Harry stares. “Come again?”
“I, uh.” Dudley shuffles his feet. “I wanted to say… sorry.”
“For what?” This ranks up there with laid-back hippogriffs in terms of implausible things.
“Being… a right prat to you, all the time. See, at Smeltings, they put me in counseling ‘cause I beat up this kid, and my therapist told me I was being a bully, right, and I asked her if the stuff Piers and me used to do to you was bullying, and she said yeah it was, and I said should I apologize, and she said only if I actually meant it, and I do.”
Harry takes a second to process this. “Huh. Okay. Are you going to stop doing that stuff?”
Dudley nods quickly. “Yeah! Piers and I got in a row about it, actually, he’s not talking to me but it’s all right, I’m going to boxing classes with Brian and Stacey so I don’t need him. They both go to Smeltings.” He glances over his shoulder.
“They’re both downstairs,” Harry assures him.
“Right. Well, don’t tell Uncle Vernon I know a girl doing boxing. He doesn’t think it’s okay for girls to learn fighting.”
“Well, that’s silly,” Harry says. “Some of the scariest people I know are girls.”
“Right?” Dudley shudders. “Urgh, I imagine it’s worse when they’re…”
Harry sighs. “Freaks like me?”
“Wasn’t gonna say freak. Just. I dunno, witch seems rude, dunnit?”
Still trying to gauge his sincerity, Harry is slow to answer. “Not for us. For us it’s just like saying someone’s a girl. You’re a witch. Or a wizard. Simple.”
“Huh. Okay. Hey, can you show me magic?”
“I can’t actually do any in the summers. Don’t tell your dad, though. He thinks I’m going to turn him into something if he hits me.”
Dudley laughs, and immediately looks shifty about it. “Hey, uh, it’s also not… okay what they do to you. You know that?”
“I do know that.” Harry is oddly kind of touched by this whole awkward effort. “Nothing I can do about it, though. And I’m only here for like, three months of the year, anyway.”
“Right.”
There’s a brief silence.
“Want to see a snake?”
Dudley’s eyes light up. “Yeah!”
That’s how Dudley meets Gabby and Dash. He’s surprisingly gentle with them, especially Dash’s small body, and barely wigs out at all when Harry admits Gabby’s venomous. Although he’s pretty sure Dudley is only calm about holding a venomous snake on account of Harry can talk to her and promises Dudley she won’t bite.
Dudley throws a temper tantrum about how his friend at Smeltings has a snake and Dudley wants one, which is how Dudley goes to the pet store one day with a fistful of pound notes and Harry at his side. Harry talks to the pet store snakes while Dudley distracts the clerk and winds up pointing out a friendly young ball python who’s perfectly happy with the idea of sleeping in a large, warm tank and getting let out to explore now and then. Dudley names him Bert.
Aunt Petunia loathes Bert and refuses to set foot in Dudley’s room as long as the tank is there. She assigns Harry to clean Dudley’s room instead, repeatedly telling Dudley he should tell them “if the freak tries to steal any of my Duddiekins’ things!”
Duddiekins, Harry mouths, and Dudley turns bright red.
Anyway, the upside to having to clean Dudley’s room is that it’s actually not that bad, since he lives at boarding school some of the year and has to clean his own room there. Harry translates a lot of conversations between Bert and Dudley. Both of them love Punch and Judy, and when Bert promises not to wander off, Dudley develops a habit of letting him out of his tank pretty much all the time.
Aunt Petunia’s face when Dudley comes down to breakfast wearing a ball python as a scarf absolutely makes Harry’s year.
ooOoo
A bloody house-elf turns up wailing about danger at Hogwarts, and trips the Trace. Harry winds up locked in his room.
Great.
ooOoo
“Why?” Harry asks in a whisper.
“‘S not right,” Dudley says in the same tone. He looms uncomfortably in the upstairs hall, dressed in pajamas that are not quite as large as the ones he’d have been wearing this time last year. “Can you get the lock downstairs?”
“I think so.”
“Right.” Dudley nods. Glances towards his parents’ room with a look of outright terror. “Uh, would you, uh, want to write me? At school, not here. Is there a way you can send post the normal way?”
“I think so?” Surely Muggleborns didn’t send owls to their parents all the time, right? “If there is, I’ll write care of Smeltings.”
“Cool.”
“Bye, Harry,” Bert hisses from Dudley’s neck.
“Bye, Bert. Be good.”
“I’ll look after him.”
“What’d he say?”
