I have to give a big thank you to all the wonderful people who have reviewed this story this week, especially MajorChaos13, George1892, MickyDontCare, and OneSmoothOrange! Your enthusiasm, kindness, and thoughtful critique make me so happy and inspired! Keep shining your light!
Unpleasant Surprises
After the combined forces of Harry, James, Dumbledore, Madam Pomfrey and three hours were able to calm Lily down, Harry was discharged from the Hospital Wing. His mother still insisted on checking his arm personally (it was fine, albeit stiff: bones straight, strong, and new). But it was eleven o' clock when his parents finally went up to Dumbledore's office to Floo home, and Harry had missed breakfast. It was nice, he supposed, having his mum fuss over him, but he wasn't used to it, and it was rather exhausting. How did Tom do it all the time?
A little while later, after changing back into his robes and washing his teeth, he found Delf and Roderick in the Great Hall, hunched over cold lunch and a heavy book called Advanced Transmogrification.
"I can see you two have missed me terribly," he said by way of greeting as he slid onto the bench opposite them.
Their heads jerked up simultaneously. "Harry!" said Delf happily. "You're all... boned."
"What a terrible way to say that," Roderick admonished. Delf blushed and scowled.
"My arm has bones in it again, yes," Harry agreed, flexing his elbow and fingers as proof. "But I actually have a lot of things to tell you, so let's go somewhere else. Are you all done eating?"
"Yes," Delf said, closing the book. "We were just studying for Transfiguration." Wrong. Harry knew the book they had was far past their year level, and the covert glances that passed between them confirmed it: they were studying Animagi magic. He'd have to catch up now.
"But Harry, you've been in the Hospital Wing all night regrowing your arm. How could you have anything tell to us except that you're planning to kill Lockheart?"
"Well, I'm going to do that too," he said as he led them out of the Great Hall. "But that's not the point right now."
Just then, they passed Tom, Ron and Hermione coming in for lunch. "You're a rotten liar," Harry told his brother sternly. Tom looked up at him with wide, uncomprehending eyes. "Your letter? I woke up this morning to Mum reading it aloud to Dumbledore. Katie and I were never in that loo, and I would never force her to do anything. You had no business telling Mum."
"I didn't say it was true," Tom protested feebly. "I just said what I'd heard."
"You knew it was a lie though. Some honor you've got," Harry said coldly, and led Delf and Roderick away from his deflated brother and his shell-shocked friends.
"I reckon that wasn't completely necessary," Roderick suggested quietly as soon as they were a couple hallways away. "Anyone with any common sense knows that's a lie, and who cares what Tom says anyway?"
"I know, but my parents don't have common sense, they do care what Tom says, and he needs to stop spreading stupid rumours before it gets him in trouble," Harry replied sharply, then felt bad. He hadn't had a fantastic morning, but he didn't want to take it out on them: "Sorry," he mumbled. Roderick shrugged it off.
They turned a couple corners in silence before Harry found a place that looked private enough: an out-of-order girl's toilet. As soon as he pushed the door open, he saw that someone else had already noticed its disused state and made good on it.
"Now we know where they're brewing the Polyjuice Potion, at least," Roderick noted dryly. "They were probably just coming from here."
Harry peered into the cauldron couched in the toilet bowl. Hermione clearly knew what she was doing, because he was sure Tom and Ron didn't. "You're right. Looks like they've just started."
"So what's going on?" Delf asked impatiently.
"Right. So Colin Creevey's been Petrified."
Roderick's mouth fell open.
"I saw Professor McGonagall and Professor Dumbledore bringing him in last night. They said they thought he was coming down to see me."
"Merlin…" Delf breathed.
"But that's not even the strangest part," Harry continued. "I woke up in the middle of the night and there was this house elf next to me. I thought at first he was Tipsy, but he wasn't. He told me that he was the one who stopped Tom and Ron from getting through the barrier at King's Cross, and he was the one who jinxed the Bludger yesterday. He said that Tom is in mortal danger as long as he stays here, and that the Chamber of Secrets has been opened before."
"What!" Delf gasped. "But that's just a legend, everyone knows that."
"Then what?" Roderick insisted.
Harry shrugged. "He smacked himself over the head with my water jug and said 'bad Dobby'."
"Hang on!" Roderick exclaimed. "Dobby? Dobby!" There was a loud crack, and all of a sudden, a small, bedraggled figure stood in their midst. "This Dobby?" Roderick asked, pointing at the house elf.
Harry stared at the cringing creature, utterly gobsmacked.
"Dobby did not… Dobby is… Waaaahh!" He burst out crying again.
"Stop that," Roderick commanded, with uncharacteristic force. "Dobby, listen to me. Was it you who jinxed the Bludger yesterday?"
The elf nodded mutely.
"And blocked the portal to the train?"
Another nod. "Yes," he sniveled. "And Dobby stopped Thomas Potter's mail from his friends over the summer. Dobby hoped that if Thomas thought his friends didn't like him, he wouldn't want to go back."
"I remember that!" Harry exclaimed. "Tom was really mad they weren't writing him."
"Thomas Potter… has a brother who loves him!" Dobby wailed. "Grave danger at Hogwarts!" He collapsed into another round of sobbing.
"Well now, let's not get ahead of ourselves," Harry protested awkwardly.
"Dobby," Roderick said, crouching in front of the elf. "What do you mean, 'grave danger'? What's going on here?"
"Dobby cannot say, Master Roderick, Dobby cannot say!" he howled. Roderick groaned and rubbed his forehead.
"Harry said you mentioned that the Chamber of Secrets has been opened before. Can you tell us about that?"
The elf gave a frightened squeak and ran to a sink, which he proceeded to smack his head against repeatedly. Roderick swore and grabbed him by the pillowcase, pulling him away from the plumbing fixture.
"Dobby," Delf cut in, her tone gentler than Harry had heard it in recent weeks. "If you tell us what the danger is, we'll be able to help protect Tom." Harry knew she was skewing her priorities quite badly, but it was worth a shot. Tom was certainly what Dobby was most fixated on.
Dobby looked at Delf through his bandaged fingers, but then burst into tears once more. "Dobby cannot!" Harry sighed.
