TW for Violence—not, like, Quentin Tarantino levels, but definitely a shift in tone for the darker. TW for blood, bugs, claustrophobia, and some subtextual but there if you squint implied intent to sexually assault a minor. Once & Future King is going to be a darker story overall than my other series Sarcasm and Slytherin; they're children, so I didn't want to go there right out of the gate, but do keep that in mind going forward. Thanks for reading!
If you want to skip the TW sections, jump to "“Uh… Harry.” Theo cautiously poked Harry’s shoulder. “You awake in there?”" Summary of the skipped part available at the end of this page. Some of our charming protagonists have a brief conversation about the events in the beginning of the chapter but it isn't particularly graphic.
Harry felt a creeping, deadly cold. His movements slowed, and so did his mind.
Blink: he was crouching on the floor, trying to stand.
Blink: his wand was no longer in his hand…
Blink: hands were on him, moving him…
Blink: he was in a chair…
Blink…
Warmth crept back into his fingers, toes. Harry made fists, wiggled his feet. The warmth reached his hips and his legs jerked, trying to move. They couldn’t for some reason. Same when his arms spasmed. Nausea hit his stomach in a punch and Harry turned and was sick on the floor.
As if he’d puked up the last of the curse, Harry was suddenly clearheaded again. With clarity came terror.
He was sitting in a simple chair, arms and legs bound to it in a way that he couldn’t have untied himself if he tried. Three people were trussed up and tilted up against the wall to his left like Christmas turkeys forgotten in a corner: Neville, Portia, Theo. And in front of him waited another three decidedly less friendly faces.
Harry glared at one Draco sodding Malfoy. “Lovely to see you on this fine evening, Dray-Dray. Out for a stroll?”
“Shut it, mudblood,” one of the older students snarled. She popped Harry in the mouth. Harry tasted copper and iron. Slowly he turned and looked up at the girl who did it. Jugson, he couldn’t remember her first name, she was a fourth year he was pretty sure. Blood trickled out of Harry’s mouth and he made sure to memorize her face.
Jugson swallowed visibly and stepped back. Then she scowled, crossed her arms, looked to Malfoy.
Malfoy who was clearly the ringleader of this little plot. Malfoy who was going to regret this very much.
“How’s it feel, huh Potter?” Malfoy spat. “Being put in your place, I mean.”
“We were worried you’d have forgotten what it felt like after so much time going around pretending you belonged among your betters,” added the third one, a fifth year Harry recognized but couldn’t name.
“My place,” Harry said slowly. Oh, he was going to make them regret this—
“Don’t bother trying to get out,” drawled Jugson. “I did the runes on that chair myself. You won’t be going anywhere until you do what we say.”
“Really now?” Okay, he could play along. Let them monologue while he found a way out. Harry refused to let himself look at his—friends. His friends. “What is it you want me to do?”
“Suck my dick,” said the boy, laughing.
Theo made a jerky sort of movement in Harry’s periphery. Portia shouted something muffled by the gag. “Shut it,” Jugson sneered, sending a stinging hex at her. Based on the following pained moan, it was an overpowered one.
“Don’t be crass, Morgan,” Malfoy said. “No, Potty, we’ll just be extracting a few little oaths from you today. How would it feel to be my homework slave for the next five years?”
“Are you admitting you need a mudblood’s help to get decent marks? For shame,” Harry sneered. Cold fear was starting to bite at him. Whatever Jugson had done to the chair, it was working. His wandless magic wasn’t doing anything to the ropes. Bounced right off them like water off a hot pan. And—when that spell hit Portia, he’d known—he didn’t want to sit here and wait for them to torture her. Or Neville, or Theo.
“Quiet!” It was Malfoy, this time, who stepped forward and hit him.
Harry shook the stars out of his vision and laughed up at Malfoy, baring bloody teeth, and oh he fucking reveled in the visible revulsion in Malfoy’s face. “Really? That’s the best you can do? Pathetic. You hit like a little Muggle girl.”
“I said be QUIET!” Malfoy screamed, pulling his wand. His hand was shaking but he pointed it right between Harry’s eyes, breathing hard. “I could blind you, Potter. It wouldn’t even be hard. Just a little fireworks spell, a kiddie thing…”
Oh no. Harry was not about to let the last thing he ever saw be this great blond prat’s ugly face. He hauled off and spat.
Malfoy reeled back in disgust, yelling and scrubbing at his skin. “Why you filthy little mudblood!” shouted the older boy—Morgan, that was his name—as he moved in.
Harry grinned manically as Morgan knocked the chair over and flicked his wand, sending Harry and chair alike spinning into a wall with a shouted incantation. Something crunched, Harry didn’t know if it was his bones or the wood, but he didn’t care, because sharp pain was lancing up his arms and he could feel hot liquid dripping down his fingers.
Just what he’d needed.
“Oh dear,” he crooned from the floor. Morgan stopped a few feet away. Staring. Unsettled. Harry twisted so he could see and savor the fear in Morgan’s eyes. “Oh, dear, you really should not have done that.”
“DON’T TELL ME WHAT TO DO!” shrieked Morgan, finally at his breaking point. He dashed forward and kicked Harry hard in the stomach.
Harry had exhaled hard as soon as he saw it coming. He didn’t lose his wind. The ache spread immediately through his abdomen, but whatever, he’d had worse, and he had what he needed.
Proximity.
One hand lashed out and latched to Morgan’s ankle.
Harry gripped as hard as he could, feeling the call and pulse of his blood on his hand, against Morgan’s skin. He grabbed the power as hard as he could and wrenched.
Morgan’s furious shouts turned instantly into screams. Yes, Harry thought, make him hurt, and suddenly—remembered Neville was here, watching this.
It was the hardest thing he’d done in a while, but Harry tore his magic back.
Morgan stopped screaming and slumped to the floor.
Painfully, one hand wrapped around his middle and one clinging to the wall for support, Harry picked himself up out of the wreckage of the chair. Seemed he’d not broken any limbs but the chair had gashed up both his arms and his back, too, when it shattered.
Jugson was gone, but Malfoy was still there, staring at Harry in stupefied horror.
“Don’t go anywhere,” Harry told him, yanking on the traces of his blood still clinging to Malfoy’s face and hands in order to make the command stick. “I’ll deal with you in a moment.”
And he would, too, but right now he had other priorities. Harry found his wand and went for his friends, cutting their ropes and gags away as quickly as he could without hurting them.
“Harry!” Neville surged to his feet, looking around wildly. “Harry, are you—is he—”
“He’s not dead.” Probably.
Theo and Portia climbed to their feet, wincing and rubbing their wrists.
“Not him, are you okay?” Portia stressed. She grabbed his wrists and he winced. “Nope, okay, lets go to the infirmary—”
“No, let’s get a professor! I—this—we need the Headmaster, someone…”
Neville trailed off as both Theo and Harry stared at him. “No, Neville, we can’t,” Harry said heavily. There were Slytherin rules and there was the fact that he would definitely somehow get blamed for this. “Look—Theo, go with him and explain. I have to—clean this up.”
“By clean up…” Portia gestured a bit wildly.
“Yes, I’ll heal myself, just go already!”
Something in his tone must have convinced them that Harry was not messing around. They cleared out in seconds.
Later. He’d deal with them later.
For now…
Harry ignored Morgan, who had not woken up, and finally walked over to stand before Malfoy.
“I am going to hurt you very badly, Heir Malfoy,” Harry said softly. “Do you know why?”
Nothing.
Oh, right. “You can move,” Harry said, tugging on the fading-but-not-gone power of his blood.
“You’re sick!” Malfoy shouted instantly, borderline hysterical. He backed up so fast he hit the wall and stumbled. “Fucking sick…”
“It’s because you touched what does not belong to you,” Harry hissed. “And for that… I think I’ll start with your hands.”
Malfoy barely had time for a startled “What?” before Harry stepped forward and grabbed his left hand.
There was still undried blood on Harry’s fingers and palm. He smeared it over Malfoy’s skin and that was all he needed to twist, push, and send fire down Malfoy’s nerves.
