Disclaimer: None of this is mine.
A/N: Nothing much to say. Thanks to those that reviewed and favoured the first chapter.
Let's get to it.
Trophies and Dogs
The scene I found myself in would be considered most bizarre, if I'd been of a keen enough mind to pay attention to such things at the time.
Ron stood beside me, bleeding from his nose and mouth onto the floor of the Headmaster's office. He looked ready to fight. Rave. Rage. And in a way it was all for me. Had been for me. The blood. The countenance. Every last bit of his defiance.
Loyalty was a blessed thing, though we often realize that too late. Or maybe that's just me. I should have realized back then that he'd walk with me into the fires of hell and back.
Dumbledore, taking one look at the boy, had set his nose straight with a wave of his wand. It did little to conceal the terrible look in Ron's eyes, amplified by the sputter of blood that had dripped onto his robes and the whiteness of his skin.
He looked like a corpse walking. Nothing like the usual demeanour of the eleven-year-old boy he was.
This, I felt, was serious.
Behind us, ready to yank us by our throats into submission should we prove defiant, stood the still-livid Snape, his breath hot and terrifying on our necks.
Off to the side – with Marcus Flint acting as a silent, dumbfounded spectator in between – stood Crabbe and Goyle, supporting a whimpering Draco Malfoy that had just been awoken to stand trial – or act as witness, I suppose.
Snape had been busy, building a case against Ron and me, although mainly me.
"He's a danger to the rest of the students, Headmaster," he said, voice barely above a whisper. There was intent in his eyes, passion. Hatred. Why did he hate me so? "Barely more than a week into school and already he's stepped into his father's shadow. You cannot keep him here. Not in good conscious."
Dumbledore, who had been paying nothing but polite attention to Snape, now looked at me. Really, really looked at me. Searching. There was a gleam of honest, good-natured curiosity, but it was far outweighed by something else. Something powerful, something magical. Then he looked back at Snape with that same polite attention, motioning with his hand for him to continue.
"And what, Severus, do you recommend? Harry and Mr Weasley are, after all, students of your house."
Snape breathed – with pleasure. "Expulsion would be the appropriate response."
"You can't be serious!" Ron cried, red-hot fury blinding his sense of self-preservation in a moment of madness. "It was Malfoy who sta-"
"Ten points…" Snape cut in silkily, somehow breaking Ron's train of words apart, "from Slytherin, Mr Weasley."
Okay. I swallowed dry, stale air. Okay. I didn't think anyone could have ever concocted a situation where Snape would relish the opportunity to take off house-points from Slytherin.
The game had changed. No certainties, it seemed, were left.
"A clear disregard for authority," Snape continued, "a penchant for rule-breaking… cursing students, putting them on verge of death-"
"I did no such thing!" I said, before I could stop my thought-process. This was a fuckin' train wreck still in motion. "Malfoy was never in any danger – the spell-"
"Shut up, Potter!" Snape snarled, and I shut my mouth as if he'd spelled it so, wide-eyed. There had been utter, utter malice in his voice. Like he'd wanted nothing more than to see me gone from the face of the Earth. Like I was but a mere reminder of something he'd rather pretend didn't exist. Something stung in the back of my eyes, and I found myself, to my horror, fighting tears from breaking free.
"As I was saying…" Snape gave me one last look; he wore a peculiar sort of smile. Satisfaction. Relish. I don't know what; I couldn't stand looking at him. "A clear disregard for authority. I cannot tolerate such behaviour from one of my students. I demand him banished from Hogwarts. Indefinitely."
There was a silence. It stretched ominously into a soundless scream of noise… and then someone broke the spell and huffed with indignation.
"Really, Severus, the boy has barely been here a week and already you've made yourself judge, jury and executioner of the boy's fate. Do the agony of the past truly cut so deep?"
"You shouldn't speak of things you don't understand, Minerva."
"Someone has to speak sense here."
"You have no part in this."
McGonagall stepped up beside me, dragging a slightly confused and deeply mortified Neville Longbottom with her; why the Gryffindor of our year was even here I couldn't fathom. But the turn of the conversation coloured me intrigued. The agony of the past sounded deliciously mysterious.
"Have you even seen him perform a piece of magic, Severus? Do you have any idea what kind of talent your house is sitting on?" She gestured to Dumbledore, who just sat there, inquisitive and nonchalant, staring at the proceedings happening in his office like it was an everyday occurrence. Like he'd been sitting there all day waiting for this. "That kind of talent, Snape… That… kind."
She was pointing straight at Dumbledore.
Snape almost – almost – blanched at the notion.
"Surely, you can't mean-"
"I do. Have you even seen him holding a wand? He holds it like he's done it for decades. You know how most children are with a wand. Like a toddler trying to run before learning to walk. He's not just gifted, Severus. He possess a natural affinity I've only seen in one other student… Fifty years ago. You're aware of whom I'm referring to, of course."
Snape nodded. Intrigued. And, if my eyes didn't deceive me, afraid. Just the smallest measure revealed.
Fear.
Fear.
What fear?
Fear of what? Of whom?
"You can't keep him from magic…" She cast her eyes briefly, tentatively, at Dumbledore. "Just as we couldn't have kept him away…"
Snape found his composure.
"So according to you, a remarkable propensity for Transfiguration and curses is adequate justification for putting another student's life at risk?"
"We're here to teach! Not judge on the feuds of first year students."
"They must learn that their actions has consequences!"
"Yes, but not unreasonably so!" McGonagall, and she must have found it strange to be defending a Slytherin against Snape, wore a mixture of shock and anger in her eyes. "By your standards, you yourself wouldn't have made it past your first year! Or have you forgotten what you were like? We can't predict the future. What our students will become. We can only guide them in this moment. In this school."
"Enough."
The voice, oh so softly spoken, broke the argument asunder. Startled, I turned my eyes to the owner of the voice.
Albus Dumbledore.
I breathed deeply, steadily; I remembered the sense of old magic that had sent tingles down my spine when I'd entered Ollivander's shop.
Dumbledore had just laid claim to the air in much the same manner. Polite. Nonchalant. Powerful. There was a poised elegance in the way he held himself, robes deep purple, wand held loosely, delicately, between his gnarled fingers, twirling it absentmindedly. His control – and, yeah, he was in control – was immaculately wielded and clear to everyone in the room.
