3author's note: Started in 2016, last updated in 2017. Yeah, I know. I got distracted by first Reign over the Frozen Heavens, and then The Long, Harsh Road. But, this will probably be finished…someday. At the very least, I'll finish chapter eight, someday.
#31. functions as its more cheerful, easygoing counterpart, but there's some grimness in the early stages of that one, too. I wrote and edited them together, and they've kinda grown up as counterparts.
This is one of the first 'fics I worked on after the fanfiction hiatus. At some point during that time, I'd forgotten I'd decided to deliberately write fanfic worse than regular 'fic…and then it seemed too much trouble to go back and "fix" it.
WARNINGS: This is not a happy 'fic. There are a lot of potential triggers around mental health issues, suicide, abuse, etc.. This is also a tragedy; don't expect things to work out well.
#30. The Power He Knows
Prologue: How We Got Here
Hallowe'en, 1981. An ordinary day by most people's standards (or an ordinary Hallowe'en, rather), it was an extraordinary day for the secret community of wizards and witches of Wizarding Britain. The tyrant whose very name evoked fear in them, who had had them at his mercy for well over a decade, had been vanquished, and that by the strangest of individuals, a truly curious happening. For he, the most terrible Dark Wizard of recent memory, he who had slain many of the most prominent and powerful wizards in the United Kingdom, had been felled by an infant, a child of some fifteen months, by the name of Harry Potter.
Now, it fell to the revered Headmaster of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry to decide what was to become of the boy. After careful consideration of the circumstances: the betrayal by James and Lily by one of their closest friends, the apparent demise of the second, and the status of the third, Dumbledore knew that the choice was between keeping Harry Potter in the Wizarding World, to be raised amongst his own, and risking him growing up to become like his father, James (or worse, Lucius Malfoy), and sending him into the muggle world, to be raised by his sole remaining kin.
In the end, it was the protection that the shared blood of Lily and Petunia Evans provided that decided him. He rather suspected that Lily had somehow saved her son's life by sacrificing her own, by dying when she might have lived. He gathered this from analysis of the crime scene, and the words of one Severus Snape. He was fairly certain, although he held out thoughts of other possibilities
Still, the words of the "seeress" gave him confidence that his suspicion was correct. The "power the Dark Lord knows not" must be a reference to Lily's love. Love, that most powerful and inscrutable force in existence, a power truly incomprehensible to the Dark Lord Voldemort. Petunia Dursley, Lily's only sister, and closest remaining kin, was doubtless also grieving for the loss of her sister, lamenting that she had not done more to reconnect with her sister now it was too late. He would offer her redemption, a chance to give Lily's son the love that she could no longer give to her late sister.
And that was why, that night, when most of the Wizarding World was out celebrating, drinking themselves silly, and doing quite ridiculous things as a result (shooting stars, sending messages in the daytime, congregating in public places wearing distinctly Wizarding attire?), Albus Dumbledore took the moment of quiet, when no eyes were on him, to appear in the street outside one Number Four, Privet Drive, the residence of Vernon and Petunia Dursley, and their infant child (all the better; Harry would have a child his own age to play with as he grew!).
And thus, ignoring the entreaties and arguments (and threats) of his deputy headmistress, Head of Gryffindor House Minerva McGonagall, he waited outside the Dursleys' house early in the morning of November First, as Rubeus Hagrid appeared on, of all things, a flying motorcycle. He delayed explaining the sad story of Sirius Black's treachery to the half-giant for the moment, in favour of briefly glancing at the infant saviour of the Wizarding World.
Straightaway, he pulled the letter he had written for Petunia from seemingly out of thin air, tucking it amidst the baby's blanket, and left the bundle outside the Dursleys' door, having assuaged Minerva McGonagall's doubts. The three of them departed, leaving the young boy hero completely alone, to be found several hours later by his aunt. And sadly, that is how our story begins.
Dumbledore counted on love to protect Harry Potter, better than any spell or other protection he might give the boy. The love of Harry's mother for her son, the love of Petunia (however she deny it), for her younger sister, the love that saturates most households, if it comes to that. And, sure enough, the protection of Lily's blood veiled the baby from the view of any roaming Death Eaters, at least for the time that it took to round them up, and send the half of them to Azkaban, making the other half wary of trying anything rash (as breaking into a muggle home, and slaying the Potter child).