Screams rang through the small chamber. Harry half-closed his eyes. The sound was like music. He forced himself to count.
At fifteen he stopped and let go.
Screams turned to sobs and Malfoy collapsed, cradling his left arm. He was left-handed, a fact Harry had filed away within the first few weeks of term in first year. Now, his left hand hung limp and dead.
Harry crouched before him and grabbed Malfoy’s chin, forcing him to look up and meet Harry’s eyes. Malfoy whimpered. “Do you want your wand hand back, Draco?”
Malfoy just squeaked, so Harry tightened his grip on the blond’s face and shook him slightly. “I asked you a question.”
“Y-yes.”
“Hmm.” Harry pretended to think about it, enjoying the way Malfoy’s desperation swelled. To someone like him, losing function in your wand hand was worse than losing your actual wand. “I’m feeling merciful today… after all, it was only me you truly injured, and it’s natural for the weak to test their betters, if only to determine their place. So I’ll give you back your hand… if you swear an oath to me on your magic that you will never tell a soul what happened here today without my permission, and that you’ll ensure your little friends do the same. Can you do that for me, Draco?”
By the end, his voice had dropped into a soothing croon. Harry’s nails were about to break Malfoy’s skin from the force of his grip on the other boy’s face. Malfoy was shaking underneath his hand. “Yes, yes, I can… yes,” Malfoy stuttered.
Harry shoved his wand into Malfoy’s right hand and watched dispassionately as the oath was sworn. Satisfied, he let go and stood.
“W-wait!”
Eyebrows raised, Harry turned back.
Malfoy flinched, blushed. “S-sorry… I… my hand?” He visibly braved himself. “Please?”
Harry waited several seconds before he permitted himself to smile. “Of course, little Malfoy, I did say I would…” He reached out and carressed Malfoy’s hand. Then he flung it down and stepped back sharply. “But I didn’t say when. Best not to irritate me or I might forget to take care of it before summer. Bye now!”
He left the room buoyed by Malfoy’s incoherent scream of rage and fear.
Harry made it a few corridors down before he had to wedge himself into a corner and collapse.
A migraine pounded at his temples and his hands were shaking almost as badly as Malfoy had been. That much wandless magic took it out of him. Especially when he was using it against wizard-born, who seemed more resistant in general but particularly resistant to his special breed of mental suggestion, which was why he’d needed an oath.
It took an hour before he felt steady enough to make his way back to the common room.
Theo was there waiting. He stood as soon as Harry walked in. Malfoy and Jugson were nowhere to be seen; Harry hadn’t the faintest clue where Morgan was or even if he had managed to pick himself off the floor yet.
Wordlessly, Theo followed Harry back towards their dorm. On the way, Harry noted several faces who watched them covertly: Miles Bletchley and Amalia Crockett, fourth years, and Boris Urquhart from fifth were the most obvious.
“What happened?” Theo hissed as soon as they were alone and had silencers up. “Malfoy still hasn’t come back and apparently Jugson’s locked herself in her room.”
“I ensured Malfoy wouldn’t talk,” Harry said. “He will have some trouble with his wand hand until I feel like repairing it.”
Something flickered over Theo’s face, too fast to name. “Impressive.”
Harry sketched a mocking half-bow from where he was seated on his bed. He couldn’t quite hide the way he trembled, though, and Theo noticed. “You’re hurt. Harry, you—oh, fuck, you still haven’t healed these have you? Idiot. Episkey. Episkey—I think I have some dittany in my bag, that will help the scarring…”
“Theo.”
It was lucky that was all it took to snap Theo out of it, because Harry didn’t have the energy or the patience for more. Theo settled next to him instead of bolting for his trunk like he’d been about to.
“I still can’t believe…”
“What? It wasn’t my fault. Malfoy’s been quiet since his pathetic attempts to convince people I was running around attacking people failed.”
Theo snorted. “Yeah, that looked a bit stupid once White was found out. No one missed how you glared at him during meals.”
Apparently Harry needed to be a bit more subtle. Sure, the man had subconsciously been terrifying him for most of the year, and now he knew why, but that was not an excuse.
“As if Malfoy were your better…” Theo said, like he knew where Harry’s mind had been going.
“Or yours.” Harry cocked an eyebrow at Theo. “For someone from a family that prides itself on survival instinct, he’s kind of an idiot.”
Theo’s laugh sounded a little strangled.
“Neville and Portia?” Harry asked after a moment.
“They’re fine. You know Portia… she hates the Slytherin games, but she said she knew you’d come and it wasn’t like it was her they wanted. You might have to talk to Asten but the fact you showed up and did actually manage to protect her should be enough for him.” Harry nodded. He hadn’t actually thought of that yet, but it was true, he’d promised Asten to leave Portia out of the Slytherin games. “And Neville, well. He was mostly furious once he got done having a panic attack. Made some very creative threats toward Malfoy if he ever tried anything like this again. Apparently when they snagged him, he was on his way to meet Portia and me, and he fought back so hard his wand got snapped and he broke Jugson’s nose. I had no idea he had it in him.”
“I’m… not actually sure what part of that to respond to first,” Harry said. “No, never mind, I’ve decided. His wand snapped? Are you serious?”
“Yup.” Theo flopped back on the bed, and after a moment’s consideration, Harry followed suit. It was just Theo here and gods knew he could use the rest. “Right in half. Apparently it was a family wand. He didn’t seem upset, mostly worried his gran would ground him or something.”
“I’m sorry, did you just say a family wand? His gran wouldn’t even let him have his own bloody wand?!” Harry nearly screeched.
“Yes, that’s what I said, you don’t have to blow out my eardrums,” Theo sniped. Harry was too tired and sore to even care. Once he’d have glared at Theo for that tone, but… well, he was finding he liked some of his closer—friends to be comfortable around him. Familiar.
Merlin, even thinking the word friends was still strange.
“We can talk to him,” Harry sighed. “Point out that he really needs his own wand. No wonder he struggles with practical work.”
“And if his gran won’t buy him his own, we can take him to Diagon again and convince him to buy one himself,” Theo agreed. “I know he has pocket money.”
Harry nodded. Honestly, he hoped the Longbottoms were difficult about it. That would be a golden opportunity to raise Neville up while tying him even closer to Harry and their group.
“He wasn’t… bothered, though?” Harry checked. “By…”
Theo snorted. “Harry, he’s a Hufflepuff. He’s already started to come around to the idea of blood magic generally. Oh, by the way, you should do some research into that this summer, Father has said it’s incredibly dangerous if you don’t know what you’re doing, but—yeah, he didn’t love it exactly but Portia just asked him outright and he said he couldn’t blame you after what they did. We’re fine.”
“Bless the gods,” Harry muttered.
They lay there in silence for a bit.
“I wasn’t sure you’d come,” Theo finally said.
Harry blinked at him. “Of course I came. You’re mine.”
For some reason, Theo seemed to have trouble breathing for a second. “Are you okay?” Harry asked, since he hadn’t rescued Theo from those jackasses just to watch him choke on his own spit and die in their dorm.
“Yes–yes, fine.” Theo rubbed a hand over his eyes. “Just… you’re… something else, you know that?”
Harry eyed him. “Okay…”
“Never mind.”
“I’ve told you I don’t feel things… normally,” Harry said, turning away to stare up at his canopy instead. He’d thought Theo had grasped that, but if he was about to bolt—Harry didn’t want to see his face when he did it. Especially not because if Theo tried to leave Harry couldn’t let him unless he bound him to secrecy first.
“No, I know that—I didn’t mean it was a bad thing. You’re… something else, and that’s—good.” Theo shifted around on the bed. “Don’t know if you noticed, but I’m not exactly an emotionally normal child either.”
Point. Harry cautiously looked back at him and let some of the tension drain out of his spine. He had really not wanted to get into it with Theo right now, not after earlier. But Theo didn’t look afraid or angry or any of the things that usually preceded people leaving. Mostly tired, and something else Harry couldn’t name.
