Harry used to look forward to the start of January when his friends would finally return and there would be Quidditch, games in the common room and everything fun again. This time, it felt just the opposite – with the return of the rest of the students, him and Tom were back to their previous secrecy, even though Harry had to admit there was something charmingly naughty about sneaking into each other's bed or taking detours to the Room of Requirement; snogging or wanking with a Silencing Charm was doable, shagging would make the whole bed creak and alert their roommates, not to mention poor Voldemort.

Tom kept the serpent's nest Disillusioned under his bed – they came up with several options of where they could keep him once he got too big, but they probably wouldn't have to worry about that until at least next year. A fresh supply of fish, a Heating Charm and a daily chat were enough to keep the hatchling happy.

So, they'd gotten into a game of hide-and-seek with the rest of the school, even taking advantage of cleaning cupboards or empty classrooms here and then, and yes, it was mildly annoying, but it was also fun. They'd been fooling around like a pair of teenage lovebirds, which was exactly what they were – Harry couldn't shake the thought that this was what his sixth year was supposed to have been like… Tom's, too, for that matter; the time traveller was glad to see him let loose a little and vent energy into something less serious and more age-appropriate than saving and/or domination of the wizarding world (same thing in Tom's opinion, they were still working that one out in their late-night chats).

The Knights of Walpurgis hadn't been very active except for following through with Tom's commands and hanging out together, but then again, Harry wasn't sure what they'd actually done at Hogwarts in his timeline – he doubted Tom would trust them enough to let them help to petrify Muggle-borns, but it was a possibility.

He shuddered at the thought, because as things were this time around, he found himself at the Three Broomsticks with Fulcran Lestrange to his right and Maxmilion Dolohov to his left, joking in an undertone about Max's crush, a Hufflepuff girl who was sitting further down the table. It was nice, the Slytherins were nice, and Harry was struggling to wrap his mind around the fact that they'd have been on their way to become some of the most infamous of Death Eaters in an alternate reality.

While their inter-house friendships kept blossoming, the situation within Slytherin seemed to have settled into a new normal, that is, two strongly divided groups who avoided each other as much as possible; one consisted of the most radical blood supremacists, the other was Tom's progressive fellowship.

When it came to blood supremacism, there was no grey zone left in Slytherin anymore; you're either with us, or against us. To Harry's astonishment, about two thirds chose their side.

He wasn't aware until then just how much respect Tom inspired among the Snakes outside of the Knights of Walpurgis – Harry had thought it ended with Tom's original eight, but the boys were apparently just the tip of the iceberg.

To an outsider's eye, the division was subtle, mostly just changes in who hung out with whom and sitting arrangements. That wasn't quite what Harry was used to from Slytherins – judging by his experience with Malfoy and his squad, he had a mental image of them being rather vocal about the people or ideas they disliked… Apparently, he still had a thing or two to learn about his transfer house.

"They're… surprisingly civil," Harry voiced his thoughts during one early January dinner, indicating towards the far side of the table. "I thought Malfoy would give us shit for openly standing up to him."

Tom smirked, a hint of malicious self-satisfaction seeping through his amiable façade, "Oh, he hates our guts, he just can't do anything about it."

"He can't?"

"He has nothing on you, and contrarily, the two of us have too much on each other… though I made sure I have more on him, of course,"

"… Do I even want to know?" Harry sighed, wincing.

"Nothing too drastic," Tom leant in conspiratorially, § I made the Knights practice the Imperius Curse on each other.§

"So you could truthfully claim you've seen them cast it, and they couldn't?"

Tom nodded with a smug twist to his smile, "Good, we'll make a Slytherin out of you yet. He obviously can't go for an open war, though we can expect some closed doors at the Ministry – we'll just find a way around them."

Speaking of Slytherin, they'd started profiting off the founder's basilisk, as per Tom's suggestion. They learned it was a she, not that Harry cared much. They would awaken her every few days to harvest the venom, occasionally bringing her a few rats or even a hare to compensate for the energy output.

It was the most insufferable serpent Harry had met, though. She kept pleading with them to send her to kill Muggle-born students and muttering how she'd like to tear them, rip them, swallow them,… They had to lie about their purpose, promise they were collecting the venom in order to get rid of all Muggles and Muggle-borns at once in a grand scheme. Harry had found every visit downright disturbing.

