7. The Philosopher's Stone
It took less than a week before Harry discovered there was a negative to his new status as a Gryffindor hero. He was rather abruptly introduced to this downside just after breakfast on Friday, during their weekly descent to the dungeons.
As he had done in the Defence classes earlier in the week, Harry made sure to sit as far from Draco as possible. He didn't know what was going on with the blond, but he was sure it didn't mean well for him.
"Settle down."
The icy tone of Snape's voice cut through the idle chatter, silencing the classroom. Harry gulped. He knew that tone; unfamiliar, as it had been nearly twelve years since he had heard it. Familiar, because he had been subjected to its anger for six long years before that.
At its height, the hatred between himself and Snape had been legendary. He would not soon forget the look of pure loathing on the Head of Slytherin's face, at the end of third year all that time ago, when the man burst into the hospital wing just after Harry and Hermione had freed his mortal enemy, and Harry's own godfather, Sirius Black. All three of them had known exactly what had happened, even if the 'how' of it had escaped Snape. Screaming at Headmaster Dumbledore and the then (and now also current) Minister of Magic Cornelius Fudge, Snape had been helpless as the convict Black had escaped and the rewards for his role in the man's capture evaporated, while Harry watched on with a satisfied smile on his face. It was then that, in the mind of the Potions professor, Harry had truly morphed into his father, James Potter, the one man he had hated beyond even Sirius.
From Harry's point of view, he had always heavily disliked Snape, but truly despised him by the end of his sixth year. Snape had turned Hogwarts to the Death Eaters and killed Professor Dumbledore only moments before, and at the death of his mentor Harry had fully given himself over to his rage. Despite later finding out that the entire episode was set up by the old headmaster, at the time he had been compelled to watch the murder play out while petrified under his own invisibility cloak, to watch Snape betray the only man who had ever believed in him. While trying vainly to hunt him down across the grounds of Hogwarts during Snape's escape, Harry didn't think there was ever a man he had more wanted dead; more wanted to kill.
Neither Sirius's flight from Hogwarts nor Dumbledore's death had happened yet, and if Harry had anything to say about it, neither would. Yet even before that, from the day they had met, the two had mixed poorly, with Harry reminding Snape too much of James for the man to remember he had also inherited traits from his mother Lily.
Knowing from Snape's future confessions that he'd been, er, sweet on Harry's mother, Harry had played up the connection upon his return to the past. In his very first Potions lesson, where he'd previously been mocked and condescended, he had answered Snape's questions correctly (proving to himself at least that he had learned something from six previous years of Potions classes), pinned his extra knowledge on wanting to live up to Lily's memory, and generally batted his eyes, the bright green bulbs so similar to those of his mother. By continuing to emphasise the connection over the term, he had earned Snape's favour, and shielded both himself and his fellow Gryffindors from the greater part of Snape's wrath.
Watching his expression at the moment, however, Harry knew that although the connection wasn't shattered, it was very definitely badly strained. This was going to be a Potions lesson of the more traditional variety.
He had tried desperately to remind Snape of his mother. But there was nothing more James-Potter-y, than beating Slytherin at Quidditch.
Harry gulped. Compounding Snape's bad temper, the other Gryffindors had no experience in dealing with it. Having not had to deal with as ruthless a Snape as many of their predecessors, they would have no knowledge of which buttons to avoid pushing in the coming chaos. He had a growing suspicion the lesson would descend into absolute carnage.
As he walked to Hagrid's hut that afternoon, shell-shocked Ron and Hermione in tow, he reflected that he'd been right.
"- and, and, he must have taken hundreds of points from Gryffindor, and all our potions were ruined, and I think Neville cried -"
The three Gryffindors and Hagrid were gathered round a rickety table, hunched over in their seats, with steaming mugs in front of them. Hagrid, as tall as the three first years put together and twice their combined girth, took up an entire half of the table by himself. Ron was going over their Potions lesson from an hour earlier with helpful input from Harry, while Hermione just sat rigid in her chair, tightly clutching her tea. The atmosphere was heavy, and even though Harry had experienced plenty of 'lessons' like that before, even he had forgotten quite how viscous Snape could be.
"D-d-d'you think he knew I was the one who set him on fire?" Hermione asked in a small voice.
"Yer set Professor Snape on fire?!"
