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Chapter Seventy-Five—Helping the Headmistress

"Potter. Good to see you again." Draco took the seat next to Harry in the train compartment as if he had every right to be there, ignoring the incredulous stares of people passing by in the corridor. "I think I have an answer to the riddle that you posed me."

Harry glanced up from his book, which was on Arithmancy. While he knew most of the basic information already, this was the field that differed the most from world to world, and it might be possible to learn why this world was so different and so hospitable to immortal beings if he deduced it Arithmantically. "Has it occurred to you that it wasn't a riddle?"

Draco smiled tolerantly. "Of course it was. What else do you call a piece of unknown information wrapped up in cryptic language?"

Cryptic language. Asking him to consider Muggleborns fully human is cryptic. Harry sighed and closed his book. "All right. What do you think the answer is?"

Draco leaned nearer and whispered, "Power."

"Pardon?" Harry asked. He wondered if he was about to hear from Draco that because Muggleborns could be just as powerful as anyone else, then they should be fully accepted among the purebloods. It was an argument that Harry had used to convince some purebloods on other worlds.

It wasn't the best argument, given that it said nothing about the moral dimension, but it was a good beginning.

"I mean that you want to use Muggleborns for power." Draco's smile was as stubborn and as smug as ever. "You should have just told me that, Potter. I could have agreed with that. Instead of with this nonsense about Muggleborns being—I don't know, superior to purebloods?" He laughed and shook his head. "Even you can't believe that."

Harry stared up at the ceiling of the train compartment and intoned, "No, that wasn't the answer."

"What?" Draco inched back on the seat, looking genuinely shaken. "What does that mean?"

"It means you're wrong. I don't want to use Muggleborns for power." Harry saw the compartment door move out of the corner of his eye, and snorted a little. Hermione was standing there, listening in a way that was probably subtle when the people involved were actually twelve. In any case, Draco didn't notice. "I want them to be fully accepted and respected by other magical people."

"But they can't be!"

"Why not?" Harry turned in his seat to face Draco. "Tell me why. Give me a reason that's yours, that's well-reasoned. Why do you believe that?"

"You know that they're inferior to us. That's the way it is." Draco hesitated. "I shouldn't have to spew a whole bunch of arguments to convince you, unless you're a Muggle-lover."

Harry snorted. "I'm rather young for a lover." Even if some people don't think so.

Draco's cheeks turned pink, followed by his ears. "But what does that mean?" He sounded lost now. "You think Muggles are just as good as us? That Muggleborns aren't Mudbloods?"

"I'll thank you not to use that word again," Harry said, in what he was sure was the moment before Hermione would have flung the door open and stormed into the compartment. "Remember that it's the kind of thing people would call my mother."

"Oh. Is she the one who filled your head with this nonsense?"

"The way your father filled yours with the kind you believe?"

Draco jerked back. "And I'll thank you not to insult my father." His nose went into the air the way Harry remembered happening so often. "If you really care about treating people fairly, why can't you treat me fairly?"

"Because to you, treating you fairly involves letting you insult people and not getting angry when you do." Harry shook his head as he watched the compartment door open this time. "You don't deserve that kind of treatment."

"Thank you."

"I was saying that you don't deserve to insult other people, not that you don't deserve to be insulted."

Draco's face turned so pink that he looked as if his cheeks were actually on fire. He turned and ran out of the compartment, brushing past Hermione as if she wasn't there. She turned and glared after him.

"Don't try it right now," Harry advised her, picking up his Arithmancy book. "He won't listen to you anyway, and that's a fine rant wasted."

Hermione took a deep breath and sat down in the seat across from him. "I don't understand how you can be so patient with him."

"He's my Housemate, and he might be able to learn better," Harry said simply. "That doesn't mean you need to put up with him, though. Feel free to lecture him all you like."

"And you won't defend him?"

"Not unless you turn to personal insults or things that really aren't true." Harry shrugged and went back to reading.

Hermione pulled a book out of her own trunk and started reading, too. Harry sneaked a glance at the cover and managed to see that it was a history book about wizarding politics since the formation of the Wizengamot. He smiled to himself and went back to wrestling with theories about how Arithmancy might make this world more comfortable for immortals.

"Mr. Potter, if you would see me after dinner, please."

Jonathan watched in concern as the Headmistress stopped by the Slytherin table and leaned down to speak to his brother. Perhaps she'd meant the words to be quiet, but they were audible enough to Jonathan. He wondered why, at least until Harry caught his eye and winked.

But Harry, despite the charm he'd obviously cast so that Jonathan could hear, just nodded to McGonagall and said politely, "All right, Professor."

McGonagall sighed as if she was carrying the weight of the world on her shoulders and walked away. Jonathan tapped his fingers on the table in a drumroll, but nothing he could do would probably make any difference, so in the end he turned back to his dinner.

"Do you think Harry's in trouble?"

Jonathan turned his head and blinked a little at the girl who had sat next to him. Hannah Abbott, that was her name. She'd been Sorted last year along with Harry, and she'd been in a few of the Hufflepuff study groups, for Defense and Potions. Jonathan got along with her all right, but he'd had the sense she was sort of scared of Harry, and she hadn't tried to become close to either of them.

