
Posted originally on the Archive_of_Our_Own at https://archiveofourown.org/
works/6245998.
  Rating:
      Explicit
  Archive Warning:
      Graphic_Depictions_Of_Violence, Major_Character_Death, Rape/Non-Con,
      Underage
  Category:
      F/M, M/M
  Fandom:
      Harry_Potter_-_J._K._Rowling
  Relationship:
      Harry/Tom, Harry/Voldemort, Harry_Potter/Ginny_Weasley
  Character:
      Harry_Potter, Voldemort, Tom_Riddle, Ginny_Weasley, Albus_Dumbledore,
      Luna_Lovegood
  Additional Tags:
      InsaneHarry, Crazyharry, EvilHarry, DarkHarry, DoOverFic, MisguidedAlbus,
      Reincarnation, Rape/Non-con_Elements, Pedophilia, Implied/Referenced
      Incest, Murder, Torture
  Stats:
      Published: 2016-03-14 Updated: 2016-07-10 Chapters: 5/? Words: 20705
****** Death Himself Witnesses Against Me ******
by BakaMondai
Summary
     The end of the world. It's funny that no one expected it to come so
     soon. From hatred and bigotry as old as civilization itself. And
     after everything is over and all is said and done, The Boy Who Lived
     wakes up once again staring at the dead body of Lily Potter.
Notes
     AN: Well, this is eventually going to be a TomXHarry fic. This is
     because I ship it and I will not change my mind :P.So if your not
     into that, you can stop reading the fic right here. Oh and before I
     forget, (and I will forget), here are your disclaimers.
     Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter. It is the sole property of
     Warner Brothers, J.K. Rowling, ect. and they possess all of the
     characters you recognize from the novels. Any OC’s I decide to
     include, for whatever unfathomable reason, are mine.
     Rating: Mature for possible scenes of masturabation, pedophilia,
     murder, torture scenes, cursing, sex with minors, semi-consensual
     sex, non-consensual sex. Sorry if any of this offends your
     sensibilities, but if so please click off this fanfiction now. Wow,
     that was quite a list.
     Recommendations: If you really like this fanfiction, I would
     recommend Xerosis by Batsutousai and Again and Again by Athey. They
     are two of my favorite fanfiction and served as an inspiration for
     this one.
***** Everyone sees what you appear to be, few experience what you really are
*****
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“Everyone sees what you appear to be, few experience what you really are.” -
Niccolo Machiavelli
 
Green eyes opened peering heavily at the shambled room around him. Though he
had motor control and he seemed able to pivot his arms and legs around to
stand, he was still trapped in the crib with his mother’s corpse lying silently
staring at nothing beside him. Ashes and broken wood and fragments of what had
been his baby room laid scattered, the empty robes on the floor making light of
the situation.
 
His head ached, and he felt fevered and ill but oddly excited and yet detached
from where he was, as if he wasn’t actually experiencing this series of events
again . He did not want to think of the war or death or Voldemort or
Dumbledore. He had not wanted to think about anything, but he was back here.
Why was he a child again staring at his mother’s corpse waiting for someone to
take him from this place? Why was he peering into this wrecked cottage again?
 
A loud slamming sound echoed from downstairs and Harry fell to his butt quietly
in surprise, his chubby hands losing their grip on the crib bars, landing on a
particularly soft blanket covered in snitches and broomsticks. It was hard
still to move his limbs, but he seemed capable of some fine movements and his
legs at least appeared sturdy enough when he braced against the crib bars. At
least he wasn’t completely helpless. He ran his hand over the soft comfort
holding it like a shield against the quiet devastation that surrounded him.
 
‘It must be...Severus first, I believe. Then it must have been Sirius, then
Hagrid. ’ Harry remembered, as the loud banging continued reminiscent of
someone thundering up the staircase to his nursery. ‘ So this must be Severus
.’
 
And then a young, strikingly young, Severus Snape appeared breathing hard after
searching every room but the one Harry had slept in. And then Harry felt
disgusted with himself for watching the man break down as the man fell to his
knees and sobbed for Lily Potter. Severus did nothing by halves though, as he
must have sat there mourning over Harry’s mother for twenty minutes before
managing to gain any kind of semblance of control.
 
Harry quickly weighed the possibilities of this situation, wondering if Severus
would be a better caregiver than the Dursley’s and nearly reflexively snorted
in disbelief. Almost anything with a pulse would have been better than the
Dursley’s at caregiving, and though the man was caustic and weathered he most
certainly had a pulse.
 
Making up his mind, Harry considered how he could get the man to remove him
from the rubble before deciding simply making the man aware of his presence
would be a significant step in the right direction.
 
“Mommy?” Harry whispered startling the grieving man out of his mourning.
“Potter,” Severus snarled angry at being disturbed and then turned to actually
notice the boy in the crib, the boy’s face absolutely drenched in blood and a
deep gouge in his forehead in the shape of a lightning bolt. The man visibly
paled.
 
“The dark lord….” Snape trailed off almost as if he was looking for answers to
the unasked question from the toddler in front of him.
 
“Bye-bye,” Harry said, grimacing internally at the difficulty of the words,
pointing to the discarded clothing on the floor boards, “Whoosh, whoosh. Bye-
bye.”
 
A look of almost absolute confusion appeared on the man’s face after he stared
at the empty ashes of the Dark Lord. Severus then stood firmly before walking
towards the young boy. He plucked the boy from the crib holding him at eye
level before the sullen man’s face seemed to collapse in on itself. For a
moment, a single solitary moment Harry allowed himself to believe that Snape
was going to carry him out of the broken shambles of his home, that this time
Snape was going to be  different.  Then the man’s eye’s hardened, darkening
noticeably, and the man sighed deeply, audibly.
 
And then the man sat him back down gently in the crib, and turned, resolutely
walking away from Harry and Lily. Harry alone watched all of this, his green
eyes hard as stone, anger pooling in his stomach. It seemed that no matter what
Harry did or didn’t do, the blame for someone else's actions would come to rest
on his shoulders.
 
It would be another two hours before Sirius came for him.
 
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Ms. Dursley was possibly the most shocked woman in all of Surrey, finding a
toddler on her doorstep that early November morning.  It,  because it couldn’t
be anything else but an  it,  had been left there like an unwanted, unneeded
gift with that blasted letter. It wasn’t as if the letter had told her much,
outside of the fact that those nasty freakish people her sister always spent
all her time with had finally gotten her and her worthless husband blown up.
 The only part that concerned her was the fact that this  letter,   if it could
even be called that written as it was on parchment paper as was, demanded that
she take the brat of a boy in. It claimed that she and her husband were the
last living blood relatives of the boy, which she believed. The freaks had a
nasty habit of getting people killed.
 
‘Well,’ Petunia thought indignantly, ‘I will not stand for this! But first, I
must make sure that the neighbors haven’t seen him.’
 
And so she peered her beady eyes out the door of number four Privet Drive, and
craned her enormously long neck out the door to scan for any early-rising no-
good gossiping women who might have spotted the child, although it was
unlikely. After all, she alway took the garbage out early in the morning before
all the other residents had risen. It wasn’t like she wanted to be seen doing
something so common in front of the other women.
 
After assuring herself that the boy hadn’t been seen by any of the neighbors,
she stooped low and grabbed him, holding  it  extended from her body before
quickly ducking back inside the house, the garbage bag dropped as she stared
down at the creature in her arms. He looked so normal, still sleeping in her
arms, just as Dudley would. But if Lily had shown Petunia one thing, it was
that these people were not normal. They could look normal and sound normal and
do normal things, but if you dug deeply enough you would find the rotten
festering freakishness inside them.
 
Steeling herself, Petunia placed it on the couch, and went to skim the letter
once more before she screwed up the letter and nearly burst into tears. It
seemed as if Lily always got everything she wanted. She had always gotten the
best dresses, the finest presents, the handsome suitors. Lilly had gotten the
magic and the brains, the beauty and the talent, and by God Petunia couldn’t
see how it was fair that her sister got to take any pieces of Petunia’s
perfectly normal life and smash it smithereens. But the letter said not to send
the boy away, that it was important for her family’s safety that they take the
nasty freak into their normal home. Petunia still remembered the disaster when
her own parents had refused such an offer of protection.

 There were just too many things for her to consider by herself with the still
sleeping baby-, no thing, - never a child, never a child right beside her.
 
She quickly straightened herself up, and glanced at the clock on the mantle
place beside the numerous photos of Dudley. It was only a quarter past six, and
she generally would never wake Vernon up this early, but she knew that she
couldn’t make this decision alone. She needed her husband’s input.
 
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“Absolutely not! Petunia, we agreed that there would never be any of this
funny business . Your sister and her idiotic, unemployed husband may have
managed to get themselves blown up, but I will not be cleaning up after them!
You know what happens when  those people  mix with us normal folk!” Vernon
bolstered loudly, his face a darkened blotchy purple and red. “People end up
dead! That’s what happens to us Petunia! I will not have Dudley exposed to such
things! Think of your parents, Petunia!Think of what the freaks did to them.”
 
Petunia had only just finished explaining what had happened that morning to her
over excited husband and she sighed again. It felt like this was the thirtieth
time this morning she had sighed like that and Vernon’s yelling wasn’t doing
much for her headache, so she simply passed him the letter that had been left
on the step with the Potter child.
“What’s this rubbish?” Vernon asked gruffly, as he had finally stopped
bellowing when he noticed his wife rubbing circles into her temples.
 
“It’s the letter they sent with the boy when they dumped him on our
doorstep.Just read it, Vernon. I’m going to go ahead and make breakfast. I
hadn’t started yet because of the interruptions this morning.” She said nodding
to Harry who laid, still asleep in a cardboard box on the cabinet.
 
The next few minutes were filled only with silence, the quiet popping of
grease, and Vernon’s mumbling as he read and reread the offending document
before him. By the end of it Vernon had mangled the letter so badly that it was
barely legible anymore, and a blood vessel was protruding quite noticeably from
his forehead as he worked himself up into being angrier and angrier than he
originally was, until he was literally spitting out phrases like,“...Required
to maintain and care for nephew… age of wizarding majority… seventeen. Hogwarts
School For Witches and Wizards!” and, “Warding around my home… danger from
terrorist groups…”
 
It was only the clattering of Petunia setting the table and minutes later the
sudden shrieking of his own son waking up that shook him from his angry musing
to notice that the Potter brat, who he had honestly assumed to be asleep for
the entire duration of his and Petunia’s conversation was now staring at him as
he sat in the cardboard box, the boy's eyes an eerie, hard set shade of green.
Feeling a sudden shiver go down his neck, Vernon got up and made his way onto
his dining chair.
 
“We don’t have that much of a choice, Vernon,” Petunia advised quietly as she
spoon fed Dudley the mashed banana and monitored the way he attempted to hold
his cup up. “They always get what they want, and if they want to have him stay
in this house, we can accommodate that. I can clear out that cupboard
underneath the stair and he will be plenty far enough away from our Dinky
Duddydums so he won’t contaminate him with his freakishness. All we would have
to do is put locks on the door so he can’t get out unless we let him. And just
imagine, in a couple of years we can put him to work cleaning and cooking,
after all, he would have to earn his keep.”
 
“What about this warding? What does it do? Wouldn’t they be able to tell if we
do anything to the boy?” Vernon wondered aloud.
 
Petunia snorted lightly, “If anything that’s the only reason why I’m willing to
accept him. It’s supposedly a type of protection that they can place on the
house to keep us safe. My mother and Father declined this same type of
protection right before they died, although there's most certainly did not come
with a freak attached.”
 
Her face pinched tightly and she ran a bony hand through her blonde hair, “
Although I loathe to admit it Vernon, the freak shouldn’t be as much trouble to
keep as it would be to get rid of him. Those people know things, and since
they’ve dumped him on us we will just have to make the best of it.”
 
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Vernon Dursley would be the first person to renounce his nephew, even before
Petunia. After all Dursley’s were well mannered, well bred, stocky men and
women who most certainly did not involve themselves with fantasy and definitely
not anything  abnormal.  And Vernon Dursley’s nephew Harry Potter most
certainly was  abnormal.
 
From the very moment Harry Potter had set foot in Privet Drive Number four,
there had been something slightly… peculiar about the boy. For one, though
Petunia probably should have noticed it first, Vernon noticed by the time the
boy was five years old he had never smiled. Even as a baby, the Potter child
had simply stared at nothing, his eyes burning the air like molten lava.
Another, perhaps the more peculiar thing was that the boy never spoke. The
Dursley’s were perhaps more content with the fact that the boy never spoke than
they were concerned. As far as they cared, it was perfectly normal behavior for
a freak.
 
But five years old was when Vernon started noticing the boy. Started noticing
the darkness to his eyes, the smirk that graced his upturned mouth, the lips
that never smiled. He noticed the litheness of the boy, how tiny he was
compared to his own girth, bloody hell compared to his own son’s girth. He
noticed the small hands and the demure stature.