Or it should have been, I thought.
Snape must have been a particular arrogant fool, for he dared to speak up in that moment, speak up against this wizard.
"Headmaster." He cast a loathly eye my way, but I'd found strength in Dumbledore's interference and glared back. "Potter nearly killed Mr Malfoy, suffocating him – at least it will be perceived that way by… outside forces. Failing to respond – with any kind of response – will leave you open to… counter-measures."
Counter-measures?
"Your concern warms my heart, Severus," Dumbledore said unconcernedly. "But let me concern myself about the Hogwarts Board of Governors. Harry and Mr Malfoy's altercation, though upsetting, of course, is hardly something worthy of greater scrutiny."
Ron's eyes boggled beside me, masking none of his disbelief. I managed, impossibly, to keep my show of incredulity to a minimum.
Snape wasn't so easily cowered, though.
"Headmaster, I implore you, Potter deserves-"
"I cannot nor will I ever agree to the expulsion of first-year students for something as banal as an occurrence of magical misadventures – young student, as you're aware of, Severus, has been known to find their powers… unpredictable, when provoked."
Snape looked beyond reason, beyond fury, beyond all thoughts of rationale. His skin had grown a sickly pale, contrasting fetidly with his dirty black hair.
"Misadventures? The spell Potter used was entirely deliberate; it was premeditated use of a dangerous curse that, if butchered, could have had far more lasting effects than what it did."
"Which I am sure will be chiefly upon Harry's mind the next time he discovers an enticing new bit of magic." Dumbledore peered at me over his half-moon glass. I had the feeling he was seeing right through me, skimming through all that I ever was and all that I'd ever be. I could merely nod in response. "Good. Very good. See, Severus, without the Headmaster's approval, no student of Hogwarts can be expelled. And I assure you, on this matter you do not have my consent. Mistakes are an inevitable part of growing up. And from those mistakes we must encourage growth of character."
I had a feeling that if you were not on the right side of Dumbledore's sight, he could be really annoying. Bordering on condescending. At this moment, I was mighty fond of him.
"You… you won't assign any… any kind of punishment, then." There was resignation in Snape's eyes. But there was also defiance. The latter I found troubling.
"On the contrary," Dumbledore began, voice light, though the mask he wore on his face was anything but good-natured. "Events of this night – events that I perhaps should have foreseen – have lent a light with which we might decipher the future. No actions taken in this moment would resolve in a very bleak future, I think. I've had a couple of our house-elves prepare a new dormitory for Mr Weasley and Harry."
"You have what?" It was McGonagall that had spoken; Snape, in a stupor of what looked like sheer shock, seemed incapable of articulation.
"One of the room used for the housing of muggleborns in the past."
Ron looked like Christmas had come months too early.
Snape – well, Snape found his voice.
"You… that – you cannot do that! That's not punishment! The boy's delinquency must be punished. Headmaster!" It seemed Snape was making one final mad pursuit in what he called justice. "Skipping classes! Leaving books sprawled all over the library!"
I must admit I winced a little at every point of our long list of mishaps. And to think we'd only been at it for half-a-day.
"Roaming the castle in the middle of the night! Instigating duels! Harming students! Lying! Cursing!"
"I would have thought that you, Severus, of all people would understand just what kind of punishment forced isolation can be. Believe me, this is not something I do lightly. But I feel actions to the contrary – or no actions at all – would be a grave error of judgement on my behalf. Unless, of course…" He turned his eyes on the four Slytherins off to the side of the office, standing below a long row of past Headmasters. "Is it your wish, Mr Malfoy, to continue to share a dormitory with Harry and Mr Weasley?"
Malfoy, sickly pale, shook his head negatively. Frantically. "No – sir…" It looked like there was more on his mind, but the words eluded him.
Dumbledore beamed.
"Ah! Very good! Very good indeed." The jovial tone of the Headmaster's voice, coupled with Malfoy's sickly confusion, almost had me laughing outright. "One of the rooms that served the muggleborns of the past will be made inhabitable at once." He turned to Ron and I. "Your belongings, I imagine, will have been relocated upon your return."
Snape, one last acidly livid look at Dumbledore, then at me, turned about and made for the staircase, gathering Malfoy, Crabbe, Goyle and Flint on the way with a rough motion of his arm. Ushering them out, he stopped on the threshold and looked back.
"A hundred points will be taken from Slytherin."
"A hundred!" Ron repeated hollowly. I felt punched to the gut; we'd be shunned in our house for good if they found out we'd cost them a hundred points. "That would put us below zero…"
"A hundred points – from each of you." Snape smirked cruelly, and it was perhaps the closest thing to a snake's smile I'd ever seen. Malevolent. Acrid. Filled with dark pleasure. A terrible, vindictive smile. "And I think a bulletin will be placed in the common room, stating who's to blame and why… just to clear any confusion that might arise."
Shunned? No. We were dead.
And then Snape, with one last smirk, left us to our silence, claiming victory in the end.
Dumbledore looked sorrowful for a moment, but when he spoke, his voice was steadfast but not unkind.
"I think it wise, Mr Weasley, Harry, should you wish not to attend classes tomorrow that you perhaps might take the day off. Have a lie in as they say. You have my permission."
Ron, palsy white, stayed silent, looking at the floor as if committing its every detail to memory.
"Thank you, professor," I muttered, unable to look at anybody in the room. It wasn't even because I was particularly filled with guilt. Dread. Yes, dread took up a good chunk of my being, dread of the future for obvious reasons, but that wasn't it, either.
It was that there was just… nothing there. At all. The stress and the adrenaline that came with the night had left me. There was nothing left to feel, preparing for the duel, practicing curses and shields, duelling Malfoy, the horror of – fuck the horror! – of seeing Malfoy falling, falling, falling… Snape finding us, yanking us along the darkened corridors by invisible ropes with his wand, finding us under the judgemental eyes of what seemed like hundreds of paintings in the Headmaster's office.
The Headmaster's office!
I was drained, completely knackered. Spent.