"Alright," Roderick muttered. "Dobby? Dobby, stop that." The house elf stopped crying quite so loudly. "Do you know how I always ask you to do things, not command?"
The elf nodded almost reverently. "Master Roderick is very kind to Dobby, sir."
"Yes, well." Roderick cleared his throat uncomfortably. "Right now, I'm going to give you a command, alright? Listen to me: you must never interfere in the life of Thomas Potter again. Tom had a giant row with his best friend because you blocked his letters, and they almost got expelled after you closed the barrier. And Harry nearly died because of your Bludger, do you understand? He was protecting Tom, and he fell off the stands."
Dobby gave a sniff that sounded suspiciously like "So brave…"
"Am I clear, Dobby?"
Dobby nodded his head sadly. "Dobby only wanted to protect Thomas Potter…"
"We understand that," Roderick said patiently. "But we're here, and much better equipped to look after him than you, okay? You need to worry about steering clear of Dad." Dobby nodded emphatically. "Okay. You can go home now."
Crack! Dobby was gone.
"Tom didn't have a giant row with Ron," Harry said as the echoes of the Apparation dwindled to nothing.
Roderick shrugged. "Doesn't matter. Guilt was obviously a driving factor for him right then, so reinforcing that to make sure he stayed out of trouble was a necessary evil."
Delf shivered. "You sound so Slytherin."
Roderick glared at her. "Thanks."
"Sorry."
-o-
In the second week of December, Professor Flitwick came around and took down the names of all the Ravenclaws who was staying at school over Christmas holiday. Harry signed up as a matter of course; Roderick, because his parents were going out of the country; Mr. Greengrass had dragon pox, so Delf and Astoria had both been firmly instructed to stay at Hogwarts.
"Poor Dwight's been sent to stay with Aunt Cecilia," she told them over lunch, scanning the letter worriedly. "Knowing him though, he'll enjoy giving them hell for a while, so I almost don't know who to feel sorry for." The boys chuckled.
They had Potions afterwards, and when they got down to the dungeon, their first impression was something had exploded. Which, as it turned out, it had. Smoke hung in the air, and slimy bits of potion still clung to the ceiling and walls. Amanda poked a blotch next to her desk and started screaming when her finger immediately swelled to the size of a cantaloupe. She endured a ten-minute fit from Professor Snape, who then dosed her with a Deflating Draught. The second years who had the class before lunch had been working on Swelling Solution, and someone's (Professor Snape was exactingly vague on precisely whose) cauldron had blown up, causing mayhem and disrupting an otherwise uneventful class. Harry was not surprised to discover Tom had been in the group: they still needed bicorn hair for the Polyjuice Potion, and the Potions Master's private store was the only place to get it. It was a pretty good tactic, he mused as Professor Snape rattled off instructions with more than his usual sarcasm and spite.
"Well, in some ways, I'm comforted," Harry announced as they left the dungeons for their free track before dinner. "If Tom had managed to keep completely out of trouble for more than two weeks at a stretch, I'd have thought there was something wrong with him."
But things stayed quiet for the next week, until they were crossing the Entry Hall for dinner and spotted a gaggle of excited students gathered around the bulletin board next to the large hourglasses that kept track of House points (Ravenclaw was in the lead by a comfortable margin, he was pleased to note).
"What's going on?" Roderick asked the closest person they knew, a Hufflepuff girl in their year.
"They've set up a Dueling Club," she said eagerly.
"Brilliant!" said Harry. Delf looked at him, questioning his eager tone. "What? If you think about it, dueling is a really interesting magical skill and we're given next to no training in it." She rolled her eyes, knowing he was only rationalizing wanting to learn to jinx something really thoroughly.
"Still, pretty cool, eh?" Roderick said as they all sat down for dinner. "I bet Flitwick will teach it. I heard he was a wicked dueler when he was younger."
Delf had a somewhat more pessimistic opinion: "No, this just reeks of Lockheart. It has 'vanity project' written all over it."
"Ugh, you're right," Roderick grumbled.
But nonetheless, a sort of masochistic interest drew them back to the Great Hall at 8 o' clock that night. The four House tables had been removed to make space for a large golden stage that stretched the whole length of the long wall on the left. Thousands of lighted candles flocked over the stage, giving it radiance beyond its natural luster. There was an excited hum of conversation from the gathered crowd (which seemed to be made up of half the school, if not more). There were Tom, Ron and Hermione, right at the edge of the stage; Harry waved at Katie, off to the left with Alicia and Angelina, who smiled and waved back; Lawrence, Will, Beverly and Kelly edged out of the crowd to stand next to them.
"'Lo there," Will said cheerily. "Swanky old set up, eh? We reckon it's got to be Flitwick doing it. No one else is nearly qualified, we've checked." Lawrence nodded his agreement.
Delf shook her head. "No, we've been thinking too. We think it's Lockheart."
Identical expressions that were at once disgusted and crestfallen crossed Lawrence and Will's faces, and Beverly grimaced. Kelly didn't seem to be listening. "That makes perfect sense now that you say it, unfortunately," said Lawrence glumly. The trio's disdain for Lockheart had spread to most of the rest of their Ravenclaw classmates.
As though to prove Delf's point, Gilderoy Lockheart strode out onto the stage, followed, for some reason, by Professor Snape. Harry wondered what the Potions Master would be getting out of this: he looked about ready to murder someone. Though actually, maybe that's what he was getting out of it.
Lockheart lifted his hands in the air, and silence descended with them. "Gather round, gather round!" he called heartily. "Can everyone see me? Can you all hear me? Excellent!
"Now, Professor Dumbledore has granted me permission to start this little Dueling Club, to train you all up in case you ever need to defend yourselves as I myself have done on countless occasions—for full details, see my published works." Delf snorted contemptuously, and Roderick and Harry rolled their eyes at each other. Vanity project, indeed.
"Let me introduce my assistant, Professor Snape," said Lockheart, gesturing behind himself and flashing a wide smile. "He tells me he knows a tiny little bit about dueling himself and has sportingly agreed to help me with a short demonstration before we begin. Now, I don't want any of you youngsters to worry—you'll still have your Potions Master when I'm through with him, never fear!"
