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Chapter Text

“Take slow, deep breaths. That’s it. Let your mind sink into itself, into the plain that I told you about.”

Harry keeps his eyes closed and his breathing slow and deep, as Ernie is advising him. It’s odd that it would be Ernie, of all people, who knows the most about Occlumency, when he seems pompous and easy to irritate so much of the time.

But those thoughts are the kinds of things that will keep Harry from succeeding with Occlumency. So he tips his head back and lets the thoughts run out of his head like water, along with the worries about his nightmares that are the reason he’s learning Occlumency in the first place.

“Do you see the plain?”

It takes a long moment of concentration, but Harry can see the plain, an immense, flat, black, glassy expanse stretching out in front of him, reflecting the rippling light of a few stars overhead. Harry breathes. There are distant flares of green and purple light like an aurora, but he stands there passively while they play over him.

“I see the plain,” Harry says at last, when the silence has dragged on so long that it’s become an imposition itself and he realizes, distant, that Ernie is waiting for him to answer. The plain shimmers in front of him.

“Focus on a distant point of light.”

Harry picks out a purple one. It shines like starling feathers.

“Walk towards it. Leave your burdens behind as you do.”

Harry goes stepping lightly across the dark plain towards that distant point. The way that he has to walk means he sheds more and more burdens. Worries, fears, concerns, qualms of conscience. At last he stands in front of the purple light.

“Touch it.”

Harry reaches out. His hand travels through the air with incredible slowness. He watches it move, watches the light play over the back of his knuckles and fingers, the way that he turns as if to cup it in his palm…

And his hand slams against an invisible barrier.

Harry tries again to move forwards, and again, pushing against the molded air and trying not to feel the irritation that wells up inside him. That will just push him further away from touching this point of light.

But it’s useless. Harry exhales and opens his eyes, and finds himself staring at Ernie, who has his head cocked, lines falling into place as he frowns.

“Did you touch it?”

“I was blocked again.”

“You’re blocking yourself.” Ernie’s voice stops sending inhuman and ghostly, and sounds disapproving enough that Harry bristles. Ernie holds up his hands. “You need to let go of everything, and that includes worries about what will happen to your followers and Professor Black if you master the final step and abandon all your emotions to Occlumency.”

Harry shuts his eyes and leans back on his hands. They’re sitting outside by the lake, and it’s not Ernie’s fault that Harry is too afraid to complete that final step, or that the air around them has grown chill enough for snow to fall. They’re inside a Warming Bubble Charm that Sirius taught Harry, anyway, and it blocks the wind and keeps the snow from getting anywhere near them. “I know.”

“Why are you so worried?”

Harry swallows and opens his eyes. “Because of what happened to the other people with the title of Lord Slytherin. They became puppets of others who manipulated them into evil actions, or they were too proud of themselves and ended up being blood purists. What if that happens to me because I stop caring?”

“But you won’t.”

“That’s what you want me to do with Occlumency!”

“Yes, but it will only be temporary. You’ll be able to pull your mind out of the aurora and back into your body, and your emotions will return to you. The goal is to be able to leap back and forth between the open state and the blocked one, the emotional state and the emotionless one, at will.”

Ernie sounds like he’s quoting someone. Harry nods. “To block Voldemort.”

The name still makes Ernie flinch, but he doesn’t run away. “Yes.”

“I have a hard time doing it.”

“I know. But you said he’s been resurrected. You have so much to protect from him that you can’t afford not to do it.”

Harry knows that, which is why he’s out here practicing Occlumency in the first place. He takes a deep breath and shakes off some of the crowding fears as much as possible. “All right. Let’s try again.”

“Picture a plain…”

Chapter Text

Harry hears people screaming as they enter the Defense classroom, and starts hurrying down the corridor, his only thoughts focused on The curse, the curse, I thought I had more time before it started affecting Sirius—

And then he skids to a stop as he comes to the doorway, and sighs. There’s a very realistic Nundu standing in the center of the classroom, roaring and opening its mouth as if to breathe poison all over everybody.

Realistic, that is, if you don’t notice its tiny size or the way that its head thins into wispy nothingness as it approaches the ceiling.

“Sirius,” Harry says wearily.

“What?” Sirius’s head pops up from over the Nundu’s back, his mouth wide open. “Help, help, I’m being kept captive!”

“It’s an illusion,” Harry calls down the corridor. Hermione and Ron step up beside him. Hermione is shaking her head with disapproval, while Ron peers at the illusion with curiosity. “Notice the way it turns into little more than shadow and light near the ceiling?”

“And the floor,” Ron says, pointing out the way that the Nundu’s paws appear to hover above the stones.

“Five points to Gryffindor for observation skills!” Sirius rolls his wand, and the illusion fractures into light and disappears.

Harry sighs and enters the classroom. “You don’t have to scare anyone,” he says to Sirius out of the corner of his mouth, as students take their seats.

“Everyone.”

“What?”

“I don’t have to scare everyone. Some of you are probably good enough at Defense not to need it. But I have to scare anyone. Anyone who can be fooled by illusions like that needs a better grounding in prank spells.”

Harry is sort of starting to regret that he suggested Sirius take over the Defense post, although to be fair, Dumbledore didn’t have to listen to him.

“Welcome to your first real class of Defense Against the Dark Arts this year!” Sirius winks at all and sundry and points with his wand to the blackboard. Large, angular letters appear, spelling out Sirius’s name, the name of the class, and a list of five spells. “How many people already know how to perform all of these spells?”

Harry blinks at the list. The Shield Charm, the Blasting Curse, the Disarming Charm, and the Stupefying Charm are familiar to him, but not the last one.

“What’s the Light-Blinder, Professor Black?” Hermione asks at the same time.

“One that constructs illusions like the Nundu I had in front of the class!” Sirius says, waving his wand around with enthusiasm. “It keeps your enemies from seeing what’s right in front of them. Light-Blinder!”

Harry thinks that’s a somewhat roundabout name for the spell, but he’s willing to try it. He puts up his hand. “Is there a way to keep it from fading out near the extremities so it’s not as obvious what it is, sir?”

Sirius snorts a little, maybe because Harry is calling him “sir.” “If you concentrate hard when you cast it, yeah. It also works better when it’s an illusion of something that your enemy expects to be there.”

Harry nods, already determined to master it. He didn’t practice any illusion spells except a few very basic ones with the Defense study group, mostly because he thought it was more important for them to master other hexes.

Sirius looks around the classroom with a glint in his eye. “These are the five most useful spells you can have when it comes to defeating your enemies.”

“But it’s a mixture of defensive and offensive magic, Professor.”

That’s Neville. Sirius points at him, which makes Neville flinch in his seat a little. “That’s right! But when it comes to defeating someone, it doesn’t really matter if you leave them Stunned or just make yourself able to run away. What matters is that they’re not coming after you anymore.”

“What about injuring them, Professor?” Padma asks.

“Well, of course, the Blasting Curse does that…”

And Sirius starts going on about the Blasting Curse, while Harry takes notes with a sense of relief. It’s important to have a competent Defense professor.

Now, more than ever.

*

“Hermione, are you all right?”

“Yes, of course I am,” Hermione says, turning around to stare at Harry as if it’s much more insane to come back into the common room at midnight with a cage full of struggling Niffler than it is to be sitting by the fire at midnight huddled over a book. “Where were you?”

“Salazar got out and went to the seventh floor again. I’ve retrieved him.”

“Have you figured out why he wants to go there?”

“No.” Harry scowls down at his pet. Salazar rears on his hind legs and chatters at Harry. “I hate saying that he’s being unreasonable, when he saved my life in Vince’s house, but he won’t give us back the locket, either.”

“What locket?”

Harry gives Hermione a sidelong curious glance as he sets Salazar’s cage down beside the couch. “I thought I explained? Salazar took a locket from Grimmauld Place that Kreacher wants back, and normally he lets me take things out of his pouch without a problem, but he’s not giving this back.”

“Yeah, I think you explained.”

Harry watches Hermione for a second. She’s staring at the page of the book in her hand so hard that her eyes appear to be watering. “Are you okay, Hermione?”

“I can’t do it!”

Harry blinks as Hermione flings the book into the air and breaks down, her arms wrapped around her head, sobbing. Even Salazar stops scratching the cage bars to watch her. Harry pats her awkwardly on the back.

“You can’t do what?”

“Study everything I need to study for O.W.L.S! I can do some of the spells, but I can’t do all the practice I need for the practicals, and I need more time for the written exams, and the Muggle Studies exam is going to be hard because it’s based on what people think about Muggles, not what’s actually true—”

“You’re brilliant, though, Hermione—”

“I could do it if I had a Time-Turner! But I don’t! So I can’t do it!”

“I promise, Hermione, we’re going to—”

“What if I fail? What if I get the worst score on any exam since Barnaby the Useless?”

“I think his name was Uriel the Useless,” Harry says thoughtlessly.

Hermione gapes at him for a moment, and then bursts into tears. Harry pats her back awkwardly.

Ahalam, who insisted on coming with Harry while he searched for Salazar and then just slept through the whole thing, wakes up and edges his head out of Harry’s robes. “What is the matter with your friend? Does she have a torn sinew-thing? Does she want me to show her my scales? They are beautiful and glow in the firelight.”

“I don’t think she would like that right now,” Harry tells Ahalam, who only stretches and goes back to sleeping in Harry’s robe pocket without answering. He pats Hermione’s back again and hugs her when she goes on crying.

She does calm down eventually, and lifts her head, drying the tears on her face with the back of her hand. “You’ll help me, Harry, won’t you?”

“Calm down?”

“Help me study!” A truly terrifying fire has come to life in Hermione’s eyes. “If I have a study partner who’s great at the practical magic, then I can handle studying for the written portion of the exams. If you help me. If you stay by my side every day and never abandon me—”

“Uh. Sure, Hermione.”

Hermione beams and hugs him. Harry goes up to the dormitory with Ahalam and Salazar’s cage, and lies awake for a while hoping that Hermione doesn’t mean to make him keep that promise literally.

With his luck, though, she will.

Chapter Text

“Harry, make her stop!”

Ron hisses the words to Harry when Harry is still busy stepping off the bottom step of the stairs up to the boys’ dormitory, scratching his face and yawning. Salazar tried to escape from his cage again a few hours after Harry caught him the first time, and now his body aches with tiredness.

“Make her stop what?” Harry mumbles, trying not to collapse into the chair by the fire so that he can just sleep the day away.

“Make Hermione stop that!”

Ron’s voice thunders through his head and finally wakes Harry up a little. He blinks stupidly at what seems to be a map spread all over the floor of the common room, a huge piece of parchment covered with dashes of different colors and blocks of numerals and letters. Harry frowns. From where he’s standing, he can’t read anything on the map (or whatever it is), but he has a very bad feeling about this.

“This is our study schedule!” Hermione announces from where she’s sitting in a chair by the fire. One of the seventh-year students edges around the parchment, crinkling the side. Hermione gives him a dirty look and casts a charm that flattens it.

“Hermione?” Harry asks in some alarm.

“I coded every hour between now and the onset of O.W.L.S!” Hermione’s eyes are so bright that Harry thinks he could use them to light his way down a corridor. “I made sure to leave enough time for sleeping and meals and walking between classes. And I didn’t count the time that we’ll be on the Easter holidays. But otherwise, every minute is accounted for!” She glances at a watch on her wrist Harry doesn’t remember her having. “I have allowed five minutes for debate.”

“Harry,” Ron says in dangerously whiny tones.

“Hermione,” Harry says as gently as possible. “What about time for relaxation and studying for the classes we have right now and doing the homework for them?” He hopes he can appeal to Hermione’s love of all academic success to make her realize how mad this is.

“I built that in. Well, time for relaxation is built into sleeping and walking between classes.” Hermione grimaces a little. “I also built in some for Quidditch games, but I suppose I might have missed some of the hours they could take. On the other hand, you barely need to practice, Harry, and Ron is a good enough Keeper with Oliver encouraging him. So you don’t really need to attend practices. We can just invite Oliver to the school. You know he’ll come.”

Harry stares at her for a moment. Hermione looks back at him, nodding slightly, as if to say that she knows this is overwhelming but he’ll get used to it if he just thinks about it.

Harry doesn’t want to get used to it.

“I appreciate your effort, Hermione,” he says. “But we also have to make time for more relaxation than just sleeping and walking between classes. You remember what happened third year?”

“That wouldn’t happen now, Harry!” Hermione says quickly. “I’m much older and more level-headed.”

“What kind of definition of level-headed is she—”

Harry Silences Ron with a little twitch of his wand, and Ron looks at him in outrage. Harry decides he’ll apologize later, but right now, he’s aiming to prevent two kinds of explosions.

“I think it will happen, if you try to break down every hour between now and the exams this way,” he says, and starts walking along the edge of the parchment. Peering at it shows that the area near Hermione’s feet is the one leading up to the O.W.L. exams themselves, and he crouches down and studies it. Then he sighs and looks at Hermione. “Hermione, you’ve only left yourself time for four hours of sleep.”

“I wouldn’t get more than that for worrying anyway! I might as well make productive use of it.”

Harry sighs again and stands up. “Hermione, I will help you study,” he says, and waits until her face lights up before he adds gently, “But not like this. My life can’t be this regimented anyway. You know all the stupid and weird things that happen to me. If nothing else, I don’t see any room for Lord Slytherin business that might arise.”

“I built it in.” Hermione glances over the enormous wheel of parchment for a moment. “There, you see? An hour on March fifteenth.”

Harry doesn’t roll his eyes, because Hermione is his friend and this is very important to her. But he does lean forwards and say, “This is going to damage your health, Hermione? And—” how to reach her “—do you think that you’ll be at your best on the exams if you’re battling exhaustion and maybe sickness?”

Hermione sucks in a loud breath and stares at him. Then she says, “But mental health is important, too, and by doing this, I can protect my mental health!”

“But what if something happens that prevents you from completing what you need to do every hour? Is that going to be less worrying?”

“Why should something happen?”

“I mean—if you get sick. Or a professor doesn’t assign as much homework as you think they will, or they assign more. Or one of us gets detention.”

“You are not getting detention, Harry Potter.”

Right, if this is what happens when Hermione has too little sleep, I am definitely not letting her go down this path. “I’ll do my best,” Harry says evenly. “But you know that some of the professors haven’t been sympathetic to me in the past, and Hogwarts can’t do anything about them if they’re just being professors. And I don’t want to use my Lord Slytherin powers to undermine them, either.”

“You are not getting detention.”

“It might happen anyway.” Harry reaches out and puts his hands on her shoulders. “You need to leave room in your schedule for things like that, Hermione. Not every minute can be devoted to studying.”

“At least five hundred minutes a day aren’t devoted to—”

“I care about you, Hermione. I’m your friend. I don’t want to do this, and I’m not going to let you do it to yourself, either. You know that you’re going to do brilliantly on the O.W.L.S. You know it. You don’t need to do this.”

Hermione’s bottom lip quivers a bit. Then she swallows and looks at Ron. “Does Ron agree?”

Harry starts and releases Ron from the Silencing Charm. Ron gives him the kind of narrow-eyed look that tells Harry they’re going to have words later, and then turns and faces Hermione. “Yeah, I do,” he says. “Hermione, this is mental. You must see that.”

“I just—I just want to pass my O.W.L.S. And I want to make sure that you do equally well, too.”

Ron leans forwards and gives Hermione a kind smile that Harry doesn’t think he could have found in himself. “We’re not going to do as well as you, Hermione. But what matters most to you is doing well, and what matters to me is other things.”

“Like what?”

“Quidditch. Staying healthy. Being able to spend time with my friends that doesn’t just involve studying or quizzing each other.”

“Even if—do you think that you’ll be able to get a good career if you don’t have the right O.W.L.S?”

Ron shrugs. “Everything I want to do involves good N.E.W.T.S, not good O.W.L.S. And a lot of the N.E. W.T. classes do take you with an Acceptable, you know.” Hermione looks so horrified that Ron adds hastily, “I want to do better than that. But the seventh-year exams are the most important.”

Hermione looks down at the circle of parchment around her chair and bites her lip. “So this is sort of silly, what I did?”

“You’re being Hermione,” Ron says. “That’s not silly. It just means that sometimes we need to be Harry and Ron and bring you back to reality a little.”

Harry nods, glad that Ron has been able to handle this part better than Harry could. He can’t do everything. It’s a solid reminder that he needs for himself. “And we’ll continue helping you practice spells and everything, Hermione. We’ll help you. We just can’t use every minute on the O.W.L. exams.”

Hermione sighs. “You’re right. I know you’re right. I don’t know why I—why I did this.”

“You’re being Hermione, and you worry about these things,” Ron says, and takes her hand. Hermione looks at him in something like wonder.

Harry glances away, swallowing a bit. There are times that he’d really like to find someone to take to Hogsmeade, and hold hands with, and kiss in dark corridors. But he won’t date a follower—they might feel they owe him something—and he certainly won’t date someone who’s a stranger when he can’t know if they’re just impressed by his fame.

Maybe someday he’ll find someone.

*

“Help me understand this, my lord. You want to advocate for wand rights for goblins, but you don’t want violent confrontation with the Ministry about this?”

“Stop calling me your lord, Theo, you sound like a Death Eater.”

Theo breathes in sharply. He’s sitting at the library table across from Harry, but suddenly it’s as if there’s a huge void between them.

Ahalam pops his head out of the robe pocket he’s currently occupying. “Why are you angry at the clever boy? What has he done to make you angry? He does not smell angry. He smells in pain. Are you angry that he is in pain?”

“No, I made a mistake,” Harry hisses back to Ahalam, who nudges at him with his nose. He turns back to Theo. “Sorry, Theo. That was uncalled-for. I’m on edge for other reasons, ones that have nothing to do with you.”

Theo studies Harry with narrow eyes, suddenly much more like the Nott of two years ago than he’s been since. That’s fair, though. Harry was like a thoughtless git a minute ago.

“Apology accepted,” Theo says at last. “But may I suggest that you get your anger handled in some way? It’s a weakness our enemies can exploit.”

“Yeah,” Harry says. “Sorry. I will.”

“What are you angry about?”

Harry shrugs. Not even to Theo is he going to admit that he feels a little jealous of Ron and Hermione. That’s his problem, not a reflection on his friends or the position as Lord Slytherin that he chose to assume. “Things I can’t have. Problems that I’ll have because of the title and people trying to have violent confrontations with me.”

“I hope you don’t regret your title.”

Theo’s eyes are fixed on him, and Harry doesn’t think he’s imagining the fear there. He shakes his head. “No. It’s my problem. And being Lord Slytherin is still reward enough for all of that.” He leans forwards and ignores the way that Theo opens his mouth, probably to continue the argument. Harry finds his own whinging tiresome. “And I never said that I didn’t want a confrontation with the Ministry about goblin rights.”

“Then—”

“We’ll have one. It just won’t be violent.”

Chapter Text

“Ready?”

Harry flashes a smile at Susan and straightens his shoulders. “Yeah, let’s go.”

The two of them walk out of the narrow alley that runs down one side of Gringotts, their eyes fastened on the building. Most people don’t pay much attention to them first, even though it’s a Hogsmeade weekend and therefore they should have been in Hogsmeade, not Diagon Alley.

But then a tall man in the plum-colored robes of the Wizengamot stops and takes a good look at them, and shouts something. The crowd around them begins to grow, with people starting to shout both his name and the words, “What are you doing?”

Harry doesn’t actually know what’s causing them the most consternation: the fact that he’s Harry Potter, the box of wands he has floating in between him and Susan, or the banner Susan is carrying that proclaims WAND RIGHTS FOR GOBLINS!

It might be the combination, come to think of it.

He and Susan get most of the way up the front steps of Gringotts before anyone thinks to stop them. And then it’s the goblins on guard at the doors, rather than any of the wizards or witches shouting in the alley behind. One of the guards comes down to meet them and aims her axe at Harry. “What are you doing?”

“Bringing you wands.”

“Those are wood blanks.”

“No, they’re real wands, purchased from Ollivander’s,” Harry assures her. They are, too. He went to Ollivander’s shop a few weeks ago by Floo and explained what he wanted, and although Ollivander dithered at first, trying to insist that a wand must choose a wizard, he eventually gave in to the challenge.

Harry doesn’t know if all the wands are newly-crafted or if Ollivander included some that he hasn’t been able to find matches for before this. It doesn’t matter that much. The symbolic gesture and the future matter a lot more than whether all these particular wands will find goblin wielders.

The goblin stares at him with her face twitching, and then says to the smaller male goblin who has halted behind her in uncertainty, “Fangbreaker. Go fetch Griphook.”

“Yes,” Fangbreaker squeaks, and darts off.

The female goblin plants her axe on the steps, and eyes them. She does such a good job of ignoring the shouting behind and below them that Harry is impressed. She has green eyes and green skin and green-grey armor that seems molded to her skin. “My name is Bloodcaller. Did someone tell you to do this?”

“No. Although I did discuss it a little with Griphook.”

“No one among the wizards and witches?”

“Some of the followers of Lord Slytherin also discussed it,” Susan replies. Harry sneaks a glance at her and sees her smiling. Yeah, she’s really enjoying this.

“Do those followers include members of the Wizengamot or the Ministry?”

“Some of them have relatives in the Ministry,” Harry says.

“Like my aunt. Amelia Bones,” Susan adds, when Bloodcaller adopts an expression which Harry is sure means that she can’t be expected to know who every human showing up in front of Gringotts is.

Bloodcaller frowns a bit, but says nothing as Fangbreaker comes back out of Gringotts. “They say come in, and move your arses as fast you can,” Fangbreaker says breathlessly, then winces when Bloodcaller just looks at him.

Bloodcaller sighs and faces Harry and Susan. “I suppose you had better enter.”

*

“How did you get the idea to bring wands for us?”

“It seems like the biggest problem for some goblins, from what Professor Flitwick at Hogwarts says.” Harry is standing in front of Griphook’s desk deep in Gringotts, and Susan is standing beside him, smiling. The box of wands is on the desk. Griphook is staring down into it. “We talked to him.”

“Just him? A half-goblin? None of our people?”

“I sent a few owls,” Harry says. “To you and a few other goblins Sirius named that he knows. I didn’t get any responses.”

“Yes, because we thought it was a prank.”

“Sorry?”

Griphook gives a great sigh and leans back in his chair to stare at Harry. “You know that the Ministry will be furious,” he says. “There are numerous reasons that they don’t want us to have wands, most of them predicated on their fear that we’ll grow too powerful if we have them.”

“Lord Slytherin would never let you face the Ministry alone,” Susan says at once. “And this is just the first prong in a campaign that he’s going to fight for all kinds of people. So if it wasn’t this, it would be something else.”

“We would still have preferred to not do this now.”

“Oh, the timing is bad? Would something else be better?”

Griphook plants a hand on his face, claws wrapping around the sides of his mouth, and mutters something that makes Harry abruptly glad he doesn’t know Gobbledegook. “We did not expect to do anything about this in my lifetime,” he says, not looking at them. “It has been goblin generations since we last made a serious attempt at carrying wands. Longer still since we had human allies who decided to risk this.”

Harry does feel a little bad that he never tried to coordinate with the goblins through the Floo or something. “Oh. So we should take the wands back?”

“I did not say that.”

“What are you saying?”

“That it would have been nice if you had planned this. Included us.”

“All right. I can do that from now on. Sorry for not doing it before.”

Griphook eyes him as if he doesn’t believe Harry, which is fair. Then he shakes his head. “Have the confrontation with the Ministry somewhere other than Gringotts,” he says. “Wait for word from us. But leave the wands here. We will try them and see who among our people might match with them.”

Harry nods. “Sure.”

For some reason, that makes Griphook lean forwards over the desk, hands shooting out to grip the sides. “You are not afraid of goblins having wands?” he says, and he sounds almost like he should be speaking Parseltongue. Ahalam stirs around Harry’s neck. “Not afraid of what will happen next?”

“Not more afraid than of humans having wands.”

Griphook narrows his eyes. “You don’t know enough of history.”

“It’s not well-taught at Hogwarts.”

Griphook just waits some more, and waits. But Harry doesn’t know what he’s waiting for, so he can’t help.

Abruptly, Griphook gestures towards the tray of wands, which drops behind the desk and down what seems to be a hole in the floor. “Get out of my office,” he says tiredly. “Wizard-children. Spoiled children. Children of the storm who do not know what they have unleashed.”

Harry just nods, because it seems best, and he and Susan walk out of there. There’s a large crowd of people waiting for them outside the bank, who all start shouting.

Harry lifts his chin. He bet that no one would get violent in the middle of Diagon Alley. Time to see if he’s right.

Chapter Text

“Mr. Potter, would exactly did you think you were doing?”

There’s a brittle fury in Minister Fudge’s eyes. Harry half-nods to him and examines the rest of the Alley over his shoulder. They haven’t called Dementors or anything like that, thankfully, although there’s a detachment of Aurors spread over the bottom of the steps up to Gringotts. Harry isn’t sure whether they’re there to bodyguard the Minister or hold down the goblin rebellion they must think is happening.

“What do you mean, sir?”

“Bringing wands to goblins is an act of war!”

“It is, sir? Wow! I looked up some laws before I did this, you know, and I didn’t see anything about that in the laws!”

Harry did actually read some legal books, too. The ones in Grimmauld Place aren’t the most updated ones, but even Sirius had to admit that the Ministry changes so slowly they probably wouldn’t give Harry the wrong information, either.

The Minister pauses. Behind him, someone clears her throat. Harry glances at her and finds a tall woman who looks a little familiar watching him pensively.

“Sir…”

“Well, all right, not literally an act of war,” the Minister has to concede. “Yes, Cordelia, what is it?”

Harry perks up a little. Daphne’s mother is called Cordelia. And she looks like Daphne, now that Harry is looking for the resemblance, with wide green eyes, although her hair is darker and she doesn’t have much of the same face shape.

“There is no law on the books about bringing wands to goblins,” Madam Greengrass says, shooting Harry a quick look. Harry is happy to stand there and let her get on with it. “Only about selling them.”

Fudge’s face does a complicated dance of expressions that makes Harry have to cough to hold back laughter. He sometimes saw Aunt Petunia’s face doing the same thing, when she was forced to concede someone else had a good point whether or not she wanted to.

“Why do you think those laws are on the books?” Fudge demands.

“I think wizards and witches are afraid of goblins, sir.”

“That’s right—I mean, no, of course not, we aren’t afraid of them! It’s just better for peace all around if goblins don’t have wands.”

“Oh. Because they would be better with them than we are, sir?”

“Of course not!”

“But then why is it better for peace?”

Fudge looks around as if he expects someone to come up and start taking pictures of him. Madam Greengrass is smiling widely and viciously, although she tames the expression as Fudge spins back around to face her. “What is the wording of the laws?” Fudge asks in what he probably thinks is a whisper.

Susan is shaking with laughter next to Harry. Harry hits her with an elbow in the side. The last thing they want is to have the Minister think they aren’t taking this seriously.

“I believe that it says something akin to goblins causing a rebellion if they have wands.”

“You heard that, Mr. Potter,” Fudge says, turning back around and nodding violently to Harry. Maybe he’s not enough fool to assume Harry didn’t hear him, then. “Because they could cause a rebellion if they had wands.”

“Is that what the other rebellions started over, sir?”

“Eh? You know that the History of Magic class in Hogwarts concentrates on goblin rebellions, I hope?”

“Oh, yes, sir. But Binns tends to emphasize the outcome, not the cause. I was just wondering how many of the rebellions started over access to wands. And whether they might have been solved by bringing the goblins wands. Not selling them, of course, that would be illegal.”

Fudge shakes his head impatiently. “I don’t have time for this, Mr. Potter. Where are the wands now?”

“Inside Gringotts, sir.”

“And did you give them to goblins? Did you see them matched with those wands?” Fudge lurches a step forwards.

“No, sir.”

Susan starts laughing under her breath again at this literal truth. Harry hits her with his elbow again. Madam Greengrass looks back and forth between them but says nothing and doesn’t change the expression on her face one iota.

“Oh, well.” Fudge straightens his bowler hat. “Then perhaps it’s still all right.” And without even asking Harry and Susan how they got to Diagon Alley in the first place, which Harry was sure would be the next question, he turns and practically runs into the bank.

Madam Greengrass lingers where she is, staring back and forth between Harry and Susan with shrewd eyes. “You know that you are playing with fire?” she murmurs.

“Don’t worry. My Quidditch Captain has shown me how to fly through it.”

Madam Greengrass blinks, and then gives them a small, genuine smile before she follows Fudge. Most of the other Aurors do the same thing, but two of them step forwards and nod to Harry and Susan in an inescapable way.

“We’re to escort you back to Hogwarts, Lord Slytherin.”

Harry stifles a sigh. At least they’re not going to learn anything other than that Harry and Susan came through the Grimmauld Place Floo.

And at least he knows that the goblins will accept the wands now, and Fudge didn’t manage to prevent it. Harry will account that a victory.

*

“We wish to speak to you.”

It’s the most straightforward sentiment Harry has ever heard out of a centaur. He finds himself blinking at the chestnut stallion who stands on the edge of the Forbidden Forest. He’s apparently been watching the Defense class practice.

Harry’s Defense class, as opposed to Sirius’s. Sirius thinks the whole thing is great and sometimes assigns them homework that coordinates with whatever spells they’re practicing in the Defense group.

“Uh, all right.” Harry drags his hand through his hair and catches Ernie’s eye. He was supposed to have Occlumency practice right after this.

Ernie gives him a stern look, but also waves a hand to tell Harry that he’ll wait, this once. Harry holds back the urge to salute, which would just irritate Ernie, and walks over to stand in front of the centaur, nodding to him.

“You call yourself Lord Slytherin?”

“Yes.” Harry is glad that none of his friends are with him, because they would probably get upset about “disrespect” or something.

The centaur prances in place. Then he says, “My name is Stardim.”

“All right,” Harry says slowly. It sounds like an ominous name for a centaur, given how into Astronomy they are.

“We have heard that you brought wands to goblins.”

“Yes, that’s right.”

“Why did you not bring them to us? We have also been deprived of them.”

“I didn’t know that you would accept them. And I’d already spoken with some of the goblins about my plans to fight the Ministry for creature rights, but I hadn’t spoken to any centaurs. I thought that you might dislike humans enough not to want to be involved.”

One of Stardim’s hooves slams into the earth and digs a divot. “That was ignorant of you.”

“Sorry.”

Stardim examines Harry for long moments more. His eyes are black and piercing and remind Harry a little of Snape’s, although he’s pretty sure that Stardim at least can’t actually read his mind. “You will enter the Forest with me now and speak to Magorian.”

Harry breathes out slowly. “I can’t do that without informing someone of where I’m going.”

“You will come with me now or the centaurs will never be your allies.”

Harry bites his lip. But…well, even if the centaurs are never his allies, they’ll benefit if Harry manages to get wand rights for goblins and other non-human people. And Harry can just picture Ron and Hermione and Theo and Sirius’s expressions if he goes off into the Forbidden Forest without warning anyone.

“Sorry,” he says, on a hard exhalation. “I want to work with you, but not to the extent of going off by myself and with a centaur I’ve never met before.”

Stardim’s eyes widen. Harry reckons that he was assuming his tactics would work. He tosses his head up, makes a sound of contempt and disdain that makes Harry wince, and then turns and bolts into the Forest.

“Harry!”

It’s Ernie coming up to him, but also Draco, Theo, Hermione, and Justin. Theo is watching the way that Stardim went with a frankly disturbing look in his eyes. Harry moves in between Theo and the edge of the Forest, casually.

“What was that about?”

“He wanted me to come with him right away to meet Magorian. He said that the centaurs wouldn’t be our allies if I didn’t.”

“He wanted you to come alone?”

“Yeah.”

“Then it’s a good idea that you didn’t go,” Hermione says, for all that she also looks torn. “I’m sure that we might be able to come up with a way to appeal to them even without your visiting them, I can look in the library…”

Harry nods and drops back to walk with Theo as they go towards the castle. Ernie seems to have given up on the idea of holding their Occlumency lesson outside, which is all right with Harry. He’s getting a little better at it, and he doesn’t want to be near the Forest right now.

“What do you think?” Harry asks Theo.

“I’m thinking that the Dark Lord sometimes reached out to centaurs in the last war. And that he’s frequented the Forbidden Forest before.”

Harry smiles grimly. “Yeah.”

He will be sad to miss out on an offer of alliance with the centaurs if Stardim was sincere. But he simply can’t trust someone without proof.

Chapter Text

“You have unexpectedly become involved in major events, Mr. Potter.”

Harry smiles a little. “I don’t know how unexpected it was, sir. After all, you knew that I take the title of Lord Slytherin seriously and I want to do things that will make people’s lives better.”

“Do you think it wise to agitate the Minister on the eve of war, my dear boy?”

Dumbledore stares at Harry. Harry stares back. After a moment, it occurs to him that Dumbledore is serious.

“You really think that Fudge is going to last long as Minister? Or, well, I suppose he might, but that he’s going to be an effective Minister for wartime? Voldemort is just going to stay quiet the way he has been and work around him. Or if Voldemort shows himself openly and people demand the Ministry do something, then someone else is going to replace Fudge. Either way, it doesn’t matter that much what he does.”

Dumbledore closes his eyes and looks like he’s asking the back of his eyelids for help. “It still isn’t the wisest idea, Harry.”

“And I told you why I think it doesn’t matter.”

“Did you have to give the goblins these wands now?”

“When would you think it was a good idea, sir?”

“After the war! When certain things are settled.”

“But we had more than a decade of peace before this, and no one did anything then, either. It’s kind of like how I kept thinking that if I just waited and hoped, someone would come and get me away from the Dursleys. But that didn’t happen. I had to tell people about the necromantic protections for it to happen.”

Dumbledore gives him a look that wouldn’t be out of place from an ancient dragon. Or Harry thinks so, anyway. It’s not like he had to face dragons, in the Tournament or otherwise.

“Hagrid came and got you away from them.”

“Not permanently. I had to go back the same day. I never should have had to go back. And if you think that everything is fine with that, sir, I don’t really know what to say.”

Dumbledore contemplates Fawkes on his perch for a second. So does Harry. Fawkes is nice to look at. Even if Ahalam is hissing complaints in Harry’s front robe pocket about how he’s the prettiest one in the room, not Fawkes.

“You may have damaged this war more than you can know,” Dumbledore whispers. “The same way you did when you stopped our efforts to gain international cooperation with the Tournament.”

“If you can only win a war by leaving children in abusive homes and hating goblins, then I think you need to change your tactics. Sir.”

Dumbledore leans back in his chair and turns his head away, and Harry knows that he’s been dismissed. He leaves, shaking his head. Dumbledore’s problems seem so easy to solve, to him. Just work with people instead of telling them that they’re too young to understand or they have to act exactly the way Dumbledore wants them to.

Or he could leave Harry out of the war altogether, but Dumbledore seems to think that it’s important that he be there.

It confuses Harry, but it’s also not really his problem.

“Do you think the phoenix is more beautiful than me? I need honesty. I need to know the spells that make my scales shine. I need to be away from the Niffler when we use them. Do you think the phoenix is more beautiful than me?”

Harry laughs and takes Ahalam out of his pocket, letting his little snake twine around his wrist. “I think that you’re beautiful and you don’t need any help. And I don’t want you to become one of the things that Salazar collects. You’re so beautiful that I would miss you in my day-to-day life.”

Ahalam flickers his tongue out as if considering that, then lowers his head to the back of Harry’s hand. “If you believe that I am so beautiful, feed me more cheese.”

“One thing has nothing to do with the other.”

“Beautiful snakes deserve cheese.”

“I’ve told you before that I don’t like how it affects your health.”

“That is a risk I choose to take.”

Arguing with Ahalam on the way back up to Gryffindor Tower probably isn’t more productive than arguing with Dumbledore, but at least it lets Harry feel better.

*

“Yes, I think you’ve almost got it.”

Harry blinks hard and tries to will away the feeling of standing on the cold, bright, black plain instead of in the sunlight streaming through the window above them. “Thanks, Ernie,” he says. His voice is detached, but a second later, the Occlumency bubble keeping him separated from his emotions pops and they come rushing back in. He staggers a little.

“Are you all right?”

Harry manages to regain his feet and give Ernie a grim little smile. “Just not used to feeling everything all at once after I deliberately kept from feeling it.”

Ernie nods sagely. “It takes time to get used to switching back and forth. But I couldn’t sense anything except darkness and cold when I tried to get into your thoughts. No other Legilimens will be able to sense much, either.”

“I keep hearing how powerful Voldemort is, though.”

Ernie looks uncomfortable at the name, but at least he doesn’t actually run away. “Well. This is still the basis of what you’ll need to defeat him. You’ll have to study more and become better and stronger, but it’s a good beginning.”

“Thanks for telling me.” Harry stretches his muscles and then whips around abruptly. He and Ernie chose this corridor on the seventh floor because it’s deserted most of the day except when people are going to and from Astronomy, but he heard a sound up the corridor just a moment ago. He knows he did.

“Lord Slytherin?”

“I don’t think this is a situation where you need to call me that. But I heard something.”

“If a stranger’s here, then I should—”

Harry doesn’t pay attention to Ernie’s convoluted explanation. Instead, he shakes his wand into his hand and prowls slowly up the corridor, sticking his head around the corner when he reaches it.

When he sees what’s going on, he sighs and puts his wand away. “It’s all right,” he tells Ernie, who’s peering worriedly after him. “It’s only Salazar.”

His Niffler is bouncing up and down near the wall, clawing at it. Harry is starting to think that there’s probably something inside the wall, like the basilisk was in second year, but he also thinks that there’s nothing he can do about it. He reaches out to catch hold of Salazar’s neck.

His Niffler squeals and bolts towards that old tapestry covered with dancing trolls Harry has seen before.

Harry chases him and darts back and forth in front of and behind the tapestry as he tries his best to catch hold of Salazar. His thoughts are darting and wheeling in much the same way. I wish I knew what the hell he’s doing…wish I knew…wish I knew…

“Lord Slytherin!”

Ernie’s voice is strangled and urgent. Harry Stuns Salazar and comes out holding the Niffler in his arms. Ernie is pointing at the wall of the corridor where Salazar was doing his best to dig through the stone before.

There’s a door there.

Harry stares at it, and then looks at Ernie. Poor Ernie has white all around his eyes. “Have you ever seen this room before?”

“No, Lord Slytherin. Nor heard of it!”

Ernie must be really distressed, to retreat into formality when he knows there’s no one around he would need to use Harry’s title for. Harry grimaces and nods. “All right. Then I suppose we should investigate a little.” He conjures a cage for Salazar that will at least hold if he wakes up from the Stunner and reaches for the doorknob.

Ernie’s hand gets there first, and he swings it open. Harry blinks at him.

“It’s right that a follower or vassal go in front of you when there might be danger,” Ernie says pompously.

“You could have cast a detection charm.”

“Were you going to?”

“Point.”

Harry stares at the room that’s been revealed. It looks like it’s crowded with so much rubbish that he would be surprised if anyone could move in there. There are frayed robes and broken chairs and open trunks and smashed-up busts and splintered swords, and that’s only the small portion he can glimpse through the half-open door.

Salazar wants something in there? How could he possibly have known about it, and why would he want it in the first place?

“You’re not going exploring, are you, Lord Slytherin?”

Harry becomes aware that he’s taken a step forwards, and steps back again, shaking his head. “Sorry, Ernie, I think it’s interesting, but you’re right. Something dangerous could be in there.”

“Please let me fetch some of the others.”

Harry blinks at Ernie. “You don’t just—not want me to explore?”

“I know my lord. I know that he might agree with me to keep the peace and then come back here on his own, when it would be more dangerous.”

Ernie’s voice is sharp. Harry winces, but says, “Well, I didn’t run off into the Forest after the centaurs, you know.”

“I know, my lord.” Ernie’s voice is soothing, as if he’s humoring Harry. “But what matters is that you don’t run off into the wilderness of this room now, either.”

Harry just sighs and nods. Ernie marches off down the corridor. Harry faces the room and leans on the wall with his arms folded.

He’ll wait, like a good little boy. Even though he’s a bit resentful that he’s being managed.

Then again, that’s more than what Fudge knows on a day-to-day basis. Harry is glad to think that he’s at least smarter than the Minister for Magic.

A sharp squeal comes from the cage that he conjured for Salazar. Harry draws his wand and Stuns his Niffler again without looking away from the room.

No, he’s not going to be drawn into a chase after Salazar. Eventually, they’ll figure out why the room is so important to him, but for right now, Harry will just remain here.

Chapter Text

“Harry, what did you find?”

Harry snorts. “It’s not my fault, Hermione. I was chasing Salazar when he went after this wall, and this door appeared.”

He glances up. Ernie brought Susan, Ron, Hermione, and Theo, or they brought themselves. Harry isn’t sure who Ernie ran into first, and he doesn’t think it matters that much.

“I’ve never been aware of a door here,” Hermione says, and lays her hand on the wall for a second. “No one told me about it even though I’m a prefect now. Ron, have your brothers ever mentioned something?”

“No, but I think I might know what it is. The Room of—”

“Requirement,” Theo says, and he’s hissing the word. Harry glances at him in concern. Theo’s eyes are fastened on the door and the rubbish in the room beyond, and so wide that he honestly looks upset. Harry steps backwards so that he’s next to his friend.

“Is something wrong, Theo? What’s the Room of Requirement?”

“A legendary room in the castle that can give you whatever you want, whatever you need. Supposedly it’s just a legend, like the Chamber of Secrets. Supposedly, Rowena Ravenclaw created it.”

“That sounds like something Ravenclaw would do,” Hermione says eagerly. “She invented a diadem that was supposed to increase the wearer’s wisdom, although it’s been lost for centuries and no one knows—”

“What would your Niffler want with a rubbish room?” Susan asks, ignoring the way that Hermione glares at her for the interruption. “I know that he collects objects, but it doesn’t seem like there’s anything worth anything in here.”

“We don’t know that, do we?” Theo’s eyes are darting back and forth between Harry’s face, the cage that Salazar is locked in, and the door. “Just because we can’t see much from here doesn’t mean some of the rubbish isn’t valuable.”

Harry nods. “And I waited like a good little boy. So let’s go.” He tilts the door further open with a little push of his fingers, and strides forwards.

The others yelp and scramble after him. Harry is glad to see that Ron is bringing along Salazar’s cage.

He probably will get loose and run around in here at some point, but at least this way, they have a chance of seeing where he went.

The room sprawls around them, vaster than Harry would have thought could be encompassed by these walls. Then again, if it’s the Room of Requirement, it’s as big as it needs to be to contain all this junk. And most of it is junk. Harry spots a Cleansweep broom stripped of all its twigs, a Snitch with no wings, many empty mirror frames, and too many broken wands to count.

“Harry! Look at this!”

Harry leans over, curious, and then blinks as he realizes that Hermione is holding up what seems to be a silver staff with the bottom third or so snapped off. “What about it?”

“It looks like one of the historical staves that wizards and witches used before wands! What do you think it’s doing here?”

“I don’t know,” Harry mutters, glancing around. Despite the silver of the staff in Hermione’s hand, he’s becoming uneasy. There aren’t that many shiny things here. It makes him realize that he has no idea what Salazar was seeking.

And that makes him wonder, more uneasily still, if the thing Salazar wants is rare and dangerous, like some of the Dark objects Salazar wanted at Grimmauld Place, instead of just sparkling.

Harry draws his wand. Theo’s back touches his, and he realizes his Slytherin friend has drawn his wand, too. Harry smiles gratefully back at Theo and then faces further into the room, eyes darting around.

They walk on, dust and particles of precious stones and metal crunching under their feet. Ron is exclaiming over some of the older brooms. Harry would ordinarily be interested, too, but right now, it’s hard to take his eyes from the shadows around them and the large cabinets and the occasional things with shut doors. Who knows what’s hiding in them?

A flash of pain shoots through his scar, so suddenly that Harry hisses aloud without meaning to. His friends immediately swing to face him, orienting on him in a way that makes Harry blush. Theo looks over his shoulder and steps lightly to Harry’s side, one hand reaching out to cup the air—

No, not the air. A drop of blood falling from Harry’s scar.

“My lord.”

The dark tone in Theo’s voice means that things are about to get very bad, very fast. Harry turns back towards the door of the Room, but feels something shaking behind him, and flinches as he turns and sees an object soaring at his head.

Theo blasts it with a curse before it can land. It clatters away into a corner, and Hermione and Ernie go running to inspect it.

“Don’t touch it,” Harry says, hissing as he rests his hand for a moment on his scar. It’s as hot as the stove felt one time when Dudley forced Harry’s hand down onto it.

“Don’t worry, I wasn’t going to.” Hermione has conjured a bag to scoop up the thing in, or maybe Transfigured one. She turns towards him with a ghost-pale face. “I think—this is radiating Dark magic, Harry.”

Salazar abruptly squeals from his cage.

Theo Stuns him without taking his eyes from Harry. “Are you going to be able to make it to the infirmary?”

“I’m only going there if you think Madam Pomfrey wouldn’t tell Dumbledore.”

“I’ll Obliviate her myself before I let that happen.”

Harry sighs and follows his friends, leaning a little on Theo’s shoulder and then on Ron’s when Theo casts a curse at Hermione’s bobbing and swaying bag. Ron’s face is filled with concern as he glances between Harry and the object in the bag.

“What is that, mate?”

“I don’t know,” Harry says, and draws what feels like a breath of cooler and fresher air as they get back into the corridor. “But I’m going to make it my business to find out.”

*

“You know how I said Rowena Ravenclaw made a diadem to grant wisdom to people?”

Harry blinks at the tarnished silver thing that’s on a plate made of lead Hermione conjured—or Transfigured—from something. It’s still radiating Dark magic, but not making Harry’s scar hurt the way it did in the rubbish room. He thinks that might have something to do with the web of spells woven over it, which are preventing it from being the kind of danger it was there. “That’s it?”

“Yes. It has the inscription. Wit beyond measure is man’s greatest treasure,” Hermione explains when Harry raises an eyebrow at her. “There’s nothing else that would have that. I don’t think someone would even dare to make an imitation.”

Harry wonders about that. He knows there’s plenty of pettiness and laziness in the magical world. But Hermione’s right that it doesn’t make much sense to create an imitation of such a famous treasure and then chuck it in a rubbish room barely anyone knows about.

And there’s the matter of the Dark magic it radiated.

“Don’t touch it, my lord.” They’re in a different version of the Room of Requirement, this time with the kind of wards that can prevent the diadem from getting out of hand again, but Theo is still trembling with anger as he leans over Harry’s shoulder. “I think if you do, you’re going to be possessed.”

Harry blinks. Possessed. The only thing he’s ever heard of that could possess someone was Voldemort’s diary.

On the other hand, that diary didn’t make his scar hurt the way this one did. But maybe it’s slightly different. The book could get people to write in it, so it could lure them closer. Maybe it didn’t have to attack people like the diadem does.

Harry pushes the conclusions he has no idea what to do with right now away, and asks Hermione, “Why do you think Salazar was so attracted to that in particular?”

“I honestly don’t know,” Hermione says, and frowns at it. “It’s not like he could have seen it from beyond the wall, and the shine of it is pretty damaged. I always thought Nifflers were attracted to shiny things more than anything else, and what they were worth was a lot less important.”

“I believe I may have the answer to this.”

Harry glances up and nods at Theo. Theo’s face is pale, his mouth clamped shut so that his nostrils look like they’re flaring. “All right. Any idea you have is fine.”

“I’ve never felt anything like the Dark magic that radiated from that diadem, and I grew up surrounded by Dark magic and Dark objects,” Theo says bluntly. “It makes me think that the magic was attracting Salazar, perhaps because he’s spent a lot of time around Dark spells in Grimmauld Place.”

“He honestly hasn’t. Sirius and Remus cleaned the house pretty thoroughly before they let me visit. The magics that were left were just minor.”

“Then it must be something else. Perhaps he is being influenced by something we don’t know about? Someone in your dormitory or the Tower has an object that they don’t know is Dark, and he’s spent time around that.”

Harry opens his mouth to dispute that, even as Ron says, “Oi!” And then he closes his mouth again, and feels himself shiver.

“You’ve thought of something.”

“Yeah,” Harry whispers. “Salazar found a locket in Grimmauld Place that he put in his pouch, and he hasn’t taken it out again, even though Kreacher’s demanded it and threatened to kill him for it. I didn’t even think it could be that, because the locket didn’t feel Dark to me the one time I touched the chain. But…he usually lets me take anything out of his pouch after he’s been able to hold it for a while, and he won’t let me take the locket.”

“I think we need to see this locket.”

Harry glances at the warded cage sitting beside his chair. Salazar is awake again, tucked inside the cage, but his hungry gaze is fixed on the diadem, and hasn’t moved. “I mean, you can try. But I don’t know any charm that will pull it out of the pouch without hurting him.”

“I know one.” Theo has a slightly unpleasant smile on his face as he draws his wand and gestures at Salazar. The pink light that leaves his wand looks familiar to Harry, but Theo has been casting silently for a while now, and he doesn’t know the spell without the incantation.

I need to work on casting silently, too.

The charm strikes Salazar, who’s scratching at the cage bars and doesn’t seem to notice. Then he freezes. He trembles a little.

“Theo?”

“He’s fine, my lord. I promise.”

Harry nods uncertainly in the moment before Salazar opens his mouth and begins to vomit.

Harry stares. No wonder that pink light was familiar. Fred and George enjoy casting the Nausea Charm on people, although they haven’t done it on anyone around Harry who he’s friends with for a while.

“Are you sure this is—”

Salazar vomits again, and this time, he practically flips himself inside-out. That includes his pouch. A torrent of little golden rings and Galleons pours out, followed by the glowing locket.

Harry reaches out instinctively to snatch it before Salazar can pull the thing back into his pouch, but he gets a stinging magical slap across the wrist for his troubles. He pulls his hand back and glares at Theo, although he thinks Susan is the one Levitating the locket.

“I’m not having you possessed,” Theo says, not even bothering to apologize.

“I wouldn’t get possessed. Not when I know what it does.”

“Are either of you interested in the fact that this locket radiates Dark magic, too?” Susan asks loudly. “Or are you just going to argue all day?”

Harry turns around and stares. He honestly didn’t think the locket was that much like the diadem, but then again, he wasn’t around it without the shelter of Salazar’s pouch for very long before. Now that it’s lying on the silver tray the Room just made for them next to the diadem, it’s obvious how Dark it is.

Harry swallows.

“It might not have attacked you,” Theo says, his wand aimed somewhere halfway between locket and diadem. “But it could still possess you if you touched it or wore it for too long. And it makes you want to do so.”

Harry grimaces. Now that he’s concentrating, yeah, he can feel the lure of the locket, pulling and tugging on his attention like a child with a robe’s hem. He leans back and draws his own wand. He probably won’t have to cast anything, but it comforts him to have it there. “Any guess what these are?” he asks.

“You said that the diary could possess someone. And it had Dark magic. These have Dark magic. They could possess someone.”

“Voldemort made them, then?”

Susan stands a little straighter at the sound of the name, and Theo hisses. Ron and Hermione swallow and keep watching him. Harry looks around and realizes that no one is going to answer. He’ll have to do it himself.

“Yeah,” he says. “I think he did. Like the diary.” He traces his wand in a spiral on the air, one of the spells that Sirius taught him over the Christmas hols. It should identify how much Dark magic an object is emitting, which is at least a way to begin telling how dangerous it is.

The diadem and locket vanish behind a curtain of what looks like thick smoke. Harry thinks he hears a deep voice chuckling, and another one screaming. His hand wrings around his wand. It’s hard to work to sit there instead of flinching back like everyone else did.

But ultimately, he’s the one who needs to handle this. The one who’s Voldemort’s mortal (prophesied, even) enemy. Harry stands up and clears away the smoke with a Finite, then stands for a moment staring at the objects.

He wants to run and find Sirius, but there is the fact that the locket and diadem might take him over. Harry will at least have to bring Sirius here, where the magic of the Room is subduing the locket and diadem’s evil a little.

