Rise or Fall

by Etmunin

A new opportunity was presented to the fallen archangel. While it is neither a good nor a bad one, what is to come of it will nonetheless seal the fate of everything. But he doesn't know about it. How should he? After all, it happened nine months before Harry Potter was born. Genfic, no romance (The story's not dead the author's just slow)

8. I - Serpent Surprise

Chapter 8: I - Serpent Surprise

---

Dumbledore hasn't been idle.

•≠•≠•≠•≠•≠•≠•≠•≠•≠•≠•

Harry pushes the door to the third-floor corridor open. Where the too-familiar dark presence didn't already alert him, what he finds does. The giant dog's three heads are slumped on the ground, along with its body, foam seeps from its flews. One of the lateral heads looks up to weakly snarl at him, it comes out as a whine.

The trapdoor is open.

•≠•≠•≠•≠•≠•≠•≠•≠•≠•≠•

When Harry woke up in the hospital wing, uneasiness hung like a blade over his head. He watched the new snow fall outside and had to fight down the impulse of losing himself in (thinking how below freezing temperatures would have damaged this body further, how laughable, that he should be affected by cold-)

Harry didn't know what he was there for. He knew, but he didn't know. He heard it from Professor Dumbledore, the Potions incident, and his most recent memories supported that with flashes of Snape's anger. What he didn't remember anymore were the finer details, like that his stay here was originally supposed to be shorter. Or that the fading ache in his limbs didn't come from where he thought it did. He didn't remember Madam Pomfrey telling him he was lucky his injuries, although deep, were merely physical and thus healed immediately.

Watching some annoyingly itchy red spots on his hand fade away - which were a potion side effect, no question about that - Harry thought he vaguely remembered waking up to a world of much greater pain. Then again, he didn't remember. And he didn't really need to, because he looked around and found everything to be in order. But something was, had been, the sensation of something bad happened and it was his fault shadowed his mind-

(thebottleshatteredonhertemple)

(anoldmancrumbledunderhistouch)

(partingpaleskinandpalomino-)

Dream. Whatever he forgot again, whatever he woke up from, it was a dream. Or something of sorts, could his mind's nighttime adventures even be called dreams? Either way, in the real world all was well. Watching Madam Pomfrey go about her business ('alive and well and kicking, hah'), strangely reassured Harry as much.

He watched the last red of that rash fade from his skin, and banished the abstract shadows of doubt lingering on his mind as well. He had no use for them. In fact, the longer he stayed awake, the easier it was to ground himself in the here and now. His trusty method, he shoved everything that didn't add up aside, and went about his day. Because no matter his own, personal weirdness, the world kept spinning on. His name was famous and revered and whatnot, but Harry was just human, after all. The world didn't revolve around him, he could afford to repress some uncanny loose strings about his person.

And once he was free to go, Harry really didn't know what to think of his housemate's tales of the two explosions.

"Be glad you missed all that", Nott laughed sharply. "Let's just say that the rumors have been something."

Harry half sighed, half snorted. "Rumors that don't have me at their center aren't worth my attention", he said dryly. "What is worth my attention- care to update me on my friend? You know, the turban, the dark air about him, you can't miss him. I hope."

"You are just out of the Hospital Wing", Malfoy snapped. "Give it. A rest."

Which, true, Harry was just out of there, and he wasn't about to ask how Nott, Malfoy, Greengrass and Zabini just so happened to casually cross his way back to the Common Room.

"But I'm impatient", Harry admitted, walking on, the others walking next to him. "I want to know what monster he'll bring along now."

"Maybe you need a new pair of glasses", Malfoy said, rolling his eyes. "Just look at the fool and tell me he is capable of handling more than his own shadow. Not even that, but you wouldn't know, since you have yet to attend a class of his."

"Hm. His play really is effective, isn't it."

Harry's companions exchanged a subtly pained look, save for Malfoy, who wasn't subtle with that, and Nott.

"If it calms you down, his absence wasn't noted", Nott shrugged. "But you are so vehement about him, I'm curious. What do you have?"

This reaction was new.

"What?"

"Against your friend", Nott clarified. "What do you have?"

In his eagerness to explain, Harry picked up the group's walking pace.

"He gives me a bad feeling", he said. "Almost- the worst I ever felt, he is rotten, and whatever he wants to achieve around here, it's automatically bad if he manages it."

"We see how you have it out for him to the point you seem to know he's close when he isn't in sight. I find it peculiar, but others-" at that, Nott treated the others to an eyebrow raise, "-not so much. So. If he's as bad as you say, there's got to be more we can see. What else do you have?", he insisted.

What Harry had was a lot, it was the overwhelming feeling and... and that was roughly it. Except no, the troll incident, and how could it almost have slipped Harry's mind that he actually managed to kill a troll, by Merlin, what happened for him be able to loose sight of that-

"Remember Halloween? The troll? Remember who came in shouting about a troll in the dungeons? Remember, it wasn't in the dungeons? But hey, the girls' bathroom on the first floor, the dungeons, easy mistake to make."

Nott, who nodded thoughtfully, seemed to take it in, but then Greengrass spoke.

"It could have been a devious lie, or it could have been just Quirrell being his usual confused self. I'm sorry Potter, but I just cannot believe you", she said in an almost apologetic tone. "You feel one thing, but - and Draco is right here - we've attended his classes. We feel quite another way about the man who is likely the reason we'll fail the DADA exams."

Harry couldn't believe how impossible it was for them to not grasp something he felt with his entire being. Meanwhile, the rational part of him was busy analysing the situation from an outsider's perspective and was forced to admit they had valid points themselves. Furthermore, once he thought about it, his entire vicious case against Quirrell, even his steadfast assurance that he was responsible for the troll, it boiled down to that feeling. Vague in origin as always. Glancing at his housemates, Harry suppressed a sigh. How could he begin to further explain what he just so grasped himself? He wasn't even sure it could be classified as a gut feeling in the traditional sense-

"Salazar", at Zabini's behest, the Common Room's door opened.

Something was in the air and Harry picked up on it. It was in the way the general tone in conversation started to shift upon his entering, in the way the other Slytherins' eyes continuously flitted over to their little group, more precisely him, in a manner different from the usual looks his personality got.

"What's the matter", Harry wanted to whisper over his shoulder, but by then he heard Greengrass' own whisper.

"Oh. We forgot to tell him."

"Tell me wha-"

"Tell you all about your last Potions class", she hushed back, "and how the happenings thereof didn't go unnoticed, even with everything that came after."

"Oh. Well, I really don't remember that much of anything", Harry said in no low tone anymore, and the others made faces like they saw something delicate shatter. "I'm afraid you'll have to elaborate."

Zabini, just as not silently and in a deadpan tone, answered.

"You called Professor Snape, and I quote you word by word here, a 'pain in the arse.'"

It took Harry a long moment to process that, and then he wanted to laugh. But even he, in light of all the looks on him, caught on that it wasn't a very good idea. Still, he couldn't fully stop himself.

"That's awes- I mean, what was I thinking..."

Nice catch on Harry's part. Nobody seemed to share his sentiment, if the souring looks on the rest of the room were anything to go by.

"This isn't very funny", Malfoy stated dryly.

Harry was about to answer, but his gaze got stuck. For a long moment his mind lingered elsewhere, in an out of reach place of many eyes and insectile legs, of clicking pincers and- and-

He tore his eyes away from the snake portrait above the fireplace.

"To be fair", Harry shrugged, "he gave me enough reasons to call him that."

The silence in the air almost burst his eardrums, and it had Harry thinking he maybe pushed his luck saying that. Except no, he realized as he cautiously scanned his frozen housemates, this silence was different. Though strangely familiar.

"Um", he asked, "what's wrong?"

The silence lasted maybe a second, maybe an hour. It was hard to tell. Either way, it gave Harry time to realize why this felt familiar: The dumbfounded looks on his housemates looked out of place, jarring. The same way Malfoy's own astonishment upon seeing Harry's wandless casting had looked jarring, back at the first breakfast.

"You just spoke Parsel", an upperclass girl stated mechanically from the sidelines.

"I'm sorry?", Harry asked, a little too absently. He felt his patience for tricks played on him - by his mind, memory or others - starting to thin.

"I said", the girl repeated, frowning her wide-eyed disbelief into something more decisive, "you, Potter, just spoke Parsel."

She was serious. The whole room was serious. But only once Harry looked back at the more familiar faces of the other first years, did it really dawn on him that maybe, just maybe, this was real. He turned away from his classmates to the rest of the people present.

"You… you're serious", he heard his own voice from far away.

"Yes", another person said.

"This is real, you're not pulling my leg."

"For Merlin's sake- yes", came the insistent answer.