“He says he’ll look after you.”
ooOoo
Harry takes the Knight Bus to the Leaky Cauldron and spins a sob story about his having to travel for a family funeral and Harry just didn’t feel safe being that exposed and—
Tom the barman eats it up.
ooOoo
“This is where you’ve been staying?” Theo looks around the room with distaste.
“It’s fine. Got a bed, and a wardrobe, and look! I made bruise balm that lasts a whole lunar cycle in storage, if you finish it on the night of the new moon! And I wrote up a paper on it for Professor Snape!”
Admittedly, he needs a prettier version for Professor Snape. This one is covered in blotches.
“I made a mechanical snake with hollow fangs. I can put venom in it and send it to kill people,” Theo says.
Harry picks up the little bronze snake. It’s about the length of his hand, wrist to the tip of his middle finger, and has a body of overlapping metal segments. Two glinting blue stones make up the eyes. “What’re the stones?”
“Sodalite, for clarity and analysis. I haven’t got the enchantments done yet but it should develop some autonomy. There’s sulphur and some arithmantic matrices for smell in the skull, so if you give it a sample of someone’s scent, it can track them that way, too. And then you send it off to find and bite the person.”
“You could put potions in the fangs instead of a poison,” Harry says. “Draught of Living Death. Wit-dulling Potion. Or Wit-Sharpening, if you wanted to help someone, I guess.”
Theo grins. “You see why I brought it to you.”
“But does it work, yet?”
“No… but I’ll get there!”
Harry waves his summer homework. “Have you done this yet?”
“Duh.”
“Ugh. I haven’t.”
“Well, maybe stop with your bruise paste and get on it.”
“Burn paste next,” Harry says happily. “So I can meet more dragons.”
“One wasn’t enough?”
ooOoo
Peaches and Blueberry turn up at his room in the Leaky with a really scruffy black… well, it’s not really a cat, is it, it’s far too large for one thing, closer to thirty pounds than ten…
Harry spots the tufted tail and chokes. They’ve brought him a stray kneazle.
Much more intelligent than nonmagical cats, and incredibly fierce, kneazles are prized as familiars but extremely picky. This one is already eyeing Harry like it thinks he might make a good lunch.
Harry summons cat treats out of his trunk and spends an hour wooing the skittish creature until it allows him to gently pat the top of its head.
“You need a bath,” he tells it.
The kneazle hisses at him.
“No, really. You stink. Guessing you won’t let me bathe you, though. Uh… here, c’mon.” He coaxes the kneazle into the bathroom, fills the tub with three inches of water plus some mild soap, and retreats all the way to his bed, where he can see the tub through the open bathroom door.
The black kneazle sits on the edge of the tub for a while, looking between Harry and the water. Harry pulls out a book and goes back to studying what minerals are good in potions. Theo’s use of sodalite for his enchanted snake’s eyes made Harry wonder why more potions don’t involve stones and the like.
In his peripheral vision, he sees the kneazle, reassured by Peaches on the toilet tank and Blueberry sprawled on the tile floor, slowly descend into the bathtub. A series of splashing, licking, and shuffling sounds herald the kneazle’s attempt to wash itself. Peaches climbs down at one point, presumably to help.
Eventually it climbs back out, wet and clean. Harry transfigures a quill into an extra bowl and sets out three dishes of cat food and one of water.
ooOoo
The kneazle sticks around. Harry names him Wilfred and wonders at the way Peaches seems very taken with him. Selling half-kneazle kittens would be… lucrative. Of course he’d make sure they don’t go anywhere they don’t want to.
ooOoo
Harry haunts the Menagerie, Orford’s Owls, and the Aquarist Paradise for most of the summer. Against his own better judgment (as well as Theo’s) he picks up three toads from the Aquarist—different magical species. The largest, from Colombia, excretes a goo from its pores that’s used in beauty potions. The smaller ones are both desert toads whose croaks cause mild and temporary paralysis. Harry wants to study them.
Of course, then he has to buy two tanks for them, and trick them out with all the right atmospheric charms, spatial expansions, automatic cleaning spells, and environmental features. Each tank can become a really good mimicry of the toads’ natural habitats with enough work. Harry pays for it, this time, but he fully intends to be able to do this for his own creatures someday. So he asks the lady at Specialty Creature Supplies how she does it.
“Runes,” she says. “Runes and enchanting.”
Harry thanks her and runs off to the bookstore.
I’m going to study Enchanting with you so I can learn spatial expansion charms! And Runes, obviously, maybe to a Mastery, and Potions, and Herbology, and obviously Magical Creatures and Beings. I went and looked up what you can learn at the Magieuniversitat in Berlin, he writes to Theo.
Never let it be said you lack Slytherin ambition, was Theo’s typically sarcastic reply.
