Disclaimer: Nothing is mine; everything is J K Rowling's.

The other side of the coin...

Chapter 26

The candles, the mistletoe and the chair Fleur had vacated had vanished the moment she left the room. Harry remembered the way the room had changed from Fleur's desire to his. How he had sat alone in a room of silver mirrors, beside the quietly crackling fire that had formed beside him. The thick, holly, logs burning merrily beneath a summer sky blue ceiling.

Sometimes, he decided, the Room of Requirement is too perceptive.

He'd left the moment he had realised what Godric and Rowena's masterpiece was doing and only returned to sleep when he was sure he was so tired that the only thing he could possibly want was sleep.

The bed that the room had created for him had been bedecked in blue and silver hangings, and the sheets smelt as if they had been hanging above the very fire that Harry had previously abandoned.

He had been too tired to argue with the room, or to try and change the decor.

Harry had been so tired that he hadn't awoken until mid-afternoon at which point the only thing he really wanted was one of the few things the room could not provide.

He'd come to the Great Hall early in the vague hope that if he was here before usual then the house elves might take pity on him and the food might arrive early too.

So far the tables remained woefully unadorned and Harry had been left to watch the gradual gathering of students as the evening approached.

It also left him rather too much time to think.

Smiling over being kissed by Fleur gradually shifted to the question why. Harry dearly wished she'd appear somewhere so he could speak with her. He'd even considered going to the Beauxbatons carriage, but that felt like a bad idea.

He sat on the very end of the table, spinning his wand round on the surface considering his question as it began to give birth to more and more queries in turn.

Why did she kiss me?

Harry could have understood if he'd kissed her, or tried. Fleur had been testing her allure on him. Unless there was some secret about veela kisses he was not privy too then he couldn't see why she would have kissed him.

As a thank you for the evening, perhaps?

It was possible. He'd seen and read, though Harry suspected the word exposed would be more apt, enough romance to know that it happened, at least in fiction, but it did not feel like something Fleur Delacour would do.

She was like him and Harry would never dream of cheapening something that should have such meaning behind it. He had learned how good it felt to know that someone would always stand behind you and he knew how terrible it felt to discover someone you hoped would be beside you had turned away.

Fleur knew this too.

People began to flow in to the hall in earnest. Scattering in small groups from the door to the four tables. Harry watched them in the reflection of the great, stained glass window.

He picked out several faces from the crowd. A cheerful looking Seamus and Neville. Ron and Dean looked a miserable pair, the latter's arm was still in a sling. He spied Ginny with a dirty blond haired Ravenclaw he vaguely recognised, and glimpsed the trio of Gryffindor chasers at the far end of the table to him.

Katie was in the middle of the three for once, and both her friends seemed to be doing their utmost to hold her attention. It was possible she had not enjoyed the rest of her evening as much as Harry had if Roger Davies had abandoned her so early.

He watched curiously in the window as Alicia and Angelina kept dragging her attention back to themselves and found something new to laugh about every time Katie through a regretful look down to his end of the table.

A flash of familiar silver in the window caught his eye and he immediately forgot about Katie Bell.

Fleur Delacour drifted halfway down the hall between the Gryffindor and Ravenclaw tables, her step uncertain and her usual smile fixed upon her face. Harry suppressed the surprisingly fierce urge to change her expression back to the perfect, kind of curving of the lips that he had seen last evening.

Her eyes flicked to the end of the table where he was sitting and her smile changed.

It did not shift as Harry had hoped. The polite, cool pride twisted into something bitter and she stopped, mid-stride.

As Fleur turned away to leave the hall the cold grip of a hollow hand returned itself to Harry's heart.

She is avoiding me.

All of a sudden he felt rather sick, food could not have fallen further from his mind. Very slowly and deliberately he spun his wand once more upon the table surface and slipped it back into his sleeve.

The moment he was certain that the french veela must have passed out of sight of the doors to the Great Hall and the staircase he left.

Harry took the steps two at a time, only pausing to dodge the trick step on his way to the Chamber of Secrets.

There were so many reasons that Fleur might have for not wanting to speak to him, but Harry didn't want to think about any of them. He needed something to do, anything that would occupy his hands and mind.

'Harry!' The cheer on Myrtle's face vanished instantly at the expression he was wearing. The ghost girl paled, growing even more translucent. 'What's wrong, Harry?'