"Good, good." Dumbledore turned to McGonagall and Longbottom – I breathed a sigh of relief as the attention of the room shifted – and watched as Longbottom became quite still, looking like he was waiting for the right moment to make his escape. "I'm terribly sorry, Mr Longbottom, that you had to witness this spectacle. Severus can be a… proud man at times. What are you business here?"
"I – I – slept, sir," he stammered.
"Sorry?" Dumbledore said, slightly confused. "You slept? Seems perfectly natural given the hour, my boy."
"No, I – I forgot the password…"
Dumbledore, blue eyes twinkling merrily, turned to McGonagall.
She was brisk and to the point. Not at all amused.
"I caught the boy sleeping in corridor outside the Gryffindor common room. Apparently he forgot the password after being released from the Hospital Wing earlier this evening."
Ron tried gallantly to hide his cackles, choking it in his mouth. Everybody heard him; Neville deflated in on himself.
Dumbledore smiled kindly. "Ah yes – forgetfulness happens to us all, I fear. Why, there was once a time where I could have sworn my robes-"
"Professor Dumbledore!" McGonagall cried, wide-eyed, covering at Neville's ears.
My curiosity thwarted my dread, but it seemed Dumbledore remembered himself. Blinking, he looked round his office as if unsure what was wrong.
"Inappropriate audience?"
"Yes – by Merlin…"
Ron and I shared a look, and I was happy to find I wasn't the only one who seemed to have missed whatever it was McGonagall seethed at.
"Very well," Dumbledore said. He turned to me, serious all of a sudden. "I imagine professor Snape's gone by now, Harry. If I may leave you with a parting advise, I'd recommend you head straight to your common room. Please do not stray off course any further tonight and stay out of trouble."
"Yes, sir. Thank you, sir – thank you."
Dumbledore nodded, then turned to Neville. "All right, Mr Longbottom. Let's see if we…"
Ron and I left in silence, walking the halls and corridors of this magical place with raw exhaustion. It had been a long night, as mentioned; the clock was well-beyond two closing in on three, and in a few hours the castle would be bustling with renewed life.
Moonlight dressed Hogwarts up all prettily, caressing her elderly corridors with a soft touch, but my adolescent mind found no wonder and awe forthcoming as I skipped past the Entrance Hall, heading towards the staircase that would lead us to the Dungeons.
"Potter! Weasley!"
Ron, groaning, turned to behold the person approaching us. When we recognized the person, Ron was caught by a mild dose of giggles again, the strange tale of misfortune still faintly amusing.
Neville Longbottom came to a halt before us, slightly out of breath from his run.
"Did you get the password, then?" I reached for a compassionate tone of voice, but found only tired amusement. Neville ducked in embarrassment, but I was too damn weary to care.
"Is – is it true?" Neville stammered, ignoring my question.
"You'd have to be more specific, mate?" Ron drawled, leaning against the railing of the marble staircase.
"Did you really… duel with Malfoy?"
"And his goons and Flint, yes," Ron said with an indifferent tone of voice one would only use if they tried to play nonchalant about something they were immensely proud about. "But one could hardly call it a duel."
Neville, indecision clear in his features, finally cracked and slammed himself into Ron, who was nearest, hugging him.
"Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!"
I blinked, surprised, then snickered at Ron's gobsmacked expression. I knew Malfoy had been especially vicious towards Longbottom, but this response alluded to something more vicious that might have happened between the two.
"Yeah, eh, mate – could you let go now?"
He leaped off Ron as if he'd caught fire, his face crimson. Ron looked sort of odd, his face caught in contemplation.
I wanted to see my bed.
"Look, I'm sorry – Longbottom, was it?" He nodded in response. "Right. Look, we're in enough trouble as it is – as you no doubt realize – and we need to get back to our common room. Tomorrow – god, Ron-" I turned to Ron, sharing my dread with my eyes as I began walking off, "-tomorrow's gonna be absolute hell!"
"Goodnight, Longbottom," Ron said, following me as I'd already left Neville behind. "Say hi to my brothers, will you?"
"Yes. I will. Thank you. And thank you! Please, if you ever need…"
We descended the stairs and left behind the remnants of Longbottom sentences in the cold moonlight of the ground-floor. Down here, in the dark, where corridors became dungeons, where the air grew stale and dank, where only torches of fiery light illuminated our path in a stark contrast of trembling shadows, we found the path leading home. And soon we found ourselves in front of an inconspicuous black stonewall – the contents of which were strictly forbidden for anyone not a member of the Slytherin house.
"Pureblood," Ron announced to it, looking to the heavens above with disgust. "As if that'd be hard to guess. They might as well put up a sign, saying – wait, Fred and George!"
"What about them?" I asked.
"I dunno. I think I've got a plan."
Ron looked to be scheming and I didn't inquire, and together we entered the common room. It was, I admit, a rather grand place, if not with a slightly malicious nature. It was a lengthy, underground room consistent of stonewalls and ceiling, from which there hung round lamps illuminating the room with a dark greenish colour.
At the end of the corridor there was a fireplace in which a fire crackled merrily despite the gloomy surroundings. Above it, elaborately cut, hung a mantelpiece with a meticulous painting of a snake adorning it. In its eye were an emerald that shone with an inner-light.
On either side of the mantelpiece were two double-clipped corner windows that favoured us with a view of the lake from beneath its surface. Through the one on the left you could see what looked like an underwater cave outside our dormitory, a black hole of a mouth swallowing light and water pointing directly at the windows.
Ron and I had already discussed what it might be and ways in which we could dive down and explore it; we imagined there must be endless ways with magic.
For now it stayed just a fine thought.
The fine-cut and deeply uncomfortable chairs that littered the floor of the common room were all vacated. I wondered, casting a glance at the only painting of our common room, off to the left-hand side, opposite the direction of the boys and girls dormitories, if Malfoy and his friends had already been through here.
My eyes stayed on the painting, fascinated. It moved, of course, all paintings of Hogwarts did, but this one not so much. It never spoke. It depicted a very pale, very ugly old man with a faint, thin white beard that reached the man's waist and a balding scalp.
Rumour had it that this was Salazar Slytherin himself. What became of him before his death. Ron and I agreed that it was a preposterous thought, but had nonetheless vowed to find a curse that could burn through its protective charms one day – you know, just for educational purposes, of course.
