Book Two ― A School Divided
Chapter Thirty-Six ― A Madeleine Moment
Story Summary: Following the events of Third Year, Harry Potter explores the Chamber of Secrets and finds a portrait of Salazar Slytherin. Following Slytherin's advice, Harry will attempt to break out of the games set upon him and finally be free. But how? And is freedom even possible for the Boy-Who-Lived?
Book Summary: Returning to Hogwarts after spending the summer scheming politics with Daphne and furthering Muggle-born education with Hermione, Harry is forced to act prematurely to ensure the safety of the First-Years he promised to help. With Sirius in forced exile, a Tom Riddle with a different plan, a suspicious Dumbledore, and a dangerous tournament, is Harry's desired freedom even possible? Can his ambitions coexist with his desires?
Note: This chapter has been beta-ed by user Outliner.
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Dumbledore waited patiently in his office for Harry Potter to wake up, occasionally glancing at this or that piece of equipment that told him at which stage one of many of his scientific experiments were. However, recent events had captivated his mind fiercely, and he couldn't bring himself to pretend to care about anything other than the strange behavior shown by the boy during the First Task. He hadn't read any international newspaper, as he always did, or any of the periodicals to which he had been subscribed. He hadn't opened the inflow of letters, which he was sure would be full of complaints about the First Task, or even about Harry Potter specifically. Charlie Weasley had already done his best Hagrid impersonation, seemingly horrified that a dragon had been so extensively hurt by the task, but luckily the odd looks he got from the other dragon handlers had quietened him, though he remained grumpy still.
All of his thoughts were concentrated on the facts in play during that wild fight. Primarily, his head stayed on the strange usage of Parseltongue by the young Potter during the said confrontation. This was for two reasons. The first was that he had no idea that the language could be used as a magical conduit for spells, let alone one which seemingly amplified their power. The second was that the Harry Potter whom he cherished in his mind, the one who had crawled out of the Chamber of Secrets, would never have used Salazar's gift in any scenario, no matter how advantageous it may be. This was a different Harry Potter, and one he did not know how to deal with.
Partly, such a change had been evident for a while, but it had only manifested in positive ways. Better grades, a seemingly more active social life, his casual mentorship of Muggle-borns in the school. True, he had lost his temper in the Great Hall, but anger could easily be forgiven under extreme pressure, as his selection to the Tournament surely would qualify. That acceptance that teenagers would not remain unbowed by constant tension was part of the reason why he hadn't forcefully intervened so far, but the justifications for his passive observations were wearing thin.
It was clear that someone was aiding Harry Potter, and leading the boy to a separate path, one not selected by Dumbledore. It was also clear that whoever that someone was, had to be surrounded with information that Albus himself had no access to, such as the magical uses of Parseltongue.
That was what concerned him most. There was little Albus Dumbledore did not know of the magic taught in Europe and even beyond, and what little he was unaware of had remained as such by choice. Largely speaking, if he did not know of it, it was either a very recent innovation that he would eventually read about in the periodicals or be informed of in his capacity as Supreme Mugwump in due time, or it was too Dark to be of interest to him. And he knew in which category anything regarding Parseltongue would fall.
Simultaneously, he was confident that it wasn't the Horcrux influencing the boy. The signs of anger and loss of control over his aggressiveness all pointed to an overwhelmed mind that was incapable of dealing with stress and relied too heavily on the body's magic to make up the difference, yet did not have the Occlumency necessary to protect any semblance of rational thought. It was the same system that allowed Muggle parents to perform sudden feats of strength far beyond their capabilities to save their children, for instance. Hardly anything reliable, but with enough documented affairs that it didn't truly represent anything groundbreaking, though that it happened with someone as powerful as the young Potter was proving to be was more novel. Dumbledore himself had been through similar situations in his youth, and could hardly blame the boy. Had the Horcrux commanded his aggressiveness, Dumbledore would have expected something more calculated than the rash and borderline feral path chosen by the boy to deal with the dragon.
But for all his understanding of the grave situation in which Riddle had thrown Harry Potter with this Tournament, the boy's behavior was establishing a pattern of lack of control that suggested an underlying cause. When incidents cease to be incidents and begin to be recurring points in a line of events, it is a good enough indication that something was amiss.