He straightens his shoulders and speaks with a confidence he doesn’t feel. “Nothing about this to anyone else for right now, all right? Not until we know something more definite than we know right now.”

“Of course not.”

“Yes, Harry.”

“Yes, Lord Slytherin.”

It really is disturbing, the way Theo bows his head.

*

Harry wakes up in the morning feeling weirdly well-rested, and it takes him a moment to realize why.

Salazar stayed in his cage all night instead of managing to escape and go scratch at the wall that holds the Room of Requirement.

Harry smiles at the sight of his Niffler asleep in his cage as if he never carried one of those abominable things. At least one thing is going well, then.

Chapter Text

“I have no idea what those are.”

Harry winces despite himself. He was really hoping that Sirius, who grew up in Grimmauld Place and got exposed to all sorts of stupidly Dark objects by his parents, would know what Voldemort might have done.

“Then I suppose we have to—”

Sirius reaches for the locket and abruptly snatches his hand back with a yelp. “Nott!”

“Apologies, Professor,” Theo doesn’t look particularly apologetic for hitting their Defense professor with the same stinging slap hex that he used on Harry yesterday.

Harry snickers, which makes Sirius turn to him with a wounded expression. “You’re going to allow your followers to treat me that way? Really, Harry?”

“Just don’t try to touch the locket, and you’ll be fine.”

“So these are Dark things that You-Know-Who created.” Sirius sits down, still closer to the table with the locket and the diadem than Harry would like, but he takes a deep breath and reminds himself that Sirius is an adult. “I wonder how one of them got into our house?”

“Well, I mean, your parents were followers of his, right? The same way that Mr. Malfoy had that diary.”

“Yeah, although neither of them were Death Eaters like Malfoy,” Sirius offers casually, and then his face darkens. “My little brother was, though. Mum couldn’t stop going on and on about that in the Howlers she sent me. Maybe this was something You-Know-Who gave to Regulus to hide for him.”

Harry just nods, although he wonders if Voldemort would really hand these things over to just anyone. The diary had the mission to try and let the basilisk loose on the school. What was the locket’s mission?

Or the diadem’s? Could it really tempt and possess anyone when it was locked up in a rubbish room that most people didn’t know existed?

Then Harry shakes his head. He doesn’t know enough about the—things. For all he knows, only the diary had a mission, and the others were just there to decoy people in and possess them and eat their souls.

Or something.

“You’ve really never heard of artifacts like these?” Theo is standing behind Harry’s chair, his attention on Sirius, although Harry can feel the flickering tension in him, as if he’s strung on wires. “You don’t know what they are?”

“I would tell you if I did.” Sirius’s face is apologetic as he glances back and forth between Theo and Harry. “On the other hand, I might be able to tell you where to look.”

Harry smiles a little. They’re in the middle of the Room of Requirement, which ought to be able to produce any books or research materials they require. Maybe it could reproduce the entire Black library in a pinch. “I’d appreciate that.”

*

“Lord Slytherin.”

Harry sighs a little when he sees Zacharias Smith bowing to the floor outside Gryffindor Tower. One of the first-years who was apparently staying up to participate in a past-curfew Exploding Snap tournament came to fetch Harry and tell him there was a “weird Hufflepuff” waiting for him outside. Harry guessed it would be Zacharias. Susan and Justin don’t qualify as weird.

“What is it, Zacharias?” Harry asks, trying to be quiet but also firm and commanding. Sometimes people just need him to be Lord Slytherin, without complications.

“Is he being weird?”

“He is being himself,” Harry hisses to Ahalam, who’s crawling up his arm. He keeps one eye on Zacharias, but just like he thought, Zacharias relaxes at the sound of the Parseltongue, instead of getting upset. Yeah, something is wrong, so it reassures him to be reminded that Harry is the all-powerful (snort) Lord Slytherin. “But I think something bad happened.”

“Then you shall solve it. I shall help. Then there shall be cheese.”

Harry chuckles despite himself, and Zacharias relaxes a little more. Maybe he thinks that if Harry can laugh, everything is under control.

“What happened?” Harry asks softly, and unfortunately, that’s all the reminder Zacharias needs to tense up again.

“My family’s—grown tired of waiting for me to become Lord Hufflepuff. They sent me an owl saying that I wouldn’t be allowed to return to Hogwarts after my O.W.L.s unless I made significant progress.” Zacharias swallows loudly enough to scare a Niffler and straightens up to stare into Harry’s eyes. “My lord, I’m afraid.”

“Where would your family send you?”

“They might send me to Beauxbatons, but they—I’m afraid they would just coop me up in my room until I agree.”

“What?”

“They’ve done it before.”

Harry’s stomach churns violently, remembering the summer before his second year when the Dursleys did the same thing to him, and he almost believed he would never see Hogwarts again. “Then I’ll help you. What do you need?”

“They—they said that I should meet my older cousin on the edge of the Forbidden Forest tonight, and tell him what progress I’ve made towards becoming Lord Hufflepuff.”

“And you want me to go with you to meet him?”

“Please,” Zacharias breathes.

This is probably the kind of situation that some of his other friends would yell at him for entering, but Harry has his wand and Ahalam. And he has his Invisibility Cloak tucked away in his pocket.

More to the point, though, Zacharias doesn’t seem like he could possibly be trapping Harry. He seems to be in genuine distress.

Harry nods. “Lead the way.”

“Thank you, my lord.”

*

“So you’re the Lord Zach has lost himself to.”

Harry doesn’t miss the way that Zacharias flinches at the words and the nickname. Maybe it’s an equal flinch for both. Harry lifts his chin and pulls on all the arrogance that people keep telling him he ought to have as Lord Slytherin, along with the way that Ahalam lies on his shoulder. He’s special. He has a snake. He can speak Parseltongue. He killed a basilisk. He’s special.

“Who are you?”

The boy who stands under the trees at the edge of the Forbidden Forest flushes violently in the light of Harry’s wand. He doesn’t look familiar, although Harry has to admit that he wasn’t paying much attention to the Hufflepuffs at the point this boy would have been in school. “Tiberius Hufflepuff.”

“Hufflepuff? Then why aren’t you trying to become Lord Hufflepuff instead of Zacharias?”

“I had my name legally changed,” Hufflepuff answers, and then looks furious at himself for answering. “What does it matter? The important thing here is why you are making a member of the Smith family follow you!”

“He came to me and asked for protection.” Harry ignores the anxious way that Zacharias shifts behind him. It doesn’t matter if his family knows that. Harry is going to protect him. “I suppose because you couldn’t provide it.”

“He needs to become Lord Hufflepuff!”

“He said that he would need to undertake a quest for some special artifacts to do that, and also that some older family members of his had already failed those quests. Did you?”

Hufflepuff turns red in a completely satisfying manner, and whirls towards Zacharias. Harry promptly steps between the two of them. His wand is in his hand. Ahalam, who has a fine sense of drama when the occasion calls for it, has reared up and begun to hiss.

“Call off your snake!”

“He’s not attacking you. He won’t do anything if you don’t yell at Zacharias.”

“Zach!”

“He told me that he hated that name.”

“He’s a little boy. We’ll call him Zacharias when he’s proven himself.”

Harry narrows his eyes. There are echoes resounding in his head, ones that have the names Vernon and Petunia and Dudley behind them. There used to be a time when Harry believed they would call him something other than “freak” and “boy” if he just tried hard enough to be what they wanted him to be.

“You should call him Zacharias because it’s what he wants to be called.”

“I don’t know what he’s told you, but he’s a useless idiot.”

“Then you shouldn’t want him to be Lord Hufflepuff anyway.”

Hufflepuff stares at Harry for long moments. Harry doesn’t know what he’s thinking. He doesn’t think he much cares, either. What is wrong with Zacharias’s family? Why would they assume that he has to be Lord Hufflepuff and then despise him and bully him so much?

Harry doesn’t know as much about politics as he thinks would please his followers, but he knows that people who want him to be a powerful Lord Slytherin don’t put him down and bad-mouth him. This is probably less the result of the Smith family really wanting Zacharias to be Lord Hufflepuff and more them grasping whatever tool they have.

Because they’re frightened.

The insight leaps from nowhere and strikes into Harry, but he’s sure he’s right. He smiles. “You’re afraid of me.”

“We’re not afraid of a little boy.”

“The one who defeated Voldemort—look, you’re even afraid of his name—and killed a basilisk and defended Hogwarts students from the Ministry for the past two years? Of course. You would have to be smarter to be afraid of me.”

“You don’t want to make enemies of us.”

Zacharias makes a noise behind Harry that seems to confirm that. Harry doesn’t turn to face him, though. Zacharias isn’t going to be a victim here, at least not any more than he already has been. “I know that you’re already my enemies. You don’t threaten and try to coerce a friend of mine and get to call me your friends, too.”

“Friend?”

It comes from both Zacharias and Hufflepuff at the same time. Harry says mildly, “Of course. What did you think you were, Zacharias?”

“A follower.”

“He is a follower,” Hufflepuff says, shaking off his visible shock. “And he’s a poor tool, but he’s the only one we have right now. You’re going to release him from following you around and let him become Lord Hufflepuff, or you won’t like the moves we make in response very much. Right now, everyone is so in shock that you gave wands to goblins that no one is doing much about it. But what do you think will happen if we start telling people that we oppose it?”

“Then I’ll keep going.”

“You can’t.”

“If your family was that powerful, just as political players, you would already have someone who was Lord Hufflepuff. And you wouldn’t be so afraid of me.”

Hufflepuff takes a step forwards, until his face is just a short distance from Harry’s. “I’m not afraid of you.”

“What about the rest of your family?”

“Give Zach back.”

“No. And that was a stupid rhyme.”

Hufflepuff stands there for a moment longer, as if he thinks Harry is going to change his mind and start bowing down to him. Then he turns away with a rapid shake of his head and a mutter that sounds like, “We’ll see where you are when the change comes.”

“I don’t see a whole lot of people bringing change to the magical world right now. Are you sure that you don’t want to join up with me?”

Hufflepuff flinches at that, and then takes a step back and Disapparates. They must be closer to the edge of the wards than Harry knew.

“I’ve never seen anyone stand up to Tiberius like that.”

Zacharias’s voice is soft and distant, as if he’s so shocked that he’s not thinking about what he’s saying. Harry turns around with a small smile. “I promise that I’ll stand up to him if he comes back again. And any member of your family who does, too.”

Zacharias watches him with wide eyes which have devotion dawning in them. Harry holds back a sigh.

Theo would say that it’s better Zacharias is devoted to someone trying to protect him. Hermione might even say the same thing.

Hermione would probably add something about how Zacharias has probably never had someone to protect him, though, which Theo wouldn’t.

“Come on,” Harry says, putting a hand on Zacharias’s shoulder and squeezing. “Let’s go back to Hogwarts.”

“Yes, Lord Slytherin.”

“You don’t have to call me that unless you want to.”

“Sometimes I do.”

But at least Zacharias sounds a little sly, a little mocking, which makes Harry smile at him as they walk back to Hogwarts.

“The other boy left because of me! I am very pretty and very intimidating. I can speak Parseltongue and I am a snake! He is afraid of me.”

Ahalam, Harry thinks, will never change, any more than Oliver will.

Chapter Text

Harry’s friends react in different ways to hearing that he went to the edge of the Forbidden Forest by himself.

Hermione sighs wearily and shakes her head, smoothing out the folds of parchment across her knee that seem to have a new revised study schedule. “If you insist on that, Harry. And it sounds like it was what you had to do to keep Zacharias safe.”

Ron looks up at the ceiling. “Have any idea how powerful the Smith family is?”

“No.”

“Pretty powerful.”

“We’ll take them on the same way we’re taking on the Ministry. I don’t think they’re more powerful than the Ministry.”

Ron grins at him and claps Harry’s shoulder. “Right on.”

Susan gets a weird little glint in her eyes when Harry talks about how Tiberius Smith changed his name to Hufflepuff. “I haven’t heard that,” she says. “And it’s the kind of thing that Aunt Amelia would pass on to me, if only as gossip.”

“You think he’s lying about it?”

“I think he might be intending to do it, but hasn’t yet. Let me see what I can find out.”

Theo gives him a long, patient look when Harry mentions that he went to the edge of the Forbidden Forest. When Harry clarifies that Zacharias and Ahalam were with him, it doesn’t seem to reassure Theo that much.

“You understand that I can’t protect you if I don’t know where you are, my lord?”

“That’s not true! If I was in severe enough danger, your oath would pull you to me. So you would know where I was then.”

Theo rubs his hand across his eyes and mutters something that sounds like, “You and Ahalam are well-suited.” But he doesn’t raise a huge protest about it, so Harry reckons they can consider the matter settled.

Sort of.

*

“You might have a natural talent for Potions, Mr. Potter!”

Harry hides his skeptical smile behind his book as he watches Slughorn hover over the cauldron of Draught of Peace he’s been brewing. Slughorn goes more slowly than Snape but explains things more clearly. Harry knows that Hermione is worried about whether they’ll cover all the relevant information in time for the O.W.L., though.

“Thank you, sir.”

Harry doesn’t really think that he has any natural talent. This is probably Professor Slughorn wanting to flatter the Boy-Who-Lived.

“Yes, indeed, indeed!” Slughorn winks at him. “Some of us remember James Potter and his Quidditch skills, like a colleague of mine I will not name, but some of us remember Lily Potter and her Potions talent.”

Harry holds back a startled reaction as best he can. He doesn’t really want to give Slughorn what he’s looking for. “Is that so, sir?” he asks. “People rarely speak of my mother to me.”

“Yes, it is. She was wonderful at casting spells that helped guide the potion along, once I allowed students to do that in their N.E.W.T. classes! Wonderful! Why, talk to her about Potions for fifteen minutes and you never would have guessed she was Muggleborn.”

Harry blinks and stares at Slughorn for a second. “Sir…”

“What? Oh, you mustn’t think that I’m a blood purist!” Slughorn flaps a hand at Harry. “I’m not! It’s silly to think that purebloods are better at certain skills because of inborn blood or any of that nonsense!” He laughs heartily. “It’s just that purebloods grow up with that kind of training, and so Muggleborns are less likely to have it, eh? Muggleborns can be as good as purebloods! Doesn’t happen more than one time out of five, but it can, and that’s what we all need to work towards!”

Harry nods slowly, and then finishes bottling his potion for the mark and cleaning up his cauldron. All the while, though, he’s thinking very hard.

That’s the kind of thing I need to fight. Not just blood purity nonsense like Mr. Malfoy and Voldemort spout, but that kind of casual prejudice that thinks it’s really surprising when a Muggleborn is as good at Potions as a pureblood.

That’s what I need to do.

*

“I think you ought to practice the Patronus Charm, Harry.”

Harry blinks at Blaise, who’s sat down next to him. They’re in the middle of another lesson for the Defense Association, and Harry has been offering advice to a few people and shoring up some shields. “What? Why?”

“You never did learn it, did you?”

“Well, not completely. Because the Ministry withdrew the Dementors when Sirius turned out to be innocent, and I was taking lessons with Professor Lupin, but that stopped.”

Blaise nods, wraps his arms around his knees, and leans closer. “I think you ought to do it because my mother has contacts among the Examinations Authority, and apparently you really impress the Defense proctors if you can cast a Patronus.”

Harry thinks about that. “I could put it on the roster of lessons for the Defense Association, I suppose, but I don’t think most people have the time to learn it. The O.W.L. exam is just a few months away. But maybe it would be a good thing for the younger students. Were you thinking of them?”

“I was thinking of you.”

Blaise’s voice has an edge to it. Harry eyes him cautiously. “Blaise—”

“Have you ever thought about what you’re going to do to keep the prestige of Lord Slytherin alive?”

“I think it’s already more alive than I would prefer, mostly.”

And that’s true. Harry has a few random people bowing to him in corridors each day, now. They’re not his followers, because he can scowl at the ones who do it (and anyway, mostly they only do it to fuck with him). These are students who watch him with big round eyes and murmur to each other about his “exploits.”

“But you yourself need to be more than just a teacher for other students. You need to show in your Defense O.W.L. how much you know about the subject.”

“Now you sound like Hermione.”

Blaise doesn’t laugh. Instead, he leans closer. “Granger has good ideas. Will you at least consider learning the Patronus?”

“I said I thought it was a good idea. I just don’t have time to learn it before the O.W.L., that’s all.”

“I think if anyone could do it, you could.”

“Thank you for your vote of confidence. But I don’t think I could.”

There’s a stubborn frown on Blaise’s face as he pulls away and stands up. Harry watches him go, shaking his head slightly. Yes, it’s good for his friends to have faith in him, but not when they’re pushing him to do frankly impossible things.

*

“I wanted to speak to you, Mr. Potter, on a matter of grave importance.” And Harry does think it must be one, both from the tone in Dumbledore’s voice and the fact that he called Harry “Mr. Potter.” Most of the time, he still prefers to use Harry’s first name.

“Okay, sir. What is it?” Harry got called away from breakfast where he was trying to prevent people from feeding Ahalam too much cheese, like normal, and so he’s dealing with a small snake that has a large lump in his middle and also has one simple demand echoing over and over in Parseltongue.

“More cheese! More cheese!”

“You’ve had enough cheese.”

“More cheese!” Ahalam sticks his tongue in Harry’s ear.

Harry pushes Ahalam’s tongue out of his ear, which means he misses the first thing Dumbledore says to him. He coughs and turns back when Dumbledore makes a tired little sound. “Sorry, sir. You were saying?”

“The Smith family has proposed new legislation to the Wizengamot saying that anyone who declares themselves a Lord or a Lady would be immediately remanded for treatment at St. Mungo’s.”

Harry blinks a little, then says, “How do they square that with trying to get people to be Lord Hufflepuff?”

“What?”

“Their family keeps trying to send people on quests to find some sort of artifact and become Lord Hufflepuff. Or Lady Hufflepuff, I suppose. It’s just that the only person I know about it who doesn’t want to do it would have been Lord Hufflepuff.”

“I am sure that they have considered that and would say that the legislation would not touch them because they have not actually declared any member of their family Lord Hufflepuff. Or Lady,” Dumbledore adds after a moment. “But you are in danger, Harry.”

“No, I’m not. I didn’t actually declare myself Lord Slytherin. Other people did that and started following me around. I’m not actually in any more danger of being susceptible to that law than that bloke I met who changed his name to Hufflepuff. Only maybe he didn’t, because Susan didn’t recognize it.”

“What?”

“I’m just saying, sir,” Harry says, and reaches out to pat Dumbledore’s hand as he stands up. “It was nice of you to inform me about this proposed legislation, but I don’t need to worry about it.”

“Given that you have used the title Lord Slytherin for the past two years, I don’t think you are as safe as you might imagine, Harry.”

“But I’m not the one who called it Lord Slytherin’s Army. And I’m not the one who thought they needed to get my permission to hold the Tri-Wizard Tournament. And I didn’t make a huge official declaration in front of anyone.”

“The school is helping you.”

“They would have to bring that up as a piece of evidence, sir, and it doesn’t sound like they would. It sounds like the declaration is what they’re focusing on. Stupid of them, but I wouldn’t expect people who want a member of their family to become a Lord to be rational.”

“More cheese!”

“Yes, you can have cheese, in a little while.”

Ahalam wriggles happily on Harry’s shoulder and does at least stop tickling his ear, so Harry is able to focus on Dumbledore again. His face is haggard, but thoughtful.

“You truly believe that you would win a legal challenge like this?”

“I believe that they don’t even have the legislation enacted yet. You said they were just bringing it before the Wizengamot, not doing anything else yet. And it could take a long time for the law to be passed. And I still believe that I have technicalities on my side.”

“What did you do to get the Smith family angry at you?”

“Refused to jump when they snapped their fingers.”

Dumbledore watches him for a long moment, as if he thinks he’ll get a different answer if he waits long enough. But he won’t. Harry truly isn’t worried about the Smith family. He thought when he spoke with Hufflepuff that they would try something like this, something legal and scary to people who think like that.

Not to someone like Harry, who has to live every day in the reality where multiple people have tried to kill him.

“I hope you are right, my boy.”

He must feel better, since he’s not calling me “Mr. Potter,” Harry thinks, and nods to him, and leaves the office.

*

“But you could learn to cast a corporeal Patronus. And I want to see you do it.”

Harry sighs and leans back against the wall of the old ballroom in the dungeons where the Defense Association is practicing today. They had to come inside because the wind and the snow picked up to the point that it was actively dangerous to be out there. “Why are you so insistent that I do it, Blaise?”

“Cheese!”

“I said you could have cheese in a little while.”

“It has been a little while!”

“Not long enough.”

“Cheese!”

Harry sighs again and turns back to Blaise. “Sorry about that. He wants things he can’t have. So why do you want to see me master the Patronus so badly?”

“I didn’t start following you because I thought we needed a Lord Slytherin the way Theo and Daphne did. Or because I’m too weak to stand up against my family without someone else’s support, the way Draco is. Do you know why I did?”

Harry hesitates. Blaise has never been as close to him as Theo or Susan or Daphne or, of course, Ron and Hermione. “Uh, no.”

“Because I know that you’re going to be great, and that means that your prestige can increase mine.” Blaise makes a sharp gesture. “But I also found out that you’re friendly and actually want to protect your followers, so that’s why I stayed.”

“Okay. But none of that tells me why you want to see me learn the Patronus Charm.”

“Because it will impress the examiners. And I think you would be good at it. And because some of the gossip my mother sends me says that you’re a soft touch and anyone can take advantage of you, and you mostly became Lord Slytherin by luck, not brilliance.”

“Uh. I mean. That’s true?”

“It shouldn’t be true!” Blaise leans close to Harry, scowling at him. “Lord Slytherin should be brilliant and able to take the magical world by storm with the genius behind his spells!”

“But you know I’m not really like that. Why do you want me to be?”

“You could do so much better in school than you are! Why is that not your priority?”

“Because trying to protect people and defeat Voldemort is my priority?”

They stare at each other for a long second, and then Blaise lets out a sigh and seems to deflate like a collapsing balloon. “All right, fair. But will you at least make a slightly better try? For me?”

“Because you want me to be brilliant?”

“Because you—” Blaise clenches one hand into a fist. “Because you inspire me, all right? And if you can master the Patronus Charm, maybe I can think about what I can do, myself.”

Harry blinks, then nods. He’s played worse roles than inspiration for someone else.

And at least Blaise just wants Harry to do well on the exams, instead of wanting him to poop rainbows out his arse, or whatever most people in Britain wanted of him.

“All right.”

“Thank you.”

Blaise smiles at him, and Harry smiles at him, and turns around just in time to put out the fire that Justin has somehow started in Zacharias’s hair.

“Cheese?”

Ahalam’s voice is very small and sad, and Harry sighs. It has been a few days since the feast he had before Harry took him up to Dumbledore’s office. “Yes, all right, cheese.”

“I am very happy.”

Harry touches Ahalam’s scales, smiling. He does enjoy making people happy, especially when it’s something simple like promising to study one particular spell.

Or giving them cheese.

Chapter Text

“Expecto Patronum!”

A silvery mist surges back and forth in front of Harry, and then dissipates. Harry sighs a little and shakes his head.

He’s been practicing the Patronus by himself because, frankly, it would be pretty embarrassing to have it fail in front of his followers. Well, no, his followers would probably be fine, but the more casual students in the Defense Association might start worrying about how weak he was.

And Harry has learned the hard way that he can’t trust the school’s opinion not to change instantly when it comes to him.

“You are hunting hard.”

Harry glances curiously at Ahalam, whom he left asleep on a warm rock in the corner of the old Defense classroom no one uses anymore. Ahalam’s head is up now, swaying back and forth a little, and he looks so intent that Harry goes over to him.

“What do you mean?”

“You are hunting very hard. You want to look at the sinew-things, and you want to cast spells, and you want to train your hatchlings—”

“Students, Ahalam. They’re called students.”

“You are teaching them to hunt, they are your hatchlings.”

Harry rolls his eyes a little. He reckons he’s not going to win that argument, so he just says, “Yes, all right, I’ve been working. But no harder than Hermione or Ron or the rest of them work, you know.”

“You are hunting hard when you have the best and prettiest snake to make things easier.”

Harry smiles and reaches out a hand. Ahalam twines up it, but doesn’t come up to Harry’s shoulder like he usually does, resting on his arm and coiling there instead. He darts his tongue out. “You remember when we broke past the ward on the dangerous man’s office.”

Harry nods. That’s what Ahalam always calls Moody. “Yes. And I wouldn’t want to ask you to do something like that now.”

“But I added my magic to yours. You can cast in the real language, and that will increase the power of your magic.”

Harry blinks. Yes, he’s called on Ahalam’s magic a few times, but it’s never been a consistent thing, and it hasn’t happened in the last few months. It’s—well, a startling insight to emerge from the mind of someone who’s concerned with cheese most of the time.

But then again, Harry is concerned with the protection of his friends most of the time, and defeating Voldemort. It doesn’t mean he can’t think about other things, like this bloody Patronus.

“Do you want to help me try?”

“I will try! I am the best and prettiest of snakes! I am also the strongest and the smartest! Cast the spell in Parseltongue, and I will add my strength to yours, and we will hunt down the spell together!”

Harry finds himself smiling and lifts his wand. He doesn’t try to concentrate on a happy memory, since so far that hasn’t worked, but just the joy he feels being around Ahalam. He takes a bracing breath and sighs out the words in Parseltongue. “Expecto Patronum!”

There’s a confused and confusing swirl in front of him, of blue and silver smoke. Harry is at least relieved that he doesn’t seem to have done any more badly than the other times he’s cast the spell today. But Ahalam is swaying back and forth on his shoulder, chanting, “Form, prey, form!” and Harry blinks a little as the smoke takes on a definite form.

He laughs when he sees what it is. It breaks apart in the next moment and turns back into formless drifting stuff, but he knows what he saw.

“Why is your Patronus that?”

“What did you think my Patronus should be?”

“A snake,” Ahalam says, in the same small hurt voice that he uses when he’s denied cheese. “The best and strongest and smartest snake.”

Harry caresses Ahalam and smiles at the place where his Niffler Patronus has just disappeared. “You’re still great, Ahalam. And you said the Patronus was prey. So it wouldn’t really have been appropriate for the Patronus to be you, right? Because I wouldn’t want to eat a snake.”

Ahalam sways back and forth cheerfully. “That is right! It is a crime to lie to snakes, and a crime to eat one! Do you know what else is a crime? Keeping snakes from cheese!”

Harry snorts and gives the air one more smile before he walks towards the door of the old classroom. He knew that sooner or later they would get back around to cheese.

*

Harry stumbles out of the Forbidden Forest, shaking. Hagrid just took him to meet his brother Grawp, and Harry…

Harry never wants to do that again.

He stands and shoves his trembling hands in his pockets, while he tries to smile at Hermione. Hermione’s face is pale, and she keeps looking over her shoulder as if she thinks Grawp is about to come after them.

“That’s awful,” Hermione whispers. “That Hagrid had to go meet with him, and keeping him tied up like that…it’s not right…”

Harry takes a deep breath. “Yeah.” He wonders for a second if Dumbledore was right, and holding the Tournament last year would have meant they could have established international alliances. Would that mean poor Grawp wouldn’t have been taken from his people and tied up?

But then Harry shakes his head impatiently. He couldn’t countenance putting students in danger—and creatures like dragons—to save one giant. He hates that he has to think like this, but he thinks he made the right decision to keep the Ministry from bringing in the Tournament.

But that doesn’t mean he can’t do something for giants now. He glances at Hermione. “Would you be willing to help me look up laws about the treatment of magical creatures?”

“Yes, of course. I built some time free from the study schedule tomorrow evening. We can meet in the library then.”

Harry conceals a smile. Hermione didn’t try to enforce her insane study schedule on anybody after Ron and Harry talked to her about it, but she’s keeping herself to a pretty strict one. “Yeah, that’ll work. Thanks, Hermione.”

Hermione nods determinedly to him, and then glances over her shoulder at the Forest again. “I feel sorry for Hagrid, but he shouldn’t be keeping his half-brother captive like that.”

“I totally agree.”

*

“Are you all right, Sirius?”

Sirius asked Harry to visit him, and Harry thought it was going to be about what day and time they would leave for the Easter holiday. As much as Harry likes Hogwarts, he doesn’t really want to spend the hols here, now that he has a choice. He’d like to see Grimmauld Place and Remus again.

But now Sirius is sitting in front of him and sipping Firewhisky straight from the bottle, and his face looks ghastly.

Sirius sets down his bottle and reaches across from the squashy couch he’s kept in his quarters since last term to clasp Harry’s hand. Harry holds on, searching his face. The only thing he can think is that Sirius got bad news about one of their friends, or Remus, or something.

“I cast—I found—”

Harry tightens his hold on Sirius’s hand. He doesn’t know what the problem is, but Sirius really needs to talk to someone, obviously.

Sirius abruptly lunges forwards and wraps his arms around Harry, dragging him close. Harry makes a muffled sound of surprise against Sirius’s shoulder, but hugs him right back.

Sirius breathes, close to Harry’s ear, “I found a spell that would let me identify what kind of Dark magic was on the diadem and the locket. I found a horrible book at Grimmauld Place that made sense of them. I think—I think they contain pieces of that bastard’s soul.”

Harry shivers, but the notion doesn’t really surprise him. He remembers what the diary said about being a memory preserved in a book for fifty years. “And you think that’s—what? It helps keep him alive?”

“Yes, I think it might. And I found a spell in the book that would identify the objects, although it doesn’t do much besides confirm what they are.”

Sirius falls silent. Harry holds him closer. He doesn’t know if it’s just the existence of the Dark magic that has upset Sirius, or delving into books from Grimmauld Place, or something else.

“I tried the spell out in various places in Hogwarts,” Sirius whispers. “I thought he might have hidden another of those objects here, since he hid the diadem. And—Harry—”

He begins to shake. Harry pulls back and stares up at Sirius. The only thing he can imagine is that Sirius found the whole school itself is one of these things or something. That seems to be the only conclusion that would cause him this much pain.

But Sirius is pulling back, forcing his shaking back under control, and staring at Harry.

“Harry,” he whispers. “You glowed. Your scar—you—you’re one of them.”

Harry feels as though he’s falling.

A second later, harsh and hoarse and horrible, Sirius begins to cry.

Chapter Text

Harry sits on the Astronomy Tower and lets the wind blow through him.

He’s up here alone. No friends, no Sirius, no Salazar. No Ahalam. Nothing except himself and the cold wind that still carries the smart bite of winter even though the weather below is turning to spring.

Harry sits there and tries to come to terms with carrying around a piece of Voldemort’s soul.

Of course it explains more than it doesn’t, like the dreams that Harry finds hard to fend off even with Occlumency and the pain that scorches him when Voldemort is near. But explanations aren’t really what Harry feels like thinking about right now.

He sits, and the wind blows through him, and scrubs him clean.

He feels dirty—dirtied so much that he shakes with it. How long has he been carrying around that bit of soul?

Of course, as soon as Harry thinks that, he feels stupid. He knows the answer. Since that Halloween night when Voldemort tried to kill him. He’s been this thing, which Sirius says is called a Horcrux, much longer than he’s just been a normal kid.

Panic tries to build up, but Harry stares up at the stars and breathes in the wind, and finally he calms down enough to think about it.

He’s not possessed. Sirius reassured him vehemently of that, and Harry’s pretty sure of it, too. He’s not trying to possess other people, like the diary. He’s not corrupt and stinking of evil like the locket and the diadem, or someone would have noticed what he was much earlier. The Dursleys certainly would have mentioned it.

He is—

He’s something that still has to be destroyed to get rid of Voldemort’s immortality.

Harry closes his eyes. That’s what he’s been trying to avoid thinking, but now, with the wind picking up to a good old howl and the stars blazing cold above him, he can’t avoid it any longer.

What is he going to do? He has to die.

He doesn’t want to die. He wants to live.

But so does Voldemort.

Harry buries his forehead in his knees, feeling like he’s about to start breathing impossibly fast. But it doesn’t actually happen, fear and exhaustion hovering around him but not coming out. Harry shudders and curls into a smaller, tighter ball.

It can be put off for a few years, he thinks. It will give them time to research what to do about Horcruxes other than stab them with a basilisk fang. Maybe they’ll manage to move the shard out of him. Maybe they’ll come up with a way of destroying it that Harry can survive. Stab him with the basilisk fang and have Fawkes cry on the wound?

That didn’t get rid of it last time.

Harry breathes out. The thing is, he can’t keep this to himself. He has to tell some of his friends, at least. They would know that something was different the moment they spent some time around him and Sirius, anyway.

But he can keep one thing to himself.

The determination, wild as a thestral, welling in him that if worst comes to worst, if they can’t do anything else and can’t find a way to remove the Horcrux…

That he’ll die.

He wants to live. But he wants to protect his friends more.

*

“Are you finally going to tell us why you and Black have looked like something’s broken in your souls for the past week?”

Harry flinches before he can stop himself. It’s Theo’s wording, not his tone or the fact that he’s asking the question. Harry already called his closest friends here, to a version of the Room of Requirement covered with wards, to announce that he’s a Horcrux.

Theo, being Theo, reads his face and is out of his chair on the opposite side of the small table in seconds, his hand on Harry’s shoulder. “What is it? My lord?”

Harry closes his eyes and retreats inwards for a moment, then takes a deep breath. He can’t give in and lie down and die. He can’t make jokes and brush this off. But on the other hand, he can’t just act like a lord.

“Please don’t call me that right now, Theo.”

Theo watches him with wild, wondering eyes for a moment, and then inclines his head. “Harry, then. What is it? You’re frightening me.” His eyes dart to the door of the Room, but right now, he and Harry and Ahalam are the only ones here.

“The intense boy is being very intense. What is wrong? Does it have to do with the dog-man? What can the best and prettiest snake do to help?” Ahalam touches Harry’s neck with the end of his tail. “Can it be solved with cheese?”

“I’m sorry,” Harry says to Theo, “I didn’t mean to, but I’d rather only tell this once, so I’m going to wait for the others.” He says to Ahalam, “No, it can’t be solved with cheese.”

“It is a mighty problem! Tell me what the problem is, and I will help you with it. And then perhaps we can have cheese afterwards.”

“I’ll tell you in a bit,” Harry promises, eyes on the door of the Room, where Sirius is entering now. Ron and Hermione are right behind him, giving Harry worried glances, and Susan follows them.

The others seem surprised when Ernie joins them, but Ernie looks a little defiant. Harry just waves him to a chair. He’s become close to Ernie since they started Occlumency lessons together, and Ernie has seen some of his worst memories. He deserves to know this, too.

And because it’s not impossible that the Horcrux could attack Ernie now that he’s entering Harry’s mind and seeing some of his memories.

“Sirius found a book that talked more about what the diadem and the locket are,” Harry says, and some of his friends look around nervously even though the Horcruxes aren’t here right now. “They’re called Horcruxes—”

Theo hisses like a snake someone has stabbed. Harry nods to him. He’s the only one here who grew up with that kind of Dark Arts, other than Sirius, and Harry isn’t surprised he recognizes the word.

“They’re containers for someone’s soul.”

Hermione is the one who turns the palest, but Susan is the one who whispers, “They’re containers for parts of his soul? He split it? That’s awful.”

Harry nods. “Sirius thought that another one of them might be hidden at Hogwarts, since the diadem was. He found a spell that would allow him to find the containers. He cast it.” He swallows.

“It’s the school!” Hermione says.

“It’s you.”

Theo’s voice is completely flat, and so is his face. Harry nods without attempting to say anything to comfort Theo. There would be no point. “Yeah,” he whispers. “Yeah, it’s me. My scar. Voldemort put a piece of his soul there the night he tried to kill me on Halloween, in 1981.”

Ron makes an awful choking sound that Harry never wants to hear again. It’s as bad as Sirius’s crying was, in some ways. He reaches out a trembling hand. “Harry, if you are—if you can—”

“We don’t know what to do,” Sirius says, in a rush, leaning over the table and slapping his hands down on the surface. “We know how to destroy the others, but we—I don’t know what to do, I don’t know if there’s ever been a living Horcrux before, if Harry can even live if we get rid of it when it’s been in him so long—”

“There must be something,” Ernie says. Harry has never heard him so upset before. He’s wide-eyed and pale and sweating. “There must be—I don’t understand all portions of this situation, but there must be—”

“No.”

Theo’s flat voice steals the voices from the others. Harry shifts and blinks at him. Theo stands still, arms folded, glaring at him. Harry raises his eyebrows. “What?”

“I know you have a plan in place that involves destroying yourself to destroy the Horcrux,” Theo says. He’s still and cold, and for the first time around him, Harry feels a prickle of fear. “That’s not going to happen.”

“Harry, you wouldn’t—”

“You couldn’t, not really—”

Harry bares his teeth. He didn’t intend to say anything about this, because he didn’t intend for anyone to find out, but now he has to. “If it came down to choosing between my own life and yours?” he asks, eyes locked on Theo’s for a moment before he looks around the table at everyone there. “Yeah, I would. In a heartbeat.”

“No.”

Theo speaks like someone three times his age, his voice calm and quiet and still. Harry sighs and puts his head in his hands for a moment. “I would always choose your lives over mine,” he says. “That’s the way it is.”

“And what makes you think we should agree with that?”

“Because that’s the way I want it, and you’ve supposedly sworn an oath to me and also are my friend?”

Theo recoils without moving. Harry tugs on his hair and ignores Ahalam’s hisses of concern from his shoulder. “Sorry,” he mutters. “That was rude. But—I don’t know what else to do, Theo.”

“Look into moving the Horcrux into something else. Look into different ways of destroying the Horcruxes. Look into ways of disembodying the Dark Lord and capturing his spirit in something else, rather than dying.”

Harry blinks at Theo. “I did think about the first two things. I’m willing to try and find ways. I’m not just going to—march off to my death.”

“And the last?”

“We have to kill him, Theo. We can’t leave him alive.”

“But if he can never get out—”

“How would we know he can never get out?”

“We don’t know how to do any of these things yet,” Sirius interrupts in a loud voice, and Harry jumps. He didn’t realize how intense his argument with Theo had got. “But we might find ways to do them. So don’t just—promise us that you won’t run off and do something rash, okay, Harry?”

“I don’t want to do something rash! I want to live! It’s just that I want you to live more.”

Sirius reaches out and hugs him, the flash of tears in his eyes. Then he takes a deep breath and shakes his head. “Listen to me. We are going to investigate, and that means doing careful research. Even though the kind of books we’ll have to read won’t make life pleasant for anyone,” he mutters, only halfway under his breath. “No one is going to make any decisions until we know for sure what those decisions have to be, okay?”

Harry nods, because he’s perfectly willing to wait and do research. His idea of dying to save them is just a last-ditch idea.

It’s just that he has to face it. Has to make his own peace with it before he does it, if it ever becomes necessary.

He glances around, and gets a nod from Ernie. Ron is watching him with a face so pale that he looks like a murder victim, all his freckles standing out on his skin like drops of blood. Hermione is sniffling, her head buried in her hands.

Theo and Susan are whispering furiously to each other.

Harry narrows his eyes at them. Susan glances up, catches him looking, waves, and goes right back to whispering with Theo.

I wish I knew what the hell that was about. But in the end, no matter what they plot and plan, Harry will have to be the one to make the final choice.

That’s part of what being a Lord is. If he claims the title and the privileges, he has to be willing to pay the price.

*

“You’re not going to die.”

Harry sighs and turns around. He sort of expected this, after Theo’s opinions on the conversation, but he didn’t expect Theo to come up to him while Harry was on the Astronomy Tower, once again wrestling with his thoughts.

“If I have to, I will.”

“You won’t have to.”

Harry narrows his eyes. “And how do you know that?” he asks quietly. “We still don’t understand all the minutiae of the prophecy, Theo, and we know that a basilisk bite doesn’t destroy the Horcrux in me.”

“We shall arrange it.” Theo looks almost angelic with his faint smile and the wind blowing his dark hair back. “You don’t have to worry about it. Susan says you should worry more about your O.W.L. exams, in fact.”

Harry half-shrugs. Tests and studying feel very far away right now.

“Don’t worry, my lord. We won’t let him kill you.”

Harry frowns at Theo’s back as his friend turns and trots away. He wishes he knew what Theo and Susan were planning—but then again, he’s pretty sure that it won’t work no matter what. The prophecy says he has to face Voldemort. No one else.

All I can do is lessen the cost for them.

Chapter Text

“Sirius told me.”

That’s all Remus says before he holds out his arms. Harry runs into them and leans against Remus for a long moment. Salazar is banging and rattling against his cage because he wants to be let out to look for shiny things, but Harry ignores him for the moment, safe in Remus’s embrace.

“We’ll get it out of you,” Remus whispers. His voice is warm and he smells of something that might be butterscotch. “I promise.”

Harry just nods. He won’t say that’s impossible until he tries and fails. He just fears it will be.

But for the moment, he’s home for the Easter holidays, and there’s no point in moping about things that can’t be helped. Harry steps back from Remus with a grin. “Did we tell you it was Salazar who found them?”

*

Harry gets an odd owl on the second day he’s home, and frowns at it as he unrolls it near his omelet.

“Master Harry is not getting omelet on his message!”

Harry rolls his eyes and moves the scroll further away. Then he starts studying it again, because he thinks the writing should be familiar—something about it is familiar—but he’s damned if he knows why.

Does Harry Potter wish to make allies of the werewolves?

“Morning, Harry.”

Sirius shambles into the kitchen with eyes so sleepy that Harry wants to go up to him, and hug him, and tell him to stop searching through the damn Black library for a solution to the Horcrux in Harry’s head. But he can’t tell him that, not without making Sirius upset and driving him further into the books.

Sirius doesn’t think the Horcrux in Harry’s head is his fault, exactly. But he seems to think he should be the one doing something about it, because he’s Harry’s godfather.

Well, Harry is Harry’s—Harry. He bears just as much responsibility as Sirius, and he’s the one who will have to make the ultimate decision.

Plus whatever terrifying but futile thing Theo and Susan are coming up with.

“Morning, Sirius,” Harry says, and makes a snap decision. He holds out the scroll. “I got this. The writing looks sort of familiar to me, but I don’t know whose it is. Do you have any idea?”

Sirius picks up the scroll with one hand. His fork is in the other. Then he stares at the scroll, and his fork clatters to his plate.

“Sirius?” Harry pushes his chair back from the table, and grips his wand, watching Sirius narrowly. He hasn’t seen his godfather look so pale since the day he told Harry about the Horcrux. “What is it? Who is it?”

Sirius gives a wordless yelp, to the point that Harry expects him to transform into a dog any second. But instead, he snatches up the scroll and rushes out of the room, taking the stairs two at a time. Harry wonders if he’ll yell for Remus, who might know someone who’s writing about werewolves, but he doesn’t.

He doesn’t come back, either. Harry finishes breakfast by himself—Remus is going to be late getting up, this close to the full moon—and walks his dishes absently over to the sink, frowning, trying to search his memory. There was nothing particularly distinctive about the handwriting, no unusual punctuation or loops on the letters or anything like that—

“Master Harry is leaving the dishes to Kreacher!”

Harry jumps, and the dishes fly out of his arms. Kreacher snaps his fingers and catches them in midair. Then he stares at Harry with his arms folded until Harry gives up trying to explain himself and plods out of the kitchen. He goes back to his bedroom, where he has letters that he’s saved from his friends and some people who think sending demands and questions and petitions to Lord Slytherin is a fun idea, and starts going through them.

There must be some reason that he nearly recognizes that handwriting.

*

Sirius is quiet when he comes back down to dinner, and he sits there staring vaguely at the wall until Harry wants to shout at him. But he glances at Remus, and Remus shakes his head a little. He looks pale himself. Harry bites his lip and wonders if the letter is from a werewolf activist Remus knows.

Or just a werewolf. He doesn’t think Remus is on very good terms with any of the ones in Britain, really. They’re led or controlled or something by Fenrir Greyback.

There’s someone Harry would like to see in Azkaban.

His thoughts distract him until the end of dinner, when Sirius sets aside his plate and leans forwards with a hoarse little huff of breath. Harry promptly puts down his fork and turns to stare at him.

Sirius clears his throat a few times, shakes his head, and finally whispers, “Let’s go to the library.”

They almost never go to the library. That’s where all the books are that Sirius did the research on Horcruxes in. But there doesn’t seem to be a reason to deny Sirius if it will make him feel more comfortable, so Harry gets up. He finds that he has to lead the way to the library. Sirius is so lost in thought he comes up about ten stairs behind.

Harry manages to contain himself until they’re settled in chairs in front of the fire and Kreacher has popped in butterbeer for Harry and steaming mugs of what might be Firewhisky for Sirius and Remus. “What is it? Who is it from?”

“My brother.”

Harry is glad that he hasn’t taken a sip of butterbeer yet, because he would have spewed it all over the carpets and earned yet another lecture from Kreacher. “Your dead Death Eater brother? The one who died in 1979?”

“Yes.”

“I didn’t know ghosts could write letters.”

“We don’t think he’s a ghost.” Remus leans forwards from his chair next to Sirius, his face pale with concern. “We think—he may have faked his death, although I don’t know what method of faking it would have convinced a loyal house-elf that he had passed and make the date of his death show up on the Black family tapestry…”

“Maybe he’s a ghost who found someone else to hold a quill for him?”

“Harry,” Remus chides.

“Well, I’m sorry, it’s not every day that I get a letter from a dead Death Eater, you know?”

“Harry.” Sirius has his face in his hands. “Please stop calling him a dead Death Eater.”

“Okay, he’s an alive Death Eater.”

Sirius glares at him.

Harry raises his hands, swallowing. It’s just a lot to take in, and even as part of him thinks that he probably recognized Regulus Black’s handwriting because he and Sirius learned to write from the same people and their letters must look similar, his head is reeling.

What the fuck? What the hell?

Regulus would have been the last person Harry thought he would get a friendly letter from. Even below someone like Snape, because at least Snape is alive and has hands to write it.

“Why would he send it?” Harry asks. “Was he close to werewolves when he was alive or something? Was he a werewolf?”

“No,” Sirius chokes. He puts his hands over his face and shakes his head back and forth. “To know that he’s alive, that I thought he was dead…”

“We’ve talked about this, Sirius.” Remus sounds weary. “He must have put in a lot of effort to fool the tapestry and even to make You-Know-Who think he was dead. You couldn’t have known.”

“It’s not your fault you didn’t know your dead Death Eater brother was alive, Sirius.”

That gets him another glare, but Harry ignores it. His mind is racing, wondering how Voldemort got fooled and if there’s any way that Harry could contact Regulus and ask how he did it. Harry’s Occlumency is still not perfect, and at this point, Ernie is beginning to despair that it ever will be.

“You are very excited about something. What is it? Tell the best and prettiest snake.”

Harry smiles at Ahalam as the snake crawls out on his arm. “I got a letter from someone who seems to be Sirius’s brother. I thought he was dead, but I suppose not.”

“Do dead things come back to life? Will mice come back to life in my stomach? It is important that I eat cheese, which does not come back to life!”

Harry rolls his eyes and turns back to Sirius rather than getting into another argument with Ahalam about cheese. “Are you going to write to him? Or do you want me to reply to him?”

“My mother tried to send him owls when Kreacher first brought us word of his death,” Sirius whispers. “None of the owls would fly. That was how we knew for sure that he was dead. Owls can’t find someone who isn’t living.”

“But you haven’t tried sending him one now.”

Sirius’s eyes are so haunted that Harry feels bad about teasing him earlier, and reaches out to clasp his godfather’s shoulder. “I don’t—know. I don’t know what it means if the owl takes off, and I don’t know what it means if it stays.”

“We could try with Hedwig. Do you want me to?”

Sirius nods and turns his head away. “I don’t want to watch—well, no, yes, I do. But I don’t know what I expect to see happen.”

Harry makes his smile as gentle as possible while he stands. “I’ll go and write a letter to him now.”

*

Harry writes a simple letter, asking Regulus how he survived and why he wants to talk to Harry about werewolves, and gives it to Hedwig, who is tilting her head curiously in his direction. “Regulus Black, girl.”

Hedwig turns her head in another direction and refuses to leave.

There’s a long moment of agonized, breathless silence, and then Sirius turns and runs out of the owlery, his footsteps pounding on the stairs.

*

Stay safe. Do nothing without me.

That’s the whole of Theo’s letter, when Harry writes to tell him about the letter from Regulus. Harry shakes his head and picks up Ron and Hermione’s letters, which are at least a little longer and express genuine surprise.

It’s not like Harry’s going to run off in search of the alive Death Eater. If Hedwig can’t find him, Harry doesn’t have the faintest idea where he would begin to look.

Chapter Text

“Regulus Black was notorious among the Death Eaters.”

Harry doesn’t ask how Theo knows that. It’s perfectly obvious how Theo knows that. Harry just gives him a steady look and sits down on the chair that the Room of Requirement has provided for him. Theo has taken a chair across from him, and is almost vibrating with nerves. “In what way?”

“He always did exactly what the Dark Lord asked of him. He considered it an honor to serve.”

“He didn’t care about anyone else? Did he have friends? Or did all his friends join Voldemort?”

Theo flinches at the name, which hasn’t happened in a while, and then shakes his head and takes a deep breath. “Yes, just about all his friends were Death Eaters. He was part of a group of young Slytherins who were all—recruited.”

Harry nods. He supposes he should have guessed that. “And so you think that he’s doing something in some way to lure me to Voldemort?”

“Why else would he write to you? Are you seriously considering an alliance with the werewolves?”

“If we can have someone contact them. But then again, Remus is the only werewolf I know, and he’s told me that he’s despised by Fenrir Greyback and the packs Greyback controls.”

Theo snorts. “I’m not surprised. Greyback bit Lupin, and he’s never had the time for someone who wouldn’t immediately roll over and start obeying him after that.” He leans a little back in his seat, pulls at his hair, and then says abruptly, “What I’m about to tell you—you can’t tell anyone else, Harry. Not Black, not Granger or Weasley.”

“What happened to calling them by their first names?”

Theo just looks steadily at him.

Harry sighs. “Okay, I promise.” He always would have made the promise regardless, and from the look Theo gives him, he knows it. But his expression does look easier as he leans forwards again.

“My father has blackmail on several werewolves working in the Ministry.” Theo’s expression is unreadable now. “They manage it with Wolfsbane and by having established that they have children or family members who need special care on a regular basis. Or by being too senior, in a few cases, to have their absences questioned. I’ll give their names to you.”

Harry stares for a moment. Then he says, “Won’t your father…notice that they aren’t doing what he wants them to do anymore?”

“It’s been a long time since he required them for some kind of active participation in his plans, and now that Voldemort has returned, he still hasn’t issued Father any clear orders.” Theo continues to speak from behind that unbreakable mask. “Of course, he still retains their names and sends some of them Galleons for the Wolfsbane. You should be able to use them, too.”

“I’m not going to blackmail them,” Harry says, more sharply than he meant to.

A deeply unsettling smile cuts across Theo’s face. “None of them are good people by your definition, Harry. They put their fellow Ministry workers in danger every day, given that a cut from a werewolf’s nails or teeth can at least scar badly, and make a lot of people think someone who has it carries the infection. And their temper rises harsh and hot. Two of them have scarred people, and had to come up with stories about curses they cast that did it. They weren’t heavily punished, though, because Father provided them with the money for the bribes. And several of them have deliberately bitten people they wanted revenge on. Or those people’s children, like Greyback.”

Harry clenches his hands in front of them. The thought of children being bitten makes his own harsh, hot anger ignite inside him. “I still don’t want to blackmail them.”

“You can blackmail them into good deeds. You could tell them that you’re fighting for the political rights of werewolves and they have to assist you. Make some gesture the way that you did when you gave the goblins wands. There are werewolves who would follow you if you did something like that.”

“Are you managing me?”

“Of course not.”

“You’re speaking in this weirdly soothing tone.”

“My lord requires it.”

At least Theo’s eyes are bright and mocking, which makes Harry relax with a little huff, shaking his head. “And you want me to have the names of these werewolves.”

“Yes. Whatever trick Black has pulled to make his own family tapestry think he’s dead, he’s not going to trick you. You won’t need him to intercede with you for the werewolves, or whatever he plans on doing.”