"Parsel?", Harry echoed, and didn't need more than just their expressions for confirmation. Miraculously, despite the sudden clutter in his mind, Harry could still manage a "How is this possible?"

"You tell us that", was answered by an imposing figure Harry vaguely recalled from Malfoy's tales to be someone important on the Quidditch team. "We would very much like to know how this is possible. It does not run in your family."

"Yes!", Harry exclaimed, and driving his hand trough his messy hair did as little to sort it out as it did for his messy thoughts. "That! Because I can't speak Parsel, I- I can't…", and by the time he finished that baffled sentence, he found his hand moved to hover over his throat and it felt familiar, like he did that motion before and it was important. Except that couldn't be. Like it couldn't be that he all of a sudden spoke-

"Come on, speak it again", came the prompt, somewhere from the room that was witness to all this. "Because we heard you loud and clear."

Harry's hand sank. His eyes passed the others but didn't see them.

Screw it. No way this was real. He took the leap of faith and, while he was at it, did a somersault jumping.

"The times I wake up from something important I keep forgetting all over, the times I'm awake but still wake up from something important I keep forgetting all over, and now this happens? What new thing will I surprise myself with next?"

But the sudden spike in his heartbeat after the words left his mouth was very much real, as was the dizzying realisation that what he meant to say had left his mouth in hisses, yet Harry had still perfectly understood it.

At least nobody else did. Good, that was risky stuff there, and that funky little fact kept Harry grounded. Someone else spoke up amongst the outbreak in whispers and murmurs, and he turned around to them.

"First the wandless casting", Nott said, "and now Parsel. Anything else you feel like giving us a heads up about?"

"Wha- no- I'm new to this too, give me a break, would you", Harry huffed. That just hit a little too close to home.

"What does that mean you're new to this? You shook that trick out your sleeve and surprised yourself in the process?", asked another boy who was having it as little as Harry. Who in turn narrowed his eyes.

"Precisely", Harry spat. He scanned the room, and out of all the eyes on him, he could read only one emotion, and that was his own, namely the need for space.

"You know what? This here is nice and all- but we can continue the discussion tomorrow at breakfast, when the entire bloody school knows and will be on my case with it-", and with that, Harry stormed out. His housemates parted before him as he moved. He needed the time, to sort himself out and accept that this was part of his life now. Incredibly. Miraculously.

It felt right though. Why did it feel right, though? Were there other impossible things he could do that he dare not even dream of, that would feel as right as well? Harry would have found a lot more excitement in his newly discovered ability, had his mind not been burdened by the worry of what the next day might bring, when everyone would be busy scrutinising him.

The next day at breakfast, the rumour mill was milling. But, marvellously, about other topics.

"It would surprise me way too little if the Weasley twins were behind all that explosion ruckus. No, really, stop it with the attack talk. There's nothing around that could attack, you worrywarts" was one of the two hot topics, and then, when talk about Harry came up, it boiled down to "Did you hear what happened with him and Professor Snape? How is he still alive?", "For five years I dreamt about something like that happening, and when it does, I'm not there…" and "Yes, this is definitely he who defeated You-Know-Who. The Hat must've made a mistake, he has the heart of a Gryffindor."

Harry left the Hall. Unbeknownst to him, he went out of sight just in time before the Weasley twins could formulate their plan of hoisting him up on their shoulders and celebrating him for his "service to Hogwarts studentity", if he'd wanted to or not.

Strangely enough, Harry was put off by how nobody outside Slytherin seemed all that put off by what he did. Insulting Snape to his face like that… Thinking about it, and now that the novelty of it started wearing off, he did not find all that much satisfaction in it anymore.

Only one person outside of Slytherin came at him without the uncalled for admiration.

"Hello, Hermione", Harry greeted weakly.

She looked at him, frowning, she obviously didn't condone disrespect towards a teacher. Even if that teacher was Snape. But she swallowed her own displeasure and stepped aside to show why she was seeking Harry out in the first place.

"Go on", she encouraged Neville beside her.

He took a steadying breath, briefly met Harry's eyes, and looked to his feet.

"It's just- I-I was really nervous and I should have listened"- What was he talking about- "I'm sorry for all that. That I failed the potion." Oh.

"Nervousness can be a pain, yeah" Harry shrugged lightly. "I don't hold it against you. Really, it's fine."

Later, was still something in the air upon entering the Common Room. But it was something… pleasant. Any talk about anything Parsel was restricted to this place, and it put Harry in a mood good enough to answer questions, as long as they knew to keep their tact ("Alright, who here speaks a second language? So we can compare if it's really the same thing?")

And even the next day, there wasn't any talk about him as the Parseltongue, and neither the days after. Harry was past questioning it, his mind was better off memorising McGonagall's limitations of transfiguration. That, at least, made sense. Even if it didn't make him quite as happy as the fact that apparently mentions of all things Parsel were contained to the Slytherin Common Room. In fact, he felt himself grow comfortable enough to find out that even hissed, the password to the Common Room would be accepted. He kept that gag up from then on, to the point the others wouldn't bat an eye anymore, not even one saying "alright, now you're just showing off".

It was a good time. And then it was Friday. Double-Potions day. Along with Harry, his housemates woke up from the Parsel-haze, and made sure he knew they hadn't forgotten the slight to their Head of House either. The cold shoulder was served cold.

After breakfast, it was time to head to Potions, or was it? If, for example, Harry was to take this teeny tiny turn left instead of right and-

Greengrass held him in place by the bag strap.

"You're not running out on this class too", Zabini stated, unimpressed. His classmates met Harry's desperate look with unyielding faces. No sympathy for the devil was had that day.

"Not so much a laughing matter now, hm?", Malfoy made himself known too, and the majority of Harry's brainpower was taken up by how much he did not feel up to this, no, as such all he conjured in response to that was "Your face is a laughing matter."

Incurred by what eloquent insults were usually thrown around back in middle school - namely the tendency to go for each other's mothers and faces - that was a desperate low blow. Symbol of how cornered he was. By the smug looks exchanged between the others, they too knew that. Harry groaned, tore himself free and walked off ahead, which, given where they were headed, wasn't smart. This wasn't his day.

"At least he has the decency to be nervous, I suppose…", he heard Nott say behind him.

In a way, it had been strange that the next Potions classes was the next instance where he met Snape, a week after… that. It was strange that Harry hadn't been sought out earlier. More, Harry didn't linger on, because he was very interested in getting the strokes of his letters the orderliest he'd ever gotten them, barely looking up from writing his notes. Sitting at the back of the class, on the seat Sophie Roper had relinquished to him with a knowing look.

In no time, class was over and the room was emptied of everyone else, except for-

"You did not expect to get away just like that, did you?", Snape's voice sounded trough the emptied classroom.

He didn't. Which is why Harry had made the decision to not move an inch after lessons ended. But, standing up to meet Snape - whom Harry inwardly still didn't do the favour to refer to as 'Professor' - something barbed and snappish gathered itself within. He hadn't forgotten Snape's first day speech and everything that came later, after all. His humility only ran so deep.

"It's why I'm here", Harry stated woodenly.

"Why you are here, Mr. Potter", came the barbed reply, "is because time of my life, I haven't had someone wag their tongue at me in such utterly disgusting disrespect."

Where was that pre-class nervousness again? Or that near-remorse? Here and now with Snape again, who reminded him why he did it in the first place, Harry truly did not feel bad for insulting him to his face like that anymore. His response grew to be almost equally as barbed.

"Likewise, sir. I haven't forgotten the 'halfwitted muggle' part, on my first day here. I remember your little speech. The same should go for you, because I do hope you don't make a habit of insulting your students to the point it all blends together."

Snape didn't move a muscle in his scornful expression, didn't indicate he noted the meaning of Harry's words.

"The reason you are here now, and not earlier", he spoke, "is because I have yet to fathom consequences other than expulsion, which the Headmaster bars me from, which would be fitting of the deplorable attitude you meet me with."

Harry almost sneered. Look who was talking.

(This one)

(This one in particular, he had even less love for…)

And he felt himself begin to hate. From that, he bore a thought;

If something were to befall the man before him, he would rejoice. Because he hoped for that. Wished for that. Imagined that. And maybe, just maybe, if he had a say in it, could put a hand on it, take and twist and tear apart-

Harry froze.

(thebottleshatteredathertemple)

(anoldmancrumbledunderhistouch)

(partingpaleskinandpalomino-)

Harry was young. He was inexperienced. He never festered hatred within him, until it could never grow into his nature over the course of millenia, because he was never alive for longer than eleven years. This familiar sensation was new and not yet part of him.

So he dared to break his tunnel vision, dared to glance to the side and - in one painful moment of clarity - Harry felt what he was capable of harbouring against another human being.