"No, don't worry," Harry cut in, ignoring Hagrid's question for now. "Snape was taking out his anger at the Quidditch result on the nearest Gryffindors he could find. The older years have all had the same thing this week as well."
"When'd yeh set the professor on fire?" Hagrid pressed again.
"At the Quidditch match..."
"She was awesome, Hagrid, she really was. We saw Snape cursing Harry's broom during the game, you know, when his broom was all wonky and Alicia had to take out Malfoy. You put a stop to that, didn't you Hermione? Went over there and set his robes on fire so he couldn't continue his hex." Ron said this rather proudly, making Hermione shrink even further into her seat. "Besides, he couldn't have been too mad with you, he was mostly pissed at Harry!"
"Language, Ron!" exclaimed a scandalised Hermione.
"Well, it's true. Was probably because he couldn't kill him the first time." Ron rebutted, with a nod of agreement from Harry.
"Snape couldn't'a cursed Harry, he's a teacher!"
"He was holding direct eye contact and saying a spell under his breath, I've read all about them." Hermione said sharply. "And after today's lesson I'm not so sure I'd call him a teacher."
Hermione seemed to have gathered herself into a righteous rage. The fact that a Professor could change his behaviour so suddenly because he was sulking at the result of a school Quidditch match did not sit well with her. Harry didn't know if he had the heart to tell her that this was actually what Snape was normally like, and that their year had previously been a special case.
"Nonsense, yer must've been mistaken. Got the full trust o' Professor Dumbledore, Snape has, and Dumbledore's as good a wizard as they come. Snape's not gonna try an' kill the Boy-Who-Lived - sorry Harry -", as the latter flinched at the all too familiar nickname, "- in front'a all o' Hogwarts."
"The broom righted itself as soon as I distracted him!" Hermione half-shouted, half sobbed.
Harry knew that, if nothing had changed from his previous adventures, it was Quirrell who had been cursing him at the match, and Snape was muttering the counter-curse that had held the effects off for so long. When Hermione had set fire to Snape's robes, the disturbance had also stopped Quirrell, which was why the broom's misbehaviour had stopped. However, Harry was feeling none too charitable towards the Potions Professor at the moment, and to start the trail towards the Stone he didn't need to establish who was trying to kill him so much as that someone was. Snape's exoneration was going to have to wait.
"But why would Snape want me dead?"
Hagrid looked aghast. "I told yeh, Snape's got the full confidence o' Professor Dumbledore!"
"So then what does he want even more than Dumbledore's favour?" Harry asked.
"Gold!" Ron jumped in immediately.
"Nonsense!" Hagrid roared.
"But where would you hide gold at Hogwarts? It would have to be off limits to students. Can you imagine what carnage Fred and George would wreak with a chance like that?" Harry asked. Hopefully, with the right prompting, his two friends could solve the mystery that very afternoon.
"As long as they get me loads of Christmas presents with it, I wouldn't mind." Ron grinned.
"The third floor corridor! They could be hiding anything in there." Normally, Hermione wouldn't have been one to start the conspiracy theories without undue amounts of evidence, but apparently this idea seemed about as fanciful as a schoolteacher taking out his bad mood on a bunch of eleven-year-olds.
"Now don't yeh go anywhere near that corridor, y'hear me? Fluffy'll have bits torn out of yeh if yeh do, doesn't like surprises much, the poor thing."
Harry seized the opportunity. "Fluffy? Who's Fluffy?"
Hagrid's face tightened; divided between the secrecy required by his beloved headmaster and the realisation that, if he didn't spill the news, there was a good chance the three first years would try to find out by themselves. Whether for fear of their safety or concern that someone would try to bother Fluffy, he lowered his voice and explained.
"He's a Cerberus."
"A what?!"
"A Cerberus. They're big three headed dogs, Ron." Hermione replied. "How did Hogwarts get one of them, Hagrid? The textbook says they're really rare."
There was a small part of Harry's brain (that sounded most like a nagging, older Hermione) was quite insistent that her younger, corporeal version of herself delving into textbooks of at least OWL material before Christmas of her first year, and in a subject she wasn't even taking, was a bad sign. Giving a silent promise to himself (and his inner Hermione) that he really would try and fix Hermione's book problem soon, Harry promptly ignored it to focus on steering the conversation towards the subject of the Philosopher's Stone.
"That's awesome. What're they used for?"