Harry wasn't fond of killing magical beasts, but even he had to admit they should put her out of her thousand-year-long misery at some point so she would never again pose a risk to the students in the future. Tom promised to do it when the time came.

At least her venom was useful enough to compensate for the inconvenience. Some famous potioneers of the medieval times were known to be Parseltongues, kept basilisks and used their venom in their potion recipes. As Parseltongue became scarce (possibly due to the inbred Slytherin lines not being able to produce suitable heirs anymore) and several people who had tried to breed basilisks died when they accidentally looked at their serpents unshielded, most countries banned the beasts and their venom's price shot up dramatically.

Naturally, it would have been very suspicious if two Hogwarts students suddenly started selling the substance in large quantities – Harry assumed this was one of the possible reasons why Tom hadn't made profit off it in his original timeline. That's where Fleamont came into play. Harry explained the situation to him and the potioneer was eager to help with the distribution, in exchange keeping a small volume for himself and talking Harry into sneaking him into Hogwarts one Saturday afternoon to see the legendary Chamber of Secrets.

Fleamont claimed to have secured an exclusive contact on one of his business trips, someone from Morocco, where the wizarding law regarding basilisks wasn't as restrictive, conveniently close enough for delivery by owl post, which underwent no customs.

Money started pouring in. One ounce of their product was selling for a whopping 500 galleons, the equivalent of about 6000 pounds in 1997, or about 200 pounds in 1944. Fleamont, being a seasoned businessman, advised them not to offer too much of it as they would flood the market and the price would drop drastically, but they weren't planning to stay "in business" for too long anyway, so they happily sold at least one ounce a week. They side-along Apparated to Gringotts one Hogsmeade weekend to set up a vault for Harry and give his legal consent for Fleamont to deposit the profits there.

The real treasure they'd been sitting on, however, was the serpent itself. Basilisk hide was one of the most magically resilient materials in existence, even sturdier than dragon hide. There hadn't been one large enough to make an actual armour in centuries, but the Serpent of Slytherin would suffice for at least five. The poshest wizarding families of the world would fight tooth and nail to get their hands on it. Tom got very excited at the prospect and started looking into skinning spells while Harry just wondered why the hell had his timeline's Dumbledore left something so incredibly valuable to rot.

They could also get a good collector's value on the skeleton of the "Serpent of Slytherin", provided they could sell it. That one was uncertain as the giant bones would be difficult to smuggle out of the castle, and proving it was the real deal would be tricky without revealing too much.

It was on Thursday, the 10th of February, that Headmaster Dippet with a pair of Ministry officials and the Charms Professor Gemma Kamelion in tow entered the Great Hall, all sporting similarly grave expressions and looking their way. Harry's heart shot to his throat, thinking their operation must have been discovered.

He watched with bated breath as the Head of Ravenclaw approached their table, the three men waiting by the door… or as it turned out, approached her own house's table. She laid her hand on one of the younger students' shoulder and bowed to tell her something in a low voice. The student shot her friends a nervous look and stood up, following the adults out of the room.

The Hall burst into murmurs, speculations flying left and right. Harry and Tom just shared a relieved look – apparently, the other wizard had been thinking along the same lines.

The student, a second year named Sarah Jacobs, had been absent for the rest of the day and missed all of her classes. When she finally returned for dinner, she was puffy-eyed and ashen, surrounded by an accordingly sullen group of peers.

"They say there was an attack in Brussels, Grindelwald blew up their Ministry." said Isaac Rosier in a low voice, "Her parents worked there and didn't make it. On top of that, she's a half-blood; the wizarding side of her family said they won't take her in, and there's no one left of the Muggle side, so…"

"Merlin, that's horrible."

"But she's just twelve! I don't know what I'd do…"

"Poor lass."

"Will she end up in a Muggle orphanage?"

Harry wasn't there when such occurrences became more frequent in his seventh year, but he remembered this helpless feeling from when he'd been listening to the victim count on the radio.

A good part of Slytherins had been rooting for Grindelwald's side, but there was generally a lot of hate directed at Dumbledore from all houses.

"Why won't he do something?"

"The whole world's begging him, how can he be so selfish?"

"Coward! Where's his Gryffindor courage now?"