 The first time he thought about the boy as he stroked his own length, he
convinced himself it was an accident. The second time he was positive it was
just a mistake, but by the fourth or fifth time he began to slowly try to
rationalize his thoughts.

 He knew that wanking to the most vulgar thoughts of the boy was probably
wrong, even if the boy was a freak, but Vernon had never been one for self-
restraint, and so his mind wandered to all the filthy things he could make the
boy do. Things that normal people like Petunia would never do. Things he would
never think of asking Petunia to do.
 
After all, it wasn’t like the boy was normal. It wasn’t like he was human. He
was just a freak. Vernon could do whatever he wanted after all, he took care of
the brat didn’t he? Fed him. Clothed him. Gave him room and board. Petunia’s
words from four years ago haunted his sleep every night. After all, the boy
owed him, owed them for everything.
 
Didn't he?
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His graying hair was hanging down in his face and he had the most terrible
stitch in his side. is entire body pulsed with pain and anguish but still he
ran on. The only alternative was death. Painful, encompassing, complete death.
The muggles catcalled after him, braying loudly. Suddenly, an explosive noise
erupted and Harry fell to his face, gasping in pain his hands instinctively
fumbling for the bullet wound. He began chanting quickly, his magic surging to
close the hole faster, but he already knew it was too late.
 
Just as the skin and sinew knitted together enough for him to raise himself up
from the cold hard ground, the team of Hunters emerged into the clearing.
Muggles. Hunters. Whatever one called them they both meant the same thing for
magicals. Death.

 Harry Potter was screaming and begging for several hours before he died.
 
Harry bolted awake in his cot under the stairs. He nearly slammed his head into
the ceiling and he felt the tears running down his face in rivulets. Harry kept
forgetting than he was only five, every night felt like he was back surviving
by the skin of his teeth, running blindly from death. It felt like a dream
being here with his filthy muggle relatives, playing family. He still felt like
he would wake up there, starving and dying and alone.
 
He rested his head firmly against the wall nearest to his cot, shivering as the
sweat against his body cooled.He reckoned that nightmare’s had always been with
him haunting him, even when reality had decided that he had had enough. They
had been there entirely though his first life, through his early years with the
Dursley’s, into Hogwarts, and passed that into his professional and romantic
life. They were a constant when he had been on the run with Ron and Hermione
and present throughout his rocky marriage to Ginny.
 
Sometimes, Harry was simply certain that he had gone insane. How else would he
have ended up back where he obviously didn’t belong. Perhaps it was that Harry
was simply being too much of a Potter at breaking the rules. He snorted. Now he
was being ridiculous.
 
He rolled over and closed his eyes, resolute in once again finding sleep.
 
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 “Never attempt to win by force what can be won by deception.”
―  Niccolò_Machiavelli ,
 
Harry Potter knew good and well what Vernon Dursley was up to in the dead of
night in the days following his fifth birthday. He was the one doing the sheets
and the laundry making the breakfast and doing most of the menial chores around
the house after all. He wanted to fit in for as long as possible, and the
easiest way to do such a thing was remain with the Dursley’s until he turned
eleven. Still, the family put him on edge much more than it had in his first
life. That was most certainly due to the fact that he either hadn’t noticed his
perverted Uncle during his first life, or something had changed the man enough
to make him think that being attracted to a young child was an acceptable thing
to do.
 
Whatever the man's reason, Harry was left dealing with the indirect results of
Vernon’s making. Petunia was absolutely enraged. Whether it was Harry’s fault
or not, she had seen the signs as well as he had, but as the man hadn’t
actually done anything…
 
Harry knew very well as he stared into the frying bacon that divorce between
his aunt and uncle would never happen. Even if the man had taken Harry in his
first life, Petunia wouldn’t have left the man. They were just so obsessed with
everything dull, with everything boring and ordinary.
 
It was then that Petunia finally strode into the kitchen, sniffing daintily at
the smell of eggs and bacon and toast that filled the entire room. She tossed a
vindictive,”You better not burn it, freak.” his way before making her way out
of the kitchen and back up stairs to wake her husband and son.
 
Harry rolled his eyes, his opinion of muggles had severely deteriorated in the
last sixty years. In his opinion his aunt and uncle were definitely prime
examples of muggle trash. Not that he hated all of the muggles. Not really, it
was probably more of a controlled wariness, fear and of course select hatred
for the scum of the earth. But Harry supposed that hating scum was a relatively
normal occupation of anyone's time.
 
Dumping the mountains of eggs and bacon onto the large platters sitting at the
dining table, Harry quickly sat the table for three as he heard his aunt, uncle
and cousin trundling down the staircase. While eating after the Dursley's did
pose obvious disadvantages to the amount of food he had available, it did grant
him with one wonderful reprieve: avoiding having to see the two massive whales
now sitting in the kitchen eating.
 
And it allowed Harry to slip away to do some hunting of his own.
-----------------------------------------------------------
 
The first time Harry had gone hunting, he had been in his late sixties. It was
one of the last raids the British Ministry had been able to put together with
the dwindling amounts of witches and wizards they were able to contact. Simply
put, while the raids had initially been implemented in 2020, they had mutated
by the early forties. While the original raids had taken into account the
massive increases in muggle populations and had attempted to protect the
individual, by the forties that mentality had been discarded for a much colder
approach. The twenties targeted only those who ran their mouth and hospitals;
the forties slaughtered muggles.
 
By the forties, almost no one had been left though. It was obvious that single
groups of thirty witches and wizards stood no chances against the twelve
billion humans on the earth. There were simply too many. The eradication of
wizarding kind had been apparent since Harry was a child though, if he had only
been looking for it. The older generations took too long to die out, and so new
ideas simply took too long to come to fruition. There were too many
internalized wizarding wars, too much death in the nineteen-forties, again in
the nineteen-seventies, and again in the early two thousands. There was too
much inbreeding and not enough attention paid to the statute of secrecy. Harry
snorted. Too much would have, could have, should have for his taste. The
stagnation of their world had damned them all probably before he was born.
 
The hunting also helped satiated that  strange  feeling he’d come to experience
since his early teen years. He hadn’t named it until his sixties, until that
first raid.  Rage.
 
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Insanity destroys reason, but not wit. - Nathaniel Emmons


The first muggle Harry murdered in his new life was probably in his late
thirties. Harry had met the man twice, once in his uncle’s parlor as the man
bargained over fine wine and pork roast, for drill prices and chatted amiably
about golf. The second time was that very day, when the small boy apparated
directly to the man’s home.

 The Dursley’s wouldn’t notice Harry’s absence until eight, when his school
called them wondering if the young boy was ill.
 
Harry glanced at his watch. 7:15. He grinned.
 
Harry let himself into the first brown brick two-story house on Cuthbert
Street. He had done his research, like always, and knew that the home housed a
single working man by the name of Theodore Thatcher. The man was muggle through
and through, though perhaps more disgusting than most muggles in the nineteen-
nineties. A peodophile, Harry had seen the obvious glances that the man had
sent his way the night he had had dinner at the Dursley’s, and the polite
smiles he had shared with Vernon when they discussed the  boys . Outside of
that, a cursory glimpse into the man’s mind had brought forward several of the
man’s fantasies that now nauseatingly featured Harry himself.
 
Harry shuddered as he opened the front door and slipped off his shoes. Setting
them by the front door and conjuring a pair of surgical gloves, he took careful
stock of his magical reserves. He was already feeling the small amount of magic
he had cast taking a minor toll on his deaged body. He simply wasn't
experienced using vast quantities of his core, although he could still feel
every drop of his power from his previous life. That would have to change. Oh
well. It simply meant more hunting.
 
Harry could hear the water running in the upstairs bathroom from the living
room and he threw himself onto the leather upholstered sofa and hunkered down
to wait for his victim.
 
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At about a quarter to eight, Mr. Thatcher ran down the staircase in almost a
blind panic. He was late  again.  It must have been the third time this week.
Mr. Thatcher did not do late. He was a prompt man, always had been and always
would be but it seemed in the last week the world itself had decided to
conspire against him. He'd broken an alarm clock, gotten stuck behind several
slow commuters, and now fallen asleep in the shower. It was absurd but now once
again he was in a rush to Pinkerstone hoping he could make his eight o’clock
meeting.
 
Thatcher had no transition between running for his front door, his mind already
occupied by the problems he would encounter at work today, and lying on his
back in the living room with a small figure staring ominously down at him.
 
“Hi,” said the small boy squatting beside him. “How do you feel?” The boy’s
hair was familiar, but confusion quickly won out over curiousity, which bled
into fear as he realized he couldn’t move.
“What’s going on?” His voice wavered noticeably, ”Who are you?”
“Shhh,” The young boy moved his finger to his lips, “I’ll be asking the
question, Mr. Thatcher. It is suffice to say that we have met before. And might
I say, Mr. Thatcher, you have made yourself quite a powerful enemy. Now, let me
ask again once again. How do you feel?”
“Now look here! I am not someone to be trifled with boy-”
“Crucio”
Pain. He felt pain like nothing he had ever felt before, like every nerve was
on fire inside his body, like his entire being was trying desperately to rip
itself atom from atom. Suddenly the pain stopped, and the small figure fell
slightly forward, panting in exertion.
 
“What was that? Thirty-seven seconds? Pathetic.” The figure mumbled to himself,
“But holy shit what a rush. These last few years have robbed me of so much this
pleasure.  Dealing with your  filthy  kind will be a welcome reprieve in the
coming years.”
 
“Well, how do you feel Mr. Thatcher? We don’t have long before I must really be
going, after all, a school boy must go to school. Though, it will be awfully
sad when the grand businessman doesn’t go to work anymore.” The boy chuckled
darkly, his darkened green eyes meeting his own for mere seconds before he was
able to make the connection.
 
“The boy! Dursley’s nephew!” He gaped in shock. What was this boy doing in his
home?
 
“Ah, hole in one, Mr. Thatcher. I suppose it’s apt for you to recognize my
eyes, since I think we have just about run out of time.” The brat glared
petulantly at him. “I don’t see why you had to go and ruin my fun like that
though, taking a full twenty minutes longer than normal this morning in the
shower than normal. Tsk tsk, Mr. Thatcher. I thought you were the epitome of
all that is normal and punctual and prompt. Well, at least my fat whale of an
uncle still has something to aspire to. Anyway, are you ever going to answer my
question?”
 
Abruptly, Mr. Thatcher did suddenly noticed that something was off... That his
intimate area did feel rather… peculiar. Like there was a certain  numbness .
His face dawned with horror suddenly as he realized that something rather
important was missing from him.
 
Harry began laughing at the panic dawning on the man’s face almost immediately,
relishing the man’s pain. “Well,” he said wiping the tears from his eyes,”that
is absolutely delightful! I suppose I simply must allow you to actually feel
the damage I’ve done before we finish up here.”
Removing his numbing charm from the man's freshly castrated pelvis, Harry
finished cutting through the bloody ooze to the remaining nerves that still
held the man’s penis to his body with the most beautiful carving knife he had
found in the man’s pantry. He made sure to do this very slowly listening to the
screaming as if was a symphony.
 
Smiling with maniacal delight as a idea possessed him, he grabbed Thatcher’s
throat, holding it tightly to force the man to keep his mouth wide so Harry
could shove the bloody penis down the man’s throat. Setting aside the remaining
bits of the once functioning genitalia, Harry grabbed the knife and laughed
loudly. “I hope you fucking choke on it you filthy son of a bitch.”He glanced
at his watch. He only had three minutes to finish whatever he was going to do
before he’d need to cast a cleaning charm and apparate to school. Whatever
would Harry do?
 
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
---------------------------------------------
Glancing down at what remained of Mr. Thatcher gave Harry a grand idea, and he
snickered wildly as he shoved the man's balls into his eye sockets. Though he
had only taken a large mass of skin from the man, most of what remained was
actually spread across the living room. He’d run blood and guts halfway up the
walls with magic and had actually managed to get Thatcher’s stomach attached to
the hanging light fixture above their heads. Other organs either lined the
house or filled what remained of the man’s abdominal cavity. Though the man had
died, it had probably only been when Harry had sliced the man’s throat open.
Whatever, not like it was Harry’s problem anymore. Harry shook his head and
cast two more charms, one cleaning all the blood from his body and another
expunging it from his clothes.
 
He was still three minutes late to class that morning.


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EndofTortureSceneEndofTortureSceneEndofTortureSceneEndofTortureSceneEndofTorture
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Harry was very bored of being in primary school. Actually, Harry was very bored
of being in Surrey, England. He was tired of stopping himself from saying nasty
spiteful things to his equally spiteful aunt, and avoiding spending any time
alone with Vernon Dursley, tired of circumnavigating teachers and Dudley, and
Piers and all the stupid muggle trash that existed in a very narrow space.
 