Neville was more succinct. I’m not sure that’s possible, Harry, but if anyone can pull it off it’s you.
ooOoo
“Oh, hello. Patil, right?”
“Er, yes. Good to see you, Potter.”
Harry eyes the book in Padma Patil’s hands. “I was coming to get that.”
“Well, I got the last copy,” she says stiffly. “You can’t have it.”
“Oh, fine. Let me know how it is, though? They’re not getting in another shipment for at least two weeks. Might not even be before we go back to school. I’ll have to owl order.”
Padma Patil considers this. Then she smiles brilliantly. “Sure thing.”
Which is how he and Padma Patil strike up a pen friendship over Potions.
ooOoo
Flashes litter his vision by the time Harry escapes Lockhart and the photographers.
“Hey, Theo?”
“Yeah?”
“Is that enchanted snake thing working yet?”
“Not yet.”
“Hmm.” Harry picks up his new (iron, size five, good for potions associated with rationality and emotionlessness and protection) cauldron and the books inside it that he still needs to pay for. “Maybe get it going. I’d like to sic it on this bloke.”
“You know, I didn’t quite design it to use on a professor… but if the wand fits.”
ooOoo
Padma joins him and Theo and Neville on the train. She brings with her a chess set, a cat named Lakshmi, and a Hufflepuff named Susan Bones.
“Well met,” says Harry politely, because Bones is an old magical family and Theo has been all but beating him over the head with etiquette books ever since that incident with Pucey last spring that he prefers not to remember. And, he looks, yep, Theo’s staring at him with narrowed eyes as Harry rises and completes the appropriate empty-palms-up half-bow of greeting.
Bones returns the gesture. “Well met. Oooh, is that a kneazle?”
Wilfred hisses at her.
“He’s a stray I took in.” Wilfred, Peaches, and Blueberry are curled up in a multicolored pile of fur on the windowsill. “He still only lets me pet him sometimes. I’m working on it. Here, give him a cat treat.”
Bones takes the cat treats and settles in with single-minded focus to win Wilfred over. Lakshmi, a lovely lithe little tabby, earns Wilfred’s approval much sooner than Bones does, and the cat-pile soon numbers four.
A vicious chess match ensues between Padma and Theo. To her credit, Padma only shrieks a little when Gabby makes an appearance. Harry very firmly tells her no, she cannot eat the little men on the chessboard, he doesn’t care that they look so wriggly and fun to chase.
Silence falls. He looks up and finds everyone gaping at him, except Theo, who just looks tired. “What?”
“You’re a parselmouth,” says Bones.
“I know. I promise I’m not evil, or anything. She wanted to eat the chessmen. I told her no.”
Unexpectedly, Bones laughs.
“I think it’s wonderful,” Padma says. “My great-aunt is a Parselmouth. She teaches healing at the Shambala enclave in Nepal.”
“Epic,” says Harry.
Neville also gets over his nervousness quickly, and while Gabby refuses to go near him, Dash likes how Neville’s hands smell (“like green things”) and consents to be held by Neville for a while before returning to Harry’s pocket.
“I take it you like creatures?” Padma says with a little smirk.
“I love them. I wanted to be a veterinarian when I was little, you know, a Muggle healer for animals, and when I learned about magic I decided I wanted to be a magical creature specialist. I’ll catch the creatures that try to hurt people and heal the ones that get hurt and kill creature smugglers. Did you know there’s dragon farms that kill baby dragons for their heartstrings and scales and stuff? It’s so sad. Good dragon preserves only harvest them when dragons die naturally, and if they all operated like that there’d still be enough for all the wandmakers who use dragon heartstring, and most dragon bits in potions can be passively collected. I mean it’s not like you need to kill dragons for their scales, they shed those naturally!”
He draws breath and realizes he’s been ranting. “Oh, shoot. Sorry.”
“Susan is the same way with magical law,” Padma says drily.
Theo turns on her with interest. “Really.”
Susan smiles like a shark. “I’m going to be Minister one day. I have a list of stupid laws that need to be written off the books and reforms I’m going to pass.”
“I like you,” says Theo.
ooOoo
They don’t all five fit in one carriage, so Harry, Theo, and Neville wave goodbye to the girls before clambering into the first empty one they see. Harry’s cats take up the last spot in the carriage and Wilfred yowls so angrily at a girl who starts to climb inside that she backpedals and goes to the next one in line. Harry laughs and settles Gabby under the collar of his robes so she can’t be seen.
Hmm, maybe he should look into getting more snakes. He can sell their shed skin and milk their venom. In point of fact, maybe Professor Snape would like some adder venom? It’s useful in healing potions and suchlike.