The problem was, that was the only thing the protections did. They protected him from the pressing threat of the Death Eaters still roaming the world outside. They could not, however, protect him from the dangers awaiting him inside the Dursley home.
Petunia Dursley mourned the loss of her sister; it was true. It was not true, however, that she felt even the slightest need to take care of her sister's unnatural brat, on account of this. She and her husband, Vernon, were both no-nonsense sorts of folks. Magic, and wizardry, were taboo for them. They hated the idea of magic, and Petunia, furthermore, secretly envied, and thus hated, her nephew's innate gift for magic.
And if it was hard enough for the couple to ignore the strange lights and bangs that amused the child as he happily sat in the cupboard under the stairs, this harmless, innocent magic, it was harder when the spoilt brat didn't get what he wanted. The way that things he wanted zipped to him across the room, and that childish, self-satisfied smile that accompanied it, quite frightened Dudley. And frightening Dudley would not do. Harry Potter was no son of Petunia's. She had no qualms with using stronger methods of discipline on him.
But when she began to shout at him, or Vernon to leer over the boy with grave threats that he somehow expected the boy to understand, the response was something chilling. The magic, in the boy's fear, became more volatile, more violent. In one incident, dishes from the cabinet flew out to break against the walls. One nearly hit Dudley, and that did it. Petunia had done what she could. But if she were forced to choose between her nephew and her own son, well, there was no contest. She didn't have enough love to spare for her extended kin.
She found that the "accidental" magic died down a bit when they left the baby in the cupboard.
Those protections, the ones protecting the boy from the Death Eaters, and other malevolent wizards, lasted an astoundingly long time. Nevertheless, on that day, when Petunia decided that she had had enough, and the last embers of what might be called affection for the boy (if you stretched the term) died, the protections, too, died.
They had, in truth, been dwindling for some time. It was their death throes, and the violence of a certain Dark Lord's awakening consciousness that resulted, which had caused the increased violence in the boy's magic. Now, the same ex-Dark Lord, lured into progressively greater wakefulness, was snapped instantly into complete awareness of his situation, trapped as he was within the body of Harry Potter.
And the reason for this might be worse than his awakening at all: Tom's own accidental magic had put paid to Petunia's efforts to "care for" her nephew, and now, they were trapped here, together, in the cupboard under the stairs. And Harry Potter, the boy whose body Tom Riddle was inhabiting, was dying of neglect. The unavoidable conclusion of what would result from this was that Tom Riddle himself would die. As far as he knew, he was all that was left of Voldemort. Dying was not an acceptable option.
He considered the scenario, analysed it with a forcibly relaxed, critical eye (it wasn't like he could see anything; he was trapped in a scar in the boy's head). The boy didn't want for food; Petunia fed him enough to keep him alive, although it was less than a two year old child (as Harry now was), should eat. It wasn't a lack of sleep, for sure; Petunia was all too happy to forget about her nephew and to let him sleep as much as he wanted; this would change later, of course. No. The thing that seemed to be killing Harry Potter was, directly, a lack of love. Most human beings needed, and thus craved, that acceptance, the belonging, the nurturing that mothers gave to their children. That was what was missing, mostly. That was why Harry Potter was dying.
That was something Tom Riddle didn't need. And thus, as the protections of Lily's blood dwindled and died, and Tom Riddle realised that he'd put his own life in jeopardy, albeit through lack of self-control (relearning how to harness magic was quite a difficult chore, but moreso was reining it in). the erstwhile Dark Lord set about gaining control of his accidental magic . Which he could only acquire by gaining control of Harry Potter's body.
He began by leaking from the scar, almost as if a fluid, cutting, consuming, channels through the boy's spirit body, as he would call it, for lack of a better word. He carved channels first to the eyes, and then to the ears, and in so doing, he became bound into the physical body's eyes and ears. Harry Potter, poor child, could no longer hear or see. But Lord Voldemort could, and that fact was what was important to the Dark Lord.
