing about it.

He had promised to go back to the Gryffindor common room to work on the next Charms essay with Felix, and it was probably best he did that instead of what he wanted to do, which was go and meet Theo in the library. Felix seemed to be paying more attention to him since Halloween, and he kept offering help in class if Harry wanted it. It would keep him happy if Harry worked with him instead of staying away for an evening.

Harry half-wished that he could just tell his brother the truth and didn’t have to handle him the way Aunt Petunia had sometimes handled Dudley and Uncle Vernon. But he had too many secrets to do anything else.

*

Albus leaned back in his chair and met first James’s eyes, then Lily’s, then Sirius’s. “I know that we have no absolute proof of what happened to the troll—”

“Or who let it into the school in the first place! I think that’s the more important thing!”

Albus smiled a little and raised his hand. James had always been volatile. “I believe I have that situation under control. But I do want you to consider the fact that it could have been Harry’s accidental magic that killed it.”

Lily sucked in a sharp breath. “You—you think so?”

“Yes. It has all the signs. The spells that would release water from the loos and the sinks in the way that happened in the bathroom would have released it in a different pattern. This was wild and sloppy. And the drowning of the troll was entirely by accident, I am sure. There is every sign that Harry was fighting simply to hold it in place. It flailed around and left, well, quite a bit of blood and bone on the walls and floor. If he had meant to kill it, he could simply have aimed a stream of water down its throat.”

“Unless…”

“Yes, Sirius?”

Sirius’s eyes were dark. “Unless he did mean to kill it, but he just didn’t have enough control of his magic to do it.”

“We do have to consider that possibility, unfortunately. And the wild escape of water from the pipes and the sinks might suggest it.”

Albus sighed silently to himself. He had no idea why Harry’s accidental magic had developed the way it had. While the boy had undoubtedly suffered at the Dursleys’ hands—a burden for which Albus would carry the guilt until they buried him—he did not bear the scars or the reflexes of someone for whom beatings had been the constant scourge of life. Accidental magic could be the kind that lashed out for children like that, but Harry was not in that category.

And yet, Harry’s magic was wild and focused on offense in any case. Albus had no idea how Harry had ended up in the bathroom with the troll, nor why he would have tried to kill it instead of running or delaying it.

Lily raised Albus’s next thought before it could finish fully forming. “Maybe he tried to use the water to pin it into place, so he could get away. There’s no saying that he stayed there while it died.”

Albus nodded, relieved. “Yes, that’s also a possibility, Lily. He tried to defend himself. The water exploded from the pipes. His impulse was to run, but the troll turned towards him, and in his fear, he wanted to stop it. His magic understood the stop it order as killing the troll, while Harry himself probably only meant to keep it there.”

“Is that really better?” Sirius demanded. “It means that he has even less control than you thought he did.”

Albus grimaced. He had been cheered at first, along with Lily and James, when it seemed as though Harry was gaining control in Charms and Defense, but he suspected he knew what was happening now. Harry wanted so desperately to succeed, so desperately to please his parents and become a powerful wizard, that he was forcing the magic through the wand with an effort of will.

That was a far cry from the proper control that he needed, that Felix had always had. And it was a far cry from being able to tell his magic what to do and have it obey. It meant that it would remain accidental, flailing, reaching out and accomplishing Harry’s will with clumsy giant fingers.

It might hurt someone else. It might kill them.

Albus wondered if he would know when the time had come to remove Harry from Hogwarts for the safety of others. His mind flashed back to the damage an Obscurial might do, and while Harry was not one of them, his magic would not flow through a wand and was not leashed. A feral, snarling thing, it might grow even worse now than Harry had faced down a troll. It might assume that killing was an acceptable response.

“What can we do?” Lily whispered. “It was partially our fault that this happened…”

“We didn’t have a choice,” Sirius said. “Not after.”

He didn’t have to finish the sentence. All four of them sitting in the office knew he meant after that night.

“I will place some monitoring charms on Harry,” Albus murmured. “They would give me warning if he gathered his magic to do something that reached the level of killing the troll. I would be able to arrive and contain him.”

Lily bowed her head. “I couldn’t live with myself if Harry killed someone, Albus. Or hurt them, in the process of trying to protect himself. If we could only make him understand that he isn’t in any danger at Hogwarts.”

Albus nodded. It was Felix who might be, but so far, Albus had sensed no sign of Voldemort’s wraith, as he had thought he might be once the professors learned of the presence of the Philosopher’s Stone. He had wards that would detect any possessed animal, any sign of a Dark spirit attempting to force entrance.

And he was sure that was all it would be. If Albus was right about the ways Voldemort had secured his immortality, the wraith would not have enough strength to possess a human being.

“I will also speak with Harry more regularly. Access to a trusted adult would not go amiss. You know that Harry doesn’t—have them right now.”

Albus winced at speaking such words to Harry’s parents, but they were facts, and Lily and James’s answering smiles were bitter but understanding. Lily more than James’s, truth be told. James had cherished a hope that Harry would simply fit seamlessly into their lives, Albus knew, the way Felix did.

But Harry was a casualty of politics, and it would not be that easy. Albus hoped that Harry would blend more easily with his family in the future.

For now, he had to keep Harry from causing any more casualties of his own.

*

“It was hard for you to come here?”

“Hard to get away from a brother who’s suddenly decided he’s my babysitter,” Harry said, glancing up briefly to roll his eyes in Theo’s direction before he turned back to the book open under his hand.

Theo blinked when he recognized it. “Why do you want to read children’s stories?”

“I’m hoping there’ll be some indication in here why my magic suddenly feels like a dangerous beast. It’s not something I can exactly ask anyone about, and the research I’ve tried to do on it is—no good. I don’t know the right way to search for it. Plus, I don’t want anyone to know I’m doing it, which pretty much means I can’t ask for help. But children’s stories might reveal something about people with magic like that. Or elemental powers. Or at least what people believe about them.”

Theo blinked carefully and sat down across from Harry. “Your magic feels like a dangerous beast?”

“Since Halloween. It feels like it’s always awake and aware and ready to swipe at someone if I want it. The Weasley twins haven’t managed to sneak up on me the way they used to. No one sneaks up on me anymore.”

Theo stared some more, looking carefully for disturbances in the air around Harry or anything else that might support what he was talking about. “I don’t see any sign of it.”

“Well, it likes you, doesn’t it.”

Theo coughed. “Excuse me?”

“It relaxes when you’re around me. It’s like having an owl that just went to sleep on my shoulder.” Harry waved his hand. “Look, I don’t know how else to describe it. That’s one reason I’m trying to find out, because this is weird, and I don’t know if it’s because of what happened on Halloween or what I made happen.”

He killed. Still, Theo had grown up with two people who had caused multiple deaths in the war, and they had never told him their magic felt like that.

Maybe it had to do with Harry’s magic being wandless and elemental. Theo had to admit that it was all a bit bewildering to him, this new world that had opened up in front of him because he had become Harry’s friend. He had never heard of half the things that it seemed Harry carried around on a daily basis.

But it made him feel as if he had opened his eyes on a bright morning, too. Because he was otherwise bored at Hogwarts most of the time, and here was someone who wasn’t boring.

“Why did you manage to find me before something happened?” he asked then, keeping his words vague in case someone was listening. He really had to try and figure out some good privacy charms as soon as possible. “You weren’t anywhere near me at first, were you?”

Harry hesitated and looked up. Theo knew, before Harry opened his mouth, what he would say.

“Don’t,” Theo interrupted harshly. “Don’t put me off with stupid words or meaningless platitudes. I want to know.”

“It’s going to sound weird.”

“This, of course, is an experience I have never had around you.”

Something strained and watching melted from Harry’s face, and he gave a half-laugh. The sensation of possibility and future expanded in front of Theo, and he smiled back.

“I had a headache when I came out of Dumbledore’s office, and some white speckles in my vision,” Harry admitted. “It was like what happened that day in Potions when Longbottom’s potion spilled—”

“Which one?”

“The Boil Cure. I saw a gout of potion come out of the cauldron. That’s why I jumped up on the stool. Then when the potion actually came out and soaked Longbottom, I thought it was the second time and no one else had seen the first one. And now I know, no one did. I was the only one that did.” Harry hesitated. “I saw a vision of you, dead, with your chest caved in. And my magic started pulling me towards you. So I ran.”

Theo half-bowed his head. Yes, the news of Harry’s visions was at least as startling and rare as the news that he was an elementalist capable of mastering all four elements. But the news that the vision had focused on him, and more, that Harry had cared enough to run to Theo’s aid instead of running off and hiding somewhere the way Theo probably would have—

He couldn’t breathe for a long moment. He had a friend.

When he got his breath back, he teased, “So you really are a Gryffindor.”

Harry did his half-laugh again, and it warmed Theo down to his bones as he started suggesting some things they might be able to look up in the library to find out why Harry’s magic had changed.

*

When Theo had left, with a wave, for dinner, Harry quietly drew out the book that he had tucked beneath the book of children’s stories when his magic told him Theo was coming. It was a book of wizarding law as it related to children and caretakers, and Harry didn’t understand half of it, but he planned to read it over and over again until he did.

Actually, it probably wouldn’t have mattered if Theo had seen it. He would have assumed Harry was researching some way to make sure that he didn’t have to go back to the Dursleys.

But Harry didn’t want to raise Theo’s hopes by telling him how intently Harry was working to find some way to get him away from the Figgs. Harry might not be able to do it. He would hate to see the crushed look of disappointment on Theo’s face if he promised that, and then—couldn’t deliver it.

But at the same time, Harry was determined to do it. He had to do it. He couldn’t leave Theo to suffer with the Figgs one moment longer than necessary.

Theo was his friend. Harry had already saved his life from a mountain troll.

Begin as you mean to go on.

Chapter Text

“Harry?”

Harry turned around and smiled at Professor Dumbledore, who was standing behind him near the top of the staircase Harry had just come up, ignoring the way that his magic tensed and snapped invisible teeth on the air. “Hello, Professor. Did you want to speak to me?”

Professor Dumbledore sighed a little. “Yes. I wondered if you realized that you don’t have to make friends with Slytherins?”

It was so unexpected that Harry blinked at him. “I didn’t think I did, sir?”

“I only meant that I know you have been spending a lot of time with Mr. Nott of late. I didn’t want you to think that was required as part of the political role we might ask you to fulfill. Mr. Nott has had plenty of opportunities to learn about the goodness of Muggles from his current guardians, and you do not have to speak to him about it.”

A frisson of hatred crept through Harry and his magic alike. Yes, he learned so much that was good from the Figgs, like how to cast a spell that scorches a child’s tongue. But he just nodded. “Okay, sir.”

“Good!” Dumbledore clapped his hands together. “How are your lessons with Professor McGonagall going?”

Harry sighed a little. “Not well, sir. I can’t seem to get the hang of Transfiguration.” In truth, he hadn’t thought of a good way to practice it yet that didn’t rely on illusion, and elemental magic didn’t hold a solution.

“Yes, Minerva has spoken to me about it. I want you to know, again, that your behavior need not be based on the hopes that we expressed having for you. If you need to take first-year Transfiguration again next year, that will work.”

Harry bowed his head. He wondered if the Potters would suggest sending him back to the Dursleys if he didn’t get better in Professor McGonagall’s class. Or if he didn’t stop spending time with Theo.

But while Harry might try his best to figure out a way to manage Transfiguration with the magic he had, he wasn’t about to give up Theo. He would spin it any way he needed to, but Theo was his friend, and Harry had never had one of those before.

“All right, sir,” he murmured meekly.

“Ah, Harry. My dear boy. I wish there was something I could do for you.”

Don’t send me back to the Dursleys.

But Harry wasn’t about to suggest it, just in case that gave Dumbledore the idea, so he stood there, and then Dumbledore sighed and waved him away. Harry turned and continued trudging up the stairs to Gryffindor Tower, the invisible beast on his shoulder settling into rumbling wariness again.

He wondered, as he went, why Dumbledore thought that Harry could still turn into the political player Dumbledore had wanted him to be. Or was this trying to maneuver him into a new position because his skills were limited, at least as far as Dumbledore knew?

Maybe he’ll want me to reach out to the Slytherins or something later on, and telling me I don’t have to do it is just a way of making sure I don’t feel pressured.

Harry shrugged to himself as he reached the Fat Lady’s portrait and muttered the password. He didn’t think he would ever really understand Dumbledore’s motivations, so the best thing was just to go on living his life.

*

Albus stared sadly after Harry as the child walked up the stairs on legs thinner than they should be, with magic wilder than it should be swirling around him. He had placed the tracking and monitoring charms, and the child hadn’t indicated that he’d noticed a thing. Felix would have.

Harry is not his brother.

Albus sighed, shook his head, and turned back towards his office, his heart heavier than usual. Yes, of course, Harry was not his brother, and they had not planned for him to be. Ideally, Harry would have returned from the Muggle world with a good experience in it and been able to advocate for Muggles to the purebloods he seemed to insist on spending time with, while Felix would have been able to explain the good parts of magic and magical history to the Muggleborns.

But even that probably came too close to the sin that Lily had sometimes accused Albus of when they discussed Harry’s future, seeing the Potter twins as nothing more than mirror reflections of each other.

Did we not have cause?

Whether they had had cause or not, they had made a mistake. They had left Harry with abusive people, and the damage could not be repaired.

Albus felt very old as he turned to make his way up the stairs.

*

“This is hopeless.”

Harry just nodded as Granger leaned back from the table they’d been sitting at in the common room and crossed her arms. It probably was hopeless for him to try and learn Transfiguration the “normal” way. Professor McGonagall had really tried to teach him, and she was a lot more patient than Granger.

Honestly, the reason Harry had let Granger try to tutor him in the first place was in the name of building connections with his fellow Gryffindors, trying to fit in better with his House. If someone asked about him spending all his time with Theo in the library, he could say truthfully that he’d spent hours in the common room, too.

Granger squinted at him now and asked, “You don’t have any questions?”

“Nothing that anyone else could do something about,” Harry murmured, and shook his head. “I think maybe I should have asked more questions of Mr. Ollivander when I got my wand, but it’s too late now.”

“Not really! You could write to him! Maybe he could figure out what’s wrong with your wand if you talked to him about it a bit!”

Harry listened tolerantly as Granger rambled on about her new idea, including lots of guesses about wandlore. Some of them were accurate, based on what Harry had been reading before Quirrell told him he was an elemental mage; others weren’t. Honestly, it didn’t matter that much. Harry was building connections by being here. He was encouraging Granger to fit in a bit better.

Slytherin, a voice said in the back of his mind. Harry couldn’t even determine whether it sounded like Theo’s or like Felix’s.

Harry pushed that thought away, too. Sure, he acted like a Slytherin in some ways, but he had chosen Gryffindor, and that just meant being subtler still in covering up the ways he didn’t fit in.

A glance at the watch James and Lily had sent him showed that he only had about fifteen minutes left to get down to the library and meet Theo. Harry reached to pack up his Transfiguration book, and Granger stopped rambling.

“Oh! Where are you going? Can I come?”

“Sorry, Granger, I have another tutoring session.”

“Well,” Granger said, and sat up a little, “will you please tell Professor McGonagall that I was being helpful? She said something the other day about how I should try to get better at that.”

Harry hid his amusement and nodded. He didn’t even have to lie to his Housemates half the time, it seemed. They just filled in the gaps in his stories their own way. He had never said he was bound for a tutoring session with McGonagall; Granger had just filled that in on her own.

With his materials all packed away, Harry stood up and headed for the Fat Lady’s portrait. He caught Felix’s eye on the way. Felix waved at him and turned back to the chessboard spread out between him and Ron.

I’m glad he has friends who occupy him and doesn’t feel like he has to run after me all the time, Harry thought, and slipped out the portrait. That could be really inconvenient.

*

Theo supposed he should have anticipated the glassy mask that settled over Harry’s face the instant he stepped around the corner of the bookshelves and registered Blaise sitting at the same table as Theo.

Blaise put down his quill and gave Theo a guarded glance. Theo just smiled back. He had wanted to introduce the only two interesting people in his year to each other. It would let him spend time with them both and might bring Harry a bit more out of his shell.

“Sorry, Nott, I must have mistaken the time,” Harry was saying easily. “I didn’t realize you were here to study with Zabini. Or maybe the day? Were we supposed to meet on Sunday?”

“You’re good,” Blaise said with respect. “Much better at lying than most Gryffindors.”

Harry’s eyes narrowed.

“No, you haven’t mistaken the day or the time, Harry,” Theo said. He was a little touched that Harry had immediately reverted to last names in front of Blaise, obviously unsure if Theo would want his Housemates to know he was on good terms with a Gryffindor. “This is Blaise. I wanted to introduce the two of you.”

“Why?”

Theo frowned. Harry’s face had remained glassy, and his tone was pleasant enough but completely unrevealing. Theo didn’t know everything the Muggles had done to Harry—and obviously they couldn’t use magic to abuse him the way the Figgs had on Theo—but he hated that it had made Harry so reluctant to trust anyone.

“He says we’re the two least boring people at school,” Blaise said. He was studying Harry in what might be interest or just looking for weaknesses. “We should be friends so we can all be interesting together.”

“Okay.” Harry sat down on the far side of the table and spread out his books. “So are you interested in Potions, Zabini?”

“Blaise.”

Harry turned his head and gave Theo the flattest stare ever.

“His name is Blaise,” Theo said, and tried to ignore the creeping feeling that everything was going horribly wrong and he should never have invited Blaise. “If we’re going to be friends, you should use it.”

“But I don’t know that we’re going to be friends yet,” Harry said softly.

Theo found himself stumped. He had assumed that Harry would welcome more friends. Wasn’t he always trying to talk to the Gryffindors, even the most unpromising of the bunch, like Longbottom? Sure, he wanted to blend in to fool his parents, but it didn’t take that much work. Surely he would welcome someone who could understand his real nature and admire his gifts, the way Theo did.

But Harry’s face was flat and unfriendly. He turned back to Blaise and just stared at him.

Blaise was the one who started to laugh. “I thought you were mental,” he told Theo, leaning back in his chair and surveying Harry. “To try and get along with a Gryffindor, and then introduce me to him. But you were right. Not a Gryffindor at all, is he?”

Harry’s chin jerked up, and Theo didn’t think he was wrong about seeing a swift flash of fire along his shoulder.

“I didn’t tell him anything,” Theo said quickly. “It’s just easy to notice when someone actually speaks with you, Harry.”

“The Gryffindors do, though. And they haven’t noticed anything amiss?”

It wasn’t going exactly the way Theo had imagined, where he had thought Harry would make the first move, but Blaise’s eyes were alight with interest. That could serve as a bond, at least, Theo thought with relief. Something to tie them together and pull them into one group.

Harry looked back and forth between Blaise and Theo, and then clearly decided he might as well answer Blaise’s question. Theo wished he knew whether Harry was doing it because he trusted Theo or because Blaise had already reasoned out how devoid of Gryffindor qualities Harry was. “It’s easy to listen to people without really talking to them. I make a few replies they expect me to make, and they fill in the rest themselves.”

Blaise slowly nodded. “I handle my mum that way sometimes.”

“Does she—do worse than not listen to you?”

Theo felt his eyebrows rise. He would have expected the abuse Harry had endured from Muggles to make him worse than bitter about children who had grown up with their parents. But instead, it had just made him focused on picking out those children who had suffered like he had.

Blaise shook his head. “No. She just thinks I’m too young to make useful suggestions, and she has ways of handling problems that I don’t—well, never mind. She won’t change the way she handles them. But nothing like what Theo is going through.”

Harry sat back and studied them both again. Theo could see the links clinking into place in his mind, the fact that Theo trusted Blaise enough to reveal the truth. That obviously elevated Blaise in Harry’s thoughts.

I’ll have to teach him not to reveal what he’s thinking so obviously, Theo decided. But that can come later.

“Okay,” Harry said. “I suppose we can work together for a little while, Zabini, and see how well we tolerate each other. As long as you can stand to work with someone who’s so far behind in the wanded classes.”

Theo narrowed his eyes as he tugged out his own Transfiguration book. He had expected Harry to not want to reveal his elementalist powers right away, but he had expected some hints, with Harry eventually telling the truth once he trusted Blaise enough.

From the stubborn way Harry met Theo’s eyes, that wasn’t going to happen, and Theo was the only one trusted well enough to keep his secrets.

Theo hid his smile as they got to work on Transfigurations of buttons to beetles. He could be in much worse positions, and frankly, this was one he liked.

*

“Can you believe that Slytherin Seeker? Diving after the Snitch like that and nearly knocking McLaggen off the broom—”

Harry hummed absently in response to Felix’s outraged commentary, eyes on the circling players but mind far away. He liked flying, and he understood the rules of Quidditch just from hearing the other boys argue in the common room, but he didn’t think he would ever want to play such an arcane game himself. It had so little point. Go pelting after a Golden Snitch or a Quaffle, it was all the same in the end, wasn’t it?

Well, no, wait, Harry had to admit to himself as he watched the Weasley twins hit a Bludger at the Slytherin Seeker, Terence Higgs. There was one advantage he could see to Quidditch. You were pretty popular if you played it, and that could be good. People would probably leave you alone, and you could tell them you were off to Quidditch practice when you wanted an excuse to leave the Tower.

Harry leaned back as he watched the Gryffindor Keeper, Oliver Wood, scream something and dive in a way that nearly wrenched his broom from his hands to prevent a Quaffle from getting through the hoop. Then again, if you played Quidditch, you would have to deal with fanatics like Wood.

Felix had talked about trying out for Seeker next year, since McLaggen wasn’t much good. He was talking about it again now. Harry nodded without taking his eyes from the players.

Then something did catch his attention. He turned his head and saw a gleam of red from the stands where the teachers sat. He wondered for a second if it was Professor McGonagall, who had been wearing red robes that morning. But no, she was over by the commentator’s stand yelling at Lee Jordan.

The flash of red showed again. And then again.

And then it resolved into a boomerang of gleaming red light heading straight for Felix.

Harry sat there with his mouth open for a long second. Then he shouted, “Felix!”

He didn’t think Felix had heard him for a moment; he was on his feet, like most of Gryffindor, yelling about Higgs doing some complicated twisting maneuver that had cut McLaggen off from catching the Snitch. But then he twisted around and saw the red light, and snatched his wand with a yelp.

The red light was too close by then, tumbling end over end and looking as spiky and sharp as any of the fence posts that Dudley had tried to impale Harry on. Harry flung himself at his brother and pressed them against Felix’s seat.

The spell went just overhead with a low, furious humming sound, and Harry stuck his head up cautiously. Yeah, it was already turning around to come back.

“Stay down, Felix!” Felix had poked up his head again and looked as if he was going to come to his feet.

“If there’s a Death Eater out there, I need—”

“Down!” Harry pressed Felix down until he was almost lying flat and ignored the screaming from around them and from the pitch. The spell was here to kill Felix, he was absolutely certain. That meant no one else needed to worry unless they were stupid enough to stand up and challenge it. A quick glance around from the corner of his eye showed Harry that no one was.

A sharp snort ripped from him before he could stop himself. He was predicting to himself that even though all the Gryffindors around them were ducking down as well, one of them would make a snotty comment later about how the Slytherins or Hufflepuffs were cowards.

And then the red spell was right there, in front of him, and Harry had no more time for thought.

Harry spun as it came straight at him, letting it go past, but he saw that it was already turning around this time, orientating on Felix. Harry let the vigilant magic that was screaming on his shoulder leap up and towards it without knowing what exactly would happen next.

The red spell exploded into a hazy mess of light and sparks. Harry closed his eyes. He could feel the killing part of the magic trying to come back together, the power that had leaked out into the air struggling to rejoin its pieces, and Harry’s own magic refusing to let it.

There was nothing sophisticated or neat about what Harry’s magic was doing. Harry could feel it using claws and fangs, or things that felt like them, to rend apart the spell, and snap and gulp and swallow.

But before he could take in more than a little bit of the magic and notice that it felt familiar, the spell snapped apart and flowed away. Harry gasped and sagged back in his seat, his gaze traveling across the Quidditch pitch for a moment.

He’d already started to suspect, because the magic had felt so familiar. But he saw the last of the red sparks flowing back into Professor Quirrell.

Harry narrowed his eyes, and then Felix popped up beside him and shouted, “I saw Gryffindor get the Snitch!” and everything descended into mass confusion based more on who’d won the Quidditch game than what Harry had seen.

Harry kept his own silence until some of the adults came and got them, but he looked back towards Professor Quirrell—or rather, the place Professor Quirrell had been. He was gone by the time Dumbledore and McGonagall and Snape had surrounded Harry and Felix to escort them to the Headmaster’s office.

I’ll still see him, Harry thought grimly. In class, if he cancels our private lessons. And then I can find out exactly what he did.

*

“How did you get rid of the spell aimed at your brother?”

Felix frowned at Professor Dumbledore. He didn’t understand why the Headmaster’s questions were so sharp, and why he was focused on Harry like Harry was the one who had done something wrong.

He probably did save Felix’s bloody life, Felix had to admit. He hadn’t had any idea how bad that sharp-edged spell was until Professor McGonagall had explained it in clipped words on the way up to the school. He hadn’t seen it clearly, and he’d thought it might even be a prank spell from the Weasley twins at first.

But now that he knew, and that Harry had essentially unleashed his wild magic to rip it apart…

“I tore it apart,” Harry said in a small, dull voice, the same explanation he’d used so far. He stared at the floor, at his feet. They were in Professor Dumbledore’s office, and for all that the walls and desk and shelves around them sparkled with bright silver instruments, Felix had the impression that his brother wasn’t feeling soothed or cheerful. “I reached out with my magic and ripped it, and then I felt it trying to come back together, so I ripped it some more.”

“You realize, of course,” Professor Dumbledore said in a heavy voice, “that your magic is beyond dangerous, my boy?”

Felix felt something shift in the room. He blinked. He didn’t know what it was. Looking around, he saw that Snape seemed alert, but was also glancing from side to side with little darts of his eyes, as if he didn’t know what it was, either.

“And what about the spell that was aimed at my brother in the first place, sir?”

Felix’s mouth dropped open a little. That shift had been Harry. Felix had never seen him really angry before. He was glaring at Professor Dumbledore now, and his magic was rattling behind him with a buzz like a scorpion’s tail. Felix could hear it, even though he couldn’t see it.

“Of course we will need to figure out where the spell came from—”

“It was Professor Quirrell. Sir.”

“There is no way in the world that you can know that, Harry.”

Felix thought he probably would have got angry at Professor Dumbledore’s dismissive tone himself, so it was no surprise that Harry did. He leaned forwards a little and hissed, “I know the magic felt familiar. It’s because I’ve been around him in Defense class and our private lessons. I know it was him. And then he was gone when I glanced over again. Why was he gone instead of trying to help the Boy-Who-Lived in the middle of an attack?”

“He might have gone to search for the real attacker,” Snape sneered. Felix turned to glare at him, too. It figured that Snape would hate what Harry had to say and distrust it just because Harry was the one saying it.

“Your wild magic is the concern here, not Professor Quirrell.”

“Why?” Harry clenched his hands in front of him. Felix heard the disturbing, rattling hiss again, and some of Professor Dumbledore’s little trinkets swayed in place. “Why are you so determined to say that I’m the dangerous one?”

Professor Dumbledore sighed. Felix looked from him to Harry, and decided he was pretty interested in the answer to his brother’s question, too.

“We have no evidence, aside from your word, that Professor Quirrell was the one behind the attack on Felix,” Professor Dumbledore said at last. “But we know that you ripped the spell apart. And magic that can do that must be carefully studied and controlled.”

“Why? Isn’t mine just the result of a disease?”

“It’s getting better, though,” Felix said, unable to keep silent any longer. “Harry said so. He can do a lot better in Charms and Defense, now.”

Harry’s face pinched for a second. Felix had the strong impression that he wanted to continue yelling at Professor Dumbledore. But he nodded and sat back a second later, watching the Headmaster warily.

“We must be sure that you are not a danger to the other students,” Professor Dumbledore said.

“What about the person who tried to kill Felix? Shouldn’t you be hunting for them and figuring out if they’re a danger to the other students?”

Professor Dumbledore stared at Harry as if he had never seen him before. “They will be found,” he said at last, in a soft voice. “You can be assured, my dear boy, that we’re looking for them.”

“Oh, I see,” Harry said, and sat back with his arms folded. “So you’re picking on me because I’m the one who’s here? Yeah, I saw that all the time with my cousin and his friends. They would get frustrated with someone else and pick on me because that other kid had parents who would protect them.”

Felix stared at Harry. “How bad did it get?” he whispered. “Dudley’s bullying?”

“Mr. Potter.”

Felix wasn’t sure which one of them Professor Dumbledore was talking to, and at the moment, he didn’t care. He leaned towards Harry. “Did it get really bad?” he asked. “Did they hurt you a lot?”

Harry’s eyes flickered towards him and lingered for a second. Harry opened his mouth—

“I can hardly believe that Mr. Potter was the victim in those circumstances, rather than the bully,” Snape sneered.

Felix saw the moment the door clanged shut behind Harry’s eyes. He just sneered and nodded and sat back in his chair.

“Mr. Potter,” Professor Dumbledore said again, and this time, he was definitely addressing Harry. “I believe that we have talked about what things would be wise to express, and which things would not.”

“Oh, absolutely,” Harry said, with a sharp smile on his face that made Felix wonder how much he was hiding. “I’ll be going then, Professor, I suppose? While you keep up the very important search for the person who tried to kill Felix, which you’re absolutely doing at the same time as you’re questioning me sternly here.”

“Insolence!” snarled Snape. “Twenty points from Gryffindor! You will not speak to the Headmaster that way!”

Harry glanced at Snape, and then away. Other doors were closing, Felix thought. Harry was already locking away the part of himself that would say these things, and retreating behind the polite, bland mask that he seemed to wear most of the time with the Gryffindors. “Of course, sir.”

Snape started to say something else, but Professor Dumbledore interrupted, sounding weary. “Severus, enough. Mr. Potter, of course you’re free to go, but keep in mind that we might bring you up here to answer questions at any time.”

“And you’ll tell me and Felix when you find the person who tried to kill him?”

“You’re only children. You’re too young to worry about it.”

Harry shook his head and walked out. Felix started to say something when they were on the moving staircase, but Harry shook his head again and gestured in a way that made no sense to Felix. Still, he obediently kept silent until they were out of the staircase and walking back towards Gryffindor Tower.

“Why didn’t you want to talk there?”

“There are probably spells that will carry our voices right back to Dumbledore so he can spy on us.”

Felix stared at him. Harry was—yeah, he looked different. He was walking now with a stalk that made Felix think he heard something else around Harry, a hum or a crackle. Something that was like the static electricity Mum had told him Muggles had discovered and shown him with a few experiments.

“You don’t respect him at all, do you?” Felix finally whispered.

Harry turned towards him and shook his head. His eyes darted around. Felix looked with him, but couldn’t see any portraits or ghosts or whatever else Harry was looking for. Nothing that would spy on them and report the conversation back to Dumbledore, Harry would probably say.

“How can I? He left me with Muggles who hurt me for ten years.”

“But you know why he did that. So that people can stop hating Muggles and we can bind the Muggle world and the magical world closer together.”

“And would you like it? To be left without any knowledge of magic and thinking your whole family was dead for ten years?”

Felix blinked. He had the odd impression that more than just Harry’s eyes were watching him, even though he still couldn’t see anything or anyone else in the corridor. He half-wondered if Dad was nearby under an Invisibility Cloak or something as he answered.

“I wouldn’t. But I also didn’t like being hunted by Death Eaters and put in hospital a bunch of times. It’s not—fun, Harry. But that’s the kind of price you have to pay for power and fame. And I’ll be using them to make things better for other people in the end.”

Harry closed his eyes for a second. Felix had the impression he was thinking. Then he nodded and said, “Forget I said anything.”

“But the Muggles did hurt you?”

“You’re not going to listen, so why does it matter?”

Felix reached out and caught hold of Harry when he would have turned to walk away. “Harry, I want to know. It’s—important. That way, we can at least talk to Mum and Dad about how not all Muggles are good, right? And we can make sure that you never have to go back there.”

Harry stiffened. “Do you think they would?”

“The way they are right now?” Felix sighed. Sometimes he wondered if he knew his parents all that well. It had been one thing when he was younger to know that he had an older twin brother living in the Muggle world who he’d meet someday, but it was another to be older and realize they were making excuses for putting Harry in an awful situation. “I don’t know. I want to say no, but…”

“Right.” Harry wrenched his shoulder loose and walked away.

Felix stared after him helplessly. He wanted to say that everything would be all right. Harry wouldn’t need to save his life again because Professor Dumbledore was going to investigate and find the person who had tried to kill Felix, the way he’d promised. And adults were stronger than any one of them, anyway.

But he didn’t know what to say.

And he had the odd impression that it wouldn’t have made a difference if he had.

*

When the door opened, Harry was ready.

He sent twin jets of air flowing off to the sides. He’d been practicing as much as he could in some of the old corners of the dungeons where it seemed that no one but the Slytherins went, and not usually them. He hadn’t even told Theo about this, because air was one of his weaker elements and he wanted to be sure he had it right.

One stream of air slammed into Professor Quirrell as he stood in the open doorway, pinning him to the wall for a second. The other dived past him and shoved the table that usually stood near the door away from it. Harry wasn’t going to give Quirrell the chance to spring a trap on him.

Quirrell gasped, his eyes fixing on Harry for a moment. Harry was sure that he was just pretending to be upset and afraid, the way he pretended with his stutter around other people. But to Harry, it didn’t matter much.

He had killed the troll. He could kill Quirrell if he wanted.

“Mr. P-potter,” Quirrell whimpered. “Have m-mercy…”

“You may have fooled Dumbledore, but I know that you were the one who aimed that spell at my brother,” Harry said calmly. “I don’t know why. You’re going to tell me if you’ll do it again. If I don’t like the answer, I’ll just smash your head in.”

“You can’t do that!”

At least he wasn’t pretending with the stutter anymore. Harry stared at Quirrell, and his winds snatched a heavy book off the shelves and slammed it straight past Quirrell, pinning it to the wall for a second. Quirrell flinched.

“Yes, I can,” Harry said softly.

Quirrell swallowed, and then slowly stepped backwards. He must have realized that the wind Harry had had pinning him was gone. He licked his lips and stared at Harry. Harry stared straight back, his body as tense as a Muggle wire.

“Come in,” Quirrell said at last, and shuffled back.

Harry followed him, on high alert. He had fire coiled, invisible except for a few sparks, around his neck, and more wind waiting to be used. He could feel the promising tug of water somewhere out of sight. He never had figured out where it came from, if Quirrell usually kept a hidden pitcher of water in his office or what. But that wouldn’t really matter. If Harry had to use it, he would find it and use it.

Quirrell stared at him, rubbing his neck. Harry stared right back, and prepared to shift the stone under Quirrell’s feet if he had to, too.

“Why did you not do something to me already for endangering your brother?” Quirrell asked.

“I told Dumbledore. He didn’t believe me, or he did but put me off for some reason of his own.” Honestly, Harry thought that Dumbledore was too preoccupied with worrying about Harry’s magic at the moment. “And then you didn’t make any other move, so I’ve just been waiting for today.”

Quirrell laughed, a soft, cold sound that trailed off into a hiss at the end. “Not a wise decision, boy. I could have attacked your brother again at any time.”

“But you didn’t. So maybe you’re waiting, maybe you’re concerned with outing yourself, maybe what you want isn’t his death as much as something else. I don’t care that much, honestly. Don’t attack him again.”

“Have you considered what I could do to you?”

“Sure,” Harry said, and lit the book he had tossed at the wall on fire.

Quirrell shrieked and ran forwards with his hands stretched out. Harry kept the book burning, then ended the flames a second before Quirrell’s hands would have brushed against the cover. Quirrell turned around and stared at Harry as if he had never seen him before.

“I know you could do something pretty horrible to me,” Harry said quietly, while his heart pounded. “But again, you didn’t. So there must be something that you’re waiting for, too. And I’ve endured enough that I could probably fight back through the pain for at least a second and kill you.”

“You would be a murderer twice over, then?”

“If once, why not twice? And I wouldn’t be alive anyway to see everyone’s disappointed looks, probably. But you would be dead. I think that matters more to you than killing me or Felix.”

Harry’s stomach was churning. He didn’t like thinking about killing the troll. But he had. And if Quirrell was going to throw it in his face and try to make it a weapon, then Harry had no choice but to accept it and turn the weapon on Quirrell, the same way he had accepted what people would think about his elemental magic and was using it anyway.

The room was silent, while Quirrell continued to study him. Well, it was probably silent for Quirrell, anyway. To Harry’s ears, his magic snarled on his shoulder, trembling, wanting to spring on Quirrell and rend his body apart so no one would ever find more than little pieces of him.

Harry thought he probably stood a better chance of killing Quirrell with his elemental powers, though. So he held his magic in check and waited.

Quirrell laughed again, then, and drew his wand. Harry promptly dropped into a defensive crouch and focused on Quirrell’s eyes. They were the part he would set on fire first.

“No,” Quirrell said. “I will swear an oath on my wand not to harm you or your brother for the rest of this year. After that, we might have to…reevaluate.”

“How do you expect me to swear an oath back when I don’t have a wand? And what do you mean by the rest of the year? The end of this year in December, or the school year in June?”

“Ah, Mr. Potter,” Quirrell murmured. “You are an interesting student. The end of this school year, in June. In truth, I don’t expect to stay much longer than that, if as long. You will have heard that all Defense Against the Dark Arts teachers spend a year in the castle, at most? That will be my term, likely.” He held his wand loosely by the middle of it, his attention on Harry. “And you will swear on your magic.”

Harry considered that. He wondered if it was the wisest decision. Quirrell had tried to kill Felix.

But unless Harry was going to kill Quirrell right now, there wasn’t much else he could see to do. He couldn’t protect Felix all the time. Quirrell still might manage to kill him. And if he did murder Quirrell, there wouldn’t be a collective shrug the way there had been with the dead troll. Meanwhile, this might buy more time for Dumbledore to investigate Quirrell, assuming he ever actually did that.

And if Quirrell wasn’t trying to kill him or Felix…did Harry care that much about what he did with that year?

No. No. I don’t.

“I’ll swear on my magic not to attack you unless attacked first or you attack Felix or Theo, until the end of this school year in June. And you’ll swear not to attack any of the three of us unless attacked first.”

“Young Mr. Nott matters to you, too, then.”

Harry didn’t bother answering. Quirrell spun his wand between his fingers, then nodded. “Done.” He held up his wand in front of him and murmured, “I promise not to attack, in any way, shape, or form, Felix Potter, Harry Potter, or Theodore Nott until the end of their first school year, in June of 1992, unless one of them attacks first, dependent on Mr. Harry Potter making a reciprocal oath on his magic.”

Quirrell’s wand glowed a weird orange color. It didn’t fade, so Harry assumed it was waiting for his oath. He said, “I promise not to attack, in any way, shape, or form, Professor Quirinus Quirrell until the end of my first school year in June 1992, unless attacked first, or unless he attacks Felix Potter or Theodore Nott.”

The orange glow sparked and vanished. At the same time, Harry felt a weird constraint on his magic. It felt like a chain that ran from the top of his shoulders around his collarbone and back, in a joined circle. Harry grimaced.

“You do feel it, then.” Quirrell looked pleased. “Now, I think we were studying Shredding Jinxes and ways to get your magic to imitate them in various degrees of strength, were we not?”

Harry stared at him. Quirrell smiled.

“You think I’m just going to continue tutoring with you, like nothing happened?”

“I think you are the most fascinating student here, and certainly the only one out of your classmates who is interesting to teach. I think our oaths are strong enough to keep both of us safe. I think that I enjoy the process of teaching you too much to give it up.”

Quirrell was strange. Harry glanced at the burned book on the floor.

Quirrell laughed again. “Our oaths do not say that we cannot take revenge in other ways, do they? I will have it for my book, Mr. Potter. But not today.”

Harry considered some more. It was the strangest thing he thought he’d ever done, seriously thinking about spending more time with his brother’s would-be murderer. But why not? They were bound by oaths now. There was no reason to think Felix was in danger, or Theo, or Harry himself. And Dumbledore and the other professors weren’t doing anything about tracking Quirrell down or training Harry’s real magic.

“All right,” Harry said finally, and turned to the conjured cloth targets that Quirrell was already waving into being.

*

Albus settled back with a long, deep sigh. His monitoring charms had told him that Harry had gone to Quirinus’s office this evening, and Albus had been prepared to go rescue his Defense professor if necessary. But despite an odd swell of magic Albus hadn’t been able to identify, both of them were still alive, and the charms that told him how fast Harry’s heart was beating had calmed down.

Perhaps Quirinus had managed to convince Harry his suspicions were baseless, as Albus knew them to be. He would have sensed Voldemort’s wraith coming within his wards. He had not, which meant the wraith was not here. And there was no one else with a compelling reason to try and kill Felix.

Well, perhaps the Death Eaters who managed to hospitalize him, Albus acknowledged wryly to himself. But there were none of them at Hogwarts, and Albus had monitoring charms on all their children.

Fawkes gave a low croon. Albus held out his arm, and Fawkes flew over and ducked his head to have his neck scratched.

“I do despair at what I did to Harry, you know,” Albus told his oldest confidante, who responded with a series of escalating chirps. “But after what happened that night…when he and Felix were close together after the attack, as they had never been before…”

Albus shook his head. There had been a swell of Dark magic so ugly that he had felt it tugging on his soul. He had yelled for Lily and James to separate the twins at once, and when they had, the swell of Dark magic had dissipated.

They had all hoped that time and distance in the Muggle world would serve their personal goals for the twins’ safety as well as the political goals. When they were older, the twins would have more stable magic, more robust health. It would once again be safe to have them in the same room, the same school.

So far, Albus had seen no reason to doubt that decision.

Fawkes had stopped chirping. Albus stroked his neck once more and lofted his arm, sending his faithful companion back to his perch.

He needed to speak with Sirius. The man had maintained enough distance from Harry, and for no reason that was valid anymore. Harry would need his godfather.

We must keep him from going down the wrong path, accidental magic or not.

Chapter Text

“Hi, ah. I thought we could go for a walk in Hogsmeade today.”

Harry tilted his head and blinked at Sirius Black. He stood in front of Harry, rubbing his mouth with one hand and looking almost helpless. Harry suspected it was because he was uncomfortable, but he had no idea what he had done specifically to make Sirius uncomfortable.

“I thought we weren’t allowed,” Harry said. “I thought only third-years and up could go to Hogsmeade.

Sirius gave him a smile. Well, sort of a smile. It was turned-up and crumpled at the corners like the smiles that Aunt Petunia had given Harry in public when she thought she had to. “Well, that’s true, but Albus gave his permission. And you’re the brother to the Boy-Who-Lived! A Gryffindor! You should get used to breaking rules!”

This is probably just some way to try and make me use wanded magic again, or make sure that I don’t spend all my time with Slytherins, Harry thought, but he wasn’t offended. Sirius was just another of the Gryffindors he needed to lie to.

“He really said we could go?”

“Yeah, he sure did.” Sirius was relaxing, maybe because Harry wasn’t cackling like an evil Dark wizard in front of him. “And I got you a gift. Remember, I said I would?”

Harry managed a smile that he hoped landed on the right side of shy. “What is it?”

“That would be telling! Come on, you can open it on the walk to Hogsmeade.”

Harry glanced over his shoulder, but no one else had come out of the castle after them. It was early on Saturday morning, and most of the kids were probably still asleep. Harry had only been awake because Professor Dumbledore had asked him to come to his office and meet Sirius there.

“All right,” he said. He could spare a few hours from his research into ways to get Theo away from the Figgs, especially since it wasn’t going that well. “Come on, then.”

*

He looks pretty normal like this, Sirius had to admit to himself as he and Harry walked down the Hogsmeade path.

But he knew what he had seen that night, the one that had been seared into his mind so deeply that just thinking the words that night recalled it perfectly. He knew that he had seen the Dark magic shining through Harry’s skin as if he was just a hollow candle-holder. And he knew that it had got worse when Harry had moved closer to Felix.

Harry had been a normal baby before that night.

And no wonder, Sirius thought, swallowed hysterical laughter. When he was—he was so little. Not what he became afterwards. Just a happy baby…

“What’s the present that you have for me?”

Sirius shook himself and returned to the path and the boy in front of him, who was staring expectantly upwards. Sirius smiled wanly as he took the package, wrapped in red and gold paper, out of his pocket. Albus had warned him that Harry was far from normal, but his eyes still lit up when Sirius held the gift out, and that was enough for him.

Even if Harry had to rip the paper open with his hands instead of swipes of his wand. Even if that part of all this made Sirius’s heart ache.

Harry opened the paper, and then turned the book over, and smiled. He glanced up at Sirius and smiled more broadly.

“Thank you. This ought to come in useful when I’m trying to prank Felix.”

Sirius smiled back, glad that Harry liked the book of charm and prank spells. “I know that you can’t cast all of them yet, with your wand, but—”

“I’ve got pretty good at Charms and Defense,” Harry murmured, shyly, his head bowed. “It’s just Transfiguration that’s giving me trouble, really.”

Sirius relaxed some more. Maybe Albus had exaggerated in his concern. Yes, Harry had grown up in the Muggle world, and yes, he had been a little concentrated ball of Dark magic that night, but…he was just a kid. He had been just a baby. Maybe he wasn’t using Dark Arts the way Albus was afraid of after all. Maybe he was just a kid who needed more help with his wandwork.

“Do you want me to try and help you with the Transfiguration? While we go to the Three Broomsticks and drink butterbeer?” Lily and James would kill him if they knew he was giving their son butterbeer, but it wasn’t like Sirius was going to tell them.

Harry nodded, his cheeks flushing. “Yeah. Yeah, Sirius. I’d like that.”

“You can call me Padfoot, if you want to,” Sirius said, and then he reached out and ruffled Harry’s hair, mostly to see what would happen.

Harry ducked his head a little, and he flushed harder, but he was smiling. Sirius was sure of it.

And if he could be the one to keep Harry on the path that a normal Potter and a normal Gryffindor and a normal kid should walk, all the better. Sirius did have ten years of godfathering to make up for.

*

Harry looked through the book that Sirius had got him one more time on his way to the library to meet Theo and Zabini, and shook his head. Some of these spells might be funny, if you used them with someone else’s knowledge and didn’t do them too hard. But others reminded him of things Dudley would have done if he’d had magic.

Were they all bullies, too? Sirius and James and that traitor who died?

Harry decided that he didn’t care that much. He would keep the book, and he would write to Sirius, and he would call him Padfoot, and he would blush around him and act happy to get to spend some time with the man. It was fooling Sirius with not much more effort than he’d used to fool the other Gryffindors.

“Potter.”

Harry turned and put his back to the wall behind him. Zabini was waiting outside the library, and his face was tense and taut.

“What?” Harry asked quietly.

“Did you know about the letter Theo got this morning?”

“What about it?” Harry had seen the owl land at the table, but he’d only darted in the way he often did when owls were in the Great Hall, to get some toast and sausages and leave, so he hadn’t seen more than that.

“It was cursed.”

Harry felt his eyes widen, and his magic woke up around him, snapping into being with a buzz and a shiver. Harry wasn’t entirely certain that Zabini could feel it, but he did take a step back and watch Harry with cautious eyes.

“What was the curse?” Harry whispered. “Who sent it?”

“I don’t know exactly what the curse was, but Theo can’t even get up from the bed. And it was the Figgs.”

Harry felt as though something was breaking in his head, although it was so glassy and crystalline and fractured that he didn’t know for sure. He just knew that Zabini was leaning away from him, and that Harry nodded and turned towards the dungeons.

“Potter? Where are you going?” Zabini was trotting beside him, eyeing him sideways.

“To see Theo. You’re going to get me into the common room.”

“I can’t do that!”

“Can’t, or won’t?”

Zabini wavered for a second, then said, “We aren’t supposed to bring people from other Houses into the common room. Especially not Gryffindor. Professor Snape is worried that you’ll come back and prank us.”

“Look, the Hat wanted me in Slytherin,” Harry snapped, feeling a pang that he was parting with one of his secrets. But it was the least damaging one, and Zabini’s dropped jaw was worth it. “I held the brim shut with my magic and made it say Gryffindor. But you might have noticed the way it struggled during the Sorting? Yeah. It wanted me in your House. So it’s like you’re bringing an honorary Slytherin along, all right?”

Zabini blinked a few times. Harry was pretty sure he hadn’t noticed the Hat struggling with Harry during the Sorting, but Harry could also almost see the way that Zabini was realigning the pieces in his head and thinking about the past differently, to pretend he had noticed.

“You’re sure that’s true? Theo would tell me the same thing?”

Harry nodded. “Ask him after I get rid of the curse, if you don’t believe me.”

“I will. And how are you going to get rid of the curse?”

Harry glanced sideways, and Zabini must have seen the intention in his face, because he shut up.

Harry marched on, not sure himself what would happen once he saw Theo, or how he would get rid of the curse. But he had got rid of the spell that Quirrell would have used to murder Felix. That meant he had to be able to get rid of something that wasn’t as bad.

And then, he thought, I’m going to find some way to get rid of the Figgs.

*

Theo curled around his stomach, his arm wrapped around it, his eyes shut. He had screamed at Malfoy when the idiot had tried to open the curtains around his bed, and at least he could be sure that he would be left to suffer in solitude until the curse wore off.

He had never seen anything like this before. It had flickered to life the minute he touched the parchment and curled around his arms, then dived into his body. It felt like the worst stomachache he had ever had, and overlapping waves of pain flooded through him, from his gut but also from his head.

The parchment had said only, This is for trying to corrupt a Gryffindor.

Someone must have told them about his friendship with Harry.

Even as he lay there and vomited without having anything left that could come up, Theo clung to his grim, stubborn determination. He would remain friends with Harry. They couldn’t tell him what to do. He would get better, and he would get his revenge someday.

His curtains went flying back. Theo snapped his eyes open with a snarl, hearing outraged shouts from the direction of the bedroom door and wondering why someone would drag half of Slytherin here to witness his humiliation.

Harry.

Harry knelt on the bed and reached out to Theo with his magic.

Theo had a moment to decide if he trusted Harry, but in the end, there was really no choice. He rolled over and held out his hand, which was curved into a claw with the pain, and Harry seized hold of it with his magic before his fingers got there.

A different kind of pain, clean and fiery, darted through Theo’s body. And then he slumped back, the churning nausea and the pressure in his gut and the pounding in his head just gone.

“Are you all right?” Harry whispered, hovering over him. His face was open and murderous. But Theo knew the anger wasn’t against him. It was about him.

Theo took a moment to simply bask in that, that someone other than his father would want to hurt people for him, and then he sat up slowly. “Yes. The curse is gone.” He watched Harry from beneath his eyelashes, aware of Blaise at the edge of the curtains, and ignoring him. “How did you do that?”

“My magic can rip spells apart,” Harry said softly, likewise ignoring Blaise, although from the way his shoulders hunched, Theo knew Harry was absolutely aware of the other boy. “I saw it when I tore apart that spell that came flying at Felix. I thought I might be able to do it with the curse once Zabini told me about it.” He took a deep breath and touched Theo’s forehead for a second, as if Theo was the one with a scar there. “You’re really all right?”

“Yes.” Theo turned so that his hand was clasping Harry’s for a second, squeezing hard, and then let go. The babble of angry voices from beyond the door was getting louder. They had to deal with it.

“Zabini!” shouted someone who sounded like Montague. “What are you doing, bringing that Gryffindor in here?”

“How would you prefer that I handle this?” Harry asked Theo quietly.

“In whatever way you need to to make sure that we stay safe,” Theo answered. He half-hoped that would mean Harry revealing his elemental magic, but he doubted it would. Harry would figure something out, though.

Harry nodded and turned around. Blaise tried to step around him, but Harry held him back with one hand. Then he turned towards the door into the first-year boys’ bedroom and concentrated with his eyelids half-lowered.

There came a loud shriek a moment later. Then other people began shrieking, and Theo heard them beating a hasty retreat back into the common room. Harry relaxed and shook his head.

“What did you do?” Blaise whispered.

Harry glanced at him, and Blaise shied away, although Theo saw no open threat on his face. “I concentrated on making them feel afraid,” Harry said.

“Won’t they just ask me questions later? Take it out on me?”

Harry grinned, a sight so unexpected that Theo found himself smiling back before he thought about it. “If they do, Zabini, come and tell me. Then I’ll make them feel it again. And make it worse. Just remind them about how they ran away gibbering like idiots if they get upset with you.”

“You’d protect me? But I’m not your friend the way Theo is.”

“But you brought me to him, at my own request. You shouldn’t have to suffer for that.”

Theo could see the moment when Blaise made his decision, the decision Theo had been half-hoping for since they’d begun working together in the library, but had thought would take a few more months at least. He nodded at Harry. “Call me Blaise.”

Harry blinked, lost in what seemed to be wonder. Then he said, “All right, Blaise. Call me Harry.” He turned back to Theo and stared at him as intently as a mediwitch would have. “You’re really all right?”

“Yes,” Theo whispered. He struggled against his impulse to say something else, something that might have been too revealing in front of Blaise, and finally said, “Thank you.”

Harry gave him a single, fierce smile, then turned around and walked back out of the room. No one tried to oppose him, from the sound of it.

“What the fuck is he?” Blaise blurted, turning around to stare at Theo.

“Himself,” Theo said, because he wasn’t ready to share with Blaise yet that he was probably their future lord. And my friend.

*

Harry shoved the last book away with a growl under his breath. Everything he’d found about how to get away from abusive guardians in the magical world said that they had to tell adults about the abuse and get them exposed and tried.

Theo wouldn’t want to tell anyone adult about what the Figgs were doing to him, and Harry doubted that Dumbledore or Snape would do anything even if Theo did.

“Harry.”

Harry looked up and blinked. Theo was standing in front of the library table, and his smile was faint but present, the way it had been for the week since Harry had healed him from the curse. “Hi, Theo. Where’s Blaise?”

“He wanted to do some studying with Malfoy. Something about building bridges to other people.” Theo sat down on the far side of the table and stared at the books. “Magical law. You want to become a politician?”

Harry shuddered. He couldn’t imagine a worse fate, even given that it was something he would have to pretend to go along with for a while because it was what Dumbledore and his parents wanted. “Ugh, no. I was—” He would have to say it now, because he was out of solutions on the book front “—trying to find a way to get you away from the Figgs and back to your father.”

Theo’s eyes widened. Most of the time now, Harry could tell what he was feeling, but he sat perfectly still with his face a mask of shadow and didn’t move at all.

“Theo?” Harry asked warily. He had assumed Theo would want the help, but maybe that had been stupid of him. He was pants at guessing what people wanted—

“Harry,” Theo said, and swallowed. “No one else would have done that much for me.”

Harry blinked, reminded suddenly that even if he was low on friends and not that popular because of the problems with his magic, it had to be worse for Theo, who didn’t have a popular, famous brother to kind of prop him up. Harry reached out and squeezed Theo’s hand for a second, then sat back on the other side of the table.

“I assume that you don’t want to tell anyone about the Figgs,” Harry said. “So that sort of leaves us out of legal options.”

“No,” Theo said quietly. “They wouldn’t listen to me, most likely. They were the ones who put me with the Figgs in the first place, after all. And if they did take me away, they probably wouldn’t put me back with my father, just with some other family who’s convinced they need to redeem Death Eaters’ children.” His voice was corrosive.

Harry nodded and thought about it. “So we need to make the Figgs give you up, and we have to make sure that you specifically go back to your father.”

“I think Dumbledore would only put me there if the Figgs themselves recommended it.”

Harry half-smiled. “All right. So we blackmail them.”

Theo’s eyes widened some more. “How, though? They would probably just tell people the truth if we tried to blackmail them with what I suffered, and even if Dumbledore disapproved, like I said, they would take me away and shove me into some other good family’s embrace. He might not even disapprove.”

Harry nodded grimly, thinking about what he had gone through with the Dursleys, which Dumbledore seemed to think was perfectly okay. “Then we need to find a way to control them.”

Theo stared at him again. “There isn’t a way to do that. I mean, if we can’t blackmail them, then we can’t control them, either. I tried to find out some of their secrets, but I don’t think they have any,” he added with disgust. “They spend their time reading books of magical law and debating each other, or coming up with battle tactics for what could happen when the Dark Lord returns. Or torturing me.”

“I didn’t mean like that. I meant magically. The Imperius Curse.”

Theo choked. Harry waited patiently until the fit went past. Theo leaned towards Harry and lowered his voice, looking around for a second as if he thought someone would break into their little alcove past the books. “Are you insane? Neither of us can cast that.”

Harry lifted a hand, and flame sprang into being around his fingers. “Are you sure about that, Theo?”

Theo fidgeted for a second. “It’s still a really strong spell. And someone could find out. The signs of the Imperius Curse aren’t easy to recognize, but Dumbledore probably knows how to look for them.”

Harry nodded. “So we figure out how to make it undetectable.”

“Harry.” Theo seemed to be controlling his voice with an effort. “No one has ever done that.”

“But I’m going to.”

“Why, Harry? Why are you putting so much effort into this?”

“Because you’re my friend,” Harry said. “And I won’t abandon you. Now, can you recommend any books that I can read which have the Imperius Curse in them but aren’t going to make Madam Pince suspicious?”

*

Theo was still a little dazed when he went back to the common room after giving Harry the titles of some innocent-looking books, which was probably why he didn’t see the boring Potter until he almost jumped out of an alcove and grabbed Theo’s arm.

Theo’s wand snapped up, and he whirled to the side, facing Potter and driving him back so that his head almost hit the stones. Potter’s eyes widened. He didn’t look much like Harry when you were close to him, Theo thought, all the potentially interesting edges smoothed over by vulnerable softness.

“Hey! What are you doing, Nott?”

“What were you doing, Potter, grabbing me like that?” Theo took a step back, since there didn’t seem to be any Gryffindors following Boring Potter around, but didn’t lower his wand.

“I want to know why you spend so much time with my brother.”

“There’s this strange thing you might not have heard of, Potter. It’s called being friends.”

“Come off it!” Felix crossed his arms and glared at Theo. “Harry comes straight from being raised by Muggles and runs into you of all people and you act as though you can understand him?”

“Unlike you, I’m not nearly as prone to snap judgments.” Theo slid his wand back into its holster as he heard other people’s footsteps coming near. None of the professors or Gryffindors would act sympathetic if they found Theo holding a wand on the hero of the magical world, no matter how much they might secretly feel the same way. “Why would I despise Harry for being raised by Muggles? He’s so much more than that.”

“Oh.” Potter nodded. “So you want to use him for his power. You should know that he’s sick, Nott, and he won’t get better if you keep encouraging him to use his magic for things other than practicing Transfiguration or whatever you’re doing.”

Theo sneered back, but kept quiet as the footsteps came around the corner and turned out to be Ron Weasley and another Gryffindor whose name Theo hadn’t bothered to memorize. Thomas, maybe. “What’s Nott doing, Felix?” Weasley asked, taking a step forwards and turning a little as if to shield Potter from any spells Theo might throw at him.

“Having a conversation with me about Harry.” Potter leaned around Weasley to give Theo a dark, weighted gaze that might have impressed him if he were a totally different person and also delusional. “I think we understand each other.”

“As much as you can ever understand a Slytherin,” Weasley muttered, glaring at Theo. Then he and Thomas turned and almost herded Potter away, as if they thought he would catch something by being near Theo.

Theo shook his head and resumed the walk to the dungeons, letting his mind return to the dazzling thing that had had taken up so much of his attention that Potter had been able to sneak up on him.

Harry really wants to help me. He would do anything to help me. He’s my friend.

The world was still full of pain, and Theo wanted desperately to be back with his father, especially with Christmas coming up, but it was full of unexpected brightness, too.

*

“Imperio!”

It turned out that Harry didn’t even have to taunt Quirrell into casting the spell on him. Quirrell tried it the instant Harry opened the door of his office for their next lesson.

Harry stood still and felt the slippery sensation in his mind. It was like being drenched in a wave of fish. He pushed back against it, and it pushed back against him, and he could hear what seemed to be a voice from very far away murmuring about how he wanted to trust Quirrell and obey him.

But I don’t, though, Harry thought back.

The voice recoiled, or went another direction, and then came back talking about how good it would feel for him to simply bow his head and obey and not tell anyone about these lessons and trust Quirrell to treat him well—

Harry thought of the times that he had tried to obey the Dursleys so they would treat him well, and laughed aloud.

Quirrell stared at him. There was no smile on his face now, and it was the first time Harry thought he was completely without one, even when Harry had burned his book. He moved his wand and probably cast the spell again, although he didn’t speak it, and a wave of fresh fish, cold and wet and slippery, hit Harry.

I am the one who is looking out for you, the only adult you can trust, you want to tell me every word that you’ve exchanged with Dumbledore, you want to tell me your secrets, you want to distrust your brother—

Harry pushed, and found the end of the slippery thing. It was like a coil in his mind, but it did have an end, like a snake’s tail. Harry grabbed hold of the Imperius and pulled on it, and it unraveled.

“Mr. Potter.”

Harry opened his eyes. He hadn’t even been aware that he was closing them to focus on the Unforgivable Curse more closely. And Quirrell was standing right in front of him with one hand spread out and his fingers clenching, like he wanted to drag the invisible coil from Harry’s brain and back into his own magic.

“What?” Harry asked quietly. He knew he was smiling. He knew it was probably a mean smile, but Quirrell was pretty mean himself, so it wasn’t like he would go running off to Dumbledore to report him.

“How did you resist it?”

No sly smile at all, no. Harry had done something that Quirrell hadn’t expected, but he had done that when he’d attacked him with elemental magic, too, and Quirrell had still sounded as though perhaps he saw the funny side of it then.

Not now.

I’ve scared him, Harry thought, and the thrill of power that trembled through him was wonderful.

“I heard a voice telling me that I wanted to obey and trust you,” Harry said. “I don’t obey and trust adults. I’ve tried it, and it never worked out. That’s probably going to keep me safe from any Imperius Curse an adult could cast,” he added thoughtfully. That was fun. And interesting.

Quirrell pursed his lips and blew out air, turning away to pace the floor. Harry watched him.

“And yet,” Quirrell said, turning around suddenly with a dramatic snap of his robes that Snape did better, “you are not afraid of me.”

“No.”

“Not running out of here to tell Dumbledore.”

“No.”

“The oaths that we swore—”

“Frankly, I don’t think of this as an attack because it didn’t work,” Harry said, and met Quirrell’s eyes. There was some other emotion hiding there now, something that wasn’t fear, but that Harry couldn’t make out. It probably didn’t matter. “And I was already thinking about how to taunt you into casting the Imperius on me.”

“Why?” Quirrell asked, slowly and coldly, his hand dropping to his wand.

“Because I want to learn it.”

“Whom do you want to curse?”

“Not you.”

“And you do not expect me to ask for more details?”

“No. Why would you? This hasn’t been a normal professor-student interaction from the very beginning, sir. You would have encouraged me to tell my parents about my elemental magic if it was, or told Dumbledore the first time I said something that made you think I was warped.”

Quirrell blinked several times. His hand rose away from his wand, and he studied Harry in silence. Harry just waited. He had been less than confident about his ability to get Quirrell to cast the Imperius, but he didn’t think he had to worry now.

“Warped,” Quirrell finally repeated, his voice a little more lively, but still not like he was going to smile any second.

“Freakish. Dark-Arts-using. Cold. Abnormal. I don’t know what word you really want to use for it.” Harry shrugged. It was kind of nice to have someone other than Theo he could be himself with. Yes, Quirrell had also tried to cast the Imperius Curse on him and kill Felix, but Harry had resisted the curse and saved Felix’s life, so it wasn’t like he had succeeded.

And Quirrell hadn’t done the worst thing of all. He hadn’t dumped Harry at the Dursleys’ and gone nattering on about how it was a necessary and worthwhile sacrifice.

“What are you going to do with the Imperius Curse once you learn it?”

“Use it to make people do what I want.”

Quirrell finally smiled, an expression Harry had seen only a few times before, one that seemed to be about baring his teeth as much as anything else. “You would have done well in Slytherin.”

Harry half-shrugged. He had no objection to Slytherin as it existed. He just didn’t want his parents to treat him like a pariah for going there, or lose his relationship with Felix, or chance that maybe his Parseltongue would come out if he looked at a snake and found himself speaking in that language instead of English. It was a fine House for other people, just not him. “Can you teach it to me?”

“Your magic other than your elemental magic is extremely chaotic. Undisciplined. You cannot even imitate first-year Transfiguration effects. How do you think you can imitate the Imperius?”

“By recreating the pattern that it creates in my brain. The snake-like one?” Harry added when Quirrell stared at him and Harry reckoned he hadn’t been specific enough. “It felt like a coil with a tail on it. I pulled on the tail, and it unraveled. I’m going to make sure that I can create that in someone’s brain, and, well, most people can’t resist it, so I don’t think they’ll find the tail to pull on.”

“Tell me, Mr. Potter,” Quirrell breathed, “is there any specific reason that you thought of a snake?”

“That’s what the pattern was like.”

Quirrell stared at him, and Harry stared back, and his magic manifested on his shoulder and rattled sharp, invisible wings. And then Quirrell tossed back his head and laughed. Harry stared at him stubbornly, even though the laughter, cold and high-pitched, made part of his stomach squirm in discomfort.

“You are a child I would have been delighted to mentor, at one time,” Quirrell said, when his laughter trailed off. “If things were different.”

“Does that mean that you’ll teach me the curse, sir?”

“Cease the respectful language, Harry, it does not become you. Yes. I will teach you. As long as you are willing to swear another oath not to tell anyone, including your Mr. Nott or your brother, who is teaching you.”

Harry accepted that easily. He certainly wasn’t going to tell Felix, and he could easily hint to Theo. Since Theo knew that Harry was still having lessons with Professor Quirrell regularly, he could probably guess anyway. It wasn’t like McGonagall was about to teach him that kind of thing.

“You realize,” Quirrell said softly, when Harry had sworn the oath that would bind him to silence concerning the casting of the Imperius Curse, “that I will be practicing on you, and that if you happen to slip in your resistance…”

“Yes, I know.” Harry stared at Quirrell. “Although I can’t imagine I’ll ever want to subject myself to a rain of fish on a regular basis, so I probably won’t slip.”

“A rain of fish?”

“That’s what the curse feels like to me,” Harry said, and shrugged.

“Interesting,” Quirrell breathed. “To many people, it feels like the most pleasant sensation they can imagine, like being bathed in pleasure…”

“Well, I haven’t had a whole lot of that in my life, so maybe that helps.”

“Maybe.” Quirrell nodded, still staring at him, and then lifted his wand. “Well, Harry, to begin. Imperio.”

Harry reached out and ignored the sensation of cold, slippery bodies falling around him to grasp the pattern of the curse, and watch as it uncoiled in his mind, tail sticking straight up and more visible this time. But he waited before unraveling it, watching it intently, determined to hammer it into his brain until he could understand and grasp it entirely.

And then apply it to the Figgs.

I am going to help Theo. I won’t fail because I don’t want to fail.

And whatever suffering the Figgs felt under the curse—Harry didn’t know how much that would be, if it felt like the most pleasant sensation in the world to lots of people—they deserved it for what they’d done to Theo.

Harry was pleased with how neatly that worked out.

Chapter Text

Felix straightened his robes a little and grimaced. He wished that he didn’t feel so much like he was waiting to ambush Harry outside the Great Hall.

But he had to talk to his brother, and at the moment, there was no guarantee that he would be able to if he followed his usual morning schedule. Harry always came in for such a short time to keep the owls from reacting to him that it seemed Felix would barely turn around from talking to Ron and he would be gone.

So Felix waited, and saw Harry come marching down the steps from Gryffindor Tower, eyes fixed on the entrance to the hall.

Felix watched his brother, and shook his head a little. Harry always had a grim face when he wasn’t smiling. His eyes seemed to be looking at something other than the Great Hall even though that was where he was going. He would have more friends—friends who weren’t in Slytherin—if he could just relax sometimes.

“Harry!” he called.

Harry turned around and walked up to him without a real break in his stride. He was smiling a little now, but it didn’t reach his eyes. “Felix? Is everything all right?”

“Yeah. I just—I needed to talk to you.” Felix lowered his voice. He didn’t want to imagine what would happen if one of the Slytherins trying to yank Harry over to their side heard this. “Did Nott tell you what happened yesterday?”

“No. What are you talking about?”

“I went to talk to him about corrupting you and trying to get you on his side. I know you think he’s probably a real friend to you, Harry, but he’s trying to use you for your power. I thought you might not be able to see that.”

Harry’s eyes widened. “What are you talking about?” he repeated.

Felix put a comforting hand on Harry’s arm. “I know you still don’t know that much about how things work in the magical world, the way that people follow Lords sort of mindlessly. Mum and Dad wanted you to just, I don’t know, know it somehow without really explaining it to you. But there are also people who are powerful magically, but don’t have that impact on people that Lords and Ladies do. You’re one of them. Nott is trying to use you. I thought you probably wouldn’t realize that.”

Harry was quiet for a moment. Felix wondered what he was thinking, but when he opened his mouth to ask, Harry looked straight at him and smiled. Felix relaxed. It was a bright and understanding smile, the kind he had just been thinking would make Harry look more friendly to people if he used it more often.

“Thanks for warning me, Felix. I certainly wouldn’t want people trying to use me.”

“That’s right. And I’m going to have a talk with Mum and Dad and Professor Dumbledore, too. It’s not right that they’re almost trying to use you without explaining things to you.”

“Thanks, Felix. I’d appreciate it if you talked to them. They never seem to listen to me.”

Felix sighed. “I know. They’re—well, they’re not stupid, but they’re wrong sometimes. I’ll talk to them. And do you want me to talk to Sirius? I know you were meeting up with him a week or so ago.”

“No, we’ve been sending those letters back and forth that I was having you send off with Hedwig. I think we understand each other.” Harry gave him a fleeting smile and ducked into the Great Hall, probably to get his usual porridge and fruit.

Felix sighed with relief, and then went to catch up with Ron and Dean, already planning how he would word his letters to Mum and Dad. Harry really did need a break from everyone trying to use him. It wouldn’t be great if he got away from the Slytherins only to run into their parents’ expectations and maybe get tossed right back to Nott and Zabini.

*

Harry didn’t know how he had kept his anger and sadness, boiling together like steam, from showing on his face while he spoke to Felix. But Felix wasn’t like Dumbledore. He was just a kid, the kind of innocent kid that Dudley would have scared off if they were all Muggles at primary school.

Getting angry openly and yelling at people didn’t make things happen, anyway. It had only made Dumbledore stare at him suspiciously after that time in his office, and no one had listened to him about Quirrell being the real culprit.

So Harry would lie to Felix, and in the meantime, he would find somewhere to meet Theo and Blaise that wasn’t so open as the library.

He went looking in one of the corridors near the Great Hall that Saturday afternoon, ignoring the fact that lunch was coming and then going. He’d gone through a lot worse than a missed meal at the Dursleys. That was practically familiar ground.

Harry was looking for a secret passage, or even better, a room with a thick coating of dust that would show people hadn’t been there in a while. Then he would have somewhere at least partially hidden to meet Theo and Blaise.

What he found was the Weasley twins.

Harry’s magic lifted its head and hissed before he even heard the footsteps. Harry turned to face them and put his back to the wall, drawing his useless wand. People like Fred and George only knew the lie about him doing better in Charms and Defense.

The twins came around the corner and stopped with looks of exaggerated surprise. “Look at what we have here, Forge,” said the twin on the left.

“A little lion, all by his lonesome!”

“A Potter, without his twin!”

“A boy raised by Muggles, without his Muggles!”

Harry couldn’t help tensing when he heard them say that last one, and knew their eyes were tracking his movements. But he shook his head and said quietly, “I was looking for a place I could meet with my friends. Sorry to bother you.” He started to turn around.

There was suddenly a red-haired twin in front of him. Harry barely managed to lift his wand instead of reacting with a hand that would have had fire shimmering around it. He locked his eyes on the other boy’s, hearing the other twin moving into place behind him, and said, “Move.”

The Weasley blinked and glanced over Harry’s shoulder at his brother. “All right,” he said, lifting his palms in front of him. “We just have a proposition to make to you. You’re not a Ronniekins—”

“And you’re not a Felix Felicis,” said the other one, coming around in front of Harry. Harry relaxed a little, but still kept the wand aimed at them. At least they were both standing where he could see them, now.

“You have Slytherin friends, right?”

“Snakey friends.”

“You need a place to meet with these snakey friends.”

“We can show you one.”

Harry nodded. “For what price?” He realized a moment later that he probably shouldn’t have said it. It wasn’t the kind of way Gryffindors dealt with each other. But he knew well enough that kindness from the Dursleys always had a price, and it didn’t seem likely to change when he was dealing with these particular Gryffindors.

The twin on the left smiled at him. “You don’t report to anyone what we’re doing if we sometimes use the same place.”

“You don’t—”

“Tell our mother, in particular. Or anyone else—”

“From our family, like Perfect Percy the Prefect.”

Those were terms Harry could agree to easily. “Deal.”

The twins immediately led him up through the corridor, although sometimes they paused and stared at a scrap of parchment for some reason. Harry stood far back enough that they wouldn’t think he was trying to see their parchment, and watched the corners and walls flash past.

They finally came to a halt in front of a painting of a bowl of fruit. The twin on the left shot him a glinting smile. “Now, watch out, little Potty wee Potter, this is very important,” he said. “You’ve got to—”

“Tickle the pear,” the other twin said, and leaped forwards and did so.

Harry blinked, and blinked again as the pear giggled and the portrait opened like a door. In retrospect, he supposed it shouldn’t have been that surprising, not when the portrait of the Fat Lady acted like a door for Gryffindor Tower. But what lay beyond was a surprise.

It was an enormous room filled with roaring fireplaces and billowing steam and the smells of food and creatures. Two of them spun around and bustled towards the Weasley twins. Harry stared at their green skin, floppy ears edged with hair, and long fingers, and felt as if he was about to faint.

“Misters Weasley is being back!” said the nearest creature.

“They are wanting food, surely,” said the one next to him, a taller one who Harry thought might be a girl. She gave Harry a fleeting, curious glance. “Who is the other one being?”

“This is Harry Potter,” said the nearest Weasley twin, who luckily waved to Harry instead of trying to clap him on the shoulder or anything like that. “The brother of the Boy-Who-Lived. He was looking for a quiet place to meet with friends.” He turned around and grinned at Harry. “And these are the kitchens of Hogwarts, so welcome, little Potty.”

“What are you?” Harry asked the creatures, because it didn’t seem likely that he’d get a realistic explanation from the twins.

The twins blinked and looked shocked, which might be genuine. But Harry focused on the creatures instead of watching them and trying to determine that. He had the feeling that trying to work out their real emotions and what was genuine about them was kind of a waste of time, anyway.

“We is being house-elves, Mister Potter,” said the taller one. She had a uniform on that looked as if it might be made of a pillowcase, and a strange-looking scarf around her neck that might be made of stitched-together napkins. She studied him. “Mister Potter and his friends would not be causing trouble?”

“No, we wouldn’t,” Harry said faintly. He’d heard of house-elves, of course. They’d been in the history books he’d read. Felix had mentioned them. But either the Potters didn’t have any, or they had kept out of sight the entire time Harry was “home.”

“What do you do down here? Why do you cook for everyone?”

“We is being bound to do so, Mister Potter,” said the tall elf quietly. “My name is being Jilly. And this is Arrow.” She touched the younger elf beside her on the back of his head, and he stood up and looked between Jilly and Harry.

“What do you mean, bound? Could someone get you away if they wanted? Could you leave if you wanted?”

The twins made gasping sounds. Arrow’s mouth was wide open, and he gasped, too. But Harry was just looking at Jilly, who seemed the most sensible person in the room to him. He saw the way her mouth twisted.

“House-elves can be being dismissed if they be given clothes,” she said. “But Hogwarts is being a much better place for house-elves than many others. So we is staying here.”

Harry nodded slowly. He could understand that. The Potters’ house didn’t strike him as the absolute best place he could have landed, especially with parents who had decided to abandon him for ten years, but it was better than the Dursleys’. You took what you could.

“So we can meet here?” he asked, to move on. It was obvious that Jilly didn’t want to talk about it anymore.

“Yes. So long as you are not causing messes or creating work for good elves.” Jilly studied Harry as if looking for the presence of stains or rips in his clothes that would show he was too wild to entertain.