Which reminds him. “Oh, guys, guess what? Professor Snape sent back my paper on the improved version of bruise balm. I ended up using two different kinds of lobster carapace, both the hopping ones from Malaysia and nonmagical ones for balance, and it lasts twice as long now as the normal kind. He sent it back and look!” Harry yanked the scroll in question from his bag and held it out.
Neville unwinds it and frowns. “Harry, it’s like… drowning in red ink. He calls you an idiot three… no, four times, just in this first section.”
“Yes, but look! There, at the bottom.”
“‘Passable first attempt,’” Theo reads. “‘Perhaps after several rounds of editing, it may not be an utter embarrassment. Second draft expected by September fourteenth.’ Oh, wow, good job.”
Neville stares at him. “Are you serious?”
“From Snape, that’s practically glowing praise,” Theo says. “You just have to read between the lines.”
“I hate Slytherins,” Neville sighs.
Harry rides the high of Professor Snape’s instruction right through the horror that is the Welcome Feast with Professor Lockhart beaming from the head table.
ooOoo
As it turns out, Professor Snape is very interested in adder venom, and also other kinds of snake. Harry makes it out like he can talk to wild snakes and collect their venom. Professor Snape probably isn’t fooled, but he has a sort of “don’t screw up and I’ll pretend I don’t see you breaking the rules” attitude towards the more judicious of his Slytherins. Harry is pleased to see he now belongs in this group.
“Oh, Professor? I, uh, I wanted to ask if… if you knew my parents.”
Professor Snape goes very still. “Why do you ask that?”
“Someone mentioned you went to school with them. I don’t really know anything about them. Especially Mum. Everyone says I play quidditch like my dad, and how good he was at Transfiguration, but I’m not anything special at that class and that’s kind of all I know.” The more Harry talks, the less murderous Professor Snape looks, which is… probably a good thing.
Probably. Sometimes, with Slytherins, a calm face is actually a sign of Very Bad Things. Other times it’s actually just a calm face. Professor Snape is the consummate Slytherin, so it’s hard to tell.
“You would be best served following your mother’s example,” Professor Snape says, like every word hurts him a little. “She was—kind, but not especially nice.” Harry nods: that’s a distinction he can appreciate. “Fierce in defense of her friends. She had enormous facility with Charms and Arithmancy, and could have been an incredible enchantress… She was unusually sarcastic, for a Gryffindor, and made an effort to seek friends of all Houses.”
“Thank you, sir.” Harry decides Snape has a good reason for not talking about his dad, and doesn’t push.
Snape looks at him with those cold, cold eyes. Harry feels rather like he is being evaluated and sits very straight.
“Here, Potter.” Snape summons a book from one of his shelves and thrusts it across the table. “It would behoove you to show this book to as few people as possible.”
Artes of the Minde, Harry reads on the cover. “Thanks, sir.”
ooOoo
“Harry! I missed yer!”
“Oh, thanks, Hagrid, missed you too. Want to meet my kneazle?”
Turns out, Wilfred loves Hagrid. Harry tries not to feel jealous and is only vindicated when Wilfred doesn’t hesitate in following him back up to the castle after Harry’s done helping wrap up the leg of a unicorn that strained a tendon. He gets some tail hairs out of it, and promises to research soft-tissue healing potions in case there are any that work on unicorns.
ooOoo
“Professor Snape, have you ever read my mind?”
“Not intentionally.” Professor Snape does not so much as falter in his rhythmic and rapid slicing of hippogriff liver. “Like most children, you lack mental discipline, and most of your surface thoughts are essentially screamed into the ether for any reasonably accomplished legilimens to read purely on accident. Being around any significant number of you dunderheads gives me a crippling headache.”
Oh, that explains why Professor Snape is always so irritable in classes and at feasts. Harry is a good enough Slytherin, however, not to ask outright why the man stays in a job that causes him such pain. “My apologies, sir.”
That does make Professor Snape pause. Albeit briefly. “It is of no consequence. I presume you have been doing the meditative exercises as the book prescribes?”
“Yeah. I mean, yes, sir.” Wait, he can think of a better question. “Is there a reason the school does not teach occlumency? It seems like it would help. The book said it improves memory.”
“There are risks to the study of occlumency that certain powers believe are best avoided by children.”
That’s a not-answer if Harry’s ever heard one. He continues grinding star-blooming lavender while he thinks it through. The risks can’t be too bad if Professor Snape wants him to study it. Harry’s sure by now that Snape doesn’t actually want him dead. He’s had plenty of time to arrange some kind of accident. Occlumency guards the mind—so some people must not want children’s minds guarded.