And frankly, Dumbledore was ill-disposed to teach Harry Potter any Occlumency at all as long as the boy did not show signs of being possessed by Riddle, and so far, the Headmaster was certain that Voldemort was not aware of the connection between them. Otherwise, this whole situation with the Tournament wouldn't be necessary, and Riddle would have been looking for other ways back to resurrection. While Harry Potter did not know any Occlumency, Dumbledore could always resort to using Legilimency against him, and that was too good an investigative weapon to not keep in reserve.
All of that led to the obvious question of who was Harry Potter's patron? Who had taught him how to cast in Parseltongue, convinced him that such was an acceptable idea in such a public forum, and likely taught at least some of the magic that the boy used in the fight? And, just as importantly, how had such teaching been imparted?
Dumbledore closed his eyes and stroked his beard. Fawkes chirped pleasantly in the room. The puffs of smoke from the bits and bobs he had collected and built over the years covered him in a slight fog, and his other hand traced idle patterns in the table in front of him. He needed to move cautiously. Harry Potter was too important for Britain to be alienated, and one wrong move might show both the boy and the world that he had devices for the young man. Such a result was unacceptable.
On the other hand, so was the boy's current behavioral trend. Dumbledore breathed out languidly, resisting the urge to sigh despondently. He had faced harsher odds and more intricate puzzles than this and had triumphed. This would be no different. But the stakes had never been higher, and his already natural conservatism was warring with his desire to see the matter resolved quickly.
Regardless of which path he'd take, it was clear that keeping a much closer eye on Harry Potter would be essential. He would find out who had sponsored this change in the boy and separate the two. Then, guiding Harry back to the correct path would come naturally for both Headmaster and young Gryffindor.
All would be well, as long as his guiding hand remained both invisible and influential.
Hermione Granger was confused. She did not recognize the boy who entered the dragon pit in the First Task and could not help but be slightly repelled by the violence and aggression shown during Harry's performance. The rational part of her mind told her that the prospect of fighting dragons may well have snapped something in Harry if his embittered laughter and dark, malicious grin were anything to go by. The smile, in particular, was enough to make her shiver slightly.
But Hermione was not purely a girl of reason, and though it was a concession she had taken years to admit, her emotions and gut often ruled her before her mind could reason, and her pride set her straight more than her morality. She was excellent at rationalizing away things in her mind after the fact, but it did not change the fact that the origin of her beliefs was not universally her keen mind, but her righteous spirit. And now, she warred with herself in her evaluation of Harry Potter, which was something she did not expect to ever do.
Her mind told her he would be fine, but her conscience told her something was wrong, and very wrong, at that. Immediately she wanted to blame Greengrass for poisoning Harry, but though the resentment remained, she reminded herself that Harry had been as short with her as he had been with Greengrass over the previous week and that the Slytherin seemed just as wounded and worried as Hermione herself.
It was little comfort. Her best friend, and the boy she loved, looked to be near a point of no return in a fight she was not privy to. She was not stupid. She knew that Harry was keeping secrets and that she was not entrusted with everything that he had been doing. There was no way that he had learned all those spells in a week, no matter how much potential he truly had. She had seen him teach the First-Year Muggle-borns and the ease with which abstract concepts of magic seemed to come to him nowadays. That was not the sort of knowledge obtained by reading books in libraries or standing attentive at lectures. Something else was the root of Harry's transformation, and while his initial overtures were all things she deeply appreciated — visions of Harry teaching magic to their children still occupied her daydreams — the latest events had been deeply troubling.
She needed to find out what Harry was hiding without pushing him away. She did not know why he was so assertive in keeping his secrets, but she would remain loyal to him, as long as he was honest and forthright about his ideas and what was in his mind. Somehow, Hermione suspected that his sudden love for secrecy would not fade away easily, and the thought wounded her.
Daphne Greengrass was afraid, for many reasons. She had come to love Harry Potter, and it was a beautiful feeling, unlike anything she had ever felt before. It felt crystalline, preserved in eternal shine, both light and dense, heavy with the weight of fate and destiny and great things, and soft with the breeze of lost afternoons, naps, and sceneries of the sea. She could foresee a million different things with the boy, future and present, and her body felt lighter in his presence, time seemed to shift, passing smoother, but somehow frozen. She felt in the perpetual blossoming of a delighted grin whenever they talked, and nowhere were her passions raised higher than when they argued.