“You are mine,” he said at last. “My… friends, my… I took Malfoy’s hand because he touched what wasn’t his. I don’t want to see you hurt—any of you. That’s not… not normal friendship, as far as I know…”
“It’s not.” Theo carefully rested his hand on Harry’s so he didn’t jostle any half-healed wounds. “But it’s fine. I’m sort of like that too.”
Harry used an alarm spell to wake himself up at three in the morning. He was still bone tired, but a heavy dinner and an early bedtime had helped him recover some, and he could function even if his entire body just wanted to go back to sleep.
Between the Cloak and some silencing charms, he easily sneaked out of his dorm and into the girls’ wing. Harry crept down the hall, counting doors.
He found what he was looking for fairly easily. The fourth-year girls’ rooms were as clearly labeled as any other dorm, and while all the Slytherins with any sense warded their beds and belongings, the rooms themselves typically had no protections.
Taryn Jugson’s bed lay on the left, closest to the windows looking into the Black Lake. Harry knew that, along with the blood-based runeward she used at night, thanks to Pascal Haigh. Theo had cornered him and given a good hard yank on the leash that bound the Haighs to House Nott. Haigh was in Rookwood and Jugson’s year, and he was an ally of Rookwood’s. They’d bet he would have information and they’d been right.
It hadn’t been all that hard to look the ward up in the collection of highly suspect books Harry and Theo had amassed between them. Haigh said Jugson was a bit of a swot for runes, and the ward was advanced for her age, but one of Theo’s books included notes on how to break wards built around othala.
Harry cut his hand and used his blood to carefully trace out the rune array he’d memorized that would modify her ward and let him in. It gleamed on her green curtains before his blood sank into the heavy fabric and disappeared.
Easing his way past them, Harry climbed up onto the foot of Jugson’s bed and cast a witchlight that hovered just under the canopy.
Jugson was frowning, even in sleep, and her wand hand twitched slightly as she watched. Maybe she was aware on some level that someone had gotten too close. Maybe she was dreaming. It didn’t matter. Harry delicately tipped his hand so blood pooled in his palm and braced himself. He hadn’t done anything like this in a long time.
“Wakey, wakey,” he said, prodding the lumpy shape he guessed was Jugson’s foot.
She jerked upright in the manner of someone waking from a nightmare. When her eyes fell on Harry, her expression suggested the nightmare hadn’t ended. “Potter? W-what are you—how did you get in here?” She looked around. “What the fuck do you think you’re even doing?”
“Oh, it wasn’t too hard,” he said, offering his gentlest smile. Jugson paled. “I’m sure you saw earlier… I know a little something about blood magic.”
More than a little something, after Severus’ rant on the subject of blood magic-based runespells. Lily Potter had left a few books on the subject in her trunk and Harry had skimmed the early chapters of a few of them just so he didn’t accidentally blow himself up. The risks were, as Severus said, very high, but Harry trusted himself to do what he’d been doing his whole life. He could handle a headache.
“Who’s helping you?” Jugson had either gotten over her fear or tried to cover it up, and now she was angry. “Is it Rookwood? That fucking bitch, I knew she’d do something like this, allying with a godscursed mudblood—”
Her words were cut off by a scream that Harry knew her roommates wouldn’t hear, thanks to that handy little ward of hers.
When the screams cut off Harry lowered his hand and looked her in her teary eyes to make sure she was listening. “I don’t,” he said coldly, “like that word.”
“Fuck you,” Jugson panted.
“Isn’t that what your little buddy Morgan was thinking earlier? Taking advantage of having a second year tied up for him? Even for me, that’s pretty sick.” Harry hadn’t thought about the horror and fear that particular thought had caused him. And he didn’t plan to. He did plan to get Morgan back for it, but he was just a lackey; Jugson and Malfoy were the real problems here.
“He was—it was just a joke—”
Except Harry didn’t think it was. He’d seen the look in Morgan’s eyes.
“Well.” He shrugged. “It doesn’t matter now. Petrificus totalus.”
Jugson’s whole body locked up like a plank, save for her terrified eyes.
Harry crawled along the edge of the bed, getting no closer to her than he absolutely had to, until he could grip her chin with bloody fingers. The blood, the touch, and eye contact, it all gave him a way in. A path for his magic. It surged forward. Even with the magical exhaustion he’d felt earlier, his magic was still furious and wild, still looking for a target. All he had to do was give himself one.
“You will believe what I want you to,” he hissed, only dimly aware that he’d slipped into Parseltongue.
His magic caught on the channel he’d made for it of touch and blood and will. Jugson choked under his hand and he let up the body-bind because he knew now, well, now she wouldn’t be going anywhere.
Not when Harry was forcing her to believe she was buried alive, sharing a coffin with maggots and worms and all manner of nasty things. He’d been pushed into a hole behind St. Hedwig’s when they were doing earthworks for a new plumbing system, years back, and he remembered the blinding terror that he’d felt when the other children surrounded the hole to jeer and throw dirt and rocks down at him. In the end his magic had lashed out blindly and knocked them all away, and Harry had managed to climb out—after which the Sisters gave him weeks of punishment work.
The thing about terror, he’d learned as a kid, was that it made you forget everything else. Including that you even had magic, or how to use it. Unless you controlled fear, it would control you.
Taryn Jugson had apparently never learned to control hers.
Harry sat on her bed for a while until he got bored of the screams for help, for mercy. Then he silenced her and leaned up against the foot of her bed with a book.
Jugson was about to be in for a very long night.
-----
“Uh… Harry.” Theo cautiously poked Harry’s shoulder. “You awake in there?”
“Hm? Oh, yes.” Harry offered him a smile that Theo didn’t believe for a second. There were bags under Harry’s eyes and he had downed more coffee than food in the first ten minutes of breakfast despite the fact that he didn’t even particularly like coffee.
There was also the question of where he’d been last night. Theo had shoved Goyle out of their room early that morning so no one else would realize Harry wasn’t in the dorms.
Or at least not the boys’ dorms. Theo was not an idiot and he had been the one to pressure Pascal into telling them how to get into Jugson’s bed.
But they were at breakfast, so he couldn’t exactly ask. Just squint down the table until he saw Jugson.
She was sitting with her best friend Amalia Crockett. Theo caught his breath when he saw the bags under her eyes and the barely-there shivers that went down her spine every few seconds. Crockett kept rubbing Jugson’s back, but Jugson didn’t seem remotely aware of the touch or the food on her plate or of anything, really. She just stared off into space with dead eyes and ate mechanically when Crockett pushed a fork into her hand.
“Harry,” Tracy hissed, sliding into her seat at the table, “what did you do?”
“What on earth do you mean?” Harry murmured, buttering his toast.
He jolted. Theo strongly suspected Tracy had just kicked him under the table. Harry’s answering glare was deathly, and Tracy paled, but to Theo’s surprise and slight respect, she didn’t actually completely back down. “Just… Harry, everyone’s saying you… did something to one of the fourth years last night.”
“What do you think little old me could have done to a big, bad fourth year?” Harry said with a sliver of a smile.
Tracy dropped her head into her hands. “You’re going to be the death of me,” she said, muffled, and Theo relaxed a fraction when that turned Harry’s smile into something genuine.
-----
“Okay, sit down and tell us what you did to them,” Portia demanded.
“That is the question of the day, isn’t it?” Harry said aloud. He’d had the pleasure of spending one of their last days at school watching Slytherin House work itself into a dither about the sudden disappearance of the Malfoy heir–he’d hidden himself in his dorm and was reportedly relying on house-elves for food–the sudden twitchy presence of Morgan in the hospital wing, unwilling or unable to tell what had happened to him, and the apparent mental breakdown suffered by Jugson, who had been one of the top contenders for her year and belonged to a politically powerful minor noble line. Reportedly all Jugson had said to her friend Crocket in the morning was “Potter.” Naturally, rumors flew.
He did also have to provide an explanation to his friends, and as they’d congregated in the greenhouse to accost him, Harry figured it was as good a time as any.
Of course, he wasn’t going to make it easy. He smiled thinly at Portia. “Why, I tucked them into bed and told them fairy stories.”
“Harry,” Neville said.