"I don't know," Jonathan said, because he didn't. "I just don't know what the Headmistress could want with a second-year student unless he was in trouble."

Abbott gave him a look like she thought he was stupid. "Come on, you know better than that."

"What are you talking about?"

"People who pay attention know that your brother is really strong, even though lots of people don't like to talk about it," Abbott said, lowering her voice a little, as if people were listening. There weren't many, and they glanced away and minded their own business when Jonathan glared at them. "I heard all about how he showed that he could turn into an adult and showed his power at that meeting of people who consider themselves part of the government now."

"Oh," Jonathan said. "I mean—you know that some of the adults are denying that, right?" Specifically, some of the people from the ICW, who wanted to deal with Harry and Voldemort privately.

Abbott rolled her eyes. "And the sensible people know they're lying."

Jonathan found himself grinning. He shot a glance at Harry, and Harry nodded back to him with a small smile, evidently having been waiting for Jonathan to turn to look at him. Then he began some kind of debate with Pansy Parkinson, who was sitting not far from him.

And Jonathan wasn't worried about him anymore. Part of that was Harry's obvious calm about being summoned to the Headmistress's office, even if was going to turn out to be something annoying or terrible.

But part of it was being reminded that other people knew the truth, and he wasn't alone in his Harry-watching.

"Please come in, Mr. Potter."

Now that they were alone, Harry thought, Minerva didn't know how to handle him. She opened her mouth and then closed it again, fussing behind her desk with her fingers linked in the corners of her robe. Harry sat down in the chair across from her and just waited calmly. He could do that whether he was here as an ordinary child or as someone who was a political ally.

Or enemy? Minerva's allegiance seemed to change from world to world. Most of the time she was on Dumbledore's side, but she didn't always fight for the Order of the Phoenix, and sometimes she'd told him it was a foolish idea. Or she worked in the Ministry and didn't teach at Hogwarts. Or, in a few worlds, she'd been dead by the time Harry was born and lingering only as a foul-tempered ghost who refused to discuss how she died.

Minerva swallowed now and said, "Would you be willing to reverse the spell that you put on Albus to make him mad?"

"Did Sirius tell you?" Harry asked, choosing what he considered the likeliest candidate.

"Yes, he did." Minerva jerked her head a little, and a piece of grey hair fell down from behind her ear. Her eyes were quiet and helpless. "Can you do it?"

"Why do you want me to?" Harry asked. "I thought you were all right taking over as Headmistress."

Minerva closed her eyes for a second and shivered, and then seemed to brace herself. "I can't run the school well enough," she whispered. "There's knowledge I don't have. I'm not good at politics, and right now the Headmaster or Headmistress has to be. I don't know which way to jump when someone tries to command me. I want to go back to teaching."

Harry sighed a little. "The problem is, if I remove the spell, that's not the same as getting rid of Dumbledore's obsession with my brother and me. He would go straight back to his useless war with Voldemort if nothing else changed."

"You're sure it's useless?"

Harry nodded sharply. "You haven't been paying attention to the ICW's updates, Headmistress?"

"I didn't know how much we could trust them…" Minerva let that trail off, and sighed. "You're saying that we can trust them a lot more than we think we can."

"Yes. They're changing things, but they have to. A lot of the British Ministry is such a mess that it hasn't fulfilled the functions it's supposed to fulfill for generations. And bringing Dumbledore back wouldn't really help the school. I mean, it would help you because you could go back to teaching, but that's it. He'd be called to account and told to stop his war, and he'd either defy the ICW openly or pretend to agree and then go right back to hunting Voldemort and trying to destroy him. Then he'd be removed from the Headmaster's position when he got found out."

Minerva bit her lip. "I truly think I make a poor Headmistress. I don't know enough to serve our students well."

"In what areas?"

"Holding them to account for detentions that they complain are unfair. Determining when a detention is unfair. Sorting out conflicting stories when one of them must be a lie. Eliminating bullying in the school. Making decisions about what our funds should be used for. Getting rid of the bloody House rivalry between Gryffindor and Slytherin."

Harry nodded. "I could try to help you settle some of those matters if you wanted me to, Headmistress."

Minerva blinked and stared at him. "But I couldn't let—you're a student…"

Her voice trailed off as she remembered, but then she didn't go on. It was up to Harry to pick up the thread of the conversation. "Someone who's lived as an adult in many worlds, and will be happy to help you with something like this."

"Yes. I remember now." Minerva frowned down at her desk, where a curl of parchment lay that looked as if it had frantic notes scrawled on it. "But you want to pretend to be an ordinary student, don't you? That's why you're attending Hogwarts in the first place."

"I'm doing that for the sake of being with my brother and helping some of the others here," Harry corrected her. "I already revealed myself as the Master of Death. I'll help you if you want."

Minerva swallowed and stared at him. "How many other times have you helped me, in other worlds?"