It was bad. It was waiting to happen. And this time, it would be real.

At that, something wilted away. It left him defenceless against the weight of his shoulders sagging, the sight of just the stone floor below, and on his mind only this faint dread of having avoided something bad.

(It wasn't his place to remember how a glass bottle felt as it shattered in his hand, because it met the resistance of a human skull.)

But Snape's biting voice echoed trough his head, Snape himself still stood looking derisively down at him, and Harry almost scoffed. Why should he be the one to back down in weakness when-

His stomach twisted, his heart skipped a beat, and all else was quelled. Harry drew a slow breath, as he forced himself to not forget that clarity. That hate, he…

"I don't want this."

Snape, thrown off the conversation but not his ire, narrowed his eyes. "Come again?"

Oh. Harry said that out loud.

"I have…", he started, stopped, and then started again. "I don't want this. I have no need for this, all of it", he repeated, with a vague all-around gesture, even if what he meant was on the inside. And only as he watched Snape's glare grow nastier in real time, did Harry realise that what he'd said could be misunderstood badly.

"This would be called the real world then, Potter", Snape said with an unnerving calm that didn't extend from his tone to his blazing eyes. "Here, consequences don't care about whether we want them or not. Our boisterous fame doesn't elevate us above right and wrong. If you have failed to understand that after all this time, then you are in the wrong House. I do, in fact, remember my little speech, and I remember only telling truths. Like, for one, that Slytherin doesn't need students like you."

That was it. With the gusto needed to deal with this entire mess in a way that hopefully didn't drive it further up the walls, Harry straightened up, looked Snape in the eye, clamped down and didn't let go.

"Sir, what issue do you have with me in particular?"

Snape hummed. "Was my lack of unthinking admiration for the saviour of the wizarding world perhaps perceived the wrong way?"

"You know exactly what I mean", Harry pressed on, as calm as the turmoil in his chest allowed for. "You treat me worse than my housemates. You treat me worse than even the Gryffindors you so notoriously dislike. But for what? What have I ever done to you?"

"Nothing at all if, from your perspective, our last classes were how we usually address a Professor", was Snape's response, thinly coated as placid.

Harry sighed and set up to roll his eyes. "You know what I mea-"

And he stopped right in his snappish tone. Remembered what slippery slope it would lead down to, if he did nothing to bite it down, if he followed the part of him that was hungry for hatred, and what it enticed with was the burning unfairness of this all, after all, it wasn't Harry's fault Snape's irrational attitude had pushed him, could push him some more-

It took effort to remember he didn't want this. That's when Harry knew he had to end it. Insides twisting and hoping it didn't show on his face, Harry looked up at Snape, took a deep breath, and took the step forward.

"Asphodel and wormwood, yes, there is something you have with me in particular. But, sir, you are right as well", he said. Heard himself say. "I apologise for what I said to you. I shouldn't have done that, and it made everything worse."

But was this making anything better? Snape's expression was... unreadable. Harry found it less concerning than he should have, however. He did it, he said it, and there was no taking it back.

"I'm sorry", he repeated, more for himself. He felt his pulse start to come back down. The anger smooth down. Good.

And it stayed down, even as Snape spoke. But the other's tone rang different.

"Let us, for a minute, assume you are nothing but sincere when you say those words, 'I'm sorry'", he spat, and Harry found the hostility in his voice to be... off. The same unreadable something that was on Snape's face was in his tone. "But finely handpicked words to get your way will not work here. Maybe they will work in the future with another House, after I have had a talk with the Headmaster."

By the wording it was meant as a threat, but Harry, in the unexpected but not unwelcome calm that settled over him, thought about what that meant and found it to be the best thing the man ever said to him. Which wasn't a high bar, but still.

"Maybe that's indeed for the better", he found himself agreeing, and if anything, it made Snape's expression more unreadable. "Someone else, another Head of House, they would not treat me like you do."

Yes, and Harry's voice took on an undertone of steel as he continued.

"Because what I said to you last class was a reaction to you", he went on. "Yes, it was out of line, and it made everything worse and I regret that, but then again, you were out of line from begin with. All I can ask is, believe my apology. Or at least admit that your own behaviour leading up was not normal."

"With every word you say, I am led to believe more and more that the Sorting Hat makes mistakes after all. And that that mistake best be corrected."

Why was Harry getting the feeling the hostility lacing Snape's tone was more routine than fresh? It didn't matter, what did matter, however-

"It would be a pity, because otherwise I'm doing just fine here, but if it means-" appeasing your fury and making sure mine doesn't flare up again because that would be ugly, but Harry continued differently instead, "-peace, then yes. I would go along with switching Houses."

Snape never ceased to look him in the green eyes. That was new.

"You mean that."

"I never lie, sir."

"If, how you say, you are truly so eager to get started on packing your belongings..."

And he let his words trail off, left a silence for Harry to fill.

On his own part, Severus could not quite believe he could have his way so easily with the same face that had had its own way so easily with him, seven gruelling years. At least, he supposed that disbelief was the reason he himself was out of anything further to say, to make good on his threat. He would enjoy driving the son of his nemesis away, he knew that.

But he didn't feel it. That fire was out, it was maddening. But not as maddening as the hatred for the scion of James Potter.

There were two undertones to the boy before him. Harry's resemblance to James, which stared him in the face every second, but another one had formed. There was the young Potter's face now, his entire appearance, scrawny as ever but also healthy as ever. And then there was his scrawny form laying motion- and almost lifeless at the center of the ravaged Common Room. Doused in his own blood.

Severus willed that second aspect of Harry away from his inner eye. It was of no need, no relevance, absolutely none at all-

'I'm sorry', he who looked like his father said to him, and, by all means, looked to mean it. But of course he'd say the expected pretty words, put on the appropriate face, expected it to save him from the consequences of his actions just like that. And to play up an apologetic act and get him to actually somewhat believe it, now if that wouldn't be the most spectacular prank that face could ever pull on him.

Nonetheless, that spark failed to rekindle the fire.

Severus kept watching the boy and the bouts of nervousness starting to ripple across his no longer standoffish expression. Soon, he would have pulled forth something more to say to fill the silence. Something petty, which would make the world make sense again. Would reignite that fire.

"I- I mean, I think you misunderstood…" finally, there it was. "I'm not eager to leave Slytherin, not at all, I get along with them well, but- I guess I'd still get along with them from another House, but In another House they wouldn't know abo- I mean… I can leave Slytherin, if it means peace…"

Harry stopped trying to talk into the silence, willed himself to sit it out, to bear it, just this once in his life. He noticed his arms had moved to cross in front of his chest and he slouched, he uncrossed them and stood straight, because there was no reason for it, he'd spoken his sound mind, after all. He took a deep, barely-shaky breath.

Finally, Snape capped the silence.

"Then know, that we will not have a chat like this, next time you serve me a reason to take disciplinary actions against you", he hissed. "Next time, you will go straight off to be one of the few students in this school's history to have switched Houses."

Harry felt himself nod, he fell into a soldier mode he didn't know was in him.

"As for your punishment", Snape continued. "Say goodbye to the weekends with the people you yourself said you get along with, for the rest of the year. I will find you from fourteen to eighteen in this classroom, both Saturdays and Sundays, and you will prepare the school-issued Potion ingredients for the coming classes because by Merlin, too many dunderheads at this presumed elite school could use it."

Potion ingredients could range from niceties, like aromatic herbs and spices, to outright frog brains. Even in the given detention time, it was impossible to prepare everything for everyone, so, knowing Snape, Harry knew it would only be the things like frog brains or leeches that would await him.

But thinking about it, this wasn't too bad, also frog brains should work for him, considering he'd had no problem with troll br-

"Now leave", Snape snapped. "I will not excuse you to the teacher whose class you are missing right now."

And with a mechanical nod, Harry was out.

"How is he still alive" was already humming its rounds trough the rest of the student body, and it entered the Slytherin populous too, once Harry joined back up in one piece.

"And?", Greengrass asked. "What's your verdict?"

"Prepping frog brains and other tasty potion ingredients on every weekend for the foreseeable rest of the year", Harry replied. Considering everything and saying this out loud, this really was a light sentence, and the other Slytherins seemed to think so too.

As time passed by - and along with it Potion classes wherein Harry and Snape cooly ignored each other instead of going for each other's throats his House seemed to move on from the incident as well. If anything, Harry's very obviously cooled down tensions with Snape did the same thing for his image as the Parsel affair, it garnered him a distinct appreciation. He wasn't complaining. On the contrary, slicing up those frog brains on the weekends was distinctly fun. It's like one of his aforementioned hidden talents was mincing brains and all sorts of other tissue. And that unorthodox liking concerned him, but just a little too little. It was contained to just the weekends, and Potions, after all..

