The days blended together. Many of them were spent at St. Mungo's holding Hermione's hand and making idle, repetitive chatter; other days were just classes and going through the motions. He worked with Tom, he begged him to help Hermione, he begged the painting to do the same. Both said that there was likely nothing that could be done.
Tom promised that Hermione had already been looked at by the best of mind-healers. He also promised that no one would know that Harry was involved, that the healers that had diagnosed her had erased any evidence of the spell damage. That they were firmly in Tom's pocket.
He cried more than a few times during those early days.
Tom was too busy to notice Harry's tears. Preparing for his coronation, taking control of the government, installing his people, taking over the Prophet, and so many little things that Harry had almost no idea about. Even the painting could not be bothered to keep Harry updated.
It didn't stop them from visiting each other. Being intimate and plotting towards their own goals.
Utilizing Snape, they anonymously revealed a scandal that made most people forget about Hermione's accident. Didn't stop most of the school from looking at him wrong, but at least the public consciousness had moved on to something else.
The lack of whispers didn't stop him from staring in the mirror each day, fighting down the urge to smash his face into it.
Harry went through the motions for months. The next thing he knew he had stepped off the stage, having accepted his honours from McGonagall and waved to his mum and dad.
They sat side-by-side in the audience looking happy as they could be. Lily's smile was bright as the night was dark, reaching her eyes for once and making her crow's feet crinkle.
James wore a happy smile that was just lip, no teeth. It reached his eyes, but it was still guarded. Everything was guarded between all of them as of late.
For almost a year now. It would soon be a year. Solstice. So much had happened.
Harry sat back down and watched as the rest of the graduates of note received their awards, their recognition for outstanding deeds. There weren't too many left after Potter.
Blaise got the highest grade in Arithmancy.
The crowd surged around Harry. Throngs of bodies and their oppressive heat pressed against him. They bumped and jostled him around like he was a pinball. Fellow students passed him by as they headed to congratulate their friends, their housemates. To wish them well and say how much they would miss them.
The other Slytherins had said as much and then left him to his own machinations. His mother was talking to the other teachers and students. His father was off in the distance, the June sun glinting off his glasses, lighting him up as a beacon for Harry to avoid.
The summer heat was suffocating. The people around him were suffocating.
Tom had been unable to attend, and without the only person he could trust, all Harry sought now was the relaxing embrace of being alone.
Harry slipped into the hallways of what had been his home for the past seven years. Hogwarts was a place where he had truly come into his own. Had made his little side business, had made his friends. It was where he had learned everything about being a wizard and everything about the bonds of family.
His fingers glided along the once roughly hewn stone of the walls that had been made smooth through centuries of students touching these walls, be it travelling between classes, sneaking out for a midnight snog or saying goodbye.
Harry knew that he would be back. There was no doubt about that; his mother worked here and soon Remus as well.
But he would never be back as a student. It would never be his home again.
Harry made his way down to the Slytherin dormitory. The wall was open, revealing the common room to the world. The rays of sun shone through the lake, bathing the room in flashes of refracted light.
The notice board was empty, the tables clear of papers and books.
Barren.
The graduation ceremony was held after Hogwarts had adjourned for the year and they had all left on the train. Harry had decided against apparating home with his luggage. Not out of nostalgia for the multi-hour train ride but merely to appease his father who seemingly ached to ride the train.
He also had a minor suspicion that his father might apparate onto the train and inspect Harry's luggage for dark artifacts.
The painting had insisted on discretion so much that it had made Harry actually paranoid.
Harry entered his dorm room and went to his former bed. The house elves had been vigilant and thorough, but as the painting had taught, there was magic that house elves could not detect.
He tapped his wand against the back left leg of his bed frame, revealing a secret compartment that contained the Chocolate Frog card of Tom.
"Ready?" it asked.
Harry nodded and made his way back upstairs.
A few more people had filtered into the school from the ceremony. They paid him no mind.
No one noticed at all when he ducked into the girls bathroom under his invisibility cloak, no one saw a chocolate frog card hiss at a pipe, no one saw him slide down the pipe that appeared from where the sink had been, no one saw the sink return to its original shape.
No one noticed Harry was gone at all, and he was okay with that. He wanted to blend into the background.
He wanted to continue to blend into the background. It was better than being noticed.
Harry cleaned his robes from the trip down the pipe and then covered his mouth and nose as he traversed the Chamber to the hidden library. It smelled like death and mold.