Harry laughed. "I've lost count, honestly. It's not always specifically with being the Headmistress of Hogwarts, though. Sometimes it's with something like taking notes, or cataloguing rare artifacts, or once with childbirth."

Minerva's eyes bulged. "I would never have turned to a student for help with that."

"I wasn't a student." Harry shrugged. "Or Harry Potter. Or male. Or on the same side as you in the war—I mean, that's what you thought, anyway. But when a baby is getting ready to be born, it needs to be born."

Minerva stared at him with something that looked halfway between outrage and fascination. "I can't imagine what it's like for you, being here and dealing with ordinary human limitations and foibles."

"I find it out every day," Harry said gently. He nodded at her desk. "Is there something I can help you with right now?"

"So what you're telling me," said Voldemort slowly, his voice as quiet as though he was whispering to protect a secret, "is that you're setting yourself up as an assistant to the Headmistress?"

"Not a professor." Harry yawned and leaned back against the trunk of the huge black oak standing over him. It creaked comfortingly. They were in the Forbidden Forest, which was as close to the castle as Voldemort had wanted to come right now, since he'd wanted to see Harry in private. We should get back into the school to see Salazar at some point, though. "More like…a helper."

"It's beneath your dignity."

Harry snorted. "Even if I once believed that, I got cured after the life when I was a Kneazle defecating in a tray that was cleaned by someone who had been one of my best friends in another lifetime."

"It is hard to imagine you as an animal," Voldemort admitted. His fingers feathered through the air for a moment as though he was petting tendrils of magic that projected out of Harry's body. Harry knew very well that he didn't have any, though, since he was keeping all of them closed in his body. "Or imagine you as anything but what you are now."

"What am I now?"

"Perfect."

Harry felt the blush stealing over his skin, and had no doubt that Voldemort had eyesight good enough in the darkness to see it, but he did his best to cope by clearing his throat loudly and shaking his head. "I'm not."

"To someone who needs no one other than you, you are."

Harry huffed a little and nodded. "Anyway. I just wanted you to know that I'm going to be helping the Headmistress from now on, and that I have no intention of removing the spells from Albus unless someone comes up with a real way of making sure that he doesn't pick up the war right where he left it."

"That will be never." Voldemort paced a little to the left of him, as though wanting to look at his face from a different angle. Harry rolled his eyes, but let him.

"So far, Remus hasn't come up with anything that I would think would work. Although he promised that he would find a distraction." Harry shook his head. "Did you have anything else that you wanted to tell me?" Mostly, Voldemort had shared news about people who wrote him skittish owls, wanting to believe that he had changed but not daring, and a few of the former Death Eaters who had made successful transitions back into society.

"The International Confederation of Wizards is still here, as I'm sure you've heard."

"Yes. Although I have to say that their investigations into the Ministry and the way magical Britain was wrong are taking a lot longer than I thought."

"The corruption went so deep in the Ministry that they're finding many of the laws and paperwork they need simply don't exist." Voldemort stopped his prowling and leaned against a tree. "Lazy people didn't file it. Laws that were supposed to be passed in the Wizengamot weren't. Of course, many people acted on the supposition of those laws, anyway, such as the Aurors who arrested criminals based on them. Or those who would have been criminals, if the laws had existed."

"So the Confederation is still trying to sort everything out," Harry said with a nod. "That makes sense. Are you…"

"Am I what?" Voldemort's eyes still sometimes gleamed red when he turned suddenly.

"Are you under suspicion for any crimes you committed, or the war that you used to fight?"

"The International Confederation does not like declaring me innocent, but on the other hand, they have much larger concerns, especially with the lies and tactics of those who presented themselves as legal champions. They will be watching me, but I believe that they consider me a free citizen as long as I don't do something else Dark."

Harry smiled. "That's wonderful news."

"Is it?"

Harry studied Voldemort in concern, wondering if he somehow regretted letting the war end, or wanted to go back to certain Dark actions now. "Don't you think so?"

Then Voldemort glanced at him, and Harry realized that he had mistaken the man's tone. Yes, his eyes glinted red, but it was with an emotion that Harry had seen on the face of most other Voldemorts only when they were killing or torturing someone.

Satisfaction.

"I am glad that you think it's wonderful," Voldemort said simply, confirming Harry's impression, in case he needed it confirmed.

Harry dipped his head a little and smiled. "You know that I'll want to wait for more physical displays of affection," he said. "But it doesn't mean that I don't recognize what's happening between us."

Voldemort watched him with wide eyes, and a quivering tension that made Harry realize he had no idea what was going to happen next. Well, with Voldemort. He knew what the words he was going to speak next were, and he had at least a dim idea, he hoped, of what they would mean to Voldemort.

"It doesn't mean I don't value it."

Voldemort lowered his head and stood in silence. Harry started to take a step towards him, and Voldemort shook his head rapidly without looking up. "Don't move," he whispered. "Don't say anything else."

And so Harry let them both stand there and savor the moment of tension, and then Voldemort whirled away and strode rapidly off between the trees.

Harry, meanwhile, stood where he had been, and savored yet another experience new and unique to this world.

More and more, I don't know if I want to leave.