"Yes, but will we have a Defense teacher?" Roderick whispered. Delf snickered and Harry grinned at the thought.
Up on the stage, Lockheart and Snape turned to face each other from about half the stage's length apart. Lockheart gave an elaborate bow with much twirling of hands, while Snape jerked his head irritably. They raised their wands like swords in front of them.
"As you see, we are holding our wands in the accepted combative position," Lockheart told the silent crowd. "On the count of three, we will cast our first spells. Neither of us will be aiming to kill, of course."
"Is he looking at Snape?" Will whispered incredulously.
"One—two—three—" Lockheart cried.
Both men swung their wands over their shoulders, but Snape was clearly the superior wizard: "Expelliarmus!" he cried. There was a blinding flash of scarlet light and Lockheart was blasted off his feet. He flew backwards off the stage, smashed into the wall and slid down it to sprawl on the floor.
Harry heard Draco and several other Slytherins cheering. A number of girls craned their heads and stood on their tiptoes to see if he was injured. Harry, Delf and Roderick smothered laughter in the backs of their hands and waited to see how he would cover himself.
Lockheart was getting unsteadily to his feet. His hat had fallen off and his wavy golden hair was standing on end.
"Well, there you have it!" he said, tottering back onto the stage. "That was a Disarming Charm—as you can see, I've lost my wand—ah, thank you, Miss Brown. Yes, as excellent idea to show them that, Professor Snape, but if you don't mind me saying so, it was very obvious what you were about to do. If I had wanted to stop you it would have been only too easy. However, I felt it would be instructive to let them see…" Lockheart suddenly became aware that Snape was glaring daggers at him. "Well then!" He clapped his hands together. "Enough demonstrations! I'm going to come among you now and put you all into pairs. Professor Snape, if you'd like to help me…"
They moved out through the crowd, pairing people off as they went. Lockheart put Roderick and Delf together, and Harry was put with Kelly. Casting his eye over the crowd (now rather dispersed around the Great Hall), he saw with a quick jolt of amusement that Snape had put Tom and Draco together, and they were currently glaring at each other and fingering their wands. That wouldn't end well, and he couldn't help but preordain Tom the loser.
"Face your partners!" Lockheart cried, back on the stage. "And bow!"
Harry and Kelly faced one another across a good space of clear floor, and bowed. She was a pretty girl, taller than Harry by some two inches, wavy blond haired and blue-eyed, with the promise of a very full figure. "Don't go too hard on me, Harry," she said, with a sort of disquieting smirk.
"Er, yeah, sure…" he said.
"Wands at the ready!" shouted Lockheart. "When I count to three, cast your charms to disarm your opponent—only to disarm them—we don't want any accidents. One… two… three!"
All around him, spells sprang to life, some stronger than others, some very accurate, others… less so.
"Protego," Harry murmured as Kelly copied Snape and tried to disarm him. Her spell glanced off his shield, and before she could do anything else, he had her wand soaring through the air to land neatly in his hand.
"Good match," she said a bit peevishly, coming over to collect it back.
"Sorry," said Harry said. "I guess I'm a little over-eager."
"You're a little over-talented," she corrected, again flashing that smile he couldn't read.
"Um… thanks?"
Not all of the 'duels' had gone as smoothly as theirs, however: Ron's wand had backfired and Seamus was lying on the floor looking quite groggy; Hermione and the large Slytherin girl she'd been paired with were wrestling rather than dueling, and Hermione was losing quite badly; Lawrence and Will were panting: they knew the spells, but didn't want to injure their best friend; Delf and Roderick were trading spells rather smoothly actually. Roderick looked like he often did on his broomstick, dodging and weaving, while Delf looked like she was conducting a very dramatic orchestral piece.
Tom and Draco, on the other hand, had deteriorated into something very creative. Draco was doubled over gasping with jinx-induced laughter, and Tom was doing some sort of Irish jig, yelling insults at the Slytherin the whole time.
"I said disarm only!" Lockheart shouted in alarm. "Stop! Stop!" Out of the corner of his eye, Harry saw Roderick glance up at the professor to see if the order was addressed at him, giving Delf just the opportunity she needed to get him with a Full Body-Bind jinx. Roderick toppled over clumsily.
Luckily, Snape took charge just then, and yelled "Finite Incantatem!" At once, Draco stopped laughing and Tom stopped dancing, and they were able to glare at one another, panting hard. Roderick got up too, rubbing his bum and grimacing at Delf, who looked stoutly unapologetic.
"Dear, dear," Lockheart tittered, skittering through the crowd looking at the aftermath of the duels. "Up you get, Macmillan… careful there, Miss Fawcett… pinch it hard: it'll stop bleeding in a second, Boot…
"I think I'd better teach you to block unfriendly spells," he said, standing flustered in the centre of the Hall. He glanced at Snape for reassurance and got none from the man's glittering black eyes and blank expression. He looked quickly away. "Let's… let's have a volunteer pair! Longbottom and Finch-Fletchley, how about you?"
"A bad idea, Professor Lockheart," Snape interrupted. "Longbottom causes devastation with even the simplest spell. We'd be sending whatever was left of Finch-Fletchley up to the hospital wing in a matchbox." Harry glanced around to see Neville's round pink face go pinker still. "How about Malfoy and Potter?" he continued. Harry and Roderick exchanged excited looks till Snape gestured Draco out into the middle of the Hall where a large clear area was forming.
"Excellent idea!" Lockheart exclaimed. "Now, Thomas, when Draco points his wand at you, you do this." He raised his wand, attempted a complicated sort of wiggling action, and promptly dropped it. Most of the Ravenclaws tittered, and Snape smirked as Lockheart bent down to retrieve it, saying, "Whoops! My wand is a little over-excited."
Snape moved closer to Draco, bent down and whispered something in his ear. Draco's lips curled in an unpleasant smirk, and Harry saw Tom gulp nervously. "Professor, could you show me that blocking thing again?"
Lockheart cuffed him on the shoulder. "Just do what I did, Thomas!" Tom looked even more worried than before. "One—two—three—go!" Lockheart shouted.