And the conversation that was to happen with Malfoy one day also concerned Harry less than it should have. It took place when Malfoy sought him out in a quiet moment one evening, when they were alone.

"So", the other called Harry's attention and he met silver eyes. "Before you spoke Parsel, you spoke about how you don't remember the Potions incident."

"Yeah, no", Harry agreed. "Not very well. Why?"

Malfoy's face was unreadable.

"I was the one to escort you to the Hospital wing."

That was news to Harry. "You were? Did I call you something too? I don't think I did, but sorry if so."

Malfoy looked him in the eyes as he tilted his head. If anything, his gaze grew even more quizzical.

"You mean you don't remember anything… noteworthy?"

"No," Harry said, and it weren't his own ears that picked up on the discordant note to his otherwise casual tone. "Why, what was there?"

There was nothing. Only Malfoy's classmate, muggle-raised, with attributes pureblooded wizards dreamt of. Who could spit all over certain teachers and rules at some times, be a school-focused clockwork at others, ignore vital advice and run off for library sessions with buck-teethed mudbloods. Yet there was the faint memory of the faint worry Draco had felt in the dungeon classroom when he realised the potion fumes had hit him-

-and then there were the moments of clarity that followed. The dread. And maybe, just maybe, what Draco had felt when he looked into eyes that were lucid the wrong way. Was that what Potter meant, when he called Quirrell evil?

"There was nothing", Malfoy concluded the conversation and walked away. He swore he could feel how green the eyes boring into his back were. Sometimes it was - just a tad bit - unsettling.

Truly, attributes that pureblooded wizards dreamt of. In a cold winter night. When the lake their emerald chambers lay under swallowed the sounds of the raging snowstorm above.

It began with Harry's dream (-memory. A recollection of bygone times visiting his consciousness when the distractions of the day didn't keep him tethered).

But dreams and memories, they are eerily similar.

'Gabriel, can you-'

'Of course! What do you need?'

At that, Samael pauses. Gabriel agreed to something before even hearing it. Samael didn't even need to bribe them with taking the blame for the next time Raphael notices some of the constellations in their care spelling out some of the finest choice words Enochian has to offer.

Just like that, they know.

'Alright, what did you break that I have not yet noticed?'

'Sammus, why would you ever assume such a-'

'Gabriel. Spill.'

'My dear older sibling whom I love very much, whatever would I be without your guiding light in my life-'

A couple of nearby seraphim snicker with each other. Samael grows more unimpressed by the minute. Gabriel shuts up.

'Did you try to cheat the passing of time again?', they probe.

'That flat planet solar system was beautiful and deserved eternity, but nah', Gabriel answers, shedding all nervousness like a snake sheds its skin, going from defense to offense in a blink. 'I took a bite out of your star.'

Samael needs a moment.

'What?', they ask. Gabriel beams innocently. They employed their Samael-specific strategy, and it's working; A confused Samael can't be an angry Samael. And Samael lets themselves be confused because, as a fellow chaos connoisseur, they want to grasp the sense in Gabriel's madness. Something which Michael and Raphael couldn't be bothered to do. Gabriel knows they have them, so they lay it on thicker.

'Your most recent heaviest neutron star, the one where you bragged that it topped Michael's heaviest one? Well, it's not so heavy anymore', they say. 'I relieved it of its plutonium.'

Evident of the efficiency of Gabriel's tactic, Samael skips right over the part where they no longer have Michael beaten in their billion-years old bet on who can manage the formation of the heaviest neutron star. Even if they were so disappointed recently, when a promising candidate collapsed into a black hole instead.

'We don't even have the parts to take bites out of anything', Samael states. 'Are you saying you took a vessel to my star and… ate all its plutonium?'

Gabriel still beams innocently. Samael takes that as a yes.

'Why', they ask, baffled at their younger sibling. Soon, they will be proud they managed to be baffled.

'Note that I specifically took a vessel with developed tastebuds', Gabriel chirps.

'And?'

'Plutonium is sweet.'

Samael can't believe it.

'I can't believe it.'

Gabriel does the True Form equivalent of an eyebrow raise.

'I can't believe that you'd need a star and its plutonium to achieve this 'sweet',' Samael continues. 'Isn't Eden full of better options?'

'Eden is full of plants, and plants taste disgusting.', comes Gabriel's reply. 'Anyway, you know how dutiful Gadreel is. They wouldn't allow for one leaf to be broken, I wouldn't get away with it.'

Samael laughs at that. 'You think so? Gadreel is in no way a problem to get past.'

It is now Gabriel's turn to be unimpressed. 'Please', they huff. 'Contrary to you, I am not up to disrespecting our good Gadreel.'

The memory fell away.

Harry woke up to a silent and dark dorm, wondering what woke him so suddenly. But he didn't like waking up. The others were asleep, it was silent, and that made him unwell. He turned around to fall back asleep, hoping to find back to that dream's happy. He forgot why it was happy. But he wanted to find back to it.

(Except…)

(There was something, a pull, which lead to - oh…)

(Now this was interesting)

And Harry failed to return to bygone memories. His sleep stayed dreamless, and in turn devoid of memories. The hidden side of his mind wasn't there anymore. It went on a visit, seeing as in this very moment, it could. Because dreams and memories are eerily similar.

As someone else would experience shortly.

He sees the wrong figure on the Quidditch Pitch from afar. Draco moves, he has the newest racing broom Father bought on his shoulders and is heading out onto the field. The sporty Quidditch robes suit him well. The cheering over his head comes from many voices, but they fade away the closer Draco gets, because they aren't as real as him.

It's Potter.

It's him standing there, surrounded by nothingness. He holds something luminously red in his hands, it's his back turned to Draco, it's his face looking down at a glowing red remembrall once Draco gets around to see it. But it aren't his eyes meeting Draco's. The red glow doesn't fade from his irises when he looks up. They no longer reflect the remembrall, they glow by themselves.

The remembrall bursts in Potter's hold again.

In dreamlike fashion, Draco's flinch is delayed, he is frozen and forced to watch how glass splinters tear the other's face open, leave numerous small but bloody wounds dotting his cheeks and temples. His eyes never loose their glow and their fixation on Draco, they remain a sole source of crimson light.

"Why are you here?", he thinks he asks, but it may also have been his mind vocalising itself. He isn't talking to the Harry Potter he knows. He is talking to someone- something - else. In this nighttime dream, that much is clear as day.

"You opened the door just for me", the unwelcome other answers. "Would've been rude for me to not accept such a nice invitation."

This isn't real, which is how Draco finds the guts to talk back.

"You are rude", he snaps. "I never invited you anywhere. You have no business here."

"Really?", Potter chuckles. "Because it seems to me I snuck my way deep enough into your head for your subconscious to be so nice and offer me a place here. You seem to not really like my presence in this state, I'm guessing it was about to serve you some nightmare. You'll understand I took the chance you gave me to come see things myself?"

Draco doesn't understand half of what the other just said, but that doesn't negate how the atmosphere all around seems to grow tight.

"I- I never invited you", he insists, more for himself.

Draco isn't here in flesh and blood, still, he feels like he is suffocating in his surroundings that shift and distort, a reflection of his own growing apprehension. The Quidditch Pitch disappears, the faceless crowd above has long since grown silent and distant, the world around falls away until - in a distorted, colourless void - the red gleam of the other's eyes is all remaining colour.

Potter leans forward, and his features almost abstractize with glee.

"I can't get into people and their heads just like that", he drawls, "but wouldn't you know it, there's a loophole. Dreams are free range. Not that it means much, I'm a sitting duckie with my wings stuffed away. But you dreamt up my person specifically. You extended to poor, disabled me this accessible platform. Yes, Draco, you invited me."

Potter flashes a grin or a snarl, it's unclear, and the skin around his wounds shifts in places. For a brief, inexplicable moment within this dreamscape that doesn't know logical rules, the appearance of the scrawny, red-eyed boy with the scar, the wounds on cheeks and temples, the unruly black hair and the round glasses, it ripples like a thin veil.

What could that veil be hidi-

This isn't real, is the thread Draco clings onto. It gives him the power to maintain his bite.

"Whatever you say", he dismisses. "Also, I never gave you permission to call me that, Potter", he then snaps, and revels in how it feeds his confidence to hear these words out loud.

Potter just blinks lazily, the red briefly flickering out. That's when Draco realizes that, almost in a serpentine manner, the other didn't blink before.

Come to think, how can he know this is a dream right now? How can he know this as he actively experiences it, and not have that realisation occur to him while he wakes up to his tangled sheets, as is normal? Why does his mind feel this urgent need to keep him grounded in a mantra of not real, not real, not realnotreal-?