"Oi!"
I turned to Ron's surprised gasp. There stood a little creature upon one of the chairs, a house-elf, and waited expectantly for our attention.
"I am to take Mr Weasley and Mr Harry Potter to their dormitory," it said with a clipped edge. Professional. Nothing alike the ones I'd met a couple of hours earlier in the kitchen.
I smiled, tired. This day was, at last, nearing its end.
"Thank you, little guy."
"Dumbledore's…"
"Awesome," Ron breathed, awed, "And barmy, of course. But totally awesome."
We were lying in our beds. Our dormitory, judging by the view offered by the only window in the room, was a couple of floors higher than the common room. Which I thought a bit strange when you considered the fact that we'd descended stairs to reach it. It was like we were a part of a rickety, underwater turret, for I could even see the twin windows of the common room a little ways down, off to the side, a flickering, fiery light pulsing through the glass.
Our room was rather sparse. We had two beds, both of which had green and silver silk hangings. A small bedside table, on which Ron had placed his wand and I had placed my glasses, stood in between our beds. A small, oval mirror, just big enough to reflect a single eye, surmounted the bedside table. Small Slytherin crests and snake-like markings beset the grey walls. Ron had already declared that we needed to find a way to change that, to liven up the place.
I quite agreed, considering we had to spend the next seven years here, but right now I just wanted to sleep. And yet I couldn't; there was something about the room, the legacy of it, which deeply nagged at me.
"Ron – what did Dumbledore mean when he described this as one of the muggleborn rooms?"
Ron sighed, shifting in his bed to look at me. "I dunno. Or I hope I don't know, I guess. I have an idea."
"What?"
"You have to understand…" Ron began, then paused, searching for the words. "The Pureblood bigotry isn't a great part of our history. It wasn't until the last fifty years or so it really – how did my dad explain it? – grabbed hold in the general population, even more so when You-Know-Who came into power. Purebloods saw it as an easy way to gain favours and power in our society… I don't know; I think that's how my dad said it."
Ron paused, gathering his thoughts; there was a lot to make sense of.
"During the war with You-Know-Who, muggleborns weren't exactly welcome in Slytherin – for obvious reasons. If muggleborns have a hard time today here – and most of them do, we now know – then imagine how they must have had it back when everything was going on." Ron glanced around the room. "I think Dumbledore would have made these rooms to protect them from their housemates. Bill said the rumours of their treatment still ran around while he went to Hogwarts. Rumours about how muggleborns were treated back then." Ron actually shuddered at the thought. "It wasn't pretty. Nothing were back then."
"So even Hogwarts was involved in the war with Vol – sorry, Ron! – with You-Know-Who?
Ron nodded. "Everybody were in some ways from what I hear. You might not like the way people look at you, and I understand – I really do – but there's a reason they look at you the way they do. You changed their lives. You changed all our lives. You saved us. To those that fought against him, my dad says you'll always hold a special place in their hearts. Gratitude, he calls it."
Later that night, when sleep found Ron a willing victim, I laid in bed, staring at my wand, recalling with the kind of perfect clarity only regret can bring along, what with this stick of wood I could wrought.
Was I awed? Yes. Was I afraid? Yes, though not as much as I should have been. The thing about a young mind is that it's almost never capable of imagining all the ways in which it can corrupt itself.
And I was corruptible. Susceptible.
Magic was capable of greatness. And as I recalled Ollivander's words when I purchased my wand, when I contemplated the strange sorting I'd partaken, I understood that I, because of magic, was in possession of that same capacity for greatness.
And, shit, but that scared me. I'd never even considered being great – never even considered pursuing it – when I first received my letter from Hagrid. When I met Ron, a weight had fallen from my shoulder and it was like all I could have asked for had already been given me.
But now…
Malfoy, trembling under my wand…
Oh. Well.
The world would still stand tomorrow.
The sun would rise.
Malfoy was gonna be fine.
Damn it.
I yielded.
Barely perceptible disgust filled me as I gave in to the deeper emotion that was there… in my hearts of heart… the one I'd locked away until now… fascination. Satisfaction. There was a power in that show of skilled dominance. A raw power I had enjoyed wielding – in the face of Malfoy and his friends, my skills were unequalled.
Albus Dumbledore.
A sigh. Damn it all to hell.
And now I laid there, in my new bed, in my new home, wondering if Dumbledore had seen through the insecurity to the more sinister emotion breeding just beneath the surface. The enjoyment.
No, I told myself, gripping my wand tightly and turning over in my bed, the fact of the matter remained. As it must. I didn't enjoy it. I didn't! There was no real gratification from my enjoyment – no catharsis of emotions.
But there was understanding.
I was alone. Beset, it seemed, on all sides. By Snape. By Malfoy. The only people that had shown me any kind of good will, and that had been limited, were people from other houses. Friendliness? Hardly. Eagerness. Yes. Curiousness? Yeah. There had been a lot of that – a lot of craned looks around corners. But that was not strange, given the impossibility of my past.
Scholars had written books of theories about that night, about me, about what in particular that set me so apart. What made my existence beyond the age of one a possibility? No concrete answer, as far as I could gather, had arisen in any research. How they'd made their research without ever consoling me was beyond me, but that wasn't a thought worth chasing at the moment.
Of course! Of course I was gonna be looked upon differently. I was different. How had I survived, when my parents had died, like so many before them, to Voldemort's wand?
And there came a certain expectancy with my past, with my fame. When I'd performed well in class, outmatching everybody with an ease that both frighten and exhilarated me, people only looked on like it was something they had expected all along. Envious expectancy.
I was, however, wrong about one thing. As the snores reminded me, I wasn't alone anymore.
I had Ron.
Sighing, I ducked into my bag and fished out my list of Duel Spells, knowing that sleep wouldn't find me for quite a while.
Twirling my wand, a light bursting at the tip, I skimmed the pages.
As Dumbledore requested, I slept in. As did Ron.
Blessedly, none came to wake us up. Most likely because no one knew where to find us.
I swung my legs out of my bed, grabbed my glasses, and went to the loo.