This actually stopped Harry. He looked at Neville, really looked at him, and something cut through the high of giddy delight mixed with violent fury he’d been riding since yesterday. Portia was no stranger to the world’s darkness, and even if she hadn’t had what one would precisely call a traumatic childhood she did have a hell of a backbone. Neville, on the other hand, was an egg sitting in a pot of water, and Harry had only just started to heat it up.
So Harry sat down and laid his hands flat on the old scarred table. He’d decided Blaise and Zacharias, as well as Portia and Neville and Tracy, could hear his explanation. The rest could wait until Harry was more sure of them.
“Malfoy got a few older Slytherins to help him trap me by abducting Theo, Portia, and Neville yesterday,” he said.
“What the ever-loving, sheep-fu–”
“Hang on, Zach,” Portia said tiredly. “It gets better.”
Harry smiled grimly at her. “Yes, well, they proceeded to tie them up and send me a nice little paper crane saying where to go and threatening unpleasant things.”
“Please tell me you were sensible and went to a professor,” Zacharias said flatly.
“I went straight to Snape, yeah, but he wasn’t there and if I’d gone to another professor, I’d have been an instant pariah in Slytherin.”
Zacharias looked even angrier. “They’d turn on you? For protecting your friends?”
“They’d see it as Harry having betrayed us first,” Tracy said quietly. Theo hadn’t said a word, just sitting silent and still at Harry’s right, but he nodded to back her up. “Snape’s a Slytherin, so he’s all right, but most of the other professors aren’t, and even the ones that are would be debatable since they’re not the Head of House.”
“I couldn’t get any of them in time,” Harry said. “It was a trap to see if I’d go for someone else. I… almost fell for it.” That confession was harder than any of the times he’d been forced to go sit and talk to a priest when he was little but Harry had learned well from his books about Dark Lords out of history. People who pretended to be gods never lasted, because they weren’t gods, and ever-bigger claims of being unbeatable eventually got too big. “So I went alone and… it was a fourth year and a third year, plus Malfoy. They got the drop on me with some kind of freezing hex. Glacius.”
Portia looked grim. “I, uh. I know that one. It’s… well, Asten made me wear this bracelet, see?” She pushed up her robes and showed them all a chunky silver bangle on her left bicep. “It protects against… most of the spells used on people if someone wants to force them to, uh… well, you know. And glacius is one of them. It’s a dueling spell, too, but it’s… yeah.”
Neville’s eyes got very wide. “OH.”
Yeah, oh, Harry thought. Suddenly Morgan’s little joke seemed like less of a joke. Maybe Harry would have to revise his punishment for the older boy in favor of something less pleasant.
Tracy eyed the bangle. “Where could I get one?”
“I’ll ask Asten, apparently our mum left it in the vault with a note for whoever was in charge of me,” Portia said, pulling her robe sleeve down again.
“Merlin.” Neville looked a little sick, and Zacharias seemed like he would be too if he wasn’t busy being murderous.
“Anyways, they tied me to a chair runed so I couldn’t escape with wandless magic.”
“Jugson’s a straight O student in Runes,” Tracy said.
“I couldn’t get out on my own, so I… goaded Morgan into throwing me into the wall. The chair broke. And it cut me up some.” Harry subtly palmed his wand under the table. He’d have to lock the trapdoor to keep them in if they reacted badly to this and a wanded spell would be less draining. “When I was little, I didn’t know I was doing it, but I learned some wandless blood magic.”
“Harry!” Neville shoved his chair back but didn’t stand.
Zacharias’ eyes narrowed but he didn’t move.
“Neville?” Theo spoke for the first time. “What have we been telling you?”
“Magic is magic,” Neville said instantly, then blushed. “I… but… you hurt them. I saw you…”
“You know what they were going to do,” Harry said. “They were going to torture you all until I swore binding fealty oaths and then that little twit was going to make me do sexual things and Malfoy was going to make me basically his slave for the next five years. Do you really think they didn’t deserve it?”
“I’m sorry, that boy threatened what?” said Zacharias, whose expression had bypassed murderous and gone straight into an eerie calm that Harry recognized as what came before extreme violence.
“He might’ve been joking,” Neville said weakly.
Portia snorted. “He knew glacius, and that spell’s not on the approved lists for any under-eighteen dueling class. It’s definitely not in the Charms books here, or Asten would’ve told me.”
Tracy whispered, “The Slytherin girls… we all say to stay away from… from him.”
She looked terrified. Harry was definitely going to be doing something else about Morgan.
“What did you do to… Malfoy and… and Jugson?” Neville said.
Harry looked him in the eyes. “I deadened Malfoy’s wand hand and made him swear an oath never to tell anyone, and to make Morgan and Jugson do the same, if he wanted it back.”
“Given that he’s still hiding in his dorms, I suspect you haven’t given it back,” Blaise said. His dry tone was steady but his skin had acquired an ashen undertone. Good. If Harry was taking him in, he would make sure Blaise knew the terms.
“I haven’t,” Harry said. “Maybe if I’m feeling merciful I’ll do it before the summer hols. And Jugson… I got some help breaking the wards on her bed last night–”
“Hold up, you all ward your beds at night?” Neville blurted.
Zacharias sighed. “Neville, have you met them?”
“...fair.”
“–and I used a little more blood magic to trap her for the night in a hallucination of being buried and eaten alive by worms and maggots and things,” Harry finished. “All night.”
This was followed by several seconds of ringing silence.
“Okay, that’s… creative,” Blaise said.
Neville bit his lip, but Zacharias nodded, slowly.
Harry slowly unwound. Next to him, Theo did something that looked like it may have been tucking a wand away, shielded from Tracy on his other side by the book bag in Theo’s lap.
“Harsh,” Portia said with an air of finality, “but I guess it’s fair. It’s no worse than what they were going to do to you, anyways. And bullies tend not to stop unless they are stopped, you know?”
“Couldn’t you have gone to your family, Longbottom?” Blaise said suddenly, with a sly glance towards Harry. “I mean… Harry, no offense, but you’re a bit of a political nobody, and Theo and Portia are if anything worse off.”
Neville looked like he wanted a turtle shell to retreat into. “I… don’t know,” he whispered. “They might… I mean, they’d… take on the Malfoys b-but they… my g-great-uncle said if I was an em-embar… embarrassment they’d… p-pull me f-f-from Hogwarts.”
Then, to Harry’s shock, he burst into tears.
Zacharias put an arm around Neville’s shoulders. The movement was so natural it looked completely wrong against the pinched look on his face. “Nev, c’mon… it’s okay, you’re not getting kicked out…”
Harry actually couldn’t think of anything to say. Neville’s family had threatened to pull him from Hogwarts? Were they mad? Did they want Neville to be manipulated by the first person who came along and saw what a desperate little thing he’d been? It was lucky for Neville that Harry actually had Neville’s better interests in mind. A glance at Theo told him Theo was thinking much the same thing with the same level of shock.
“Are you all emotionally illiterate?” Zacharias hissed, glaring around the table.
Tracy looked around. “Uh, yeah, more or less,” she said.
“My mother doesn’t kill her husbands,” Blaise said.
Theo grinned. “You do know what my and Portia’s families got up to, right, Smith?”
“I grew up in an orphanage surrounded by Muggle kids who thought I was possessed by evil,” Harry deadpanned.
Zacharias cast his eyes towards the sky. “Merlin help me, I’m surrounded by a bunch of emotionally damaged morons.”
This got a watery laugh out of Neville, who finally lifted his head from Zacharias’ shoulder, although he didn’t tug away from the arm on his shoulders and Zacharias didn’t seem inclined to move it. “I… j-just, Hogwarts, it means I’m not a… a squib. So I… I mean I could’ve told them, I g-guess, but M-Malfoy, he said… he said if I told he would… w-would tell them I c-can barely do m-m-magic and my grades are only p-passing ‘cause I do well on theory and that’s only bec-because of you all and… I’m hopeless…”
“You were using a family wand,” Theo said. “Not your own.”
“He was what?” Blaise and Zacharias said in unison, then glared at each other.
Neville squinted at them.