Harry sighed. Rationally, he knew that all muggles weren’t bad. They weren’t
all lazy or ignorant, but so many of them were that it made him morose. Things
hadn’t ended well in his last life, yes, and it didn’t give him the right to
psychotically murder people now. Still, it made him feel better and had the
perks of getting rid of some of the vermin that had contributed to his death
originally. That was always a good thing in his opinion.
 
Harry found that perhaps one of his favorite perks of redoing his life was his
new appreciation for parseltongue. His acquisition of Clementine was perhaps
the most entertaining thing to happen to him in a while. Though Clementine was
only a garden snake, she was surprisingly witty and had helped Harry come to
terms with his strange do-over. Most important though was the fact that she was
only a foot long and weighed perhaps three ounces, which meant he was able to
keep her coiled around his wrist when he wore long sleeved hand me downs.

 Harry had found Clementine at age four, and it had actually only been her calm
reassurances that had kept him from murdering the entirety of the Dursley
family and simply going to Albania in order to look for Riddle. After all,
Harry was positive that this phenomenon had something to do with that man, and
god damn it he was going to have answers.
 
While Harry had actually succeeded in defeating Voldemort in his original
timeline, Harry had had his suspicions as to the efficacy of killing the man.
The muggles had still murdered them all. The world had still ended. Perhaps a
few people had outlived Harry, but he had seen where wizards and muggles were
going. Though the wizards may have died off first, it seemed obvious that the
muggles would soon follow them. After all, during the twenties, Wizarding
Hunters had predominantly attacked hospitals. Advanced curses were developed
that targeted the babies and mothers of anyone entering the hospital. Pregnancy
became nearly nonexistent in muggles by fourties. Humanity, not the separate
factions wizards and muggles had created, would likely die off in less than a
hundred years.

 And Harry Potter was the only one who knew.
***** Age is an issue of mind over matter. If you don't mind, it doesn't
matter. *****
Chapter Notes
     This chapter didn't want to be written. Originally, it had probably
     500 words more than it has right now, but I deleted it and started
     over. The next chapters should flow much better than this seems to.
     Also, as you can probably tell, there is a lot of set up here. I'm
     probably going to skip over a lot of what Harry ends up doing for the
     next six years, since much of it isn't relevant at all, and he lacks
     the magical power to actually do much of anything, at least until
     he's exercised his core quite a bit more. Also, I want it to be clear
     that Harry isn't thinking very clearly. He's made plans, but then
     gone in direct opposition to those plans. He's also not thought very
     hard about the long term effects of his actions, done them, and then
     had to scramble for a solution to the problem he just caused. He
     isn't exactly functional and I blame that on a number of influences
     (cough horcux cough) Anyway, hope you like it.
October 31, 1985
5:55 p.m.
Albus had been concerned… no, perhaps that was an improper way of phrasing his
mindset regarding the young Mr. Potter. Albus was always concerned, about
things ranging from the way he weighted the complex machinations of the
Wizengamot to the subtle conditioning of certain youth at Hogwarts. He was
always engaged in several highly complex metaphorical chess games with some of
the brightest and perhaps cruelest of those to ever emerge from Hogwarts. No,
the young Potter boy did not concern him. He disturbed him.
Albus Dumbledore was distracted, horribly and completely distracted by the
astounding puzzle the boy had presented him with, simply by existing.
Originally, it had been the complexity of the boys survival, but then it had
been the boy’s control over his magic. It was perhaps unnatural, the way
Harry’s magical energy had continued to expand and contort, even from what it
was at the site of Lily and James Potter’s death. It reminded him of the Riddle
boy before he had mutilated his magic and soul. Reminded him of that fateful
first meeting...
Then there had been those reports coming in from Mrs. Figg who Dumbledore had
stationed nearby the boy’s residence. The level of magic Harry Potter emitted
was off the charts, rating as high as a second year Hogwarts student. The boy
was only five years old, for Merlin’s sake! Dumbledore worried about the
similarities between the two boys and pondered the effect of the Killing curse
on the boy endlessly.
He stood, suddenly tired from his pondering, and then busied himself peering at
Fawkes who slept peacefully on his perch and envied the bird for it’s ease.
Something about Harry Potter often made it difficult for Albus to sleep
soundly, even after all these years. The plumage on the beautiful phoenix made
his heart ache, and Dumbledore turned around facing the window rather than his
beloved familiar. He had made the right decisions concerning the Boy-Who-Lived.
He knew he had-
A single earsplitting shrill pierced the air in the Headmaster’s office, and
Albus whirled around, before his eyes hit the glass dodecahedron screaming on
his desk. He was unable to take a step forward before Fawkes startled,
squawking at the noisy awakening, and took flight soaring out Albus’s opened
window. Abruptly, the glass figurine shattered.
Albus nearly fell to his knees in shock. The wards around Privet Drive number
four had fallen.
---------
October 31,1985
5:00 p.m
Filthy. Muggle. Trash.
Harry was at the end of his rope with Vernon. The man was hundreds of times
worse than Harry remembered him being, almost infinitely worse than Petunia who
was horrid in her own shrill way. Vernon watched him near constantly when he
was not being shut away in the tiny space of the cupboard, his pudgy eyes
examining the boy wherever he went.
Harry grit his teeth harshly, and strained to maintain his composure. The
Dursley's and he sat around their large dining table conversation strained
between the three adults seated. Harry remembered this dinner from his first
life as well, although without the leering glances from his uncle, and the
obvious tensions between the adults. He also remembered the results of this
dinner. Harry nearly barred his teeth in agitation. He refused.
The woman beside Petunia spoke concisely about the two boys, as she was in fact
Harry and Dudley’s teacher from Primary. She had expressed concern about
Harry’s living situation and had come for an unannounced home visit. The
Dursley’s were thoroughly unimpressed, and Harry knew both from experience and
from disgust that from this point forward things were drastically diverging
from what they had been.
He no longer had patience for filth.
----
Petunia smiled tightly as Ms. Fitch left Privet Drive number four. The woman
had come snooping about worried about the nasty brat of a boy not speaking, as
if it were her family's fault that they had a freak in it! It had taken perhaps
all of dinner and a couple tense minutes to explain why the boy didn’t speak.
That they believed it was caused by his parents brutal murder, and that they
simply didn’t have the heart to force him to talk if he didn’t want to.
The woman lapped it up and left feeling contented that her work as a teacher
had taken care of.
Her tight smile falling from her face, Petunia rolled her shoulders stretching
the tension out of them. Dinner had been an event and she was quite glad the
woman had left. Initially, Petunia had thought Ms. Fitch had come to speak
about Dudley’s scores on his tests or his behavior in the classroom, all of
which she had prepared excuses for, mind you. But, for some unforeseeable
reason, all the woman seemed to want to talk about was Potter. It was Mr.
Potter this, Harry Potter that, and Petunia had nearly found herself grinding
her teeth to nubs as she had to listen to the woman talk about Lily’s brat.
Thinking of the boy, Petunia’s head swung as if on a swivel. It took a few
moments of searching until she locked eyes on the boy. He was standing in the
corner of the living room, his dark green eyes boring holes into her.
Petunia froze. Her mouth was wide, as she had been intending to scream at him
to get back into his cupboard, but her eyes perhaps were even wider. She
couldn’t move.
“Don’t bother trying to speak, Petunia. Afterall, I have to save you for last
since the blood wards are tied directly to you. Besides, the more you struggle,
the more magic I have to use and the more likely I am to screw something up and
have to gut you first.” Harry grinned cockily up at his aunt, bracing his back
against the cream colored hallway wall.
“You know, I honestly was trying quite hard to keep everything the same. I
don’t think I’m going to mind giving up the advantage as much as I thought I
would though. You see, I needed you Petunia,” Harry’s eyes firmly met his aunts
as he stepped closer to her.” Had you been kind to me, perhaps I would have
need of you yet, but it seems as if it was simply not fated to be.”
Petunia whimpered, tears running down her cheeks silently as she fought hard
against the immobility. She couldn’t speak, yet fear of the infernal demon
child they had had dumped onto them still sank deeply into her stomach.
Harry’s eyes flashed dangerously as he lifted one finger to his lips before he
continued,“We have a lot to discuss, aunt, but for now you will have to be
plenty quiet for me. I intend to have some fun, and if you spoil it for me…
well, just having me gut you would seem kind. Anyway, I won’t be the only one
having fun! You can watch.”
Harry rested one hand on Petunia’s arm, the other hanging loosely at his side
clutching the kitchen knife, and marched her slowly into the living room where
Vernon now sat watching television and shoveling popcorn into his mouth. He
didn't notice Harry approaching the couch until Harry flung a wandless reducto
at the television shattering it loudly and exploding one of the sitting chairs.
Vernon gaped in confusion at the wreckage.
"Hi, Uncle Vernon. It looks like we all get to have a bit of family time.
Unfortunately, it seems as if Dudley is going to have to be left out. You see,"
Harry's eyes burned, "I don't do children."
----
The first thing Harry did was reinforce Petunia's bindings with a variation of
the incarcerous spell. It wouldn't do at all for the woman to break free of the
bindings through sheer willpower as some muggles managed at times. This
variation was allowed him to manipulate her body to a degree and required a
darker inflection of the will to be properly successful.
Not that he honestly expected Petunia to break free and throw herself at him in
an attempt to save Vernon. Harry glanced at the woman curiously before he
snorted. What the hell, not like anyone was around to stop him. He quickly
pinned Vernon to the couch with an immobulus and once again turned to face
Petunia Dursley.
Harry had very mixed feelings about Petunia. He hated her, make no doubt of
that, but by all rights she didn't owe him anything. She had taken him in only
when no other option was available, and had made several requests already for
him to be taken away. And yet, she wasn't the paragon of evil he had always
wanted her to be. Neither was Vernon. They were both muggles. People. Awful
rotten ones at that, but still. He was about to punish her for that, about to
torture her for having the bad fortune of possessing no latent magical power,
and having married a pervert.
Harry steeled himself. He had done worse things. He had lived through doing
worse things. His eyes met hers, and he felt something he had not for a long
time. Pity. Remorse perhaps.
Harry swung around, his eyes alight with fury and his body shaking. It
shouldn’t matter, it shouldn’t matter that Petunia was his mother’s sister, or
even that she had raised him from infancy, albeit unwillingly. It shouldn’t
mean anything to him that killing her would leave Dudley alone and without a
mother. But it did for some reason. Something inane and meaningless made him
hesitate and that made Harry so furious that he nearly screamed. He hadn’t felt
like this in a long time, not since the first raids he went on where Harry
still had the foolish hope that muggles and wizards could get along. Where he
trusted that people had morals and decency and that everyone had the innate
ability to be good.
Harry snorted. What a crock of shit.
Harry turned away from Petunia again, and faced his frozen uncle slouching
across the couch. He felt no such emotion when he thought about torturing the
man. Neither did he feel the pressing need, the unmanageable anger he had come
to expect since he had rejoined the Dursley’s.
‘But that doesn’t mean I won’t enjoy this.’ Harry thought,’In fact, I may enjoy
it more than if I was raging. This way, I can savor his death.’ He peered back
at Petunia from the corner of his eye. “Perhaps this will be a lesson for the
both of us, Petunia.”
-----------
TortureScene
-----------
His grip reaffirmed on the handle of his knife and his mind silent of his
previous concerns, Harry approached his uncle. Harry had originally planned to
simply kill both of them and be done with it, but now an idea had come to him.
A punishment perhaps worse than simply killing them both.
Harry raised his hand and summoned the remains he had stored under his bed.
There were quite a few bits of humans tucked inside the plastic tub, alongside
a healthy amount of graveyard soil and a vial of his own blood. He had been
collecting since the start of primary, when Harry had first killed Mr. Thatcher
and established that he possessed sufficient magical power to take on a single
adult muggle.
After all, Harry had recognized his talent for necromancy decades prior. It was
an obvious fit, and with the resurrection stone and the massive influx of
bodies he had had plenty of chances to practice.
Harry open the sealed tub and wrinkled his nose slightly at the wafting smell
of soil. While the stasis charms on the box prevented the body parts from
decaying, it didn’t keep the smell from oozing into everything it touched.
Readying his knife, Harry decided to start with the individual pieces he knew
he could remove without using magic. There was always something more personal
about removing an organ or extremity that pleased the dark magic and made
Harry’s gut tighten in pleasure. Recognizing this, he started at his Uncle's
massive feet running the knife along individual toes softly. And then harder.
They came off easily, as Vernon was still quite restrained and incapable of
protesting in any form or fashion. After that, Harry moved away from the man’s
feet, partially due to the stench and partially due to the blood gushing out of
the stumps. He moved onto the man’s fingers, snapping the bones first and then
cutting away at skin and sinew until it fell away.
He continued on through the list of body parts easy enough for a child his age
to remove from an adult's body: nose, ears, teeth, and tongue- although that
one had required a cauterizing charm lest the man bleed to death before Harry
was well and truly finished. When he proceeded to open the man’s trousers for
that all important external organ, Harry heard Vernon’s first whimper,
something that was finally able to escape the boundaries of the immobulus.
And then Harry realized why. Despite the fact that Harry was literally cutting
the man to pieces, removing sections of his body and depositing them into a
container with other pieces just like it, the second Harry had grabbed for
Vernon’s penis, Harry could feel it. Hard. Engorged with blood. Erect.
“You disgusting pig.” Harry threw down his knife as he jumped to his feet in
revulsion “Do you see what you married Petunia! I knew we were both going to
learn something from this, but this definitely wasn’t what I was expecting!
You're not even worth the effort it would take to finish this.” Hard eyes fell
against Vernon Dursley. Harry tossed a diffindo at the man’s bared throat and
was done with the man.
Harry wasn’t just done with Vernon, he was done with the Dursley’s and
regretted ever coming to this awful place. He regretted setting foot in the
door, regretted staying until he was this old, regretted allowing himself to
feel anything at all for Petunia. And so he turned to her and whispered the
only word that could fix what he had somehow broken.
“Obliviate.”
-----------
EndOfTorture
-----------
Harry erased every fragment of his existence and of Vernon and his bloody
murder. He even went as far as to force Petunia’s mind to ignore every sign of
Vernon’s rotting corpse. He also implanted a suggestion deep into Petunia’s
mind that moving out of such a large house in the next couple of weeks would
definitely be a positive thing to do.Then, he trundled upstairs and wiped
Dudley’s mind as well. They wouldn’t remember that Harry Potter ever existed,
much less that he had murdered Vernon Dursley.
Gathering all of his things, Harry was forced once again to reexamine his
meager belongings. There wasn’t much, and with much of it stored safely under
shrinking and preservation charms, there was even less. The largest and most
personal thing, in fact, was his tub of necromantic parts. Harry figured that
that was just depressing. He
Harry refused to go to Gringotts, at least until he had a reasonable supply of
polyjuice and a suitable amount of galleons that were not listed under his
name, as well as charmwork so extensive they wouldn't sense a single
necromantic bone in, or on, his body. He wasn’t stupid. Harry knew that the
goblins likelihood of actually helping him for his own benefit was a chance in
a million. They would protect his money and keep it safe as long as it suited
their means. Trying to access it as a child, one with no suitable guardian and
the smell of necromancy around him was akin to begging them to try to take
advantage of him. Or perhaps begging to be cursed by one of the light wizards
who would be able to sense the magic on him, and that definitely was his own
fault. He hadn’t bothered with casting the high level concealment charms
necessary for him since his rebirth. He hadn’t seen the need to mask the taint
necromancy had left. Now those charm were necessary if he wanted to visit the
wizarding world. He would have to hide the taint on his magic, and his magical
reserves were not up to such advanced levels of magic.
“What do you think, Clementine?”Harry asked his familiar, cursing his lack of
forethought.
“Of what, my master? Of the way you wasted your quarry? Or perhaps how you
irrationally changed your plans based on one deviation.”She hissed sweetly at
him from around his wrist.
He glared in annoyance.”I was finished playing out a fantasy where everything
maintained itself as it was last time. Petunia and Vernon were muggles and I
didn’t waste them. I got everything I wanted.”
“Yes, certainly master, that’s why you reacted in shock to the smell of his
lust? You’ve told me the stories of the last war. There has been many worse
things you have born witness to. Worse things you have done yourself. And
unlike some of those things, you were already partial to this knowledge.”
“What are you saying?”
“You overreacted. Pure and simple. We were to wait for the time to come to
strike out at our foes, but if it is discovered by the wizarding world that you
have killed your uncle-”
“They would quickly declare me the next dark lord and be done with it.” Harry’s
eyes widened in shock. Silence interrupted their discussion as Harry finally
considered the ramifications of his actions. He cursed his arrogance and
quickly began muttering quietly to think of a solution to the mess he had
caused. Then a large smile appeared on his face. “You forget, as do I at times,
that I am only five years old. What do you think of staging a kidnapping?”
And abruptly, Harry shattered the wards.
The Dark Mark hung ominously over Privet Drive. It’s reappearance and the
subsequent disappearance of The-Boy -Who-Lived was to be the talk of the
wizarding world for the next six years.
***** On the day of my birth, my death began walking towards me. He never
faltered, although I did many times. *****
Chapter Notes
     This isn't a week late. :I Not at all. In fact, it is right on time.
     Actually, I got super bogged down by Stats. I failed a test and had
     to drop all my fanfiction to make sure the next one was at least a
     ninety. Wish me luck cause without it, I will won't have the B I need
     to keep my GPA up. Test is coming up soon. Here's to hoping I can get
     the grade I need.
Chapter Three
 