But there was a terrible side to the beauty of love, a thorny branch filled with poisonous power, and the death of much. It was a prison, tying her reality to his, and to as independently-minded a person as her, such a connection was scary, tense, and unknown. It was a soft chain, tied around her body, a constant whisper that if you delve too far you will be heartbroken, and though you may retain your wings, your body and mind will see no advantage in flying, and you'll self-seclude to a cold, hard ground, to never fly again lest the pain of the love strike again. For her, the situation was made far worse by the fact that it was not her who delved further into the distance, testing the boundaries of her love. It was Harry who had drifted, half-maddened by anger and stress, and though some vestige of the boy who had been still shining through, even in the terrible two weeks previous, the snapping and growling and glaring and brooding and barking had produced something she could not help but contempt.
So, she feared. For herself and for the partner she had come to love and to miss even in his short absence. She did not know who would wake up after the First Task, but she desperately, feverishly wished it was the snarky, mischievous, courageous boy who had won her heart and not the angry, hostile, and cruel facsimile of the past week.
She was strong. She had always been strong. But the chains around her body were threatening to crush her and she could do little more than weep and hope at the moment. Maybe in a few days, she would return to normal, to the intelligence and foresight she so prized in herself. But for now, she lay paralyzed with fear and anxiety, facing the power and pain of love all at once, overwhelmed and overcome.
Harry would have faced it head-on, if he could, she mused fondly, before the thought pained her. She could only hope that the Harry that woke up still would.
Neville Longbottom was also afraid, but for himself. He didn't much feel like Harry would remain angry all the time. He was the strongest person Neville had ever met, bar none, and he fully expected Harry to come through again and be back to normal now that the dragon situation was dealt with. Not that the past week had not been hard to withstand with a surly, constantly angry person lurking over his shoulder in their training sessions with Mad-Eye, but it was understandable, he reckoned, to not be yourself with the prospect of fighting a dragon.
Twice now, Harry had lost his temper and did things that he did not seem to fully control. In the Great Hall when his name was selected to the Tournament, and now this. Neville and Harry had been indelibly connected by their outbursts at the Great Hall, which were so similar in nature and so unexpected by everyone else. Neville had also twice lost his calm and did things he did not control or even fully remember all that well. It was as if fury itself directed his body and mouth, and he was merely a conduit. It was scary, and he did not know how he would proceed if it became a regular feature of his life.
For all that he had gained from his own wand, from a strengthened relationship with Harry and Hermione, and from knowing he was indeed very powerful for his age, Neville still preferred the quiet stewardship of the greenhouses and the loving, silent, constant care that healthy growth required. There he did not have to struggle through his thoughts and beliefs and could live relaxed, outside of any shadows except those of the plants that he had grown from his own hands. The 'The Roaring Lion of Gryffindor', as the Twins had come to call him with simultaneous affection and jeering, in their style, was never fully confident he was as Gryffindor as he was Hufflepuff. He still wasn't, even in this renewed self.
He associated Gryffindor with strength, erroneous as that thought was in the grand scheme of things, and he did not believe himself to be strong enough to overcome himself. He did not want to live in the constant shadow of his inner fury, or that would become another shadow for the plants to try and compensate for. But how does one suppress something inward from projecting outward?
Neville did not want to be a roaring lion. He would not shy away from fighting for what was right in his mind, but that was not his instinct. He liked quiet work, quiet things, and quiet people. He always fancied that this would be his life, but the thrum of his heartbeat and the whirling of his anger was louder than his words, and he did not want to be overrun by himself anymore.
But if Harry lost it too, what could Neville do to resist it?
All across the castle and beyond, people were confronted by similar questions. Harry Potter's performance had made an impression, that was for sure, but it was not necessarily a positive one. The unnatural aspect of his victory of the dragon gave way to rumors that he had consorted with unsavory magics to reach his ends, and though the outside world had mostly been swayed by the Daily Prophet's mixture of praise and caution, the people in Hogwarts itself had witnessed the events first-hand and had formed their views on it independent of Skeeter's quill. Among the staff, opinions mostly tilted positively, though concern was visible and ubiquitous to an extent. Chief among the concerned parties was Filius Flitwick, who was more concerned than ever that Harry had found a mentor and one who was failing at imparting the boy with the appropriate safety measures. He was unsure of how to deal with that but vowed to try and supplant Harry's current mentor as a primary source of information, or at least to act as a countermeasure. McGonagall was also concerned but customarily looked to Dumbledore for how to act on any Potter-related affairs, not entirely trusting her tact on the matter ever since the disaster that had been his First Year, and knowing that the Headmaster had more information on the Boy-Who-Lived than she.