Harry leaned forward, catching his attention. “Neville. You’ve heard the saying the wand chooses the wizard, right?”
“Uh-huh…”
“Well, Ollivander was a little weird about it when I got my wand, so I looked it up a little.” Not enough, but a start, and he’d made a trip to the library to pester Madam Pince about wandlore today in preparation for this conversation. “Wands are special and unique to every person. Even two rowan wands will be different if they’re from different trees, or the same tree in different seasons or at different ages… stuff like that. It’s complicated and I don’t understand half of it but your magic will never work as well with a wand that didn’t choose you.”
“Family wands will work, sort of, for descendants,” Portia said. “Well. Some. There’s some woods and cores that just go dead when their wielder dies. But a family wand will see a descendant and sort of grudgingly cooperate but it’ll never be as good.”
“So… so I might be… not hopeless?” Neville whispered, staring around at them.
Blaise exploded. “It’s a bloody disgrace you didn’t get your own wand! Honestly, I thought your family were–were at least respectful enough of magic for that! Family wands are for toddlers to learn magic with so they won’t get up enough power to set anything on fire! Not for a bloody twelve-year-old at Hogwarts, are your parents insane, were they trying to stunt your magic–”
He descended into a torrent of Italian that sounded strongly like cursing.
Harry raised his voice over Blaise’s furious muttering. “Point is, you need your own wand, and you’re not a disgrace, and I understand why his threat got to you, okay, Neville? And…” How to say this…
“I’m going to be blunt since none of these idiots will,” Zacharias said. “Your family are arseholes, Nev. That’s a really awful thing to do to a child–both the wand and threatening to keep you out of school.”
Neville looked conflicted. Harry judged it was time to move on so he could process all of that at his own pace. “So… any questions?”
“I’ve got one,” Portia said. “What else are you going to do to Morgan?”
“Oh,” Harry said, “I’ve got the whole summer. I’m sure I’ll think of something.”
-----
Controlling Slytherins was never an easy task but it had undeniably gotten more difficult since Harry bloody Potter went and landed in the snake pit. Severus ate his breakfast with an exhausting lack of enthusiasm as he watched the boy and his friends at their place in the Great Hall. Davis and Nott had lately been joined by the Zabini child in Harry’s orbit, and Parkinson had been hovering around their edges as well. This morning she’d sat with Nott across from Harry, Zabini, and Davis.
On the one hand, Severus was pleased to see that Harry was finally gaining a little social traction after the long isolation last year. On the other, his growing nucleus of other Slytherins was not exactly a normal friendship. Severus could see even from here that the other four were hyperaware of Harry in a way that screamed they thought of him as a leader of sorts. That in itself wouldn’t usually worry him too much, Merlin knew they at least all seemed to get along, which was already a head start on plenty of Slytherin cliques, but if Severus had noticed so would other people.
Like Albus.
He glanced sidelong down the staff table. Sure enough, the old coot was aiming twinkly looks towards the Slytherins every few seconds. Severus already knew Albus had requested to speak with Harry before they left for home tomorrow, since Harry had immediately taken the cheerful little note to Severus and asked him to chaperone the meeting.
The other thing he was desperately hoping, probably in vain, for Albus to overlook was Miss Jugson’s recent nervous collapse. The girl had been wandering about like a zombie since yesterday morning. That in itself wasn’t too odd, as students periodically tried practicing magic on their own time and overreached themselves, but the fear on Jugson’s face whenever she looked at Harry–that was odd, and combined with the way several members of powerful and Dark families were obviously courting the boy… Albus would see the similarities between Harry and another dark-haired little Slytherin boy, fifty years ago.
Oh, Severus knew the stories. Had seen the memories. Had realized exactly why Albus distrusted him in his school days: halfblood, dark hair, resentful of his Muggle caretaker, sorted into Slytherin as soon as the hat touched his head…
Not that it was right. Albus was far too fond of jumping to conclusions. But Severus could understand, grudgingly, angrily, where the bias came from, even if he didn’t agree.
It had been a long time since Albus had actually paid attention to the Slytherins, though. Not since the end of the war. Apparently he had just decided with the overwhelming current of their world moving towards Gryffindor that they were no longer a threat.
Right now his eyes were aimed at the Slytherin table and the twinkle wasn’t there.
This meeting was going to be a disaster.
Severus met Harry in the Great Hall after lunch. “Mr. Potter,” he greeted, since there were others about.
“Professor,” Harry said. “Thank you for coming with me.”
“As my Head of House, I am obligated, as you are no doubt aware,” Severus said drily.
Harry smiled, small and close, and followed as Severus led the way towards the Headmaster’s office.
A thought occurred to him. “Don’t look him in the eyes,” he murmured, after checking there were no portraits in earshot.
“...okay,” Harry said. “Can I ask why, sir?”
“Later.”
Luckily Harry was enough of a Slytherin to accept that without protest.
“Fizzing Whizbees,” Severus told the gargoyle. It leapt aside, looking as put out by having to respond to such an inane password as Severus did saying it, and he led Harry onto the stairs as they began to rise.
-----
Harry felt his hands clench at his sides and forced them open. He was not generally fond of the Headmaster, and this new bit of instruction was making him much more nervous than he liked to admit. Don’t look him in the eyes? It wasn’t like Harry really wanted to prolong this, so he was fine following it, but Severus had seemed weirdly urgent about it.
Don’t look him in the eyes. Okay. Fine. Harry could fixate on the bridge of his nose instead. Or maybe his beard. Something.
“Harry, my boy!”
“It’s Mr. Potter, sir, please,” Harry said. Did they really have to keep doing this?”
“My apologies, my boy, I am only happy to see you,” he assured Harry. “I was close with your parents, as you know, and I’m sure they would wish for me to look out for you.”
A hot flash of anger shot through him and Harry fought to keep his eyes down. He distracted himself by taking what he knew from experience was the least comfortable chair. At least one of his parents wasn’t enough of an idiot to worship at this man’s robe hems, and Harry was fairly sure Lily Potter would be spitting like an angry cat if she saw this.
Was Dumbledore really so sure Snape’s bitterness would keep him from ever talking about Harry’s family? Maybe if Harry had gone in Gryffindor or something, that would make sense, but not with Harry as a Slytherin and a model one at that. This… this lie of a nice happy little family was risky and insulting when he thought of it like that.
Harry was dragged out of his thoughts when he realized Dumbledore had just been staring at him in silence while Snape lurked in the corner. “Sorry, sir, but… you wanted to see me?” he prompted.
“Yes, yes! How has your year been, my b-Mr. Potter?”
How… had his year been? Was he mad?
“I… fine, thank you.”
Dumbledore beamed. “Excellent news. I do hope the unpleasantness with Professor White hasn’t disrupted your studying too much.”
Unpleasantness. Understatement of the year. “No, sir,” Harry said.
“Mr. Potter’s grades have been exemplary. He is consistently one of the top students of his year,” Severus put in.
“I’m very glad to hear that.” Dumbledore smiled at him like a grandfather, or how Harry imagined a grandfather was supposed to smile. “But you aren’t spending too much time studying, are you? Little boys need friends as well!”
These probing questions were really starting to grate. So was the way Dumbledore seemed like he was trying to catch Harry’s eye on purpose.
Harry fixed his gaze on the end of the Headmaster’s long, crooked nose. “Well, yes, sir, I’ve got friends.”
Dumbledore waited, and when he didn’t offer anything more, said, “Who might these friends be, dear boy?”
And okay, Harry was well aware that he disliked and distrusted authority figures out of habit due to their long history of utterly failing to do what they said they would, namely protect children and be fair, but Dumbledore really seemed to be trying to earn himself a special pedestal in that category. Surely this wasn’t normal.
But Dumbledore controlled his life, right now.
Harry clenched his fists below the table. “Well, sir, I’m probably closest with Neville, sorry, Neville Longbottom, and also Zacharias Smith, and I get on well with Justin Finch-Fletchley but we’re not as good friends since he spent a lot of time this year in the hospital wing.” Ha, that got a tiny flinch out of the old man. “I’m still friends with Theo Nott and Tracy Davis, and Portia Bole from Ravenclaw…”
There, those were safe answers. It wasn’t like he could hide who his friends were.