Harry had to smile at the thought of Theo causing a mess. Blaise was more of an unknown, but considering the amount of fussing he did with Cleaning Charms on his robes, Harry wasn’t really worried about that, either. “I can promise that we’ll be careful.”

Jilly studied him one more time, then sniffed and nodded. “Mister Harry is missing lunch. Do you want some?” She waved her hand at a tray of steaming pies, pasties, biscuits, cakes, and meat that several elves were working on.

“Oh. Um. Yes. I suppose so,” Harry said, relaxing a little. He might have found a solution to his problem of eating in the Great Hall. Usually, lunch was better than either breakfast or dinner, when some owls might be bringing editions of the Evening Prophet, but he had been snapped at by a stray owl a few times.

“Then you be sitting down at the table,” Jilly told him, and poked Arrow in the back to lead him over towards the tray of food.

Harry turned towards the Weasley twins, who were watching him with sly smiles that he didn’t care for but didn’t seem to be malicious. “Thanks for your help. I never would have found this without you lot.”

The twins both bowed, and Harry felt a pang for a moment. He and Felix might have been like that if he’d been raised in the magical world, so completely in tune and always finishing each other’s sentences.

On the other hand, it was kind of stifling when he thought about it. And who knew what they would be like if he’d had the same problems with his magic and his parents or Felix had discovered him using Parseltongue?

“You are—”

“Most welcome—”

“Young Mister Harrikins,” the twins chorused, and winked at him, and ran out of the kitchens while looking at their scrap of stray parchment again.

Harry sat down and watched the elves work for a while, then ate a pasty when they put it in front of him. He could feel himself relaxing as he ate. No owls, no other people around to yell in his ear when they wanted something passed or comment on how much he ate or jab elbows they thought were friendly into his side, and the house-elves made Harry feel a certain kinship with them, given how many chores he’d done at the Dursleys’.

He might just start taking all his meals here.

*

“You found the kitchens?”

“Technically the Weasley twins showed me the way,” Harry said, and paused to tickle the pear in the painting of fruit that Theo had passed several times and never thought one way or the other about.

Theo shook his head as the painting swung open. His father had promised him that Theo would discover the way down to the kitchens sooner or later, with a little time and patience. Theo doubted it would have been during his first year, or that he would have listened to the Weasley twins if they did try to tell him things.

The elves in the room scrambled around to face them as they came in. Theo dismissed them with a glance and sat down at one of the tables. A plate of cut-up carrots landed in front of him, which was good enough.

He faced Harry again, opened his mouth, and then blinked at the weird expression on Harry’s face. “What?” he asked.

“You just—take them for granted, don’t you?”

Theo wondered what Harry was thinking. It was odd that he couldn’t tell, but Harry’s emotions appeared to have shut down completely. Even his voice was flat, and Theo couldn’t hear anything from his magic. “Why shouldn’t I? House-elves have served wizards and witches for centuries. My father has several.”

Harry turned around and stared at one of the elves who was working behind Theo, or so Theo assumed. He didn’t turn around to look. “How long have you worked at Hogwarts, Jilly?”

It was unusual enough for Harry to know the name that Theo turned around, too. The tallest house-elf he had ever seen was watching him with flat grey eyes. She looked at Harry when she answered, though. “Three hundred and five years this spring, Mister Harry.”

Theo blinked. “You’re the oldest house-elf I’ve ever met.”

“Hmmm,” said this Jilly, and nothing else.

“Do you like this?” Harry asked. “I mean, you said something about being bound. I tried to look it up in the library the other day, and there’s really no books about the binding that I could find. But there was one that suggested house-elves served wizards and witches because they liked it. Is that true?”

Theo turned around in time see Jilly’s face twist. She smoothed it out in the next moment, and gave Harry a perfect bland smile. It reminded Theo of his mum’s company smile, and he glanced away.

“House-elves is of course saying that we like it,” Jilly said softly. “There is books written about it, Mister Harry. How can it be otherwise?”

“I’m asking you if you do.”’

“You is being a wizard,” Jilly said flatly, and then turned away and went back to helping make what seemed to be a heaping pile of pasties probably destined for the Gryffindor table.

Theo just stared. Then he turned back to Harry. “None of the Nott house-elves would have acted like that,” he said, wanting to reassure Harry that he would have good service if he ever came to visit.

If Theo ever saw his father again, which at the moment didn’t seem likely.

Harry’s eyes were flat. “I think they should. I wanted to know if house-elves really enjoy their service, and I know now I can’t get an answer from someone who might be punished if she gave it. But I don’t want to just assume that they should like serving and treat them like slaves.”

“They’re not slaves!”

“Why? What’s the difference?”

Theo hesitated. He had expected the ideas about slavery since his father had told him that Muggleborns sometimes had them, but he hadn’t gone as far into the difference in his head as he supposed he should have. “I mean—well—”

“Yeah?”

“They like it. They’re happy. Slaves aren’t happy.”

“And you think that an elf saying she can’t tell me the truth because wizards won’t like it is happy?”

“She didn’t say exactly that,” Theo began.

Blue flames snapped into being, encircling Harry’s arms. Theo stopped speaking. He knew he was open-mouthed, and he disliked it, but he couldn’t help himself. He stared, and Harry seemed to realize what was going on, and shut down the show with a snap of his fingers and a roll of his shoulders.

He had more powerful magic than anyone Theo had ever met, and yet he still pretended to be inferior in class. Sometimes it made Theo sick.

Harry shook his head. “We shouldn’t talk about it right now,” he said. “Not until we know more about it.”

Theo nodded slowly. “Get books out of the library and bring them here?”

“That’ll work.”

“Is there a reason that you didn’t invite Blaise to this meeting?” Even though Theo had thought Blaise and Harry were getting along lately, he had to admit that he might be wrong, and Harry not inviting Blaise to their “new” meeting place seemed to confirm it.

Harry blinked at him for a minute. Then he said, “I honestly didn’t think of it. And I know that you’re a good enough friend that you wouldn’t mind meeting in the kitchens. I thought Blaise might.”

Theo chuckled. “Don’t let the way Blaise treats his robes fool you. He might be fussy about Cleaning Charms, but he would meet anywhere to learn anything new. I think most Slytherins would.”

For a moment, a look of naked longing crossed Harry’s face. Theo tilted his head. “Upset that you didn’t let the Hat place you in your rightful House?”

“There are some things about it that would have been nice,” Harry admitted. “But the Potters and my brother would never have let me be, or Dumbledore. And I might have killed and eaten Malfoy by now, which wouldn’t benefit anybody.”

Theo laughed. He was sure Harry was joking. Partially sure.

No, completely sure, as Harry smiled at him and Theo remembered that Harry wouldn’t think Malfoy worth the effort when he hadn’t done anything personally to Harry the way that the Potters and Dumbledore had.

*

“Harry. Can I talk to you?”

Harry blinked at Neville. He was “friends” with the other boy just the way he was “friends” with Gryffindors besides Felix. He talked to them in the common room, sat with them in classes, pretended to study with them, played chess or Exploding Snap with them on occasion. But Neville hadn’t tried to push for a deeper connection. Harry even thought he didn’t call Harry “Potter” only because there were two people with that last name in their year.

“Yes?” Harry asked anyway.

Neville took a long, deep breath, and clenched his hands in front of him like he was about to dive into a deep pool. Harry waited quietly. Maybe Neville was going to offer “advice” about Transfiguration again. Neville was considered a poor student but still doing better in that class than Harry, no surprise.

Harry’s magic stirred around him. Harry dismissed it. There was no reason to be upset about that. Why should he care? Transfiguration wasn’t something that would save Theo from the Figgs, or keep Harry from being sent back to the Dursleys’, or keep Felix safe.

“Did someone do something to you?” Neville whispered.

Harry blinked. “What do you mean?”

“Did someone—I don’t know, grab you and throw you into a wall or something? Because you flinch a lot, and I know that no one can sneak up on you lately but I see your face when the common room gets really loud and—and I don’t mean to—I just n-noticed.”

Neville was practically babbling, and Harry took a deep breath and pasted a smile on his face. “It’s okay, Neville. Some things happened to me that I don’t want to talk about, but I’m fine.”

“Was it the Slytherins?”

“No, it was before I came to Hogwarts.”

Harry hoped that would be enough. Neville was a good kind of kid who would probably go and try to tell someone else if he thought Muggles had abused Harry, which meant the Potters and Dumbledore would hear about it, which would only cause trouble. And no one else had noticed it so far, which meant—

Which meant Harry had to ask why Neville had noticed it.

Harry leaned forwards. Neville leaned in, too, his eyes wide. “Why did the Muggles grab you and throw you into a wall?”

“They thought it was funny,” Harry said, and pounced while Neville’s eyes were widening and his mouth was opening to ask the next question. “Who grabbed you and threw you into a wall?”

Neville licked his lips. Hie face was white, and he reached out the way Harry had noticed he usually did when he wanted Trevor with him to pet for comfort. Trevor wasn’t there right now, though, and Neville clenched his hand into his lap. “N-nobody.”

“But you noticed that I had been. And usually, the only kids who notice that kind of thing are kids it happened to.”

“I d-didn’t mean to upset you—”

Harry shook his head before Neville could babble himself into leaving. “It’s not that kind of question, Neville. I just want to know what happened to you.”

Neville stared at his lap. Harry waited. Finally, sneaking little glances at Harry out of the corner of his eye as if he knew how Harry had killed the troll, Neville said, “M-my family thought I was a Sq-Squib. They were al-always doing things to m-make me show I had magic. My g-great-uncle dropped me out of a window and I bounced, but that wasn’t until I was eight. So then they knew.”

Harry had to work so hard to keep his flames under control that he could barely hear Neville’s next words. Neville was trying to explain something about how his family were all powerful wizards and witches who had showed accidental magic when they were younger than eight, and they just wanted to make sure that he got to go to Hogwarts, and they loved him, really, and—

They can tell Neville that all they want, Harry thought, his fingers curling into claws. It doesn’t matter. They were willing to kill him so they could get what they wanted.

Just like the Figgs. Just like the Potters.

“You know that you don’t have to go back to them?” Harry interrupted harshly when Neville was starting in on yet another defense of his great-uncle. Harry could maybe have taken it if Neville was talking about his grandmother or any other member of the family, but not this great-uncle. Yes, Felix had said something about the great-uncle once before, right after Harry had come to the magical world, but Harry hadn’t paid attention to it, much. Now he knew it was real, and he had to help Neville.

“I mean, Professor Dumbledore found a new home for Theo Nott when he was being abused by his father,” Harry added hastily when Neville stared at him. It sickened him to spread the lie about Theo’s father, but it was what Theo would have wanted him to do. “He could find you a new home, too.”

Neville was quiet for a long second. Then he said, “You know my parents were killed fighting the Death Eaters?”

“No,” Harry said slowly. “I didn’t know that.” He’d had the impression that Neville’s parents were alive, but come to think of it, it was an older woman who had brought him to the Potters’ party during the summer. Probably his grandmother.

“I have to live up to them,” Neville said, and he gazed at Harry with his eyes shining with such a fanatical light that Harry recoiled before he could stop himself. “There’s no—there’s no choice about that, Harry. I have to do it. I have to be the best wizard I can be.”

Harry frowned. “But why does that mean you have to live with abusive people?”

“Because they’re the only ones who know what my parents were really like and can tell me.” Neville shuddered a little. “And they’re the only ones who will push me and test me and make sure that I use as much magic as I can. That I’m as strong as I can be.”

His stutter had faded completely. Harry studied him, and saw a kind of strength he hadn’t known could exist staring back at him.

He also knew that there was no way, probably, he could get through to someone who thought like that, and Neville would go tell an adult if he tried.

“Okay,” Harry said, as calmly as he could. “I see why that’s important to you.”

Neville relaxed and smiled at Harry. “Th-thanks, Harry.” He ducked his head. “I know a lot of people who say that I couldn’t be an Auror, that it’s r-ridiculous. Thanks for believing in me.”

Harry nodded, and patted Neville’s shoulder, and turned the conversation around so that it was a nice harmless one about Herbology, which was Neville’s favorite subject. Harry didn’t do too badly in that class, either, because it didn’t need a wand.

He went to bed that night and stared at the ceiling in a determined way, listening to Felix’s light breathing from one side of him and Neville’s snores from the other. He knew that he wouldn’t be able to get Neville away from his family without some kind of proof, and Neville would hate him if he did that.

But there was no reason he couldn’t use the same invisible methods of persuasion on Neville’s family as he was planning to use on the Figgs.

Harry closed his eyes and recreated the shape of the Imperius Curse in his mind again and again.

*

“Imperio!”

The sensation of being hit with wet, cold, stinking bodies pelted Harry’s mind again. He grimaced. It never got any better. He had almost thought it would, after the way Quirrell had described what the Imperius Curse felt like to most people, but it didn’t.

And then the snake-like coil popped up in his mind again, and Harry grabbed it.

It had a tail, which was the way he unraveled it. Harry yanked on it and it began unraveling, but he studied the shape and committed it to memory again. It felt the way he imagined it would probably feel to memorize a complex poem. Each time bits of it came back clearer and clearer, and he could repeat the parts he had already memorized more easily, and some of the new parts made a home in his memory.

But he couldn’t cast it yet. It faded out of sight, and Harry hissed in frustration.

Quirrell whipped around to face him, aiming his wand. “What was that?”

Harry stared at him. Quirrell’s face often went blank and dreamy when he cast the Imperius, almost as if he was using the spell on himself, but now it was pale and tight. His hand shook as he aimed his wand at Harry. “Huh?”

“You hissed.”

Harry held in his flinch. He couldn’t let anyone find out about his Parseltongue. Yes, Quirrell probably wouldn’t react like the Potters or Dumbledore would if they knew, but he would try to use it as a weapon against Harry. “I was frustrated, that’s all. I made a little hiss.”

“You were speaking.”

“Huh?”

Quirrell stared at him a moment longer in silence, and then shook his head. “I must have imagined it,” he murmured, and Harry didn’t think he would have heard him, but little air currents swirled through the room whenever they were in here now, and they directed the sounds to Harry’s ears. “The Potters have no Slytherin blood.”

Harry just blinked and tried to look as gormless as he could. And tired, too, he could do tired. It was tiring resisting the Imperius Curse day after day, and he wondered how much longer he’d have to do that before he could master it.

He did have a question he wanted to ask Quirrell, though. “How much control do you have to maintain over someone with the Imperius Curse?”

“What do you mean, Mr. Potter?”

“I mean, do you have to stand behind them with your wand up every time, ready to cast it again when it wears off? Or can you leave it there and it’ll make them do what you want while you just think instructions into their minds?”

“Why, Mr. Potter, you should know as well as I do that many Death Eaters woke from trances cast by the Imperius Curse after the war. They came back to themselves, so to say. Does that not suggest that the Imperius Curse is like your second example?”

Quirrell had a weird smile on his face. Harry glared at him. “I don’t believe that.”

“Why?”

“The Death Eaters are liars.”

“So distrustful,” Quirrell murmured, making it sound like a compliment. “But there is much debate on the nature of the Imperius Curse. Precisely because the legal penalties for casting it are so high, few people have the experience of doing so. And those who do…why, they tend to be the kinds of wizards and witches who work hard to keep their secrets.”

“So it always dissolves even if you don’t pull on the tail end?”

“What tail end, Mr. Potter?”

Harry tried to explain, but he had tried to explain before, and Quirrell never got it. Harry supposed it was another thing he was simply doomed not to be able to share with anyone, the way that the curse felt disgusting instead of pleasant to him and the way he couldn’t Transfigure objects or really understand wand magic.

“Enough of this, fascinating though it is,” Quirrell said, cutting off Harry’s fumbling explanation. “I think, Mr. Potter, that I have indulged your own lack of understanding of your elemental abilities long enough.”

“I’m working on understanding them.” The Imperius Curse was just more interesting, as far as Harry thought.

“But not enough.” Quirrell smiled in a way that made him look like a vampire, although he didn’t have any fangs to bare. “I do think, my dear boy, that unless you figure out a way to use your abilities to imitate Transfiguration soon, I shall have to end our sessions.”

Harry narrowed his eyes. “Why?”

“I won’t have a pupil who is ridiculously stupid,” Quirrell said softly. “And dear Minerva has confided to me that unless you improve, you won’t. be able to pass first-year Transfiguration and will have to repeat the class with the eleven-year-olds next year. There are dozens of things you could do to remedy the matter. You haven’t done them. You will find a remedy in the next week, and make Minerva sing a different tune in Monday’s classes.”

Harry swallowed back panic. He had thought of one or two things, but he didn’t think they would work. They all involved earth, and earth was his weakest element. “And if I can’t?”

“Then these sessions stop.” Quirrell shrugged. “There are other things I could teach you, as I’m sure you realize, to let you continue being my student and stave off my own boredom. I see no reason to let you dictate the content of our classes without even trying to push back—”

Harry flung a hand towards Quirrell, and concentrated as hard as he could on creating that snake-shape in Quirrell’s mind.

For a moment, he thought it was going to work. He could feel the way that Quirrell’s mind shifted towards him and then away from him, and he could picture the snake taking form in it, and he could feel—

There was another mind there. A second one, one that flung off the snake-shaped bindings with a snarl.

Harry staggered back, head pounding, as the magic crashed into him. It felt more disgusting than ever, but it was his own magic, and if he didn’t know how to form the Imperius Curse, it couldn’t be used to enchant him, either. A second later, and the disgusting feeling was gone, along with most of the headache.

He opened his eyes and found that he was leaning against the wall near the door, with Quirrell’s wand pressed against his throat. Harry thought dazedly that he’d Transfigured a sharp tip onto it, because it felt like a razor.

“Do not,” Quirrell whispered, “try that again, Mr. Potter.”

He stepped back and raised a hand to adjust his turban. Maybe it had magical protections on it and he was wondering why it hadn’t stopped Harry’s attempt to reach his mind. Harry stared at him and shook his head.

“Why did your mind feel that way?”

“You are not to worry about that.”

Harry left after a short staring contest, already wondering if the Imperius Curse would have worked if Quirrell didn’t have whatever he did in his mind. Some kind of barrier? Protection charms?

Harry thought he should go to the library and look that up.

Then he groaned as a thought came to him. He’d have to do that after he looked up Transfiguration theory, since he hadn’t managed to talk Quirrell out of that stupid thing.

*

Albus leaned back against his chair and sighed softly. The tracking charms on Harry showed that he still went to the library on a regular basis, but he was alone whenever he was there, or so Irma reported. He was checking out books on Transfiguration, apparently determined to become better at it. His heartbeat increased regularly when he was in Quirinus’s classroom, but that was to be expected, when he must be practicing Defense.

And if he ate in the kitchens, well, it kept anyone from noticing the adverse reactions of the owls in the Great Hall, and that was all to the better, in Albus’s estimation. Perhaps Harry would become friendly with the house-elves and be able to do something to better their condition, something Albus had long wished to do.

All in all, it appeared that Harry had spent less time with Slytherins, if any, since his brother had spoken with him, and that brightened Albus’s days.

Now, he could turn his mind to a much more important task: finding the shade of Lord Voldemort. He had received some promising leads about Albania…

Chapter Text

“Are you excited for Christmas, Harry?”

Harry glanced up and gave a soft, hesitant smile. Felix smiled back. Harry had seemed to get quieter in the last few days, as if he was concentrating intently on something. Maybe Professor McGonagall had given him extra work, or Snape. Snape sometimes seemed to hate Harry more than he did Felix, which was a puzzle Felix couldn’t work out.

“Yeah. Are we riding the Hogwarts Express back to London?”

Felix nodded and leaned back against his chair. He had already finished his essays for their Monday morning classes tomorrow. Being able to remember everything he had ever read came in handy that way. “And Mum and Dad will meet us there, and we’ll have Sirius and a bunch of our friends over for the holidays, but Christmas Day is just us. We’ll have piles of presents…”

“Really?”

Harry’s voice was quiet, his eyes seeming to stare far away. Felix paused. “The Muggles didn’t?”

“Not for me.”

Felix grimaced and nodded. He could absolutely see why Harry would resent the Muggles who had raised him. It just wasn’t acceptable for that to spill over into prejudice against Muggles in general or for Harry to go along with Slytherins who wanted to use him because of that.

“Well, we’ll have piles of presents,” Felix said fiercely. “And Ron will come over, and the twins, and Neville, and—we could have Hermione?” That was said a little doubtfully, but he had noticed that Harry and Hermione spent a lot of time together while Hermione tried to tutor Harry in Transfiguration, so they might be friends.

Harry jumped a little as Felix’s words pulled him from whatever he was thinking. “Oh. I think she was talking about going on holiday with her parents somewhere over Christmas.”

Felix nodded. “Are you going to write to her?”

“Maybe? I don’t know what we’d have to discuss except my tutoring.”

“That could be enough. I don’t—I don’t think it’s fair, Harry, but I know Professor McGonagall is getting more and more frustrated. I don’t want you to have take first-year Transfiguration again with next year’s firsties.”

Harry’s face became more grimly determined. “I think I have a solution to that.”

“You do?” Felix sat up.

Harry nodded and slouched back on the sofa he was using so that his face was mostly out of line with the firelight. “Yeah. You know how simple Transfigurations were mostly beyond me? Well, I don’t think the more complicated ones are.”

“That doesn’t make much sense, though, Harry. Why would they teach us the simplest ones first if it did?”

“When has anything about my magic made sense, Felix?”

Felix had to laugh at the sound of that, as little as he wanted to. “Well, that’s true. And you think that you’ll be able to take second-year Transfiguration with the rest of us? I mean, and catch up on first-year Transfiguration, too?” That had to come first, Felix knew, no matter how remarkable Harry might be in certain respects.

“Yes. I have to.”

Felix reached out and put his hand on his brother’s arm. “You don’t have to, you know? Mum and Dad are going to love you no matter what, even if you have some difficulties with your magic.”

“Really? Are they?”

Felix looked down at the floor of the common room and slowly withdrew his hand. “Yeah,” he said softly. “I need to think about that. And—if you do well at Transfiguration, it should be for you, not them.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Harry said, and touched Felix back for a second on the shoulder before he pulled away. “Hey, want to play some Exploding Snap?”

It still wasn’t a game that Harry was all that comfortable with, Felix knew, growing up Muggle as he had. He was grateful that Harry would volunteer to play it with him. He grinned. “Yeah, let me get my cards.”

*

Minerva swallowed as she turned to face Mr. Potter, whom she’d asked to stay after class. Things like this were the most difficult part of her job. She never minded disciplining those who broke the rules and deserved it—she’d had plenty of practice with the Weasley twins—but to see how someone might try as hard as they could and still fail, and she had to tell them what the consequences would be while the light went out of their eyes…

She hated it.

She managed to force herself to smile as she sat down behind her desk. “You said something about how you can demonstrate the Transfiguration, Mr. Potter? Did you work on it during the class period?” It hadn’t seemed as if he had, more as if he was glaring at the small wooden box Minerva had given each student and was daring it to respond, but she knew that his wand was reluctant to answer to him. There were bound to be some differences, given that.

“I think so, professor.”

His voice was soft, and he stared at the floor. If one couldn’t see their eyes, Minerva had thought the day of the Sorting, the Potter twins would look exactly alike. She knew better now. Harry Potter was in all things meeker and more biddable than his twin. At least he wasn’t afraid of hard work.

“All right, Mr. Potter.” Minerva gestured at the box. “If you could make that into metal, please.”

“And it doesn’t matter what kind of metal, right, Professor?”

Minerva blinked. That, she hadn’t expected. “No, Mr. Potter,” she said softly. “Although most students choose steel or iron.”

Or don’t choose at all. But Minerva wasn’t about to say that. The subtleties of Transfiguration theory were for higher-level classes. Some of them, the students wouldn’t explore at all until their NEWT years.

Mr. Potter nodded and stared down at the box. Minerva looked with him. She had chosen simple boxes of balsa wood for this exercise, mostly because it was easy to acquire and wouldn’t hurt too badly if the students exploded their boxes and pieces hit someone else. She looked down at the grain of the pale wood and waited for it to change as Mr. Potter reached out and tapped it slowly with his wand, muttering the incantation. He had a look of such fierce intensity on his face that Minerva forbore to say anything, even the encouraging words she normally would have.

The wood sparkled. Minerva blinked, wondering if Mr. Potter would set it on fire.

The wood twisted, still sparkling. Minerva stared as the pale color and gasped aloud as she watched it become paler still, and then the box, which had been partially balanced against the back of the desk, twisted and fell over.

Because it was so heavy. Minerva reached out and picked it up with a hand that shook slightly.

“Is that all right, Professor?”

Minerva stared at Harry Potter for a moment, and then at the box in her hand, which, by the weight and the look of it, was solid gold.

“Is that all right, Professor?”

Minerva bit her lip, hard. Her mind was a mess of jumbled thoughts and emotions. She didn’t know how Potter had achieved this. Some of her upper-years could have done it, but by the time they got into their fifth or sixth year, they were beyond working with the plain little wooden boxes like this one or trying childish tricks. And if Potter had had the skill all along, why had it taken him so long to display it?

“Why did you choose gold, Mr. Potter?” was the question she asked, the only one she would permit to leave her lips.

“It’s been on my mind, Professor McGonagall.”

Minerva looked again at the box, turning it around in her hand. The metal felt like gold, bent a little when she put pressure on the sides of the box like the softest of pure gold would. Minerva half-shook her head. She was stunned, but she supposed she would have to get used to it.

And when she thought about it, wasn’t there an answer? Felix Potter was a prodigy in Transfiguration, like his father had been. Perhaps Harry Potter’s talent had been slow to catch up because he’d lived with Muggles who had probably never encouraged him to exercise it, but once he was put in a supportive classroom environment and had the chance…

Minerva began to smile, and she knew she probably looked a little silly, but that wouldn’t stop her.

“Twenty points to Gryffindor, Mr. Potter, for studying so hard and showing that you have the determination and discipline to do well in a class I know you struggled with.”

Mr. Potter bowed his head, the faintest of blushes touching his cheeks. “Thanks, Professor.” He waited until she dismissed him, and Minerva was left there to sit and stare at the golden box and wonder at his fierce discipline.

It sounded more than silly to admit it to herself now, but there were times that she had doubted that one’s Sorting. So long under the Hat, and then so quiet, so skittish, so prone to hang back…and Albus had said something about him spending most of his time with Slytherins, more than he spent in the Gryffindor common room…

Well. Minerva shook her head briskly. Albus was right most of the time, but that only made his infrequent blunders all the more spectacular. Minerva had to admit she would enjoy rubbing this one in his face.

The boy was James’s son at Transfiguration, and he had studied hard to impress his Head of House. That was Gryffindor enough for her.

*

“I heard highly impressed stories from Professor McGonagall this afternoon,” Quirrell said casually as Harry walked into his office. “Well done.”

Harry nodded, watching Quirrell carefully. So far, he didn’t seem upset about the unexpected Imperius Harry had thrown at him last time, or eager to count it as an attack. “I’ll never be great at Transfiguration, but I can do it now. So thank you for your advice, I suppose.”

“How did you manage it? Minerva showed me the golden box, and I studied it, but I couldn’t pick apart the exact mechanism you used to make it.”

Quirrell was probably just using flattery, Harry thought, or wanted him to explain it in his own words for some reason. But Harry would take it, as long as their truce—of sorts—continued. “I watched other people casting the spell all class while I was pretending to cast it myself. Near the end, I thought I could see the pattern it would make in my mind, the way the Imperius Curse makes a snake pattern. So I arranged the pattern in my mind and threw it at the box, and at the same time, I tugged on a vein of gold I could sense buried somewhere under Hogwarts. I brought it up and used the pattern to wrap the gold around the wood and then took the wood out from underneath the gold and shoved it back down where the gold was. So now there’s a vein of wood underneath Hogwarts. Somewhere.”

Quirrell stared at him with his mouth slightly open. Harry eyed him. He didn’t know what this meant. Quirrell had to be pretending to be impressed, right? Because Harry knew his method was way too complicated and took way too long compared to the simple Transfigurations other people could do.

“That is—insanely complicated,” Quirrell said at last.

Harry nodded. “Not much good in battle.” He thought he would probably never like Transfiguration, although he would pretend to when he was dealing with Professor McGonagall.

Quirrell stared at him some more. Harry waited. He didn’t know if maybe their truce had come to an end after all and that was why Quirrell was so off-balance. Or maybe he just hadn’t anticipated that Harry would be able to meet his challenge and impress McGonagall?

“You have not yet brought your wandless magic under control, then,” Quirrell said, and shook his head like a dog surfacing from deep water. “You are still using your elemental magic.”

“It takes a long, long time for me to imitate regular wanded magic,” Harry said as carefully as he could. He had to tell the truth, because Quirrell always seemed to sense a lie, but he didn’t want to appear weak in a way that would make Quirrell stop their lessons. “But I did combine the elemental earth magic with the pattern of the spell that I sensed my classmates casting.”

Quirrell gave a soft, huffing laugh, but at least he didn’t seem to think Harry was lying. “Potter, what you’re doing falls into a realm of magical theory that has more to do with Runes than it does Charms or Transfiguration.”

“Oh?” Harry asked warily. He had seen a few minutes of Runes in some of the books he’d found in the library, but he’d been much more occupied in reading about Transfiguration theory and ways to free Theo from the Figgs than learning about something that wouldn’t help him.

“Yes. Runes are shapes that are carved in wood or rock, or drawn in blood or ash, or created with other materials, that hold and channel magic. They can make a spell more permanent than is possible when cast with a wand.” Quirrell was lecturing, the way he seemed to like doing, and Harry stood and listened. “They can also be created with mere ink, of course, which is the way that they tend to train students in the Ancient Runes course in Hogwarts. But the more uncommon the material, the more powerful the rune.”

“How does that relate to spell-patterns, though, sir?” Harry thought it better to add the word in case Quirrell thought he was too disrespectful.

“Some people have experimented with the possibility of creating spells by drawing runes inside their minds.” Quirrell shook his head. “The theory has never been worked out in practice. For one thing, thoughts are simply too insubstantial a material, and not uncommon. For another, no scholar could guarantee that they would envision the exact same rune another time, and even a small change in the shape would change the meaning, and thus the spell.”

“But you think—”

“You can feel the shape in your mind, not merely see it. A snake. Or—what did the shape that you picked up from your classmates feel like?”

Harry closed his eyes and thought about it. “A snowflake,” he said at last. “A simple one.”

Quirrell was nodding excitedly when Harry opened his eyes again. “You see? You potentially are opening whole new frontiers of magical theory. That is far more interesting than if you were simply good with wanded magic.”

Harry was quiet.

“You do not agree?” Quirrell’s voice had that odd sibilance it seemed to pick up at times. Harry hadn’t been able to see a pattern to it.

Harry took a deep breath. “It’s interesting,” he agreed. “But it doesn’t help me with convincing the Potters that I fit into their family or Dumbledore that I’m going along with his plans. I could use—something that did. There’s too much about me that’s unusual. It took me two days of intense study to do what I did today, and I’ll have to spend more time on it as Transfiguration class gets more complicated. If this was simple, it would be better.”

Quirrell’s eyes were wide. He stared at Harry, and stared at him some more. Harry looked back as neutrally as he could and wondered if it was wise to have told Quirrell as much as he had. Probably not.

Quirrell clasped his hands together and made a noise like a chortling seal.

Harry blinked at him.

“Two days of intense study, it took you?” Quirrell laughed again, and this wasn’t the cold, high-pitched laugh that he used more often, but something deep and hard. “The poor little lion, to worry about that when you have cracked the spine of a magical theory that has persisted for centuries.”

“You’re an adult,” Harry said as calmly as he could. “You don’t have to worry about fitting into a family.” Well, probably, anyway. He barely listened to any gossip about the professors, but no one had ever said anything about Quirrell’s family that he was aware of. “I do. Maybe if I was already seventeen, all of this would be fine, but it’s not.”

“Why do you want to fit into their family?” Quirrell asked, his voice now soft and curious. He had so many alternating moods that Harry was beginning to think his impression of a second mind in Quirrell’s skull was just all Quirrell. “Rather than standing proud and independent on your own?”

“Well, for one thing, they have all the money.”

Quirrell paused. “A fine reason, but not enough of one.”

Harry rolled his eyes, and Quirrell didn’t take offense, probably because he was still waiting for that other reason. “They also have legal guardianship of me. Who would take it if I alienated them? My godfather is their best friend. I don’t know anyone else here who would do it. It’s not like McGonagall would, she’s also Dumbledore’s friend and she works for him.”

“I notice you have not asked me.”

“You wanted to kill my brother.”

“I think I have proven that I want to guard and guide you.”

“No, you want to use me,” Harry said. He didn’t resent that. Quirrell was at least bloody honest about it. “And use me to relieve your boredom. Sir. That’s not the same thing as wanting to guide and guard me. And there’s the whispering I’ve heard about the curse on the Defense position. I don’t want a guardian who would only be here for a few more months, anyway.”

Quirrell stared at him again. “You impress me with your insight, Mr. Potter.”

“You swore an oath willingly to have a sort of peace between us until the end of the term. You would probably have pushed for something else if you thought that you would be around for more than a year.”

Quirrell paused again. Then he began to do that creepy thing he did, where he prowled in a circle around Harry and examined him from all sides, like Harry was a Muggle car that someone was selling.

Harry turned around and kept facing him this time. His magic snarled on his shoulder in warning.

Quirrell smiled with half his mouth. “You are an interesting young man,” he said softly. “Yes, I do have plans beyond the end of term, but you are right that those plans don’t involve the Defense position and Hogwarts.”

Harry nodded, and made a mental note to hurry up and learn the Imperius by the end of term. It would mean even more if he could learn it before they all went home for the holidays, so he could curse the Figgs to be half-decent to Theo over Christmas, but he didn’t think he could learn it that fast.

“However.” Quirrell stopped pacing and adjusted the hang of his robes around himself, his voice growing lighter again. “There is no reason that the most clever and interesting child of my acquaintance could not come with me, that we could not swear more permanent oaths not to hurt each other, that we could not continue the exploration of your incredible magic together.”

Harry didn’t have to think about it. “No.”

“No?” Quirrell asked, staring at him.

“No.”

Quirrell considered him some more. Harry watched him. His magic was coiled around his back and down his arms, and he felt that interesting tug of distant water that he always did when he was here. Well, he felt it other places, too, but he reckoned that was probably the water in the jugs on the tables of the Great Hall and in the pipes. Only here did he get the impression that it was out of sight but also a limited amount, and if he just reached out—

“Why not?” Quirrell asked.

“Theo is here. My brother is here. I need to make sure that I don’t leave them without a defense.”

Quirrell sneered, a jagged expression that sat oddly on his face. “Friends and family are a weakness. And I had thought you were including your brother as one of the Potters who needed to be deceived.”

Harry sighed. He didn’t really know what to do about Felix. On the one hand, Felix tried as hard as he could to make things easier for Harry, welcoming him into conversations and games in the Gryffindor common room and sitting with him at meals and dedicating some time to teaching him. On the other hand, Harry had to lie to him the way he did to almost everybody.

“I don’t know for sure what to do about Felix yet,” Harry said. “But I know that we couldn’t take him with us.” He looked at Quirrell pointedly. “Not when you tried to kill him, you tosser.”

Quirrell’s mouth opened very slightly, and he looked like he didn’t know what to do. Harry waited. He had done that deliberately, to see how Quirrell would react in a situation where Uncle Vernon would have begun roaring and tossed Harry in the cupboard.

Quirrell turned away and stared at the wall, and then said in a small voice, “A moment ago, I was offering to let you come with me, to join me in plans that are as grand as any you could ever imagine—”

“And a month ago, you tried to kill my brother.”

“You are oddly focused on that.”

Harry grimaced as a headache spread along his temples. It seemed localized above his eyes, in the center of his forehead. Harry didn’t rub at his face, because he wasn’t stupid enough to admit more weakness right now, but he shrugged. “He’s my only brother. Maybe the only family I’ll ever have if the Potters catch on to what I’m doing. He’s important.”

Quirrell turned around again, and the headache vanished. He shook his head, but it now looked brisk, instead of bewildered. “Very well. You have told me your reasons for wanting to remain here and lie to your family. Let us get on with the day’s lesson.”

“Just like that?”

“Just like that.” From the way Quirrell was smiling, Harry was half-sure he had done it deliberately, to set Harry off-balance and get some of his own back. “And this time, it will be half me teaching you, and half you teaching me.”

“What do you mean?”

“You said that you can feel the shape in your mind. It may be that the trick is impossible for others to learn, but that may not be true, as well.” Quirrell flicked his wand into his hand. “We are going to see.”

*

“I’m staying here for the holidays.”

Theo avoided Harry’s eyes as he spoke. Harry was quiet. They were in the kitchens, and Jilly, who had been speaking with Harry when Theo came in but had stopped the instant she saw him, put a plate of cakes between them. Theo picked one up and nibbled it without looking at Harry.

“All right,” Harry said. His voice was heavy. Theo blinked and looked up at him.

Harry was grim-faced, rubbing his forehead with one hand. He looked at Theo with a guilty expression, which rocked Theo, who had been anticipating and dreading that it would be pity. “I’m sorry I couldn’t learn the curse fast enough to use on the Figgs already and bind them so you could leave Hogwarts.”

Theo opened his mouth. Nothing came out until he saw the way that Harry leaned back in his seat and his face started shutting down, and then the words boiled out.

“It’s not—you can’t—Harry, you can’t blame yourself for that. No one else could even learn the Imperius Curse when they’re a first-year! And there’s no guarantee that I’d get to spend time with my father anyway, and that’s what I really want.” Theo could feel his smile almost cracking his face. “Believe me, compared to last Christmas, spending time at Hogwarts is more than fine.”

Harry waited a long moment, as if listening to the echoes of Theo’s words, before he looked at him and nodded. And then he reached out a hand, and Theo clasped it, ignoring the thought that the house-elves behind them might notice. It wasn’t one he’d ever had before.

“I wish I could get the Potters to invite you over,” Harry whispered.

Theo kept to himself his belief that, given the way Harry talked about his family, they wouldn’t be in control of Harry by the time he was fifteen, if that long. And then Theo and Harry could spend as much time together as they wanted at the holidays, in Hogwarts or with Theo’s father or elsewhere.

“It’s all right,” Theo said. “We’ll write letters to each other.” He noticed the way Harry grimaced, and shook his head. “I know you hate owls. That’s all right. I’ll give mine instructions to only find you when you’re alone, and to obey you. Okay?”

Harry gave him a narrow look. “If that would work, why do other owls attack me?”

“I actually have no idea,” Theo said. That was one of the minor mysteries about Harry he hoped to understand better someday. The papers had said something during the summer about Harry being under a curse, but Theo would have learned about it by now if it were true.

Harry trusted him that much. He thought. He was mostly sure.

Harry paused as if he was going to say something, but then shrugged and nodded, accepting that compromise. “Tell your owl that I won’t hurt it, unless it tries to hurt me, and then I will.”

“She’s my owl.”

“Tell her not to bite me.”

Theo sighed. But honestly, he had to accept that. Harry lived by the credo of striking second and striking hard enough that whoever he hit probably wouldn’t get up again, and Theo didn’t want to lose Nightshade. “I will.”

Harry leaned back in his seat and nodded, and then stared at Theo for a second.

Theo stared back, and finally figured out what Harry was probably pondering a second before Harry got up and came around the table. So he managed to lean into the hug and not be too stiff.

It helped that Harry held him like he didn’t know what to do, and dropped his arms abruptly and a moment too late or early, Theo wasn’t sure which. Theo reached out, gripped his hand, and squeezed.

“So,” Harry said, and then cleared his throat. “The Figgs won’t make you go stay with them?”

“They sent me a letter the other day ordering me to stay here. They don’t want their polite and sweet Christmas burdened with the child they were forced to take care of.”

“So you have that in writing? Could we use it?”

Theo shook his head. “If something like that would work, I would have been free a long time ago. Dumbledore wouldn’t listen to that. Nothing short of the Figgs saying themselves that they think I should be back with Father would make him listen.”

“So that’s what I have to make them say with the Imperius Curse.”

“It would help,” Theo said, and tried not to swallow too loudly. He was still dazed just with the idea that he might be free of the Figgs inside a year. He hated to look at it too closely, in case it turned out to be nothing more than moonflowers in the sun.

“Okay,” Harry said, and nodded, and stared at the wall with a cold look Theo had seen before. Harry was probably picturing the Dursleys under the Imperius Curse. But this time, maybe the Figgs.

Honestly, nothing Theo had ever received from someone had flattered him more.

*

“Happy Christmas, boys!”

Felix laughed and rushed across the platform to them. Lily bent down and wrapped her arms around him, while James pounded his back and ruffled his hair and laughed hard enough to make Lily remember all the reasons she had fallen in love with him.

Harry walked up to them slowly, his trunk dragging behind them and his head bowed. He was sneaking little glances at them out of the corners of his eyes. Lily smiled even while her stomach did cold flips inside her.

It was true that Harry’s magic was wild and probably dangerous. It was true that he had made astounding advances in the past few months with mastering his wand, but also true that that might not be enough to keep his magic quiet.

But seeing her baby boy like this, so shy and uncertain…

It made Lily’s heart melt.

“Come here, Harry,” she said softly, and extended her arms to him, aware of Felix and James both turning to watch. “Come here, sweetheart.”

Harry seemed to take a moment as if pondering how sincere her offer was—and really, Lily had words she wanted to say to Petunia—before he took a deep breath, and came forwards, and put his arms awkwardly around her.

He hasn’t had many hugs, either, Lily thought, and drew him gently closer to her, trying to make sure that he didn’t feel trapped in her embrace. Harry went stiff for a second, and then relaxed, leaning against her.

It reminded Lily so much of how he had leaned trustingly against her when he was an infant, newly home from hospital, that Lily’s eyes filled with tears. All that was missing was the soft smell of clean infant skin and warm milk.

Harry leaned harder against her for a second, and then took a step back, his eyes as wild as a deer’s. Lily let him go no matter how much she wanted to hold on to him, and subtly shook her head at James, who had stepped forwards for his own hug. James wisely restricted himself to ruffling Harry’s hair.

“Come on, kids,” James said, and looked proudly around, probably seeing what Lily saw: that they had two sons, two boys following them and coming home to tell them tales of being Gryffindors at Hogwarts. “Let’s go home.”

*

It sort of hurt Harry, how easy the Potters were to fool.

He had thought about not fooling Felix, but he spent almost all his time at home around at least two of the Potters, and the times he could speak to his brother alone were pretty rare. And it was imperative that James and Lily not suspect what he was doing. So he played the docile and smiling and uncertain and shy child, and all of them lapped it up.

Felix woke Harry up early on the day after they got to the Potters’ house and dragged him out into the enormous drawing room where a tree that took up half of one wall stood. He pointed out the history of all the stars and ornaments and fairy lights that decorated the tree, while Harry stood there and listened and nodded.

It was kind of Felix, in a way. But it was still a history that Harry hadn’t been there for.

Lily dragged Harry into the kitchen and covered him in flour as they made Christmas biscuits. (Harry supposed that settled the question about whether the Potters had house-elves: no). Harry smiled at her and absorbed the little stories she dropped and asked questions about things she wanted him to ask questions about and kept his magic tensed and growling at his side, stopping it when it wanted to reach out to the fire in the hearth and the water in the sink.

James took him flying, and only dived at Harry once. Harry promptly fled towards the ground, and James pulled up and looked stricken. He wasn’t good at stricken and would probably resent it, so Harry flew up and looked shy and mumbled about how he hoped he could play Quidditch at some point and would James show him how good a Chaser he’d been?

That was a good question. It kept James distracted for hours, telling stories of old days and tossing a Quaffle around. Harry marveled and cheered and thought that Uncle Vernon would have been so much easier to distract if he’d liked football or something like that.

Well, probably not. Not like he would have played it with Harry.

Sirius came over on Christmas Day, when the gifts piled beneath the tree were making it wobble, and gave Harry a hard, hopeful smile as he handed over a distinctly book-shaped package in red-and-gold paper. Harry tore it open, the way he’d be expected to, and blinked when he found himself holding what looked like a red leather ledger.

“It’s a photo album,” Sirius explained, shifting back and forth and scratching the back of his neck as if he had fleas. “I thought it would be—you could put your own pictures in there, and we could add some of the ones you weren’t here for…”

Because you threw me away.

But by now, lying was second nature to Harry. He faked a soft smile without thinking about, ducked his head—that was a good tactic for concealing the real expression on his face—and murmured, “Thank you.”

Sirius was beaming by then, obviously glad that his present had gone over well. He whipped a camera from behind his back and waved it around. “I thought we could take some pictures today?”

And he snapped photo after photo of Harry and Felix opening gifts, Harry holding each one of his up, the four Potters next to the tree with their arms around each other, Harry and Felix eating biscuits, the enormous meal that was heaped on the table and the bones and crumbs of it that were left later. It was sweet.

On the surface. But Harry had come to accept that that was the only place the Potters were likely to look.

*

Theo smiled a little as he accepted the letter from Nightshade. She hooted sulkily at him and stood on the table next to him, pecking at the remains of the Christmas dinner on his plate. She was a snowy owl, technically, but a rare one who had completely black feathers except around her face and legs. She was beautiful and deadly, and Theo was glad she had come back unscathed from her first delivery to Harry.

Although not all that happy, Theo thought.

Disregarding that given that Nightshade had returned alive, Theo tore the letter open and sprawled on his bed to read it. He was the only one of the first-year Slytherins who had stayed, and the boys’ bedroom was blissfully quiet.

Dear Theo,

I miss you. There’s no one I can be honest with here. They all want to play happy families and I have to lie all the time. They want to bake biscuits and give me presents and pretend that they never left me with the Dursleys.

The Dursleys locked me in a cupboard. I think I told you that. I never had a bedroom. I never had a bed. I think the Potters think I’ll be grateful to them for letting me have a bedroom or a bed. Or maybe just James and Lily think that. Not Felix. I don’t know. It’s not like I can talk to him honestly while we’re here.

But you know what? I don’t even think it’s that. I mean, that James and Lily are thinking about how I’d better be grateful. They just don’t think about it at all. They look at me being the quiet good little kid who’s using his wand for things now, and they think it was all worth it.

I’m thinking about using that curse we’ve talked about on them, too.

Harry.

Theo smoothed a shaking hand over the parchment. Part of him ached fiercely, wishing he could take Harry away from the Potters, wishing that he could somehow travel back in time further than a Time-Turner would take him and keep the Muggles from hurting Harry.

But part of him was also fiercely glad. Harry saw reality for the way it was. He wouldn’t give up his powerful magic and his friendship with Theo and Blaise and his studies on the Imperius Curse to try and fit back in with the Potters, the way Theo had been afraid of. It had been silly, maybe, but the thought of Harry surrounded by Christmas cheer and tempted to give in to it…

Yes, he’d worried.

I needn’t have.

Theo gently touched the wrapped package on his bedside table that was waiting for Harry. They’d agreed that it would be better to exchange gifts when they were both back in school, in case someone saw either of them with the one they’d bought or the one they’d received and made a fuss about it. At Hogwarts, it would be a lot easier to keep them concealed and a lot easier to pretend they had come from someone else.

Theo couldn’t wait to see what Harry had got him. He couldn’t wait to see Harry’s face when he opened Theo’s present.

He couldn’t wait to see Harry, in general.

*

“He’s doing a lot better, isn’t he?” Sirius murmured to James.

James nodded back. His eyes were on his older son, where Harry was slumped over in a chair clutching his photo album. His heart was full of pride and strangeness, and memories that were finally, finally, beginning to replace the awful ones of that night.

“Yeah. He’s stopped jumping and flinching so much. He helped Lily bake biscuits the other day and he really looked like a normal kid, you know? Not just—not someone who’s been abused by those awful Muggles.” James took a sip of his Firewhisky and sighed. “I’m so glad that he’s starting to get past that.”

“You don’t get past it that quickly,” Sirius said in a hollow voice.

James clapped his shoulder. “I know. But you did the right thing. You ran away when you got a chance, and did you ever regret living with me and my parents?”

Sirius smiled then, and James was glad to see his shadows flying away. “No.”

“Well, Harry can be healed by the magic of family. Sustained by it, like you were.” James looked back at the sleeping Harry again and got up to smooth his hair back and kiss his forehead. For a moment, the rough lightning bolt scar seemed to burn beneath his lips.

But it didn’t burn the way it had that night, when he and Lily had rushed home and seen the most awful and unexpected sight they could ever have imagined—no, one that was beyond imagining.

James shook the thought away. The scar didn’t burn now. Lots of things didn’t.

*

They’re idiots, Harry thought as he feigned sleep and listened to their conversation, and hoped neither of them would notice the shimmer of fire that for a moment ran around the middle of his back.

If not for Theo, if not for Felix…

I might have accepted Quirrell’s offer.

Chapter Text

“It’s just not as important as you seem to think it is,” Felix said, and flopped back into the seat on the train compartment with his arms folded. Part of him knew he was being childish. This wasn’t the way Mum and Dad had taught him to act when he argued with someone.

But Harry was infuriating. He kept on harping on the attack that had happened at the Gryffindor-Slytherin Quidditch match, for some reason. And he seemed to think it was Professor Dumbledore being incompetent that meant the attempted murderer hadn’t been caught yet.

“Why?” Harry demanded. His magic was prowling around him, rattling the walls. Felix knew Harry wouldn’t take it well if he asked Harry to control his bloody magic, but Felix really wanted to say it. “You could have been—”

“Could have been. I wasn’t. The worst I had to do was duck a few times. That’s nothing compared to the kinds of curses that put me in hospital.”

“So if I’d let it hit you, then you’d bloody listen to me?”

Well, he raised his voice first. “You don’t have to shout at me! And I didn’t mean that. I just mean it isn’t as big a deal as you think it is because it didn’t actually hurt me. And the supposed murderer hasn’t tried again since that, have they?”

Now Harry was the one who looked like he really wanted to say something. In the end, he stood up, shook his head, and stalked out of the compartment.

Felix slumped back and stared miserably at the countryside rushing past outside. He was missing Mum and Dad and Uncle Sirius, he almost didn’t want to go back to Hogwarts, and now he’d had a fight with Harry.

“All right, mate?”

That was Ron in the doorway. Felix smiled shakily and sat up. “Yeah. Just—Harry and I had a bit of a row about the spell that attacked me at the Quidditch match.”

Ron let himself in and sat down opposite him, frowning. “But that doesn’t make sense, does it? It didn’t come back, and no one else tried to kill you. So what’s the big deal?”

“Yeah, you get it.” Felix wondered why he felt so much more comfortable around Ron than his own brother, but reminded himself, with a wince, that it wasn’t Harry’s fault he didn’t understand the way things in the magical world worked and how little of a threat a disappearing curse was to Felix’s life. “But Harry thinks that the person who did it will try again, maybe.”

“And Professor Dumbledore will stop them!”

Felix nodded. He no longer thought Dumbledore was perfect, not after discussing him with Harry, but he was obviously still a lot more powerful than either Harry or Felix was, and the proper person to take problems to. “Want to play some Exploding Snap?”

“Why not chess?”

“I actually stand a chance of winning when we play Exploding Snap, you berk.”

Ron snickered and got out his cards.

*

“Theo.”

Theo turned around with a small sigh and a smile he couldn’t hide. He hadn’t known how much he’d missed Harry until he was there again. They’d met up in their usual corridor a few paintings down from the bowl of fruit that would let them into the kitchens, and Harry had been a little late.

“How was your holiday?” Theo asked, walking close to Harry as they made their way into the kitchens. The house-elves gave them a glance and then dismissed them. Theo sat down with his back to the fire and watched Harry settle onto the bench across from him and also visibly consider what he was going to say.

You don’t have to lie to me.

But Theo knew Harry didn’t trust any more easily than he did, and he waited patiently until Harry said, “Tiring. They just—don’t understand. I have to lie to them all the time. You know what Sirius Black, my godfather, gave me for Christmas?”

“What?”

“A photo album. He said we could take a lot of pictures to put in it, and I could also put in some of the pictures from the time when I wasn’t there. Like I was in hospital and missed a few parties or something, not—”

Theo reached across the table and grabbed Harry’s hand. “When I have my father back,” he said softly, “you would be welcome to come and live with us, if you want.”

Harry blinked, hard. Then he said, “I think I could put the Imperius Curse on Lily and James. I don’t want to have to use it on Felix, though. And Dumbledore could probably resist it and find out I’d used it.”

Theo sighed. That was true. All the solutions that would have occurred to him if he had magic as powerful as Harry’s were out, since Harry still had his brother to care about and his parents were so close to Dumbledore that any major behavioral change would be noticed at once. He sat back. “All right. Well, enough about shitty families we need to lie to. Why don’t we exchange gifts?” He lifted the wrapped one from his side.

Harry’s eyes blazed with something so near to joy that Theo’s breath caught. He hadn’t seen it before. Harry waved his hand, and a gust of wind floated a package in gold and plum paper over the table to settle on the bench next to Theo. Theo tried not to guess what it was before he tore it open, but it did have the flat shape of a book.

Harry had already got into his. His eyes widened when he saw the small black book with silver edges, which was what Theo had intended. “What’s this?”

“A journal that you can write your notes in, or your thoughts,” Theo said softly. “It’s charmed to respond to the magic of the first person who writes anything on its pages, and then no one else can open it or even see it unless you give them specific permission. I thought you could use a private place to write down some of the things you’re thinking.”

Blinking, Harry reached out and touched the journal. Then he said, “I’ll let you see it, of course.”

Theo smiled. “Thanks.”

Harry seemed to snap himself out of a daze. “Sorry,” he muttered. “I—I should be the one thanking you.” He shifted and squirmed in place for a second as though trying to wrench his mind back into the present. Theo waited, not minding. He was pleased that his gift had had such a powerful effect on Harry.

Harry took a deep breath and nodded to the gift sitting on the bench at Theo’s side. “Thank you for yours. You should open that.” Then he glanced off to the side, so transparently trying to pretend that he didn’t care that Theo smiled again as he picked up the package.

When he opened it, he discovered that it was a small book without a title on the cover, and wondered if Harry had got him a journal, too. But when he opened it, he saw it did have a title listed on the creamy paper, if not an author.

Theo dropped the book.

“What’s the matter?” Harry’s voice soared sharply, and Theo heard the rattle that marked his magic waking up. “You don’t like it?”

“No, I love it,” Theo said hoarsely, and stared down at the book without trying to pick it up. “I just—I’ve heard of it, but I’ve never read it. I don’t know anyone who owns a copy. Where did you get it?” With one hand, he caressed the paper that seemed to shift and stir under his hand, and the delicate silvery letters picked out there that spelled Tales of the Wild Hunt.

Harry watched him with one foot tapping under the table. “I found it on a back shelf of the Potter library. It felt—it felt like your magic. I don’t know,” he added defensively when Theo looked at him. “It just did. When I picked it up, I thought of you, and I saw you in the Great Hall pulling a Christmas cracker with white mice coming out of it.”

“That did happen,” Theo whispered, feeling a little faint. “I think…”

“Yes?”

“I think this is the copy that my family used to own. The Ministry confiscated it on a raid, nearly a hundred years ago.” Theo couldn’t stop touching the book, but that just looked like it reassured Harry more, so he didn’t particularly feel the need to. “I have no idea how it wound up in the Potter library, or why they wouldn’t have destroyed it, but I think it was ours. And the moment you picked it up must have been the moment when I pulled the Christmas cracker.” He took a deep breath. “The Potters won’t notice it’s gone?”

“It looked like they hadn’t dusted back in that corner in fifty years,” Harry said dismissively. “And they don’t have house-elves, so no one’s probably going to go back and check. I don’t think they had any idea it was there.” He watched Theo from beneath his brows, and then smiled a little. “So you like it.”

“I am thrilled with this book, Harry.”

Either the tone in his voice or the words finally got through. Harry sat up and beamed at him, and then he turned and started asking Jilly questions. Theo examined the book reverently while he did. He could ask about the conversation later.

Trust Harry to find a book saturated in the Nott magic for him. Even Theo could feel it now, the soft, subtle darkness creeping out from the cover and the illustrations that appeared on the pages as he turned them, unrolling themselves in clean, subtle lines. Theo doubted they would have appeared for anyone else.

This book felt like his father’s magic. For the first time in over a year, Theo could imagine that Father was standing there with his hand on Theo’s shoulder.

And Harry had given it to him, just because it felt like Theo. Just because he thought it was a good idea. Without the slightest idea of what a book like this might cost.

Theo watched Harry chatting with Jilly, and wondered at the wave of emotion rising in him. He didn’t know how to define it, except that if one of the Potters had come in and said Theo could keep the book but they were taking Harry away, he would have given up the book without hesitation.

Harry turned away from Jilly and seemed surprised to see Theo watching him. But then he smiled.

Theo did his best to put the book aside, although he kept one hand over the robe pocket where he’d stored it, and have a normal conversation with Harry. But the realization kept burning in him, even later when he was lying with the book tucked beneath his pillow and his cheek resting over it so he could bathe in the sensation of being near his father.

Mine, he thought, and he meant everything.

*

Blaise did not know what to do. This was rare enough to irritate him.

Theo wasn’t the only friend he had made in Slytherin. Blaise had a nodding acquaintance with some of the older ones thanks to their alliances, business or political, with his mother. He enjoyed Draco’s company in limited doses. Pansy could be tolerable when she was making fun of someone who wasn’t Blaise.

Harry was a total mystery.

Yes, he shared his secrets with Blaise, and they did homework together, and he was Theo’s friend. And Theo seemed convinced that Harry would stand up for them if they really got in trouble. He had simply removed the curse from the Figgs that was tormenting Theo. Blaise didn’t know anyone else who could do that.

But Harry was also a poor student in Potions, and, from what Blaise had heard, in other classes, too. Even the ones that didn’t involve wands, like Herbology and Astronomy, he apparently dithered and didn’t pot the plants right, or didn’t see Saturn even when he was staring right at it. He barely attended meals. He faded into the background around his brother or even Granger. It didn’t seem like associating with him would provide Blaise any prestige in the eyes of his House. Professor Snape hated him.

It should be simple not to be friends with Harry. But it wasn’t.

The second time he made an excuse not to go to the kitchens with Theo and meet Harry, Theo watched him with glinting eyes and then said, “All right. But you should know that Harry won’t think of you as someone he should trust if you keep staying here.”

“He should. We exchanged first names. I’m the one who brought him here to help you with that curse.”

Theo shrugged. “But for Harry, one incident of that happening isn’t enough. You have to keep proving that you actually want to be his friend.”

Blaise grumbled about haughty Gryffindors, but he would probably have done the same thing himself. That was why he gave in and accompanied Theo to the kitchens that Tuesday a fortnight after the term began.

Harry was sitting with his back turned to them when they entered, speaking with the tallest house-elf Blaise had ever seen. But he turned around and gave them a faint smile, nodding to them. “Hullo.”

Blaise thought he could see something being shut up behind Harry’s smile, but he was more distracted by the glint of something on Harry’s neck. “What’s that?” he asked, pointing.

“What’s what?” Harry’s hand came up to brush at his hair, where he must have thought Blaise was pointing, but he didn’t look away from them. Theo glanced back and forth between them, frowning.

“Something gleamed—there! On the side of your neck. No, a little higher. Were you wearing jewelry or something?”

“No,” Harry said, and suddenly he had gone still. Blaise folded his arms. This time, he hadn’t done anything. “What is it?”

“I have no idea. I saw it shining, that’s all.”

Harry closed his eyes and concentrated. Then his hand darted forwards and seemed to pluck the thing Blaise had seen out of the air, although Blaise’s eyes watered as he tried to actually focus on it. Harry opened his eyes and stared at the pinch of air between his fingers, turning it back and forth.

“What is it?”

“A monitoring charm, Theo,” Harry said softly. “When Blaise pointed it out, I could feel it as distinct from the rest of my magic. Until now, I couldn’t. There’s a disadvantage to having this much power hovering around me all the time, I suppose.” He looked up. “Thank you, Blaise.”

The “thank you” felt heavier than it should. Blaise nodded and said, “You’re welcome. Do you know who put it on you?”

“I don’t know for sure. But I can guess. And I think there are probably others. I’ll get rid of them.”

Harry burst into fire.

Blaise yelped and scrambled backwards, only to be stopped by Theo’s arm around his back. Blaise stared at him, and Theo shook his head a little. He didn’t seem to be alarmed, which was the only reason Blaise didn’t think this was a punishment of some kind for discovering the monitoring charms.

The fire died, and Harry looked normal, except that perhaps his magic was a little—lighter. Blaise didn’t know how to define it better than that. Harry turned back and forth, stretching his arms out and studying his robes, nodding. “I suppose I’ll have to check all my clothes to make sure that there’s nothing on them, either,” he muttered. “But that probably got rid of the worst of it. Thank you, Blaise.”

“You—fire—how?”

Harry looked up, and sighed. Blaise had had time to see now that yes, none of his clothes were charred, and his skin was utterly free of blisters and burns. His hair wasn’t even singed. Blaise made a silent vow not to go anywhere until he got answers.

“I’m an elementalist.”

Blaise’s brain stopped running and did a flip over itself. He stared at Harry, who scrunched up his nose and stared back. “You can’t reveal that to anyone,” Harry added. “I’ll have to make you swear an oath or something.”

From Theo’s non-reaction, he had known this already. Blaise stomped forwards before he could think about it. “You can command fire?”

“All four elements, really. Although my control over earth is pretty weak.”

“If I’m going to be your friend,” Blaise snapped, “then I want to know all your secrets that Theo does. It’s not fair if you trust him more and me less.”

“It’s fair,” Harry said softly, and a blue flame flickered into being at his shoulder. “I met him first. I trust him more.”

Blaise stared at him, but Harry didn’t back down, and when Blaise thought about it, he could see why. Harry was an elementalist, holy Merlin. Someone cared enough about where he went and what he did to put monitoring charms on him—powerful ones if they could be seen, even accidentally. His parents had left him in the Muggle world for ten years for no reason Blaise had heard. Mum had believed it was because Harry was a Squib, but obviously not.

Blaise’s mind made another leap, and he smiled. “You don’t really use your wand at all, do you?”

“You’re smart,” Harry said, in a neutral tone that made it less of a compliment and more of a truth. “No. It’s just a piece of wood to me. I’ve been using my elemental magic to fake it in Charms and Defense and Transfiguration.”

“What will you do once we get into higher-level classes?”

“Fake it some more.”

Blaise wanted to say that someday that wouldn’t work, but from the way Harry’s eyes were set and glinting, he didn’t want to hear it. Blaise nodded slowly. He was willing to swear some oaths to keep Harry’s secrets, because this was fascinating. Someone who could use the magic of all four elements, and wandless! This was the kind of secret Blaise wanted to know and keep track of, and the kind of magic he had heard, from some stories he had read when he was younger, that elementalists could teach other wizards.

He drew his wand. Harry slid down from the bench and stood in front of him, and spoke the words of the oath he wanted Blaise to repeat.

Blaise did it without hesitation, because it wasn’t a particularly onerous oath, and he wanted to stay. He caught Theo’s eye as he tucked his wand back into his holster, and had to snort at how smug Theo was.

Yes, fine. He was right that spending time with Harry is a good thing, and getting him to trust me reveals all sorts of interesting secrets.

It doesn’t mean I’m ever going to let Theo live down that time he fell asleep with the sandwich on his face and woke up with mustard all over his nose.

*

Every single robe in his cupboard had the same kind of tracking and monitoring charms. Now that he knew what to look for and how to hold his magic in check so its thrumming and snarling didn’t overwhelm the quiet hum of the charms, it was perfectly obvious.

Harry closed his eyes and took a deep breath. Then he reached out and scooped up the first five sets of robes, tucking them into the satchel where he usually kept his books. He wasn’t sure of his control if he tried to burn off the charms while they were just hanging in the cupboard, so he would have to take them to a classroom, put them on one at a time, and burn them that way.

“What are you doing, mate?”

Harry gave Ron a strained smile as he shut the cupboard door. “I’m going to practice some of those cleaning charms Professor Flitwick was talking about on my own clothes. Better do it now than have to do it my first time in class, right? Especially since my control over my wand is so uncertain.”

“Oh, yeah.” Ron nodded. “You’re going to an old classroom to do it?”

“Yes.” That was even true. It just wasn’t any of the more accessible classrooms where students went to practice spells, brew, or duel.

“Thanks, mate. Don’t want to see what kind of mess you might make of the room.”

Harry’s magic flared around him, but he controlled it, just nodded, and managed to slide out of Gryffindor Tower and to the classroom he was thinking of without catching anyone else’s attention. He slid the robes on one by one, and then let his fire loose, rippling around him, cleansing and purifying, ensuring that the only things on the robes were things he wanted to be there, like the buttons and hems.

All the while, his anger shone hot inside him, compacted but all the hotter for that. It had either been the Potters or Dumbledore, and Harry thought that the Potters probably didn’t care that much about his individual movements as he went about his school day. It was much more likely to be Dumbledore.

I hate him.

The hatred was sharp and cutting, tiny thin flares of flame like lasers tumbling around inside him. And he knew that he couldn’t do anything about it. Dumbledore was politically powerful, magically powerful, and the Potters’ best friend or Lord.

He’s the one who sent me to the Dursleys. He’s the one who put Theo with the Figgs.

Nothing could change, except removing the charms from the robes. If Dumbledore put them back again, Harry would just destroy them again. He might have waited, might have been wary of the consequences of taking them off, but it wasn’t like Dumbledore could really admit he had put them there, either.

I’ll remember this.

*

Albus frowned slightly at the empty air that should have been alive with ripples of Harry’s movement and the sound of his heartbeat. The charms had dissipated entirely, one set in the kitchens—those on Harry himself—and then more sets in an empty classroom. He wondered if someone other than Harry had found them and thought they were dangerous. But none of the students would have had the power to remove them, and the professors would have recognized his magic and come to speak to him first.

Then he felt like striking himself in the forehead. House-elves. Of course. They might well have noticed the charms and decided that they were from someone dangerous, perhaps even Voldemort. And it would be like house-elves to take the robes to an out-of-the-way place, remove them, and return them without even alerting their owner. From the feeling of it, batches of charms were vanishing at a time.

Albus shook his head. He would have to speak with the elves and ensure that they knew he was tracking Harry for Harry’s own good, and to be able to get there quickly in the event of a wild magic breakdown.

In the meantime, he could live without them for a few days, and give the house-elves time to calm down.

*

“Imperio!”

This time, the spell seemed to land differently in Harry’s mind. Maybe it was his bitter, burning anger at Dumbledore, which hadn’t gone away but had retreated because he had nowhere and no one to take it out on. Maybe it was because he had finally experienced the spell enough times to figure out what he should do with it. Maybe it was the time of day, or the extra flick of Quirrell’s wand when he cast the spell, or Harry thinking how it was already the end of January and he had to learn this by June at the latest to prevent Theo from going back to the Figgs.

But this time, Harry looked at the snake-shape of the curse in his mind, and he saw.

He could pull on the tail and unravel it, and when he did, it went too fast. And he had also decided that was one of the reasons that people could ultimately break the Imperius unless someone was always right there next to them casting it or could at least get to them regularly to renew it. They might not feel the shape, but the shape had an end.

Now…

Harry reached out, and he guided the snake’s tail into its mouth.

There was a spark like one of the monitoring charms catching the light, and the shape tumbled around in his head. Harry laughed aloud as he considered it. Yes. This was the way to make a permanent Imperius Curse. Make the shape a ring, and no one who only experienced it the normal way would be able to find the beginning or end of it. Only someone who could feel the shape the way Harry did would have a prayer, and there were going to be few of those people.

My wandless magic really is stronger than wanded magic. At least for this one thing.

“What did you do?”

Quirrell’s voice was sharp in the way that meant he knew Harry had done something but couldn’t figure out the answer for himself. Harry opened his eyes and grinned at him. “Made a ring of the snake in my mind, sir. I think it would create a permanent Imperius Curse.”

Now I just have to figure out what would make it less pleasant for those prats…

But maybe the permanent spell would be nasty? Harry supposed he couldn’t know for sure until he tested it out. Maybe he could find a really unpleasant student here and try it out on them. Malfoy probably wasn’t unpleasant enough to count.

“Why do you think that?”

Quirrell’s voice was quiet. He seemed to dislike Harry coming up with an idea that he hadn’t come up with first. Harry blinked at him. “Because I could always end the spell by pulling on the tail. I think people who break the Imperius Curse or where it fades over time were doing the same thing. Or sort of the same thing, since they can’t feel it. But if you put the snake’s tail in its mouth, then you couldn’t get it out again without being able to feel the shape of the spell.”

“Are you threatening me with this, Mr. Potter?”

“No.”

Quirrell prowled a step forwards. Harry felt a headache blossom through his scar. He raised his magic around him, quickly and quietly, on alert as he hadn’t been when Quirrell had been staring at him.

It felt as if he were confronting a dangerous enemy, suddenly, although he hadn’t thought of Quirrell that way in a few months—not since he’d begun to teach Quirrell the Transfiguration of wood into gold, anyway. Harry hadn’t thought Quirrell would want to kill him at least until after he learned that. He hadn’t done it yet.

Now, though, now he could.

“If you think to bind me with that,” Quirrell said softly, “you will not walk out this door.”

“I’m going to use it on people who deserve it, and that’s not you.”

“Then why did you mention it?”

“Because you obviously felt the change in the spell and asked me about it, and you’ve always been able to sense when I lied.”

Quirrell eased back with a snort, and the sensation of sharp menace died away. “You should be more careful whom you tell about this,” he said, while Harry noted his fading headache and didn’t lift a hand to touch his scar. “Saying that to someone could give them the wrong idea.”

“Yes, sir,” Harry said. He left unsaid that he didn’t plan to tell anyone else except Theo about this ahead of time.

And Blaise? Maybe. Blaise had so far kept Harry’s secrets without appearing tempted to give them away. But Harry knew Theo would accept and approve of Harry’s plan to use the Imperius Curse on the Figgs and (if he could get away with it) the Potters. Blaise might have some kind of squeamishness about it.

“Once again, you have broken through a long-established magical theory, Mr. Potter. I will have to consider this.”

Quirrell didn’t say what the magical theory was that Harry had broken, and Harry didn’t ask. It was probably something about how no one could perform a permanent Imperius Curse without ending up as a gibbering wreck or running around screaming at people. There was a reason the spell was called an Unforgivable.

Harry didn’t particularly care. He unhooked the tail of the serpent in his mind from its mouth and made it vanish. Then he hurried away to find Theo. Now that he knew he could master the curse at least partially, Harry didn’t want to wait for the end of the year. Theo might have to spend a few days with the Figgs before they could make Dumbledore believe that they really wanted to give him back to Mr. Nott. As far as Harry was concerned, this was unacceptable. They would have to set this in motion by the Easter holiday at the latest.

*

The being who sometimes thought of himself as Quirinus Quirrell and sometimes Lord Voldemort stared after the Potter child and remembered the night that he had broken into the Potters’ small cottage at Godric’s Hollow. Remembered his servant bowing before him. Remembered the sudden dazzle of brilliance, bright as lightning, when the bloody runes traced on the floor burst into fire.

Remembered what he had seen, lying before him.

He had not known that that child would grow into—this. He had only caught a brief glimpse of Dark magic heaving like a sea in storm before the backlash tossed him out of his body and through the atmosphere. And he had had other things to concentrate on, just then.

It was fascinating, mentoring Harry Potter through the discovery of his elemental and wandless and world-breaking magic. It was disconcerting, too. For the first time in years, Lord Voldemort had encountered someone he would regret lifting his wand against.

Of course, he would do so. Of course he would do so. Albus had called together the professors during the Christmas holiday and confirmed that the rumor that had drawn Lord Voldemort here was now reality. They had chosen to conceal the Philosopher’s Stone in the school, under heavy protection, and leak the truth to certain well-chosen former Death Eaters, with the plan to draw Lord Voldemort’s wraith into a spirit-trap when it crossed the wards.

Albus appeared confident that he would know the instant the wraith approached. He had said something about Lord Voldemort not being strong enough to possess anything other than an animal.

Quirinus had had a hard time controlling his laughter, but Lord Voldemort had required him to.

Lord Voldemort had survived death. Lord Voldemort had been in the room that night and seen the power stirring there and it had not managed to kill him, for all that it might have deprived him of the body he was born in.

Lord Voldemort would kill Harry Potter if he had to, Felix Potter because it was required. But he would regret the first kill.

*

“Are you sure that this is a good idea?” Theo hissed behind him as he and Harry slipped into an alcove behind the staircase leading down to the dungeons.

“You were the one who said that Marcus Flint broke a Gryffindor’s arm last year and made the bones grow into each other,” Harry said absently as he eyed the staircase, waiting for his prey to come down it. “And then you told me it was one of the Weasley twins. I like them. I’m doing this.”

“You could practice on an animal first…”

“We don’t have time,” Harry said shortly. “And there’s no telling that I could get the animal to do the kinds of complex things that I have to make the Figgs do to leave you alone. Look! He’s coming!”

Theo sank back behind him, not making a sound. Harry smiled to himself. Whatever his concerns about Harry using the Curse on another person—which might be concerns for Harry himself, not about Flint—he had made his choice by staying silent.

Flint came down the stairs, but he wasn’t alone. Still, he was in front of the mass of Slytherin Quidditch players, and isolated enough that he still made a good target for Harry’s magic. Harry concentrated on him so hard that he could feel his power buzzing in his teeth.

Imperio.

The word blasted out of him so strongly that Harry was numbly surprised none of the Slytherins with Flint seemed to hear it. Theo caught his breath, but didn’t otherwise react. Harry pushed, and the snake coiled out of his mind and into Flint’s.

Panting with the effort, Harry stuck the snake’s tail in its mouth. Flint had frozen at the bottom of the stairs, trembling, his eyes wide. His friends didn’t appear to have noticed yet, but probably would at any second.

Do this, Harry snapped, and sent the directive searing into Flint’s mind like the beams of hot fire that had seared him inside when Blaise had found Dumbledore’s monitoring charms.

It was the hardest thing he’d ever done, wrapping the snake around and around Flint’s mind. Flint was fighting him. There was panic there, and flowing waves of what looked like pain. Harry smiled grimly. It seemed he wouldn’t have to do anything special to make the Figgs’ fate unbearable for them. The permanent Imperius Curse would presumably do it all on its own.

For the next month, you’re going to quit the Quidditch team, Harry whispered into Flint’s mind. Your marks are slipping, and you’re concerned about that. You’re going to spend so much time on Arithmancy and Ancient Runes that people will joke about it. He wasn’t a Slytherin, and Theo wasn’t close to Flint, so this was the only thing Harry could think of to make sure that he’d hear about the results.

The waves of pain intensified, but the snake was still firmly in place. Harry slipped out of Flint’s mind and sank further back into the alcove with Theo. The whole thing had only taken a few seconds, but the game would be up if one of the Slytherins with Flint spotted them.

“You all right, Marcus?” one of the other Slytherins asked. Harry didn’t know who it was. He was a tall kid with a nose that must have been broken at least once.

“Yeah, headache,” Flint muttered, rubbing his forehead. “You know, I have to think about my marks…”

“Yeah, your dad’s always saying that.”

“Well, he’s right,” Flint said, and lifted his head. Harry could see the determined look on his face, which didn’t look fake at all. “I’m going to quit the team.”

“What?”

Harry felt Theo choke behind him with what might have been laughter, but he didn’t say anything. And since the older Slytherins were so distracted with Flint’s pronouncement, they all went past in a clot without looking into the alcove, either.

Harry relaxed with a long sigh. He had wondered if a connection would remain between him and Flint, one that might drain his magic, but he couldn’t sense anything. He would just have to keep track of time and check in to make sure that Flint was cracking the books and that he would return to the Quidditch team when a month was up.

“Just had to do something that would give the Quidditch victory to Gryffindor?” Theo whispered behind him.

Harry turned around with a smile. “Had to do something noticeable, something we would hear about even if we never interact with Flint.”

Theo nodded slowly. His hands were clenched in front of him, and there was a question in his eyes that Harry didn’t think he was aware of asking. Harry reached out and gave his hand a quick squeeze.

“We can do it on the Figgs,” he said. “I’m sure we can.”

Theo didn’t slump in relief, but his eyes closed. Harry was content to stand there quietly, and let Theo have this moment.

When he recovered, they could start planning the future. But for now…

For now, it was enough to be here.