"On the day of my birth, my death began walking towards me. He never faltered,
although I did many times." Anonymous
 
Harry stared into the fireplace, his green eyes reflecting the flames. His feet
were thrown over the side of the armchair, dangling as they swung slowly back
and forth while he thought. They had been here for the last three days or so.
He wasn’t exactly certain how long and honestly, it probably didn’t matter very
much at all. There was a never ending stream of houses just like this one
behind him and an equally daunting amount of them ahead.
 
He had just turned ten today. Harry had celebrated with the box cake he found
in the cabinets and a long hot bath in the master bathroom. He had thrown
confetti around the dining table and ‘opened’ imaginary presents since he
didn’t dare leave his wards until he had to. It was very lonely and had done
nothing but depress him honestly.
 
So now he was sitting here, in front of the fire feeling more alone than he had
ever been in his life, in either of his lives. The past five years had done
some good though. For one, he had killed so many people that it had almost
become boring. It probably wasn’t the most sane reason for him to stop killing,
and it definitely had thrown the muggle investigators for a loop. After all,
serial killers didn’t just stop killing. Harry almost felt a grin tugging at
his cheeks.
 
He had also had plenty of time to hone necromancy even further than he had in
his previous life. By the time he had been willing to resort to it before, the
availability of fresh corpses, or even muggles to create those fresh bodies,
had declined enough that it had been reasonably difficult to even create
something as simple as an inferi. The fact that muggles had been so available
to him had been a boon, and in the past five years he had steadily been
decimating the homeless populations of London and Birmingham. He had had the
ability to create anything he wanted as well as establish a direct connection
to his soul plane.
 
Harry had learned how to follow the tendrils of his astral being decades ago,
but the first time he attempted it during this life had been when he was six
years old. Immediately after traversing his tether, Harry had known something
was off. It had taken perhaps a week of slowing the transent from human
sentience to astral being for him to see the vile thing latched to him.
 
A horcrux. Voldemort’s horcrux.
 
Harry chuckled and swung his legs around, hopping up and walking to the liquor
cabinet. He loved scotch, and apparently someone in this family had as well
since a large bottle of single malt sat aside several wines. He grabbed glass
and the bottle, padding softly to the kitchen for some ice. He poured it and
took a tentative sniff, swiveling the single malt slowly before swallowing a
delicious mouthful of the amber liquid. He couldn’t have much, since his body
was inevitably that of a ten year old, but god damnit he was officially ninety
five today and he was going to treat himself.
 
--
A number of hours later, Harry stumbled drunkenly up to the master bedroom,
nearly tripping on the stairs and then actually tripping over three mangled
bodies that hadn't been there last he remembered. He appropriately bent over
and vomited from the smell mingling with the alcohol and began cursing wildly.
 
He knew what it was, that blasted Nightmare had probably possessed the flesh
golem and started pulling out corpses again. He teetered awkwardly to his feet
and stared at the dead family for a moment before sighing. He would have to
deal with Anzu, and the bodies, tomorrow morning. His head was swimming right
now from all he had drunk and he did not have the energy to argue with a
demented minor demon.
 
-----
One Year Later
 
He had been so certain that they would never see Harry Potter again. The entire
wizarding world had been plunged in years of mourning when the disastrous
results of placing the boy who lived with his aunt came to light. From the
scene the aurors stumbled onto to the perpetrators superb skill at masking his
magical signature Dumbledore believed, as almost everyone else had believed,
that Harry Potter was dead. There was nothing else to believe, as the uncle was
butchered, the aunt memory wiped, and the terrifying symbol of the dark lord
ghosted above the house.
 
The most frustrating thing had been that no one knew anything at all. Severus
had heard nothing from his contacts, no one came forward announcing their
possession of the boy, and his body was never found. The facts though....
 
Albus had been so certain he was dead. That he would never have Minerva hand
him the letter signed by the auto-address quill that always, always addressed
letters, her lips pinched tightly together, her cheeks red, and her eyes wide
with shock. Her voice and hands had quivered when she burst into his office
with one sentence on her lips that changed everything.
 
“Harry Potter is alive.”
---
Alive. The word reverberated through his skull, fractured his thoughts and
forced him to grasp the proffered letter. He knew what it was on sight as he
had sent out many of the letters when he was a Deputy Headmaster, but now he
wondered in awe at the single letter in front of him.
 
It read: To Harry James Potter
1441 Rosenburg Street
London, England
 
They had an address. It was more than Albus had ever hoped for. His eyes rose
to met Minerva’s shining with a more pronounced twinkle than they had anytime
in the last six years. “I believe,” He began,” we have a house visit in dire
need of being conducted.”
 
Minerva shot him a dirty glare her voice tinged with a slight twang from her
Scottish brogue, "You would do well to remember that it is to be the both of
us, as well as the other heads of houses that will go. I needn't have come to
you at all Albus.”
 
He opened his mouth to disagree, but promptly closed it once again after
examining her ironclad will. Arguing was going to get him nowhere when Minerva
acted like this, especially as he was still off balance from the news that
Harry Potter was still alive. Sighing, he finally tried to compromise slightly.
“Rather than all five of us, it would be preferable for Severus as well as the
two of us-” at Minerva’s shocked expression, Albus amended slightly appealing
to her sense of empathy. “He has just as much reason to be there as we do,
perhaps more considering his relationship with Lily. Five of us will terrify
the boy, and we most certainly don't want to overwhelm him.”
 
Minerva grimaced slightly shaking her head and contemplating the offer before
deciding that it was a worthwhile compromise. “I will send Severus up then, and
we will leave in,” she paused casting tempus at the air beside her,” an hour.
You best be ready then, or else I will leave without the both of you. “
-----
Apparating to the address on Harry’s letter deposited them at a curious
location, that being the sight of an enormous gray box-like building that
Severus snorted at and called a storage building. That left all three parties
of the group confused and almost unbearably disappointed, until Dumbledore
attempted a short range locating charm and managed to find a trail of magic
leading to one of the storage units.
 
Inside they found a small boy with green eyes staring watching a television. He
turned towards them with a surprisingly easy expression. “What took you so
long?” Harry asked petulantly.” I have been waiting for weeks!.”
 
Harry figured the clueless child was the best way to play Dumbledore. He made
up a large tale about his Mahi dropping him off here weeks ago to wait for
someone to pick him up. He told them he trusted his Mahi, the she had saved him
from a bad place years ago. When they finally gave up verbally asking him where
he had been all of these years, he could feel the fine tresses of Dumbledore’s
magic reaching for his mind.
 
Harry forced them away violently, and then took on the look of an affronted
eleven year old relishing in the shocked expression on Dumbledore's face. “Mahi
taught me that it’s rude to read other people’s thoughts! Do you want me trying
to read yours?” Harry glared at the man.
 
Dumbledore composed himself quickly and made the excuse of simply wanting to
make sure Harry had been well taken care of. Still, he was on the receiving end
of one of Minerva’s scowls.
Minerva turned from the headmaster to the young boy in front of her who looked
so much like James. She pulled Severus forward and beamed brightly at the young
boy. “So, Harry, have you ever heard of Hogwarts.
----
Harry was taken directly from the storage unit he had been renting to Hogwarts.
He didn’t have to take the train, and as there was simply no other place for
him to go, it was determined that Hogwarts was the safest place for him to be.
Harry didn’t really mind going to school early, particularly as he had no
classes and no responsibilities. He also made use of the opportunity to pick up
the diadem from the room of requirement, and to visit the basilisk in the
chambers to solicit venom. He ignored the announcements in the Prophet of his
survival and subsequent recovery. For the most part, Harry enjoyed the quiet.
 
The professors at Hogwarts did not seem to have much of an actual opinion on
Harry. He kept to himself for the most part and did not openly antagonize
anyone. In fact, the most surprising thing would have been Severus Snape’s cool
response to the boy after returning to the castle. Of course that had nothing
to do with Harry needing basilisk venom. Absolutely nothing.
 