“Mmm. Well, I’m glad you have friends in other Houses, but are you quite sure those Slytherins are… well, safe, my boy? As you know, many of your fellow Slytherins come from families who actively supported Lord Voldemort in the war…”
Harry was actually so insulted by the heavy-handed manipulation he was tempted to call Dumbledore out on it. But that would be stupid. “I don’t see why it should be a problem, sir. They aren’t their parents, they’re just kids, and anyway, no one’s given me any problems over the war. I don’t really get why everyone assumes Slytherins are so bad. I like it there.”
Dumbledore sighed. “Far be it from me to try to dissuade you from your House, Mr. Potter, I merely wish to ensure your safety.” Oh, Merlin, that was even more obvious. “But what about friends in Gryffindor? Miss Granger, perhaps?”
Startled, Harry looked up, and his eyes brushed across Dumbledore’s for the merest fraction of a second. Dean came to mind, of course, but–what was the Headmaster playing at? Granger? The know-it-all?
Harry tore his eyes down again. He’d broken Snape’s rule.
“Or perhaps that boy, what’s his name, Mr. Thomas?” Dumbledore suggested.
Cold fear seized him and Harry had to remind himself to breathe and not look up. “I… we’re friends, sir,” he distantly heard his own mouth say.
Had Dumbledore just read his mind?
Was that why he wasn’t supposed to meet the old man’s eyes? Because he could bloody well read minds?
Through the rising panic he clung to Dumbledore’s droning voice like a lifeline. “Really, my boy? I find that surprising, I’ve never once seen him with you or your other… friends.”
“It’s not like we can sit with him in the Great Hall, he’s in a different House,” Harry said. Ruder than he’d meant to be but he was busy trying not to have a Merlin cursed panic attack here so he could forgive himself the slip. “And if we spend time together out of classes we’re quiet about it.”
“Mr. Potter, are you telling me you make this boy sneak off to see you because of his blood status?”
Dumbledore’s disapproving voice had one good result, namely that it whiplashed Harry right back to being angry again, coldly angry and in control of himself. “No, sir, of course not!” He made his eyes wide, his face insulted and betrayed. “My mother’s a muggleborn, why would I think badly of someone for that? It’s the Gryffindors, they bully anyone who hangs out with the “slimy snakes,” so Dean asked us not to go spreading it around.”
You old bastard, he thought savagely, wishing he could meet the Headmaster’s eyes and project the thought at him like a knife.
“Forgive me, my boy.” Back to my boy again. “You understand why I ask, of course? Blood prejudice has been rampant in Slytherin House for far too long.”
“The only people who I’ve heard make assumptions about someone because of their blood are Gryffindors,” Harry said stiffly. At least being offended was an excuse to close up and retreat from the Headmaster. Maybe it would even help with his request, when he got a chance to bring it up.
Dumbledore hemmed and hawed and shuffled some parchment around on his desk. Finally he said, “Well, my boy, I’m sure you might have misheard them, or perhaps it was only an understandable belief that certain people of noble descent might harbor the same prejudices their families often do.”
That’s not much better than assuming someone is an uneducated moron because of being a muggleborn, Harry dearly wished to say.
“Now, my boy, I must let you go pack, but before you go, is there anything you wish to say to me?” Dumbledore’s eyes bored into the top of Harry’s head with an almost physical force. He imaged them like a drill bit boring into his forehead. Trying to find its way into his mind.
The urge to look up, meet the man’s eyes, and start talking hit him like a truck. It would be nice, he found himself thinking, to tell someone about Jugson and Morgan and Malfoy… just to confess, and have someone else take care of things…
Harry stubbornly dug in his heels. Nothing could be more against his instincts than to just spill his guts to an authority figure who had proved Harry’s distrust right already, multiple times. Adults never took care of things, except Severus, and least of all this man.
“I wanted to ask you if I could stay on at Hogwarts over the summer,” he blurted.
The pressure eased.
Panic tried to set back in. Could he read minds without eye contact? Had that urge to be honest been malicious and not some weird, previously unknown desire for a father figure? Or some kind of spell?
I’ll ask Severus later, Harry promised himself. He had to focus.
“I’m sorry, my boy, but it’s just not possible,” Dumbledore said sorrowfully. “Most of the professors return to their homes for the holidays, and it would be wildly improper to just allow a child to roam these halls unsupervised.”
“Well…” Harry bit his lip. Time to go for it. “Maybe I could stay with a friend instead? It’s just, I don’t mind the orphanage, but there’s never quite enough food to go around, and I’m sure they’d appreciate one less person to feed, and anyways most of the other kids don’t like me. They think I go to some posh school and they made fun of me last year… and Theo and Tracy have already said I can go stay with them for the summer!”
Dumbledore frowned. On a lesser man it might have even been called a scowl. “Now that would be even more improper, my boy. Mr. Nott may have hidden it from you but his family is nearly destitute–” another lie, did they never stop?– “and he has only his father, who is on house arrest. I could no more permit you to impose upon their finances than I could permit you to stay in the care of a convicted felon. And Miss Davis’ family is similarly financially strained.”
Harry prepared the knife. “Well, what about the Longbottoms?”
Dumbledore paused.
Got you, Harry thought. “Neville said I could go stay with them! And I don’t know if they’re like, rich, but he promised me it wouldn’t be a problem, and he has his greenhouses, and I could fly! Please, sir?”
Merlin, that please tasted horrible, and this whole innocent-schoolboy thing grated, but if it worked…
“I suppose it may be acceptable,” Dumbledore finally conceded. “For the month of August only, my boy. I will speak with Augusta–excuse me, Ms. Longbottom–about picking you up on the first of the month.”
“Thank you, sir!” Harry beamed, standing and fidgeting like an excited child and all the while desperate to get out of there. “Can I go tell him? Only Neville was so excited, he normally doesn’t have friends over!”
“Yes, of course,” Dumbledore said, “Have a happy summer, my boy,” and Harry was out the door like a shot.
He had to go find Neville then, to keep up appearances, but after tracking him down in one of the first-floor study rooms, Harry went straight for Severus’ office.
The door opened at his knock. “Come in,” Severus said, already setting out a tea service.
Harry sank into his usual chair across from the desk and watched, barely seeing, as Snape prepared a cup of tea and passed it to him.
They sipped their tea in silence for a few minutes until Harry couldn’t stand it anymore. “I don’t know if this is even possible, but… can the Headmaster read minds?”
Severus sighed through his nose and set his tea down with a clink. “There is an art known as legilimency. Most improperly define it as a spell, and while there is an incantation, even an amateur legilimens doesn’t have to verbalize it. The Headmaster is one of the foremost legilimens in magical Europe.”
“And legilimency is… mind reading?” Wasn’t that horrifying.
“In the crudest and most Muggle sense, yes,” Severus said with a curl to his lip. “It is the art of forging a connection between one’s mind and another, using both magic and will. A mind is not a neatly indexed book that a legilimens can just open to whatever page they like. Surface thoughts can be picked up on fairly easily but rarely offer anything of note: your stomach is upset, there’s an essay that you can’t stop worrying about, such mundane things. To go deeper requires a legilimens to override the natural thought processes of the subject and direct them towards a particular subject. Masters of the art will use conversation. For example, the Headmaster might hypothetically direct a conversation towards the subject of a hypothetical student’s social life, and while on the subject, direct the student’s thoughts towards his or her friends to glean more information about them.”
“Hypothetically,” Harry said. Several things about his conversations with the Headmaster were beginning to make horrible sense.
“Correct.” Severus took a sip of his tea.
“And… if I had felt a sudden strong desire to confess all my sins to the Headmaster?”
Severus grimaced. “I believe he may have resorted to a wandless compulsion charm.”
“A what?” That sounded… completely horrible.
“It’s exactly what it sounds like. Compulsion charms allow the caster to create a compulsion in the target to do a particular thing. Legilimency helps implant subtler and less specific compulsions: to hate a particular breed of dog, perhaps, or to dislike a certain food… or love a particular political leader. Or to trust, or distrust… For a master legilimens the uses of compulsion charms are nearly unlimited.”
