Chapter Thirty-One: The Second Element - Water
Colin was sitting on top of him, pinning him, although if Harry really wanted to, he could easily push him off - while Harry wasn't big, Colin was smaller than he was and didn't have the strength that came with years of physical labor. The younger wizard clutched at the front of Harry's robes. "Please stop!" he cried, his voice higher than normal.
Harry blinked out of his stupor and said, his anger barely reined in, "Colin, he tried to kill you!"
"I know that!" Colin wanted to curl in on himself. Facing Harry like this was terrifying. It was disconcerting - Harry had the figure and face of a child, but his eyes were something else altogether. There was anger and power and force behind them, and such a combination made Colin's heart quake. "But I'm not worth you killing him like this! This isn't you! You're not a killer!"
Harry's voice was cold. "He deserves it. After all he's done, what redeeming quality does he have? None!"
"This isn't about him! T-the Harry I know...I wouldn't be terrified of him!" The words tumbled out of Colin's mouth.
Harry went completely still. "What do you mean?" he stammered. "Why are you afraid of me? I'm not angry at you! I'm protecting you!"
Colin swallowed. "It doesn't feel that way," he whispered. "It just feels like you're angry, and you've lost control."
Harry stared at him. Because Colin was right. Mihai was incapable of harming anyone at this point, and once the court found out he had used an Unforgivable on a defenseless child, he would likely get time in Azkaban. Or the equivalent in Romania. And yet Harry was ready to end his life. He wasn't trying to protect Colin. He was full of rage and wanted to hurt. Realizing that, he felt a twist in his stomach and finally said in a shaking voice, "Understood. You're right. I...don't know what's gotten over me..."
Colin slowly got off of Harry, who took a while to stand up, shoulders hunched. It was a very strange look on the normally quietly confident boy.
Charlie coughed uncomfortably. "I'll call in the aurors. They'll take Mihai, and I'll take care of the paperwork and all. You should take Ferdinand home, Harry, and you guys should return to Hogwarts. If the aurors need any info or you're needed to testify in court or anything like that, they'll contact you."
"Harry! Ron!"
They turned around to see Hermione and Draco running towards them.
"Harry! That was amazing!" Hermione breathed as they reached them.
Harry smiled, but it didn't quite reach his eyes.
Draco raised an eyebrow before turning to Ron. "Did we miss something?"
Ron shrugged, looking uncomfortable. "Not really." He smiled awkwardly when Harry gave him a grateful look.
...
When they returned to Hogwarts, they were greeted by a very different atmosphere from when they left it.
"Talismans?" Hermione asked in disgust as she saw people selling them in their common room. "Neville, I really hope you realize none of these will actually help you against a basilisk's stare."
"They can't hurt though, can they?" Neville asked miserably. "I need all the help I can get."
"He's got that right," Draco muttered.
Hermione shot him a dirty look.
"By the way, while you guys were gone, Professor Lockhart started a dueling club, if you guys want to join," Neville said. "It's for learning how to defend yourself against the Heir of Slytherin."
"Hell no!" Ron and Draco's voices were loud enough to turn heads.
"It'll just be a waste of time," Ron said. "Right, Harry?"
"I'll join."
Ron and Draco gawked.
Harry shrugged. "At least for one day. See what it's like."
"Well, there's a meeting tomorrow, if you guys want to attend," Neville said. "Last time, we learned to disarm each other."
"Did you guys actually learn that, or did Lockhart just blabber on and on about how he disarmed Merlin?" Draco drawled, plopping down on a couch.
"Well actually Snape disarmed him, and the rest of the meeting - "
"Snape was there?" Draco was significantly more interested.
"Yeah, he was his assistant."
There was a pause before Draco started laughing so hard he fell off the couch. "Repeat that, Longbottom?" he said, gasping for breath and clutching his sides. "His what?"
Neville twisted the hems of his robes nervously. "A-assistant," he repeated.
Draco descended into another laughing fit before managing to get himself into the couch again. He grinned at Neville, causing the other boy to go pale. "You're a good laugh, Longbottom. Consider a future career as a comedian." He turned to the others. "Alright I'm going," Draco said, chuckling. "This will be rich."
"You too?" Ron asked in disbelief.
"How much do you want to see Lockhart knocked down?"
"Well I hate both Snape and Lockhart, so..." Ron shrugged. "But if you're all going..."
...
When Harry finished telling Nicolas about his adventure, the older man looked out his window, frowning. Finally, he asked, "Do you know why what you did was bad?"
"I got angry, Sir?" Harry said dejectedly.