What would be so incredibly bad if this were actually real?

Unseen and unheard, but not unfelt, something oppressive hangs in the air, as crimson-eyed Potter opens his grinning mouth to speak:

"You and good Albus, I must say-

-Ack!"

And Draco woke up to someone's hacked cry.

The world was blurred with his mind struggling to transition from dream to reality, but as he did, as the most cutting edges faded from his memory when the dream dissolved, so did the 'accessible platform'. Draco was alone in his mind again. Alone after what, he did not know. Because even for humans who are human, immediately forgetting all about dreams is normal.

Still, he made a point for himself by being the first to call out to Potter, who was lying on the floor.

"Did you just trip over your own presents?"

Maybe Potter wasn't fully awake himself. Unglassed, bleary, green eyes blinked up into his general direction.

"What presents?"

"Those presents?", Malfoy asked back.

And that's when Harry came to realise he was still laying flat on the ground, his head being the only thing he moved since falling there, having indeed tripped over-

"Glasses or not, how did I not notice those?", Harry wondered about the parcels near his bed, his glasses now on and the others waking up in the background. "I swear my mind was somewhere else… Wait, why are there presents?"

"Um", Malfoy said. "Because they are yours?"

"What?"

"You do know today is Christmas, right?"

"Huh?"

"…Something tells me we can't expect opening any presents from you in return."

And with that, Malfoy moved over to unwrap his own gifts. As for Harry, it took his staring at the others unwrapping their parcels to get weird until he caught on and gingerly started up on his own. Holding the fancy but actual quill from Malfoy, Harry still didn't quite believe it.

The Christmas feast was fun, though.

Later that evening, Malfoy was to come across Harry taking notes with a familiar and well-disliked utensil.

"I gave you a real quill", Malfoy huffed. "You don't need to hold on to that muggle rubbish anymore."

Harry touched the feathered end of his beloved pen to his chin and answered, "And I thank you, first real Christmas gift I've ever- anyway. Here's the thing. I really, really don't like quills."

Malfoy sighed.

"What's so bad about a quill now?"

"That sound they make" Harry answered. "It's like someone ripped your limb out, ripped the bone out of that ripped out limb, and sharpened your ripped out bone's end, before scratching around on a paper with it. Except it's a feather. Yeah, it feels exactly like that, 'cuz I wouldn't know what having feathers is like. Do you follow?"

"…Uh-huh." Nuh-uh.

All in all, it was a good day.

However, as time went on, once the holidays ended and school began, waking up on Christmas day wasn't to remain the sole instance of Harry's mind not fully being there. In occasional intervals, his concentration was to be worn thin, and he found having to retain full awareness of himself and his surroundings to grow strangely difficult, especially when he had to keep up with his classes.

The most notable instance was in History of Magic, which, even for Harry, was a dangerously boring subject. Now, he knew how he behaved when he was bored and his mind wandered off, but startling up and back into the present once he noticed he'd run his pen over his hand wasn't it.

Moreover, what he'd unwittingly written on his palm, and he frowned at the writing on his own hand, in his own hand.

Curious bastard aren't you

Such rude language… and, the cherry on top, his other palm wasn't empty either.

Wouldn't you like to know what this says

What was he thinking moments ago when he scribbled that, where had his mind been? More annoyed than anything, Harry smudged the ink away before anyone saw. There was a class to concentrate on, he had no time for whatever this was now.

Although, even if not for long, the question remained - why did he do that?

He did it because dreams and memories were eerily similar. Because Dumbledore hadn't been idle.

•≠•≠•≠•≠•≠•≠•≠•≠•≠•≠•

Past the sick dog and on trough the open trapdoor, Harry falls soft, a "Lumos!" revealing what exactly he landed on. It's that weirdly all around him plant again, the one Professor Sprout called a Devil's Snare on his first day.

Having no time for weird plants, he hurries on.

•≠•≠•≠•≠•≠•≠•≠•≠•≠•≠•

As time and classes went on, Harry started to grow more comfortable than ever. With the castle, his classes and, most importantly, his classmates, both Slytherin and not. And that level of comfort grew most apparent when it was brought down.

Quirrell was gone again.

Then again, Harry was comfortable. That, or he was just plain exhausted of the man's existence. Either way, enough was finally enough. He needed to see Dumbledore. Except he didn't know where to go towards Dumbledore's office, he did the next best thing and asked a prefect. Prefect Buckminster sighed in resignation.

"Sherbet lemon", she sighed. Harry did the auditory equivalent of a double take.

"What?"

"The gargoyle statue on the gargoyle corridor responds to 'sherbet lemon', of all things."

"Oh. Thanks."

Harry's nerves told him not to, but he knew he had to keep his legs moving. The struggle kept him busy, he was stood before Dumbledore in no time.

"Professor Dumbledore, sir. I… I need to tell you something", he said after a cardboard greeting.

If Harry hadn't bern so occupied with what was within, he would have noted what was outside. Dumbledore was tense, on edge at the sight of him, despite his pleasant greeting.

"I'm listening", he said. "What do you have?"

And Harry told him.

Shortly after, he left Dumbledore's office. It was done without slamming the door, because the door was heavy and magical and whatnot, and he was stormed off before it finished closing by itself.

'What do you have'

Nothing new beyond what he had told Nott. Even less. Something was holding him back, this was rational and intelligent Headmaster Dumbledore after all. And who was Harry to come at him with emotions. His housemates were one thing, but it was another to come at Dumbledore with 'Its a feeling that I have, you know?' Dumbledore couldn't work with that.

Quirrell was gone before Halloween and when he came back, it was with a troll. Yes, the troll must have been his doing. He is gone again, what will he come back with next? But Dumbledore had remained passive.

Rationally, Harry there had existed this possibly his lack of evidence wouldn't lead to much. Emotionally, he was angry.

'I appreciate you bringing this to my attention…', Dumbledore had said emptily. 'Rest assured the third floor corridor is in capable hands, my boy. Now, tell me again why you are so preoccupied with the third floor, despite my explicit warning…?'

Even Harry's insisting that said door was unlocked led to nothing. It was maddening. Dumbledore was maddening, Quirrell was maddening. If nobody else was going to do something, then…

He caught a whiff of something familiarly disgusting. What impeccable timing.

…Then he would take care of it himself.

Powered by his surging nerves, Harry fell into a hurried step. Yes, he felt his everything screaming at him about how wrong this presence was. Yes, he felt how it shifted in intensity as both it and him moved along. But, and Harry frowned his eyes shut in concentration, where?

He fell into a light jog, however his breathing and heartbeat were faster and heavier than a light jog warranted. He was out of breath once he came to stop before he entered a corridor, because what was in the air was downright suffocating.

He shouldn't do this, he should back down, this was dangerous, was screaming trough Harry's mind, but his rationale was muffled by something other, and it left no room for him to question where he was going. There was no thinking, only left, right, right, left, and one last time to the right. Past armours and portraits, tapestry and wall ornaments. Under web-hung chandeliers, surrounded by the echoes thousand-yeared stone walls threw back at him. The presence grew in intensity, except it didn't, Harry just got close enough to feel it at its fullest.

His stomach twisted, but the steady rhythm of his legs helped, enough to keep him from wondering what in the world he was thinking. Left, once more, one last corner and then-

Harry stopped before rounding a final corridor. Only one pair of footsteps was to be heard, growing louder. He didn't need to peek around the corner to sense Quirrell walking along, getting closer to the corridor crossway, and one of its corners that hid him.

He didn't move.

Two things held him taut. The urgency to remain unnoticed, and - with his thinking waking up again - the searing dread that one question, which sprung out of nowhere, brought along: If Harry felt Quirrell's presence... did that go the other way too?

His adrenaline wasn't helped by how he continuously had to force himself to utter stillness, lest the rustling of his robes would alert.

(…Demon?)

Time slowed down. As did Quirrell's footsteps. They were loud now, they were here.

And within a second of Harry finally catching sight of the man, the world grew as rich in detail as when he had put on his glasses for the very first time. Harry saw it all. Quirrell's turban, as he looked to the wrong side first. The growing outline of his face, as he began to turn around. His semi-readied shoulders. How he was about to look to his other side, and to where Harry was stood. The way his hand inched towards a fold in his robes.

Harry acted in the impossibly small timeframe before the man caught sight of him. As he did, he was enveloped. The adrenaline had laid his magic bare, and it reared out to envelop and hide him away from sight.

The world moved again, and details blurred, were engulfed by a tall shape in robes and turban shouting no words but angered surprise, as it was thrown back and had something flying away, willed from its hand by an instinctual snap of fingers. But the item - too soft to be a wand - wasn't ripped away but taken away, as the man hadn't had time to fasten his grip, before Harry, who hadn't had time to comprehend himself and that he was moving, held something fabric in his own hand.