Chapter Text

“It’s strange how Mr. Flint suddenly decided that he needed to quit the Quidditch team.”

“Really strange,” Harry agreed with a smile that bared his teeth.

Quirrell stared at him as Harry let the door fall of the office shut behind him. That feeling of water immediately pressed on Harry’s nerves. He ignored it as best he could. He had started to feel it in some other places, like when he was talking with Theo in the kitchens or if he was walking through a corridor and passed another person. That meant it probably wasn’t some strange spell Quirrell had cast and Harry didn’t have to worry that it would manifest as a weapon for Quirrell to use against him.

He would figure out what it was someday. For now, there was no great hurry.

“Why did you use the Imperius Curse on him?” Quirrell asked, apparently tired of pretending.

“I had to be sure it worked,” Harry said. “No way am I testing it for the first time when my life might depend on it.” Or Theo’s life. Or Felix’s life. Although Felix would probably be horrified if Harry ever used the curse to save him and then Felix figured out what he’d used to do it.

Quirrell tapped his wand against his teeth. “And you did something to Flint that you can hear about the reversal of easily.”

“Yes.” Harry didn’t intend to tell Quirrell that he had deliberately made it so that Flint would only concentrate on his marks for a month and then go back to the Quidditch team. Let Quirrell think the spell had slipped and Harry didn’t have that much control. It was probably the best thing for him to think, all around.

Quirrell made a vaguely dissatisfied sound, but seemed to decide he should let it go. “We will not be having our ordinary spell practice today, Mr. Potter,” he said, and reached for a book sitting on the desk behind him. He tossed it to Harry, who caught it with an instinctive gust of wind. Quirrell stared at him with a blank face that didn’t tell Harry what he thought of Harry’s use of air. “I have discovered a book on how dangerous elemental mages were, and some of their history. You will read it.”

“And take notes?”

“You should certainly take notes, for your own future use. I will take the book back in a month.”

“All right,” Harry said, and started to sit down on the floor in one of the corners. It wasn’t up to Quirrell to provide him with a seat.

Quirrell made a sharp sound with his tongue, a little like a hiss—Harry started, but there didn’t seem to be words there, to his relief—and summoned one of the desks that stood against the wall. “You’ll sit here,” he said, sending a chair skidding after it. “And I have the parchment and quill and ink for you as well.”

“Thank you, sir,” Harry said. He didn’t usually bother with the title anymore, but Quirrell was being more generous than he needed to be, so Harry could be, too.

“Potter.”

Harry looked up. Quirrell was standing in front of Harry with his arms crossed and his gaze heavy with meaning. “Yes, sir?”

“You should keep in mind that no matter how dangerous that book might make you think you are, I am a thousand times more dangerous,” Quirrell whispered, and Harry didn’t think he was imagining the way the shadows moved behind him for a moment. “Any adult wizard who already knows what you are can resist you.”

“Yes, sir,” Harry said. That made sense, he supposed. Quirrell wanted to continue this role of being “mentor” to Harry, but he wanted to keep Harry under control, too.

Well, that was all right. Harry hadn’t been able to find that much about elemental magic in the library outside vague stories and legends. The books seemed to agree that people like him were dangerous, but not why.

Other than the possibility of lighting someone’s hair on fire with a thought, of course.

Harry dug into the book, ignoring the fact that a lot of the words and sentences were long and he would probably have to read them more than once. A month should be enough time. He would take the information, the way he had all the other information that Quirrell had offered him, and use it to survive. Maybe one day he would use it to get what he wanted other than survival, but right now, along with Theo’s and Felix’s safety, that was all he wanted.

*

Lord Voldemort watched the Potter boy taking notes with a quill that dripped, and forewent the temptation to correct the child’s handwriting. That, at least, was nothing to do with him.

Yes, in a way, this information would make Potter potentially more dangerous. But it would also render him grateful, and thus easier to control. And there was nothing in the book he could learn that Lord Voldemort did not also know.

He turned to his own book, which involved legends of the Mirror of Erised, and listened to the scratching of Potter’s quill. It was almost peaceful.

*

Harry snapped the cover of his journal shut as Felix slid into the seat beside him. He’d been taking notes on Flint’s behavior and the rumors that were circulating about him quitting the Quidditch team, and that wasn’t something he wanted Felix seeing.

Even if he couldn’t, per the enchantments on the journal. Harry certainly trusted Theo, but it was taking him a while to trust the journal.

“We overheard Snape talking about the Philosopher’s Stone and Voldemort,” Felix whispered.

“Who’s we?” Felix had Ron following him around the most often, but Dean Thomas, too, and Seamus, and even Hermione was starting to join in more often now that she seemed to have achieved more of a balance between “having friends” and “having a captive audience for lectures about marks.”

“Me and Ron and Hermione. And doesn’t this prove it? Snape must be the reason that Dumbledore set up that trap Mum and Dad were talking about! The one that’s meant to lure Voldemort to the Philosopher’s Stone!”

Harry thought that one of the stupidest decisions the Potters could have made was to tell Felix about that in a letter. Why would they want him to know about it? Did they really think that Felix could survive a confrontation with Voldemort? Did they think he could somehow contribute to the Stone’s protection when Dumbledore was the one who had come up with this plan and was a lot stronger than Felix?

Maybe they did think Felix could defeat him. He did once before.

“Okay, Felix, but think about this. Did you see the person Snape was talking to?”

“No, but what does that have to do with anything?”

“How do you know that he wasn’t talking to some other professor who knows about this? Dumbledore announced it to all the teachers. So Professor McGonagall has to know about it, and Quirrell, and Flitwick, and Sprout.”

“But why would he be talking about Voldemort with that person?” Felix insisted. “The other professors don’t know everything!”

“I thought you said they did. I thought Mum and Dad—” it was hard to force the words past his lips, but Harry managed “—said that the other professors were helping to protect the Stone from Voldemort, so they had to know.”

Felix frowned and shook his head. “I just don’t think someone would be talking about it with another person that openly unless they wanted to get the Stone for Voldemort.”

Harry sighed. “Look, I don’t like Snape. He treats you terribly, and Ron and Hermione and Neville terribly, too.” He paused, but Felix was nodding and didn’t say anything about the way that Snape had treated Harry terribly, even though Harry was the only one of them who’d actually had detention with Snape. Harry sat on that resentment and continued. “But I have to think that if he was working for Voldemort, then Dumbledore would know. It just seems impossible that he wouldn’t.”

“Does that mean that you don’t want to help us protect the Stone?”

“How can you help protect it, for fuck’s sake?” Harry snapped, losing the battle against his temper. He heard someone gasp from the side and thought it was probably Patil, who had Opinions about language like that in the common room. He didn’t care. “Dumbledore already has all these people working on it and something really powerful concealing it. What can you do?”

Felix glanced around and seemed to notice the people in the common room staring at them. He cleared his throat and at least raised a Privacy Charm around them, which was more than he’d done so far. Harry folded his arms and stared at him.

“Look, no one knows exactly what happened that night,” Felix said, lowering his voice even with the charm in place. “But we know it was terrible. We know it scarred Mum and Dad. They’ll never talk about it, even with me.”

The son they actually like, Harry’s brain supplied.

“But we know I defeated Voldemort somehow. Knocked him right out of his body, if what Professor Dumbledore says is true. So that means I must be able to do it again, right?”

“No. Just because McLaggen caught the Snitch in the game with Slytherin doesn’t mean he caught it with Hufflepuff or Ravenclaw, does it?”

“This is a lot more complicated than that, Harry!” Felix put his hand on Harry’s arm. “Come on, please? Just help me?”

“Help you with what?”

“I know that you’re still meeting up with Nott, somehow,” Felix said, which was perceptive enough that Harry just ended up blinking at him. “Try to subtly ask him about any rumors that are going around the Slytherin common room, okay? If Snape is in league with Voldemort. If anyone’s heard anything about Voldemort coming back. Please?”

“You are mental.”

“Please, Harry. This is all I’m asking. It’s not a big thing, all right? And—” Felix lowered his voice “—maybe this will show Mum and Dad that you can be useful in the fight against Voldemort, too, and they won’t send you away again.”

Something splintered in the back of Harry’s mind, and for a moment, he was struggling wildly against his own magic, which surged to the front of his brain and wanted to create a fire that would burn Felix.

No! No! I won’t be like them! I won’t just hurt or kill people who haven’t done anything!

Harry wrestled the magic under control and took a deep breath and said, “If they send me away again when they know what it was like for me there, then I’ll hate them.”

Felix’s eyes widened. Then he said, “Oh, Merlin, I’m an idiot.”

For implying that I would deserve to be sent away?

Felix chattered on. “I keep forgetting that you didn’t grow up the same way I did, with the same explanations about how certain things are just more important than others. They—Mum and Dad really did hope that you would be a political asset, Harry. That really is the reason they sent you away. Not because they wanted you to suffer. Because the suffering of Muggleborns coming into our world and wizards and witches who fear Muggles and Muggles who get caught up in magical wars is so much worse.” His eyes were wide and earnest.

Harry bit his tongue to the point that pain flooded his mouth and stopped him from saying anything.

“Mum and Dad are used to thinking like that. Just—in terms of usefulness and pragmatism and the greater good.” Felix leaned closer. “It doesn’t mean that they love you any less. It’s just that they have to send you where you’ll be useful. And they would keep you in the magical world if they see that you can be more useful that way than in the Muggle world.”

Useful. I have to prove I’m useful. I was a baby when they—

Harry was going to explode. He really was. And then he would be sitting on a smoldering couch next to the charred skeleton of the Boy-Who-Lived, and he would have no way to explain that one.

“I’m going for a walk,” he snapped at Felix, and snatched up his journal and tucked it away in a robe pocket. His fingers were sparkling and glinting as though he was wearing some kind of bright polish. He knew it was little tendrils of fire darting between them, and had no idea how to stop it.

“But then it might look to Mum and Dad like you don’t want to protect the Stone.”

“I already don’t matter to them, this isn’t going to change anything,” Harry flung over his shoulder, and left the common room at almost a run, his skin stretched tight and hot around bones that felt as if they would fly apart any second.

He had to get somewhere—he had to go—

He pounded down more staircases than he could count, and ones which usually would have delayed him in getting outside, but today they all seemed to cooperate and spin around where he needed them to go the instant he needed them. Maybe Hogwarts sensed how close to flying apart he was and wanted to get him out of the castle, too, Harry thought dimly.

He ran through the entrance hall into the open, and towards the lake. He could feel the call of all that water, but right now, he didn’t want to manipulate it or anything else he could have done.

He flung himself into the air when he was still a short distance from the lake, and dived straight into it.

The shock of the cold went through him like a piercing arrow, one that wounded the pain and anger until they couldn’t survive. Harry gasped and flailed back to the surface, tossing his head back. The water gripped him, a balm that seemed to speak in a low, soothing murmur he couldn’t make out the words of, and cooled the fire.

Harry tilted his head back and closed his eyes. When he lifted his hands in front of him, there were no tendrils of fire flickering around them. He sighed out.

“Felix!”

Harry tightened his shoulders. This was obviously someone who had mistaken him for his brother. He turned around with a polite smile on his lips, shaking his head. “Sorry, I’m Harry,” he said. At least it ought to make the person go away soon.

Hagrid, the big man who had led the first-years into Hogwarts on the night of the Sorting, blinked at him, and then smiled tentatively. “Hey, Harry, maybe you can still help? I have a—well, a secret, and I need some help with it.”

Harry was at least sure that this would have nothing to do with Voldemort or the Potters or the Philosopher’s Stone, so he shrugged and said, “Sure, if I can. But you know that I have some curse on me that makes most animals not like me, so I don’t know if I can help you with gamekeeper duties.”

Hagrid chuckled uneasily. “Well, maybe not, but I could still use the help, and I don’t know—I can’t tell Professor Dumbledore.”

A little more intrigued now, Harry stood up, drew his wand and cast a “Drying Charm” that was really just a wind of hot air blowing around his clothes while he aimlessly waved his wand. “All right. Let’s go. Your hut’s just over here, right?” He walked in the direction he thought it was with Hagrid trotting behind him.

*

Harry stared at the huge black egg rocking on the table with his mouth slightly open. A dragon egg.

“He’s just a baby,” Hagrid whispered, his hands worked together until Harry could see the knuckles standing out like small hills from the corner of his eye. “But he can’t hatch. I think he’s caught in the egg, but m-my hands are too big…”

Harry reached out, not sure what slow force was pulling his hands and telling him it would be all right—not when Hagrid’s dog Fang was cowering in the corner of the hut, not when he knew that owls had so much hatred for him that the dragon would probably bite off his fingers and burn him.

But somehow, he knew that it would be all right. He knew exactly where to pull on the egg, and how to do it in such a way that the halves of the shell came apart and the small dragon sprawled on the table, fluttering its wings and heaving in a great breath.

Harry stared down at it, and it lifted its head and turned to look at him.

Not it. Her. The truth slammed into Harry’s mind with a force like the Hogwarts Express.

“Look at ‘im, the little thing!” Hagrid crooned, and reminded Harry that he wasn’t alone with the dragon. He blinked and managed to force his mind back into the present.

“Her,” Harry murmured. “I think it has something to do with the size and the number of teeth, see?” In reality, he was making that up. He hadn’t studied magical creatures in any depth after his initial reading about Parselmouths and the reason he was probably getting the reaction he did from owls and the others. But he couldn’t not correct Hagrid. The little dragon was female. He knew it.

“Oh, really?” Hagrid peered down doubtfully, then chuckled. “Well, I don’t know all that much about ‘em.”

Then why do you have a dragon’s egg? Harry wanted to ask, but he doubted Hagrid would want to tell the story. He reached out a hand, ignoring the way that Hagrid started to say something.

The little dragon curled herself up and grabbed his hand with her forepaws. She crooned at him, and Harry heard the soft sound of words churning through her breathing and hisses, like the murmurs of the lake suddenly making sense.

“Big place. Nice creature. Big place. Hungry. HUNGRY!”

“I think she’s hungry, Hagrid,” Harry said, feeling a smile pull at his mouth. The little dragon was completely curled around his hand by now, climbing to arrange herself along his forearm like some kind of giant, living tattoo. Harry stroked her black scales in wonder. They shimmered with heat, and when she sneezed, sparks flew out of her nose, but he knew with absolute certainty that she wouldn’t hurt him, and not just because he had the kind of elemental magic that could resist the dragon’s fire. She liked him.

At least some people do.

It hadn’t occurred to Harry that his being a Parselmouth might make him as attractive to reptiles as it made him hateful to other creatures. He had thought snakes would like him, but he’d never intended to run into one of them, so it didn’t matter.

But now…

He thought he could take the way Fang whimpered when Harry glanced in his direction and the cats in the Gryffindor common room fled from his presence and owls clicked their beaks at him like they were thinking about rending him apart. If it meant that creatures like this little dragon, who was so much cooler, would like him.

“Hey, Harry, be careful, be careful now!” Hagrid was reaching for something standing near the hearth, which smelled like blood. Harry sniffed at the smell of alcohol also coming from it and stiffened, remembering some of the nights that Uncle Vernon would drink and what he called Harry would get worse. “She’s great, but you’ve got to be careful with them things.”

The dragon hissed at Hagrid. “Hungry. Big creature bring the food. Other creature talk to me. Talk to me. Talk to me.” She rammed her head up under Harry’s chin, which snapped Harry’s head back and left dizzy little lights spinning in front of his eyes.

“Whoa!” Hagrid set down the bucket quickly. “Yer all right, Harry?”

Harry nodded and swallowed. “She’s getting hungry, I think,” he said. He was a little stunned how much the dragon’s vocabulary in Parseltongue sounded like it was improving just from the time she’d hatched. She was getting smarter a lot quicker than a human baby would, he thought.

“Chicken blood and brandy, that’s what she needs,” Hagrid said happily, and poured the bucket into a large wooden bowl sitting next to the table. He heaved the thing onto the table in the next instant, and the dragon scrambled to the edge of Harry’s arm to dart her tongue out and start drinking. Her claws remained clenched into Harry’s arm and her tail locked onto his shoulder. She was so brilliant.

And dangerous. Harry glanced at the wooden walls around them. “Hagrid, how are you going to keep her here? She’ll burn your house down.”

“Nah, she won’t! Just a little creature like her? Of course she won’t.” Hagrid was practically crooning at the dragon himself now as she devoured her meal, hissing in contentment. “I was going to call her Norbert, I mean, when I thought she was a boy, but I’ll call her Norberta. Beautiful name for a beautiful creature!”

Harry took a deep breath and reached up to unwind Norberta’s tail from his shoulder. She swallowed the last bit of chicken blood with brandy and immediately reversed herself, hanging onto him with all four paws and staring at him.

“Talk to me. Talk to me. Talk to me. I know you can talk. Sleepy. Stay with me. Creature makes nice bed.” She snuggled herself closer, and now her tail was not only back around Harry’s shoulder, her claws were hooked in his shirt. Harry had no clue how to get her off without tearing it.

“She’s going to sleep,” Harry said. “Can you take her off, Hagrid?”

Hagrid nodded, and between them, they got Norberta disentangled from him. She wasn’t pleased about it. She flailed in Hagrid’s grip and bit him with teeth that only drew a chuckle from him and reached for Harry with her neck and her tail and her forelegs all at once. “Talk to me! Where are you going, creature that talks?”

Hagrid finally got Norberta plopped in what looked to be a dog bed made out of stone and filled with moss. Norberta was snarling and reaching for Harry, but she literally went to sleep between one gesture and another. Harry stepped back, his skin tingling, and it was hard as hell to take his eyes from the baby dragon.

But he had to. He took a deep breath and turned around. “Hagrid, you didn’t answer me. What are you going to do about this being a wooden house?”

“She wouldn’t do anything to it, the little—girl!” Hagrid said, and petted the curve of Norberta’s spine. She made hard little punching motions with her talons and shredded half the moss in the bottom of the bed. “Look at her, sleeping like a baby!”

“She might not mean to do anything,” Harry pointed out. “But all she has to do is breathe hard enough, and the house is gone.”

Hagrid looked unconvinced.

“Where did you get her?” Harry asked, deciding to change the subject. Maybe Hagrid would be more likely to agree when Norberta had grown up and burned Hagrid and some of the furniture a bit.

“Funniest thing, really,” Hagrid said, and smiled as he let his hand drift over Norberta’s hot scales. If it hurt, he didn’t show any sign of it. “There was a traveling folklorist, down at the Hog’s Head. Pub in Hogsmeade,” he added, when he looked up and probably saw the look of confusion on Harry’s face. “Wanted to hear a couple of legends about the school, and he said he’d give me this old egg that he didn’t know how to hatch for them. So I told him a couple of legends, and got Norberta here.” He looked down at her again with the goofiest smile Harry had ever seen on anyone’s face.

“Traveling folklorist,” Harry repeated flatly. “What kinds of legends did he want to hear about?”

“Oh, legends about the kinds of artifacts kept in the school, things like that,” Hagrid said blandly. “He knew Professor Dumbledore tells me lots of things that he doesn’t anyone else, with me having been here so long.” He puffed his chest out a bit.

Probably including the Philosopher’s Stone, or whatever else they’re using to protect it, Harry thought crossly. But yelling at Hagrid would only make him back away or clam up. Right now, he seemed perfectly comfortable around Harry, but it wouldn’t take long for him to remember how many animals reacted to him and start distrusting him.

“Oh, okay,” Harry said, and gave Norberta one more lingering look as he went towards the door. “I’ll come back later, if that’s all right? So I can spend some time with her?”

Hagrid smiled at him, a smile that seemed almost ready to crack his skull in two. “That’d be grand, Harry. Maybe you can take care of her a few times while I have gamekeeping duties in the forest?”

“Sure,” Harry said. He really should have disagreed or told Hagrid he wouldn’t. But spending time with an animal who liked him was too great a temptation.

He trotted back up to the castle, and thought about how he might tell the Potters he’d found a creature who liked him. So, you want to make sure I can have a pet the way Felix has Hedwig, right? How about a baby dragon?

Harry snorted to himself. At least thinking about the Potters like this, in a ridiculous scenario, made it easier to get past what Felix had said in the common room. He wouldn’t forget it. He wouldn’t forgive it. But he wouldn’t brood on it all the time, either.

He had to survive. Mindless anger wouldn’t help that.

*

“And you’re sure that you’re fine, Marcus?”

“Shut the fuck up, Pucey.”

Theo hid his smile in his porridge as he listened to the conversation from down the table. Flint had woken up that morning utterly confused as to why he was surrounded by Arithmancy and Ancient Runes books and determined to get back on the Quidditch team. At least it was before the game with Hufflepuff.

And at least it proved that Harry’s little experiment with the Imperius Curse had indeed worked.

Theo looked up. Harry met his gaze from across the Great Hall. He had taken to spending more time here in the mornings, maybe because the owls now avoided him rather than coming up to him constantly.

Theo wanted to know why that was. He wanted to know more about why owls had avoided him in the first place, why even Nightshade had been so unhappy carrying letters to Harry. He wanted to know everything about Harry, and he didn’t know why this particular secret was one that Harry hadn’t told him.

But right now, he knew the most important thing. The Imperius Curse worked. And Easter holidays were fast coming up.

Now, they just had to make sure that Harry got access to the Figgs. And that they didn’t order Theo to stay here for the holiday.

Well, that last is simple, really, Theo thought, as he reached for scrambled eggs. He would just write to the Figgs and tell them how much he wanted to stay at Hogwarts, and they would order him “home” to keep him from getting anything he wanted. Some people were so easy to manipulate.

He glanced over at Harry again, and noticed how Harry had his head turned so that he was looking at his brother.

The sooner Harry learns that lesson, the better.

*

Severus gritted his teeth as he stalked out towards Hagrid’s hut. It was ridiculous that the gamekeeper had managed to acquire a dragon egg and had apparently hatched it and was keeping the beast in his hut. At least Draco had had the good sense to come to him instead of trying to deal with the matter himself.

As it was, this would be taken care of quietly. Hagrid would not go to Azkaban for dragon breeding or smuggling, the dragon would be deposited at a sanctuary in Romania appropriate for its species, and Draco would be encouraged to bring anything else disturbing to Severus in the future.

Severus knocked briskly on the door but didn’t give Hagrid a chance to respond. He simply stepped inside, knocking late March snow from his robes, and looked up.

Hagrid was frozen guiltily in the act of pouring blood into a bowl for a dragon almost as long as his table. And standing next to him was the Potter boy, the one who bothered Mr. Nott in class, staring at Severus with hard eyes.

Severus told himself that he was having strange fancies if he was afraid of those eyes. He still regularly spoke with Lily, after all, and she didn’t look at him like that. The way that he had turned over the prophecy to the Dark Lord, and the way the Potters had chosen to handle that, were—complicated. But her eyes did not frighten Severus.

Neither did this boy’s.

“Potter!” he snapped. “I should have known you would be involved in this. Rule-breaking again? You will have detention until Easter—no, through Easter and after, detention every night for two hours—if the Headmaster is good, it will continue into next year—”

The air next to Potter flared. Something dark unfolded around him, and Severus for an instant was staring at a black, swaying serpent with Potter’s green eyes. It struck at him before he could even lift his wand.

A cool breeze seemed to flow over him. Severus turned his head and realized that the door of the gamekeeper’s hut was behind him, letting in the wind. He sneered and slammed it shut.

Then he spun back around to Hagrid. Hagrid still looked guilty, but there was obviously no dragon on his table. And there was no sign of the Potter boy.

Severus sighed to himself in irritation. Draco had been exaggerating, then. Or mistaken. Severus would have to remember in the future that Draco was a less than reliable witness when it came to the gamekeeper. It was probably that rubbish about blood purity Lucius filled the boy’s head with.

“Professor Snape,” said Hagrid, rubbing what looked like blood off his hands onto a cloth. Probably making some disgusting treat for his boarhound, then. “I d—didn’t expect to see you here—”

“I heard odd rumors, Rubeus,” said Severus sharply. “I trust that you are not harboring any illegal creatures in here? Or not any more illegal than usual, at least,” he had to add, seeing the way Hagrid’s eyes darted back and forth.

“N-no. Not any more than usual.”

Severus nodded sharply and turned on his heel. Then this was not his problem. And it was not as if Hagrid could have hidden a creature as disruptive and quick-growing as a dragon in his hut. Perhaps even Hagrid could have worked out that a fire-breathing dragon in a wooden house was hardly a good idea.

Perhaps.

Severus rubbed his head, which tingled with something like irritation to an old wound. But no, he was sure that he had seen nothing that would indicate a dragon.

He would have to have a talk with Mr. Malfoy about coming to Severus based on half-seen glimpses through window curtains.

*

Harry stood holding Norberta in his arms near the edge of the grounds. Hagrid had agreed, after Harry had flung the Imperius Curse at Snape and made him ignore what he was seeing and forget about what he had seen, that it was time for Norberta to go because she wasn’t safe. Apparently, Ron’s older brother Charlie was a Dragon-Keeper, and he could send some people to pick her up.

Not that Harry wouldn’t miss her. Not that Hagrid wouldn’t. In fact, he missed her so much already that he hadn’t even been able to be here when the Dragon-Keepers came to take Norberta away. But it was time for her to go.

“You can talk to me. I know it.”

Harry looked slowly down at Norberta. She was standing with her claws braced on his belly, but he felt no fear she would disembowel him, even though he knew she easily could. And he could cradle her like this, even though he shouldn’t have been able to. It was as if his magic had reached out and made her lighter.

Not your magic. Your Parseltongue.

Harry took a deep breath and let it out again. The Dragon-Keepers weren’t here yet. He said softly, “Yes, I can.”

Norberta gave a happy sneeze that blew sparks onto Harry’s skin, where they just sat, glowing, not hurting him. Harry stared at them in wonder, a soft squeeze gripping his heart. He—

He wished he didn’t have to hide his Parseltongue. At that moment, he wished it so much.

But he had to do what he must, so he’d survive. And he shuddered at the thought that even Theo might recoil if he found out about Harry’s Parseltongue. Yeah, the elemental magic was one thing. But Voldemort had been a Parselmouth. That was his most feared ability, because of the connection to Salazar Slytherin and because people were apparently really scared of the snakes he could command, according to the history books Harry had read. If there was anything more to it than that, he didn’t know.

But he couldn’t survive if he saw rejection in Theo’s eyes. That was all there was to it.

“Why did you never talk to me before?” Norberta’s brilliant eyes met his, and Harry smoothed a hand down her neck and over the small spines there.

“Because people don’t like it. Human people,” he added, because the word in Parseltongue had a broader meaning. “I didn’t know what Hagrid would think. I have to hide.”

“That’s stupid that they do not like it.” Norberta butted her head into his chin, but Harry managed to move a little so that she didn’t hurt him the way she had when she was a hatchling. “But it is good that you hide. Serpents hide. True hunters hide. Someday, you can spring out and kill them, the way a good predator should.”

Harry half-smiled. “Maybe I will.”

“I know you will.” Norberta sounded confident.

The swish of brooms came from overhead. Harry looked up and saw six people flying towards them. He took a deep breath and ran his hand over Norberta’s head again. “Can you be good on the flight to the dragon sanctuary for me?”

“You should come with me. You would not need to hide then. The other dragons would love you.”

Harry half-laughed. Two offers in three months to run away with someone, first Quirrell and now her.

Such a contrast to the way that the Potters wanted to run away from me.

But he subdued the thought. “I’m human, and I need to stay around humans,” he explained gently. The Dragon-Keepers were almost near enough to hear his Parseltongue now. “But perhaps I’ll come and see you someday.”

“You will.”

The Dragon-Keepers landed on the grass in front of Harry, staring at him. Harry stared back, concerned that they might have heard him speaking Parseltongue after all, and then realized that they didn’t seem to be scared. Instead, their eyes were wide with…

Awe?

“She just lets you hold her?” whispered one of the Keepers, swiping a hand through red hair. This must be Charlie Weasley.

Harry nodded. “She probably got pretty used to me over the past few weeks, since I was helping Hagrid take care of her,” he said, and held Norberta out. She hissed and wriggled discontentedly.

He realized a second later that the Dragon-Keepers didn’t want to touch her. Instead, they indicated a crate that was strung between the brooms. Harry bent down and arranged Norberta so she could enter it, as gently as he could.

She licked his face with a flaming hot tongue that didn’t leave behind any burns. “I will miss you.”

Harry had to. His head was inside the crate with her, and he was pretty sure none of them would hear if he kept it low. They probably wouldn’t even know what someone speaking Parseltongue sounded like. “I’ll miss you. Goodbye. Grow strong and eat lots of prey.”

Norberta tried to cling to him, but Harry stepped back and nodded to the Dragon-Keepers as he shut the door of the crate. “She’ll be fine now, I think.”

“Good on you, mate,” Charlie said, and gave Harry a friendly punch in the shoulder that he barely managed not to flinch away from. “Let me know if you ever want to be a Dragon-Keeper, okay? I’ll put in a recommendation for you.”

Harry smiled. He couldn’t say anything about the future right now, except that it involved fighting for Theo and keeping secrets and not going back to the Dursleys, but that was a good distant dream, maybe. “Thanks, Charlie.”

Charlie waved, and the Dragon-Keepers arranged themselves on either side of the crate and gathered up the chains that would support it.

Harry watched them fly away, and breathed out slowly. Then he turned and walked back to the castle through the gathering April dusk, aware that part of him would have given anything to be flying beside Norberta through the clouds, on the way to Romania.

Goodbye.

Chapter Text

“You’re sure that you can do this?”

Harry tilted his head to look at Theo, and smiled a little when he realized that Theo was trying desperately not to hope. It was something Harry had felt enough times himself that he recognized it perfectly.

And it made him feel beyond good that he could be the one to allow Theo permission to hope. He reached out and hooked his hand around Theo’s, giving his fingers a squeeze that must have been painful. But it caused Theo to lean back against the seat in the train compartment and close his eyes a little.

“Yes, I’m sure,” Harry murmured. “Remember that I did it to Snape, and he isn’t showing any sign that he suspects me of it.”

“All those detentions he assigns you—”

“Those are pretty normal, Theo. He certainly did it before we had our little confrontation in Hagrid’s hut.”

“If you’re sure,” Theo murmured, and leaned a little towards Harry without looking him in the eye. “If something I did got you hurt or…”

“You didn’t do this,” Harry said. “I’m the one who chose to use the curse on him, and the one who chose to help Hagrid with the dragon.”

“I still can’t believe an actual dragon let you hold her and pet her.”

Harry shrugged. “Dragons are pretty empathetic. Hagrid gave me some books to read on them. It’s possible that she could sense how much I wanted to protect her.”

“Bollocks,” Theo said softly.

Harry didn’t want to look at him. Yes, it seemed likely that Theo wouldn’t reject him for his Parseltongue. But Harry couldn’t take the chance. Theo was the only true friend he was sure he had, despite the fact that he’d spent a lot of time with Hagrid over the last few weeks before the Easter hols and he had gone on not letting Felix see how much his comments had hurt him. Or how close Blaise was becoming.

Blaise proved useful just then by flinging the compartment door open and coming in with a pout on his face. “Why are you so bloody difficult to find, Harry?”

“My brother. He knows that I’m still friends with Theo. I don’t think he knows about you at all, but I wanted to avoid a lecture about being friends with Slytherins.”

Blaise flopped down on the seat opposite the one where Harry and Theo were sitting, and shook his head. “He’s that upset about you spending time with people in your rightful House?”

He was obviously fishing, but Harry just rolled his eyes. Unless Blaise did something really bad, then Harry was inclined to let him get away with as much as he wanted. Blaise made him laugh, and that wasn’t something Theo could always do. “Felix has no idea where the Hat almost Sorted me. He thinks I’m a pure Gryffindor.”

Blaise stared with his mouth a little open. “Wow,” he said at last. “Based on his marks, I thought he was some kind of genius, not some kind of idiot.”

“That’s his bloody memory. He remembers everything he’s ever read.”

“Unfair,” Blaise proclaimed.

“I have to admit, I kind of thought the same thing, but if it comes down to it, I’ll take the elemental magic.” Harry smirked and let a little fire flutter around his fingers, making sure he moved his hand away from both Theo and the seat first.

“So you have accepted it.”

Theo’s voice was quietly satisfied. Harry glanced at him. “Did you think I never would?”

“I didn’t know for sure.” Theo might have looked perfectly relaxed to someone who didn’t know him and simply peered into the train compartment, but Harry could see the tension coiled in his muscles. It would probably remain there until Harry successfully cursed the Figgs. “Based on the way you reacted when I first talked about how powerful wandless magic was and how desperately you were trying to fit into your family.”

Harry exhaled hard. He wasn’t sure how much he wanted to talk about this, and especially not with Blaise there, listening with greedy ears.

But he was also bloody tired of keeping secrets to himself. And maybe, since he didn’t have any choice about lying to the Potters, it would do some good to tell the truth to someone.

“I still thought I had a disease that I could cure with some hard work,” he said. “And then everything would be the way it should have been, and they would welcome me back. I think I only started fully accepting my elemental magic when I realized that I couldn’t use a wand at all. So it didn’t matter how hard I worked. It wasn’t my fault that I’d failed to use one.”

“They didn’t welcome you back?” Blaise blurted.

Shit. Harry should have realized that confessing something like this would touch on secrets he wasn’t really ready for Blaise to hear yet. He glanced at Theo out of the corner of his eye, and saw the way Theo nodded.

All right. He didn’t think Blaise would betray Harry, and maybe—maybe it would make Harry feel better to have more people who understood his childhood.

He wasn’t counting on it, though.

“The Muggles the Potters sent me to didn’t treat me well,” he said, and watched Blaise visibly swallow. “Lily Potter’s sister and her husband and son. My cousin chased me and beat me up with his friends. My aunt swung a frying pan at my head more than once. They didn’t always let me eat what I wanted, and they called me a freak constantly. I knew nothing about magic, so I didn’t even understand why they were so upset with me.”

Blaise shuddered.

“Tell him the rest,” Theo said softly.

“Why?” Harry asked, not looking away from Blaise. “What possible difference can it make?”

“Because I want to know,” said Blaise unexpectedly, and wrapped his hands around each other. “I’m your friend, Harry. Or at least I hope you think of me like that. I think of you like that. And I should know what my friend went through.”

Harry blinked a little. For him and Theo, he thought, it was different. He could tell Theo what the Dursleys had done because what the Figgs had done was so similar. But Blaise wasn’t abused, as far as he could tell.

Maybe it can be different with different people, whispered a sharp voice into his head, so unexpected that Harry swallowed himself.

“They made me sleep in a cupboard,” Harry said quietly. “They starved me half the time. They never believed that I didn’t do something I was accused of, and they never celebrated my birthday or Christmas with me. The first gifts I ever got were from the Potters at my eleventh birthday in July.”

Blaise shuddered again and brought up his hands to cover his face. Harry shot Theo a sharp glance. If Blaise wasn’t able to handle this and Harry had hurt him somehow, then he was going to be upset.

Theo just shook his head, and made a motion with one hand that clearly said Wait. So Harry looked back at Blaise and waited.

“I was wondering why you called your parents the Potters,” Blaise whispered finally. “I understand now.”

Harry nodded. “And if you ever suffer from something similar, Blaise, I expect you to tell me.”

“So you can suffer it along with me?”

“So I can do something about it. The way I intend to do something about the Figgs as soon as we arrive at King’s Cross.”

Blaise cleared his throat. “I—I don’t think I’d be any use to help you hide bodies.”

Harry half-smiled. In a way it was horrifying that Blaise thought he could kill people, and in a way it was flattering. Harry knew which way he preferred to take it. “Thanks, Blaise, but that won’t be necessary. I’m going to convince them that it would be better to send Theo back to his father.”

“How, though? They’ll never do it. The reason they took Theo in in the first place is because Dumbledore convinced them that Mr. Nott was abusive.”

“Watch and learn,” Harry said, looking up. He could feel the train slowing down, and stood to reach for his trunk. He had thought about staying at the school for the holidays, but then he wouldn’t have been able to meet the Figgs, and it would probably have made the Potters suspicious.

Blaise looked back and forth between them, then sighed and said, “I hope you’ll trust me later,” and left to get his own trunk, wherever he’d put it.

Theo was so quiet and still, even though he was moving, that Harry turned towards him. “I can do it,” he said. “I did it to Snape, I can do it to them. I doubt they have minds as tough as Snape’s, anyway, not if you were able to manipulate them into insisting you come to their house.”

“I know,” Theo whispered hollowly. “But it doesn’t feel real that I could be back with my father. I need it to be real. If it isn’t, it’s going to hurt worse than their spells.”

Harry squeezed Theo’s hand, once, fast, and headed for the door of the compartment. He could feel his strides lengthening, his eyes turning cold as he moved.

I will do this. And they will suffer.

*

Theo didn’t understand why everyone didn’t turn around and shiver when Harry stepped off the train. Couldn’t they feel the magic moving around him? Couldn’t they feel the soaring power that right now was focused on causing as much suffering to Theo’s “foster parents” as possible?

Maybe not, Theo realized slowly as he looked around at the people who continued to chat to each other and hug their children and scold them. Maybe he could only feel Harry’s magic because he was so used to it and knew what to look for. Or maybe it just didn’t stand out as much in the crowded, magical environment of Platform 9 ¾.

“There’s Felix. Keep him from seeing me.”

Theo took a smart step to the side and shielded Harry from his brother’s sight. He knew Harry worried about being caught up in his brother’s orbit and dragged off to the Potters before they could find the Figgs. But luckily, given that this was Felix Potter they were talking about, he had to deal with a crowd of swooning fans, and Theo and Harry were able to make their way over to the side of the platform.

“Theodore.”

The Figgs always called him that. Theo looked up into Vanessa’s pinched face and felt very little. She was handsome enough if you cared about that sort of thing, he supposed, with blonde hair and a musical voice. But he had heard that voice speaking too many curses to find her pretty.

“Foster Mother,” Theo intoned dully. It was what she insisted on being called.

Harris stepped out from behind her and scowled at Theo. “Who is this? Some Slytherin brat you dragged along to whine to?”

“His name is Harry Potter,” Theo said in the same monotone. “He’s the brother of the Boy-Who-Lived. I met him at the party for them that we attended last summer.” He kept his back straight and didn’t look at Harry. He would be in trouble if the Figgs even suspected how much Theo valued him.

Harris turned to look down his nose at Harry. Vanessa just looked irritated. “You understand that you shouldn’t be associating with something like our foster son?” Harris demanded. “You understand that he could turn on you and betray you at any moment? He has no idea of proper behavior. All our efforts to educate him haven’t worked out, unfortunately.”

In the shelter of his sleeves, Theo’s fists clenched.

*

Harry stared at Harris Figg for a long second, nearly speechless, but hearing the echo of Uncle Vernon’s voice in this wizard’s.

Ungrateful little freak. Nothing we did worked to stomp that freakishness out of you. Burden. Unwanted—

Harry smiled as his magic unfolded around him the way it had when Snape had confronted him in Hagrid’s hut. This was going to be a positive pleasure.

He flung the snakes into the Figgs’ minds, straining a little to capture two at once, but he was sure that he’d done it correctly. They both paused, eyes widening. But it wasn’t something that would last long, or be that noticeable to anyone else coming up behind Harry and Theo. It would probably just look as if they were startled at something Harry had said.

Harry slid the snakes’ tails into their mouths, and thought as viciously as he could, You don’t want Theo to stay with you anymore. You want him to go back to his father. He’s upsetting your perfect life, and you hate him so much that you don’t care if his father kills him. Use whatever arguments you must without stating that outright to get Dumbledore to agree. But for the rest of the time that he’s with you, you won’t touch him or cast spells on him, either. You hate him so much that you don’t want to dirty your hands or your wands.

The Figgs’ minds shuddered under his, but they weren’t all that strong. Harry had come to think that most people with rigid minds weren’t. It wasn’t rigidity that gave someone the strength to resist the Imperius Curse; it was sheer stubbornness.

The commands sank into their minds like chains, and Harry added right after that, And every night, you’ll have nightmares where you’re suffering everything that you did to Theo. You’ll never tell anyone else about them. It would be a sign of weakness.

That produced a bigger shudder, and for a moment, Vanessa Figg’s mind almost slipped free. But Harry bore down, so filled with rage because of what they’d said and done to Theo that he could have beaten her in a longer contest. A second later, she slumped and blinked.

“Come along, Theodore,” she snapped, and turned her back. Harris sniffed and joined her with a curt gesture to Theo.

Theo’s eyes widened at their backs. Harry was sure that something had already changed. Perhaps they would have cast a Stinging Hex or the like at Theo to get him to follow them ordinarily.

Theo looked at Harry. Harry nodded and stepped close enough to murmur, “They’re going to think that you’re dirty and they want you to go back to your father. I’m sorry that I can’t prevent them from saying those things to you, but they’ll never touch you or curse you again. And they’ll dream of what they did you to every night for the rest of their lives, suffering what they did as if they were experiencing it at your wand.”

Theo clutched his hand for a long moment. Harry leaned a little towards him, trembling with the magical exhaustion that was trying to overcome him.

“Harry!”

That was Felix. Harry should have known that Felix would find him before either of the adult Potters. He squeezed Theo’s hand once, and then turned and stepped away while Theo hurried after the Figgs.

“Hey, son.” James was right behind Felix, greeting Harry with a worried frown, his eyes straying to the Figgs. “Nott didn’t hurt you, did he?”

“Of course not,” Harry said, and kept his voice childishly confused with an effort. “Why would he?”

James shook his head with an uneasy laugh. “Oh, nothing, really. It’s just that he’s a Death Eater’s son, that’s all.”

“I thought he was better because he was with the Figgs,” Harry said, and kept his voice gentle and confused as he stepped back from the owl cage still clutched in Felix’s hand. Hedwig was staring at him with her feathers puffed out and looked as if she might attack through the bars at any second. “Professor Dumbledore arranged for them to take care of him, right?”

And Dumbledore will suffer for that in time.

“Yes, but…” James sighed. “Well, it doesn’t really matter. I’m glad that he didn’t hurt you. Let’s go home.”

*

“I think you’re right, Vanessa.”

Theo paused. He had been walking towards the dining room where the Figgs had set up dinner the way they did every night, but had heard his own name, and paused. Harris’s voice was heavy.

“We did our best to redeem Theodore, Harris, and we failed. No one can do everything. All we’ve really done is summon this disruptive influence into our home and interrupt our own lives. No, the little bastard can go back to the big bastard, as far as I’m concerned. Let him suffer and long for the days that he had here.”

Theo’s eyes shut, and he wrapped his arms around himself. He was shaking so hard that he was certain he was going to sit down on the floor at any second. He hadn’t known—he had believed, he had hoped, but he hadn’t—

He hadn’t known.

“What are you doing out here, Theodore?”

That was Harris. Theo managed to open his eyes and smile at him a little. “I was coming to dinner,” he said quietly, casting his eyes down. “But I can leave you alone if you would rather eat dinner by yourselves, Foster Father.”

“No, come in.” Harris had a smile that distorted his face. Theo watched him closely and thought that he might have had a shadow of suffering in his eyes, although it was hard to be sure. “We were just discussing that you might be happier moving back in with your father than staying here with us.”

Theo made his eyes as big as he could. “R-really? You would do that?”

Harris’s expression of disgust was a much more familiar one. “If you insist on it, yes. I think that you’ve had enough time here to show that things aren’t going to change, and your father might as well have you back.”

Theo trotted into the dining room after him and sat at the table while the Figgs explained to him that they were giving up on redeeming him and warning him in long lectures about betraying their secrets or trusting his father too much. Theo didn’t care. He had even been braced for that, after what Harry had said about not being able to prevent what they’d say to him. He sat there and wrapped his happiness around himself.

And at the end of the meal, they had lifted the spells that kept him from writing to his father. Theo ran straight for the Owlery where Nightshade stayed when they were here and began to write, scribbling on the windowsill with a quill and parchment that were kept in the room.

Dear Father,

The Figgs have said that I can come home to you…

He kept much detail out of the letter, just in case someone would still try to intercept the post when Nightshade flew off with it, and of course he said nothing about Harry. But as he watched Nightshade soar away, it occurred to him that he owed another debt to Harry that he could never repay, one stronger and more profound than the life-debt.

But then Theo shook his head. No, Harry wouldn’t think of it that way. He was Theo’s friend. He would see this as part of that.

But whether Harry wanted it or not, he had someone who would die for him.

*

“Are you sure that you’re all right, Harry? You’ve been sleeping so hard the past few nights that I had to look in on you to be sure that you were still breathing.”

Why would you be concerned? You left me at the Dursleys’ for ten years without checking on that once.

But Harry managed to smile at Lily and duck his head. “I didn’t realize how hard I was working on my wanded magic,” he whispered. “It’s harder now that we’re getting into harder spells in Charms and Transfiguration.”

From beneath his eyelashes, Harry watched Lily make some calculations, arriving at the result that Harry would always be weaker than he should be, thanks to his “disease.” Her smile was gentle, and pitying. “Of course, Harry. Feel free to sleep in as much as you want. And eat as much as you want.” She nudged a bowl of porridge towards him.

Harry scattered cinnamon and raisins across it, things that he never got at Privet Drive, and ate through it steadily. He knew that Theo would probably be enraged if he could see the way the Potters were underestimating Harry, and Quirrell would probably be baffled. Why wasn’t Harry standing up for himself? Why was he so intent on continuing this lie?

But Harry felt himself filled with a cold, quiet happiness. He had won. He had kept anyone from even suspecting anything about the truth of his magical exhaustion, and Dumbledore seemed to have given up putting monitoring charms on him, and no one but Quirrell and Theo suspected what had been going on with Flint.

He was weak, to them. The weaker he seemed, the more useless, the more he would escape their plans to use him in their politics.

The closer he got to the dream Norberta had given him, of someday living among dragons and using his Parseltongue among people who enjoyed his company. Theo would visit, of course. And Blaise.

Maybe Felix if he ever gets his head out of his arse.

*

Felix hesitated before he sat down next to Harry at the table in the library. Harry glanced up at him with a small smile. He had a book of magical theory in front of him. Felix had noticed that he’d switched to reading that from history a while ago. He supposed it made sense. Harry would need to understand the theory to understand how to use his wand, probably.

“Yeah?” Harry asked, when they’d sat in silence for a few minutes.

“Did you—I know I said a stupid thing that day you ran out of the common room,” Felix muttered, feeling his cheeks turn red.

Harry put a hand to his chest. “And you apologize only a month and a half later! Shocking!”

“Shut up, you prat. Okay, I was a prat that day.” Felix found it hard to hold his brother’s eyes. “Anyway. I wasn’t trying to say that you weren’t worth anything if you didn’t go along with Mum and Dad’s politics, or if you didn’t want to help us guard the Stone.”

“What were you trying to say, then?”

Felix stole a peek at Harry. He was listening, but his head was tilted and there was a thoughtful frown on his face. Felix had an odd vision of the way that Harry might look when he was grown up, sober and quiet and serious.

“Just that I want us to live in the same world, and you might not be able to live in mine.”

Harry’s muscles coiled so fast that the vision of him as an adult vanished, and he just looked like the feral child Felix had met for the first time less than a year ago. “Did you hear Mum and Dad talking about sending me back to the Dursleys’?” he asked flatly.

“What—no.” Felix took off his glasses and rubbed his nose. Merlin, he was saying everything wrong today. “Not that. I meant something less literal. Just that I’m going to be important in politics because I have to be, because no one’s going to let me alone, and I have powerful magic that means people will follow me. If you don’t go along with what Mum and Dad want, or you can’t…”

“We might not follow the same path. I see.” Harry lost the tense look. “Well, I mean, being a Lord or a leader or whatever doesn’t sound that good to me, Felix. I didn’t grow up with it the way you did. I just want to concentrate on learning more about magic and making up for the disadvantages I have. I hope we’ll always be brothers no matter what paths we walk.”

“Of course we will!” Felix reached across the table and took Harry’s hand, relieved that Harry hadn’t been angrier. “We always will. And it doesn’t matter to me how powerful you are or what you believe, Harry. I know you’re my brother, and you’re a good person.”

Harry nodded slowly. “Thanks, Felix. Same to you.”

Felix left the library with a little glow of happiness like a burning ember inside him. He’d been brooding about his own words for more than a month, and in the end, it was pretty simple to make up with Harry.

Next time, he wouldn’t leave it so long before he apologized.

*

Harry watched Felix leave, and listened to his own power singing in his ears—fully recovered now from casting the Imperius Curse on the Figgs—and felt like snorting. A good person. Right.

I don’t want to be a good person. I want to be a living person.

*

“Father wrote back.”

Harry smiled as he sat down next to Theo in the train compartment. “What did he say?”

“That of course I’ll be living with him starting with the summer holidays.” Theo was almost bouncing in place. It did Harry good to see him looking like a—well, he wasn’t really a normal child, but a happy one. “And he’s moving quickly to remove anything Dark from the house before the Ministry launches an inspection.”

“Dumbledore?”

Theo shrugged. “The Figgs wrote to him on the second day I was there. I don’t think he was pleased, but he also seems to have accepted that this experiment didn’t work out. And he’s probably convinced himself with some kind of genial bollocks that he was only trying to do the best for me, and if I can’t recognize that, then he washes his hands of me.”

“Huh.”

Harry sat back to consider that. He wondered whether Dumbledore would really let him and Theo go, if they seemed weak and useless enough, or if he would try to find some other way to use them. Probably the second one, but maybe he was willing to admit that things like the Figgs hadn’t worked.

“Harry.”

Theo’s voice brought Harry out of his thoughts. He glanced up, and froze at the look Theo was training on him.

“You did something for me no one else could have done,” Theo said softly. “There is no way I can repay that.”

“I don’t want repayment, Theo—”

“And I realized that, so I won’t try. What I’m saying is that the important thing—you have my loyalty, Harry. I will never betray you.”

Theo’s eyes were shining, and Harry reached out towards him. Theo grabbed his hand and squeezed it hard enough that Harry’s fingers ached for a second, then let it go. And then he leaned back and smiled and started talking about the Transfiguration assignment they’d had over the holidays, and the moment was past.

But not forgotten. Harry doubted it ever would be.

*

“You have not yet summarized for me what you learned from the book on elementalist wizards I lent you.”

Potter looked up at Lord Voldemort with his intense green eyes. Lord Voldemort watched emotions shift and chase themselves across his face. He didn’t reach out with Legilimency, however. Not only could he glean from those expressions what Potter was thinking, but with the sensitivity to the Imperius Curse that Potter had developed, there was a chance he would sense Lord Voldemort’s mental touch.

This child was frankly more impressive than any other child of his age that Lord Voldemort had ever met, more than some of his lowest-ranking Death Eaters had been. Which was the reason that Lord Voldemort had made the decision he had.

“I learned that elementalist wizards were feared because their abilities were hard to counter,” Potter began.

“Your abilities, Mr. Potter. Let us have no false modesty now.”

Potter blinked a few times, and then nodded. “Duelists and Aurors and the like are trained to counter specific spells. Like countercurses for curses. It’s harder to react when someone doesn’t need to use a specific spell, just a burst of intense fire, to hurt you.”

“Of course, it is not impossible,” said Lord Voldemort, and let his smile curl along his lips. The boy just watched him. “For creative and flexible duelists, and the upper ranks of Aurors, being able to adapt one’s tactics and think on one’s feet is a must. And once a wizard knows that he is facing an elementalist, much of your advantage is lost.”

“Yes.”

“I am much stronger than you are.”

Even as he spoke, Lord Voldemort wondered why he was spending time trying to impress the boy. It wasn’t necessary. Potter gave him a kind of wary respect, and obeyed him in the lessons, and avoided attacking him because of the oath. To try and get into his head and charm or persuade him was an amusement rather than a goal.

But something about those flat, still green eyes goaded Lord Voldemort to try.

“Yes.”

“And that does not bother you?” Lord Voldemort asked, giving in for a moment to academic curiosity. “You do not wish to be the strongest person in a room?”

Potter blinked and focused on him for a moment. Ripples disturbed the surface of his eyes now, but he only said, “No, sir. If I can protect myself and a few other people, then that’s as strong as I want to be.”’

Lord Voldemort sneered, but inwardly. No reason to make Quirrell’s face reflect it. That was one thing he hoped to teach the boy better. He would never be strong enough to protect the fools he cared about from Lord Voldemort.

But he could be the second strongest. Once he had Potter running tame on his leash, then Lord Voldemort would teach him how to be, while at the same time teaching him to bow his head. It would be a waste of Potter’s potential to do anything else.

“Explain to me how you would use your connection with earth to shift the ground beneath the feet of an enemy.”

Potter nodded, and began, and it did seem as though he’d learned his lessons well. Not that any of it would benefit him when Lord Voldemort made his move.

*

Harry came awake from a confused dream that seemed to involve the Forbidden Forest. Or at least a forest, with an orange moon hanging overhead and a distant voice calling softly for him. For help.

Help me. Help me. That was the only thing it said.

Harry shook his head and sat up. The soft snores of the other boys—well, all right, four soft snores and one big snore in Ron’s case—echoed from around him. No sign of a voice calling for help. Harry lay back down, but could tell after staring at the canopy for a little while that he wasn’t going back to sleep.

He got up, slipped on a robe that would keep him warm enough, and made his way down the stairs to the common room. He paused halfway up and shrank back when the fire popped, but no one was down there when he finally eased down the last steps. Even the Weasley twins had gone to bed at last.

Maybe he could sit in front of the fire and stare at it for a while until he got sleepy enough to go back to bed.

He hadn’t sat there for more than five minutes before a small piece of paper skimmed towards him. Harry flinched and nearly incinerated it, his eyes darting around as he realized the Weasley twins must be here after all.

But all was quiet and calm. And the piece of paper, which landed on the couch beside him and unfolded, had Quirrell’s handwriting on it. Harry supposed it wasn’t much of a surprise that something enchanted by a professor could get past the portrait guardian, and picked it up with a bit of curiosity. Quirrell had never tried to give him a lesson in the middle of the night before. Did he have some new idea?

The message was simple.

You will make your way to the third corridor on the right-hand side of the school, to the door that the Headmaster recently declared off-limits to students. I will be waiting there for you. If you do not come, then your friend Mr. Nott will hurt.

Something fell away from the paper when Harry angled it to read it. He picked up what looked like a piece of Theo’s dark hair.

Harry froze. The fire on the hearth roared and began to curl out over the stones, and it was a struggle to subdue it back into place. During that time, Harry gained control of his magic, and folded it back around his body.

But not control of his rage.

Harry stood up, wrapped and mantled in fire with the sound of water singing in his ears, and left the common room.

Chapter Text

Lord Voldemort stood beside the Mirror of Erised, Theo Nott on the floor at his feet, covered in ropes.

Yes, he could have made another plan, he mused as he stared at the silent hatred in the Nott boy’s eyes. So like his father. But then, he could not have shown the Potter boy the need to cut away weaknesses, to shed them when one attached itself to him.

And Lord Voldemort did intend to spare the Potter boy, and make him his servant. Their association would not end when the boy retrieved the Stone from the Mirror for him—

Something trembled on the floors above.

Lord Voldemort lifted Quirrell’s head, frowning. He had not expected to feel it when the Potter boy left Gryffindor Tower. Why would he? Yes, his magic was powerful, but nothing compared to the Dark Arts wielded by a full-grown wizard like Lord Voldemort, or the coils of shining power wound in Albus’s chest.

The thought of his most hated enemy distracted him from Potter’s progress for a moment, and when he paid attention again, he found that the boy was closer than he had thought. Using secret passages, perhaps.

At least the boy would not need to get past the ridiculous traps Albus had thought to guard the Stone with. Lord Voldemort had disabled them as he passed along. No need to make someone who couldn’t use a conventional wand spend time figuring them out—

Fire filled the room where the Mirror stood.

Lord Voldemort lifted Quirrell’s eyebrows and stared as the flames curled in the air, lashed around each other, and formed a glowing, spinning knot in the center of the room. That was more impressive than he had predicted, yes.

But didn’t matter. When Potter got here, then Lord Voldemort would show him the consequences of standing up to a Dark Lord. And then he would give Potter a choice.

Lord Voldemort was certain that the boy would make the right one.

*

Quirrell wasn’t actually waiting by the door after all. Instead, the door was open, and inside was an enormous dog snoring all three of its heads off and a small, enchanted harp playing off to the side.

Harry stalked past it, so furious that he didn’t much care why the dog was present or whether the harp would quit any second. He could feel the fire playing around him, and the water pressing against his skin. He could have filled the corridor with them both, and burned or drowned anyone who stood to oppose him.

But no one did, and Harry had to leap down the empty hole under the flung-back trapdoor and trust in his winds to catch him.

There were smears of ash on the floor underneath where Harry landed, with a jolt but recovering. Harry didn’t care. There was nothing that could hurt him now, or his snarling magic would have sensed it and warned him. He kept moving forwards, through a room with a swarm of flying keys in the air and an open door on the other side, past a chessboard covered with stone dust and the motionless body of a mountain troll.

Then there was a room with a long table in it, covered with potions, but Harry ignored them. There was a doorway in front of him, and beyond that doorway waited a quiet light and a feeling of water pressing on his nerves that he associated with Quirrell.

Harry strode through the doorway.

The first thing he looked at was Theo, lying on the floor bound in ropes, his eyes wide. Harry asked him, “Are you hurt?”

Theo started to open his mouth, but Quirrell aimed his wand at him. Quirrell looked calmer than Harry had ever seen him, strangely, his eyes bright and wide with amusement. “Not a word, Mr. Nott, or you’ll suffer what I did to you earlier.”

“What did you do to him?”

Quirrell shook his head and clucked his tongue. “It doesn’t matter, Mr. Potter. You have two lessons to learn tonight. Unless, of course, you want Mr. Nott to learn them instead.” And he aimed his wand at Theo again.

Harry reeled his magic back in. It was going to sweep forwards and burn Quirrell if he let it, and he didn’t know if the man would manage to get off a curse before then. Or if he had enchanted the ropes around Theo to strangle him unless he was the one who released them. Harry knew the man was clever enough to think of that.

“What do you want?” Harry’s voice sounded like a crow’s in his own ears. Theo tried to catch his eye from the floor, but Harry forced himself to ignore it. He would lose control if he looked too closely, and then Theo might not survive.

“The Philosopher’s Stone has been hidden inside this mirror,” Quirrell said, and tilted his head towards a large mirror behind him. “I must say, Albus did it rather cleverly. Only someone who does not want the Stone to acquire it. Since I do desire it, I cannot qualify. You will get the Stone for me.”

Harry stared at him blankly. He wanted to ask all sorts of questions, such as why it had to be him and why Quirrell hadn’t used Theo for it. But those answers probably weren’t important. He started to move closer.

“Careful, Mr. Potter.” Quirrell turned a little to the side, standing so that he was separating Harry and Theo, his wand aimed at the ropes now. “Any attempt to move closer, and Mr. Nott will die as the ropes strangle him.”

Harry half-nodded. He hadn’t been consciously angling closer to Theo, but Quirrell wasn’t wrong about what Harry would have liked to do. Just like Harry hadn’t been wrong about the enchantment on the ropes.

“So much for your oath,” he did say lightly, because he had to have some outlet for his magic or it was simply going to explode out of him.

Quirrell laughed softly. “I baited Mr. Nott into attacking me first. It was incredibly easy. All it took was an insulting comment about you. I am surprised that your family isn’t more concerned about your codependent relationship.”

Harry said nothing. He halted in front of the mirror, but he watched Quirrell, not it. His magic snapped around him, and fire coruscated in a shifting mass that filled the room with more light than the simple Lumos Charm on Quirrell’s wand. “How does the mirror work? Do I look into it and will it to show me the Stone?”

“Of course not, you foolish boy. I told you that only someone who didn’t want it could acquire it. Look into the mirror and tell me what you see.”

Harry turned to face the glass. His mind felt crystalline. There was a place outside of rage, and his rage had carried him there.

He saw a wavering reflection of Quirrell for a long moment. Then he realized that the man standing there had dark hair, not a turban, and wore simple black robes edged with silver. Green edging around them marked him as a Slytherin. But the eyes staring back at him were Harry’s own.

Harry blinked. He watched as the man lifted a hand, and a long, scaled face materialized in it. The face was on a serpentine neck coming from behind him. It was Norberta, grown as large as an elephant, but somehow still able to fit her face into his palm.

Shadows stirred next to his future self, or his adult self, whichever this was, and Harry saw Theo standing there. It couldn’t be anyone but an older Theo. His eyes were full of joy so radiant that it blazed out of the darkness that seemed to envelop him, and he rested an elbow on Harry’s shoulder and leaned close to whisper into his ear.

The shadows pulled back beyond Theo, and Harry saw that his adult self was standing in the middle of a wide-open tract of green land with mountains in the background. Dragons circled overhead, and a serpent crawled at his feet, one that flickered with red-orange color and almost made Harry think it was a stream of fire at first, and off in a corner were blackened ruins that he somehow knew were the Dursleys’ house. Standing not far from them was Felix, smiling and waving with no blame in his eyes.

“Tell me what you see,” Quirrell demanded.

Harry jumped. For long moments, he’d just forgotten Quirrell, and Theo on the floor at his feet. Rage rushed through him again, and then sudden calm.

“Myself in the future strong and grown-up,” he replied. It was as much as he was willing to share, and Quirrell probably would have been able to guess it anyway. “And I have—I’m putting my hand into my robe pocket…”

His future self beamed at him, with a smile that Harry had never thought would cross his face, and took his hand out of his pocket to show that he held a glinting red stone, which he tossed into the air and then caught lightly.

At the same moment, Harry felt a round shape settle into his real robe pocket.

He stepped back from the mirror, tearing his gaze away. It was hard, but now that he’d remembered the real Theo, there was nothing else he could do. He turned and slowly stuck his hand into his robe pocket. Quirrell watched every move, while keeping his wand pointed at Theo.

That was the only smart thing he’d done, Harry thought. His bones were singing and burning with rage. He watched Quirrell only enough to make sure that he caught the Stone Harry tossed to him. Quirrell examined it and laughed long and low.

Harry relaxed and started towards Theo. In an instant, Quirrell’s wand was aimed at him. Harry paused.

“Do you understand why I thought you should be the one to fetch this for me?”

“No.” Harry didn’t want to listen. He wanted Theo out of those strangling ropes, and as soon as possible. But he had to stand there and plaster an interested expression on his face, even if he couldn’t help glancing towards Theo.

Theo’s eyes were wide and furious. Harry let a flicker of fire curl in his left palm, which was down at his side and should be out of Quirrell’s vision.

“I see potential in you that I have never seen in any other child except myself at your age,” Quirrell said softly. “I would take you with me, Harry Potter, as I offered once before. I would teach you the ways of power, and how to walk the paths that are not open to anyone except the immortals.”

“It’s generous of you to offer to share the Stone with me, sir.”

Quirrell laughed, and it was the high-pitched cold laugh Harry had heard more than once before. It triggered some memory in him, something beyond that. A soft vine seemed to curl around his throat.

“I am immortal without that,” Quirrell said, giving a dismissive wave of his hand. “I needed this lovely thing—” and this time he wagged the Stone “—only to get myself a better body than the one I currently have.”

Harry stared at him in silence. When it became obvious that Quirrell was waiting for him to say something, he asked, “Why do you need one? I didn’t know the Stone could make someone look better.”

“Not that,” Quirrell said, and smiled, and slipped the Stone into his robe pocket, and turned his back on Harry. Harry tensed to move.

But a headache like the one he’d received before when Quirrell turned his back on him abruptly rebounded through his skull, and before he could try to ignore it, Quirrell had finished unwrapping his turban.

Harry stared at the red-eyed face on the back of Quirrell’s head, the slash of a mouth, the scrubby bump of a nose, and could say nothing at all. Theo made a sound in his cocoon of ropes. Harry clenched his left hand again.

“What your…brother reduced me to,” the voice whispered. “I am Lord Voldemort, and I will be again.” His voice was already growing stronger, leaving out the pauses. “I offer you a place at my side, Harry Potter, where the man who trained you will continue training you, and you need fear nothing and no one.”

Harry blinked slowly. He hadn’t expected this, and he was so shocked that he could think of nothing to say.

Lord Voldemort sighed. “You have never desired power, have you?”

“Just to protect myself,” Harry whispered. It felt wrong to say, but he didn’t think lying to Voldemort was the best way to do things.

Voldemort nodded, or Quirrell’s head moved up and down. “Well. It need not matter. I will train you. I have offered you a chance that anyone else would jump at,” he added, when Harry stood there. “Will you come with me?”

Harry frowned. “I have—people will search for me.”

“Not if we pretend that you died here,” Voldemort murmured. “And not if we cut away the chain that holds you back. That was the reason I brought Mr. Nott here, Mr. Potter. Your dependence on him is unacceptable. To be powerful, you must remove the weaknesses. Cut away the fat, as it were.” And Quirrell turned and aimed his wand at Theo.

Something in the back of Harry’s head broke.

He reached out, towards the song of water that had pressed on his nerves all this time, every time he was alone with Quirrell—Voldemort, and had been singing to him since he came down the stairs. He reached out, and it seemed as though Voldemort’s body, Quirrell’s, shimmered and turned transparent.

Harry could see through the surface of the skin. He could see the water underneath that skin, and feel it, and he knew it was what he had been feeling all along. There was water in every single cell in Quirrell’s body.

And Harry said to it, Freeze.

The water listened to him. Spikes of ice appeared in every cell as the water there froze and turned to shapes like stars, and the cells ruptured and broken. Harry watched as the wave swept up through Quirrell’s body and made him drop his wand, and he laughed as he snapped back into his own body.

Fire hovered around him, but it was water that was doing the killing work.

Quirrell was on his knees, screaming. He was dying. Harry knew it. With his cells broken, how could he live? Harry curled his lip and watched as Quirrell’s mouth opened and the back of his head seemed to bulge.

No, did more than seem to bulge, because a black ghost-like shape was flying straight at him.

Harry promptly ducked, and watched as the black smoke of Voldemort streamed overhead. It spun around and came back towards Harry, howling in a voice that sounded entirely different from Quirrell’s, but similar to the cold laughter that Harry had sometimes heard from Quirrell’s mouth.

Harry reached out to the air and whipped the ghost away from him. It crashed into the wall and snarled for a long moment.

Then it said, in a voice so thick with hatred that Harry wouldn’t have understood it without the physical alertness humming through him, “We are enemies, Harry Potter, from now until the ending,” and turned and soared away through the wall.

Harry stood where he was for a long moment, panting, his magic dazzling around him and crisscrossing the air with fire. He glanced at Quirrell, and then away. He was dead, and he’d died in agony.

He walked towards Theo, and hoped that he wouldn’t see fear on his best friend’s face when he pulled the ropes away.

*

Theo didn’t know what had happened, but he knew that Harry had killed Professor Quirrell and somehow got the Dark Lord to leave.

His father had always said that elemental wizards were dangerous. He had said, “Imagine facing someone who can control every breath in your lungs.” And Theo had agreed, but not paid much attention, because he had other things to learn from his father, and it had seemed unlikely that he would ever meet a wizard or witch who had control of the elements like that.

He didn’t know for sure if that was what Harry had done to Quirrell or not. But he knew Quirrell was dead.

And Harry had saved his life, again.

Now, Harry kneeled down next to him and whispered, “Are you all right?”

Theo stared at him. Harry kept his eyes averted from Theo’s face, and his right hand, resting on his knee, was clenched so tightly that Theo thought Harry might have broken a finger. It looked like that, anyway.

Why is he—

He thinks that I’m going to reject him because he killed someone.

Theo didn’t know where the insight had come from, but he knew that telling Harry he was ridiculous probably wouldn’t help. He just nodded a little and said, “He only hit me with the Disarming Charm, a simple pain hex, and the Incarcerous. The pain hex has already faded.”

“All right,” Harry said quietly. He turned and stared down at the ropes for a second. Then he said, “I don’t know how to get these off. I’m afraid that I’ll hurt you if I burn them off. Can you—where did he put your wand? If I get it for you, can you get them off?”

Theo shook his head, as much as he could in the tight cocoon of the ropes. “I don’t think I could counter it. I—” He glanced at Quirrell’s body. They would need someone to take the fall for this, so that Harry didn’t get blamed for Quirrell’s death, as well as someone to remove the ropes.

Inspiration struck, and Theo smiled. Harry blinked at him. “Call Flint.”

“What?”

“Flint. You should still have a connection with his mind, since you cast the Imperius Curse on him. Can’t you reach him? Call him down here and order him to release me and take the blame for the corpse?”

Harry blinked, and blinked again. Theo wondered if he was in shock from Quirrell’s death. Theo would have been if he hadn’t already seen Harry kill the troll to save him, he thought. Or if he had done the killing himself.

But he hadn’t, and that meant he could plan to protect both of them. “Flint,” he repeated quietly. “You can still give him commands, right?”

Harry slowly sat back on his heels. Then he nodded.

“All right. Can you reach his mind, and call him down here, and get him to untie me first?” Theo would mention Flint taking the blame for Quirrell’s death again in a minute, when Harry might be in a better position to listen to him.

“I’ll try.”

Harry closed his eyes, and Theo craned his neck back to see Quirell’s corpse, as much as he could from this position. His skin looked as though a thin film of ice covered it—which probably meant Harry had used water to kill him, not air—and his mouth was open in a soundless scream.

Theo made himself look, made himself memorize it, and felt a cool satisfaction pour through him. Harry had saved him.

The way he had saved Theo from the Figgs. The way he had saved him from the curse the Figgs had sent with their letter.

I think he’ll always save me. Part of him is mine.

*

It took some time to guide Flint down the third-floor corridor and past the remains of the traps that Voldemort had disarmed. Harry kept his eyes closed and his hand clenched in Theo’s, his mental connection with Flint flickering and dancing like a flame.

Voldemort. It was still nearly impossible to think about that. Felix and his friends had been right after all. Voldemort had been after the Stone.

But none of them had managed to stop him from taking it.

Flint’s heavy footsteps finally came tromping into the room, and Harry looked up at him. The boy had glazed eyes, and halted near Theo, staring past him at the mirror and not saying anything.

Harry took a slow, deep breath. He didn’t know if they would be able to figure out what had happened by reading Flint’s mind or memories, the way Theo had told him some people could do, so he had to make this as convincing as he could.

“Draw your wand and release Theo,” he commanded.

Flint waved his wand and muttered something, and the ropes around Theo vanished. Theo promptly rolled over. Harry gripped his hand and pulled him closer. Theo was rubbing circulation back into his legs and didn’t appear ready to stand up yet.

“What do you think of the Philosopher’s Stone, Flint?” Harry asked.

Theo shot him a baffled glance. Harry just shrugged back at him. This was his idea to try and make sure that Flint would take all the blame. He didn’t know if it would work. He just had to try.

“I’d want it,” Flint said hoarsely. “Something that makes you rich and lets you live forever? Of course I’d want it.”

Harry nodded. “What if I told you that you could have the Philosopher’s Stone if you just did a few things?”

Greed filled Flint’s eyes. “What do I have to do?”

“Draw your wand and fling your strongest curses at that mirror.”

Flint’s wand snapped up, and Harry didn’t think it was his imagination that it was moving quicker than the wand of someone simply told to move under the Imperius. He took another long, slow breath as he watched. This was his plan, to mingle Flint’s real memories with the desire for the Stone and his actions until they would be hard to tell apart.

It took a lot more than one curse from Flint’s wand to shatter the mirror, which was what Harry had expected. Theo shook out his limbs and stood at Harry’s side quietly, watching. He put a hand on Harry’s shoulder after a few minutes.

Harry leaned his cheek on Theo’s hand, briefly. Then he straightened. That was all he could allow himself.

He had killed someone.

And he would do it again if Theo was in danger, but he had still killed someone.

“All right, stop,” Harry said at last, when Flint’s final Blasting Curse cracked the frame and the glass and made the mirror list to the side on one leg. “Now, turn around and cast a freezing curse on Professor Quirrell.”

Flint whipped around and did that with a speed and pleasure that Harry didn’t think he was pretending to have. He couldn’t be sure, though. The sense of the Imperius Curse in Flint’s mind was dim and tangled, now, ever since Harry had asked the question about the Stone. He hoped that didn’t mean Flint was escaping from his control.

When Quirrell’s body was practically made of ice, Harry told Flint to stop. He did, but his eyes were darting around greedily.

“Where’s the Stone?” he asked.

Theo hissed at Harry’s side. Harry knew why. Someone under the Imperius Curse wasn’t supposed to be capable of this much independent thought.

On the other hand, Flint had still stopped casting curses when Harry told him to, and hadn’t tried to turn his wand on them. “Quirrell has it,” he said hoarsely. “You can have it if you get out anything in his robe pockets, too.”

Flint knelt down and rummaged hastily through the robe pockets. When he stood up, he had Theo’s wand in one hand and the Stone in the other, plus what seemed to be a flask of potion and a handful of dried and rotten ingredients that Harry didn’t want to know the reason for.

“Give us Theo’s wand.”

Flint tossed the wand to Theo, who grasped it and closed his eyes with a relieved breath. Harry rested his hand on Theo’s shoulder.

“This is what you’ll remember,” Harry said, his voice echoing in his own ears. “You’ll remember that you wanted the Stone, but you didn’t know how to get past the protections the professors had on it. You made Quirrell help you. You suspected he wanted the Stone, too, so he was willing to come with you. Then you fought when you got to the mirror and realized that only one of you could have it and neither one of you would share. You were the one who broke the mirror, and you managed to fight him to a standstill and kill him. You have the Stone, and you don’t want to give it up. Can you remember that?”

“Yes.”

“It’s your reality now,” Harry said, and saw Flint nod eagerly and stare down at the Stone shining in his hand.

“Yes.”

Harry swallowed and turned away. There were brooms in the room with the flying keys, he remembered dimly. He and Theo would have to get out that way, since they certainly weren’t capable of flying or Levitating by themselves. “Come on, Theo.”

Theo nodded, and walked quietly beside him. They went in silence through the other rooms, grabbed the brooms leaning against the way in the key room, and flew the rest of the way. As Harry had suspected, the harp was still playing in the room with the three-headed dog and keeping it asleep, or Flint would haven’t been able to come down in the first place.

They landed outside the door. Harry shoved it shut, shaking. Then he turned around and raised his hand. Brooms here would incriminate them, even if Flint decided to use the same method to escape; they couldn’t leave two of them lying around.

Fire flickered from his palm and burned bristle and twig and broom shaft. Harry kicked the ashes to scatter them around.

Then he turned to Theo.

Theo’s eyes were wide and his face pale in the moonlight. He reached out and placed his hands on Harry’s shoulders.

“I killed him,” Harry whispered. “I—are you afraid of me, Theo?”

“Never,” Theo said at once.

“But I—I killed him.”

“He would have killed me,” Theo said. “He would probably have killed you, for all his words about taking you with him.” He shifted his hands and grabbed Harry’s arms, his hands tightening to the point of pain. “You saved my life from the Dark Lord, Harry. You saved my life from someone who hurt me and would have hurt me further. Just because you’re powerful enough to do that doesn’t mean I’m afraid of you.”

Harry nodded. He treasured Theo’s words, memorizing them as carefully as he could, tucking them away. “Thank you,” he whispered.

Theo hesitated, then stepped forwards and abruptly hugged him, squeezing him so tightly that Harry coughed and gasped for a second.

For the first time in his life, Harry really let himself be held.

*

Harry knocked on the door of Dumbledore’s office. It felt as if the last few weeks before the end of term had raced by, even consumed by the studying for exams that Granger had insisted all the Gryffindors go through. At least most of the speculation and gossip about Marcus Flint being discovered aiding Professor Quirrell to steal the Philosopher’s Stone—and the hysterical way he had fought back when it was discovered in his possession—had died down.

Harry didn’t know why Dumbledore wanted to see him now, but he didn’t think it was to question him about the mirror or the Stone. He would have done that sooner, right after Professor Quirrell’s body was discovered, if he was going to, Harry thought. And he’d been pretty busy covering the Defense classes in rotation with the other professors for the last few weeks, but not so busy that he couldn’t have talked to Harry.

“Please come in, Harry.”

Harry blinked as he stepped into the office. The Potters were sitting in chairs arrayed off to the side of Dumbledore’s desk, with only a single chair for Harry in front of it. Harry smiled at them, murmured, “Hi, Mum, Dad,” and sat down in the single chair.

“There is something very important we need to talk to you about, Harry.”

Harry wished Theo was there, or even Felix. He entwined his hands in his lap and muttered, “What is it, Headmaster?”