“Thanks,” Harry says quietly. He won’t refuse the names, and from Theo’s little nod, he knows that. He stands up and walks towards the door.

“Theo?” Harry asks before he can think better of it.

“Yes, Harry?”

“What’s your definition?”

“Of what?”

“Of a good person.”

Theo’s eyes glitter, and he makes a little clawing gesture at the air that Harry isn’t entirely sure is conscious. “One who follows my lord and safeguards my friends,” he replies, and then slips out, closing the door softly behind him.

…Yeah, Harry should have anticipated that.

*

“Are you studying for your O.W.L.S., Harry?”

“Of course,” Harry says absently. In fact, he’s examining a letter that he got from Zacharias. He wanted to warn Harry that his family is pressing the legislation they wanted to demand against Lords and Ladies more heavily in the Wizengamot, and the chance is good that Harry will be called to testify.

“It doesn’t look like it!”

Harry puts the letter aside reluctantly and smiles at Hermione. “Sorry. It’s kind of hard to concentrate on just exams when—you know.” He lets his hand briefly brush across his scar, since he and Ron and Hermione are in an isolated corner of the common room.

Hermione’s eyes soften, which is a lot more than Harry would ever get out of someone like Theo or Susan. “Oh, Harry, of course. I’m sorry.” She pushes a book aside and reveals a slice of treacle tart that Harry had no idea she had. “Try and eat some of this. Sometimes sugar improves concentration.”

“…It does?” Harry asks as he reaches for the tart.

From the way Hermione blushes, Harry is pretty sure that that’s the kind of lie she tells herself to help the studying go better, but he just smiles and eats the treacle tart. And then he willingly gets into a discussion with Hermione about Charms, which, based on her obvious pleasure and Ron’s grateful looks, probably counts as his good deed for the day.

*

“Tell me what you have.”

“Wand, check.”

“Wand holster, check,” Theo says from Harry’s side, where he’s stepping away and eyeing the holster on Harry’s arm as if he thinks that it might need to be tightened again.

“Muggleborn semi-official lawyer, check.” Justin grins at Harry from where he’s leaning against the wall in the anteroom outside the Wizengamot’s chamber.

“Supply of endless patience, check,” says Zacharias, who is standing stiffly next to Harry. Then Zacharias flushes and looks around as though he thinks someone is going to scold him for making a joke.

Harry interrupts just in case Theo has ideas in that direction. “Title of Lord Slytherin and the best allies and friends anyone could have, check.” He smiles at Hermione and Susan, who chose to come with him. Susan is known to a bunch of people on the Wizengamot because of her aunt Amelia, and Hermione is here for both her brilliance and her ability to show that Lord Slytherin has more than just one Muggleborn friend.

Theo won’t be entering the room with him. From the complex, shadowed expression in his eyes as he looks at Harry, he regrets that.

Harry nudges him with an elbow, winks at him, and then opens the doors and steps into the meeting chamber of the Wizengamot.

Eyes fasten on him at once, and the voices that were casually talking before turn into a dull mutter. Harry makes himself walk forwards without looking around, to left or right. He halts in front of a chair that faces the Wizengamot and frowns.

“My friends need chairs, too,” he tells the air.

There’s a shimmer, a flash of what seems to be a dark purple circle in the middle of the stone floor, and then four more chairs pop up. Harry smiles. “Thank you,” he says, sitting down. Zacharias sits on one side of him, and Justin on the other. Susan and Hermione sit behind him.

“This is most irregular, Mr. Potter,” says a tall woman with thick glasses, frowning at him.

“I don’t see why,” Harry says blandly. “This is Justin Finch-Fletchley, my lawyer in training. These are Zacharias Smith and Susan Bones, who know more about the Wizengamot than I do and therefore qualify as advisors. And this is my friend Hermione Granger, who wants to enter the Ministry someday and therefore wanted to observe the Wizengamot in action.”

“I mean that it is irregular not to stand before the Wizengamot.”

“Oh, but their legs would get tired.”

The tall woman stares at him. Harry smiles back.

“This is ridiculous,” says a man who’s standing up on the far end of the topmost row of seats. Harry can see the resemblance to Zacharias in his face, and doesn’t need the sharp way Zacharias moves in his chair to know that this isn’t a beloved relative. “They are only children. They shouldn’t be here.”

“Then you’re going to dismiss me and say that I can’t cause any harm for declaring myself Lord Slytherin, right?” Harry asks.

“You have no right to declare yourself that way!”

“Technically, other people declared me. They looked up the records and found out that defeating the basilisk means that I won the title by Right of Conquest.”

“I don’t believe you defeated a basilisk.”

“Too bad. They do.”

The man glares at Harry from beneath a shock of sandy blond hair that honestly doesn’t look that much like Zacharias, and then turns to Madam Bones, who’s standing with folded arms at the end of his row of seats. “Amelia, send the others away. He can’t possibly need a lawyer or advisors, and the Granger girl is only here for specious reasons.”

“I’m not minded to do that,” says Madam Bones. “Mr. Potter, you were called here to speak about your title and your followers.”

“Yes, Madam.”

“Regardless of how you gained your title, legislation has been proposed that would recommend you for immediate treatment to St. Mungo’s. How do you describe yourself, given that?”

“The attempted victim of a bunch of hypocrites.”

Madam Bones blinks. “What?”

“The Smith family has been trying to get its members to go on quests for years to be appointed Lord or Lady Hufflepuff,” Harry says, and loads his voice with all the scorn he can muster, when Madam Bones looks as if she might ask for more detail. “They shouldn’t try to take my title away just because they’re jealous.”

Zacharias and Theo both recommended he use that wording, and it works. The Smith relative standing up, whoever he is, turns around as if stung with a hex. “It’s not jealousy, you little moron!”

“Ah,” Harry says. “So you admit that you’ve been trying to get members of your family to take up the title of Lord or Lady Hufflepuff?”

The man’s face freezes in hatred.

Zacharias leans over to Harry, although Harry can feel his friend shaking like a leaf. “My uncle Horace,” he whispers.

Harry nods his thanks, not taking his eyes from Horace Smith. “I just asked you a question,” he says. “I can’t command you to answer it, of course, since you’re not one of my followers, but it would be nice if you would.”

Madam Bones turns around and faces Smith. “Is this true?”

“You would take the word of a bunch of schoolchildren?”

“You took them seriously enough to make a case that Lord Slytherin was mentally ill. Answer the question, Horace.”

“We did, but that’s different!”

Harry laughs into his elbow as the Wizengamot chamber explodes into shouts and snarls. It’s true that most of the people who are yelling right now probably don’t want to support Harry, they just want to get back at Smith or they hate the thought of anyone being a Lord or Lady at all, but he’s successfully side-tracked them, which was all he wanted.

“Is the Wizengamot always like this?” Harry hears Hermione asking Susan.

“This is restrained, honestly.”

Harry sits back and exchanges a smile with Justin and Zacharias. Honestly, he might have to do something about the Smiths’ effort to attack him politically in the future, but it doesn’t look like he’ll have to do anything today.

Chapter Text

“Expecto Patronum!”

There’s a silvery flicker in front of Blaise’s wand. He drops it and scowls, but Harry smiles at him. “That’s a good try!”

“But I can’t get it to manifest.”

“Most people can’t.”

Several people scowl at him now. Harry shakes his head. They’re at Defense group practice out near the lake. The last several days have been sunny and warmer than they usually are in April. Harry has decided they might as well practice outside while they can. “It doesn’t matter how much you scowl at me. It’s still true that it’s a tricky bit of magic.”

“You can do it,” Theo says. He has his eyes closed, his head tilted back so that he rests against the tree nearest the lake. Harry is glad to see him relaxed. He and Susan have been spending too much time researching a way to strip the Horcrux from Harry’s head, lately. “And you didn’t have to practice it that long. A few weeks.”

“I had a snake helping me. I can still only cast it with his help.” Harry shakes his head again when the scowls deepen. “I have no pressing need to cast it otherwise.”

“The Defense practical,” Blaise begins.

“That’s not a pressing need, frankly.”

Loaded glances go around the people who are standing in a loose half-circle in front of Blaise. Then Katie clears her throat. “You don’t think that we could use it to do better on the Defense N.E.W.T.’s?”

“Sure.” Harry blinks. “That’s one of the reasons we’re practicing it, isn’t it?”

Theo gives a quiet chuckle that Harry ignores. Honestly, sometimes Theo just does things to mess with him, Harry thinks.

“I mean,” Katie says, “we’d get it faster if you showed it to us.”

“But I can only do it with Parseltongue.”

“If you showed it to us, and we practiced it in English, we might get it faster.”

Harry sighs, but Blaise isn’t the only one who’s looking at him hopefully. He did think that the Defense Association’s practice might mean people would be more comfortable with getting high marks on the exams, but apparently not. He nods. “All right.”

Ahalam makes a sleepy protest when Harry gathers him up from his sunny place. “The best and prettiest snakes need much sunlight. It is second only to cheese.”

“The others want me to perform the Patronus for them. Can you help?”

Ahalam immediately perks up and winds around Harry’s fingers, making Harry smile. Sunlight and cheese might be his most pressing needs, but the need to show off is right behind them. “They must all see how a wonderful snake does it.”

“They should,” Harry agrees, and stands up with Ahalam balanced on his shoulder.

He’s only cast this spell a few times since the first time he got it, so he doesn’t expect it to be easy. But when he draws his wand and Ahalam hisses softly, he can feel magic pouring back and forth between them like water in different rivers.

Huh. Maybe I have more of a familiar bond with him than I thought.

“Form, prey, form!”

“Expecto Patronum!”

The silvery-blue smoke wavers into existence, and then a pretty solid Niffler is left sitting there. Harry raises his eyebrows. He thinks he can actually see the dents in the soft earth from the Niffler’s claws.

“Wow!”

“It’s a Niffler?”

“Have you named him, Harry?”

Harry glances up with a grin. Sirius has wandered over to the edges of the group, and he seems to have forgotten that he tries to use formality with Harry when they’re at Hogwarts now. “Sure. His name is Godric.”

Someone laughs, but it’s not Blaise or Katie or the few other people who seemed to really want to see Harry’s Patronus. They’re leaning in and scrutinizing it intently. Harry doesn’t see how that will help them cast their own Patronuses, but maybe it will.

Then Katie steps back with a nod and exchanges a glance with seventh-year Ada Pucey that Harry really doesn’t understand. “Can you do it again?” she asks.

Ahalam is more than happy to help Harry cast the Patronus again, and Harry is more than happy to indulge his friends. He ignores Theo’s quiet laughter and the way that Hermione is rolling her eyes at him. He can do this, he can show them, and hopefully they’ll be able to do it, too. That’s all he can ask.

*

“Oh, they did it because they wanted to see if you have powerful magic, since you’re someone who was declared a Lord more or less on accident.”

Harry blinks at Susan’s bowed head. They’re in the library, and she’s reading a few truly enormous tomes that have illustrations of serpents and fire, alternating back and forth between them in an odd manner. “What?”

“I thought I spoke clearly, my lord.”

“Don’t you start,” Harry complains. Susan mostly calls him by his title in public when she thinks she has to show off to people, unlike Theo, who does it all the time because he—believes in it, Harry supposes. “I just asked you a question. Why would they care about how powerful I am?”

Susan looks up, keeping one finger in place on the page in front of her, even though the book doesn’t show any inclination to fall shut. She regards him with strained patience. “So they can see if you’re worth following.”

“What?”

“I know that I really didn’t speak in a mumble that time,” Susan says, although she lowers her voice to a whisper while Madam Pince peers at them around the shelves. “Come on, that can’t be a surprise, right?”

“I thought I was teaching people in the Defense Association! Not recruiting followers!”

“Oh, some of them are only there to learn and wouldn’t become your followers if you paid them. The Slytherins especially. But Bell and Pucey and some of the younger years were evaluating you.”

“But they don’t need to.”

“I don’t understand that.”

Harry holds back the temptation to retort that he thought he spoke clearly. “Other people wanted me to be their Lord to protect them or make a political point or change something they didn’t like about the school. And some of you are just plain friends now.” Susan smiles at him. “But Katie and Pucey and most of the younger years don’t need things like that from me.”

“They want to follow you, then.”

“But they don’t need to!”

“I don’t believe you don’t know the difference between want and need, Harry.”

Harry sits back and closes his eyes. He’s going to snap at Susan otherwise, and he doesn’t want to. Susan chuckles a little and goes back to reading through the books and making notes on them, from the sound.

“Are you going to tell me what you and Theo are planning?” Harry finally asks, when he’d decided to put the subject aside, because there’s no reason to keep going when it frustrates him so.

“No.”

“Huh?”

Harry’s eyes pop open, and Susan gives him a faint smile and finishes writing something down with a flourish. “You would try to stop us, and you would worry about it, and there’s just no reason for you to worry about that,” she explains, as she scans down to the bottom of the page, shakes her head, and flips to the next one.

“I should be able to figure it out by reading the books that you are.”

“I doubt it.”

“How come you never remember that I’m supposedly your Lord when I want you to do something? Where’s that Hufflepuff loyalty, huh?”

Susan stills for a long moment. Harry leans forwards, hoping that he’s got through to her, and they’ll finally tell him what this is about. It’s possible that they have found something that can free Harry from the Horcrux.

It’s far more likely that they haven’t, and in that case, Harry can talk to them, softly, gently, and prepare them for his perhaps inevitable death.

(They might not like hearing it, but they need to).

“There are different kinds of loyalty,” Susan says quietly, her eyes locked on her hands. “Some that go deeper. Some that go higher. And I’m loyal to you as a friend and my principles more than I am to you as a Lord.”

“So that means doing all sorts of research?”

Susan just nods and goes back to her work, not speaking again. Harry sighs, sits back in his chair, and tries to drown himself in his own homework.

Two months until the end of term. Two months to O.W.L.S.

Chapter Text

You are looking in the wrong direction. I am not always solid.

Harry stares at the scroll that Hedwig delivered to him early that morning. He kept it to himself this time, because of the effect the last one had on Sirius and his friends. And besides, he wants to ponder what this means.

Not solid…?

Harry can think of one thing that might mean, but it’s so strange that he still wants to think about it some more, again, before showing anyone the scroll.

“Harry? Are you all right? You’ve acted oddly since that letter came.”

Harry sighs and tucks it away, looking up at Hermione. She’s actually abandoned the incantations that she was muttering about to lean forwards and stare at him in concern. Right now, for a wonder, they’re the only ones at the “Lord Slytherin and his followers” table in the library.

Harry sighs and casts a small Privacy Charm that Theo taught him. Hermione blinks, and Harry thinks she probably doesn’t know the spell and wants to ask about it, but luckily, she manages to refocus when Harry shakes his head. “We told you about the letter from Regulus Black.”

“Yes.”

“And this is another one. He says that he’s not solid.”

“What does that mean?”

Harry spreads his hands. “I suppose it has something to do with why owls can’t find him, and the way that he managed to make the Black family tapestry and Kreacher think he died. But it doesn’t give us much of a lead on finding him. Or, more to the point, whether we can trust his information or not.”

Hermione nods, her face a bit blank. “Do you think—you should tell Sirius?”

“It devastated him last time, especially when Hedwig and then other owls couldn’t find Regulus. I think I’ll let it wait a bit.”

Hermione gives him what looks like an unhappy smile. “What?” Harry asks.

“It’s just—I heard Susan talking the other day about how you have to delegate, and sometimes you have to make decisions that take lots of political consequences into consideration. Or the reactions of multiple people, not just one.”

“Yeah, I reckon?”

“This just sounds like a Dumbledore-like decision to me,” Hermione says softly, and turns away. “To keep the information from Sirius because he might react badly.”

Harry sits frozen for a long time after that. When he leaves the library, it’s to go to Sirius’s quarters.

*

Sirius drinks more than half a bottle of Firewhisky before Harry manages to Summon it away from him, and then he scowls at Harry and gives a little hiccough, grasping after the bottle. “Give-give it back, Harry,” he mumbles. “No fair.”

“I think you’ve had enough.”

“You’re not my dad.”

Harry knows that something is really wrong when Sirius’s face screws up and he holds still for a long moment as though expecting someone to hit him. Then he curls up and begins to utter heartbreaking sobs that make Harry want to hit someone.

Probably someone who’s been dead for a long time, admittedly.

“I didn’t tell you about the letter so that you could drink yourself into a stupor, Sirius. I told you so that we can figure out what we ought to do.”

“My little brother isn’t even solid some of the time. What can we possibly do?”

“We can figure something out.” Harry sits down on the couch across from Sirius in his quarters and tries to squash his own discomfort with having Sirius stare at him as if he wants Harry to tell him everything is going to be okay. “We’ll try, all right? We can try.”

“You know something. What do you know?”

Sometimes it’s good to be transparent with the people who lean on me, and sometimes it bloody sucks. “I know, or I think I know, that Regulus might be a ghost,” Harry says, as calmly as he can. “We need to find people who can speak to ghosts. Maybe talk with some of the ones at Hogwarts.”

“A ghost?”

“I mean, I don’t know for sure, it’s just a theory—”

“Better bloody theory than the one I had.” Sirius scrubs at his face with one hand for a moment, then sits up with a hectic gleam in his eye that makes Harry relax and worry all at once. “What do you think we need to do?”

*

“Myrtle?”

For a long second, Harry doesn’t think it’s going to work, even though he was careful to use her name and not call her “Moaning Myrtle” the way so many people do. But then Myrtle materializes near the ceiling of the girls’ bathroom, floating in place with a slight frown. “Harry?”

“That’s right—”

“Some people said you were Lord Slytherin,” Myrtle tells him with a more than slight accusing tone in her voice. “That you were like the one who did this to me.” She gestures at her shape without looking away from Harry.

“I would never be like Tom Riddle.”

“But they said that the monster that killed me was a basilisk, and you’re a Parselmouth.”

“Right, but I killed the basilisk. That’s the reason people go around calling me Lord Slytherin in the first place.”

Myrtle pauses for a long moment. “Oh,” she says finally.

Harry gives her the kindest smile he can. “I’ve got some questions about ghosts. We’re getting letters from someone who might be a ghost. Can I ask you?”

“They can’t be from a ghost! We’re not solid.”

“Well, he says that he’s only solid some of the time. And you could always get someone to write you a letter, if you asked.”

“No one wants to write a letter for dead Moaning Myrtle,” Myrtle says, and her eyes well up so suddenly that Harry jumps. “They all make fun of me, just the way Olive Hornby did, and they say—they say—”

“I would write a letter for you if you wanted,” Harry says quickly.

Myrtle pauses. “You would?”

Harry nods. “Do you have someone you want to write to? You died so long ago that I assumed most of your friends and family were probably dead.”

A second later, he winces and thinks that he shouldn’t have said that, but Myrtle only looks flattered. She ducks her head, and something like a silvery flush comes into her cheeks. “That’s so nice of you,” she whispers. “There is someone I would want to write to, if she’s still alive.”

“All right. You want me to ask if she is?”

“I have ways to find out,” Myrtle says vaguely. “And now I can tell you about ghosts!”

Harry leans back and happily continues the discussion. He can see why people dislike Myrtle, but he also thinks that they wouldn’t if they knew how useful she could be.

Or is that a Dumbledore-like thought?

He winces then, but hopes he hides it.
*

However Myrtle does it, she does find out that the person she wants him to write to is still alive, and Harry brings parchment to write down the letter. Then he heads up to the Owlery and sends it off with an eager Hedwig.

He goes to bed, prodding at the sleeping Ahalam on his pillow and wondering as he does how Olive Hornby will react to receiving a Howler after all these years.

Chapter Text

“I wanted to ask you to try again, my boy.”

Harry manages a small smile. A small one is all he can give, when the Headmaster came out and interrupted their Defense group practice—well, just the end of it, the part where Harry shows more spells to his lingering friends—and looked unhappy because Theo and Susan and Ron and Hermione and Daphne and Ernie and Zacharias and Padma refused to leave.

“What do you mean, Headmaster?”

“Try again to be allies. You don’t want to be left alone without them, and frankly, I don’t want my students trying to fend for themselves against adult wizards and witches with fearsome Dark magic—”

“You don’t?” Susan asks.

“You wouldn’t know it from our first two years here,” Theo says.

“I think you probably knew Quirrell was possessed, right?” Ron asks, in such a friendly tone that it takes a moment for Harry to pick up on what he actually said. It’s Padma’s laughter and Dumbledore’s blinking that makes Harry look back at the Headmaster, curious how he’ll answer that one.

“I did not,” Dumbledore says firmly after a moment, and he looks—devastated, honestly. “My dear boy, you don’t imagine that I would have let Quirinus teach here if I knew, do you?”

“Well, yeah,” Ron says, and looks ready to continue, but he’s close enough for Harry to step on his foot. Ron sends him a look far more wounded than that deserves.

Harry sighs. “So you want to try and work with me, sir? Create a united front against whatever Voldemort is going to do next?” He’s proud that only a few of his friends flinch, and the audible reactions are a squeak from Ernie and the way that Zacharias stumbles back a step and makes the grass crunch.

“Yes.”

Harry studies Dumbledore’s eyes as they lock on him. Honestly, it might be a good idea. Dumbledore knows a lot about Voldemort, and he might have more ideas than Harry does what the prophecy means. And he can protect people and he knows powerful spells. He just doesn’t always use them the way he should.

The last consideration is the one that makes Harry sigh and shake his head. “Sorry, sir, no.”

“May I ask why not?”

Dumbledore is standing braced as if for a blow, but Harry has none to give him. He isn’t going to bring up the Dursleys or anything like that here. That mistake has cost Dumbledore control over Harry’s living arrangements and a lot of power in the Wizengamot. It’s done. “Because you withhold information,” Harry says quietly. “I can believe that you didn’t know Quirrell had Voldemort on the back of his head at first, but not that you didn’t figure it out before the end of the year.”

Dumbledore pauses. Then he says, “You were not Lord Slytherin then, Harry. You were eleven years old. Would you have expected me to tell you?”

Harry steps smartly to the side, just in time to grab Theo’s arm before he can reach for his wand. “No,” he says. “But I would have expected you to stop him.”

“I had no proof—”

“Sir, he had Voldemort on the back of his head. Proof would have been easy to get.”

Dumbledore pauses again. Something about his mouth trembles. Harry watches him intently. Dumbledore looks like he’s going to cry. Or have some sort of epiphany. His hand twitches as if he’s going to reach towards Harry. Harry finds himself holding his breath.

Dumbledore pulls back. Looks old. Gives Harry a look of severe disapproval, and then turns and walks back towards the school as if carrying a heavy burden.

Silence lingers behind him, broken when Ernie complains, “Well, that was useless.”

“The esteemed leader of our educational institution appears to have placed us on a probationary capacity on his mental chessboard,” says Daphne, who still sometimes goes on like that unless someone is around to tap her on the head.

“He’s carrying a heavy burden,” Harry says slowly, still watching Dumbledore leave. “He has to put up with all these people thinking he should defeat Voldemort because he’s the only one Voldemort’s ever been afraid of.”

“Like you don’t know what that’s like.”

Harry jumps and turns around to stare at Theo, whose eyes are dark with fury. “What?”

“Like you. Don’t know what that’s like.” Theo takes a step forwards and stares after Dumbledore, too, but not with a tenth of the sympathy that Harry knows he feels himself. “Dumbledore shouldn’t add to your burdens.”

“Uh, Theo?”

“Yes, my lord?”

“Maybe you could tone it down a little?”

“What?” Theo’s eyes snap to Harry before he looks around their little group of people. Then he gives a knife-thin smile, and takes his hand away from his wand, shaking his head. “I certainly wouldn’t murder Dumbledore on Hogwarts’s grounds.”

“Theo.”

“I won’t promise the other thing.”

“You want to murder Dumbledore?” Colin Creevey’s voice hasn’t been as squeaky for the past few years, but it’s clear that it still is when he gets excited. He’s wandered back towards them from the school, along with a few others in the group, who probably got attracted by Dumbledore’s visit.

Harry tilts his head at Theo, to say silently, See? Is this really what you want?

Theo visibly holds back the words that he wants to say next, but nods. “I don’t want to murder Dumbledore,” he tells Creevey. “I just want him to stop getting in the way and dropping cryptic statements that do nothing to help.”

Creevey looks relieved. As the group breaks up, chattering about how they can’t believe Dumbledore let Voldemort ride around on the back of someone’s head all year, Harry leans nearer to Theo. “You can’t just randomly threaten people in front of the others in the group,” he says. “You know that.”

“Can I speak to you when this is over, my lord?”

Theo means the last of the Defense practice group. Harry holds back his irritation, and nods. He can’t ask Theo to just act like a mindless follower; he’s too good of a friend for that. “Fine. Talk at seven in the Room of Requirement?”

“That would work, my lord. Thank you.”

*

“You can’t talk about murder in front of other people like that, Theo.”

“You aren’t saying that I can’t murder him at all.”

Harry rubs his temples while Ahalam hisses concern from his shoulder, and absently hisses back, “My head doesn’t hurt that much,” while he considers what Theo is saying.

How has his life turned into this, where he’s arguing against talking about murder in public, rather than against murder?

But he can remember just why and how his life has changed without straining himself, so he ends up dropping his hands and saying directly, “No, I’m not saying that. But I am saying that it freaks people out when you do that, and it drives our allies off. So stop it.”

Theo studies him with luminous grey eyes. Then he inclines his head. “As you will, my lord. But you ought to know that I am still thinking about killing him.”

Okay. Okay. This is the sort of thing that Harry really brought Theo here to address. He takes a deep breath and braces himself. “Right. But you know that Dumbledore is a bulwark against Voldemort, right? So you really shouldn’t be thinking about killing him.”

“He has done you a great injustice.”

“Theo? Theo, tell me you heard me talk about the part where he’s a bulwark against Voldemort.”

“We don’t need him,” Theo says, and gives Harry a smile that hovers on the edge of—of something darker than Harry likes to think about, honestly. “We have you.”

“Aren’t you one of the people saying that everyone shouldn’t be depending on me so much to kill Voldemort?”

“Of course we’re going to help you,” Theo says, his voice soothing. Harry scowls. He hates the feeling of being managed. “But what really matters is that you’re the visible bulwark. The one who makes people not panic. If Dumbledore dies now, people would panic, which is one reason I’m going to wait to kill him. But we can make sure that over time, Dumbledore’s authority transfers to you.”

Harry takes another deep breath. “This sounds so—so twisted and wrong that I don’t even know how to tell you.”

“But you’re not going to betray me.”

Theo’s voice is extremely sly and self-satisfied. Harry scowls at him and turns around to hit one of the dueling targets the Room of Requirement conjured for some reason with the flat of his palm. “No, you prat. But you have to know how it sounds.”

“Look at me, my lord.”

Harry wheels around, and then has to take a step back because Theo is unexpectedly close. Theo reaches out and gently grips Harry’s shoulder. Ahalam hisses, “Is he going to try and poison you with fangs in his fingers? I will stop him!”

Harry just shakes his head, a human gesture that Ahalam has thankfully learned to understand. His familiar’s hiss is a little disappointed as Ahalam settles back.

Harry can’t turn to look at him, though. Right now, his eyes are locked on Theo’s, and he thinks it would be hard to look away.

“You don’t fully understand the loyalty of those who follow you,” Theo whispers. “I thought you did, but I was mistaken. It’s good that I found that out now, before this kind of mistake gets someone else killed.”

“Theo.”

“There are people who would do anything for you. Not everyone who follows you is of that caliber, but most are.”

“Who would you say are?”

A ghost of a smile drifts across Theo’s face. “Susan. Ron. Hermione. Black.” His eyes glitter. “Me.”

Harry closes his eyes. He wants to say he has a hard time picturing Hermione killing for him, but she might, if she thought it was needed. And so would Ron. Sirius could, in a moment of impulse. Susan is probably the most surprising one.

Theo is no surprise.

“You say you’re loyal to me,” he murmurs, without opening his eyes.

“Of course we are.”

“But are you going to put loyalty first? Or what you want to do first?” Harry opens his eyes and finds Theo frowning at him as if he doesn’t understand the question, even though Harry thinks it should be obvious. “Would you kill Dumbledore even if I tell you not to? That it’s a bad idea, and ridiculous besides?”

Theo clenches his hands together for a long moment. Harry just watches him. Ahalam hisses soothingly and constantly on Harry’s shoulder, and Harry feels as if they’re standing in the middle of a warm wind.

“Not if you directly told me not to,” Theo says at last, as if the words taste bad. “But I do think that he’s a danger to you. And if he tried something like using the Imperius on you, I would kill him and suffer the consequences.”

“He wouldn’t do that.”

“Look at what he did already.”

Harry sighs at the implacable look in Theo’s eyes. Fine, no having an intelligent conversation there. “I don’t want to order you around. But I will if I have to. If I have to do that to make sure you’re not a danger to other people.”

“You think I would kill—”

“Someone who threatened me in a moment of rage or grief, yes. Even if they never meant to carry out the threat.”

Theo pauses for a long moment. When he speaks again, his voice is almost inaudible. “I would harm them regardless of what they meant to do or their motivation. If I really thought they would kill you. Because of what it would mean to us if we lost you.”

Harry sighs and steps forwards, letting his hand rest on Theo’s shoulder for a moment. “I know,” he says quietly. “But they would still be dead, and you would be in trouble. I don’t want you to fall into that trap, either.”

“You think it would be a trap?”

“I think there are people who would do their utmost to see you and some of the others dragged away from my side, and not just the dead person’s family.”

Theo is silent for long moments, and then he nods, stepping backwards. “All right. If I can hold my hatred of the Horcrux in your head at bay long enough to work on solutions with Susan, I should be able to hold my hatred of people who might attack you at bay long enough to find legal solutions.”

Harry sighs in relief. “What are you working on with Susan?”

“We aren’t going to tell you.”

“You might want to consider that if it ends up with one of you sacrificing yourselves for me, I’m going to be angry.”

“We would risk a lot more than your anger to make sure you survive.”

Harry opens his mouth to say something, then shuts it again. Theo’s eyes glitter in a way that says the rational discussion is, once again, over.

“Will you give me a hint?”

“Why would I do that?”

Harry rolls his eyes. “Prat.”

But he does make a note to himself that whatever this is, Theo and Susan appear wary that he could work it out with a hint. That has to mean he should be able to monitor the books they’re taking out of the library and discover it that way.

Theo gives him a faint smile and leaves the Room. Harry wishes for a comfortable chair, and the Room provides an armchair that looks as though it’s covered with a wash of moss and leaves. Harry snorts a little. If he doesn’t watch out, the Room does tend to give him the kind of green and silver things that some people would probably say befit Lord Slytherin.

“Does the dangerous boy pose a danger to you?”

“No, he never would.” Harry gently strokes Ahalam’s back, and his familiar wriggles and wraps his tail around Harry’s neck. “I’m never going to ask you to bite him or anything like that.”

“All right.”

Harry closes his eyes and takes ten minutes for himself. Ahalam seems to know what he’s doing and doesn’t even ask for cheese or sunlight for the next few minutes.

If not for little quiet periods like this, then Harry isn’t sure how well he would manage to retain his sanity.

*

“So why did Olive Hornby send you a Howler this morning, Harry?”

“I have no clue, Hermione.”

Chapter Text

Harry clenches his fists. It’s a distant, half-imaginary sensation. This is a dream. This is a dream. I can wake up from it.

But that reminder doesn’t seem to be working.

Harry is still caught in the dream, vision, whatever, where he is looking through Voldemort’s eyes at a hulking man with long, claw-like fingernails and jagged canine teeth. Harry’s never seen him before, but he’s nevertheless sure that he’s looking at Fenrir Greyback.

“What news do you have for me, Fenrir?”

Knew it.

“There are strange movements among the Traitors,” Greyback says, his mouth open in a half-snarl that Harry thinks he might not even realize he’s making. It seems unconscious. “They are withdrawing from contact with my people and migrating to the seacoast. I don’t know why.”

“You are to find out.”

Harry really doesn’t know why people follow Voldemort. From the way that Greyback bows and scrapes and protests his loyalty, he’s afraid of getting cursed. If your own lord could curse you, why wouldn’t you stand on your own? Or just choose a different one?

(Harry knows from some of the things his own friends have said that they don’t see not following a lord as an option, unless there are no lords—or ladies—around. It doesn’t make sense, but many things don’t).

“Yaxley. How goes the bargaining with the centaurs?”

While Harry wasn’t paying attention, the cringing Fenrir Greyback got sent out, and now a tall man with eyes even darker than Snape’s is standing in front of Voldemort. He bows his head a little, not visibly afraid, and murmurs, “Well, my lord. The one called Stardim did try to lure the boy into the Forbidden Forest months ago, but it did not work.”

“You are to tell him to try again. And in an area where none of the boy’s friends or pets are around and can stop him.”

“Yes, my lord.”

Voldemort begins to think about something else then, something so full of revolting detail that Harry manages to yank himself back and awake. He lies in bed, panting.

“What is the matter? Why did you wake the best and prettiest snake up?”

Harry rolls over and gently tucks Ahalam under his chin. “I had another vision from Voldemort,” he says, and tells Ahalam about it. He thinks it’s the only good side-effect of the Horcrux, even though he would rather not be having the visions at all. At least he knows about the centaur plot. The movement of werewolves, too, for whatever that’s worth. “And he wants the centaurs to kidnap me when you aren’t around.” The others too, of course, but the mention of himself is the only thing that will really matter to Ahalam.

“I will be with you always! No centaur can kidnap you when I am here!”

Harry half-smiles, and rolls over to check on Salazar, mostly to make sure that his Niffler hasn’t dashed off in search of another Horcrux. No, Salazar is asleep and snuffling, making little kicking motions with his legs.

He’ll need to tell his friends about these plans, and write to Remus about the werewolves, to see if they have any idea.

And work harder on Occlumency than ever to shut Voldemort out, if he can even do that with the soul connection.

*

“Seriously, Harry, why do you keep getting these Howlers?”

“I have no idea, Hermione. I suppose Olive Hornby just hates me for some random reason. It’s not like she would be the only one.”

*

Harry edges closer, around the edge of the shelves. He has his Invisibility Cloak draped over himself, and he’s left Ahalam behind in his bedroom, ignoring his little snake’s complaints. He has to be absolutely quiet while he sneaks up on Theo and Susan, and he wouldn’t be surprised if they have spells up to detect the presence of snakes.

Now, though—now he’s right up to the corner of the bookshelf that separates him from their table in the library, and he can hear their low hissing voices, sounding almost as if they’re on the edge of Parseltongue, as they debate.

“Nothing like this has ever been tried before.”

“Scared, Nott?”

“No, I’m saying that we have to make sure that we get it right the first time, because of how many people it could affect.”

Harry bites his lip. It’s unusual to hear Theo urging caution in the way that they approach some problem concerning him. He edges a little closer, and then jumps as he hears a sharp ringing sound.

“Miss Bones, what is that noise?”

“I’m sorry, Madam Pince, we set an alarm to tell us when we needed to start on our next round of homework, and we didn’t know it would be so loud…”

Harry relaxes. He thought it was an alarm to detect him, but what would they detect? He’s not even moving, so they can’t hear his footsteps.

Then Theo steps around the shelf, smiles pleasantly at the air a little to the left of Harry’s actual position, and says, “Nice try, my lord. But we still aren’t going to tell you what we’re working on, and you’ll have to live with it.”

“What—”

“A charm to detect the blood in your veins.” Theo shakes his head as Harry pushes the hood of the Cloak back and scowls. “You can act as recalcitrant and stubborn as you want, my lord. But we’re going to protect you.”

“But…”

“What? Are you going to deny that we have the right to do this?”

“I’m going to say that you should tell me what’s going on. Especially if it’s as special and dangerous as you and Susan were hinting at.”

“It will work.”

Harry waits a moment, then folds his arms and points out, “That doesn’t mean it’s not special and dangerous.”

Theo smiles, and doesn’t reply.

Harry finally has to stomp away. He doesn’t try to be gracious about it.

*

“It’s more important than ever that you master Occlumency, my lord.”

Ernie’s voice is urgent. Harry leans back on the grass with a sigh and stares up at the clouds drifting overhead. Ahalam is asleep beside him in a patch of sunlight. “I know. But it’s a connection at the level of the soul, not the mind. And I haven’t managed to master it so far, even with as hard as I’ve worked at it.”

Ernie hesitates. Harry waits for him to say what he’ll say, and only sits up when Ernie clears his throat.

“I think that I may know a way to help you, my lord. But it is not pleasant.”

“But it would help me block out the visions?”

“Yes, my lord. If you truly wish to do so. If you wish to keep the connection open even a little, perhaps because you wish to spy on—You-Know-Who, then you won’t be able to close it.”

Harry shakes his head firmly. “I’m afraid that he’ll be able to use it to spy on me back, and I won’t take the risk with my friends or anyone else that way.”

“Then you should be able to master it, my lord.” Ernie still looks nervous. “If you will face me and looks into my eyes. Stay as relaxed as possible.”

It’s easy for Harry to do this, when it’s the way that he’s been practicing Occlumency with Ernie all along. For a moment, he thinks it’s going to be the same as ever, with Ernie taking a breath like he’s going to say “Legilimens.”

But what he says is, “Confringo mentem.”

Harry screams as intense pain tears through his mind. It’s like what he felt from his scar when he was at the Mirror of Erised in first year—no, like the basilisk venom in second year—no, like the panic of thinking that Theo might get pulled with Harry into a deadly situation when he insisted on swearing that oath that forcibly Apparates him to Harry—

And then it’s over.

Harry sags down on his knees and hands, while Ernie hovers over him, face so anxious that Harry has to bite his lips a bit as he looks up. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” Ernie whispers. “I didn’t know it would hurt you that badly, my lord—but now, you ought to be able to protect your mind with armor that—”

Then Ernie goes flying, blasted away from Harry so violently that Harry gets to his feet and runs over to him despite the echoes of the agony still shrieking in his head.

“Are you all right?” he asks, crouching down beside Ernie and drawing his wand so that he can turn around and face the threat.

“I’m all right, my lord,” Ernie whispers, but his face is white with pain. “I landed badly. My—ankle.”

Harry starts to answer, but then he sees Fred and George Weasley walking towards them, and the red he sees isn’t their hair. “What were you thinking?” he snaps, standing up and glaring at the twins in a way that makes them pause. “This is going a little far for a prank, don’t you think?”

“He was making you scream,” says Fred, and jerks his wand down to aim at Ernie.

“He was doing what I asked him to do,” Harry says stiffly, and steps in front of Fred.

Meanwhile, his head is reeling. The twins are his friends and sometimes act like followers, and they’re part of the Defense group. But they never acted like—they never acted like Theo and Ernie did.

He didn’t even think they were close enough to care much if he got injured, other than if Voldemort did it.

“I don’t call injuring Little Lord Slytherin very friendly, do you, George?”

“I sure don’t, Fred.”

“Listen to me,” Harry says, and manages to put enough steel in his voice that they actually pause and do it, which is—something, at least. “Ernie was helping me practice Occlumency. He had to armor my mind to get me to a certain level.” Fred and George are good people, but Harry isn’t spreading the word about Horcruxes around. “It hurt, yeah. But it doesn’t mean you need to attack him!”

Fred and George pause and give each other silent complicated looks. Harry shakes his head and bends over Ernie again. “How do you feel?”

“I’ll live. But it does hurt.”

Harry nods and stands up, conjuring a stretcher, a spell that he looked up after the Easter holidays when he thought he might need to carry Sirius to bed in his grief over Regulus. “Come on. I’ll get you to Madam Pomfrey. Right after they apologize.” He stares at Fred and George, and waits.

Fred and George give each other another glance. “Sorry, Macmillan,” they chorus.

Harry nods again, and then floats the stretcher in front of him as he makes his way up the stairs to the hospital wing. There he watches Madam Pomfrey fuss over Ernie while he prods gingerly at his new Occlumency shields, like poking at a loose tooth with his tongue.

It does feel like he has armor on his mind. And he doubts that the connection with Voldemort will open as easily in the future, even if he’s asleep at the time. He’ll have to thank Ernie again, when he gets to come back, since Madam Pomfrey gave Ernie a pain potion that knocked him out, and is herding Harry out of the infirmary now.

He’ll have to thank Ernie. And speak to Fred and George, and find out what the hell they were thinking.

*

“Oh, no, it’s his Lordshilp!”

“He looks upset! Run! Run!”

The twins pretend to run away in slow motion, allowing Harry to easily catch up with them between the library shelves. He shakes his head and keeps his face stern even when they glance at him with trembling hands. “I need you two to be serious for at least a few minutes. Can you do that?”

Maybe his tone tells them how serious he is, himself, because both Fred and George drop the scared act. They nod, and Fred adds, “We know what you want to talk to us about.”

“Good. Why the fuck did you curse Ernie like that?”

“Ooh, little Lord Slytherin knows the mighty curse words!”

“Little Lord Slytherin’s upset!”

“So you can’t be serious,” Harry snaps, and feels a strange hurt brewing under his breastbone. “Just—fine. I suppose I should have known better than to ask you.”

He turns away, and tenses when he feels Fred’s hand on his arm. But Fred only says, “Fine. We need to discuss this with you. George, could you put up a Privacy Charm, please?”

Harry turns around, arms folded. George is already lifting the charm, which will surround them with a sparkling barrier that will keep sound from getting in or out. That at least means Madam Pince won’t kick them out of the library.

“What did you want to talk to me about?”

Unusually, Fred and George spend a moment looking at each other as if throwing an invisible ball back and forth. Then George turns around—Harry can’t tell if he won or lost the silent contest—and says, “It’s about how dangerous it is for you to just trust anyone around you.”

“I do trust none of my friends to betray me.”

“Well, you need to stop.”

“Have you actually uncovered evidence that someone was trying to get close to me to betray me?” Harry supposes that it would be easier for the twins, who sneak around everywhere in the course of playing their pranks, to hear that kind of thing than he would himself.

“Not as such,” George mutters. “But we know that You-Know-Who is back, and we know that he used traitors a lot in the last war. Pettigrew being a prime example. You can’t be too careful.”

“Yes, I can.”

George scowls at him. “You see why we reacted badly when we thought Macmillan was hurting you—”

“But you could at least have done something like Stun him and then ask what was going on! Not toss him into the air so far and fast that he broke his ankle.” Madam Pomfrey healed it, and Ernie is walking around again, but still. “And—well, to be blunt, I didn’t think you considered yourselves my followers to that extent.”

“How can you doubt our loyalty, Lord Slytherin?” Fred cries, sweeping a bow that’s so low he scrapes his head against the floor. “How can you doubt that we would give our lives to serve Your High and Mighty Graciousness—”

Harry lets his silence speak for him, and Fred straightens up and exchanges looks with George again. Then George nods and says, “Fair enough. In a situation like that, we’ll attack with Stunners instead, unless we have reason to think the person is a Polyjuiced Death Eater or something.”

“You didn’t answer my other question.”

This time, the silent conversation goes on a lot longer, and Fred is the one who ends up turning back around to face Harry. “Listen,” he says. “We can see that you’re making a lot of changes in the world that wouldn’t otherwise happen, and you’re the only one who can do that. And you plan to make more.”

“Well, yeah,” Harry concedes. He has more plans with the goblins, and he’ll work with the werewolves if he can, and if he ever manages to speak with the centaurs, then he’d like to ally with them as well.

“We’ve wanted things to change for years,” Fred says, and his face is shining with a passion that Harry didn’t know he was capable of. Well, for things other than pranks. “To get more sensible and more open and—”

“More tolerant of reality,” George says, and props his elbow up on Fred’s shoulder as he grins at Harry. “D’you know that goblins are actually forbidden to buy things from the Diagon Alley shops? There’s a whole lot of potential customers we could be selling to, all going to waste.”

Harry stares at him. “What?”

“‘S true.” Fred nods solemnly. “And it’s not just that. It’s other things that we hate and you’re challenging. And you’re the only person who has the power and the authority to inspire other people to follow you. Without you, they’ll just give up.”

“So this isn’t just about money for you?”

“Well, it is. But—”

“Also other things,” George finishes, and both of them nod again.

“So when you think you see someone threatening me—”

“Lethal force first, ask questions later.” Fred’s eyes glitter.

“Okay, but I need you not to do that.”

The twins give identical long-suffering sighs, and then Fred perks up. “What if we invent some things that would keep people motionless until you can speak to them and determine if they’re a threat?”

“What kind of things?”

“Just some things.”

Harry rolls his eyes. He doesn’t want to really change the twins, though, even if he could. He wants them to have freedom to act like the rest of his friends. “Fine. Just make sure that they’re in general not lethal.”

“When you say in general—”

Fred and George settle in for a debate, which Harry rolls his eyes at again, but endures. He does make sure that they agree to apologize to Ernie more seriously, and otherwise lets them range ahead. It makes sense, with how eager they are. They can come up with the kind of ideas that Harry would never think of.

And in the meantime, Harry will go write a letter.

If Olive Hornby thinks she can win this Howler war, she should think again.

Chapter Text

Have you solved the mystery yet?

Harry rolls his eyes a little. This is yet another letter from Regulus Black, and it says nothing other than that. Harry is tempted to write back asking why Regulus doesn’t just tell them that he’s a ghost and probably with werewolves, but he doesn’t know how he would get Hedwig to carry it, when—

Then he sits upright.

“What is it, Harry?”

Harry can never get away with anything when Hermione is around. Now, he smiles at her and swipes a scone with marmalade from the table. “Tell you later,” he says, and races out of the Great Hall.

“Harry, wait!”

Harry ignores her. He’s eaten plenty, and he wants to do this as soon as he can, just in case his idea wouldn’t work with more time passing.

He reaches the owlery in record time, gulping down scone as he goes, and glad that Ahalam wanted to sleep in on Harry’s warm pillow this morning. He would be a distraction when Harry wants to get this settled as soon as possible.

“Hedwig!”

His owl swoops down from the rafters towards him and lands on his shoulder, giving him an affectionate little nip. Harry beams at her and takes Regulus’s letter from his pocket. “Can you take a letter to the person who wrote this letter?” Maybe she can find the person who’s helping ghost Regulus with the writing, even if she can’t find Regulus himself.

Hedwig hoots and bobs her head, which is at least a good sign. Harry nods resolutely back to her and bends over the parchment, scribbling a hasty sentence down. I want to help you, I want to know more about allying with the werewolves, but it’s difficult when you’re only solid part of the time. Tell me who’s helping you, and if you’re a ghost.

There. That covers the contingencies he can think of. He holds out the letter to Hedwig. She promptly grabs it with a soft sound of excitement, gives him one more nip, and then soars out the window. Harry leans on the sill to watch her go.

“My lord.”

Theo sounds like he’s wheezing. Harry turns around, feeling a little guilty. “I’m sorry. Did you want to talk to me about something? I promise, nothing bad happened.”

Theo shakes his head and straightens up, already having got his breath back. Harry supposes that that might be one thing he’s better at than Theo, running like a mad thing. Then again, it only happened because of Dudley and Harry Hunting. “You ran too quickly for me to keep up with you, my lord.”

“And…?”

“Someone could have ambushed you and hurt you.”

Harry sighs. “But they would have had to know that I was going to run out of the Great Hall, run even faster down a different secret passage, and ambush me that way. And they would have had to know that I was going to the owlery. If you didn’t know, why would they?”

“It’s still dangerous.”

“Is this going to be like the nonsense of bodyguards that we had in the past? You remember what the result of that was?”

“You were kept safe, some people who badly needed to learn respect for you did, and it was fun?”

Harry sighs again. Very well, he’ll just have to concede that he and Theo remember those things differently. “Sorry for alarming you, but I had an idea, and it might have been affected by the passage of time, so I wanted to get up here and send Hedwig with the letter as soon as possible.”

“Will you please explain, my lord?”

Harry hates when Theo goes all stuffy and formal. But it seems that he probably otherwise won’t be forgiven for making Theo wheeze any time soon, so he explains, “I got another letter from Regulus Black. I wanted to see if Hedwig could find the person who wrote the letter, instead of the one who sent it, or Regulus Black. But for all I knew, the time since the letter was sent might affect her ability to find the person who wrote it. So I needed to send it as soon as possible.”

Theo looks at him with his forehead furrowed. Then he said, “That’s not how the magic that allows owls to find letter recipients works.”

Harry shrugs. “Okay. Thanks. Then I’ll know next time. If this even works. But at least Hedwig acted like she could deliver it and didn’t just sit there the way she did when I asked her to deliver it to Regulus Black.”

“I am happy that you’re happy, my lord. May I escort you back to breakfast?”

Harry casts a Tempus Charm and winces at the time. “I actually need to go back to Gryffindor Tower and get my books if I’m going to be on time for class. Do you want to walk with me?”

“It would be my honor.”

Harry scowls a little as he passes Theo. Theo notices, of course, and asks the question with an upraised eyebrow and judgmental silence. Harry pauses in the doorway of the owlery long enough to say, “Just remember that you’re my friend too. You don’t need to act like I’m going to snap at you for a lack of formal manners.”

“I am not afraid of that, my lord.”

But now Theo looks far too satisfied, which means he’ll probably make cryptic remarks for the rest of the morning. Harry rolls his eyes and indulges in some stomping on the way down from the owlery.

At least it makes Theo chuckle.

*

“Expecto Patronum!”

Harry cheers as he watches a Patronus explode from Katie Bell’s wand. Katie’s expression is awed as she watches the delicate gazelle prance up and down the grass. Then it turns to her and nuzzles its nose gently against her hand, and Katie reaches up to pet it with shaking fingers.

“You did it!”

“I did it because of you,” Katie says instantly, beaming at Harry.

Harry opens his mouth to deny it, and Fred coughs behind him. The twins have taken on some of the role that Theo and Susan are usually the ones to fill, telling Harry not to speak disparagingly of himself. The difference is that Harry knows Theo and Susan do it because they’re worried about his image, and the twins do it because they think it’s hilarious.

He inclines his head so that he doesn’t have to get into an argument with Fred in front of Katie and smiles at her. “Well, either way, I’m glad you did it. You have to get the extra high mark on your N.E.W.T. now, right?”

“Yes, of course I do,” Katie says, after a long pause that makes Harry peer worriedly at her. She turns away to speak with one of the other seventh-year girls, Gwen McLaggen, whom Harry doesn’t know as well. Harry pushes away the worry that briefly pinches at him. He doesn’t think Katie is in league with Voldemort, so whatever she does is fine.

“My lord!”

Blaise’s voice is radiant. Harry turns around fast enough to make Ahalam grumble awake on his shoulder. “Yeah? You’ve got it?”

Blaise’s hard, shining smile tells him that he does, but Harry still applauds as he watches the silver cobra rear and dance in front of Blaise. “You do have it!”

“And I wouldn’t have been able to do it without you, either.”

Harry only smiles and doesn’t reply. He won’t discourage them from thinking that if it would provoke irritation from his other friends, but he doesn’t have to do anything to encourage them, either.

Being a lord really is a delicate balance, sometimes.

*

Hedwig takes forever to come back with the letter from Regulus, which worries Harry, but she lands on his shoulder with a happy little hoot at breakfast, finally. Harry breathlessly tears the envelope open.

At least this one is longer.

I am under a curse which means that I cannot clearly speak of the conditions of my survival. But you have figured part of it out. I have a werewolf assisting me who writes these letters, and I can offer you an alliance with them. None of them want to follow Fenrir Greyback. They do not strictly follow me, but they will do as I ask. We are allies.

Harry perks up. If nothing else, his dream about Voldemort speaking to Greyback and talking about werewolves moving gives this some independent confirmation.

I do not know if it would be wise for me to meet with you. At least, not until this summer, when both you and I will have more time.

Harry can’t help the way that his eyes dart around the Great Hall, wondering if Regulus Black is a student in disguise. But no, he really doesn’t think so.

If you would be willing to meet with me, send back another letter as you sent this one, and we will speak about a time.

Harry nods. At least he can talk to Sirius and see what he wants to do. He’ll almost certainly want to come, but Harry doesn’t know if Regulus would allow that. Maybe it would be different meeting with someone who never knew him before his “death” than it would be meeting with someone who did.