He was retreated back around the corner before he had time to get a look at Quirrell's eyes in order to (seek for yellow or black or red or white).

(Because this was a trace he knew)

(And only now did he recognise it trough its bastardisation)

There was no thinking again, but this time it was the opposite. No zeroing in, but getting away. No listening to the sound of running behind him and an enraged spell incantation, hearing the zirr of something immensely powerful in the air, there was just ducking away. The last thing Harry saw, before he fell rather than stumbled around a corner, was green light illuminating the corridor.

(The thing was demonic)

Harry ran. As he did, he couldn't hold his straining magic anymore and it fell away. He was visible again, and his chest screamed with a pain that didn't stem from running.

(…But it had taken him, he who should know what a demon felt like because he made the damn things, this laughably long to recognise an aura as demonic?)

(How?)

It took him trough doorways and corridors and around so, so many corners.

(And wow, what an aura that was)

Only once his chest stopped aching with his breath, did he remember he was still clutching something. The thing he took off Quirrell. It was a string bag, the size of his fist. It opened far wider than Harry would have expected from such a small bag. Its contents were also far larger than he would have been logical. But, as it dawned on him what he was potentially holding, that was the smaller of his worries.

Minutes later, Harry burst trough the door to Dumbledore's office again.

"This was quick. To what do I owe our swift-"

As illogically small as the bag was, it was light as well. Harry's slamming it down on Dumbledore's desk didn't quite have the desired effect. That was made up for by its contents, though.

"I told you. I told you it would happen if and it happened, look-", Harry hissed as he fumbled to open the bag.

There was the rich sound of something large, heavy, egg-shaped and with a scaled texture rolling onto the hardwooden desk. Then there was silence.

"I told you", Harry said once he was back in breath, with joyless triumph. "I told you he would bring back something, I'm telling you he is planning something, and it involves creatures and the third floor."

Dumbledore was still unperturbed, though the gentle gravitas in his tone and slight frown was that of the experienced adult Harry hoped to finally bring into this.

"So you are saying you took this off Professor Quirrell just now?", Dumbledore asked, nodding at the item that, very likely, was not am item after all because something was alive in there.

"Yes", Harry answered. "Where else would I have gotten an egg like that?"

"Indeed", came Dumbledore's answer, in a tone that showed he was long chasing some other idea. Then it grew down to earth. "Harry, why do you dislike Professor Quirrell like that? To the point you are sure to point grave accusations at him?"

This was it. Still, Harry's eyes wandered down to his hands in his lap.

"You know, earlier this year I have received notice that you skipped out on Defense against the Dark Arts", Dumbledore spoke again. Am I right to suspect this is continuously the case, despite no further reports coming in?"

That got Harry talking.

"Yes."

"And why?"

That got Harry talking further. But before that, he felt something brew in his chest, and Dumbledore could watch a storm brew in his student's eyes, a budding something that he knew could grow into something monstrous.

But Harry's vigour wasn't aimed at him, it was aimed at the name he spat out. On his part, he was not aware how he had already made

"He's wrong, and I hate him for it."

That was the first time Harry said it out loud. That he hated. Well and truly hated.

Dumbledore leaned forward, an unfathomable gleam in his eye.

"Hate, you say, Harry? Isn't that a tad harsh?"

"No", Harry said calmly, but with fire in his eyes. "You don't seem to experience him like I do, nobody does, I am alone. I wonder why I'm such a special case-", and if that wasn't true for Dumbledore as well, "-and at least by the end of this year, he will do what he plans for when he brings all these monsters in and lurks around the third floor. And if he does what he wants, and succeeds, it's bad."

He sighed, and his fire subsided.

"That's all I know, sir", he concluded.

And Dumbledore, who knew some more, thanked and dismissed him. Harry left, and left Dumbledore thinking. Not about that there maybe was a dangerous entity in harmful vicinity. No, he was thinking about something else.

"What an intriguing fellow, eh Albus?", one of the portraits of past Headmasters exclaimed, now not pretending to sleep anymore, and Albus had to take the moment to gather his nerves at his first name being spoken, just after seeing that face and thinking about those circumstances.

Later that evening, Harry was to look up from his History assignment, struck by a sudden and very un-historical question.

"Malfoy?", he called.

"Yes?", came the answer once Draco looked up from his own homework.

"What can you tell me about demons?"

He sighed. "Just say 'creature' or 'beast' instead."

"But I don't mean 'creature' or 'beast', I mean demon", Harry insisted.

"But they mean the same", Malfoy answered, "except 'demon' is a word thrown around by idiotic muggles and mudbloods."

"Hm. Could've done without that language- don't look at me like that, you know I'm right - but thanks."

A few days later, Harry and Hermione, who were going to the library, encountered a peculiar group of adult wizards. They were just walking past them, and were not paying enough attention to them to notice their chatter was in another language, until one of the group spoke up with excitement.

"Bă, dacă nu mă înșel, acolo e Harry Potter."

Harry could have sworn he heard his name said, so he stopped and looked around. The group of three people moved to close the gap between them, Harry and Hermione. Doing so, the two who weren't redheads urged the one who was, chattering away in their language. By their side looks towards him, Harry strongly suspected he knew the gist and topic of their words.

"Charlie, tu știi limba cel mai bine, tu vorbești. Intreabă dacă chiar el e-"

"Yeah", the redhead waved his companions off, in English already, and then he turned his attention to the two of them.

"Hey", he greeted. "Don't mind us, we're just passing trough."

"Hello. Charlie, right?", Hermione said from next to Harry.

"Yes", Charlie answered, and looked at her Gryffindor crest. "Who told? The twins, Ron, Percy, or all of them?"

"Ron did, to me at least. I'm Hermione, and this is Harry."

Harry nodded. Then he watched how Charlie only lingered on his Slytherin crest briefly before meeting his eyes. Then he looked away to react to one of his buddies impatiently tapping his shoulder.

"Și?", the other eagerly asked, before Charlie got a word out.

"Da da, el e, calmează-te", he huffed right back.

"Băiete, știm că oamenii de fel nu prea te interesează, dar chiar și tu tre' să admiți că-îi tare cum lam întâlnit pe Harry P-"

"Vai ce mititel e", the other foreigner interrupted. "Nu m-am așteptat."

('What-?!') and Harry had the sensation that, had he understood what was said, he would have been a little miffed.

"Yup, I'm the translator", Charlie said to Hermione, bringing Harry back into the present. "They haven't learned English, because why study languages when you can study dragons? I mean, I learned, but I had to." He grinned. "Anyway, we need to get going", he then concluded with a side look at his quietly but excitedly chattering companions. "There's business we're here for. T'was nice meeting you." With that, everyone was back on their ways.

"Huh", Harry said to Hermione. "So I'm even known in… wherever these guys are from. Who were they, anyway? Wait, I think I remember Ron saying something."

"Yes, Ron hasn't stopped talking about it the past few days- or complaining, I'm not sure", Hermione shrugged. "His older brother Charlie and some colleagues were coming to visit from the Romanian dragon sanctuary", and at that, Harry remembered.

"Right, I knew I heard that once", he said. "Ron told me about Charlie, back on the Express. Wow, that seems like ages ago. When did time pass so quickly?"

"I suppose", Hermione said. "But don't you rather wonder what business dragon handlers have here?"

"Hm", Harry said as a non-statement, because had he said "yes", it would have been a lie and he didn't do those.

So, if there were dragon handlers around, that meant Dumbledore wasn't idle.

•≠•≠•≠•≠•≠•≠•≠•≠•≠•≠•

There is a beauty about the countless winged figures flying overhead, one that touches Harry deeply. There is a fear weighing him down once he realizes what this room is and what the nearby broom means, one that touches Harry deeply.

So much happened, he pushed the aspect of flying far away into his mind. What was once mere apprehension about getting onto a broom and taking off, has over time and neglect decayed into full-on terror, which is getting the better of him now. He looks at the broom, that is meant to be flown up high, to the many winged shapes reflecting brilliant light, and he can't do this, he is physically ill. He can do none of this, what is he thinking, what is he doing, he can't, he can't.

(He must)

He moves. His racing heart outbeats his trembling limbs, the pit in his stomach threatens to swallow him, but at least that means it swallows his nausea as well, he reaches for the broom and-

He will fly high he will fall it will hurt it will end him it will destroy him he can't let himself fall again he can't take this again he can't do this again not again again again

-takes off.

...But he doesn't fly higher or braver than absolutely necessary.

•≠•≠•≠•≠•≠•≠•≠•≠•≠•≠•

"Can you stop that?", Greengrass huffed, suddenly turning around to look at him. Harry blinked in confusion.