It took him days of non-stop working to cut his narrow channels, eating through the boy's weakened, fragile soul, still soft and pliable on account of the boy's youth, and frail and brittle from the lack of love that was slowly killing it. He sapped his way in a similar fashion down to the tips of the boy's fingers (hands and fingers were a natural channel for magic, he'd discovered in the orphanage). Next, he tunneled down to the boy's toes, and then set about broadening the channels he'd cut to ears and eyes, forming another one with the nose, and broadening his channels still further.
Only now did Harry Potter, the Boy-Who-Lived, become aware of what was going on. He began to fight back, lashing out desperately, feebly, growing progressively weaker, both on account of the lack of environmental love (which had little effect on Voldemort), and on account of how much of his soul-body the Dark Lord had already consumed. He couldn't control his own hands, or even eyes. There was a sense, even for a child as young as he, of despair; some might call it a remnant of knowledge from life before incarnation.
It didn't matter. Voldemort had access to his own magic, and knew how to use it. He also had been able to, mostly, stop even the boy's magical fits, by gaining control of his hands. He had the advantage of both knowledge and power, and he knew it. The more he'd eaten of the boy's soul, the stronger he'd become. Now, he carved a channel directly for the boy's spirit-heart, sensing that the attack came from there.
This task took weeks to complete, and even then, at any time, Harry Potter might have been saved, if Petunia or Vernon had had a change of heart. If someone had somehow shown him love, it could have rekindled his ebbing spirit, enabled him to successfully fight back, and Potter would have been saved. But Petunia and Vernon kept well away from the boy, leaving him alone in the cold dark with only fragments of memory of how it was, to be loved.
The channels pumped Voldemort's consciousness, his soul, through Harry's body like blood, allowing something like instantaneous travel for his consciousness. Now, he burrowed straight for the heart, drawing himself through the channels, and flooding out Harry Potter's heart. The last resistance flickered and died. Somewhere beneath London, a glass ball shattered, the harsh strains of a woman's voice unheard by all.
And Voldemort continued to consume what remained of the boy's soul.
Small wonder if, distracted by urgency and necessity as he was, he didn't realise that small parts of Harry's soul survived, perhaps almost intact, if tainted by the passing of Voldemort's soul. Mostly, these twisted remnants of soul reflected areas that Voldemort was unfamiliar with, that could not be linked up to a corresponding place in Voldemort's own soul-body. With Harry Potter's "death", these parts of the soul, too, became Lord Voldemort's, as Harry Potter's body, identity, and life did.
He would not learn of them for several months. Once he gained control over Harry Potter's body, soul, life, and Harry Potter was no more, his awareness of that spirit-body, now his, vanished as if it were nothing but a dream. For now, he was Harry Potter, and it was his spirit body, and the physical world flooded his knowledge, and his senses.
Petunia noticed when the accidental magic died down. She was still wary and cold towards her nephew, but he no longer cared. This odd, hybrid creature didn't need the love that its predecessor did; he'd survived well enough in the orphanage, hadn't he?
Which was why he was surprised to find that, along with the renewed ability to move, he had gained an entire, tiny set of new memories: Harry's memories, from sometime near birth, until Harry Potter's premature quasi-demise. More astonishing was the feeling they invoked. For the first time, Tom found himself regretting, wishing things might have been otherwise, that Lily and James hadn't died, that Sirius were here…. An unfamiliar pang, of loss, of pain, of grief, filled him as he reflected on their too-short lives. Sirius Black was somewhere, but given what he knew of the man's nature, he had probably been locked up in Azkaban. After all, Dumbledore believed that he'd (essentially) murdered his best friends.
He wished that there was something he could do about it. He missed Sirius. He missed Lily, and James. He found himself, crying, in the dark of the cupboard, for the very individuals he'd happily slain a year ago. He understood why, after many nights spent thinking about the matter. It was because they were no longer the enemy, no longer almost-strangers bent on foiling his best-laid plans. They were family, a chance to be raised in a loving home, now squandered, a funny, cheerful man, and a temperamental, but nonetheless doting woman who would never again be seen alive upon this world. And he'd done that. He'd done that. How could he?
This was a new emotion, too, was guilt. But the Dursleys gave him all the time in the world to come to terms with it. Or that was how it seemed.
He had indeed, by the time he was four years old and the Dursleys realised that, if they had to put up with another mouth to feed, they might as well make him earn his keep. By that time, indeed, he'd already made his peace, and progressed to scheming.