“Are there any books on it that I could show people?”
Professor Snape offers him the ghost of a hint of a smile, and Harry glows. “I shall provide you with a list.”
ooOoo
Hedwig turns up with an owl order of books a week later. Harry gleefully unpacks them and distributes copies of Occlumency for the Modern Wix to Padma, Susan, Neville, and Theo.
“Ooooh, thanks, Harry, I’ve been wanting to learn but my aunt won’t let me,” Susan says eagerly.
ooOoo
Lockhart sets Cornish pixies on the class. Harry pockets three of them when no one’s looking and turns Hedwig’s cage into a pixie habitat.
“‘They like dense foliage and eat berries, preferably of magical plants’,” he reads. “‘Their wings shed dust that can be collected with an enchantment’... it doesn’t give the spell, though. Theo, want to come to the library?”
“Busy,” Theo says absently. He’s sprawled on his bed, with parchment strewn about covered in maths and diagrams. Two of the Muggle engineering books Harry got him are open in front of him along with a large and ancient tome that looks like something Harry would read with his troll-skin gloves. “But get me a copy of Principles of Flight if you can.”
“That’s in the Restricted Section. Quirrell’s pass expired at the end of last year.”
Theo looks up. “Oh, bollocks. Maybe Vector will write me a pass…”
“I’ve a better idea,” Harry says. “Be back in a bit.”
He turns up at Lockhart’s classroom and endures a thirty-minute lecture on managing fan mail that follows Harry’s request for an autograph. Lockhart doesn’t even look at the standard all-access Restricted Section pass before he signs it with a flourish and a peacock-feather quill.
Harry shows back up in the dorm with a book on Cornish pixies, another one on indoor gardening, a third from the Restricted Section on space expansion charms, and Theo’s book on flight. He also has the pixie dust collection spell written down in the notebook he uses for everything he learns working with Hagrid.
Millicent Bulstrode sees him in the common room and falls into step on the way to the dorm. “What’s that for?”
“A project.”
“On pixies?” She gives him a broad grin.
Harry evaluates her. “Wanna see?”
She does, in fact, want to see.
Theo greets Bulstrode, laughs at Harry’s shiny new all-access library pass, and goes back to his project. Bulstrode helps Harry master the pixie dust charm and confesses that she likes creative writing. By the time she leaves, they’re on a first-name basis and Harry’s almost doubled the space inside his repurposed owl cage as well as gotten it set up to plant ferns, gorse, liverwort, and cowslip inside, all native to Cornwall. Millicent even tips him off that notes left out for the house-elves often get special requests filled for things like magical berries.
ooOoo
Harry tries out for Slytherin seeker, and gets it, much to Malfoy’s ire. He happily owl orders himself a Nimbus 2001 and enjoys his sudden popularity in Slytherin when he decisively wins them the first match against Hufflepuff.
ooOoo
The fourth draft of Harry’s paper on his bruise balm is returned to him with a simple, See me written on it. So Harry does.
He goes back to the dorms afterwards in a daze. “Professor Snape is going to send it to get published,” he says to Theo. “Published! My paper!”
“Congratulations.”
“I’m gonna patent it,” Harry says. “And sell it. He already wants me to see if I can do the same with other kinds of potion. And I found a poultice used on horses’ legs for soft tissue injuries, but I need to adapt it for unicorns for Hagrid, Padma said she’d help, and I’m studying the paralytic toads… hey, d’you think I could order a boomslang egg?”
Theo snorts. “No.”
“Bet Hagrid could.”
“But would he?”
As it turns out, the answer is yes. Harry has a violently green boomslang hatchling within the week, named Achilles because he wants to fight everything he sees.
“Furry monster! Fight!”
“No, Achilles!” Harry pulls the snake back and away from a hissing Blueberry. “That’s Blueberry, a friend of mine. No fighting.”
“Fine.”
This whole little pageant plays out in front of a wide-eyed Theo. Zabini long ago cleared out of the room when he saw Harry playing with his pets. Goyle, who surprisingly thinks the cats are great, is busy getting Peaches to chase a cluster of broken quills tied to a shoelace, and ignoring the snake byplay. Malfoy is God knows where. Probably siccing Crabbe on Weasley or something.
Harry looks at Theo with a brilliant smile. “I’m going to breed boomslangs and sell their skins and venom.”
“You do that,” says Theo faintly. “Oh, hey, can I study one of them? I need to figure out how real snakes move. I can’t get the mechanical one to move right. It just slides around on flat surfaces like marble.”