Amidst the students, disagreements were clear.
Some believed fiercely that Harry Potter had gone dark in pursuit of maddened power, and that the First Task had been the shot across the bow in his reign of terror, and those were present in all Houses. People like McLaggen talked loudly about Potter as the successor of You-Know-Who, and though they were shushed and ridiculed by most, their words rang loudly in the silent confusion of Hermione Granger and the hollow, startled concern of Ronald Weasley.
Others claimed that the First Task was a cynical show of force by a student who wished to make the Tournament a power play, and which had orchestrated his presence as a way of presenting his extensive magical prowess to a large audience. That was uncomfortably close to the truth for Daphne to hear, and though she used her influence to silence those claims, the whispers continued amiss in the Slytherin Dungeons, with the exception being the stoic aloofness of Nott and the furious, burning hatred of Draco and his followers.
The Malfoy Heir was sure that Potter had cheated somehow, had to have cheated somehow, and had colluded with Dumbledore and the Ministry to defeat a fake dragon. Though the memories of all students would assure that there was no fake Hungarian Horntail in the arena, the impossibility of Harry's victory made sure that those who were forever predisposed to dislike him would listen to Draco; the words may have rung hollow, but the sentiment resonated with some.
In Ravenclaw, the ostracized Luna Lovegood defended Harry strongly, letting go of her absent-mindedness and speaking frankly. Though her tone of voice did not change, the context coated her words in sage wisdom instead of the crazed mania that her housemates had ascribed to her.
"I don't blame Harry for acting as he did," she said when the House had retreated into itself, debating the spells and tactics that seemed too harsh and unnecessary, their natural curiosity on all things arcane battling with what they perceived as a poor use of magical power. "Dragons are dangerous creatures, and he needed to show that he is dangerous when cornered too," she paused, absently stroking her hair and looking around as if seeing the Nargles she so prized around the heads of those who looked at her. But when she spoke, her silver-grey eyes were clear and focused. "If people would stop cornering him, he wouldn't have to."
Though many would have discounted Luna's words if she had quoted Merlin himself, and though it by no means marked the end of her ostracized and demeaned status, some Ravenclaws were shamed by her words, remembering the days of the Chamber of Secrets.
Not all was doom and gloom, of course. Neville remained fiercely defensive of Harry, as were the Twins, Tracey Davis, Susan Bones, and unexpectedly, Fleur Delacour, who unilaterally and mercilessly quashed any rumors among the Beauxbatons contingent.
"When boys are forced to fight dragons and turn out to be men," she was rumored to have said inside her school's carriage. "Do not weep for the boy you had mistaken him to be."
Many others were stalwart allies and believers in Harry and blamed the Ministry and Dumbledore for putting him in an untenable position. Silently, Ron was in this group, but he was too ashamed of his behavior to know how to outwardly express it, something that, to begin with, had never figured among his talents. Cedric was also here. He had faced his dragon and had come away from the experience deeply fearful and slightly traumatized, realizing only after a long sleep just how close to death he had come for the entertainment of the faceless crowds, all to come out in fourth place. He could understand the indignant fury that was rumored to have fueled Harry's rampage against the dragon.
The younger students were universally awed by Harry's prowess, the Muggle-borns fiercely loyal to their teacher, and the other newer entrants similarly impressed by his magical ability. Among the Second-Years, Astoria had come out of her sulking following the consequences of Cygnus's Speech revealing that she was afflicted by a malediction to support her distraught older sister, in an act that brought untold relief to Daphne.
As he followed Salazar's and Daphne's estimation that only by defeating the dragon outright would he attain what he wanted most — leadership and power with which to eventually free himself of all undue external influence — he unwittingly achieved a different sort of notoriety. True, he now stood alone on the merits of his work and not by the mysterious nature of his survival. But in the wake of a dragon defeated and cowed into submission, he had left a school bitterly divided, and made himself a controversial figure.
In the middle of all of this chaos, one figure awaited patiently by Harry's side as he woke up tiny feet dangling from the high chair that Madame Pomfrey had provided her. The figure of a Slytherin student carefully holding watch of the most famous Gryffindor of his generation would already be startling if described on its own, but the age gap made the scene even more abstract and replete of meaning. The older of the pair was laid back, occasionally opening his eyes, confused and tired, with large blanks in his memory of the past day's events. The younger was the one keeping watch, her large clear amber eyes concernedly waiting for her older friend and mentor to fully wake up.