"They're guard dogs, they are, and damned good ones too. And Dumbledore got 'im from me, I've a load of interestin' creatures somewhere around I can find for yeh."
While Hagrid was busy preening at how great Fluffy was, Hermione pushed at the gap.
"Guard dogs? What's being kept on the third floor that needs a Cerberus to guard it?" Hermione asked.
"There is gold on the third floor corridor!" Ron exclaimed rather optimistically.
"Nonsense!" Hagrid responded. "There's no gold to be had from goin' past Fluffy. Not without a fair bit more work, anyway." He amended under his breath.
"What does that mean?" continued Hermione. "How can you need 'more work'? Either there is gold or there isn't."
Perhaps annoyed by his slips, Hagrid firmed up. "That's enough, you three, and I mean it." He looked them all firmly in the eye. "What's on that corridor is to be kept between Dumbledore and Flamel, y'hear me? Yeh'll stay right away from it."
Perhaps it was the dressing down, or perhaps they both thought that there were now enough clues to work through without upsetting Hagrid further, but neither Harry nor Hermione asked any more questions on Flamel. Instead, they turned to safer topics, and bemoaned Quirrell's incompetence, Binns's boredom, and a hundred other trivial Hogwarts affairs until the three first years were quite late for dinner.
Truthfully, Harry did feel bad that his first visit to Hagrid had been so focussed on getting information out of him. He could only ensure that he visited more often in the future - and if he brought cakes from the kitchens when he did so, he wouldn't even have to stomach Hagrid's attempt at cooking.
Draco had finally been unleashed from the hospital wing. And he wasn't happy.
It had been a tortuous weekend, with visitors interrupting him every half hour, including Professor Snape, an understanding Slytherin Quidditch team who assured him he'd done what he could (Higgs even admitted he didn't think he'd have done any better against Potter; knowing the result of the equivalent match in his first-first year, Draco agreed with him), and a blushing Alicia Spinnet, who graciously promised that she hadn't meant to hospitalise him and wished him a speedy recovery. The last one had been fun, as Draco had taken her apology with a silent stare, and the girl had gotten redder and redder the longer he glared at her before finally fleeing the room with cheeks as scarlet as her Quidditch robes. As soon as she was gone, he grinned. Let her stew. If he was going to suffer, he wouldn't be the only one.
His frustration with himself over the result of the Gryffindor-Slytherin Quidditch match was somewhat mollified by the knowledge that by the end, he'd been flying with a serious concussion and was doing well to stay on his broom, never mind try to catch the snitch. However, this also meant that Madam Pomfrey felt justified in keeping him under wraps for far longer than necessary, annoying him further, and he had only escaped on Monday morning by promising to return for daily check-ups for the next week. The last of those was now over, and having returned from her domain for the last time, Draco replayed the Friday's events in his head.
It was a relief to return to normality in Potions lessons. No longer spending half his time wondering why everyone was being so damned nice to each other, he could happily whittle away the morning watching the Gryffindors wilt under his spectacularly fearsome Head of House, with occasional explosions marking the unnecessary additions to their potions courtesy of his Slytherin housemates. The sight did wonders for his bad mood, and by the time they left the dungeon he was almost happy again. Almost, but not quite.
He had an afternoon off, as Crabbe and Goyle were in detention until late evening. In his absence over the previous weekend, they had forgotten they had a Charms essay due in for Monday morning. The two boys had been surprisingly shaken by his absence from the Slytherin dorms, and Draco could only think they were lost without anyone to follow around like lost puppies for the two days.
Crabbe and Goyle burst into the common room just as Draco was finishing up with the week's homework, which he'd only started that afternoon due to all the hospital visits he'd been forced to endure over the past days. Both were out of breath and panting heavily, but Draco took little notice. With their fitness, that could mean anything from having run the full way through the castle to taking a brisk walk down the last two corridors. Still, they were making a ruckus, so it was best to make sure they were all right before shutting them up as quickly as possible.
"What's wrong with you two?" Draco asked rather shortly. It was, after all, supposed to be his night off.
"Dog!" said Crabbe.
"Dogs!" replied Goyle.
"Pardon?" Draco asked again.
Crabbe turned to Goyle.
"Dog!"
Goyle turned to Crabbe.
"Dogs!"
This was hopeless. Up until now the two goons had, at least, been making progress in their conversational abilities, but tonight it seemed that they were back to square one again.