"Wrong. Anger is an emotion, and as such, it is a natural part of being human - no one can fault you for becoming angry, especially in such a situation."
"Then was it because I was hurting someone?"
"Wrong again." A small smile came across Nicolas's face. "It's unlike you to give so many wrong answers, Harry. No, hurting someone does not necessarily make an action wrong. If that were the case, the most morally conscious of us would never defend ourselves, lest we hurt our attackers." He sighed. "The issue here is that you had linked your anger, something that is naturally uncontrollable and does not affect anyone else outside of yourself, to your actions, which are naturally controllable and affect the world around you. Anger, as an emotion, comes and goes, for any number of reasons, for good reasons or bad. Even an accomplished occlumens cannot fully control their emotions at all times."
"Then how do I unlink the two, Sir?"
"Coincidentally, that is the next stage of your training. Water, the element of focus and control." Nicolas paced as he explained. "This is a critical part, Harry, and you must understand why. You have mastered fire, the element of will and power. You currently have much raw magical power, but if you cannot control it, the raw power is useless, even dangerous. To learn control over your magic, you must learn to focus and have extraordinary control over yourself.
"You are probably starting to see a pattern here. Each aspect of your magical skill is connected to your own mastery over yourself. The power of your magic is tied to your willpower. The control of your magic is tied to your focus and self control. That is why accidental magic happens even in adults. When they lose control over their emotions and allow them to leak into their actions, they lose control over their magic as well.
"Perhaps at this point, you may be wondering. What is the difference between willpower and self control? In some ways they are similar, but at the core, the will is the foundation of action while self control is the foundation of inaction, of restraint. Let us begin. Follow me."
Nicolas led Harry outside. A half hour of walking later, they reached a lake. "You have learned occlumency. However, occlumency is not the same as self-control and discipline. You will see why soon. In order to restrain yourself, you must know what you want to restrain yourself to. Do you know what that is, Harry?"
Harry thought for a second. "A...good person, Sir?" he suggested tentatively.
Nicolas chuckled. "Good guess, but no. I will tell you. Yourself."
Harry blinked. "Sorry, Sir?"
"Yourself. You must restrain yourself to act as and be who you are. At all times." Nicolas touched the surface of the lake with his wand, causing a ripple across the surface. "The first step of this training is to find out who you are. At first, it will be very unclear, but over time, as you calm and focus, it will become clearer to you. I am not giving you much guidance here on purpose. The thing about water is that the more you try to control it, to disturb it, the murkier it gets. You are searching for the truth about yourself. You are not trying to impose a truth upon yourself.
"However, I will give you one piece of advice. I took you out here for a reason. To find out who you are, you must be still. Very still. In mind and spirit. Because your true self will probably come out very, very quietly. And there is no better place to become still in mind and spirit than in nature, cut off from the ruckus of society."
"How will I know when I've found myself, Sir?"
Nicolas shrugged. "I don't know." He grinned. "But you will."
...
Harry returned to Hogwarts without making any real headway into Nicolas's training. The man was being elusive, or rather, the training itself is elusive. He didn't understand what he was supposed to do, and he ended up just sitting there by the lake, thinking about everything that had happened that year. The Muggle Protection Act. Dobby. The petrifications. The basilisk. His dragon.
As he entered the common room, ready to go to bed, he saw Ginny startled to see him. "Evening, Ginny," he said politely.
She stared at him, shaking slightly, before tripping over herself going up the stairs to her dorm.
How odd.
...
It was as Neville said. Snape was Lockhart's "assistant." And they were paired off to learn to disarm each other.
"This is not boring at all," Draco said sarcastically as he faced off against Harry.
"Well you need to learn to walk before you can run," Harry said lightly.
"Don't pretend, Harry." Draco could see right through Harry's professional politeness. "You're regretting your decision to come."
"Maybe a little."
"Alright! Professor Snape here has a great suggestion! Let's have a pair up here for us to watch and analyze!" Lockhart cried out. He looked around and called out cheerfully, "Potter! Come up!"
"Zabini," Snape said, without flare.
"Now, remember, you two, disarm each other only!" Lockhart said, wagging his finger annoyingly as though talking to misbehaving toddlers.
Harry and Blaise approached each other and bowed, Blaise barely bending at the waist. "Let's have a good one," Harry said pleasantly.
Blaise didn't think it deserved an answer. At the start of the duel, just as Lockhart gave the signal to begin, he immediately fired off a spell, "Everte Sta-!"
"Melofors."
Blaise's head was suddenly encased in a pumpkin. "The hell - ?"
"Confundo."
"I said 'Disarm only'!"