“When you were placed with the Dursleys, we knew that the truth would eventually be revealed of your placement when you returned to our world.”

Harry lifted his eyes. Did that mean they were going to have him talk about what his aunt and uncle and cousin had done to him? He wasn’t sure he wanted to. Theo knew the most, Blaise knew a little. That was enough.

“For that reason, we knew the Dursleys themselves would become targets,” Dumbledore continued. “We included magical protections around the house that would keep them safe from wizards and witches who might seek to harm relatives of the Boy-Who-Lived.”

Not me. Never me—

Harry crushed that reaction. He couldn’t afford to show it right now. The last time he’d got upset and told part of the truth to Dumbledore, he had suffered for it. So he said, “All right, sir.”

“But the protections depend in part on the presence of a magical person living with them,” Lily said. She was smiling, but she was also squinting. “They fade slowly over time, and would be gone entirely within a year. That means we’ll need you to spend a week with them in June, Harry, to ensure it’s before the end of July and your birthday, the time we took you from them last year, so the protections can be renewed.”

Something Harry hadn’t even been aware he carried, some hope that he might be able to be family with his parents someday, froze and then shattered.

He didn’t show any sign of that to them. It was suddenly easy not to. He just stared at the woman who called herself his mother and asked, “Even with what they did to me?”

“It’s only for a week,” James said now, speaking quickly. “And we know they wouldn’t do anything that bad to you if you just—neglected to tell them that you can’t use magic during the summers.” He was smiling, but Harry could practically smell his sweat.

“And, Harry,” Lily said, so softly that it was hard to hear her, “we know that what happened to you was bad, and we’d never want to subject you to more of it. But it’s not as bad as the torture and death they could suffer if Voldemort’s old followers caught wind of where they lived.”

Harry nodded. It was easy to do that, as cold and brilliant as he felt, the way ice felt as if it was spreading out to encompass him under the surface. It was easy to say, “All right. But you promise that it’ll only be a week?”

Even Dumbledore looked relieved, and Lily and James smiled at him. Once, Harry would have done anything for those smiles. A couple years ago. Maybe even at the beginning of this school year.

Now, he watched from behind the cold mask no one could see under his skin, and felt nothing except a hatred so vast and bleak that it was like standing in the middle of the Arctic. He listened to them reassure him that it would be only for a week, and someone would be there to pick him up a week to the day after school ended and the Dursleys collected him from the platform.

Lily got up and moved across the room to hug him when they were done explaining. Harry stood there and returned her hug. It was easy. It was all on the surface, and the real part of him was under the surface where no one but Theo could see it. Watching.

“I know it’s hard, baby boy,” she breathed into his ear. “But we love you, and we’re so proud of you.”

Harry didn’t believe her. He would never believe her again.

But it was easy to nod and smile and say, “I love you, too.”

While the cold under his skin watched, and thought about how hard he would cast the Imperius Curse on the Dursleys, and thought about turning the water in the Potters’ cells to ice someday.

*

“I’m surprised how well he took that,” James murmured as they watched the door close behind Harry.

Lily shook her head a little. She hadn’t wanted to do that, but it was true that Petunia and Vernon and Dudley would die without those protections, and death was worse than neglect and abuse. She had thought of asking Felix to go to the house when Albus first proposed this, or volunteering to go herself, but Albus had pointed out that Harry and the Dursleys were used to each other, and they would accept him back with the least amount of disruption. And it was only for a week.

Harry’s magic was wandless, even. He could defend himself it he had to, if it got really bad. Lily would never encourage that, but she didn’t want her son hurt, either.

“Thank you for the sacrifices you have made, Lily, James,” Albus said, gently. “I know it’s hard. But it’s only for a week.”

Lily swallowed air. That was true. Only for a week.

A week, and it would be over until next summer.

*

“I can’t believe that Mum and Dad are sending you back there,” Felix said for the fiftieth time.

Harry just nodded. The cold under his skin had retreated a little over the intervening days since Lily and James had told him they were discarding him again, but it was still with him. It was easy to grimace a little and shake his head. “I know, but it’ll only be for a week, and then I’ll be home, and we’ll see each other again.”

“I told them not to do it.”

“You did?”

Felix nodded, slumping back into his seat in their shared compartment and scowling out the window. The train was slowing, coming in towards King’s Cross. “Yeah. I volunteered to go. But they said that you and the Muggles are used to each other, and there was no way that they would accept me. I’m sorry, Harry. I really—didn’t think they’d do it.”

Harry smiled at him, and part of it was genuine. It was nice to know that his brother had tried to help him. He could never tell Felix so much, but he could share this. “Thank you.”

Felix sighed and looked at him. “Just—use your magic if you have to, okay? Not your wand. But your wandless magic. I don’t think the Ministry could track that, and it would be more terrifying to the Muggles, anyway.”

Harry had to struggle not to laugh at the thought of how much he intended to use his wandless magic. “Yeah, I agree. Okay.”

The train stopped altogether a few minutes later. Harry stood and reached for his trunk, preoccupied with finding Theo for a last goodbye. They’d agreed to meet on the platform. Felix had agreed, with grumbling, and the Potters had agreed eagerly, to leave as soon as they could, so as not to irritate the Dursleys more with a glimpse of them. That ought to mean they couldn’t catch a glimpse of Theo, either.

Theo had been quiet when Harry had told him about the Dursleys, but then, he knew that Harry had ways of handling them that extended beyond just wandless magic.

Felix lunged forwards and hugged Harry abruptly as they were leaving the compartment. Harry tensed up for a second, then hugged Felix back.

He was just a kid, that was all. A regular kid. Not a kid like Harry or Theo, who knew other things.

“I’ll be waiting for you,” Felix whispered, and then he turned and hurried off the train. Harry lingered until the initial rush of eager students went by, and then strolled out until the platform, glancing around. The Potters had left, and the Dursleys weren’t there, but of course, Harry was still on the magical side of the barrier.

Theo was there. And standing next to him was a tall man in dark robes with his hand resting on Theo’s shoulder.

Harry found himself smiling as he walked towards them, since he knew who this was. “Hello, Mr. Nott,” he said.

“Mr. Potter,” Theo’s dad said, and half-bowed. Belisarius Nott had grey in his hair, but Theo had told Harry that he’d been really old when he and his wife had Theo. His eyes were a bright, piercing blue that surprised Harry a little. He wondered if it was Theo’s mum who had had grey eyes. “My son has told me—much about you. How many debts he owes you, in particular.”

Harry felt himself flush. “He doesn’t owe me anything, Mr. Nott. Theo is my friend.”

“And so he also told me, but the fact that you saved his life twice, plus returned him to me and spared him pain from the awful people who had charge of him…” Mr. Nott stared hard at Harry. “My honor is at stake here, Mr. Potter.”

“In what way, sir?”

“I cannot allow you to stay with your abusive relatives,” Mr. Nott said quietly. “Even for a week.”

Harry felt his heart beginning to pound. His eyes darted to Mr. Nott’s left arm despite himself, but any sign of a Dark Mark was covered by his sleeve. “It’s only for a week.”

“Not even for a week,” Mr. Nott repeated firmly. “You have done too much for us, and the debt is too great. You will come with us and be our guest for those seven days, and I will drop you off at your relatives’ house at precisely the right time to meet your…parents.”

The pause he made, the emphasis he put on the last word, made Harry wonder if Mr. Nott was thinking along the same lines he was. A bloody Death Eater cares more about me than my actual parents.

“But the magical protections on their house will fade if a magical person isn’t in residence. The Potters told me that.” Mr. Nott smiled as if he approved of Harry calling his parents by their last name. “They’ll notice if I’m not there. Or the Dursleys might even tell them.”

“Not to worry about that.” Mr. Nott snapped his fingers, and a house-elf appeared beside him with a little crack. “All we need is a handful of your hair, and we can add it to a cup of Polyjuice Potion, which my Nimby here will drink. He’ll become a copy of you, and take your place for that week. A house-elf’s magic will be indistinguishable from yours in human form, and the protections should be renewed. I would appreciate, of course, your doing whatever you can to your relatives to ensure that they don’t hurt Nimby. Theo didn’t tell me what it was, but he implied there was something.”

Harry’s eyes darted to Theo, and he smiled despite himself. Theo hadn’t even betrayed Harry’s secrets to his own father.

Theo smiled back, and it was the most sincere one Harry had ever seen on his face.

“Yes, I can do that,” Harry said. “Can you Disillusion me so that no one sees me when they pick up Nimby? I wouldn’t put it past Dumbledore to have some watchers on me so he can make sure I actually go back to the house.”

“Yes, of course. Your hair, Mr. Potter?”

Harry watched the house-elf as he plucked the hairs from his head. He didn’t much like it that a house-elf was going to take his place, one who presumably had no choice about it.

But he would give more than this to avoid going back to the Dursleys. And he would hit Uncle Vernon so hard with the Imperius Curse that he would not only not hurt Nimby himself, but would get in the way if Aunt Petunia or Dudley tried. Otherwise, a house-elf’s magic was wandless, too, and ought to protect him.

All the time, Theo watched him, and smiled.

*

Everything went smoothly, Theo was glad to see. Harry stepped around Father as if heading for the barrier, at the moment that Father Disillusioned him, and Nimby popped away to a secluded place on the platform to drink the Polyjuice Potion. Then he would walk out to the platform in Harry’s guise to meet the Muggle, and Harry would follow just behind to throw the Imperius Curse.

Theo hadn’t told Father about that, and he didn’t intend to. Father would do anything to protect Theo, and almost anything to protect someone whom he felt the debt to that he felt to Harry. But Father could also think a lot of uses for someone who could throw a wandless, permanent Imperius, things that wouldn’t hurt Harry, but would subject him to the machinations of someone older and more politically powerful than he was.

Theo didn’t want that to happen.

In the end, it was incredibly easy. They stepped through the barrier and watched as Nimby, in his disguise, approached the disgustingly fat Muggle who waited there and was already going purple in the face. A flicker of motion next to him showed Harry skirting around Nimby. Theo saw the moment when the Muggle man’s eyes widened and the purple color in his face receded as he listened to whatever instructions Harry was pressing into his brain.

In the end, he roared, “Let’s go, boy!” at Nimby, and jerked his head towards a Muggle vehicle, but without touching him. Harry turned and walked back towards Father and Theo, but Father didn’t remove the Disillusionment until they had taken the Floo and were safely at home.

Harry took a long, deep breath, staring around at the chandelier that crowned the soaring front entrance hall, his eyes lingering on mahogany banisters and marble flooring and glinting mirrors and sheer silk curtains. Theo looked around and tried to see it the way Harry would, but he was too accustomed to his home to really do that.

Still, at the moment he was mainly proud that they had enough money to offer such a beautiful and relaxing space to Harry.

“Please get comfortable, Mr. Potter,” said Father. “Theo, show him to his room.”

“Can you call me Harry, sir?”

Father paused, and then smiled. “If you will call me Belisarius.”

Harry looked a little overwhelmed at that, but Theo grabbed his shoulder and tugged him up the stairs, and showed him the room laid out next to his, and the huge bed and the bookcases that stood taller than Father and the bathroom that was all Harry’s, and Harry’s face brightened with laughter, and that was what Theo had been waiting to see.

*

Eleven months after the last time it had happened, Harry lay in a bed that was all his in a wizarding home and wept.

But this time, he knew why it was happening, and he let the tears come.

Chapter Text

“Harry, if you will reserve a moment to speak with me?”

Those words had been echoing in Harry’s mind all day, since Belisarius had asked him after breakfast. Now Belisarius was standing and holding the door to his private study open. Harry hadn’t been in there yet, only glimpsed the room from the open door. Even Theo had said he was rarely invited in.

Harry stepped inside with his magic humming around him and his attention focused on the water inside Belisarius’s body. He would freeze it if he had to.

Belisarius was picking up a goblet of something dark and foamy from a magnificent cherry wood desk. He froze as if Harry had already used the water the moment his eyes settled on Harry. Then he sighed. “I am sorry. I should have remembered the life you have had up until this point, and warned you that what I wanted to talk to you about is nothing negative.”

Harry didn’t answer, but watched him.

“Please sit down.” Belisarius motioned to a chair covered in yellow cloth in front of the desk, but seemed to realize Harry wasn’t going to sit until he did so himself, and finally settled into a chair opposite Harry’s that looked almost like a golden throne.

It surprised Harry that Belisarius wouldn’t sit behind the desk, but it also made him feel less like he’d stepped into a professor’s office at Hogwarts. He walked in and sat in the chair, and shook his head a little when Belisarius started to lift a hand to call a house-elf. He wouldn’t be able to eat or drink anything.

Belisarius studied him in utter silence, except for his own breathing and the sound of his swallowing when he lifted his mug to his lips. Harry reached out with his elemental senses and found that he could feel the liquid in the mug, too. It wasn’t pure water, but close enough that he could freeze it in Belisarius’s throat and choke him if he had to.

So far, his sense of water was by far the best. He could influence the fire in his bedroom hearth, too, but his senses of air and earth weren’t delicate enough to affect the air in someone’s lungs or shift the minerals in their body. Harry was determined they would become so, and he worked on that kind of meditation when he was lying in his bed at night.

“How much do you know about Lords in the magical world?” Belisarius asked when he seemed to have finished studying Harry and was leaning back in his chair.

“I know you have one.” Harry didn’t bother to hide the way he looked at Belisarius’s left arm.

Belisarius chuckled. “And no one has heard from him for eleven years.”

Harry stared at him and said nothing. He knew Theo had told his father about the confrontation with Quirrell. Harry had only asked Theo to keep quiet about the exact way Harry had killed Quirrell, not that Voldemort had been there.

“Almost no one,” Belisarius corrected softly. He leaned forwards. “What have your parents told you about the political structure of our world?”

“That they hoped Felix would be the kind of Lord that ends Lords,” Harry said. He no longer had enough loyalty to the Potters to keep their secrets. But then, he thought their enemies probably knew at least the outline of their political goals, anyway. “And they hoped I would tell everyone about the goodness of the Muggle world and bring magical and Muggle people closer together.”

“Ahhh.” Belisarius leaned back in his chair. “And you have no interest in doing that.”

“No.”

“Because you were in danger at your Muggle home.”

“Yes.”

Belisarius smiled. “And is your brother a Lord?”

Harry hesitated. He wanted to say yes; he wanted to say no. He hadn’t paid enough attention to Felix to notice his magic influencing anyone the way the magic of Lords was said to do, but then, maybe it had been and Harry just hadn’t felt it because he was Felix’s twin brother or because he was an elemental wizard.

On the other hand, there were some people following him around, right? Dean Thomas and Ron Weasley. Maybe Hermione, although Harry didn’t know if a Lord’s follower was supposed to yell at him until he studied. (Felix telling Hermione that he could remember everything he read had just made her snort and ask why his performance in Potions wasn’t better).

“I’m not sure,” Harry settled for saying. “He’s powerful. He never had an outburst of accidental magic. He’s been able to use the Potters’ wands since he was a kid. And there are some people who really look up to him, but I don’t know if that’s his power or because of the Boy-Who-Lived thing.”

“Ah,” Belisarius murmured. “That is an interesting thing, is it not? Your brother’s magic has never been wandless. Yours has never needed a wand.”

Harry tensed, but Belisarius just nodded at him. “Theo has been loyal to you, and hasn’t told me all your secrets, as you must have noticed. But I know what I can feel, Harry, and I have noticed the way that you call things to you without using a wand, and how often you leave your wand in your bedroom.”

Harry relaxed a little. At least Belisarius didn’t seem to realize that the winds were floating objects to Harry, not that Harry was using a wandless Summoning Charm. And then his mind caught up with what else Belisarius had said, and he blinked.

“Yes,” Belisarius said. He was good at reading expressions, which Harry resolved to remember. “Your brother’s magic complements yours, in a way. Split perfectly in half. At least, when it comes to wanded magic. I do not know how his perfect memory for what he reads would complement the curse that makes animals react badly to you.”

Maybe it doesn’t, Harry thought. Maybe his perfect memory for looking back complements my sight that looks forwards to things that have yet to happen…

But he chased the thought off. He didn’t know for sure if that was the case, and he hadn’t had a vision in months, so he didn’t know why they happened or what triggered them. He should have had one of Voldemort threatening Theo if he’d had one of the troll doing that, but nothing.

And as neat as Belisarius’s theory was in some ways, it didn’t say anything about what Felix might have instead of Parseltongue.

Then again, since Harry never intended to tell anyone about his Parseltongue, it didn’t matter much.

“Where are you going with this?” he asked, and met Belisarius’s eyes.

Belisarius sipped from his mug again. “Just this, Harry. If your twin is a Lord or supposedly destined to be one, so are you. Your magic is more than powerful enough for it.”

Harry wrinkled his nose. “Maybe so, but I don’t want to be a leader. Theo’s talked to me a little about followers, and I don’t—want that. I want to protect my friends. I don’t want them to serve me. And I don’t want to combat Death Eaters or make speeches or whatever else the Potters were envisioning for me.”

“If people wanted to serve you?”

“I’d refuse.”

Belisarius regarded him for a long moment over the rim of his mug. “You are an unusual child.”

“I think my childhood ended before I went to Hogwarts.”

Harry had said it partially to test the man, to see if he would laugh or tell Harry he was being melodramatic. But instead, although Belisarius’s eyes widened a little, he just nodded. “I think you are right.”

Harry relaxed, and the rest of the conversation was less loaded, with Belisarius asking Harry how he was liking the house, how he found the Nott house-elves (Harry didn’t think he needed to tell Belisarius about the conversations he had with them), how much time he’d spent on his summer homework, and other ordinary subjects. Harry looked up in surprise when someone knocked on the study door.

Someone, he mocked himself a minute later. There was only Theo in the house other than them and the elves, and the elves would simply pop up when Belisarius summoned them, rather than bothering them with knocking.

“I’d like to borrow Harry for a moment, Father, if you’re done with him,” Theo said.

His eyes were clear and his face open in a way that Harry had never seen when they were at Hogwarts. He seemed to stand taller, too. Harry was glad that he had apparently made the right choice about bringing Theo back to his father, that Belisarius really wasn’t abusive.

“Yes, of course. We’ve had an interesting talk. Perhaps we’ll speak again before you go back to the Potters’, Harry.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Belisarius.”

Harry nodded to him, although it was still beyond strange to call an adult by their first name without at least an “Uncle” or an “Aunt” in front of it, and escaped. Theo grinned at him. “What did he want to talk to you about?”

“Lords. Politics. That kind of thing.”

“What did you say?”

“That I have no interest in being a lord.”

“Hmm.” Theo stared at him for a second, maybe because he would have been a Lord if he could have. Harry looked calmly back at him. It would be different, for Theo, who had grown up with at least one adult who loved him. For that matter, Harry wasn’t sure when exactly Theo’s mother had died. Theo probably thought being a Lord was exciting.

Harry thought it sounded like a lot of work he had no desire to do, and letting people you didn’t really trust but who just wanted to follow someone into your secrets. He would never be able to afford that, not with the amount he was carrying.

“Well, come on, let’s go play Quidditch,” Theo said at last, and dashed outside towards the pitch. Harry followed willingly. The Nott family’s brooms were older than the Potters’, but still pretty fantastic.

*

Belisarius stood by the window that overlooked the pitch, hands behind his back, watching his son and Harry Potter circle around each other on Nimbus 1900’s. Theo’s laughter was audible even from here. And Harry was a talented flyer, twisting his body to the side and diving after the practice Snitch in a way which made Belisarius regret, a little, that he would probably never play Quidditch at Hogwarts.

If there was a need for a Seeker on the Gryffindor team, the spot would almost certainly go to his twin. And although Belisarius would have known without Theo telling him that Harry had forced the Sorting Hat to do his will, there looked to be no chance that Harry would ever play for the Slytherin team, either.

Powerful. Uncommonly powerful.

Also one with an unstable political position, given his twin brother’s fame, the apparently destroyed plans that the Potters and Dumbledore had had for him, and his confrontation with Belisarius’s own Lord at the end of the school year.

Belisarius’s hand drifted to the Mark on his left arm. It was quiescent, which was not a comfort. If the Dark Lord had returned, Belisarius should have known.

He had been loyal. He had lied and said he had been under the Imperius because he had thought retaining his freedom and political position would help his Lord more than going to Azkaban, as the Lestranges had. But it seemed that his Lord would have killed Theo for a mere whim. It wasn’t even about Theo obstructing a plan of his. It had been solely to teach Harry Potter a lesson, or something of the sort.

If people wanted to serve you?

I’d refuse.

Belisarius sighed to himself. Yes, it was easy to say that when so far there had been only a few confrontations where Harry had been able to make the choice to save or spare Theo, and it had meant showing his power to a few people or not at all.

But if becoming a Lord meant sparing the friends he wanted so much to protect from more trouble?

Belisarius wondered how long Harry’s resolve would last.

And what his own resolve would be, if his Lord returned and again proposed to sacrifice his son.

*

Felix glanced over his shoulder and then took a long breath. Mum and Dad were both at an urgent political meeting with Dumbledore, discussing how to block a law that would deprive werewolves of the last vestiges of their rights. No one else was in the house, and this was probably as good a chance as he was going to get.

Felix turned and aimed his wand at the locked drawer in front of him. “Alohomora.”

For a minute, he thought the spell wouldn’t work, but then the drawer trembled as he pushed more power into the spell, and the Locking Charm broke. Felix smiled in triumph and yanked the drawer open.

He had known vaguely that there were locked drawers in his parents’ bedroom, but he hadn’t known what was kept there. Legal documents, he’d thought he’d heard Dad say once. And important mementoes of the war or something like that. But this morning he’d got up early and was on his way to the kitchen when he heard Mum say that it was things related to that night.

They’d shut up the instant they saw him, and then started trying to distract him with sausages. But all the time, Felix had been thinking about what they’d said. That night always referred to the night Voldemort had come to kill him and Harry.

He had no idea what was in that drawer, but he wanted to see it. Wanted to see what was so important that Harry had to spend a week with terrible Muggles and they had to keep the drawer locked at all times.

His first glimpse into it was disappointing. There was a little leather folder of the kind that Dad kept some of his legal documents in, right enough, and a book shoved further back that might be a ledger, given that it was also bound in leather and didn’t seem to have an author or title on the spine. Maybe he’d been wrong about which drawer it was.

He flipped open the folder in any case, just to check, and blinked at the sight of the two pieces of parchment in it.

My and Harry’s birth certificates?

Felix spread them out and looked at them in mild interest. He’d never seen them before, but he didn’t expect them to be some fund of hidden knowledge. They were just records of when he and Harry were born. If they’d got burned up or something, then Mum and Dad would be able to get another copy from the Ministry.

Felix paused as he thought about that.

If that’s true, why are they locked up here?

Felix peered at the documents with a new interest. Harry’s certificate, the one that had been on top, had his name, the time of his birth—11:49 PM, July 31st, 1980—their parents’ names, Sirius recorded as his godfather, a blank where the name of the attending midwife should have been, and Madam Pomfrey’s name. That was right, as far as Felix knew. Mum and Dad hadn’t been able to trust that a midwife wouldn’t be a spy for Voldemort. They’d trusted Madam Pomfrey, and everything had gone all right.

Felix glanced at his own certificate. Felix Chance Potter (the middle name his father’s idea of a joke), 11:59 PM, July 31st, 1980. Parents James Fleamont Potter, Lily Marie Evans Potter. Godfather—

Felix’s thoughts scrambled to a halt. In the space where Sirius’s name should have been written was another one.

Who the hell is Remus Lupin?

Felix stared blankly, even though just a glimpse of the paper would have been enough for his memory to grab hold of it. He could have copied it down perfectly later, even the fanciest strokes of the calligraphy. But he had no idea who Remus Lupin was, or why the man would have been listed as his godfather. The rest of the information, except for his name and the time of his birth, was the same as on Harry’s.

What the hell?

Shakily, Felix scanned the rest of the parchment and even flipped it over. Wait. There was one more thing that separated his birth certificate from Harry’s. In the lower left-hand corner on the back of Felix’s parchment was stamped a small shape, a solid circle surrounded by a circle of broken, dashed lines. Felix had no idea what it was.

It was on Harry’s, too, but in the lower right-hand corner on the back instead. Felix held the parchment up to the light, but couldn’t make out any more about the symbol than he’d already seen.

What is going on?

At least Felix thought he might know now why Mum and Dad kept their birth certificates locked up. They were important documents, sure, but he and Harry also weren’t meant to find them and see them. Or Felix, at least, would have had questions about who Remus Lupin was and what this symbol was.

He shoved the certificates back into the leather folder they’d been in with a shaking hand and dropped the folder back into what its approximate place had been. Then he looked at the book, shoved back in the drawer, and pulled it out. He no longer thought it was a ledger.

It still didn’t have an author or title, though, even when he turned it over so he could see the cover. What the cover did have was an embossed form of the symbol that had been on the back of their birth certificates. Seeing it bigger, and done in gold the way it was, Felix thought it might be a symbol of the sun.

Shakily, he flipped open the book, and discovered that it was handwritten, in a neat script that wasn’t either of his parents’. Felix squinted at it, and then scowled. It appeared to be in Latin, which he knew a little of, but not a lot. The only word he could make out for sure was sol, sun, and that didn’t tell him any more than the cover had.

He flipped quickly through the pages, letting his eyes skim lightly over each one. The book didn’t look thick, and he would be able to copy it out later and look up the words. It would take a long time and be tedious, but it would work.

When he’d finished scanning the eighty pages of the book, he sighed and slid it back into the drawer, then shoved the drawer shut again. His head felt oddly full and stuffed with cotton, the way it often did when he’d read something without comprehension, just to regurgitate it later when he needed it.

He locked the drawer again as best he could, and then eyed the long, flat drawer beneath it. That one was locked too, wasn’t it? He reached out and jiggled the slender silver handle. Yeah, locked.

And then Felix froze. Because unlike when he’d unlocked the first drawer, this time, he felt as if something huge had opened one eye and turned its head to look at him.

Something that had been asleep until this point.

Something that was now staring at him.

“Felix? What are you doing in here?”

Felix jumped and yelped, then winced as his voice cracked. It had been doing that, lately. It wasn’t fair that Harry, who after all was a whole ten minutes older, didn’t sound like that yet. “Sirius! You surprised me.”

“Yeah, well, you surprised me by being in here, kiddo.” Sirius was giving him a strained smile. “Come on, let’s have some butterbeer.” And he turned and left the room without giving Felix a chance to respond.

Felix rubbed his shoulder, which he’d wrenched a little when he jumped, and wondered if the sensation of something watching him had just come from Sirius standing behind him in the doorway and his not noticing. But then he glanced back at the lower drawer, and flinched. No, the sensation of something watching was still there.

Something that wanted to eat him.

Felix left the room, just managing not to run.

*

“So who’s Remus Lupin?”

Felix, of course, just had to ask that question when Sirius had a mouth full of butterbeer.

Sirius choked and coughed and grabbed his throat and mimed dying. Felix smiled at him, but there was a hard darkness in his eyes that didn’t look as if it was going away. He kept drinking his own butterbeer and eating the chocolate biscuits Sirius had got out for them, but he also kept watching Sirius, and there wasn’t a whole lot of patience in his eyes.

Felix had come home from school harder, Sirius had to admit. He wasn’t sure if that was because Felix had had to cope with a whole bunch of kids staring adoringly at the Boy-Who-Lived, or if he was upset because he’d failed to protect the Stone, or if it was because…

Of his brother.

“Who is he?” Felix repeated. “I saw his name listed as my godfather on my birth certificate. That was kind of a shock, given that I’ve always thought you were my godfather.”

Sirius sighed. He’d told James and Lily that never telling Felix about Remus was going to backfire. He would find out someday from a stray reference, or, yeah, the bloody birth certificate (which was also not a good idea, but had anyone ever listened to Sirius? Of course not), or because Remus might come back, unlikely as that was when he’d washed his hands of the lot of them. But now he was the one who had to deal with it.

The world was highly unfair to people named Sirius Black.

“He was a friend of ours in school,” Sirius said quietly. “The fourth Marauder, with me and your dad and Pettigrew.”

Felix blinked, hard. Then he said, “You left him out of all the stories you told me about Hogwarts.”

“Yeah.”

“Why?”

Sirius looked at Felix and wondered what the kiddo would say if Sirius told him the truth. That Remus had reacted with utter violence when he’d found out what Lily and James and Sirius and Albus had done to prepare for that night. That he’d screamed at Lily and James for essentially giving up on Harry the moment they heard the prophecy.

“You don’t just decide that your kid is going to die! You don’t decide that!”

They were probably all lucky that Remus had left instead of going to the press.

Sirius took a deep breath, and chose the lesser truth.

“Because we all thought he was a spy,” Sirius said softly. “He was acting cagey and not attending a lot of Order meetings, and after you and your parents went under Fidelius…he started acting weirder than ever. Saying that he didn’t think the Fidelius was safe. I thought he was trying to hint that he wanted me to change the Secret-Keeper over to him. It was one of the reasons we picked Peter.”

Sirius closed his eyes. Of course, it was beyond obvious now that Peter was the one acting suspicious, including whispering rumors about Remus when Remus wasn’t around to hear, but they’d all been out of their minds with fear at the time.

And hatred of Voldemort. And thinking they knew better.

We didn’t know shit, Sirius thought, heartsick, heartsore, heart-weary.

“And then—then everything happened, and I tried to apologize to Remus, but I did it in a terrible way. I kept telling him that it was understandable we thought he was the spy, with the way he’d been acting. And he got upset and stormed off. James and Lily tried to reason with him, but they didn’t do it any better than I did.”

“And that was it? He just left your friendship like that? You just let him go?”

“There was also, um. You know that you were sick a lot the first year after that night?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, Lily and James were frantic not to expose you to certain kinds of—Dark magic. And we didn’t know if Remus might influence you the wrong way.” Felix’s eyes were narrowed, suspicious. Sirius added reluctantly, “Remus was a werewolf.”

Felix stared at him. Then he leaned back in his chair and stared down at his butterbeer. “And what did he think about Harry? I was going to say—I was going to ask why he couldn’t take care of Harry, but if he was a werewolf…”

“Legally, he wouldn’t have been allowed. Yeah.” Sirius cleared his throat. “And he was upset about what your mum and dad planned to do with Harry.”

“So am I.”

Sirius stared at the floor for a second. He wondered what Felix would say if he knew all about what they had planned for that night, the kinds of decisions they’d had to make, the shock when they’d returned to the house after Voldemort’s defeat…

He took a deep breath. He might have tried to explain it to Felix when he was younger, but that wasn’t his decision. It was James and Lily’s. And at least he had got Felix out of the room before he tried his unlocking spells on the bottom drawer.

“I know,” Sirius said quietly. “But it’s still the best decision that they could have made.”

“Best! How is it the best, when he gets abused there?”

Sirius tensed, but his butterbeer bottle didn’t explode or anything like that. It might have, if this was Harry who was so angry. But Felix had never had an outburst of accidental magic. It was one thing that had made Albus absolutely sure that he was capable of defeating Voldemort. His magic was perfectly contained and controlled, even as a baby. Someone so much the opposite of Voldemort, someone who would never collapse into the chaotic madness that haunted a Dark Lord, was the savior they needed.

“I know,” Sirius said quickly. “I didn’t really mean—I didn’t mean best as in, it’s a good thing. Just that…listen, we came home that night and there was all this Dark magic around you. And you were having a seizure. Lily and James had to separate the two of you. Harry was making you sicker.”

“And they couldn’t give him to you? They had to give him to the Dursleys?”

Sirius sighed. “I spent so much time around you that they were afraid I would come back carrying a taint of Dark magic from Harry and infect you again. The Dursleys were also your mum’s relatives, and with the Potters unexpectedly prominent all of a sudden because they were the Boy-Who-Lived’s family, they were afraid that Petunia and her husband and kid would get attacked. So they thought they would kill two Snidgets with one stone and establish magical protections around her house by anchoring them in Harry.”

And if he’d died…

Sirius didn’t agree with it, but he knew the end of that argument. It would have been less of a loss than if Felix had.

“We’ve been back together most of a year,” Felix said mulishly, picking at the biscuit in front of him. “Living in the same dormitory. And he hasn’t got me sick, or anything.”

“It’s possible that he can control it better now that he’s older,” Sirius said carefully. “Or that the time you spent apart meant you had the chance to heal and become stronger. But you can’t blame your parents for wanting you apart at least part of the summer, to make sure.”

“Bollocks,” Felix said, which made Sirius blink, because he couldn’t remember hearing Felix swear before. Well, at least not when he wasn’t being punished for something. “They could have put him somewhere else if that was the case. With you, like I said. If it was only for a week during the summer and no more.”

Sirius sighed and sat back. He thought again of what was in that locked drawer Felix hadn’t managed to open, and what Felix would say if he saw it, and what James and Lily would say if they knew how much he’d already told Felix.

Sirius didn’t like a lot of the decisions he’d made, the things he’d done. He wasn’t proud of them. And he liked even less some of the things that James and Lily and Albus had sworn him to secrecy on.

But what was done was done. Revealing everything now, when it would only make Felix hate them and turn against them, wasn’t an option. And Sirius did agree that Harry couldn’t be allowed to just run off and do whatever he wanted with his wild magic. They might have lost the chance to be good parents and a good godfather to him forever.

But they could still prevent him from joining with Voldemort.

“Are you going to answer?”

“I love you, kiddo,” Sirius said, and leaned across the table to hug him. Felix was stiff and unresponsive in his arms. “And I don’t always agree with your parents. But they have the right to make decisions for you and your brother.”

“I don’t think they’ll have the right to do it for Harry for much longer.”

“What do you mean?” Sirius asked sharply, pulling back. If Felix thought Harry was going to run off to Voldemort or with one of the Death Eaters’ families—

“I mean that Harry is going to get fed up with their nonsense and leave.”

“Felix, he’s eleven. Where would he go? What kinds of political connections do you think he could forge, especially with—the way he is?” Unpopular in Gryffindor House, was what Sirius was thinking. With magic that came so slowly to him that he still had to struggle to use his wand. Suffering because of those horrid Muggles.

Sirius was sorry for what had happened to Harry, but he also knew that that very damage would make it harder for Harry to forge strong connections with his peers or become a political pawn. Just because Sirius might worry, irrationally, about Harry being caught up in Death Eater antics didn’t make him think Death Eaters would try to use an unstable kid with erratic magic. He’d be too dangerous to them.

“I mean that he’ll stay at Hogwarts for all the holidays and stay somewhere else for the summers. And what will Mum and Dad do then?”

“They might cut him off if he’s too erratic,” Sirius said quietly. “If he’s too dangerous. What source of money would Harry use to buy his books and his robes and so on if the Potter money was gone?”

Felix paused, and then looked abruptly sick. “They couldn’t do that—”

“They were willing to abandon him for ten years with abusive Muggles without checking up on him.” Sirius shoved his chair back from the table, forcing himself not to care about the harsh noise or the way that Felix’s begging eyes fastened on him. “If you think that they wouldn’t cut him off from the vaults, you’re wrong.”

“Sirius…”

Sirius shook his head and walked towards the Floo. He shouldn’t have said as much as he had. He’d made his choices, and those choices were to stand with Lily and James no matter how wrong he thought they were. He couldn’t change his mind now and somehow pretend that made everything he’d done in the past better.

He despised himself. And he was stuck. Some errors, there was no mending.

*

It was the best week of Theo’s life.

Part of it was because he was with Father again. He could feel Father’s hand on his shoulder or hear his voice whenever he wanted. He could eat meals with him. He could ask him questions and hear the rumbling of Father’s voice as he answered. He could refer to a memory they shared and see the quick flare of laughter or sorrow across Father’s face.

But the other part of it was Harry.

Harry would race Theo, and laugh when he lost a game of Exploding Snap, and swoop and dive like a busy Seeker. He would perform daring dives on the broom that made Theo lose his breath yelling at him to be careful, you idiot, and made Theo wonder if there wasn’t a streak of Gryffindor in his perfectly Slytherin friend after all. He would swim in the pool with Theo, and jump on the beds with him, and watch some of Theo’s spells carefully so that he would be able to perfectly mimic the effects with his elemental magic.

But he also spent time studying in the library, and he would smile at Theo when he sat down at the table across from him but still continue reading. Or he would ask questions and then keep pushing for extra answers to what Theo thought were easy questions, easily answered.

One of those was what Theo thought of, afterwards, as the Great Dark Lord Debate.

*

“Why do people want to follow Dark Lords and Ladies? Aren’t they afraid that someday they’ll turn on them, too, and they’ll become victims of the torture and murder?”

Theo blinked at Harry, surprised that he would ask a question with such a simple answer, but willing to give it to him if it meant that Harry would lose that tight, unhappy expression on his face. “Because they want to see their enemies punished.”

“But that doesn’t answer my question. Don’t they think the Dark Lord could turn on them someday?”

“Not if they’re loyal enough.” Theo set his Charms textbook aside and focused on Harry. Harry had said he would do his homework when he was with the Potters to give himself something to concentrate on that wasn’t hurting them. Right now, he was clutching a history book. “Why? Do you find it so unthinkable to follow someone?”

“Yes.”

Theo studied him in silence for a long moment. Harry just stared back, and Theo finally said, “Well, you have power, yourself. You’ve killed a troll and a man already, and you’ve discovered a permanent, wandless Imperius. You can keep yourself safe. But other people know they can’t, and they have to—”

“Is magical power the only kind of power worth respecting, then? Does everyone think they’d be vulnerable without it? Because I know your father’s not as powerful as I am, but I know he would find other ways to defend himself.”

Theo hesitated. He and his father had never talked in depth about Father’s decision to follow the Dark Lord. Theo only knew that he had made that decision, and probably wouldn’t have made a different one.

“He wanted to see his enemies punished,” Theo said. “And I know that you’ve heard the theories about some people finding a Lord’s or Lady’s magic so compelling that they have to do what they’re told.”

Harry blinked at him. “Oh,” he said. “So the Imperius defense wasn’t a lie?”

Theo hesitated again. But Harry had trusted Theo with secrets of his heart and soul that, even if they weren’t as politically damaging, would have hurt Harry if they’d been revealed. “No,” Theo said quietly. “It was.”

“Oh.” Harry thought about it, and shook his head. “Then I still don’t understand. How you can care about revenge more than survival…”

Theo felt as though someone had cast a Lumos inside his brain. He gaped at Harry for a moment, who stared at him, and then sat back and shook his head.

That explains so much. He cares so much about survival that he wouldn’t risk the Potters finding out about his magic, even if that would mean they wouldn’t leave him with the Dursleys anymore. He won’t take revenge on the Muggles because someone might find out. And what does he think they would do?

Well, that was obvious when Theo thought about it. Harry thought they would expel him from Hogwarts. Find some way to cut him off from Theo forever. Take his magic away, if they were properly motivated.

Dump him back with the Muggles with his magic bound? Yes, that was probably Harry’s worst nightmare.

Theo breathed out slowly. “You know that my father would do almost anything to protect you, right, Harry?” he asked. “He meant what he said about literally being unable to let you go live with the Muggles when you’d saved my life and brought me back to him.”

“Almost anything.”

“What?”

“If Voldemort came back and made him obey, then he wouldn’t be able to do anything. He’d have to hand me over, or kill me, or torture me, or whatever Voldemort would want.”

Theo was slowly learning to control his flinches at the Dark Lord’s name, although he did wish that Harry would call him by a pseudonym the way most people did. He sighed and rubbed his forehead. “Okay, look. Can you trust that my father at least wouldn’t do that without—without the Dark Lord’s telling him to do?”

“But he would if he was told to.”

Theo just stared at Harry, at a loss for words. Harry stared back with flat eyes.

“And that’s another reason why I don’t want to be a Lord,” Harry added, when the silence had stretched for a little while. “I never want to tell someone to obey me and watch them have to hurt a family member, or a friend, or someone they care about. Or even just someone their family member cares about.”

He twisted a little and jumped out of the high library chair to the floor, a flash of fire searing the air around him for a minute. “Come on. Let’s go flying. I have to go back tomorrow.”

Theo watched him race out of the library, and got up to follow. But his mind was full of thoughts he hadn’t considered before, and he didn’t know what to do with them.

He had always assumed he would follow a Lord someday, since he wasn’t powerful enough to be a Lord. He had never thought he would have a completely confusing, maybe-Lord for his best friend.

But he didn’t want to change Harry, either. Not when Harry had rescued him from the Figgs and saved his life without a second thought and didn’t seem to have entertained the idea that his elemental magic gave him something to hold over Theo’s head.

I’ll follow him. Maybe not the way I thought, but I’ll follow him.

Chapter Text

“Harry!”

Felix yelled his name as if he’d thought he would never see Harry again. Harry pasted a smile on his face and walked towards his brother. They were meeting in the garden behind the Dursleys’ house. Harry had been the one to write and suggest that to the Potters. That way, he’d explained, they would be out of sight of the Dursleys’ neighbors and his relatives both.

And from the smiles on the Potters’ faces as they followed Felix, they had taken this as another sign that things weren’t “that bad” for Harry at the Dursleys’. That they would allow him to write and receive owls.

Well, it didn’t matter. It was still easier to fool them than it had ever been, now that Harry knew he had to. Belisarius had Apparated him here this morning, and he and Theo were watching under Disillusionment Charms nearby.

Felix flung his arms around Harry and hugged him. Harry hugged him back, and then turned and made himself endure the way James ruffled his hair and Lily hugged him. He only had to put up with them for a few more years, he thought, until he could win free of them.

Or until he couldn’t bear them any longer and broke free.

Theo had thought Harry would reach that point before he reached the age of seventeen. Harry had pointed out that he’d endured the Dursleys for ten years, and managed to not run away.

Theo had just looked at him with dark eyes and asked, “And now that you have the power to fight back, are you just going to stay with people who abandoned you to abusive Muggles?”

That made more sense than Harry liked to think about, more sense than he’d wanted to admit. So he’d shoved Theo on the shoulder and they’d gone outside to fly one last time before Belisarius brought them here.

“So everything went all right?” Lily asked.

“It went fine,” Harry said, and let his smile widen.

Lily nodded, a little gesture that Harry didn’t even know if she was conscious of. James’s smile widened, and he reached out and ruffled Harry’s hair again. “Of course it did! No son of ours is going to put up with a lot of Muggle bollocks.”

No son of yours, Harry thought.

Interestingly, he saw Felix clapping his hand across his face from where he stood behind the Potters. Harry glanced at him, and Felix shook his head at Harry with a frown so severe that Harry blinked. But he would wait to ask questions. Obviously, it would have to not be in front of the Potters.

James grabbed his hand, while Lily grabbed Felix’s, and they were ushered towards the Apparition point beyond the Muggle street. Harry glanced back once and caught the glimpse of movement that would be Belisarius and Theo standing there disguised. He inclined his head in a deep nod that anyone who saw him could take as a gesture of farewell to the Muggles, if they wanted.

They didn’t need to know about how Belisarius and Theo had helped Harry, kept him. They didn’t need to know about the several books from the Nott library that Harry was carrying along with him, which Belisarius had happily lent to him.

They didn’t need to know about so much. If Harry had his way, he would never tell the Potters about his elemental magic or his Parseltongue, except maybe in a letter written to them from safety after he’d reached it.

Felix?

Maybe, Harry thought, as he watched his brother from the corner of his eye and saw the way Felix was scowling at Lily’s back. But I’ll have to know him a lot better than I do now first.

*

Theo leaned against his father’s leg and stared after Harry for long moments. Not even his father summoning Nimby from the house and asking for a report on what had happened with the Muggles distracted him.

Having a best friend wasn’t something he had ever allowed himself to imagine. Now that he knew what it was like, Theo didn’t want to give it up.

“He’ll be all right.”

Theo stiffened a little, eyes on the ground. He trusted Father, of course he did, but he hated being so transparent to him.

“I will keep our home as a sanctuary for him when he needs it,” Father went on, his voice soft, as he rested his hand on Theo’s head and stroked through his hair. “I could do no less for someone who saved your life and brought you back to me.”

Theo nodded, reassured. That meant a lot more to him than if Father had just said he would do it because Harry was Theo’s best friend. Father might change his mind about such things in the future, but his sense of obligation to Harry would never lessen.

Be safe, Theo thought, looking towards where the Potters had Apparated. Because he was back with Father, he doubtless wouldn’t be invited to parties at the Potter house anymore, and would have to wait until September to see Harry, unless they could sneak off and meet up somewhere. Be as happy as you can.

As Father stretched out a hand to Apparate him home, Theo thought that the last part of that would be far more difficult for Harry to manage.

*

Felix finished telling Harry what he’d found in the locked drawer and sat back to watch Harry and wait for his reaction. Harry was lying on the floor next to Felix’s bed, his eyes fixed on the wall and his magic snapping around him.

Felix sipped at his melting ice that he’d persuaded Mum to get for them and waited some more. It was strange, but Harry seemed to have changed a lot in the week since Felix had last seen him. Not in the way Felix had expected, though. He’d thought Harry would come back sunk into himself and detached, or else yelling at everyone.

Instead, Harry just seemed quieter and more thoughtful. And warier. Like he was watching everybody all the time, and waiting for them to say something that was horrible or twisted or stupid.

Considering the way our parents just dumped him back at the Muggles’, I suppose I can’t blame him for that.

Harry blinked and turned to look at him, and suddenly looked a lot more normal again. “Did you try writing to Lupin?”

“I sent an owl out.”

“And?” Harry prodded.

“It came back with the letter still on the leg. I don’t know if he thought that maybe someone else was writing to him and didn’t want to answer, or if he’s sworn off all contact with us, or he’s dead, or what.”

“Owls just wait when someone’s dead,” Harry said softly, staring at the wall again. “They can’t find them, so they don’t bother trying. He’s probably out there somewhere. It must be one of the other things you said.”

“How did you know that?”

“About owls waiting? I read a lot of things about them when I was trying to figure out why they didn’t like me.”

“We have to get you a pet that will like you,” Felix said, sprawling on his bed and kicking up his heels. “There has to be some animal out there. Maybe a crossbreed, like a half-Kneazle. Or a magical one.”

Harry had a very odd expression on his face for a moment, but he shook it off. “Well, maybe someday we’ll find one.”

Felix nodded. “What do you think about what Sirius said?”

“That Lily and James were afraid of me getting you sick and that’s why they shipped me off to live with the Dursleys?”

Felix opened his mouth to ask why Harry wasn’t calling them Mum and Dad, and then didn’t ask it. Because he knew. “Yeah.”

“I think he’s probably telling the truth. Or part of the truth. But it doesn’t make me like them better. And it doesn’t mean that I want to impress them anymore. Or just enough to keep living here.”

Harry’s face wasn’t closed or wearing a strange expression right now. His eyes were shining with a frightening focus, and his hand was clawing at the carpet as if he was going to pull it out like grass. Felix swallowed. Harry’s magic was snarling around him, a low sound but one that Felix could feel echoing in his bones.

“You think they’d kick you out?”

“They already did that, didn’t they?”

“But Sirius thought they might do it permanently. And then you wouldn’t have access to the money that you need for your robes, or your schoolbooks, or any of it.”

Harry lay back on the carpet. His magic sank down around him again so that Felix couldn’t hear it snarling anymore, but he could still feel it. Watching. Waiting. He wondered, a little uneasily, where it went when he couldn’t hear it.

“I know. I need to figure out some way to get some money.” Harry’s fingers strummed the carpet behind his head this time. “But I don’t have any good ideas. I’m too young for most people to take me seriously if I tried to sell something or shop on my own. Maybe I—”

His eyes unfocused, and he stared at the wall. Felix looked, too, just in case, but there was only the spot that was left over from what his parents persisted in calling the Too Much Soup Incident.

“Harry?”

Harry blinked and came back from what looked like it was very far away. “Hm? Yeah?”

“Where’d you go?” Felix tried to smile and make it into a joke, but he was a little frightened about the way that part of his brother seemed to have disappeared into thin air. “Are you all right?”

“Yeah.” Harry slumped back with his arms tucked under his head again. “I thought I had a thought about how I could get some money, but then I worked out some of the ways it could go wrong, and it’s not worth it.”

Felix was curious enough that he opened his mouth to ask, and then he shut it again. He had grown up here, in comfort and with the certainty that his parents loved him, while Harry hadn’t. He had a path to walk before he could earn Harry’s trust.

“Did you do your homework yet?” he asked.

“No. I thought I’d wait until I got here so I could use it to distract me a little from Lily and James.”

Felix winced internally, but nodded and hauled out his Charms book. “What do you think of Flitwick’s essay? It seemed simple, but coming up with ten uses for the Lumos Charm seems like a lot to me…”

*

Harry listened intently, sending his winds roaming through the house, until he was sure that everyone was in bed. Then he conjured a small ball of fire that he set drifting above him to illuminate the room and dug into the money pouch that he’d filled up yesterday when they went to Diagon Alley after coming back from the Dursleys’.

He dug out a Galleon and sat back to study it, turning it slowly around and around. Yes, the edge had a lot of little notches in it, and there were designs etched into the face of it that would take a lot of work to memorize.

But mostly, it was gold. How hard could it be to get more gold together when he had the power to dig it out from the earth? How hard could it to be imitate a Galleon, even, once he memorized the designs enough? Or create a disk of copper or some other metal and sheathe it with gold?

Of course, he would have to learn more about wizarding money before he did that. There might be tests in place to detect things like that, spells that would figure out if there was something besides gold in a Galleon. Or figure out if it was less thick than it should be.

But Harry reckoned he had at least a couple years to learn. And then maybe he would be able to get away from the Potters forever, without depending on an adult to give him money. He could take Felix with him if Felix wanted.

Harry flipped the Galleon into the air and watched it sparkle in the light of his fire as it came down. He could feel his smile and how tight it was on his face, but he also felt a deep satisfaction stirring in his stomach.

For the first time since he’d really realized what his magic was, he was glad he was an elementalist.

*

“If it isn’t Mr. Harry Potter himself!”

“The famous Boy-Who-Lived’s only slightly less famous brother!”

“Informer of infamy!”

“Master of magic!”

Harry eyed the Weasley twins uneasily. They’d come over to the Potters’ house along with Ron and their little sister Ginny and a girl named Luna Lovegood and a boy named Cedric Diggory who was the twins’ age and evidently lived near them. Harry had watched the wild raging Quidditch game for a little while before excusing himself to lie on the grass and test his magic with ripples in the earth and air. He wondered if the twins had noticed something from up on their brooms.

“Why do you say that?” Harry asked, and tucked his magic in close to himself, letting the air and the earth go. “You know that I still struggle when I have to use my wand.”

The twin Harry thought was George laughed out loud and sprawled on the grass next to him. “Yeah, but you have a lot of power. We can—”

“Feel it,” Fred, or probably Fred, added, and sprawled next to George. “It’s probably just not going through your wand very well because your wand isn’t the very best one you could have.”

“You know that I didn’t bond with any in Ollivander’s shop.” Harry looked at the ground and tried to adopt the shy, modest look that he wore around the Potters all the time now. “So it’s hard to tell what wand would be good for me.”

“But when you do, then you’re going to be a powerhouse,” said George, and acted like he was going to poke Harry in the ribs, but then pulled his hand back, which was good, because he might have got scorched otherwise.

I already am a powerhouse, Harry thought, but didn’t say. It was still kind of strange, getting used to the realization he’d had the night he’d thought about copying Galleons. He was an elementalist and he could use a wandless, undetectable, permanent Imperius Curse. He was stronger than wizards like Felix and the Potters, not weaker than they were.

If Theo was here, he would roll his eyes and say that he’s only been trying to tell me that for a year.

Harry felt a pulse of loneliness echo through him. The Weasleys were fine, but they were really Felix’s friends and not his. Ron and Felix had all sorts of jokes that came from knowing each other for eleven years. Ginny, the little sister, was shy and had a crush on Felix, and didn’t say much. Diggory was in the air helping everyone all the time, and especially Lovegood, who didn’t seem to be very strong on a broom. The twins were—the twins.

I do wish I could tell someone other than Theo and Blaise my secrets. But they could use them against me.

“Your Magical Mastership, sir? We’re right here.”

Harry sighed and rubbed one hand over his eyes. “I’m not a magical mastership, and I don’t know what you want me to do,” he said.

“Flea says you’re pretty good at Quidditch,” Fred said, using the nickname Harry knew Felix hated. “Come on, show us.”

“I just want to stay on the ground, thanks.”

“But why? It’s a waste of time to just lie on the ground!”

You wouldn’t say that if that you could feel earth moving and shifting underneath you. “I just want to—”

Someone screamed. Harry’s head jerked up. It didn’t sound like the good-natured “This is fun” screams that he’d been hearing all morning while Felix and the Weasleys were hitting the Quaffle or sometimes the Bludgers around.

Luna Lovegood was clutching at her broom, both legs hanging off one side. She was trying to boost herself back up on the broom, but Harry could see that it wasn’t going to work. The Cleansweep tilted lazily to the side, and then began to fall. Felix and Ron were flying towards her as fast as they could, and Ginny and Diggory were diving, but they were all too far away, especially because Lovegood didn’t seem to know how to slow her fall.

Fred and George were shouting and casting things, but they were too slow, too, and Lovegood was too fast. And then her hands slipped off the broom altogether, so the charms that would have halted the broom just hit it and not her.

Harry looked at the air below Lovegood, and thought, Cushion her.

There was a wild stirring of wind that mostly grabbed at his hair and nothing else, and then the air beneath Lovegood became thicker in a way Harry thought only he could see, flashing little glints of light as the sun reflected off nothing in particular. Lovegood hit the cushion and bounced, rolling slightly from side to side. Harry hastily shrank the air beneath her, stilling it and driving it towards the ground, and Lovegood came with it, shaking.

She landed on the ground, and Ginny and Felix and Ron landed right behind her a few seconds later. Then came Diggory with the Quaffle. They surrounded Lovegood and babbled away about whether she was all right. Lovegood was nodding and shaking and holding onto Ginny. Harry examined her critically. She looked all right.

“Nice work, Harrykins.”

Harry started and glanced over his shoulder. Fred and George were watching him with identical wicked expressions, their eyes glinting in a way that made him tighten his shoulders. Usually, that kind of look was followed by Harry Hunting not too long afterwards.

“What do you mean?” he asked warily.

“You stopped—

“Lovely Luna from falling.”

“Very good-natured and—”

“Chivalrous of you, really. But we shouldn’t be surprised, since you are—”

“A Gryffindor,” they finished, and stared at him.

Harry shrugged, his back prickling with irritation, but at least the kinds of things the Potters believed were useful to him in this situation. “It was just accidental magic. I wanted to stop her from falling, so it happened. You know I still don’t have the kind of control to use charms like you did.”

“That was so wild and accidental and uncontrolled, of course,” said the twin Harry thought was George, placing his hand above his heart.

“Totally what someone think of when they talk about accidental magic,” Fred agreed. “Not under your control at all. The least controlled thing I’ve ever seen.:

“Where are you going with this?” Harry hissed, lowering his voice. He didn’t think anyone else would notice. They were still too busy fussing over Lovegood. “What do you want?”

“We’re not idiots,” George said.

“Not at all,” Fred agreed. “We know that there are secrets we don’t know, and we think we’ve just witnessed one of them.”

“We want to know more.”

Harry considered them while the prickle in his back got worse. On the one hand, he would be less lonely if he had friends he could associate with under the Potter’ noses, and the twins had been good to him by showing him the kitchens, and Theo would probably advocate for him having allies in his House.

But on the other hand, he didn’t know what the twins would do with that information. If they would keep it to themselves. If they would tell adults because they were “worried about him.” If they would think it was good fun to prank him in some way that would reveal his elemental magic.

The temptation to use the Imperius on them was very strong.

But Harry didn’t want to. The twins hadn’t hurt him the way the Dursleys had, hadn’t hurt Theo the way the Figgs had, hadn’t hurt Felix or Blaise, and Harry didn’t need more practice. He breathed out slowly and finally said, “I’ll tell you in a few days, okay? The next time you lot come over. Make sure that you come up with some excuse so we can talk alone and no one suspects it, and make sure that you know a Privacy Charm no one else can pierce.” No one was going to get in trouble for using their wands at the Potter house, which had wards up to prevent the Ministry’s Trace from working.

Fred and George grinned at each other in what Harry was startled to recognize as honest excitement. Good God, they must be really bored if this sounds interesting to them.

On the other hand, once they learned that his secret wasn’t all that interesting, maybe they would be inspired to back the hell off. It was just one person’s elemental magic, and the twins were older and smarter than him and had lots of friends and knew more spells than he did. Why would they want more than that?

*

Ginny took a deep breath and rapped on Harry Potter’s bedroom door.

She bit her lip as she waited. She hadn’t thought at first that Harry had anything to do with stopping Luna from falling. She’d thought it was someone’s charm, or Luna’s own accidental magic. But, well, the twins had told her the truth, and when she thought about what she knew about Felix’s twin, she supposed that it was possible.

And she owed him for that. Luna was her best friend.

He finally opened the door, staring at her warily. Ginny blinked. Ron had said that it was hard to tell Harry and Felix apart sometimes, that he’d thought Harry was Felix from the back and vice versa, but Ginny didn’t see how it could be that difficult. Harry looked as if he was ready to run past her any second.

“Um,” she said. “Hi.”

“If you’re looking for Felix, he’s down the corridor,” Harry said, and tilted his head a little as if listening. “Or maybe in the kitchen eating biscuits.”

“No, I was looking for you,” Ginny said, and lifted her chin. Talking to Harry was a little awkward, but not nearly as awkward as talking to Felix would be. Not when he was so kind and down-to-earth and not stuck-up like some of the rumors said…

“Well, what do you want?”

Ginny could feel a blush rising after all, but just because she’d been standing in front of Harry and daydreaming about Felix. “Look,” she said. “I know that you stopped Luna from falling today.”

“Okay. So?”

His bluntness was almost refreshing. Ginny straightened her back. “So, I know that you might not want me to tell Luna because you’re embarrassed about your accidental magic, or she would be here thanking you herself,” she said. “But I wanted to thank you.”

Harry blinked at her as if this was an entirely foreign concept to him. Then he shrugged. “You’re welcome,” he said, and started to close the door again.

“No, wait!” Ginny sighed and leaned her elbow on the door when Harry just stared at her. “Listen, I’ve seen that you just kind of—sit aside from the Quidditch games and the other things, and I thought—you could use a friend.”

“Are you volunteering?”

“If you want me to,” Ginny said. “But I know we might not get along, so I brought you someone who will get along with you.” Not without a pang of loss, she pulled the diary out of her robe pocket. “This book talks to you if you write in it,” she whispered, lowering her voice. “His name is Tom. He’s a Hogwarts student who was at the school, oh, decades ago. So he can tell you secrets, but he won’t know anyone who’s there except maybe some of the teachers, so he can keep yours.”

Harry reached out and picked up the book, slowly turning it over, staring at it. Ginny smiled at him.

“You’re sure he can’t betray my secrets?” Harry asked, his eyes flickering up.

“Yes,” Ginny said. She thought about telling him how warm and kind Tom was, but she didn’t think that would make as much of an impression. “You can try writing to him and asking about mine if you want. But he won’t tell you any of them. He promised. And even if you write something in there and then you lose the diary, he won’t tell people yours, either.”

Harry was running his fingers gently over the book. “If he’s so great, why are you getting rid of him?”

“I told you. You saved Luna. She’s my best friend. If I didn’t have her, I think it would be a lot harder to give Tom up, but you’re the reason I still have her. And I pay my debts,” Ginny said firmly.

Harry gave her an odd look, but then he went back to looking at the little black book. “Where did you get this?”

Ginny half-shrugged. “We went to Flourish and Blotts, and I found it inside one of my old Transfiguration books. We have to get our books secondhand, you know.” She could feel her cheeks heating up, but Harry didn’t even look at her, so she reckoned he didn’t care. “I suppose it was an old book that got misplaced somehow.”

She expected Harry to ask why she hadn’t told someone about it and got the book taken back to the shop, in which case she would tell him the truth. Tom had said it was very boring being trapped inside a book for fifty years, and if she took him back to the shop, he didn’t know how long it would be before someone would buy him and open the book again.

But Harry didn’t ask. He tilted his head at the book again and then looked back at her. “Well, thanks.”

Ginny gave him a tentative smile. “You’re welcome.”

“But please don’t tell anyone I saved Luna’s life.”

That was what the twins had said, too. Ginny had no idea why there was so much secrecy, but she could accept it. It was a fight trying to keep things private in a family as large as hers, which was one reason she and Luna had become friends in the first place. She could tell Luna things that would make her parents shriek.

“All right. Thank you again.”

Harry nodded and shut the door. Ginny stood where she was, breathing a little and telling herself that if she had talked to his twin, she could face Felix.

He was probably in the kitchen eating biscuits, like Harry had said. It would be fine.

*

Harry sat on the bed and stared at the book.

It felt odd. The cover was only ordinary leather, but it seemed to cling to his fingers in ways that reminded Harry of sucking mud. Harry studied it and the air around it, and thought he could make out little shifts of motion there, as though the book distorted the air or wind didn’t want to come too close to it.

Harry flipped the book open, and discovered the pages were all creamy white and blank. He frowned for a moment, and then decided that he probably had to write something on it for the book to respond. He fetched an inkpot and a quill and sprawled on the bed, thinking about what to write.

Is he going to be upset that Ginny gave him away?

Well, that could be his first question. Harry wrote, Hello, my name is Harry Potter. Ginny Weasley gave you to me. Are you upset that she did?

His words shone for a second, and then sank smoothly into the page. Harry leaned back, staring. It was undeniably brilliant, if the person who had put the enchantment on this book was a Hogwarts student, but also creepy-looking.

Words pushed themselves to the surface of the page a second later. Hello, Harry Potter. My name is Tom Riddle.

So Ginny hadn’t been lying about this, at least. Harry rapped his fingers on the book for a second, and then wrote back, You didn’t answer my question.

Those words disappeared, too, and a second later, so did the ones “Tom” had written. He replied, I am a little curious to know why she did. I know I was a good friend to her, and someone who would always keep all her secrets, which she told me were difficult to keep safe from her twin brothers and her parents.

She said it was in payment for a life-debt.

There was a longer pause than before when Harry’s words had been wiped out. Finally, the book said, How intriguing. She said something about a Potter boy who was a year older than she was, whom she idolized. Are you an older student at Hogwarts, then, who knows the kind of magic that can save a life?

Harry narrowed his eyes. Why would the book find that intriguing? This had to be the product of an older student who could certainly master the magic that would save a life, if he wanted.

In Harry’s experience, people like that were mostly interested in themselves.

I’m a student at Hogwarts, he wrote, deliberately vague. The student Ginny was talking about is my brother.

I’m sure you’re at least as powerful.

Harry laughed aloud at the flattery and watched the book as he did so. There was no reaction, so he thought the book probably couldn’t sense sounds or “see” with anything resembling eyes. It was limited to what he told it.

Well, and whatever was going on with the air that seemed to be stirring around the book. Harry narrowed his eyes, and if he squinted, thought he could make out dark tendrils just on the edge of vision. They reached for him and came down for a second on the air around his body, as if reaching for something.

Then they recoiled.

Why is your magic reaching for mine? Harry wrote.

Who are you? The words were jagged, slashed onto the page. What are you? You don’t feel like a wizard. You don’t feel like anything at all!

Harry tilted his head. Interesting. I’m a wizard, he wrote. Maybe your book is malfunctioning.

No one but a Muggle would say that. Are you a Muggleborn? There was a pause, and the words smoothed out and disappeared, replaced by, Not that I mind if you are, but I am a little surprised that Ginny knows a Muggleborn family that well. She seemed to be isolated in a mostly pureblood household.

Harry raised his eyebrows. He was no longer that impressed with Tom, although his original had to have been clever to put part of himself into a book. It’s not really your business what I am.

I’ve never felt any magic like yours.

I don’t think you can feel my magic at all, since you implied that I was a Muggle.

The book was quiet and still after those words had vanished. Harry shrugged and started to shut the cover, but more words appeared a second later.

If you don’t like me, then you can give me back to Ginny.

Harry shook his head. If nothing else, that would be a bad idea because it would make Ginny feel like the debt she supposedly owed him for saving Lovegood’s life was unpaid, and she would start casting around for something else to give him. And he didn’t need her paying him more attention. He might end up trusting the twins with his secrets, but he didn’t need to drag their little sister into it.

I don’t think she needs you, Harry wrote. She already has a best friend. And he shut the book while the words were still vanishing and tucked it into the bottom of his trunk.

The magic on the book was interesting, and Harry would have liked to investigate it more, but he didn’t think he’d be trusting Tom with any of his secrets any time soon.

*

“Did you notice that Harry doesn’t use his wand for practically anything?”

Ron said it largely randomly when they were lying outside one day about a week before Harry and Felix’s birthday, watching clouds with their hands behind their heads. Felix had spent the morning finishing his summer homework, and thought he was justified in relaxing.

“He still has some trouble with it, I think.” Felix shut his eyes and yawned. Then he opened them and squinted at the cloud over his head. It looked a little like a wolf if he turned his head sideways.

A pang made its way through his chest. He had written to Remus Lupin again, but the bird had simply flown away and come back a few hours later, with the same letter still clinging to its leg and the distinct knot Felix had tied in the twine undisturbed.

“But it’s weird he doesn’t use it for anything, right?”

“He has trouble with it,” Felix repeated, irritated with Ron for making him think about more serious things on a sunny summer afternoon. “And he grew up Muggle. I think that his first instinct is still to do something with his hands rather than with magic.”

“I just think it’s weird.”

Felix closed his eyes and shrugged. He and Harry were getting on a lot better than they used to last year, he thought, when Harry was keeping secrets from him like having Slytherin friends. Felix telling him about the birth certificates and Remus Lupin had made a lot of difference. But Harry still didn’t tell him everything, like what it had really been like with the Muggles during the week he’d spent with them, and that would have to be okay.

Felix wouldn’t win Harry’s trust by judging him. And enough people in his life had done that.

*

“All right, tell us!”

Harry eyed the twins again, and restrained a sigh. He still wished there was some way he could get out of this. But the twins had been kept at home the last few times the Weasleys had visited because of pranks they’d got in trouble for, and they hadn’t told anyone about his saving Lovegood, so far.

He hoped he could impress on them how much he didn’t want anyone finding out, so they would keep it quiet. Ginny was bad enough.

“Okay,” he said. “Do you know that Privacy Charm I asked you about? Can you cast it?”

George nodded eagerly and cast it. Then both the twins stared at him.

“Boy,” Harry said, unable to help himself, “your lives must be boring if this is so exciting to you.”

“We mostly—”

“Have to make our own excitement,” Fred finished, and then they went right back to staring at him.

Harry sighed a little. “Okay. Anyway, my magic is elemental. I can’t use a wand at all. It’s all wandless. I saved Lovegood that day by telling the air underneath her to turn into a cushion.”

He held his breath a bit, wondering if that would be enough for the twins and they wouldn’t ask—

“Wicked!”

“Can we see?”

Really boring lives, Harry thought, shaking his head, and held out his hand, concentrating as he closed his eyes. A fire sprang to life above his fingers, and he carefully made it large enough to be a little impressive, but not as large as he knew he could make. Then he opened his eyes to see how the twins were taking it.

They were gaping at him. Harry shut the fire down with a flicker of his will and frowned at them. “Why is that making you look like that?” He knew that they’d done more powerful accidental magic in their time. They’d told him the story of turning Ron’s teddy into a spider once already.

“It’s brilliant, that’s why,” said George, as if that should be self-evident. “Accidental magic just does—”

“Whatever it wants,” Fred finished. “Half the time, it doesn’t even really obey you. It just reacts to—”

“Your emotion. I mean, sure, maybe Luna could have used accidental magic to save herself when she was falling, or Ginny could have—”

“But it might just have changed the color of the clouds or something, or made one of them feel safe without saving her.” Fred whistled under his breath. “You have control of yours. It’s awesome.”

“Okay,” Harry said, calling back his magic so that it wrapped around him and didn’t spread out to touch either of the Weasley twins. “So now you know. And I need you to promise that you won’t tell anyone else.”

“Are you kidding?” George exclaimed, and Harry tensed. But then George finished the sentence. “This is awesome! We’ll keep it to ourselves so we can know something they don’t!”

“Do your mum and dad know?” Fred asked abruptly.

“No,” Harry said. “They think I’m getting better with my wand and can do simple spells now. They think I’m sick. They think I should be tossed back into a Muggle home for a week with Muggles they know didn’t treat me will just because it’ll keep those people magically safe.”

Fred and George exchanged a quick glance. Harry tensed again, watching them. He hadn’t meant to tell them that, or at least not to sound so bitter. If necessary, he would lash out with his Imperius Curse, if they didn’t—

Fred turned back to face him. “We won’t tell,” he said, his face grim. “I’d suggest we tell Sirius or our parents or Dumbledore or something, but they’re all—we heard Mum and Dad talking, about how your presence at the Muggles’ house would keep them safe, and you were happy to do it.”

Harry smiled. “That,” he said, “is a lie.”

And Fred and George nodded at him, and it occurred to Harry that, oddly enough, he might just have gained two more friends.

Chapter Text

Why are you writing to me when you don’t like or trust me?

Harry watched as the tendrils of darkness reaching out from the book once again grasped at his magic and fell short. He wondered what would happen if the book was trying to touch the magic of a “normal” wizard. Then again, Ginny hadn’t seemed to be too badly affected. Maybe it took a long time to happen.

Why do I have to trust or like you? Harry wrote back. Why don’t you communicate with me anyway, if you’re bored and shut in that book with nothing else to do?

While the diary pondered that one, Harry glanced back at the book in front of him. His and Felix’s twelfth birthday had come and gone, and he’d asked for lots of books, which the Potters had been more than delighted to shower him with. Harry had moved from history to reading books about hexes, jinxes, household charms, and Healing spells.

The first three kinds meant he could look at other spells he might have to imitate someday. The last books told him a lot about anatomy.

And so far, he was coming to the conclusion that “normal” wizards and witches were completely vulnerable to an elementalist.

No matter what they do, they have to breathe. They have to be in contact with the earth. Their bodies have blood in the veins and water in the cells no matter what happens.

Harry wasn’t sure yet if he would be able to manipulate blood. Water in the cells was far easier, as the element was relatively pure, not as mixed with iron and hemoglobin.

But perhaps he could even reach the iron someday, if he increased his mastery of earth manipulation.

The flicker of words appearing in the diary drew Harry’s attention back to it. Riddle was scratching in what looked like jerky, petulant script. You are the strangest boy I have ever met. Usually, when someone wants to make an alliance with someone else, they offer politeness, if nothing else.

Why should I offer politeness when you tried to feed on my magic?

I cannot feed on your magic at all. Why is that?

Why should I answer you?

Another pause. Harry flipped a page in the anatomy book, and frowned at the detailed diagram of bones on the next page before turning past it. He wasn’t focused on learning to break bones at the moment, at least not with direct elemental magic. A gust of wind that hurled someone into a wall would do just as well.

A question for a question? the diary offered. I answer one, you answer one?

Harry smiled a little and leaned up on his elbows. This was something he’d been hoping to work the diary towards, which was why he’d sometimes talked to it for ten minutes or so each day. But of course, just accepting the diary’s offer at face value was something he was too smart to do.

That might work. If one of us doesn’t answer a question or the other, then the game is done.

This is all just a game to you?

A deadly serious game. My question.

The diary rattled back and forth in what looked like irritation, and that clutching magic spread out again. Harry watched it once again fall short. Each time that happened, it answered a question of the sort that he wasn’t going to ask Riddle.

It seemed Harry really didn’t have any “normal” magic at all, not the kind that would allow him to use a wand and presumably would allow Riddle to start leeching from almost everyone else who would write to him. Harry had wondered. After all, he could create illusions and throw the Imperius, which were like “normal” magic.

But he was starting to think that he could create illusions by bending light and air, without having been paying attention to the details of the process the way he had when he was exercising other kinds of elemental magic. And his Imperius was probably related to his Parseltongue.

Not something I intend to mention to Riddle, either. Someone else could still take the diary from him and ask questions, and a question about Parseltongue in particular would rebrand Harry as a dangerous freak.

Why did you create the diary in the first place? Harry asked, and went back to his anatomy book.

He came to the end of the anatomy book’s relevant portion and opened 1001 Jinxes and Their Variants before Riddle’s answer bloomed onto the page. I wished to preserve, forever, a memory of myself as I had been at sixteen.

Why that age—

Ah, ah, Harry, Riddle wrote, his words leaping into stark relief and erasing Harry’s. A question for a question. Why can’t I reach out to your magic as I can with others’? I know you are not a Muggle, so do not think to lie to me.

Harry snickered at the thought of a sixteen-year-old speaking those words. So pompous. He sounded like James. He envisioned James’s face if Harry made that comparison, or Riddle’s, although that was a little harder because Harry didn’t know what Riddle looked like, and wrote back, I don’t have normal magic.

Why—

Ah, ah, Riddle. Why did you want to preserve a memory of yourself at sixteen?

I accomplished great things at this age. Why is your magic not normal?

Probably something to do with what happened to me as a child. What was one of the great things you accomplished?

I don’t wish to be more specific. What happened to you as a child?

I don’t wish to be more specific.

The diary’s cover slammed shut. Harry snorted, and scooped up the book to toss it back in his trunk. Little by little, he intended to learn what he could from Riddle, including those secrets about Hogwarts that Ginny had promised he knew, while giving as little as possible away himself.

But he didn’t mind if it took a while.

*

Albus leaned back behind his desk, watching the whirring and dancing of the silver instruments that measured the life force of the Dursley family, and considered the problem of Harry Potter.

The boy had arrived at school with uncontrolled wild magic that had lashed out and killed a troll. Albus had, of course, also looked into the possibility that Harry had killed Quirrell, but Marcus Flint had undoubtedly cast the spells that broke the Mirror and killed poor Quirinus, and Albus couldn’t help but think that there would be more damage if Harry had been there. The stones would have melted and run, or the traps would have been destroyed instead of disarmed.

Besides, Quirinus had been helping Harry tame his wild magic all term. If Harry had objected to that, then he would have likely hurt the professor before a random evening in May. And Harry hadn’t seemed to care at all about the Philosopher’s Stone. Felix had reported to his parents, who had reported to Albus, that Harry hadn’t wanted to join the impromptu student force taking turns guarding it.

Harry had looked devastated, for a moment, at being told he would have to return to the Dursleys’ for the summer. But then he had locked down that emotion, much like another boy Albus had once known.

Yet Harry had gone into Gryffindor, if after long moments of thought on the Sorting Hat’s part. And Albus had sent him back to Privet Drive partially as a test. If his magic reacted every time he was angry or frightened, then he would undoubtedly have hurt his relatives, and Albus would have been alerted and arrived in time to rescue them.

So it seemed that Harry had gained better control of his magic. Perhaps concentrating on using his wand and finding workarounds for common charms and Transfigurations and Defensive spells had helped with that.

And while he would be useless for the specific purpose Albus and the Order had had in mind of reconciling the Muggle world with the magical, he could still be useful politically. Albus smiled a little as he thought of the way Harry had made good enough friends with the house-elves that they had kept disabling Albus’s monitoring charms on the boy.

Perhaps it was time to encourage Harry to reach out to magical creatures, so subtly that Harry would never detect Albus’s hand behind the impulse.

*

“I really don’t like the fact that we have seven books for Defense, and they’re all by the same bloke,” Felix muttered as he and Harry prepared to board the train. “Sounds like an arrogant git to me.”

“You know that Gilderoy Lockhart is a great wizard,” Lily said sternly, but she was smiling as she said it. Harry watched her with a critical eye. She didn’t seem to be infatuated with their new Defense professor the way Ron had described the witches in the bookshop the day of the signing as being—Harry and Felix had decided to stay home that day once they heard about it—but perhaps she felt a lesser version of it. “Harry, remember to read those books we got you, all right?”

“Yes, Mum,” Harry said dutifully, and stood there while she hugged him. He let his arms twitch around her in an awkward embrace. They would expect that kind of awkwardness, and advancing it little by little, as if he were getting used to them slowly, seemed best.

It was so much easier to pretend now that he wasn’t concerned about their ultimate reactions.

“Be good, boyo,” James said, and ruffled Harry’s hair. Harry smiled at him. The smiles were fake, but James and Lily never noticed. If anything, since Felix had told him about the locked drawers in their bedroom, Harry had experimented with smiling in different ways, with edges or shades to them. They still didn’t notice. “Remember to read the books so that we can figure out what’s wrong with you and get you an owl of your own this year! Second-year classwork is going to keep you busy enough without Felix attaching your letters to owls all the time.”