Harry and Tom (and the painting) had agreed that it would be better to wait on moving anything from here until Harry wasn't officially under the watchful eyes of his parents or Hogwarts. He was now a private citizen and was not beholden to the rules of the school. It would take a legal order for him to reveal anything now that no one was his guardian.
He gathered up the books that Tom had left behind some fifty years ago and stuffed them in his magically expanded pockets.
Hermione had failed to take some of the books and notations that revealed Tom's true identity, the ones that she did take Harry had already destroyed. Tom had admitted that he had been sloppy by leaving what he did in the Chamber.
The foolish arrogance of youth just seemed to be that way. Sloppy and uncaring arrogance led to mistakes that would bite you in the ass.
The painting had been drilling the fact that Harry was a young idiot so far into his head that he had been waking up with nosebleeds to go along with the headaches. He was waiting for a hole to appear in his brain one morning.
The painting never seemed to allow Tom's mistakes to apply to him. Like he and Tom were two separate people.
Maybe that was something else to do with age.
With barely a glance at the room, he turned on his heel and strode out of the Chamber and used a broom that had been stuffed into his pocket to exit the pipe.
Harry stood at the opening as it began to close and returned the broom to his expanded pocket when he realized that a stall door had opened and he was being stared at.
He made eye contact with Ginerva Weasley.
Harry cocked his head to the side, and looked past her, brushing off his robes again. "Are you here for Ronald's graduation?" He palmed his wand.
Ginny nodded slowly and moved her head to gesture with her chin. "What was that?"
Harry looked back as it reformed the regular sink configuration. "The entrance to the Chamber of Secrets. It's funny, but people seemed to have forgotten about it with all the scandals that have happened recently. It's not like there's anything important in it."
"Why were you in there?" Ginny was slowly sidling towards the door.
Harry flicked the wand in his sleeve. The door bolted shut and a silencing charm fell over the room. The air was thick with unspoken tension.
Ginny whipped her wand out and pointed it dead at his chest. Her brown eyes blazed with unrestrained dislike. "Hermione found it didn't she?"
Harry tutted. "Ginerva, you seem to be reaching for a reason to be suspicious. You see, what happened…" He dropped his voice low and whispered quietly.
So quietly that she unconsciously leaned in to hear.
Harry pulled his wand fully out and with a nearly silent declaration said, " Obliviate!"
The fire faded from Ginerva's eyes and they grew dull and complacent. She wavered in place for a second as Harry removed the last few minutes from her memory.
He left the bathroom and could vaguely hear the faucet turn on and Ginerva wash her hands as if nothing untoward had happened.
Another successful obliviation.
Harry looped up through a few secret passage ways to take a roundabout way to the Great Hall. The majority of the guests were now inside and Harry went up to his parents, Sirius, and Lupin.
"Sorry about wandering off." Harry looked up at the ceiling. It showed the bright sun and sparse clouds but without the scorching heat. "I wanted to say goodbye."
Sirius pulled Harry into a one-armed hug. "Nah, you don't have to say goodbye to the old girl. You just come and visit me or your mom for dinner. I'll sneak you in anytime."
Harry nodded. "I don't have any doubts about that." He gave Sirius a lopsided smile. "You should come visit my new apartment. I think you'll like it. Good view."
Sirius' smile wavered a slight bit before coming back in full force. "I think I'd like that. You can invite us all to a fancy dinner party."
"Maybe a wine and cheese party? Oh, wait, a better idea... mulled wine on the patio. I could get a nice, big cauldron going and I promise I won't add too much cinnamon this time."
Lily cocked her head to the side. "This time?"
Harry gave her an unashamed smile. "Only a small attempt once. Very recently. Well within the legal age. I would never break any drinking laws."
Lily shook her head and pulled him from Sirius and into her own hug, her lips brushing his ear as she whispered, "You're a terrible liar."
He gave her a small hug back and pulled away. "I know."
"I hope you also know that you can come home anytime you want to." She squeezed his arms. "We haven't touched your room."
"I know. I know. Thank you." Harry gave her another hug before pulling away. "I think I might bounce back to my flat. It's been a long day." Harry hugged Remus and his father before heading out. He vaguely heard his father and Remus asking where he was headed but he was already out the door.
Harry stepped through the gates and apparated to his flat.
It was a nice flat. Tom had arranged it for him a few months ago. It was a penthouse apartment, two stories, rooftop patio, pre-furnished with everything Harry could need.
Large bed. Soundproof bedroom.
It had been very thoughtful.
Or so he thought, until one of the esteemed and purer blooded members that worked within Lansdowne Palace informed Harry that his flat had long been a place for members of the royal family, and later the government, to store their lower class partners. Ones that could not be seen with their lover in the light of day.