Blaise grew quiet. "Have I always been blind?" he asked from inside the pumpkin. "No, this must have been a recent development – I remember colors…"
Their audience roared with laughter.
"Finite," Snape said in a dangerously soft voice.
Blaise quieted his ramblings and yanked the pumpkin off his head. The look he sent Harry was full of loathing. "Think I'm not worthy of being taken seriously, Potter? That you would use a pumpkin on me?"
"What? No, that was the first spell that came to mind - "
"Serpensortia."
A snake burst out the end of Blaise's wand, hissing angrily at the crowds rather than Harry, whose attention immediately left his opponent.
"Petrificus totalus." Blaise smirked at Harry's surprised expression as he fell, his arms stiff at his sides. "Honestly, Potter, your Gryffindor frame of mind won't serve you well in a duel."
"That's cheating!" Ron said indignantly. "You can't just attack the audience to win a duel!"
"Distractions are a valid dueling technique, Weasley," Blaise said coldly. "And until that snake actually attacks someone in the audience, it's a distraction, not a cheat. Vipera evanesca." And the snake disappeared. "Now for some payback. Levicorpus."
Arms still stiff at his sides, Harry was yanked upside-down into the air by his ankles.
"I think we can stop here - " Lockhart began.
"Now, now, no need to leave a duel unfinished," Snape said, his eyes glinting in pleasure.
In the audience, Draco's eyes caught Hermione's hand reaching for her wand. It was clear what she was about to do. "Granger, relax."
"How can I relax?" she hissed fiercely. "How can you relax? Your best friend - "
" – will win the duel," Draco said, eyes shining. "And I want to see how he handles this situation. Do you really want to lose an opportunity to learn how to duel, just because you jumped in prematurely?"
"How do you know he has a plan?" Hermione asked, surprised.
Draco paused, the image of Harry facing Quirrell flashing through his mind, his calling for Dumbledore beforehand, him telling Draco to run... "Harry knows how to duel." And from that image, he could almost see what happened next.
Blaise stepped closer to Harry. "I wonder how you would look with antlers? Or boils all over?" He recognized the triumphant gleam in Harry's eyes all too late. There was a flash of light from Harry's chest before a king cobra shot out, wrapping herself around Blaise, hissing and showing a terrifying display of fangs and hood. Blaise stumbled backwards in shock and terror. Within a second, his wand was gone from his hand, clasped in Sasha's mouth.
Sasha slithered back to her master, dropped Blaise's wand nearby – the wizard would not be able to reach it unless he went past her – and then proceeded to guard them both.
Harry chuckled, still upside-down – the full body-bind curse was wearing off. "I'll keep your tips in mind, Blaise," he said lightly. "However, I guess it's only fair that I give you information in return. The use of familiars in dueling is also legal, though rare. Mainly because people don't know how to use them effectively. Or in some case, they make terrible partners. But neither of those apply to me and my familiars." As he regained the use of his limbs, he pointed his wand at himself and said, "Liberacorpus." Falling to the floor, he stood up calmly to retrieve Blaise's wand and return it to him. Bowing to his opponent, he said, "Thank you for the duel."
"Told you," Draco whispered to Hermione. He stepped up to the platform as Blaise passed him. "Lost to a half-blood. Tsk tsk," he couldn't help but taunt.
Blaise's lips curled upward arrogantly. "You're one to talk, Malfoy. Are you saying you can beat him?"
"Better than you can," Draco said confidently.
The other's eyes narrowed. "Prove it."
Draco caught Snape's eyes just as Harry was about to come off the platform. Receiving a nod of approval, he jumped onto the platform. "Scared, Potter?" he called out, the slight tremble in his voice giving away his nervousness.
Harry turned in surprise, Sasha with him.
Draco's grip on his wand tightened. He wanted to know how he stood against his best friend, his hero. He wanted to at least be a challenge for the other. He wanted to show Blaise and all the other haughty Slytherins that he was better than them. To his relief, Harry smiled, a challenging glint in his eyes that wasn't there when he was facing Blaise – he knew he was going to have a fun duel, and if Harry thought Draco was going to be a fun challenge, then Draco was definitely going to meet his expectations.
"You wish." Harry turned and stepped forward towards him, Sasha slithering behind him.
Draco swallowed. Harry looked quite confident. Refusing to back down from nerves, he forced himself to lock gaze with the other and met him halfway. Their audience was so quiet, one could hear the anticipation. They bowed to each other, and unlike Blaise, Draco made sure to match Harry's low bow. He could hear Blaise's muttering, but he couldn't be bothered to care. He didn't need Blaise's approval. Even if he lost this duel in front of everyone, he would make sure he lost well.