Madeleine Tessier had done what many of Harry's closest friends wanted to do, but could not. She stood there, watching him, holding guard of his restless body and disordered mind. Later in life, Harry would claim that the entire exercise of teaching the firsties would be worth just for this moment of solemn concern.
For now, he was still not fully conscious, but he was coming around, idly looking around, puzzling the small fragments of reality that managed to filter through his exhaustion and soreness. Madeleine kept silent, looking at him curiously and wide-eyed, still dangling her feet rhythmically, which seemed to have caught the Gryffindor's eyes.
He was slowly brought to a more manageable mental state by the steadiness of the young girl's movements, the bob of her head from side to side, the feet going up and down, up and down, like a pendulum. After a while of staring at it, confusedly putting the pieces together, he looked at the British-French girl, and through a painfully scratchy voice, whispered.
"Madeleine?" He frowned minutely, his body not fully prepared for large motions.
"Hi, Harry," she said excitedly, grinning widely. She blinked owlishly. "I'm glad you're finally awake. I was getting quite hungry."
"Not calling me Professor Potter now?" Harry asked jokingly, trying to crack a grin and succeeding only in grimacing.
"You're not teaching me anything," she stated imperiously. "It would not be proper."
"You can call me Harry always, Madeleine," Harry chuckled weakly. The silent noise coming out of his throat instead of the light laughter gave him the appearance of an elderly, powdery person. "I would prefer it."
"Well, too bad," Madeleine determined firmly, crossing her arms. "I will not be improper."
"I would never dare suggest that," Harry said weakly, with the ghost of a grin. They stood in silence for a while before Madeleine perked up.
"I have something to show you!" She claimed, taking out her wand.
"Go ahead," Harry invited her warmly. The little girl always managed to cheer him up, and though he felt terrible, her earnest enthusiasm would never cease to be adorable.
She waved her wand around and very softly incanted Lumos. After a while of staring at nothing and letting her eyes dim and lighten up, as they always did whenever she was casting a spell, she repeated the motion and a second ball of light, this time a slightly discolored off-white, almost yellow, was sent floating around them. From there, she would send additional balls of light into the air, with various tones closely resembling the first pure white orb, but always slightly different. The interval that she took to concentrate before casting the Lumos got larger and larger, but Harry could not help but be transfixed by the light show. Though she couldn't send the light show moving in orbit as he managed the day he gave her this exercise, she did manage to send five small lights into the air, and each of them reinvigorated him and filled him with pride.
By the time the last light orb had been sent into the air, he was beaming, and she was drenched in sweat and panting heavily, but couldn't be happier with herself.
"That was very good!" He praised her effusively and honestly when she finally gave up midway through trying to will the sixth ball of light into existence. She exhaled tiredly for a second but smiled back proudly at him.
"Thank you! I have been trying very hard to do that," she then wrinkled her nose. "I got to seven once, though, I promise!"
"I believe you," Harry responded fondly. They stood in silence for a moment longer before he continued. "Thank you for being here, Madeleine."
"Of course I would be here," she claimed so matter-of-factly that it was a statement in and of itself. "I'm your friend, and that's what friends do."
"Seems my other friends didn't get the memo," he muttered darkly, his mood instantly worsening as he looked at the otherwise empty Hospital Wing. His eyes grew dim and stormy again, as they had in the First Task, and a headache began to form again.
"The other students are scared," Madeleine murmured like a small child. Harry looked at her, and though she did not flinch, she did look away.
"Scared of what?" He asked, anticipating the answer.
"Scared of you," Madeleine whispered after a bit of fidgeting, and the words he had expected had come, but still they hurt a lot. At least Daphne, who had suggested for him to follow this path, should have been here to support him. Hermione, who had stood by much worse things, was not there. Ron had been silent for weeks now. The Twins, for all their outspoken support, whenever he was present, were seemingly too busy with other things. The abandonment wounded him, and his mood worsened, and his headache increased.
"Of course they are," Harry grinned sharply. "That's all I'm good for. Scaring people."
"That's not true," Madeleine protested vehemently. "You teach me magic, and you've been nice to me. I'm not scared of you."