Amazingly only one thing came to mind.

'You flooded the bathroom again, Myrtle,' he sighed. The ghost giggled.

'If you slip and break your neck you can stay here with me,' she offered.

'Thanks, Myrtle.' Harry didn't have the heart to tell her that he might have the opportunity to take her up on her offer sooner than she expected, so he simply disappeared down the stairs. Dumbledore would only continue playing with Harry's life for so long before he he lost patience and simply finished him off. The worst part that was it was necessary and the old wizard was right.

'Don't even think about opening that egg,' Salazar snapped the moment he entered the study.

'I have to open it to figure out the clue,' Harry reminded the portrait.

'Maybe the clue is on the outside,' the painting suggested more in hope than knowledge. Harry gave him a flat look. He'd sit in the study and let the egg scream at him for the whole day if it stopped him thinking about whatever mess had been made of his friendship with Fleur Delacour.

'It sounds worse than Godric's singing,' the painting grumbled. 'The only things less bearable than his singing were the months he spent learning Mermish and speaking it constantly above water and Rowena's poetry. She just couldn't grasp that a poem needed more than just a rhythm and some rhyming.'

Harry ignored the paintings rambling. He had reached the conclusion some time ago that if the basilisk had been able to hear Slytherin then Tom Riddle was probably only partially responsible for its madness.

The egg swivelled on the desk once, revolving on its axis before Harry attempted to open it.] 'Mermish,' Salazar exploded from behind him. The founder was growing senile. 'Don't open it until it's underwater.'

'I can't hear it if it's underwater,' Harry patiently told the portrait who promptly broke into apoplectic rage.

'You'll be underwater too,' Salazar hissed in parseltongue, 'stop acting sceptical and listen to the wizard who was heralded as one of the greatest of all time.'

'Will it sound any different underwater?' Harry asked.

'It's Mermish,' Slytherin explained, sufficiently calm to speak in English again now Harry was listening. 'It sounds horrible above the ground, but below it is supposed to be quite beautiful.'

'How deep is the pool?'

'Only about five metres,' Salazar answered. 'I didn't want my basilisk to drown if she fell in. It will be cold.' Harry detected more than a note of vengeful humour in the tone of his ancestor.

It seems my anti-Salazar device has come back to bite me.

The egg screeched horrifically all the way to the bridge, drowning out Slytherin's indignant protests at his early opening of it.

Harry stripped off his robes and dropped, naked, into the pool before the vast likeness of Salazar Slytherin's face. The moment the water covered his head he could hear the singing. It was choral, and such a drastically different tune to the egg's last that he would have never guessed it could have come from the infernal thing.

He had to wait until the song had finished before he could listen to it from the beginning.

Come seek us where our voices sound,

We cannot sing above the ground,

And while you're searching ponder this;

We've taken what you'll sorely miss,

An hour long you'll have to look,

And to recover what we took,

But past an hour, the prospect's black,

Too late, it's gone, it won't come back.

He dragged himself out of the icy water, shivering violently in the cold of the Chamber of Secrets while the serpent effigies looked down indifferently upon his discomfort.

It took several strongly cast warming charms before he was dry enough to put his robes back on. His teeth did not stop chattering until he was back in the study.

'Was it warm,' Salazar snickered, looking pointedly towards his blue fingernails and pale skin.

'I will leave the egg open when I depart,' Harry threatened, half-serious.

'What did it say?' the founder asked, more subdued.

'Something of mine will or has been taken,' Harry informed him, 'something important.'

'Oh,' the portrait raised an eyebrow in a fashion eerily reminiscent of Harry, 'I thought everything you possessed was down here cluttering up my study?'

'So did I,' Harry mused. 'Maybe it's just a turn of phrase,' he suggested weakly.

'Maybe they intend to take something you can't hide or protect,' the painting countered, 'a person, perhaps.' It made sense, but there were few people that Harry would sorely miss.

They can't choose another champion, Harry decided. That would play havoc with the tournament.

'The only person they could take is my godfather,' Harry announced confidently. 'If they find him then being party to the tournament is the least of his worries, or mine.'

'What else did you learn?'

'Whatever they intend for me to retrieve will be kept by the Merpeople, underwater, for at least an hour.'

'There are Merpeople in the Black Lake,' Salazar responded straight away. 'Godric used to talk to them.'