"Dog!"
"Dogs!"
"Dog!"
"Dogs!"
"Enough!" Draco shouted, drawing the attention of those in the common room that weren't already staring at the noise from Crabbe and Goyle. Thankfully, the common room was fairly quiet, as those people who wanted an early night had already turned in and the students staying up later weren't yet back from the library or other, more secretive, parts of the castle.
"Now, tell me, calmly, what exactly has you both so worked up this evening."
"Dog!" blurted Crabbe, almost at the same time as -
"Dogs!" went Goyle.
"Yes, I managed to get that bit. But where did you come across a dog and why has it gotten you both so riled up?"
Now that he mentioned it, Crabbe and Goyle were shivering quite acutely at the moment, and their faces appeared bleached white. Maybe they actually had come across something genuinely scary, in which case Draco should probably lay off the scolding.
"D-d-do -"
"Ok!" interrupted Draco, before the charade could begin again. "Maybe I should be more specific. Did you make it to your detention in time?"
Nodding. That was good.
"And who was your detention with?"
"Filch," said Goyle. This was better, he was getting actual information out of them now.
"And what did he have you doing for your detention?"
"Cleaning out the trophy room," replied Crabbe, "without magic."
Ouch. "And when you were finished, where did you go?"
The two boys looked at each other and, if it was possible, paled even further. "We got lost on our way back, 'cos it was dark and all, and we ended up..." Goyle tailed off.
"... On the third floor corridor." Crabbe finished with an audible gulp.
Ah. That explained why the two were so shaken. Rule-breaking without direction (preferably from Draco) would terrify the two automatons, and doubtless they had feared punishment for being out of bounds. They probably saw Mrs. Norris and mistaken the pet for a dog. "And on the third floor corridor, is that where you saw the 'dog'?"
"There was this locked door, so I opened it, and -"
"Woah," Draco interrupted Crabbe, "How did you go through a locked door?"
Crabbe stared back with an odd expression on his face and Draco felt an odd sense of turnabout as Crabbe looked at him as if he was missing something obvious; it was the very same expression Draco used so many times when trying to get a particularly simple point across.
"I unlocked it. With magic."
"You know the unlocking charm?" Crabbe, using magic proportionally and intelligently? How had that happened?
"Took a few goes." Goyle added.
Crabbe's expression turned smug. "Yeah, but I got it in the end. You said we should practice the spells in that textbook."
Draco had indeed strongly urged them to become competent in the first year spells from The Standard Book of Spells, Grade One, but he hadn't actually expected them to do it. "When did you get the time to do that?"
This time Goyle picked up the story. "When you were at Quidditch practice. We had our homework done, we did, 'cos you did it with us, so we went on extra."
Draco's opinion of his companions grew up to its highest level in, well... ever. He hadn't considered that, by helping the two through their homework while he did his (teaching them was boring, tedious, but what else was he supposed to do with his time? At least this way it looked to others that he was actually trying and not being too naturally perfect at everything), they would have much more spare time than their previous counterparts had. If he had thought of it, he probably would have imagined them spending the time imitating particularly passive gargoyles. The idea of them using the moments he wasn't with them - which in the run-up to the Quidditch match had been quite a bit - to do something useful was... astonishing, really.
Of course, they then used this knowledge to break into corridors out of bounds and where trespassing students had been promised painful deaths, so clearly they had a bit to go in the intelligence department. Still, at least they were being interesting.
"Okay, so you came across the forbidden corridor and entered a locked, out of bounds, potentially dangerous room. What did you then come across?" Draco asked, his voice a strange mixture of pride and irritation.
"A dog."
"Dogs!"
"Dog!"
"Dogs!"
"Okay!" Draco said again. "Was it one dog, or more than one dog? Crabbe?"
"One dog."
"And Goyle?"
"Three dogs."
Really, how hard was it to determine how many dogs you were facing?
"How many heads did you see?"
"Three." The two answered together.
"But there was only one dog?" Draco asked of Crabbe.
"Yep. Only one tail wagging."
"Goyle?"
"Was focusing on the heads, myself. The teeth." muttered Goyle with a shudder.
"So the dog had three heads, and one tail. Are you sure?" So, there was a Cerberus at Hogwarts, and there was only one reason Dumbledore would suffer to have one of those in the castle. Rumours of years long past, of the months to come, suddenly solidified in Draco's mind as the pieces fell together.