Harry saw the reason behind such comments, but he mostly just felt sorry for the man. He wanted to reach out to him, having fallen for a budding Dark Lord and defeated that same person himself, admittedly in reverse order, but he honestly had no idea how to go about that without appearing weird or suspicious.

It was torturous to just sit through it, watch tragedies happen as the Daily Prophet reported two more attacks in late February and mid-March – in his timeline's war, he at least felt like he had the power to do something about the situation.

He tried to drown the helplessness in studying, flying and sex… It mostly worked. He started reviewing for his O.W.L.s while also keeping up with his sixth year curriculum, then just when he thought his head would explode, he would blow off some steam by riding either Tom or a broomstick.

The Ravenclaw team wasn't in their best form during the match a week after the Brussels incident, but their Seeker got extremely lucky, finding the Snitch just metres away from where he'd been hovering, thus Slytherin eventually lost 150:180 – they could still win the Cup if they beat Hufflepuff in April and Ravenclaw lost to Gryffindor in May.

Harry had also finally gotten to deciding on the direction in which he was going to steer life. After giving it some thought, he discovered the destination was No Sodding Clue.

He tried to imagine himself as the Auror he's originally wanted to be. Helping people was a nice thought, but literally meant dedicating himself to fighting dark wizards, something he felt like he'd had enough of for a lifetime.

Helping others was a good reference point, though, he liked that. What else could he do to make himself useful? He wasn't studious enough to become a Healer or go into research, and he hated politicking and paperwork, which ruled out the Ministry.

He could get a mastery in Defence and teach it, he supposed, but he'd be spending most of his time at Hogwarts – he loved the place, but maybe it was time to move on? Wait, did Tom still want the Defence position in this timeline?

"Have you decided what you want to do? After Hogwarts?."

They were snuggled up in their usual Room-of-Requirement-provided bed one lazy Sunday afternoon, basking in the mild April sun after a hot shagging session. They each had an arm wrapped around the other, Tom's head resting against Harry's bare chest and tickling his chin with its curls.

"Other than you?" Tom smirked, letting his hand slide to the globe of Harry's exposed arse and squeeze.

Harry was barely clinging to his train of thought, his body not at all adverse to a another round, but he managed, "Yeah, like, for work."

"… I'd obviously like to go into politics at some point, but not as a nobody. I want to enter from an established position; what position, I'll decide based on the offers I get, but I've been thinking Hogwarts professor or some other sort of academic."

Harry hummed thoughtfully. "Well, if we make as much money off the hides as Fleamont says we will, you could just stay, er, home and invent stuff or invest."

"Yes, that would work, too," Tom agreed, then paused for a moment before adding in a very casual manner, "Would you like to buy a house?"

Harry inhaled sharply in surprise. Wasn't this a massive proposition? How could Tom sound so calm? "Um, buy a house… together?"

"Of course… Unless you don't want to live with me," he shifted backwards to be able to see Harry's face, watching expectantly for a reaction.

"No! I mean, yes, I'd love to live with you," Harry squirmed under Tom's scrutiny, trying not to give away just how excited he was at this development. "It's just… other than that, I don't really know what to do with myself."

"There's nothing you'd like to do?"

"Help people, I guess, but I don't really see myself as an Auror or a Healer… Seems like too much drama, you know?"

"Makes sense, after what you've been through…" Tom dropped his gaze to Harry's chest, making a strange, too-blank expression which had made Harry wonder what was going on in his head the few times it appeared. "What about teaching? Or cursebreaking?"

"Would you laugh at me if I said I don't want to be away from home for so long?" Away from you, he actually wanted to say but was too embarrassed to.

As if reading his thoughts, Tom looked back at him and smiled. "No, I'd say I don't want to be away from you either." He closed in for a gentle kiss. Harry welcomed it with a contented sigh, revelling in the warmth spreading through his chest and stomach. He loved moments like this, just the two of them in their own little world, and a promise of bright tomorrows.

"I guess I still have time to decide," Harry said once they separated. "… And we still have time for round two, if you're up for it," he added hopefully.

"I don't know," Tom grinned, a spark of challenge in his brown eyes, and rocked his hips against Harry's warm, bare thigh, the hardness of his cock unmistakeable. "Am I?"