Before Harry knew it though, the day of the feast was upon him. He rationally
knew that it meant the arrival of the other students, but seeing many of them
once more was like a sharp punch to his stomach. They were so young. They were
so alive.
 
He approached the group cautiously, peering out from the shadows and slinking
quietly to the back of the group. He did not want to draw unwarranted attention
and have to actually talk to some of the other children. Almost immediately
though, as if pulled in by the fact he wanted to avoid people, a small curly
brown hair girl leaned over him whispered, “Have you seen a toad? He’s a
greenish black color. Neville lost him on the train and wasn’t able to find him
before we got off.”
 
“No, sorry,” Harry said gritting his teeth. He hoped she would walk away
quickly, since his stomach had decided to start doing acrobatics. He was not
ready for this. He would never be ready for this.
 
“Oh,” she paused," I don’t remember seeing you on the train. I’m Hermione
Granger by the way. You are?”
 
“Harry.” His eyes closed for a half beat longer than necessary as he fought to
maintain his composure. Gods she even smelled the same.
 
She continued on oblivious to his reactions, “Pleased to meet you Harry. What
house are you hoping for? I’m hoping for Gryffindor, I read all about the
houses in Hogwarts: A History. Apparently, Dumbledore was in Gryffindor.”
 
“Is that why you want to be in it then? Honestly, you seem more of a Ravenclaw
to me. Probably more bookish than anything else. Especially since Granger isn’t
a pureblood family” He shot her a sidelong glance. “To answer your question, I
would prefer Slytherin to Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff to Gryffindor. I would
probably fit in best in Slytherin though, and since I really don’t want to
isolate myself from others who share the same interests that I do, I will
probably end up in Slytherin.”
 
“Oh.” She bit her lip firmly. She opened her mouth minutely, then closed it
again and quietly mixed back into the crowd.
 
Harry stood amongst the crowd for a few more moments before Professor
McGonagall appeared, looking almost as strict as ever.
 
“Welcome to Hogwarts,” said Professor McGonagall. “The start-of-term banquet
will begin shortly, but before you take your seats in the Great Hall, you will
be sorted into your houses. The Sorting is a very important ceremony because,
while you are here, your house will be something like your family within
Hogwarts. You will have classes with the rest of your house, sleep in your
house dormitory and spend free time in your house common room. The four houses
are called Gryffindor, Hufflepuff, Ravenclaw and Slytherin. Each house has its
own noble history and each has produced outstanding witches and wizards. While
you are at Hogwarts, your triumphs will earn your house points, while any rule-
breaking will lose house points. At the end of the year, the house with the
most points is awarded the House Cup, a great honour. I hope each of you will
be a credit to whichever house becomes yours.” She then gave all of the
students a tight smile and began directing them into the Great Hall.
 
The Great Hall changed something for Harry. He knew that he had been bored for
a long time. Harry had slowed down a lot in the recent years, but he had killed
hundreds of people because he was bored. He was by no means a nice person.
Massacring muggles had taken the edge of the burning needling feeling of apathy
that had built up in him in the previous years, but it had never made him feel
like this.
 
It had been decades since he had felt like this.
 
Harry was hyper aware of every child around him, aware of Quirrel and
Dumbledore, and their individual pawns against him. He felt every student's
heart beating and the excitement speeding up their breathing. His own heartbeat
was racing, and until he forced the feelings down behind his occlumency
shields, he was breathing just as hard as the other children.
 
Then he managed to pull on a mask of confidence and bravado, and raised his
eyes to Quirrell's. He grinned at the man, and tugged on the bond between them
probably giving Voldemort a headache. He nearly laughed! This year was going to
prove to be absolutely delicious.
 
Harry ignored the sorting for the most part, taking note only when an
individual differed from their original placement, such as Hermione Granger
going into Ravenclaw. Finally, Professor McGonagall called his name and the
Great Hall fell dead silent. Harry could hear his own feet hitting against the
stone floor as he walked with his back straight and his head held high. He
clambered onto the proffered stool and held his breath as the raggedy hat was
unceremoniously dropped onto his head.
 
For a moment, it was as if the hat had had taken a deep breath, and then the
sorting hat began screaming as Harry’s memories flowed into the hat’s
sentience. Only centuries of fine tuning its own magical essences was enough to
slow the hats descent into the boy’s mind, and it was so much more advanced
than anything it had ever seen before. There was so much pain and agony that
immediately washed over the hat that he was forced to withdraw. All the while,
he was screaming out Slytherin, because the hat knew now what no one else did,
and knew that Harry Potter would only ever find a place in Slytherin house.
 
The Great Hall burst into terrified chatter as the Sorting Hat continued
screaming after being removed from Harry’s head. The boy-who-lived walked
stoically to his spot at the Slytherin table. It took Dumbledore several
minutes to reclaim order, meanwhile the Sorting Hat had to be removed from the
hall and was unable to continue sorting students due to its uncontrollable
sobbing.
 
The rest of the sorting had to be put off. It was a historical moment that
Harry found quite entertaining , although he regretted harming the Sorting Hat.
The poor thing had been near catatonic since his sorting, and had been unable
to speak at all.
----
Dumbledore was not pleased with the results. The hat had multiple enchantments
on it to prevent to from directly speaking about a person's inner mind, and
those to make it impossible to control. Dumbledore had been certain though that
he had found the correct combination of charms to send students to the proper
houses and to bypass whatever occlumency the boy had somehow managed to
develop.
 
Obviously, the spells had not been successful. So now, Dumbledore had no
information to the state of Harry Potter’s mind, had not been successful in
convincing the boy into joining Gryffindor, and had to come up with a
reasonable explanation for the reaction of the Sorting Hat to present to the
rest of the faculty.
 
He groaned audibly.
---
The prefect had lead those newly sorted Slytherin’s down into the dungeon to
the corridor that held their common rooms. Though there were many students left
to be sorted, it was decided that those not sorted already would sleep on the
floor of the great hall while those who had been who become integrated with the
rest of their houses.
 
Thusly, whispered discussions had run amok over the firstie side of Slytherin
table about Professor Snape. Everyone knew he was their head of house, everyone
knew he tended to favor his snakes tremendously, and everyone knew the rumors
of his participation on the dark side of the war. Outside of that, there was
little outside of rumour and gossip, but that did not stop anything.
 
After being escorted into the Slytherin common room, Harry and his peers
dispersed from the tighter formation and began looking around at the ornate
fixtures available. Of course the first noticeable thing was the green and
silver, but several things stood out at Harry. The most important was Severus
Snape, standing in the shadows observing the group of first years. No one else
had noticed the man as they were too busy taking in the sights of the
magnificent common room.
 
“We are here today,” Professor Snape began startling almost everyone as he
emerged from the inky black shadows, “underneath the banner of a noble house,
although one that has experienced loss and pain. We are here today learning to
do better than our predecessors. To seek knowledge and use it for our own
ambitions, whatever they might be. Though that is not all we are, and we,
Slytherin’s are more than simply an ‘enemy’. The trademark of our house is both
cunning and ambition, both items that must be restrained by our intellect as
well as our resources. Without that restraint, we are no better than
Gryffindors, rushing blindly into any situation.”
 
“We are here today to learn to escape from prejudice, so that time might heal
the wounds of the last wars.” Here Snape’s eyes began scanning face, until his
dark brown eyes found Harry Potter’s.” We have assumed the burden of those
attempting to become great, and our reputation precedes us as such. Keep in
mind that all houses have produced their own Dark Lords, their own war mongers,
and their own criminals. Also recall that Slytherin house has generated the
overwhelming majority of solicitors, medi-wizards, curse-breaker, and leading
officials more so than any other house in the last twenty years. We are more
than a mass face of Death Eater Campaigners.” He shot looks at several of the
first years, glared at a couple of the incoming second years and released the
first years to their prefects.
 
The first years were promptly separated into groups of boys and girls. The
girls went to the right while the boys went to the left to prepare for bed. The
individual dorms were very different from what Harry had experienced in
Gryffindor tower. While everyone roomed in a single room, here three
individuals shared a suite that was connected to two other suites via a
hallway. Each collection of three suites had access to a shower and bathroom.
Harry figured that was one of the reasons that Slytherins always seemed more
put together than the Gryffindors. More bathrooms were always a good thing.
 
Now the only problem was the stupid blond prat he just to happened to be
rooming with. It was like fate itself had decided to shat on him. He grimaced.
Alright, it wasn’t like the boy was unbearable. He hadn’t done anything
particularly wrong and he hadn’t even tried to be slightly nosy, although for
how long that would hold out Harry was not certain.
 
For now, he simply ignored Malfoy and Nott, who happened to be his other
roommate, and busied himself with pulling out all the brand new items that
Dumbledore had bought after he had been secreted away to the school. He found
himself pleased that everything he had asked for had been purchased.
 
The first thing he set up was Clementine’s cage which rested on the nightstand
by his bed. Clementine had actually spent most of the last few weeks since
arriving at Hogwarts on his wrist. She claimed that she just did not want to
get lost, and while Harry figured that to be true, he also thought she was a
little homesick.
 
He knew that Clementine was at the age where she was wanting to reproduce. If
not for adopting him as a ‘snakelet’ she probably would have had several
clutches by now. It was depressing her slightly, and although Harry wasn’t
quite sure she would appreciate the effort, he was resolute in finding her a
suitable mate. Hence the need for the cage, because although she could pretend
to be a fairly convincing bracelet, he didn’t think he particularly wanted, or
needed another one.
 
Still, for posterity's sake, he scratched the small garden snake’s head until
she woke up and slipped her into her tank, where she hissed in displeasure at
the wood shavings, and then exclaimed happily upon finding a large heated rock
in the center of the tank.
 
The next things he set out went on the desk provided by the school. That
encompassed his textbooks as well as his stationery set. He then began placing
his clothes in the wardrobe also provided by the school. Finally, he pulled a
large pouch out of his shirt and reached inside. After digging around for a
moment, Harry finally found the journals. Well, they weren’t actually journals
but that was what the leather bound books had been sold to be. He used them for
writing. Most of what he wrote was fiction, and it wasn’t very good, but as
Harry had had plenty of free time on his hands in recent years he had been
getting better with every passing attempt.
 
After charming them to be attracted to a radius around his desk, Harry spelled
them with obscurative charms and flopped down on his bed exceedingly tired from
unloading everything.
 
Seeing that Harry was finally finished, Draco finally made his move.
Approaching the other boy smugly, Draco held out his hand, “I’m Draco Malfoy.
Over there is Theodore Nott. You can call him Theo. Everyone does.”
 
Harry contemplated this for a moment,pushing himself up from his stomach,
sizing the other boy up. Harry knew kowtowing to Draco wasn't likely to get him
much of anywhere, but because of the boy’s father, Harry didn’t want to
actively piss him off. The problem was one of extremes because Draco had always
moved in extremes, often polarizing problems that couldn’t be solved easily.
Eventually, Harry offered up an equally smug smile proffering a,” Harry Potter,
but you knew that already didn’t you.”
 
“I see you have a snake. Is she magical?” Nott asked from behind Harry, he had
his hands and nose pressed up against Clementine’s tank.”
 
“No, she’s just a garden snake I met several years ago. I wouldn’t try to touch
her though. She’s very testy when it comes to being handled.” Harry replied
easily. “Her name is Clementine, and she is about seven or eight years old. I’m
going to be breeding her soon since that generally calms down snakes.”
 
“Theo.” Draco shot the other boy a dirty glare. Harry nearly laughed at the
petulant expression on the other boys face. They were almost fighting over him
as if he were a shiny new toy.
“So, "Draco asked,” What did you do to the sorting hat?”
“Ah, I wondered how long it would take for people to start asking. I didn’t
really do much of anything. All I did was show him exactly what he wished to
know.”
 
“Show him?” Theo chimed in.
 
“Yes, the hat looks inside your mind to sort you, and views a smattering of
your memories in order to sort you. He then empathizes with the suffering
you’ve endured and rationalizes the actions that you have taken. Of course, the
hat also sorts based on desire and the will of the individual. I just
overwhelmed his empathy rather than allow him to force his way into my mind.
Afterall, there is at least one individual on the staff that I would rather not
allow to know my innermost thoughts. Of course, there was another reason behind
my actions. The hat was spelled.” Harry smirked.
 
“Anyways, I have a proposition for you both. I want a guarantee that I will be
protected from exploitation while in this room. I have this contract,” Harry
said now serious, pulling the contract from the pouch around his neck. “It will
protect the two of you the same way it will protect me. Although, I still
expect the two of you to actually read the contract.”
 
The two boys took the document in surprise. Reading the contracts, large smile
appeared on both of their faces. Whatever they were expecting, Harry Potter was
nothing like they had thought he would be.
 