Chapter One: Meet Harry Potter
Harry Potter was a boy with long, shaggy black hair, who wore his school uniform with casual indifference, as if, contrary to what he'd told Hagrid the Keeper of the Keys, he had expected to come here to Hogwarts all his life. Quite a few people were angry when they discovered just which of the boys Harry Potter was.
Foremost among them was Draco Malfoy, mostly because he felt that he'd been made a fool of (and his family weren't all in Slytherin for nothing). He clearly remembered that day in Madame Malkin's, when he'd asked, "Say, what's your surname?" and the boy had tilted his head to the side, as if considering, briefly, before replying "Weasley".
Draco had refused to have anything to do with a blood traitor, and they parted on bad terms. The wretch! All this time, he'd lied, to make a fool out of Draco Malfoy. His father would hear about this, you mark his words.
Then, there was Severus Snape. He wanted very much to hate the boy on sight for being a "chip off the old block", but there was, despite the superficiality of family resemblance, little of James Potter in the boy who stood, casually awaiting the Sorting Hat, and was even now crossing the hall to put it on his head. Snape had expected the short, almost spiky hair of James, with that cocky grin, and the fresh-pressed robes, and the superior smirk. He'd predicted a man, tall enough even in his preteens to look down his nose at his fellows, and that Gryffindor superiority complex that made him dismissive of Slytherin.
Instead, from what he could see, Harry Potter was a gregarious, vivacious individual, whose sworn ambition was to "reunite the houses of the Founders". That would mean making friends in all the houses. And Potter seemed to have made a good head start. Weasley, for instance, would almost certainly be placed in Gryffindor. But few of the other arrivals seemed to have a bad word to say about Potter; even some of the higher year already sorted Ravenclaws and Hufflepuffs were willing to give him a friendly wave. He got a couple of nods, too, from Slytherin. What was the world coming to?
The boy didn't even look as much like James as he should. Sure, he wore glasses, and had straggly black hair, but he was shorter and smaller, Snape was sure, than James had been even at that age, scrawnier…with that long, shaggy hair, he put Snape more in mind of…well…himself. He shuddered, but watched the proceedings with bated breath. If only the Hat could hear his chants of Not Slytherin, not Slytherin.
Naturally, there were others willing to withhold judgement, for the moment, chief among them Deputy Headmistress Minerva McGonagall, and Headmaster Dumbledore. McGonagall still dreaded the idea that James Potter's son (who would, naturally, be sorted into her house), might turn out against all odds as a carbon copy of his father at that age. Worse still, suppose he recruited his fellow Gryffindors into his shenanigans? It would be like the Marauders all over again. Quite apart from the destruction and headaches that would naturally ensue, she was still grieving for three of the original Marauders—and weren't the Weasley Twins bad enough!
Headmaster Dumbledore searched the boy standing in the crowd of fellow first years for any noticeable signs of trauma caused by his abuse at the hands of the Dursleys. Arabella Figg had warned him that the Dursleys were not the most ideal family for caring for the saviour of the Wizarding World, that they mostly excluded him from their family, shutting him out, leaving him at her house whenever possible. She showed him what kindnesses she could, but it was a difficult line to toe—if the Dursleys thought the boy might enjoy his visits to her home, they would find someone else to take the job, instead. Perhaps that nasty sister of Vernon's. Dumbledore admitted that he was alarmed by this report. Imagine a family who actively avoided making one if its members happy! But despite it all, Harry Potter seemed to have done well enough.
It was true that he was shorter and scrawnier than James had been at the same age, and the hair suggested a note of rebellion (or perhaps, people had taken to staring at the rather unique scar on his forehead, even before he became aware of Wizarding Britain?). Nevertheless,those bright green eyes were full of hope and earnest eagerness for the school year ahead. Ah, to be young and entering Hogwarts for the first time!
Harry minded none of this. He was thankful, in a strange, indirect way, for his years with the Dursleys; he'd needed the time to reacclimate himself to the notion that he was now under the authority of another, needed the opportunity to train and restrict that impulse towards instant gratification, needed to rein himself in in general, learn to curb his impulses, and most of all to cultivate the almost-obsequious eagerness to please that had made him beloved in Hogwarts before. He needed to practice his skills at pulling the wool over people's eyes, and, while the Dursleys were too stupid to provide very good practice, it was something, and their stubborn refusal to see him as anything but a servant and a barely-tolerated nuisance (the overlap would never make sense to him) meant that there was never any lack of need for such deceptions.