“Who’s that letter from, Harry?”

Harry hands over the parchment to Hermione, and then sticks his hand out, just in time to block George from giving Ahalam a piece of cheese.

“You are a thief,” Ahalam says in a heartbroken voice.

“I told you that you couldn’t have it! No fair trying to sneak around my instructions and telling my followers you can!”

“You did not tell them that I could not have cheese, so it is their fault.”

Harry snorts despite himself. Sometimes he thinks Ahalam’s reasoning ability is getting better day by day. For all that they would still be pretty ridiculous arguments coming from anyone else, they’re pretty good arguments for a snake.

“Oh, I don’t like this, Harry.”

“Because it might not be Regulus Black?” Harry asks, looking up at Hermione, who’s chewing her lip. “I suppose that’s possible, but copying his handwriting that way would be a pretty neat trick.”

“No, it’s because he’s still not telling you everything.” Hermione waves the parchment for a second. “I don’t want to say that you should be distrustful of everything and everybody, but—he’s not someone you really know.”

Harry nods. “That’s why I won’t go visit him or do anything else without speaking to Sirius.”

“And other people.”

“Well, of course other people. Since Theo could be pulled along if I’m in danger, and I don’t want to upset anyone—”

“No, I meant you won’t go visit him without other people.”

“Um. I never intended to?”

Hermione leans forwards and stares intently at him, as if she thinks that he’s lying. Harry just stares back, baffled. He really never did intend to go without some others, although probably not the “entourage” that Theo or Susan would think was fitting.

“All right,” Hermione says at last, reluctantly, as if she doesn’t like that she didn’t get to yell at Harry. “And in the meantime, you’re going to study Charms beyond the Patronus Charm, aren’t you?”

“Cheese!”

Harry whips around to see Ahalam with a triumphant lump in his middle, and George giving him a guilty grin. “Oops. It just sort of slipped out of my fingers.”

“No more cheese for days,” Harry tells Ahalam.

“That does not matter! There is cheese right now.”

Harry rolls his eyes. It will matter to Ahalam in a few hours, but right now, he’s as happy as can be with what he’s feeling.

Come to that, maybe I should try to adopt that philosophy.

*

“Harry, can I talk to you?”

“Of course,” Harry says, concerned, putting aside his Defense book despite the way Hermione glares at him. The only time Katie has sounded as urgent about something is when it involves Quidditch, and, well—Harry hasn’t joined the Quidditch practices in a while. He’s been too busy with O.W.L. study and everything else.

(He doesn’t intend to tell Oliver that he hasn’t been attending the practices. Harry doesn’t want to cause the world’s youngest ever heart attack).

Katie walks with him over to one of the windows that’s cracked a little in a way no magic seems able to repair. It’s a draughty corner of the common room and not one that’s popular because of that. She turns to look at him, and yeah, her face is ashen and her hands are shaking. Harry wonders what’s gone wrong.

“I need to know if you would protect me if I became your follower,” Katie whispers.

“Of course,” Harry says, even though part of him sighs. People shouldn’t have to become his followers to feel safe. They should just be able to. But that’s not the way the world is, even if it’s the way he’d like it to be. “Who do you need to be protected from?”

Katie bites her lip. “I’ve received an offer to play for the Falmouth Falcons.”

“That’s fantastic! Wait, are they stalking you or something? Do you not want to play for them?”

Katie half-smiles. “I’m actually a sixth-year, you know, not a seventh-year? Most of my friends are seventh-years, and I know I talked about learning the Patronus for my N.E.W.T.s, but I won’t turn seventeen until July.”

“All right…”

“I want to leave school early and play for the Falcons. But that would mean not sitting my exams. Not finishing Hogwarts. My family wouldn’t be happy about that, even though it’s not a disaster and I could sit my exams any time I wanted. But they won’t understand.”

“And your family would hurt you?”

“Not in the way that you’re probably thinking of.” Katie makes a helpless gesture. “They would just—get upset. Cry. My aunt would tell me over and over that I’ve broken her heart. My father would whinge. I just don’t want to listen to it.”

Harry thinks for a moment. Then he says, “If you want me to pretend that I’ve commanded you to do this, then I can’t do that. It would make me look tyrannical and not like a good Lord, and that would damage a lot of other plans I have in progress. So if that’s what you want me to do, I’m sorry, but I can’t.”

Katie shakes her head, eyes wide. “No! I just want to be able to swear to you and have you protect me from my family if they start complaining about it. Technically I would still be under their control until I turn seventeen. But if I’m sworn to a Lord, then you can say that I can leave school and live wherever I please.”

“Oh. So it would only be for a few months, until you turn seventeen?”

“Yeah.”

Katie looks a little shifty, but Harry ignores that. He thinks she’s probably going to use this as a test period to see if she even likes being his follower, but that’s fine. He’ll still protect her no matter how long she stays with him.

“Then you can write to your family, and have them write to me, and I’ll say that I’m your Lord—what?”

Katie is shaking her head. “That won’t work. The legal protection would be shaky. I need to swear an oath, and then there’s no way that they can force me to come back home no matter how hard they try.”

Harry conceals a groan. “Katie—”

“What’s wrong with an oath?”

“Someday I’m going to take one from someone who regrets it, that’s all. And I’d rather that you not make a commitment you can’t break. Who knows what would happen if I, I don’t know, turned evil and—why are you laughing?”

“Harry Potter, Lord Slytherin, evil!” Katie says, and dissolves into giggles.

Harry scowls at her. “Well, I might. You don’t know.” He almost wishes he could tell her about the Horcruxes and his connection with Voldemort, because maybe then she would believe him that it could happen, but of course, he can’t.

“I’ll take my chances.” Katie smiles at him as she takes out her wand. “I’ll make a simple oath on my wand, all right? And you can tell me if you think it’s too much or something.”

“All right,” Harry says, with reluctance that he doesn’t have to feign. He just doesn’t want anyone to regret this, that’s all.

Along with keeping them safe and happy, that’s all he’s ever wanted.

Katie holds her wand out to him, and Harry takes it uncertainly. No one else who swore an oath to him did it exactly like this. Katie places her hands on the wand, atop his, and looks directly into his eyes as she says, “I, Katie Anne Bell, swear on my wand to be true to Harry Potter, Lord Slytherin, until the first of August of this year, to follow him in good faith, to support what he says when he says it, to place his interests above my own.”

There’s a flash of golden light from between their joined hands. More than one person in the common room yelps, it’s so bright. Flushed and triumphant, Katie lifts her hands and takes her wand back, smiling at him.

“That’s a serious oath,” Harry tells her, a little appalled. “And I didn’t make one to you in return.”

“You don’t need to,” Katie says simply. “I trust you.”

*

Theo and Susan are smug when Harry tells them about Katie’s oath, because of course they bloody are.

Harry does his best to scowl intimidatingly when he’s practicing Transfiguring Sickles into golden rings for Salazar to store in his pouch. More people in the common room are watching him with consideration that they don’t even bother to hide.

This had better not start a trend.

Chapter Text

I said I didn’t want it to start a trend, Harry complains in his head as he stares at Katie’s friend, Gwen McLaggen, kneeling in front of him.

“But you don’t have to swear an oath,” Harry says for the second time. “And you don’t need to kneel before me. Katie didn’t do that.”

Gwen smiles up at him. She is a seventh-year, and she has long blonde hair that she’s tied back in a braid and grey eyes that sort of remind Harry of Sirius’s. “I know she didn’t, my lord. But I want a different kind of oath.”

“I didn’t know there were different kinds of oaths,” Harry mutters, even though that’s not really true. After all, Theo swore an oath to Harry that’s different from the one Harry swore to Vince, and Katie’s is different from Theo’s, and so on.

Gwen raises her eyebrows in what looks like polite disbelief, but doesn’t openly disagree with him. She just holds out her hands, instead of her wand, the way Katie did. “I want to swear an oath of mutual protection with you.”

“Mutual?” Harry asks as he takes her hands. He can feel the callus from her wand and something that feels like an old scar.

“Yes. I swear to protect you from physical threats, and you swear to protect me from legal ones.”

“This sounds like a bodyguard oath.”

“It is, my lord.”

Harry pulls his hands back. Gwen looks a little offended, and Harry says, “It’s not you. I just don’t want someone sworn to me that way. And anyway, this is your last term, so why would you want to? You won’t be around me at Hogwarts all the time after this year.”

“Bodyguards get special dispensation to live in Hogsmeade,” Gwen says happily. “There’s a special house that’s reserved for them when there are some, but right now it’s rented out to someone else. They’ll find me a room, though.”

“Why do you want to live in Hogsmeade so badly?”

“My boyfriend’s there. And also the witch I want to apprentice to, an alchemist who told me that she doubts my dedication. Let’s see her doubt it when I’m on her doorstep asking about it every day.”

Harry laughs and relaxes. At least he knows that Gwen wants to become his bodyguard for herself, which is a motivation that Harry is more comfortable with than the idea that everyone will just swear an oath to him out of pure loyalty.

Who am I to deserve that much loyalty? Harry thinks, as Gwen speaks the words of the oath, and Harry repeats the same one back to her with some words changed to highlight the legal protection he’ll be giving her. I need to give some of them shelter, some of them protection, and some of them friendship. But other people, I’m just giving a chance to discover what they really want.

Which isn’t service forever.

*

“You wouldn’t let me make a bodyguard oath.”

“You made a different one, Theo.”

“But you didn’t suggest that I could have made a bodyguard oath.”

“I didn’t know they existed until Gwen told me!”

It seems their argument has got a little heated, since both Katie and Gwen—and a few other people—have glanced up from where they’re practicing their Patronus Charms in the middle of the grounds. Harry gives him a weak smile and impatiently gestures for Theo to join him nearer the edge of the lake. Theo follows him, face implacable.

“I could have suggested it to you.”

Harry fetches a sigh from the depths of his chest. Theo seems determined to be slighted by what Gwen did, and Harry has come very close to telling Theo that it’s none of his business, but that would probably make him more upset. “Why do you want to?”

“She has more of a connection to you than I do, now.”

Harry opens his mouth to answer, then blinks. “Are you…jealous?”

Theo scowls. “Not in the way you mean it.”

“Explain to me what way you think I mean it.”

Theo leans towards him with a grimace, and lowers his voice. At least most of the others are going back to Patronus practice now. “I’m not jealous because I think you consider her a true friend or because you might spend more time with her. I’m only jealous that you granted her a dispensation that you wouldn’t have gathered me.”

“Do you know why she wanted to swear the bodyguard oath to me?”

“No.”

“She wants to stay in Hogsmeade once she finishes her NEWTS so that she can see her boyfriend and hopefully gain an apprenticeship with a picky alchemist. And bodyguards get housing in Hogsmeade.”

“So?”

“So she swore the oath and she wants to stay for a personal reason. A selfish one,” Harry adds, when Theo’s frown doesn’t change. “Not—she wouldn’t lose herself in the service to me, the way I worry about you and the others doing.”

“So you would be more comfortable if we were all selfish?”

Theo’s voice is very strange. Harry drags his hand down his face. “You’re making it sound weird.”

“I must, my lord. It sounds as if you value self-interested service over deep loyalty.”

“That’s not—I don’t value her more than you! It’s just that I don’t have to worry I’m putting her in danger because—”

Pounding hooves interrupt Harry’s voice. He spins around, gaping, as he sees a centaur charging out of the Forbidden Forest. He’s moving so fast that Harry instinctively looks beyond him for the thing that must be chasing him. Maybe it’s an Acromantula?

“My lord, down!”

Theo is pushing him towards the ground, and Harry grunts and falls. He immediately rolls and gets his wand into his hand, because he doesn’t know what’s happening, if an Acromantula is coming out of the Forest or if Theo thinks there’s some other danger, but he knows he’ll need his wand to face it—

Theo is standing over him, a vicious expression on his face, casting a spell that Harry doesn’t know. It tangles the hooves of the centaur, and he screams and goes down, his hind legs and tail lashing.

“Theo, what are you doing?”

Theo casts another spell, one that makes the centaur’s right arm fly out. Harry stares at the weighted net that crashes to the ground.

“He was coming to capture you, my lord,” Theo says. Some of the other members of the Defense Association have started to scream. Theo ignores them, his voice calm and clinical. “I just saved you from being kidnapped, at the last.”

Harry swallows. He’s glad that Ahalam is napping in the sunlight at the other end of the practice ground, and couldn’t be hurt by the way that he fell. “Thank you, Theo.”

“You’re welcome,” Theo says, and his eyes slide past Harry and lock on someone behind him. “You’re his sworn bodyguard. Where were you?”

Harry rolls his eyes as he hears Gwen begin a stiff defense about how she hardly expected a centaur to come crashing out of the Forbidden Forest and try to carry their lord off. He’s glad that he’s safe, that Ahalam is safe, and no one was hurt.

But he doesn’t like that Theo feels settled in his one-sided rivalry with Gwen because of this. And he doesn’t look forward to the conversation he’s going to have to have with Magorian.

*

“His name is Gorgallant.”

Magorian says nothing more than that. Harry stares at the centaur leader for almost a minute in silence. Magorian flicks his tail and says nothing, but a few of the others behind him shift from foot to foot.

“You realize that tells me nothing?” Harry asks. “Not why he tried to capture me, not why you expect that information to matter to me.”

Magorian clears his throat, but still takes a long moment to speak, with his hoof pawing delicately at the earth. Then he says, “Gorgallant is my son.”

Harry pauses. It would be hard for a father to admit that his son has done something so stupid, harder still for Magorian to admit that Gorgallant got corrupted by Voldemort.

“Does that mean you won’t punish him?” Harry asks.

“I have already exiled him.”

Harry blinks a little. As far as he knows, Gorgallant is still tied up behind Hagrid’s hut, with Theo and Gwen bickering over who gets to guard him. “That’s something you can do without the centaur being in your presence?”

Magorian stares at him as if Harry is the stupidest person he’s ever met, even worse than the way centaurs usually look at humans. “Of course we can. He has a magical and mental connection to the rest of us. We have severed it.” He prances for a moment in place. “He is no longer welcome to run with us.”

It sounds like a ritual phrase. Glancing at the shut faces of the centaurs behind Magorian, Harry reckons it is.

“What about Stardim?” he asks.

“Who is Stardim?”

“A centaur who came to the edge of the Forest a few months ago and tried to entice me to go with him. I think he’s probably an agent of Voldemort, but I haven’t seen him since then, so I don’t know what you did with him.”

Magorian’s nostrils flare for a long moment. Then he says, “We do not have any knowledge of the centaur you speak of.”

Harry grimaces and nods. He supposes he should have expected that. “All right. Thank you for exiling Gorgallant.”

He turns to leave, but pauses when he hears a kick behind him. His wand is in his hand, but he doesn’t want to actually cast a spell if he doesn’t have to. That would only leave the centaurs with more wariness of humans than they already have.

“Why are you doing this for him, Magorian?” one of the centaurs snaps. Harry glances over his shoulder. This one is tall and pure white, everything from his fur to his beard and hair and tail. “You would not do such a thing for any human except Hagrid. You swore it once! Why would you exile your son instead of attacking this human?”

“Voldemort is also human,” Magorian says in a low voice. “I will not allow him to corrupt our people for his own pleasure.”

“If he could offer us more than Potter could—”

“You will suggest that we should deal with humans?”

“I suggest that you are an unfit leader who is not putting the best interests of your people above your own personal feelings!”

Magorian paws the ground and spreads his arms wide. “Whenever you feel able to challenge me, Larodian, I will be waiting.”

Larodian doesn’t even give Magorian time to brace, that Harry can see. He just hurtles forwards, his own arms spread. Harry wonders why for a second, and then sees how they clasp each other, and swallows. It seems that centaurs wrestle to solve their disputes.

They’re grunting and stamping and weaving back and forth, and it occurs to Harry—especially seeing the way the other centaurs stare at him—that he should be elsewhere. He turns and hurries away as quickly and quietly as he can manage.

He shakes his head as he steps out of the Forbidden Forest. He doesn’t know if he wants to get further involved with centaurs and their politics. Not if he might be obliged to wrestle them.

And not if Larodian wins the contest between him and Magorian.

“My lord.”

Theo’s voice is clipped. Harry sighs a little and turns to face him. “Yes, Theo?”

“You went into the Forest without me.”

“I know. I’m sorry. But I also went without Gwen.”

Theo pauses, visibly struggling. Harry watches him with glee that he tries not to show on his face. Theo finally chokes out, “If you need to take someone, and I’m not available, she would be an acceptable choice.”

Harry nods, a little impressed that Theo managed to say that. “I spoke with Magorian. The centaur in question, Gorgallant, is his son, and Magorian thinks he’s corrupted by Voldemort. He’s exiled him.”

Theo gapes at him. Harry stares back. He wonders if Theo will ask about Stardim next, and be upset that Harry didn’t manage to get more information on that particular centaur.

Theo just says, in an odd tone, “Do you know what it means, to exile a centaur?”

“To sever their connection with their people. Magorian told me that. But another centaur called Larodian didn’t like it, and he’s wrestling Magorian for leadership. I don’t know if Magorian is going to win.” Harry hesitates. Theo’s face is still odd. “I reckon exiling a centaur is a big deal?”

“It’s a punishment that hasn’t been used in centuries,” Theo whispers. “It severs a connection that keeps a centaur sane. Magical theorists reckon that’s why ancient centaurs were supposed to be wild maniacs who got drunk all the time and killed and raped humans, but modern ones are much calmer.”

Harry swallows. “So we have to worry about Gorgallant trying to escape and attack everyone in sight?”

“I don’t think so. He’s dead.”

“What?”

“He slumped over a few minutes ago and just—died. McLaggen cast a few spells on him Healers know that are supposed to detect low breathing and heartbeat in people who are under spells that might mimic death. But there’s nothing. He’s gone.”

“You think that severing the connection killed him?”

“A centaur who’s never been without a link to the whole of his people? Yes, I think so.” Theo hesitates again.

Harry is looking towards the Forbidden Forest, though, and doesn’t ask why. He’s wondering if they have to worry about the centaurs no matter who wins the contest for leadership. Magorian will be upset that they made him kill his son, and Larodian just seems to be upset about humans in general, but maybe in favor of Voldemort.

“My lord?”

Harry sighs and turns back to Theo. “Yeah?” He wonders if he should be asking Theo in more detail about the non-human people he wants to ally with. Harry didn’t have any idea about this centaur connection. Maybe he needs to be more cautious and not just assume that his own research is turning up all the important details.

“Do you know why Magorian did this?”

Harry shrugs. “He said something about how he won’t do things to let Voldemort corrupt his people. I reckon we should be glad that he decided I’m the right human to help in the situation, instead of Voldemort.”

Theo gives a sharp little laugh that makes Harry’s attention return to him. Theo’s smile is tight, his eyes flickering for a second over Harry’s shoulder. Harry looks, but if a centaur is watching them from the edge of the Forest, he can’t see them.

“He did this because you are Lord Slytherin, and he is wary of your power, and wants to remain on good terms with you.”

“You can’t know that.”

“He would not have exiled his own son if not for that.”

Harry studies Theo’s face for a long moment. Theo doesn’t look happy about this, even though he usually would about Harry being powerful or intimidating or something, and that makes Harry a little more inclined than usual to doubt his conclusions.

“He could also want to remain on good terms with the humans in Hogwarts,” Harry says finally. “Or because I’m the Boy-Who-Lived, he could be worried about people getting angry because centaurs are attacking me.”

Theo just shakes his head. “I think it is your power, my lord. The centaurs have never worried about offending the humans in Hogwarts before, or remaining on good terms with you the other times you’ve ventured into the Forest.”

“Which hasn’t been very many times—”

“I believe it is your title.”

“Then why don’t you look happier about it?”

“I am worried that you will be so unhappy about the power that you will mismanage it, and damage both yourself and others.”

Harry stares at him. Theo looks back, his face locked in a deep scowl that Harry has no idea how to address.

In the end, he can only shake his head and speak the truth.

“I won’t try to do that, Theo. I was thinking about how I need to know more about the centaurs and handle them more carefully, and I can’t just research on my own. I was thinking that I was lucky I came out of the Forest without damage, and I need to take more people with me in the future. The goblins were unhappy about the way I gave them wands, too. I need to talk to more people, have more allies.

“What I am going to say,” Harry says, and leans a little closer to Theo, who seems to have stopped breathing, “is that I might not use my power in the way you think best. The same way that I wouldn’t use it to kick Trelawney out of Hogwarts. I have to listen to other people, but I also have to make decisions that aren’t just based on what one of them thinks.”

Theo’s eyes are huge as he stares at Harry. Harry stares back, wondering what will happen next.

Then Theo bows his head. His voice is subdued, but so happy in tone that Harry blinks a lot. “As you will, my lord.”

“Are you joking now?”

“No. I am remembering why I followed you.”

Theo looks up with eyes that shine with devotion, and Harry bites back on a sharp exclamation. He didn’t mean to make Theo look like that.

But as his friends have so often reminded him, he can’t control their reactions to him being a lord. So Harry nods and walks back towards Hogwarts, deciding that he’ll contact Dumbledore about the dead centaur.

He wants to build alliances between us? Then let’s see how he takes care of inconveniences.

Chapter Text

“They’ll see me.”

“Who will?”

“The goblins.”

Hermione leans over towards Harry with wide eyes. “They will? What—what did you write to them?”

Harry keeps his voice down, a murmur for Ron and Hermione’s ears only. It’s not that he thinks the other Gryffindors would run around betraying them, really, but that he doesn’t want this particular gossip to spread before he’s ready. “I told them about Stardim and Gorgallant and how I might have an alliance with the centaurs in the future. I told them about not knowing about the centaur connection to the herd that Theo mentioned and apologized for any assumptions I might also have made about their use for wands. So they’ll see me.”

“And that’s the supposed secret of asking goblins to pay attention to you,” Hermione mutters, shaking her head. “Be humble and apologize to them when you get something wrong.”

Harry grins a little and tucks away the letter from the goblins. “Yeah. And they said that we could renew our dialogue about the wands, as they put it. That they might have something to say that would explain their reaction in more detail.”

Hermione beams at him. “This is so great, Harry! You’re using the power of Lord Slytherin for good, and not to just benefit some purebloods, the way they’d want you to use it—”

Harry is smiling at her, and paying attention to her, and so he doesn’t see the large owl that’s sailing towards him in time. That enables it to land on the table and the Howler it’s carrying to explode, puffing smoke up towards the ceiling and releasing Olive Hornby’s screaming voice. “DON’T EVEN KNOW WHAT KIND OF GRUDGE YOU HAVE AGAINST ME—”

More than one person at the neighboring tables turns around to watch and laugh. When the Howler finishes, the absent Olive Hornby gets a round of applause, led by Fred and George.

Hermione frowns at Harry through the dissipating smoke. “Harry, seriously, are you ever going to tell us what that’s about?”

“Honestly, Hermione, I have no idea.”

*

“I have a practical demonstration for you today.”

Harry immediately narrows his eyes. There’s far too much enthusiasm in Sirius’s voice, especially given that Harry thought they would spend this class revising. It’s only a few weeks to the O.W.L.S., after all.

“A practical demonstration of what, Professor Black?” Daphne asks, blinking at Sirius. She really has calmed down from when they first knew each other, and now spends most of her time sounding like a human being.

Sirius beams at her. “I’m so glad that you asked, Miss Greengrass. It’s a practical demonstration of what it’s like to fight for your life, based on some of my own memories of the war.” And he casts a Smoke Charm and vanishes behind it with a cackle, while everyone else is coughing.

Harry immediately dives to the floor. He can hear some of his friends echoing him. Hermione is choking on the smoke, and Harry takes the time to cast an Air-Clearing Charm on her, then look around sharply.

Something is charging towards his feet.

It appears to be a rat—no, wait, the forerunner of a horde of rats. Harry leaps to his feet with a disgusted yell and starts stomping and kicking with grim determination. None of the rats make it up his legs, but some of them are leaping into the air, and it won’t be long before they do.

Harry would like to use some of the more lethal spells on them, but not everyone in the fifth-year Defense class is part of his practice group, and he doesn’t want to frighten the ones who aren’t. So, instead, he Transfigures the floor beneath the rats to water.

They begin to squeal and slip at once, then plunge in and start paddling around. Harry uses more Transfiguration, raising the sides of the pool so that they can’t just climb out once they get to the edge of the water. He makes the sides as smooth as possible.

“A passable first attempt!” Sirius’s voice booms from everywhere and nowhere, and then he comes charging out of the smoke and straight at Harry.

Harry’s had enough dueling training now not to hesitate, or to assume that his godfather will go easy on him. He tangles Sirius’s feet up with a rope, and has to leap a similar prank spell that his godfather’s aimed at him. In the meantime, Sirius is changing into a dog and shedding the rope with a triumphant bark.

Harry promptly snaps his wand down, yelling out an incantation that he thought he would never use when Sirius taught it to him. “Sulfurus!”

Sirius yelps and skids to a stop as the smell of rotten eggs fills his nose—his very sensitive canine nose.

He’s only disoriented for a moment, but it’s enough. “Serpensortia!” Harry yells, and the floor fills with conjured serpents. He hisses to them, “Attack the dog in front of me and any rats you find.”

The snakes set out with great enthusiasm. They pause for a moment when Sirius turns back into a man, but it doesn’t put them off for very long, probably because most snakes, despite what Ahalam would say, aren’t that smart. They race towards Sirius and climb him, and he’s involved in banishing them.

Meanwhile, Harry takes the opportunity to cast a quick glance over his shoulder.

Most of his people appear to have dealt with the rats well, even before the snakes Harry conjured started ripping into them. Some have drowned the rats, or frozen them, or put up barriers of stone that the rats are flowing back and forth in front of without being able to find their way through. Harry snorts a little when he sees that Theo has blown the little bodies apart. Of course he would.

“My lord! Look out!”

Harry dives without looking, trusting Theo, and Sirius goes down with a thud and a groan. Harry turns to look and sees that Theo has trapped Sirius with chains that are winding back and forth like snakes themselves, tightening every time Sirius tries to escape.

Harry falls back and looks around to see who’s having trouble. It seems that Pansy Parkinson is. Harry catches her eye and repeats the sharp motion of his wand that he used to Transfigure the floor to water.

Parkinson looks startled, then wary that he would help her. But she does it, and falls back and raises a stone wall beyond that when the rats start to scramble out, wet and squeaking and furious.

Ron, who Transfigured something into a terrier that’s attacking the rats, catches Harry’s eye and grins. “It seems to me that we have one enemy here,” he says in a loud voice. “All for attacking Professor Black at once?”

That gets a cheer, and Harry whips back around to focus on Sirius just as he says something that bursts Theo’s chains asunder. He promptly starts setting off firework prank spells, but Harry, Ron, Theo, Hermione, and a few of the others press towards him anyway.

And suddenly it’s much easier. Harry knows that the others are at his shoulders casting spells to defeat the ones that Sirius tries to send at him, and he raises shields when it seems as though some of the fireworks will hit Theo and Ron, right beside him. Sirius has to retreat, even as he comes up with more and more creative distractions.

This is the lesson he was trying to teach us. To fight together, instead of individually.

They corner Sirius at last against a wall, and even though he turns into a dog and tries to leap out of the way, Hermione is ready for that. She catches him with a muzzle that wraps around his face and muffles his yelp, then links to a chain that Theo already conjured. Sirius rolls over on his back and waves his paws pathetically in the air.

“We won!” someone yells.

Harry grins and cheers with the rest of them. Then he takes pity on Sirius and Vanishes the muzzle and the chain so he can turn back into a man.

Luckily, Sirius is laughing hysterically when he stands up, and he beams around at them. “Good job!” he declares. “You’ll need to work together more effectively against foes who are actually trying to hurt you, but this was a good start!”

“The rats weren’t trying to hurt us?” Blaise demands, holding up his wand. It looks like it’s been lightly gnawed on.

“Of course not!”

“They chewed into my bag and ruined a few of my books!”

“Oops?”

Blaise starts to turn his wand on Sirius with what seems to be an honest intention of cursing him, but Theo and Harry act at once, with Theo stepping up to Blaise’s side and whispering in his ear, and Harry getting between Blaise and his godfather. Harry shakes his head subtly at Blaise as he turns to face Sirius. “What’s next, Professor Black?”

“Next is illusions!” And apparently completely unfazed by the fact that some people are still angry at him for the rats trick, Sirius waves his wand. The air shimmers, and illusions of him appear everywhere.

All the illusions stick out their tongues and pull faces, and then dart away. Harry sighs tiredly.

“We should just be able to find the one who doesn’t do things like that, and we’ll have found the real Professor Black,” Theo mutters next to him.

Harry shakes his head. “Sirius will imitate them and stick his tongue out sincerely.”

“Why?” Theo stares at him in astonishment.

“Because he enjoys it.”

Theo is still looking at Harry blankly. Harry laughs in spite of himself and turns to face the nearest illusion, hitting it with a charm that’s meant specifically for banishing visual traps. It impacts instead of functioning as it should, and the real Sirius runs away with a yelp.

Harry pursues.

*

“Thank you for agreeing to meet with me, Illdark.”

“You have sworn the oaths.”

Harry nods agreeably He and his escorts had to swear a few different oaths to be allowed into Gringotts. They can’t use their wands in the presence of a goblin without permission unless they’re defending themselves. They can’t cast a spell on any goblin without permission. They have to pay for any damage they cause, in any manner.

Harry thinks that last vow is there mostly because his escorts for today are Fred and George.

It says a lot, that the reputation of the Weasley twins has spread like that even beyond Hogwarts.

Illdark stares at him in silence. She’s a tall female goblin with chains braided into her ears and around her neck, and maybe under her skin; Harry thinks he sees bits of them emerging in a few places. She has incredibly large dark eyes that fasten on Harry and seem to drink in his words and intentions. He won’t lie; he’s a bit intimidated by her.

But she’s the one that the goblins have appointed to discuss the wands issue, so he’ll speak with her.

Illdark leans over the enormous stone desk that she’s sitting behind. They’re in the middle of a cell-like room deep in the bank, and Fred and George are standing behind Harry and snapping suspicious glances around at the walls. “Why did you send wands to us in the first place, Lord Slytherin?”

“As part of a larger effort to challenge the Ministry’s laws, and fight for the rights of nonhuman people.”

Illdark pauses for a long moment. Harry waits. He’s made enough missteps with the goblins so far that he’s not going to guess which part of his words was wrong.

“What other peoples have you been fighting for?” Illdark asks, her voice a sound like water bubbling in dark caverns.

“I’d like to ally with the centaurs, but a few of them have tried to capture me for Voldemort, and there’s a current challenge going on for leadership, so I’m not sure when I’ll be able to ally with them.” Magorian won the wrestling march between him and Larodian, from what Hagrid told Harry, but there are other centaurs who think he did the wrong thing by exiling his son. Who knows how long that will take to work out. “I have some allies among the werewolves, and I’ve offered an emissary to the merfolk who live near Hogwarts. So far, they haven’t responded.”

Illdark flashes her teeth, which are long and pointy and quite impressive. “So you have few alliances so far?”

“Yes, that’s right.”

“What would you fight for us to be able to do?”

“Carry wands, if you want to. Have your own laws, or sue in wizarding courts, if you’d prefer. Be called people instead of beasts or beings. Strip out some of the language that’s made its way into treaties over the years. Have History classes that include magical nonhuman peoples taught at Hogwarts. Have leaders from your nations come to treaty negotiations. End the prejudice against people like Filius Flitwick and Rubeus Hagrid at Hogwarts who are partially human and partially other. Say that—”

Illdark raises one hand. Harry falls silent and waits. He can feel Fred looking around the room as if he thinks an ambush is coming from somewhere, and George is similarly tensing on the other side of him.

But Harry doesn’t think that’s it. Illdark is staring at him with far more shock than anything else—at least if wide eyes and a slightly open mouth mean the same thing for goblins as humans. Maybe not.

“Why would you do all this?”

“Because they’re the steps I think will lead to the greatest equality between humans and nonhumans. I’d like to fight for house-elves, too, but I need to talk with more of them and figure out if they are happy the way so many purebloods say or—”

“You misunderstand me.” Illdark’s voice can sound like grinding stones when she wants to, Harry thinks, leaning back in his chair and eyeing her a little uneasily. “Why would you fight for these rights? At all?”

“It’s the right thing to do, and I’m one of the few humans who has the power to do it. And I think we can agree that waiting on the Ministry isn’t going to accomplish anything.”

“No human has done this for us in living memory.”

The way she says it makes Harry sure that she’s old and that her living memory extends far back beyond any human’s. He nods. “I know. That’s one reason that I need to speak with you the way I didn’t about the wands—which I’m sorry for, by the way—because I don’t know how to achieve these things without you.”

“You assume we want to achieve these things.”

“What would you rather do instead?”

“You assume we want human help.”

Harry blinks. “All right. Would you like money instead?” He’s sure that he can get Sirius to donate from the Black vaults, which are apparently enormous. And it’s just the sort of chaos that he’d like to foment against the Ministry.

“You assume we want to move against the Ministry at all.”

Harry manages to hold his laughter in, although he thinks it makes his voice tremble when he says, “Well, I’ve had years of History of Magic, for what it’s worth when it’s a ghost teaching it. It sounds like the goblin rebellions were about winning some freedom for your people and avenging insults.”

Illdark leans forwards and hisses at him hard enough to make Ahalam stir in Harry’s robe pocket, although he knows she’s not a Parselmouth. “You dare to joke about things you do not understand?”

“No, sorry.” Harry shrugs. “All right. Then I suppose that you can decide what to do with the wands, and I won’t bring any more unless you tell me directly that you want them, and you won’t need to participate in anything my allies and I do against the Ministry, either.” He stands up. “Are we done here?”

“You assume you can simply walk away?”

Harry narrows his eyes, feeling Fred and George stir behind him. “We do have an exception in the oaths we swore for self-defense,” he says quietly.

Illdark twitches one hand. “I do not mean to attack you. I mean that you think you can dictate the terms of our participation in your alliance?”

“You say that you don’t want human help or to achieve the things I’m fighting for. I thought I’d move out of the way and allow you to do your own thing, and I’ll do my own thing with the allies I have. At least it ought to get the Ministry looking in more than one direction.”

Illdark hisses at him again. “You think that you can do this without us?”

“You think that I’m just going to sit here forever while you ask a lot of meaningless questions?”

Illdark pauses. Harry wonders if she’s communicating with someone he can’t see. The way she turns her head and lifts a hand as if signaling someone to silence sort of indicates it.

But she turns back to him and speaks as though she’s alone in the room. “You will change your goals and the things you are fighting for because we say so.”

It takes Harry a minute to realize that it isn’t another question. Then he can feel his face cool. He shakes his head. “No. It’s true that our alliance is tiny right now, but I think wand rights and participation in the Ministry is worth it for other nonhuman people even if you don’t want them. So you can work with me or work on your own, or you can do nothing, for all I know. But you won’t be able to stop me from doing what I want.”

Illdark studies him in silence. Then she says, “You may go.”

Harry barely keeps from shaking his head again as he turns away. For a mercy, Fred and George don’t speak until they’re out of Gringotts and blinking in the sunlight.

“What do you think that was all about?” Fred asks.

“Not a clue, Ford,” George says, and they both look at Harry.

Harry shrugs. “I don’t know, either. Maybe it was a test to see if I would just let them do whatever I wanted or dictate the terms of the alliance. But either way, I suppose we can go on planning from here and just leave the goblins out of it.”

Privately, he’s a bit sad about that. He did hope the goblins would join him. But the last thing he wants to do is force them.

I’m not going to be like the Ministry.

Chapter Text

“Harry Potter.”

Harry turns around, surprised. Ahalam gives a sad hiss in response. “Are we not to have cheese? There was cheese promised!”

“In a minute,” Harry says, interested to note that the unfamiliar boy behind him, an older Slytherin, doesn’t flinch at the Parseltongue. Of course, most of the students in the school know that Harry’s a Parselmouth by now, but some of them still get upset about hearing him speak it, unless they’re one of his followers and used to that kind of thing.

“Yes?” he asks, when the Slytherin just stands there.

The boy bows. He has hair so dark that it has a blue sheen to it, and large, protruding dark blue eyes that remind Harry a bit of Luna’s. “My queen sent me to you with an offer of alliance,” he says.

“Your queen?”

The boy produces a stream of sound that Harry can’t understand. After a moment of staring, though, the boy adds, “She is the queen of the merfolk in the Hogwarts lake. We were given to understand that you were seeking an alliance with us?” By the end of his speech, he’s starting to look uncomfortable, as if he thinks Harry might have been lying.

“Oh! Yes, of course! Sorry, I just hadn’t talked to anyone official yet so I didn’t think she would have heard about it.”

“We heard from the goblins.”

“Oh!” Harry blinks some more, and Ahalam winds out onto his shoulder. The boy looks at Ahalam with what seems to be intense interest, and Harry abruptly hopes that sea snakes don’t eat merfolk eggs. Or babies. Or whatever they have. He’ll have to learn. “I—didn’t think they were very disposed to ally with me.”

The boy smiles a little at him. “Goblins have their own customs which my queen would not dream of questioning.”

Harry thinks of asking whether the goblins are his allies or not, but the boy’s reply seems to say he won’t say. Harry half-shrugs and pushes the thought away. “Thanks, then. Should I meet you or someone else at the lakeshore this afternoon? Or some other time soon to talk about it?”

“The queen has deigned to grant you an audience,” the boy says, his voice a little repressive. “That means meeting underwater, so she can speak clearly and you can understand her clearly.”

“But I don’t speak Mermish!”

“I have been authorized to offer you a token that will allow you to breathe underwater and understand our language for an hour.” The boy offers a silver bracelet on his palm, a solid thing that looks as if it’s been ornamented all over with a pattern of fish scales. “And of course you may examine it for harmful spells first.”

Harry nods and floats the bracelet over to him instead of touching it. Ahalam flicks his tongue at it. “It is pretty. A good gift for a beautiful snake.”

“No. We don’t know if it has harmful magic on it.”

Ahalam sulks.

“Please allow me to test this with some of my followers first,” Harry says, hardly believing the words coming out of his mouth. Merlin, if the Harry of three years ago could hear this, he’d be laughing his arse off. “Then we can set up a time for the meeting.”

“That will be acceptable, Lord Slytherin. Please contact me when you are ready to discuss it.”

“Er, but what’s your name?”

The boy’s dark blue eyes widen, and Harry wonders if he’s committed some kind of error by asking, but then the boy shakes his head. “Not your fault, Lord Slytherin. I was extremely remiss in not introducing myself. I am Isidore Ramath.”

“Nice to meet you, er, Ramath.”

“You must call me Isidore, my lord, since you are of a higher social standing!”

Isidore looks to be on the verge of fainting. Sourly, Harry thinks that Theo would probably approve of him. “All right, Isidore. I’ll let you know when I think I can make this meeting.”

“Thank you, my lord,” Isidore says, with a bow of his head that luckily doesn’t turn into a full-on bow, and he turns and glides away as though he’s achieved everything he wanted, after tracking Harry down in this corridor on the way to the Room of Requirement.

After he leaves, Harry stares at the hovering bracelet and sighs a little.

At least he’s meeting Theo and Susan in the Room of Requirement, so they can tell him what they think of this and if it’s dangerous.

“Bracelet for the snake,” Ahalam says hopefully.

“No.”

“Bracelets are second only to cheese!”

“But you told me before that you also need sunlight, and honesty, and for me to talk to you more than I talk to Salazar, and—”

At least arguing with Ahalam makes the walk pass quickly.

*

“This bracelet is set with a Stone of Truce.”

Harry can practically hear the capital letters as Theo says them. He blinks a little. “And what’s that?”

Theo gives him a disapproving look. Harry ignores him. Theo should know as well as anyone that Harry hasn’t actually had the chance to study much about gemstones and their properties, and that there’s no reason he would know this specific one. Which must be pretty rare in the first place.

I don’t think merfolk go around giving them out to just anyone.

“This means that as long as you wear the bracelet and are in the meeting speaking with the queen that Ramath informed you about, none of the merfolk can harm you.”

“Why is that different from just the wording of a truce, though?” Harry asks.

Susan laughs a little. Harry glares at her, but Susan leans forwards and lets her fingers rest on the gleaming pale stone that Harry didn’t notice in the bracelet until he got to the Room of Requirement. “As long as you wear it and are obeying the rules yourself, the merfolk literally can’t harm you. Their spears or tridents would just dissolve into dust if they tried to hurl them at you. And any harmful spells would do the same thing.”

“What about their songs?” Hermione asks, looking at the stone. Harry sent his Patronus, Godric, to go get her when he realized they would be talking about the merfolk’s offer, because she’s so interested in the rights of magical creatures. “Would those also fail to enchant him?”

“The merfolk in our lake can’t sing those sorts of songs, that’s only sirens—”

“I’ve read that some sirens pretend to be merrows or selkies so that their human neighbors don’t drive them away—”

“That’s stupid, if they were really sirens they could just enchant their neighbors and that wouldn’t be a problem—”

“It’s a problem because humans are stupid about merfolk—”

Harry clears his throat loudly, and both Susan and Hermione flush and stop arguing. “Well, it sounds like the Stone of Truce would affect their songs if they can even sing them.” He turns to look at Theo, who’s been silently amused by the whole thing. “Ramath said something about how the goblins informed them of my wish for an alliance. What do you think the goblins are actually doing?”

“I wouldn’t presume to speculate, my lord.”

“I’m asking you to.”

Theo raises his eyebrows, and Harry thinks he’s going to get another pseudo-diplomatic answer, but in the end, Theo shrugs and says, “I think that the goblins will make an alliance with you, but on their own terms, and some of the questions Illdark asked were to see if you would react in a certain way.”

“Which way?”

“If you would get upset. If you would snap at her. If you would accept everything she said to you. And from the memory you showed me in Black’s Pensieve, she was especially surprised that you referred to goblins as people.”

“But they are,” Harry says, a little blankly.

“Not to everyone, my lord. Remember?”

Harry scowls at the reminder, then sighs. Yes, that does make his conversation with Illdark make a little more sense. He turns back to Susan and Hermione. “Do you think we should ask other people to be with me when I speak with the mer-queen?”

“You mean, besides us?” Susan asks.

“Yeah. I didn’t know if it might be offensive to bring guards, or a certain number of people. I suppose I should have asked Ramath.”

“I can ask him. It must be so fascinating to talk to someone with merfolk heritage—”

An alarm squeals from Hermione’s wrist, and she gasps and grabs it. “Oh, I’m so sorry, Harry! It’s time for me to leave so I can get back to the Tower in ten minutes and start studying for Charms!”

Harry manages not to laugh. In fact, all he wants to do is smile at her, an enormous fondness moving through him. Hermione wouldn’t be Hermione if she were more relaxed about this. “It’s all right, Hermione. But I’ll make sure to ask Ramath—”

“I want to ask him!”

“Someone will ask him,” Theo says.

“If I can have people come with me, and you’ll definitely be one of them if I can,” Harry reassures her.

Hermione beams at him and runs away as the alarm that shimmers like a barely visible watch on her wrist shrills again. Harry shakes his head. “She’ll probably be a brilliant spell-crafter someday,” he mumbles. “I think she probably invented that spell.”

“She did, yes,” Susan says.

There’s a kind of smug satisfaction in her voice that makes Harry look at her curiously. “Did she tell you?”

“No.” Susan leans back in her chair and folds her arms, grinning. “I might have been working to develop my mage sight. I might be able to see spells’ signatures.”

Theo gapes at her. Harry is glad that he seems stunned, even though Harry is mostly stunned because he doesn’t know what she means. At least Theo doesn’t know everything, either, even if he is plotting with Susan.

“What does that mean?” Harry asks.

Susan turns to smile at him. “When you cast a spell, my lord, it leaves a trace on the air—or the world around it, that would probably be a better way to put it. An imprint, like the footprint of a creature. It doesn’t last long, and most people can’t see it. And if you’re in a duel or something like that, you would be too busy dealing with the spell’s effect. But if you can see signatures, then you can retain that imprint longer than other people. And recognize new spells when you see them.”

“That’s so brilliant! What does it look like? What color is it?”

Susan laughs. “There’s all sorts of different colors. But mostly they look like fireworks, in that they have colors but they also form patterns. And I know when I’m seeing one that’s new. The spell on Hermione’s wrist is new.”

Harry smiles at her. “That’s awesome.”

“I agree,” Theo says, and his voice is soft, but his eyes are calculating. Of course, he wouldn’t be Theo if they weren’t. “I think it’ll be important that you be with Harry when he talks with the merfolk, Susan. And that you guard him at times when you can, especially if McLaggen and I can’t.”

Harry sighs a little, but doesn’t dispute the guard plan. It doesn’t sound like it’ll work.

Instead, he just thinks happily about how brilliant his friends are.

Ahalam interrupts by poking his nose into Harry’s cheek. “There could now be a pretty bracelet for the prettiest snake.”

“No, I need it for something else.”

Ahalam sulks.

Chapter Text

“Harry, could you—could I ask you to do something?”

Harry blinks and looks up. Daphne is standing in front of him, biting her lip. He doesn’t think he’s ever seen her do that before. He rises to his feet, concerned. He was only practicing a few prank spells that Sirius taught him, anyway.

“Of course, Daphne.”

“And not tell you why.”

Harry stares at her. Daphne lifts her hands and holds them out in front of her the way that someone might futilely try to placate an angry dragon. Not that Harry thinks he’s given her any reason to think he would react like that. “I promise, it’s not going to hurt anyone. I just want to make sure that you won’t try to argue me out of it.”

“If it’s not going to hurt anyone, why would I do that?”

“It could be dangerous.”

Harry chews his own lip for a moment. They’re practicing inside today, since outside a howling thunderstorm stalks around the castle, and people are pausing to stare. Even this version of the Room of Requirement isn’t large enough to be truly private, not with how they need to spread themselves out so their spells don’t hit each other. “To you?”

Daphne nods.

Harry stares at her some more, but she looks back at him with those wide eyes. Harry sighs a little. Truly, she’s never asked him for much. And he would feel like a git if he denies this to her.

“All right,” he says, and fumbles in his robe pocket, taking out a simple silver medallion on a chain that he owl-ordered a few days ago. He was going to enchant them with Sirius’s help and offer them to his followers in a week or so, but this isn’t going to wait, it seems. “But let me enchant this first.”

“What is it?”

“Let me concentrate, and then I’ll tell you.”

Daphne makes a face. Apparently, unquestioning trust is something that she’s owed instead of something she wants to give. But she does watch in fascination as Harry touches his wand to the silver chain.

She’s not the only one. People are stopping their practice duels all over the room to crane their necks towards Harry and Daphne. Harry frowns at them, but they don’t look away.

Fine.

Harry half-closes his eyes and focuses his magic through his wand and on the chain. This is a theory he came up with and Sirius agreed would probably work, but he intended to practice it in private first.

Now, no time, not with the fact that Daphne actually approached him for something. That probably means it’s coming up—

Harry carves the thought from his mind, and instead concentrates, as hard as he can, on the idea that he needs to enchant this chain and keep Daphne safe.

The magic draws Ahalam out of his robe pocket. Harry can feel Ahalam weaving back and forth on his shoulder, and he knows that some serpentine power is probably interweaving with his, but it doesn’t matter. His breathing is light and fast, and he opens his eyes to see green lines of magic dancing around the chain.

Someone starts to say something, but someone else who sounds like Hermione snaps them to silence.

Harry lifts his wand and traces the green lines back and forth, keeping his eyes fastened on them. This is what he wanted to happen, but he had no idea that it would.

You did, says a voice in his head that sounds gentle and dreamy, a little like a snake might sound that was more interested in food than magic.

Harry brings his wand down with a sharp little gasp. The green lines slam into the chain and twine around it, and Harry staggers from the sudden outflow of his magic. Then the chain itself, and the star-shaped medallion on the end of it, begin to shine as if they’re something truly valuable. Harry braces himself against empty air and smiles.

“My lord?”

Blaise and Theo speak the words at the same time, and frown at each other. But Theo is the one who says, in a slightly accusing voice, “You didn’t tell us that you would try something like that.”

“I didn’t know I would try it so soon,” Harry admits, making his staggering way back to his feet. “I intended to practice with Sirius first. But Daphne needs it now.”

Daphne flinches at the cool glance Theo gives her. Harry catches Theo’s eye and makes a sharp jerking motion of his hand.

He thinks Theo will be upset, but instead, he subsides with a faint smile. Harry shakes his head as he turns back to Daphne. Theo is one of his best friends, but honestly, sometimes Harry really doesn’t understand him.

“Here you are,” he says, and holds out the medallion to Daphne.

She accepts it gingerly, staring back and forth between it and his face. “What does it do now?”

“I wound Ahalam’s magic as well as my own into it,” Harry explains. “And the bonds that tie us together. It has Lord Slytherin’s magic in it. It’ll keep you safe from a lot of pretty nasty threats.”

“Explain how, please, my lord.”

Daphne sounds more like herself now, head tilted like a curious owl. Harry grins at her and obliges. “There are so many bonds that connect me and the rest of you. It’s like I’m a spider in the center of the web.” He winces as he hears a little moan from Ron, but he keeps pushing ahead. “So the damage that hits the medallion if you’re hurt by a curse will radiate down the lines of the web, and dissipate because it’s spread between so many people. And some of it will vanish because it’ll spend its energy running the bonds instead of hitting a person.”

“So wearing this medallion means I hurt you or the others?”

“Not exactly. Spread between so many people, it’ll feel like an insect bite or a small distraction. And like I mentioned, some of the energy will dissipate because it’ll be running down the strands of the web.”

“How can this be happening?” Daphne whispers as she traces her fingers down the medallion. “I swore no oath to you.”

“But you’re my friend. And you’ve followed me.”

“Well, yes. But that is a bond so abstract in its expression that—”

Harry hastily cuts her off before she can wander into some tangent that he won’t be able to follow and that will probably confuse and bore the others. “I just mean that I feel a connection to you, and this is a way that I can wield that connection. I fed my sense of it into the medallion.”

“But that’s—that’s against accepted magical theory.”

Harry laughs a little, ignoring the way everyone is staring at him. “It doesn’t matter that much, I promise, Daphne. I’m using the magic of Lord Slytherin in a way that makes sense to me, and that could make nonsense of magical theory. But it will work. Do you want to test it?”

Daphne pauses for a long moment and looks around as though expecting someone else to say that this is stupid. But Theo and Blaise are leaning slightly forwards like hounds on the scent, Hermione is staring intently, the twins are lurking and look as if they might volunteer to cast the curse if Harry doesn’t, and Gwen is frowning but looks inclined to participate.

“All right,” Daphne says, and she strings the medallion around her neck, lifting her chin. “I trust you, my lord.”

Harry doesn’t say that the magic in the medallion wouldn’t work if she didn’t. He doesn’t think that’s a good idea. He nods as Daphne backs up and lifts his wand. There’s a long pulse of serpentine magic waiting for him, Ahalam eager to help him, but Harry is too cautious to use the same kind of magic that empowers the medallion against it in the first test.

“Stupefy!”

The red spell flashes towards Daphne and hits the medallion. No, is drawn into the medallion. Harry didn’t deliberately aim at it, because that would be too simple, and he wanted to see what would happen without that. But no, it works as he intended to. The spell vanishes, and Harry feels the slightest brush of discomfort in his head, a tiny bit of blurring in his vision.

Hermione gasps. “I felt it!”

“So did I,” Theo says. “It felt like a tiny Stunner.”

“Would that be a good thing in battle?” Blaise asks thoughtfully. “If each of us was affected, even a little bit, it could throw off our balance or our concentration.”

“I’m going to work on improving it,” Harry reassures them. “Move more of the burden to the bonds themselves, less to the people involved. That should eventually reduce the effect of the spell on us to nothing.”

“And we won’t always be in combat situations,” Susan says. “It could be useful in other contexts than that, whether or not it’s been modified to affect the bonds.” She and Theo exchange glances.

Harry narrows his eyes, wanting to press them, but Daphne cuts in. “Explain to me how you managed to violate magical theory and make this medallion, Lord Slytherin,” she demands.

