Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter.
"Retract-you must finally have cracked! The very idea-"
"Now, now Severus, I know how much you enjoy a challenge with potions. And what's more, I'm very aware of the little experiments you used to do to fool Mrs. Norris. Giving mice wings was a nasty little trick indeed, the poor thing used to run in circles trying to find a way to catch them." Snape snickered and sipped from his mug before responding.
"I concede. I'll make the bloody potion but I can't guarantee it'll work. I would need test subjects and you know how strict the ministry is with testing unregistered-"
"Oh hush, you know better than anyone the results your potions will get before anyone or anything consumes them."
"I presume you'd like me to make sure they're big white fluffy wings as well? Should I make them fully functional? Exactly how far are you willing to push my limits here?"
"Oh, as realistic as you can manage. But feathered wings would be nice, we wouldn't want to scare Tom to death. He'll be a child after all. Oh, and Severus? The colour isn't too much of an issue, I'm more concerned about functionality." Severus rolled his eyes, finished off his coffee and then strode out of the office. Harry could hardly believe what had just occurred, but decided not to question his luck too much.
"Ah, Harry. Tell me, have you managed to come up with some sort of plan?"
"Yes sir, but it will require a lot of work."
The two planned for days on end, thinking of every possible scenario and accounting for it. It was only a month later when they had the most solid plan they could possibly form before Dumbledore decided to switch back to training Harry with magic.
To circumvent any suspicion about Harry's background, they worked tirelessly on his wandless magic. To Harry, it was even better than working with a wand. As long as he had enough intention behind what he wanted to do, he could cast more spells than he'd ever imagined. The lack of a need for actual spell names worked wonders with him-he was even able to transfer that intention to using his wand as well to perform some of the most complex spellwork Dumbledore had seen.
The trick was to find his magical core and learn how to manipulate it. Dumbledore had told him it might take him years to fully learn it but he'd done it in less than a month. He was fueled with a fiery passion to save Tom from himself and his endless struggles through his life. The two practiced with first year spells and worked on Harry's aim until he was almost spot on every single time. By the time the next school year started, Harry had worked through most of the spells he knew and was creating his own magic. He no longer needed to say the spells to get the desired effect and had even managed to start combining ideas and intentions into spells. According to Dumbledore, magic took to him like it does to unicorns.
Delores Umbridge. Dumbledore had told Harry that they'd be getting a new Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher, but neither one of them had been given any notice as to who it would be. Dumbledore had only found out the day the students would be returning and even then, Harry hadn't had any time to meet her. Apparently she had skipped her introductory meeting with Dumbledore in favour of setting up her new rooms.
Harry and Hermione had eyed one another with worry when she had finished with her appalling speech.
Their first defence class had been atrocious. While it wasn't uncommon for teachers to go over the year's syllabus with their classes before they actually started teaching anything, it definitely wasn't common for teachers to be mad at the students for asking questions. Hermione had asked if they would be using spells to learn them properly during class since the book didn't depict any wand movements or spell inflictions for the incantations and the entire class was appalled to hear that they would only be learning the theory. This had quickly been followed up by Seamus asking what if they needed to defend themselves against someone who broke into their home. Umbridge's response to this was simply to deny Voldemort's existence and that no death eaters were wandering around free.
Harry, unable to help himself, had opened his mouth then.
"So, you just think that because we have magic we are all inherently good people? What if someone passes by your home and decides they want to steal an antique they saw sitting in the window-and then they do it? They could use magic against us in our own homes to steal something they wanted just because they wanted it. And besides that, what if Dean's out in muggle London and someone puts a knife to his throat? I would think we'd like to be able to protect ourselves in our day to day lives. The likelihood of us needing to is fairly low, which is good, but it's not a zero percent chance."
Needless to say, she had given him detention.
Her lecture about how no one was going to get hurt in their daily lives was boring at best and her inherent ability to be blissfully ignorant to anything outside of her own little world was incredible. Nonetheless, it still resulted in Harry having to write the sentence I must not tell lies. over and over and over again. It hadn't taken long at all for him to realize that the quill he was using was using his own blood to write the words. He made sure that every single drop of his blood had dried on the paper before handing it to her and just after he closed her office door, he directed just enough magic inside to burn the parchment to ash. She had screamed and tried desperately to put the fire out, but the flames just burned on until the entire parchment-and his dried blood-was ash. He didn't want anyone else getting ahold of his blood anytime soon.
Luckily, he had thought to put his invisibility cloak on before doing so, because as soon as the fire was gone she stormed out of her office and started shouting for him to come back and face punishment for burning the parchment. He knew he could get to the common room faster than her, but instead he hastened to Dumbledore's office and took every single shortcut he knew to get there faster than he thought possible.
"Ah, Harry," Dumbledore looked up from a stack of parchments he was perusing and gestured for Harry to sit down. "I was under the impression that Professor Umbridge had given you a detention tonight."
"About that, I finished early."
"Ah, did she have you doing lines? I find that students get to be quite fast at those by your age," he chuckled.
"In a way. Sir," Dumbledore's eyes sharpened at his tone. If he hadn't been paying his full attention before, he was now. "In detention...I don't really know how to say this so I'll just-" Harry cut himself off and placed his hand on Dumbledore's desk. Blood had been dripping down his fingers, and the words seemed to be getting angrier by the second. "I don't want anyone else to experience her detentions, sir." Dumbledore's eyes met his over the desk before Fawkes squawked in indignation and flew over.