Cautious, tentative nodding from Crabbe and Goyle. Draco took a sharp intake of breath.
A guard dog, to babysit - if the rumours that had been whispered amongst the Death Eater ranks had any truth to them - a Philosopher's Stone.
If the rumours were true, there was a Philosopher's Stone up for grabs in the castle. Hundreds of wizarding children had heard the legend growing up; the tale of a small, ruby-like stone that offered everything one would ever need; infinite gold, and infinite life. Neither were truly infinite, of course; selling large quantities of gold would needlessly devalue the metal and ruin your source of income, along with much of the wider wizarding economy. The stone also did nothing to protect against unnatural deaths; accidents both unfortunate and arranged. It was a manageable problem, if one made the right precautions, but if you were to live forever, eventually someone would manage to encourage you along into the afterlife. It was simple mathematics.
But these were mere technicalities; a wizard with the power of the stone would be more comfortable and prosperous than he could possibly imagine.
Draco could foresee three possibilities; if Lord Voldemort gained possession of the stone, carnage would ensue. A Dark Lord with a newly forged body and funds to burn into a prolonged campaign did not bear thinking about. It was a world where he would be favoured, but without the need for Malfoy gold he would be no more so than a hundred other pureblood families, and Draco had already knew all too well what suffering befell those who lost the Dark Lord's goodwill.
If Potter found it, or was rescued by Dumbledore in the process thereof, things would continue the way they were. His future knowledge would still be of use, as it minimised divergence from the Hogwarts he had known, but he would always be playing the tightrope act, trying to placate what would undoubtedly be an increasingly suspicious headmaster while avoiding the pressure to be branded as one of the Dark Lord's cattle.
However, should Draco claim it, then things became... interesting. Promising. Where the Dark Lord would fund a war, Draco could fund peace; instead of a brutal dictator, the wizarding world would find themselves a magnanimous leader; and where Voldemort would use the elixir of life to build for himself a new body...
Draco could use it to cure the Greengrass curse.
It was not strictly a Greengrass curse, for it had been passed down from her mother's side. Yet nevertheless, over a century ago, one of Astoria's ancestors had been struck by a blood malediction curse, which had promptly waited, dormant in the family, for several generations and would reveal itself in the youngest of the line before Astoria had left Hogwarts. As far as they could tell - and they included the Malfoys, the Greengrasses, their cousins, relations, and the best hired mediwizards to be had in Western Europe - it was nothing but sheer bad luck that Astoria was the one to suffer, and it had been no action of her own which awakened the curse.
They had fled a future where the Malfoy name was shorn of all respect and influence, but what would that have mattered, were they to have had each other? But the curse was far beyond the capabilities of St. Mungo's, and private research was expensive in money and contacts that his family no longer had. Instead, the couple were doomed to a short time together, punctuated by ill health and bereft of children who, with the effects of childbirth on Astoria's delicate constitution, would have made that time shorter still. And now a cure was here, at Hogwarts, and all Draco had to do was grasp it.
He had a lifetime to live again, and he could solve all their problems within the first year. If the rumours were true.
"Malfoy?" Crabbe asked slowly.
He had evidently zoned out, lost in his own thoughts, and Crabbe and Goyle were staring at him with confusion on their faces.
"Very well done," he said quickly, covering his lapse of attention as best he could, "both of you. You've done yourselves proud tonight." Two beaming smiles stopped Draco, slightly stunned by the impact of his small words. "Continue practicing the spells, practice until we get back after Christmas, and if I think you're good enough, I'll show you some special tricks next term."
The Crabbes and Goyles were easily self-interested enough in themselves and their families to have found a way around the trace, so they should have no problems there. If he was going to have unthinking muscle backing him up, it might as well be as competent as he could make it.
As for himself, he had time enough to think about his approach before he attempted anything rash. Time enough to acquire a few items that would prove most useful in the years to come.
A/N: There won't be much from Cursed Child in here, however as we know very little else about Astoria I felt I couldn't leave the blood curse out. In general this will be canon compliant with books 1-7, but not necessarily anything beyond that.
Please leave a review, even just "Good job!" or "Could do better!", they do help hugely with motivation. And thank you for reading! Next up, answers to a question I really expected to be asked about by now...