'There's a giant squid and who else knows what in there too.' Harry did not relish the idea of going into the lake. It was likely every bit as cold as the pool and much less hospitable.

'Where did the squid come from?' Salazar asked.

'How would I know?'

'You might have been curious,' he ventured.

'I wasn't, but I do know it eats toast. The Weasley twins and Lee Jordan feed it.' Slytherin peered at him in disbelief. 'It's true,' he insisted.

'Squid do not eat toast,' the founder denied flatly. 'Still, I advise avoiding it for the duration of the task. How do you intend to breathe. There's the bubble head charm, but it isn't really meant for long term use, self-transfiguration, enchanting and even a selection of magical plants.'

'Transfiguration is my forté,' Harry decided. 'I don't want to have to choke down anything from Snape's stores. He's probably pre-emptively poisoned half of it.'

'You'l have to pick something to transfigure yourself into,' the founder pointed out. 'You've chosen the hardest route. You won't be able to master a full self-transfiguration in time, but a partial one could be managed.'

'Obviously it needs to be something that breathes under water,' Harry mused.

'Don't get too complex,' Salazar warned. 'You only need to breathe for an hour, gills would be enough.'

Harry gazed rather wistfully at the books on the anatomy of water creatures on the far side of library.

'Another time,' Slytherin chuckled. 'Having an animagus form is very useful, but it takes a great deal of study and has more effects than you realise.'

'Just gills then,' he agreed. 'They can't be too complicated.'

'You're going to have to redesign half of your respiratory system,' Salazar informed bluntly. 'If you replace the alveoli and bronchi within your lungs with the filaments of gills you will simply have to inhale water to breathe. As long as you keep oxygenated water flowing over the filaments you will be fine.'

'That sounds deceptively simple,' Harry frowned.

'You'll have to breathe very quickly to keep the water flowing in and out fast enough, not to mention it will feel extremely unnatural to inhale water in such a manner.'

'I knew there would be a catch,' Harry sighed.

'If you're careful you'll be fine. I'll teach you the spells used to reverse faulty transfigurations before you start practicing, just in case.' Slytherin clearly did not appreciate the idea of his heir dying in such a mundane fashion.

'It's probably unfair that I have your assistance,' Harry remarked.

'Unfair on who? Your rivals? Tom Riddle? Albus Dumbledore?' The portrait fixed him with the look Harry had dubbed the your-acting-like-Godric expression.

'I suppose that is true,' Harry conceded.

'You aren't going to defend Dumbledore?' Salazar seemed quite surprised.

'The prat has been doing his best to get me killed every year,' Harry answered coldly. 'I won't be defending him unless I really need him.'

'There's my heir,' Slytherin crooned. Harry suddenly felt a stab of pity for his children, that was not a voice he wanted in his childhood memories. 'Don't let him use you, you aren't his sacrifice to make.'

'I'm not anyone's sacrifice but my own,' Harry told him firmly.

'I suppose that is better than being everyone's enduring, noble hero,' Salazar sighed. 'Any chance you'd consider not dying to destroy that horcrux.'

'It has to be destroyed,' Harry told him quietly. There were hundreds of people who would never have to lose anyone, thousands, and all it would take was a single death. He could understand Dumbledore's decision, even if the nature by which he had carried out was highly offensive and manipulative. 'I want to live, but I don't think I have it in me to condemn someone to death just for my own survival.' Oddly the statement felt perilously close to a lie, perhaps it was because when he considered the idea he could only ever really imagine sacrificing someone who didn't deserve it. The ones who did never seemed to be an option when there was a choice over who was to pay the price.

'Normally you spit vitriol at the mere suggestion,' Salazar remarked, ever curious and observant. 'What is distracting you?'

'The aftermath of the Yule Ball,' Harry admitted. He had never told Salazar about Fleur, the topic had never come up.

'The Katie girl again?' Slytherin asked.

'No, I went with Fleur Delacour, my rival,' Harry explained.

'I suspect there is some context to explain that,' the painting probed. The founder sounded surprisingly understanding and sympathetic.

Perhaps his children weren't so unlucky.

'She is like me,' Harry began, trying to structure his thoughts. 'I did not realise at first, like many who look at me and see only the Boy-Who-Lived I saw only Fleur Delacour the proud, arrogant french witch. I realised, eventually, that we were more similar than I suspected and remembered what you told me about finding equals. She… demanded, that I take her to the Ball and I agreed.'