My memories of yesterday seemed befuddled, coming to me like they belonged to another mind. There was a distorted sequence of events, all of it muddled into one large package of misdeeds. Discerning one episode from another was a daunting task. So much had happened.
Oh, and there was also a crack in the mirror. Staring into the face of an eleven-year-old Harry Potter, a crack broke my face into two elongated faces, lower and upper, jaw and forehead, comically stretched.
"Ron!" I shouted, noting I'd left the door ajar. My wand was pointing at the mirror, awaiting the information from Ron. "How do you repair things?"
There was an eloquent groan coming from the dormitory.
"Merlin – what time is it?"
"Late."
"Ah – bloody hell, Harry, I don't remember. I'm sure it makes sense once you hear it, though."
I furrowed my brow, wacked the mirror with my wand and intoned, "Repair."
Nothing.
I sighed, pausing in my train of thoughts. Repairing. Mending. I considered the broken glass in front of me. Considered its function, its shape… Gliding my hand over it, I even considered the feel of it.
At the best of times, magic could be damn intricate. Spells were meant to aid the wizard or witch, focusing their intent into a concrete result, making a focal point for our wills to bend reality. But even in my younger days, I instinctually knew that magic wasn't so intricate, and it wasn't so simple, and that it was not merely tied down to knowing the right spell for the job.
And if that doesn't confuse you, then you're either smarter than me, lying to yourself, or not paying attention.
Bear with me. Please. Magic leaves a print. A trace. A feeling you can pursue with the right frame of mind. That frame of mind, though, a state of non-being, casting your mind beyond this realm, is impossible for most to obtain. You cannot train your mind for this type of clarity. Not in any way I know. Some grows into it; some are born into it.
Most never even touch it.
I understood. I – was? Were? Am.
I am magic. As is everything. As is nothing.
You see?
I held my wand, tightly now, considered it. There was a perceptible response coming off it, answering my silent deliberation. Warmth travelled up the length of my arm. Magic rendered my senses. Laid claim to reality, bended it.
Mended it. Mending. To mend.
I looked back into my split reflection, seeing – imagining – myself looking back whole, looking back mended. The warmth still tingled about my arm, and I knew I had it.
I had it.
I gestured with my wand, knowing I had. There was a fine, distinct sound – crack! – and staring back at me was the whole face of Harry James Potter, grinning with wonder. Like an eleven-year-old boy was supposed to.
"Oh, you remembered the spell."
No. "Yeah."
Ron stood in the doorway, dishevelled, scratching the back of his head without making any attempt to stifle his yawn. He stretched, something cracked, then he took to the room.
"What was it?"
Ah…
"What was what?"
"The spell, Harry." Ron looked at me, frowned, gesturing to the mirror. "You know, the mirror – the spell to fix it."
I cast my mind about the billion of explanations, the hundreds of spells I'd already heard and barely remembered. I was sure I'd heard of it before. It was right there…
"You didn't remember it, did you?"
"Well – it sounds stupid when you put it like that."
"How then?"
"I'm not sure."
We brushed our teeth, dressed in normal clothes – not a school day for these boys, no sir – and Ron spent a minute teaching me a charm that could tie your shoelaces. Apparently it was one of the few spells Ron's mother had taught him during his youth.
"Mum never practiced much with Ginny and I," Ron explained. "Not magic, anyhow. Hell, you remember the train ride? Had I known just a little I'd have figured the twins were having me on…"
We sneaked out of our dormitory, finding the common room fortunately still and lonely. A bulletin, as Snape promised, hung by the exit, explaining how Ron Weasley and Harry Potter had been caught out after curfew, getting into all sorts of trouble.
"Let's get out of here before anyone return," Ron said, shuddering as the scenario no doubt ran through his mind.
We sneaked through the castle to the sounds of whispered rumours and glares filled with despise whenever we happened upon the occasional Slytherin.
One particular seventh-year Slytherin was rather articulate about his displeasure.
"This is my last year!" he all but shouted at us. Ron cast a look of pure longing at the door leading out of the Entrance Hall and out onto the grounds. We had been so close.
"My last year! Slytherin has won the cup for the last six years! Ever since I got here! I'll not have that ruined by two fucking first-years who can't… who can't…" He dragged Ron by the collar of his shirt, face-to-face, inches apart. "I've N.E.W.T's to worry about this year. By Merlin! I haven't got the time to hold you by the fuckin' hands! I don't care who the fuck you – the fuck you doing, Potter?"
Petrificus Totalus!
His limps snapped together, stiffly, and he fell back. Only Ron's quick reflexes, arms snatching around the bigger boys waist, ensured that the older boy didn't hit the stone-floor.
"Harry!"
"What?"
Ron stared, wide-eyed and grinning, as he stood up after having laid the boy.
"No duels in the corridors, remember?"
"Well," I said, a blush creeping up my neck. "I never had the means to fight back before…"
"You certainly do now! Bloody hell!"
"Yeah…" I muttered, casting a glance round the commotion my little display of magic had caused. For a school filled with young witches and wizards, who all had a wand capable of all kinds of spells, there really weren't that many that actually dared using magic in the corridors.
The reason why stalked towards us through the sound of mutterings – God I hated that sound! – coming from the opposite end of the corridor.
"Snape!" Ron whispered, straining his neck to look above the students around us. "How the bloody hell can he just be there?"
I was wondering the same thing myself.
"Maybe he's following us."
Ron looked horrified at the thought. "You think so?"
"Not really. I don't think he can see us yet…" I shrugged. There was a strange sense of complacency within me. Snape was like a boulder in a river, pushing students aside with his glare and mere presence, cutting a path straight towards us. It didn't scare me for some reason.
I fixed my eyes on the Entrance Hall, and the sunlight that poured through seemed madly enticing at that moment, urging my defiance.
"Run for it?" I asked Ron.
"Merlin, he'll go absolutely bonkers!" There was an exceptional look of mirth and fright on Ron's face, flushed with exuberance.
We laughed and, as if on their own accord, our legs set in motion, sprinting through the groups of students from all houses. They parted for us – I caught faces in the crowd that shuddered with disapproval, faces that stared with shock, with curiosity, some with awe, as if they couldn't fathom that we'd make a dash from Snape.
Most of them cheered. None of them Slytherin.
It felt good.