“That can’t be legal,” Harry said flatly.
“Correct. The use of a compulsion charm on a minor is wildly illegal,” Severus said. “In fact, so is the use of legilimency. But we have no proof of either and no complaint against Dumbledore would result in an investigation.”
“Have you tried before?” Harry said, narrowing his eyes.
Severus looked away. “Not I.”
“You and… my mother?”
“Twice, while we were in school and with the help of a professor. Nothing came of it.”
Harry looked at Severus for a few seconds. “You’re one too, aren’t you? A legilimens.”
“Perceptive,” Severus said with a faint, approving smile that made Harry feel funny inside. On the one hand, he liked Severus and trusted him more than most other adults. On the other, finding out that the one adult he put in that category might have been reading his mind this whole time (and possibly manipulating him based on what he saw) was… blackly terrifying.
“And no,” Severus added, “I have never read your mind without permission. Most legilimens at my level and the Headmaster’s cannot help but pick up certain things from unguarded minds–strong emotional states, the occasional thought–but it amounts to little more than unusually good intuition regarding other people.”
“Unguarded minds,” Harry said. “So there’s a way to guard against it?”
Severus smiled a bit bigger this time. “A good thing to remember about magic, Harry, is that every spell has a counter. Every ritual can be undone. There exists a defense against every spell known to wixen, even if it has yet to be invented. And,” he held up a finger, “this is even more important: there is no such thing as invulnerability in magic. For example: the fidelius charm protects a secret completely and cannot be broken, but it has one glaring weakness: someone must be utterly trusted with this secret and they can choose to divulge it at any time to anyone they like.
“The inverse to legilimency, known as occlumency, is the art of personal warding. To ward something, you must know its contents and its boundaries. To learn occlumency, you must know yourself and be able to recognize what is not yourself.
“The first risk to occlumency is that by ordering your mind, a legilimens who breaches your defenses and subsumes your will to his own will find it much easier to seek out a specific memory or group of memories than someone unguarded.”
Harry frowned. “And the second risk?”
“It’s somewhat complicated, but… imagine a country with very naturally defended borders. Perhaps it is surrounded by mountains, or some such. Now imagine the ruler of this country, in mistaken efforts to protect his nation, builds a very high wall all around it and cuts off immigration and emigration almost completely. What would happen?”
“Well, if the rest of the world wasn’t like that… it would fall behind?”
Severus nodded. “Precisely. A mind that is occluded, constantly, risks stagnation… but when we consider this is a person, not a country, the effects are much more insidious. You lose your ability to… relate to others. You become ever colder, ever more aloof, and while you may still feel the full range of human emotion, while you may still be a moral person, if you are never affected by other people your growth will inevitably become stunted and your empathy will wither on the vine. We are social creatures by nature. We require the influence and impact of others.”
“Uh… wow.” Harry took a deep breath. It might still give him a crisis whenever he remembered how many people he’d let himself… form attachments to, but even he knew that sounded horribly unhealthy and sad. “What’s the risk of legilimency, then?”
“Reaching out from one’s own mind leaves you… vulnerable. A legilimens who gets caught by someone versed in either occlumency or legilimency has very few true defenses and their best option is to try to retreat, as it were, outside the boundaries of the mind they were inside. If they left a poorly warded escape route… they can become imprisoned. And more broadly, a legilimens with poor occlumency may forget who they are. Drowning in the minds and personalities of those around them, they… have the inverse problem of an overdeveloped occlumency: empathy and human connection die, not because nothing can get in, but because once it is taken in by the legilimens it has nothing to connect to.”
“It sounds like it’s best to be good at both, then?” Harry said tentatively. “If occlumency helps you keep hold of yourself, and legilimency helps you reach out to others…”
“If it were not past the deadline for points, I would award you some for that.” Severus looked proud and Harry tried to squash how warm he felt. “Indeed. Most people have a gift for one or the other, if at all, hence the importance of a qualified instructor to recognize the limits of a student’s ability and keep them from going further into legilimency than their occlumency can balance or vice versa. Being better at one than the other can be sustained, but only to an extent.” He took a deep breath, looking almost pained. “This is not common knowledge, but the Dark Lord… he was a master legilimens, better than the Headmaster, far better than myself. However, while I am more skilled at occlumency than legilimency and the Headmaster has to my knowledge taken care to maintain his occlumency at a safe level, the Dark Lord neglected it almost entirely. His madness was a separate issue but his near-psychopathic lack of empathy was largely created by self-taught legilimency.”
Harry knew his eyes were wide. “How can I learn occlumency, then? And legilimency, I guess?” If there were people running around reading minds he was not going to let himself be vulnerable, but he also didn’t like the thought of breaking his brain in the process. He was already, as his friends put it, emotionally illiterate, but apparently it wasn’t too much for them to still like him, and as messed up as he knew he was, Harry still had the capacity to recognize they were people and not want to see them hurt.
Severus looked at him for a few long seconds. “Your mother may well have books on it in her trunk, but… one moment.”
He was gone long enough for Harry to finish his first cup of tea and half of a second. When Severus returned, it was with a small and rather dusty book in his hand. He laid it on the desk but didn’t remove his hand. “Harry, I will permit you to borrow this book until you have read it, but you must promise me that you will not attempt any of the exercises beyond chapter three over the summer.”
Harry felt himself begin to frown. Severus quickly added, “I say this not because I think you incapable, or because I wish to slow your progress, but because there is a very real chance that you could end up drooling in a hospital bed for the rest of your life if you attempt something beyond your capacities without instruction. Is this clear? Should you prove as diligent with this as you are with your classroom studies, I will offer you lessons next year–I am licensed to teach both disciplines—but first you must prove yourself capable of taking it slowly and being aware of the risks.”
“Yes, sir,” Harry said, his anger gone. But– “Does everyone know this?”
Severus’ lips thinned. “Once, most magical children were taught the basics–enough to know if their minds were being invaded. Hogwarts actually had a third-year class on introductory occlumency, and though most people never developed the desire or discipline to progress beyond that, it provided a suitable deterrent. Most legilimens would find the temptation to read those around them checked by the knowledge that most people would notice. The practice has died down in all but a few families, who tend to find tutors for their children around thirteen, which is the widely accepted age at which a child’s magical core has developed enough to sustain basic occlumency.”
“Should I wait until my birthday?” Harry said reluctantly.
“I highly doubt you will have advanced beyond the basic meditative exercises by the end of the summer,” Severus said drily, “so no, there is no need to wait. Again: you may read as much of the book as you wish, as there is a lot of theory in the later chapters, but you may not attempt those exercises, and I must also insist that you not delve into any of your mother’s books on the matter, either. Next year, should you wish to continue the study, you may bring them to me and we can create a course of study that is appropriate for your age and skill.”
Harry struggled with himself for a few seconds. “Thank you, sir.”
Severus nodded.
They sipped their tea in silence for a few seconds. “Did Mr. Longbottom truly invite you to his home?” Severus said at last.
“Yeah,” Harry said. “He heard me telling Theo I probably couldn’t get away to his house again this summer and he asked.”
Severus shot him a canny look that said he probably knew Harry and Theo had set up that conversation ahead of time. “If you require assistance with your occlumency or another study this summer, or if you need adult assistance of any kind, you may write me. In fact, I insist that you do so.”
Harry agreed, even though he knew he probably wouldn’t, and went back to the dorms.
***
Packing was horrible. Every book and every bit of clothing that he stowed away in his mother’s trunk was a reminder that Harry was leaving the only home he’d ever known. Granted, he was only leaving for a few months, but it still made him swing from sadness to fury or vice versa every few minutes.
Theo seemed to know what was going on and, even though he had somehow finished packing the night before, stayed sprawled on his bed alternately reading some book on basic runes and wondering aloud about various bits of gossip that had been swirling lately. Harry didn’t answer much but he appreciated what he knew was Theo’s attempt at keeping him company and providing distraction.