Tom wouldn't have had time to do anything even if he knew what to do. Draco quickly raised his wand and shouted "Serpensortia!" The end of his wand exploded and an enormous black snake shot out the end of it. It landed heavily, then raised itself and looked at Tom with mean little eyes. Screams rang out from the crowd and the ring around the second-years widened appreciably. Tom stood frozen in its path, clearly torn over fight or flight.
"Don't move," Snape said lazily, strolling forward. "I'll get rid of it…"
"Allow me!" Lockheart shouted, and Harry groaned. Why couldn't he just stay out of the way of more competent wizards? Like Filch? Lockheart brandished his wand at the snake, and there was a loud bang. Instead of disappearing, the snake flew a dozen feet in the air and then fell back to the earth with a meaty smack. It would have been nice if Lockheart could have de-boned the snake instead. Furious and hissing loudly, it slithered straight towards a Hufflepuff boy in Tom's year who was about three feet to Harry's left. Jason? Justin? The snake was hissing its fear and confusion, not that anyone but Harry could understand it. "What am? Where safe? Predators near! Go hide go hide go hide!" It was confused about what it was, its purpose, its existence. Draco's spell had brought it to some kind of magical life, and all that had happened to it was painful, scary, and confusing. It didn't want to hurt Justin or Jason or whatever, but it certainly would if he didn't move out of the way. And the boy looked frozen to the spot, too terrified to move. It took all of Harry's self-control to resist replying to it, reassuring it. But even that, he though, might not do much good. The poor thing was too terrified. This whole thing was barmy and had to stop.
Harry stepped forward smartly, drew his wand, and shouted "Evanesco!" The snake vanished in a puff of black smoke.
A rather breathless, ragged cheer rose up from the surrounding crowd. Harry realized too late that this was the second time in as many months he'd put himself in the way of a threat aimed at Tom. It wasn't a good habit, and he didn't want to become known for it. But just then, he was stuck with his heroism.
"Ah-ha! Excellent, Mr. Potter, excellent!" Lockheart exclaimed. "Very effective use of the Vanishing Charm. Twenty points to Gryffindor. No, fifty!"
"I'm in—"
"Well, I think that's enough of a meeting this week, don't you?" Lockheart said jovially. "Regular meeting times will be scheduled and posted in the coming week. This was more of a chance to gauge your interest, which I can see is appropriately high! Good night then, off to bed…"
Silently fuming, Harry exited the Hall, Delf and Roderick close on his heels.
"That rotten wanker!" Roderick cried as soon as they were safely in the Entry Hall. Gryffindor's rubies now had a fifteen point lead on Ravenclaw's sapphires. "How could he not know you were in Ravenclaw? It's on your robes!"
"Yeah!" Lawrence agreed angrily as he and Will elbowed their way through the crowd till they stood next to Harry and Roderick and Delf. "What a bastard! We were thirty-five points ahead of them before that!"
As the news of Harry's heroics and Lockheart's subsequent mishandling of his reward spread through the common room that night, anger over the issue grew with it. Harry took offense for mainly private reasons: he wasn't a Gryffindor. The damned Potter name was not synonymous with 'lion'.
Everyone else, however, took it very personally indeed: a slight to Harry Potter was a slight to Ravenclaw House as an institution, and to they themselves, its representatives! After all, Harry was the epitome of what it meant to be in Ravenclaw! He was what every Ravenclaw aspired to be!
Or so they told him.
By ten o' clock that night, there was a campaign being formed to confront Professor Flitwick about it, and naturally, Harry was elected to have the actual discussion, since he was the 'injured party'.
And so, the next day during their last Charms class of the term, Harry stayed on after his classmates left, most of them patting him on the back or nodding their support for him. Delf and Roderick hesitated to see if he wanted backup, but he waved them out with the rest of the class.
"Professor," he said, approaching the desk at the front of the room. "Could I talk to you for a moment?"
Flitwick looked up, his eye twinkling from under his hat brim. "Let me guess. This is about the fifty points Lockheart gave Gryffindor yesterday, isn't it?"
"Well, yes, sir. You see, there was this snake at the Dueling Club last night, and they thought it was going to attack a boy, but I made it disappear, and—"
Flitwick raised his hand and Harry stopped his rather disorganized tirade. "We teachers gossip too, Mr. Potter. Your actions last night are well known to all of us. If I had to guess, I'd say you're here because you'd like me to correct Professor Lockheart's rather egregious error in point allocation."
"Yes sir. The points don't bother me so much, but they do everybody else, quite badly, and they asked me to talk to you about it since I'm the, er, 'injured party', they said."
"And here you are."
"Yes sir."
"Well, Harry," (Harry started a bit at the familiarity) "I've actually just been waiting for one of you to come up and give me an excuse to correct this. Minerva nearly choked on a mint last night, laughing about it. Fifty points from Gryffindor. Fifty points to Ravenclaw. And five more for Miss Greengrass' efforts in class today. Tell her, won't you?"
Harry grinned. "Yes sir."
"I believe you have a free hour next. Go make good use of it."
"Yes sir. Thank you, sir!" He hurried out into the hallway as first-year Hufflepuffs and Gryffindors filed in to begin their lesson. He headed to the right, meaning to go down to the Entrance Hall where his House-mates would have been watching for the change in the hourglasses.
But Hagrid was in the way. His face was entirely hidden by a snow-encrusted balaclava, but there was no disguising his girth. In his trademark moleskin coat, he filled up more than half of the hallway. A dead rooster hung, nearly swallowed, from one colossal hand.
"Hullo, Hagrid," he said cheerfully.
"All righ', Harry?" he replied, pulling the massive balaclava down so he could speak. "Why aren't yeh in class?"
"It's a free hour since I quit Divination," he replied. "What's with the, er, chicken?"
"Second one killed this term," Hagrid explained grouchily. "It's either foxes or a Blood-Suckin' Bugbear, an' I need Professor Dumbledore's permission ter put a charm around the hen-coop."
Harry nodded. "Sensible. I'll see you around, alright? I'll visit when it stops snowing."
"I'll keep ye ter tha', Harry!" Hagrid called as Harry squeezed past him and hurried off down the corridor.