Ron and I laughed as we hit the grounds running.
Blood ran hot in my veins as we cut right, streaking across the grounds. My thigh burned with exertion, our feet heavy in the still dew-covered field of grass. None of that mattered. We defied. We laughed. We escaped.
Young and immortality often goes hand-in-hand. At least, the theory of immortality – the feeling that death is this distant concept that cannot reach you. Not that we were in any danger of death presently, but that's the danger of reflection. Memories elude you. They distort your perception of the past.
Oh, how I'd learn…
In the distance, stands of a stadium rose into the air. Our run, quite naturally, slowed to a steady pace as we drew nearer and no one seemed to catch up behind us.
"Should we go for a flight?" Ron asked, and as he said it I knew that we'd been meant to be here. Flying.
"Sure."
We stopped by a broom shack that stood by the Quidditch Entrance, intent upon grabbing ourselves a couple of the school's brooms.
It was locked. Ron swore as he tore at the wooden door.
"Know the charm to unlock doors?"
"Nope."
Ron, unflappable, gestured to the door. "Do you thing?"
I remembered just the spell for this type of thing.
"Reducto!"
A jet of blue light, crackling like lightning, spilled out of my wand, striking the door. It blew of its hinges in a cascade of wooden shrapnel, the door incinerated into dust in the twilight of a spell. Ron staggered over the debris, astonished, and grabbed two brooms.
"Or you could do that, I guess." He handed me a broom, hand shaky, casting a wary glance at the wand in my hand. "Reducto, you said?"
"Yeah."
A pause.
"Cool…"
We slipped through the Quidditch tunnel, laughing at our success in a rush of juvenile jubilation. Fuck…
You know, there is a… danger. Doing this, I mean. Looking back, examining your past, dwelling on it in a way that it was never meant to be dwelled upon.
What is there to be learned from quiet reflection? It's like Dumbledore and Voldemort told me – the past is the backdrop on which we evolved from, but it does not hold any fundamental power of our future.
It does not do to dwell on the past…
Amen to the wise.
Yet some things we must remember. The good years.
Know – if nothing else – when the good years are upon you… cherish them, celebrate them, remember them as a first love that never stuck – bittersweet and meaningless.
You'll never get them back.
Shit.
The good years came and went away in the blink of a lost guiltlessness.
We reached the end of the tunnel, sunlight flittering like a bellowing curtain ethereally over the threshold. We broke the light and found the Quidditch field occupied.
"Shouldn't you two be in class?" Ron shouted, grinning.
Fred and George twirled on their brooms, seeing us for the first time.
"History," one of them said in lieu of answering. Or maybe that was answer enough. Certainly, Binns had seemed like he'd one day just droned himself to death. "If you're lucky, Binns won't even notice you aren't there. What's your excuse, firsties?"
"Thirsty?"
"Does he remember our names, Fred?" George – I was guessing – said before Ron could answer.
"Binns? Well, Fred, I'm not entirely sure he remembers much of anything on this side of the century."
Or maybe that was Fred.
"Then how, George, should he notice our absence?"
Well, that was – what?
"George, I do believe you're on to something."
I looked, incredulous, back and forth between the two, noting Ron was grinning beside me.
No matter.
"So Binns' always like that?" I said. "He never gets more…"
"Lively?"
One of the twins, the one who hadn't answered me, blanched at his brother.
"Ah – poor choice of words there, Fred."
"Really? Discriminatory?"
"Towards a ghost?" I said doubtfully.
"It was a rather obvious and unoriginal pun, Fred." George – one of them – said, completely discarding me.
They could be amusing, I suppose, but I got the feeling I'd rather not spend too much time with them if they were always like that.
"Damn shame you two aren't in Gryffindor," Fred said – I think – half-an-hour later. "We could really use your talents, Harry – you'd be perfect as a seeker! You could even give our brother, Charlie, a run for his money. Some say he could have made it for England, if he wanted to."
"And some say he once got lost in the enthralling eyes of a Hungarian Horntail. Pity that, really."
"And some say you need to shut up!" Ron said.
I, recalling the look McGonagall had favoured me when she caught me flying against Malfoy the other day, trying to take back Longbottom's… whatever it was, spoke of her shared sentiment with the twins.
"Let's just keep this between the two of us, shall we?" she had said, when she'd dragged me to her office. She had given me a long, steady look. "You father was brilliant on a broom, too, you know. And with a wand. My subject was his favourite. I think he'd be proud."
I had hidden my face and my watery eyes as McGonagall, favouring me one last smile, soft and tender, left me unpunished in the hallways.
I think she took pity on me.
For once I couldn't complain about that.
On the way back to the castle, my thoughts ran adrift with the shadow of my parents. Lingering. Whispering. I'd heard bits and pieces of them, not enough to make them corporeal within my mind.
My father had been brilliant on a broom.
"Ron," I said, narrowing my eyes in concentration. I could see the thought manifest before me. "Weren't there a couple of Quidditch Trophies in the Trophy Room?"
"More than a couple. Blimey, the bloody room was stuffed with them!" His cheeks were red and winded, his countenance carefree. Joyful. "Why do you ask?"
"I want to go have a look."
"What, right now? You think that'd be smart, considering last night? Aren't you supposed to not return to the scene of the crime?"
I laughed. "We've already been punished for it once."
"Wouldn't stop Snape from punishing us again," Ron muttered dryly.
"I want to see if I can find something about my dad, Ron."
"Oh." There was an odd look in Ron's eyes. Uncomfortable. "Let's go, then."
An hour and several wrong turns later we found ourselves at the threshold of the Trophy Room. Voices echoed off the walls of the corridor, coming from inside the room. They sounded young.
"-no sign of any fight, is there?" a girl by the sound of it was saying. "Are you positive Potter and Weasley fought here last night, Neville?"
"Yes. Someone must have cleaned up after them. I'm telling you Ron Weasley looked-"
"Awesome, right?" Ron said, announcing our presence.
They whirled about and hurdled together, alarmed. I recognized the anxious face of Longbottom from last night, and I recognized the bushy-haired girl from the train. For some reason the name escaped my recollection.
"Hermione Granger, right?" said Ron beside me, looking at her funnily.