"No, Fawkes. If you heal that, the ministry will never believe us." Fawkes stayed on the other side of the desk and Dumbledore sighed.
"Harry, I'd like to have the department of Aurors notified. But keep in mind if I do this then you'll likely have a scar there. They won't be able to treat it until they verify it's real, and that could take some time." Harry nodded. The last thing he wanted was for other kids in school to have to ensure such a horrible experience.
"I don't care if it scars, I don't want her to do this to anyone else." With that being said, they put a towel under Harry's hand to prevent it from bleeding on the desk any further and sent Fawkes with a letter to the Auror department.
When the floo flared to life, Harry sighed in relief as Dumbledore greeted the aurors all by name as they came through. He answered question after question before finally Dumbledore managed to get the aurors to take the memory from him. Harry did his best to provide as much detail as possible in the memory Dumbledore drew the memory from his mind and waited patiently for the aurors to finish viewing it. Only then was Fawkes allowed to heal the cuts on his hand that were-somehow-still bleeding before being sent to bed.
That night, Harry dreamt about Tom. The two were at school together and walking around on the sun-warmed grounds while other students around them shoved their noses in their books. He didn't know how he knew, but somehow he knew it was just before finals in their seventh year.
"Harry? What do you think the rest of our lives will be like-after Hogwarts, I mean." Harry, who had been gazing out over the lake, turned to look at Tom.
"What do you mean?"
"Oh come on, you can't tell me you haven't thought about what happens once I've left school. I imagine there's plenty of children around the world that will need your help." Harry's heart lurched.
"Well…" He paused as he heard his name being called in the distance.
"-rry...Harry!...HARRY!" Something wet splashed on his face and he practically leapt out of bed.
"What the ever-loving-bloody-fuck was that for?!" Harry scrambled out of his soaking wet bed and glared at Ron.
"You weren't waking up and we have to go or we'll be late for class! Come on-you know Hermione won't forgive us if we're late!" Realization dawned on Harry and he started throwing clothes on as they ran down the stairs and to their first class while Ron spelled his hair dry.
That afternoon, Harry had a free period that he decided to put to good use. He walked out to the lake and simply stared out at the water. He wondered what had prompted him to have that dream in the first place and when his thoughts wandered to the conversation he had with Tom in his dream his heart lurched again. He wasn't sure he could go through with lying to someone for so long, but there wasn't much more he could do short of hope he lived to be old enough to pass as an adult and go adopt him when he was an infant. The main issues with that though was Voldemort's obsession with him and Dumbledore expressing his concern over how much time they'd have before Voldemort became a serious issue.
He had this sinking feeling that he'd grow to care too much for Tom to want to continue to lie to him about being an angel, but he would just have to deal with it. If he managed to get Tom to trust him, then Tom finding out later that he had been lying would be detrimental and could cause more harm than good.
Umbridge's reign over the school became absolutely terrifying over the next several weeks. Students were no longer worried about their grades and were more concerned that their favourite teachers would be sacked. Teachers were doing their best to maintain a normal learning environment, although that became borderline impossible when Professor Flitwick was told he could no longer have practical lessons and again when she infiltrated Snape's dungeons.
The entire class had been in the middle of an incredibly volatile potion that required concentration and quiet when she entered the room with a rather large scroll. Hermione had seen everyone look away from their potions and quickly thought to vanish all of the cauldron's contents in the room before anything dangerous could happen as everyone else's eyes were glued to Snape glaring down the pink toad of fake cheerfulness in his domain.
"And what, precisely, do you think you are doing? I distinctly remember posting a sign outside the classroom today stating that anyone who needs either myself or a student will simply have to wait until the end of class. I don't recall putting an exemption for you." Umbridge seemed to swell with poorly hidden fury.
"He-hem. I'm here to inform you that, effective immediately, no potions are to be brewed on the grounds of Hogwarts due to safety concerns." Snape, eyes glittering dangerously, crossed his arms slowly.
"Is that so? And what about those students who may catch a cold and need a pepperup potion from the infirmary?"
"Well you can simply purchase it from St. Mungo's like everyone else!" She crossed her arms and tried to look intimidating, but inevitably she failed.
"And how much does pepperup potion cost from St. Mungo's? Anyone? No one? How disappointing." He never looked away from Umbridge, didn't even give a chance to anyone to even hazard a guess. "How very presumptuous of you. Presuming Hogwarts has it in its budget to supply the school with basic medical supplies when the cost is over triple! I can brew a hundred and sixty seven doses of pepperup potion for just under a galleon. But to purchase the same amount-even at a discount for the school-would cost seven galleons. And this is just pepperup alone. Are you insinuating you either want the school to close due to lack of funds or are you looking to ensure the students are so sick that they all have to return home?" He leaned down to be a bit closer to her height and spoke softer even though his voice seemed to ring with finality into every corner of the classroom.
"Don't you dare presume you know the best for this school. You might find that some of what you're doing just might make it into the hands of some very salacious reporters who would love to tear into your reputation as a member of the ministry." He straightened back up. "You may leave the classroom, Professor Umbridge, or you just might find that there are worse things lingering in these dungeons than I." She turned and hastened out of the door, practically running by the time she had reached the back of the classroom. After the door slammed shut, Harry couldn't help what happened next.
"That was wicked, sir." He slapped a hand to his mouth and briefly wondered who had given him permission to say that out loud.
Snape merely chuckled once and the corner of his mouth lifted ever so slightly. "Four points to Gryffindor for finally being able to see what's right in front of you. Class dismissed."