"Huh? I'm not doing anything."

"I could've sworn-", she shook her head. "Just stop it."

Harry glanced over to Theo, whose entire posture was as crinkled as his forehead, and he was either agreeing with Greengrass or too concentrated on the board before them, he said nothing. And Harry himself wasn't doing anything either. Just sitting there, watching the two play chess (yeah, and thoroughly judging them and their piss-poor plays, there was a better sense of strategy to be found up Michael's-)

"Again. Stop it", Greengrass snapped, and that's when Harry let go of the ghost of a sneer that had snuck onto his face from nowhere.

"Sorry" he mumbled, and what was weird was he meant it, for a reason that eluded him. Whatever. They fell back into silence. All around them, the Common Room was abuzz with those who had finished their homework and could afford to laze about, chat or gossip. The latter was the case with the group around Malfoy.

"I overheard no small number of Gryffindors complaining that their stew was lacking meat today", he laughed. "That's such a Gryffindor problem to have, can you imagine?"

"Oh golly, my goodness. Won't that just be the end of us all", came the answer, but not from Vincent, Gregory or Pansy, who he'd been talking to, but from behind, from someone who was blind to the insightful art of gossip.

Draco heaved an irate sigh and turned around to the annoyance with the lightning scar.

"Look who's talking. Shouldn't you be off to detention around now?"

Oh. Harry realised he couldn't pretend he hadn't lost track of the clock. He slumped flat into his seat in defeat.

"Gee, thanks Malfoy", he creaked weakly from his dying swan position. "For you to send me away just like that, do you care more about those who will brew their potions with perfectly minced frog brains instead of poor old me? Like you care about the Gryffindors and their stew? Is that what I mean to you?"

"Harry", Theo finally spoke up, in a tone that ended it all.

"Yeah yeah bye", Harry huffed, picked up his akimbo limbs and went away. Nobody waved after him with a white lace napkin, because everybody was busy zeroing in on Theodore Nott.

Greengrass voiced it first. "Since when are the two of you on a first name basis?"

Theo shrugged. "Since portraits are apparently able to do the impossible and read the inscriptions on their frames."

An assortment of various shades of "what?" blossomed on everyone's faces, save for Zabini, who was a little wiser on the matter, and whose hand magically moved to pinch the bridge of his nose by itself.

On his part, Harry didn't exactly skip on the way to Snape's, he was too busy growing a bad mood. He was in the stage where he lamented his lost free time, before he could be reminded of the undue joy he found in how his knife's blade sliced through the animal parts of the ingredients he had to prepare.

Either way, in his current bad mood, Harry had a bad idea. But it was a fun one, so he went ahead and swayed a little under his pretentiously nose-up gait, as he put on a mock façade and a little voice that was airy with the haughtiness he poured into it. Good thing it was just him there.

"I am the Draco Malfoy", Harry rattled down, in a pitched voice, just slightly above his breath, "and you live under a rock on the moon if you don't know that. Everyone and everything is mine to nag about, also I'll get so pink it's hilarious when you tell be that I, the Draco Malfoy, share my interest in big sports with lowly dirty stinky yucky muggles."

Nobody was around to applaud his play, still, Harry bowed lightly at the end of it. Then he chuckled to himself, and then he winced a little, before he issued a silent apology to Dra- to Malfoy, for using his person like that to lift himself into a better mood.

Anyway, Theo was next.

"Theodore is my name, and being curious is my game" Harry whispered to himself more pompously, and he almost went down under his own giggling. It was one thing to think this up, another to hear it said in his worst pretend voice. "I'm so curious in fact, I will absolutely bait you into seeing if the name plaques on some of the portrait frames are immune to having their letters rearranged. And then, Potter, when the portrait people cuss you out and Zabini walks in and it all looks like your idea, I will make it up by so generously allowing you to call me by my first name, Harry, like we aren't all stiff like old-timers here."

Blaise Zabini's name Harry dared make no plays with, because he wasn't fully over that time he'd mistakenly referred to his classmate as 'Zambini' in a conversation once. As for Greengrass, he - oh, there was a rolled up parchment laying on the ground, some poor soul lost their Potions homework - anyway, Daphne Greengrass-

Harry froze.

Then he ran.

In a perfect world, he would not have run. But this was the one where Quirrell existed. And Harry could feel the reason he stormed off, and it got more and more intense as it led him into the dungeons. It was too faint for the man himself to still be around, but his presence lingered, he had been here.

(He had to give it to the thing. It was pungent enough to even alert his lesser self)

(It felt demonic enough, but could he be absolutely sure it was one?)

(No. And that didn't sit well with him)

Harry stopped before the locked door to Snape's office. Then he ran towards where he knew Snape was awaiting him.

"Sir, something's wrong in your office", Harry exclaimed breathlessly, as he barged into the Potions classroom.

Snape was the stoic dam against Harry's frantic onslaught.

"There is also today's work waiting for you", he replied dismissively from behind his desk, his black glare chastising Harry for his improper entrance. Harry did not move from the doorframe.

"But you need to get to your office. I reckon you keep valuable ingredients in your office, no? It would be pretty bad if something were to be amiss, right? Checking in on it can't hurt. This is urgent. Please."

"Well, aren't you just awfully nosey today, Potter", Snape scoffed. At the tone of his voice and his demeanour, Harry hissed out a sigh between gritted teeth, his eyes flitting back and forth. His body shifted as restlessly as his mind did, cogs turning to produce anything that would just get Snape to believe him.

Which is when he was surprised by Snape standing up and hurrying out within the same motion, because what Harry needed to say was already told by his body language.

When he caught up, it was to the sight of his office door swinging open behind Snape, who hadn't bothered to close it behind him. Harry was too far away to see what the man was doing in there, but when he came back out and locked the door behind him, the shadows in his face were more pronounced with how consternated his expression was.

"What's wrong?"

"Go to your Common Room and, for Merlin's sake, remain there", Snape barked instead. Without elaborating further, he rounded the corner and left Harry to his own devices.

Go to the Common Room. Or even better, he could go to Dumbledore. But as Harry set off in the direction, which was curiously also the direction Snape had disappeared in, he stopped again and changed his course for the third floor. He would just head over really quick, throw a peek trough the door to make sure the three-headed dog was up and healthy, then go and see to it Dumbledore listened to him this time.

The three-headed dog wasn't up and healthy. Because the meat from the Gryffindors' meatless stew and the poisonous substance stolen from Severus Snape's office were no coincidence.

Harry did more than just peek trough the door. Which is where the past almost catches up into the present. But, before that, lest it goes unsaid: Dumbledore hasn't been idle.

•≠•≠•≠•≠•≠•≠•≠•≠•≠•≠•

In Harry's grasp, the winged key's struggles are useless. In his other hand, he holds the broom and doesn't let go of either, as he opens the door to the next room and finds himself facing a giant chessboard, tall stony chesspieces and all.

The moment he steps into the new room, both items start to vibrate strangely in his hands, as if repelled by a magnet. There is a pull that wants them back in the previous room. Nonetheless, Harry gets back on the broom and forces it into the air. It sways dangerously under him.

(None of that. He is in control)

The broom stabilizes somewhat, and Harry keeps his eyes on the next door, similar to the one he passed trough, doesn't listen to the angry grinding of stone and doesn't look at what moves under him. His hairs stand on end as he fumbles to stick the key into this next keyhole, while maintaining his balance on the shaking broom he never left, but before he can try to turn it, his gut screams at him to let go of it.

The winged key explodes. It was not meant for this room and this door, it was meant to take anyone with it who tried to force it anyway, it burst. Harry feels sick looking at charred feathers dancing to the ground. At least where the keyhole was there now is a hole, and, still on the struggling broom, he zooms past the door.

Two things hit Harry in the face the moment he enters the next room. One is the smell. The other is the ground. He can just stand up in time to watch the broom fly to where it is pulled after it bucked so violently it threw him off. Good thing he didn't fly high. His fear payed off.

This room isn't empty. Not unlike the dog, a troll is laying motionlessly on the ground. Instead of foam dripping from its jaws, it's blood dripping from its temple.

Onto the next one, then-

(Dreams, memories…)

(…It calls again)

(He knows what this means)

He goes to the next room.

(He goes to where the call invites him)

(He can speak freely, so he does-)

"Wow, Albus. Your face."

•≠•≠•≠•≠•≠•≠•≠•≠•≠•≠•

Ever since he saw to it the situation settled after the tale of the two 'explosions', Albus hadn't been idle. He had already had his sights on the new Defense Professor, ever since he hired the man, and what he hid under his turban was no question anymore. Except there was the same kind of work to be done, again.

This time, for Harry Potter.