I know exactly what’s “wrong” with me. But it wasn’t anything Harry would ever be able to change, so he nodded and leaned into the hug that was as fake as his smile and got on the train with Felix by his side. Hedwig battered the bars of her cage with her wings and clicked her beak at Harry. Felix rolled his eyes and let Hedwig soar out ahead of them, telling her to meet him at Hogwarts.

“I’m going to find Ron,” he said as they stored their trunks on the rack of an empty compartment. “Want to come?”

“No. I think I should get a head start on reading these books that they’re so insistent I read.”

“And finding Nott?”

Harry stiffened despite himself. Felix caught his eye and gave him a tight, unhappy smile.

“I’m not stupid, Harry. I know that he’s your best friend, and I—I wish I could trust him, but I don’t. But I can’t trust Mum and Dad and Sirius anymore, either. I don’t know who I can trust, except you. Go find him. And—I hate saying this, but I won’t tell Ron and Dean and Seamus about him, and I don’t think you should, either.”

Harry stood there, shocked, while his brother gave him a brief hug and jogged away, sticking his head into compartments. Harry blinked some more, and then turned away, shaking his own head.

He would have to think more about Felix and the unexpected things he understood later. For now, he wanted more than anything to find Theo.

*

“Harry.”

“Theo.”

Theo didn’t try to keep the warmth out of his voice or his face or his eyes. This was what having a best friend was like, and although he’d never known exactly what it was going to be like when he’d dreamed of having one, he was willing to give up a lot to hang on to Harry.

Harry held out his hand to shake. Theo ignored it and hauled him into a hug. Harry stiffened, and then cautiously hugged him back. He didn’t seem to know what to do with his arms. Theo ignored that and stepped back to study him.

“Looking for bruises?” Harry asked.

“Or evidence of hexes, sure. I suppose your brother was all right? And your parents awful?”

Harry nodded. “And Felix found out something that I’d like to tell you, but I can’t imitate Privacy Charms very well yet. Can you raise one?”

Theo found himself smiling as he did so. Sometimes he felt as if he were worse than useless when it came to protecting them, with Harry running around saving his life right and left and restoring Theo to his father. But then Harry asked him to do something like this, and Theo reminded himself that they were friends.

Not Lord and follower.

Well, not yet, anyway.

Harry sat down and sighed. “Felix was looking around during the week I spent at your house.” His eyes lit up. Theo was pleased the memory was a good one. “There are some locked drawers in the Potters’ bedroom, and Felix went to see what he could find in them. The first one held our birth certificates and a book with a strange symbol on the cover. Like this.”

His hand flashed open, and fire billowed into existence and created a solid circle surrounded by a second one of broken, dashed lines. Theo stared. The symbol was unfamiliar, and so was Harry’s control over his magic.

He must have practiced and practiced…

And it was almost two months since Theo had seen him last, as little as he liked to remember that.

“I’ve never seen that before,” Theo admitted, staring at it. He memorized the shape for future use, but that didn’t do them much good right now. “Does Felix think that he’s discovered what it is?”

Harry vanished the fire with a wave of his hand. “The book that had the symbol on the front was in Latin. Felix memorized it just by looking at it and he’s translating it, but slowly. So far, the first page has a lot to do with the sun, which means the symbol might be the sun. But it seems to be a discussion of runic and magical theory related to the sun, and Felix has to double-check every line and word, so it’s slow going.”

“Does he know Latin already?”

“No.”

Theo nodded. That would mean Potter was learning the language as well as translating it. No wonder it was taking so long. “All right. And why do you think your birth certificates were kept locked up?” It was standard practice for parents to keep a copy of them as they did with all important documents relating to their children. Father certainly did. But since there were copies—permanent, indestructible ones—kept on file in the Ministry, it seemed odd to lock them up.

“I don’t know. But each of them had the symbol on it, so it probably has something to do with the book. And we found out that Felix’s godfather was listed as Remus Lupin, when all along he thought it was Sirius.” Harry’s face was grim. “Apparently, Remus Lupin was friends with the Potters and Sirius in school. They left him out of all the stories they told Felix.”

“That seems more than odd.”

“It had something to do with him disapproving of their decision to keep Felix and send me to the Dursleys.”

“Have you contacted him?”

“Every owl comes back unopened. Apparently he’s still alive, or they wouldn’t be going to find him in the first place, but he won’t communicate with us.” Harry’s fingers rapped harshly on his knee. “Maybe they made him take an Unbreakable Vow or the like that he wouldn’t talk to us.”

“Maybe,” Theo echoed, searching his mind. He couldn’t remember hearing anything about a Remus Lupin, and finally had to shake his head. “I could ask my father if he knows him. If it would help.”

“Thanks, but I don’t think it would. They prevented him from talking somehow. Otherwise, people would have known about my Muggle childhood before I came back to the magical world.” Harry hesitated. “There’s something else I want to tell you. I want to tell someone. But I need you to promise that you won’t tell your father.”

“Never without your permission.”

Apparently he hadn’t kept the hurt out of his voice, because Harry’s eyes focused on him right away. “All right, Theo. It’s just—this is different. Worse than elemental magic.”

Theo puzzled over the worse, and then rolled his eyes. “You’re thinking of this in terms of what would be ‘wrong’ or ‘weird’ to a wizard or witch on the Potters’ side, right? Harry, I promise, nothing you can say would make me less your friend.”

Harry’s answering smile was faint and tight, but real. “All right.” He looked at a snake-shaped pin on Theo’s cloak, and seemed to concentrate intently on it. Theo prepared himself for the pin to burst into fire or come to life.

Instead, a long series of liquid hisses slid out of Harry’s lips.

Theo jumped. Harry promptly sat back on the bench, raising a hand in front of him. Theo saw the glimmer of fire and took a deep breath, shaking his head.

“I meant what I said about not telling my father. And I’m not going to—I was just startled. Harry, how in the world are you a Parselmouth?”

“How in the world am I an elementalist? Why did my own parents leave me with abusive Muggles instead of taking care of me the way they should have? What does that symbol mean? The answers to all those questions are about as far out of reach.”

“Okay,” Theo said. “But, Harry, a Parselmouth?” He wondered how to explain what it all meant. The shadow of the Dark Lord—well, no, Harry would know about that, given all the history he’d read. The way that some people still revered snake-speakers. The legends that they could communicate with, even command, creatures like dragons and Ashwinders. “That’s amazing.”

Harry considered him with alert eyes for a second, then sighed and shrugged and slumped backwards in his seat. “I suppose. But mostly, it makes owls and other animals hate me, and that’s damn inconvenient.”

“You knew that?”

“Well, suspected it. The Potters took me to a pet shop last year, and all sorts of animals either attacked me or acted frightened of me. I already knew I could talk to snakes, and I started thinking about how snakes are predators capable of eating birds’ eggs and young. And—” Harry hesitated again. “I got the chance to talk to a dragon last year.”

Theo snapped his fingers. “I knew it was bollocks when you said that dragons were just empathetic!”

“Well, I could hear everything she was saying. She liked me. Her fire didn’t hurt me.”

“And?”

“And she invited me to come with her when the Dragon-Keepers came to pick her up. Said I should come live in the reserve. The dragons there would like me the way animals at Hogwarts never did.”

Harry’s eyes were wistful, and looking somewhere far away. Theo felt a flare of uneasiness. Father had insisted that he read a few more detailed histories of elementalist mages that Father had found in a bookshop somewhere. Elementalists had always ended up withdrawing from the regular magical world in the past, going off to live on their own or sometimes with one or two others of their own kind.

Theo could learn elemental magic from Harry the way Blaise was doing, but he could never be exactly like him. And he didn’t want to lose Harry.

“You wouldn’t, though, would you?” Theo asked, and then winced at the pleading tone in his voice. So much for being calm about this.

Harry looked curiously at him. “Why not? Dragons like me. That’s a lot more than most people or animals here do.”

“It would mean I could never see you.”

“You’d be welcome to visit, of course,” Harry said, staring at him. “Why did you assume you wouldn’t?”

Theo pushed away the thought that elementalists had seemed to go off into their own private communities where ordinary wizards and witches weren’t welcome, not dragon reserves, and smiled. “Of course. I’m sure I could persuade Father to invest in a Portkey.”

“Or you could Apparate. Portkeys sound bloody awful.”

Theo nodded, and they fell into a discussion of which forms of magical transportation they were going to try their best to learn as they grew older. Harry talked a bit about the books that he’d been reading that summer, and Theo mentioned the books on elementalists. Harry asked to borrow them, and Theo took the first of them out of his bag. Harry took it and caressed the cover.

And then he set it aside and continued talking to Theo, showing a level of self-control that Theo wasn’t sure he could have, in Harry’s place.

But he appreciated it all the same. He was wildly glad to have his friend back at his side.

*

Harry swore he could feel the Sorting Hat eyeing him across the Great Hall as he sat down at the Gryffindor table. He ignored it. He was safe in the House where he—well, didn’t belong, but was the best off. The Potters were willing to think he was their normal, weak kid while he was here, and it wasn’t like he was ever going to give the Hat a chance to sit on his head again.

“Harry!”

Harry turned in surprise, just in time for a Hermione Granger who seemed to have an invisible broom under her to tackle him from the side. She didn’t seem to notice that he wasn’t hugging her back, and in fact was fighting to hold his magic down so it didn’t set her on fire or scratch her eyes out.

He supposed that his magic didn’t consider her a threat, so it hadn’t warned him, the same way it had stopped warning him about the twins after Harry made friends with them this summer. But that didn’t change the way that his heart was racing or his breathing was hoarse as he finally managed to get away from her.

Hermione’s brow wrinkled as she studied him. “Harry, are you all right?”

Harry made sure his voice didn’t sound like his breathing when he said, “Fine.”

“Only you’ve gone all pale…”

Harry sighed. This at least wasn’t going to be news to Hermione, after the way she had probably noticed him glaring at people who made loud noises last year. “I—really don’t like being grabbed out of nowhere, Hermione. My cousin used to do it when he thought it was funny and a joke, and I—don’t like it.”

Hermione’s eyes widened. “I’m sorry! How silly of me! I know that some Muggle teenage boys play rough, too.”

Playing rough. Harry didn’t curl his lip into a sneer, but he wanted to. “Sure,” he said. “It’s okay. How was your summer?”

Hermione proceeded to talk his ear off until it was time for the Sorting. Harry was a little surprised. He’d known that she’d visited Felix during the week he was with Theo and had run into the Weasleys the day of the Lockhart book signing, but he hadn’t known she considered him a personal friend.

Or maybe she was just lonely, and Harry hadn’t pushed her away last year or said unkind things about her the way some of the upper-year Gryffindors had. And she thought he was weaker than she was, magically. That was probably it. He was a safe target for her enthusiasm.

The first-years came filing in. Harry looked them over idly as Hermione cut off her monologue with a gasp and apparently reprimanded herself for speaking out of turn. He saw Luna Lovegood and Ginny Weasley and someone who looked a little like Gregory Goyle from Slytherin, but he didn’t know any of the rest.

“Goodness, they look small,” Hermione said.

“Yeah,” Harry said. He caught Theo’s eye from across the Hall, and Theo inclined his head with a small smile. Harry glanced away again. He felt a little uneasy with how happy he was to see Theo again.

It was all right, since no one else but Theo and maybe Felix would ever know, but it wouldn’t be if enough Gryffindors or Slytherins caught him staring.

*

By the time she got to the front of the line, Ginny’s hands were clenched.

She had clapped happily when Luna was Sorted into Ravenclaw, where she had thought her best friend would probably go. Luna’s mum and dad had both been there. But when Luna had sat down and said something to the first-year boy next to her, he’d scooted away, and then other people had started laughing at Luna. And someone had waved their wand at her and made a bug appear in her hair.

Luna had brushed it out, but that wasn’t the point.

“Weasley, Ginevra!”

Ginny marched up to the Hat, her thoughts churning. She pulled the Hat onto her head and waited while it greeted her, but then it fell silent, and she looked up at its brim from where she’d been trying to glare underneath it at the Ravenclaw table.

My, my. What a fierce and brave one.

Yes, but that’s not the point. The point is that Percy told me you can choose.

Be wary of choosing the wrong House, little lion, the Hat said with a disappointed tone in its voice. I had someone do that last year, and if I ever get on his head again…

Ginny ignored that. She knew it wasn’t going to be the wrong House. You can see perfectly well what I want. And you know that it wouldn’t be the wrong choice.

The Hat was silent. Ginny could feel some of the people in the Hall staring at her in confusion. They’d probably thought it was going to be an instant Gryffindor Sorting. And how could they know that, when they’d never met her before? Most of them, anyway.

Because she was a Weasley, and Weasleys always Sorted Gryffindor.

But that didn’t matter. Dad’s mum had been a Black, and he hadn’t Sorted Slytherin. Mum had been a Prewett, and they Sorted all over the place. And Ginny was going to do what she had to.

No, it wouldn’t be the wrong choice, the Hat said finally, slowly. It will be a choice that makes some people look at you askance.

Ginny sat up. It didn’t matter, she told herself, and the feeling shimmered beneath her skin and settled into her bones. Yes, that was right. It didn’t matter.

Her mum and dad loved her, but they weren’t here. Her brothers loved her, but they didn’t understand her. She was just “little Ginny” to them, just another member of the family, or sometimes one they resented, since they thought being Mum’s “special little girl” and the coddled and spoiled one was all there was to her.

There was more. She was going to prove it. And Luna understood her and was here and had been her best friend ever since she’d tried to teach Ginny how to pronounce “Crumple-Horned Snorkack” when they were three.

You’ll learn?

I’ll learn. I have a fantastic motivation to learn. And to teach some people to learn better.

The Hat laughed into her head, and then called out, “RAVENCLAW!”

Ginny heard audible gasps, too many of them for it to be just her brothers. She ignored that, tearing the Hat off her head and putting it down on the stool. Then she ran over to the Ravenclaw table, her table, and shoved a few people out of the way so she could sit down next to Luna.

Luna was staring at her with wide eyes. “Did you argue with the Hat?” she asked.

“I convinced it Ravenclaw was the best choice for me,” Ginny said, and beamed at her.

Luna gave her a trembling smile back. Ginny ignored the way it shook. She turned to the front of the Great Hall as Professor McGonagall, who was still staring at Ginny, removed the stool and the Hat, and Professor Dumbledore stood up and spread his arms.

“Welcome, welcome, to the feast,” he said, his eyes shining. “Welcome to our new first-years, and our returning students, and our staff! You may have noticed our new Defense Against the Dark Arts professor at the table, Professor Gilderoy Lockhart!”

Several of the Ravenclaw girls giggled and sighed as Lockhart stood up and waved, but they weren’t the only ones by a long shot. Ginny rolled her eyes. She thought he was handsome, but not that handsome. She traced her wand on the table and half-listened to Professor Dumbledore’s announcements about the Forbidden Forest and the list of banned objects that the caretaker, Filch, would take away from anyone using them. At last the food appeared, and Ginny snatched her fork.

“Do you want to pick the peas out of that salad?” she asked Luna, nodding towards a salad that honestly looked pretty good if you could get rid of the onions and peas.

“You just shouldn’t take any if you don’t like peas,” said a girl sitting on the other side of Luna, who had red hair twisted up on her head and a sharp expression. “Leave it for people who do like them.”

Ginny gave her one slashing glance, which made the girl squeal and cower. Then she scooped up some of the salad to put on her plate and Luna’s, and they went about floating the peas and onions out with a wand.

Ginny could see already that some of her new Housemates would be a trial. But as long as she had Luna’s back and Luna had hers, then everything was going to be okay.

*

“Thanks for letting us use the kitchen for an elemental magic class.”

Jilly squinted at him. Harry squinted back at her. She remained the oddest house-elf he’d met, although that might be because the elves at the Notts’ house hadn’t really wanted to talk to him openly.

“Why are you not offering to teach it to elves?” Jilly asked.

Harry blinked, and answered honestly. “Because I didn’t know if you could learn it. Or that you wanted to.”

Jilly moved slowly towards him. Harry watched her. He didn’t feel a threat or fear of her, but he also knew now that his magic was a lot stronger than most people’s. He might not be able to face down a house-elf who really wanted to hurt him, but he could hurt back, and that was enough to make people hesitate.

Jilly leaned in until her nose was touching his. Harry stared back. Her eyes were startlingly grey from this close, although a different shade than Theo’s.

“You is teaching elves,” Jilly said softly. She didn’t sound as if she was giving him a command, although Harry supposed she actually was. “When other wizard children are not being here.”

“All right. Are you the only one who wants to learn, or are there others?”

Jilly abruptly jumped back. Harry thought it was because the door might be opening, but she only stared at him from over folded hands. Then she said, “I tells you later,” and swished away to oversee the baking of a large batch of biscuits near the back of the kitchen.

Harry blinked, and then turned towards the door as it did open. Theo gave him a small smile as he slid inside, which Harry returned. Blaise followed him, and then Fred and George, who gave wide smiles at everyone in sight.

“Dear lady,” said the one Harry thought was George, addressing Jilly.

“Could we have—”

“Some sweets?”

Jilly nodded and snapped her fingers. Harry watched her closely as the sweets, including ices and marzipan and a towering cake that looked as it would bleed chocolate if you cut it, materialized on the table, but she didn’t smile or look up or anything that showed she was going to speak to the twins the way she spoke to Harry and sometimes Theo.

The twins grabbed the sweets and spoons for the cake and didn’t seem to notice anything different, either, even though they had spoken to Jilly as if they thought she was different from other house-elves. Harry shrugged to himself. He wasn’t going to solve all the mysteries of house-elves today.

“Why do they want to learn?” Blaise muttered to Harry, leaning forwards and speaking softly enough that the twins, now fighting about who had the most cake, probably didn’t hear him. “Aren’t they a menace enough already?”

Harry knew Blaise was really asking why Harry had agreed to teach them. He shrugged a little. “They learned about my magic. I needed some way to keep them quiet. And they could be powerful allies.”

Friends, too. But there was a way you had to speak to house-elves, and a way you had to speak to Gryffindors, and a way you had to speak to Slytherins, and Blaise would think what Harry had said made the most sense.

“Huh.” Blaise sat back and watched Fred and George with some interest.

Harry waited until the twins had finished eating and Theo had settled into place at the table with his own plate of cut fruit to hold out a hand. Fire sparked into being on his palm. Blaise promptly held out his hand and closed his eyes.

Harry waited patiently. Blaise had got pretty good at calling fire before last term ended, but Harry didn’t know how much he’d practiced over the summer, or even if he could when he wasn’t with someone who had elemental magic already.

Fire sparked on Blaise’s palms. Harry smiled and started to congratulate him, but then Blaise yelped and started wringing his hand, and the flames leaped off his fingers and started to burn the wood of the table.

Harry sighed and snatched control of the fire, putting it out.

He looked up and found everyone staring at him, even Theo. Fred’s mouth was hanging open, and a bunch of half-eaten cake was marinating in it. Harry looked away, feeling slightly queasy, and asked, “What?”

“How did you make the fire stop burning without touching it?” Theo asked.

“I took control of it.”

“You can’t—you can’t just do that,” George said. It was almost a wail.

“Duels would be easy to win,” began Fred.

“If you could just seize control of the other person’s spells!”

“It’s not done!”

“You can’t do it!”

“How did you do that?” they both asked at the same time, and stared at him, waiting. For all that Blaise and Theo were silent and Theo’s expression was a little twisted (probably about the twins speaking in chorus), Harry thought they likely wanted to know the same thing.

“Elemental magic really is different from wand magic,” was the only thing Harry said. “If someone starts messing with elemental magic around me, then I can seize it. I think I could probably seize control of someone’s conjured wind or water, too, but I haven’t tried. The charms and the Defense spells people use aren’t really—elements. Lumos Charms aren’t fire.”

He would have continued explaining, but George said excitedly, “Let’s see, then! Aguamenti!”

A jet of water sprang into the air from the end of George’s wand. Harry reached out and gathered it in. It was no different than grabbing control of the water in the loos or pipes, the way he had when he’d fought the troll. It shimmered and glittered and drifted in motes over to Harry, settling around his shoulders like a scarf.

The twins were grinning. Theo had a small smile on his face, and Blaise just looked stunned.

“We really want to learn that,” Fred said.

Harry discovered that he had an odd feeling in his chest as he looked around at them staring at him. It was—kind of nice to be looked at like that. To have people hanging on his every word, ready to do what he told them, ready to learn what he could teach them.

Harry licked his lips and forced some of his pleasure back down. He couldn’t get too caught up in this. He could still imagine the way that the expressions on Fred and George’s and Blaise’s faces would change if they knew about his Parseltongue.

But Theo was still here, as solid as ever. And Jilly was watching, although Harry thought he was the only one who’d noticed that.

Things were going to change around here, then.

Harry took a deep breath and nodded. “All right. The first thing you need to do is meditate,” he told Fred and George. “Get used to thinking of the elements as being all around you. Start with air. Or conjure some fire and start with that. Whichever way will work.”

He turned back to Blaise and Theo. “You already have that connection to the elements. Right now, concentrate on whichever one is weakest and start working to bring it forwards. Earth, for you, Blaise. And yours is water, right, Theo?”

“Right,” Theo said softly. His eyes shone as he settled back in the chair. Blaise already had his eyes closed, concentrating fiercely.

On the other side of the kitchen, Jilly closed her eyes, too.

Harry smiled, and settled back in his chair, petting the water-scarf around his neck. It wrapped around his fingers like a friendly snake.

I don’t want to be a Lord. But maybe I could be a teacher.

Chapter Text

“Mr. Potter, would you mind coming up here to help me with the reenactment?”

Felix concealed a grimace as he stood up. So far, he hadn’t found a way to make Lockhart back off asking him to participate in enacting scenes from his books. Snapping at the git got him in detentions for cheek to a professor, and asking politely just made Lockhart think Felix was asking for advice on “how to manage his fame.” If he never had to suffer through another horrific conversation like that one, Felix could die happy.

Well, no, you won’t. Not unless you find out the truth of what’s in that book, and why Mum and Dad had your birth certificates locked up, and why they abandoned Harry at the Dursleys’.

Felix was so busy thinking that he’d missed all of Lockhart’s instructions about what to do. Therefore, when Lockhart flourished his wand at Felix and announced, “Wagga-Wagga!” in a loud voice, Felix snatched his own wand up and used an Expelliarmus before he thought about it.

Lockhart’s wand went flying out the window, much the way it had in the first class when a pixie tossed it, and several people laughed.

“Now, now, Felix, that’s not what I asked you to do!” Lockhart said, wagging a finger at him and going over to the window. He reached through as if he thought his wand would be lying right below, then clucked his tongue when it wasn’t. “I do appreciate your enthusiasm for the part, but maybe being the Wagga-Wagga Werewolf is a job for a more thoughtful student…”

Felix escaped back to his seat with a sigh of relief that he didn’t bother hiding. Ron leaned over and nudged him in the side. “Wagga-wagga!” he whispered, nearly choking on laughter.

Felix shoved him hard enough for them both to fall out of their seats.

*

“You drive me mad sometimes, you know.”

“Feel free to stop coming around any time,” Harry muttered, concentrating on the potions essay in front of him. Well, you would probably think that he was concentrating on that if you didn’t notice the essay floating an inch or so above the desk.

“You don’t mean that.”

Harry sighed and looked as Theo set his books down on the table next to him. “No, of course I don’t,” he murmured. Theo’s heart still lightened at the way Harry focused on him. “But why do I drive you mad? You’re picking up on the elemental magic well, and you still know more about me than anyone else.”

Theo grimaced. He had half-hoped that he would be able to have a conversation with Harry without bringing up the obvious himself, but no, that was a futile hope. Harry simply didn’t care about this at all.

Which was the precise reason that he drove Theo mad.

“Your marks,” Theo said, leaning forwards once he’d cast a small Privacy Charm. It could be broken, but Theo would notice if that happened. “You should do better with them.”

Harry blinked at him. “Why?”

“This is why you drive me mad.”

“I just don’t see why they matter. I’ll have to know how to do certain things in the future, but everything that’s been useful so far, I’ve learned outside of class.”

“You…” Theo trailed off as he thought about it, and didn’t spit out the angry things he might have said with other people. Harry had never been encouraged, the way Theo had been and Felix certainly had, to think about making something of himself, of succeeding in life. His awful relatives couldn’t have said anything like that. He hadn’t known he had parents to make proud. And he kept thinking of survival before anything else.

“You said something about wanting to be a Dragon-Keeper,” Theo said at last. “Don’t you think that it would be good to make good marks in classes that connect to knowledge about them?”

“I’m too young for Care of Magical Creatures. And I asked Ron. He said his brother Charlie didn’t earn NEWTS in anything like that except for Care. He just fucked off to the Romanian reserve to study dragons when people wanted him to do something else.”

“You said fucked off!”

“Does it bother you? Then I won’t.”

Theo shook his head. He didn’t even know how to explain to himself the sharp joy running through him, let alone explain it to Harry. “No, it’s fine. But you could plan for more of a career than that. I asked my father, and he said that Dragon-Keepers are more valued now if they have several NEWTS, including ones relating to Herbology and Potions. They need to be able to take care of the dragons if they get sick, too, you know, and deal with the magical plants that might invade the reserves.”

Harry stared at him in silence. Theo didn’t know why until he asked, “You told your father about my ambitions?”

“I didn’t reveal your Parseltongue, you paranoid git,” Theo snapped, and thumped a book on the table a little harder than he needed to. “I told him that I’d heard you didn’t need NEWTS to be a Dragon-Keeper, and gave him the example of Weasley’s brother. I hinted that I might want to look into it.”

“But you don’t.”

“I hinted. That’s the kind of thing that it’s hard to identify as a complete lie or a complete truth. And Father wants the best for me. So he gave me the best advice, the kind of thing that would make me well-regarded if I decided to become a Dragon-Keeper. And the kind of thing that would make you well-regarded, too.”

Harry calmed down and sighed. “Sorry, Theo. I just—”

“Don’t want anyone else finding out about this, yes, I know.” Even if Theo thought Harry should tell them just to make their jaws fall open and his parents apologize for the way they’d treated him. “But I think that you could do better if you made better marks. At the very least, get some of the professors on your side.”

“What do you think would happen if I did?”

Theo studied him, but Harry had lowered his floating essay to rest on the table and was watching Theo with calm, clear eyes. Theo didn’t think it had been a trick question. “The professors could speak about what a good student you were,” Theo said slowly. “Advocate for you to your family, in ways that my father can’t without revealing our connection. Make your family respect you. Maybe future employees as well.”

“I’ve given up on impressing my parents,” Harry said, lowering his voice despite Theo’s Privacy Charm. He really was the most paranoid person that Theo had ever met, but he had the most impressive secrets, too. “When they sent me back to the Dursleys despite knowing how awful things were for me there, it was the last straw.”

“Then do it for yourself and your future career. And things might be easier at least for now if you acted like you cared about impressing them.”

Harry shrugged. “I could always go back and take my NEWTS after leaving Hogwarts, if they turned out to matter.” His voice said he wasn’t convinced they did. “In the meantime, I take only as much time as I need to to finish the essays. And you know why practicing the spells more wouldn’t do me much good.”

Because he can’t do it the easy way. He has to shape his elemental magic to imitate the spells. Theo nodded. He did know that. “I just…”

“What?”

“You’re smart, and people act like you’re not. I heard Granger saying something about it the other day. How she’s worried for you when we start the higher-level classes next year, because you’re such a poor student and she’s worried that you’ll fall behind.”

“Let her keep thinking that. She can tutor me, or think she is. It keeps her busy and happy and makes her easier to get along with.”

“You are such a Slytherin.”

Harry’s smile was fleeting and small. “I think people put too much stock in the traits of the Houses. Now, how much of a git do you think Snape is going to keep being to me?”

*

The Potter boy was infuriating.

The younger one was merely exasperating. Severus had seen him several times over the years leading up to Hogwarts, and certainly hadn’t been able to escape the newspaper articles talking about him. But he was what Severus had expected: brash, prone to talking back, able to scrape an Acceptable in Potions when he tried but more motivated in glaring at Severus than applying the skills of his memory to the potion in question.

The elder one just watched Severus. All the time. He was a weak wizard, there was no question of that, but he, again, could have done better than he did. He wasn’t brash. He didn’t talk back, most of the time. He was an empty shell who stared and stared and stared and watched Severus more than his potion and didn’t care about the detentions and points losses that Severus assigned him.

He showed up and served the detentions. That was the only thing Severus had managed to extract from him. He had watched the boy when other Gryffindors groaned about the points losses, and the boy apologized only enough to make them stop complaining. Severus was convinced the brat felt nothing of the sort.

Severus could not make Harry Potter lament anything. And it was driving him mental.

He had tried separating Potter and Nott in Potions. Nott would be a far more capable student if he stopped acting as though Potter was the center of his brewing universe. But even when he did that, Nott never turned in a brew worth more than an Exceeds Expectations because he would be trying to pay as much attention to Potter as possible. And the next class, they simply sat at the same table again, as if the past class had never happened.

So Severus planned a test. One that would force the Nott boy to see how weak the Potter boy was, how much of a liability.

Then Severus could stop watching another Slytherin futilely trying to follow the path of friendship with a Gryffindor, and have some peace in his own classes.

*

“Mr. Nott. You will be brewing with Mr. Potter today.”

Theo twitched, probably because he and Harry were already sitting together. He glanced at Harry. Harry just tilted his head and one shoulder. If Snape wanted to make their lives easier, they shouldn’t argue.

“Yes, Professor,” Theo murmured, and got out his knife and two vials.

“Mr. Potter.” Snape turned and swooped at him. Harry watched him. Yes, Snape was sort of intimidating, but all Harry had to remember was the way that he had cursed Snape into doing what he wanted last year, and any worry left. “You will be in charge of practical ingredients preparation for this session. Mr. Nott will direct you.”

On the other side of the classroom, Felix was puffing up like a toad with indignation. Harry caught his eye and made a pushing motion with one hand down at the table. Luckily, by the time Snape turned around, Felix had gone back to dicing slugs and muttering about it.

“And no collaboration with anyone else,” Snape said softly, leaning in until his nose almost touched Harry’s, “twin brother or not. Is that understood?”

“Yes, sir.”

Snape always got so upset about his quiet respectful words, Harry thought, as he watched Snape’s pale face twist in a scowl. Maybe he could tell there was nothing behind them. “You will do your best not to be a liability to Mr. Nott, Mr. Potter,” Snape hissed. “Do you understand me?”

“Yes, sir.”

Theo looked as though he would happily stab Snape in the back with his potions knife. Harry caught his eye and said nothing, but that was enough for Theo. Harry arranged the slugs, lilac flowers, and other things in front of him as Snape flew away to bother someone else.

“Go ahead and slice up the slugs in thin, even slices, about a quarter of an inch long,” Theo murmured, leaning towards him.

Harry nodded and did it, watching Snape out of the corner of his eye as he sneered at Neville. Neville hunched his shoulders and ducked down behind his cauldron. Harry’s eyes narrowed in turn.

“Longbottom has to learn to stand up for himself sooner or later.”

“Or Snape has to learn not to bully him.”

Theo paused, staring at him across the table. “What are you doing now?”

The words caught Snape’s attention, and he swooped across the room and down on Harry. Harry looked up at him with eyes that he knew were even emptier than usual. He could feel the breath in Snape’s lungs, the same air that he had been using to help him scold Neville a few minutes ago.

“Harry,” Theo breathed.

“You are being a liability to Mr. Nott, are you not, Harry?” Snape hissed, and bent towards him. Harry thought about how easy it would be to light his hair on fire, blister his skin with heat, freeze the water in his cells, make him stop breathing. “You do not know what you are doing, you refuse to study, you are incredibly childish—”

He needs something else to think about.

Harry let the rest of the words flow over him, because they didn’t really matter, anyway. He knew Theo said that a good Potions mark would help him get a Dragon-Keeper job, but to succeed in this class, where Snape’s ridiculous favoritism mattered more than anything else? It wouldn’t help him.

So he waited until the end of Snape’s little spittle-flecked speech, which seemed to contain something about the word “detention,” and then reached out and coalesced the water in Snape’s mouth into ice, which he hammered through his tongue.

Snape shrieked and flailed back, one hand rising to touch his mouth, the other going for his wand. Everyone else in the classroom stared. Theo was looking at Harry, and so were some other people, but Theo was the only one doing it with fear and knowledge in his eyes.

That fear was what made Harry vanish the ice spike. He glanced down at his potion, or rather the cauldron empty of anything but water, and took a deep breath. Theo didn’t say anything, just kept looking at him.

Snape rounded on Harry with the most furious look Harry had seen on his face. Well, no, the one when he had seen the dragon was worse. “Mr. Potter,” he hissed. “What did you do?”

“I don’t know, Professor,” Harry said, because, really, it was true. He’d reacted violently when he didn’t have much of a reason to. It wasn’t like Snape would stop bullying Neville because Harry had hurt him. He probably wouldn’t do it even if Neville’s family descended on Hogwarts. That wasn’t the kind of idiot he was. And Harry didn’t care about the way that Snape bullied him in particular. Driving a spike of ice through Snape’s tongue had been a stupid thing to do, because it stood no chance of making his point.

“I know that you have wandless magic,” Snape continued in a low voice. One trembling hand caressed his jaw. “And we will be going to the Headmaster’s office and summoning your parents. With any luck, you will not be in detention until your seventh year, but only because you will be expelled.”

“Sir,” Felix said, with so much contempt in his voice that it was obvious to anyone who listened how little he respected Snape. “What proof do you have that Harry did any of this? What even happened?”

Snape whipped around and snapped, “Twenty points from Gryffindor, Mr. Potter!” He raked the rest of the class with a glance so sharp that Hermione dropped something on the floor and Neville ducked down beneath the table. “Class is dismissed. Write a two—no, a three-foot essay on the importance of respecting your professors, due on Friday! Class dismissed!” He glared at Harry and gestured for him to follow.

People scrambled to pack up their cauldrons, glaring at Harry the entire time. Harry stared back, entirely unimpressed. They were upset with him, not with Snape for punishing the whole class. Yeah, that matched his impressions of children from his primary school.

Well, he didn’t need them to be impressed with him or think well of him. He had Theo and Felix, Blaise and the twins, and it was enough.

And maybe they would expel him today. Maybe he would go back to the Potters’ and wait until the first time they didn’t pay attention to him, and then it would be away to find Remus Lupin or a dragon reserve.

The only thing he would regret was leaving his friends behind.

*

Lily clenched her shaking hands in front of her before she went into the Floo. She could not show weakness, not in front of Severus, and not in front of Albus.

And not in front of this strange child of hers, whom she could barely stand to look in the eyes.

She stepped out of the fireplace into Albus’s office and gave the Headmaster a shaky smile. James stepped out behind her, putting one hand on her shoulder. He did that all the time around Severus. It was the kind of childish, possessive maleness that Lily just had to ignore. “Good afternoon, Headmaster.”

“Good afternoon, Lily.” Albus’s eyes were dim, and he gestured her to one of the visitors’ chairs with a heavy hand. “If you could sit down? There is a matter between Professor Snape and young Harry that we must resolve.”

All he had said through the fire was the same thing. Lily didn’t know what had happened. She nodded, though, and sat down, because what else could she do? James sat next to her and took her hand.

Lily finally looked back at Harry, who was sitting in a chair between theirs and Albus’s desk. Severus was standing in front of Harry, glaring down with his arms folded. His face was dark red in a way Lily hadn’t seen it be since the day when their friendship had ruptured for good.

Harry stared back at them with shadowed eyes. But empty eyes, too. If it had been Felix in this situation, he would either have been apologetic, if he thought he’d really done something wrong, or furious and defiant. Harry didn’t look as if he felt anything in particular.

As though he opened a valve in his heart and drained all the emotion out, Lily thought, not for the first time.

It was never easy to face him. And it wasn’t his fault. Lily had to admit that she and James and Albus, and to a lesser extent Sirius, had all taken a step back emotionally from Harry the moment they’d heard the prophecy. It was easier for Albus, since he wasn’t really involved with Harry in day-to-day life, but it had been agonizing for Lily. To know that her baby, her son, was going to die at the hands of a murderous madman? She had alternated days of grim research with days of holding Harry close and listening to his heartbeat with tears creeping down her face.

But it had ended up being the same as if he’d had a deadly disease that no treatment could help. They could be there for him, but they couldn’t help him. And at least they had known that if Harry had to die, Voldemort would fall with him. They would lose their little boy, but a threat to the entire world would be gone at the same time.

And then…

Harry had lived. And Felix had lived, too. Lily sometimes thought she still wasn’t over the surprise of that, the shock of looking at even just her younger son and feeling it thunder through her body when she’d come into that room and seen him wailing on the floor.

They’d sent Harry away. It had been the wrong decision, Lily thought now, but they couldn’t have made a right one at the time. The Dark magic that built between Harry and Felix meant they couldn’t keep him with them if they wanted Felix to live. And they did want him to live, so much, their unexpected miracle, the son who had had even less chance of surving Voldemort’s attack than Harry had.

And she hadn’t connected emotionally with Harry again after the attack, even though she had assumed she would. That step she’d taken back couldn’t be reversed. Harry was a stranger to her after he’d survived the prophecy. She had prepared herself to accept her dead son, not her living one.

How much more so now? she thought, swallowing as she met Harry’s dead eyes. When he’s come back to us possessed of some odd kind of magic?

Or just possessed.

It was a thought she had had more than once, but Albus had assured them he’d checked for Voldemort’s spirit possessing Harry and found nothing. Lily supposed she would have to live with that.

“Earlier in class today,” Severus began, his voice trembling a little with passion, “I told Potter to work with young Mr. Nott, preparing the ingredients and following Mr. Nott’s instructions, to ensure he could not cheat. He responded to me with cheek, and a few minutes later I heard Mr. Nott ask him what he was doing. I went over to make sure he was following my directions, and assigned him detention when he did nothing but stare at me. Then he attacked me.”

“What did he do?” James was leaning forwards, and from the expression on his face, Lily knew he was a few minutes away from using the name “Snivellus.” She pressed her foot down on top of his and gave him a warning look.

“Used his wandless magic to attack me! It felt like the Tongue-Puncturing Curse!”

“Why am I not surprised you know that one, Sn—”

Lily intervened hastily. “Harry, did you use the Tongue-Puncturing Curse on Professor Snape?”

“No, Mother.”

Lily slumped back a little in relief, but Albus sighed softly and said, “Did you will the effect of the curse to occur, Harry? I know that you have wild magic, and that means that you might have imitated the effect without knowing the name of the spell.”

“No, sir.”

Lily flicked a glance at Albus. Albus shook his head a little, looking mystified. No, Harry hadn’t lied.

“I am not lying!” That was Severus, spittle touching the edges of his words. “If you think that I will accept this child back in my class—”

“No,” Albus said quietly. “That would be quite unreasonable, of course. I will remove Mr. Potter from your Potions course, Severus. I will be tutoring him in the art myself. I probably should have taken a stronger hand in his education last year, when I realized that his problems in wild magic were persisting. My apologies, to all in this room, that I did not do so.”

Harry looked up for a second. His eyes had an expression in them, but Lily couldn’t place it. A second later, he looked back at his hands.

“This sounds like a reward, Headmaster, rather than a punishment.”

“I will not be expelling him from the school, Severus, even though I know you would prefer that. I will indeed give him detention, and impress upon him that it is unacceptable to attack others with his wild magic, no matter the provocation.”

Lily relaxed a little. At least that would mean Harry would be under Albus’s supervision, and Albus would have the ability to test him for his power and restrain it if necessary. And perhaps figure out a way for Harry to direct his energy other than hurting people, and other than politics, which his illness made him useless in.

“I insist that the detention I originally assigned before the attack stand!”

“Well, that would be fair, Severus. What is it?”

“Detention every Friday and Saturday night from eight to eleven for the rest of the term,” Severus snapped. “And I insist on supervising them.”

“That makes no sense,” Lily said. She ignored the sidelong, burning glance that Severus gave her, and the way that James tried to step on her foot in return. “Why would you want to do that when Harry attacked you right after?”

“Yes, I must agree, Severus,” Albus said. “And detentions for so long and for so many nights seem unwarranted for a bit of disrespect in class. I will supervise detentions on Friday and Saturday nights for a fortnight.” He turned to Harry. “Please come to my office at eight-o’clock on Friday evening, Harry.”

“Yes, sir.”

Lily looked into Harry’s eyes, looking for something. Hatred, outrage, guilt, awareness that Albus was honoring Harry by taking time out of his incredibly busy schedule to supervise detentions. But there was nothing there.

She wondered, wearily, when anything ever would be, if the kind of childhood he’d had couldn’t even put anything there. She could have dealt with a child who yelled and screamed and asked for explanations.

Not one who just sat there and let everything wash around him, like a…a piece of ice.

*

Harry stood outside the gargoyle that guarded the Headmaster’s office. Snape had left some minutes before with a glare over his shoulder. Dumbledore had kept Harry there, along with the Potters, to explain carefully to Harry what a great opportunity this was, and how Harry shouldn’t waste it, and how they would tame his wild magic one way or another.

Harry had nodded and murmured his completely insincere thanks. He had thought and thought, and now he was alone in the corridor with his thoughts, which were louder when they were ricocheting around his head.

They never asked what I actually did. What I actually said. For my perspective. They never thought that I might have an opinion about being removed from Potions. They talked past me like I was a dog who couldn’t understand them.

It didn’t hurt, not exactly. The part of Harry that could feel this deeply about something that his parents had done had broken at the end of last term. But he did shake his head as he imagined the gulf that stretched between him and them, and that they had no conception of its even existing.

“Harry?”

It was Blaise, peering around the nearest corner. He saw Harry and half-nodded. “Theo wanted to come, but he was worried about making Snape angrier at you if he saw,” Blaise murmured, leaning back against the wall. “Snape doesn’t know you and I are friends.”

It soothed something in Harry to know that Blaise saw them as friends, too, and not Harry as just someone he could take advantage of or learn from. He half-nodded back. “They’ve taken me out of Potions classes. Dumbledore is going to teach those personally to me from now on.”

Blaise stared at him. “I mean, hexing a teacher is bad, but…”

“It’s an excuse to keep a closer eye on me. He’s worried about my wild magic getting out of control and hurting someone else, although he didn’t phrase it exactly that way. He and the Potters were talking about what a great chance it would be for me to learn something from the Headmaster.”

“Ah.” Blaise’s face became set and grim. “Well, I suppose that you can only learn as much as you can, and maybe Snape will be more bearable this way and give you fewer detentions.” His eyes darted around to the portraits on the walls.

Harry understood. Blaise wouldn’t say what he really thought with potential eavesdroppers. He shrugged lightly. “I can’t learn fewer things from the Headmaster than from Snape.”

“True enough. I’m sorry, though.”

It was the first time anyone had said it to him since the incident in Potions. Harry found himself taking a breath that didn’t feel as if it was dragging something heavy along with it for the first time since then, and nodding to Blaise. “Thanks.”

Blaise nodded back. Both of them knew that Harry was regretting the lost chance to interact with Theo more than anything else. Defense was the only other class that the Gryffindors had with the Slytherins, and Lockhart was so ridiculous in it and so insistent on people paying attention to him that it was difficult to talk there.

“Don’t be a stranger,” Blaise said, and smiled at Harry before he left.

Harry stood there and breathed for a few minutes more before he went back to Gryffindor Tower.

*

“It’s so fucking stupid!”

“Language, Felix!”

Felix glowered at Hermione and stomped around the common room again. A lot of people were watching them, just because any drama with the Boy-Who-Lived was a good thing to some people, even if it mostly involved his brother, Felix thought sourly. He’d put up a Privacy Charm, but it was the sort that broke if someone was too loud, and the things Harry was telling him deserved to be yelled about.

“They never even asked you your side?” he demanded again, turning to Harry, who was sitting on the couch behind him. “They never even asked you what you’d done to Snape and why?”

Harry just shook his head. Felix hated the closed-in expression on his face, but he understood why Harry didn’t want to show anything in front of the others. Felix trusted Ron and Dean, but Harry didn’t, and much the same was true of Hermione. The others were outside their immediate circle and even more likely to be gawkers.

“Fuck,” Felix said again.

“Felix!”

Ugh. Felix liked Hermione, he really did, but her least likeable moods were the ones like this when she wanted to lecture everyone about everything. He flung himself onto the couch beside Harry, and got a reaction from him since the first time when he’d told Felix about what had happened with him being taken out of Snape’s classes. Harry blinked at him.

Felix looked back at him and mouthed, It’s bollocks.

Harry paused, and then he smiled a little. He reached out and tapped Felix on the shoulder. Felix leaned his shoulder against his brother’s and then turned to face Hermione, who was on her feet and glaring at both of them.

“This is a good opportunity for Harry,” Hermione said firmly. “He’s going to learn from Professor Dumbledore himself. And Professor Dumbledore is a great alchemist, which by definition means he’s a great at Potions. He can teach you so much, Harry! I would go to him and ask him to teach me, too, but I know he’s busy and he can’t take time out of his schedule for more than one student.”

Harry’s lip curled a little. Only because he was getting so used to watching his twin could Felix see it. To everyone else—to Hermione—it would probably look like he was just sitting there and listening and not feeling much of anything.

“And Professor Snape shouldn’t have yelled at you, but he’s right not to want a student hexing teachers. And if it was your wild magic getting out of control, then you do need help in getting it under control. Sooner rather than later.” Hermione nodded and crossed her arms. “I’m just glad that Professor Dumbledore instead of Professor Snape will be supervising your detentions. Neither of you need to be alone with each other right now.”

“Maybe you’re right, Hermione.”

Harry’s voice was calm. Well, calm was one way to think of it, Felix thought. You could also call it bored. Icy. He just nodded and listened as Hermione began yet another explanation of how lucky Harry was to be taken out of his Potions classes.

Felix watched and thought that Mum and Dad were idiots, and Professor Dumbledore might not be an idiot but he was less smart than everyone thought he was. And Snape was an idiot and a wanker, but they’d already known that.

And Harry was dangerous, and everyone was lucky that he wasn’t more dangerous than he was.

*

What were the punishments in your day for a student who hexed teachers?

While he waited for Tom Riddle to respond, Harry lay on his bed and wrote a letter to Theo. Felix would take it and send it with Hedwig if Harry asked him. Theo deserved to know what had happened, and Harry didn’t actually care about what Snape said or did to him, but the retaliation Snape might take out on a member of his House he knew to be friendly with Harry obviously concerned Theo.

The black writing scratching into being across the pages alerted Harry, and he rolled over and looked down at the diary.

I never heard of such a thing happening, except accidentally when a professor intervened in a duel between two students. Why did you hex one?

He was being impatient and assigning me detention for something that wasn’t my fault. Harry already knew that Riddle wasn’t the sort of person who would understand Harry wanting to stick up for another student. As a result, I’m being removed from the class on the professor’s insistence. Dumbledore will teach me Potions personally. Maybe other things.

Riddle was slower to respond this time. Harry had actually gone down to Felix in the common room with the letter and come back before the reply appeared.

I’ve never heard of that, either. The words came into being slowly, writhing across the paper like dragons’ tails. Who are you? What’s so special about you?

I don’t know why you keep fishing for things you’re not going to get, Tom.

I can’t feel your magic. I thought you might be a Squib, but you’re a student in Hogwarts, and I don’t think you’re lying about that…who are you? Haven’t I earned at least that much?

Harry’s mouth twisted a little. He wanted to tell Riddle, he realized. He wanted to reach out to someone else, make them respect him the way Snape and Dumbledore and the Potters never would.

I turned Snape’s spit to ice in his mouth and hammered it through his tongue. What does that tell you?

More silence, in the form of blank paper. This time, Harry found himself staring down at it, his fists clenched at his hands, and then he saw the words dancing into being.

An elemental mage. I am honored.

And it was only more manipulation, Harry knew that, and he knew he probably shouldn’t have even shared the secret in case Tom found a way to tell someone else, but for the moment, just for a moment, it eased the ache inside him. A reminder that other people thought he was worth something.

Chapter Text

“That was stupid.”

Harry rubbed his eyes and said nothing. He’d spent most of the night drifting in and out of dreams in which he was standing in a dark forest with an orange moon floating above him, while a distant voice called endlessly for his help. A path had stretched in front of him, illuminated by the moonlight, but even in the dream, Harry knew better than to take it.

“Harry, are you listening to me?”

Theo was leaning forwards over their library table. The Privacy Charm was up around them. Harry met his eyes. “Yes.”

“It was stupid of you to turn your elemental magic on Snape like that,” Theo said flatly, and folded his arms. “You could have kept it secret. You could have done something to him that wouldn’t lead so obviously back to you. You could have ignored him and focused on your potion. You know he hates you. This isn’t news. Why in the world did you lose control like that?”

“I was tired,” Harry said. He mumbled it, and he knew it didn’t sound impressive, but it was the truth.

“Tired of what?”

“Tired of him bullying me. Tired of him bullying Neville. He wouldn’t ever learn better unless someone showed him better. So I showed him.”

Theo stared at Harry without an expression on his face. Then he said, “Harry. Listen to me. I need to know that you’re really listening, not just humoring me the way you do sometimes.”

Harry sighed and focused all his attention on Theo with an effort. The way that the stupid tiredness kept dragging his eyelids down was—stupid. “All right. I’m listening.”

“You can’t just lash out that way and do whatever you want,” Theo said softly. “I know that you don’t want to reveal your elemental magic and your Parseltongue to people, and you don’t think you need good marks to be a Dragon-Keeper. But someone could—Harry, someone could decide you were dangerous based on just what you’ve done even when you’re hiding the truth. Look at what happened because you attacked Snape. You have Potions with Dumbledore. You know he’s going to pry harder into your secrets, not leave you alone. You did something that felt good in the moment but was counterproductive to the goals that you’ve told me you have.”

Harry stirred restlessly. “I hate it when you make sense,” he muttered.

Theo’s smile was fleeting. “I think the chance is gone to make the Potters just think of you as a good little boy on par with your brother,” he said. “But you could do other things. Make them ignore you. Make them think of you as normal, average, not someone who needs careful watching and handling.”

“How do I do that?”

“Concentrate on your marks—”

“Come on, Theo. How is that going to do—”

“I’m not saying that you have to strive to be top of every class,” Theo interrupted him. “I know that Transfiguration and Charms are always going to be hard for you because of the way you have to work to imitate the spells. But if you concentrate on your marks, they’ll be more willing to overlook you. They’ll just think that you’re a normal schoolkid, and maybe even that you’re shocked at your own behavior and willing to try being quieter and calmer. You can even attribute the shift to being out of Snape’s class. You can say that he irritated you so much that you did something you didn’t mean to, and now you can do better.”

“They’ll never look at me as normal. They’ll never trust me.”

“It’s not about making them trust you,” Theo said evenly. “It’s about making them look elsewhere. Drop their guard, if you want to think of it that way.”

Harry hesitated. One reason he hadn’t wanted to listen to Theo scold him about the incident with Snape was that he didn’t see a way to change it. Yes, it was stupid, but it was done now, and he would always be the one who got stared at and whispered about by the people in his family except for Felix. Why bother regretting it?

“You can see why I want you to do this?”

Harry glanced up sharply. He might be wandering in a daze of his own tiredness, but he still recognized the moment when there was a tone shift in Theo’s voice. “Theo? What’s wrong?”

“I’m worried about you, you idiot!” Theo’s face cracked wide open now, losing the neutral mask, and Harry stared at worry and fear he had never seen before, not even during the summer at the Notts’, when Theo had seemed to think he could express things more openly. “Just lashing out in the middle of Potions class—that wasn’t subtle, that wasn’t well-considered, and now you’re going to be under Dumbledore’s eye! And I’ve lost my partner in Potions class, too. All of this is something stupid that you shouldn’t have done!”

Harry blinked, then blinked again. He had thought of what he’d done as mainly affecting him and Snape, but it had affected Theo, too, and Harry felt stupid all over again for not seeing that.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered.

Theo paused for a second, then nodded and sat down on the other side of the table again. “Good,” he said, without nearly as much heat. “But it’s going to take you a while to repair what happened, you know.”

“I don’t see how I can repair it with Snape.”

“Oh, him.” Theo made a rude gesture that Harry would have thought he’d die rather than use. Theo grinned when Harry stared at him. “I had some influences in my life apart from Father, you know. Just not many. And I wasn’t talking about Snape. I was talking about your parents and Dumbledore.”

“And Felix?’

“From what I heard him saying the other day, I think he’s fully on your side.”

Harry had to smile. Yes, Felix had been telling off Malfoy for saying something about Snape and how he never received respect from students. “Yes, all right.”

“There.”

Harry started. “What?” As far as he could tell, just agreeing with Theo and smiling ought not to be enough to set him off, but—

“You can smile like that,” Theo said, pointing at him. “You should smile like that when you go to Dumbledore for your first lesson. You should think about how people would want to see you. Yes, right now you probably seem wild and dangerous, but you’re still twelve years old. Act polite and open and friendly and curious, and you’ll have them falling over themselves to assume you’re normal.”

Harry cocked his head. “Do you think I can act like that?”

Theo started to speak, and then stared at him instead. “Why did that impress you when nothing else I’ve said in the past did?”

“Because you said act.” Harry lowered his voice and leaned forwards over the library table despite the Privacy Charm. He also sent a small current of wind humming around them which should probably keep anyone who might break the Privacy Charm from hearing what they said. “I was thinking that one reason it didn’t matter what I did was because I would never convince them otherwise. My parents would always think I was useless and dangerous. Dumbledore would always distrust me. Snape would always hate me. So I might as well do what I wanted.”

“Okay,” Theo said slowly.

“But if you really think I’m a good enough actor to fool them and at least get them to back off a bit…”

Theo smiled himself now. “Yes, I do think you can do that. Maybe knowing some of the consequences will spur you to be better at it,” he added dryly.

Harry nodded. Yes, that was something to consider. “Okay. I’ll try.”

Theo sighed and reached across the table to grip his hands. “Thank you, Harry. I don’t want you kicked out of the school before we even reach the age where I can really see what you become, you know?”

“Well, I couldn’t be a Dragon-Keeper until I’m an adult, anyway,” Harry muttered, feeling himself flush.

“You know very well I’m not talking about that.”

“Just because I’ll try to be a better actor and a better friend to you and work on my marks more doesn’t mean I’m going to be a Lord or whatever you’re talking about,” Harry informed him crossly.

Theo smiled, and said nothing.

*

Felix looked over the letter that he was sending to his parents. He wasn’t sure that it expressed everything he wanted to say, but it expressed some things they needed to hear, and that meant he was going to send it.

Mum and Dad,

I can’t even call you dear anymore. Why did you think that Harry was at fault for hexing Snape? He’s the one you always call Snivellus, Dad! He’s the one you told me to beware of when I was first going to start Hogwarts! And now you’re taking his side?

Why do you always assume that Harry’s at fault and wrong? It’s just stupid. Why did you put him back with the Dursleys for a week? Why do you think he needs to be disciplined or whatever by the actual Headmaster?

I don’t understand you. But I want to. Write back to me and try to give some coherent excuse, because I don’t understand.

Really sincerely yours,
Felix.

Felix nodded and put his quill aside, then picked up the letter and glanced towards Harry. “You need to start towards the Headmaster’s office for your lesson soon, don’t you?”

“Yes,” Harry murmured, and stood up. The lesson had been delayed the week before, Felix knew, something about an emergency at the Ministry that Dumbledore had to attend to. But now that was resolved, and Harry had his first Potions lesson with Dumbledore tonight.

“I need to go to the Owlery. I’ll walk part of the way with you.”

“That letter to James and Lily you said you were going to write?”

Harry murmured the words as they left through the portrait. Felix sighed, both grateful that Harry was comfortable enough around him not to call their terrible parents Mum and Dad and worried about what would happen if someone overheard.

Their House didn’t seem to know what to make of Harry anymore. Some people thought he was a hero for standing up to Snape and an idiot for doing it in the middle of class. Some people thought he was dangerous, but also that it was just accidental magic. People stared at Harry and gossiped about him when they thought he wasn’t listening.

As far as Felix could make out, Harry was always listening. He seemed to be able to hear things he shouldn’t, often around corners.

“Yeah,” Felix said, wrenching his attention back to the present when he realized Harry was staring at him and waiting patiently. “I want them to know that I think their behavior where you and Snape are concerned is a load of bollocks.” He savored the last words.

“Don’t…Felix, don’t make them so upset with that you that…”

Felix stopped in the middle of the corridor and turned to stare directly at Harry. “You think they would hurt me?”

Harry let his gaze dart aside. “I know they’re your parents…”

“Not nearly as much as they used to be,” Felix said. “But I don’t think they would do that. Harry, please look at me.”

Harry did. His green eyes were bright and piercing in a way that Felix had never thought of Mum’s as. Felix reached out and put his hands on his brother’s shoulders, ignoring the way that the letter crinkled a little.

“I don’t think they would do that,” Felix repeated. “Not because they’re good people all of a sudden, but because they don’t want to get their hands dirty. They sent you away and never checked up on you instead of abusing you themselves. They locked up our birth certificates like I told you instead of burning them or just not keeping copies in the house. Or telling us about them. They let Dumbledore handle the thing with you and Snape instead of trying to discipline you. They won’t hurt me because it would ruin that nice little shield of plausible deniability they have going.”

Harry opened his mouth, then closed it. He said, “Oh.”

“You still sound like you’re trying to find a way to blame yourself.”

“They were your parents until I came back.”

“Right. And that was not your fault. They sent you away to an abusive home and never checked up on you when we were just babies. They made their decisions to be horrible people a long time ago.”

Harry blinked and blinked again. Felix hoped he was absorbing the fact that his brother would stand up for him, and it didn’t matter what Mum and Dad did or said. They might have wanted to forget that they had two sons, but Felix was never going to forget that he had a brother.

“Okay,” Harry finally said. “Thanks.”

Felix smiled and walked with him in silence until the point when they had to part ways. Then he waved and continued up to the Owlery alone, smoothing his hand down Hedwig’s breast feathers as she swooped to his shoulder.

“Here you go, girl,” he said, handing her the letter. “Mum and Dad, all right? And fly fast.”

Hedwig clicked her beak at him as if to say that she always did that, and soared out the window. Felix watched her go with both a heavy heart and something like satisfaction burning in him.

They might not answer. In fact, Felix was kind of expecting them not to. But then they would have to live with the consequences of not doing that.

Like Felix thinking they were weak cowards.

One way or another, someday I’m going to find out the truth.

*

“Harry! Come in, my dear boy!”

Albus watched carefully as Harry Potter stepped into his office. The boy ducked his head and murmured a greeting, or one that would pass for that if you were listening carefully enough. Albus sighed a little as he waved Harry to a chair in front of his desk.

He knew he couldn’t expect the boy to behave exactly like Felix, not when he had been raised by Muggles. Blood didn’t will out that much. And Harry would feel inferior because of his magic, his difficulties in getting it under control, and the lack of a perfect memory for what he read that Felix had.

But he could be at least open to being corrected.

“Please tell me what difficulties you have with Potions,” Albus said, leaning back behind his desk and inviting Harry to look at him with a smile.

The boy raised his head, but only a little, so that he was staring at the top of Albus’s desk. “Mostly the teacher up until this point, sir,” he mumbled. “The way he attacks and blames Neville and me and Felix was distracting.”

Albus blinked. He had, of course, anticipated that Severus would go after both Potters because of his grudge against the boys’ father, but Mr. Longbottom was an odd choice for Severus’s bile. “Mr. Longbottom?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Can you tell me why that is?”

“He made a mistake during our first Potions class last year, and so Snape—”

“Professor Snape, please, Harry.”

“—seems to have decided he’s stupid, and he calls him an idiot and tells him he’s doing things wrong in every class since then.”

It didn’t escape Albus’s notice that Harry hadn’t accepted his correction about Severus’s title. He concealed a sigh. If anything, he would have expected an overly meek and submissive child from Lily’s description of the Dursleys, but instead, he had this wild and willful boy.

His personality reflecting the orientation of his magic, perhaps.

“You know that Professor Snape needs to keep an eye on the cauldrons of the entire class, Harry? And that he might get upset when one student persists in making mistakes.”

“But he makes it worse by yelling at Neville, sir. And he never tells him how to avoid mistakes. He just waits until Neville makes them and then yells at him.”

“Well, it seems as if you don’t like bullies, Harry.”

“I don’t, sir.”

“Then I find your behavior towards Professor Snape all the more interesting, but also confusing,” Albus said, as gently as he could. “One could argue that you bullied him by hurting him the way you did.”

Harry twitched. He said nothing. Albus waited, and then added, in a coaxing tone, “Please give an answer to that, Harry. I would like to know what you think of that.”

*
I think that you don’t give a shit about Neville.

Of course, there was no way that Harry could say that aloud. But Theo had given him the idea that he could say it in his head, and make sure that his behavior showed him thinking something different.

He felt free in a way he never had when he’d thought he might as well do exactly as he wanted because no one would believe him anyway.

Harry nodded and said, “Yes, sir, when I think about it, I could see how some people would think that. I won’t do it again.”

No. He probably wouldn’t do that because he never expected to run across Severus Snape in classes again. And outside of them, if Snape hurt someone or antagonized Harry, then he would do something subtler and something that wouldn’t get him in trouble.

“Good.” Dumbledore smiled, or so Harry thought he did from the way he was keeping his head bowed, and leaned back behind his desk, clapping his hands. Harry started as the desk shuddered and began to spin, another top unfolding from beneath the one that had a fluffy cloth on top of it. “Let us begin with a simple potion, then. In fact, the one you were brewing the day you attacked Professor Snape. Please read the instructions and tell me what you should do first, Harry.”

Harry glanced down at the instructions and read them over carefully. He hadn’t actually studied them in that last disastrous Potions lesson because Theo had been the one directing him to do things like cut up the slugs. He nodded when he had reached the end and went back to the top. “It says that you have to fill the cauldron with water, Professor.”

“Excellent, Harry! Please do so.”

Harry picked up the cauldron that had appeared on the new desktop and glanced around. “Is there a way to fill it with water here, sir?”

“Oh, I’m sure you can do that, can’t you, Harry?”

“No, sir,” Harry said slowly. “We haven’t learned conjuring water in Charms yet.”

There was a bit of silence, while Dumbledore stared at him intently and Harry kept his head down and his eyes on the desk and the cauldron. The cauldron appeared to be made of iron, he thought. He should get better at identifying metals if he was going to be using earth magic.

“Of course,” Dumbledore said finally. “My mistake. Here.” He tapped his wand on the rim of the cauldron and conjured water easily, without speaking a word. Harry watched it fill the cauldron and thought about what Dumbledore’s face would look like if Harry froze it, not only without a word but without a wand.

But Theo’s advice about acting was still useful. If Harry thought about how he could do it and how Dumbledore might react, it was a lot easier to keep a bland look on his face, nod, and go back to the instructions to read about chopping slugs.

*

The boy produced a Hair-Coloring Potion that was several shades off the proper blue. Too-thick slices with the slugs, Albus thought, judging with an expert eye. He waited until the potion was steaming in the cauldron to ask, “Do you think that’s perfect, Harry?”

Harry glanced back and forth between the notations at the end of the recipe and the cauldron several times. “No, sir,” he said eventually. “The recipe says it should be sky-blue, and the potion is—darker blue than that.”

“So uncertain, my boy?”

“Well, I do have to wear glasses, sir. I thought that maybe the potion was really more off the color than that and I just wasn’t seeing it right.”

Albus huffed in amusement. The boy was calmer than he’d suspected, and also more capable of cleverness. Albus wondered if that was influence from Miss Granger of Gryffindor. She had spent some time tutoring Harry, from what Albus knew.

“Yes, it is several shades off. Can you tell me what the reason is?”

“Sorry, sir, no.”

“Without even looking at the recipe?”

Harry shook his head. “Sorry, sir, no. I don’t know what factors influence the color of the potion.”

Albus frowned. “But surely you remember reading about this in your book? Or in the lecture that Professor Snape undoubtedly gave?”

“We didn’t have an assigned book reading or a lecture before we brewed this potion, sir.” Harry held himself utterly still on the other side of the cauldron, and didn’t fidget or adjust his robes. It worried Albus a little. He wasn’t used to children who acted like miniature adults. “I think Snape—”

“Professor Snape, Harry.”

“He prefers that we read ahead, but he doesn’t tell us to.” Harry nodded slowly, as if thinking about his words and finding them good. “And he usually does the lecture the class after that potion.”

Albus stared at him. That was—not the way he had thought Severus was teaching. Certainly it had not been the way old Horace taught, when he was in the classroom. He had always assigned reading the week before, given the class a good lecture afterwards, and then had them brew the potion. If they couldn’t reasonably do so by the end of the class period, he would place a Stasis Charm on the cauldrons, and the students would spend time in the next week finishing up.

“Why do you think that is, Harry?”

“I think Snape—”

“Harry,” Albus said calmly. “Please. No more of your continued disrespect.”

Harry watched him with opaque eyes for a moment. Albus waited. Perhaps the outburst he had been anticipating would happen now, as childish as it seemed to him for Harry to stage one over a professor’s title. But then again, Harry was a child.

*

I don’t respect him, was what Harry wanted to say.

But he heard Theo’s voice murmuring in the back of his head. There’s no point in saying that. Either he knows it and doesn’t care. He just wants you to say the title anyway. Or he doesn’t know it and would be upset if you say it.

Harry didn’t want to bow his neck. He wanted to stand up and scream at Dumbledore that Snape was the real bully here, and that it was mad that Dumbledore allowed him to continue teaching, and he didn’t even know that Snape didn’t lecture—

But while Theo might have approved of Harry saying that, in the same way he might have approved of Harry telling Dumbledore and the Potters about his elemental magic and the Parseltongue, he wouldn’t have approved of the screaming. Or the lashing out.

Harry breathed out slowly. What does it matter, in the end? What does it matter next to not giving Dumbledore a reason to suspect you of anything? Right now, he hasn’t renewed the monitoring charms, but he might. He hasn’t decided that you’re a dangerous monster who needs to be kept under tighter restraint, but he might. He already took you out of the classroom. Don’t give him a reason to do anything else.

“All right, sir,” Harry said finally, and hearing himself say the words settled him. If he could give one person a false title, why not another one? In the depths of his mind, he knew exactly what those titles were worth. “Professor Snape.”

Dumbledore beamed at him and nodded encouragingly. Harry wondered idly why everyone, the Potters included, seemed to find that smile so important they would do anything for it. Harry just thought it looked exaggerated.

“Please go on, Harry.”

“I think Professor Snape wants us to take initiative to do the reading. And he might believe giving us a lecture is coddling us.”

“Ah, yes. I suspect that, as well.” Dumbledore gave Harry another smile that Harry knew was meant to encourage confidences and listening. Harry returned it with a bland one of his own. “Do you think that you could do the reading in the future?”

“Is that what you’d like me to do before lessons with you, sir?”

Dumbledore paused for the barest moment. Harry blinked at the cauldron and pretended not to have caught it. He didn’t think that he’d said anything particularly important, which made Dumbledore’s response…interesting.

“You do not see yourself as returning to Professor Snape’s classroom?” Dumbledore asked delicately.

“I thought I wouldn’t, sir,” Harry said, and blinked a little more. “Professor Snape said that he didn’t want me there again, and you said you were taking me on yourself, so…”

“Only until the end of this year,” Professor Dumbledore said, and smiled. “Or even this term. I never meant for this to be a permanent arrangement, Harry.”

Well. I’ll have to work on my temper when it comes to Snape, then. But at least Theo would be glad to have his brewing partner back.

Harry gave a demure little smile. “All right, sir. I suppose it’ll depend on Professor Snape, but I’ll think about it. Is the reading something you’d like me to do before lessons with you? And would you be giving lectures, too?”

Dumbledore laughed. “Indeed, dear boy. It’s been a while since I lectured on Potions, but I dare say I might be able to remember how to do it.”

And Harry nodded and sat back with wide eyes to listen and nod to the lecture. Dumbledore didn’t say he had to take notes, so he didn’t try. Just nodded and listened and made soft murmuring noises at appropriate points.

And if Dumbledore didn’t seem entirely convinced by the act, he at least let Harry go with nothing more than a twinkle of his eyes and a recommendation to do the reading in the book that Snape hadn’t bothered assigning.

Harry went down the stairs with thoughts turning over and over in his mind, mainly how much freedom controlling his temper and pretending that he believed the same things as the Potters might give him.

*

I have misjudged the boy.

Albus glanced at the cauldron on his desk and shook his head before Vanishing the half-correct potion inside it. He had thought, given his subtle testing of Harry’s temper and control, that he might explode, might rant about having to call Severus by his title, might snap that he knew what Albus was doing and he hated it.

But he hadn’t. And that pointed, at least, to a child who knew he had done something wrong by hexing Severus and might be wary of the consequences even if he didn’t regret it.

At this point, Albus would take wariness. Morality could be taught later.

*

Why do you think you’re an elementalist when no one else in your family is?

Harry snorted. Tom had been asking those sorts of questions ever since Harry had told the diary he was an elemental mage. He wrote back the same answer he wrote to most of them, which was simply I don’t know.

But don’t you think that it’s the kind of thing that would be interesting to research?

Harry sighed and flopped back on his bed. It was late at night, and the second-year Gryffindor boys’ bedroom resounded with the snores of the others, from Felix’s light snuffling to Ron’s baritone. As usual, Harry was short on sleep. When he did sleep, he had the same stupid dream about the path in the forest and the orange moon shining overhead and the distant voice calling for help.

Awake or asleep, Harry wasn’t about to blindly follow a path into a forest that looked a lot like the Forbidden one.

A swirl of movement from the side caught his eye. Harry turned his head and laughed a little when Tom’s handwriting formed his name. For someone who had been living in a diary for over fifty years, according to him, Tom was pretty impatient.

Why don’t you research it?

Harry flipped over and wrote back, Where would I find the material? The most likely place would be private Potter genealogical records, and I don’t have access to those here at the school. And if I tried to do it when I go to the Potters’ house for the holidays, they’d want to know what I’m looking for.

Why would that be a problem? There was a pause, and then Tom’s intricate hand began a few lines below that. For that matter, why do you refer to them as the Potters and not your parents all the time?

Harry rolled his tongue around his mouth. Then he shrugged a little. Drip-feeding some information to Tom couldn’t hurt. It wasn’t like Harry ever intended to show this diary to the Potters or Felix and ask them to answer the questions.

They just think that I’m weak and my magic is childish because it doesn’t use a wand. That I have King Canute’s Disease and need to catch up to other children. I haven’t told them about my elemental magic and don’t intend to.

Silence, which meant a blank page, from the diary. Harry shook his head, closed it and tucked it under his pillow, and rolled over to try and get some sleep.

The stupid dream with the orange moon and the path in the forest came back. Harry scowled at the path, ignored the pleading voice, and sat down leaning against a tree, closing his eyes. It felt solid, much more real than any dream he’d ever had, but so what? He would just outwait his brain until it got bored with this and gave him something else.

“What an interesting mindscape.”

Harry jolted, and his eyes flew open. A boy who looked about sixteen or seventeen was standing in front of him, looking around with sharp, interested dark eyes. His hair was dark, too, and curled around his temples in a way that emphasized the paleness of his skin. Harry supposed other people would probably think he was handsome.

Harry just watched him in silence, because this was probably the result of a spell, and he had no idea who had cast it on him, but he was prepared to move in a second and burn this magical projection of a human if he had to. But he was trying to listen to Theo and not be so hasty. So he waited.

The boy turned around and caught sight of Harry. He smiled. He wore a prefect’s badge and a Slytherin tie. “Harry Potter, I assume?” He sat down across the path from Harry, with a tree at his back as well. “Tom Riddle at your service.” He inclined his head, eyes narrowing. “You look different than I expected.”

Harry ignored that. “How did you get into my head?”

Riddle’s smile widened. “Do you know, I’m not sure? I’ve never been able to do this before. Usually I would say that it’s a similarity in our minds or our magic, but I am certainly not an elemental wizard.” He continued examining Harry. “Do you know anything else it could be?”

Help. Help me.

The voice echoed down the path, and Harry jerked his head in the direction of it. “I think some arsehole cast a spell on me and put me in this bloody dream and is trying to make me go down that path to help them. Or help someone else they like. I thought that might be your voice, but I suppose not, since they’re still talking and you’re here—”

Harry cut himself off, because Riddle’s eyes were wide and his expression was greedy, hungry. “What?” he asked warily, and gathered fire around himself.

“The voice you’re hearing?” Riddle cocked his head. “The one that’s calling for help?”

“Yes?”

Riddle’s smile widened more and more. “It’s speaking in Parseltongue, Harry. I think I have the answer to our similarity.”

Harry jerked back, and found himself flying out of the dream. He panted, one elbow braced on the bed, staring around. The diary was still under his pillow, as he could feel when he pushed cautiously down with his other elbow.

A dream. It was just a dream?

But then something stirred within him, a feeling like a cat stretching luxuriously in the sun, and a familiar voice whispered in his head, How endlessly interesting you are.

Chapter Text

I don’t see the point in remaining silent about your abilities. All it does is encourage people to look down on you. Like that nosy Gryffindor girl you met in the common room. What business does she have telling you not to worry, that you’ll get it someday, in that condescending tone?

Harry ignored the voice in his head. It was his own fault that it was there in the first place. Sitting in Transfiguration and carefully crafting the illusion of a beetle around his button didn’t require that much concentration, which in turn let him ignore the voice more easily.

If I were an elemental wizard, I would burn anyone who looked sideways at me.

And they would have noticed you and thrown you out, Harry thought, unable to resist the urge to respond. At least the only people I killed were ones where I could disguise the killing as an accident or blame someone else for it.

You are so much more powerful than they are, Riddle immediately responded. So much more interesting.

So much more foolish, to sleep with your diary under my pillow.

Riddle laughed. Harry went back to ignoring him again. For all he knew, talking to Riddle made him more powerful and more able to influence Harry. He was already in almost all of Harry’s dreams, smiling at him while the orange moon hovered overhead and the path led into the depths of the Forest.

“Mr. Potter, please show me your Transfiguration.”

Harry nodded and wove the illusion around the button again, using light and air. Professor McGonagall smiled approvingly as the image of a beetle with waving legs appeared, and luckily didn’t prod it with her wand to test that it was solid.

“Three points to Gryffindor, Mr. Potter,” she said, and turned around and walked towards the far side of the classroom, where Anthony Goldstein was struggling with his button.

Wouldn’t it be useful to know how to do real Transfiguration? Riddle asked coaxingly. To make it as real as you possibly can, and not just something that you have to fake?

Harry ignored him again as he tapped the illusion with his useless wand and unwove the light and air. He wondered if he could create more complex illusions. Probably, but not the same as actually changing the structure of the thing.

“Do you need some help, Harry?”

That was Hermione. Harry smiled politely at her. “That’s all right, Hermione, but I already got the Transfiguration. I don’t know if you saw. Professor McGonagall gave me a few points for it.”

“But it’s already gone off again. Do you need some help in getting it to stay?”

“No, thank you.”

She’s an interfering Mudblood, snarled Riddle in his head.

Harry struggled not to laugh, but the impulse must have got back to Riddle, because Harry’s mind filled with an ominous silence. Harry sat back and looked around the classroom. It seemed that only a few people were still having trouble; Goldstein had just achieved his Transfiguration. That meant Harry was about where he should be. He couldn’t seem like he was improving too fast when he had struggled with the subject all last year.

Why were you laughing at me? Riddle snarled.

Hermione’s impatience and surety that she knows best have nothing to do with her blood status, Harry told him lazily. Maybe Riddle would shut up if he realized how unsympathetic Harry was with his basic position. Draco Malfoy is twice as arrogant as she is and nowhere near as clever, and he’s a pureblood. You don’t have anything to say I want to listen to because you base it all on blood status.

To Harry’s astonishment, Riddle went silent. Harry blinked a little and then looked down at his button and pretended to focus on Transfiguring it again, while he considered this.

Riddle was smart enough to know when he was beaten, at least. Maybe he would leave Harry’s head soon when he realized how boring Harry was.

Not hardly, Riddle snarled.

Harry just smiled and kept “working.”

*

Ginny marched through the Ravenclaw common room and up into the first-year girls’ bedroom. Luna blinked up at her from her bed, which was right next to her trunk. Her extremely open and extremely messy trunk.

“They took your shoes again, didn’t they?” Ginny snarled.