Perhaps he actually belonged in Slytherin.
***** “Life asked death, ‘Why do people love me but hate you?’ Death responded,
‘Because you are a beautiful lie and I am a painful truth." *****
Chapter Notes
     I almost just stopped this fic without a word. Sorry about that. I'm
     not finished with it and I will make sure to post more often. You
     see, I've been having trouble lately and my motivation has been
     drying up as a result of that. Also, I'm not in the best of health,
     and the medicine I am on right now makes me sleep an incredible
     amount of the day. Like ridiculously long amounts if time, and that's
     not helping with writing, or anything else. Sorry, I'm kind of
     unloading this on people who just want to read my story. Anyway, I'm
     out of school so maybe I'll post more often.
Harry took little notice of the outcome of the sorting. He honestly had never
paid much attention to who had been sorted where at any point during his
Hogwarts years, and it had simply been too long for him to remember every face.
Despite that, Harry undeniably felt the echoes of his past. Slytherin house
tended to share a large number of classes with Gryffindor, and while the
distinct lack of Hermione was quite strange the interactions between Weasley
and Finnegan were similar enough to make his chest hurt. That was supposed to
have been him. That had been him.
An interesting exception on the rather bleak future offered by Hogwarts was
Severus Snape.
After the battle of Hogwarts, Harry had alway held a massive amount of respect
for the Potion Master, but he had never been one to get sentimental for the
man. Although everyone had believed it had been his decision to name Albus
after the dour potions master, it had in fact been Ginny’s decision. Ginny had
never directly confessed what had happened in her sixth year, what exactly
Severus had protected many of the students from, but Harry had eventually
pieced together idea of what had occurred. Thus, Harry had not minded, nor had
he protested as he had directly named James and later on would name Lily.
Still, Harry felt a bit odd going to his first Potions class, perhaps even
odder than he had after Minerva’s Transfiguration class. He had sat through
that entire experience with his back ramrod straight and his teeth clenched
tightly. Seeing Minerva hurt as much as anything else did, leaving a dull ache
inside him as well as the intense desire to curse something. Her death had hit
him hard, perhaps equally as hard as Severus’s. Both of them had been fortunate
enough to die before the fighting broke out though.
 