Around a corner, down the stairs, behind the tapestry, down more stairs, swing a left…
"Want to eat… crush… kill…" He stopped cold. The voice was back.
The hallway Harry found himself in was particularly dark, as a broken pane in a window was letting in a freezing draught that had extinguished most of the torches. A little way along the passage, he heard Professor McGonagall screaming at a student who had apparently managed to bungle turning his friend into a badger.
"So hungry… so long…." It sounded like it was coming from around the next corner.
He hurried forward to see if he could catch a glimpse of whoever it was, but something tripped him halfway down the corridor, and he went sprawling.
Twisting about to see what the culprit was, he felt his heart literally stop in his chest: lying on the hallway floor, a look of frozen shock on his face, was Justin, that boy he'd saved from the snake only the previous day. But next to him, all the more terrifying, was Nearly-Headless Nick, the friendly Gryffindor ghost. No longer pearly white, he was smoky and grey, and was floating horizontally very close to the ground. His head was hanging askew, and his expression was identical to Justin's.
"Oh, no," he breathed. "Oh no, oh no, oh no…" He scrambled to his feet and sprinted the rest of the way down the passage way to the partially open door McGonagall's voice was echoing out of.
"Professor!" he shouted, skidding to a halt and badly startling the class of sixth-years.
McGonagall's head jerked around irritably, but when she saw Harry's wild expression, her eyes widened. "Potter! What in the name of—"
"You need to come see—quick—something's happened—"
Just then the voice he least wanted to hear split the air: Peeves. "ATTACK! ATTACK! ANOTHER ATTACK! NO MORTAL OR GHOST IS SAFE! RUN FOR YOUR LIVES! ATTAAAACK!" He closed his eyes and groaned.
The students exploded out of their seats and stampeded into the hall, despite McGonagall's shouts to stay where they were.
"You stay here, Potter!" she commanded as she dashed out after her class. He wouldn't have done anything else if she'd paid him.
Harry nervously listened to ten minutes of confusion and noise from the hallway: McGonagall enlisted some students to carry Justin to the infirmary; no one knew quite what to do with Nearly-Headless Nick till someone finally had the idea to conjure up a fan and waft him there. This plan was quickly implemented, and the chaos moved away down the hall as Transfiguration was quickly canceled.
Harry looked up anxiously as McGonagall reappeared in the doorway, her expression very severe. "Tell me what happened," she ordered.
"I… I was coming downstairs from—I was talking to Professor Flitwick after class, and I was coming downstairs to meet my friends, and I just tripped… He was just there in the middle of the floor, you saw, I wasn't looking where I was going, I wanted to see who'd turned who into a badger, I don't… I don't know what happened, professor."
She examined him shrewdly. Finally, she released a long sigh and rubbed her temple. "I believe you, Potter, so help me, I do. Go down to your friends. I need to report this to the Headmaster, assuming he didn't hear all the commotion just now."
He nodded, thanking his lucky stars he wouldn't have to go see Dumbledore as well.
By the time he got down to the Entrance Hall, news of Justin's Petrification had spread like someone dipped it in Swelling Solution.
Delf and Roderick were waiting for him at the bottom of the main stairs, and they both jumped up when they saw him coming.
"Come on," he said shortly, leading the way outside into the snow. When they were a safe distance out from the castle, he turned and saw their mystified and worried expressions. "No one's dead," he reassured them. They only looked more concerned. He sighed. "Okay. You've heard that that kid Justin was Petrified? And Nearly-Headless Nick?" They both nodded. "And I suppose you've heard I was there: that I found them." Another set of mute nods. "Well, that's all true, but there's more: right before I fell over them, I heard this… voice. It said it was hungry, that it wanted to eat something. It didn't seem to come from anywhere, and faded away really fast."
"It was probably just Peeves being—" Delf began, but Harry cut her off with a gesture.
"No, he popped up right after I found them and started screaming about it."
"Do you think it had anything to do with Justin and Nick getting Petrified?" Roderick asked. "Since it was the first time, there's no reason to think they're connected…"
Harry shook his head. "There was another time, nearly two months ago. I forgot to tell you about it because we got really distracted with Hogsmeade and dates and everything."
"What!" Delf exclaimed. "Harry, that's the most pathetic reason to forget to tell your best friends that you're hearing voices I've ever heard!"
"I know, but I assumed the same thing as you, that it was Peeves! And I've been alone both times, so there's no reason to say 'Harry's hearing voices' when we don't even know if other people can hear it or not, thank you very much."
Roderick was frowning thoughtfully. "So what do we do then? Just never let you be alone so that we'll hear it too?"
Harry shrugged helplessly.
"Harryyy," Delf complained. "We agreed after last year that we'd just relax this time. Tripping over Petrified ghosts and hearing mysterious voices does not fit that bill!"
"Well, it's not like I meant to!" he protested. "Come on, let's go in. I'm freezing."
"Yeah, why are we out here again? None of us have cloaks on," Roderick said, blowing on his fingers as they trekked back up to the castle.
"I'm not letting this get on the Hogwarts rumour mill. Do you know how quickly news gets around the castle? It's like there's a secret society of ghosts that only go around whispering gossip to people."
"No, that's your brother," Roderick corrected. "Merlin knows he doesn't do anything else." Harry laughed.
-o-
That weekend was the Ravenclaw-Gryffindor Quidditch match. The grounds were covered in a fluffy layer of snow as Harry and Roderick made their way down to the pitch after lunch. Delf had gone back to the dorm to collect her cloak and gloves, telling them she'd see them after the match.
"Morning!" said Abigail chipperly as they entered the changing rooms. "Beautiful conditions out there. Cloudy, so the sun won't reflect off the snow, but not actually snowing anymore. Quick, get changed to so we can start."
They greeted the rest of the team, got changed, and sat down for Abigail's pep talk, which was exactly five seconds long: "We know what we're doing. We're an excellent team, and that's why we're going to win." Chet and Chaz cheered as they all stood up to get on the pitch. "Oh, and Harry." He turned back to look at her from the tent flap. "Don't catch it too fast. The rest of us would like to play too."