"What are you doing here?" she said, not answering Ron. Not even looking at him. Like he was unworthy of note. I looked between them, unsure if there was something there, but sure I wasn't seeing it.
"Ah – why do you ask that?"
"Because you're not supposed to be here. You'll get us all in trouble." She cast her eyes for the door, as if sensing all the teachers converging at our location. None came, of course. "I heard about your fight last night. That wasn't very smart at all, was it?"
I blinked. Out of the corner of my eye, I noted Ron's eyes gaining a distinct twitch.
"It… really wasn't about being smart at all, though," I said, nudging Ron, silently telling him to keep his shit together. "And I think most of the school knows by now. Considering the house-points we lost.".
Hermione laughed, though it was hardly a warm sort of laugh.
"We saw," Neville said quietly. "There was a cork in between in the Slytherin's hourglass."
"Most likely because of the points they lost."
Seems like the entire school had been made aware of the cost of our faults.
"What's it to you, Granger," Ron said dryly.
"The cork will disappear once they're above zero again." She smiled sweetly at us. "Unless, of course, you end up losing any more points."
"Are you looking for a fight?" I said, furrowing my brow, annoyed at last, twirling my wand. "Because if you are, you're doing a good job of it."
Hermione went for her wand, as did Ron, even as Neville slowly distanced himself from Hermione with small, measured steps.
I held my hand up for Ron, pacifying him for the moment, knowing that if he got his wand out curses would be flying again. McGonagall had been on our side last night; I wasn't sure she'd be that if Ron cursed one of her students.
"Really, Granger, if I'd wanted to curse you, I'd done so already." I gave my wand a whirl, sparks of red and golden light emanating from the tip. "I've had it in my hand the whole time, you know."
Hermione, frowning, slowly placed her wand back inside her robes.
"You wouldn't know how to, anyway. We haven't learned any curses yet." Though no uncertainty coloured her voice, she looked anything but certain of the fact.
"Of course he knows curses! How else would we have defeated a sixth-year student? No offence, Harry, but does he really look like he could take on an older student with his fists?"
"Hey!"
"I said no offence, Harry. You're not allowed to take offence."
"What's that even supposed to mean?"
"A sixth-year?" Hermione interrupted us, looking intrigued between us. "Which six-year?"
"Marcus Flint," Neville said. "I forgot he was there last night."
Hermione rounded on Neville immediately. "You said they had been in a fistfight!"
"It looked so!" Neville held up his hands, shielding himself, horrified. "They never really talked about how they fought…"
"Yes we did," I said, furrowing my brow at the larger boy. "Quite a lot actually."
"Oh." Neville turned slightly pink. "Well, I, er-"
"What curses did you use, then?" Hermione said, dismissing Neville as she turned to me. "Must be something more advanced than first-year to take on a sixth-year student – actually most of all curses are taught after our first year."
I shrugged, smiling. "It wasn't me."
"What…" Her eyes left mine, focused on Ron for a second, then returned to me. "Impossible."
"Hey!" Ron cried.
"No offence, I'm sure," I said quickly.
"Offence taken!"
"On the train ride he tried to make his rat yellow with a ridiculous spell that doesn't even exist. I looked it up-"
"I'm sure you did. Look, we came here for a Trophy with my dad's name on – or my mum, I guess…"
"Oh." The defiance fell away from Hermione's eyes, replaced by a tenderness that raised my opinion of her immediately. And her usefulness. "Well, I couldn't find anything with your mother's name on, but your father has a couple – there is one over there."
I stared, dumbfounded, tried to say something, found no words, then shut my mouth, staring still.
Ron had no such troubles.
"You've looked up his parents!" My astonishment was mirrored in the tone of his voice. "That's… well, that's bloody creepy!"
"Oh, come on! I'm hardly the only one taking an interest in him." Hermione blushed outright when she realized what she'd said, but continued nonetheless. "His story is fascinating. I just wanted to see if I could find something from his past that might explain…"
"The scar…" Ron whispered.
"And what did you find?"
"Well… Nothing." Hermione hesitated. "Your father was amazing on a broom, Harry. There's a whole stack of Quidditch trophies over there. But it is the trophy that way, by the window, that's most interesting. It was from his seventh year apparently."
It was a Medal for Magical Merit. A lavish golden medal carrying the name of James Potter.
"Medal for Magical Merit?" Ron said, looking at it awed. "For what?"
"Dunno," Neville answered. "But he's on here, too. As is your mum, Harry."
I looked at what he was pointing at. It was a list containing the names of all the Head Boys and Girls in Hogwarts' history.
"Both your parents were Heads, then." Hermione wore a strange, bland mask.
"Your father was Quidditch Captain, too, Harry!" Ron yelled, standing by the cups and trophies Hermione had pointed at initially. "Merlin – look at all this! Your dad wasn't amazing on a broom; he was a genius!"
"You don't have to gush about it."
Ron stopped gushing.
"I was not gushing!"
"He was also a gifted student apparently," Hermione said, studying the Medal for Magical Merit with an envious look she wasn't quite capable of masking. "I wonder what it's given for…"
"Your dad sounds awesome."
Suddenly, I found the room tightening around me with invisible claws, gnawing away at me with a vengeance born out of an unrealised future.
"I… I wish I'd known him." I looked at Ron, caught his eye; something told me he understood my tone immediately.
"Let's get back to the common room."
I nodded. Grateful. "Yeah…"
"Where exactly is Slytherin's common room?" Hermione asked curiously, following us.
"Not now, Hermione," I said. The world, there like a normal plane of existence moments ago, was blurring with drunken edges. Slipping. A scream arose through the edges.
You hear that? Mudblood!
"You're not going to-"
"He said, not now!" Ron all but snarled.
I turned the corner, the way unseen, blinded by a world I couldn't comprehend. Rising from somewhere I couldn't see. Flashes of green light. Screams. Distress not my own – and yet part of the synapsis of my brain somehow. Remembered not as a memory I'd lived, but endured through another being. Pain unimaginable.
"Harry," Ron whispered beside me, "where're we going, mate? What's going on?"
I turned another corner, ignoring Ron, everything of reality unfound in the enormity of whatever memory beset me. A door blocked my way; I turned the knob, finding it locked.