“Which is a problem for any indoor operation,” Harry guesses. “Yeah, sure. Hey, Dash, mind helping Theo out? He wants to figure out how snakes move.”
Dash climbs out of Harry’s pocket. “Sure. What do I need to do?”
Harry spends a harried afternoon relaying Theo’s instructions to Dash while coaxing cowslip to take root in his pixie cage and also preventing Achilles from trying to eat the pixies. He’s going to need to ward the pixie cage against snakes, obviously. Gabby prefers the mice she catches around the castle but Achilles is a magical snake and magical creatures seem to be the equivalent of snake catnip for him. No matter the pixies are too big for him to actually eat yet.
ooOoo
Snape and Lockhart run a dueling club. Harry already knows expelliarmus and finds the whole exercise kind of boring. Then Lockhart pulls Harry up on stage and sets him against Weasley in a mockery of a duel. Harry disarms the other boy three times in a row and earns fifteen points for Slytherin with the added benefit of pissing Weasley off.
ooOoo
On Samhain, he slips off with Theo. Padma and Susan both come along—they hadn’t known about a group of students doing the traditional holidays in Hogwarts but they’re pleased to follow along. Padma admits she uses a version of a similar ritual important in the practices of Hindu magicals adapted to the British rites so it holds power for both her family magic and the native magic of the Isles.
Harry still doesn’t have a family rite. He tries not to feel bad about it. Again, the meditation brings him an overwhelming sense of love and peace, and the scent of something floral. It’s nice.
Maybe the Potters have family rites somewhere in a vault or… or old house. He’ll have to go find out next time he’s at the bank.
ooOoo
Harry asks Hagrid. Apparently no one knew Cornish pixies had any role as pollinators in the wild.
Achilles, meanwhile, has grown as large as Harry’s forearm and shed his skin four times. Harry wraps up three of the skins for Professor Snape as a Yule present. He figures it’s only appropriate given how much time the wizard has spent reading and rereading Harry’s extracurricular essays.
Picking out and sending off Yule presents is the highlight of his holiday. Harry gets Neville a couple of Muggle books on how to draw plants, and a cutting of a plant he finds in the Forest that looks like Hebridean icewort but blooms white instead of blue. Harry couldn’t get it to take to a pot, he says in his included note, but maybe Neville can. For Theo, he owl orders a build-your-own-gyrocopter kit plus a thin codex on flight-related charms. Padma gets a tonic Harry spent a week making of different essential oils and herbs, Colombian toad goop, and powdered boomslang skin—So your hair and skin don’t get dry this winter, he writes. He takes a risk and orders Millicent a bunch of short story anthologies from a Muggle bookstore, again with the assistance of Justin Finch-Fletchley of Hufflepuff.
Harry doesn’t know what Justin likes but figures he should get him a thank-you gift too, at this point, which he fulfills in a set of luxury quills from Scrivenshaft’s.
Susan is the hardest to shop for, but Harry eventually settles on drop earrings of quartz and citrine for clear thoughts and intellectual curiosity, set in gold, for vitality and life. They’re so nice he considers getting his own ears pierced. He’s seen loads of older boys sporting earrings in one or both ears—it doesn’t seem to be the taboo here that it is for male Muggles.
Ron Weasley again tries to stalk him in the days approaching Yule. Harry manages to escape him by heading out to spend the mornings with Hagrid, tromping through the snowy forest, and then sneaking back to the dungeons, where he works on a healing poultice for unicorns. Turns out using any unicorn ingredients makes it totally fail on live ones. Who knows why.
ooOoo
Yule morning, Harry wakes up to piles of presents in the Slytherin common room. Only a few of his House mates have stayed on for the holiday—Elide Gambol, the next youngest after Harry, shares her peppermints with him, to Harry’s delight.
Having presents of his own hasn’t gotten old yet and he doubts it ever will. Harry drools over a fully tricked out tank containing two breeding pairs of magical opal axolotls, which are extinct in the wild. Their white skin shimmers with shades of blue, green, violet, and even red as they dart through the water and plants in their tank. He’s going to get Theo something extra. Chocolates, maybe. Theo loves chocolate.
Neville sends him a traveling herbologist kit: it looks like a quaffle-sized box with a handle, but when you open it, it expands to show a hydroponic growing system with built-in water purifying and sunlight charms that work as long as you refresh the water once a week and keep the box somewhere with high ambient magic. It’s suitable for growing the kinds of basic healing herbs Harry will probably use a lot and he loves it.