"You seem to be the exception," Harry replied dryly.
"I didn't say everyone was scared of you," Madeleine shook her head. "A lot of people are scared for you, too."
Harry blinked a bit in surprise. "I'm sorry, what?"
"Daphne is very scared for you," Madeleine said, looking at a distance. "I can tell by how she's behaving in the dungeons," the young girl brought her feet to the chair and supported her chin on her knees, hugging her legs. "She's terrified for you. A lot of other people are scared for you too."
"What are you talking about?" Harry asked, confused.
"You've been weird lately," Madeleine accused him irritably, frowning in his direction. Harry suddenly understood and got angry all over again, inadvertently snapping at the young girl.
"Did Greengrass send you here?" He demanded sternly.
"That's what I'm talking about," Madeleine huffed and frowned, pointing at Harry. "You always teased me by being mean, but you were never actually mean."
"I'm not mean," Harry objected.
"The other day, Stephen wanted to ask you something, and you looked at him so angrily that he just went away," she responded. Harry frowned confusedly.
"Stafford? I don't remember doing that," he murmured.
"And then you ignored Aaliyah when she wanted to support you instead of Cedric," she continued, woundedly.
"I did that?" He asked weakly.
"Dennis wanted to go with you to the Weighing of the Wands, but Colin was scared that you might snap at him and went with you instead," she said, tearing up slightly.
"Colin did what?" Harry questioned, slightly horrified. The boy had worshipped him to the point of annoyance, but didn't want him near his younger brother?
"And poor Daphne spent this entire past week miserable," Madeleine sniffed sadly, crying very softly, cleaning her eyes slowly with her robes. "She looks terrible, she barely eats, and she keeps sending looks at you that you don't notice because you're too busy being angry," she finished the last sentence with a sulk, looking at him with her amber eyes, full of disappointment and betrayal.
"I wasn't that angry," Harry protested feebly, but with a progressively sinking stomach. He couldn't remember any of that, but the girl did not seem the lying type and her emotional state did not look manufactured. The girl was genuinely hurt by his actions.
"Yes, you were!" She replied petulantly. Madeleine then looked down and murmured. "Daphne fell asleep exhausted one day in the Dungeons, and Tracey was trying to wake her up, but she kept whispering about dragons and you fighting them. I thought she was having a nightmare, but then I remembered the First Task," she sniffed again, pausing her tale to sob silently one time. She seemed irritated by herself for sobbing and straightened up her posture, though as she continued to speak, it sagged again, and she didn't manage to keep herself from sobbing progressively more. "I figured you had to fight them, so I went to the library and got a book on dragons for you," she claimed and began sobbing more intensely. Harry, petrified by the sight, could do nothing more but stare, horrified. "But when I found you, you stepped into me and knocked me to the ground, but you didn't even notice, you just walked away."
"Oh my God," Harry whispered, beyond mortified at himself.
"I took some notes," she said, taking a few mangled pieces of parchment from her bag with a trembling hand, still sniffling, some rogue tears falling her face and into the paper. She handed them to Harry, who opened them slowly. When he saw what was in them, his heart stopped and his stomach sank to the floor.
There were five or six pages of notes, with hand-drawings of different species of dragons and arrows pointing at weaknesses in green ink and potential dangers in red ink. There were warnings all around the page written in Madeleine's elegant handwriting, which she had earned through painful repetition and effort over the summer and the months she had stayed in Hogwarts. There was even a drawing of the Hungarian Horntail he ended up having to fight, replete with red ink, some even in purple, such as 'stay away from the tail!' and 'use ranged attacks, coming too close is too dangerous!'
"I'm sorry that I couldn't finish doing all of them," she said in a small voice, still crying softly. She hiccupped once because of the tears, and Harry's heart broke. "I did my best."
Feeling empty and horrified all at once, Harry looked back at the notes, and on the last page, there was a little note in Color-Change Ink. He remembered buying the stuff to improve his mood in his First Year, and though he rarely used it, he still faithfully took care of it.
"Good luck, Professor Potter! I believe in you!"