And in this strange, second childhood, there were plenty of other, smarter individuals whom he had to outwit, although he was very, very careful to never lash out at the Dursleys with his "accidental" magic. The magic he used was always defensive, always to enable him to escape, to heal, to avoid harm.
He'd learnt from his mistakes—if Dumbledore thought to check back on Harry Potter's childhood history (and wasn't it just like him, to leave even a "saviour of the Wizarding World" in an abusive, neglectful home?), he would find nothing incriminating. Harry had been very cautious in all his dealings with the Dursleys. It had meant withstanding the abuse, but he had borne it as he knew he must, as the real Harry Potter would have had to, if not for him.
He'd had a brief, clandestine conference with a snake or two in the area, and they all agreed that he was generally worth ignoring, if that special request were made of them (and sure, they might as well pass the news on). Harry Potter's history, to all outward appearance, was as pristine as it could possibly be.
He'd spent years thinking of what sort of face he could present to the Wizarding World, and he'd settled on this one, a fairly familiar one, that of the friendly, intelligent student who was eager for inter-House unity and cooperation. Of course, it wasn't a fixed thing yet; he needed to see what house he was sorted into. And if he were sorted into Slytherin, well, reuniting the Houses was an ambitious project, now wasn't it?
He'd met Draco Malfoy in Madam Malkin's, realised who he must be right away, and had wasted no time in trying to figure out the younger Malfoy. Sure, he'd given Lucius Malfoy the diary, but he didn't know what had happened to it since, and he wasn't sure how much he trusted a man who had renounced his lord rather than risk Azkaban, claiming to have been controlled by the Imperius Curse, no doubt.
Draco Malfoy was, if he could judge, a spoilt brat far too reliant on his father's name. He was, in some ways, a much skinnier, magical version of Harry's cousin Dudley. And, as he discovered when he tested the boy by giving the surname "Weasley", he was far too quick to burn his bridges. But already, he'd thought of an excuse for his behaviour in Madam Malkin's—it wouldn't do to have the heir of a prominent Wizarding Family as an enemy (at least, not with him as the apparent instigator).
He'd met quite a few people on the train, of course, and had exhausted himself, practically, with his attempts to make good on his stated goal of reuniting the houses. Ron Weasley had entered the compartment in which he'd wound up, explaining that the rest of the compartments were full, and what ensued was a fascinating conversation with the second youngest Weasley that told Harry all he ever needed to know, if he ever needed to manipulate the boy, somehow. The boy's mother, Molly Weasley, had made quite a fuss as she entered the train station, in the usual way of anxious mothers who are running late in a public place. That she apparently had seven children must only have exacerbated the effect.
The youngest Weasley, the sole girl, would not be starting Hogwarts until next year, which was just as well. Half of the Weasley children were currently in attendance, after all, and all of them but one (not yet sorted) in Gryffindor.
If he could break through to that family, he'd practically made an ally of the entire house.
Naturally, his machinations were forced to dodge sideways to avoid the sudden incoming obstacle known as the Sorting Hat. A hat which could, you know, read minds.
Oh, dear, this is irregular, the Sorting Hat said, almost as soon as it blocked out his vision. He clenched the holly and phoenix feather wand tightly in his right hand, as if it could protect him. I've already sorted you once, you know. People aren't supposed to come through the system twice. You're not at all whom I was expecting…Tom Riddle.
I am Harry Potter, he countered, aware of how rigidly he was sitting on the seat, but with most of his attention bent on the talking hat. How was it that the Sorting Hat seemed to have trouble recognising this, when he'd made his peace with the matter years ago? But he knew that it was important to convince the Hat; the bonds of confidentiality which ensured it kept silent about every student's past might not extend beyond mere students. Probably it did, or the Hat would be the most obvious choice for judge in wizarding crimes.
But he had not suffered in silence for almost a decade to be foiled by his own incaution. Also, technically, what he'd said was true. There was no other boy in Wizarding Britain to that name, which he was keeping for now, until he could find a suitably clever substitute. He was Harry Potter, or rather, as much of a Harry Potter as there was to be summoned and sorted by the Hat.