When they were ready, Lockhart gave the signal.
"Fumos!" Smoke spewed out of Harry's wand and quickly covered the platform.
"Ventus!" A jet of spiraling wind from Draco's wand dissipated the smoke, just in time for him to see a snake slithering at him at full speed. "Serpensortia." A large snake shot out of his wand in Sasha's direction, engaging her in combat before she could reach him.
"Incendio!" came from behind him.
Instinctively, Draco pointed his wand at himself. "Impervius." The fire hit him and slid off him.
"DISARM ONLY!"
"Incarcerous."
Draco mentally cursed. Damn Harry was fast. Did he just have a queue of spells lined up? "Glacius! Depulso!" The ropes sent at him turned to solid ice before being sent backwards towards their caster.
"Spongify." The ice turned to rubber and bounced off of Harry harmlessly.
"Are they trying to kill each other?" Hermione muttered furiously. "Sending flames at Malfoy's back? Shooting ice at Harry's head?"
"Hermione, look closer," Ron breathed, his eyes locked on the duel. "They're enjoying themselves."
And it appeared that Ron was right. Harry's eyes were bright, and there was a smirk making its way to Draco's face. Despite the duel being more dangerous than one would expect from second years, it screamed to their audience how well they knew each other. The duel was very different from the previous one. It wasn't a fight. It wasn't a chance to show one's superiority. It was a dance. They pushed and pulled, on the offensive and then the defensive.
"Flipendo!"
To everyone's surprise, Harry pointed his wand at his feet. "Colloshoo!" His feet stuck to the ground, the Knockback Jinx fell flat. "Finite. Incen-"
"Incendio! Inflatus!" Draco felt a rush of satisfaction at his beating Harry to the spells. A stream of fire shot out of his wand, and the succeeding spell inflated the flames into a torrent.
"Impervius!"
Draco was ready, his wand kept trained on the parting fire. A well-shot spell would end the duel. Then to Draco's shock, he heard a loud hissing sound coming from Harry's direction. In an instant, his arms were wrapped in Sasha's coils – the other snake's corpse could be seen to his right. The snake wrenched his arms to the side, and Draco's wand was no longer on target. In the next instant, his wand flew out of his hand – he was so distracted he didn't even hear Harry disarming him.
Harry was breathing heavily. "Nice try. You lost."
Draco blinked. Then he smirked. "You think so?" He whistled. Suddenly an owl swooped down, grabbing Draco's wand in its talons and then dropping it into Draco's hand. "Relashio."
Sasha was forced to let go and slithered back to Harry, whose eyes, to Draco's pleasure, were wide with surprise.
It was as though they were in their own time and space. Their audience didn't matter. The only thing that mattered was their duel and living up to each other's expectations. "You didn't think I would take your advice to heart?" Draco asked, readying himself for another round.
There was a silence before Harry said, "No, I didn't. I really should have known better."
"I always take your advice to heart," Draco said, just as Harry added, "You always take my advice to heart."
"That's enough." Draco turned to see Snape watching them with unblinking eyes. "This club consists of more than two people."
Draco lowered his wand and turned to Harry. Then they both bowed.
"You're a parselmouth."
Harry turned to the speaker – Ernie Macmillan. "I am," he said.
Ernie looked as though he didn't know whether to run or stay where he was. "Are you the Heir of Slytherin then?" he asked with a shaking voice.
Harry frowned. The first step of this training is to find out who you are...You are searching for the truth about yourself. You are not trying to impose a truth upon yourself. Dumbledore told him about Riddle, but...Harry's ability to speak to snakes was a mystery. "I don't know," he finally said.
"What kind of an answer is that?"
"A truthful one," Harry said, his voice challenging. "What answer would you prefer? Yes? Or no?" When Ernie fumbled over a response, Harry stepped down from the platform, the students stepping away from him in fear. "Sasha has been public knowledge for over a year. And never once did you think I was the Heir of Slytherin? Until now?"
"We didn't know you could speak Parseltongue! People have snakes for pets, but people can't speak to them!"
"Harry's not the one!"
They all turned to Colin, whose cheeks flushed pink. "He's not," he repeated.
"Creevey, how can you be sure?" Ernie asked, uncertain. "You only saw the eyes..."
"I'm sure!" Colin insisted. He turned to Harry. "He wouldn't attack me. I know he wouldn't. I've...I've seen him angry."
"Who else can it be then?"
"Not him!"
"Colin," Harry said gently. "Let it go." He turned to Ernie. "I don't know who I am. And if I don't, I highly doubt anyone else does either."
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