That had slightly soured his opinion of the apartment.
It was still nice though. Close to Tom. Safe. Middle of London. He could come and go as he pleased.
He really was a kept man now.
Harry went to the dining room table and began to unload his pockets. The books he would return to Tom, his broom would go back in its case, and the frog card would get put somewhere he could spy on Harry's life.
His fingers brushed across parchment that was deeper in his pocket, and slowly, painfully, he pulled them out.
McGonagall had presented these to him during the ceremony. His accolades.
Defence against the Dark Arts, Potions, and History of Magic. He had scored the highest NEWT grades for those classes.
...He had been the only student to do the History of Magic NEWT.
Harry closed his eyes and tried not to see the empty room. It hadn't been worth using the Great Hall for. The proctor had just done it in Binn's classroom. Had said they hadn't expected to have to do one of these NEWT's. That it had been nearly a decade. The proctor had asked where the second student was.
No one had told him that Hermione wouldn't be there.
Harry closed his eyes, took a deep breath and cleared his mind. He called upon his occlumency teachings and shoved the thoughts of Hermione away, into a box, shoved that box into a corner, walked out of that room, up a mental staircase and out of the basement where all his upsetting thoughts had begun to live.
"I'm sorry," Harry whispered.
"What for?"
Harry spun around, his wand drawn for a moment before lowering it. Snape was sitting in a wingback chair, flipping through a copy of The New Daily Prophet . "I told you to knock." He pocketed the Chocolate Frog card.
"I was here first." Snape turned a page, the rustle echoing through the room.
"And breaking into my flat is acceptable now?"
"Consider it a security test. You didn't even check for spells, much less a man who is not even concealed, sitting out in the open."
Harry sniffed. "Pretending to be the DADA professor to punish me for McGonagall rescinding the job offer? That's not very fair."
"You need to be more vigilant. Especially with the position we are currently in." Snape put the paper down. "I require another."
Harry stared at him for a moment before opening a wall safe and extracting a tied up stack of letters. Their parchment was old and stained from sitting in an uninsulated attic for decades. "The Prophet asking for more?"
"Always. I've been informed by the board that the sales double each time 'anonymous' releases a new exchange between Grindelwald and Dumbledore."
Harry pulled two off the top of the stack and passed them to Snape. "And how is Crocker doing?"
"Milking Bathilda Bagshot for information to corroborate these letters. I've heard from the editor that there is a manuscript in the line. An expose on Dumbledore's life."
"I'll want to see it before it goes to print."
"As will his highness. I imagine there will be a whole line of people ready to tear it apart and ensure no "lies" are printed."
Harry snorted. "Yes. Especially since the foundation of our government is built on honesty and integrity. His Majesty would never lie."
Snape scanned over the pages that Harry had handed him before tucking them into his robe. His face twitched as he looked at the table where Harry's school papers lay. Harry could see the indecision of… something in Snape, but Harry had learned his lesson on trying occlumency on him. It had ended with him flat on his ass with a migraine.
Harry sighed. "Out with it. Don't say it's not your place. Hit me with your brutal honesty. I know you want to."
Snape gave him a dour look. "I won't tell you that you need to move on from what happened to Granger."
Harry felt his hackles raise.
"But I will say that if you're so determined to forget it, obliviate yourself instead of giving yourself brain damage via alcohol."
Harry ignored the part of his mind that went to the bin in the kitchen that had more than a few bottles in it. "I will have you know that I have merely been sampling the wines they have on offer here. The selection is staggering."
"...Of course."
Harry wondered if his mum had asked Snape to check in on him. It wasn't like the man particularly cared if Harry drank himself silly. He could just grow a new liver if he needed to.
This line he walked on. The one between his family and his desire for justice, for doing what was right, even though the methods were wrong. His decisions for the greater good… would they tip him closer to being the bastard he thought he was? That bloody line was so thin he could barely see it at this point, but morality was not black and white. There were so many distinct shades of grey that it all blended together.
He didn't even know if Snape was asking about his drinking habits for Lily, Tom, or his own morbid curiosity.
If only he could be like Snape, completely unreadable instead of moping around or putting on a smile that didn't reach his eyes.
Harry ran his hand through his hair. "Is there anything else you need?"
Snape shook his head and with a loud crack, disapparated.
Harry pointed at the chocolate frog card that sat on the table. "Don't say anything."
"I wasn't going to."
AN: on ao3 this is actually the first chapter in the next section of the story called What We Became, but i didn't feel like dealing with ffn