Hmm, the Hat grumbled, but then it subsided, sifting through his thoughts and memories with increasing horror. Well, that was to be expected. What wasn't to be expected was the way the Hat, too, paused when it came upon the memories of Harry Potter's life prior to Hallowe'en, 1981. It turned over Harry's reaction, thinking whatever thoughts the Hat thought when it wasn't broadcasting them into its victim's mind.
My, well, yes. It looks as if there's still only one house for you…"Slytherin!" it called out. Severus Snape might have fainted, up at the staff table, as might have McGonagall. Certainly, something of roughly the size and hardness of a human head seemed to make contact with the table. And, it was difficult to tell from this distance, but Dumbledore's eyes might have, briefly, lost their twinkle. He set the hat delicately down on the stool, and turned to face the entrance to Great Hall.
He knew that it was important to do damage control, but wasn't sure what would help, and what would hurt. He stumbled off to the Slytherin table with deliberately uneven steps, as if in a daze. His usual fluid grace was gone, for the moment. He turned to the Weasleys, and tried to catch any of their eyes, really, but Ron glared at him across the room, as if he'd deliberately misled him into thinking that he was a worthwhile person, when in fact he was a slimy, untrustworthy Slytherin, which, come to think of it….
Hmm. Ronald Weasley was someone to watch out for, then. If he wasn't careful, he'd have another Dumbledore on his hands. He gave him a friendly, encouraging smile and nod, as if he noticed nothing unusual, and tripped, falling heavily into a seat at the Slytherin table. After a moment's silence, McGonagall gathered her wits, and continued reading out names from her list. Weasley, when his turn came, was of course sorted into Gryffindor.
"Potter! Hsst, Potter!" Malfoy hissed. Harry turned to face him with a look of distraction, as if he'd been startled out of deep thoughts.
"Yes, Malfoy?" he asked, in what he hoped was a suitably curious tone. Malfoy frowned, but seemed to reconsider a glare.
"You told me your surname was 'Weasley' at Madam Malkin's. You'll pay for that!" Ah, such vitriol, considering his youth. Harry just fixed him with a level stare.
"I'm sorry. I'm new to the Wizarding World, and it was so overwhelming, the way that everyone reacted when they just heard the name 'Potter'…. By that time, I was tired, and I didn't feel up to more of that. I thought you might behave the way the others did…."
Draco Malfoy frowned, eyes narrowed, and then, slowly, nodded.
"Perhaps we got off on the wrong foot, then. Allow me to introduce myself. I'm Draco Malfoy. And these are Vincent Crabbe and Gregory Goyle."
He nodded to each of two burly boys flanking him as if they were bodyguards, but reached across the table (and to the side), holding out his hand. Harry reached carefully through the serving dishes, not yet loaded with food, and took the hand offered, with a solemn, firm shake. He might decide to rid himself of all ties to Malfoy later, but it would be hypocritical and foolish both to ignore his own conclusions of the weaknesses of Draco Malfoy. And perhaps the boy would have some use later, after all.
Harry Potter soon found himself in the heart of the library, poring over old tomes about legal cases. He knew, after all, the location of every classroom, had confirmed the locations were unchanged from his previous education here, and therefore needed no time spent finding his classes. He also knew most of the material that would be covered (for his entire schooling career, perhaps), and therefore, felt no need to study the ordinary things. Which meant that he could focus on a pressing question: how to repay Hagrid for saving him from the Dursleys, and reuniting him with his only true home, Hogwarts.
The answer was obvious to any fool, hence his current fixation on Wizarding legal customs. That it might also help Sirius Black lingered as a thought in his mind, but for now, he was reading up on the legal punishments for manslaughter and murder (doubtless, the girl's death was counted in the former category; Azkaban was the likeliest punishment for the latter, and Hagrid was definitely not there, although…).
In addition he'd pulled out the archived school rules, protocol, and regulations, focusing on the infractions liable to result in a student being expelled. Hagrid's seemed to be a special case (but wasn't it, regardless of what the evidence said?). Expulsion should have been the least of his worries; given the accusations that would necessarily have been leveled against him, it was only the intervention of as well-respected a wizard as Dumbledore that kept Hagrid out of Azkaban.