Luna looked down at her hands. “Nargles,” she said softly, but her voice lacked conviction.

It would have been all right with Ginny if Luna had been blaming nargles because she really believed in them. It was what she did at home when she lost things. But it wasn’t all right when. Ginny knew very well that the “nargles” where their Housemates and Luna was only saying this because she didn’t think anyone would believe her.

“I’m going to make them give them back,” Ginny said.

Luna looked at her with wide eyes but said nothing, so Ginny whirled around again and marched down the stairs to the common room.

A third-year girl was displaying Luna’s pink shoes there, sticking her feet out and waggling them up and down one by one. Ginny walked straight up to her and punched her in the nose.

The girl went down with a shriek. A friend in the chair next to her shot out of the chair, yelping, “Hey!”

Ginny glared at her, and the girl shrank back. Then Ginny looked down at the girl on the floor, who was clutching a bloody nose, and said coldly, “You stole those shoes from my friend Luna Lovegood. Give them back.”

“You broke my nose!” the girl said, or at least Ginny thought that was what she said. She was saying it through her fingers and the bloody nose Ginny had given her, though, so Ginny wasn’t sure.

“Yes,” she chose to say anyway, and drew her wand and pointed it at the girl. The other girl, the one who’d jumped up, froze where she was reaching out for Ginny. “Because you took my friend’s things. Give them back.”

“Those aren’t Loony Lovegood’s shoes,” said a boy, uncertainly. Ginny stared at him for a second. She thought he was a second-year and his name was Terry Boot, but it didn’t matter that much right now.

“Oh, really? So when I went past a few minutes ago, she wasn’t bragging about how she’d stolen them from ‘the weird girl?’”

“It was just a bit of fun,” said the girl with the bloody nose, getting back to her feet. “You can’t hit people, not over a bit of fun—”

Ginny aimed her wand at her. “Give them back.”

“Or what? You’ll hex me?” The girl was already turning her head towards the fireplace, where a prefect was getting uncertainly to her feet. Ginny did know this one. Lanya Fawley, who had escorted them up to the Tower from dinner the first night. “Fawley, do something!”

“Yes,” Ginny said.

“Come on, Weasley,” Fawley said, lifting her hands. “It’s all just a bit of fun. Nothing to make a fuss over.”

“So if someone stole your shoes, you’d just stand around and laugh and smile?” Ginny asked. “Or if someone stole this git’s shoes?” She aimed her wand at the girl wearing Luna’s shoes again. “Okay. I’ll keep that in mind. I’ll have to learn wards for my trunk that bite.”

“It’s—it’s not the same thing,” Fawley said weakly.

“Who cares about Loony?” the girl with the shoes said sulkily.

“I do,” Ginny said, and hexed her.

It was a hex she definitely wasn’t supposed to know, one that made welts appear all along someone’s legs as though they’d been hit with something. But the twins had taught it to her, and Ginny couldn’t think of a better time to use it.

There was lots of shouting then, and Fawley came over and hauled Ginny to the entrance of the Tower by her arm. But Ginny got the chance to look over her shoulder and narrow her eyes at the girl wearing Luna’s shoes, who the others were calling Marietta, and she shuddered and looked as if she was going to faint.

So that made it less likely that someone was going to steal Luna’s shoes again.

*

Harry cocked his head when the twins came into the kitchens for their next elemental magic lesson. Blaise and Theo were already there, Blaise sitting with his eyes closed, meditating on wind. Jilly was also sitting on a small stone bench in front of the hearth, flickering fires rotating over her head like balls she wasn’t using her hands to juggle.

“What’s wrong?” Harry asked, ignoring the way that Theo’s hand twitched towards his wand. There obviously was something, given the dark scowls on the twins’ faces, but he didn’t think Fred and George were about to attack them.

“Flitwick gave Ginny a detention,” George said, and flopped into place on a bench. Riddle said something snide in Harry’s head about purebloods who weren’t graceful. Harry ignored it.

“She hexed a girl for stealing her friend Luna’s things,” Fred said. “And she’d deserve a detention for that, we agree—”

“The Welt-Littering Hex, couldn’t be prouder of her—”

“But Flitwick didn’t give detention to the girl who was stealing Luna’s things. Apparently he really only gives detentions for—”

“Using or misusing magic,” George said, pitching his voice high in what was probably meant to be an imitation of Flitwick’s slightly squeaky tones. “Not—”

“Teasing people, calling them Loony, or stealing their things.” Fred folded his arms, looking mutinous.

“Do you think it’s likely to continue?” Harry asked quietly. He could think of people who would be put off by hexes like the one George had mentioned, but it definitely wouldn’t have worked with everyone in Gryffindor.

“Yeah.” Fred frowned harder. “Which means that Ginny will keep hexing them or punching them—she punched the girl who stole Luna’s shoes first, apparently—and she’ll keep getting detentions.”

“So we wanted to ask, O Fearless Leader—”

“If Ginny and Luna could learn elemental magic.” Fred leaned forwards on his bench and concentrated on Harry as if he was the only person in the room.

That is as it should be, Riddle said, and then threw a private fit when Harry ignored him some more.

Harry blinked. He supposed he could bring Ginny and Luna into this. He still thought fondly of Ginny for giving him the diary because she thought he needed a friend—it wasn’t like she could have known what was hiding inside it—and Luna was a gentle girl who seemed harmless. But he didn’t know how well they could keep secrets.

He glanced at Theo. Theo inclined his head with a slight shake. Harry focused back on Fred and George. “It doesn’t sound like Ginny is good at keeping secrets, and Luna might talk about it the same way she talks about her imaginary creatures. And if Ginny is using it to hex people, how is it going to stay a secret for very long?”

“We’ll teach her some hexes that could cover for it,” said George eagerly.

“And no one pays attention to lovely Luna anyway,” Fred added.

“That’s not acceptable,” Theo said tightly, and Harry felt a slight shudder coming from him, like his magic was leaking into the air beyond his body with sharp motions. “Not when it puts Harry at risk.”

“How would it put him at risk?” Fred looked baffled.

“My parents can’t know,” Harry said.

“How often do your parents—”

“Come to Hogwarts and talk to our little sister, anyway?”

“And you think they’d never talk to her during the holidays?” Harry shook his head. “It’s not that I don’t want to help them,” he added, when he saw the way Fred and George were looking at him. “And I think it’s cruel that people in Ravenclaw are bullying Luna by stealing her things, and I don’t have a problem with Ginny hexing or punching people. But if they can’t keep it a secret—”

“What would you need to bring them in?” It was Fred who asked. George had a stern mask on his face, but Fred’s eyes were gleaming with something different. It was one of the few times that Harry had seen them not looking much alike.

“A vow,” Theo said. “Nothing elaborate, just a Silencing Vow. They literally won’t be able to tell anyone it’s elemental magic. Their voices will give out whenever they try, and their hands will cramp up if they try to write about it.”

Fred paused. “That sounds like a Dark spell.”

Theo gave them back a smile that caused George to flinch a little. “I can cast it.”

“Of course you can, Mr. Nott,” Fred said, and Harry started to shift to move in between him and Theo. Theo just put a hand on Harry’s shoulder and stood there. Harry sighed and moved back to his original position.

“All right,” Harry said. “Approach them about it, and if they agree to the vow, bring them to the kitchen with you for the next lesson. But don’t tell them ahead of time what they’ll be learning or what they’ll have to make the vow about.”

“Thank you, O Fearless Leader!”

“Thank you, Prince of Gryffindors!”

This is the kind of loyalty that could make you a leader, Riddle whispered, stirring restlessly. If you only knew.

Harry said nothing, because that was the only way to deal with Riddle—other than what’ he’d planned to work on tonight—and just nodded. “Get them to promise to swear the vow first, mind.”

“We will,” George said, and from the way Fred nodded along with him, Harry was sure that they’d at least propose it to Ginny and Luna that way.

*

What you plan will not work.

That was exactly the kind of thing Riddle would say, so Harry ignored him as usual. He dropped the diary by the shores of the lake and crouched down in front of it, closing his eyes as he drew on fire.

Do you hear me? It will not work.

Harry opened his eyes with fire churning in his palms and heating his blood. He stood up and extended his hands to point at the diary. The book seemed to shine, although that could have been a trick of the moonlight reflecting off the lake or the fire in Harry’s hands shining on it.

It will not—

Harry took a deep breath and unleashed the firestorm.

He’d chosen his spot carefully, a part of the shore that was out of sight of both the castle and Hagrid’s hut, and his time carefully, a little after midnight, when the prefects would have gone to bed and the patrolling professors wouldn’t be especially alert. He could make this burn as long as he wanted to, and he could calm down any fire that got out of control so that it wouldn’t burn anything beyond a small patch of grass.

The flames coiled around the diary and pressed in against the pages. Harry heard what sounded like a distant cry, one that had more than a trace of a hiss to it, and he smiled grimly. He didn’t care how long this would take. He was going to destroy it.

But it wouldn’t burn.

Harry paced slowly along the edge of the fire, staring. The inner heart of it was a flame so brilliant a white that it was hard to look at directly. Harry knew that the heat was perfect. It could have charred bones to ash with the temperature. In fact, it was crisping the grass and the earth below it and turning it to charcoal as Harry watched.

No, the diary wasn’t damaged. Not a page had turned black or crisped. The distant voice still sounded like it was screaming, but no, it wasn’t burning.

Harry dismissed the fire with a wave of his fingers. Coldness that had nothing to do with the air around him penetrated his bones and coiled in his chest as he stared at the diary lying quiet on the grass. He knew if he touched it, it would be cool.

I told you, Riddle’s voice whispered.

Harry took a slow breath. He had done his best to ignore Riddle, sure that he would be able to destroy the damn book that had housed him. But obviously it wasn’t working. He tilted his head a little and murmured, What do you want?

`Why, Harry. Riddle’s voice was heavy with something that sounded like delight. Are you ready to bargain?

You can feel exactly what I feel, know exactly what I am, Harry said, and summoned the memories of putting Marcus Flint and the Figgs under the Imperius Curse to the forefront of his mind. You know that I would destroy you if I could. I’m not bargaining because I want to be a leader or want power, whichever you think would be a good idea to corrupt me. I’m bargaining because I don’t have a choice.

Riddle was silent for a long moment. When he spoke again, his voice sounded odd. Why did you stand against Lord Voldemort?

He tried to kill Theo.

That’s—that’s not a reason, Riddle said. He sounded almost shocked. When he offered you the benefit of his power and expertise? When you learned so much from him during the year he was here?

Harry chuckled. He could feel Riddle shifting around the edges of his thoughts, poking at his memories. They lit up briefly as though someone was setting fire to them and watching them not-burn like the diary. He told me my magic was elemental and helped me practice the Imperius Curse. Otherwise? He offered me nothing. He wanted to control me. He tried to kill my brother. He tried to kill Theo. What would I take from him? He would have made me into a slave or killed me when he decided I was inconvenient.

He would have not.

And you know so much about his motives?

Riddle paused for long moments. Then he said in a careful voice, Why are those other boys so important to you?

Theo was my first friend. My brother is my only blood family who’s worth anything. Harry didn’t bother lying. It wasn’t as if he could, with Riddle in his fucking head. I want to save them and protect them. They’re loyal to me. I’m loyal to them.

That is a weakness.

Harry laughed aloud, and ignored the way that the air seemed to bend towards him, listening. There was no one near them. His magic would have reacted if there was, and at the moment, it was coiled around his shoulders, hissing like a snake contemplating its own scales.

You think so? You think that having friends and allies you can always depend on is a weakness? That my brother is keeping some of my secrets from my parents, and that’s a weakness?

You should show yourself forth in strength. Dazzle your parents and everyone else who would look down on you. Prove that you don’t need friends or allies by showing yourself as too powerful to touch.

That’s not what I want.

You don’t need friends or allies or brothers.

Maybe not. But I want them.

Riddle’s voice fell silent. Maybe he had given them up in frustration. Harry stared at the diary, and decided that if he couldn’t destroy it with fire, he would try with water.

Drowning it in the lake didn’t work, and neither did trying to rip it apart with wind. Harry supposed the only thing he could do was bury it in the earth and hope that no one would find it. He turned and marched into the Forbidden Forest with it.

Do you think that will work?

I think that you’re probably too proud to try and appeal to centaurs, and they’re the only inhabitants of the forest I know about with hands to write back to you.

Riddle snarled in his head and then fell silent. Harry had the impression of him turning his head to sniff at something in the distance, and knew what he was sensing a moment later.

There was only a sliver of moon overhead, and no direct, clear path in front of him leading into the depths of the forest. But there was a voice in the distance, calling, exactly as he had heard in his dreams.

Help me. Please help me.

A voice in Parseltongue, Harry reminded himself. Even if part of him reached out towards the voice instinctively, wanting to help, thinking about helping a being trapped as he had once been trapped at the Dursleys’, it was useless. It was a snake, who would probably attack him for releasing it.

Why do you think that?

Harry had gone back to his policy of not responding to Riddle. He picked a clearing that was several hundred feet from the edge of the forest and knelt, using his magic to scrape a deep hole in far less time than someone else would have been able to. He dropped the diary into it and considered it for a long moment.

An ordinary wizard would be able to put an alarm ward on it that would tell them when someone had disturbed the dirt, Riddle said snidely.

Harry shrugged and tamped down the dirt over the hole, then tugged on a boulder to roll into place over it. It was true that he couldn’t be sure someone wouldn’t disturb it and would have to come back at some point to check, but the boulder made it less likely that someone would bother. Then Harry used wind to sort the dirt so that it was less obvious the place had been disturbed at all.

You know that Dumbledore is going to figure out you did that?

Why? Harry asked, and then frowned because Riddle had tricked Harry into talking to him.

Riddle snickered. He can read minds. All he has to do is look into your eyes and pull your most recent memories to the surface, and he’ll know what you did.

Harry felt something inside him freeze in a way that hadn’t happened since last year, when he realized for once and all that the Potters would send him back to the Dursleys. But it didn’t shatter. He said, Why hasn’t he figured out so far that I had the diary or used elemental magic to kill the troll, then? Or that I used the Imperius Curse to free Theo?

He probably had no reason to look for that. But he could change his mind at any time and probe into your thoughts.

So what should I do?

There is a discipline called Occlumency that can shield your memories. It’s difficult to learn. Lucky for you, I know it.

And what do you want in return?

There’s the part of you that the Hat wanted to Sort into Slytherin, Riddle said, his voice bubbling like a mistaken potion. I do want something in return, but it should be simple for you do, since I can lead you to the entrance. Have you ever heard of something called the Chamber of Secrets?

*

Harry seemed more withdrawn in their next Potions lesson than Albus had ever seen him.

“My dear boy, is something wrong?” he asked, leaning forwards across the desk. He had been lecturing about the Draught of Peace—not something Severus would have his students brew for years yet, but connected to the Improved Calming Draught that Harry would be brewing next. Albus saw no reason not to introduce relevant knowledge when it appeared.

Harry finished writing down the sentence he was in the middle of and then glanced up, his eyes going to Fawkes for a moment before returning to alight on the bridge of Albus’s nose. “No, sir.”

Albus sighed and tried to catch Harry’s eyes. That last bit had sounded like an obvious lie, and Harry was more important than most other students, so a bit of Legilimency wouldn’t be out of order.

Harry looked down again.

“I cannot help you unless you tell me what is wrong,” Albus said, as coaxingly as possible. This would have been easier with Felix, who had known Albus growing up and considered him a family friend. Harry appeared to consider Albus as nothing but the instrument of his suffering in the Muggle world. And while Albus was sorry for that, there were larger considerations involved in putting Harry in that position, including the fact that Harry never should have survived that night. “I know that I did not listen to you last year when you tried to tell me about Professor Quirrell attempting to kill your brother, and I should have, considering he was later involved in the attempted theft of the Philosopher’s Stone. I am sorry. Will you not confide what you are concerned about to me now, Harry? We don’t want another incident like the one where you lashed out at Professor Snape.”

“I promise there won’t be, sir.”

Harry’s voice was heavy with certainty, which intrigued Albus. “Can you tell me why?”

“Half the people who were in the class with me that day have told me how stupid it was and how I can’t do things like that.”

“I must confess,” Albus said quietly, “I had hoped to hear an answer that touched on your regretting it, Harry.”

“I do regret it, sir.” Now Harry sounded a little surprised.

And that sounded as truth. Albus nodded. Perhaps Harry was less sunken into the mindset of a sulky child than Albus had feared. “Good. Now perhaps we’ll return to the Potions lecture?”

He hoped for a small smile from Harry, but Harry only nodded seriously and reached for his quill. Albus sighed. He had known less serious Slytherins.

Perhaps one day, he will have the right mindset.

*

Ginny stepped slowly into the kitchen. She had expected a prank out of the twins, and had let them know she would hex them if they were lying. But several people were gathered in the kitchen, and although she didn’t really know Nott or Zabini at all, the twins being here reassured her a little. So did the house-elf, and Luna walking so close to her back that Ginny could feel her warmth.

She couldn’t help disbelieving a little, though, once she had figured out what the twins were probably hinting at and had combined that with her memories of the accidental magic that had saved Luna’s life. Elemental wizards and witches were legendary. Why would one just randomly pop up at Hogwarts? And be Felix Potter’s older brother, who was weak with a wand the way Mum had clucked about last year?

Harry turned towards her. Ginny started. He looked different here than he had in the corridors or the Great Hall, and now she remembered how he had looked over the summer. When he had somehow saved Luna from falling off a broom.

Mastery of wind would do that, Ginny thought. She cleared her throat. “We have to swear an oath to learn this?”

“Yes,” Harry said, and nodded a little off to the side. “Theo.”

Nott turned and came towards her. Ginny studied the way he walked, as if he was a stalking cat, and thought she’d like to learn how to do that. If everything went well, maybe they could learn more than elemental magic.

“This is a Silencing Vow,” Nott said calmly when he stopped in front of them. “It will help stop you from talking about what you learn here. Your voices will give out whenever you try. Your hands will cramp up if you try to write about it. I would advise you not to attempt to find ways around this. The charm can’t technically prevent someone from putting your memories into a Pensieve, but it will try. And you may not like what it does.”

Ginny could see the twins looking a little pale from the side of her vision. She didn’t care. She nodded. “I want to learn how to protect Luna and do more about protecting myself.” Marietta Edgecombe had been hexing Ginny in the back whenever she could in the corridors. Since she kept it out of the common room, the prefects weren’t doing anything about it.

And neither was Flitwick. Ginny was pretty disappointed in him. He had said that punching and hexing were worse than insults and stealing, but he hadn’t done anything to Edgecombe, which meant Luna’s things were still getting stolen. Apparently Edgecombe denying that she’d stolen Luna’s shoes and saying she’d just “found” them meant it was her word against Ginny’s and their Head of House just gave up.

If he wouldn’t do anything, then Ginny would.

“Speak the words after me,” Nott said, drawing his wand and swaying it back and forth over Ginny’s head. “I promise I will not try to tell anyone else about Harry Potter’s elemental magic.”

“I promise I will not try to tell anyone else about Harry Potter’s elemental magic,” Ginny and Luna chorused together, Ginny feeling a bit of smugness that she’d guessed right. Ginny watched as some of the sparks falling from Nott’s wand changed color, becoming black and then red. They hovered in front of Ginny and Luna’s faces for a second before blazing forwards and settling into their lips and hands.

Ginny jumped, because it stung. Luna just looked wide-eyed back and forth from Harry to Nott and then said, “You have loyal friends.”

“Yes,” Harry said, smiling for the first time. He looked a lot younger when he did that and a lot more relaxed. “And I hope that I’ll be able to count you as two of them.” He nodded, and Nott put his wand away and walked over to stand beside Harry. Ginny squinted.

They might be friends, but they didn’t stand like it. Nott stood like he was Harry’s employee or something, ready to be ordered to do things.

“The first step to mastering elemental magic is meditation.”

Ginny narrowed her eyes a little. “That’s going to take forever.”

Harry didn’t move, but a curl of flame rose from his shoulder and slid down to encircle his wrist like he was charming a snake. He smiled at her, and the fire turned into a ball hovering above the center of his palm. Harry flexed his hand, and it became an arrow. Then it turned into a small fiery dragon with real wings. Ginny gasped as she watched the dragon nestle on Harry’s shoulder, against his neck.

It didn’t appear to take any effort on his part. It was dazzling.

“It takes a while, yeah,” Harry said. “But the rewards are worth it.”

Luna had already plopped down in the middle of the kitchen floor and closed her eyes with a look of determination on her face. Ginny nodded slowly and sat down beside her.

Yes. If we can do this, it will be more than worth it.

*

“Do you know anything about the Chamber of Secrets, Theo?”

Theo blinked and looked up in surprise from his Charms homework. Harry was leaning back in his chair on the other side of their usual library table, and the stillness of the air around them meant he had set up his elemental equivalent of Privacy Charms. Theo put his quill down slowly.

“Not a lot,” he said. “It was supposedly opened fifty years ago, and a student at the time died. And then the attacks stopped. It can supposedly only be opened by Slytherin’s Heir.”

“Slytherin’s Heir,” Harry said softly.

Theo leaned in. He hadn’t considered this before, but he thought now that he should have. “Do you think that’s you? Since you can speak Parseltongue?”

Harry blinked and looked at him. “Is that supposedly a defining feature of Slytherin’s Heirs?”

“Yes,” Theo said, as patiently as he could. Harry had worked, in the last few weeks, on improving his marks and doing the homework for classes that the professors assigned instead of exclusively practicing with elemental or wandless magic. But he was still determined to ignore what Theo thought might be his most fascinating kind of magic. “Haven’t you looked that up at all? Isn’t it interesting to you?”

“It’s mostly inconvenient, because animals don’t like me.”

Theo sighed. “Yes,” he repeated. “Yes, it’s a defining feature of Slytherin’s line. You might be able to find the Chamber of Secrets and open it, at that.”

“It seems odd that no one would claim that the Potters were a Slytherin family, given that,” Harry said, and toyed with his quill for a second. A wind blew past his hair, and Theo suffered a distant pulse of envy. He was getting better with elemental magic himself, and he suspected his best element would be air, but Harry just used it so easily. “And that no one else in my family has it.”

“How close have they ever been to snakes?”

“What does that matter?”

“I mean that perhaps they are Parselmouths, but they don’t know that because they don’t spend enough time around snakes.”

Harry pondered that, but ended up shaking his head. “I don’t see how they could be. Owls and other animals act perfectly normal around them.”

“I’ve never heard that Parselmouths have animals react to them the way you do, either.”

“So you think it might not be the Parseltongue, but something else?”

Harry sounded so discouraged that Theo blinked at him. “Why do you sound so upset?”

“It could be a Dark curse, the way Lily thought at first, just not one the Healers were prepared to find.” Harry tugged on his hair for a moment. “I just—I’m tired of being cursed and special and different, Theo. I wish I was normal.”

“Do you? Really?”

Theo had pitched his voice in the low way that he only used when he wanted to attract and hold Harry’s attention. Harry blinked at him, and then lowered his head and chuckled, wiping a hand down his face.

“All right, no,” he admitted. “I wouldn’t be able to protect or teach other people then, and we wouldn’t be friends.”

Theo just shrugged. He personally thought he would have found something in Harry Potter worth paying attention to even if he hadn’t had wandless magic and had just been the Boy-Who-Lived’s shy, Muggle-raised brother, but he could see why Harry didn’t think that, and it wasn’t to Theo’s advantage to try and make Harry think that.

What mattered was what they had here and now. Their friendship.

*

Only much later did Theo think about how strange it was for Harry to be asking about the Chamber of Secrets given that he wasn’t interested in researching Parseltongue, and by then it was too late.

Chapter Text

This is ridiculous, Harry thought, as he climbed out of the bottom of the sludge-soaked pipe.

Who’s making sure that Dumbledore can’t touch your thoughts? Who’s teaching you about the secrets of the school and giving you places to hide?

Harry grimaced as he used wind and water from the floor to scrape the gunk off his robes. It was true. Riddle had done that. He was forever showing Harry passages and corners and alcoves around the castle that Harry didn’t think even the Weasley twins knew about. And he made quiet fun of stupid people in the back of Harry’s head all the time, where Harry could hear it and laugh at it but not get in trouble or make people think he was mental by saying or laughing at any of that out loud.

Harry didn’t have many friends or allies. And Riddle wasn’t capable of speaking to other people now that the diary was buried, as far as Harry knew. Harry would keep the bargain that he’d made to get hold of the knowledge Riddle had.

Further down the tunnel, Riddle said now, his voice vibrating with excitement.

“As if I couldn’t figure that out,” Harry muttered, speaking aloud now that they were alone. He gingerly picked his way further down the tunnel, over small animal bones. He paused when he saw a shadow of skin up ahead.

Even if it’s the basilisk, she won’t eat you. Not a Parselmouth.

“She might kill or paralyze me before she knows what she’s doing, though,” Harry muttered, creating a hovering shield of thick air in front of his eyes.

She would not.

Riddle only sounded as though he was distracted, though, listening for someone outside Harry’s hearing. Harry shook his head and kept walking further into the tunnel, dodging past the skin and studying it a little as he did. It felt smooth and cool beneath his hand, and so hard that he thought he could have torn at it with sharp rocks and not rent it.

Of course you could do that. Basilisk hide is one of the toughest and most magic-resistant substances there is.

Harry just shrugged and leaped over a small tumble of rock to get to the doors to the Chamber of Secrets Riddle insisted were there. “I don’t know this stuff off the top of my head.”

Stuff, Riddle scoffed. You should work to improve your vocabulary.

Harry made an immediate promise to himself not to do that. At least, not when he was talking to Riddle in his head. Riddle would just have to suffer it.

Harry was still grinning when he came around the corner and halted at the sight of the doors. They stretched all the way to the ceiling, and were covered with giant snakes that looked like they had emeralds for eyes. “Wow. Fancy.”

Fancy, Riddle said scathingly.

Harry took a step back so that he could look up at the snakes, ignoring the way that Riddle was now muttering to himself. Their heads were so far above Harry’s head that he wondered for a moment how they would “hear” the Parseltongue word Riddle had said he would have to speak to open them. But then he shook his head. Magic, of course.

“Open,” he hissed. It felt odd to speak Parseltongue to carvings of snakes instead of to a living creature, but the doors segmented at once and allowed him into the Chamber.

It was a disappointment. The stone cavern was as long and wide as Riddle had promised, and the pillars were carved with the ornamental snakes he had described, but there were puddles everywhere, and only a few feeble torches flickering on the walls. Apparently those were lit with magic, but it didn’t look like strong magic to Harry. And there were more scattered bones here. Harry wrinkled his nose at the musty smell.

How can you overlook the statue?

Harry stared doubtfully at the statue. It was technically impressive, but only because of its size. Salazar Slytherin was one ugly man, he thought at Riddle.

Riddle went off into a cascade of rage and spluttering. Harry looked around again, and picked his way through the puddles towards one of the far walls, to see if there were any interesting doors or entrances to other passages.

No. All he could see was smooth, featureless stone. Harry tried hissing it at a few times, but nothing happened.

You should face the statue and say “Speak to me, Slytherin, greatest of the Hogwarts Four,” the way I told you. Riddle was apparently over his snit.

Why should I do that?

That is the dwelling place of the basilisk.

But I’ve told you why I don’t particularly want to meet her right now.

You will do as I tell you! Riddle howled, and then his mind crashed into Harry’s.

Harry had been half-expecting this, ever since he had woken to find that Riddle had escaped the diary. Of course he would want to be more than a memory in a diary, or a silent voice trapped in someone’s head. He would want to possess a human body that he could use to manipulate people and accomplish whatever his goals were beyond setting the basilisk free.

Harry coiled himself up and pushed utter rejection at Riddle, the way he had pushed utter will into his elemental power and his ouroboros when he’d created the image for himself of the Imperius Curse. Riddle snarled and flailed around his head, and at one point grabbed something that seemed to unravel part of Harry’s thoughts. Harry pushed back, and Riddle lost hold of whatever he’d grabbed.

What was that? Riddle gasped. Why could I not—

Harry slammed more rejection against him, so fierce and insistent that Riddle spat at him like an offended cobra and retreated to sulk in a corner of Harry’s mind. Harry stood where he was, breathing in silence, and Riddle stared back at him from that distant corner of his mind.

I do not know what you are, Riddle finally whispered.

“Not your obedient servant,” Harry said aloud, and glanced around the Chamber again. He would have asked Riddle once if there were any secret passages or things more interesting than the obvious down here, but he knew now he couldn’t trust him. Maybe Harry would come down again later and explore.

But for now, no. And no sign of more secrets, either. Harry turned and marched out of the Chamber.

You promised that you would release the basilisk!

I didn’t. I said that I would come down to the Chamber and look around. That was all. You were there for the wording of that promise, Harry taunted as he reached the tunnel and closed his eyes for a second, calling up his will. You should have paid attention to it and asked for something else if you didn’t like it.

Riddle grumbled and snarled at him again, but fell silent as a long pull of wind lifted Harry from the stone and sent him skidding down the tunnel. Harry laughed aloud as he spread his arms and flew like a bird on the current, above the bones and muck on the floor, past the skin, and up the pipe that he’d ridden down.

How did you do that? Riddle asked, as Harry landed on the tile of the bathroom and knelt down to hiss the sink shut.

You were there when I practiced it, Harry muttered, and checked the hem of his robes for any sign of the gunk from the Chamber. He didn’t find anything, and nodded to himself, satisfied.

You didn’t do that!

No, but I was calling up the wind and watching it blow objects around to see how strong it would have to be to move heavy ones. What did you think I was doing?

Riddle was silent as Harry made the journey back to Gryffindor Tower, where Felix ambushed him and pulled Harry over to sit on the couch in front of the fireplace next to him. Felix was grinning, and it was easy for Harry to smile back and ignore Riddle’s grumbles. “What is it, Flea?”

“Oh, Merlin, not you too,” Felix said, but he only rolled his eyes as he pulled a piece of parchment out of his pocket, so Harry knew he wasn’t too upset. “You know I got that stupid non-answer from Mum and Dad when I wrote to them.”

Harry nodded. He hadn’t really thought Lily and James would tell Felix anything substantial. It had just been a bunch of platitudes and reassurances that Felix might not understand right now but they had done what they thought was best.

But then Felix had written to Sirius. And maybe because Sirius felt more guilty or because Felix had said Sirius hadn’t grown up in the best way, either, he must have written something clearer back. Harry leaned over to read the letter.

Dear Felix,

You can’t ever show your parents this letter. I already know that James would never forgive me for writing it, and I know that you might not think much of him right now, but he’s the only friend I still have from school. I can’t have him find out.

But I can’t let your questions go unanswered, either.

There was a prophecy made not long before July 1980 that said a child would be born as the seventh month dies with the power to defeat You-Know-Who. For various reasons that they didn’t even tell me, James and Lily had some reason to suspect their child was the one. They mourned him, but they also thought there was no way that a mere baby could kill a Dark Lord, and they knew that You-Know-Who already knew about the prophecy.

So they baited a trap and set it. Harry was the bait.

They—we—used a ritual that was mainly a series of runes set around the nursery. We thought that when You-Know-Who stepped into the runes, they would activate and grasp his life and Harry’s and entwine them together. You-Know-Who would be fighting to escape and kill Harry at about the same level of passion. That’s what Albus said, and he knew the bastard best. You-Know-Who used to be his student.

The trap would activate and kill You-Know-Who because he could only escape if he stopped trying to kill Harry, and Albus was convinced he never would. So we would at least win the destruction of You-Know-Who’s body, if not all of him, and have enough time to plan our next move if his wraith or something was still out there.

We knew Peter was a traitor. We let him lead You-Know-Who into that room. Where an innocent baby was waiting.

We found Peter, dead. We found You-Know-Who’s body a pile of ashes. We found both you and Harry still there, alive, instead of just one child, the way we…

The line trailed off into a long line of blots. Harry had to cock his head and turn it back and forth carefully to make out the words that Sirius had apparently scrawled there when he got tired of blotting up the paper and wrote normally again.

The way we expected.

There are no words for this, Felix. No words for how sorry I am. But James and Lily were—upset. They had planned for Harry to die, accepted it as best as they could, and here he was, still alive, and they didn’t know how. Not to mention the Dark magic in the room, pulsing harder whenever you came closer together. And you almost immediately started having a seizure, Felix. Lily was sure you wouldn’t survive the night.

It’s not right, it’s not fair, but yes, they did push Harry out of their hearts long before that night. They forced themselves not to care what happened to him, because they thought that protecting their child was less important than protecting the world from You-Know-Who.

It’s not right, it’s not fair, but that’s the way they thought.

The Dursleys were a convenient place to put him, and a convenient way to protect Muggles who might have been targets for the Death Eaters under the protection of wards that wouldn’t have worked if someone magical wasn’t living with them. I don’t think—

Another trail of ink blots. Harry scooted closer to Felix and tilted his head, while Felix obligingly tilted the parchment.

I don’t think it would have bothered them too much if Harry had died from the abuse.

Harry closed his eyes and contained his rage. He couldn’t burn down the common room. He couldn’t send wind across all the miles between him and James and Lily and toss them out of the windows of the nice house they’d been living in while he suffered and starved in a cupboard. He couldn’t free the basilisk and send it after them.

Why not? Riddle’s voice whispered hungrily in the back of his head. Why couldn’t you do that?

You want me to, Harry thought back at him. Enough reason to refuse.

He took a deep breath and looked at Felix. Felix was wearing a grim little smile, which Harry didn’t understand. Harry blinked at him. “What about this makes you happy?” he asked, and waved his hand at the parchment. “It pretty much condemns Lily and James, but you grew up with them. They were your Mum and Dad—”

“And they taught me right from wrong,” Felix said, leaning closer. “And this is wrong. But at least now we know something. We know there was a prophecy. That’s a place to start.”

“How is it a place to start?” Harry demanded, and then tried to calm himself down, because he probably sounded hysterical. “It could have said anything, it could have been given any time—”

“The Department of Mysteries has a room filled with all the prophecies that have ever been heard in wizarding Britain.”

“What’s the Department of Mysteries?”

Felix blinked at him for a long time. Then he said, “Merlin, Harry, you have to study some more of the basic history and context of the magical world.”

Harry felt his cheeks heat up. He thought he probably shouldn’t say to Felix that he didn’t care since he would never work for the Ministry of Magic and Dragon-Keepers had no need for such things. He had already promised Theo that he would work harder on his marks and not just dream of being a Dragon-Keeper.

So he said only, “Okay. But what are they?”

*

Felix blinked again and managed not to shake his head at Harry. Sometimes he felt as if he was helplessly naïve and small beside Harry. He wasn’t the one who had survived years of childhood abuse and still managed to act relatively normal around people. He wasn’t the one who had made friends with Slytherins after growing up with almost no friends. He wasn’t the one who had managed to accept his brother after hearing that his parents had discarded him in favor of that brother.

But then Harry would say something like this, and Felix would remember that he did know things Harry didn’t, and he did have something to contribute.

So he rolled his shoulders and said quietly, “They’re one of the bigger departments in the Ministry. They study the biggest questions and the most obscure magic in our world. And the Hall of Prophecies is one of their biggest rooms.”

“But we couldn’t just stroll in there and ask for a prophecy, could we?”

“No,’ Felix admitted. “But now that we know that a prophecy like that exists, we have a place to start.”

Harry was quiet for long moments, and Felix let him be. Then Harry looked up and asked, “Why aren’t you more upset?’

“I told you—”

“No, not about Lily and James. I mean, why aren’t you upset about the prophecy being about—me, apparently? I don’t know why they thought it was me instead of you, but they did. That means—why aren’t you more upset about losing your status as the Boy-Who-Lived?”

Felix sighed and sat back. That had been a question he’d hoped Harry wouldn’t ask until later, because he wasn’t sure he could answer it. But Harry was sitting in front of him, the brother betrayed by everyone else with the last name Potter, and Felix couldn’t hold off on answering him until he felt better about it.

He said simply, “Because when I started doubting them, I had to start doubting everything they ever said. That included the part about me being destined to defeat Voldemort. And it being an okay decision to send you away. And—”

His voice broke. He took off his glasses and wiped his eyes with one hand, ignoring the way that it made Harry get all blurry. He knew his brother was still right there, and that was the important thing.

He put up a Privacy Charm. Ron was on the other side of the room and casting him alarmed glances over the chess game he was playing against Dean. Felix couldn’t have him stomping over here to interfere right now. He didn’t know how soon he could tell Ron the truth, if ever.

“It was wrong,” Felix said, softly, deeply.

“What do you mean?”

“What they did to you,” Felix said. With his glasses back on, he could see Harry’s eyebrows creeping up, and he knew he probably wasn’t explaining himself well, but these were the words he had. “They always talked about how certain things were wrong and we needed to stop them. Well, this was wrong. And they didn’t apologize for it and they didn’t explain it and I never heard a word about the prophecy and I might still not have if I hadn’t written to Sirius and they were wrong and they went on and on pretending they were right and—”

Felix stopped, panting. At the moment, he thought it would have been nice if he’d ever had an accidental magic outburst. It would have relieved some of the pressure building up in him.

But he couldn’t, and at least Harry reached out and curled a hand around Felix’s wrist and held him. Felix leaned a little closer to Harry and shut his eyes.

“The Boy-Who-Lived thing means nothing if it’s being used for wrong things. They did something worse than half the things they ever told me about being wrong,” he finally whispered. “And they kept on defending it. They would have sacrificed you. A baby. And then they sent you away because they just didn’t care and it was a convenient excuse, like Sirius said. I can’t—I don’t—I can’t forgive them for that.”

How many times had Mum and Dad cautioned Felix against trusting anyone who had the Dark Mark, even if they had apologized and turned to the right side? They seemed to think that Snape was the only exception, and then only because Dumbledore had vouched for him. They didn’t embrace forgiveness.

How could they think Felix would forgive them once he found out?

“We know, now.”

Felix nodded and sniffled. He wiped his tears away again, taking off his glasses, and Harry took them gently from him and placed them back on his face. He was smiling, Felix saw as Harry’s face swam back into view.

“We have the Department of Mysteries and the knowledge that a prophecy exists,” Harry says simply. “That means we can start investigating. It’s better than nothing.”

“That doesn’t explain the book I found,” Felix murmured. Translating the book was still slow going. He could write down the words he had memorized and the Latin definitions and grammar he was learning, but that didn’t mean that a sentence about the sun and moon made any more sense when it seemed to be a combination of magical theory and poetry. “Or the thing locked in the drawer that felt like it wanted to eat me.”

“I know. But it’s more than we had before.”

That was true enough to make Felix relax. And if Harry could say that this was enough to begin the hunt, and live with it, then so could Felix.

*

Harry opened his eyes, and sighed. He was once again under a tree at the edge of the Forbidden Forest, with the orange moon hanging overheard and the distant Parseltongue voice crying for help, and Tom Riddle pacing back and forth in front of him.

“What do you want?” Harry asked, and leaned back against the tree behind him. Solid and strong, and the air around him had the crisp bite of autumn and the chill of real night.

Help me, sang the voice in the forest. Help me, please.

“Do you think it is true that you are the one the Dark Lord wanted to defeat?” Riddle turned to him with burning eyes. His hands were clenched and his body trembling, as if he were an owl about to spring after a mouse.

“I assume my parents thought it was true,” Harry said flatly. “And you know exactly how reliable their thought process is.”

“But he thought it was true, as well.”

“Yeah, but we’ve established that he’s not the sanest person around.”

Riddle said nothing, but just paced in a tight little circle. Then he turned around abruptly, sat down, and leaned forwards so that Harry was staring into his dark eyes from closer than they’d ever been before. Uneasy, Harry shifted back.

“I will give you whatever you want if you release the basilisk,” Riddle said abruptly.

“Why do you want her released?”

“What does it matter? Your parents lied to you. They threw you away. Dumbledore did the same thing. You have your brother and your friends, and the basilisk won’t harm them. Why should you care about what else she’ll do once she’s released?”

Harry was quiet, eyes fastened on Riddle. Riddle went on vibrating with anxiety and impatience. Harry didn’t forget that Riddle had tried to possess him down in the Chamber, but he also didn’t forget that he had managed to cooperate with Voldemort himself when he knew damn well that Voldemort had tried to kill Felix.

There could be more important things, more important concessions that you could wring out of an enemy.

But that just made Harry all the more determined to figure out what concession Riddle thought he would wring out of Harry. Why was freeing the basilisk so important? What did Riddle think would happen once she was free?

Based on what he’d said when Harry asked already, though, he would just deflect. So Harry decided that he’d have to approach the question some other way.

He leaned back against the tree and glanced around. Forest and orange moon and voice calling in the distance, he’d thought it had something to do with Riddle being in his head—

But he had had these dreams before Riddle escaped the diary, hadn’t he? He’d had the first of them last year, in fact, although he’d just dismissed them as annoying nightmares at the time and they hadn’t repeated so consistently.

Something occurred to Harry that was so simple he couldn’t believe he hadn’t thought of it before, and he laughed aloud. Riddle tensed some more, probably smart enough to realize that this laughter wasn’t a good sign for him.

“Harry?” Riddle breathed.

Harry leaned towards Riddle. “That voice in the forest is in Parseltongue.”

“Yes.”

“It’s probably a trapped serpent.”

Riddle’s shoulders tensed unmistakably. “Most likely,” he said, eyes half-lidding. He wasn’t committing himself, Harry noticed with a sensation of his own glee.

“Like the basilisk.”

Riddle stared at him, and didn’t respond.

“Why aren’t you asking me to free that snake? What’s so different about it from the basilisk? Why haven’t you once encouraged me to go find it and set it free?”

The dream dissolved.

Harry sat up with a hard smile, panting. He didn’t like it that Riddle was in his head, and he didn’t like the attempted possession, and he didn’t like Riddle’s presence in his dreams, either, but at least now he had the beginning of something to reach out and clutch, the way he and Felix had the prophecy.

Something was off about the snake in the forest in a way that even Riddle didn’t like. Harry was no more going to charge off to free it than he would charge off to free the basilisk. Something that gave Riddle pause could be even more dangerous.

But it was a thread that he could pull.

*

“Wow, Theo.”

Harry’s voice was low and admiring, and Theo had to admit that he reveled in the sound of it as he opened his eyes. He and Harry and Jilly were the only ones in the kitchen for this particular elemental magic lesson. All the others had classes—well, except for Blaise, but he had said darkly that “darling Draco” was due for a lesson, and Theo hadn’t inquired.

Hovering in front of Theo was a small metal container of biscuits, lifted by nothing more than pure air. Theo moved it slowly back and forth, and watched Harry’s head turn to keep the box clearly in sight. After a moment, panting, Theo had to set it down on the table, and lean back against his chair.

“It’s really nothing more complicated than anyone could do with the Levitation Charm,” Theo muttered. But he was pleased, and he knew that he had caused it with his will and the elements instead of his wand, and Harry’s smile was like warm sunshine spilled over him.

“It’s still awesome,” Harry said, and swung his legs. He sat on one of the tables most of the time now, and Theo couldn’t even remember when that had begun. It wasn’t weird, anymore. It was just the way Harry was. “You’ll be able to practice elemental magic on our own in no time.”

“And that doesn’t bother you?”

“Why should it?”

Harry’s face was open and puzzled. Theo leaned his head back and decided that he might as well speak the truth. “A lot of people who couldn’t cast wanded magic wouldn’t want to share their elemental magic with other people, either. They would be worried about the ones who learned it—being more powerful than they are. Doing something they would want to be able to keep to themselves.”

Harry snorted. “You said yourself that there had been other elemental wizards and witches, and I’ve read books about them. And people can learn it. It’s not my magic, Theo. It’s just magic.”

He turned away to answer a question from Jilly, and left Theo smiling like a fool.

He was glad that he wouldn’t be following his father into the Dark Lord’s service. He would follow someone who was much kinder and couldn’t even conceive of not sharing his magic and his power.

*

“Are you all right, Padfoot?”

Sirius flinched a little as James’s hand landed on his back, rubbing soothingly. He’d been sitting up in the Potter Owlery, feeling the wind blow across his face and watching for the approach of Felix’s Hedwig. Not that he thought she would come today in particular, not that she couldn’t find him at his house, but still, it felt like something he needed to do.

“Fine,” Sirius said hoarsely, and rubbed his face.

“Come on, Pads, I know better than to fall for that.” James sat down next to him and nudged his shoulder into Sirius’s. “Come on, tell me? You’ve felt more distant from us lately, me and Lils. Drifting away. Is it because Marlene turned you down for a date again?”

Sirius stared at him and wondered what the James of their fourth year would say if he could see his older self now. Hell, even their sixth year, when they’d still hexed Snape but James had also reacted violently when they’d found a bunch of Gryffindors tormenting a first-year Ravenclaw and had hurled all the bullies into the walls with the force of pure accidental magic.

But the years had passed, and they had changed, and they couldn’t reverse them.

Sirius finally swallowed and said, “I don’t—I’ve been thinking about Remus, James. About what he said to us before he went away.”

James immediately folded his arms and drew into himself in a way Sirius knew and hated. It meant that James wouldn’t want to listen to anything Sirius said and would only listen to Lily and Dumbledore. Sirius privately called it his Imperius mood, because James really did act like the people who had been under You-Know-Who’s Imperius.

Or who claimed to have been.

“We made the best decisions we could. We had to think about more people than just our child, Sirius. It would have been selfish to only think about him. And it was Remus’s choice not to live with that or accept it.”

“I keep thinking of his last words to us,” Sirius said, which was true enough, although not the reason that he was waiting irrationally up in the Owlery for Hedwig.

“Which set of them?” James asked, his arms dropping, his voice wavering with anger. “The set where he told us to go to hell for the decision we made about Harry and the prophecy, or the set where he told us he hated us and would rip our throats out?”

Sirius closed his eyes. “You know—you know why he said that last.”

“It wasn’t a justification.”

Sirius said nothing. The memory of that night writhed back and forth between them. None of them had expected to come into the room and find Harry alive, that was true.

But none of them had expected, still more, to meet Remus outside the house, and find out that he had arrived and attempted to interfere in the trap to save Harry’s life, and see—what had been done to their old friend when the trap came to life.

Sirius opened his eyes in time to see James casting a nervous glance back into the house. It could have just been a glance in the direction of the library where they’d left Lily. James wouldn’t want Lily to come up and find them having this conversation. She didn’t like talking about it.

But because Sirius had been there that night and participated in the decisions that damned his soul, he knew exactly where James was really looking. Towards the locked drawer in the bedroom that contained the living, hungry thing.

The thing that they had bound to help them that night. The thing that wanted its payment.

The thing that had partially eaten Remus.

James turned around, shaking his head. “What’s done is done, Sirius,” he said, the same thing Sirius had told himself so many times down the years. “We can’t go back and we can’t undo it. Would you really want to?”

The years of peace, James probably meant. They hadn’t destroyed You-Know-Who forever, but they had discovered a means to neutralize them, and brought themselves time for Felix to grow up.

He wouldn’t be thinking, as Sirius was, of Harry’s destroyed childhood.

“Yeah,” Sirius finally sighed. “I reckon you’re right.”

James clapped his shoulder and stood up. “Remus knows where to find us if he really wants to make things right again,” he said. “If he wants to come back and apologize and take up where we left off, that’s his choice.”

Sirius smiled weakly, and James smiled back and left.

And Sirius turned around to see Hedwig winging towards him, in truth, and he knew without asking that it was truly him she was here for and not Lily or James. His hands shaking, he opened the letter when Hedwig landed on the windowsill in front of him.

Padfoot,

Thanks for writing. I know that you think we probably shouldn’t know this, but now that we do, Harry and I can do something about it. And we’ll keep it safe and secret and not tell anyone you told us. Promise.

Sincerely,
Felix.

Sirius swallowed and closed the parchment in his fist, crumpling it into a ball. Then he lit it on fire and stood staring at the ashes.

He had told Harry and Felix about the prophecy and Harry being the bait in the trap, and that had at least broken part of the silence he had increasingly hated to live in. He had told Felix about Remus over the summer.

But what he hadn’t told writhed within him. The thing they had bound. The payment they had promised, and stolen, from the thing. What had happened to Remus as a result of the thing.

What had happened in the days leading up to the trap. What they had seen when they came into the room where Peter’s body and Voldemort’s ashes lay.

I am trying to make a compromise with betraying my godson by betraying my friends, Sirius thought, and laid a hand over his heart, wondering if he would one day find the courage to stop being such a coward.

Chapter Text

“Who’s that, sir?”

Albus smiled at Harry. The boy had proven to be a docile student, which mitigated some of Albus’s concerns about him based on Severus’s report. He also didn’t act like someone who couldn’t control his temper and would lash out with elemental power every time he got upset.

And now the interest in a portrait of his House’s Founder. Albus considered that an excellent sign.

“That’s Godric Gryffindor.” Albus turned so that he could also take in the portrait of the man with golden hair and eyes that the painter had made appear golden, too, although Albus suspected they had really been brown or hazel. Godric stared down at them, as fierce as an eagle. “And that sword he’s holding is one of Hogwarts’s legendary artifacts.”

“Hogwarts has those—just lying around, sir?”

Albus laughed a little at the tone of incredulity in Harry’s voice. Grateful as he had been for the boy’s calmness, he would also give much to have him act more like a normal child. “Not a great many, and the Sword is carefully protected. But yes, there are some artifacts that the Founders left to the school.”

“How many, sir?”

Albus was glad enough to leave the subject of Potions for a while. Nothing said he couldn’t teach the child history. “Well, the Sorting Hat itself once belonged to Gryffindor, you know. He did a great many things for this school that support the way we function now. And there is a stairway on the seventh floor leading up to Ravenclaw Tower that has Rowena Ravenclaw’s wand embedded in it.”

“Why, sir?”

“Legend has it that the staircase didn’t move like the others, but swung wildly round and round and often tossed the students and professors trying to climb it off,” Albus said cheerfully. He would have liked to have seen that, although admittedly he would have liked to see it from a distance. “Rowena tried to control it, but she couldn’t discover a way to do so without sacrificing a great deal of her magical power. At the time, she was old and sick and didn’t have that power to spare. But embedding her wand in the staircase’s railing provided the means to do it without hastening her death.”

One of the portraits behind him made a small noise. Albus glanced hopefully over his shoulder. He had oftentimes tried to invite the portraits to join in his conversations with students, since they had seen so much history pass, but they rarely did unless it related to the behavior of the student in question.

However, whoever it was didn’t say anything else, and Albus turned back to face Harry, who was watching him with eyes as round as an owl’s. It reminded Albus of the fact that owls couldn’t stand to be around the boy. Guilt stabbed him. That was something he had meant to look into; he had a chance of finding a subtle Dark curse on Harry that St. Mungo’s had missed. And he hadn’t, overwhelmed as he was with other work.

I will make it a priority this week. Perhaps the boy would feel better if he had a pet that could spend time with him.

“The history of the school is fascinating, Harry. Would you like to discuss that for a while and leave Potions for next week?”

Harry gave him what appeared to be a shocked smile, but it quickly turned into a real one. “Thank you, sir. I’d like that.”

Albus began to talk about one of his favorite subjects, all the while watching Harry closely while not appearing to. Harry appeared utterly enthralled, and Albus regretted his past thoughts that the boy couldn’t be a true Gryffindor.

Yes, I have misjudged him.

*

I wonder if someone could make a replica of Ravenclaw’s wand and sell it as the real thing. Or claim that a sliver of wood was really from her wand.

The story isn’t well-known, but it’s still the kind of thing that a self-respecting wizard would never do, said Riddle’s stiff voice from the center of Harry’s brain. You should earn your way with magic, not with tricks.

Harry shrugged. If the Potters disowned him, and he had no reason to think that they’d try particularly hard to keep him in the family, then he’d have to survive any way he could.

Some things are worth more than survival.

Like what?

Power.

But you can’t wield power if you’re dead, Harry thought, and knocked on Hagrid’s door. The man had invited him to come that afternoon, and Harry had to admit the invitation was a little flattering. Maybe Hagrid had another creature he needed handled, the way Harry had with Norberta last year

If you have attained—

And then Riddle shut up abruptly. Harry shook his head. Riddle seemed determined not to share certain information with Harry, which up to a point was understandable, but it also meant that he had no chance to persuade Harry to trust him. Harry was starting to think that Riddle wasn’t very good at the game and Harry might have less to worry about than he’d thought.

“Harry! Come in!”

Hagrid’s voice boomed, as usual, but Harry didn’t mind that. He was glad that at least someone besides his brother or his friends was happy to see him. He smiled at Hagrid and slipped inside, glancing around curiously. There was a small sparkling thing near the hearth, but Harry couldn’t immediately tell what it was.

“Found this in the school,” Hagrid said happily, and bustled over to the glowing thing. Then he paused and cast a sheepish glance at Harry. “Er, not supposed to have her, technically. You won’t tell anyone?”

“No,” Harry said, hanging onto a straight face with an effort. He suspected Hagrid wasn’t “technically” supposed to have many of his creatures.

“You’re a grand friend, Harry.”

Harry smiled at him, and then came closer so he could actually make out what the thing near the hearth was. He stopped and stared when he did. It was a—bubble, maybe. It actually reminded him of nothing so much as some of the plastic toys that Dudley used to get to play with. It hovered above the hearth, turning slowly over, glinting and flashing. In the center floated a small golden shadow.

Harry had to come closer still before he could make out that it was a snake. And she abruptly turned her head and stared at him.

“You must tell him to let me go,” she hissed. “He means well, but he has kept me captive, and I have things to do.”

Harry twitched a little, but hopefully Hagrid would just think that was because of her being a snake at all. He had no intentions of revealing his Parseltongue to Hagrid. He looked up and smiled again. “What kind of snake is she?”

“Don’t rightly know,” Hagrid said, and knelt down next to the globe, or bubble, or whatever it was, picking it up. He turned it slowly back and forth, admiring it. “She got into the school, and Professor McGonagall put her in this, and then I asked if she could let me have her. Er. Professor McGonagall thought I was going to put her back in the Forest. Don’t tell her?”

Harry just shook his head, his eyes fixed on the snake. He had to admit that he had never seen one like her, either, not that he knew much about snakes. It wouldn’t do to be seen researching them, and he could never have one as a pet, so why bother?

Because it would increase your power! Riddle hissed in his head.

How, when everyone hates Parselmouths and Parseltongue because Voldemort was an idiot?

Riddle shut up, the way he often did when Harry mentioned Voldemort. Harry had started to wonder if he saw another Parselmouth as a rival.

“Ain’t she pretty?” Hagrid turned the globe over and over. The snake’s scales flashed. Golden, Harry saw, with slightly deeper colors around her scales that might be orange or red. “I’ve been feeding her mice and birds, and she eats everything! Pretty little thing.”

The snake squirmed up to the top of the globe, which must be less smooth on the inside than it looked like, and flicked her tongue at Harry again, not looking away from him. “I was on an important quest. You must tell him to release me. I am needed to engage with the Enemy, since you will not come to the Forest and free my original.”

Harry started. Luckily, Hagrid was staring at the snake adoringly and didn’t notice.

“Um, Hagrid.” Harry licked lips that felt as if they should be cracking despite the fact that they weren’t dry enough for that. “Are you going to release her?”

“Oh, yeah,” Hagrid said, looking up and blinking. “Just hoping that she might lay some eggs first, y’know? I’d love to have some baby snakes to raise.”

“I will not lay eggs,” the snake hissed, and jabbed her tail towards Hagrid. “I am only female by courtesy. My original is female, but she has been imprisoned for years and years, and even danger coming to the school cannot free her. She needs a Parselmouth. I was hoping to reach someone else, since you refuse to do your duty.”

Harry had never so badly wanted to use Parseltongue. He managed to refrain, and just shook his head a little at Hagrid. “She doesn’t look like she has them, though, does she? I mean, I thought you could tell when a snake was about to lay.”

“I am not a chicken.”

“Well, no, that’s true.” Hagrid stared at the snake longingly, and then sighed, turning to Harry. “I wanted to show her to you, though. D’you think that you could set her free? Professor McGonagall’s supposed to be on patrol duty tonight, and she doesn’t usually come outside when the students stay in the school, but…”

Harry nodded, to contain both his laughter and his relief, and held out his hands. Maybe he could study the bubble magic that contained the snake and feel how to copy it.

You should not come near her, Riddle snarled in the back of his head. She is the enemy.

Harry said nothing. It was true that he didn’t want to free the snake in the Forest, but he hadn’t expected to encounter a—an illusion of her, or whatever this was. Maybe he could talk to this one and figure some things out.

And it might help to make sense of an odd encounter with a portrait that had happened a few weeks ago, too.

“Thank you, Harry.” Hagrid gave Harry the globe and tossed one more melancholy look at the snake inside it. “Pretty little thing, ain’t she?”

“She’s beautiful,” Harry said sincerely. She did look prettier than some other snakes he’d seen, although no creature would ever match Norberta’s beauty, at least for him. That was one reason among many that he wanted to be a Dragon-Keeper.

“You’ll be careful with her?” Hagrid asked anxiously. “I know some Gryffindors don’t like snakes.”

If he knew, Riddle muttered.

Harry’s thoughts were saying something similar, for once, so he swallowed his laughter and nodded solemnly to Hagrid. “I promise that I’ll be careful with her, Hagrid. And I don’t mind snakes.” It was the closest he could come to saying he might like them, since word of that could get around the school too easily.

“All right, then.”

Hagrid waved from his hut as Harry carried the globe into the Forbidden Forest, but when Harry looked over his shoulder, the door of the hut was already closed. Presumably Hagrid couldn’t stand to look while Harry set the snake free.

Harry knelt down as soon as he was inside the Forest boundary and studied the globe for a long second. The magic sparked and leaped against his hands. The image that formed in his mind was one of several overlapping snakes wrapped around each other, the heads of the two on top facing each other with their jaws open.

“Set me free. I will be more careful this time when I go into the school.”

“What is your original?” Harry hissed. “I know there is a basilisk in the school and I have no intention of releasing her, but I know nothing about this snake in the Forest. I only know that she calls to me.”

“And you would listen. If you weren’t stupid.”

Harry laughed harshly. “Yes, of course. That’s totally reasonable. I should set the basilisk free, by that measure.”

“The basilisk hasn’t spoken to you! The basilisk hasn’t asked for help! It would never occur to our Enemy to do so.” The snake’s tail lashed against the side of the bubble globe. “Whereas we did ask you, and you have ignored us.”

“I had no reassurances about you. I had no idea what or who your original was like, and I have no idea even now if you intend good.”

The snake gave a long, low hiss that sounded like the Parseltongue equivalent of soft, frustrated cursing. “Ask us what you need to know. It would still be easier to have a Parselmouth to help us than to ask the only other person we can ask in the school.”

“All right. Why do you refer to the basilisk as the enemy? Aren’t you also a set of snakes—a snake—put here to guard the school by Slytherin?” Harry wasn’t sure how to refer to a snake that could apparently divide herself into a set of little snakes and send them slithering around to do her bidding.

The snake reared her head back and gave him the most offended look Harry had ever seen on an animal. “We are not. The basilisk is the Enemy. Slytherin was the Enemy. My original was put here to counter them. We weren’t sure that anyone who still spoke Parseltongue would attend the school and hear us, but the basilisk is coming close to awakening, to being set free. We must act.”

Harry narrowed his eyes. “Who set you here?”

The snake was now looking at him as if he was stupid. “Godric Gryffindor, of course.”

Harry felt his mouth fall open. “No one ever says that Gryffindor—spoke Parseltongue. They all only talk about Slytherin.”

“Humans are stupid and let their memories die,” the snake said dismissively. “Of course Gryffindor was a Parselmouth. He is part of the reason that the basilisk was set here at all. In the beginning, our forefather and the Enemy worked together to make the school a welcoming place for all. But then the Enemy became the Enemy, and so Gryffindor placed us here because he knew the basilisk might awaken sometime far in the future and be misused. We can counter her. We are very strong.”

She lies! cried Riddle in Harry’s head.

You would say that, wouldn’t you? Harry thought, but with only half his brain. The rest of his mind was racing furiously. He had encountered a portrait of a man he knew now was Gryffindor, after seeing the portrait that looked almost the same in Dumbledore’s office, and the man had spoken in Parseltongue to him. But he’d turned away when Harry pretended not to understand.

Harry had thought it was a portrait of someone from Slytherin’s line, if not Slytherin himself. Either the portrait or the statue in the Chamber could have been inaccurate. And then when he had learned it was a portrait of Gryffindor, he had wondered if the one he’d seen was somehow trying to trick him.

He thought it was less likely now.

“What if I told you that the basilisk isn’t going to be released? I won’t release it.”

Riddle whined in the back of his head. Harry told him he sounded like Dudley, which shut him up.

“It doesn’t matter if you are not. Someone will. The time is coming. The Enemy is stirring. That means she will be released.” The snake was once again trying to climb the inside of her bubble globe. “Let me go. You will do nothing.”

“I can’t do anything! You don’t know how much people around here hate Parselmouths.”

“You could find a sneaky way to do anything. Not only the Enemy and his kind are sneaky. But you will do nothing.” The snake gave him a long look, her tongue tasting whatever kind of air existed in the bubble. “We can sense that the way we can sense the Enemy stirring.”

Stung, Harry gave up on his attempt to learn the mechanics of the bubble containing her and twisted it apart. In seconds, the snake streaked away into the Forest and was lost among the leaf litter.

Harry stared after her. He tried to convince himself it was a good thing that he wasn’t going to do anything, the same way he had thought since he had realized that Riddle was in his head. He shouldn’t do anything. He certainly shouldn’t release the basilisk. And he shouldn’t get involved in whatever this was, either, this—multiplying snake in the Forbidden Forest.

You only have this snakeling’s word for it that her original intends to fight the basilisk, Riddle whispered. She could be lying.

There was that, too. Harry told himself it was for the best that he wasn’t going to do anything.

He said it over and over again to himself as he walked back to the school.

*

“Harry, are you all right? You’ve been quiet all evening.”

Theo had sneaked off to meet Harry for a private hour, where he could talk about antics in the Slytherin common room and Harry could talk about anything he wanted. They couldn’t steal this time together often, and Harry usually made the most of it, laughing and talking about Felix or grumbling about the other Gryffindors and how hard it was to imitate wanded spells and what a wanker Dumbledore was.

Harry sighed and stared at the table for a long moment. The elves in the kitchen still bustled around them, but Jilly wasn’t in sight. Theo thought she often wasn’t anymore, except for the lessons in elemental magic that Harry arranged. Then again, he had never paid attention to specific house-elves at Hogwarts until he met her. Maybe she was here in disguise.

“Someone told me that I wasn’t doing anything,” Harry said, almost too soft for Theo to hear. “Just—well, they didn’t say this, but like I was sitting there and letting the world go by. I told them that people would be upset at me if I did something. They said I should find a sneaky way to do it.”

Theo had to work hard to keep calm. This was—what he had hoped for, whenever he’d looked at Harry hiding magic powerful enough to cook brains and wrench souls out of bodies and watched him just keep it to himself.

But Harry would probably retreat if Theo talked about politics or Lords. So he nodded and asked, “Do you want to do the particular thing you’re talking about?”

Harry closed his eyes. “It would mean revealing myself as a Parselmouth.”

“And you think that would be more dangerous than revealing yourself as an elemental wizard.”

Harry didn’t answer.

Theo leaned forwards and twined his fingers with Harry’s. “There’s still the sneaky way of doing things. What about doing it that way?”

“I—I’m not that smart, Theo. Not about things that aren’t just my own magic and things I’ve learned here. What if I mess up, and people find out I’m a Parselmouth? What if the Potters take me out of school for it and dump me back with the Dursleys?”

He will probably never lose that fear. Theo could point out all sorts of things, including that Harry was strong enough to run away on his own, but he didn’t intend to. That wouldn’t soothe Harry’s fear.

“My father would come and rescue you,” Theo said simply. “He would keep you safe in our house and ensure that you had an excellent education. Hell, he’d take you out to tour dragon reservations if that was what you wanted.”

Harry stared at him. “He doesn’t like me that much.”

“You’re right. It wouldn’t be unselfish.” Theo shrugged. “He would want to have you as an ally and ensure that you used some of your power for the benefit of our family. But I would insist on binding vows and documents signed in blood. Blood rituals, even. I wouldn’t let him just do whatever he wants to you.”

“Do you think you could stop him?”

Theo breathed out slowly. “I’m going to tell you something I’ve never told anyone else.”

Harry leaned forwards at once. He probably didn’t realize how he acted when someone said they were going to share secrets with him, Theo thought idly. For all that Harry kept an infuriating number of them, he always wanted more.

“You know that Dumbledore and the Ministry took me away from Father because they thought he murdered my mum.”

“Yeah.”

“He didn’t.”

“You said.”

Harry’s eyes were fastened on him, shining like stars. Theo had never been drunk, but he thought this might be what it was like. Harry could do things to people when he made them the center of his attention.

“He didn’t murder her,” Theo repeated, and then took the deep breath he needed to speak the next words. “But he did kill her.”

Harry’s hand jerked across the table. Theo let it go, and Harry nearly smashed it into a cup of pumpkin juice one of the elves had brought them earlier that Harry hadn’t touched. “How can you make that distinction?” Harry whispered. “Is that what your father told you, or is that what you worked out?”

Theo laughed, and then stopped, because the sound of that laugher wasn’t what he’d thought it would be. “I saw it happen, Harry.”

His best friend was quiet, and the silence drew Theo to keep talking.

“They were going to duel,” Theo whispered. “Mum loved to duel. She was better at it than Father. But Father has more raw power. They dueled all the time, but this time, Mum told him that she wanted a real duel. The kind of thing he would have done in—in the war.” His throat stuck at admitting Father had been a Death Eater, but Harry simply watched him and watched him, and after a moment, Theo was able to continue. “He told her that he didn’t want to do that, and she nearly opened his throat with her next spell.

“They dueled right in the middle of the entrance hall. You remember? With the high ceilings and that priceless tapestry of Pegasus in flight to Olympus on the wall?”

“I remember.”

“Father was angry, and he responded that way. Mum met him. It was—I don’t know how to describe it.” Theo saw the flash of the spells in his dreams all the time, and he still didn’t know to describe it. “And then Father cast a spell that she should have been able to deflect, but Mum sent it flying into a vase that used to stand on a plinth there. It was a vase that was owned by the Nott family for generations. Father howled, and he—he used the Entrail-Expelling Curse on her. She couldn’t shield in time.”

There was absolute silence. Theo saw Harry’s fingers twitching out of the corner of his eye, but he couldn’t look his friend in the face.

“Did you try to hurt him?”

Theo exhaled slowly. He owed Harry a lot of things, he thought, but nothing had confirmed they were friends quite as much as the fact that Harry had known to ask that question, or that his voice was calm when he did.

“Yes,” Theo whispered. “I didn’t—I hurled myself over the balcony where I was watching. My magic just sort of reached out and splashed Father. I didn’t have a wand, I couldn’t cast a spell. It was accidental magic. But that’s the reason he has the scar on his face that he does.”

“I never noticed a scar.”

“It’s off to the center of his forehead, above his eye. Sort of like yours. You wouldn’t notice if you weren’t looking for it, really.”

“Did he—hurt you?”

“No.” Theo swallowed. “He took my mother to St. Mungo’s, and they treated both of them. They couldn’t save her. But it was obvious that she’d been hit with an Entrail-Expelling Curse, and they took his wand away and tested it. Then they decided that he’d murdered her and they took me away, and he probably would have gone to Azkaban except that he swore under Veritaserum he hadn’t meant to kill her. They classified it as murder anyway.”

Theo’s stomach seethed when he thought about it. It wasn’t the same as his just murdering her outright, which would have been—like Father, but not, at the same time. He had loved Mum. He loved Theo.

But no one had believed it had been accidental, for all that Father had been able to say so under Veritaserum. So they had taken Theo away. And they had believed that he was tainted at the same time, not an innocent victim, so they’d given him to the Figgs to be “corrected.” They believed all sorts of contradictory things, and Theo was hurt, and Theo hated them.

Worse than Father. Because Father had been angry, but he had also believed that Mum could have shielded herself from the curse. Theo was utterly, utterly sure of that, in a way that made his confidence unshakable.

“I’m sorry, Theo.”

Theo blinked, and squeezed Harry’s hand. “You had nothing to do with any of it. And you’ve made the last year better than I could have imagined.”

“You can’t accept sympathy, then? That sounds like the kind of thing you’d say if you told me you were sorry for something and I acted like you.”

Theo laughed shakily and sat back. “Anyway. You asked if I thought I could stop Father from just using you. Yeah, I can. All I have to do is remind him of Mum’s death, and he—crumples. Sometimes I do it without meaning to, like when I look at him and he sees Mum’s eyes in my face. But I would do it deliberately in this case. And he would stop.”

Harry was staring at him in a way that Theo had never seen before. Theo looked evenly back. He hoped he hadn’t caused Harry to pity him or something. Because he would have to shove Harry off the bench if that was the case, and he didn’t want to hurt his best friend.

*

He talks to his father about his mum’s death. His father, who killed his mum. And Theo can talk about using his power against his father, and—

It isn’t the end of the world.

Harry lowered his gaze to the table and sat there without moving for long seconds. Theo waited for him. Theo was always waiting for him, it seemed, now that Harry thought about it, and listening to the story of his mum’s death had been only a small return of everything he had done for Harry.

But if Theo could stand up to the father who had killed his mum, and use his power, and not think he was going to be punished or the power was evil—

Harry could do the same thing.

“Harry?”

Theo sounded a little freaked out. Harry smiled at him. “You just convinced me that it would be possible to stand up against the Potters and not suffer the end of the world.”

“I did? I mean, your circumstances with your family are so different—”

“I know. But I’m always sitting here and thinking about what could happen, if someone found out I was an elementalist or a Parselmouth. Thinking that the worst things haven’t happened yet, that there’s always worse yet to come. And as long as I think that, then I don’t know what I can do to make things better.”

Theo blinked several times. “I never meant to make you feel you had to…”

“I know. But I think I needed this push.” Riddle said something in the back of his mind that Harry deliberately ignored, the way he could ignore other people snoring in History. “Listen, Theo. I found a portrait of a man the other day who spoke to me in Parseltongue. I ignored it because I thought it was Salazar Slytherin. And then I saw the same portrait in Dumbledore’s office, and asked who it was, and Dumbledore said it was Godric Gryffindor.”

“What?” Theo breathed.

“Yeah. And Hagrid had a snake that McGonagall captured sneaking into the school. The snake talked to me and said she was a piece, or a copy, or something, of a snake who’s trapped in the Forbidden Forest. The snake is Gryffindor’s, or was put there by Gryffindor, to stop the approach of an enemy to the school.”

“What enemy?”

Shit. Harry hadn’t thought it through when he’d started admitting this that it meant admitting the existence of the diary and Riddle and the Chamber of Secrets. Harry clenched his hands together under the table and tried to reassure himself that the worst wouldn’t happen, that Theo wouldn’t turn away from Harry for keeping more secrets.

“There’s a basilisk under the school.”

“There is a what?”

“Um. In the Chamber of Secrets.”

“How do you possibly know this?”

Harry took a deep breath. “Ginny Weasley found a diary in her books that she bought from Flourish and Blotts…”

The story didn’t take as long to tell as Harry had thought it would. It also didn’t lessen the darkness or the disbelief in Theo’s face one iota. Harry leaned back and tried to convince himself that he hadn’t just destroyed their friendship.

“You could have freed the basilisk and killed yourself.”

“Not a word about the other students I would have endangered because I’d let the basilisk out of the Chamber of Secrets?”

“I don’t care about them,” Theo said, which Harry knew was at least partially a lie. Theo cared about Blaise, and he cared about Fred and George at least a little, enough to watch them and make sure they didn’t tell anyone about Harry’s elemental magic. “I just—Harry. Please. Please stop facing these things alone.”

“I told you.”

“Not until months after it started!”

That was true enough. Harry winced and sat there. He hated this, this—ripping feeling inside him. As though someone had grabbed a piece of cloth attached to the center of his body and was giving it a tug.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered at last.

“Good. Does that mean you’ll stop facing these things by yourself?”

“I—yes.” Harry made a decision and told himself that it didn’t matter what came after this, that it would be all right, that Theo wouldn’t walk away because Harry didn’t know how to word this invitation. “Do you want to come visit Godric Gryffindor’s portrait with me tomorrow?”

“Yes.”

*

Harry took a deep breath and stepped into the corridor where he had seen the portrait he knew now was Gryffindor. The last few times he’d been by, the frame had been empty. But this time, the blond man was in the canvas, and turned around to stare at him as soon as he and Theo entered the corridor.

“I’ve come to talk to you,” Harry said in Parseltongue.

The man leaned forwards. Now that he was taking the time to look at him, Harry could see the shape of the golden torc that encircled the portrait’s neck: the slim slenderness of the body, the gleam of the ruby eyes, the head holding its tail in its mouth. Before, Harry might have tried to say it was a dragon. Now, he knew better.

“Fucking finally,” snapped Godric Gryffindor.

Chapter Text

“I don’t understand how people started thinking that Salazar Slytherin was the only Parselmouth among the Founders.”

Gryffindor snorted. Theo watched him. One of the things that fascinated him about the portrait was how dynamic Gryffindor was, making lots more noise than other portraits and moving around more. Even his boots clumped when he was striding up and down the unseen floor of what seemed to be a library.

“It happened because people hate snakes,” Gryffindor said. “And they revered me—why, I never understood exactly. Because I created the Sorting Hat? Because I left the Sword of Gryffindor behind at the school and wielded it against dangers attacking us a few times?” He scratched his cheek to the side of his red beard. “So they naturally decided that someone they revered couldn’t have spoken the tongue of the beasts they loathed.”

Harry was leaning forwards across the small table they’d half-Levitated, half-dragged to the obscure side corridor where Gryffindor’s portrait hung. The twins had helped them secure the entrance with shimmering charms Theo didn’t really trust. “But no one ever questioned it?”

“Things people know as history get lost to that history all the time, Harry. You should know that.”

Theo cocked his head. Gryffindor’s voice was chiding, but also personal. “What do you mean, sir?”

“He’s a Parselmouth who hasn’t looked enough into his own history. And he’s an elemental wizard who’s letting his powers wither on the vine.”

Harry stiffened. Theo had to batter down his own outrage. In some ways, Gryffindor was telling Harry exactly what Theo had been telling him for almost a year now, and Theo should be glad that he was. Maybe Harry would actually listen to someone who was older and wiser.

But Theo also didn’t like seeing Harry hurt.

“I’m learning as best as I can!” Harry snapped. “It’s not exactly easy, what with everyone being afraid of Parselmouths and thinking they’re evil!”

“They don’t think the same of elemental wizards, lad.”

“No, but they would think I was dangerous. And drop me back in the Muggle world.”

“You would let them?”

Harry leaned back abruptly, shivering. Theo sat close to him, wishing he could help, but he was pretty sure he couldn’t. The cold didn’t come from anything in the corridor or even anything Gryffindor had said, but from Harry’s inner conflict.

Theo put a hand on his shoulder. Harry leaned a little towards him, but didn’t take his eyes from Gryffindor’s portrait.

“I’m twelve years old,” Harry whispered. “My own parents gave me up. Maybe they would again. But then what? The one person I might want to adopt me is Theo’s dad, and everyone would get all outraged about that. My godfather won’t stand up to the Potters. Dumbledore won’t let me go where I want, or just vanish somewhere. He would track me. He knows a lot more magic than I do.”

Gryffindor abruptly stepped back in his portrait until he was almost resting against one of the library shelves behind him. Theo blinked, both at the gesture and at the expression of remorse on his face.

“I’m sorry, Harry,” Gryffindor murmured. “In my day, standards of adulthood were different. Twelve years old didn’t matter so much to your ability to defend yourself.”

Harry nodded, his head bowed. Theo put one hand on his shoulder. Harry started a little, then gave him a small smile.

“But in truth,” Gryffindor started again a moment later, flicking his hair out of his eyes as he glanced down at Harry, “you are still one of the most powerful wizards alive. Your combined gifts mean that you could call serpents of fire if you wanted, or serpents of earth. You could conjure venom in your enemies’ lungs the way you can transform the air.”

“I don’t think I’m that skilled yet.”

“Then I will teach you.”

“Why?” Theo had to interrupt. He was glad that Harry was going to find a mentor who wasn’t the Dark Lord in disguise, and really glad if it meant that Harry wouldn’t be hiding his magic any longer. But it did seem weird that this portrait would tutor Harry out of the kindness of its canvas. “Just because he’s in your House?”