He grinned. "I'll do my best."
The crowd roared as the two teams took the pitch. The teams were on good terms, and there were high fives and jokes and a lot of posturing across the buried mid-field line. Harry noticed a rather wicked gleam in Katie's eye as she grinned at him, so he was only marginally surprised as she shuffled forward through the snow drift to kiss him squarely on the mouth. They had kissed a few times since their first one on the hospital wing, secret, stolen, nervous things, but this was different, this was exciting. The crowds were screaming wildly when they pulled apart, and she was laughing.
"You only did that for the audience!" he shouted over the noise, but he was laughing too. Right then he felt he could fly without his broom.
"That's right! Now everyone knows you're mine!" she shouted back, clearly very pleased.
Once things had calmed down a few degrees, Oliver and Abigail shook hands, and Madam Hooch's whistle split the air. The teams took to the skies, each player soaring off to their positions. Harry kept a suspicious eye on the Bludgers for a few moments before deciding they were acting in their usual vicious way. He set out on his long counter-clockwise loop around the pitch, watching the game with one eye and keeping the other peeled for the Snitch.
"Harry! Harry!" The faint shouts drew his attention to the stands, where Delf was standing on the bench waving one arm and pointing diagonally across the pitch at the teacher's stands with the other. How could she have spotted the Snitch before him? He scanned the area quickly, but no golden glint was in evidence. He glanced back at her, confused. She was still pointing in the same direction, but he had to focus on winning the game, not chasing imaginary Snitches. He'd figure out what she wanted after the match. He soared away across the pitch, attention back on the game. Lee Jordan was narrating a scuffle going on near the Ravenclaw goal hoops, and the Gryffindors cheered as Alicia scored. He went back to searching for the Snitch.
Twenty minutes later, the teams were tied at sixty points each, and Harry was still circling, willing his fingers to not freeze off and cursing the Snitch for being so elusive. No, wait… There it was! Hiding down in the ripples of snow on the ground. The Nimbus seemed to respond to his thoughts before his hand directed it, and he was diving, down, down, down. He heard the collective gasp from the stands… he had it in his sights… ten meters, five, three…!
The damn traitor thing moved! Harry twisted to the right, but his broom stayed on its trajectory, so what was meant to be a graceful dive turned into an awkward lurch as he went one way and his broom the other. His fingers locked around freezing metal as he hit the end of his reach and toppled arse over elbow off his Nimbus into the snow. The next several moments were a confusion of snow and sky and dizziness: he was upside down several times over, he was standing straight, he was flat on the ground, he had a mouthful of slush—
He sat up, shaking snow out of his ears, nose, mouth, and pretty much everything else. He looked at his tightly clenched fist: the Golden Snitch waved its wings feebly in his grasp, and he pumped his first triumphantly into the air.
His teammates landed around him, laughing and cheering, and Chet and Chaz hauled him up onto their shoulders and paraded him about in a circle. The Gryffindor team followed the Ravenclaws, and the twins pulled him back to the ground and gave him a noogie. They were disappointed to lose, of course (one look at Oliver's face proved that), but apparently Harry's landing had been worth it. He looked more like a snowman than anything. Roderick and the Gryffindor Chasers saved him from the twins, and he shook hands with Imogene and hugged Katie till she giggled and spluttered that she couldn't breathe.
Lee Jordan was narrating over the hubbub: "Just another in his series of dramatic catches! No broken bones this time, right, Harry?" Harry sportingly waved his arms in the rough direction of the teacher's stands where Lee did the announcing. "Mr. and Mrs. Potter, Harry has not lost a game in three and a half years, though there have been some close calls! How do you feel about his latest victory?" Harry froze as solid as the ice in his hair. So that's what Delf had been pointing at…
"That was amazing!" James' voice rang out over the pitch. "I couldn't have done better way back when I was Seeker on the Gryffindor team!" The Gryffindors cheered.
"You dad was Seeker when he went here?" Abigail whispered. Harry nodded, mute with shock. What were they doing there?
"Mrs. Potter, what about you?"
"I'm just astonished! I don't think my heart has started back up yet!" The crowded stadium laughed.
Through the haze of confusion, Harry saw Roderick looking at him worriedly, as if he thought he might explode if the wind blew wrong, and made an effort to compose his face.
"And what do you say, Harry? How's a 'hullo' for mum and dad, eh?" Damn Lee… Damn him. He needed time to process this. Harry stiffly raised his arm and made something resembling a wave.
"There we are, how nice. Harry, your parents will be waiting for you outside the changing rooms to say hello properly. In the meantime everyone, good match, wouldn't you say?" The crowd roared its approval.
Harry moved off to the changing room during Lee's closing comments, and his teammates followed after him, all but Roderick rather confused by his mood.
"Did you know they were coming to the match, Harry?" Cho asked as he took off his wrist guards and tossed them distractedly at his locker.
"No," he said shortly.
"You don't seem pleased," Chaz noted, pulling his jersey off.
"I'm just… I wasn't expecting them. Bit shocked."
There was the usual post-win banter after that, which he took no part in, sunk deep in confusion, distrust, and cautious, painful hope. By twos and threes, his friends went back to the castle and the party that was sure to be starting in the common room. Roderick looked at him as if to ask 'shall I stay?' but Harry waved for him to go with Roger.
Soon enough, he was alone in the changing room, but there was only so much he could stall, and he knew they'd be waiting.
The snow was blinding as he stepped outside, so at first he thought it was an optical illusion that there were four figures waiting for him just up the path. But no: his mum was there, and his dad; Tom had stuck around for some inexplicable reason, and Katie too. His stomach gave an odd little twist. Wasn't it sort of against the rules to meet your boyfriend's parents without him there?
His mother spotted him first: "Harry," she called, hurrying towards him and kissing his forehead. He accepted it stiffly, still not sure if he trusted what they were doing there.
"Excellent flying, really fantastic," James said proudly as Lily led Harry over, and his heart swelled without his permission. Katie moved close and put her arm around his waist. "When the Snitch moved I thought we were in for a good long chase, but you just grabbed it!" Tom was scowling at the ground jealously.