The problem was that, as he had been the one to introduce the monster that had killed the girl (apparently, her name was Myrtle Clearwater) to the school, he was thus held liable for the monster's actions; it was, in essence, a case of attack on a student with a deadly weapon (i.e., a monster), and the primary question had therefore been whether it had been deliberate or accidental.
Hours passed with him thus engaged, before an almost irate Madam Pince shooed him from the library (he forced out a half-hearted smile; some things never changed), and headed on a more or less direct course for the Great Hall. He'd learnt quite a bit already, but not half enough. This particular exercise was beginning to seem hopeless, which might have discouraged others, but not he. He prided himself on letting nothing stand in his way. There had to be some way to exonerate Hagrid without confessing (which, even had he been inclined to do this, wouldn't work, now would it?).
An important part of the case would inevitably be speaking to Hagrid himself, and, given his displayed attitude towards Slytherins ("not a wizard who went bad wasn't in Slytherin…You-Know-Who was himself one, way back"), Hagrid might be inclined to never speak with him again. It had been amusing before, but now it was an obstacle. But obstacles were meant for surmounting, and it wasn't as if he had a deadline.
It was the next day, in the library between classes, that he first met Hermione Granger. If Ronald Weasley was the new threat in the form of being a second Dumbledore, then Hermione Granger was a threat due to her sheer intelligence and depth of knowledge. Already, she seemed to be working her way through the shelves; doubtless, the only reason he hadn't seen her yesterday was that she hadn't yet discovered its whereabouts. He had overheard her talking in the Great Hall prior to the Sorting, so he knew that she had read Hogwarts: a History. He'd never read it himself, but he was sure that a book with such a title (and such a reputation), must have a map in it somewhere. But first years (he'd almost forgot) didn't usually have the best grasp even of relative locations. The stairs, the moving sets of armour, the highly mobile paintings, all made normal muggle means of fixing landmarks inadequate.
She was a muggleborn, he noticed, but it was a bit harder to hate muggleborns than it had been before. Lily, his mother (more or less), was a muggleborn, and she was nothing like his father (Tom Riddle, not James Potter; Good Lord, this was confusing). Granger was, furthermore, the sort of person it struck him straightaway as not the sort of person he wanted to cross; she'd be dangerous on account of her knowledge alone, but as a pawn for the other side….
He shuddered to think what use Dumbledore might make of her, if, God forbid, he figure out who Harry really was.
Time, then, for an overture of friendship.
Then, of course, he discovered that he'd met her before, after all. He recognised her as the bossy, verbose girl who had burst into his and Ron's compartment, bullied Ron into trying out a fake spell (which might have been against Wizarding Law, for all she knew, right?), and landed quite a few blows on him in swift succession. He was sure that the real Harry Potter (the original Harry Potter?) would not have handled it half as well as he. Nevertheless, her cavalier pronouncement that she "knew all about him", because she'd read several books that touched on his life (and what did they know; they didn't even know that he was raised by muggles?), had left him reeling. She'd left behind a grumbling Ron and a stunned Harry Potter. Even he had trouble processing all of the girl's words, spoken in such a rush, all those titles, and why did she think that she was so much better than everyone else—?
"Hello," he said, with a friendly smile. "I'm Harry Potter. I was here yesterday; maybe I could help you find something?"
She didn't question why he would think that he knew the library so much better than she; perhaps she thought that she'd missed an introductory course: How to Use the Hogwarts Library, only available on the first day of school. They should have one of those, at that.
Her response was a garbled rush, something to the effect of, "Oh,you're HarryPotterImet-you-on-the-train-and-I'm-sorry-if-I-came-off-a-bit-rude-could-you-help-me-find-this-book-that-Professor-Flitwick-mentioned-I-thought-it-might-help-me-better-understand-what-he-said-about-basic-defensive-theory-and-the-structure-and-function-of-charms-but-I-understand-that-maybe-you-wouldn't-know—"
He led the still babbling Hermione Granger to the proper section of the library with no more pressing thought to his mind than getting rid of her. Not that way. Yet. She might still be an asset, but that was rather hard to remember as she droned on and on. Even his built up self-control was wearing thin, and the day was only about halfway through.
Alright. Hermione Granger. A specific problem he would come back to. He had a task at hand to be working on.