Harry is happy to explain, and to do it in more detail when Hermione asks questions, but he does have to shake his head when she gets into technical and theoretical terms. “I don’t know about all that,” he says. “I came up with the idea and thought it would work, and so did Sirius.”

Susan and Theo exchange glances again. Harry frowns at them. If they would just tell me—

But then the twins start demanding medallions, and Harry puts Susan and Theo’s plans out of his head.

*

“You know that we were going to wait and practice with the medallions.”

“I know.” Harry sighs as he leans back against the couch in Sirius’s quarters. “I just thought that Daphne needed it, and I had to go ahead and give her one.”

“And the way that you made a medallion after that for everyone who wanted one?”

“Not everyone! Just the first five people who asked.”

Sirius looks at him.

Harry shakes his head and then yawns. He slept well last night after making a bunch of medallions infused with Slytherin magic, but the exhaustion still drags at him. “I know. But honestly, it’s better to test them now and see how they function outside a battle situation. Like Blaise said, the momentary distraction from absorbing a spell might be a lot worse in a duel.”

Sirius says nothing for long enough that Harry’s eyelids start to drift downwards. Then Sirius sighs sharply and shakes his head. “I just worry that you’re getting too far into it.”

“Into exercising the power of Lord Slytherin?” Harry asks around another yawn. “I promise, Hermione and the rest would make sure that I never go too far.”

Sirius laughs in what sounds like shock. “Of course not! I can’t picture you going too far into power and ambition, not that way.”

“Then what way?”

Sirius hesitates long enough for Ahalam to hiss, “I am sleepy. You are sleepy. We should sleep.”

Harry fends off the exhaustion to look at Sirius and raise an eyebrow.

Sirius sighs gustily. “I could see you getting overwhelmed by everyone’s wants and needs, and just spinning yourself into exhaustion to satisfy them. I don’t want that for you, Harry. I know your life is extraordinary in so many ways, but I want it to be as ordinary and normal as possible.”

Harry’s lips twist. This is reminding him of a few conversations with Dumbledore where the Headmaster said that he wanted a normal childhood for Harry.

But he knows Sirius doesn’t have the same silly motivations, so Harry just says, “I think there’s no way I can have that, but thank you for wanting it for me.”

“You’ll at least try to protect yourself and not jump to whatever someone is asking just because they’re asking for it?”

“Yes, he will.”

Harry blinks and turns his head. Did he actually fall asleep for a moment? When did Theo get here?

“Good,” Sirius says.

“Wait? What are you talking about?” Harry asks, around another yawn.

“Because we’ll make sure that you don’t use all your magic like this in the future, no matter how many people want those medallions.” Theo takes a step forwards and draws Harry to his feet. “Come on, my lord. You have a bed calling your name.”

“Oh, you can hear that, too?”

He can hear Theo roll his eyes as his friend guides him out the door. “We won’t let you damage yourself, even if you want to.”

“Don’t want to…damage myself. Just…have to keep you safe.”

Theo says nothing, but he squeezes Harry’s hand for a moment.

At least Harry falls asleep without any trouble once his head touches the pillow. It would be sort of embarrassing if he didn’t after all the tiredness Sirius and Theo had to see from him.

Chapter Text

“This is a ceremonial visit, my lord.”

Harry scowls at Gwen, who’s arranging a necklace of delicate golden and silver links around his neck. Harry doesn’t even know where she got it. “You don’t have to call me that. That’s a habit you picked up from Theo.”

“It’s the habit that I like to have.”

Harry grunts and gives it up as a bad job. Gwen isn’t as stubborn as Theo, but the past few weeks have shown him that she’s plenty enough for an ordinary day.

Gwen steps back from him and gives his necklace and his robes a long, critical stare. She finally nods, smiles, and stares to draw Harry after her. “If you’ll follow me, my lord? The Mer-Queen is expecting you to be on time.”

Harry fights back the temptation to say that he would already have been on time if not for the fussing with his robes. He walks behind Gwen and lets the other guards for this journey—Theo, Fred, George, and Katie—fall into place around him. There’s some significance to the merfolk of the number six.

Harry just hopes that Ahalam, who’s coiled on his shoulder and looking importantly around, doesn’t count as seven.

They reach the shore of the lake. People are breaking off their Saturday morning conversations and walks and lazy Quidditch practice outside to gape at them. Harry can feel his cheeks turning bright red, and does his best to lift his head and walk along as if this is all natural and has happened to him before.

Well, it sort of has.

They reach the very edge of the lake, and find Isidore waiting for them. He smiles and nods to Harry. “Good morning, my lord. My Queen is pleased that you have decided to come. You have the bracelet?”

“Yes.”

“And your other guards are capable of performing spells that will allow them to breathe underwater?”

Despite himself and the level of preparation that he and the others tried to put into this, Harry finds himself blinking at Isidore. “I thought—I thought they had to stay on shore? That was—I was sure of that.”

But now, embarrassingly, he can’t remember if that’s the case, or if he just assumed it was. It seems that so many things have happened in the past few weeks, most of them just when Harry sets time aside to study for O.W.L.S.

“Originally, we did discuss how they would wait on the shore, but watching your level of respect for other nations, the Queen believes that they can be trusted underwater. As long as they can keep up with you and cast the spells that would allow them to breathe on their own.”

“I have something even better than spells,” Theo announces, before Harry can process most of this. “Gillyweed. It’ll last an hour, and allow us to grow gills and breathe under the lake.” He takes out what looks like a shapeless clump of seaweed, and starts handing it around to the others.

“We didn’t discuss this,” Harry says under his breath to Theo as the others take their weed.

Theo smiles at Harry. “There are many things that we don’t discuss but can assume are true, my lord. For example, the plans that Susan and I have for your scar.”

Harry scowls at him, but he has to admit that it’s a sign of dedication and perseverance. With a sigh, as he fastens the bracelet with the Stone of Truce around his wrist, he tries to accept it as just that and not a sign that he’s also being outmaneuvered.

(Even though it probably is that).

“Ready,” Gwen says, and swallows the gillyweed.

She immediately chokes. Harry takes a step forwards in alarm, but Gwen runs over to the lake and plunges her head beneath the water. Then she slips into it. Harry thinks he catches a glimpse of her webbed hands and feet, and blinks.

All right, I didn’t know it would do that.

“We are pleased to welcome you to our realm,” Isidore says, taking a step forwards and bowing with his hands extended. The motion turns into a smooth dive into the lake. Harry thinks he sees gills opening on the sides of Isidore’s neck, too.

The others are swallowing the gillyweed, although Theo holds back, probably to make sure that no one can manifest from thin air and stab Harry in the back. Harry sighs and folds his robe on the shore, then reaches out and lifts Ahalam off his shoulder.

“You have to stay here.”

“I am a snake! I can swim!”

“But you can’t breathe underwater.”

Ahalam is going to argue about this, clearly, but in the meantime, Isidore rises back to the surface with something that looks like a frozen bubble cradled in his hands. The top of it unhinges like a lid, and he holds it out with a little bow.

“My Queen is most anxious to see your non-human companion, and a demonstration of your prowess as Lord Slytherin,” he announces. “We have prepared this bubble of air for your familiar to visit our village, my lord.”

“They know that I am the prettiest snake,” Ahalam says contentedly as he slithers into the bubble and curls up tightly. “You should treat them well for being so sensible.”

Harry laughs a little and scoops up the bubble, holding it in front of him. It feels as solid as a pearl. “I’m glad that she’ll get to meet you.”

“Everyone wants to meet me. I am the prettiest snake.”

Harry shakes his head in amusement and wades forwards, ducking into the water. In a few seconds, he’s swimming, and Theo is coming behind him, and the others form up around him like a square, following Isidore to the merfolk’s village.

*

It’s brighter beneath the water than Harry expected. Then again, he supposes that the merfolk know they’re coming, and so they’ve lit up the lake.

The queen swims up to meet Harry when they’re still a fair distance from anything that looks like a village. She’s an incredibly tall and strong merwoman, with a tail that gleams green and silver. Harry hopes that pleases some of his followers.

Harry pulls up and inclines his head to her. He can see from the corner of his head that Isidore is bowing deeply, and so are his guards.

He was specifically told that he shouldn’t bow deeply. Well, Harry just hopes that Isidore knew he was coming talking about when he said that.

“Lord Slytherin.”

It seems the Stone of Truce is functioning fine, since Harry can understand her words. He wonders if his guards can, or if the merfolk cast a translation spell. Or maybe all Mermish sounds like human language under the waves. Harry did see some sort of reference to that in a book.

“Your Majesty.” The Stone of Truce helps him speak normally.

The queen considers him in silence for long enough that Harry wonders if he did something to offend her even before he came to the meeting. And then she flips over and starts stroking back towards the village, calling a trilling command over her shoulder. Mermen swim past Harry and the others.

“She wants you to follow,” Isidore translates.

Harry nods. The Stone of Truce doesn’t take care of everything, then. The trill certainly didn’t sound like any words Harry knew.

He speeds after the mer-queen, and his follower are doing the same thing. The mermen that arch between Harry and the queen, probably forming an honor guard, are less tall and strong than she is, but they have powerful tails and tridents in their hands that Harry wouldn’t want to go up against, even if the Stone of Truce would protect him.

The village is made of twisted stone in shapes that look like shells, bubbles, twisting tentacles, and other forms that Harry doesn’t know if he’s seen outside of nightmares. He can see merfolk peering at them from behind the houses and tall clumps of swaying seaweed.

Harry keeps his eyes forwards as much as he can and pretends to ignore them. He thinks that’s the polite thing to do.

Ahalam has no such compulsion.

“Look at all the merfolk watching me! They will have heard that the prettiest snake is coming to visit them. They will have fish ready to feed me. Hold my bubble high! We must not let them get upset because they cannot see the prettiest snake!”

Harry bites his lip desperately, hoping that the merfolk won’t think a smile is an insult of some kind, and lifts his bubble high. Ahalam coils up and begins arching his neck strangely.

It takes Harry long moments to realize that Ahalam is doing his best imitation of a bow to their audience.

Holding back laughter is a lost cause, after that.

They arrive at a large structure that spirals up like a unicorn’s horn and then curves back down towards the sand of the lake bottom. The mer-queen turns and floats in front of it. Harry does the same thing, flapping a hand behind his back to signal Theo to stay where he is. He can already see his friend moving close enough that his presence is distorting the water around Harry.

Harry doesn’t think the merfolk will attack. And anyway, if they do, Theo can do as much good from his current position as he can if he comes closer.

Harry meets the queen’s large purple-green eyes. “Well, Your Majesty?”

“We heard that you had offered an alliance to the goblins.”

“That’s right, Your Majesty.”

“And that they accepted right away.”

Harry blinks. “I think that’s a bit of an exaggeration, Your Majesty. They asked me a series of questions, and seemed disappointed with some of my answers. They didn’t say anything about an alliance before they dismissed me and my guards from Gringotts.”

The queen flips her tail in a negligent gesture, not taking her eyes from Harry. “There is nothing to that. The goblins always test those they wish to ally with, and driving you forth at the end of bloodied spears would mean they thought you too weak to ally with.”

“Huh?”

The queen is going serenely on. “Is it true that you support wand rights for all beings?”

“It is.”

“Even though wands are useless to us under the water? The flowing currents would degrade their magic.”

The mermen shift their tridents as if they’re anxious to get close to Harry and stab him on the queen’s say-so. Harry bites back his own vexation. “If something else would work for you better than wands, then I would support that. I only know that the lack of wands has been a problem between humans and goblins specifically.”

The queen gives another trill, and the mermen turn and present their tridents before them. Harry reaches back with a precise motion, and stops Theo before he can draw his wand.

Not that many of his spells would probably do much good underwater. But Harry isn’t going to take a chance that Theo doesn’t know some awful curse that would peel the scales off the merfolk’s bodies or something. Because it’s Theo.

“Then you will support us in using our tridents as we once did.”

“The—tridents are like your wands, Your Majesty?”

“They are, Lord Slytherin. Or rather, they were. They were disenchanted long ago, by a wizard that I understand you call the greatest of your kind.”

It takes Harry a moment to work that out. “Merlin?”

The merfolk give a huge disgusted grumble that rolls through the water and up from the village of watchers, as well. Ahalam arches his neck. “They are unhappy because they cannot see me! Hold me higher! I must bow harder!” And he curls his neck like he’s a swan and bobs it so hard that watching him makes Harry a little sick.

Harry manages to hold in his laughter this time so he can speak to the queen. “I see. Do you think I can somehow restore the tridents’ enchantment?”

“I know you can.”

“How?”

“One of my followers has seen the medallions that you enchanted for your people. You can use your magic to flow down the web that links them together and reach out to us to enchant our tridents—or you can do so if you trust us enough to count us as part of the web.”

Harry blinks. “I don’t think you would be willing to swear oaths to me or follow me the way that some of the humans have done, Your Majesty.”

A smile flickers at the edges of the queen’s mouth. “And I am skilled at seeing webs of power and connection in many different fathoms, Lord Slytherin. I know that the web that binds your followers is not composed of oaths and choices to defend you alone. It is formed of what you think about them.”

“So if I think of you as part of the web, then you will be?”

“Exactly.”

Harry stares at her and blurts out the first thing that comes to mind. “But that sounds like a fantastic power. Why hasn’t anyone else used it before now? Why hasn’t Voldemort used it to bind his Death Eaters?”

“I do not know in the specific case of your Dark Lord, since I have not seen him. But I believe that it relies on the emotions one feels about the people who follow them.” The queen makes a delicate gesture with one webbed hand. “It cannot be faked or built on a feeling that does not exist. And if your Dark Lord distrusts the people who follow him, or simply does not feel enough loyalty to them…”

“It wouldn’t work.”

“Yes.”

Harry closes his eyes for a long moment, thinking. Luckily, that doesn’t seem to be an insult to the queen or her guards the way that Harry sometimes fears random gestures might be. He thinks long and hard enough that he does hear a few murmurs and shuffles from behind him, and maybe there are more than he thinks, given the muffling effect of the water. But he has to think about this.

He opens his eyes at last and asks, “If you were part of the web, would you be willing to give your loyalty to other people who help or follow me or befriend me, as well as me?”

“Of course. Why would we not?”

“Well, some of them are wizards and witches who might not like you at first. Or might not want me to give you enchanted tridents even if they think that you’re fine in general. It’s going to be a struggle with some of them.”

Harry wants to grimace as he thinks about that. He’s happy about the parts of the Lord Slytherin power where he can give people things they want or need and protect people. He’s much less interested in listening to arguments about why other people are bad or stupid and don’t deserve those things.

Sometimes I really wish everyone could just get along.

But that’s a childish fantasy and something he won’t even bring up because it would make him sound stupid. Instead, he asks, “What kind of arrangement should we make that respect your people’s autonomy and yours, Your Majesty, while also bringing you into this—web?”

The queen’s smile widens. “I am so glad that you asked, Lord Slytherin.”

With a sigh, Harry settles down to something that sounds a lot like diplomacy, even though he suspects that it will have to be cut somewhat short because the Stone of Truce on his wrist won’t allow him to breathe underwater for that long.

But his heart is filled with curiosity and hope.

That makes up, somewhat, for the diplomacy.

“Look at me! Look at me! I am bowing! You have the chance to see the prettiest snake!”

And so does Ahalam.

Chapter Text

“Thank you for meeting with me, Harry.”

“I was able to clear some time in my busy schedule of being Lord Slytherin and getting things done, sir.”

The Headmaster winces and sighs. Harry sits down in the chair in front of his desk. He left Ahalam behind despite his snake’s sulking, because he thinks his little familiar would only be a distraction during a conversation when Harry has to give every bit of his attention.

Dumbledore doesn’t start talking for long moments, just staring at him, so Harry looks around the office. He may be mistaken, but he thinks there are even more whizzing, spinning, smoke-emitting silver instruments than there were on his last visit.

“Harry?”

“Yes, sir?”

Even with Harry looking at him, Dumbledore doesn’t seem to relish what he has to say next, but maybe Harry looks impatient or disgusted or something, because the Headmaster does touch his hands together and begin. “If—if I were to tell you about something that I wanted you to keep secret from your followers, would you do so?”

“No.”

“Harry.”

“In the past, sir, that hasn’t worked out well, no offense. And I don’t tell them every thought that crosses my mind, but someone who’s such an uncertain ally wanting me to keep secrets? I’d have to tell them that.”

“Did I not take care of the centaur’s body for you?”

“Yes, sir. One action that I’m grateful for, in the long months of lying, scolding, being disappointed in me, trying to get me to work with Snape—”

“Yes, yes, I understand.”

Harry falls silent and watches Dumbledore. It is true that the Headmaster seems upset in a way that he hasn’t in the past. He picks up a quill and lays it down again, stares at Fawkes for a second, turns back towards Harry with an unconvincing smile fixed on his face.

“I have—come by some knowledge that you should have of Voldemort.” He hesitates again, then shakes his sleeve back from his right hand. Harry tenses, but there’s no wand in it. “And I have brought proof of my story.”

Harry stares at Dumbledore’s blackened hand. Long cracks of red and green run up and down his arm, and it’s seamed with little flickering charges that look like lightning. He knows his mouth is open. He manages to shut it, then opens it again and whispers, horrified, “Sir, what did that?”

“Let me tell you, Harry, about the things known as Horcruxes.”

*

“So Dumbledore knows about them.”

Harry nods. He’s feeling a little overwhelmed, which is the reason that he staggered upstairs to Sirius’s quarters and even accepted a glass of butterbeer that Sirius has added Firewhisky to. Now Harry is drifting and a little calmer, but he still stares into his mug for different reasons as he answers.

“Yeah. He didn’t—he was a little vague about how he learned about them, but I had the feeling that it was going around and looking into people’s memories.”

Sirius hisses like he’s a Parselmouth himself. “At least you have that defense that Ernie built for your mind, but you need to tell the others who know about it to learn Occlumency right away.”

“What about you?”

“Me, meet Albus Dumbledore’s eyes? Don’t worry about that, kid. I haven’t done that since I came to be a professor here.”

Harry half-smiles, but his mind is on Susan and Theo and Ron and Hermione. And Ernie, although given that Ernie knows Occlumency, he’s probably fine.

“I suppose we should be glad that Dumbledore can’t talk to Salazar.”

“Yeah. C’mere, Harry.”

Harry staggers up from the couch and into Sirius’s arms. Sirius holds him close and hugs him hard enough that Harry is a little breathless at the end of it.

“I’m going to protect you,” Sirius whispers. “If he ever seems like he’s about to cast a spell at you, run, okay? And we’ll come up with some other protections for you. No more meeting with him alone again.”

Harry nods against Sirius’s shoulder. He’s cold for so many reasons: that Dumbledore seems to be dying from the Horcrux he destroyed, that he thinks there are at least seven of them, what Dumbledore might do to Harry if he figures out that Harry is one.

But at least he has Sirius, and his familiar, and his friends. They’ll fight to protect him as much as Harry would to protect them.

He’ll do his best to survive.

*

“Ah. Harry. Yes.”

Once again, the Minister has shown up at Hogwarts, and at the defense group practice, but this time, he seems a lot more nervous than he did the last time Harry saw him. He’s fidgeting with his collar and choking a little at the way that Fred and George are watching him in interest.

Harry holds back a laugh as he walks over to Fudge. Ahalam is asleep in his robe pocket, but the pointed attention of everyone in the group is reminding the Minister perfectly well that he’s Lord Slytherin without that. “Yes, sir?”

“I just wanted to—that is, I wanted to ask—there should be some method—there should be—”

Harry watches Fudge splutter through more of whatever he’s trying to say, genuinely curious. This is making him feel better than anything has since he discovered that Dumbledore knew about the Horcruxes. “Yes, sir?” he asks politely, when Fudge seems to have ground to a halt and is staring blankly at Harry.

“Did you know,” Fudge says, and takes a breath so deep that his next words seem to come out as a shout despite not being that loud, “that the goblins are using wands in the middle of Diagon Alley?”

“Oh, I didn’t know they were using them yet.”

“The wands that you gave them, Lord Slytherin?”

“Are they? That’s kind of surprising. I didn’t know that you could tell the wands I gave them from any other.”

Fudge glares at him. “Aren’t you worried about this?”

“Have they murdered anyone, sir? Stolen from anyone? Ripped anyone from limb to limb, or used the Imperius on them? If not, then they still haven’t committed the crimes that the human Death Eaters did. Most of which they got away with, too.”

“They were under the Imperius Curse!”

Harry’s eyebrows rise, and he gives Fudge a look that makes the man turn plum. “You think I’m stupid,” he snarls.

“No, sir, not stupid. Gullible, perhaps.”

Fudge gapes at him, and Harry thinks that maybe he shouldn’t have said that. But…

He is so, so sick of pretending that everything humans do is fine, and everything goblins (or merfolk, or centaurs) do is wrong. And it seems that no matter what actions he takes or what he says or how soothing he is, Fudge is going to be suspicious of him.

So why not give the man something to be suspicious of? Really suspicious?

Harry leans forwards with a slight smile and calls up the Slytherin magic the way he would if he were infusing the medallions with it. It loops in the air around him in lazy green patterns, waving back and forth until Harry knows it looks as if he’s floating in the middle of a cluster of vines.

“I plan to make alliances with magical people,” he says. “All the magical people. As far as I can tell, the Ministry just pardoned the Death Eaters last time, and that’s a big factor in Voldemort coming back now.”

“He is not back!”

Harry sighs a little. He’s not going to argue the point. “If you really think that, then you won’t appreciate the rest of my argument, but I’ll say it anyway. If goblins commit crimes with wands, then you can tell me, and I’ll talk to them. The same way if merpeople commit crimes with enchanted tridents—”

“You can’t give them enchanted tridents!”

“Why not?”

“Merlin took them away! Forever! You can’t undo that spell!”

“Well, we’ll see. Perhaps they’ll accept wands if I can’t.”

Fudge turns more purple than ever. “You can’t just do this!”

“I had my lawyer look up most of the relevant laws, you know.” It was actually a fairly sad afternoon with Justin shaking his head over the Ministry legal texts and getting more and more exasperated, but Harry doesn’t see the need to tell Fudge that. “It doesn’t actually say that goblins and merpeople can’t carry wands. The laws don’t even forbid beings from carrying wands. It just says that wizards and witches can carry them.”

“There you are, then!”

“The laws don’t say only witches and wizards can do that.”

“Everyone knows—”

“But it’s not written into the laws.”

Fudge splutters. Harry waits out the results of the spluttering, something that he’s not expecting to produce much except spit. Sure enough, Fudge finishes and wails, “But it’s—it can’t be that we overlooked something like that! That generations of us overlooked something like that!”

“If everyone assumed the laws said that, and didn’t check, or didn’t call attention to it if they did check…”

“The Wizengamot will pass new laws!”

“And how long is that going to take, when everyone has their hands out?”

Fudge’s cheeks turn the color of a bruised rose. “Are you accusing me of bribing the Wizengamot?”

“I didn’t say anything about money, Minister. Just that I know the Ministry runs on favors. Can you come up with favors that everyone on the Wizengamot wants, and get those favors in time for them to pass a quick law?”

“We only need half the Wizengamot plus one!”

“So fifty-one people, then?”

Fudge almost stomps his foot. “Why can’t you see what you’re doing is dangerous to our future?”

“I don’t think it’s more dangerous than complacency or refusing to change. We’ve done that for years, because people in the Ministry and on the Wizengamot and other places didn’t want to change. Now we’ll try it my way.”

Fudge tries a few other arguments, but they die before he even gets them out. He can probably see that they’re not going to make an impact. He finally throws his hands up and stomps sulkily off towards the gates that lead back to Hogsmeade. Harry watches him go.

“Was that the wisest course?”

Susan has come up behind him. Harry shoots her a small smile. “Maybe not, but there’s no way that we can compromise with him the way he wants. Either we’re in favor of goblins and other people carrying wands, or we’re not.”

Susan nods. Her expression is smooth, unreadable. “I suppose the goblins are allying with you after all.”

“Choosing to use the wands I gave them. There’s a difference.”

“But surely using the wands implies approval of your other choices?’

“Does it?”

Susan rolls her eyes. “Now you sound like a goblin yourself,” she mutters, and goes back to teaching a couple of fourth-years the Patronus Charm.

Harry takes a deep breath. He thinks he can feel the magic in the air around him shifting, responding to invisible currents.

Maybe this will mean an open conflict with the Ministry. Maybe not. But Harry knows that what he said is right.

Stand up for other people or don’t stand up for them. There is no compromise in the middle, not when it comes down to this.

Chapter Text

PRIVATE ARMIES TO BE MADE ILLEGAL!

Harry blinks and stares at the story on the front page of the paper, then snorts. He feeds Ahalam a piece of cheese and only shakes his head when Hermione gives him a concerned look. “I didn’t know Fudge was going to do that, but it doesn’t matter.”

“Why not?” Fred leans over his shoulder. “Seems like it might matter to him, Harrikins.”

“Because other people were the only ones who thought that our Defense practice group was ever an army. It isn’t, so this won’t affect us.”

Fred is quiet. Harry folds the paper and puts it down, glancing curiously over his shoulder. He wonders if Fred thinks this is the start of a bigger campaign against him by the Ministry.

And, well, it is, but it’s still not the kind of thing Harry needs to worry about. He’s going to dance with the Ministry, because he needs to, but this particular law is just going to result in some skirmishes of words and nothing else.

“What if—” Fred says.

“We consider ourselves your army?” George asks, propping an elbow on his twin’s shoulder and watching Harry in a way that makes Harry’s spine prickle with a sudden warning of danger.

Harry opens his mouth. Then he closes it, because he won’t be able to say anything sensible. The idea is so stupid that—

“But why would you want to think like Umbridge and Fudge?” is what he finally settles on, and is more than a little astonished to see Fred rolling his eyes instead of looking offended or just laughing.

“Stupid people have good ideas sometimes. And George and I have been discussing what we want to do since our seventh year is ending, you know—”

“Career goals—”

“And generals in Lord Slytherin’s Army that’s going to be changing the magical world sounds pretty good to us.”

“But you’re going to open a joke shop!”

“Cheese.”

“We can do both,” George says. “One of them is the career that will satisfy our creative instincts and put money on the table.”

“And one of them is the career that will let us test all these delightful products that we’re designing.”

“Cheese!”

“And make sure they’re safe before we sell them, like.”

“And let us decide which ones we shouldn’t sell at all because they might end up in the hands of our enemies.”

“You have enemies?” Harry asks, trying to keep his tone as light as possible while he reels internally. “Other than the people you’ve tested all your pranks on when they could figure out it was you?”

“Our enemies,” George says, and gives him a chiding glance. “As in, yours and mine and Forge’s and—I suppose we can say that little Ronniekins and little Theodore’s enemies are ours as well, right?”

“Don’t let him hear you call him little Theodore.”

“And of course, sometimes we might have to defend ourselves from people who don’t like our sense of humor.”

“Cheeeeeese!”

Harry shakes his head. “I appreciate the gesture, both of you, but I don’t have an army and you’re not generals in it.”

“Lieutenants?”

“No.”

“Hear that, Fred? We can choose our own rank.”

“There is no army!”

“That’s what you think,” Fred says, and he and George rip off salutes to Harry that make half the Great Hall stare and march off with their chests puffed out, calling out commands to each other.

Harry buries his head in his hands.

“There shall be cheese! Now!”

At least Ahalam is a lot easier to pacify. Even if it also means that Harry will have to bring him up to the Headmaster’s office after breakfast, given Dumbledore’s pointed stare in his direction.

*

“Surely you can see why this would be a dangerous precedent, Harry?”

“Of course, sir. But it’s not like I knew Fred and George were going to march up to me and do that.”

“Shiny.”

Harry sighs and readjusts Ahalam, who’s squirming on his shoulder. Since Harry didn’t let him have the bracelet with the Mer-Queen’s Stone of Truce in it, Ahalam has been fascinated by shiny things.

In this case, it happens to be Fawkes’s feathers, and the phoenix is giving them a look of annoyed confusion.

“You must control your followers better, Harry. Otherwise, who knows what kind of ideas they could give the Ministry?”

Harry stares at Dumbledore a little blankly. “Control them?”

“You claim dominion over them as Lord Slytherin, Harry. Yes, that means you are responsible for their actions and must control them.”

“I mean, no? That’s not the way it works. There are things they could do that would make me tell them to stop and then tell them to go away if they did them. If they committed murder or something like that, I’d turn them over to the Aurors. But I don’t control their thoughts. Or their actions. And what Fred and George did earlier is just—stupid. But not something that needs to be controlled.”

Dumbledore closes his eyes and massages his face with one hand. It’s the one where his skin is cracked and blackened from the Horcrux. Harry feels sorry for him.

“You realize that Fudge will use actions like the twins’ to support his idea that you do have an army?”

“Yes, but he’d still need to prove it.”

“He might have no trouble doing that.”

“How?”

“If he convened enough of the biased voices on the Wizengamot, the ones who think that you are an out-of-control young man and who would try to—”

“If that’s the case, please give me their names, sir. They didn’t speak up when the Smiths tried to bring that legislation, but you’re right that they might try to do something if Fudge concocts a lie.”

For some reason, Dumbledore frowns, hard. “I wouldn’t say that it was any particular group on the Wizengamot.”

“Okay? Then you can’t give me names?”

“I don’t know who would do what because this has never happened before,” Dumbledore says, and Harry realizes with a start that the Headmaster is frightened and confused. He has both hands clenched into fists in front of him, and he stares at Harry with slightly crazed eyes, as if that would change things. “No one’s raised a private army before, no one’s armed goblins with wands before, no one’s challenged the sitting Minister in such a fashion before—”

“Sir. Please calm down.”

“I am not upset.”

Harry doesn’t know what he might have said to reach Dumbledore, but surprisingly, it’s Fawkes who does. He shakes his feathers and gives a little trill. When Dumbledore turns towards him, he flies over and leans his head against the underside of Dumbledore’s chin, singing softly.

Dumbledore closes his eyes and slowly relaxes.

“Sir?”

“Yes. I am calmer now, Harry.” Dumbledore still looks weary as he opens his eyes. “You do not—you do not see the consequences that might spill forth from this, whether or not there is any evidence? How people might choose to believe Fudge’s version of events out of pure fear, even if they would not normally?”

“I suppose.”

“You still sound doubtful.”

“I just don’t think we can act on fear. That’s what Fudge is doing, and that’s what all the people who believe that goblins don’t deserve wands and merfolk don’t deserve tridents are doing. What are we going to turn into if we’re just like them?”

“Please do not tell me that you are going to give the merfolk enchanted tridents, Harry.”

“Okay.”

“What?”

“I won’t tell you.”

Dumbledore stares at the far wall for a minute. Fawkes croons more insistently and rubs his head under Dumbledore’s chin harder than ever. Dumbledore still looks a little blank and tired as he reaches up to pet the phoenix.

Harry leans forwards, wondering if he can make his point while Dumbledore is being soothed by phoenix song. “It’s really going to be okay, sir. I don’t plan to take control of the whole magical world or anything like Fudge thinks I’m going to.”

“Then what are you going to do?”

“Teach people to form their own webs of trust that can bind us together.”

“What do you mean, a web of trust?”

“Right, I forgot that you didn’t know about that. Sorry, sir. Let me explain…”

*

“How did he take it?” Ernie is the first one to ask when Harry meets up with a few of his people in the Room of Requirement.

Harry sighs and leans back in the chair that the Room conjures for him. It’s just the right size, perfectly soft and fluffy. Ahalam, who has been hissing disappointedly about not receiving something shiny since they were in Dumbledore’s office, at least is happy to slither down Harry’s side and curl up on the cushion. “He was afraid.”

“What?”

“Why?”

“I thought You-Know-Who was afraid of him, not the other way around.”

Harry dredges up a smile for Zacharias, who said that last thing. “I don’t think it’s as simple as that.”

“No, of course not.” Hermione nods, her hair sparking with magic. Susan is looking at her thoughtfully, probably feeling the signature of another spell Hermione invented, but Hermione ignores her. “He likely feels anxiety that something new is happening, and he doesn’t control it. That he never heard of something like this, and that it might get into hands where it could be misused. The Death Eaters’, for example.”

Theo gives such a dark laugh that everyone in the Room turns to stare at him. “The Death Eaters would never have the kind of trust and loyalty that would fuel a web,” he says, and nothing else.

“How do you know?” Hermione asks.

Theo looks at her.

“Whatever the reason is,” Harry says, “Dumbledore’s afraid enough that he wants to oppose us, but he’s also held back by the fact that he thinks love and loyalty are such worthy things that he doesn’t want to oppose them. So he won’t do anything for right now.”

“So it’s no different from where he stood before?” Susan shakes her head in disgust.

“He’s more confused now,” Harry offers.

Susan laughs and stands. “If you’ll excuse me, my lord, Theo and I have a research date.”

“About what kind of research?”

Susan and Theo give him identical cutting smiles that show they have definitely been spending too much time together, and then they leave. Harry sighs after them.

“You know that they would tell you if you really wanted to know,” Ron says. Hermione shuts her mouth, probably because she was going to say something similar, and nods.

“No, they wouldn’t. I already asked them.”

“But—you could command them?” Ernie asks, as if he thinks the words might offend Harry.

“Could,” Harry says, “but I won’t.”

His people exchange glances. Hermione is the one who shakes her head. “I don’t actually think that as many people are going to be able to learn the webs of trust as you do,” she says. “But it’s good that we’re going to try.”

Chapter Text

Harry knew that something was going to happen, because frankly too many of his people have been exchanging glances all day long in their Defense practice, but he didn’t know that it would result in a sudden, sharp tug on—

It feels like part of him. It is part of him, something small but extending beyond his body, tethered to another person.

Harry knows what it means even though it’s only been theoretical up to this point. Someone just cast a spell at someone wearing one of his medallions.

He snarls in spite of himself and hurtles in the direction that the tug comes from, then stops, helpless. He knows the basic direction, but he can’t tell if it’s somewhere on the Hogwarts grounds, or beyond them, or how far away it is—

“My lord.”

Gwen and Theo have come up on either side of him, already arraying themselves in such a fashion that Harry knows they felt the tug, too. He nods to them. “Can you find out who that is? Where it is?”

“Hermione and Susan are doing that, tracing the web of trust as best they can,” Theo says in an absent voice. He waves his wand and casts a Summoning Charm, making Harry jump as Ahalam, who’s been sleeping on the grass, promptly zooms towards him and lands on his arm. Ahalam stirs.

“I was sleeping. Why did you wake me up?” He lifts his head. “Is there cheese?”

“No,” Harry hisses back, and realizes that Gwen and Theo are gently, respectfully, relentlessly shepherding him in the direction of the school. “Let me go! Put me back! Someone needs me.”

“Our priority is keeping you safe, my lord,” Gwen says, and spins around to land in a crouch when someone moves abruptly behind them. But it’s just Fred and George, jogging towards them with grim expressions.

“We’ll take point,” Fred says.

“In case someone’s set a trap in the school itself,” George says.

“Or in case our lord gets any ideas into his head,” Fred says, his own head tilted, before he and George salute stupidly and run away.

Harry turns to look back at the Defense group. He sees that Sirius has come out of the school, along with McGonagall, and they’re talking to his people. He takes a long breath and relaxes as much as he can. At least the students should be safer with a couple of professors nearby if an attack comes.

“This way, Harry.”

Harry knows he will cause more distress if he tries to get away from Theo and Gwen now, or get in Fred and George’s way. So he walks sedately, but his eyes are darting ahead, trying to find any trace of the person who used the medallion.

“What are we doing?”

“Someone used the medallion, so we’re going to safety.”

Ahalam rears up the way he did when the merfolk offered him the bubble that would let him go underwater. “I can protect the cheese!”

“I’ll keep that in mind.”

Harry manages to smile for all of a second before the direction of the pull from the medallion changes. Now it’s coming from somewhere in front of him, from the school, definitely. He begins to run.

Gwen charges in front of him. Theo comes behind.

Harry heads past the Great Hall and straight up the grand staircase in the direction of the hospital wing. His stomach is cold by the time he pushes the doors open and they fly back against the walls.

“Mr. Potter, my goodness—”

Daphne is lying on a hospital bed near the back.

Harry feels as though he’s taken a Bludger to the chest. He’s running towards her, and then he’s there, and it seems like there were no steps in between. He grabs her hand and holds it. Ahalam wraps tightly around Harry’s neck and leans down to stare at Daphne.

“She is not shiny.”

It takes only a moment for Harry to see what he means. The medallion around Daphne’s neck has cracked in two, and only pieces like half-moons hang on the chain. Harry touches it with a trembling finger.

Lingering magic welcomes him.

Harry swallows. He thought from the slight impact he felt that whoever had been attacked only sustained a small spell. A jinx, maybe. But this says that it was a proper curse, and the medallion probably saved Daphne’s life.

“My lord.”

The voice is so small that Harry thinks it’s from behind him at first. But then he realizes Daphne’s eyes are open, and she’s holding out her clenched fist towards him.

“None of that!” Madam Pomfrey is bustling over. “Miss Greengrass, you are to lie still!”

“Madam Pomfrey, she has something to give me.”

The mediwitch hesitates. Harry meets and holds her eyes. He hopes that she’s remembering, the way he is, the day when she told him he could tell the truth about the abuse the Dursleys inflicted on him or say that it came from necromantic blood wards. He made the choice to say that the blood wards were necromantic and damage Dumbledore’s reputation for the sake of keeping his people safe by not looking weak.

He will do anything he has to to keep them safe. Madam Pomfrey should know that.

“Ten minutes at the most,” Madam Pomfrey finally says, and steps back with a heavy frown.

Harry promptly turns back to Daphne and holds out his hand. Daphne takes a moment to pry at her fingers, panting with pain. The fist opens slowly, slowly, and then Daphne cries out as something in a crystal bubble tumbles free.

Harry scoops the bubble up with a Seeker’s speed. The bubble is wrapped around what he actually thinks is a piece of string attached to a stone at first, it’s so dirty. Then he sees it’s a gold ring, with a black stone at the top that has some kind of odd carving on it.

Harry stares at the ring, then at Daphne. She gives him an exhausted smile and lets her head fall back against the pillow behind her. “I know you’re looking for these,” she whispers. “And I knew I recognized the aura of Dark magic from something in my cousin’s collection. So I went and got it.”

A Horcrux. That’s what it has to be, although at the moment, any Dark aura that Harry might sense is muffled by the crystal bubble wrapped around the thing. All of his hair tries to stand on end, and he swallows. “Daphne,” he whispers.

“Take care of it, my lord.” And she faints.

“She was hit by a Blood-Boiling Curse,” Madam Pomfrey says in a low, angry voice as she comes forwards to cast some healing spells and some diagnostics on Daphne, and then turns and glares at Harry. “She is going to rest.”

Harry nods hastily. He absolutely agrees that Daphne should rest, if only because he’ll want to speak to her later about what she means.

How she knew.

Theo is silent behind him, but in the way a building storm is silent. Harry knows he’ll be thinking of the angles, trying to figure out who could be a traitor.

Harry can think of at least one way Daphne could have learned about Horcruxes without a traitor being present. But he’ll still have to wait to ask her.

He tucks the crystal bubble in a robe pocket. Ahalam watches as he does so.

“Not shiny.”

“I know. It’s dirty.”

Madam Pomfrey still starts a little at the sound of Parseltongue, but doesn’t say anything as she watches them leave.

“No. It is not shiny because it is not shiny.”

And Ahalam wraps his head into his tail and refuses to say what he means for the rest of the journey back to Gryffindor Tower.

*

“I don’t understand why you’re not more worried about traitors, my lord.”

“Because I think I know how she did it, Theo.”

Theo turns to face Harry, his body coiled like he’s a snake. “Please tell me, my lord.”

Harry sighs a little and glances around to make sure they’re really alone in this corridor. Then he nods and raises a Privacy Charm anyway. “Daphne knows about the Room of Requirement. I think she asked for a version of the Room that would show her what we were concerned about. It would have given her a book on Horcruxes, or maybe shown her a vision. And then I think she probably asked for a version that would show her an actual Horcrux. The diadem was in there for a long time. I think the Room could reproduce it.”

“So she knew what the aura of it felt like.”

“Yes.”

Theo exhales, staring at the far wall. Then he says, “I am ashamed, my lord.”

“What? Why?”

“Because I did not think that the Room could be used that way. I failed you.”

Harry groans a little. “Theo, I don’t know for sure that she did use it that way. I just think it’s more likely than someone managing to be a traitor and one of us not noticing. Or that person telling Daphne in particular about Horcruxes. They wouldn’t know that she had access to one.”

“I didn’t even know that her cousin was a Death Eater.”

Harry shrugs. “I didn’t, either.”

Theo’s lips firm. “I do believe it would be best to remove the knowledge of the Room of Requirement from most of your people’s minds. This time, it was Daphne who figured out how to use it. But next time, it might be someone who could use it for a much more dangerous purpose.”

“You want me to Obliviate them?”

“Of course not, my lord.”

Harry relaxes.

“I would do it.”

“Theo.”

“What?” Theo’s eyes are so wide and innocent that they look as if they might melt down his face. “Be assured, my lord, that I know you don’t want to Memory Charm your followers. And it would probably damage the web of trust between you. But I would do it.”

“If I allowed you to, then I would also damage the web,” Harry snaps.

Theo frowns. “True. I suppose I shouldn’t have told you my plan.”

“You wouldn’t even have brought this up if I hadn’t told you about how Daphne probably used the Room of Requirement.”

They scowl at each other for a moment. Then Harry leans forwards. Time, he supposes, to test the limits of the bond between them. This isn’t something he would do with any of his followers besides Theo, but then, Theo isn’t like the others.

“Theo,” he says quietly. “Stand down.”

Theo takes a sharp breath. There’s a moment when Harry genuinely doesn’t know what he’ll do. Then, slowly, Theo bows to him.

Ugh.

But Harry’s own dislike of bows and bodyguards and the like didn’t make him run away from those bodyguards when they were herding him away from potential danger, because he knew he would get in their way. And his own dislike of commanding people doesn’t let him hold back from commanding Theo now, when so much is at stake, and Theo has given Harry the right to command him that others haven’t. He holds his ground, and stares at Theo evenly, while Theo holds the bow.

Then Theo straightens, and smiles at him. “Yes, my lord. I won’t Memory Charm them.”

“Thank you,” Harry says.

“The Room of Requirement remains a problem,” Theo says briskly, as if they never had their little confrontation. “How are we going to deal with it?”

“Find the other Horcruxes as fast as possible,” Harry says grimly. “And destroy them. And ask the Room of Requirement how to do it.”

Chapter Text

“It’s most unusual that you would come to see me, Harry. Most unusual. But I’m glad you did.”

“I need to know more about the Horcrux you destroyed, sir.”

Dumbledore pauses in pouring his tea. Ahalam leans out from around Harry’s neck, where he slept most of the way up to the Headmaster’s office. But of course Harry’s luck couldn’t last forever when it came to that. “Does he have cheese?”

“No, he doesn’t.”

“Why not?”

“He just doesn’t.”

“He is not a good host,” Ahalam says, and retreats to curl up into a sulky ball before Harry can ask him where he learned about ideas of good hosts and bad ones.

Dumbledore clears his throat. Harry turns back to him, and sees that Dumbledore has taken his wounded hand out of his sleeve. Or his cursed hand. As Harry leans forwards and studies it, he’s more inclined to think that no ordinary spell could have done this kind of damage.

“May I ask what you know about other Horcruxes, Harry?”

“That obvious that I’m researching them, sir?”

“That, plus I did hear a few details from Madam Pomfrey about your friend who left the school and returned wounded.”

He isn’t going to use Daphne’s name, it seems. Harry shrugs, while wondering if Madam Pomfrey told Dumbledore the details entirely willingly, or if she had her mind read. “She brought back a large ring with a black stone. She had felt its presence among her cousin’s things and thought that it was probably a Horcrux.”

Maybe Dumbledore also knows that she used the Room of Requirement to learn about it—which Daphne has confirmed—but if not, there’s no reason to alert the Headmaster to that.

“Impossible.”

“Sir?” Harry half-rises from his chair. Dumbledore has gone so pale that he honestly looks as if he might topple forwards. Fawkes must be concerned, too, because he flies over and lands on Dumbledore’s shoulder, crooning and touching his beak to the side of Dumbledore’s chin.

“I destroyed that ring.”

Harry raises his eyebrows and takes the crystal protective bubble, like the one that Daphne wrapped the ring in originally but stronger, from his robe pocket. “Does this look like the one you destroyed, sir?”

Dumbledore leans forwards and stares, then swallows. “It does. But—how could your friend touch that without getting cursed?”

“She wrapped it in the bubble,” Harry says. He decides to leave out that Daphne was cursed, just by someone casting at her rather than from the Horcrux. Dumbledore doesn’t need to know all about the medallions or the web of trust, or how well it works. “I didn’t have the impression that she had to go into someplace vastly dangerous to get it. She had access to her cousin’s house. That—wasn’t the same with you?”

“No.” Dumbledore closes his eyes, opens them, and takes a deep breath, and Harry sees the moment when the man decides to take a leap of faith and trust him. “I visited a shack that had belonged to Tom Riddle’s ancestors, the Gaunts. I discovered the ring beneath a set of floorboards and foolishly picked it up and put it on because I believed that I saw—well, it doesn’t matter now.”

Not trusting me with everything, then.

“The ring cursed me at once. If it hadn’t been for Professor Snape’s facility with potions, I would not now be alive.”

Harry nods. He can believe that, and he can also refuse to give any respect or consideration to “Professor” Snape if this is Dumbledore’s subtle way of encouraging him to. “Why did you put it on, sir?”

“That gets into personal matters that I am not prepared to discuss, Harry.”

“All right, sir. How did you destroy it?”

Dumbledore hesitates some more. Harry waits, and resists the urge to shout at him. He really does want to trust and work with the man, but he can’t if Dumbledore hides everything for no good reason.

“The Sword of Gryffindor,” Dumbledore says at last, softly. “Because the blade is still filled with venom, it enabled me to strike and destroy it much the way that you did with the basilisk fang in your second year.”

“Thank you for telling me, sir. You saw the way the ring reacted when you destroyed it?”

“Yes, of course. I watched it all the way through. I wanted to make sure it was gone.”

“Can I have the Sword now so that we can see if it’s the same way that this one reacts?”

Dumbledore hesitates once more, then stands and goes over to fetch the Sorting Hat from the shelf where it’s resting. Unusually, or at least so Harry thinks, Fawkes touches the Hat with a wing before Dumbledore hands it to Harry and sings a soft trill.

Then again, Fawkes did bring Harry the Hat in the Chamber. Maybe they have a sort of special bond.

Stranger things have happened. Like me being Lord Slytherin and having a snake who’s obsessed with cheese.

“Thanks,” Harry says, as Dumbledore hands the Hat to him. He takes it into his hands and closes his eyes, trying to tell it what he needs, but then feels a bit silly and just sets it on his head. Dumbledore can probably get Madam Pomfrey pretty fast if Harry falls unconscious because he was brained by the Sword of Gryffindor.

As though I would be so careless with it, Mr. Potter.

You did let it fall pretty fast in the Chamber of Secrets.

That was an emergency. The Sorting Hat pauses for a long moment. And you seem to be indicating that this is as well?

Well, I do want to see what happens when the Sword touches this ring. Both to make sure that it’s really a Horcrux, and to compare it with the Headmaster’s memories of what might be a fake Horcrux.

“I do see, I do see,” the Hat says aloud. “Very well, Mr. Potter, the Sword!”

Harry hastily takes the Hat off and manages to move it just in time. The huge Sword rattles to the ground with a clatter that makes Fawkes take off from Dumbledore’s shoulder with a little squawk, although Harry has a hard time imagining him being really startled. Ahalam peers down as Harry picks up the blade.

“Shiny.”

Harry rolls his eyes. Now Ahalam is going to start asking for swords along with bracelets and cheese. He wonders how long the list will be by the end of the year.

He puts the crystal bubble down on the chair and stands up, making sure that every part of his body is well out of reach of the Horcrux. He doesn’t think he needs to take it out of the bubble because the basilisk venom ought to destroy that as well.

Then he takes a deep breath and brings down the Sword.

It strikes into the bubble and destroys it with a ringing sound that seems to hum far deeper into Harry’s bones than it should. A second later, it hits the ring, and Harry watches as the gold and the black stone split and the room fills with shrieking and the dripping of black, blood-like liquid down from the Horcrux.

It looks a lot like what happened when the diary died.

Harry steps back, shaken. The Sorting Hat is rocking back and forth, and Harry drops the Sword into it. A second later, the Hat turns and makes a sort of odd hopping motion, and Fawkes swoops in, picks it up, and flies over to deposit it on the shelf.

“That’s what happened when the diary died,” Harry murmurs. “Or near enough.”

He turns to Dumbledore, who looks more deathly pale than he did before. He stares down at his hand, then at the destroyed Horcrux on the chair, and then at Harry with a look of helplessness that makes Harry wince.

“That didn’t happen?” Harry asks.

Dumbledore closes his eyes. “No. The ring tore in half, and a cloud of red smoke rose up from it and made a cackling sound like—like Voldemort’s laughter. Then it dissipated.” He opens his eyes and stares down at his hand once more. “Someone created a clever fake, and cursed it so that, I suppose, Voldemort would not know the difference if he came to check on it.”

It’s Harry’s turn to wince. It does seem rather hard that Dumbledore should have taken the risk of finding and trying to end a Horcrux, only to be caught by the curse that someone thought they had to put on the decoy.

But something else is—well, not more important, but something that Harry might actually be able to change.

“Who knew enough about the Horcruxes to make a fake and leave the one you destroyed in its place?” he asks. “And how did the real Horcrux end up in the collection of Daphne’s cousin?”

Dumbledore looks at him with wordless confusion. For once, he’s not alone.

“The shiny went away.”

“You can’t have the Sword, Ahalam. What would you do with it?”

“Admire it.”

Harry smiles with the same helplessness. At least his snake does manage to cheer him up.

*

“And he did let you borrow the Sword to destroy the diadem and the locket.”

“Yes.”

“It meant exposing to him the fact that you’d found that many Horcruxes, though, my lord. I don’t like it.”

Harry leans back in his chair—in the Room of Requirement, where he often meets now with Theo, Susan, Ron, Hermione, Ernie, and sometimes Gwen or Sirius—and shakes his head. “He already knew about their existence, and he possessed something that could destroy them. We had to take the chance to do it.”

“What about the one in Harry?” Hermione demands, leaning a little forwards.

“We’re handling that,” Susan says at once.

Harry twitches. Hermione looks back and forth between him and Susan. “I thought you had told Harry what you were doing,” she says, and her fingers are drumming on her leg in a way that Harry knows means she really disapproves and is going to speak up a lot more about this if someone can’t reassure her.

“I trust them,” Harry says quietly, drawing Hermione’s attention. “I trust that they won’t do anything to harm me.”

“But you should get to know what they’re doing.”

“I didn’t tell them about the medallions in advance. I trust that we’ll get to the point where we can reveal the truth to each other, and none of us are going to die or get hurt because of it.”

“And if my lord distrusted us so much,” Theo says at once, bowing his head in Hermione’s direction, “then it would utterly disrupt the web of trust that binds us and keeps the medallions working.”

Hermione’s eyes widen, because she doesn’t appear to have considered that. But then she scowls. “Bollocks.”

“What do you mean?” Theo widens his eyes. “It’s not bollocks. It’s very important.”

“I mean that you say that now, but it’s not the reason that you kept the secret from Harry in the first place. You did it because you were worried he would try to stop you from saving his life if it meant sacrificing yours.”

Harry shifts. At the moment, not even the bright room he’s sitting in, filled with squashy chairs, can cheer him much. He does think that, but hearing Hermione say it makes him worry again about what Theo and Susan are doing.

“Yes,” Theo says calmly. “And he might have. But what matters right now is that we’re making progress, and there’s no way that Harry will have to die, and he also won’t damage the web of trust that protects everyone else by ordering us to stop.”

Hermione squints at Theo. “You’re devious.”