Alohomora.
I blinked, startled, frantically looking everywhere.
"Here, let me," Hermione said, stepping forth with her wand raised.
I raised my own. "Alohomora," I intoned.
The lock clicked.
"Harry." I turned to the sound of the voice, for a frightening moment not recognizing it, and found Ron at the end of it. "I thought you said you didn't know the spell to open locks."
"I…" I licked my dry lips, the edges trembling. "I didn't."
Ron found a confused expression, as did Hermione and Neville, looking between themselves.
"I don't understand."
Welcome to the club, I thought. Where had that thought come from? Had I read it somewhere? No. Maybe heard it…
Fuck.
"Come on!" Hermione suddenly persisted, eagerness colouring her voice, pushing me out of the way to get at the door. "We can't stand here all day."
"You little-"
BOOM!
The door was torn of its hinges, busting outwards and almost hitting Hermione. An enormous, foul-smelling mouth tried to gnaw its way through the threshold, snapping at me, spittle flying everywhere.
"Run!" I yelled, dragging a frozen Hermione with me, as Ron grabbed Neville and ran.
We left the macabre corridor to the loud, screeching sounds of what appeared to be a vast dog.
Hermione and Neville, not saying a thing, disentangled themselves from us the moment we hit the corridors of the third floor, hurrying past us towards what I could only assume was the Gryffindor common room.
Ron, turning in the other direction, ran without looking back. A moment later, I heard why. Beyond the screeching, the howling, the clawing and gnawing, there were footsteps, converging on my location.
Shit.
Run. Run. Run!
Curiousty persisted.
"If it's Potter again, I swear I'm going to-"
Snape!
Fear overwhelming curiosity in a blessed moment of clarity, I turned in the direction Ron had gone, finding him beyond sight, and raced faster than ever before down the corridor.
Away from the scene of the crime.
Just what the hell was that thing?
Picture yourself unable to perform even the simplest of spells, perhaps the Stunning Spell, Stupefy. A mandatory skill requirement of every member of a Hit Wizard unit.
In 1985, psychologists of the Unspeakable Department from the British Ministry imposed upon a new batch of recruits a task that involved the usage of such simple spells – such as the Stunning Spell. During the task, the Hit Wizards, who had shown themselves to all be quite skilled and capable wizards, found themselves unable to stun and apprehend their targets. Their spells simply sizzled out. Impotent. Ineffective.
What went wrong? Surely this wasn't an inept group of men. They were some of the toughest, most highly trained individuals in the world, after all; the reason for their failure couldn't possibly be inability.
What changed, then?
Something – in specific situations – manifests itself. Something unseen. Something beyond merely physical skills comes into play.
We know it as fear.
If you're a Potion Master, you'll know intuitively which ingredients will make a certain Potion, and which will break it. If you're a Quidditch Player, you know you can make a certain turn of your broom. If you're a duellist, you know which curses to pull at certain times of distress.
You've done these potions thousands of times, you have flown your broom thousands of times, and you have cast your curses thousands of times – and these skills are so intuitive that you know you'll do them well.
Yet numerous people have found themselves suddenly incapable of doing something as simple as levitating an object. They forget the tiniest details, like the need to swish the wand before the flick, or instead of levitating something they find themselves suddenly conjuring streams of fire.
In my first duel in the German Duel Circuit, I found myself repeatedly duelling my opponent into a corner, locking him up, yet I was unable to finish the duel and submit him. I lost the duel by a single point after going into overtime.
Only afterwards did I realize that I'd repeatedly rounded my curses towards his free arm, leaving him with more time to precisely counter my attacks. It was a mistake that I'd probably made countless times in training, but had always had the presence of mind to correct.
I could submit a duellist of greater skill than my adversary in a training environment, so why couldn't I think well enough to do the same thing during the fight, in front of hundreds of people? Why couldn't the Hit Wizards perform the Stunning Spell? Why could a person possibly forget how to perform one of the simplest spells known?
Performance Degradation. Take note of it. Performance. Degradation. It might happen to you.
The scenario being conducted by the Hit Wizards was a close quarters combat (CQC) simulation. It involved urban warfare with spells emulating the effects of real, perilous spells, hand-to-hand combat with role players wearing spell-lidded, impact-reduction suits, an overwhelming noise stimulus, and poor, macabre lightning.
At random intervals throughout the scenario, the Hit Wizards would, without warning, receive a significant pain stimulus to the upper body via an already-applied curse to their skin, stimulating a cursed wound.
Under this level of stress, the wizards were incapable of performing the complex motor skills – spells in this case – they'd been able to perform since their time at Hogwarts.
The same performance degradation occurs with the Potion Master who fumbles to create the potion that will save his dying wife, the Quidditch Player who finds himself repeatedly losing control of his broom when the dragon bites at his tail. Or a duellist who suddenly realizes that what he knows, instinctively, in a safe environment is not what he knows in the ring.
The skill you posses in a calm, controlled environment will probably not be the skills you posses when it really matters. The impact of stress on any given individual may mean the difference between victory and defeat, living or dying, getting eaten or escaping…
Life and death… Winning and losing…
What can be done? To better yourself in such situations…
Well, not a whole lot, apparently. People posses various degrees of propensity to handle themselves in stressful environments, possessing some kind of calming quality that most of us simply don't.
But consider this:
No man fears to do that which he knows he will do well.
Which means, in layman's terms, that in order to excel – in anything – you must put in the work. Practice, practice, practice, and when your hands quiver with the effort, practice some more.
It may not be enough, certainly the kind of environment put upon the Hit Wizards could overcome even the best of us, but with practice you'll always stand a greater chance of success. Always.
For the things we have to learn before we can do them, we learn by doing them.
I looked up from the book at the sound of Ron's snoring, groaning bleary-eyed at the dark.
We'd gone directly back to our common room, sprinting past our housemates before they could stop us. Not saying much, the vivid memories of the vast mouth gnawing adrift in our minds, we dressed for bed. It didn't take long for Ron to fall asleep. For a long time I'd sat by our window, looking into the lake, contemplating just what such a dog was doing in a school.
And now, hours later, Ron still asleep, my mind still remained along the same current of thoughts.
Sleep was a long, long night away.