It took Hagrid at least a week to get over the fact that Lily and James's son had been sorted into Slytherin. He sent Harry a message with the morning post, inviting him over (and if he had any friends, they could come along).
It was his first reminder that normal children his age had friends. But making friends, as he explained to Hagrid, was impossible in the Slytherin House, and impossible, if you were in Slytherin, with members of the other houses, who already were being indoctrinated into the viewpoint that stated that Slytherins were all untrustworthy scum. Just because he wanted to unify the houses! Honestly!
Hagrid had the grace to look sheepish in response.
"But there are a few people in other houses that are still willing to talk to me, although whether it's because I'm 'the Great Harry Potter', or not, I'm not sure. Still, if it works…."
And despite all other concerns, he left Hagrid's hut with a great deal more to think about. For instance: what had been in that almost-forgotten grubby package under Gringotts? And who had tried to steal it, whatever it was? It struck him as both strange and alarming, that the package that had lured a thief into Gringotts (who had escaped, no less) might now lure the same into the less-impenetrable Hogwarts. He chewed the matter over.
The next distraction came from his successful catching of a remembrall after a precision dive that he knew that he would never, ever have been able to accomplish in his past life. The dive had impressed even McGonagall, which hadn't stopped her from giving him detention.
He questioned himself: just what had prompted him to do such a reckless thing? It birthed the shocking realisation that, though he was undeniably Tom-Riddle-who-is-Harry-Potter, he was also Harry-Potter-who-is-Harry-Potter. He'd understood that some of his emotional responses seemed to have been governed, coloured, he might better say, by Harry Potter's thought patterns of the time, but this…this was a sign that Harry Potter, Dumbledore's champion, still lived. In a way.
Perhaps that justified the hatred he incurred from his head of house, who watched him unceasingly, as if willing him to mess up. He now had two candidates for a nouvel-Dumbledore. It was somewhat ironic that one of them was his old follower, Severus Snape.
He saw the folly, now, how he'd been played, how absurd it was to believe that Severus Snape would ever turn his back, "get over" Lily Potter. Love didn't work like that. Even now, ten years later, he pined for a man and woman he barely knew, longed to free Sirius Black from prison. Surely, romantic love was no weaker than that. If you read stories, it usually seemed stronger. And the acid of that failed romance dripped down on him now from Snape's venomous mouth.
McGonagall, by contrast, seemed pleased with him, despite the detention. Perhaps it was what he'd heard, the rumour that James Potter, and Sirius Black, and their friends, had been a set of infamous troublemakers. He didn't know. She scolded him heavily for his recklessness (recklessness worthy of a Gryffindor, he chided himself; it was clear where Harry-Potter-alone would have ended up!), and delivered the punishment as incentive not to do anything that rash again. He made no promises. He was still struggling to understand his own actions.
Malfoy tolerated him, for the most part, and stayed out of his way. He narrowed his eyes, but pursed his lips and kept silent when he saw the overtures of friendship that Harry made to members of other houses. Pay attention! You might learn something! he wanted to say to Malfoy, but it was just as well if Malfoy reduced the number and power of his own system of allies; that would mean more connections for Harry, and Harry Potter was, after all, a true Slytherin.
The strangest person in the school (other than the Headmaster, and Harry Potter himself), was swiftly revealed to be one Quirinus Quirrell. Harry Potter had sized him up upon their first meeting at the Leaky Cauldron, and swift decided that the man would be lucky to last an entire year under his curse. Since then, the man had added to his own eccentricity. He wore a turban (rumour held that it was stuffed with garlic to protect him from a vampire he'd encountered on his travels, but that seemed implausible, although a strange smell did seem to follow him). Despite his apparent terror at the mere thought of All Things Dark, he was knowledgeable about the subject, and passably skilled at evading subjects he wanted to avoid talking about.
But there was an odd sense to him, a strange darkness that no one else seemed to notice. When he narrowed his eyes, and tried to pinpoint it, it seemed to duck out of sight, as certain legendary monsters that can only be seen from the peripherals. It was maddening. He didn't like this strangeness, this not knowing. But he was…a very private individual. He had no true friends to whom he could turn for assistance. He simply watched the man on his own time, trying to solve the mystery. Things he didn't understand, after all, rarely boded well for him.