"Thanks," Harry replied faintly, feeling somewhat lightheaded between the shock of having them there and the pleasure of the praise.
"Harry, you haven't introduced me properly," Katie put in teasingly, nudging him in the side.
"Oh! Um, Mum, Dad, this is Katie Bell, my girlfriend. Katie, my Mum and Dad: Lily and James Potter."
"Nice to meet you," Katie said politely, shaking hands with each of them.
"Gryffindor and a Quidditch player: good taste," James commented, and winced when his wife swatted him. "A pleasure, young lady," was slightly more graceful.
"I wish we had known you would be playing today, Harry, or we would have brought the camera," Lily said regretfully, and Harry's careful pleasure shattered.
Harry felt rather than saw Katie looking between him and his parents. "You didn't know he was playing?" she asked, all innocent confusion.
"Well, we knew there was a Quidditch match, of course. After what almost happened to Tom, we wanted to be here to intervene if anything happened again," James explained to Katie, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world.
"So you didn't come to see me," Harry said dully. He didn't know who he was angrier at: his parents for getting his hopes up, or himself for letting them.
"Well, if Tom had…" Lily seemed to sense that they had made a misstep, but it was too late to backtrack. "That is, we were very happy to learn we'd be seeing you, sweetheart, but we—"
"Stop." He cut his mother off unceremoniously. "I can't hear it right now." He turned and stomped along the trail up to the castle, ignoring his mother's calls for him to wait. Katie's arm had slipped from around his waist, but she had kept hold of his hand, and followed him as he moved away from his family. They had cheated! They had witnessed his joy, his embarrassment, his victory, and they deserved none of it. He was fuming at himself as well though: he ought to have known better. Everything they did was for Tom, and it was stupid of him to have forgotten.
There was a great deal of noise coming from the Great Hall, stuffed full of excited students having lunch, but Harry ignored it and climbed the stairs to the rest of the school, and Katie followed. The corridors were dank and chill, and he bulled into the nearest classroom he found. Katie closed the door behind them and watched impassively as he kicked a desk over.
"You weren't quite telling the truth when we went to Hogsmeade, were you?" she said as Harry stopped kicking things and stood in the middle of the room with his fists clenched. "When you said that 'you love your mum and dad and Tom, but they really frustrate you sometimes'. You're more than frustrated."
He sighed heavily, reaching for his meditation training to calm him. It worked, but only slightly.
"...Yeah. I'm sorry you had to see that. I've gotten used to lying by omission when I talk about my family."
"Tell me," she suggested, hopping up to sit on a desk. Her eyes were wide and earnest, and he sighed again.
"I said Tom and I were raised differently, and that's true. But what I actually meant was, he gets Mum and Dad's attention, and I don't. He did learn to deal with stuff like the Crescent Gala and Chocolate Frog cards and all that nonsense, and I did learn to be independent, but a byproduct of that is that they don't know a damned thing about me. I wrote letters in first year. I told them I was in Ravenclaw. I told them how I became Seeker. I told them how odd it was having my god father be 'Professor Black' rather than 'Uncle Sirius'. My first letter back was a Christmas card. Dad assumed I was in Gryffindor till just this past summer. They didn't know I was on the team till Tom wrote a letter about it last year. It would be a lie to say I'm not bitter about it, because I very much am, but I had become used to it and built a life without them. It's just stupid when they come and act like real parents again because they haven't been that since I was seven. They've forgotten half my bloody—fucking…" He trailed off, coughing to try and clear the tightness in the back of his throat.
"What?" Katie prompted softly.
"Birthdays," he rasped. "They forget my birthday." He bowed his head, ashamed of the hold his sadness had on him.
He heard her scoot off the desk behind him and walk across the room. "You sound like you blame yourself."
"That's crazy," he mumbled.
"I know. I'm just saying what it sounds like." She stepped around him till they were face to face. Harry couldn't tell what she was thinking, like he would have been able to with Delf and Roderick, but her eyes were sympathetic.
"You probably don't want to hear this."
She frowned. "Not true. I want to know everything about you." And for the second time that day, she kissed him. She was hesitant, and Harry was too surprised to react for a moment, but then he kissed her back, and put his hands on her waist, and her arms went around his neck. This was different than kissing Lindsey. He had liked her well enough and certainly been attracted to her, but Katie cared about him, and he was starting to understand that stuff like kissing was just one way of showing that. He felt the edge of her jumper ride up a bit under his fingers, and experimentally slid his hand up under the fabric. She shivered: her skin was burning hot compared to his hands, which were still frigid from flying around so long. She didn't stop kissing him though, and he took this as a sign of encouragement and allowed his hands to slide along up her ribs. She smiled against his lips and pressed closer against him as his fingers found the bottom of her bra and—
"Harry? OH, MERLIN—!"
Tom arrived.
Quicker than thinking, Harry had his wand out and was shouting "Petrificus totalus!" Tom, caught in the act of trying to escape back into the hallway, promptly went stiff and fell on his face. Harry and Katie rushed across the room, and Harry rolled him over.
"Okay, you," he said, kneeling with one knee on his brother's chest and aiming his wand at his throat. "Yet again you have stumbled upon something I sincerely wish you hadn't. Remember when I threatened you when you saw my tattoo last year?" Tom didn't react, of course. "Well, this time I'm not going to sic the twins on you, and nothing as benign as hair-dye potions will be involved. If word of this gets out around school, I will personally find you, use this spell on you again, and stick you in the most disused, spider infested broom closet I can find in this place, and leave you there for a long, long time. Are we clear?" Tom didn't react again. "Good. Rennervate." Tom barely looked any less frozen as the spell released him, but Harry was done. The threats were made. Now all there was to do was see if they stuck. Ignoring his brother completely, Harry took Katie's hand and went to see if they could find a more private space to take up where they'd been interrupted.
Two days later, on Monday, Harry ambushed Tom as he came out of History of Magic, dragged him up to the eighth floor, froze him, and left him in a very disused and spider-infested closet while he went to Care of Magical Creatures. The twins had come up to him during Transfiguration and made all sorts of extremely suggestive innuendoes concerning him and Katie. Apparently the threat hadn't stuck after all.