From Padma, he receives a map of the world spelled so that if you tap your wand on any country or region, it zooms in and shows a list of the magical creatures native to that area. Harry immediately resolves to put it up on the inside of his trunk lid, so every time he opens it, the map is visible. He suspects she coordinated with Susan, who’s got him a book about the laws related to moving magical creatures and their byproducts between different countries. Best to know the rules in case you have to break them, she’s written cheerfully on the inside of the cover.
“I love my friends,” Harry says dreamily. Gambol gives him a weird look.
Millicent picked out a state-of-the-art broom care kit from Gambol & Jape, who make a variety of all-purpose supplies for wixen. Elide Gambol takes one look at it and smirks. “Someone’s got good taste.”
“You’d know,” Harry says, pointedly looking at the bottle of Sleakeazy hair potion she’s just unwrapped. She laughs.
There’s two presents left. Harry finds that one of them is from Professor Snape and consists of an old copy of Experimental Potions absolutely jam packed with annotations in the Professor’s spiky hand and a caustic admonishment to not blow off your hands tucked inside the cover. He carefully sets it next to him and turns to the last gift.
This one is… weird. There’s no wrapping paper, just a long wooden box… no bow, come to think of it, nor card. Just a note held on the top with a sticking charm labeled To Harry Potter.
Okay…
Harry runs through the gamut of detection charms he knows. Gambol helps out. Neither of them turn up anything, so Harry carefully opens the box. It has hinges along one long side and the top flips open to reveal a scroll resting on crushed velvet and sealed with a very familiar crest.
Immediately, he snaps the box shut.
“Unpleasant gift?” Gambol says curiously.
“Just private,” Harry says with a grin.
Quickly, he collects his presents, packing most of them into his bag and delicately levitating the axolotl tank and scroll box in front of him on the way back to his dorm. It’s a good thing he had a compartment added to his trunk for transporting things like the toad and axolotl tanks. Even Achilles has a spot in there, since Harry doesn’t want to risk the venomous snake getting into a fight on the train or something. Gabby talks a big game but really she’s too lazy to bite anyone unless very provoked. Achilles… not so much.
The compartment will be full with the axolotl tank, though. Harry’ll have to figure a more permanent situation by this summer. He can’t exactly keep a cage full of Cornish pixies on his desk at the Dursleys.
Well, actually, with Dudley’s cooperation, maybe he can. Dudley will probably love evil pixies that can lift people up by the ears.
But that’s a problem for another day. He stops procrastinating and pulls out the scroll.
Using charms only, he cracks the seal and spreads it out. His incredulity grows as he reads.
It’s a neutrality contract between Hadrian Iacomus Evans Potter and one Tom Marvolo Riddle, Lord Gaunt. Harry reads the fine print and figures out exactly who Tom Marvolo Riddle is.
Then he reads the whole contract again in much more detail. And a third time.
Merlin and Morgana, he’s not qualified to figure out if this is a good idea! Lord Gaunt (the fucking Dark Lord) already signed it. A small explanation rolled inside the contract scroll explains that when both parties have signed, it’ll be accepted by Magic and a copy will go on file with Gringotts. Because it’s written on Gringotts parchment, there’s no possibility of hidden clauses, outright lies, invisible ink, or other such trickery. Also, if either one of them breaks it, per the contract terms the violator loses their magic forever.
Not that Harry trusts the explanation that came with the contract. He dashes off a quick letter to Susan and tries not to sound too panicked.
ooOoo
Helpfully, Susan answers the next day, explaining that yes, Gringotts parchments do work like that and yes, there’s a spell to tell you if it is Gringotts parchment and yes, here’s a sheet of blank Gringotts parchment to practice on. Harry does the spell over and over for an hour until he’s absolutely sure he’s doing it right every time and then casts it on the contract.
Which glows silver. Okay, it’s authentic.
He pens a reply.
Lord Gaunt,
I admit your Yule missive took me by surprise. The use of a Gringotts-enforced contract is appreciated, but I hope that you will understand I need some time to consider, especially given my age and inexperience with things like this. That said, I firmly agree with the sentiment and would much rather study magical creatures than get caught up in another war.
My owl will wait a day in case you wish to reply. We’re quite close and she seems to have gained intelligence from being around magic all the time.
Yours in magic,
Hadrian Iacomus Evans Potter
And how sad is it that he’s had to learn his full name from Lord effing Voldemort? Harry resolves to go to Gringotts for a proper meeting with somebody about his vault as soon as possible.
Hedwig gives him a funny look when Harry hands her the letter, but she only nips his ear once when he instructs her to hang around for a day in case of reply, which means she can’t disapprove too badly.
ooOoo
Mr. Potter,
As I have no more desire than yourself to continue this hostility between us, you may take until the summer solstice to consider the contract. It is my hope that you will accept. Any Slytherin worth the name understands when it is time for deceit and when it is time for honest dealing; this, I believe, is the latter.