“Because he will combat the Enemy.”

Theo swallowed. “You’re talking about the basilisk in the Chamber of Secrets.”

“As some things come closer and closer to realization, there is no stopping them, any more than you can stop gravity’s pull on a rock rolling downhill.” Gryffindor’s eyes were hooded. “At this point, yes, the basilisk will be released. I don’t know who will do it or how, but someone must be there to stop her.”

“And the snake in the Forbidden Forest?” Harry asked, raising his head and staring directly at the portrait.

“She is probably the only one who can help you.”

“But you don’t want me to release her yet.”

Gryffindor smiled sardonically. “She is a spirit of fire, Harry, one that coalesced into the form of a snake to help me. I don’t know which Slytherin descendant bound her. I don’t remember that, so it may have happened after this portrait was painted. Spirits of fire were barely meant to assume solid form, let alone to be trapped for as long as she has. She would still fight the basilisk, since that’s what she came for, but I don’t know what she would do to other people.”

“You think she might be mad,” Theo said.

Gryffindor nodded to him. “And I think that Harry being an elementalist as well as a Parselmouth might be the only thing that would make him able to survive her.”

That did not actually make Theo feel any better.

*

You should not listen to the portrait, Riddle hissed in the back of Harry’s mind.

I suppose I should only listen to you, right? Harry sat in front of the fire in the common room and stared into it. He had made a decision a little while ago, one that he hoped he wouldn’t regret, and now he was waiting for the person he was going to tell.

It would be preferable. Have you not thought how Gryffindor seeks to profit from your combination of gifts? I could tutor you to use them, and my motives would be disinterested, because your success has to be mine, buried in your skull as I am. But he only wants to see the basilisk destroyed and the name of my family blackened—

“Harry?”

Harry smiled and turned his head. Felix had come down the stairs slowly, probably looking to see if any prefects were about, but now he shivered and hurried over to the fire. “Didn’t realize how cold the stairs would be,” he muttered, hurling himself into the chair opposite Harry.

“It’s okay,” Harry said. He watched Felix for a long moment, as his brother blew on his hands and held them out to the flames. Theo would probably say that Harry shouldn’t tell Felix, because Theo didn’t trust him.

But Harry had to trust some people. He was learning that now. When he had thought he could drift through Hogwarts in a bubble of silence and people ignoring him, he hadn’t thought it would be necessary. Who would want to trust someone as distant as he was? Who would care? Being in the shadow of the Boy-Who-Lived would actually have made that plan easier, no matter how awful Harry had first felt when he’d discovered he had parents and a twin brother he’d never heard of.

It would never have worked, Riddle snarled softly, sounding offended.

Harry hated to agree with Riddle, but he sort of did, if not for the reasons that the git thought. Harry had powers that he had to use, because he had to feign wanded magic. Sooner or later someone might figure out that most animals fled from him because of his Parseltongue, and he had to have a plan to deal with that.

He had to have friends. He had to have a mentor, like Gryffindor. And if he had a twin brother who loved him, Harry wasn’t stupid enough to reject him.

It wasn’t the parents or godfather who loved him that he should have had. But it would have to be enough.

“So what is it?” Felix asked, finally distracted enough from his cold fingers to look at Harry.

Harry took a deep breath as he held out a hand. But he had some practice in talking about his elemental magic to the twins, he thought, and Ginny, and Luna, and Blaise. Theo was a special case and different since he’d been the first.

At least it meant he wasn’t panicking as he said, “I have elemental magic, Felix,” and called fire to dance above his palm.

*

Felix gaped at the flame, and then looked at Harry with wide eyes. He could see how tense Harry was, as if he expected Felix to break away and run out of the common room yelling the truth to all and sundry.

In truth, Felix thought, he wasn’t as surprised as Harry probably expected him to be.

Harry’s “accidental” magic wasn’t that accidental, from what he’d said a few times. And Felix had noticed that Harry didn’t keep his wand close by or touch it for reassurance the way that Felix and everyone else with wanded magic did. Felix had gradually become convinced that the wand was really just a piece of dead wood to Harry, one he kept because it was necessary to lie to people.

He felt he had to lie to people.

But it wasn’t that surprising, with the childhood Harry had had. And at least he had better reasons for lying than Mum and Dad.

Felix felt a terrible anger move inside him, and it was a bit hard to snap his attention away from thoughts of their parents and to Harry. He realized abruptly that Harry was leaning back in his chair, and looking nervous. The flame had gone out.

“It’s all right, Harry,” he said quickly. “I think it’s really brilliant.”

“You—do?”

Felix sighed and swung his leg. He sort of wished Harry had kept the flame. Why was it so cold all the time? “Sure. I mean, not brilliant that you have to keep it secret, that’s terrible, but it’s great that you have it, and that you’re not left helpless because some people are idiots. But I don’t know how you’re doing some of the spells in classes, if it’s all elemental?” He looked at Harry inquiringly.

“In Transfiguration, sometimes it’s elemental,” Harry said faintly. He was staring at Felix with wide eyes. “But mostly I use illusion. And in Charms and Defense I can feign the effects of the spell. I use wind for the Knockback Jinx.”

“That’s going to be harder to do as we learn more complicated spells.”

“Um. Yes. You’re taking this a lot better than I thought you would.”

“I’m glad you have something,” Felix said, folding his arms. “And I already suspected your accidental magic wasn’t so accidental after all. But it is going to be harder to keep this secret as you progress in classes.”

“Yeah. I’ll take as many non-wanded classes as I can and probably drop Transfiguration and Charms and Defense after the OWLS.”

“I’m glad you plan to take them,” Felix said, and swung his legs while he thought about what it would mean for an elemental wizard to take OWLS. It probably wouldn’t test Harry at all. The thought made Felix frown. “But I don’t know how good Hogwarts is for you when you can’t learn the kind of magic you have.”

“Most of it isn’t, really. But I, um, I sort of found a mentor. Dumbledore doesn’t know.”

“Really? Who?” Felix couldn’t imagine most people in Hogwarts keeping the secret from Dumbledore.

“A portrait of Godric Gryffindor.”

Felix stared at Harry, but his brother apparently wasn’t joking. He stared back, holding Felix’s gaze, and Felix finally shook his head and said, “Okay, this is. Um.”

“Um?” Harry asked, and he was smiling, that kind of smile Felix didn’t get to see often but was happy to see when he did.

“Yeah.” Felix leaned back in his chair and exhaled. “I didn’t know that the portrait of Gryffindor would talk to anyone who wasn’t a Headmaster. And the history books never said that he was an elementalist.” Felix thought he would have remembered that even if he didn’t have a memory that would let him remember everything he read.

“He’s not an elementalist, but he knows about their magic. My magic.” Harry still shifted as if he didn’t like to apply the name to himself. “And, um, he’s actually mostly teaching me something else.”

“What?”

Harry swallowed. He glanced down at his hands and then up at Felix. “I know the reason all the owls and cats keep avoiding me,” he said. “I’m a Parselmouth.”

Felix did feel his mouth fall open this time, all the way. He gaped at Harry. Harry stared right back, and his fingers wound together as if he was clenching something small and precious to hide it away from Felix.

“How?” Felix whispered.

“I don’t know how.” Harry sounded a little exasperated. “Maybe someone in our family a long time ago was. Maybe it had something to do with the Dark magic that everyone said was flying around after Voldemort came after us. I don’t know.” He shook his head and leaned back to stare up at the ceiling. “But I know that it’s damn annoying, and it’s getting harder to hide with the way that animals are avoiding me and no one can find a Dark curse on me.”

Felix shook his head, too. Part of him wanted to say that it was Dark. He’d always learned that. Voldemort had been a Parselmouth, and it had been part of the legend that convinced people to follow him, even though it was also a lot less dangerous than some of the Darker magic he’d worked.

But the rest of him thought how cool it would be to talk to animals, and that made him open his mouth and say, “I read once that other people could learn elemental magic. Can you teach me Parseltongue?”

Harry stilled for a moment, then blinked. “You’d want to learn it? You wouldn’t want to learn elemental magic?”

“I think Parseltongue is cooler.”

Harry looked regretful for a second. “Sorry, but I don’t know of any way to teach it to you. Even Godric said he couldn’t have taught it to me if I didn’t already have it.”

“You call Founders by their first names now?” Felix teased, and managed to smile through his disappointment.

Harry shrugged, looking a little awkward. “He got bored of me calling him by his last name and ‘sir.’ That was the compromise.”

Felix sighed. “Oh, well. It’s too bad that I can’t learn Parseltongue, but I’m glad that you have someone you trust teaching you. Better than having Dumbledore do it.”

Harry made a face. “Yeah, he’s bad enough for Potions.” He paused, eyeing Felix. “You’re really okay with Parseltongue?”

“Yeah. Why wouldn’t I be?”

“Come on, Felix.”

“Yes, all right, Voldemort spoke it. But I’ve always thought that the way he could get people to abandon their ideals and follow him around like a string of Crup puppies was scarier. And he didn’t even have a snake familiar for most of the war. He only got one near the end, and it died when I—did whatever I did. We did whatever we did.” Felix frowned and shook his head. He still had no idea what had really happened on the night that Voldemort had gone after him and Harry and been defeated, but obviously it was a lot more complicated than the version he’d grown up with.

“Okay.”

Harry was staring at him with shining eyes. Felix started to smile back, and then paused when he realized it was his own trained smile. The one Mum and Dad had taught him to use whenever someone looked at him like that, because it meant they were taking him for their Lord.

He shook his head violently.

“Felix?”

“I don’t want to be your Lord.”

“Well, you don’t need to worry about that. I’d hardly want one.”

“No, I know that! I just mean—it’s like I wanted to smile at you and treat you like you were someone who could be a follower. Because that was the kind of smile and response Mum and Dad taught me to have.”

Harry studied him in silence for long moments, then said, “I still wish they hadn’t put me with the Dursleys. But it sounds like Lily and James really fucked you up, too.”

Felix nodded, and for a few moments they sat in silence. Then he reached out and put his hand on his brother’s shoulder.

“Thank you for sharing that with me,” he whispered. “I know it had to be hard, with as many secrets as you keep. And if you want to teach me elemental magic, then I’d be honored to learn. Even if it’s not Parseltongue.”

Harry hesitated for a moment. Then he said, “Well, there is this group of us who gets together in the kitchens…”

*

“What’s he doing here?”

Ginny asked the question the minute she came through the door into the kitchens and saw Felix sitting on the bench next to Harry. She could feel her cheeks turning red, but not so much with her crush. It seemed like a million years ago that she’d had a crush on Felix. She was so busy at Hogwarts with studying for regular classes and going to the classes and defending Luna and learning to defend Luna that she’d forgotten all about him.

But it seemed wrong for Felix Potter to be in the middle of what Ginny had come to think of as their private elemental magic training session. He was part of the world that loved good and gentle magic and smiled and patted children on the head when they talked about bullies. Not the part that learned magic to defeat those bullies.

“I can be here if I want,” Felix said mildly, and bit into a biscuit that was steaming gently on a plate nearby. One of the house-elves must have brought it, although Ginny hadn’t seen that happen.

“He’s learning elemental magic with the rest of us,” Nott said.

Ginny sneaked a sideways glance at Nott. Oh, he wasn’t happy about this. At all. His eyes were narrow and maybe he thought he was controlling the magic that radiated out around him, but in reality, his hands were clenched and he looked as if he might be a few inches from beating Felix to death with them.

“Calm down, Theo.”

Harry’s voice flowed out over the situation and at least did calm Nott. Ginny saw the way Felix’s eyes narrowed as he watched that and decided that Felix might not know everything about Harry’s leadership here, but he knew enough.

“Felix is here because I invited him, and he does want to learn elemental magic.”

“Why? He has power enough.”

“You think that? When I’ve been one of Voldemort’s targets since I could barely walk properly?”

Nott bared his teeth. “If you were barely walking properly by the age of fifteen months, I have to wonder—”

Something seemed to surge past Ginny, and she blinked. Nott had fallen silent, but she hadn’t seen anything happen. She watched as Nott flushed and Felix blinked a little and then eased back, as though something invisible was hovering in front of him.

“Stop it, both of you,” Harry said evenly. He was sitting on one of the kitchen tables, the way he usually did, and he had turned so that he could stare at both of them. “Or I’ll slap you with something harder than a bit of wind.”

Ginny stared enviously. She was getting control of wind little by little, since it seemed to be her best element so far, but she was still meditating for both strength and any control of other elements. And Harry just wielded it like he was Mum casting a cleaning charm at the dishes.

Harry glanced at her and winked with the eye that was out of sight of Nott and Felix, then turned around to face them again.

“Everyone is here because they want to be,” Harry said, glancing around. Luna was paying attention, although Ginny didn’t know if Harry knew that, since her wide, wondering eyes tended to make people think she was staring at something over their heads. Felix watched his brother closely, Zabini with languid boredom that fooled no one, Fred and George with fierce grins. Nott with that burning way that he always seemed to watch Harry. “And because I invited them. If I didn’t want them here or I thought they were a threat, they would be gone. Do you understand?”

I understand that you’re saying a lot more than you probably think you’re saying, Ginny thought, but nodded along with everyone else. If Harry wanted to do more things to protect and teach them, she was hardly going to say no.

“Good.” Harry leaned back. “I’ve been reading some of the books on elemental wizards and witches, and it says that most of them only controlled one element. Not all four.”

“That’s what makes you a bloody prodigy,” Zabini muttered.

Harry went on as though he hadn’t heard him. “I don’t think that’s true of people who learned elemental magic from someone else, though.”

“How do you know?” Nott asked. “The books don’t make that distinction.”

Ginny frowned. Had Nott read those books? She hadn’t. She would have to ask Harry to share them around.

“I think you might be able to concentrate on all the elements and learn the ones you really want to learn.” Harry glanced down as if hearing Ginny’s protesting thought about that, and smiled at her. He could look really nice when he smiled, Ginny thought. Not that she was fooled about how nice Harry Potter was. “It’ll take a longer time, though.”

“So I might be able to do more than wind?” Ginny asked. That would be brilliant. Then she could do more than just slap the girls who took Luna’s things or knock them over.

“And I could do—”

“More than fire?” George was grinning at Harry, and Fred looked as if he might bounce up and down and start whooping any second.

“If you wanted to,” Harry said. “But like I said, it takes longer. And it also takes longer to get good at all four of them if you split your attention between all four. So that’s the trade-off you make. Do you still want to learn?”

Nott nodded at once, followed by Fred and George. Luna stirred and leaned forwards, and Harry turned to her. Ginny was reluctantly impressed. It was unusual for people to pay that much attention to Luna when she spoke up rather than just discount her.

“I think I will concentrate on wind,” Luna said dreamily. “It would allow me to drive away the largest number of Wrackspurts.”

Harry cocked his head, but only shrugged. “If that’s what you want to do,” he said, and looked at Ginny.

“All four,” Ginny said firmly. She didn’t care if it would take her longer to master. In the end, she would do it, and get even with all the girls who thought it was just so easy to bully her and Luna.

“All right,” Harry said, with a glance at Zabini, who shook his head. “And you, Felix?”

“Just fire, for right now.” Felix’s voice was a little breathless. Ginny wondered snidely if he’d thought elemental magic was impossible to master until he came to the kitchens. It seemed he was in the habit of thinking his brother was weak. “This is—wow, Harry.”

Harry shot him a smile that was calm and bright, and said, “Okay. My weakest element is earth.” Nott visibly twitched. “So I won’t be able to help you as much when you get to that. But I can help a lot with air and fire and water.”

“What can you do with earth?” Ginny asked. Might as well how good his teaching is.

Harry closed his eyes and turned his right hand over, parallel to the floor. Ginny jumped as the whole floor rumbled. From beneath it came a grumble and a snap, and then the stones mounded up, and something that shone and twisted back on itself rose from between them.

“Is that gold?” Zabini squeaked.

“Yeah,” Harry said, opening his eyes. A little sweat stood out on his forehead. “There’s a vein of gold underneath Hogwarts. This is about all I can do with it, though.”

“That’s still pretty impressive,” Felix said, and smiled at Zabini as if they were friends now. From the long look Zabini gave Felix, Ginny didn’t think they were. She’d heard conflicting things about Zabini: that he was nice if you caught him in the right mood, that you should be scared of him because his mum killed people, that he was one of the smartest people in Harry’s year, that he was one of the most prejudiced.

On the other hand, maybe he just didn’t think Felix was going to keep coming to these teaching sessions. Ginny wasn’t sure she believed it herself.

“I used it in Transfiguration to make McGonagall think I’d completed a Transfiguration into metal,” Harry explained, and then flicked his fingers. The gold dropped out of sight again, and the stones of the floor slid back together. “Don’t know how long I can keep that up, though.”

Nott definitely twitched this time. Ginny eyed him, but she didn’t know that she would ever figure him out. “I’d like to learn earth,” she said.

“Okay. You know where you start.”

“Meditation,” Ginny said with a little groan, but she sat down and closed her eyes and started working on her breathing. From the sounds outside the little world of her closed eyelids, other people were doing the same.

Ginny thought wistfully about making the stones mound up underneath Marietta Edgecombe’s legs and trap her. Or maybe toss her all the way down the stairs.

Or make her vanish forever.

But she couldn’t do any of that if she didn’t meditate.

Ginny concentrated.

*

“When I said that you should tell more people about your powers, I didn’t mean that you should tell them your weaknesses.”

Harry eyed Theo sideways as they ducked into the corridor where Gryffindor’s portrait waited for them. “I have to tell them what I can’t do. Or someone will expect me to teach them something I can’t teach, and then they’ll think I lied to them.”

“So what?”

Harry shook his head. He didn’t know how to explain to Theo that what he needed was for people to trust him. Maybe they would become good friends, maybe not, but at the very least, he didn’t want them to betray him and go running to the teachers. So he was going to tell them the truth.

“You wanted me to share my secrets,” Harry said a little testily as he turned and created the web of wind behind them that would carry any sounds of voices or footsteps to him. “That’s what I’m doing.”

“Carefully, Harry. I said carefully. I—”

Theo’s voice disappeared in a croak. Harry whirled around, coming down in a crouch. If there were already people like Dumbledore here waiting to stop them from talking to Gryffindor’s portrait or accusing them of something, he was ready.

But Dumbledore didn’t stand in front of the portrait. Instead, there was a coiling, shimmering snake made of fire that stared at Harry with bright expectant eyes. Gryffindor had a nasty grin on his face.

Harry suspected this was a test, although he wasn’t sure how Gryffindor expected him to pass it. He already knew that Harry was a Parselmouth, after all. Harry stood back up with fire entwining around his fingers. “Hello,” he greeted.

The snake’s tongue flickered out of his mouth, a darting flame. And then it slithered straight at him.

Harry reacted without thinking. His hand flew up and then came down, and water condensed out of the air and slammed into the snake. There was a flurry of steam and hissing that Harry didn’t think came from a serpent’s mouth, and when he could see again, there was a much smaller coil of flame in the middle of the air, ruddy and golden.

And Gryffindor was no longer smiling.

“When elemental spirits come to you in the form of allies, you are supposed to welcome them,” he snapped. “Not destroy them.”

“It was attacking me,” Harry snapped back. He was aware of Theo stepping up behind him, his wand drawn, and his gaze going back and forth from the Gryffindor portrait to the splash of water on the floor. “And I saw the way you were smiling. This was meant as a test. I thought it was a test of how to defend myself.”

The fiery snake still hovering in the air hissed at him, but its hisses were weak, barely distinguishable from the crackling of a fire. Harry ignored it and continued to stare at Gryffindor, who blew out an angry breath and looked away.

“Are you all right?” Theo asked under his breath, touching Harry’s shoulder for a second.

“Yes, fine,” Harry said, glancing away from the snake so that he knew the words wouldn’t come out in Parseltongue. “We’re just having a disagreement about what kind of test Godric wanted to subject me to.”

“It was a test of diplomacy,” Gryffindor said tightly. “You will have to learn how to speak with elementals if you are going to on practicing as an elemental wizard. Destroying them, attacking them with their opposing force, is nearly the worst error you can commit.”

“And you never said anything about that before.”

“It’s explained in the books I recommended to you.”

“The books that I haven’t been able to find copies of because they’re all a thousand years old?”

Gryffindor cursed quietly. Harry sat down at one of the chairs he and Theo had dragged in here and went on staring at the portrait. Theo eased up next to him, a question in his eyes, and Harry nodded at the other chair. Theo sat down with a quiet grumble.

Gryffindor turned around and stared at the background of his portrait again. Harry wondered idly if he had copies of the books there, and if there was some way you could make copies of a book that only existed in a portrait.

“You could have responded politely,” Gryffindor said at last.

“When it didn’t respond to my greeting and came straight at me?”

“I was—testing your reflexes,” Gryffindor finally admitted grudgingly, turning around. “But I swear to you that I didn’t mean it as an attack. I thought you would dodge, and the serpent, having seen that you could move fast, like a flame, would then greet you properly.”

Harry shrugged. “And I suppose there are different ways that you have to greet spirits of water and earth and wind?”

“Yes, of course.”

“I’ll learn them, then.”

Gryffindor waited, and waited some more. Theo had leaned back in his chair and had his arms folded in a way that said no one had better try to involve him in this. Harry had to grin. His friend was honest with Harry, at least, and once you knew him well, it was easy to read Theo.

“You’re not going to apologize,” Gryffindor said at last.

“No.”

“Why not?”

“There isn’t any power that you have over me except to get angry and stop teaching me. And you want me to stop the basilisk and help the snake that’s bound in fire form in the forest, so you won’t do that.”

Gryffindor leaned nearer, so that he appeared to rest his elbows on the front of his portrait. “You really think…you really think I would do that?”

“I listed the reasons why you wouldn’t. But if you didn’t have them? Yes.”

“What kind of life have you led, where apologies are to be used that way?”

Harry grimaced. He hadn’t really touched on his childhood with Gryffindor, except when he’d had to explain why he’d kept Parseltongue secret from his parents or why he’d grown up in the Muggle world. “Because those were the people I knew.”

Gryffindor considered that for a little longer, then nodded abruptly. “Very well. We’ll include contacting elemental spirits in your lessons, then. These are the main conduits of elemental magic for wizards and witches who were born without your gift.”

Harry kept back a groan. He wasn’t sure why he needed to learn how to speak with these spirits if he could just control and conjure the elements naturally.

But if the portrait thought it was important, then Harry would keep at it. Unlike his lessons with Dumbledore, these actually provided him with important information.

Theo did pull him aside when they left the corridor and leaned a little closer. “Are you—all right? What with the deception that Gryffindor pulled on you today?”

“You think it was a deception, too?”

“Of course it was. He has to know that he’s never mentioned elemental spirits to you except when he talked about the one trapped in the forest, and he’s never mentioned that you have to be polite to certain ones.”

Harry smiled grimly. “I think he wanted to test me. See how I’d react, and where the gaps in my knowledge were.”

“I wish you’d let the Hat put you in Slytherin.”

Harry shrugged. “I don’t mind being tested like that—if it results in useful information. And Godric hasn’t lied to me so far.”

If that changes, Harry thought, ignoring the twinge in the back of his mind that meant Tom Riddle had an opinion about this, then I’ll find a way to make a portrait hurt.

He tried to ignore the way it felt as though Riddle approved of that.

*

Felix stared at the letter in his hand in stunned bewilderment. He’d written to Remus Lupin again after his and Harry’s initial letters hadn’t produced any result, and this time, he’d specifically asked for a response, or at least a reason why the man didn’t want to write to them.

He’d got a response, all right.

It was written on the back of the letter Felix had sent, in something dark that Felix had thought was blood at first. But he’d changed his mind about that. This looked…thicker.

Contact me again and I’ll rip your throat out, prey.

Felix folded up the letter with a frown and turned in the direction of Gryffindor Tower. He would show the letter to his brother and ask what Harry wanted to do. He was almost sure that Harry would vote in favor of stopping any more letters.

Felix intended to argue against that.

Remus Lupin seemed to be another victim of their parents. Felix was determined to keep on reaching out to him.

Chapter Text

Ginny came down the stairs to the Ravenclaw common room, yawning behind her hand. She had been up late the night before practicing elemental magic. Still, it was worth it. She was pretty sure that she had managed to summon a bit of wind before she fell asleep.

Her only warning was, “Hey, Weasley!”

Ginny turned around, and saw a hex hurtling at her. She was still on the stairs, and she didn’t really have anywhere to go. She flattened and braced herself as best as she could, trying to summon some wind up in front of her to use as a shield.

It didn’t work. The hex slammed into her, and Ginny felt her skin turning scaly and warty at the same moment as her balance wavered on the stairs.

She snatched at the banisters, but she didn’t manage to grab them. Ginny slid down the stairs, crying out as her head smashed into the edge of a step. She was dizzy and near-vomiting when she crumped into the carpet at the base of the stairs, her hands clenched around her head.

She heard laughter, but that was distant. Everything was so dizzy. Why couldn’t she stand up? Why wouldn’t the world stop spinning?

Then she heard a scream.

Ginny tried to fight her way back to her feet. She was convinced the scream was Luna, who wouldn’t have been far behind her coming out of the first-year girls’ bedroom. She had to get up and reassure Luna she was fine.

But she sagged down to her knees again, and had to look up the stairs, fighting hard to blink away black spots and colored ones from her vision.

Marietta Edgecombe—she had to have been the one who’d hexed Ginny—was cowering near the top of the stairs, screaming, her hands rising to claw at her hair. It was on fire. Ginny blinked and stared, but no, it really did seem to be on fire.

Behind her was Luna, and the magic pouring out of her was pounding at the air in waves. She stared at Edgecombe, and the fire got worse.

Ginny was torn between thinking Edgecombe fully deserved it, glee that Luna had managed to summon elemental fire when they hadn’t advanced far in those lessons, and alarm in case someone recognized it as elemental. She tried again to stand up.

Luna glanced at her, and Ginny stopped. This was the first time she had ever seen Luna really angry, she thought. Luna acted quietly upset when someone stole her things from her or called her Loony, but only if you really knew her and could see it. Ginny had literally never seen her in a rage.

It was frightening.

“Luna,” she said, wincing as her voice came out slurred and wavering. It was probably the scales and warts that were all along her jaws. “I’m all right.”

She wasn’t, Ginny thought. She probably had a concussion and needed to go to the hospital wing. But “all right” in the sense of “alive” would have to be enough for right now.

By this time, Edgecombe’s shrieks had brought other Ravenclaws tumbling out of their dormitories and some up from the common room where they must have been reading. They stared at Ginny, then at Edgecombe, and finally one of the prefects, Adrian Arlington, waved his wand to try and quench the fire.

It didn’t work.

Ginny finally managed to get her feet, which felt as if they’d been twisted into hooves, back underneath her. She stood up and said loudly, “Luna, it’s all right. I fell, but I’m going to be okay.”

Luna glanced at her, a steady, evaluating glance like the one Harry used in the kitchens sometimes, and then nodded. The fire went out.

Edgecombe started to cry. A few people went to her side to comfort her, Arlington stepped up towards Luna, and other people crowded around Ginny.

“Are you okay, Weasley?” asked one of them, a tall girl Ginny thought was a third-year but didn’t recognize. She waved her wand and stared at the numbers the spell pulled up on the air, which didn’t mean anything to Ginny. “You have a concussion!” She glared up in Edgecombe’s direction. “That was a nasty hex.”

Ginny nodded and then wobbled on her feet. She was mostly surprised that someone cared. Before this, everyone had acted as though Edgecombe’s bullying was just the sort of thing she and Luna had to endure.

Maybe it’s different because it happened right in front of everyone, or because she made me fall and hurt myself.

“I didn’t mean to!” Edgecombe sobbed.

“Come on, Weasley,” said one of the prefects, pushing his or her way towards Ginny. Ginny’s vision was blurring so badly that she couldn’t even tell if it was a boy or a girl, and she couldn’t tell from the voice, either. “Hospital wing.”

“Luna was just trying to protect me,” Ginny said through numb lips. She hated that Luna was probably going to have to talk with Professor Flitwick and Ginny wouldn’t be right there to help her.

“That’s something for you to worry about later. Somnio.”

Ginny sank into darkness under the Sleep Charm, her last waking thought for some time that she didn’t know what was going to happen with Edgecombe and Luna, but she was going to do something about it if Edgecombe lied.

*

“Did you hear that Ginny’s in the hospital wing?”

Harry looked up, startled. Ron had sat down next to Harry at the Gryffindor table. Most of the time, they didn’t talk that much, since Hermione was the one who spent the most time “tutoring” Harry and Ron was really Felix’s friend. But Ron was so pale now that he looked like he might faint, and Harry was the only other Gryffindor in the Great Hall this early in the morning.

He probably just needs someone to talk to, yes, said Riddle’s impatient voice. Find out what it is.

“What happened? Did she have a broom accident?” It wouldn’t surprise Harry that much. Ginny had confessed to the people in the kitchen group how she used to sneak out and jimmy the lock on the broom shed at the Burrow to fly her brothers’ brooms.

“No.” Ron buried his head in his hands. His fingers were trembling. Harry wondered if Felix would reach out and put a hand on his shoulder. Probably. But that wasn’t the kind of thing Harry was good at. “One of her Housemates hexed her.”

“What kind of hex?”

“The Uglifying Hex.” Ron shuddered and dropped his hands. “It covers you with warts and scales. But they did it while Ginny was on the stairs, and she turned and fell down them. She has a concussion. And her friend Loony did something to the person who hexed her, and now Loony has detention.”

Luna, Harry almost said, but the faint sliver of outrage at Ron was drowned by the much sharper outrage he felt over the other things Ron was saying. “What about the person who hexed her?”

“Oh, they have detention, too. I think—I think Ginny said her name was Marietta Edgecombe. It was kind of hard to understand her with all the scales clustered around her mouth.”

Harry’s hands tightened under the table. He flicked a glance at the Ravenclaw table. Of course neither Ginny nor Luna was there, but the girl Harry thought was Marietta Edgecombe was, sitting near the end of the bench with a few friends. Her hair looked singed, and she wore a frazzled expression.

Not nearly as frazzled as she’ll wear when I’m done with her.

Harry hadn’t interfered in the bullying that Ginny and Luna had talked about—well, Luna had hinted around about—because they had acted like they wanted to handle it on their own, and like it wasn’t that bad. Mostly stealing Luna’s things and whinging about Ginny to Professor Flitwick.

But now Ginny was in the hospital wing, and Luna had detention.

You’ll regret what you did, Harry thought, almost wishing he was telepathic.

Riddle laughed darkly in the back of his head.

*

“Miss Weasley, I must ask you if you have left the hospital wing.”

Ginny blinked up at Professor Flitwick. She personally thought she was fine to return to Ravenclaw Tower, since Madam Pomfrey had reversed the hex and the last scales had faded into her skin. Oh, and she had taken a potion that had healed the concussion. But Madam Pomfrey had wanted to keep her overnight and then until lunch today for observation. “No, sir. You can ask Madam Pomrey or her wards if you don’t believe me.”

Professor Flitwick gave a small sigh and sat down on the chair next to her bed. “I ask simply because Marietta Edgecombe has suffered a—series of accidents.”

“And you think I hexed her, sir?”

“I wondered if you had. Or if you had arranged with someone else to do so.”

Ginny shook her head. “No, sir.” She paused. “Did Edgecombe get detention?”

“Yes, of course, Miss Weasley. She has lines with me for a week about what she did to you, and has been restricted from her Quidditch privileges.”

Ginny hadn’t even known that Edgecombe was on the Ravenclaw team, but she supposed that was part of what she got for sticking so closely with Luna and her studies. And first-years weren’t allowed to play, anyway.

“Luna told me she has detention, sir.”

“For burning Miss Edgecombe’s hair, yes.”

“Are you going to give Edgecombe detention for stealing Luna’s things and calling her Loony?”

Professor Flitwick sighed. “Miss Weasley, nicknames are not against the rules.”

“What about theft?”

“Miss Lovegood has always got her things back, from what I was told, and Miss Edgecombe swears she was not behind most of the thefts.”

“Most of them.” Ginny leaned forwards. “Sir, I want to know why you won’t do more to protect Luna. She’s just a first-year, and Edgecombe is a third-year. Two years older, two years bigger and stronger. Do you not want to give her detention because she’s on the Quidditch team? Is she related to someone important in the Ministry? What is it?”

“Of course not, Miss Weasley!”

Professor Flitwick looked honestly shocked by her suggestions, at least. Ginny nodded. “All right, sir. I’d still like a reason.”

“The accusations that you bring most of the time are baseless,” Professor Flitwick said firmly. “Miss Edgecombe is a good student, and calling Miss Lovegood by a nickname is—not nice, but I believe that my students need a little toughening. We eagles tend to be too caught up in our books and have our heads in the clouds too much, otherwise. And you have not actually seen her steal Miss Lovegood’s things, have you?”

“I’ve seen her handle them and refuse to give them back when Luna asked for them, Professor.”

“But that is not proof of thievery.”

Ginny didn’t say anything. She thought she understood, though (with maybe the thought that Professor Flitwick did try to avoid giving detention to Edgecombe because she was on the Quidditch team and he wanted to win the Cup). Professor Flitwick wanted logic and proof and clear-cut evidence. He couldn’t get that if people only told him afterwards and no one actually saw Edgecombe stealing something from Luna’s trunk.

Ginny would have to go it alone. Well, she and Luna would have to go it alone.

Professor Flitwick stood up and patted her arm. “I’m glad you’re all right, Miss Weasley.”

Suddenly remembering why he had come in the first place, Ginny asked, “Professor, what were the accidents that Edgecombe was suffering? Why did you think I hexed her?”

Professor Flitwick hesitated. “Oh, well, Miss Edgecombe has been—she choked at breakfast yesterday morning, as if a piece of food had been caught in her throat. But no food was found. Then she missed a step on one of the staircases and fell. She insisted there had been ice under her foot, but no one could find any ice, either, which makes me think it was probably a Tripping Jinx. Her hair caught on fire again, and her books. She choked at lunch and at dinner, even though she was only eating soup. And she came to me complaining of feeling extremely cold, as though someone had cast the Freezing Charm at her. Or more properly, her blood. But everything was fine when I examined her, including normal blood circulation.”

Ginny had a hard time keeping her face straight. She managed to nod solemnly a few times as if she had no idea what could be happening.

Thank you, Harry.

“Some of those do sound like hexes, sir,” Ginny murmured. “But maybe she was choking because she was eating too fast? Or just tripped because the staircases have trick steps?”

“Yes, yes, I suppose that’s possible,” Professor Flitwick said, and perceptibly brightened. Ginny hid a smile. That was the way to handle him. Provide what sounded like a logical explanation and Professor Flitwick would go for that instead of ruminating about whether someone with powerful and dangerous elemental magic was stalking Edgecombe. “Do make sure that you let me know if you need any of your notes for your classes yesterday or this morning, Miss Weasley.”

He left, then, and Ginny leaned back and folded her arms behind her head. Her mouth twisted. She didn’t like having to do things on her own. She didn’t like it that professors seemed to value toughness or peace or logical explanations over stopping bullying.

But she would do the best she could to defend herself and Luna, and she would thank Harry for what he’d done. Keeping Edgecombe balanced on the edge of fear was even better than the problems he was causing.

*

“Someone’s going to find out.”

Harry met Theo’s eyes in the mirror of the boys’ bathroom they’d ducked into. It had become necessary when Professor Flitwick marched into the corridor where Harry had once again made Marietta Edgecombe choke on air. They had been all over the school, from the seventh floor to the ground one, at this point, following Edgecombe. “That I’m the one doing this?”

“That you’re using elemental magic.”

Harry shook his head. “There are too many spells that mimic the things I’m doing to her. It’ll be fine.”

Theo winced, as if about to argue against that, but then he sighed and leaned against the wall. “Are you going to be done tormenting her any time soon?”

“Ginny should be out of the hospital wing in less than an hour. Then I’m done.”

Theo frowned and tapped his fingers against the heel of his head. “You know that I’m all for revenge, but I don’t know if this is going to work the way you want it to. Will Edgecombe really connect the things you’re doing to the way she hexed Weasley and bullied Lovegood? Or will it only make her double down because she can’t believe someone would really try to defend the outcasts of Ravenclaw?”

Harry smiled, and saw the way Theo drew a little back from him. That part wasn’t something Harry liked, but he did enjoy the idea that if he could frighten Theo, he would definitely frighten Edgecombe.

“If she does that, then we’ll just have to make sure that she suffers some more,” Harry said softly.

In his head, for some reason, Riddle was silent.

*

“Mr. Potter, I can’t help noticing that something seems to be troubling you. Your forehead, perhaps?”

Your scar? Albus did not say. He could have said that. But that would lead Harry to perhaps begin thinking there was something special about it, and to think about the night he had supposedly got it, and to start seeking the truth about the horrific scene Albus and James and Lily and Sirius had uncovered that night.

No. It was better if that night lay as undisturbed as possible.

Harry blinked and looked up at him. The child always looked so locked-down, so wary. Albus had wondered for several weeks now what he could do to get the boy to trust him, but he had begun to think that he would not be able to force it on a schedule convenient to himself. He would simply continue tutoring the boy in Potions and talking to him gently, and that would be the surest road.

“I woke up this morning, sir, and I felt like I’d had a strange dream. But I couldn’t recall it. I was wondering…is there magic that can help people remember dreams?”

Occlumency would help with that. But Albus would prefer that Harry not study Occlumency. If need be, Albus wanted to reach into his mind and find the truth easily, gently, without disturbing him.

“There are a few charms that can improve memory retention,” Albus said calmly. “Would you like to learn them, Harry?”

“They’re not the kind of thing we would learn in regular Charms?”

Albus shook his head a bit. “Professor Flitwick does teach them in NEWT Charms class, but you’re very far away from deciding if you need to take that class, or qualify for it.”

“Yes, sir. Then—I suppose not. Maybe I’ll get a journal and write down a few dreams in it right after I wake up? Felix said something about that working well. You know, like a diary?”

Albus smiled. Pure relief had flooded him when he thought of Felix influencing Harry. If Harry, after the rocky beginning he’d had with the Potter family, could take Felix as his Lord, then much was going right after all. “I think that would be eminently sensible, Harry.”

Harry gave him a tentative smile back, and they went back to working on Potions. Albus couldn’t stop his smile. This had gone well, after all. It had gone nearly perfectly.

Harry would walk the road that Albus hoped for for him, the kind of road that would offer the healing and safety an abused child needed, before the inevitable end.

*

He doesn’t know about the diary. If he did, his reaction would have given it away.

Harry hadn’t thought the Headmaster did know about Riddle’s diary, not really. But if he had, then he would have made a satisfying suspect Harry could have tried to get closer to and learn more about.

Because he might have been the one who had made Riddle disappear from Harry’s head.

Harry hadn’t noticed the loss at first. Why would he? Riddle rarely said anything now, because Harry would ignore him immediately. But then he had gone through a few conversations with Felix and Gryffindor’s portrait that should have made Riddle speak up, and he…hadn’t.

Harry didn’t know when the silence had begun, either. Perhaps he’d been without Riddle for several days before he’d noticed. Perhaps it had begun the day he’d tormented Edgecombe and Riddle hadn’t responded. Harry had thought that Riddle might have returned to the diary, but the diary was still buried and blank. Harry had checked. No one had stolen it and perhaps made themselves a host for Riddle.

Harry had told Theo, who had looked grim, but only nodded. “Do you intend to tell anyone else?” he asked.

They’d been in the corridor outside the one containing Gryffindor’s portrait, where people rarely passed, but Harry had shaped the air around them anyway to direct any sound of someone coming to his ears and muffle their words. “Who would you suggest I tell?”

“My father.”

Harry actually paused. Belisarius Nott wasn’t an option that had occurred to him, despite the fact that Belisarius had kept the secret of Harry staying at his house for a week this summer. And Theo trusted him, which was a recommendation.

But not enough of one. Not when Harry had no idea how Belisarius would react to the idea of Riddle being in Harry’s head. Maybe he would think Harry was mad, or weak. “No. I don’t want to.”

Theo sighed a little and leaned against the wall with his arms folded. “All right. I’m going home for the Christmas holiday this year, of course. I wanted to know if you thought you’d be able to slip away from the Potters for a bit and visit me.”

“Is—your father would invite me?”

“Harry, my father likes you. I thought you realized that by now.”

Because I saved your life, and because he’s thinking of ways to use me. But Harry saw no reason to speak the words. Theo either knew those reasons and was content to ignore them, or he didn’t and breaking the image of his father into little pieces wouldn’t help Harry. “If I do it really early on Christmas morning, maybe? Or I’ll tell people I’m going to spend the day in the library and have Felix cast an illusion of me.”

“He’s good enough to do that?”

“Felix doesn’t have much trouble with any kind of wanded magic. Just the elemental kind.”

Theo smirked. “Well, at least there’s one thing he isn’t good at.”

Harry cocked his head. He and Theo needed to have a conversation about this, and he supposed now was as good a time as any. “You don’t need to be angry at him on my behalf, you know.”

“I’m not,” Theo said without hesitation. “I’m angry at him on mine, because he was a git to you, and you’re my friend.”

Harry sighed and decided that he didn’t want to discuss this anymore. Worrying about Riddle wasn’t productive, either. Gryffindor seemed to think the basilisk would be released no matter what happened. The only thing Harry could do was study elemental magic and Parseltongue enough to contain the basilisk when that happened.

“So, do you want me to come over during Christmas? And on what day?”

“Of course! Let’s try for a few hours on Christmas afternoon…”

*

“Ginny! Welcome home, dearest.”

Ginny leaned forwards and hugged her mother. Behind her, she could hear Luna greeting her father, voice as dreamy as always. Ginny was glad to hear her like that. She had been afraid that getting bullied so often in Ravenclaw would leave Luna bitter, but it didn’t seem to be.

She turned around to wave to Luna before facing her parents again, who were beaming at her. Behind her, Ron got off the train, chattering with Felix, and the twins just behind him.

George gave her a wink as he passed her. Ginny looked steadily back at him, face bland and eyes wide. Just because they shared the secret of learning magic in the kitchens right now didn’t mean that she trusted the twins not to prank her.

“I do want to talk to you, dear.”

Mum’s voice was stern. Ginny sighed. She hadn’t even been home yet, and she was already in trouble.

But despite saying that, Mum waited until they had left King’s Cross station through one of the Floos, Ginny waving at Luna on the way. Then Mum bustled around and put a huge mug of hot cocoa and a plate of biscuits in front of Ginny. Ginny bit into one of the strawberry ones, relieved. At least Mum couldn’t be that angry if she was giving Ginny treats.

“I heard that you’ve been in trouble at school for bullying people, Ginny.”

The strawberry biscuit turned to ash in her mouth. Ginny put it down and stared at her mother incredulously. But Mum only looked back at her with a serious face, as if she had said something true and not outrageous.

“I didn’t!”

“Professor Flitwick was very clear that at least one student had to go to the hospital wing for persistent choking issues—”

“So did I! And she deserved it! They bully Luna all the time, Mum! They steal her things and they hex her and they hexed me! And they gossip about us and make fun of us! I was only fighting back.” Ginny did think about saying that it wasn’t her, but she wanted to make sure that Harry didn’t get in trouble.

“You can’t fight back, Ginny.” Mum leaned forwards. “I was content to leave it up to the professors, but I heard that you’ve been causing more and more trouble. I know that we all thought you would end up in Gryffindor and we raised you to follow your principles, but fighting because someone else started it isn’t one of them.”

“So, what?” Ginny demanded. “I’m just supposed to stand back and watch Luna be bullied? Because I know that you also taught me to stand up for people!”

“No. You should go and get a professor.”

“I’ve tried that,” Ginny snapped. “By the time I brought Professor Flitwick back to the Tower, they’d removed the hex or given Luna back her things. They say that she’s just careless and she dropped it.”

Mum sighed. “Be that as it may, Ginny, I don’t want you fighting anymore. And don’t say mean things to the other girls. That’s not the way to do it. Good people don’t hurt others.”

“I’ll hurt them if they hurt Luna.”

“Ginny.”

Ginny pulled herself up, feeling as if she was clutching onto a broom that was rolling slowly over and over in midair. She glared at her mother. Mum just looked back, uncompromising. Ginny finally swallowed and glanced away. It was obvious that she wasn’t going to make a dent in Mum’s sternness.

“Do you promise not to fight?”

Ginny nodded, not saying the words. It was Mum’s fault if she thought Ginny would actually keep that promise and let her best friend in the whole world get hexed and jinxed and stolen from and laughed at.

“Good. Thank you, Ginny.” Mum got up and came around the table to hug her and kiss her on the forehead. “I know it’s hard to sit back and see things that you think are wrong happening. But the best way to deal with it is the right way, and get a professor. Attacking other people just makes you a bully, too, and you don’t want to be that, do you?”

“No,” Ginny said, with perfect truth this time.

She didn’t want to be a bully. Bullies were childish and ineffective. She wanted to be someone who could make them stop.

And she was going to be that person. She was going to keep learning elemental magic from Harry, and she was going to learn all the hexes and jinxes she could. She would study hard. She would show them that she belonged in Ravenclaw for a reason.

And Marietta Edgecombe and the others would stop bullying Luna, or they would end up hurt. That was the way it was.

*

“Welcome home, boys.”

Harry looked up at Lily with her own eyes as she stooped and kissed him on the forehead. She hoped that she managed to hide her own shudder and to smile like a normal mother as she stepped back and rested her hand on his shoulder.

Harry was so strange. She knew he had been abused, but she would have expected more eagerness to confide in them for that very reason, more insistence on claiming his place in the family. Instead, he seemed to act as though he would be abandoned back to the Dursleys any moment, and so had to keep a cool, cautious distance between himself and the rest of them.

“Thank you, Mother.” Harry’s voice was calm and polite, nothing like the loving way that Felix would say it.

“Hey, Harry, look here!”

Harry looked over his shoulder, and his coolness dissolved in a smile. A different one than the ones he had given his parents sometimes. Lily caught her breath.

There was the love she had been missing, the eagerness to belong, the dedication to proving that he was a Potter. Harry might not want her or James around, but he couldn’t hide his love for his brother.

It will be all right, Lily told herself as Harry trotted over to examine the prank Snitch the Weasley twins had given Felix. I know that Albus worried about Harry’s temperament and whether he would ever be able to recover from the abuse or get over his jealousy of Felix, but I think he has. He loves Felix, who never made the decision to abandon him.

That will have to be enough. I can’t ask him for anything else.

*

“Hey, Harry. Do you want to come outside and fly?”

For a moment, as James stepped around the shelves in the library and his son looked up at him, he felt as though he had surprised a wild, feral thing. Harry’s eyes had gone wide, and they seemed to shine with a light James couldn’t otherwise see. He shut the book on his table, a history book of some kind, and blinked at James.

James held his breath for a moment, then shook his head in irritation. He couldn’t be afraid of Harry. It was unseemly. Harry was—what he was. It wasn’t his fault.

It’s our fault.

But blaming themselves wouldn’t do any good, either, so James just smiled at Harry, clasped his hands behind his back, and waited for an answer to his question.

Harry finally nodded, as though he was bobbing a mechanical toy on a string, and said, “Yes, all right, that would be good. Let me go and get my broom? I’ll meet you on the pitch?”

“That’s fine,” James said, more eagerly than he probably should have, but he didn’t want to walk with Harry and chat with him, the way he would have with Felix. He walked out of the library quickly and went to get his own broom, wishing his hand didn’t shake. Wishing that Harry’s eyes didn’t remind him of what was locked up in the drawer.

In the end, Harry’s state was largely their fault. But it was in the past, and there was nothing they could do about it, just as there was nothing they could have done about the prophecy, or the way that James had felt a stone sink into his stomach the moment he’d heard the prophecy naming Harry.

He and Lily had given up their son to the demands of the prophecy and the need to bring down Voldemort before he killed a bunch of good people. More good people.

And then Harry had survived.

James had felt off-balance ever since. It had been easier to ignore when Harry was with the Dursleys, but he knew he would have to find some way to live with it.

Not that it would be easy. But as Albus said, it was always best to do what was right rather than what was easy.

*

James Potter was a good flyer.

Harry watched the way he dodged and laughed as the Bludgers spun around him, and nodded. James was a good flyer. Something to keep in mind, both as a trait that he could praise his father about if Harry ever needed to speak positive words to or about him, and as an obstacle to counter in case Harry ever needed to fight him.

They tossed a Quaffle back and forth. They dodged Bludgers. James told stories of his Hogwarts years with Black and Lupin that went a little way towards explaining why Snape hated Potters so much.

Harry smiled at him, and noticed the way that James flinched. All right, smiles weren’t something he should do. They looked too unnatural on his face, even if Felix and Theo didn’t think so.

It didn’t mean that spending time with his parents wasn’t valuable. He needed to fool them into thinking he partially loved and trusted them, and yes, they could become his enemies someday.

He would do his best not to kill them, because that would probably upset Felix. But it was much more important not to underestimate them.

*

“Happy Christmas, Harry.”

“Happy Christmas, Theo.”

Belisarius studied the boy who had come out of the fireplace. In many ways, Potter was the same as he had been during the week he had spent with them over the summer. His eyes flickered to the side, seeking out Belisarius, and he bowed a little from the waist. “Thank you for inviting me over, Mr. Nott.”

“You are here without the knowledge of your parents, I trust?”

“Yes, sir.”

There was no discomfort on the boy’s face or in his tone. He didn’t seem to think that Belisarius would use this knowledge as blackmail or reach out to his parents. Of course, he was right. But he had been more nervous when he was here during the summer.

Belisarius could not tell for the moment whether this change was a good thing or not, but it was certainly intriguing.

“Good. Come along, then,” Belisarius said, and herded both boys out of the Floo arrival room, listening in amusement as Theo chattered frantically to Potter, as if his words had been caged birds only waiting for their chance to escape.

With other people, he would have been concerned about Theo being too easily influenced by Potter, too vulnerable with him. But he had heard the whole story of how Potter had rescued Theo in May. He had seen the way that Potter angled his body towards Theo, without seeming to notice that he did so, and listened intently, with his whole heart. He was at least as vulnerable as Theo in this relationship.

And he had returned Theo to his father, something Belisarius, with his power and his connections, hadn’t been able to do.

Belisarius Nott didn’t intend to worry about his son’s bond with Potter unless he was forced to do so.

*

Harry peered down at the gift from Belisarius that he had opened. He had already opened a few from Theo, including a magical leather cover for a book that would make it appear to be a harmless-looking school book, and a crystal that Theo said would help him focus his mind in meditation when learning to control his earth magic. But he didn’t know what to make of the knife lying in the leather case.

“Thank you, sir,” he said politely.

“I know that it might seem I’ve given you a useless gift,” Belisarius said. He was lounging in a chair near the fire, somewhat off to the side of where Harry and Theo were sitting in front of the tree. Harry knew exactly where he was at all times, of course, and was keeping a light hold on the air flowing in and out of the man’s lungs. Just in case. “After all, surely your magic would protect you much better.”

“I was thinking that it was hard to see why you had chosen it, unless it was a matter of pureblood honor or the like.”

Theo nudged Harry’s side. “You don’t have to sound so disdainful of that, Harry.”

“I think I do.”

Theo smiled at him, and Harry smiled back, turning his head away from Belisarius. Of course, he concentrated a bit more on the airflow in the older man’s lungs, until he had an excuse to look back and watch him once more.

“The knife is a special tool that can work with your elemental powers,” Belisarius continued. “For example, lift it and let a small flicker of fire wind around the blade.”

Harry considered what possible negative effects of that there could be, and he had to admit it didn’t seem like very many. So he raised the knife and tried what Belisarius said, letting just a curl of fire lick the steel.

The knife glowed as if it was being heated up much more than Harry was trying to do, and then sucked the fire into itself. Harry was so startled that he almost dropped it. Theo laughed aloud.

“What does it do?” Harry asked, glancing at Belisarius.

Belisarius picked up a piece of parchment from beside his chair and handed it to Theo to hand to Harry. He could have floated it over, but Harry supposed the man knew that Harry would be more comfortable taking it from Theo. “Try cutting the parchment with the knife.” A small smile touched his mouth, and he leaned forwards a little in his chair. “Or you can try to use the knife and the fire stored in it at the same time.”

Harry raised his eyebrows skeptically, but he nodded and turned to the parchment, bringing the knife down on it. He thought about the fire that had curled around the blade, how the reflection had shone in the steel—

And the flames came to life before the blade ever touched the parchment, burning it to ash.

Harry stared at it. It wasn’t exactly like the level of control that he had over his elemental powers; when he used them, he could picture exactly how much fire he wanted and where it would go, how hot and bright it would be, what it would do. But this extended his magic. It could store his magic. He could carry the knife and feed it power and be able to use it in an emergency when he was exhausted.

It was like a wand.

He lifted his eyes to Belisarius and tried to show how sincere he was, which was difficult sometimes around adults. “Thank you. Where did you get this?”

Belisarius inclined his head, while a corner of his mouth lifted. He must be able to hear Harry’s silent question about who else Belisarius might have told about Harry’s elemental magic. Then again, Harry hadn’t tried to keep it that quiet. “It is an old artifact of our family. One of my ancestors, Abigail Nott, was an elemental witch. It took me some searching of the archives to find.”

“And you don’t expect a favor for it?”

“Harry!” Theo sound scandalized enough that Harry twitched. This must be one of those rules where it was impolite to question someone about a gift.

But Belisarius only seemed more amused, shaking his head. “What favor would I ask for that is greater than your saving my son’s life? Then rescuing him from his abusers?” His voice was low and charged, and he was staring at Theo. “Everything you might have done for us, you have done, and without thought of reward.”

“Theo is my friend.”

Harry hated the sound of his own voice, how quiet and uncertain it was. But then, Belisarius had trusted him enough to sound vulnerable. He probably wasn’t going to use the gift of the knife to get Harry in his debt.

“I know it, and I am thankful for it.” Belisarius leaned forwards in his chair a little. “Because I think you might understand this a little better, here is another explanation. By making you stronger, I make you better able to protect Theo, and thus work to spare Theo’s life and give him a stronger friend.”

Harry relaxed. Yes, that did make sense, and didn’t make it sound like Belisarius was trying to take advantage of him. “Thank you,” he repeated, more sincerely, and touched the knife. “This is as close to a wand as I’ll probably ever come.”

“And you don’t need to keep up the pretense.”

Harry blinked at Theo. “What are you talking about?”

“You could start using your elemental magic in front of people.” Theo leaned insistently forwards. “They might understand the knife better than just seeing you conjure the elements out of the air. It would give them a way to understand. Make you seem less foreign because you have a conduit for your magic.”

Harry understood what Theo was saying, but part of him shrank from that. “I would have to admit that I lied about being able to use a wand.”

Theo hissed a little. “You’re going to have to do that anyway, Harry.”

“What do you mean?”

“Don’t sound so gormless.” Theo’s hands tightened into fists down by his legs. “You won’t be able to feign every high-level Charm or Transfiguration or Defensive spell with elemental magic. You’ll have to show them sooner or later, Harry. Wouldn’t it be better to do it in a situation of your own choosing, under your own control, instead of having them find out accidentally and be upset that you lied?”

Or afraid. Harry could practically see the words hovering in Theo’s eyes, as if he were a Legilimens. You know that they would be afraid you managed to lie and fool them so well, managed to keep your real magic concealed for so long.

“I don’t know what would happen,” Harry said. He did not want to have this conversation in front of Belisarius, but it seemed they were having it.

“What do you mean?”

“They could be afraid of me and try to control me because they found out about my elemental magic accidentally. Or they could feel that way because I told them. I’ve read some of the books about elemental wizards and witches in history now, Theo. They were feared and hated, a lot.”

“Take control of it! That’s the only way to stop them!”

“I don’t know how!”

Harry’s neck prickled in the silence that followed. He really hated having this conversation in front of Belisarius. But it was too late to take the words back.

Even if Theo probably knew the real reason that Harry didn’t want to reveal his elemental magic already.

“If I may offer a suggestion,” Belisarius said. “As someone who truly did not intend that knife to be a gift that would reveal your elemental magic for others to know about, but who agrees with my son?”

Harry shifted in place, tightened an invisible skin of air around him that he could fling in any direction at any second, and glanced at Belisarius. “Yes, sir?”

From the look in Belisarius’s eyes, he knew well enough that Harry wasn’t speaking the title out of respect. But he said, “You could begin showing your professors and others who don’t know about it already small feats of elemental magic. That would work, wouldn’t it? It would look as if you were gaining control over your wandless magic little by little, and growing stronger and more precise with it. Eventually, you could pretend that the wanded spells you had managed were waning and your wandless magic was growing stronger, but less dangerous. Because it was under your control.”

“The books said that the reasons wizards and witches hated and feared elementalists didn’t have anything to do with believing they were under control, sir. It had to do with the ability to stop other people from breathing or freeze their blood or the like.”

Belisarius had an unpleasant smile when he wanted to use it. “I think you’ll find, Mr. Potter, that elementalists who suffered such fates in the past were not as powerful as you, even if they were older. And they did not have the Nott family protecting them.”

Harry watched Belisarius for a moment. He could feel Theo vibrating with tension beside him. But Theo didn’t act as though he thought his father was wrong.

And…

Part of Harry did want to tell people. He didn’t want to keep watching his back, and he didn’t want to hide the secret from some of the people he would never trust enough to teach, and he wanted his parents and Dumbledore stare at him in shock.

He just hadn’t trusted his own motivations to think those were good reasons to reveal the magic. But if both Belisarius and Theo were confirming what his instincts had told him…

“I could be open to working on a plan for that with you, sir,” he said.

Belisarius leaned back and lifted his mug of mulled cider in a toast. “Excellent news, Mr. Potter.”

Theo reached out and laid a hand on Harry’s arm. Harry glanced at him and found Theo almost shining with excitement, his magic touching Harry’s in a brief, slithering brush.

Harry breathed out. He didn’t dare to hope things would work out as well as Theo and Belisarius seemed to think they would, but—

He would try.

Chapter Text

“Wow! That’s wicked! Can I touch it?”

Harry was a little startled at the dislike that filled him at the thought. Felix was his brother, and he hadn’t even had the knife Belisarius had given him for one full day yet. He smiled and ignored the twinge in the back of his mind as he held out the knife.

Felix gently ran his fingers along the hilt, pausing when his hand was near the blade. Then he abruptly yelped and snatched it back.

“Felix? What happened?”

Harry almost expected to see a burn or a blister when Felix turned his hand over, if the stored elemental fire inside the blade had lashed out, but instead, there was a tiny wound in his finger. It looked like a bite. Harry stared back and forth between the knife and Felix, blinking.

“I—didn’t know it would do that.”

“Neither did I.” Felix took a step back and gave the knife a look of nervous respect. “I know there are some wands that don’t like being handled by anyone other than the wizard or witch they’re bonded to, but I never heard of any that bit. I don’t suppose that it’s like a normal wand, though.”

“No,” Harry said quietly, and pulled the knife a little closer to him. A current of warmth ran up his arm that might have been nothing more than the reflection of the fire he’d stored.

He knew better.

“So I just won’t try to touch it, then.”

Felix said something else, but the knife vibrated in Harry’s hand, and he turned his head. There was something nearby that the knife didn’t like. It didn’t want to bite, Harry thought. It wanted to destroy.

“Harry, are you all right?”

Felix was looking at him strangely. They were in Felix’s bedroom, with Harry standing near the door, and Harry found that the pull of the evil thing that the knife wanted to kill was stronger when he was facing away from Felix, towards the corridor.

At least it’s not my brother.

“Yes. There’s—something…”

Felix followed him as they went down the corridor, and then the knife began uttering shrill screams into Harry’s head, so suddenly that he flinched and stopped. When he looked up, the door to Lily and James’s bedroom was in front of him, and the knife was tugging at his hand. Harry swallowed.

“I think it senses that thing in the drawer,” he whispered.

“That makes sense,” Felix said. “It’s powerful, and it’s evil. I still don’t know exactly what it is. Does the knife?”

Harry tried to focus his mind and commune with the knife the way that he could sometimes commune with his magic when it took the form of a snarling beast on his shoulder. But the knife didn’t respond. It just kept screaming, short, focused pulses of hatred that made Harry sway on his feet.

“Boys? Are you all right?”

Felix turned to deal with James. Harry tucked the knife away and nodded, turning around so that he could give James a smile that had nothing to it, but the happy kind of nothing that the Potters were learning to expect from him. “Yes, sir. Just wondering which of our gifts we should play with first.”

“You don’t have to call me sir, Harry.”

James’s voice was soft, and so was his face, but there was a tight strain at the back of it that reminded Harry of all the things he reminded the Potters of. He nodded obediently. “Okay.”

“Could you call me Dad?”

Harry had had trouble saying it before. But right now, he was thinking about the knife and how he had to keep it concealed for the moment and what it would be like when he revealed his elemental magic in front of the school and how in the world he was going to sleep in the house tonight knowing there was something this evil locked in the drawer in his parents’ bedroom. As if it were nothing worse than a cursed necklace or something.

“If you want me to, Dad.”

James’s face lit up with such joy that Harry and even Felix stared at him. He leaned down and hugged Harry with the kind of tenderness that Harry had never noticed even last summer when he and Felix had had their birthday.

“Come on, son,” he said, sounding a little choked up. “Let’s go and see what your mum’s plans for dinner are. I’m sure that I can get her to change them to your favorite.”

Harry wondered what James would say if he knew that Harry’s favorite food for ten years had just been food. But he gave James a false smile that wasn’t obviously false and put out his hand. It turned out this wasn’t so hard, after all, and calling James by a name he didn’t mean wasn’t some huge, weighted thing.

It didn’t mean that he hated the Potters any less.

It just meant he was doing what he had to do to survive.

*

Felix watched Harry walk away with Dad and sighed. He knew exactly how false Harry’s apparent happiness was, and he thought less of Dad for not sensing it.

Then again, Dad and Mum had tossed Harry away for ten years. Why should he expect them to do the right thing now?

A soft rustle of wings distracted him from looking into Mum and Dad’s bedroom at the drawer with the thing locked in it. An owl landed next to him, and Felix swallowed as he saw the tattered edges of its feathers. It was the one he had sent with their next message to Mr. Lupin. He reached out and slowly took the message from its leg.

This message was a lot longer than the last one, and in different handwriting. Felix leaned against the wall as he read it.

Dear Felix,

Thank you for reaching out. I can’t make up for the years of silence and misunderstanding between us. I should have tried to speak to you sooner, but what happened to you and me that night was just too deep.

The first thing you should understand is that you absolutely can’t let your parents find out that you’re communicating with me. They wouldn’t take it well. They still think that I should have agreed with their mad plan to summon the unnamed thing and feed it its price. I understand that they were desperate to defeat Voldemort, but that’s no excuse.

So, please make sure that you’re hiding our letters from them. I don’t think that you need to hide them from your brother, but I’m not sure. He might be just as upset that we’re speaking.

Felix leaned back against the wall and bit his lip. He didn’t know what Lupin knew, or thought he knew, about Harry, but Felix knew that he absolutely wouldn’t keep this correspondence from Harry. Harry deserved to know, and in case something went wrong, where to look for clues.

Not that Felix intended for anything to go wrong. But something could.

I can tell you all about what your parents planned and why we’re no longer friends, but it’s not the sort of conversation that should be kept for a letter. Do you know about the Shrieking Shack? There’s a tunnel that leads to it under the Whomping Willow. I’ve put a drawing on the back of this letter about where you need to press to stop the Willow from, well, whomping.

Felix flipped the letter over. Yes, there was a sketch of the trunk, and it looked accurate. Felix frowned. There was something about it…it looked too accurate? Even as he thought that, though, he didn’t know what it meant.

He shook his head and looked at the signature.

Looking forward to meeting you,
Moony.

“What are you doing, Felix, dear?”

Felix didn’t immediately shove the letter out of sight, because that would be an amateur move. Instead, he looked up and smiled at Mum as he folded it. “Looking at a letter from the twins,” he said. “I wanted to make sure that it didn’t have any pranks attached to it.”

Mum made a faint noise of despair. “Those boys,” she said. “I don’t know how Molly does it. I’m so happy that my twins are much better behaved.” She came forwards and bent down to kiss Felix’s forehead, over his scar.

When you remember you have twins, Felix thought, but banished the thought, because saying it to Mum right now wouldn’t help.

“I think your father and—your brother are flying over the gardens. Should we go watch them?”

“Yes, Mum, that would be fun,” Felix said, and didn’t look in the direction of the bedroom door as he followed her away from it. It was hard, though.

*

“Mr. Potter, if I might talk to you for a moment?”

Harry sighed as he turned back to look at Professor Flitwick. The little professor had such an expressive face that you always knew what he was thinking even though he tried to hide it. Sometimes Harry wondered how he had survived to the age he was with that kind of face.

“All right, Harry?”

Harry absently nodded to Felix, and to Hermione, who had immediately began hovering as if she thought Flitwick wanted to talk to Harry about his marks and she wanted to hear. “Yeah, I’ll be along to lunch in a minute.”

Felix clapped Harry’s shoulder and herded Hermione out of the classroom, even though she was arguing with him in a low voice. Flitwick shut the door but didn’t lock it—Harry’s magic rippled a little—and then faced him.

“Mr. Potter,” Flitwick said, and his voice was soft and kind, “I think I’m right that you’re not using your wand at all, are you?”

Harry looked at Flitwick and thought about all the different things he could say. Then he took a deep breath and said, “No, sir.”

“Have you ever used it?”

He might know if I lie—I’m about to reveal my elemental magic to people anyway—I don’t think he would try to convince the Potters to kill me or exile me or send me back to the Dursleys—

“No, sir.”

Flitwick made a sad sort of snuffling sound, like a pig rooting under a tree. “Why did you pretend, then, Harry?”

“Why are you using my first name, sir?”

“I wanted—to express my concern. You may not be a Ravenclaw, but you are still my student, and if your hiding of your wandless talents had something to do with your—abrupt introduction to the magical world, or your brother’s fame…”

“I was told that wandless magic is childish, sir. Because it’s related to accidental magic, and that just bursts out of people when they don’t even want it to and it could hurt others.”

“That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard in my life.”

Harry raised his eyebrows. He was pretty sure that Flitwick had been one of the people in his first year encouraging him to use his wand and that he would get past the “impulse” to lash out wandlessly in time.

But that wasn’t the kind of thing he could say to his professor, so he just gave him a tremulous smile and said, “Are—would you say that to my parents if I asked you to, sir?”

“I certainly shall. I intend to owl them and ask for a meeting in the Headmaster’s office a week from today. Will that suit? That should give me some time to prepare my arguments and you some time to accept the public sharing of your talents.”

Flitwick’s voice had gone gentle. He probably interpreted the expression on Harry’s face as wild hope, which was fine. Harry ducked his head and mumbled his agreement shyly, and Flitwick waved him out of the classroom with a benevolent look on his face. Harry went, not surprised when he saw Theo next to the door, even though the Slytherins didn’t have Charms next.

“What did he say?” Theo asked, the minute they had gone around a corner and far enough to put any Listening Charms behind them.

“That he can tell my magic is wandless, and that it’s silly to think wandless magic is childish.”

Theo didn’t look smug, but Harry was sure that it took a lot out of him not to. Harry nudged him with a gentle shoulder. “Yes, yes, you’ve said for a long time that I should tell people about this. I’ll remind you that my parents are the ones who think it’s childish, and the Headmaster. They might not be receptive to this even if Flitwick is the one who raises it.”

“But this is the beginning,” Theo said, and his eyes went to the sheath that held Harry’s knife against his hip, invisible under the robes.

Harry acknowledged that with a thin smile.

*

“Okay, George, why did you want me to stay behind?”

George looked a little startled that Ginny had recognized him, but then smiled ruefully at her and shook his head. “Because you’re getting into dangerous waters,” he said, sitting down on the bench in front of the fireplace. Ginny did the same thing, ignoring the way that the tall house-elf who studied elemental magic with them stared at her. “And, well, Mum is the sort to interfere if she knows that.”

“So you would go against Mum for me?” Ginny hadn’t expected that. George and Fred didn’t obey the rules or anything, but they tended to just ignore Mum and do what they wanted. Standing up to her was—something else.

Especially standing up for Ginny’s right to fight or fly or practice dangerous magic, which they’d never done.

George nodded and leaned forwards, his face pale and serious. “It’s important, Gin. We know how important Luna is to you.”

“How?”

“We have eyes, you know. Even two pairs of them.”

“Why are you the only one here, then, instead of both you and Fred?”

George rubbed the back of his neck and looked embarrassed. “We—we thought that you might distrust us and decide it was a prank if both of us stayed back with you. This way, you know that I’m sincere.”

It touched Ginny, just a little. She sat up, though, and said, “And this isn’t a prank?”

“Of course not!”

“Then what are you going to do?”

Ginny still eyed George warily as he drew his wand. There were so many spells the twins had cast to make her life miserable before. But he only waved his wand around in a slow, exaggerated crisscross pattern, muttering, “Mentem ligo.”

“What’s that?”

“A mild version of the Confundus Charm. You cast it on someone and it distracts them from whatever they were just thinking about. You can use it if Mum sees you performing a spell that’s Darker than she thinks you should have, or practicing your elemental magic, or—well, if someone accuses you of being a bully again.”

Ginny sat up. It was the kind of thing she wouldn’t have had any interest in before this year at Hogwarts. But even though some of the kids in Ottery St. Catchpole had thought Luna was weird, they hadn’t bullied her like this.

“Yeah. I want to learn it.”

George gave her a wink. “Thought you would. Be careful with your wand at first, you have to make the movement slowly the first few times you practice it…”

*

“Now, Harry, you know that your parents won’t hurt you.”

Albus sighed a little as Harry nodded, but kept his eyes downcast, aimed at his lap. The boy radiated dubious concern. Filius, sitting in the special, half-height chair Albus kept for him, laughed.

“Of course not! We’re here to discuss something that is going to make Mr. Potter a prodigy in his classes. What parent wouldn’t be proud of that?”

Harry’s hands clasped around each other, turning so white that Albus just smiled instead of responding. He was disturbed to realize how disturbed Harry was. Albus wanted the few years Harry had left to live to be happy ones.

The Floo flared green, and Lily and James stepped out. Lily smiled at Albus, but her gaze immediately went to Harry. James wasn’t even pretending to smile.

“Thank you for coming, Lily, James,” Albus said, and motioned for them to take the two chairs to the side of his desk, where they could see both Filius and Harry at once. “Now, Filius wants to request your permission to have Harry practice some magic without his wand. He knows that you think wandless magic is childish, but he intends to challenge that perception.”

“Wandless magic isn’t childish by itself,” Lily said at once. Her hands were clasped between her legs the way Harry’s were. Albus wondered if he should point out the similarity, if it would make them both feel better, and then decided it probably wouldn’t. “But when it’s combined with poor control of magic in general and an impulsive nature, it’s not a good idea. I would prefer it if Harry could wait a few years, until he’s got better at controlling his temper, before he starts practicing it.”

“I don’t think Mr. Potter is any more childish than most second-year students.” Filius smiled, but Albus could hear the confusion under the surface of his voice. “I believe he would do well. And that’s what we all want, isn’t it, for Harry to do well in his classes?”

If it gives him happiness, before the inevitable end.

“Of course I want him to do well,” said James, coughing a little to clear his throat. “But…”

“Yes?”

“There are more important things. Like getting him accustomed to a wand.”

“I thought,” Harry whispered.

“Yes?” Filius turned to the boy.

“I thought, well, maybe I had wandless magic because Felix is so good with a wand. Because we’re twins? We have different skills?”

Albus felt as though someone had punched him in the stomach. He shivered, and shadows shifted in his mind, reminding him of the creature he had resolved to forget. From the look on Lily and James’s faces, they felt the same way.

And why not? After all, they had chosen Albus as their Lord, and while they might have to shift their allegiance to Felix, he was too young for that yet.

The thing Albus did remember was the boy who had whispered to him in the room of an orphanage about his command of wandless magic. The boy who had been dark-haired like Harry, and who had been Dark like Harry.

“That’s an old notion, and not one that’s really true, my boy,” Albus said as kindly as he could. “The one about twins having complementary skills, that is. I do think that you would be best served to find a wand that wants you.”

“But there’s not one.”

“Did you try all the wands in Ollivander’s shop, though, sweetheart?” Lily was smiling, but Albus could see how her heart was breaking behind her eyes. “No, of course not. There was no way to do that. We should have asked him to craft you a custom wand that would respond to your—unique challenges.”

“But Mr. Potter’s magic is simply wandless.” Filius was frowning at everyone in the room except Harry now, who kept his head bowed and his eyes focused on his hands in his lap. “A wand will never be able to channel it. And I cannot understand your resistance to the idea, Mrs. Potter. Most people would treat their children’s wandless magic as a gift!”

Lily choked on a rough sob, and James wrapped his arm around her shoulders.

Filius still looked as though he should have been a badger and not an eagle. Albus cleared his throat. It was up to him to speak for his followers when they could not, one of the responsibilities of a good Lord. “We—are afraid that Mr. Potter’s wandless magic is such because of the events of that night, Filius. It’s truly impossible to ask the Potters to countenance him continuing to use it.”

Filius blinked a few times. Then he said, “What does the origin matter? He still needs to be taught how to use it. And if you’re afraid that he might lash out when he’s in a temper, then that’s all the more reason to meet him on his own ground and teach him that way.”

Harry Potter died that night, was what Albus wanted to say. The boy before you is nothing more than a remnant of the Dark Lord we tried to give everything to conquer.

“I think Mr. Potter would prefer to use a wand. Wouldn’t you, Harry?” Albus turned to the boy with a coaxing smile. He knew Harry from their Potions tutoring, and Harry was a biddable child, a meek child, who had not deserved his treatment at the hands of his relatives. Albus was sure that Harry would agree with Albus and his parents and not Filius.

Surely.

But Harry looked up and said, “No, sir.”

*

I could go back to the way things were before. They would know that I wasn’t using the wand, but they would think I was trying.

But the knife in the sheath under his robe hummed, and for some reason, what Harry saw in his mind’s eye wasn’t the Potters’ disappointed faces if he didn’t do as they told him, but Theo’s and Ginny’s and Luna’s and Felix’s disappointed faces if he did.

It was the hardest thing he had ever done in his life, to look up and speak those words. It got worse when he saw the astonishment in the Headmaster’s eyes. He wanted to cower and turn away.

They could hurt him. They could still hurt him.

But Flitwick was beaming and nodding, and Dumbledore had controlled his immediate reaction. He leaned back in his chair and said calmly, “I’m not sure that we have the resources to train a wandless magic user at Hogwarts.”

They’re going to try and make me leave—

Harry’s magic spread clattering wings from his shoulder, but before he could speak, Flitwick snorted a little and said, “Nonsense, Albus. It used to be more common than it is now, especially when pureblood families wanted to train their children in magic before they turned eleven. We have the books of lessons here, and we have the time and resources to do it.”

“It would be unfair to ask you to do it, Filius. Or any of the other professors. Poor Minerva would seem like the natural choice because she’s the boy’s Head of House, but she’s so overworked—”

“It would only be extra work for the first few months, which I am more than willing to take on. After that, Mr. Potter could learn the spells alongside his classmates. It’s the teaching we have to learn, and the methods of controlling his magic that Mr. Potter has to learn. It’s doable.”

“I don’t know…”

“I think he should be allowed to try.”

Harry glanced over at Lily, the last person he had thought would speak. But she gave him a watery smile and a nod.

“I know now that you’re never going to be normal, Harry,” she murmured. “And it would be wrong to stunt your growth when you have to learn a different way.”

Harry didn’t trust that for a second, not from this woman who had helped to cast him back into the Dursleys’ house. But he had to pretend to believe it. And he didn’t think that she would be able to interfere with the lessons easily, not after giving her permission like this.

“Lils? Are you sure?”

“Yes, James.” Lily turned to look at James, and her face had some flat expression Harry didn’t understand on it. But it told him that he’d been right not to trust her. “Think about it. Do we really want Harry to suffer from the lack of a wand all his life?’

Emphasis on those words that Harry didn’t understand, either. But he remembered them to tell Theo and Gryffindor’s portrait. Maybe Felix, too, although it would hurt him if he heard the Potters talking about Harry this way.

“No,” James said with a gusty sigh. “I suppose not.”

“And his magic won’t get under control without that.”