Before Harry could finish the sentence, he had already broken down. A few loose tears turned into a deluge of crying, and he sobbed loudly, almost choking himself on his tears. Full of regret, shame, and sorrow, he cried out, asking for forgiveness, that he did not mean it, that he took it back, that he didn't remember it but that he was sorry, that he would never, ever, do it again, but the tears kept coming, threatening to drown him in an endless stream of profound, wounding sadness. He could barely breathe anymore, and Madeleine's words had brought back memories of his behavior during the past two weeks and even further, things that he had repressed, wished to forget. Every flashback made him flinch, every remembrance made him shutter in self-loathing, but he could not stop their flow, which accompanied and mixed in with his tears. And amidst it all, the small arms of an eleven-year-old hugged him, and they cried together.
Sometime later, Madeleine left and Harry was discharged. He left the Hospital Wing in silence, looking down and not facing anyone that stood in his way. He did not care if he was being followed or not — he wasn't — and when he arrived at the entrance to the Chamber of Secrets, he silently slid down without any preamble. Luckily, no one had seen him enter it.
The walk towards Salazar's office was similarly quiet, only the echo of his shoes hitting the stone ground sounding across the vast expanse of the main chamber and the narrow corridors on their way. He reached the office and sat down heavily on the chair, staring emptily at the heavy table in front of him.
He did not need to look up to know that Salazar was silently judging his behavior, trying to figure out what was happening in his mind. It was not hard to know. Harry felt empty and devoid of all emotion other than sharp, profound regret and sadness, and he figured that the strength of his emotions was such that trying to disguise it would be impossible.
"You were right," he finally said softly, still not taking his eyes away from the table. "About Occlumency."
"Only about Occlumency?" Salazar asked after a beat of silence.
"I stand by what I said about Snape," Harry stated firmly but quietly, finally looking up to face the tranquil face of the Founder. His conversation with Madeleine, if anything, had reinforced this decision. He may need to kill in the future, and if it came to that, so be it. He would no cower from it in a fight. But he would not kill in cold blood. "If you want me to think just like you, Salazar, I will leave. That is not who I am, and it is not who I wish to become."
"You understand that I will forever think you foolish?" Salazar challenged, eyes full of steel and unbent opinions, forget into being from a thousand years of existence.
"And I will think you too ruthless," Harry said softly, shrugging slightly. "You seem to think that Gryffindor was foolish. I think he ended up pretty good, in the end."
"There are worse things in life than foolishness," Salazar conceded gracefully, but then continued speaking firmly. "Fewer things are deadlier, however."
"We all die, Salazar," Harry responded uncaringly. He remembered the dreams he had of Death, which seemed so long ago, in which he was told that experience is sometimes the only path to self-realization. The sharp contrast to Salazar's constant defense of meditation and thinking was not lost on him. While he would meditate until he found something that would aid him in his Occlumency, his respect for the shadowy, mysterious dream version of Death increased.
"Giving up already?" Salazar drawled mockingly.
"It's not giving up, it's acceptance," Harry denied smoothly, shaking his head. "I will continue to fight with all I have to defend what I believe in, and those I love. But I will die one day, and if that day comes earlier because of my choices, I will die faithful to myself."
"Honor does not matter to the dead," Salazar warned him.
"It's not about honor," Harry sighed. "It's about self-realization like you always say. What's the point of knowing who you are if you're going to ignore it? This is who I am. I may die, but I will not live according to another man's beliefs. If you cannot accept that, Salazar, you are no better than Dumbledore or Riddle."
Salazar's portrait looked at Harry for a long while, analyzing him with wandering eyes, unblinking and steely. Basil was quietly looking at the scene, and the room itself seemed to hold its breath. For a moment, it was Harry who felt like the portrait, being examined by a rather stern art critic, but he did his best to not let that phase him and studiously remained looking back at the Founder without an ounce of outwardly apprehension.
"While I object to being compared to Riddle or Dumbledore," he eventually stated, slowly, his voice full of frustration and a wounded ego. "I commend you on finding such a core part of yourself, even if it took a dragon to do it," the last sentence was said sarcastically, showing that despite his words, the Founder was all but happy with the conclusion at which Harry had arrived. "There are worse things in life than being honest to yourself. I continue to believe that you made the wrong decision and that you are being stubbornly high-minded, but I will not pursue the path of convincing you otherwise any longer. Mind you, I still believe you are being moronic."
"I don't care what you believe about me," Harry responded, raising a single eyebrow. "I will be myself, and that is all I need. Now, will you help me, or will you continue to find ways to offend me?"
"I do not see why I cannot do both things," Salazar interjected immediately before turning more serious. "But very well. We have things to do, then."