The very last Saturday before the winter holiday was a Hogsmeade visit.
"So wait, when did you and Athenias break up?" Harry asked as he, Roderick and Delf made their ways down to the front gates.
"More like they were never properly together," Delf corrected sullenly. She had been acting odd ever since the Ravenclaw-Gryffindor Quidditch match. Harry had assumed she was cross he had ignored her attempted warning that his parents were in the crowd, and was letting her get over it naturally. So far, there had been little improvement. This was partially responsible for him spending much more time with Katie recently.
"Well, yeah," Roderick agreed, breath misting in the freezing air. They were all bundled into thick cloaks and snow boots and hats and all the sweaters they owned. "She made it pretty clear she didn't want anything to do with me on the way back to the castle that day. Something about 'not being the gentleman she thought I was'. Rubbish. No one thinks I'm a gentleman."
"So are you and Delf just going together? You and Oliver are done, yeah?" he verified, leaning forward to look at her around Roderick.
"Yes," she said shortly.
"But we're not going together. I don't know why you keep thinking that. I've actually asked Helen," Roderick said, answering his first question.
"Oh. When did that happen?" Harry asked. He'd become somewhat out of the loop since beginning to date Katie properly.
"Yesterday after Defense. Since Lawrence and Beverley are going together, and Will just asked some girl from Hufflepuff, and Andrew can't go anymore, and Amanda and Kelly are thick as thieves right now, I sort of… felt bad for her."
"Ouch," said Harry. "Pity-dating."
"Don't tell her I said that," Roderick said sheepishly. "I mean… she's nice enough. Right?" This last was directed at Delf.
"She's alright," she replied reluctantly. "We sort of get on."
"Delf, why do you hate all the girls in your dorm?" Harry asked as they came in sight of the gate.
"I just said Helen and I get on," she snapped. Her eyes flared orange and Harry dropped the subject like a hot coal.
Katie was waiting for him at the gate, as they had agreed over breakfast. Roderick went over to greet Helen, and as Harry and Katie made their way down the path, he saw Delf making half-hearted conversation with Fred and George. He felt bad that both he and Roderick had someone to go with besides her, but the twins would keep her occupied for the day.
The air was freezing, but he and Katie managed to have a pleasant time. They popped into a knick-knack shop and he got her a Christmas gift: a tiny statuette of a mouse that would sharpen a quill on its teeth when you said "cheese" along with a promise that she'd write to him when she was home for holiday. She got him a little wind-up figurine of a man playing Quidditch that flew around in circles till the clockwork ran down.
But it was too cold to stay out for long, and they soon retreated to the warmth of The Three Broomsticks. Roderick, Helen, Delf and Tracey had a table in the middle of the room, all mulling Butterbeers and listening to Helen.
"…strict Christians, so they send me to Bible camp every summer. They were very scared and disappointed after Professor McGonagall came to tell us because they think magic has something to do with the Devil and that I'm going to Hell."
Only Tracey looked like she really understood what Helen was saying: Delf and Roderick both had well-intentioned but blank expressions on.
"Hey," Harry said during a break. Everyone's heads jerked around. "Hello," Roderick and Tracey chorused while Delf said "Harry! Sit down!" He drew up chairs for him and Katie from a nearby table and set them between Tracey and Helen. He looped his arm over Katie's shoulder once they were seated, and smiled around the table.
"Where were you two?" Tracey asked casually.
"Here and there," Harry said evasively, sliding a glance at Katie, who giggled. They had snuck around the back of buildings several times for kissing purposes.
With mild alarm, Harry saw Delf's eyes become a low, smoldering orange.
"Did you see Oliver?" he asked concernedly.
"No, why?" she asked, confused.
"Your eyes are angry. I thought you might have run into him and he gave you a hard time."
Roderick sighed and rubbed his forehead. "Never mind," he said when Harry looked at him curiously.
-o-
"Dear, we've a letter from Tom!" Lily called to James that evening at Potter Manor.
"Oh, let's have it then."
Dear Mum and Dad,
I'm sorry to break your hearts, but I'm not coming home for Christmas.
"Oh, James, we've always had Tom for Christmas…. Harry hasn't been home for it in a while, but this is the first time he hasn't been home for it."
Sorry I forgot to mention when you visited. It's just that I feel like I have to keep an eye on Harry.
"Uh-oh. I'm suddenly concerned for a whole different reason…"
To my absolute horror, I accidentally walked in on him and Katie in an empty classroom after that Quidditch game you two surprised him by coming to. My innocent eyes were branded forever by the images of Kate in his lap with Harry's hand up her shirt.
"Is he serious?"
"Oh god," Lily moaned.
"Good job Harry!"
"JAMES!"
"Well, she's Gryffindor, isn't she?"
"That is NOT the point."
I was mortified, of course, to see them snogging and necking all over each other like that,
"Well, yeah," James muttered, who had had a couple similar experiences involving Sirius and various girls in his youth.
"And she seemed so respectable…" Lily muttered.
"She may straighten him out," James suggested.
so I left as quickly as I could.
"I should hope so!" Lily sounded mortified.
I don't think they saw me, but I really think you guys should be aware of what he's doing behind your backs. I'll keep an eye on him for you though, don't worry.
Love, Tom
A/N
I KNOW I KNOW I KNOW, JAMES WAS A CHASER IN CANON, YOU DON'T HAVE TO TELL ME. Just add it to the list of things I changed, along with him, you know, surviving.
Anyway, this is the first instance where Harry really opens up to someone properly about how he feels about how his parents treat him. I like that it's with Katie rather than Roderick or Delf or someone he's already close to, for one because it gives their relationship a solid base, and two, because it's often easier to explain a situation to someone when they don't have any previous information about it. So that's where we were coming from with that.
Also, the fic is now being posted on AO3! It's on my friend fire1's account, same title, so if you're more active over there, go give it some love! :)
Chapter 12, "Promises Kept", goes up next Saturday!
Half credit for this story goes to my friend fire1: we developed and outlined this idea together and there's no way it would exist without her. Go check her page out!
All characters are owned by JK Rowling, Warner Bros, etc.
E.I. signing out