“Yes, yes, that’s right.” James cast Harry a slightly nervous look. “You’re right that he should be able to—thrive…”

“Then it’s decided!” said Flitwick, with a glittering, steely smile that made Harry think he wasn’t the only one who had noticed the odd undertones. “As I said, I will be in charge of Mr. Potter’s tutoring, and the other professors can learn from me the few special methods we’ll need to instruct him.”

“You will tell me right away if it becomes too much for you, Filius.”

“Yes, of course, Albus,” said Flitwick, in a tone that made Harry pretty sure he would do no such thing.

Harry didn’t know why. He might be a good student in Charms if he managed to use wandless magic and have it accepted, or elemental magic and have that accepted. But he wasn’t now. And he wasn’t in Flitwick’s House.

It was a mystery.

*

“Sir? Can I ask why you told my parents that I should be able to use wandless magic?”

Mr. Potter’s words were so quiet that Filius had to strain to hear them. His heart panged when he made them out, and he turned around to consider the boy standing in the middle of the corridor outside his office, staring at him. They were of a height.

“I believe all children should have the best chance to thrive, Mr. Potter,” he said firmly. “And that includes children who have magic other than the traditional wanded kinds.”

“Have you—known many of them?”

The words were searching, and Filius wondered if Mr. Potter even knew it. But he nodded, because he didn’t believe in concealing the truth from his students. “My own brother. He was a half-goblin, too, and ran more strongly to the goblin side of our heritage, to the magics of metal and stone.”

“I—goblins could use wands, right?”

“Yes, but the wands would have to be attuned to their magic, and the Ministry has forbidden the making of such wands for a long time.” Filius smiled at the boy. It wasn’t often that someone asked that question instead of just assuming. “My brother and I both had wizard blood, but his magic was wandless, and that was the way it remained. I trained mine with a wand and let the magics of metal and stone wither.”

“The magics of metal and stone. Does that mean goblins are elemental wizards, sir?”

“Oh, well, not wizards, you understand. But elementalists, yes.”

The boy looked at him with big eyes. Filius wondered if his parents had trained him up on stories of elemental wizards and witches being dangerous, the way Filius had read when he was young. It seemed like the kind of thing the Potters would do.

Bewilderment sparked in him at the thought of them. Lily had been so much more open-minded when she was young, and James had never seemed like the kind of man who would deny reality when it came to his son.

Then again, they had taken Albus as their Lord, and people who followed Lords and Ladies did experience a certain dulling of thought. Filius had sometimes regretted that his own goblin heritage made it impossible for him to experience the sense of unity and purpose that bound a Lord’s followers, but not very often.

“I…”

“Yes, Mr. Potter?”

“Nothing, sir.”

Filius just nodded. He would try his best to be a helpful professor to Mr. Potter, and maybe in the end the boy would confide his secrets to him. “Please feel free to come speak to me at any time.”

“Yes, sir.”

*

“It’s happening, then.”

Sirius’s voice was flat. He saw the uncomfortable glance Lily and James exchanged, but he couldn’t bring himself to care. He flung himself back on the couch near the fireplace in their largest sitting room and stared up at the ceiling, listening to the silence while he waited for his friends to speak.

Lily was the one who finally whispered, “It is.”

“And Albus couldn’t tell Filius to shut up?”

“Not without revealing…”

Sirius nodded gloomily. Of course. Of course he couldn’t.

Guilt stabbed him and raked him with long claws. If he had stood up to James and Lily the way Remus had years ago, he wouldn’t be lying here now and feeling as if someone had ripped the very heart out of him. He wouldn’t be feeling as though he had betrayed his godson.

But then again, look at what had happened to Remus. Sirius would have suffered that. And he would have been as useless to Harry now as Moony was useless to Felix.

“I thought we would have more time,” Lily whispered suddenly. “I thought when we reclaimed him from Petunia, we would have more time with him, before the thing inside him starts to devour him whole.”

Sirius rolled over. “What thing?” The thing that did the devouring, or would have done it if they had fulfilled their side of the bargain, was locked in the drawer in Lily and James’s bedroom.

Lily turned such a devastated look on him that Sirius got up from the couch and staggered over to comfort her. Lily hugged him back, but it was mechanical, her eyes fastened on the wall over his shoulder.

“The remnants of Voldemort. You know that Harry—he never had wandless magic before then. Never.”

“He must have,” Sirius said, startled into speaking. “All magical babies have accidental magic. I think I remember him floating a plush over to him.”

“Not like he does now. That was normal. This is.” Lily broke off and shook her head, burying her face in his shoulder.

Sirius held her and said nothing. There was nothing he could say that would make it better, he knew, nothing that would change the facts. They had failed Harry, and the only thing they could do was make sure that they didn’t fail Felix as well.

*

“And you trust the letter?”

“It was right about the place to tap on the Whomping Willow.”

Harry was quiet, but Felix could feel the warm push of his brother’s magic against his back as they followed the tunnel that led from beneath the willow to the Shrieking Shack. When Felix thought about it, he could sense people’s magic, although it took a lot of concentration and being with two other people at most.

Harry’s magic was always warm. Because he was good at calling fire, Felix supposed.

“And it’s not the full moon,” Felix added, when Harry didn’t say anything else.

“Yeah.”

“You’re not happy.”

“I can’t reconcile the letter that he sent the first time with this one. I don’t know how to trust which one’s real.”

Felix turned around and smiled at Harry. They were walking in the Lumos light of Felix’s wand and a ball of fire that hovered above the middle of Harry’s palm. “I think we should give him a chance. Maybe he wrote the last letter right after the full moon. You know that some werewolves can get violent when they’re too close to their wolf.”

Harry just moved his head, not agreeing or disagreeing. Felix turned around and saw the trapdoor that Lupin’s letter had talked about ahead of them. He reached up to draw the bolt that was right above his head.

“Felix!”

Harry’s shout got covered up by a horrific snarl from above the trapdoor. It burst open, and Felix went sprawling to the floor. He rolled over and forced his way back to his knees, only to stop there with his mouth open.

Harry was standing encased in what looked like a whirlwind made of fire, fighting something made of flickering dark radiance, which moved so quickly that Felix didn’t understand what he was seeing. He could feel the sick lurch in his belly, where it felt as though someone was trying to drown him.

I brought Harry here. He thought it was a trap, and he was right, and—

Part of the blurring dark thing cut towards Harry, traveling right into the middle of the fire. Harry stumbled back in turn, and the fire flared bright and turned into something that looked like razors, or shards of broken glass. They all spun inwards and latched onto the thick darkness, and the thing howled in pain.

“Run, Felix!”

Felix got back to his feet with a huge effort, clutching at the wall of the tunnel. “Not without you!”

“Damn it, run!”

Felix might have hesitated, but then the trapdoor shook, and something four-legged and grey and terribly gaunt leaped down through it. It carried an aura of terror with it that made Felix’s decision for him. He turned and he ran.

He heard the sound of pounding, pursuing footsteps for only a moment before there were twin howls of pain. Felix gritted his teeth and pushed himself faster, faster. He had to trust—he had to trust that Harry was going to be all right—

He would get in the way if he went back and tried to help his brother now.

It was the only thing that kept his legs moving.

*

Harry knew Felix was getting out of danger, and he smiled. It didn’t seem to affect the beast and the dark thing, whatever it was, in front of him, but what mattered was that now Harry could use the magic he wanted without getting Felix upset because it was too Dark for him.

He let his power go, all of it at once, the wandless and the elemental magic and the magic stored in the knife, and let it do exactly as it wanted.

It reared up and in between him and the beasts, a curling wave of black fire studded with shards of ice and small stones. The sides of it began to swing, back and forth, as if someone inside the wave clutched long chains in both hands.

Harry laughed.

The grey creature howled and sprang forwards. The silent dark one followed it.

Harry flicked his fingers, and the chains and the fire and the ice and the stones tore into the beasts.

They screamed in pain, horrible grinding noises. Harry saw legs and arms and pieces of fur and ears go flying. Something exploded as it was drawn into the wave of darkness, and while Harry didn’t dare to hope that either of his opponents was mortal enough to die, he hoped at least that they hurt.

They had lured him and Felix here. They had nearly hurt Felix. They deserved torture.

The grey creature broke first, scrambling back up and through the trapdoor. The dark thing followed, but slowly, and Harry had the impression of eyes staring at him for all that it looked like a shadow.

Then the shadow broke. Yellow eyes stared out of its face, eyes that were not a man’s but a wolf’s, and a mouth formed beneath them that was human, and someone cried in a soft voice, “Help me. Help me.”

Harry wasn’t about to be fooled by that. Sometimes Dudley’s gang would pretend to be hurt and cry out like that to get teachers or their parents to pay attention to him. He concentrated, and his magic slung forwards and smashed a chain of fire into the creature’s lying mouth.

The dark thing howled and fled.

Harry called his magic back, although with difficulty. Then he began slowly backing down the tunnel, letting the fire hover in front of him. He doubted that he had defeated the beasts, only hurt them.

But nothing had happened by the time he caught up with Felix, near the entrance of the tunnel. Felix flung his arms around Harry and hugged him with desperate strength. Harry hugged him back, gently patting his shoulder.

“What happened?” Felix whispered. “Do you think that was Lupin? Did—did whatever happened that night make him like that?”

“I don’t know,” Harry murmured. “The grey creature looked a little like a werewolf, but not completely. And I don’t know what that dark thing was.”

“We’ll find out.”

Harry nodded, and together they went back down the tunnel, watching over their shoulders, guarded by Harry’s hovering elements.

Only silence followed them.

Chapter Text

“Well, I don’t think we should do it!”

Harry looked up and blinked as he took in the unusual sight of Fred and George Weasley fighting. They were standing in the middle of the Gryffindor common room, almost nose-to-nose, yelling at each other.

“Why not? You know that Mum—”

“I know there’s a bloody good reason that she doesn’t want Ginny learning that kind of magic—”

“Does this have something to do with Ginny being a girl?”

Felix’s voice was quiet, but managed to cut through the twins’ fight. George flung up a disgusted hand and turned towards Felix, running that hand through his hair. “Yes! Mum thinks that Ginny shouldn’t even fly a racing broom by herself, which is ridiculous. She’s sneaked out and done it enough times. She thinks we don’t know, but we do. She can do it! And Fred thinks we shouldn’t teach her the kinds of spells that would let her defend herself!”

“That’s not why I’m objecting!” Fred was flushed so brightly Harry couldn’t make out his freckles. “You shouldn’t teach her that spell because it affects the caster’s mind as well as the target’s, and you know that means—”

“I thought my twin brother would be more open to the cause of defending our little sister,” George said coldly, and turned away. “My mistake.”

“Please stop fighting, and listen a moment.”

Harry blinked as Felix spoke again. For a moment, he thought he could see trailing sparks tumbling through the air of the common room, extending from Felix to the walls. The people who were lounging about discussing homework or playing games or waiting for dinner to begin turned towards him like flowers towards the sun.

Well. Except for Harry. Harry could feel the demand for his attention, the tug that Felix seemed to be exerting, but it was just kind of irritating instead of compelling. He pictured a snake in his mind, the way he did when he was casting the Imperius, and the power rolled off the snake’s back and away from him.

Harry blinked, and blinked again, while Felix continued. Was that the power of a Lord that Dumbledore and the Potters had talked about?

If so, no wonder that the Potters had followed Dumbledore. No wonder Dumbledore was hoping that Felix would become a Lord and lure some people away from Voldemort.

Harry was just as glad that no one would follow him. It was a disgusting feeling, the idea that someone could bind a person to act against their own will or wisdom without even casting a curse.

“Listen to what?” George asked, sounding sullen.

Felix turned and looked at them. Fred blinked, then stared at the floor with a scowl. George just kept looking back at Felix. Harry had to admire him a little for that. He supposed the Weasley twins were more different than he’d thought after all, if they were differently affected by Felix’s power.

“Your argument doesn’t make a lot of sense. I mean, on the one hand, you shouldn’t avoid teaching Ginny some spells just because she’s a girl, but why teach her dangerous spells?”

“It’s not dangerous!”

“Is too!” snapped Fred, and his hair was practically standing on end as he made a sharp gesture with his hand at George.

George glared back, so unmoved that Harry shook his head. Felix wasn’t going to settle this, as much as he might want to.

“What spell is it?” Felix asked.

George started and then looked around the common room, seeming to notice all the people staring back at them for the first time. He cleared his throat uncomfortably. “Do I have to tell you in front of all these people?”

“You don’t have to tell me at all. But I think you should at least think about whether it’s dangerous, since Fred seems to think it is.”

“It’s not dangerous. It will just help keep Ginny safe.” George raised his voice a little. “Haven’t you ever wanted to practice magic that your parents told you wasn’t allowed or wasn’t safe? This will make it so that Ginny can do that. She knows what she’s doing. She handles more dangerous magic every day.” He gave Harry a pointed glance.

Harry just stared back. Ginny had made the choice to learn elemental magic, and so had George. She could make the decision to stop. George couldn’t make it for her.

Oddly, George took a small step back, even though he hadn’t seemed to be affected by Felix’s power. Harry concealed a frown and decided to ask Theo later if it was possible to influence someone mentally with elemental power, even though he hadn’t known he was doing it.

He hoped not. The last thing Harry wanted to do was start dealing with the kind of mindless slaves that Dumbledore’s or Voldemort’s power seemed to produce.

“I think everyone should calm down.” Felix’s voice was firm, and Harry actually felt his will pressing on the common room, forcing down the emotions of those who were staring and muttering. Once again, Harry shivered himself out of it. “What is the spell, George? You never said.”

“I don’t need to.”

“He doesn’t need to, but he should.”

George whipped around to glare at Fred, and it seemed they might go back to their shouting match. Ron, of all people, was the one to say loudly, “Does it really matter what this is about? If the magic is dangerous, then Ginny shouldn’t be casting it.”

“It’s not dangerous! I wouldn’t teach my little sister a dangerous spell!”

Ron gave George a dubious glance that made him bristle, and then stood up and turned to Harry and Felix and Hermione, who was watching with big eyes. “Whatever. I’m tired of this argument. Can we go down to dinner now?”

Harry nodded and stood up. He didn’t think that the argument was over, or that it was boring. But since George obviously wouldn’t name the spell, and Fred wouldn’t either—maybe because he thought that was a step too far in betraying his beloved brother—they wouldn’t learn anything by staying.

“Maybe I just want to be thought of as myself and not one of a pair all the time!”

It seemed that Fred had said something else to George that Harry had missed. George shouldered angrily out of the common room. Fred stared after him with his hands shaking, and then turned and went up the stairs to the fourth-year boys’ dormitory.

“Let’s go.”

Hermione’s voice was shaky, too. Harry glanced at her as they walked out in a clump that included all the Gryffindors from their year and some from first. “Are you all right?” He didn’t care that much, but knowing things like what scared her would be useful if she ever tried to turn on him.

“Sometimes my aunt and uncle would yell like that. They—drink a lot.” Hermione wrapped her arms around herself in a hug. “My mum and dad said we wouldn’t visit them anymore after last year.”

“Well, that’s good that you’re staying away,” Harry said, and smiled when she smiled timidly at him. Hermione was bossy a lot of the time, but she also acted as though she were afraid someone would turn on her at any second. Maybe it came from spending time around this aunt and uncle—or just because she hadn’t had friends before she came to Hogwarts, and she thought the ones she had now could abandon her at any moment.

Harry sort of wished he could tell her that it would take more than a moment’s uncertainty for Felix and Ron to leave her behind. After all, she was normal.

*

“Sir? Can I ask you a question?”

Filius lowered his wand and smiled at Harry. “You certainly may, Mr. Potter.” So far, he had found the older Mr. Potter far quieter in class than he remembered him, but some of his impressions, when he had revised the memories in a Pensieve, had turned out to be of Felix Potter.

The twins were identical, of course, but they didn’t look enough alike that Filius should have been so easily confused. He hadn’t been paying proper attention to the older Mr. Potter. Well, that had changed now, and at least Mr. Potter had managed to duplicate a few simple charms with wandless magic alone.

“Why are you so sympathetic to me, but you weren’t to Luna?”

“Miss Luna Lovegood? Does she have wandless magic as well?”

Mr. Potter had an odd expression on his face, but he shook his head. “I just meant that she was being bullied by Ravenclaws earlier this year, and you seemed upset about the accusations instead of the fact that she was bullied.”

Filius sighed. He hadn’t anticipated this coming up, but perhaps he should have. It seemed Miss Lovegood and Mr. Potter were friends. “From what I understand, the bullying was name-calling and theft of her items. It was not violence, such as Miss Weasley retaliated with, and as someone was using to retaliate against the students in question later,” he added, with a frown. He had never found the source of the epidemic of small accidents and bad luck that had befallen Miss Edgecombe and the other accused bullies. “When it crosses the line from words, then I must intervene.”

“But not before that? Not with theft?”

“I must seem callous to you, Mr. Potter.”

“Yes, sir.”

Filius started, not having expected agreement. But he looked into the young Mr. Potter’s eyes and found nothing but the flatness of a snake, looking back at him. He swallowed a little and leaned back against his chair.

“I—might not have reacted as I should have to the rumors of theft,” he said slowly. “But only Miss Weasley and Miss Lovegood reported thefts. The other Ravenclaw students always said they had only borrowed Miss Lovegood’s items by mistake, or never touched them, and then returned them to her trunk.”

“They returned them to her trunk after never touching them?”

“You know what I mean, Mr. Potter.”

“Yes, sir. I’m not sure that you do.”

Filius sat down and considered Mr. Potter for a long moment. Then he said, “Do you want to sit down? It seems that we’re going to have a longer chat than I expected.”

“Yes, sir.”

Filius concentrated on Mr. Potter as he sat. He could often sense someone’s mood by feeling the temper of their magic, whether or not they showed that expression on their faces. That had proven useful many times, given that he had met many people who disapproved of half-goblins, but wouldn’t want to show that to him.

Mr. Potter’s magic was elusive, however. It seemed to wrap about his body so closely that it didn’t extend into the atmosphere around him. And there was a simmer to it, as if he were cooking a stew over a fire.

But by itself, that told Filius nothing.

“Why are you so sympathetic to me when you weren’t to Luna, sir?”

“I had no proof of the thefts, other than the word of one person who had already used violence and one who barely spoke a word in her own defense.”

“But there should be a charm to know who’s telling the truth. Or you could probably make an educated guess just based on how well you know your students. And Luna didn’t speak up because she already knows that she tends not to be believed.”

Filius winced. It sounded like Mr. Potter spoke from experience. Of course, he had hardly had the happiest experience in the magical world.

Or before it?

“There isn’t a charm to show when someone is telling the truth,” Filius said, to distract himself from the pain that whipped through his body for Mr. Potter. “There is a potion, Veritaserum. It’s used because the spell doesn’t exist.”

“What? Why not? Surely someone would want to invent it because it would be so useful?”

Filius shook his head. “Unless one is asking a person yes or no questions about the bare facts of a situation they know all the details of, truth is not that simple to elicit, Mr. Potter. There are misunderstandings, things that someone genuinely believes to be true that are not, things they lack knowledge of, and ways they can shade their words. The potion works because it is borne in the body, and thus can control the person’s tongue and influence their mind. It still won’t work if someone genuinely doesn’t know what happened in a particular situation or what someone else thinks, but it will force them to say that they don’t know if instead of lying about it.”

Mr. Potter appeared to be thinking deeply. Filius sat back and fixed himself a cup of tea, while his mind turned around and around the words Mr. Potter had spoken about Miss Lovegood.

I was one of those people who did not believe her.

Filius closed his eyes. It had been quite a while since he had felt shame this intense.

“Do you think someone could invent a charm that would force people to tell the truth, sir?”

“You mean detect the truth, Mr. Potter?”

“Yes, sir.”

Filius eyed the boy. He wasn’t stupid enough to think that the change in wording was the one Mr. Potter had intended, but, well, since so far no one had managed to overcome the magical difficulties Filius had described, he didn’t think a second-year student would be the first one to do it.

“Perhaps someday,” Filius said, and then he took a deep breath. Yes, he had done Miss Lovegood and Miss Weasley a great wrong, one that had wedged itself into his guts like a hook, but now was the time to begin making up for it. “Thank you, Mr. Potter.”

“For what, sir?”

“For pointing out my mistakes to me. I shouldn’t have trusted Miss Edgecombe and the others so readily. I shouldn’t have discounted Miss Weasley’s story without first investigating it. And I should have listened to Miss Lovegood.”

Mr. Potter stared at him with such utterly astonished eyes that Filius felt a stirring of anger. Has any adult ever not failed this child?

But then Mr. Potter’s expression and his magic both smoothed out again, and he said, “It was nice of you to say that, sir. But are you going to apologize to Ginny and Luna?”

“Yes, I will.”

“Are you going to punish Edgecombe and the others?” The simmer in Mr. Potter’s magic crept back into the air, and Filius cocked his head. This time, he thought he was on the verge of recognizing the emotion behind it, although he had never felt anything exactly like it before.

“I feel they have been thoroughly punished for the last incident,” Filius said dryly. “But going forwards, yes, I will certainly make sure that I do not let my own partiality blind me.”

Mr. Potter nodded slowly, and they returned to the discussion of charms that he might be able to duplicate with wandless magic. The whole time, Filius listened to the slow simmer of the child’s magic, and concentrated on identifying what was behind it.

Only when Mr. Potter had left, however, and Filius had gone back to marking a series of fourth-year essays, did the insight strike him. He put down his quill, shaken.

The emotion behind Mr. Potter’s crackling magic was rage. Filius had last felt it when he’d faced a goblin duelist who had been furious at losing to a half-human and had nearly pulled down the cavern roof on their heads.

Filius swallowed. It seemed that Mr. Potter’s parents, and the other professors, and even the Headmaster, had failed Mr. Potter far more comprehensively than Filius had guessed. Especially if that rage was Mr. Potter’s default state instead of something that he only felt at moments of intense stress.

Especially if the boy managed to retain a calm face most of the time.

He is so powerful. I will have to be so careful to help him gently, instead of provoking him.

*

“The time draws closer when the basilisk will be released.”

“How do you know?” Harry sighed when Gryffindor stared at him. “Sir.”

The portrait paced slowly back and forth. The background behind him had begun to alter a few days ago, Harry had noticed. The dark red curtains that had been there at first were now parted, and there was a glimpse of a door that led who knew where. The bookshelves were shrouded with curtains of their own, now.

“I was created to defend this school. And I have a deep link with the Chamber of Secrets, and the monster that Salazar thought would defend the students.”

Harry nodded grimly. “What do you think I can do?”

Gryffindor stopped pacing and just looked at him. Harry stared back in stubborn silence. Gryffindor clearly had some idea, and as clearly, he hadn’t expected Harry to ask the question.

Harry waited. He was quiet and had to use wandless magic. He wasn’t stupid.

“You have talked about revealing your wandless magic more clearly to others,” Gryffindor said slowly. “You have revealed it to one professor. But the basilisk cannot be defeated by wandless magic alone.”

“So I need allies?”

“You misunderstand me. You will need to use elemental magic to defeat it.”

“Well, that’s what most of mine is, anyway. Except for the Parseltongue and things like that.”

“You will need to use elemental magic as openly as possible, in a battle with the basilisk that others may see.”

Harry just nodded. He had his own ideas about that. Theo and some of the others would probably want to come to the battle with the basilisk with him, but Harry would just tie them up in bonds of wind and put them in a room somewhere. No one else was going to fight the basilisk except for him.

“I expected more objections from you.”

“We’ve been discussing that I would need to battle the basilisk for some time. I know that I’ll have to. That I’m the only Parselmouth in the school, unless whoever’s going to release the basilisk counts.”

Gryffindor waited for a long, quiet moment. Harry waited, too. Gryffindor gave in at last, with a little sigh and a shake of his head. “There will come a day when waiting and silence will not work for you.”

“I think we’re talking about one.”

Gryffindor nodded, then. “All right. You should go to the forest and wake Semandra. Speak with her. Calm her. I hope you have taken your lessons in speaking with elemental spirits seriously, or she might destroy you.”

Harry snorted a little. Semandra meant “conflagration” in Parseltongue. “You couldn’t have named her something subtler?”

“Strange that you think I named her.”

Harry just nodded. He supposed he shouldn’t be surprised by that, given the elemental spirits he’d been speaking to, although none of them had ever named themselves to him. “Do you really think I can control a giant fire elemental snake?”

“It is not about controlling her. It is about negotiating with her.”

Harry shook his head. “And if I can’t convince her to fight the basilisk? Or if I can’t convince her that she should follow my lead in doing so?”

Gryffindor leaned forwards, face so grave that Harry winced in spite of himself. “If you cannot, then most of the school might end up dead before the professors could contain the basilisk.”

Harry closed his eyes and concentrated on his breathing for a moment. Part of him wanted to say he didn’t care. He liked some of the students, some of them were his friends, and a few of the professors were okay, but others were like Snape or Dumbledore or Flitwick. Why should he care if the basilisk destroyed them all?

But of course, he couldn’t guarantee that the basilisk would only hurt the people he didn’t like. He wouldn’t be the one directing it.

And if nobody should rely on him to save them…

That had been true last year, too, when he had confronted Quirrell in front of the Mirror of Erised, but he had still done it.

And while no one had betrayed him personally this time the way Quirrell had, still, the other part of him was on fire with rage. Riddle had no right to endanger Harry’s friends by awakening the basilisk. He would defeat the basilisk and the shade because he hated Riddle, and because he cared for his friends, and that was enough to overcome his indifference to the others.

“Tell me how to negotiate with her,” Harry said in Parseltongue, opening his eyes, and Gryffindor smiled.

*

Felix found himself breathing carefully when Hedwig came to him with the letter he knew would be from Lupin. He had sent her to deliver a letter, but also told her to dart away the minute Lupin tried to harm her.

(Hedwig had bitten him for that, as if asking why he thought she was stupid).

But Hedwig seemed whole as she settled at Felix’s side on the breakfast table, rubbing her beak against his hand for a moment before attacking his toast. Felix flipped open the envelope, thinking it could be anything from a diatribe to an apology.

It was neither. Lupin’s return message was only two words.

Help me.

Felix swallowed, and felt cold settle into his bones. He waited for a moment until Ron was distracted by the eggs and Hermione was distracted by scolding Ron for taking too many, and then he reached out and tapped Harry’s shoulder.

Harry glanced up, eyes cold. Then he saw it was Felix and smiled.

Sometimes Felix was amazed that Harry hadn’t killed someone yet. But, along with that, he was honored that Harry trusted him enough to relax in his presence. He smiled feebly and held the letter out. “This is what came when I wrote to Lupin,” he said, half-mouthing the words, his eyes darting to the other Gryffindors.

“Why did you—”

But Harry cut himself off, shaking his head, and took the letter. Felix wondered whether Harry had decided it was a good idea to write to Lupin after all or just realized that he couldn’t control what Felix chose to do.

Felix hoped he knew which one it was. But he wasn’t going to hold his breath.

Harry stared at the letter in silence for a long moment. Felix wondered if he was the only one who noticed the edge of the parchment swaying in a slight breeze. Probably. The Weasley twins weren’t at the table right now.

What was that fight they had about?

“Please don’t tell me you’re going to do anything stupid.”

Felix blinked and started, thinking that Harry was talking about interfering with the fight between the twins. Then he saw the way Harry clutched the letter, and sighed, reaching out to nudge Harry’s shoulder. “I’m not going to run off and find him, no.”

“And what else?”

“What?”

“What else are you not going to do? Are you going to try and help him?”

“After what we saw? Of course I am!”

“What we saw was him coming close to eating you!”

“That doesn’t mean he couldn’t use help!”

“Or this is a trap to lure you into his clutches, did you ever think of that?”

Felix paused. Well, no, he hadn’t thought about that. That kind of paranoia was much more Harry’s thing.

Harry nodded when he saw the way Felix was looking at him. “I’m not saying that we can’t do anything. I’m saying that given we already tried to meet up with him once and he either betrayed us, or he’s under a curse that means he has no choice but to act the way he does, we need to be careful.”

Yes, all right, Felix could appreciate that. He repressed the temptation to tease Harry about sounding like their father. Harry had never heard James Potter sound like that.

“So what do you suggest?”

As Harry leaned forwards and a few Gryffindors glanced curiously over at them, Felix wondered if his brother noticed that other people were just as attracted by Harry’s magic as they were by Felix’s. Then again, Harry didn’t want to become any kind of leader or Lord, not the way Felix thought he would have to to make things more just and right for other people.

Felix put it out of his mind.

*

“I’m coming with you.”

Harry had stood still for a long time, his eyes fastened on Theo, before he’d agreed. “I don’t want you to get hurt,” he said shortly when Theo had asked why he’d even hesitated.

Theo held the warmth that those words had provoked to himself as he picked his way behind Harry through the Forbidden Forest. A small ball of fire hovered over them, providing more light than a Lumos, although Theo had his wand lit anyway. More flames darted through the trees on either side of them, filling the darkness with wavering shadows.

They were for defense as much as light, Theo knew, and took comfort in Harry’s willingness to burn anything who attacked them to death.

“This is it.”

Theo paused and looked around the section of forest that Harry had halted in. It was nothing special, a bit of clear space that looked like it was only clear because a huge oak loomed over them and killed everything in its shade. At that, vines and other trees shoved up close beside them, and tangles of thickets and brambles beyond that.

“How do you know that?”

“I was having dreams of where Semandra was located in the forest.”

Harry tilted his head. His eyes reflected the firelight with an intense, focused glow that made pleasurable shivers climb up and down Theo’s spine.

He couldn’t wait to see the looks on the Potters’ faces, and Dumbledore’s, when Harry revealed his power in front of them. And he knew he would get to see them, one way or another. Harry would show Theo the memories in a Pensieve if he had to.

“I need you to hold still,” Harry said, and flicked his hand. Several of the hovering balls of fire darted away from their patrol and came to orbit around Theo instead. “These should protect you, but don’t come out from among them, all right?”

“Why?”

“Gryffindor told me a bit about elemental spirits like Semandra. She’s been out here so long that she might not be sane.”

“And you’re going to wake her up?”

“I can’t defeat the basilisk on my own. Gryffindor put her here because he knew the basilisk would wake up someday.”

“Harry.”

Harry, who looked as if he’d been about to begin sinking into a trance, turned around and stared at Theo.

“You could defeat the basilisk on your own,” Theo said, and put all his conviction in his voice. “You would have to use your wandless magic along with your elemental magic, but you could do it. You know you could. Why don’t you want to unleash your power on the basilisk? Are you still trying to hide it?” He couldn’t keep his contempt out of his voice.

Harry took a step back towards him. The firelight caught in his eyes again, and Theo suddenly wished, very hard, that he hadn’t said what he had just said.

“No.”

That was all Harry said, staring at him, and Theo had to swallow twice before he could ask, “Then why are you so insistent on waking this fire elemental?”

“Amazingly,” Harry said, “I try not to cause hurt to my friends. And that means you. But I suppose, if you didn’t care if a basilisk poisoned you or killed you with its eyes, then I shouldn’t have taken such care.”

He turned away. The fireballs moved in front of Theo, growing, so that he couldn’t see a thing about what Harry was doing, other than standing over the center of the small clear patch of ground. Theo tried to stand on his toes and peer over the top of the ring of fire, but that just made it expand and get in the way again.

Theo swallowed. He hated apologizing, but, well.

He would have to.

If they did both manage to survive this.

*

Harry sank into the light trance that Gryffindor had told him would be necessary for this. The forest around him grew distant and cool, as if he were standing in the middle of a dream. He reached out with his magic towards—

There wasn’t a word for it. But there didn’t need to be a word, not when he was busy trying to touch the mind of the fire elemental who should be asleep here.

If he could find her. If she were sane enough to recognize the touch of an elemental wizard in the first place.

Harry drifted in the depths of his own mind, his magic swaying back and forth inside him. He could feel the fire that surrounded Theo, and the rainwater that had collected in a hollow a short distance away, and the wind whipping the tops of the trees, and the solid earth beneath his feet. Everything else was distant.

Child.

The voice was loud enough that it nearly woke Harry from his trance. But he managed to stand still, in the end, and turn only part of his attention towards it. The rest of him remained entwined with the elements around him.

Semandra?

There was a hiss that seemed to surround him like the actual coils of a gigantic snake. Harry remained still. The sound pooled and went on expanding, and part of Harry spared a thought for Theo, inside Harry’s ring of fire, and hoped he understood why Harry had forbidden him from being part of this awakening now.

I have not answered to that name in a long time.

It’s the name that Godric Gryffindor told me you called yourself.

Silence, and the feeling of something pulling away from Harry like a retreating wave. Harry just waited, though. He knew about patience. He had had to be patient when the Dursleys stuffed him into a cupboard without food, and when he had spent weeks or months with the Potters and hadn’t killed them.

You intrigue me, child. You know much of pain for one so young.

Yes. My parents thought they could use me to protect a pair of Muggles who are related to my mother, and so they left me there. The Muggles treated me poorly.

Why would they leave an elemental wizard with a pair of Muggles?

Harry laughed in the privacy of his mind, although he thought he could see flames dancing as he did. Maybe the flames he had left with Theo, maybe flames of other times and places. They didn’t know I was elemental at the time. My brother and I were attacked by a Dark Lord, and it affected our magic somehow. So it was partially because they believed me damaged that they got rid of me.

And now?

They do not know about my magic. Although they will in a short time. Harry shook his head a little. He had wandered away from the main subject and should get back to it. And Gryffindor says to tell you that the Great Enemy has been awakened.

There was a long pause, and then the sensation of the rushing waves. This time, it was moving forwards, to Harry’s position instead of away. He kept his eyes closed, though, until he heard Theo’s gasp, and then they snapped open despite himself.

An enormous snake made of fire reared over him. She had a long, slender body with scale patterns picked out in dark red, and eyes that were narrow pools of gold with a slit black pupil. She tilted her head to the side and fixed those golden eyes on him. Her head was nearly the height of the nearest tree.

And when her gaze met his…

Harry fell to his knees as magic swept over his mind. There was shock, and excitement, and surprise, and power.

Distantly, with the part of him that could still think, Harry suspected he knew why Felix’s owl and other animals hated him. Harry was so perfectly suited to one being that he had struck them as a predator, or at least a wizard they were unable to connect with.

The part of him that could feel was swept away in wonder like a cascade of falling stars.

Semandra was awake. She had been waiting in the Forest. She had been yearning for a wizard or a witch since she had come here. She had agreed to stay asleep all these centuries so that she could fight the basilisk someday, but she had also hoped that perhaps she could while away the time until someone was born suited to her.

Gryffindor had not been suited to her. Neither had the other Parselmouth she had known at the time, Salazar Slytherin.

But now. But now.

You are for me.

Harry felt as though someone had looked at him, looked at him down to the soul, and accepted him—snarling magic, and desire to make people leave him alone, and hatred of the Potters, and all. He stood and raised a trembling hand.

It touched Semandra’s scales, and didn’t burn. Semandra turned her head to the side and flickered out her tongue, which, like a living flame, landed on his skin and didn’t scorch.

What can we do? Speaking to her in his mind was more natural than Parseltongue aloud, although Harry didn’t know why.

What do you mean?

You’re too large to keep with me in Hogwarts, and too—noticeable. But I don’t want to leave you.

Harry felt as though something had curdled in his stomach when he admitted that to Semandra. It was an admission that would have made him look weak in front of anyone else. But Semandra simply coiled towards him and touched him again with her tongue.

Did you think that I am not capable of disguising myself? And her whole enormous body became a sheet of roaring flame, and vanished.

Harry spun in place, staring around. He saw his floating fireballs, with Theo standing on his tiptoes trying to peer over them, but he ignored his friend for right now.

Where did you go?

I am an elemental spirit, Harry. Fire, and wind that is close kin to the fire and feeds it. Semandra materialized once more from the air, this time just large enough that her swaying head was at the height of Harry’s eyes. I go where I wish. I am the size I wish. I can be with you anywhere, and no one else will see me.

Harry’s eyes stung. He blinked wildly. He had thought, over and over, that no one would truly be with him, that no one could truly understand him. He had feared doing something that would disgust Theo or Felix and make them turn their backs on him, but he hadn’t known—

I will never leave you.

No, she never would. And she didn’t despise him for his tears, either, any more than Harry despised her for the killing instinct he knew she carried, that she would divide the world up into predator and prey—and one more category, that contained only herself and him.

What happens if you die in the battle with the basilisk?

I do not die as you understand it. The most she could do is scatter me for a while. I would find a way back to you as long as there was even a spark of me left. I will not let you die.

Harry nodded and leaned back to look up into her golden eyes, rapt. Semandra shrank down a little, so they were exactly at each other’s height, and swayed back and forth, staring at him.

Harry lost track of how much time they spent like that. Then, with a little lurch, he tore himself out of it, and bowed his head with a shaky breath.

I will always be here.

Harry nodded. It was easy to accept that with the connection of her rushing through his soul, but…

You do not trust me. Even though you know I mean it.

I’ve had—too many other people promise something to me and then back out. Quirrell, or Voldemort in Quirrell’s body. Various people who had noticed that the Dursleys were worrying in the way they treated him, but never did anything about it. The Potters, who had seemed to promise that he could stay with them and then had sent him back to the Dursleys.

I am not them.

Harry took a moment to brace himself against the sustaining feel of Semandra’s presence, and then he nodded and leaned back. All right. Yes.

It felt terrifying, to lean on her like that. With other people Harry trusted, like Felix and Theo, he knew that he was in control, and he could be the one to cut them off if they started turning on him. Even if he would lose the sanctuary of Theo’s home during the summers, he would find somewhere else to go.

But he would need to depend on Semandra. The fire of her filling his soul demanded no less.

Let us go to the school. And you should introduce me to your friend, the child whose curiosity I can smell.

Harry smiled shakily. At least Theo smelled curious, then, instead of fearful or desperate. Harry hoped he wouldn’t become jealous.

Why should he? He is not an elemental wizard, and not a Parselmouth. I would not bond with him. But I will be courteous to him, as he is one of your friends.

Harry reached out and let his hand rest on the flickering flames that made up her narrow skull. Humans don’t always think about it that rationally. He might be jealous that I have a—a friend with such power.

Familiar. I am your familiar.

I wasn’t sure if you wanted me to use that word. It sounded demeaning.

Semandra hissed, a sound like a forest fire laughing, and filled Harry’s mind with images of what they could do together—fly without brooms, Apparate like phoenixes in the embrace of fire, breathe underwater, bury themselves in the earth and survive. Things they could only do together, because Semandra had no power over anything but the fire that made her body up and the air in the immediate area by herself.

Does that sound demeaning, Harry?

Harry shook his head, swallowing. He wondered for a moment if he wanted other people to know about those things the way that he supposed everyone would know about his elemental magic soon, but—

I am not content to remain a secret, Harry.

Harry nodded and turned back towards the circle of fireballs that imprisoned Theo. He would need to think about this, and get used to the feeling of certainty that lay in the bottom of his soul.

But part of him, if he was honest, was already used to it. Had already seized it in claws as hard as diamond and would refuse to let it go.

He had lost the chance to have wand magic and grow up with his brother in a normal way. He wasn’t going to lose his chance at having a familiar, the only one he could ever have, if he understood his connection to Semandra correctly.

I am not going anywhere, Harry.

*

Theo had seen glimpses of a great, crackling wave of flame past the fireballs Harry had put up, but that didn’t mean he was ready to have those fireballs fly away and see a great snake of flame lurking at Harry’s shoulder.

Theo’s mouth fell open, and he stood there, staring, uncertain what to say. Harry looked at him for a moment, and then he said, “Theo, meet my familiar, Semandra.”

He pronounced the name with a hiss on the S that would probably be impossible for anyone else to imitate, Theo thought distantly. Then his brain caught up to what Harry was saying. “I thought you couldn’t have a familiar.”

Semandra hissed something, loud enough that Theo had to fight the impulse to put his hands over his ears. Harry half-smiled and translated, “My connection with Semandra is why I couldn’t have a connection to another creature. I’m too suited to her.”

“And I suppose if they thought that you had a bloody great snake as your familiar…”

“Exactly.”

“But—how you are going to hide her? Because I assume that you still want to hide.”

Harry cast him a narrow-eyed glance. Theo lifted his chin. Yes, he should probably still apologize for acting contemptuous of Harry hiding before Harry had plopped him in the fire circle, but—

He still found it so hard to understand why Harry would want to hide. Theo would have rubbed everyone’s face in his wandless and elemental powers if he’d had them. He would have shown his family exactly what they were missing.

And a bloody great snake was going to be hard to hide, unless Harry planned to just leave Semandra in the forest and visit her there.

Semandra vanished.

Theo jumped back before he could help himself, and scowled when Harry laughed. Before he could speak, Semandra was back, this time appearing as a flicker of fire hovering in midair, the way that Harry had described a few of the other elementals Gryffindor’s portrait had wanted him to meet.

“What?”

“She’s made of the elements, Theo. She can disappear into them if she needs to, and adjust her size. Like—quenching part of a fire.”

Theo nodded slowly. Yes, very well, he could understand that.

And he would do a lot to keep the deep shine of happiness that was burning in Harry’s eyes at the moment, where grimness had been for months.

“We should go back to the castle,” he said, and took a deep breath as Harry was turning to face Hogwarts, Semandra now draped around his neck. “And I’m sorry.”

Harry paused. “For what?”

“For acting as though you were wrong for wanting to hide your magic. I—understand why you did.”

“But it’s not what you would have done.”

Theo shrugged.

Harry studied him for a moment longer, then nodded. “Apology accepted. And I—understand, a bit more, now, why you might not have wanted to hide it. Now that I have Semandra.”

Theo half-smiled. He knew it would be easy to be jealous of Harry. A Parselmouth, an elementalist, someone with wandless magic, and now with an incredible familiar. But if Semandra was pouring all her effort into convincing Harry that he should act openly and claim the regard due to him, then Theo thought he would like her.

*

Albus bowed his head. He had not anticipated something like this, but perhaps he should have. He had known all along that Tom’s shade was not truly gone.

“What are we going to do, Albus?”

“I do not know,” Albus murmured in response to Minerva, and lifted his head, eyes lingering on the bloody message painted on the wall.

THE CHAMBER OF SECRETS IS OPEN. ENEMIES OF THE HEIR, BEWARE!

Beneath the letters lay the Petrified body of Luna Lovegood.

Chapter Text

“I’m afraid that you’ll have to return to your common room, Miss Weasley.”

“Five more minutes,” Ginny whispered as she leaned against Luna’s bed and stared down at her motionless best friend. Luna’s eyes were bright and wide, fixed above her on her uplifted, Petrified hand. She’d been using a mirror, Ginny knew, which lay on the table beside her bed now.

Luna had been carrying the mirror to take a look at nargles hovering in the air. Sometimes they would show up in the glass of a mirror that someone was looking into and breathing on at the same time.

“You must leave, Miss Weasley. It’s about to be curfew.”

Ginny pulled back, wiping her eyes with one hand, and ignoring the way that Madam Pomfrey clucked and handed her a Calming Draught. Ginny didn’t need a Calming Draught. She needed to find out who had done this, so that she could put them into the hospital wing herself.

“The Mandrakes are nearly ready, dear,” said Madam Pomfrey in the gentlest voice that Ginny had heard from her so far. “We’re lucky that Professor Sprout was raising a crop of them in the greenhouses this year.”

“Lucky,” Ginny whispered.

She was craning back for a last look at Luna when someone burst through the doors into the hospital wing. Ginny swung around and crouched, fumbling for her wand. If this was the Heir of Slytherin, she wouldn’t be taken off-guard the way Luna had been.

But it was Harry, with more than a trace of fire in the air around him. Ginny thought she was the only one who noticed that, though. It was gone in a second, and he was staring at Luna’s bed with his eyes so wide and his posture so rigid that Ginny might have thought he was Petrified, too.

“Mr. Potter!”

Harry gave no sign that he’d noticed Madam Pomfrey or how startled she seemed. He strode over to Luna and stared down at her. Then he reached out and tucked a strand of her hair behind her ear. Ginny thought she might be the only one who’d noticed his hand trembling.

Then she glanced up at the doorway, saw Theo standing there, and revised that impression. Theo was frowning mightily, also looking at Luna.

“It is about to be curfew, Mr. Potter! Miss Weasley! Mr. Nott!” Ginny thought Madam Pomfrey was going through all their names in an attempt to make someone listen to her.

“I think he’s upset, Madam Pomfrey,” Ginny said, as gently as she could. “Luna is his friend, too, and…” She choked and shook her head.

Madam Pomfrey hovered for a long moment, and then snapped, “All right. But only five minutes! Do you hear me, Miss Weasley?”

“Yes, Madam Pomfrey.” Ginny made her eyes as big as she could in gratitude. “Thank you!”

The mediwitch snorted and moved away. Ginny stepped up beside Harry and lowered her voice. Even if Madam Pomfrey was listening, she would probably just think that Ginny was giving in to wishful thinking.

“You’re going to fix her, aren’t you?”

*

Harry stared at Luna, while his magic roared and shouted around him. He saw Ginny back away with a wince, although she probably didn’t know what she was hearing. Theo, though, moved up and stood at Harry’s back.

Semandra’s voice was a hissing firestorm in Harry’s ears.

She is yours, and that means we must wake her. The basilisk did this. The Great Enemy is awake and moving. We were nearly too late.

Harry nodded absently. He kept looking at Luna, who would have died except for the coincidence of the mirror that had spared her life. She’d met the basilisk’s eyes in the mirror, as Semandra had already explained to him, and become Petrified that way.

What should be our first step? he asked. I don’t think we should go down into the Chamber.

No. We do not know how the Heir awakened the basilisk, and they may be there. And the Chamber itself is a lair for the Enemy, full of her magi, her own territory. And there is one other reason. Semandra paused, her presence lashing Harry’s mind like a tongue of fire. We must defeat the Enemy in the light, to show your magic at its best.

Harry nodded slowly. It still terrified him, the thought of showing that he was an elementalist and a Parselmouth and a wandless magic user all at once, but he no longer liked the thought of living in terror. That was probably Semandra’s influence, but he couldn’t bring himself to mind.

All right. Is there anything we could do for Luna right now?

We might be able to bring her a little closer to awakening, enough that a potion made of dried Mandrakes would work. But it would come at the cost of weakening ourselves.

Harry nodded, resolved. Luna was safe unless the Heir brought the basilisk into the hospital wing itself, and in that case, she wasn’t the only one who would be endangered. And if Semandra was right, they could awaken her in due time after the battle.

“I’m sorry,” he told Ginny softly. “I can’t do anything right now. But I’ll make sure that we have vengeance for her as soon as possible.”

“I don’t believe you.”

Harry jerked his attention away from the bed and Luna, hearing Theo hiss behind him. “What?”

“I said,” Ginny said, folding her arms, “I don’t believe you. I think there’s something you can do for Luna right now. You’re more powerful magically than most of the idiots in this bloody school!” Her eyes glittered with angry tears. “But you won’t, because that would require that you show yourself—”

“You must leave now,” Madam Pomfrey said, looming up behind Ginny.

Harry had no idea if she had heard Ginny, and no intention of asking her. He simply nodded, said, “All right, Madam Pomfrey,” and turned his back to walk out of the hospital wing.

“Get back here, Harry! I’m not done talking to you!”

Harry didn’t look over his shoulder. He kept walking. Theo followed him, and said, when they were a few corridors away, “You’re going to let her speak to you like that?”

“She’s most likely speaking out of grief,” Harry said. He was glad to find that there was a deep coldness in him, the same one that had been there when he was accepting Semandra’s word that trying to wake Luna up now would weaken them. “She’ll recover later, when Luna is out of danger, and it would be folly to hold that against her now.”

“And if it’s more than that?”

Harry looked at Theo. Theo swallowed.

“Then she’ll no longer be my friend,” Harry said simply.

Theo nodded, seemingly appeased, and followed Harry until they reached the point where he would have to depart for the dungeons, and Harry for Gryffindor Tower. He paused, and Harry turned to look at him at a mental nudge from Semandra.

He wishes to say something to you.

“Thank you for letting me be with you this evening when you found your familiar,” Theo whispered. “It was an honor.”

Harry smiled. He was glad Theo had been there, even if he’d behaved a bit stupidly at first. And he had to admit that if Theo had said words to him like Ginny had, it would have hurt a lot more.

“You’re welcome,” he said.

The moment lingered, with both of them looking at each other. But no words would encompass it, and it wasn’t as though he and Theo were in the habit of hugging or clapping each other’s shoulders or something like that. After a moment, Harry nodded and turned away. He heard Theo doing the same.

I am interested to see what Gryffindor Tower looks like now, years after I inhabited it.

You lived there?

Of course. It was only a great, hollow, empty tower then, with nothing in the middle except a curving staircase that led up to one set of Gryffindor’s rooms. We used to practice casting fire on the blank stone that could not harm it…

*

Ginny wiped her tears from her eyes and listened to her roommates discussing the situation in low voices. They hadn’t cared about Luna when she was there, but of course the minute she got Petrified, they were all her best friends and wanted to know every detail.

And they said that they couldn’t wait for Luna’s recovery, of course, but Ginny knew exactly how sincere those wishes were.

It wasn’t her roommates who had hurt Ginny’s feelings, though. Why would it be? They had never mattered.

No, it was Harry.

He could have done something. I know he could have. He’s so powerful! He just didn’t want to do it because it would—inconvenience him, or something. Or maybe he doesn’t care that much about Luna after all, and I’m her only true friend.

Ginny shut her eyes with a huff. Lying awake and crying about it wouldn’t help Luna. If she was the only one who could, then she had to get a lot of sleep and eat well so that she could have more concentration and time for the books she would need to read. There had to be books out there on how to reverse Petrification without waiting, even when the Petrification had been caused by a magical creature. She couldn’t leave Luna in a coma for weeks or months while they waited for the Mandrakes.

She couldn’t.

That wasn’t who Ginny was.

*

“What happened, Harry?”

Harry smiled at Felix. Felix folded his arms and considered his brother. He seemed to be—well, lighter than he’d been for weeks. Months? Years?

I’ve only known him for a few years.

Felix pushed that memory away, and returned Harry’s smile, even as Harry said, “Who said that something has to have happened?” He was aiming for a careless tone, but he wasn’t good at it, or at hiding his smile behind his hand as he scooped up porridge from his bowl. More than one person was leaning around Felix to give Harry a curious glance, in fact.

“Obviously something did. Everyone can see that.”

Felix wished a moment later that he hadn’t said that, because Harry looked around, and his smile faded completely. He nodded. “Thank you for telling me. I’ll be sure to keep that under control in the future.”

Felix sighed and rubbed his forehead. His scar hurt. “That’s not what I meant. Just—can you tell me later?”

“Yes, all right.”

When they were gathered in the kitchens for their elemental magic lesson later, Harry didn’t seem inclined to keep his promise. But the glances he was exchanging with Nott said that Nott had been there for whatever it was, and Felix was tired of being left out.

“What happened, Harry?”

Harry blinked at Felix, and then looked around as if he were wondering whether other people would be interested or not. Everyone was staring at him, so he probably knew the answer to that. He faced Felix again and said simply, “I found a familiar.”

That made even Fred, who had been on edge since he’d shown up to the lesson without George in tow, turn around and stare at Harry. Zabini whistled under his breath. Nott just looked unbearably smug.

“How could you?” Fred asked. “When so many animals hate you?”

Harry shrugged. “It turned out that the reason they hated me was because my familiar is a powerful and deadly predator. They can probably sense that.”

“And what is your familiar? Where is it?” Fred looked around as if expecting to see it materialize from a corner of the kitchens.

“She’s a fire elemental.” Harry held out his hand, and a flame materialized above his palm. Fred jumped and swore.

Harry smiled and tilted his hand back and forth. The flame followed his fingers, running, and then coalesced into a pair of snapping jaws. Felix jumped despite himself as those jaws slammed together. They sounded like the smolder of a deep, terrible fire, like the roar of flames before they started to build into a conflagration.

Harry could probably have conjured that effect himself. But looking at his face, Felix didn’t think he was lying about his familiar. He looked too pleased with himself, and even when his smile faded, it lingered around his eyes.

This is the first time I’ve seen him give a smile that did that.

Felix swallowed. He loved his brother, would never abandon him, but sometimes he wondered at how cold he must feel inside.

“And does that mean that other animals are going to stop being afraid of you?” Fred asked, properly distracted from his sulkiness at last.

“I assume they’ll continue to give me a wide berth, but I think they’ll stop attacking me. They’ll know that my familiar might not like it.”

Fred nodded and started to ask questions about how to perfect the summoning of wind. Harry answered them. His eyes were sharp, and he met Felix’s once, with a little nod, that said he had noticed the same thing Felix had.

Not only was George missing, and of course Luna, but so was Ginny.

Felix was a little worried about what that meant, knowing Ginny, but Harry wouldn’t discuss it in front of other people. He went back to his own lessons, which were mostly meditation at this point.

And he peeked at Nott from under his eyelashes, who smiled at him when he caught Felix looking, before closing his eyes serenely.

Nott still knows something I don’t, and I’m sure that it has to do with Harry’s familiar. Ugh.

*

Ginny cast a swift glance around the seventh-floor corridor, and then leaned against the wall and settled in to wait.

It was a strange place that George had wanted to meet her. There was a tapestry across from Ginny with a wizard waving his wand and teaching trolls to dance, but that was the only recognizable feature. Then again, Ginny supposed there could be a secret passage right here. It wasn’t like she would know about them, when she was only a first-year.

Only.

Ginny burned with resentment as she thought of Harry’s high-handed nonsense. She might be only a first-year, but she was going to wake up Luna.

“Hey, Gin-Gin.”

Ginny jumped and spun around, scowling at George as he stepped out of a shadow and snickered at her. “Are you going to show me this place you say is so special or not?”

“It is special.” George gave her a chiding look as he reached out to stroke the wall a few centimeters from her head. Ginny watched intently, but she didn’t see any stones that jutted out further than the rest. “There’ll be a door just here that will let us into a special room, if we do everything right.”

“What do you mean?”

“What I said. Something wrong with your hearing, Gin-Gin?”

Ginny frowned at him. George sometimes got in moods like this where he teased and said things more cutting than any prank, but she hadn’t seen them for years. He seemed to have mellowed a little once he and Fred had gone to Hogwarts.

“Does Fred know about it?” she asked.

George’s face darkened. “He thinks that we should be defined by each other all the time,” he muttered, knocking his knuckles against the stone. Ginny watched that motion, too, but nothing happened as a result of it. “When I’d like to be my own person.”

Ginny winced. Yes, she could see that. And she’d just been thinking of the twins as the same person, practically, with how they had both started at Hogwarts at the same time. “All right. So you’re ready to show me this room?”

“Yeah. Come over here. We have to walk back and forth in front of the tapestry three times to find it.”

Ginny snorted, but she had already heard about a few secret passages that had more ridiculous requirements, so she marched over to the tapestry. “Now what?”

“Walk back and forth in front of the tapestry three times thinking about whatever you want most.”

From the dark shadow in George’s eyes, he already knew what that was. But Ginny didn’t mind him knowing as long as he wasn’t going to stop her. She closed her eyes—well, mostly closed them, because she wasn’t stupid—and began to march back and forth.

Give me a place that will show me how to wake Luna up, wake Luna up, wake Luna up…

On her third passage, the stones in front of Ginny vanished with a sucking sound. She stopped and stared at the door that appeared there. She knew her mouth was open, and George was snickering behind her, but for a long moment, she couldn’t care.

Then she did, and flushed, and snapped her mouth shut. The door was an aquamarine color, like some of the decorations in Ravenclaw Tower. It was probably made of wood, but Ginny couldn’t be sure. She stepped forwards hesitantly.

“Go on, give it a go.”

Ginny brushed her hand over the surface of the door, since it didn’t seem to have a knob. It opened slowly. She stepped in and looked around the resulting room, knowing that her mouth was opening wide and she probably looked stupid, but not able to stop it.

The room was far bigger than could possibly be contained in the wall. It had a silvery floor and ceiling, but the walls were covered with tapestries, so Ginny couldn’t see what color they were. All of the tapestries seemed to be bright geometric shapes crowded onto a green background. And in front of her, there was a single desk and a chair.

“How is this going to help me help Luna?” Ginny demanded, turning back towards George.

“I don’t know all the secrets of the room,” George said, and looked around with a shake of his head. “But I know that you can’t just stand here and ask questions. The room knows what you need. Sit down.”

Ginny took a deep breath and walked over to the desk. There was a single sheet of parchment in the middle of it, and a quill and ink waiting for her. She reached hesitantly for it.

Before she could even write a single word, the word welled into being in the middle of the parchment. Hello.

Ginny froze, staring at it. Then she relaxed. Of course. The room couldn’t speak to her the way a human would, so it had chosen this particular way.

Hello, she wrote back, trying not to feel bad about the way her dripping ink was blotting the scroll. I need to wake my friend Luna up.

Describe her symptoms.

“See?” George murmured behind her. “I knew we would find some way to help you.”

Ginny turned her head to smile at him, and blinked a little. George was—there was a flash and a glimmer around his hair, it seemed, as though he was wearing something on his head. A crown?

But it vanished as she watched, and George winked at her. “Just a new spell I’m experimenting with,” he said. “One that Fred didn’t want me to teach you. Like the other ones.”

Ginny smiled and turned back to the parchment, writing down, Luna was Petrified by a giant creature. They said they can’t wake her until they have fresh Mandrakes. But I want to wake her up now.

There was a long pause after she’d written the words, as though the room were thinking. Then the thick black words arched across the parchment beneath hers. Let’s try several different things. We might begin…

*

Theo lifted his head as he saw Harry trotting towards him down the dungeon corridor. Blaise had been serving as a lookout for them, while Harry spoke with Semandra near what was apparently an entrance to the Chamber of Secrets and Theo waited to hear in more detail about the plan for confronting the basilisk.

Blaise had appeared disgruntled at being left out of both activities, but Harry simply gave him a flat look, and he subsided with a sigh.

“So you’re going with the distraction plan?” Theo asked when he saw Harry’s face. He thought it would have been more closed-off if Harry believed he had to lure the basilisk out into the castle while students still filled it.

Harry nodded and leaned against the wall across from Theo. For a moment, a flickering column of fire appeared above him, and then shrank and became a snake-shaped veil of flame draped over Harry’s shoulder. “I don’t want most people to die, but they also have to be able to see me using elemental and wandless magic to defeat the basilisk.”

“Most people.”

“There are some people whose deaths I would be fine with.”

Theo half-smiled, because he felt the same way himself, even if he would never say it aloud. “I thought you had the plan settled before this, though. That you were going to have the Weasley twins do it?”

Harry shook his head. “Fred and George are having some kind of argument, and I can’t count on them to cooperate, or one of them to be enough of a distraction. I’m going to set up a distraction outside instead, one that will draw people out there.” He smiled.

“What kind?” Theo asked, anticipation moving through him, although he thought he could tell just based on the way Harry was acting.

Harry’s smile widened. “A fire.”

*

“You wanted to see me, sir?”

Albus studied Harry as the boy sat down in front of him. He had seemed a little lighter, a little happier, lately. He was spending more time with Felix. Albus hoped that was an indication that Harry was starting to accept his brother as his Lord, and that in turn had given him a sense of happiness and purpose.

For now, though, Harry was giving him a blank face, and Albus couldn’t tell what he was thinking. He nodded. “I did. I wondered if you knew that you needed to return to your Muggle family this summer.”

He hadn’t expected much, but he got nothing. Harry only nodded. “Yes, sir.”

“It does not surprise you?”

“It surprised me a little last year, when you told me. I thought I would live with my mother and father and brother from then on. But I understand now.”

Albus stared at him. Harry looked back, and his eyes were bright and opaque. Albus thought about dipping into the mind behind them, but he wasn’t uneasy in the way that he might have been if Harry had expressed anti-Muggle sentiments. He was simply—baffled.

“You understand why we want you there?”

“Yes, sir. So you can set up magical protections for the Dursleys and keep them safe from the people who might try to use them against Felix?”

“Yes—yes, of course. We told you that last year.” Albus cleared his throat and fussed with the papers on his desk. “I am, ah, afraid that there is one difference between this term and last term.”

“Yes, sir?”

“You will need to stay with your Muggle family for the entire summer, minus a few days here and there, such as your and Felix’s birthday, perhaps.”

“Why is that, sir?”

“A week wasn’t enough to preserve the wards, last time. I visited them over the Easter holidays, and they had decayed unacceptably.” Albus hesitated, unsure how to break through the blankly smiling mask in front of him, uncertain why he wanted to. “I would also ask that you stay inside as much as possible, to give your magic a chance to soak into the floors and the walls.”

Harry smiled more widely, but Albus didn’t know what to make of the expression. “I don’t think my relatives will permit that, sir. You see, they assign me a lot of chores outside, mostly in the garden, and they wouldn’t want me lazing around inside, as they would put it.”

“They will permit it if you make it clear to them that they must, Harry.”

“No, they won’t, sir.” Harry sounded utterly calm, not defiant, which frightened Albus down to the marrow of his bones for reasons he could not discern. “Even when I was sick in the past, or badly sunburned, or when it was snowing. They made me go outside. If you came and explained it to them, or someone else did, maybe. But they won’t listen to me.”

“You must attempt to get along with your family,” Albus said, more strongly than he had intended to be. “You cannot be anti-Muggle, Harry.”

Harry laughed a little, in what sounded like genuine surprise. “I didn’t know telling the truth was anti-Muggle, sir.”

“You are portraying them as unreasonable—no, as unable to be reasoned with, which was one way that Voldemort and some of his followers tried to portray them. Many people will not be comfortable around you or following Felix if you do this.”

Harry snorted. “Sir, I welcome you to go and speak to the Dursleys if you think that you can make a difference. But they won’t let me just stay in the house. They might not agree to house me for the whole of the summer, either. A week last year was pushing it.” He shrugged. “But nothing I say will make a difference to them.”

“I am sure you are wrong, Harry.”

“Then why don’t you go speak to them?”

“If they are upset about sheltering you, they are likely to panic at the sight of a fully-trained adult wizard. I would not wish to harm—”

“Wait. One minute you think I’m lying about them, and the next, you think I’m telling the truth and that they don’t like magic so much so that seeing you would panic them? Which is it exactly, sir?”

Albus narrowed his eyes. Harry looked at him, calm, unrepentant, with a hardness beneath his expression that Albus had not seen before—no, more properly, perhaps not noticed before. Harry was an unfortunate product of his unfortunate childhood, but Albus had never thought that he was—

What, exactly?

Now that he confronted that unsettling coldness in Harry, Albus found that he could not name it. It was not Voldemort’s madness, nor some of the Death Eaters’ joy in cruelty. Perhaps he could best name it as indifference.

“I do not appreciate being spoken to that way by a student, Mr. Potter.”

“Sorry, sir.”

Yes, the same coldness behind Harry’s eyes. He would speak the apologies not because he meant them or because he was secretly mocking or because he was afraid, but because he sincerely did not care about anything Albus could do and it was simpler to go along with the demand for an apology.

Albus swallowed, shaken. “You will go back to the Dursleys for the summer.”

“Yes, you told me that, sir.”

“You will talk to them about staying in the house.”

“It would still have more an effect if you did that, sir. Or Mother or Father.”

“You are meant to—you were meant to portray the virtues of Muggles to our world, Harry. Are you so eager to see them destroyed?”

Harry’s eyes widened a little. Then he shook his head and said, with what seemed to be real wonder, “But I can’t be a Lord, sir. My magic is broken and not identical to Felix’s. And I never knew that being a pro-Muggle ambassador was what you wanted me to do. If you did, then you should have left me with a nicer family.”

“They are family, Harry, and they love you.”

Harry looked at him.

Albus closed his eyes and looked away. He wished he could explain to Harry in more detail why it was so important that he understand Muggles and be prepared to defend them. If he could explain the larger political considerations—

But he couldn’t. In any case, Harry would not live long enough to understand them.

“I hope that you’ll excuse me for not being able to do exactly what you hoped I would do,” Harry said, his eyes wide when Albus looked again. “I know it’s important to you that we welcome Muggles into our world, or not go to war with them, or something, but I can’t be the bridge you wanted to make me into.”

“Muggles are much better people than you think, Harry.”

Harry shrugged and sat still until Albus dismissed him. Albus leaned back in his chair and stared up at the ceiling, shaking his head.

If he could—if he could make Harry understand—

But he could not. It was obvious that even more of Tom’s darkness tainted him than Albus had thought.

He would never forget, as long as he lived, the sight he and Lily and James and Sirius had come back to on that night. The impossibility of it.

I must hold to the course that circumstances have decided for me.

*

Ginny drifted through the next few days, knowing she was smiling a lot and that some people glanced at her under their eyelashes. They would think that she should be cast down for days on end, because of her best friend being in the hospital wing.

But Ginny wasn’t, because she had learned how to heal her.

It was all in the parchment in the Room that George had found—the Room of Hidden Things, he said.

The parchment had explained that the Petrification happened because of the unnatural combination of a mirror and the eyes of the beast, a basilisk. The gaze was meant to cause death, but the mirror baffled and turned it back on itself. And that made Luna impossible to wake up except with a draught prepared from a plant, the Mandrake, that was close to death itself.

Supposedly impossible.

If Ginny was willing to embrace the power of death, the scroll had said, there was another solution.

And Ginny was, she had assured the Room’s intelligence. She was devoted to Luna. She had been willing to learn violent spells to stop older people in Ravenclaw from bullying Luna. Of course she would be willing to do the same to revive her.

But you must be sure, the parchment had insisted. There are those who will think your course too extreme and try to turn you from it. And you are still so young.

That doesn’t mean I’m weak, Ginny had replied. Tell me what I need to do.

The scroll had still hesitated for a long time before it had spelled out the requirements, but Ginny had anticipated that, and had waited. And then she had seen what she had to do, and had hesitated after all.

I should have known that you wouldn’t want to do it, the parchment said, the words spiraling out in a way that Ginny could somehow feel was regretful. Now you’ll probably go and tell him all about it.

No. Ginny had swallowed and then thought about the way that Harry had looked when he’d refused to wake up Luna, even though Ginny knew he could. No, I’ll do it.

And it wasn’t as if she had to kill anyone, which she had secretly suspected was the case when the parchment had been refusing to spell out of the requirements of breaking the Petrification. She just had to spill some blood. She would make sure George had a Blood-Replenisher on hand, even.

But she had to admit, in a small, flickering corner of herself, that she was looking forward to spilling Harry’s blood, for what he had refused to do for Luna.

*

Felix watched with his heart beasting fast as Hedwig spiraled down towards him. She was easier around Harry than she had been before he bonded with his familiar, just the way he’d predicted, so it wasn’t a problem to have her near Harry at breakfast anymore.

Well. Hedwig did fluff up her feathers and watch Harry with her beak open if he came too close. But that was better than attacking him.

“That something else from Lupin?”

“Yeah,” Felix said distractedly as he tore open the envelope. He’d written a short letter to Lupin saying he was willing to help, but needing more information. He wanted to see what this one said.

Again, the message was short.

I will rip your belly open and feast upon your viscera.

Felix’s hand trembled as he let the letter fall on the table. Harry snatched it up at once and read it. His eyes turned cold.

“Don’t say we—can’t help him,” Felix whispered. He was still trembling, but he did his best to sit up and meet Harry’s eyes firmly. “Don’t say that. He—he must need lots of help, if he swings back and forth between threatening people and asking for them to help him.”

“We can help him,” Harry said after a long moment of silence.

Felix caught his breath in relief.

“But we have to do it in ways that don’t endanger us. Either of us.” Harry leaned forwards, his eyes intent and glimmering. Felix had heard Mum and Dad chatter about his own eyes, but to him, they were nothing compared to Harry’s, either in color or fervency. “If I find out that you’ve set up some meeting with him again…”

“I wouldn’t do that.”

“Good.”

“Not without you knowing about it.”

Harry didn’t plaster his hand across his face, but it looked like it was a near thing. He shook his head. “Fine. I just hope that I don’t have to say I told you so if you get your head torn off or your heart eaten out.”

“I promise that I would use my dying breath to do something other than blame you.”

More than one person turned their heads and stared when Harry laughed, as if they had believed there was no way he could do that. Felix just grinned at the ones who went on looking longer than a few seconds. Yes, Harry could laugh, and Felix was one of the privileged few who got to make him do it.

More people should spend time trying to do it, though.

As they left the Great Hall, Felix felt a faint prickling on the back of his neck, and turned his head to find Dumbledore staring at him with a solemn, empty expression. Felix tried to smile back, but Dumbledore just kept staring.

Felix turned his back with a feeling of discomfort. Dumbledore might be worried about Harry not being a Lord, or having a different kind of magic, or a hundred other things. But Felix wouldn’t let the Headmaster drive a wedge between him and Harry.

He wouldn’t.

*

“Harry, would you come with me for a minute?”

Theo paused. He and Harry had met up in the library and had been going down the stairs to the dungeons to discuss their next moves in a classroom that Blaise had found and thought was private enough. Now it seemed that he would have to wait for Harry to have a conversation with Ginny Weasley first.

“Why?”

Weasley looked perplexed for a second. Theo watched her narrowly. She must have been more affected than he’d thought by Luna being Petrified.

Then again, they were best friends. Theo was sure he would have reacted much the same way if he had been Harry lying upstairs on that hospital bed.

“I, well, er. I wanted to talk to you. About what I said the other day. How I thought you should wake Luna up.”

“If you want to apologize, you can do it in front of Theo.”

Theo reached out and squeezed Harry’s shoulder. Harry leaned a little further back and let Theo’s touch grow firmer, before he moved away. It was as demonstrative as he would get most of the time.

Doing it in front of Weasley meant he trusted her. Theo didn’t, though. Not with her face as pale as it was and sweat creeping down her temples.

“Can’t you just—do what you’re told for once?”

Harry fell back. Theo drew his wand and whirled in front of his friend. Those words had been distorted, and didn’t sound like they’d been spoken in Weasley’s voice.

“No,” Harry said in a remote voice. “It seems I can’t. And it seems that you’ve revealed yourself in a way I didn’t plan on.”

He didn’t even raise a hand. Bonds of fire simply coalesced out of thin air and wrapped themselves around Weasley. She tried to pass through them and fell back with a wince from the heat. They might have actually burned her, but Theo wasn’t sure.

“Let me go!”

“Stop thrashing,” Harry said, his voice deeper and colder than Theo had ever heard it. In the light of the dancing flames, his face looked like some of the older and scarier Nott portraits’. “If you damage her, Tom Riddle, I’m going to be very upset.”

Weasley went still, while Theo hissed softly. Harry had told him some details about Rom Riddle’s diary, not all, but enough that Theo knew some of what they faced now. He didn’t know how Riddle would have been able to possess Weasley, though.

“What gave it away?” This time, Weasley’s voice was lower and smoother, and she was staring at Harry as if she could carve the truth from his skull with her eyes. Or maybe that was all the spirit infesting her.

“Your speech patterns. You sounded like Tom Riddle sounded in my head.”

“That cannot possibly be true.”

Harry hitched a shoulder and glanced over at Theo. “Can you watch out for anyone coming our way while I try something?”

Theo nodded, gripped Harry’s shoulder once, and cast a few spells Father had taught him that would let him hear further up and down the corridor than he naturally could. It was a good way of sensing trouble coming that wouldn’t leave the kind of traces wards would on the air.

In the meantime, he watched Harry approach Weasley, and thought that Riddle was going to regret possessing one of Harry’s friends.

*

Semandra, can you help me?

From the way Ginny—or Riddle’s spirit inside Ginny—was currently staring at Harry, Harry knew she could probably understand Parseltongue. Unluckily for Riddle, Harry didn’t need to speak aloud to reach his familiar.

Yes, I can. But what I can do is very obvious and painful.

Obvious in what way?

Anyone who looks at her brain or spirit in the next few months will recognize the track of an elemental’s power.

Harry thought about it, then jerked his head down. We’re going to reveal my elemental power anyway. As long as they can’t sense exactly who you are or what my connection to you is like—

No. They would have to be born elemental themselves to do that.

Then please free her.

Semandra’s amusement coiled around Harry’s spine like flickering flames as she curled tendrils of fire, too small for Ginny’s intent focus on Harry to notice, through the air and into Ginny’s ears. You need not ask so politely. We are snakes. We understand each other.

Harry smiled, and saw what was probably a flicker of uncertainty far back in Ginny’s eyes. Then do it.

Semandra wove her tendrils for a moment more, while Riddle made threats in Ginny’s voice that Harry didn’t pay attention to, and then jerked back and high. Harry felt the snap of her power in his own soul. At the same time, Ginny howled.

Her voice changed back to what sounded like a young girl’s scream halfway through, and Harry raised his hand. Semandra coalesced as a wisp of flame without eyes around his wrist, swaying back and forth. She would be ready to defend him if Riddle tried to possess Harry as he escaped.

But instead, the wraith turned into what looked like smoke on the air and opened a mouth that said only, “I will have my vengeance.”

Harry watched him go, saying nothing. Then he turned back to Ginny and released the bonds of fire that had been holding her in place. Hopefully the slight burns she had could be healed without much trouble. “Are you all right?”

*

Ginny stood shivering in front of Harry and said nothing. It felt as though a layer of dirt had been pulled back from her mind and she could suddenly hear and think clearly again, including about Harry. She’d been thinking of him as—an enemy for not waking Luna, and planning—

She swallowed.

“Ginny?”

She had been thinking of Harry as her enemy, and he wasn’t. But the pain inside her head felt as though someone had burned her brain. And meeting Harry’s still, merciless eyes, Ginny knew he would have killed her if he had to, or done something that hurt more, in his own defense.

She swallowed. “Yeah,” she whispered. “I’m okay.”

“Good. How did you get possessed by Riddle?”

Ginny closed her eyes in humiliation. Of course she should have known it was Tom Riddle. The parchment in the Room had functioned just like the diary. “I—was—George showed me this room—George!”

Harry tilted his head as if listening to something, then nodded. “All right, that makes sense with some of the things that he’s been saying. I suppose you don’t know how he got possessed?”

“No, of course not. But we have to free him!”

“We will.”

“Just as gradually as you’re planning to free Luna?” Ginny asked. She was bitter and exhausted, and maybe she wouldn’t have shown it so plainly if it hadn’t been for Harry’s stupid, calm words, but—

She was bitter and exhausted.

Harry went still, staring at her. Then he said, “Is this the reason that you let yourself be possessed?”

“I didn’t let myself be possessed!”

“You’re angry at me for not waking Luna up right away? That’s what opened up the vulnerability so that you forgot about what Riddle did in the diary and trusted your brother and trusted someone you shouldn’t have trusted.”

“I thought I could trust him because he’s my brother!” Ginny yelled. Her words echoed in the dungeon corridor, and she saw Nott turn and look towards her. But she ignored it. Harry and Nott were perfect Slytherins, of course—well, Harry was a Gryffindor, but Ginny knew where he should have been Sorted—and her heart was aching. “I didn’t know he was possessed! You’re blaming me for this and it wasn’t my fault!”

Harry inclined his head. “But you blame me, or you wouldn’t have said what you did about Luna.”

“You could wake her up. I know you could.”

“I could, but not without weakening myself, and then I would be useless when the basilisk comes.”

“But you could.”

Harry’s eyes glittered for a second. “In the way that you could have recognized Tom Riddle and resisted the possession, yes.”

Ginny drew in a deep breath and then shook her head. She knew Harry wouldn’t listen. He was blaming her for things that weren’t her fault, and he was playing some sort of—chess game with people’s emotions. Or his own safety. Or Luna’s safety.

“I’m going to find a way to wake her up on my own. See if I don’t.”

“That’s fine.”

“As long as?”

“As long as you don’t get in my way.”

Ginny sneered at him and turned away. She waited until she was up most of the stairs and most of the way to Ravenclaw Tower to lean against the wall and cry.

*

Harry turned and looked at Theo. He could feel Semandra hovering in the depths of his mind, could feel her fire and her fury stirring around him, and that meant he had to put aside the notion of thinking about how he must have hurt Ginny by burning the possession from her mind.

“Theo.”

“I’m here.”

“George Weasley is possessed, and that means that we could be looking at him coming after us next.”

“I understand. What do we do?”

“Find him, trap him, and see if we can burn Tom Riddle out of him as well.”

Theo just nodded. Harry smiled at him, flooded with affection that made Semandra laugh softly in the back of his soul. But Harry was just glad that Theo was with him. No one else would have responded so well.

They started up the stairs and made it to the second floor before they saw the pool of water on the floor and the message sketched in blood on the stones.