“So kind of you to notice.”

Harry rolls his eyes and breaks in before Hermione and Theo can get into some kind of argument that will end with them spilling (metaphorical, he hopes) blood. “Hermione, do you think that you can invent a spell that allow us to identify the existence of other Horcruxes based on the ones we have? The broken remnants must be good for something.”

Hermione narrows her eyes, looking intrigued by the challenge. “I’m not sure, Harry, but I can try.”

“All right.” Harry happily gives her the remains of the ring. He had Sirius check it over, and Theo, and a few other people, just to make sure it was free of any remnants of the wasting curse that was on the fake Horcrux and attacked Dumbledore’s hand. Hermione turns the stone over, staring at it.

“What is it?” Harry asks.

“I’m not sure. Something…”

Harry waits, but she doesn’t say anything more, and in the end, Harry nods and stands up. “Thanks, Hermione. I appreciate that you’re willing to do this.”

Hermione flashes him a quick smile and leaves the Room with the remnants of the ring. Ernie shifts and clears his throat. Harry nods to him, and tries not to feel how much like Voldemort he’s acting. At least, Voldemort seen in some of the dreams, when he nodded at a trusted advisor to give their opinion.

Granted, those dreams were really rare.

“May I ask why you entrusted Hermione with studying the broken Horcruxes, my lord? Some of our number might have more expertise.”

“Yes, but I already know that Hermione has invented successful spells, and I don’t know that about anyone else.”

“We might have.”

“Yes, but I don’t know that if so.”

Ernie blinks. “So if we do something important and wondrous, we should just come and talk to you about it?”

“Yes.” Harry squints at Ernie. “Did I…not make that clear enough?” Then again, he doesn’t think that this exact situation has come up before. Either his followers told him things they can do, like Theo, or were willing to do, like Ernie shielding his mind, or asked him for help developing their skills, like Blaise with casting the Patronus.

“You did. I suppose that—”

But Ernie doesn’t say what he supposes, and after a few more minutes of studying him, Harry supposes that he has to let it go. He smiles at Ernie, hoping that he can make him feel more at home instead of left out like he appeared to feel, and then turns to Susan and Theo. “I know that you aren’t going to tell me exactly what you’re doing—”

“No.”

“But I want you to swear to me that it isn’t going to expose you to the kind of danger that attacked Daphne.”

Susan stares at him. “Do you mean, if it exposes us to Horcruxes?”

“Not exactly.” Harry sighs and rubs his forehead with one hand, and then flinches when he thinks he feels a blast of heat from the scar. Not pain, exactly. He hasn’t had that, or one of his visions, since Ernie armored his mind. But this is still—well, ugly. He drops his hand. “If you think that it’ll be so dangerous you end up in a hospital bed.”

“That distressed you,” Theo says.

Harry rolls his eyes at Theo. “Yes, exactly, what let you know?”

“I meant only that it would be in our own best interests to protect ourselves from that kind of danger, in the name of protecting you.” Theo nods. “I promise, my lord, that what Susan and I are dealing with is entirely theoretical at this point. It has no chance of wounding us the way Daphne was wounded.”

Harry sighs. “Thank you.”

Later, he will notice the little loopholes left by Theo’s words. Such as “at this point.”

And that he and Susan never promised it wouldn’t expose them to Horcruxes.

Chapter Text

Harry has noticed Professor Flitwick watching him in Charms class today, but he didn’t pay it any mind until the professor asked him to stay after. Now Harry is standing in Flitwick’s office and watching the little professor bustle around making tea, and wondering if any of his followers are outside the door ready to storm it if he doesn’t appear in a certain amount of time.

No, wait. Of course they are. It just matters which ones are.

“Here you are, Mr. Potter.”

Harry accepts the tea with a murmured thanks, and then sits down on the edge of the chair that Professor Flitwick pushes towards him with a quick smile. Harry doesn’t see any signs of hostile intent, and it’s certainly true that the Charms professor has never hated him like Snape did, but he’s also not telling Harry what he wants to talk about.

After everything, that strikes Harry as a bad sign.

Professor Flitwick sips from his teacup, sighs, and then puts it down, leaning forwards to focus intently on Harry. “Mr. Potter, are you aware that you are unlikely to pass your Charms O.W.L. at the rate you are going?”

Harry blinks. “Sorry, professor? I didn’t think that my class performance was that dismal.”

“Your practical performance is astounding.” Flitwick waves his hand to dismiss this as if it’s a bad thing. “But your theoretical performance in your essays is very weak. And I called on you to answer a question last week, and you gave me one completely disconnected from the actual question I had asked. Why is that, Mr. Potter?”

Harry does actually remember that, but only because Hermione scolded him about it afterwards. He sighs. “I’m sorry, professor. Everything that’s happening lately with politics and my friends being hurt and being Lord Slytherin has been distracting me.”

“Your O.W.L.S. are the most important investment you can make in your future, Mr. Potter—”

Flitwick stops speaking. It takes Harry a moment to realize that’s because he’s laughing, and his laughter is ringing around the professor’s office and apparently bouncing off invisible walls.

“Well, Mr. Potter, really!”

Flitwick looks so offended that Harry raises his hands in apology. “Sorry, professor,” he says. “But do you really think that? I think the most important investment I can make in my future is surviving it.”

“Well, of course. But how can you get a job in the Ministry or elsewhere without good O.W.L. scores? And of course that influences the classes that you can take in your last two years at Hogwarts—”

“I know, sir. But I have to get there first. And Voldemort is going to keep trying to kill me no matter how hard I study. I think that I need to study Defense more than anything else, so that’s what I’ve been doing.”

And that’s what will keep my followers alive the most easily, too.

“Charms can be an important component of a successful defense,” Professor Flitwick says earnestly. “I was an award-winning duelist myself, you know, and I specialized mostly in charms.”

Harry raises his eyebrows. He didn’t think about that. “Well, I would ask for dueling lessons, sir, but I know that you’re too busy to—”

“I actually offer study time after my last class each Tuesday evening. Were you unaware, Mr. Potter?”

“I—yes, sir.”

Professor Flitwick studies him for a long moment. When he speaks, it’s gentle, but Harry still flinches as though under a whip. “I think that you’ve been carrying a burden far beyond your years, and for years now, Mr. Potter,” he says quietly. “I would invite you to remember that you are also an ordinary student, one who deserves just as much time and care to spend on your schoolwork as others do.”

Harry bows his head. He could say lots of things in response to that, including that he thinks he has to be Lord Slytherin before anything else, that he would forgive himself for failing the O.W.L.S. but he would never forgive himself for letting one of his friends be hurt, that the words expects a lot more of him than any “ordinary student.”

But he lets the words die out when he meets Flitwick’s steady, compassionate gaze. Honestly, the man looks as if he knows that and as if he would fight for Harry’s right to be an ordinary student anyway.

Harry smiles. “Thank you, sir. I’ll take you up on that offer of dueling training.”

“Of course, Mr. Potter. As long as you promise to concentrate harder on the theory portion of Charms.”

“Yes, sir,” Harry says. He’s not even irritated at the condition. It makes sense that Flitwick would set it.

And in the meantime, he thinks Hermione will be thrilled to help him draw up a study schedule to focus more on Charms theory.

*

“Who’s that?”

Harry blinks and leans around Ron to see who he’s talking about. An older witch is standing in the middle of the Great Hall, looking around, as huffy as Harry is when Hermione forces him to study too much for his Charms theory. She has sleek grey hair and pale skin and looks as if all her clothes are made of crystal. “I don’t know, honestly.”

“Harry! Tell me why you think that the Severing Charm is separate from the Severing Curse.”

Harry turns back to Hermione with a little sigh. Yes, Hermione finds it thrilling that Harry wants to review for his Charms theory exam. Harry wishes it were a little more thrilling for him. “Well, the Severing Charm causes less damage.”

“That depends on the force you cast it with. The difference between a charm and a curse isn’t impact.”

“What is it, then?”

“That’s what I’m asking you.”

Harry sighs again. Professor McGonagall is walking towards the unknown witch, who is staring down her nose as though McGonagall is someone completely unimpressive. Probably not a former Gryffindor, then. “I don’t know, Hermione.”

“Harry Potter! We went over this yesterday!”

Harry’s about to defend himself by pointing out that he had to stop Fred and George from attacking Seamus over a misunderstanding yesterday, but the unknown witch whips her head in his direction and says in a loud voice, “Harry Potter?”

“Yes?” Harry gives her a confused smile. He wonders if she’s someone else from the Ministry who is upset about him giving wands to the goblins or something. Honestly, at this point it would be a good holiday from Hermione’s relentless drilling.

“Well, finally!” The witch moves towards him, in the careful way of someone who needs a cane but refuses to use it. McGonagall hovers along beside her, frowning but also looking as though she doesn’t think she can interfere. “I want to know what you mean by sending me all those nasty letters, young man!”

Harry gapes at her. Hermione is looking back and forth between them so fast that Harry thinks she wants the ability to swivel her head all the way around like an owl’s.

“You don’t even recognize the person you’ve been tormenting with your nonsense?”

Harry thinks it must be her, but—“Olive Hornby?”

“The very same!” The woman halts in front of the Gryffindor table and glares at Harry down her nose the same way she did with McGonagall. “What do you mean by it, sending me all these letters and telling me that it was on the behalf of someone named Myrtle Warren? I don’t know any Myrtle Warren!”

“I think that’s a lie.”

Harry didn’t know he would speak the words until they were out, but, well, now they’re out and he did. Hornby gapes at him, spluttering soundlessly. Harry raises his hands and shrugs.

“What do you mean by it, young man?”

“You would have told me in your letters back if you really didn’t know who she was. Instead, you just like to yell at me for sending letters at all. And it’s not like you don’t know who I am.”

Hornby glares some more. Harry looks back at her. He can hear giggles spreading through the Great Hall, and he thinks that a few people have probably put together the mention of Myrtle with Moaning Myrtle, even if they didn’t know her last name.

“She’s dead.”

“I’m writing letters for her because she can’t be solid, yes. But that doesn’t mean that she doesn’t deserve an apology for what you did to her.”

“It was more than fifty years ago!”

“So you shouldn’t have a problem with apologizing, should you?”

Hornby folds her arms and stomps what looks like a rock crystal boot. “You’re a stubborn little bastard.”

“Sure. But I’ll just keep writing the letters and listening to your Howlers until you give an apology to Myrtle.”

Hornby glares at him. Harry looks back. He can feel Hermione tugging at his arm, maybe because she’s embarrassed about the way he’s talking to Hornby and maybe because he lied to her about not knowing who Hornby was. But he doesn’t look at her. He just leans forwards with his elbows folded on the table and stares at Hornby.

“You cannot call my student a stubborn little bastard, Olive!” Professor McGonagall says, sounding a little shocked.

Huh, she must have known her before even if they weren’t students at the same time, Harry thinks.

Hornby glares at McGonagall in turn. “I’ll call him what he is! I’m an old woman, I’ve earned the right to talk to people the way I want!”

“Ah. So you’re still a bully, then.”

Hornby glares at Harry again. Her hands are opening and closing as if she longs to punch him the Muggle way instead of curse him. Harry just grins at her and leans back in his seat.

“You could talk to Myrtle,” Harry says. “She’s still upset about what happened fifty years ago. She’s a ghost, they get trapped in the emotions of the past. Why not just apologize so that you can both move on?”

“I wasn’t wrong!”

“Then I suppose we’ll have to keep exchanging letters.”

Hornby would make a good rival for the dragon that Norberta has probably grown into, with the way that she’s huffing and stomping one foot like a paw scraping the ground. “I want them to stop!”

“Then apologize.”

“I wasn’t wrong!”

Harry spreads his hands.

Hornby turns around and walks out of the Great Hall with her feet clumping along as though she’s dragging a huge weight. Harry shakes his head. He’s continually amazed by how many people in the magical world will cling to their pride to avoid admitting they were wrong, even if doing so would rid them of a major inconvenience.

“Harry, you said—”

“Wouldn’t it be worth it to stop getting Howlers? Just stop writing letters for her!”

“You tell her, Lord Slytherin!”

Harry half-smiles at the people who are congratulating him or complaining at him and turns to deal with Hermione. “Sorry I lied to you.”

“Harry.”

“If she’d agreed to stop sending Howlers, I would have more time to study Charms theory.”

“Harry, we are going to talk about this—”

*

“Why would you write letters for a ghost?”

Harry glances up with a half-smile as he watches Draco come to a stop in front of him. They’re practicing outside again on a windy, sunny day, and he just finished helping Luna and a few other younger students create a Patronus. Draco seems to have been waiting to talk to him. “Why not? She helped me, and she asked this in return. And I do think that Olive Hornby ought to apologize.”

“Why?”

“She taunted Myrtle so badly that it’s part of the reason she died, and part of the reason that Myrtle is still here as a ghost after fifty years. Why wouldn’t I want to try and help Myrtle when that’s true?”

Draco hesitates. Then he says, “It could cause trouble.”

“Why? Olive Hornby is no one particularly famous or powerful, I think, or she would have mentioned it when she confronted me.”

“Other people might think that you care more about ghosts than humans. Or more about merfolk or goblins than humans, whoever you’re helping that’s human.”

Harry leans forwards. “Have you heard other Slytherins say that?”

Draco shifts from foot to foot. Then he murmurs, “Not really. But some of them are talking about their older brothers and sisters or cousins saying it.”

Harry nods. “Well, it’s true that nothing I can do will please everyone. I’ll try not to upset anyone unnecessarily. But when it comes to helping people who’ve been ignored for too long, or someone whose only crime is annoying people by flooding a bathroom she’s been trapped in for fifty years…anyone I upset is the one who’s upsetting themselves unnecessarily.”

Draco smiles unwillingly. “You’re not like anyone I’ve ever met.”

“I think it’s being Lord Slytherin and having other people like you to help me that makes me that way. I was pretty ordinary three years ago.”

“I’m sure we’re grateful that it’s not three years ago.”

Harry laughs a little, and Draco laughs, and then Luna comes back to ask Harry whether someone can change the form of their Patronus, and Draco fades back into the group he was practicing with, which includes Blaise and Daphne.

Harry is smiling as he speaks with Luna, but it’s not solely due to her.

Chapter Text

Harry wakes up, snatched urgently out of sleep. He gasps, sitting up and staring around. In his cage next to the bed, Salazar is standing on his hind legs, but he isn’t scratching at the cage bars the way he did when hunting the Horcrux. He’s just looking at Harry with wide eyes.

Ahalam stirs sleepily around Harry’s neck. “Why did you wake up? Why disturb the prettiest snake?”

Harry absently pets Ahalam. At first he thought that he woke up due to his bond with Ahalam, but his snake doesn’t dream as far as Harry can tell, and he only woke up after Harry. It was something else. Someone trying to alert him.

Something?

As soon as Harry thinks that, a new thought takes root in his head, as if Harry has given permission for it to form. There’s a power moving beneath Harry’s bed, stirring like a giant snake of warmth and force that makes Harry think of the basilisk. But it isn’t anything so threatening. It only wants to warn him.

Harry opens his mouth. “Hogwarts?” he whispers.

There’s no reason to suspect it, except that of course Hogwarts has taken his part as Lord Slytherin before, but the knowledge blooms to life in his mind that yes, that’s it, Hogwarts is warning him, there is danger coming and she needs Lord Slytherin there to help defend her students—

Harry flies out of bed, only fumbling for a moment to make sure that he’s got his wand and Ahalam firmly wrapped around his neck, and also that he can shuck his pyjamas and change into robes. Ahalam is sleepy and grumbling, but Harry doesn’t let that slow him down. He can feel the warning pulsing through him now, and he won’t be surprised if it wakes the professors.

On the other hand, he has no idea if Hogwarts can communicate with them that directly.

Go!

Harry runs out of his dormitory and towards the door of the common room. A few studying O.W.L. and N.E.W.T students are asleep there, but no one’s awake to cry anxiously after him. Harry scrambles out of the portrait and takes off running again.

He lets the sense of urgency and fear guide him through the corridors. He doesn’t keep track of the staircase that he’s speeding down, and he nearly stumbles when he comes around a corner and finds a pool of water on the floor that he slips in.

He’s outside Myrtle’s bathroom.

Harry swallows and strides in, ignoring the splash that probably means Myrtle’s diving into a toilet. She doesn’t bother him, and his gaze is fastened on the sink with the carving of the snake on the faucet, which is trembling a little.

Not really with any real vibrations, Harry thinks. Not yet. This is a version of Hogwarts’s warning system.

Someone is coming up through the Chamber of Secrets.

Harry snorts in the next second. Someone. No. He knows perfectly well who’s coming through the Chamber of Secrets, and what he has to do to stop them. He takes a deep breath and reaches out to connect with the magic of Hogwarts.

It flows into him and drowns his soul.

*

Later, Harry will think about what he’s doing. Now, there is only the need, the temptation, the knowledge to act.

He raises his wand and steps forwards as the sink opens in front of him to reveal the tunnel that he went down at the end of second year. Later, he will wonder if he hissed to open it. He might not have. He doesn’t remember it. Maybe Hogwarts opened it for him.

He looks down, and there’s a set of black stone stairs leading down. They weren’t there before, but that doesn’t really matter. Harry goes down them confidently, and comes out at the bottom of them in the flicker of torchlight from the walls.

That is all Hogwarts’s doing, Harry knows. He would have relied on a Lumos if he cast anything at all.

He walks, and walks, and walks. The tunnel bends back and forth in front of him, and there’s the basilisk skin, and the crunch of small bones beneath his feet, and there’s the sounds from ahead that indicate people are already there and arguing in low voices.

Part of Harry freezes and shatters like glass when he realizes that, maybe the part of him that’s Lord Slytherin. Voldemort revealed the secret of the Chamber to other people.

He deserves death.

(Later, Harry will think that that doesn’t make much sense, when he could have shown the Chamber to his friends, but he will also know it’s different).

He walks forwards with his wand still aimed and his eyes clear and bright, and he steps around the corner to see several masked Death Eaters standing there, arguing with each other about what’s happening.

It doesn’t even take much finesse to aim. After all, Harry is right in front of them, and he lifts his wand with the magic already boiling through him. Green and brilliant, the magic of Lord Slytherin, it lifts like the wings of a dragon.

“Serpentem voco!”

The stone walls ring with the answering chorus of offensive spells, but Hogwarts is manipulating the stone beneath Harry’s feet, and he stumbles to one knee. All the hexes fly overhead. Harry laughs a little as he stands and tilts his head to the side so that they can no longer ignore the movement beside them.

“I think you have larger problems to worry about,” he breathes, “then hexing me.”

They do indeed, as the basilisk skin swells with life and power. It’s incomplete, given that Harry harvested part of it in his third year to pay for brooms for the school, but magic brims around the ragged edges of the skin and fills it with sparkling life. The great basilisk lifts its head and turns it, slow, ponderous, suddenly living yellow eyes fixing on the Death Eaters.

Two die before they can glance away. One of them, trembling, manages to conjure a rooster, but Harry isn’t at all surprised to see that the rooster’s cry has no effect on the basilisk. It isn’t exactly a natural one.

The basilisk gives a single, hungry hiss and then dives towards the Death Eater who has the rooster. He ducks, and the fangs, made of magic, pierce the stone instead of him. The basilisk begins pulling its length back around to face the intruders into Hogwarts’s domain.

Two of the Death Eaters turn and run away. Harry lets them go. He knows who is here, who is really behind the red and blue spells splashing harmlessly against the basilisk’s hide. He steps forwards, and Ahalam rears up on his shoulder, streamers of green serpentine magic curling away from them.

“Show yourself!” Harry hisses, and Ahalam’s voice blends with his and dances into the air so that there is no difference between them.

There’s a long burst of red and blue in front of him, as though to echo the Death Eaters’ spells, and two of them fall to their knees with their heads bowed. It gets one of them pierced through the back of the neck by the basilisk’s fangs, but that’s little enough for Harry to worry about, as Voldemort steps out through the back of the tunnel from the open doors of the Chamber of Secrets.

It’s the first time that Harry’s ever really seen him in the flesh. Him possessing other people’s bodies or the back of Quirrell’s head didn’t count.

And Harry is shocked by how not-afraid he is. In fact, he’s just furious that this pale being with blazing red eyes and a hateful sneer on his face has invaded his school and endangered his people.

At the moment, they are all his people, even Dumbledore, even Snape, even the students who think that he’s trying to take over the school or something. He lifts his hands in front of him and brings them down. The green streamers of power tangle around him and then shoot forwards like vines to grip Voldemort.

Voldemort snarls and swats them away. There’s something deep and dark and angry inside him, and it rears up like a snapping snake with jaws spread wide.

Harry doesn’t care. He is full of the power of Lord Slytherin, and he hisses, “Turn and face the enemy!”

Ahalam echoes his words precisely. He’s flowing back and forth on Harry’s shoulder, his body forming shapes that Harry can’t take his eyes off Voldemort to appreciate properly.

The basilisk heaves itself around, and maybe it remembers, since it was shed from the one that Voldemort controlled and set on the school, that this is indeed the enemy. It gives a hungry hiss and tilts its head.

Voldemort meets its eyes and doesn’t die.

Harry is so disappointed that it shocks him, for a moment, out of the consuming magic of Lord Slytherin and Hogwarts. He swallows and realizes that people are lying dead in the tunnel, that he’s killed people, and—

And it doesn’t matter. This is one of the burdens that he always knew he would have to take on himself as Lord Slytherin.

And of course Voldemort doesn’t die. He has Horcruxes.

Including the one in me.

At the moment, Harry would be willing to die under the basilisk’s gaze himself if it meant that he could take Voldemort with him.

But that’s not an option, and Harry can feel the tide of Slytherin’s power rearing up inside him again, pushing against the one of Slytherin’s blood. He tilts his head back and cries out in a voice that is Parseltongue and not, is also the grinding of stones and the flickering of torches and the slamming of shutters and the clanking of armor. “Be gone from this place!”

The rush of the magic leaves him, and Harry sags to his knees. But he gets to watch as it slams into Voldemort, see his enemy’s mouth open wide in frustration, and then watch him flung backwards down the tunnel and through what Harry knows is the open door to the Chamber. The other Death Eaters have broken and fled, and Harry and Ahalam are alone in the tunnel except for the basilisk shifting back and forth and hissing in agitation.

Harry realizes he can understand the hisses, that they’re on the edge of the basilisk speaking and thinking independently, and he wants to think about that. But right now, all he can think about is the basilisk accidentally killing someone who comes down through the sink to try and rescue him.

Because Harry knows that he doesn’t have the strength to get back up the tunnel or the stairs by himself.

“Return to skin,” he whispers, and the basilisk collapses back into the tatters of itself that it was before he animated it. Harry closes his eyes, breathing deeply. He’s exhausted, but it’s not the kind of exhaustion that feels dangerous.

More the sort of thing that happens when he’s played a good Quidditch game, he thinks drowsily, than when he’s dueled for his life.

“You are to wake!”

But not even Ahalam’s voice can keep him up right now. Harry lets his head droop, his cheek rest against the dusty floor. He’ll lie here for just a moment—there’s plenty of time to get back up the stairs before the others wake up—

The last thing he feels for some time is the stone of Hogwarts softening beneath his cheek and cradling him, in reverence, in thanks.

Chapter Text

Harry wakes up probably earlier than he should because of the weight of all the eyes he can feel staring at him.

He’s in the hospital wing. At least that’s one relief, that he isn’t still lying on the dusty floor of the Chamber. Or murdered by Death Eaters, for that matter. That’s good, too.

He coughs, and the finally looks up reluctantly and meets the eyes of the people who are staring at him.

Theo looks so furious that there are no words for it. Harry avoids him and looks at Hermione, but that honestly isn’t much better. She looks shocked and horrified.

Susan is watching him with the kind of clever ruthlessness in her eyes that made Harry uneasy when she started to team up to “research” the Horcrux in his head with Theo. Harry coughs and turns to Ron, who just looks a normal amount of worried. There are the professors and Sirius standing behind his friends, too, but never mind them. Harry is going to start with Ron.

“What happened?” he croaks. “Are you okay?”

“Of all the times that I should be asking that question, mate,” Ron says, and puts his hand over his face.

“Mr. Potter. What did you do?”

That’s Dumbledore, so Harry shrugs at him and turns to face his friends. “Are the rest of you okay? How did I get out of the Chamber? None of you got cursed at or actually cursed by the Death Eaters, right?”

Professor McGonagall makes a shaky noise and puts her hand over her mouth. Harry sighs. Maybe he shouldn’t have mentioned the Death Eaters, but, well, he reckoned they were going to know one way or another. He doesn’t think that Voldemort or any of the other survivors took the bodies with them.

“I insist on an answer to what you did, Mr. Potter.”

“You are going to demand an answer of the Lord Slytherin?”

Oh, shit, that’s Theo’s dangerous voice. Harry has never felt less like doing it, but he sits up in his bed and clears his throat. “Theo, you know that he’s asking as the Headmaster of the school, not because he thinks that I shouldn’t be Lord Slytherin or something.”

Theo turns to him, and Harry realizes that he was directing his rage at Dumbledore to avoid directing it at Harry. His voice is low and intense and furious. “If you have no need of my services, my lord, you might as well dismiss me.”

“What are you talking about?”

“You went into the Chamber of Secrets, alone, and my oath didn’t even pull me to your side—it was your snake who fetched me—”

I’ll have to thank Ahalam later. Harry puts his hands up. “Hogwarts summoned me. Voldemort and several Death Eaters were attempting to break in through the Chamber. I didn’t have a choice about going or striking to kill and defeat them once I was down there. Of course, I could only shove Voldemort out of the school, not kill him, but I still had to obey the directive to defend Hogwarts once I was there. The school’s been good to me, and in return, I have to defend it.”

“I find it extremely unlikely that the school summoned you, Mr. Potter.”

“Find it unlikely all you want, sir,” Harry says, and turns his shoulder firmly to Dumbledore as he watches his friends. “And you never said if you were all right.”

“By the time that Ahalam led me and a few others down there, there were only you and the bodies,” Theo says. Something in what Harry said has calmed him, at least a little. His eyes look like gleaming stones now instead of glowing embers. “We rescued you and put the bodies under Preservation Charms. We didn’t know why you had landed there or how you had managed to kill so many.”

“I am concerned about you killing so many, Mr. Potter.”

“How many did I kill?”

“Six.”

“Huh,” Harry says, so exhausted and guilty and irritated that he speaks without thinking. “That’s less than I thought.”

Hermione makes a choked sound. Ron shakes his head, while Susan’s eyebrows creep up her face. Theo just looks satisfied.

“Mr. Potter,” McGonagall hisses.

“I really did get summoned to the defense of the school, Professor. And I didn’t know how many Death Eaters were down there and what they were doing until I got there. I had to kill them to prevent them from making a path for Voldemort into the school.”

“They could not have done that,” Dumbledore says, sounding very certain. “I am in charge of the wards.”

“The Chamber of Secrets isn’t warded,” Harry says. “Otherwise you would have come to help me yourself in my second year, right, instead of sending Fawkes and the Hat?”

McGonagall is staring in confusion, but Dumbledore nods, half-unwillingly. “You still did not need to kill our enemies, Mr. Potter.”

“At that point, Hogwarts was controlling my actions, and it’s ruthless.” Harry smothers a yawn. “How long was I unconscious?”

“It’s Tuesday.”

Shit. Three days. Harry winces and turns to Theo and Susan, Ron and Hermione and Sirius. “Sorry for scaring you like that.” His friends might have known he was about to wake up through their connection to the medallions and the Slytherin magic, but that also means they would have felt his exhaustion and pain.

“Why are you apologizing to your friends and not to us, Mr. Potter?” McGonagall demands.

“Because I know they were worried about me. I know that you wanted the Tri-Wizard Tournament to go ahead and wanted to force me to attend the Yule Ball, and Hogwarts had to stop you. I don’t know if you’re on my side, Professor, or the Headmaster’s side.”

McGonagall flushes with something that might be shame, or anger, or mortification. Harry honestly doesn’t care enough to sort her moods out. He turns to Dumbledore. “Take the defense of Hogwarts up with Hogwarts. Surely you can talk to it if I can.”

“Mr. Potter…”

“That’s Lord Slytherin, to you.”

Harry rolls his eyes. He knows that he’s passing out again, and that’s kind of annoying, but at the same time, it’ll get him out of the argument that Dumbledore wants to have, and the argument that Theo is apparently intent on having with the Headmaster.

At least no one else was injured and Voldemort was forced to leave. That’s the important thing.

*

“You don’t have to follow me around all the time.”

“Keeping you safe is the important thing, my lord.”

Harry sighs at Theo, and then he steps into the center of the Defense Association’s training ring and sighs even more. They’re training outside today because the weather is chilly but bright and not actually raining. And it seems like every one of the people in sight turned to stare at him on cue—not just the ones who wear his medallions.

“They can’t actually all feel me,” he mutters.

Theo makes a soft sound behind him.

Harry turns around and stares at him. “What are you saying?”

“The medallions alerted us to your situation only after the battle was done,” Theo says. His head is cocked, and he’s the only one meeting Harry’s eyes, but that’s fine. It means he’s the one Harry will ask about this. “Perhaps that’s because Hogwarts and not you were in control, or because Hogwarts itself was protecting Lord Slytherin. But since then, we’ve been—hyper-sensitive. We weren’t the only ones who felt when you woke up.” He makes a gesture to Susan, Ron, and Hermione, who followed Harry outside today. “And Blaise and I both woke up with stomachaches yesterday morning, which must have been when you were hungry for breakfast.”

“For fuck’s sake.”

Theo just laughs.

Harry strides into the circle of the Defense Association and looks around crossly. Excited and exasperated and angry and interested eyes peer back at him.

“All right. How many people here got a stomachache yesterday morning?”

Half of them raise their hands.

“And how many people knew when I woke up in the hospital wing?”

More hands rise. Harry shakes his head. “How many people know when I use the loo?”

Most of the hands go down, but not all of them.

“For fuck’s sake.”

“Language, Lord Slytherin,” Gwen says, grinning at him. She came to visit him in the hospital wing all tense and worried not long after he first woke up, but now she seems completely relaxed, if ready to move and curse someone the minute they act against him. “There are innocent third-years present.”

“I’m not innocent!” protests one of the Slytherin third-years. Astoria Greengrass, Harry thinks.

Harry runs his hand down his face. “Okay. So hopefully the hyper-sensitivity due to the medallions will wear off with time—yes, you do want it to, trust me, you don’t want to know every time I’m hungry or irritated or going to the loo. If it doesn’t, tell me, and I’ll make some adjustments to the magic.”

“You don’t have to,” Katie Bell says. “Honestly, knowing that you’re hungry reminds me to eat myself.”

“And sometimes I forget to use the loo,” says Blaise, with a completely straight face.

Harry just rolls his eyes at them and picks up his wand. “Okay, we’re going to start with shielding and warding spells.”

*

“You know that you could be put on trial for murder.”

“Of Death Eaters that the Ministry doesn’t admit are officially active in the first place?”

Dumbledore stares down at his desk. Fawkes gives a croon that honestly sounds like a tut and buries his head under his wing. “I never—wanted you to have to kill, Harry.”

“Right, but I did.” Harry can’t say that it’s affected him as much as Dumbledore probably wants it to, because honestly, the events are blurred in his mind. He knows that it was Hogwarts taking over, commanding his magic, and causing their deaths, because the school was the one that saw the complete scope of the threat.

But he still raised the magic of Lord Slytherin. He’s still the one who killed them.

And that makes him feel…

Not great. Not good. But accepting. As though—

He sits upright in his chair.

“I will take my cheese reward now!”

Ahalam has been preening all week about how he’s the one who was smart enough to go get Theo when Harry passed out. Harry did give him a lot of cheese as a reward, but Ahalam is always demanding more.

“You’re the prettiest snake, but I had a realization about something else.”

“Not how heroic I am?”

Ahalam sounds so dismayed that Harry smiles and pets his back, and then turns to Dumbledore. “I just realized, sir,” he says quietly. “The school summoned me because I’m Lord Slytherin and it aided me in the past. But the magic of Lord Slytherin is also what enabled me to throw Voldemort out of the school.”

“I am not sure I follow.”

“Come off it, sir.”

“Pardon me?”

Dumbledore sounds honestly offended and not as if he’s only playing at it the way that Harry has thought he was in the past, but Harry just shakes his head at him. “You follow, sir. You know that Lord Slytherin’s power is tied to the school. Snakes. The Chamber of Secrets. It makes sense that I would be powerful here. And for the first time, I’ve fully accepted the burdens and duties laid upon me by the title.”

“What does that mean?”

“That I regret the deaths, but I can accept that I caused them. That I would kill again in defense of my followers. Up until Saturday, I wasn’t really sure that I would. That I would—be able to.”

Dumbledore closes his eyes and sits in silence for a long moment. Then he whispers, “Do you remember what I told you about how other Lord Slytherins became corrupted by the amount of power they carried?”

“From what I’ve been able to find, it’s mostly because they allowed people to manipulate them. Maybe that would happen to me if I allowed it to, but now I’m waking up and realizing what that would cost. And I also have lots of people around me who would kick my arse if I let myself be manipulated,” Harry has to add, because he has tons. Theo might be the first, but Hermione and Susan would be right behind him, and there would be Ernie with disappointed eyes and Daphne talking like a book that has five hundred synonyms for “disappointment.”

“I would bite your arse if it would help!”

“Thank you, Ahalam.”

“How does embracing killing help you with this, Harry?”

“Someone might have been able to manipulate me by using my reluctance to cause violence. But now I’ve realized that my commitment to my followers and friends is deeper than that.”

“So you place friendship above morals.”

“I don’t think that’s true at all.”

“How do you explain your statement?”

“I mean that I would do anything to protect the people I swore to protect. To ensure that I keep my promises. And because I know they wouldn’t want me to do certain things, I can resist the temptation to become corrupt or use my power for stupid things.”

“They would want you to kill?”

“They’re upset about it,” Harry admits. Hermione hugged him when he came back to Gryffindor Tower and didn’t let him go for almost five minutes. And Sirius hugged him for longer than that when Harry visited him in his quarters. “But they would certainly rather have me kill than die.”

“Even if it becomes necessary that you die?”

Harry wouldn’t have seen it if he weren’t watching for it. But he knows what he sees. Dumbledore’s eyes flicker ever so briefly to Harry’s scar before they return to Harry’s face, and he is frowning.

Harry swallows and manages to work out a sickly smile. He doesn’t even remember the banter that he uses to get out of Dumbledore’s office, but he manages, and he leans against a wall next to the gargoyle shaking, with his eyes closed.

“You smell upset. You should let me soothe you and give me cheese.”

Harry rests his head for a moment on Ahalam’s scales and then keeps walking without replying. There’s the chance that the gargoyle might be able to report back to Dumbledore what Harry said to Ahalam, and he could translate it. Sirius did say something about Dumbledore understanding Parseltongue.

In the meantime, Harry needs to meet with Sirius and the rest and tell them that Dumbledore knows his scar is a Horcrux. Or at least suspects it.

And tell Theo and Susan to speed up their plan, whatever it is.

Chapter Text

“We are not forming a Committee to Assassinate Dumbledore, Hermione.”

“We might need to.”

Harry stares at her. Hermione’s lips are pursed, and her hands are folded so that her fingernails cut into her robes. They’re sitting in the version of the Room of Requirement that lets them all have a chair at the same table, with a cheerful fireplace on the hearth, but Hermione doesn’t seem cheerful at all.

Harry gives a rusty laugh. “Hermione, just a few months ago, you were telling me about the ways that I acted like Dumbledore.”

“He would hurt you if he knows that you have a Horcrux in your head.”

“Now, now,” Susan says, with a bright little smile that Harry eyes sideways and which already made Ahalam retreat down into his robe collar. “He could just be hoping to appeal to Harry’s better nature to have him commit suicide or the like.”

“Uh, Susan?”

“Yes, Harry?”

“Will you tone it down a little? You’re scaring Ahalam.”

“I also want to scare Dumbledore,” Susan says, but her smile falters for the first time. “You realize that he will try to kill you. Directly or indirectly.”

“Let him try.”

Harry blinks and turns to face Sirius. Both Sirius and Theo have been silent so far, since Harry asked them to come to the Room and told them what he thinks Dumbledore suspects about his scar. Theo’s eyes are distant, and Harry has already told him to stand down. But he doesn’t have that sort of power over Sirius, and right now, his godfather’s eyes are bright with rage.

“I thought, uh, that you weren’t opposed to fighting on the same side as Dumbledore,” Harry says cautiously. Sirius hasn’t said anything about it one way or the other, although Harry knows that after Dumbledore tried to force him to hold the Tournament at Hogwarts, Sirius doesn’t really trust the Headmaster, either.

“That was before you thought that he might kill you.”

“Would you sacrifice the war for me?” Harry asks quietly. “Really?”

Sirius stares at him with incandescent fury in his eyes. Then he says, “Excuse us,” grabs Harry’s arm, and drags him to a far corner of the Room. A wall rises to separate Harry from his friends, glowing with the kind of magic that Harry knows means there are privacy wards on it.

“Uh, Sirius?”

Ahalam pokes his head out from beneath Harry’s robes, says, “The dog-man is scary,” and dives back out of sight again.

“You are important,” Sirius says. “I need you to remember that. You matter.”

“Um, yes, I know that. Ron and Hermione taught me that even before people like Susan and Theo came into my life, and they remind me every day. You remind me.”

“No,” Sirius says, and acts as if he’s going to shake Harry’s shoulders, only holding himself back at the last minute. He closes his eyes in what looks like frustration. “You don’t only matter because we would be devastated if you died, Harry. Or because of what you can do for us. You matter in and of yourself.”

“Er. I know that.”

“Then why did you all but order me to sacrifice you for the war?” Sirius yells. The wall behind them glows for a minute in a way that probably means the wards are keeping his voice inside them.

Harry closes his eyes. “Sirius. This is bigger than me.”

“Bollocks!”

“It is. I mean, I can understand why you wouldn’t want to fight on the same side as Dumbledore, but what about all the innocent Muggleborn kids going to Diagon Alley each year, who could die if Voldemort doesn’t?”

“Fuck the innocent Muggleborn kids! I don’t care about them, just like their parents don’t care about you! You are my concern.”

“Okay. And if I told you that I would rather die than see an innocent come to harm?”

“What if you had to choose between an innocent being harmed and one of your followers being harmed?”

Harry takes a deep breath. He meant what he said to Dumbledore about accepting the necessity of killing if he had to, but that’s different from watching someone die when he could have saved them.

“I do care more about my followers than about other people I don’t know,” he whispers. “But I wonder if I have the right to do it.”

“Other people do it every day,” Sirius says, leaning forwards to stare intently into his eyes. “They don’t think it’s immoral. And it’s different than actively putting someone else in danger. That includes you, Harry.”

“I know.”

“But you’re acting as though you don’t think that you’ll survive this war.”

“I don’t know what Susan and Theo are planning. They refuse to tell me. I don’t know if it’ll work, Sirius. And worse than seeing all of you devastated because I’m dying would be seeing the Horcrux hurt you.”

Sirius closes his eyes for a minute. Then he reaches out and hugs Harry the way he did when Harry came to see him after the Chamber. Harry holds onto him and lets Sirius shake his way through his reaction.

Sirius finally whispers, “I can’t change the heart of you, and I don’t want to. But I just ask that you—let Susan and Theo work. I suspect what they’re up to, but I don’t know. And if they can pull it off, it’s going to be amazing.”

“If.”

Sirius nods and leans down to rest his head on Harry’s shoulder for a second. It startles Harry. He honestly didn’t realize he’d grown that tall. He’s still sort of short compared to others of his friends, especially Ron.

“Of course,” Sirius whispers. “Everything depends on whether they can make it work.”

Harry exhales and pulls back with a weak joke. “And now everything depends on whether I can keep them from murdering Dumbledore.”

“It might not be a bad idea.”

“If nothing else, it would bring an attack on the school right away. He’s still the only wizard that Voldemort fears.”

“You don’t think that he’s afraid of you.”

Harry shakes his head as he watches the warded wall dissolve, the Room responding to Sirius’s desires. “No, I think that he believes the times that I’ve escaped him are more about luck and help than anything else.”

When they step out from behind where the wall was, it’s to see Susan and Hermione abruptly pull their heads apart and give him identical smiles. Harry narrows his eyes. “Do I have to make a direct order for you not to hurt Dumbledore?”

“What makes you think a direct order would work on me?” Hermione asks, sounding honestly curious.

“Hermione, please.”

“You found what works,” she says, and sits back with her arms folded as she scowls at him. “Fine. But I want an explanation later on.”

Harry takes a deep breath and turns to face Susan and Theo. “Please don’t kill him.”

“We weren’t planning to do it immediately.”

“Susan, please.”

“What makes you think that works with me?”

Harry continues gazing at her as calmly as he can, and Susan rolls her eyes and looks away. “Fine. Merlin.”

Harry glances at Ron and Ernie, but both of them just continue as silent as they’ve been since Harry told them. Ron is red and has his fists clenched. Ernie might actually gnaw off his lip at this rate.

“I don’t want to do anything to hurt him,” Ron mutters. “I might do something if he points his wand at you, but I think we all know that he isn’t going to do that.”

Harry half-smiles. “Yeah. He’s more the sort who would want me to hurt myself to get rid of the Horcrux. Susan was right about that.”

“I’m always right.”

Harry ignores the bickering that erupts between Susan and Ron, comforting though it is, and focuses on Ernie.

“You think I’d do something?”

“I think that you’re incredibly brave and inspired by my example,” Harry says. “Anyone who could continue associating with the twins after they attacked him is incredibly brave.” That wins him a smile. “But I do think you could get hurt with that bravery, and I don’t want you thinking that you need to do something about Dumbledore.”

“Thank you, my lord,” Ernie says, and bows from the waist with a pompous flourish that Harry knows is making Hermione roll her eyes without his even turning to look. But Harry knows by now that Ernie uses that formality to defend his sense of himself, and he manages not to crack a smile. “I would prefer not to involved at all.”

“That’s fine,” Harry says, and turns to face Theo, who has been worryingly silent.

Theo sees him looking and offers a dazzling smile. “Could I have a private conversation with you, my lord?”

“Yes, that would be fine.” Harry nods to the others, and they stand with varying degrees of reluctance. From the way that Sirius and Hermione look back and forth between Harry and Theo, though, Harry thinks that they’re not worried about Harry not managing to command Theo to stand down. They’re worried that Theo might get permission to do something they didn’t.

Finally, they leave, and Harry asks, “What are you thinking, Theo?”

Theo turns away from the wall he’s been staring at. The Room has actually formed an enchanted window there for him, but it vanishes before Harry can see what it was showing. “That I find it hard not to go and kill him now, Harry. How dare he be a threat to you. How dare he bring you into more danger than you were already.”

Harry swallows. Maybe he really should have been more against Theo swearing that oath to him. He thinks it’s influencing Theo now. He’s all but vibrating with intensity.

“I can’t let you kill him because it would encourage Voldemort to attack.”

Theo pauses. Then he nods slowly. “All right. But in that case, I need permission to do something else to him.”

“What?”

“Ensure that he dies if he makes a move against you.”

“If he makes a move against me,” Harry says cautiously.

Theo smiles. The smile is bloodthirsty and savage and oddly soothing. Harry knows that Theo will never hurt him, and all the fury Theo might feel and all the magic he can summon will only ever be used in defense of Harry. “I think that he will, my lord. I think that he might only have held back thus far because he doesn’t how much you know about the Horcruxes.”

“All right. But that doesn’t mean he’ll attack directly.”

“No. But it might be something like Legilimency to convince you to sacrifice yourself.”

Harry grimaces and nods. That would be a subtle kind of attack that he might well mistake as his own thoughts, considering how often he’s thought he would need to die to win the war. “All right.”

“So I’ll set up a curse with a contingency.”

“A curse? Theo—”

Theo snarls, and Harry pauses. The sensation of magic fills the air in the Room like a thunderstorm, heavy and so dangerous that Harry’s skin hurts. And so does something that tugs on the center of his chest as if an invisible thread in the web is tying him to Theo.

“It is a spell that will kill him if he attacks you, my lord,” Theo says, his voice low and precise. “What did you think it would be?”

In truth, Harry didn’t think it through. Of course it would be a curse.

And now he’s faced with the choice that Sirius talked about, choosing between one of his followers and someone else.

Although maybe Dumbledore wouldn’t qualify as innocent.

Harry takes a deep breath. “I want you to set it up so that the curse that’s already on his hand accelerates and kills him,” he says, as calmly and clearly as he can. “Not anything else, not anything different. And set it up with a contingency so that it doesn’t affect him unless he attacks me in some way.”

“I never intended anything different.”

Harry gives him an unimpressed glance, and Theo shrugs without repentance. “I never planned anything different that you would allow,” he amends.

Harry gives a short nod. “All right. Then you can set it up.”

“What changed your mind?”

Harry sighs, his thoughts swirling around. He accepted death, he accepted killing, he spoke with Sirius…

But he doesn’t know how true all those reasons are, and he doesn’t know which one would most convince Theo, so he just tells one of the truths instead of trying for all of them. “I’m tired of Dumbledore threatening me, and our having to shield the knowledge of the Horcrux in me from him would just be too much.”

Theo grins and bows to him. “I understand, my lord. I shall make absolutely sure that the curse is set up with a contingency and that it’ll only affect him if he tries to harm you.” He sweeps another bow and starts out of the Room.

“Theo?”

“Yes, my lord?”

“Why were you willing to tell me about this, but not about whatever you and Susan are setting up?”

Theo glances back at him with an eyebrow arched. “Because you would be upset if you learned about the other one.”

He’s gone before Harry can press him, and Harry groans and massages his forehead with one hand.

“Cheese.”

“You don’t need cheese, Ahalam.”

“Snakes who were frightened are owed cheese.” Ahalam writhes into place on his shoulder. “Or bracelets,” he adds after a moment. “Bracelets are also acceptable.”

Harry snorts and turns around, wishing for a bracelet. The Room drops one out of pure air into the middle of the table they were using. It’s thin and silvery, ornamented with turquoises and rubies.

Ahalam sways back and forth as Harry slides the bracelet over his head. It shrinks as it moves, so that it wraps tightly around his body but doesn’t seem like it’ll interfere with his slithering.

“Yes! Yay!”

Harry has to laugh. Ahalam can always cheer him up when other humans are being stubborn.

“There could also be cheese.”

“No.”

“But there could be.”

“No!”

“Maybe there could be. Cheese, Room!”

Harry gapes at Ahalam before he can stop himself. Of course the little snake has heard Harry and the others commanding the Room, but he had no idea that—

Well, that Ahalam would figure out that maybe the Room could understand Parseltongue, and conjure things in response to a snake’s demands.

However, it turns out that all the Room does is conjure an illusion of cheese in the center of the table. Harry walks over and lets Ahalam lean down and bite it before his little snake is satisfied that it isn’t real.

Of course, then Harry has to put up with a sulky snake all the way back to Gryffindor Tower, so maybe it wasn’t worth it.

Chapter Text

At what time of the day and month do you intend to see me?

Harry frowns a little at the letter from Regulus. The truth is that with Horcruxes and studying and trying to make sure that his followers aren’t too worried about him, he forgot about arranging a meeting with Regulus.

Not that he can do it until the summer, anyway.

“Harry? Are you all right?”

Harry waves a hand at Hermione. “Yeah, just this letter.” He gives it to her and watches her eyes narrow.

“I don’t think you ought to meet with him at all.”

“What? But you know that he’s not exactly a ghost. And he has some kind of alliance with the werewolves—”

“He’s not telling you everything.” Hermione passes the letter back to him with a mighty frown on her face. “You can’t afford to step into a situation where someone isn’t telling you everything. You don’t know whether they might be trying to trap or manipulate or control Lord Slytherin.”

Harry blinks a little as he moves the cheese plate away from Ahalam (a constant hazard at breakfast). “Wow, do you think so?”

“Well, I don’t know if he would try to do it specifically. Or if werewolves would.” Harry nods. Hermione has a soft spot for werewolves, just like Harry, because of Lupin. “But there’s no reason to hide the information and be all mysterious when he could just give you a meeting place and time and you would make a good faith effort to be there.”

“What if he doesn’t trust me, either?”

“That’s his problem.”

Harry has to smile a little. “You’re right. And I reckon I’ll just have to tell him that I can’t meet during the term, unless he sets it for our last Hogsmeade weekend or something.”

“Of course you can’t meet during the term! You have studying to do!”

“Never change, Hermione.”

“It’s important!”

Harry listens to her with a fond smile while he moves the cheese plate further away from Ahalam and Ahalam sulks. Hermione is brilliant, a genius, someone who really can invent her own spells, and also she should never change.

*

“My lord.”

It’s rarer for Susan to address him that way in private than it is for most of the others, so Harry is turning towards her even before she steps out of the shadows at the end of the corridor. “Yes, Susan?”

“I have to ask how much you trust me.”

Harry doesn’t hesitate. “With my life.”

Susan nods. “Good,” she whispers. “Good. It might come to that, in the end, but I hope it doesn’t.” She turns and walks towards the end of the corridor, and Harry follows her without hesitation, even though they’re walking away from Gryffindor Tower.

They clatter down the steps through the silence and then into a secret passage that Harry didn’t know about. He feels Ahalam stir and hiss sleepily, but he goes back to sleep right away when Harry tells him to. They’re already deep into the evening, since it’s after dinner.

They walk what seems to be most of the length of the castle, and then Susan turns around and swallows.

“I need you to trust me,” she says. “No matter what happens next or what you see or hear. Okay? No harm will come to you.”

“All right. I do trust you, Susan.”

She smiles at him, and then she Stuns him.

*

“I know you are awake, Harry Potter.”

That’s a terrible hissing voice that Harry has heard only in his dreams and at the end of fourth year before this. He takes a deep breath and opens his eyes, knowing already that he’s so bound in ropes that he can’t move.

He’s in the middle of a huge blue carpet that sprawls across the floor of a blazing golden room. Seriously, even the walls are gold, and the mirrors on them are in golden frames. They flash back the light streaming through a window so brilliantly that for a moment Harry’s eyes swim with afterimages, and he can’t focus.

“Over here.”

The hissing voice is amused, which is somehow worse than all the rest of it. Harry rolls over, his eyes watering, and stares in silence at the man—if one wants to use the words a certain way—standing poised in the doorway of the room.

He’s just as terrible as he was in Harry’s dream-visions. His eyes blaze, and he’s stroking the head of a large snake who coils beside him and stares at Harry with simple hunger.

Ahalam?

His little snake is gone, and Harry doesn’t know where he is. He breathes out slowly. He might be able to forgive Susan for betraying him, but he won’t forgive her if Ahalam was hurt.

“Nothing to say?” Voldemort speaks in Parseltongue this time, taking a step closer to Harry and looking him over in a leisurely way. The snake coils and hisses. Voldemort murmurs to her in a voice too low for Harry to understand. “I thought you would have more to say after one of your own betrayed you.”

Harry glares and says nothing. He thinks that Ernie’s Occlumency barrier is still holding, because his scar isn’t drowning him in pain. And that means that he can’t say anything about Susan or his followers, just in case…

In case she brought him here for a reason.

Voldemort taunts him a few more times, but then seems to grow bored when Harry doesn’t respond. “This time, I will make no mistakes,” he says, and turns away from Harry. “Lucius!”

Harry narrows his eyes as Lucius Malfoy steps into view with a low bow. Harry actually does trust Draco, but it’s obvious that he can’t do that with his slimy father.

“My lord?”

“Prepare Harry Potter for the…show.”

Voldemort walks out of the golden room, and Mr. Malfoy steps up to Harry and stares down at him. Harry glares back, still mute. He sees no reason to talk to this bastard, either.

The bastard who gave Ginny the diary and nearly got Harry killed by a basilisk, too, who got Hermione Petrified, who nearly resurrected Voldemort in the heart of the bloody school. No, Harry sees no reason that he should speak.

“You do not understand,” Malfoy murmurs.