Just like last year, the Leaving Feast was lavish and Harry tasted none of it. He skipped treacle tart for dessert and managed not to say a word.
But the next morning, Tracy confronted him with an entire treacle tart held under a stasis charm, Theo said he would relay everyone’s letters to Harry by way of Aoife and Mrs. Figg’s yard, and Blaise made a cryptic comment about being able to “help” deal with the Muggles if they were unmanageably rude. Neville, Justin, and Zacharias found the Slytherins on the train within minutes, and Portia, Dean, and Luna weren’t far behind, which made for an extremely crowded compartment and a lot of noise. Much to his own surprise Harry found himself managing to actually enjoy the train ride. The knowledge that it would be over never quite left but he could ignore it and play Exploding Snap until Portia’s eyebrows were frighteningly singed, get into a long argument with Justin and Blaise and Zacharias about the Trace and whether it was fair to muggleborns, and enjoy some of the snacks Tracy and Luna provided to everyone.
They were an hour out from London when there was a hesitant knock on the door. Harry squinted at it: they’d pulled the window shade and locked the door, since Dean was here and didn’t want any passing Gryffindors to see him.
“I’ve got it,” Blaise said. He deftly pulled the door open just enough to be polite without letting whoever was out there see into the compartment. Somehow, even seeing only Blaise’s back, Harry could tell he was surprised. “Oh, hello, Draco. I’m afraid our compartment’s a bit full but you’re welcome to sit on someone’s lap.”
Harry grinned, slow and cold.
“That took him longer than I thought,” Portia said to no one.
“...just want to talk to Potter, if he’s… not busy?” they all heard Malfoy say.
“Huh?” Justin looked around, confused.
“Don’t worry about it.” Harry stood, tucking away a half-eaten chocolate frog. “Be right back, guys, I just forgot to talk to Malfoy about something.”
“Slytherin business,” Portia said tiredly.
Harry and Blaise neatly stepped around each other so that Malfoy never got to see inside clearly. Blaise’s eyebrows were still raised.
“Hello, little Dragon.” Harry pulled the compartment door shut behind him and glanced pointedly at the hand Malfoy was hiding in his robe pocket. “Bit of a problem?”
“I… do we have to do this here?” Malfoy glanced nervously up and down the corridor.
“Mmm, I suppose not… In here.” Harry tugged open a compartment next to the bathrooms that no one liked and ushered Malfoy inside. He pointedly locked the door behind them and then silenced the slightly cramped compartment.
Malfoy took a deep breath. “Look, just–I can’t go home like this. My father would… please, Potter.”
Harry looked at him, this boy who was the equivalent of a prince in his world, and felt himself smiling again, quite involuntarily. “Oh, you can do better than that, can’t you Malfoy? Come on… convince me you really mean it.”
“What?”
Pointedly, Harry glanced down at the floor, then back up at Malfoy’s face. He held the other boy’s grey eyes steadily. Waiting.
He had the patience of a snake, after all.
Malfoy swallowed hard and slowly sank to his knees. “Please,” he said quietly, bowing his head. “Please fix my hand.”
Harry let the moment stretch out as long as he could, leaning into it. Satisfaction and something else, a dark and hungry feeling, coiled in his abdomen. “I’m feeling merciful, Malfoy… Give me your hand.”
Without looking up, the blond raised his left arm, sleeve falling back.
Harry gripped his wrist, too tightly judging by Malfoy’s slight flinch, and shoved his magic through his fingers. He wasn’t nice about it, and Malfoy flinched again, harder, his limp dead fingers spasming back to life.
“Thank me,” Harry said.
“Th… thank you,” Malfoy gasped, snatching his hand back and cradling it to his chest.
“Now remind me,” Harry said, pretending to think, “where is your place, again”
Malfoy let out a small noise that might have been a protest.
Harry waited again.
“Below you,” Malfoy finally whispered.
Harry squatted down and put his wand under Malfoy’s chin, raising it so they were eye to eye. Malfoy’s face was ashen and his eyes wide but he hadn’t cried.
“That’s right,” Harry said. “Below me. I want you to remember this, Malfoy, next time you’re tempted to touch what isn’t yours.”
“I didn’t…” Malfoy visibly steeled himself. “I didn’t know.”
“Well, now you do, and you won’t have that excuse next time. A word of advice? There’s meaner snakes than you in this world, and you should learn to recognize who they are before you go picking any more fights.” He lowered his wand and stood. “And if you want to be one of mine, Malfoy, all you have to do is ask me nicely.”
Malfoy twitched and looked up sharply.
“Oh, not now.” Harry waved a hand. “That’s a bit of a big decision to make at age twelve and under duress. The offer stands until graduation. And don’t expect that you’d be any better off in my circle than others just because of your heritage or House.”
“I…” Malfoy swallowed. “I’ll think on it.”
“See you around, then, Malfoy.” Harry shot him one last grin as he left.
“Figure that out?” Theo asked when Harry got back to the compartment.
“Yeah, it was just a bit of business that we had to finish up.” Harry shrugged. Those of his friends not in the know weren’t even paying attention, but Portia, Zacharias, Neville, and the Slytherins were all watching him like a hawk while pretending not to with varying degrees of success. Harry did his best to smile reassuringly, which was, he’d be the first to admit, not his forte. Sure enough, no one looked especially reassured, except, oddly, Zacharias.
That little interlude was distracting enough that Harry stopped noticing time flying by until they were pulling into the station and he was grudgingly getting off the train.
His friends all said goodbye and vanished towards their families amidst the steam and chaos of the platform. Harry stood with Theo, watching them go.
“Are you collecting Malfoy?” Theo asked.
“Only if he wants me to,” Harry said with a sharp grin. Then he saw, underneath Theo’s smirk, a hint of–nervousness? Jealousy? Why… oh. Oh. “And he’ll never replace any of you,” Harry added. He hadn’t spent the year trying to improve his emotional literacy for nothing. “It’s not like it was Malfoy who figured out last year I wasn’t just the golden boy of the Light.”
Theo relaxed a tiny bit. “No, he’s a bit dense.”
Impulsively, Harry took Theo’s hand, and just for a second their fingers curled around each other. Then, “Theodore!” Larkin sang, elbowing her way towards them, and Theo let go to pick up his trunk.
“Promise I’ll forward all your letters,” Theo said, “Neville’s going to send his to Zacharias first,” and then Theo, too, was gone.
Harry sighed and made for the floo.
Summary of the potentially triggering content:
Harry was lured to the room in the dungeons by Malfoy, 3rd year Taryn Jugson, and another older Slytherin named Morgan, both purebloods. They tie Harry to a chair warded with runes to be inescapable and threaten to force him to swear an oath of servitude; if he doesn't, they'll hurt Neville, Portia, and Theo, who they jumped and abducted in a corridor. Harry goads Morgan into hitting him a few times and then draws on barely-controlled blood magic to free himself, hurt Morgan, and freeze Malfoy in place. He frees his friends and sends them on their way.
Once Neville, Portia, and Theo have left, Harry uses more blood magic to basically make Malfoy's wand hand unresponsive/immobile, and promises to set it to rights if Malfoy swears an oath never to reveal what happened, and make his cronies do the same. Malfoy swears, but Harry didn't specify *when* he intended to fix Malfoy's hand, so he leaves with a last taunt that Malfoy better not irritate him before the end of term or Harry might 'forget' to fix it before Malfoy's parents see.
Harry leaves and half-collapses in the hall: that much wandless magic, unshaped by runes or anything to act as a focus, is costly. He makes his way back to the dorms. However, he's not done yet; he wakes up at three in the morning and breaks into Taryn Jugson's dorm room and individually warded bed using information from Theo's vassal Pascal Haigh, whose associate Deirdre Rookwood sleeps in the same dorm room. Harry uses a drop of blood to create a compulsion for Jugson to believe whatever he wants her to believe and then locks her in a nightmare of being buried alive & consumed by various creepy crawlies for a few hours before leaving.
The next thing that happens is the safe section indicated in the start notes i.e. Theo prodding Harry at breakfast the following morning.
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