Your facility with magical study impressed me last year. Have you given any more consideration to unorthodox applications of potions in magical combat? In my experience, those of us raised outside the magical world often have… shall we say, a fresh eye for magic compared to those who grew up surrounded by it. We are less limited by preconceived notions.
The artifact I recovered last year has proven of immense value. Many things are clearer than they once were, and if it impacts your decision regarding the contract, I do not intend to continue as I was. The events which brought the war to a halt were tragic and wholly unnecessary. Too much magical blood was spilled; too much talent and progress lost. Mistakes were made that I regret and will not repeat.
Yours in magic,
Lord Gaunt
ooOoo
Harry spends the rest of the holiday distracting himself with his new pets. The axolotls (he names the males Lapis and Garnet and the females Jade and Amethyst for their jewel-toned shimmery colors) are fascinating to watch, especially when they hunt the bloodworms and fire-snails he releases into the tank for them.
Achilles threatens to eat them and Harry finally hunts down a snake ward to put around the pixie cage and axolotl tanks. It’s based on runes, because of course it is, which takes three days of intensive studying to learn to cast.
But when he’s done, his pets are safe from the angry boomslang, and he has a new ingredient (“Opal axolotl tails!”) to show Professor Snape, since they lose and regrow their tails every few months.
Dash’s new favorite food is American singing cicadas and Peaches is pregnant with what Harry is quite sure are her and Wilfred’s kittens. Also, Wilfred scratches the living hell out of Weasley when he corners Harry outside the Great Hall one day after breakfast.
Harry relates the incident in his next reply to Lord Voldemort, and the letter he gets back compliments him on earning the loyalty of such a notoriously picky creature, which prompts Harry to ask if Lord Voldemort knows anything about magical boomslangs.
It’s a productive holiday.
ooOoo
“Hey, Theo, I need you to look something over.”
Theo rolls his eyes. “If it’s some potions treatise—”
“Just read it.” Harry thrusts the parchment under his nose.
As Theo reads, his eyes about bug out of his head, Slytherin mask totally gone. “Harry…”
“I know. Just tell me if it’s… on the level.”
“Give me a bit.”
ooOoo
Theo tells him the contract is totally fine as far as he can tell. Harry dithers.
When Hedwig next turns up bearing a letter with a plain seal, Harry cracks it in his dorm, revealing a second envelope sealed with the Slytherin crest. Theo pales when he sees it. “You’re… corresponding with him?”
“I… guess? He asked me about the thing I first asked him about, weird uses of potions in defense, last year, and now we’re talking about caring for magical snakes, and oh, here.” Harry digs out the first letter he got back. “That last paragraph. I think you were right about the Stone healing him. At least I think that’s what he’s saying.”
“I think you’re right. Merlin, Harry… this could change everything.”
ooOoo
Harry’s paper gets published in Potions Quarterly’s section for contributions from young potioners, under his name and Professor Snape’s. Dumbledore calls Harry up to his office.
“Is this really the best use of your time, my boy?”
“What do you mean, sir? I like potions a lot. Making the paste was fun.”
“Well, Harry, there are some things you may wish to know about Professor Snape…”
Which is how Harry learns Snape was a Death Eater.
He doesn’t know what to do now. Except obviously Dumbledore wants him to not trust Snape, and Harry doesn’t trust Dumbledore, especially now that his limited occlumency picked up on something more than Snape’s use of passive legilimency while he was in that office. He’d trust Snape, except Dumbledore thinks Snape turned spy and he seems hard to fool, so maybe Snape’s not trustworthy after all, except Voldemort also seems hard to fool so who knows who Snape’s really working for?
Best to just avoid the problem.
Harry keeps talking to Snape about potions.
ooOoo
The unicorn healing poultice works wonders the next time a foal turns up with a swollen fetlock. Harry makes a huge batch of it with his lobster-carapace shelf life extension and gives it to Hagrid.
ooOoo
Harry braces himself, picks up his favorite quill, and signs Voldemort’s contract on the empty line.
The whole parchment glows silver. He knows now there’s a copy in his Gringotts vault, a copy in Voldemort’s, and a copy for Voldemort himself. This is Harry’s personal copy.
Already he feels lighter.
ooOoo
The rest of the year passes pretty uneventfully. All his extra studying makes Charms and Potions exams a breeze. Everyone is delighted when some unspecified accident lands Lockhart in the long-term care ward of St. Mungo’s. It’s less delightful when Snape is tapped to write the end of year DADA exams.
Those are brutal.
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