Harry shrugs, although he thinks the ropes rather muffle the gesture. No, he doesn’t. He’ll never understand following someone who endangers both you and the people you love for wealth and power. Or the chance to torture people, which a blood purist like Malfoy probably has among his motives.

“I hope you are as good as I have been told,” Malfoy whispers, and floats Harry into the air. Then he adjusts the ropes so that there aren’t so many and Harry can stand when his feet touch the floor. Harry uses the moment to examine himself. His wand is gone, of course, and the other little tricks that Sirius and the twins gave him.

Not a surprise. He will just have to escape without them, because the last thing he intends to do is lie down and die for this bastard.

“Potter.”

Harry reluctantly looks at Malfoy. It’s possible he’ll say something that will make it easier to escape, or something he says will tell Harry what happened to Ahalam and Susan.

Malfoy’s face is pinched and paler than Harry knew it could go. He leans closer to Harry. “Where is my son?” he whispers.

“How the hell should I know?”

“You should have known where he was when you left Hogwarts.”

“Got betrayed and hauled away from Hogwarts, you mean,” Harry corrects, although his mind is on Susan’s whisper of Trust me.

“I am not asking for information on exactly where he is right now!” Malfoy’s voice soars with frustration. “I simply want to know where he was when you saw him last.”

Harry studies Malfoy and tries to put aside his frustration, his resentment, his fear. Maybe Malfoy really thinks that Harry would have Draco killed in retaliation or something, which only proves what kind of lord he’s bound himself to follow. “He was studying with a few people in the library, the last I saw.”

Malfoy closes his eyes and nods. Then he sets about winding the ropes tighter around Harry’s limbs, but in odd patterns. Harry narrows his eyes, wondering if this is required by whatever ritual Voldemort intends to sacrifice him in.

As they’re leaving the huge golden room, Malfoy bends over until his face is hovering right over Harry’s shoulder where Ahalam would ordinarily be coiled—creepy—and whispers, “When I tell you to be ready, you must be.”

Harry stares at his back, but Malfoy is striding ahead of him down the corridor now, irritably throwing a command to hurry up over his shoulder.

Harry follows slowly.

Chapter Text

“My loyal Death Eatersss, behold who comesss!”

Maybe Voldemort would have been more fulfilled if he’d tried for a career as a Quidditch commentator.

Despite the humor in the back of his mind, though, Harry knows he’s in deep trouble. He’s stepping into what is undoubtedly a throne room, with a black chair at the front that’s covered with snakes and has Voldemort standing in front of it, his bone-pale hand stretched towards the doorway Harry and Malfoy have just walked through. He has a hideous smile on his face.

Harry wonders if he can get Voldemort to kill him quickly and spare him the torture the monster must have in mind, but he doubts it.

“And in the end, it wasss one of hisss own who betrayed him,” Voldemort says, and turns to face the back of the throne room. “Come forth, Misss Bonesss!”

A hiss of speculation passes among the Death Eaters as Susan walks forwards. Her face is pale, but she curtsies deeply to Voldemort and then turns and faces Harry.

“Sorry, Harry,” she says, voice loud and jarring. “Nothing personal. You just didn’t have enough to offer me, in the end.” She raises her hand and toys with the medallion that hangs around her throat, where all of Lord Slytherin’s “followers” have had them since Harry enchanted them. “I mean, a trinket? Really?”

Harry blinks at her. Then he decides that he should say nothing, because his voice might betray the hope that’s flaring through him.

Susan knows very well what the enchantment on the medallions does. She knows they’re no mere trinkets.

But it might be dangerous for Harry to bring that up right now.

“Very wisssse, Missss Bones,” Voldemort says, his head bobbing like a Muggle toy Harry has seen Dudley playing with. “You will earn more asss a member of my Death Eatersss than you ever would have asss a follower of Lord Ssslytherin.”

“Thank you, my lord.” Susan aims another curtsey at Voldemort and then pulls back, catching Harry’s eye on the way. She mouths something.

Harry stands there trying to decide if he really saw that, and read her lips correctly, while Voldemort launches into another speech.

Theo is here.

Harry swallows slowly. This has something to do with Susan and Theo’s plan. He knows it does. He makes the, maybe foolish, choice to trust his friends, and trust that betraying him into Voldemort’s clutches was somehow necessary to what they’ve chosen to do.

Somehow. He only hopes that it comes clear sooner rather than later.

Voldemort goes on with his speech, and it becomes clear that he intends to kill Harry with the Killing Curse. Harry supposes that, in some ways, that isn’t a bad way to go. One could say that it was even overdue, given the way that he survived it as a baby. It’s better than the months of torture he was afraid he would get.

But he wants to live. How deeply and dearly does he want to live.

His only consolation is that he thinks the Horcrux will die along with him when he dies, and at least that gets rid of the problem of it and brings Voldemort one more step closer to mortality—not that he knows it, probably.

“Have you any lassst wordsss?”

Harry looks up. The room is so clear about him with light reflecting from more of those dazzling mirrors. Malfoy seems to like them. Harry can practically feel Malfoy hovering behind him, fingers itching down his wand.

He does hope that Voldemort won’t tell Mr. Malfoy to be the one who kills Harry. That might mean that someone decides to take vengeance on Draco for his father’s mistake, and that’s—the last thing Harry wants.

The last thing he may ever want.

“No,” he says into the silence that stretches around him, Death Eaters leaning forwards, and he realizes that Voldemort really is waiting for him to say something. “I used to think I’d want to say something, but you’re not worth it.”

Voldemort hisses in fury and raises his wand. At the same time, Harry feels a sharp tug on something that seems to come from inside him.

He knows what it is, even though he doesn’t know why he knows. This is the oath that binds him to Theo.

Harry swallows and lifts his head. He doesn’t know if he can die now, if he dares die, what it will do to Theo’s oath if he perishes—

But then he feels the tug spread all through him, even as Voldemort lifts his wand, and aims it, and opens his mouth, and the words “Avada Kedavra!” come forth with more vehemence than Harry ever imagined they could have.

The words slam into him. The spell slams into him. He feels a distant echo of something tearing at his soul, trying to remove it from his body the way he imagines a Dementor might if he were encountering one—

And he feels a tearing, a shoving, a pushing at the middle of his chest from inside his chest, and a pushing at the scar on his forehead that seems to come from both inside and outside, within the barrier that Ernie set up to prevent Voldemort from accessing his mind—

Someone screams. Someone else shrieks like the Hogwarts Express’s whistle, their voice rising to match, but Harry can’t hear the words, they’re dim and distant and violent, at least until one slams into his ears and he makes it out.

“Impossible!”

Harry rocks back into his body and finds himself on his hands and knees, gasping, turning his head from side to side. His eyes seem blurred, and he reaches up with trembling fingers and finds his glasses hanging off his face.

Someone seizes his arm, and Harry twists around and comes up trying to punch the person. Mr. Malfoy dances back with wide eyes and shakes Harry until his teeth rattle in his head. “I am trying to help you, you stupid child!” he hisses between his teeth. “Take the moment when the Dark Lord is distracted and run!”

But of course Harry can’t do that, not when it might be Susan or Theo distracting Voldemort. He spins around as Malfoy releases him, and manages to see most of the room even in the distracting light bouncing from the mirrors.

Voldemort is roaring, locked behind what seems to be a shimmering shield of green light the same color as the Killing Curse. Malfoy is hovering as though he thinks he can actually shield Harry from another one of them. And standing in front of Voldemort are—

Susan and Theo, their medallions around their throats, reflecting the light of the Killing Curse. Streams of verdant light pass beyond them, out of the room, as if pointing the way to other possible victims of Voldemort’s magic.

No, Harry realizes a second later, trembling, on the verge of tears. Pointing the way to other medallions. They spread the Killing Curse out through the web of trust that Lord Slytherin’s followers have and—

And bounced it.

“Run, my lord,” Susan says, and draws her wand. “We don’t know how long we can keep this up.”

Theo backs up a few steps towards Harry, although he continues to face Voldemort so that his medallion reflects the Killing Curse back, the same as Susan’s. Then he grabs Harry’s shoulder and bends over so that his mouth is near Harry’s ear. “If you waste this chance, I will never speak to you again,” he breathes.

Harry blinks, and then turns around and runs for the door. Mr. Malfoy is right behind him, waving his wand around threateningly, although Harry doesn’t know what he thinks he’s doing with it when Susan and Theo were the ones who took care of Voldemort.

Then Harry finds out as the other Death Eaters stir to life from their spellbound silence and start to aim curses at him.

There’s a violent silver shield in the air, and Malfoy is yelling in a way that Harry thinks is meant to convince the Death Eaters that Harry’s manifested the shield and Malfoy is doing his best to counteract it. Harry keeps running, slipping, falling, dodging, rolling as necessary to avoid spells that slide around the shield. He can’t keep from looking backwards, though, to where Susan and Theo are still holding Voldemort at bay.

Even as he watches, the green shield flickers and dies. Harry wouldn’t be surprised if their medallions were spent the way Daphne’s was after taking that curse from her cousin.

He yells, “Run! Run now!”

Susan at least obeys him, whipping around and surging towards Harry. Theo, though, lifts his wand at Voldemort like an absolute fucking idiot.

At the same moment, someone lunges forwards from the back of the room. Harry turns to face them, and sees Sirius transform into a dog in mid-leap.

Sirius hits Voldemort in the face, and Voldemort goes to the floor under the impact of a Grim-sized canine. Meanwhile, Theo turns and runs after Harry and Susan.

Harry, though, is now worried about the fact that he’s going to have to leave someone behind—Sirius, if not his friends. He yells as loudly as he can, “Sirius! Stop attacking him and come on!”

For a long moment, he doesn’t know if his godfather hears him, he’s so involved in snarling at Voldemort and apparently trying to strangle him. But then Malfoy moves his wand and casts something silently, and Sirius goes flying away from Voldemort and crashes into a wall. He staggers to his feet, shaking his head and giving a low whine.

Another way for Malfoy to help me under the guise of hurting me, Harry thinks, and yells as loudly as he can, “Sirius! Come on!”

Something slides into his eyes, and he reaches up and brushes it impatiently away. Then he stares at the thick coating of something on his hand, darker and thicker than blood. It looks like—

It looks like the black blood that the Horcruxes shed when he destroyed them.

“Harry! Come on!”

Harry can hardly remain still when Susan and Theo are yelling for him in turn, and he whirls around and bolts towards them. He hears Sirius coming behind him, and the yells and cursing of Death Eaters getting in each other’s way.

He doesn’t hear anything from Voldemort. That’s ominous enough that Harry turns to look back again when they reach the arched entranceway of the room, ignoring the hand Theo puts on his arm and the way he shoves the holly wand at Harry.

Voldemort is staring at them with huge, empty red eyes. His snake is coiling threateningly next to him and hissing, but Voldemort doesn’t seem to be paying attention to her. He simply stares at Harry as if Harry has destroyed all his plans by existing.

Harry would like to think that, but he doesn’t dare.

“You are to run!”

Harry once again whips around, this time to see Theo holding out Ahalam to him. Harry didn’t let himself think about his little snake’s fate. It would have made him too sad and distracted him. But now he grabs Ahalam and winds him around his neck.

“Did Voldemort hurt you?”

“No, Susan took me from you before we came here. You are to run! Use your legs for good things!”

Harry turns and runs.

*

It’s scattered, afterwards, in his memory, how they fled down the corridors of Malfoy Manor where traps mysteriously failed to catch them and walls swung open at a touch. How they came out into a courtyard that felt different, for some reason, as if a weight of magic Harry didn’t notice was suddenly gone from his skin.

Sirius grabbing him and Apparating him to Hogsmeade, though, is clear.

Sirius grabs and shakes him when they land, then hugs him, then shakes him again. “Of all the stupid, unfortunate, stupid, idiotic, stupid—”

“Hey, it wasn’t my idea to go there,” Harry thinks he has to point out, because he’s a little indignant that Sirius would think that. “It was Theo’s and Susan’s.”

“Just Susan’s.”

Harry looks up. Susan and Theo are coming out of the Three Broomsticks. Harry wonders if they used the Floo, but where would they have Flooed from?

Theo shows him a thin button. “Portkey. Professor Black enchanted it for me before we left on our rescue mission.”

“So it wasn’t your idea to take me to Voldemort?” Harry frowns at Susan.

Susan looks at him with a faint smile. “Theo and I were working on ways to eliminate the Horcrux. We decided that we could do it if we spread the Horcrux out over many people and therefore we—”

“You think I want you tainted?”

“It’s all right, Harry,” Susan says softly. “With that many people holding a small part of the Horcrux, it would scatter like light and be destroyed. That’s what we theorized.”

“But that’s not what happened.”

“No. Once you came up with the medallions and the web of trust, we thought of something else.” Susan takes a deep breath. “We found a reference to a living Horcrux in a book a werewolf got for Theo. The Horcrux could only die from a Killing Curse at the hands of its creator.”

“And so—”

“We decided we had to bring you in front of Voldemort. And we decided to spread the Killing Curse through the medallions instead of the Horcrux.”

“But—if you did that, then the Killing Curse wouldn’t have killed the Horcrux, right? And I think it did.” Harry reaches up and wipes more disgusting black stuff off his forehead. He wants to take a shower that will last days.

“We had to intervene at exactly the right moment.” Susan’s eyes gleam as she smiles, but Harry thinks there are tears behind that gleam. “When the Killing Curse slew the Horcrux but not you. Theo was instrumental to that.”

“Our oath held your soul in your body, my lord.”

“Fucking what?” Sirius asks.

“What he said,” Harry echoes weakly.

“Such oaths aren’t often sworn.” Theo’s smile is so sharp that it looks as if it could scrape someone’s face off. “But we knew what we had. We knew that the web of trust might hold your soul in your body, but there was no telling if it would work without the conscious participation of everyone in the web, which we couldn’t have. So we chose me.”

“You must hurt.”

“It does hurt.” Theo tilts his head the other way, and now the smile is sharp enough to scrape flesh from bone. “But the Horcrux is gone.”

“Are you sure of that?”

“Let me test,” Sirius murmurs, drawing his wand.

Harry holds still and lets Sirius cast the spell that told him there was a Horcrux in Harry originally. It makes him tingle and feel strange, but that might be because this is the first time he’s been the sole target of it.

Or because of the reason that Sirius drops his wand a moment later and grabs him, making Ahalam hiss in protest. “The dog-man almost crushed me!”

“He can owe you cheese later,” Harry hisses back, and says in English, “It’s gone?”

“Gone,” Sirius breathes. “Oh, Harry. Harry. You’re going to live. You’re going to live.” And he bursts into tears.

“The dog-man is getting me wet. He will owe me so much cheese.”

Harry hugs Sirius back and shakes a little and thinks that maybe Ahalam can have all the cheese he wants. They survived.

It is so rare that he thinks of that as a triumph, but at the moment, with the Horcrux gone and all of them unscathed, it is.

Chapter Text

“I just don’t know if this is the best idea.”

“You agreed, Granger.”

Harry nudges Theo sharply in the ribs. He’s never really approved of Theo’s random choices to address Ron and Hermione by their last names, but especially after Susan and Theo went through and shattered everyone’s medallion and took Harry to Voldemort as part of their crazy plan, it’s even less appropriate.

Theo gives Harry an irritated look, and then turns to Hermione and sighs. “My apologies, Granger.”

“Theo.”

Theo tosses his head a little. “My apologies, Hermione.”

“I don’t want you to have to force him to apologize to me, Harry. Or use my first name.”

Harry snorts and doesn’t say anything, because he doubts that he could really explain to Hermione the way that Theo’s eyes shine when Harry gives him a command. Or that he really wants to.

They’re most of the way to the gargoyle that guards Dumbledore’s quarters, but Harry isn’t surprised when Theo stops him before they round the last corner. Theo’s voice is low and intense. “Are you sure this is the best plan, my lord?”

“Yes. We have to tell him the Horcrux is gone, or there’s no telling what he’ll do.”

“He might not believe you.”

“He should. He’s a Legilimens, he can tell when someone lies. And I’m willing to let him see the memories.”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea at all!” Hermione exclaims, making Harry blink at her in surprise. He didn’t think she would have a problem with it. “What happens if he decides that he has to prosecute you because of something in those memories?”

“Do you really think that he would put me on trial before the Wizengamot, Hermione?”

“At this point? I’m willing to believe anything of him.”

Theo gives her an approving look. “It took you a while, but you got there.”

Harry rolls his eyes and walks up to the gargoyle, which he thinks is watching them with a slightly jaundiced expression. “Harry Potter, Theo Nott, and Hermione Granger to see Headmaster Dumbledore. If he’s available.”

The gargoyle sits still for a moment as though talking on an invisible telephone, and then slides aside with that grinding noise that always makes Harry flinch a little. Theo snorts and goes up ahead of him, all eager leg after leg. Harry shakes his head and follows. Hermione is almost tripping over her own feet behind him, her wand in her hand when Harry glances back.

Harry sighs, but doesn’t try to discourage her. In reality, he has no idea what Dumbledore will do when they tell him the truth.

*

“…And so Susan and Theo worked out that they could spread the Horcrux between multiple people and get rid of it that way. It’s not what I wanted them to do, it’s not like I would ever have wanted them tainted with a piece of the bastard’s soul, but they thought they’d do it. But it turned out they spread the Killing Curse over multiple people instead. And now the Horcrux is gone.”

Dumbledore stares at Harry. He welcomed them cheerfully enough, if a little warily, when they came in, and even asked after Ahalam (whom Harry would have brought, but he’s sleeping off his cheese coma). He offered them tea. But now he’s just staring at them with his mouth slightly open.

Harry sips the tea. It’s good. He does happen to be wearing a little device from Sirius that would tell him if the tea had any poisons or potions in it, but that’s all right, he thinks. Dumbledore doesn’t need to know.

“I…” Dumbledore clears his throat slowly. “Could you start over from the beginning?”

“Do you want to explain it, Hermione?”

Hermione actually does a better job than Harry did himself, Harry thinks. She understands all the magical theory, which he doesn’t, and she spits the words out fast, with eloquent hand gestures. And she sits back with a little nod of her head when she’s done, so she must be confident that Dumbledore understands.

“What?” Dumbledore whispers.

“You were going to kill him. Or maybe incite him to suicide, that’s more your style.” Theo's smile is bright and merciless. “You’re probably upset that we got to him instead. But now the Horcrux is gone, and I’ll kill you if you touch my lord.”

Dumbledore stares at Theo as Fawkes croons in concern from his perch. Harry actually thinks Fawkes might attack, and readies his wand.

But Dumbledore just whispers, “What?” again.

“We got rid of the Horcrux. Now you’re not going to kill him.”

“What—you claim to have done is impossible.”

“No,” Hermione says, and frowns at the Headmaster. “It’s not. It was crazy, but I explained the magical theory to you, and I’m sure that you understood it. Sir,” she adds a moment later, as though thinking that maybe she should pretend to have a little respect for Dumbledore.

Dumbledore turns to Harry. “And you believe them?”

“My scar bled black like the other Horcruxes did after they deflected the Killing Curse,” Harry says calmly. “And I saw the curse hovering in front of Susan and Theo, not striking them, while streams of green poured off their medallions and out of Malfoy Manor. I’m sure, sir. I’m sure it worked.”

“But it could not have.”

“Well, most people assume that I couldn’t have survived the Killing Curse either, sir, but I did.”

“It—there is no way to remove a Horcrux from a living being.”

“You haven’t been reading enough books, obviously,” Theo says in a bright, cheerful voice that makes Harry keep an eye on his wand hand. “Problems of the Purest Souls by Winnifred Alabaster talks about all this.”

“That book is illegal to own.”

“It’s not illegal to read, though. And I didn’t say that I owned it. I borrowed it from someone else.”

“Who, Mr. Nott?”

Theo starts to his feet. Harry stands at the same time, but Theo moves so that he’s between Harry and Dumbledore, and his voice is low and vicious, but he hasn’t actually drawn his wand. Harry remains still and watches him.

“There are ways to save his life. That would have been true even if Susan and I hadn’t come up with our plan. You didn’t look for any of them. You just resigned yourself to killing my lord. You never cared for him, did you? You don’t know what to do with him now that he’s no longer an innocent child or a weapon fit for your hand.”

“That is not true, Mr. Nott.” At the moment, Harry thinks that Dumbledore is more wounded than he’s ever seen him. “If you knew how I have cared for Mr. Potter—”

“Neglected him.”

“Ensured he could have a childhood!”

Theo laughs, hard enough that he has to lean against Dumbledore’s desk. Harry has never seen him do that before, either, and keeps watching him in concern, ignoring the Headmaster for the moment.

“Left him in the care of Muggles who hated him. Played an obstructionist part, and no more, in his efforts to remove himself from that situation. Assumed he would be corrupted by the power of Lord Slytherin and kept constant secrets from him until the last minute. Yes, Headmaster, I can see exactly how much you cared for him.”

“And if I had told him that I suspected he carried a Horcrux the moment I knew? If I had told him about the prophecy early on? What kind of childhood would he have had then?”

“I don’t know. Were you planning to help him deal with those things? Or just dump the burdens on his shoulders and walk away, congratulating yourself for your compassion?”

Harry moves then and lightly touches Theo’s shoulder. Theo lowers his head like a bull about to charge, and Harry wouldn’t be surprised to see him blow breath from his nostrils, too, even despite the warmth of the fire in here. But a second later, he gives a little irritated jerk of his head and nods.

“I’m all right.”

“Good.” Harry faces Dumbledore, who looks devastated and sorrowful and indignant all at once. “But I do find myself curious about the answer to Theo’s question, sir. What would you have done if you had told me about the Horcrux and the prophecy as soon as you discovered them?”

Dumbledore stares at him. Fawkes takes flight and lands on Dumbledore’s shoulder, but he’s silent and doesn’t sing.

“I don’t know,” Dumbledore whispers at last.

Harry nods. He thinks that’s the only honest answer right now, and he repays Dumbledore’s honesty with his own. “And I don’t know what I would have done if you had told me about them. Been in despair, probably. I was in despair enough when I learned about the Horcrux I carried through our own investigations.”

“What investigations were those?”

“Our own.” Harry ignores the way that Theo and Hermione both take tense breaths. He doesn’t need them to yell at him to know it would be a bad idea to tell Dumbledore more than this.

The Headmaster watches him with a deeply unhappy expression. “We should be allies in this,” he says. “We both want Voldemort gone.”

“I agree. But if you keep secrets from me, sir, how am I supposed to trust you?”

“I kept those secrets because I could not comprehend how to inflict the pain on a young child that telling them would have. I have no reason not to tell you the truth now.”

Harry leans a little closer. Dumbledore mimics him on the other side of the desk, his eyes wide and hopeful.

“I don’t believe you,” Harry whispers, and straightens up again.

“Harry—”

Harry shakes his head and turns to leave the office. At least Dumbledore seems convinced of the truth of the Horcrux Harry lugged around having been destroyed. But Harry remains alert for a possible curse at the back until they’re around the bend of the moving staircase again.

“He took it better than I thought he would.”

“Yes, he did.”

From the tone in Theo’s voice, that’s a reason for him to spend his time staring at Dumbledore creepily in preparation for cursing him. Harry sighs, but he claps Theo on the shoulder when his friend turns to him.

“With you protecting me, I’ll be safe until we can get the medallions working again.”

Theo beams even harder, and Harry thinks that any eye he has to keep on his most fanatic follower is worth it.

*

“I still can’t believe that you took him to the Dark Lord.”

“Be a man, Draco. Call him by his name. Voldemort.”

Draco flinches and squeaks, and Susan looks triumphant. Harry rolls his eyes.

Just as he thought, the rest of his followers think Susan and Theo’s plan was both brilliant and insanely stupid. They’re not upset about their medallions being destroyed once they know it was the medallions or Harry, but they’re basically universal in thinking Susan and Theo could have come up with another way to do it. Susan is just as loud in insisting that this was the only way to make sure Harry lived through the destruction of the Horcrux.

Theo doesn’t bother defending himself. He just looks at anyone who tries to complain at him, and they back off.

“And you said my father helped you?”

That’s the part that Susan and Theo didn’t plan and couldn’t have counted on, and it’s a question Draco has more than earned the right to ask. Harry nods. “Yeah. He distracted the Death Eaters while he was pretending to cast spells at me. And he made it easier to escape than it would have been.”

“Why?”

“I have a theory, but I don’t know that you’ll like it.”

Draco blows out a breath. “I don’t really like anything that happened, Harry, because I don’t understand it.” He waves Susan away when she opens her mouth, probably to give another explanation of magical theory. “But this I at least have a chance of understanding. Please explain.”

Harry nods. “Your father’s only real experience of lords is the Dark Lord. I think the Dark Lord probably threatened you to get your father to keep cooperating. And also…your father might have thought I’d mistreat you, or other people would, if he didn’t help me.”

Draco’s mouth hangs open a little. “But you wouldn’t.”

“Do you think your father knows that? Or would believe it?”

Draco hesitates, then shakes his head. “He’s always sort of been—he’s taught me to follow power,” he mumbles.

That means it’s even more of a departure than Harry knew for Draco to follow him with no visible authority over other people or promise of reward. He smiles at Draco, who looks flushed, and murmurs, “Then I think that was his motivation. If that’s not it, then I couldn’t guess if you don’t know.”

“Yeah, I suppose not,” Draco says, and goes back to his spell practice with a frown.

At least the rest of the questions seem to be dying down now, as other people accept that Susan and Theo aren’t exactly going to apologize and they can learn more by practicing the spells they came here to learn. Harry throws himself into drilling a bunch of fellow fifth-years for spells that will probably be on the Defense practical, and then Sirius comes over and adds himself, and even the seventh-year students are having fun.

Susan and Theo are still looking too smug for a mental plan that barely worked, in Harry’s opinion, but what is he going to do? Punish them for being smart?

*

“What is that?”

Harry pokes cautiously at the large, red-ribboned box that a black eagle-owl delivered to him this morning. If it were nearer Valentine’s Day, he would think it had something to do with that, but it’s a random morning in May. He finally shakes his head and begins casting detection charms on it.

Hermione and Ron help. Hermione also stops to praise Ron for mastering a few charms that he struggled with earlier in the term. Ron’s ears turn red.

Harry smiles as he finally decides the box is harmless and removes the top. Maybe Hermione and Ron will start dating soon. That would be—

He stares down at the things inside the box. It’s a scroll with a red ribbon around it that echoes the one on the top of the box, and a cluster of—black roses? Harry thinks those are black roses.

“What is that?” Ron asks, snapping his gaze away from Hermione’s to lean forwards and stare down inside the box.

“I have no idea,” Harry says, truthfully, and uses his wand to float both the scroll and the flowers out of the box.

In the back of his mind, he’s wondering if this is some new gambit from Olive Hornby in their ongoing feud, if she managed to convince some old witch that Harry liked her, but he only thinks that until he unfolds the scroll and reads.

Dearly beloved,

I never realized how precious you were to me until I had to see the moment when you almost destroyed yourself. You were so radiant, shining beneath the blackness dripping down your brow, and I realized then that a living Horcrux who can communicate with me, who can think and feel, is the one person I could love.

Darling, come back to me. All is forgiven. Join my side of the war and keep the Horcrux safe. You are all I want in this world.

Your loving
Lord Voldemort.

Harry puts his hand over his eyes.

Chapter Text

“Do you think it’s a joke?”

“He did have kind of a strange expression on his face right after we deflected the Killing Curse,” Harry says. He’s sitting in a version of the Room of Requirement that he’s willing to share with many of his followers, not just his inner circle. The box and the rose and the scroll are sitting on the table in front of him. It’s sort of hard to look away from them. “Maybe this was why.”

“Excuse me, who deflected the Killing Curse?”

Harry rolls his eyes a little and at last manages to tear them from the stuff Voldemort sent to look at Susan. “You deflected it with your great plan, Susan.”

“And don’t you forget it.” Susan folds her arms and nods firmly.

Theo, beside her, is silent. He’s very pale, and Harry isn’t sure that he’s taken his gaze from the box since they got into the room and Harry explained who sent it. It’s a little worrying.

“Maybe you could use this to get close to him and trap him,” says Padma, bouncing a little in her seat. “Since he doesn’t know that this—connection?—has been destroyed, and he might think you want to romance him.”

Hermione grimaces at Harry. Harry just shrugs back. Everyone saw the box arrive, and everyone wanted to come talk about it. He didn’t see the harm in telling them that he had a connection to Voldemort that got destroyed in the fight. They already partially knew about that anyway, since their medallions were destroyed. It’s not the same as telling them that Harry hosted a piece of Voldemort’s soul or that Voldemort has and had others.

Still, Harry is sure he’ll get a lecture about it later.

“Trying to trap You-Know-Who is a stupid idea,” snaps Daphne, who looks as if her hair might start bristling around her head with magic the way that Hermione’s sometimes does. “The ramifications of his reified magic and the way that he might be able to turn insubstantial to escape alone—”

“What?”

Harry ignores the budding argument between Daphne and a few of the others who want her to “talk like a human being.” He holds out his hands. “I wouldn’t be opposed to trying to trap him, but I didn’t think it would work.”

“We’ve already suffered enough from one crazy plan,” Hermione says. It hasn’t escaped Harry’s notice that she’s been sitting with her back to Susan and Theo whenever they’re in the same room for a week now. “And Voldemort has too much power.”

Harry sighs and nods. She’s probably right. He turns to Ernie when the other boy clears his throat, though.

“I may have an idea, my lord.”

“Yes?” Harry asks encouragingly. A few people look at him oddly, but he doesn’t know why. He ignores it.

“There are—cages that used to be used to trap criminals before Azkaban was created.” Ernie clears his throat again and sits up a little when he sees people staring at him. “They would trap even a wraith, should You-Know-Who try to turn into one. Crystal cages, they were called.”

“I’ve heard of them,” Hermione says at once, which surprises Harry not at all. “But I don’t think that we have any method of obtaining one.”

“My family has one.”

Now everyone is staring at Ernie instead. Susan and Theo actually exchange a glance—well, Susan tries. Theo is still staring at the box and the scroll, and maybe especially the rose. Zacharias is the one who says, in a wondering voice, “But that’s illegal?”

“Why do you sound so surprised?”

“The Macmillan family is known for being law-abiding. That’s all I meant, Ernie.”

“We can do whatever we want in pursuit of a goal—”

Harry coughs before this can slide into another argument and says, “How does the crystal cage work, Ernie?”

Hermione and Susan both close their mouths, looking like cats that Harry has smacked on the nose. Harry rolls his eyes at them. Ernie brought up the thing, so he should get to explain it. And he does better when he gets a chance at things like this, Harry knows. Ernie sometimes confesses that he’s not sure he brings as much to Harry as the rest of Harry’s circle does.

Harry wants him to know that he’s valued.

Ernie does puff his chest out a little as he talks, but as far as Harry can see, that’s valid. “It’s a mechanism made of chains and bars that prevents anyone inside it from escaping in any form. The chains resonate with their magic so that they can’t cast spells or even use wandless magic. And the bars, of course, prevent physical escape, and also anyone from casting through them.”

“Would it prevent the Animagus transformation?”

“Is You-Know-Who an Animagus?”

“I don’t think so,” Harry says, with a shrug. “But he might not be the only one that we want to use it on.” He’s thinking of some of the Death Eaters, and he’s also thinking of what he might want to do to Sirius someday.

Depending on how much teasing his godfather does about Voldemort’s offer to romance Harry, of course.

“Ah. Well, yes, it would prevent that. Any use of magic. And as I said, anyone from reaching in from the outside, so they wouldn’t be able to Transfigure or Shrink the prisoner so they could escape that way, either.”

“And your family would lend me the use of this cage? Would they want something for it?”

Ernie gives him an extremely weird look. Harry sits patiently, since he’s found that “stupid” questions are most likely to get an explanation that way, and Ernie gives in with a roll of his eyes. “You’re my lord. Of course not.”

Harry sighs a little. That’s the kind of thing that he was worried Ernie might say.

Worried?

Well, no, he expected it. He just hopes that some of his followers will always be there to tell him if he’s ever taking advantage of the generosity that they offer. He never wants to give them less than full respect.

“We’ll need to think about a good way to set up the cage, in that case,” Harry says, thinking aloud. “Where we can do it, and what we can do to make sure that Voldemort doesn’t suspect.”

“Do you really think you can kill him this way?”

It’s Blaise, leaning forwards as if the answer is deeply important to him. Harry nods with more confidence than he feels. “I don’t think we can kill him right away, but if we hold him prisoner, then we can be sure he isn’t running around and causing more chaos. And we can also study him some more to learn how he keeps surviving people’s attempts to get rid of him.”

That might even make a neat cover for the existence of the other Horcruxes, now that Harry thinks about it. They can say that it’s information they found studying Voldemort.

“It’s a crazy idea!” Ron blurts. “Mate—”

“Well, the last one worked,” Susan interrupts.

Then she and Ron start to argue. Harry sighs and shakes his head a little. He thinks the rest of his friends would be a lot more inclined to forgive Susan and Theo if they didn’t keep defending themselves every chance they get.

“It worked” isn’t really enough of an excuse for betraying Harry to Voldemort, as far as most of his people are concerned.

“My lord.”

Harry turns. Gwen is standing next to him, her gaze locked on the rose and the box. At least she doesn’t seem hypnotized the way that Theo is. Harry isn’t sure what is going on there. “Yes, Gwen?”

“I don’t know how to protect you from a threat like this,” Gwen whispers. “I really don’t.”

“You don’t have to worry about it by yourself,” Harry says, putting a reassuring hand on her shoulder. “This is something that we’re going to figure out together.”

“But I’m the one who swore an oath to be your bodyguard.”

“And that’s why you’ll be included in the solution.”

Gwen stares at him, and Harry waits. He has the impression that this is another one of those things where he should have given one response, and had a different one instead.

Well, he’ll never be a “proper” lord, not the way that some people define these things. Harry thought Gwen was adjusting to that, but maybe not.

“I just want to know what happens if he kidnaps you and I can’t prevent it.”

“Then I break free and hopefully capture him with the crystal cage, and you come back with me to the school, and we figure out a way that we can destroy him together.”

Gwen closes her eyes. “So you really wouldn’t blame me if you got kidnapped on my watch? When I was the one supposed to be protecting you?”

“Oh, don’t worry, Gwen. I would blame you enough for all three of us.”

Harry sighs. Of all the times for Theo to shake off his trance and come over to smile meanly at people, it had to be now. He turns back to Gwen. “He only means that he would be upset with himself, and it would spill over onto you. But he wouldn’t kill you,” Harry adds with a stern glance at Theo. “Given that he didn’t kill Susan when she took me to Voldemort. Isn’t that right, Theo?”

Theo’s eyelids flicker. “I was part of that plan, my lord.”

“And you would be part of this one, too.”

“I don’t want you capturing Voldemort in the crystal cage.”

Harry shrugs. “We’ll see if I have any other option. I might not. We need to take him out of the game and spend some time studying him to see if we really can destroy him. If we’re missing essential clues.”

He speaks the words while staring directly at Theo, and Theo nods in reluctant agreement. After all, he’s aware of the Horcruxes and how they don’t yet know where the last ones are. But he says, “We can do it with less risk than by having you go out to get kidnapped, my lord.”

“How?”

“We could have someone Polyjuice as you, easily. And then we would make sure—”

“Out of the question. I won’t have someone else taking that kind of risk for me.”

“It seems as though you are prepared to accept all the risks to yourself that I thought you had moved past taking, however.” Theo’s voice descends to a hiss. Harry is vaguely aware of Gwen backing away, but that’s all right with him, because this isn’t really about her anymore. “Are you a lord or not?”

“Oh, I am. And I would be willing to have someone else take the risks. But not just Polyjuice as me and march into a situation they’re not able to handle. Come up with some other plan, Theo.”

Theo closes his eyes and takes a deep breath through his nose. Then he says, “Can I speak to you privately, my lord?”

Harry nods, because he does want to know what Theo’s fixation with the box and the rose is about. He turns to the other people who are crowded into the room. He’s kind of relieved that Sirius had already left the Great Hall to teach a class and so doesn’t know about the delivery or who it’s from yet. “Can you leave us alone? We’ll need to go to classes soon anyway.”

People filter out of the room, but a lot of them give him backwards glances. Harry suspects he’ll still have a lot to explain no matter what.

Susan stands where she is with her arms folded. Theo turns to her and says something softly. Susan’s eyebrows rise until they might just lift off her face and keep going to the ceiling, but in the end, she nods, turns, and leaves them alone.

“What has you so bothered, Theo?”

“You mean, besides the fact that the Dark Lord wants to court you?”

“He doesn’t really know what love is, and you know that he’s just mad. You don’t think that I would let him near me, do you?”

Theo hesitates, and then a reluctant smile breaks out over his mouth. “Not truly, no. But—my lord—it bothers me.”

Harry pauses, peering into Theo’s eyes, and then nods slowly. They’ve never talked about this, but he’s not really surprised, he supposes, that Theo’s devotion to him could have a romantic edge.

He doesn’t know if it does yet. Theo hasn’t said anything that would make him think so.

“You know that I don’t want to date a follower,” Harry says, as gently as he can. “Not someone who has a sort of—compelled loyalty to me.”

“You think that’s me? My lord, I am offended.”

Theo is smiling, but Harry thinks that he probably is offended. He lifts his hands. “You have your oath, and under certain circumstances, that would compel you to follow me and defend my life with yours. I just—Theo, I would never want you to feel like I had some sort of authority over you if we were dating.”

“You haven’t outright rejected the idea. That’s interesting.”

Harry sighs and gives the unvarnished truth, the kind that he would probably only otherwise speak in front of Ron and Hermione. “I haven’t thought much about dating in the last few years because being Lord Slytherin and the war with Voldemort and just ordinary school stuff have made that impossible. I haven’t thought about whether I would want to date girls or boys because I haven’t had time.”

“But you haven’t outright rejected the idea,” Theo repeats.

Harry looks at Theo and lets himself, for a second, think about what would happen if they were dating. Theo’s eyes are bright, and his body lean, and his magic impressive, and—

And Harry can trust him. That’s the thing that’s more attractive than all the rest. Harry could never date someone he doesn’t know well, not when they might just want to date him for his fame or money.

Or Lordship, for that matter.

But that just brings him back to the problem. Harry decides to explain it aloud. “I can’t date someone I don’t know, someone who might just be in it for the notoriety, but I can’t date a follower, either.”

“Why not?”

“I already told you!”

Harry cringes as his voice resounds in the Room of Requirement. He honestly didn’t mean to shout.

“But you’re frustrated by the fact,” Theo says softly. “Precisely because the people you trust the most are the ones gathered around you every single day.”

“Well, yeah, and also Sirius and Ahalam. Neither of whom is an option for obvious reasons.”

Theo doesn’t smile. “Has it occurred to you that precisely because you aren’t the usual kind of Lord Slytherin, many of us would be honored by your attention? Flattered, instead of intimidated by it?”

“And what about the way I feel?”

“Constrained? Uncomfortable?”

“What would happen if we broke up?”

“Then I would immediately step back to any distance you wanted me to,” Theo says softly. “I can’t imagine breaking up with you, but I suppose it would be possible. It would be likelier to come from your side.”

Harry nods and closes his eyes, reeling back his imagination from the idea that he could date a follower. “Theo—I just—I wouldn’t be able to date someone I could command.”

“Most of us wouldn’t allow ourselves to be commanded, anyway. Or you don’t make a habit of it.”

“You’re the only one that I’ve—done it with.”

“You realize what that sounds like.”

Harry opens his eyes and smiles reluctantly at the sound of Theo’s chuckle, glad that they can joke about it. “Yeah. But it’s true.”

“Perhaps that makes me the best choice.”

Harry has to glance down and away from what’s glowing in Theo’s eyes. He feels—he wants—

He wants to not lose his friendship with Theo, first and foremost. And that means thinking and talking about this until he decides if it’s something he wants, something their friendship could survive if it didn’t work.

Or their lordship-followership, for that matter.

Which probably isn’t a word.

“My lord?”

Harry takes a deep breath and faces Theo again. “Let me think about it,” he says. The idea still feels so new that it’s kind of shocking. He wants to carry it away like a gift wrapped in a cloth and take it out and look at it again when he has more time. “For now, no.”

Theo only smiles in a self-satisfied way and nods. “I’ll be here, my lord, no matter what you decide.”

That makes Harry relax, a little. He glances back over his shoulder at the gift Voldemort sent. “You must know I would never go for him, no matter what.”

“Yes, but I hate him for it anyway.”

“You didn’t already hate him?”

They make jokes as Harry scoops up the box, the scroll, and the rose, and leaves the room. He’ll put them under a Preservation Charm somewhere safe, just in case Voldemort has spells on them to tell him if someone destroys them, and decide what sort of response he should send that would best serve the war.

And in the meantime…

He thinks of the light shining at the bottom of Theo’s eyes and smile, and swallows.

He has more than one thing to think about.

Chapter Text

“Voldemort has no right to be courting you.”

“It’s not like I wanted him to, Sirius. I had no idea he would send that letter and the—the scroll.”

“Nevertheless,” Sirius says, writing busily on a piece of parchment in front of him, “he has no right to be courting you.”

Sirius seems much less upset about the whole “Voldemort wants to court me” thing than Harry anticipated. When he told Sirius in his private quarters after lunch, Sirius listened intently, asked a few questions about how Harry’s followers were responding, and then went and got the parchment. Harry tries to lean over his shoulder and see what it is.

“Now, now, now,” Sirius says, somehow managing to turn so that Harry can’t see anything of what he’s writing. “This is adult business.”

“Did—did Voldemort offering to court me remind you that you wanted to date someone, or something?’

Sirius turns and looks at him. Harry looks stubbornly back, even though he can feel his ears turning red. It’s not like he—minds if Sirius wants to date someone. Have sex with someone, even though it’s sort of strange to think about. Sirius shouldn’t have to sit in his rooms all the time and pretend he doesn’t have a social life because of Harry.

“It has nothing to do with that,” Sirius says finally, his voice gentle. “It just reminded me that I was neglecting one of my duties as your guardian.”

“Which one?”

Sirius seals the parchment into an envelope before he replies. “I have the final say in who you get to court, Harry. If there are any marriage contracts, I will be signing them. That’s what this little noseless upstart forgot.” Harry chokes. “He should have approached me if he wanted to court you.”

Harry gapes at him.

“I can be a proper guardian, when I try,” Sirius says, with a little sniff, and stands up to turn towards the door. “Mother would be so proud.” He wipes a fake tear away and keeps walking.

Harry is so stunned that he has to run to catch up with Sirius, and by then, his godfather is halfway to the Owlery. Harry gasps as he says, “Sirius, you really don’t have to do this.”

Ahalam stirs in Harry’s robe pocket. He finally seems to have slept off the cheese coma and his lack of interest in Voldemort’s courting, which he discarded as a “human thing” once he realized that it didn’t involve admiring snakes. Now he sticks his head up. “What does the dog-man not have to do?”

“Write to Voldemort and tell him not to court me.”

“He should do that. He should say that the strange pale one has to admire your scales instead.”

Sirius winks at Harry and runs up the last few steps. Harry runs after him, sure that Sirius won’t find an owl willing to carry the message by the time Harry can get there and snatch the envelope away.

But he reckoned without Hedwig. Hedwig did land on the table at breakfast shortly after the owl that delivered Voldemort’s courting proposal, but she acted stiff and hurt. Now she gleefully snatches Sirius’s letter and soars out the window.

“Sirius.”

“He should have applied to me first,” Sirius says, and gives a great sniff, draping the back of his hand over his forehead. “It’s shocking that he didn’t. Shocking, I tell you. He wants to abide by all the prim and proper pureblood stuff, supposedly, but then he does this?” He shakes his head. “I just don’t know what our young Dark Lords are coming to these days.”

“Sirius, you can’t really—”

“Anyone else who wants to court you will have to apply to me first.”

Sirius flounces down the stairs, and Harry feels, both disturbed and a little happy. At least Sirius didn’t take the news as badly as Harry thought he might. And at least a letter to Voldemort will make Voldemort angry, but probably not angrier than he was already.

Harry really hopes that he doesn’t get more black roses in response, though.

*

He doesn’t. But Hedwig carries a huge package to Sirius a few days later, and Harry groans from the bottom of his heart.

Hermione follows the trajectory of his gaze, and sighs. “Do you think that Voldemort took Sirius—seriously?”

“I hope not, but he probably did,” Harry says gloomily. He watches Sirius nodding as he looks at the package and the note fastened to it, though, which is odd. Does he intend to use this to trap Voldemort somehow?

But then Sirius stands up and carries the package over to the Gryffindor table. “I think this is for you, Harry,” he says in a loud voice there’s no hiding from. Even some of the people at the Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff tables who aren’t in Harry’s circle are craning their heads to see, enthralled.

“What the fuck?” Harry mouths to Sirius, but Sirius smiles and continues to hold out the package.

“He has my permission to court you,” Sirius says, again loudly enough for his voice to reach all the staring, craning people.

Harry looks at Hermione. Hermione whips out her wand and casts Finite Incantatem on Sirius without even being asked.

Sirius gives them such a wounded expression that Harry almost laughs. “I am myself,” he says. “Of course I am. I’m just saying that he has my permission to court you.”

Harry puts his hand over his eyes for a second. Then he sighs and opens the package. The letter can wait, as far as he’s concerned.

He blinks when he takes out a large blue stone that has a pulsing, subtle warmth to it. He turns it over, and another note on the bottom of the rock catches his eye. Harry reads it before he can glance away.

So Ahalam can sleep comfortably.

Something in Harry’s mood must have shifted enough for Ahalam to sense it, because he pokes his head out of Harry’s robe pocket. “It is shiny! It is for me!”

“It is for you,” Harry says slowly, while he wonders just how the fuck Voldemort knew Ahalam’s name. Is it something he read out of Susan’s mind when she “betrayed” Harry to him? Or Harry’s? But then, wouldn’t he have sensed the plan that Susan and Theo had cooked up?

Harry shakes his head and holds the rock out. Ahalam promptly slithers off his shoulder and onto the rock, arching his neck back and forth. “The color complements my scales.”

“Where did you learn the word complement?”

“You do not think the prettiest snake is smart?”

Ahalam sounds so hurt that Harry closes his eyes for a moment. Then he says, “I just didn’t think the prettiest snake would know a word like that in Parseltongue.”

“I know many words,” Ahalam says, and coils contentedly on the rock. “Such as warm. And wonderful.”

Harry snorts and finally turns to open the envelope. He pauses when he does, though, because the handwriting isn’t the same as it was on the scroll Voldemort sent.

He darts a glance sideways at Sirius, who widens his eyes and asks, “You think I would have let that wanker court you? Really?”

“Sirius Black.”

So many people are laughing that Harry knows McGonagall’s reprimand won’t have the effect she wants. Besides, Sirius is already winking at him and gesturing towards the note and the rock. Harry shakes his head and glances down at it again.

Lord Slytherin,

I heard that I should contact your godfather before attempting to court you, so I did. But I did also send a gift that I hope you and your familiar will enjoy whether or not you decide to pursue a formal courtship with me.

Sincerely, and ever yours,
Theodore Nott.

Harry shoots a glance across the Great Hall at the Slytherin table. His Slytherin followers are already staring at Theo, who lounges back on his seat and smiles at Harry with enough smugness to make Harry smile helplessly back.

He doesn’t know if he’ll actually allow Theo to court him. But he has to admit, it’s a nice distraction from Voldemort, and Regulus, and even the upcoming O.W.L. exams.

“He sent a nice rock,” Ahalam says, his voice full of the soft sleepiness that he normally only gets out in the sun.

Yes, Harry thinks, stroking one finger over the surface of the blue stone while he beams at Theo, he did.

Chapter Text

“What does this mean for your being Lord Slytherin?”

“Huh?”

Hermione shoots him an intense look of pity. Harry huffs and leans back in his chair near the fire. They’re in the Gryffindor common room, so at least only a quarter of the school can stare at him and whisper speculation about him (that he hears, anyway). Ron is good at glaring away people who want to come up and bother Harry, though.

At least, everyone except Hermione.

“I know that you said you didn’t want to date a follower because of the power imbalance between them and you as Lord Slytherin.”

“Yeah.”

“But you’re open to dating Theo?”

“I told him I was open to seeing where it went. I’m still concerned about the power thing, but you know that Theo barely does what I tell him anyway. It concerns me less than if it were someone else.”

Hermione bites her lip for a moment. Harry waits. He knows that she probably has other ethical concerns to raise, and he’s open to hearing them.

But instead, she says, “And if he gets you involved in some other crazy plan that might use or diminish your power as Lord Slytherin?”

“What kind of plan are you thinking of?”

“A crazy one.”

“Well, if you mean the kind that Susan and Theo used in the past, I have taken some precautions against that,” Harry says dryly. “They’ll have to earn my trust back. I won’t just go along with them without asking questions.”

“But if they answer those questions?”

“I would. Just like I would with you or Ron.”

“We are not comparable to those—those mental—”

“Their plan worked, didn’t it?” Ron asks, draping himself across the chair that stands next to Hermione’s. He’s still watching for whispering Gryffindors, though, as he proves when his glare sends Romilda Vane into retreat.

Hermione whips towards Ron. “Not you, too!”

“Listen, Hermione, I’m not going to try and talk you out of anger at Susan and Theo,” Ron says, in his friendliest voice. “But I won’t say that Harry should never trust them again, either. You saw what Theo did today.”

“Yes, and Sirius treated it like a prank!”

“Sirius treats everything like a prank.” Ron shrugs. “Theo made a move in front of the whole school. No lying, no hiding, no acting like he’s ashamed to be asking Harry on a date. Or like his power as Lord Slytherin needs to be worshipped and bowed to, either. That’s pretty good in my book.”

“Because someone else might be worse?”

Ron blinks at Hermione as if thinking she might follow up on that statement, and then says, “Well. Yeah.”

Hermione dissolves into bickering with Ron. Harry leans back and looks at Ahalam, who is curled up on the rock next to the chair and hasn’t left it since they arrived back in the common room.

“Is it really that great a rock?”

“It is the most perfect and most wonderful rock,” Ahalam says dreamily. “You should mate this boy. He chooses good rocks and appreciates snake beauty. He is an excellent choice for a mate.”

Harry clears his throat, embarrassed by the talk of mating even though no one else can understand what Ahalam is saying.

“What are you going to do about this, Harry?”

Hermione seems to have decided that not paying attention to her is a worse sin than whatever was the last thing Ron said. Harry sighs a little and says, “Give Theo a chance.”

“And Voldemort?” Hermione does lower her voice, even though Harry thinks plenty of people in the Gryffindor common room will be able to make a guess about who sent that other box with the black rose.

“He won’t be happy about this.”

“Not at all.”

Harry nods. “We’ll deal with that as we need to.”

Hermione takes a deep breath, maybe sees from the look on Harry’s face that the last thing he wants to do is talk about it, and nods. “Fine,” she says. “And in the meantime, we should get back to studying for O.W.L.S. If you and Theo need time alone, you could do worse than spend it revising, you know.”

Harry half-smiles. It’s comforting to know that neither Hermione nor Ron has changed despite how different things are now than they were three years ago.

“This rock is better than shiny. You must mate the boy so that he will keep giving me rocks.”

And Ahalam is never going to change, either.

*

“Sirius, why did you send that snippy letter to Voldemort but agree to allow Theo to court me?”

“Because,” Sirius says, staring at Harry in mild confusion, “it was funny.”

Sirius is never going to change, either.

*

“Is this awkward?”

Theo is hesitating in the doorway of the Room of Requirement. Harry invited him to meet there and chose a configuration for the room that would only open for him and Theo. It has a simple wooden door, and inside, it’s a replica of a room somewhere halfway between the Gryffindor commons and the Slytherin one.

Harry grins. “It is, a bit, but that’s part of the reason I invited you here, so it could become less awkward.”

Theo clears his throat and edges into the room, staring around at the large marble hearth and the blazing fire. Then his face softens when he sees the rock with Ahalam asleep on it. “You kept it.”

“Of course I did. I think Ahalam would spontaneously develop venom if I tried to get rid of it.”

“Oh.”

“And of course I kept it because it’s a gift from you. You berk.”