Harry found Severus Snapes’s potions class to be quite odd. He had arrived on
time, perhaps even slightly early, and settled into the frontmost table alone.
He busied himself setting out his books and writing utensils, heading his notes
and scrawling his name on the paper. Before he had finished the other students
had begun drifting into the classroom and settling into predictable patterns
divided by house. Some of the children were chatting and laughing amongst
themselves, but as more individuals accumulated into the room a very distinct
tension was building.
Harry had never noticed such a thing in his first life, as he had been so
caught up in the magic. It was a subtle darkening of the air, the way every
student shushed and suddenly glares were being fired across clearly defined
lines of war. He was not sitting in a classroom any longer. He was in a warzone
and schoolchildren were the only combatants.
An abrupt bang brought him out of his reverie, and Severus Snape burst into the
room. Harry was shocked almost beyond belief. He had forgotten how young the
potions master had been- was. Snape strode into the front of the classroom and
stood towering over the sitting students, before glancing down at his roll book
and calling out names. He eyed each of them individually, as if assessing their
worth, his eyes hovering over ties as well as faces. His eyes froze on Harry’s
own and a sneer came to his face.
"Ah, yes," he said softly, "Harry Potter. Our new—celebrity."
Several snorts and quiet chuckles could be heard coming from the Gryffindor
side of the room. Harry knew most of them to be coming from Ronald Weasley,
although he was unable to identify the others without turning around. It did
not matter, and his face remained stone cold and glued to the eyes of the man
in front to him. Snape finished going through his roll easily enough and looked
up at the class.
"You are here to learn the subtle science and exact art of potion-making," he
began. He spoke in barely more than a whisper, but they caught every word.
Snape had the gift of keeping a class silent without effort. "As there is
little foolish wand-waving here, many of you will hardly believe this is magic.
I don't expect you will really understand the beauty of the softly simmering
cauldron with its shimmering fumes, the delicate power of liquids that creep
through human veins, bewitching the mind, ensnaring the senses... I can teach
you how to bottle fame, brew glory, even stopper death—if you aren't as big a
bunch of dunderheads as I usually have to teach."
"Potter!" snapped Snape suddenly. "What would I get if I added powdered root of
asphodel to an infusion of wormwood?"
Harry’s expression remained unreadable, but inside he cackled madly. This turn
of event was undeniably delicious. “The draught of the living death sir.”
Snape’s eyes flashed darkly and he fired off, "Let's try again. Potter, where
would you look if I told you to find me a bezoar?"
“Well, while I would try the ingredient cabinet behind you sir, I would be hard
pressed to not find one inside a goat’s stomach.” Harry could not resist adding
the emphasis on sir. The answering glare was worth being cheeky.
“Perhaps Ravenclaw would have been a better suit, Potter. What is the
difference between monkshood and wolfsbane?”
“Why sir are you perhaps confused? There is no difference in those plants. They
are also called aconite, although how you could confuse them is beyond me sir.”
Harry grinned and began picking loosely at his nails.
Snape scowled, his mouth tightening visibly. “Detention, Potter, for your
cheek. My office at eight tonight.”
“Looking forward to it.”
--
Harry left the Slytherin dormitories at a quarter to eight to walk the short
way to Snape’s office. The walk would have been uneventful, except for the
young red headed boy following him. Harry rolled his eyes. If Ronald Weasley
wanted to waste his time following him around Harry was not going to stop him.
Harry supposed that the detention was peculiar, at least for Harry. Unlike any
detention Harry had had with Severus in his first life, the man simply assigned
him a small number of lines. Snape sat at his desk and Harry used the spare in
the corner to write them. In the past Harry had always cleaned caldrons in the
adjacent workroom, and it was a bit odd to be sitting and calmly working with
Snape in the same room.
About thirty minutes into the detention, Harry began to appreciate the old
detentions. Snape would not stop staring at him, his glare boring into his
skull. He felt as though the man was attempting to drill a hole through his
head with his eyes.
Harry tried to ignore it as best as he could, but the tension in the room began
building between the two. Finally, Harry looked to the man his eyes narrowed
several minutes later.
“Do you need something, Snape?” Harry said, laying his quill down.
“Professor Snape, Potter.” The man intoned automatically, “and I have a
question for you, as well as a requirement. First, while the Headmaster
believes it is adequate for you to wander about carelessly, I require more
restraint on the part of my snakes. I expect you to avoid being caught for any
mischief you might get up to. Furthermore, I require information on the woman
that you claim raised you. Either an address or some means of contacting her
for those times where you find your way into trouble.”
“My Mahi no longer needs me, Professor Snape. Her duty was to care for me until
I could come to Hogwarts. I have no way to contact her.” Technically, Harry was
not lying. While Mahi was still bound to him, as was Anzu, they no longer
needed to actively care for him or have a direct access to his magic, and
technically, it had been Mahi’s job to care for him. Technically, he wasn’t
lying.
“You are aware then that the ministry will seek to place you with another
family. At some point, Petunia may be reconsidered, since she is your blood
relation, but there is another family that has a claim on you.”
“The Malfoy family.”
“Yes, Narcissa is something like your second cousin through your maternal
grandmother. If, and only if, you wish to pursue that contact, I can help get
you in contact with her.” Snape stood up before swallowing the distance between
the two of them placing his hand on Harry’s desk.
“I will be quite frank with you, Mr. Potter. I do not like you. I never liked
your father, and I will not take kindly to your disrespect. Outside of class, I
will treat you as if you do not exist, and inside I will verbally assault you.
It is expected. If you must ask why, you do not deserve to know the answer.
However, your grade will be dependant on your efforts as a student, and if you
require assistance as a slytherin, either due to discrimination or whatnot, I
will be available. Do not waste my time.”
“Of course, sir. Thank you for informing me of your intentions. I had figured
that your goodwill on account of my gift had simply expired.”
“Gift, Mr. Potter?”
“If you have to ask sir, you do not deserve an answer.” Harry’s face was
impassive as he stood up, sliding the lines across the desk and leaving .
--
Inevitably though, despite any fixations or minor amusements, his first two
weeks at Hogwarts were quite boring. His homework was simple, the castle was
quiet, and for absolutely no reason, Harry had developed a distinctive facial
twitch. He had not considered the possibility of his growing addiction to the
darkness he performed in his previous years, but, as the days went on, the
absence of his daily rituals and his previous closeness to necromantic magics
became clearer. His hands shook, his eyes went bloodshot, and his insomnia
flared up again. Furthermore, when he did sleep it was to nightmares and
screams and blood. Visuals of the war he had long since banished flooded his
memories and Harry felt the pressures of surviving like never before.
That was why on the third week, he approached the two other boys sharing his
room and proposed that they vacate the room for the evening. Nott accepted with
ease, having decided early on that he did not much care about the boy who
lived. Draco on the other hand had argued fiercely, and had almost succeeded in
convincing Harry to allow him to stay in the dorm rooms before Harry,
frustrated with the younger boy, had simple infiltrated his mind and implanted
the order for Draco to avoid the dorm room for several hours.
Harry was irked enough with the boy that he left a terrible headache behind as
well, without feeling the slightest smidgen of guilt. After all he could only
endure so much nagging.
Originally, Harry had considered using either the Chamber of Secrets or the
Room of Requirement rather than his own dorm room. After all, the dorm room
would require extensive amounts of warding to prevent the magic from leaking
out and either of his dorm mates could become suspicious of what he was doing.
That meant it would be several days more that he would have to go without if he
used his dorm. Unfortunately, Harry had been forced to recall the fact that
there happened to be a massive basilisk living in the Chamber, and even worse,
the Room of Requirement refused to let him in.
He had actually tried to go into the room once more after the incident with
fiendfyre in his first life. The room had not opened then and he, Ron, and
Hermione had simply assumed that the room had simply been damaged beyond what
magic could repair. That was not the case.
The Room of Requirement refused to let him enter.
Harry had actually run into the same problem when initially trying to collect
Ravenclaws diadem from the room. At the time, he had thought that perhaps the
room existed outside of time, that perhaps the room had been destroyed
completely by the fiendfyer. Eventually though, Harry had enough of trying to
force his way into the room. It obviously didn't want him to enter, but he had
to get his hands on the horcrux Voldemort had left inside.
After a quick word to the house elves convinced Harry that the room was not
broken, and that he simply could not access it, a plan began to form.
The solution would have been simple if not for the wards surrounding Hogwarts.
An imperio on one of the weaker willed teachers would allow Harry access to the
contents of the room, if not actual passage. The wards however prevented such
an easy method. Imperious was a dark spell, one that would definitely register
on the wards and probably trigger some form of alarm.
Fortunately, Harry had a solution, albeit a risky one. There were of course
other methods of controlling people. Potions, other dark curses, complex forms
of the mind arts. What Harry decided on was a neutral curse incanted as ‘sua
totus mens’, the spell would allow suggestions to the subconscious, but was
heavily influenced by the cursed.
Harry had the perfect subject in mind.
Trelawny probably had no idea she was being manipulated as she teetered down to
hide sherry bottles again. She didn't generally hide them this early in the
year but she supposed that there was no reason not to. Storing them away was
the easy part, but as she often did, she found herself going through the
copious amounts of junk stored in the room. And if she never remembered this
particular occurrence, why should it matter?
That was why Harry found himself on his dormitory floor raising wards so
powerful he was left almost light headed. As Harry began the ward, he invoked
each rune calling it’s name. Harry took a deep breath as he felt the wards
slide into being, testing the runic magic within the barriers. Uruz stood on
the wall behind Draco’s bed, Kenaz behind his own, Eihwaz at Theo’s. Each of
these runes existed within Harry’s magic, but the most important for this ward
was Algiz. Each required an invocation in blood magic in order to seal the ward
to the room. Otherwise Harry ran a high chance of binding a merkstave rune to
his dormitory, something he was unwilling to have happen. So Harry turned
toward Theo’s bed facing the south and ran the knife blade along his inner arm.
The gash was not obscenely large, but it bled profusely. He turned sharply
north, towards Draco’s bed and ran the blood across Uruz. East came next, and
with it Kenaz. Eihwaz followed suite. Harry then turned to the west and used
the blood to draw Gebo on door, praying for balance and direction as well as
offering up his willingness to sacrifice. He then turned abruptly to the north,
facing Draco’s bed and inscribed Algiz on the floor once again with his own
blood.
Algiz was the rune of protection, and sealing it was vital for erecting a ward
of any power, but when coupled with Gebo and a blood sacrifice, especially one
willingly given, the magic would flow through the ward with little to no
resistance. Magic would want to comply, possibly doubling or even tripling the
protection it offered.
Technically speaking, all blood magic was highly illegal, but Harry found that
both stupid and irreparably damaging. The closest thing he could compare it to
was someone outlawing flour and then opening a bakery. Plenty of the wards and
defenses used to protect the Ministry, Hogwarts, and any older influential
Pureblood family were blood wards regardless of magical leanings. That included
the Malfoy homes as well as the Longbottom Manor. It was because those wards
were effective and because they were probably one of the most permanent forms
of magic.
Harry snorted refocusing on the ley lines underneath the school with his mage
sight. One of the perks of doing this in the dorm rooms was the direct
connection he had with Hogwarts Ley Line. He could tie the ward circle to the
ley line and have an almost permanent circle of undetectable protection focused
on the dormitory.
The actual sealing took twenty minutes because although Harry’s ward was tamed
and willing to be guided, it quickly became apparent that the Ley Line was
anything but. He felt as if it was similar to trying to tie a knot around a wet
beach ball with a pair of shoelaces. The line fought fiercely bucking and
twisting away from the seal. It tried to reverse his wards, flip his runic
symbols, and destroy the protective circle around him, but Harry was
exceedingly patient with the magic. He knew how difficult complex protection
rituals were, and so he had planned for the magic to struggle. Afterall, a ley
line would not want to be bound, even in part. Magic naturally did not want to
stagnate, it wanted to flow and coil and breathe.
Finally, a warm light began seeping out from the five points of power around
the room. Harry felt his eyes light up as he stood to his feet and stretched.
He had not felt this accomplished in ages. He was nicely exhausted and his
protective wards would guard any necromancy he did from the school wards.
Suddenly, Harry felt the all encompassing urge to take advantage of the new
ward. While the protection ritual had been fun and had gotten his blood going,
it had not suppressed his addiction. After all, the ritual had only legally
been dark arts, it was not physically tainting. No, Harry felt the burning
desire to perform necromantic arts. He had gotten good at them, enjoyed them to
a degree, but never had they controlled him as they attempted to on this night.
Harry pulled out his wand tried to cast cleaning charms at the blood on the
walls. He was surprised to feel his magic responding sluggishly, albeit
answering him. He did not attempt a healing charm at his arm though as he knew
sacrificial magic required him to heal naturally. Harry contemplated attempting
a summoning, just a small one in order to ease that craving inside of him but
he knew it was not going to be possible. He doubted that he would be able to do
much of anything tonight. He could feel the beginnings of magical exhaustion
settling into his skin.
He could tell that the extended contact with the Ley Line had in fact drained
him of a significant portion of his magic. He had barely risen from the floor
to stumble towards his bed when the sheer weight of his exhaustion hit him. He
ached physically from the amount of magic he had channeled, and almost cried
out at the thought of forcing himself to do more. He still wanted it, but he
knew that it would be at least a week before his magical reserves had reached a
reasonable amount to perform any kind of necromancy.
Still, the desire remained. Harry lay there whimpering as every facet of his
body ached in time to his magical core and he sulked at the unfairness of his
magical limits. This was not the first time he had pushed his core to magical
exhaustion, although it had been decades since the last occurrence. It was
likely that it would not be the last time because Harry knew how powerful he
could be. He could feel every ounce, every speck of his power from his previous
life, It felt just close enough for him to use it, but it was as if a massive
veil kept it from him. He could not touch it but he could feel it behind every
spell he cast.
Harry felt the full weight of his exhaustion hit him again and again as he lay
in the bed whimpering pathetically. Finally, Harry, exhausted from the
intensive ritual, fell asleep.
----
Harry dreamed.
He dreamed of blood covering every room of Hogwarts, of every child decorating
the hallways, of screaming. He dreamed of terror and smoke and crying. He
dreamed of the Muggle-Wizard war. He could not move, could not breathe for the
smoke was filling his lungs drowning him, pulling him under faster he could
force the air into his lungs. And suddenly, he was back underneath the Hunters
with a giant hole in his stomach staring into eyes that delighted in his pain.
Harry relived that torture again and again and again. They broke every bone in
his body, and ripped every tendon from his bones. They cut him to pieces and
laughed at his pain. His eyes were gouged out, his skin was branded, and his
teeth were shattered. Harry was deemened and demolished and broken and every
adjective in between. When they raped him, because of course they would not
leave him even that small bit of dignity, they fucked him hard and dry and raw.
There was nothing that he could do to stop them. No word that meant no, no word
that meant stop, no word that allowed him to beg for mercy.
There was only pain, and then there was only death.
----
Harry awoke flailing wildly at the air. His mouth was dry, although he had
obviously bit his lips to keep from screaming, as his mouth was full of copious
amounts of blood. He surged up from the bed, nearly falling to the floor in his
hurry to reach the bathroom before he regurgitated the remains of whatever had
been in his stomach.
He reached the toilet in time, vomiting profusely until he was simply dry
heaving, but it wasn’t enough. Harry felt raw again, as though it had just
happened tonight and not a solid decade ago. He felt used and degraded and
worthless. He had tears running down his face mingling with the blood. Finally,
he collapsed to the floor holding his knees to his chest as he tried to
concentrate on his occlumency shields.
Harry had never drained his core to the point where it ripped away his
occlumency shields before, but as he retreated inward he realised that that was
exactly what he had done. He had expended too significant of a portion of his
core on the protection wards and now had to consciously power his shields to
keep them in place. Harry shuddered at realising the danger he had placed
himself in by draining himself that much. The collapse of his occlumency was
one thing, but reliving his darkest memories was another. Harry had long since
established massive fixtures inside his mind to contain the horrible things he
had done and suffered in the last war. He could not handle those things. He
refused to deal with them and over the years they had become something akin to
a mental tumor. Occlumency alone protected his already questionable sanity. It
allowed him to function above those horrors, but it also proposed a great
weakness. Underneath his functioning mind lurked a maelstrom of psychological
agony. In order for Harry to function, his occlumency shields could not be
disrupted.
It took Harry hours to reconstruct his shields. The fabric of his mind had
nearly collapsed due to the sudden depreciation of his magic and that forced
Harry to act. He reassembled his mind, building it up from the ground up. The
first thing he did was restructure the way his magic flowed through him. He
gave number one priority to his mental shields, powering them before anything
else. Harry then changed the structure of his memories, allowing the positive
ones to freely float through their classifications. He designed an indexing
system for his memories tracking every thought before redividing his mind into
the two bodies that had existed previously.
Harry awoke on the bathroom floor exhausted and visibly shaking from the
experience. Something like this could never happen again.
Even with his shields restored, over the next few days Harry still had memories
drifting past his eyes. Many faces were paired with horrific deaths, some
sooner than others. He ignored it as best he could, forcing him mind to focus
on the mind numbing effects of school and homework, although he ignored the
teachers and classes as much as they would allow him.
---
While in theory, approaching Quirrell was relatively simple, Harry found that
in practice getting the man alone was anything but. Quirrell actively avoided
him. Only two days after his occlumency shields failed, Harry had already been
diverted, avoided, or by some other means, Quirrell had managed to circumvent
him. And thusly, Harry was very irritated.
--
Severus was not quite sure what to make of the Potter boy. He was polite to a
point, and outside of that initial meeting, he had not expressed much inside
his classes. The boy knew too much for a muggle raised child. Where would he
have learned all the information he knew,after all, almost no one could not
have taught him occlumency. It was just strange occurrences piling on top of
strange occurrences. Where had the boy been all these years? What had he done
to the sorting hat?
Severus hated puzzles and the Potter boy was turning out to be a puzzle inside
of a puzzle wrapped inside of an alphabet he had never seen before. Potter was