'She left you for another during the evening?'

'No,' Harry snapped. Fleur would not have done that, not after how she had reacted to Katie's offer. 'We spent the day before together, getting to know one another a bit beforehand. We talked about a few things, the egg, the second task, veela…' He trailed off at Salazar's darkening expression. 'What?'

'Veela?' he asked, trying to mask his previous displeasure.

'She is veela,' Harry explained.

'That makes sense,' Slytherin responded, for all his best attempts his frown remained about his brows and the corners of his mouth still curved down. 'Did she use her allure on you?'

'Yes,' Harry admitted, 'but not how you think. I am resistant.'

'Of course you are,' Salazar announced proudly, 'my family have always been gifted with the mind arts, the longer you study occlumency the less effect you will feel from such magic.'

'She turned the full force of it upon me to test my resistance and, once I gave in, she kissed me and left.'

Salazar's frown had turned to confusion. If the situation had not been so close to Harry's heart he would have laughed at the unusual expression. His ancestor was rarely so perplexed.

'I do not understand,' the painting confessed. 'There seems to be no dilemma except why she might have kissed you, I had feared-'

'She's avoiding me,' Harry admitted, his stomach clenching at the memory of Fleur turning away from him in the hall. 'I thought,' his fists balled, 'I knew, that it would be too good to be true. I'm fourteen she is seventeen. I don't know why she kissed me, but it has cost me my hope of having found an equal, a real friend.'

'Ah,' the portrait said delicately.'

'Ah?' Harry repeated.

'I was about to say that my fears seemed unfounded, but-'

'But they weren't?' Harry interrupted.

'You said she asked about the second task and the egg,' Salazar reminded him very carefully. 'And she began avoiding you shortly after realising you were not entirely resistant to her allure.'

Several little pieces began to fall into place in Harry's head; the small stones that start the avalanche.

Fleur Delacour had understood him. She had been like him enough to empathise. Fleur had used her understanding against him. Probed to see if she could find any weaknesses in the one rival she had not already completely categorised, tested to see if her allure might be useful against him, and now she no longer needed to act kindly to him.

'I could be wrong,' the founder suggested tentatively, 'she did not have to kiss you.'

'No,' Harry laughed bitterly, 'she did not have to kiss me. Fleur could have walked away and I would have been left in blissful ignorance.'

The side of the mountain on which he had built his hopes of having found an equal crumbled and collapsed as the avalanche fell with an angry roar.

'She used me,' he hissed, furious. A small patch of ice had formed in his chest.

'She did not need to ask you to the Yule Ball,' Salazar ventured, concern clear in his eyes.

'Fleur was plagued by wizards wanting to be her date. I was her platonic shield,' he rebutted. The ice was spreading across his chest, egged on by the little voice in the back of his head. It was whispering names, the names of everyone who had ever chosen themselves over him and left Harry to endure.

Albus Dumbledore, it repeated four times hatefully, once for every year of danger.

The voice was right. Salazar had been right. He had been wrong.

'You were correct,' he laughed, high and cold. 'I let them take advantage, let them walk over me as if my goals and dreams did not matter as much as theirs.'

The portrait wisely stayed silent. The snake had fled inside the neck of Salazar's robes to escape Harry's wrath.

'I will not be used again, not by anyone,' he swore fervently. 'I'll seize my dreams and if I find anyone worthy of my trust and friendship along the way then so be it.'

I will not become nothing, not for a world that has been nothing to me.

The slender piece of parchment was snatched from his pocket, unfolded and activated under the worried eyes of his ancestor. The name he was searching for hovered in black ink upon one folded side. Harry took one look and dropped it on the table. He had what he wanted, what he needed to escape.

'Where are you going?' Salazar asked, as Harry made to leave. There was paternal panic in his voice.

'I'm the Heir of Slytherin,' he echoed icily as he swept out, 'not a sacrifice for lesser wizards.'

On the table behind him the Marauders' Map fluttered in his wake, Peter Pettigrew's name clearly visible upon its upturned face.

AN: Hahaha, and someone thought it was getting near the end... Anyway, please read and review! I do apologise for how short this chapter is, but there simply wasn't anything else that felt like it would fit within it. I double posted to make up for it. I also hope that anyone who felt the Yule Ball moment was rushed now realises that one kiss does not the relationship make...