Theo looks at him with shining eyes, and Harry suddenly wonders if he’s the more awkward one after all, even though it seemed like Theo was. Theo is staring at him as if all his most wonderful dreams are rolled together and Harry is the answer to them all.

As if Harry were Theo’s rock.

Harry clears his throat and gestures at the table next to him, where there are biscuits and tea waiting. “Um, I hope you like these.”

“How did you get them? Did a house-elf bring them? I thought the Room wouldn’t produce food.”

Yes, Harry is definitely the more awkward one of the two of them now. “Um. It doesn’t. Um. I made them.”

Theo is staring at him with his lips slightly parted, and Harry looks at his mouth, then away again. Merlin, he doesn’t even know if he’s really gay. Isn’t it weird to date a boy or think about dating a boy when he’s not sure?

Then again, it seems as if Theo doesn’t care that much.

“I’ve never had anyone do that for me,” Theo whispers.

Harry thinks of asking questions about his relatives, and then puts them aside. No, this isn’t the time or the place for it. Theo has barely mentioned his family, and Harry doesn’t want to push him. “Great! I mean, you’re welcome. I mean—”

Theo’s quiet laugh interrupts him. Theo sits down in the chair across from him and picks up a biscuit, smiling at Harry. “No one’s ever done this for me,” he repeats, and takes a bite. “I think it’s wonderful.”

He closes his eyes a second later as he savors the chocolate in the biscuit, or at least Harry hopes that’s what he’s doing. Harry watches Theo’s fingers and his lips and feels something stir in his chest, although he doesn’t know if it’s desire. How would he? Why?

He meant what he said about having no time for these kinds of things with Voldemort around.

“You’re staring at me.”

Theo’s voice is warm and inviting. He leans back in his chair and lets his eyelids droop as he examines Harry.

“Could you stop doing that?”

“You don’t like it?”

“I like it too much.”

Theo lets out another soft laugh and sits up. “It doesn’t matter to me, Harry. I trust that we can work these kinds of things out together.” He takes another bite. “Is Granger driving you mental studying for the exams?”

“I wish you would call her Hermione.”

“Is Hermione being her usual intolerable self?”

And somehow, it does turn out to be exactly that easy. Soon Harry is arguing with Theo about the way that he thinks of Hermione and Ron exactly as if this were a private conversation they were having about Lord Slytherin business.

When their little meeting ends, Harry still isn’t entirely sure how he feels about the courtship. He doesn’t know if this will end up with him dating Theo. He was still sneaking glances at Theo’s eyes and fingers and lips, but it might not go anywhere.

But it isn’t horribly awkward the way Harry feared it might be. This is Theo, his friend.

That’s a lot more important than Theo being his “follower.”

*

“Isn’t that that eagle-owl who delivered the box and the rose to you the other day?”

Vane sounds gleeful. Harry sighs a little. He doesn’t want to think that Vane joined the Defense group just so she could say something like this because she’s upset that Ron has been glaring her away from Harry, but he can’t help the suspicion.

Besides, he probably has bigger things to worry about at the moment.

He turns around and glares at the eagle-owl as it settles on the grass beside him. Maybe it doesn’t want to land on his arm, or maybe it knows that it’s too big to do so.

Or maybe, Harry thinks as he stares into evil yellow eyes, it just thinks that would be too much of a favor.

“What do you have for me?” he asks, resigned.

The eagle-owl promptly raises all its feathers, so that it looks twice as big as it was, and then opens its beak. Voldemort’s voice comes out, in a torrent of Parseltongue that makes people scream and also sounds a lot like Voldemort is gargling with razors.

“Why did you refuse me? You know what you are to me!”

Harry raises his eyebrows. He’s less frightened than he thought he would be. Then again, an owl speaking Parseltongue is so weird that it’s hard to be scared. “Yeah, your mortal enemy. Sorry that I didn’t want my mortal enemy plotting to get me in bed.”

The eagle-owl continues to stare at him with unblinking eyes. Then it gargles Voldemort’s voice again. “You are my Horcrux. You carry a piece of my soul. I would never harm you. And you know that Dumbledore will try to kill you as soon as he realizes.”

He really doesn’t know that the Horcrux died when he cast the Killing Curse at me. Or else he thinks I don’t and he’s planning to use this to lure me close so that he can really kill me.

After a moment, though, Harry discards that second thought. It’s a bit too subtle and sane for Voldemort.

“What?”

“You heard me.”

“That’s disgusting. You shouldn’t go around shoving random bits of your soul into people. It’s unsanitary.”

The eagle-owl pauses, apparently unprepared for this. Harry frowns back at it and shakes his head a little. He kind of hopes Voldemort will decide that Harry disbelieves him. That would be the best outcome for getting close enough to the bastard to trap him.

“You are a Horcrux.”

“I said it was unsanitary.”

“Your godfather denied me permission to court you!”

“Well, you didn’t ask for it in a very pureblood way. You should have applied to him, you know.”

“I am asking you.”

“Go talk to him. I can’t do anything without my godfather’s permission.”

The owl fluffs its feathers back and forth, apparently thinking. Or reflecting Voldemort’s thinking, Harry supposes. Then the bird speaks again. “I had thought you were a true Gryffindor, reckless and defying everyone who tried to hold you back.”

Harry lets himself puff up and an offended expression cross his face. “I am a real Gryffindor!”

“You are not acting like it now, with your unconditional submission to authority.”

“I love my godfather. I’m supposed to do what he tells me,” Harry says, but lets himself visibly waver.

The owl leans closer, still puffed up. Voldemort’s voice is soft and sly as it comes out of the bird’s beak. “And you will show that you matter, that your will matters, if you defy him and come to visit me. From what I know of Sirius Black, he will be more impressed by a show of defiance than any obedience.”

That actually might have worked on a younger version of Harry desperate for love and acceptance, he thinks. But after years of being Lord Slytherin and knowing that Sirius loves him, it just feels utterly transparent.

That’s what he wants Voldemort to think he is, though, so he bites his lip. “But—you still want to kill me.”

“I am sure Dumbledore has told you that I am afraid of death. The Horcruxes are a means to my immortality. The last thing I would want to do is kill you.”

Voldemort makes Parseltongue sound gentle and coaxing. Harry looks down at his feet and then glances up and around as if just becoming aware of his audience for the first time. “Um. I have people who would watch me and keep me from sneaking away. And I have O.W.L.S. too, you know.”

Voldemort must sneer, because the owl’s beak’s doing something weird and stupid. Then he says, “I will promise not to interrupt your exams. You will come see me after them, and I will prove to you that I want to court you and that you need not listen to your godfather.”

“O-okay.”

“Wait for further instructions from me.”

The eagle-owl abruptly turns and flies away—just as a curse hits the ground where it was. Harry glances over and blinks when he sees Gwen with her wand raised.

“I wanted to kill it,” she whispers. “You had the strangest expression on your face, my lord.”

Telling her that he was trying not to laugh hysterically probably isn’t the right move now, Harry thinks. He does his best to smile politely at her. “Well, it isn’t the bird’s fault that Voldemort used it like this. But I do need to talk to my godfather right now. So I suppose the rest of the spells I was going to teach you are on hold for today.”

“Our Defense exam is Tuesday.”

Harry blinks at Blaise. “And Hermione can tutor you as well as I can, I promise.”

“Not me!”

Blaise speaks those words ahead of two other people. Hermione glares at them. Harry rolls his eyes at her and then faces Blaise. “I’ll come out for a few hours tomorrow, but right now, I really need to speak with my godfather.”

“Fine.”

Another thing I shouldn’t tell them, Harry thinks as he goes inside to find Sirius, is how much they sound like a pouty Voldemort when they say things like that.

Chapter Text

“You’re nervous about the O.W.L.S.”

“Yeah.” Harry smiles at Theo over the top of his steaming teacup. They’re taking tea together in the Room of Requirement again, just the two of them. With their class schedules and study schedules, they didn’t get to see much of each other this week. “Although I’m more worried about disappointing other people than failing an exam.”

“Because they want you to do better than you want to do?”

Harry struggles for a second to express his feelings, then shrugs. “Doing well would be nice. And I’ll try for at least Exceeds Expectations on every practical exam. But I don’t know how well I’ll do on the written ones. Hermione works and works with me, but I still don’t always get what she’s talking about.”

“You look calm about it.”

“I’m trying to keep calm so other people don’t get upset, like Blaise,” Harry admits, and then rolls his shoulders. “But some of the tension goes into my shoulders and my spine.”

“Hmm.”

Theo puts down his teacup and stands. His expression is so devious that Harry eyes him cautiously, but he doesn’t object when Theo steps around behind him and the chair Harry is sitting in. One thing he knows is that Theo would never hurt him.

Well.

Unless it came to a crazy plan to get the Horcrux out of his head, as Hermione would say.

Then Harry loses all his thoughts as Theo’s hands descend on his shoulders and begin to massage him. Harry lets out a groan before he can think about it, and then he knows that he blushes bright red.

“Shhh,” Theo murmurs, as if hearing Harry’s confused thoughts that say he really should pull back. “You don’t have to worry. You can just let me touch you. This is something I want to do, Harry.” Then he adds, softly enough that Harry doesn’t know if he was meant to hear it, “You have no idea how much.”

So Harry closes his eyes and lets some of his eternal on-guardedness fall away. Theo finds the tiniest knots in his shoulders and rubs them until they seem to dissolve into warm water. He rubs Harry’s spine briskly, then slowly, and Harry groans again and lets his head collapse forwards into his arms.

“You really were tense.” Theo’s voice is as soft as the sensations creeping down Harry’s back. “You could have asked me for this at any time, you know.”

It feels like enormous pressure to move his tongue when it feels made of cotton, but Harry manages. “I—never would have thought to ask you.”

“Hmm. Why not?”

“Never had this before,” Harry admits, his head lolling.

Theo shuts up after that and just continues to massage Harry’s shoulders and back. It occurs to Harry that Theo’s hands are trembling a little. It also occurs to him that he should make sure that’s because Theo did really want to touch Harry and not because of something else like his own extreme tiredness.

But somewhere in between his decision that he should ask that and his actual ability to ask that, Harry drifts off to sleep.

*

“So what happened between you and Theo?”

Harry blushes, the way he’s been doing all morning when he looks over at the Slytherin table and Theo, and then hastily applies himself to the porridge with berries in front of him. “None of your business,” he mumbles.

“Oh, really?”

Hermione is teasing him, Harry finally realizes, and glares at her a little. She laughs and shakes her head. “I’m glad that he’s good for you.”

“So you don’t resent him anymore for the things he and Susan did?”

“Oh, no, of course I resent him for that,” Hermione says, so cheerful that Harry blinks at her a bit. “But that’s separate from feeling that he’s good or not good for you.” She digs out a huge sheaf of parchment that doesn’t even look like it should fit from the satchel on her shoulder. “And in the meantime, we can keep studying Charms.”

“My eyes are crossing from studying, Hermione.”

“You don’t want that to happen on the actual written exam, do you?”

Harry sighs and gives in, shaking his head a little when Theo raises his eyebrows. He probably would step in and try to rescue Harry from Hermione’s study schedule, but Harry doesn’t want to give Hermione another reason to resent Theo.

Besides. He does have to pass the O.W.L.S., if only so that Sirius will be proud of him.

*

The exams are torture.

Well, not all of them. Harry does enjoy showing off his Niffler Patronus to the witch proctoring the Defense Against the Dark Arts practical, and he also enjoys the fact that he knows he does better on the Potions practical than he ever did when Snape was teaching. And the Transfiguration written exam is a lot easier than he thought it would be thanks to all the studying.

But the rest? Sitting in a room full of other tense students and trying to remember what the right answer is for a question about who invented an obscure charm in 1870?

Harry hates it, and he doesn’t think he does that well, even if he has faithfully studied and struggled with the material instead of just hiding away from it the way he would have liked to do. He promised Hermione. He promised Blaise. He promised Sirius.

He still walks out of the Astronomy exam feeling as though someone has pummeled him in the chest, and nearly falls asleep walking down the stairs. Only Ahalam’s urgent hisses not to crush the prettiest snake save him.

Considerately, Voldemort waits until the History of Magic exam, which Harry has no real interest in passing, to interrupt him.

*

Harry has just finished writing a short essay about Uric the Oddball—who didn’t do anything that memorable, really—when he hears a wave of screams behind him. He turns around and stares.

Voldemort is walking into the classroom between the scrambling students. His eyes are fixed on Harry.

Harry rubs his own eyes, sure that he’s daydreaming, because even Voldemort is less horrifying than the History of Magic exam. But no, Voldemort is really there, and really stalking forwards, and really floating a gigantic box wrapped with a crimson bow behind him.

“This is the polite way to approach you, your guardian said.”

It occurs to Harry, who is feeling lightheaded and dizzy, that he never did read the letter Sirius sent off to Voldemort. He assumed it was just a snippy complaint about how Voldemort violated pureblood etiquette by not talking to Harry’s godfather about courting him, but what if Sirius did say something about how Voldemort should come to Hogwarts with a giant gift?

The second he has the thought, Harry is sure that he’s right.

For fuck’s sake, Sirius.

But it’s his place as both Harry Potter and Lord Slytherin to spare people who will never be able to stand up to Voldemort the task, so he takes a deep breath and gets to his feet. “Did he say to do it in the middle of an exam?” he demands.

Voldemort pauses, still a few strides away from Harry. The student in the desk next to him has fainted dead away. “He did not specify.”

Sirius and I are going to have words.

But in the meantime, Harry has to make sure that both he and everyone else survives this crazy encounter. So he takes another deep breath and looks into Voldemort’s eyes. “You should realize that he didn’t want you to interrupt my exams.”

Voldemort is silent for a long moment, his neck weaving back and forth. Then he says, “So you will not open the gift?”

“I’ll accept the gift, but I won’t open it now.” Harry gestures impatiently around at the classroom full of staring students and the trembling proctor. “Do you think this is a conducive atmosphere to opening it?”

Voldemort slowly stares around. “Yes?”

“Well, I don’t. I’m not all you, you know. The Horcrux has been changed by contact with my living soul.”

Harry half-hopes that will make Voldemort give up, the idea that it’s not really himself he’s courting. Distressingly, he just looks more interested. “You are indeed different from me. I had not considered that.”

Harry folds his arms and tries to look commanding. “Well, consider it now. You need to leave and choose a more convenient time.”

“You will not respond to my attempts to court you.”

“I’m responding to this one, aren’t I? But it needs to be a time and place I find appropriate, as well as my guardian.”

Voldemort’s eyes flash for a second, and Harry tenses, ready to ask Hogwarts for help in protecting the students. But instead, Voldemort reaches out and lets his fingers skim down Harry’s cheek. Harry stands and stares at him unflinchingly, because that’s part of what he’s for, in the end, is to defy Voldemort.

“You are brave and beyond price,” Voldemort whispers. “Lord Voldemort will withdraw for now. But, make no mistake, my brave one, I will be waiting for your response to my courting gesture.”

He nods regally, as if half-bowing to the Horcrux in Harry, and then turns and flows out of the examination room. Harry exhales a breath.

Then, of course, is when people really start screaming.

*

“I thought that you banished him from the school in your fight in the Chamber of Secrets!”

Harry shakes his head. “Just for that night, I think. Or else he could come into Hogwarts through the wards because he honestly didn’t have any malicious intentions.”

“He’s Voldemort, he always has malicious intentions!”

“Not this time,” Harry mutters, staring down at the huge box in front of him. The exam proctor, showing some good sense, made Harry tuck it away in a corner of the classroom while the test went on. But Harry floated it unceremoniously up the stairs to Sirius’s quarters the moment he finished scribbling his stupid answers that don’t matter anyway.

I knew studying for History of Magic was a waste of time.

He probably can’t say that around Hermione, though, who looks like she might expire from simultaneous curiosity and anger.

“I didn’t give him permission to interrupt your exams,” Sirius says for the fifth time.

One of Harry’s friends kept interrupting the other times he said that. Sure enough, Ernie opens his mouth now. Harry turns his back as if he didn’t see it and frowns at Sirius. “So what exactly did you say to him in that letter? You told me that you just scolded him for not following pureblood courting etiquette.”

“You did what?” Ron is the one who looks on the verge of expiring now.

“He didn’t have the right to contact you without my permission,” Sirius mutters sulkily.

“No one’s arguing that,” Harry says, although a few people in the room look like they might try. “I just want to know what you said.”

Sirius sighs dramatically and collapses on the black leather couch that he keeps in one corner of the room. In the few months that he’s been here, he’s changed the décor about five times. Harry ignores it now, keeping his eyes on his godfather until he squirms and cracks.

“I told him that if he was serious about courting you, he had to come to Hogwarts to do it. And bring a huge present.”

“Professor Black,” Hermione says, and Harry hastily conjures a chair behind her. She looks like she needs it a lot more than Sirius needs the couch right now. “Why would you—why would you say such a thing?”

“I didn’t think he’d do it!” Sirius waves his hands around.

“But why did you tell him in the first place?” Hermione insists.

Sirius leans intently forwards. Harry finds himself doing the same thing. And Hermione doesn’t need the chair after all, considering that she looks as if she might run over to the couch Sirius is lounging on in the next second.

“Because,” Sirius says slowly, “I didn’t think he’d do it.”

Hermione covers her face with her hands.

Harry knows exactly how she feels, but in the meantime, they have this gigantic box to deal with, which is big enough to contain a desk. And he knows the one person who should have a say in it. He turns around and looks at Theo, who is near the doorway of Sirius’s quarters, his eyes on the box and a dreamily murderous look on his face.

“Do we open it?” Harry asks.

“Mate, are you mental?”

“Harry, I’m sorry I gave him permission! I said that!”

“I must advise against the opening of the box, my lord!”

“What if it is a big wheel of cheese?”

Harry ignores all of them, eyes fastened on Theo.

Theo continues looking at him carefully for a long moment. Then he smiles and inclines his head. “I would advise opening the box, my lord,” he says calmly. “After all, it is part of the courtship process that I have the right to see what my rivals send to you.”

“He’s not a rival for you.”

Everyone else is saying various things, but Harry knows only his words need to get to Theo, and so they do. Theo’s smile becomes even calmer and more genuine. “I know that, my lord. I meant in the traditional sense.”

Harry sighs and aims his wand at the box.

“My lord, you might set off a trap!” And Harry might have ignored what Ernie’s saying, but then the self-sacrificing idiot runs right over and stands in front of the box, his arms spread. “At least let us set up protective wards first!”

That’s good sense. Harry nods and steps back, and watches Sirius cast the wards. They’re good ones. It does seem that he’s genuinely contrite over what he told Voldemort to do.

Ahalam is swaying on Harry’s shoulder. Harry reaches up to him. “Do you sense something?” If Voldemort did add some kind of Parseltongue magic to the box, then Ahalam might be the best one to figure it out, since it is literally part of his being.

“Tell them not to damage the cheese.”

“It isn’t cheese.”

“You do not know that until the box is opened. It could be cheese until the box is opened. Therefore, tell them not to damage it.”

There’s probably some profound insight there, but Harry isn’t in the mood to figure it out. He just makes random soothing noises at Ahalam and watch as Sirius’s wards congregate around the box. It’s hard to even see the wood now, beneath the glittering knots and weaves of the wards. But that’s fine by Harry. He would much rather go overboard in protecting his followers and godfather and familiar from a trap.

At least, now that he’s been reminded of it.

He shakes off his embarrassment and watches as Sirius casts the spell that makes the box wobble under the wards. Then the slats unfold and fall to the floor, and Harry blinks at what sits revealed in the box.

“It is not cheese.”

“No, it certainly isn’t,” Harry mutters, still staring. When he realizes that no one else is probably going to move until he does, he edges towards the thing, pointing at it with his wand instead of his hand, even though he really wants to do that.

It’s made of white marble, which seems to have been infused with charms so that it glows from the inside, as if softly lit. And it’s a—

A statue of Voldemort, clad from the waist down in robes, while from the waist up, his chest is bare and he has his arms lifted the way that Harry sometimes remembers seeing superheroes do on the telly.

Sirius chokes behind him. Harry wants to do the same thing.

“He really is mad,” Ernie whispers.

For some reason, that’s the thing that makes everyone dissolve in giggles. Harry has to keep from gasping and choking when he bends at the waist, not least because Ahalam starts complaining that Harry is about to drop him on the floor. And his reaction isn’t as extreme as the way Hermione is literally on the floor or Sirius has turned into a dog to howl better.

Amid the chaos, Harry turns helplessly to Theo, who is staring at the statue with huge eyes.

Theo glances back at him and shakes his head slowly.

And that’s all that Harry needs to know. Voldemort is certainly no competition for Theo, and Theo doesn’t feel threatened by him.

Good.

Now Harry just has to figure out what to do with the thing.

Chapter Text

“Lord Voldemort cannot be courting you.”

“I mean, I agree with you, sir, but he is.”

Dumbledore puts an aged and shaking hand over his face. It’s the one that was scorched black by the decoy Horcrux. Harry sighs a little. He wishes things had worked out differently and he and Dumbledore could still be allies, even friends.

But it seems more and more like that’s not going to happen.

“He cannot be courting you because he cannot come to the school and interfere with the lives of other students,” Dumbledore tries to explain.

“I do actually agree with you there, sir, but Sirius told him to do that. So it’s really Sirius’s fault.”

“This cannot go on, Harry. If it does, I will have to rethink my decision to allow you to attend Hogwarts. You cannot act the Lord Slytherin and command your classmates, and you cannot—you cannot allow Voldemort to visit. They deserve to have lives free of him, and of you if you encourage him.”

Harry’s breath catches in his throat. But Ahalam wanders out onto his shoulder from under his robe collar and says, “Cheese?” And that, of all things, gives Harry the chance to relax, breathe, and think this through.

After a second, he shakes his head. “You can’t stop me from attending Hogwarts, sir.”

“Harry, as the Headmaster, my duty must be to the students as a whole before any particular one—”

“No, I mean that you can’t stop me from attending Hogwarts because the school herself would support me coming back,” Harry explains patiently. “I do it favors, like defending it from the attempt Voldemort made to enter through the Chamber of Secrets, and it protects me from things like having to go to the Yule Ball.”

Dumbledore shuts his eyes. “I would find a way around that.”

“Do you really want to? Or do you want to listen to my plan to stop Voldemort from courting me?”

Dumbledore visibly wavers. Ahalam peers at him, then looks at Fawkes on his perch. “Shiny,” he hints hopefully.

“You can’t have the phoenix. He’s not made of cheese, and I don’t think he would give you a feather, either.”

Harry stops talking as Fawkes reaches back, plucks a shining gold-and-crimson feather from his tail, and drops it on the desk in front of Harry. Ahalam promptly winds down Harry’s wrist and around the feather.

“Mine! My shiny!”

Harry stares back and forth between Fawkes and Ahalam. Fawkes spreads his tail and coos at Ahalam.

“Well, shit,” Harry says at last. “Maybe Voldemort isn’t the only one who’s made an inappropriate courting decision.”

“Harry, please,” Dumbledore says, with his hand over his eyes again.

“I do need to stay in the school, sir. But you have my word that I’ll keep Voldemort from coming back. And I’ll do something about him, too.”

“Something about him courting you?”

Harry smiles. “Just something in general.”

“Harry, it would please me if you would tell me.”

“But it would please me to get to be the one who makes cryptic statements for once.”

And no matter how much Dumbledore wheedles, Harry won’t tell him. He really does have a plan to deal with both the statue and Voldemort courting him, though.

Maybe it will also deal with Voldemort in general, but part of that will depend on how many Horcruxes he has left. Harry will just need to hope he gets lucky.

“The bird is very wise,” Ahalam says contentedly when they leave Dumbledore’s office, “to recognize the beauty of the prettiest snake and give me a shiny thing. I do not think his human is as wise. The bird has made a strange choice there.”

Harry laughs softly and touches the end of Ahalam’s phoenix feather, watching it spark and spit. He’s obviously not the one it’s meant for. “Well, we can all excuse a few strange choices, I suppose.”

Ahalam abruptly writhes around on Harry’s shoulder and stares at him in worry. Harry blinks back, not understanding the vibrating tension that has flooded his familiar. “Ahalam? Are you all right?”

“What if the phoenix does not like cheese?”

Harry has to snort. “I think he probably does, but either way, you can still accept shiny things from him.”

“But if he does not.”

“Then you have to make your choice as to whether you want to give the shiny feather back.”

“I will be keeping the shiny feather,” Ahalam says, after what seems to be a real struggle. “But I must speak with the phoenix soon on whether he likes cheese. Perhaps he will have to give me two feathers if he does not.”

Harry laughs and walks the rest of the way to the Room of Requirement, where he can request a space to be by himself. He has to think, and he has to make sure that he has safeguards set up in case his plan to take care of Voldemort doesn’t work.

In any case, it should at least take care of the statue.

*

“Your answer, Harry Potter?”

This time, Voldemort has sent some kind of dark grey winged snake to Harry’s Defense group practice. Harry stares at it. It looks almost like a reverse Patronus, coated with a dark grey film of oil, or so it seems.

Harry clears his throat. “I am still contemplating my answer.”

“If you reciprocate my courtship, you must give me a gift in return.”

Harry abruptly stands taller, ignoring the concerned glances from half his people. Yes, in fact, this will work nicely. “I do want to accept. But I must make sure that my gift answers the magnificence of yours. Give me three days, and when I have created the gift that will match yours, meet me in the Forbidden Forest.”

The snake flaps its wings excitedly. Ahalam hisses at it from Harry’s shoulder, no words, just a wordless threat.

“Where shall we meet in the Forbidden Forest?”

“The place that you first showed me your power,” Harry murmurs. “The place that you drank the blood of unicorns and frightened the wits out of me as a first-year.”

“I would never have frightened you had I known what you were to me, darling.”

Harry pulls up a tight smile. “I understand that, but it makes a convenient meeting place. And the more I think of it, the more I think that I fully understood who and what you were then. My youth simply didn’t let me understand all of it.”

The oily grey snake lifts its head and fixes Harry with a look of adoration that comes oddly through the serpentine face and body. Snakes aren’t really built for this kind of thing. “My own. I will await you there.”

The snake flies rapidly away, and Harry turns around to meet the expectant gazes of his friends and followers. Hermione and Gwen are both leaning a little forwards as if they’re at the start of a race. Harry smiles at them.

“I’m meeting Voldemort in the Forbidden Forest in three days to discuss our courtship.”

They explode.

*

“Kiddo, you couldn’t have phrased it differently?”

Harry winks at Sirius as he drapes the warded cloak Theo presented him with around his shoulders. Theo didn’t give him a choice about accepting this as his second courtship gift, just showed up and shoved it at Harry without explanation. But Harry has no problems wearing it. “I wanted them to shout and yell right away so they could get it out of their systems.”

Sirius sighs and casts himself backwards on the leather couch, staring at the ceiling. Harry looks up, too, but doesn’t see anything interesting.

“I would have shouted and yelled if I’d been there, too. And I don’t like the fact that you’re meeting him alone.”

“Hardly alone.” Harry conjures a mirror and stares at the collar of the cloak, which is uncomfortable, with a frown. Then he rearranges it. It settles gently after that, and he nods. He didn’t think Theo would have got him an ill-fitting cloak. “You’re going to be there, and Theo, and Hermione, and Ron, and Gwen, and Ahalam, and—”

“But not with you in the clearing. Waiting beyond it.”

“Close enough to charge to the rescue if anything happens.”

Sirius abruptly grabs his shoulder. Harry turns and throws his arms around his godfather, assuming Sirius wants a hug, but Sirius just shakes him a little and leans down to hiss into his ear. “I just want your life to be normal. With a boyfriend if you want one and happiness and your biggest concern the date when summer holidays start.”

“I know, but it can’t be that,” Harry says, remembering to keep his voice gentle. Sirius doesn’t know everything that Harry does, after all. “My life is equal parts myth and farce. I need to have a sense of humor about it or I’d collapse.”

Sirius gives a helpless chuckle and leans a little harder on him, as if to say that he would gladly do his part to make Harry’s life less of a farce. Then he steps back, shaking his head. “All right. So what are we going to do now? And do you mind telling me what you did to that statue?”

“Yes.”

“What?”

“Yes, I would mind.”

“Why are you keeping this a secret, Harry?” Sirius is practically whining, leaning forwards like a dog being denied a treat. “Why do I have to suffer along with the rest of them? I can understand you making Voldemort want to suffer, and even some of your overprotective followers, but why me?”

Harry leans forwards, making sure the expression on his face is grave. Sirius leans again, to the point that he might have to transform into a dog to keep from collapsing.

“Because,” Harry whispers, “I thought it would be funny.”

Sirius stares at him, and then gives a thready little chuckle. He throws his arms around Harry again, and Harry leans into him willingly, while his godfather gives a final shaky exhalation above him.

“I love you,” Sirius whispers. “And I promise that I’ll keep you safe, no matter what happens.”

Harry just nods and untangles himself from his godfather’s arms with a final pat to Sirius’s back. He has preparations to make before they enter the Forest, and he knows that Voldemort will be impatient. He thinks that Harry is coming to finally declare his love and give him a reciprocal courting gift, after all.

If only he knew.

On the other hand, he’s going to find out shortly.

*

Harry walks into the Forbidden Forest, making sure to keep the same calm, grave expression on his face that he used when he was talking to Sirius. His followers trail behind him, bickering in low voices. It seems that Hermione has specifically chosen to walk with Theo so she can tell him what she thinks of his and Susan’s grand plan.

“It was Susan’s plan, too,” Harry hears Theo say at one point, almost a whine in his voice. “It’s not something I came up with all by myself. Why don’t you spend as much time scolding her?”

“Because she has apologized.”

And on they walk. Harry smiles up at the half-moon and glances back at the box floating behind him, with the statue wrapped inside it. Sirius stopped sulking long enough to tie a giant green bow on it, along with smaller silver ones. Harry expected to have more trouble floating it along, but maybe because Ahalam is here, he doesn’t.

Ahalam insisted on coming. And where Ahalam goes, lately, so does the phoenix feather, which Harry has made into a little harness that can twine around his body and he can carry with him.

“You are not going to leave me behind. How will the noseless one admire my glory otherwise?”

“I’ll leave you at the edge of the clearing with everyone else. He can still see in the dark.”

“That is all right. As long as he admires the prettiest snake.”

Harry strokes Ahalam’s scales once more, and stops at the edge of the clearing. Gwen tries to take a step past him, but the air between the trees abruptly begins to glow and bounces her away. Harry shrugs a little when she gives him an accusing glance.

“I didn’t suggest that he take precautions to keep other people from intruding, but I thought he probably would.”

Gwen folds her arms and says, “I would feel much better, by your leave, if I could go in with you, my lord.”

“I know,” Harry tells her, as gently as he can. “But it’s just not the kind of thing that Lord Voldemort is going to permit.”

She pouts.

Harry hands Ahalam to Theo, who watches him with a solemn gaze. Harry squeezes his hand once and then floats the box to the front of the gathering. People give it uncertain glances. Harry didn’t tell anyone the outline of his plan, just in case Voldemort was able to read it out of their minds with Legilimency.

Is that likely to happen? No. Will Harry take all the precautions he can against it happening anyway? Yes.

“Be careful, my lord.”

Harry nods to Theo and walks into the clearing with the box floating behind him.

Voldemort is waiting in all his terrible glory. He probably wouldn’t have noticed Ahalam’s phoenix feather even if the little snake did come, Harry thinks, to hold back his rising fear and excitement and a strange feeling of guilt.

“Harry Potter. So you came.”

“I did.” Harry moves a step forwards and gestures with his wand so that the box bearing the statue floats past him and settles on the grass. “And I wanted to return the gesture that you so graciously gave me.”

“Ahh.”

Voldemort sounds—excited? That strange feeling of guilt increases. But Harry shrugs it off and smiles pleasantly as he watches Voldemort wave his hands through the air. All the bows tumble off the box at once, severed.

Voldemort does give Harry a lingering look before he drags the box open. “If you knew how handsome you look in this moment, beloved,” he murmurs.

“Oh, you don’t have to say things like that,” Harry murmurs back, blushing and ducking his head while he readies his wand.

Voldemort smiles one more time and tears the box open.

The smile falls off his face like one of the severed bows when he sees the statue.

“You would return my own gift to me?” he asks slowly, but with the feeling of a storm building in the distance. “You do not like it? You do not wish to keep it?”

“I gave it to you so that we would both be certain of our feelings,” Harry says, serene on the surface, while his heart pounds wildly. He wonders if this is the way that Sirius felt sending that letter to Voldemort that said he could court Harry if he brought a gift to Hogwarts. “Please concentrate on the statue, my lord.”

Voldemort turns his head and does.

A second later, he recoils.

Harry keeps his own pleasant smile on his face. He’s imbued the statue with the feeling of a Horcrux. It wasn’t that difficult to do, not when he’s been close to so many of them and the slimy, crawling feeling on his skin was so unforgettable. To Voldemort, who believed that the Horcrux in Harry was still alive, it will seem as if Harry has actually transferred the Horcrux to the marble figure.

“What?” Voldemort breathes.

“I know that you don’t really want to be bound to me, your rival and prophesied nemesis,” Harry says earnestly. “And I know that you didn’t plan to make me a Horcrux. I know it takes a lot of time and sacrifice to make one. I thought it would be best if I returned it to you so you can do what you want with it.”

Voldemort faces him again. His rage is obviously soaring in him, and Harry doesn’t need the dead Horcrux to tell him that. He takes a slow step forwards.

“I offer you a place at my side, and this is how you repay me?”

“You murdered my parents and tried to kill me until you realized I was a Horcrux,” Harry snaps back, and Voldemort blinks at the honest anger in his voice. “Did you think I would forgive that?”

“But you are mine.”

“Not anymore,” Harry says, and nods at the statue.

Voldemort looks one more time. Then he turns back to Harry and opens his mouth to give another one of those dramatic speeches that he likes so much.

Harry is ready, though. He practiced this and practiced this, but admittedly, it’s a little different to have to do it in front of his mortal enemy.

He flicks his wand, and the statue rises into the air.

Voldemort turns to face it, one hand raised. He doesn’t seem to know if he should try to protect the statue or bat it away. Of course, it’s a Horcrux, he would assume that it’s pretty much indestructible.

Harry drops the statue on him.

There’s a long moment when the world seems to waver and an angry screech pierces the air, soaring higher and higher until it sounds like a wounded banshee. Harry covers his ears for a second, and then notices that Voldemort is writhing beneath the statue.

Definitely at least one more Horcrux, then.

Harry flicks his wand again, and the statue rises. He concentrates, carefully, precisely, and then drops it once more so that this time it crushes Voldemort’s skull.

This has the result he wants, and Voldemort’s body jerks and goes limp. As the wraith boils out of it, though, Harry realizes that he didn’t exactly come up with any plans to trap the thing.

“Harry Potter.”

Voldemort’s voice sounds the way it should, again, menacing and full of hatred. Harry paints a regretful expression across his face.

“I’m sorry it didn’t work out. But I’m just not ready for a man that much older than myself. Maybe if you were younger—”

Voldemort interrupts him with a scream that brings everyone running into the clearing. Of course, the protections that kept them out probably vanished when Voldemort was disembodied. Harry should have thought of that.

Harry steps towards Voldemort, chin up, keeping his attention. The last thing he wants is for Voldemort to possess one of his followers the way the diary possessed Ginny.

“I hate you,” Voldemort says, wavering back and forth, but his voice comes out as clear as sunlight off snow. “I curse you until the end of time, Harry Potter. I will destroy all that you love.”

“So the courtship’s off, then?”

Voldemort hurtles towards him, and Harry lifts his wand, ready to defend. But it turns out that Voldemort’s only thought is escape. He sweeps past Harry and into the Forest, fading into the darkness beneath the trees, his voice left behind him in echoes full of malevolence.

Harry turns and stares at his followers. All of them are staring back as if he’s grown a second head, except for Sirius, who looks blissful. Probably he thinks that no one will ever top the prank Harry’s just played.

“I think the courtship’s off,” Harry tells them.

Chapter Text

“Dropping a statue on Voldemort’s head is not exactly what I meant, Harry.”

“But now he won’t come to the school anymore, sir.”

“The wards failed to keep him out once when he was a wraith. Do you not think he will possess someone and return that way?”

“Oh, he might try. But I’ll ask the wards and Hogwarts to watch out for him. And we’ll make sure that he stays out and away from the other students.”

Dumbledore puts a hand over his eyes. Harry doesn’t know why. He thinks his new plan is pretty good.

“Harry…”

“Yes, sir?”

Dumbledore lowers his hand and takes a deep breath. Harry cocks his head. The Headmaster is the one who came up to him in the middle of a random corridor and decided that today was the time to talk to him. Harry was just on his way to breakfast.

“I don’t want to trust the safety of my students to you as Lord Slytherin,” Dumbledore says slowly. “I am the one who is supposed to watch out for the students and monitor the wards to make sure that no one unwanted can enter the school.”

“Oh, if you want the responsibility, you just have to say so, sir,” Harry says, a little relieved. He knows that he can’t really give up the connection with Hogwarts and maybe won’t be able to even when he’s not a student anymore; it just goes too profoundly deep into what it means to be Lord Slytherin. But he could delegate. “You just need to actually do it.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Not pretend that you did it and not do it. The way that you did when you said you were against bullying but didn’t stop it.”

Dumbledore stares at him. Then he speaks with his lips barely moving. “That is a disrespectful way to talk to me, Harry.”

Harry looks at him calmly. He wants Dumbledore as an ally, not an enemy. And he wants continued access to the Headmaster’s office so that Ahalam can do his courting or whatever he’s doing with Fawkes.

But he won’t let Dumbledore bully him. Not anymore.

“I’m sorry for that, sir. But you have to know that there’s a reason Hogwarts called to me and not you when Voldemort tried to enter through the Chamber of Secrets. A reason that it listened to me when it came to things like me not wanting to attend the Yule Ball. A reason that I haven’t tried to involve you more in what I’m doing. You keep too many secrets, and I don’t trust you to keep your word even if you say you will.”

Dumbledore closes his eyes and stands still for long enough that Ahalam wanders out of Harry’s sleeve. “We shall go to breakfast. There shall be toasted cheese this morning.”

“What happened to all the cheese I fed you yesterday?”

“I gave it to the bird.”

“Ahalam. There’s still a bulge in your middle.”

“I meant to give it to the bird.”

Harry shakes his head and glances up at Dumbledore. “Do you have anything more to say, sir? Because Ahalam is hungry.”

“What did I do to lose your trust so profoundly, Harry?” Dumbledore breathes. “I thought we had a good working relationship up until and even somewhat after you became—Lord Slytherin.”

“You tried to return me to an abusive environment, Headmaster,” Harry says. He’s thought about this, even if Dumbledore hasn’t, and he knows the answer. “Maybe you had your reasons, but you didn’t explain them clearly and you didn’t want to. And you’ve tried to do things like institute the Tri-Wizard Tournament that would have made the students under my care unsafe.”

“I told you about the reasons for that! International cooperation and the threat of Voldemort attacking us while we stand alone—”

“So far, no one who’s not my friend or godfather has done anything to help me with that,” Harry says evenly. “And I don’t believe that they would have even if the Tournament had been allowed to go ahead. They didn’t in the first war.”

“Harry, I cannot tell you everything…”

“I thought you had.”

Under his gaze, Dumbledore looks away and shakes his head. “I will monitor Hogwarts’s wards.”

“So will I,” Harry says, a little disappointed that Dumbledore still doesn’t try to explain the Dursleys, but understanding that he’s not going to get what he wants. There is no closure for something like this.

“I did have my reasons. I believed I had explained them to you adequately.”

“No, you didn’t. You could do that now.”

Dumbledore turns and walks away. Ahalam writhes on Harry’s shoulder until he can see Harry’s face. Harry thinks a question about Fawkes and whether they can still visit him is probably coming.

Instead, Ahalam asks, “Toasted cheese?”

“You probably shouldn’t even be eating as much regular cheese as you do. There’s no telling what toasted cheese will do to you.”

“That is not the same as a no.”

Harry laughs in surprise and shakes his head as he keeps walking down the stairs. Not everything in his life is perfect, but Ahalam is pretty close to it.

*

“Hello, class!”

Despite the end of their OWL exams, Sirius has invited them for “one last class before the curse takes me,” as he puts it, and everyone has shown up. Harry is the one who checks when he comes in the door, staring.

Sirius is sitting in the chair behind his desk with a wide smile and a leg propped out to the side, wrapped tightly with bandages.

“Sirius, what did you do?” Harry demands, forgetting that he tries to call his godfather Professor Black in front of the other students. They all know that Sirius is his godfather anyway, just like they know Harry is Lord Slytherin.

“Well, I call that a fine greeting for someone who always tries to make classes fun,” Sirius says, and stares at him with huge, mournful eyes.

Harry shakes his head impatiently. “Come off it, Sirius. I want to know what happened.”

“At least you don’t think it’s something I did!”

“I know it’s something you did.”

Sirius shakes his head and turns to face the rest of the class, his expression so mournful that Harry hears a few stifled giggles. “Are you listening?” he asks the class, plastering his hand over his chest. “My own godson has no sympathy when I fell down the stairs and broke my leg.”

“Maybe because he knows that some of us will tell him that we saw you hop off the staircase,” Susan says.

“Sirius.”

Sirius turns to Harry and waves his arms expressively. “But if I break my own leg, then that should forestall something bad happening because of the curse!”

Harry blinks. That’s something he never would have thought of, and it makes him a bit ashamed that he didn’t prioritize trying to break the curse on the Defense post before now. “I’m—not sure that’s the way it works.”

“I am!”

“Is that why you won’t go to Madam Pomfrey for some Skele-Gro to fix your leg?” Hermione asks. Harry looks at her and sees that she has her arms folded, her gaze stern. At least someone else thinks that Sirius is being childish.

“That would leave the curse open to strike at me another way,” Sirius explains grandly, spreading his arms even wider. “And I don’t think I can fool it by pretending to get hurt and then just reversing it an hour later.”

He smiles at Hermione, but there’s a glint in his grey eyes that Harry knows very well. He sighs. Hermione glances at him, and Harry subtly shakes his head. They’re not going to get his stubborn godfather to agree to anything.

Hermione sits back down at her desk, still with a frown on her face, and Harry takes his own seat. Sirius sits up and gives an entertaining lecture, even getting to his feet at one point to hobble around the desk and reenact a dramatic “duel” with an illusory opponent.

Harry just hopes that he won’t act the fool during the summer.

*

“Harry.”

His name, in Theo’s soft and deep voice, is still unexpected sometimes, given that Theo so often speaks his title. Harry turns around with a deep breath and manages to summon a smile. Theo, walking towards him, smiles back.

“Yes, Theo?” Harry is painfully aware that they’re in the middle of walking to the thestral-driven carriages, and can feel his face heat up with a blush. Other than Ahalam’s rock that Theo sent at breakfast, most of their courtship interactions have been in private.

Theo comes to a stop in front of Harry and half-bows. “I hope that this gift touches your soul,” he says, still in that soft voice, his eyes locked on Harry’s despite the awkward angle that gives his neck. “Please do me the favor of opening it in private, with only a few of your trusted followers.”

Harry read a little about courtship traditions at Hermione’s insistence, and he blinks. The suitor can ask that the person they’re courting look at the gift in private, but it’s unusual to do so. Most want to have every gift public so that people can look on and understand the commitment the suitor is making.

But if Theo asks—

And when he’s looking at Harry with those melting, shining grey eyes—

It seems simple to agree.

“All right,” Harry says simply, and accepts the silver box that Theo hands him, with an insignia on top in blue stones that resembles but is distinct from the symbol on Slytherin’s locket. It’s surprisingly light. For some reason, Harry thought all the gifts would be comparable in weight to the rock that Theo sent Ahalam.

Theo smiles over his shoulder at Harry, and then turns and walks calmly off, getting into a carriage separate from Harry for the first time in the last three terms.

“Huh,” Harry says, and looks at the box.

“In private, mate, remember?” Ron elbows Harry in the side and makes him wheeze a bit. Not that he’s going to be in a different compartment from Harry when he opens it, Harry thinks, given the curious way Ron is staring.

It seems that Hermione and Susan don’t intend to be left out, either, from the way they hover at his side. Harry is glad that Theo specified some other people could be there, or he might have had to kick them out of the compartment.

If he could.

Harry nods and tucks the box under his arm as he heads for the carriage. Ahalam is awake and staring down at the box with an expression as covetous as any a snake can probably wear.

“It is cheese.”

“It is not.”

“You do not know. It could be cheese.”

“You thought Voldemort’s gift was cheese, too.”

“Until you open the box, it is cheese.”

Sometimes Harry worries that he’s not as smart as his snake.

*

“Well, come on, mate, open it!”

Harry rolls his eyes at Ron as he settles back into the compartment on the Hogwarts Express. “You know that I might as well just not open it, and let you figure it out along with everyone else later?”

“You’re not going to kick me out, right?” Ron makes huge, helpless eyes that could compete with Sirius’s in his Animagus form, and Hermione stares at him from her own seat. Harry hopes that he hides his smile in time. “Or Hermione or Susan. You want an audience for his gift.”

“Well, yeah, but not because I think it’s going to be dangerous or anything.”

“No, because you want other people to see what it is,” Susan murmurs. Her hands are linked together, but Harry knows he hasn’t imagined the slight way her body is straining towards the box. “Because you’re proud of your courtship with Theo and want to put his gifts on display.”

Well, all right, Harry hasn’t really thought of it in those terms, but it might be true. He shakes his head, clears his throat, and ignores Hermione’s mutter of, “Oh, you didn’t know what Theo was planning this time?”

“Here goes,” he says, and slides the lid off the box.

Inside is a single scroll of parchment. Hermione and Susan peer at it with identical disappointed expressions. Harry resists the urge to tell them how alike they are and carefully plucks the scroll from the box.

“Well, open it already!” Ron doesn’t look disappointed; he’s practically bouncing in his seat.

“It wasn’t cheese,” Harry tells Ahalam as he unrolls the silver ribbon that’s tied the scroll shut.

“Maybe it is a subscription to cheese.”

“How do you know about subscriptions?”

“I am very smart.”

Harry shakes his head and finally looks down at Theo’s handwriting, allowing his eyes to trace the fancy calligraphy for a moment before he comprehends. He finds himself holding his breath, and dismisses it.

The wording looks to be that of an oath, similar to but a little different from the one Theo already swore to him. Harry blinks. Does Theo want to be free of the oath? Does he think it’s too strict?

Then he sees what Theo’s written underneath that.

I know that you are uneasy about the fact that you are my lord as well as my courted. This is a variation of the oath that I will swear if and when our union becomes permanent. It will not allow you to control or compel me. It simply guarantees loyalty in every way.

It is a variation of the marriage oath, Harry. And I have hope that you will be willing to swear the same to me when we are standing in front of your godfather and the holy stones of House Nott to pledge our souls to each other.

Theo’s scrawling signature is underneath that.

Harry’s hand trembles a little as he holds out the parchment to Hermione, who’s bouncing in place. His expression must be something deeper than he thinks if she wants to see it so badly. And yes, he’s trembling in the rest of his body, too.

“Harry. Oh my God.”

“Merlin,” Susan mutters as she peers over Hermione’s shoulder at the scroll, and Harry honestly doesn’t know if she’s contradicting Hermione or just expressing her own incredulity. Luckily, if she is contradicting Hermione, Hermione doesn’t take offense. She’s too busy staring.

“I want to see, I want to see.”

Harry resists the temptation to tell Ron how much he sounds like he’s five years old as he rescues the scroll and hands it to him. Ron goes quiet and solemn as he reads it, and then he lifts his head and stares at Harry.

“Do you know what this means, mate?”

“Yeah. He wants to marry me.”

The thought somehow still seems weird to Harry, even though he’s been offered two courtships now and he knows where they usually lead. It’s just—things with him never turn out the way anyone expects them to. (Voldemort’s courtship certainly didn’t). So he never realized that Theo might actually be counting on this courtship to reach fulfillment.

It’s—

Harry thinks he might want it. He isn’t entirely sure, though. He doesn’t know. He leans back on the seat in the compartment and breathes, while staring at the ceiling (and reassuring Ahalam there is nothing in the scroll about cheese).

“You don’t have to marry him,” Susan whispers. “He would never force you, my lord.”

“I know. That’s exactly why I might want it. Theo understands the difference between a lord and a husband, and he’s willing to reswear an oath that I know he values so it would make me more comfortable.”

“But?”

Harry shrugs. “I still don’t even know for certain that I’m gay. I don’t want to get married too young just because that’s what a lot of wizards and witches seem to do. I might meet someone I like better. Or Theo might.”

“I don’t think Theo will,” Susan says softly. “He’s—gone. You can see it in his eyes.”

“You could always have a long betrothal,” Ron says, finally looking up from the scroll. He’s still feeling the edges of it with his fingers, maybe to see if it’s real, and he looks a little dazed. “That would give you time to think about it, and look around, and even court someone if you decide that you do like someone else better.”

“You think Theo would agree to that?”

“I think he would agree to anything that might lead to marriage,” Hermione says. She seems to have recovered from her shock, since she speaks in a brisk voice. “And anyway, you still don’t have to marry him. Or just do what he wants. You have the right to make a decision.”

Harry swallows and nods. He knows he’ll need to talk to Theo, and see if this is really what they both want. Ask about a betrothal. Ask whether Theo wants to be released from his oath early.

But at least they can talk about it. At least there’s that.

*

“My lord.”

Theo is waiting for him when they get off the train. Harry takes a deep breath, and then he smiles at him. He gives Ahalam to Susan and walks over to talk to Theo next to one of the Floos. He has the feeling it should be just him and Theo.

“You looked at it?”

“Yes. And I—I’d like to make sure of two things first.”

“Of course.”

Theo’s eyes are so intent on Harry’s face that Harry can feel the blush creeping up his cheeks again. But he shakes his head a little and asks, “First, do you want to be freed from the oath you have now? Do you find it too restrictive?”

“No,” Theo says instantly. “I will always want to be bound to you, my lord. Unless you find the oath restrictive and would rather that it vanish.” Theo cocks his head. “I did rather manipulate you into it.”

“No,” Harry responds as quickly. “It’s fine with me.” He takes a deep breath. “The second thing is, well, we’re still young, and I don’t want to rush this. Will you agree to a long betrothal at the end of the courtship?”

Theo blinks, and Harry freezes. Did he misread the signs? Was Theo really just offering this courtship as a joke or to give Harry a “reason” not to choose Voldemort? Was he not really thinking of marriage at all, and—

And then Theo smiles in a way that Harry has never seen before, all sunlight and hope, and says, “I would be honored to be betrothed to you, Harry.” He raises a hand that trembles to Harry’s cheek. “But do let me give the rest of my courtship gifts first. I’ve put a lot of thought into them.”

Harry smiles at him and leans forwards. Theo meets him at the same time.

Their kiss is soft and awkward and everything Harry wants at the moment.

The moment lasts long enough for them to pull apart, and Theo’s eyes flutter open. He stares at Harry with such awe that Harry blushes yet again. Then Theo grabs Harry’s hand and turns to face someone who’s come up behind them.

“We have your approval, Professor Black?” Theo asks.

Sirius, his leg still wrapped in bandages, is clapping. A second later, he hoots loudly, which makes everyone in King’s Cross turn to look at them. “That’s my boy!” he shouts. “All grown up!”

Harry clears his throat. “What happened to your leg, Sirius? I thought you were going to take Skele-Gro when you got home?”

Sirius pouts at him. “I came out of the Floo and tripped and really broke it in a way that Skele-Gro won’t fix. It has to heal naturally. Bloody curse.” He points back and forth between Harry and Theo, his grin mad enough to make Harry believe all the rumors about the Black family. “But this makes up for it.”

Harry laughs aloud, and the feeling of Theo’s hand in his and Sirius’s grin aimed at him—and Susan and Hermione and Ron watching with big smiles, while Ahalam dances in Susan’s hands—are all he ever wanted.

Later, there will be considerations, and concern from Remus, and also cheese.

But for now, there’s wonder.

The End.