just as arrogant, just as snotty as his thrice damned father. It had not made
any difference that the boy had sorted into Slytherin rather than Gryffindor.
At least, he kept trying to convince himself of this at least.
More than that, Severus refused to take points from his own house, and he had
reservations about giving detentions to his snakes outside of his purview. That
alone made him want to tear his hair out, since it meant Severus would be
forced to spend time with the Potter brat.
And it was not as if Dumbledore did not have some secret plan involving the
boy. Severus could almost imagine some form of hairbrained scheme that the
headmaster had concocted at the last possible moment involving the boy. No,
Severus knew Albus was a crafty beast, capable of horrors just as anyone else
was. Snape snorted. Slytherin or not, the brat was not his concern.
At least, not until Albus Dumbledore and his large twinkling blue eyes intruded
on his well- frankly irritating- existence.
--
Albus ran a weathered hand across Fawkes head. Everything revolved around Harry
Potter. Albus had always know that. His heart ached in remorse for everything
the boy would have to accomplish. It did not matter that the boy was only a
boy. It did not matter that his sorting had been unexpected.
Severus had to be kept under control of course, it would not do to lose control
of him especially since Dumbledore felt that everything was slipping through
his fingers. He loathed to make any moves before he had a more complete
understanding of the situation, but as things had progressed he only felt that
he had made more mistakes. Perhaps he should have forced the boy to explain
where he had been, rather than accepting Harry’s explanation of his Mahi saving
him.
He had not felt this lost in years. Dumbledore hoped that he simply was offbeat
from the boy’s reappearance, but he was beginning to suspect that that was not
the case. He just had to trust that destiny would pick up where he himself was
failing.
***** “The blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb.” *****
Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes
“The blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb.”
It was early enough that only a few individuals had drifted in for breakfast
when Harry settled into his seat at the Slytherin table. He was still tired
from a night full of horrible night terrors and restless wakings. He must have
gotten up several times just to pace off his restless energy but he was paying
for that now. While a subtle glamor blended in the shadows beneath his eyes,
his yawns were more than apparent.
Harry could not help it though. He was exhausted.
Glancing around at the small display of food in front of him, Harry wrinkled
his nose. He had gotten downstairs earlier because he could not stand waiting
in his room anymore. Waking up at two in the morning and not being able to fall
back asleep was taking a toll on his mental stability, as well as his
willingness to go along with school life.
Harry bit into his buttered toast.
The ‘Quirrel’ issue had not been resolved either. While following the man
around had initially provided some measure of entertainment by now, Harry was
almost ready to wring the man’s neck. He had finally decided to entertain the
thought of making off with philosophers stone from the third floor and throwing
the blasted thing at snake face. Not that he was snake faced right now, since
from what Harry remembered, Voldemort had had a nose.
Still, there were other things for him to focus on, no matter the fact they he
was having trouble forcing himself to care. He needed the map-
“Morning, Harry.”Draco sat down beside him, grabbing an apricot from the now
opulent platters and startling Harry out of his head. While he had not been
paying attention to the hall, more Slytherins and Ravenclaws had drifted in for
breakfast.
Shaking his head, Harry glanced at the young Malfoy. The boy was rarely rude,
although he was very obstinate. He always said hello, even a couple weeks into
the school year despite the fact that much of Slytherin had actually been
ignoring Harry. Sometimes, like this morning, Draco would sit beside him, and
make vague gestures at initiating a conversation. Harry never responded, at
least not until today.
Severus’s warning about the ministry getting involved was not unexpected, and
while Harry had seriously considered Sirius Black as an alternative, it was now
obvious that the Malfoy family would offer him more than Sirius ever could. His
relation with Narcissa and of course Draco would simply grease the wheels for
acquiring their guardianship.
Of course, he would need to get along with Draco and he would need to set clear
limits with how far he wished Lucius’s influence over him to go. That would
require time and his presence at Gringotts. Harry concealed a grimace. Well, at
least one of those things could be accomplished at the present time.
“Morning, Draco.” Harry responded with the same flippant tone, as if he did it
every morning startling the blond beside him. He shot the boy a smirk when it
was obvious that he had already knocked him off balance.
“Did you hear?” He continued as if he did this every morning and nothing was
out of the ordinary. “Flying lessons this morning.”
“Really?” Draco’s eyes brightened considerably, “do you know what house we will
be with.”
Harry snorted quietly,”As if there were any question. It’s Gryffindor of
course. They posted it in the common room last night. Can’t believe you haven’t
heard yet.”
“Of course it's Gryffindor.” he groaned ignoring the jibe” What do you want to
bet that one of them falls off their broom at least once?”
“Well, I’d say it would be Longbottom if any of them. He looks as though he’s
about to pass out even on the ground.” Harry nodded towards the sole chubby
Gryffindor and Draco grinned moronically.
“Not taking that bet Potter, although, I might laugh harder if it was Weasley,
I’ll have to agree that putting Longbottom on anything above ground level would
be a mistake.”
The sound of incoming wings got louder as Theo sat down across from Harry, and
the boy muttered, “mail will be early” before pulling out his book and promptly
ignoring everyone around him.
“Ignore him,” Draco muttered to Harry, “He always gets testy when the mails
early, and he never eats breakfast. Professor Snape makes him potions instead.
I think he would go straight to class if the Professor would let him skip.”
Harry stared at Theo. That sounded like nutrient supplement potions from his
point of view, but it would be rude to point that out unless…
“I can understand that. After I left my relatives home my Mahi made me potions
all the time.”
“Mahi?” Draco questioned loudly, while Theo ignored his statement completely.
“Nevermind.”Harry would have stood up then, if not for the sound of a thousand
winged birds flooding the Great hall. It was only moments later that an
unfamiliar bird landed near his plate. She tilted her head daintily, and
offered him her foot, to which a letter scroll was bound with a loose ribbon
that dissolved into ringlets of black and green. The only significant symbol on
the letter was the large imprint of a skull on the black wax sealing.
Harry smirked when he plucked the letter from the bird's outstretched claw. It
was a beautiful bird, more than fitting for the beauty Narcissa Malfoy
possessed.
“That is my mother’s personal Grey Goshawk.”Draco said stunned. “She only sends
Aquila out for personal letters.”
“This is a personal letter Draco.” Harry shot the boy a sharp look to which the
younger boy blushed and resumed eating.
Harry considered waiting to open the letter but seeing as Narcissa Malfoy had
been quite prompt in writing him it would only be polite to return the favor. A
quick localized burst of his wandless magic removed the Black seal from the
parchment and allowed him to open the scroll.
Mister Potter
It has come to my attention that you wish to seek my guardianship. Your head of
house may have assumed a semi permanent care of you, but one your age does need
proper guidance. I express my confusion at being suggested by a child I have
never met. There are others who share the same quantifiable blood connection
that we do, and others perhaps even more dangerous than you wish to associate
with. The Weasley’s, the Prewett's, the Tonks, are all renown light oriented
families that have not been suggested. I do not know why you seek this Mister
Potter although it is not unfeasible for my family to assume control of you.
You simply must make it worth my while.
Lady Malfoy nee Black
Harry allowed a smirk though his carefully crafted mask of indifference. He
wondered idly who it was that said Lucius was the firebrand of the two! He
carefully folded the parchment so it would not be bent horribly and tucked away
into his satchel, before looking to Draco who had obviously forgotten his
mention of Mahi.
“Are you ready to go? I think we need to leave soon if we want to get to flying
lessons on time.” He asked Draco, and was surprised when both Theo and Draco
stood to leave with him.
---
After flying class, where Neville did manage to fall from his broom once again,
Harry was surprised to find that neither Draco nor Theo were willing to leave
him alone. It seemed as if his earlier openness had convinced both boys that he
was now their friend, or perhaps simply that they could approach him without
getting their heads bitten off.
The result was that all three walked to the remainder of their classes together
that day, with random reappearances of Pansy Parkinson, Blaise Zabini, or
Lillian Moon. They all seemed to revolve around Draco more than him, despite
this he felt a bit odd having so many people talking around him. They were all
laughing, joking, teasing, and simply interacting with each other, yet it was
not until the end of the day until Harry realized why that was bothering him as
much as it was.
He had spent the last six years absolutely void of all human contact, void of
everything and everyone but the dead. He had spent the years before aging
slowly, around only his school mates who avoided him, his teachers who pitied
him and his family who despised his very existence. And before that all he had
was two decades- no make that three- of being alone. Forty one years of having
socially nothing, and now he was presented with these children's silent offer
of peace and acceptance.
It was a strange feeling.
His gaggle of Slytherins slowly made their way towards the library after
classes. They had received a large amount of homework and Draco was already
complaining loudly. Harry decided that rather than work on his homework, he was
going to work on Narcissa’s reply.
Lady Malfoy nee Black
It came to my attention when I first entered the Wizarding World that my
placement with my mother’s relatives was left up to Albus Dumbledore. While I
was eventually removed from their residence, I spent several years in the care
of muggles. It was perhaps there that I learned the value of blood and of
family, as well as the weakness of it and the fallibility of those we trust.
While it is never intellegent to give your enemies more information than you
can prevent, it is more important to collaborate with your allies. Therefore I
am willing to exchange information in the cautious hope that we may become
allies, regardless of our positions in the last war. There are those who seek
for my death, and then there are those who want me to be controlled.
Your son and I are becoming fast friends here at Hogwarts, as we share a room
and many classes. He is an impressive child, perhaps the most skilled of any
here and it makes perfect sense that of every possible guardian, I would choose
one of my closest friends families who happens to boast a claim and a right to
me. If you disagree, I am perfectly willing to seek alternate living
arrangements, although those suggested reside far too deeply in a certain
headmasters pocket for me to feel comfortable under their guardianship.
Heir Potter
Harry figured that it was a suitably vague reply. It demonstrated his
unwillingness to side with Dumbledore, more than anything, as well as his
reluctance to offer his guardianship to any traditionally light families. It
also boasted slightly of his relationship with Draco, but that was necessary.
Harry was dealing with Slytherins, older more experienced Slytherins who had
been trained in the arts of one-upmanship.
Harry turned his attention from his completed letter to the children
surrounding him.
Draco was on his right, Lillian on his left, and Blaise and Theo on the
opposite side of the square table. Their arms kept bumping due to the small
surface and the large number of books everyone had sprawled across it.
“Look, I bet if I scrunch up my writing a bit more, I could fit it all in on
twelve inches. Maybe.” Theo’s voice was uncertain as if he didn’t quite believe
it himself.
Blaise elbowed the smaller boy lightly in the stomach and smirked.”Theo, I
don’t think there is anyway for you to cram that into twelve inches. What was
it originally? Twenty inches? Its already so cramped that I don’t think
Flickwit will even be able to read it.”
“Good Merlin, Theo,”Lillian gasped leaning over the table,”your handwriting is
so tiny. I don’t think anyone would be able to read it now. I know I sure
can’t. And isn’t that essay due next week! How have you already written it
twice-”
“Actually this is my third draft.”
“Three times! I haven’t even started yet! We only got it Monday.”
“Lillian, that was three days ago,” Theo drawled, “and stop yelling. You’ll get
us kicked out of the library. I need these books for charms, but Ms. Pince
won’t let me check anything else out.”
“You need to return An Echo of Void and An In Depth Analysis of Mandrake and
Mandragora before she will let you pull anything else. Father always told me
she was a bit of a hag. She never lets anyone check out more than two books at
a time.”Draco chimed in.
“I already knew that. She told me when I first pulled them.”
“Those high level potion texts? So you're the one who checked them out?” Harry
injected. “You must have come here immediately after waking up the day after
the sorting.” Theo’s brown eyes immediately flew to Harry’s green, and Theo ran
his left hand involuntarily through his wiry brown hair. “Yeah. I came here
immediately after. I was looking for them. For reading.”
“Hmm. I would like to borrow them, if you have no intention of returning them
anytime soon.” Harry’s eyes bored into the other boys. “An Echo of Void has an
in depth analysis of the Angel's Trumpet Draught as well as cursory notes for
breeding and maintaining a large supply of mandragora, and an introduction to
the brewing, storing, and regulated consumption of the Wolfsbane potion.”
“It sounds like you know more about the books than I do.” Theo’s voice was
clipped as he spoke and it was very apparent to Harry’s keen eye that the boy
was uncomfortable with the conversation.
“They are very informative books. I would love to read them.”
‘Anytime.” Theo nodded his head in concession, a peculiar expression on his
face. It was obvious to Harry that the boy had not expected anyone to recognize
what a boon those books were. The fact that he had mentioned them casually to
Draco at some point prior and the fact that he had pulled them out at the
expense of his schoolwork intrigued him. Still, he felt some excitement bubble
up at the contemplation of getting his hands on Snape’s Potion Mastery
dissertation.
The other book may have little use, but An Echo of Void… Harry shuddered in
anticipation.
---
After shaking off the procession of Slytherin’s and making his way to the
owlery on the seventh floor to mail off his response to Lady Malfoy, Harry
detoured to the Fat Lady. Since most of the students had made their way to the
Great Hall for dinner already, he didn’t run into anyone nor did he expect to.
“Caput Draconis,” Harry intoned briskly hoping to get in without any complaint.
“I’m very sorry dear, but I don’t believe this is your house.”
“I have the password however. Are you certain I can’t come in? I am meeting a
friend, after all.” Harry flashed his most brilliant smile at the woman, and
she appeared to consider it a moment before giving a slight huff.
“Very well, please don’t get into any trouble.”
“Thank you, ma’am.”
Harry clambered into the common room via the portrait hole. He had assumed
correctly, after all he had been a Gryffindor before, and not a single person
was in the common room. For a moment he simply stood at the entrance to the
room drinking in the robust reds and golds. It reminded him heavily of life
after Hogwarts, of Ginny and their house in-
‘Don’t think about that, Potter. There is no point in reminiscing. Just get
what you came for.’ Harry forced his mind back on track.
“The map. The map. Now where was their room.” Harry mumbled as he made his way
to the male dormitory. He took the stairs two at a time, recalling that the
twins had roomed with other third years. They had been two flights above him,
then, so they should be in the same place now.
Making his way into third floor of the tower, Harry looked around. He was
immediately struck by the small number of beds in the room. So many people had
died in the years before his birth that enrollment in Hogwarts had declined
vastly, simply because there were not enough people reproducing. There were
only four beds in the room. Harry knew that there were five or so girls in
their year, but still.
The wizarding world was minuscule.
Harry shook his head and pulled his wand out as he made his way to the Twin’s
trunks. On his way, Harry managed to detect three different pranks surrounding
Fred’s trunk, but nearly eight encompassing George’s. So, that was where he
decided to look first after disarming the pranks to the best of his abilities.
Harry dug through pulling out a random hodgepodge of assorted items jammed into
the severely abused trunk. He hadn’t seen such a mess since rooming with Ron,
although Harry supposed even his conglomeration of junk paled in comparison to
the sheer amount of pranking goods hidden away in this red heads trunk.
Finally, at the bottom of the trunk underneath a mass of rubber chicken wands
of all things, Harry touched a rumpled piece of parchment. A wide grin spread
widely across his face, and he moved to pull the map out. Harry could feel the
ambient magic surrounding the parchment. This was definitely what he was
looking for.
Standing up, Harry moved to stow the map in his robe pocket, turning only to
see the red hair of George Weasley.
“Well, well, well… what do I have here?” The boy’s face was twisted into an
ugly smirk.”A lost Slytherin trying to make off with things that aren’t his?
What should we do with this nosy ickle firstie, Forge?”
The other boy leaned out from behind his twin, drawing Harry’s attention.
“Maybe we figure out how he made his way through almost all of our wards, and
then we string him up in the great hall for trying to make off with things that
aren’t his?
“A wonderful idea, Forge, a wonderful idea. So, Mr. Thief, how did you make it
through our proximity wards and the prank spells? There should have been enough
there to leave a firstie confunded, hog tied and displayed for our viewing
pleasure.”
Harry snorted. “I suppose you didn’t think any upperclassmen would be riffling
through those trunks? Everyone fifth year and above would know that most prank
spells can be contained and effectively avoided by triggering them with an
object, and for your information, while I may have noticed the proximity ward
on the door, I missed the one on your trunk. And my name is Harry for that
matter.”
“Well obviously you aren’t an upperclassman, so how did you figure that out?”
“Like I’m going anywhere near any trunk owned by the infamous Weasley Twins
without throwing every object I could find at it.” Harry lied through his
teeth. “Besides that, I wasn’t stealing. You just happened to have something
that belonged to me.” He pulled the map from his back pocket. “This used to
belong to my dad.”
The twins peered down at the parchment and glanced at each other before
nodding. “Prove it.”
Harry rolled his eyes. “I solemnly swear that I am up to no good.” He said it
to the twins rather than to the map, as he was unwilling to activate the thing
in front of the twins. “Look, I saw you two with it out a couple days ago and I
recognised it. I don’t really have anything left from my parents, and I just
wanted it you know. I’d be willing to share it, if you want.”
The twin’s expressions melted slightly and their obvious antagonism diminished.
“You said it belonged to your parents?”
“Yeah my dad and his friends made it when they were in school here. He was
Prongs.”
The twins glares softened slightly and they both seemed to come to the same
conclusion before grinning widely at him.“That’s absolutely wicked. I don’t
think we would mind borrowing it when we need it for pranks. And you should
keep it if it reminds you of your dad.”
“Thanks.”
Despite that confrontation, and the fact that Harry was reasonably satisfied
with the results of their conversation, he still cursed his idiocy. How could
he have missed one of the proximity wards? The twins were only third year
students, and no matter how advanced they were he should have caught everything
they threw at him. How in the world had he missed that ward?
Chapter End Notes
     *Aquila is a constellation in the northern sky. Its name is Latin for
     'eagle' and it represents the bird who carried Zeus/Jupiter's
     thunderbolts in Greco-Roman mythology. If you want to know more look
     it up on wikipedia. I thought it fitting for a Black to name her
     personal bird after her family tradition.
     *I hate that there was all that confusion over who Harry’s
     grandparents were. For my sake and the sake of my story Fleamont
     Potter and Euphemia Potter do not exist. Charlus and Dorea Potter
     were Harry’s grandparents. It also gives him a clean connection to a
     number of pure blooded families through the Blacks since we have an
     official Black family tree.
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