But before he could go about sizing up the new player on the playing field, Albus frowned at the shards of Erised. Irreparably damaged, he almost dare think. Certainly not to be repaired in the time he needed it to. Erised was built to resist asinine things like brute force, physical and magical, so what could possibly have shattered it? But before that, there was the problem with the Stone. All his chosen colleagues put their measures in place, and he…

Emerald green light reared in his fireplace, as the flames rose to introduce into his office the figure of an eagle-eyed woman. Her robes identified her as an Unspeakable, and Albus' watch identified her as just in time.

"What is so grave it has to be discussed in person, Albus?", she cut right to the subject, not one to bother with niceties like greetings.

"A matter the gravity of which I have yet to assess", he grimly followed suit himself. "For which I need to call upon my favour from you."

The Unspeakable's face remained coolly neutral, but the old acquaintance's eyes lit up. "Continue."

"I need to retake object MY06 from the Department."

"06, 06...", she recalled. "You already have the Erised. What could you possibly need this one for?"

"Please, Ismelda", Albus said.

"Keep your secrets then," she huffed. "However, you will need my adjucts' agreement as well."

He inclined his head. "Yes, that should be no problem."

And it wasn't. What Albus could possibly need object MY06 for was a thin peace of mind, as he released the Stone into its care, put his own part of the puzzle into place, and was free to pay his fullest attention to the reason he needed a replacement for Erised in the first place.

In his spacious office, passing a parcel on his shelf that was to be withheld during coming Christmas, Albus swept down upon a particular silvery instrument. He watched the shapes its spewn out smoke took with great care. It took too long to form, the smoke almost seemed to dance with its subject in long, graceful wafts. That, or the subject was still toying with him, even here and now, and he would only get to see the predator's gleam in its stolen green eyes once it was too late again.

Albus shook that thought off. He was alone here, and would remain so.

The long smoke wafts finally unified into a serpent, wove their elegance into its form that moved about with a faint playfulness, which was swiftly unmasked as danger once Albus looked away from its hypnotic coils and to its viciously bared fangs.

What an interesting choice of shape. Manifesting another serpent there was to deal with. One that didn't respond to 'Tom'.

"Naturally", he affirmed. "But in essence divided?"

The serpent, its fangs aimed at everything and nothing, froze. Its form grew fuzzy, and some of the smoke making it up dissipated, until it was stripped of a significant amount of length and width. A small snake curled up in its place, snapped a mouth with no fangs shut, and wove trough the air with a youthful gait to its energetic slithers.

"Finite." …Albus had seen enough.

"Born and raised", a voice that was a child's but wasn't echoed in his head. A young boy - peculiar, yes, but still undoubtedly eleven. His eyes when an evil great enough to touch to the levels of Tom glared trough them, an evil that maybe even surpassed it… and with that, raised the urgency with which it had to be dealt with.

Albus was old. He knew pain. And only the unfakeable look of agony in what were once again Harry Potter's eyes saved the boy's life when he awoke in the Hospital Wing. Whatever was wearing him, its poisonous presence lingering at the edges of Albus' senses was gone. It was again Harry, who buckled under his injuries the way the thing, the other, hadn't done.

Then came the boy's faux pas, and everything it hinted at-

"Albus"

-and he hadn't liked the implications of that. But now, in the face of dissipating smoke, these were no mere implications anymore, and Albus' disquiet grew as his memory supplied him with what a tranced voice had uttered all these years ago.

"A power the other knows not"

He didn't like how, by the looks of it, being this other who knew not seemed to extend beyond just the prophecy's other half…

Onto the next phase, then. Albus had experienced first hand a lick of that power, and for what it was or wasn't in regards to its entire picture, it gave him something to work with, to analyze and take apart. Yes, he couldn't wait to learn about what took control over his magic and how it could be drained out of him by just a touch. How the foreign bloody runes could made that possible. He took the snake-spewing smoke-spewing instrument, placed it aside, readied his pensieve, grabbed a board with pieces of cut up parchment fastened to it and a quill, then dove with no hesitation into the silvery substance of his own memory.

A scene materialized. That of an empty classroom, devoid of furniture save for the ornate mirror on the far wall. Erised, shattered already. Three people were present. Albus, then and now, and… it.

He watched himself move to confront it. Watched as it didn't react to Tom's name being called the way Tom would have, and that, once again, brought up the ravenous question; Who and what was he looking at?

He watched himself apply an Incarcerous. A binding spell that, unlike the Petrificus, would still leave the subject free enough to speak and express body language that answers could be gotten out of. At least Albus vaguely remembered that having been his past self's thought process.

Before him was the serpent of smoke, encapsulated into flesh and blood. The green eyes were the hypnotic coils, fatally keeping Albus from looking away and seeing the fangs, until it was too late and the bloodied runes were already written out. He watched something vile puppeteer the features of an eleven year old boy. Albus couldn't but hardly believe it was, as were its mocking words, "Harry Potter, born and raised." Then and there, despite what evidence pointed at, that wasn't Harry. That was a thing, and Albus saw it as just that - an it.

He paused the memory, just as the serpent in Harry's form shed the Incarcerous. He'd slipped again, he needed to rewind the scene. He'd once more gotten trapped by those eyes, standing out so very brilliantly against a bloodied complexion, and had lost himself in the need to remind himself that there is nothing behind them, this is an empty illusion, he is alone here, he doesn't need to feel watched.

(Then again, dreams, memories, they were eerily similar.)

Albus rewound the memory, to the point where eerily swift work was made of forming the strange runes, the Incarcerous was broken and the palm raised to meet his incoming spellfire. Then he paused, taking in the scene, the frozen tension captured in the two statues that could, at a flick of current Albus' wand, explode into action.

He raised the board with the separated parchments he had brought along, and diverted his attention to one crucial detail in this elaborate scenery; The bloody runes. Presented on as good as a silver platter, outstretched to both past and present him. That the serpent's eyes could only see the version of Albus that existed in this memory world was soothing. In theory.

When he copied the runes, he did what any sensible person handling unknown and volatile runes should do, and didn't write them down as the fateful unit they were. There was a reason the parchments on his writing board were in pieces. That way, he could copy each symbol separately. Take the fatal construction with him in a harmless, diffused form.

At a flick of Albus' wand, the statues exploded into action, until they froze again. This time at the point where the serpent was reaching to catch Albus' red bold of light with the other hand, the second obscure set of runes.

As he sketched, he wondered.

Albus never before encountered a language whose writing, in blood or not, was capable of such feats of raw power. That two runic circles, unceremoniously smeared and comparably on the lower end of complexity, could bend magic - his magic - like that… he began his research.

As time went on, he had Minerva, Poppy and Severus meticulously report (or complain, in the latter's case) on Harry Potter's faring. Nothing was out of the ordinary, nothing seemed to linger on his behaviour. Albus couldn't determine whether that calmed or unnerved him. He kept visiting and revisiting the pensieve, expanded on his notes, detailed, until he established a rough outline of his serpentine subject's true form;

First off, it was coordinated, good at being in several places at once - the way it had kept the ball of conversation rolling with Albus, keeping its stolen face maliciously aloof and its hands quick, speaking one language while writing another.

Secondly, it possessed knowledge even Albus himself didn't - the writing he was still fruitlessly running trough several diagnostic charms, spells, and rituals. It failed to identify the obscure language. They weren't runes, they were something else after all. The way this language brought him and his magic to their knees.

Next, it had a name. Many, perhaps, but apparently one Albus knew already, had heard before and would hear again, if its word was to be believed. But that could mean everything and nothing with how little he had to go off of. In his mind, he'd taken to assign it the placeholder designation serpent.

Then, it and young Harry were linked - the serpent of smoke, with its two faces and singular number. "Albus".

All in all, the serpent had an entire history of its own. It must have, something of such traits didn't spring up from nothing, didn't form in eleven years. An idea began to form. It was absurd to the point of there maybe actually being something to it, and Albus knew, by how he didn't reject it strongly enough for its budding roots to wither, that this idea would fester and blossom in his head.

If he could take one serpent, the one that got the better of him, and aim it at the other one that didn't… Then sense came back to him. The last thing Albus needed was for this serpent to meet the other one and see eye to eye, because he hardly doubted the two could.

Then, an interesting development happened.

"He's wrong, and I hate him for it."

And it seemed the two wouldn't see eye to eye after all. The moment Albus saw Harry Potter put on the beginnings of the serpent's vice when it came to Quirrell, he knew he had to see what happened if the two of them - three, four if Harry Potter's bloody shadow should count as itself after all- got in a situation together.

Neither can live while the other survives. Silly him, of course the two wouldn't get along. His idea was long since blooming. The door to the Philosopher's Stone remained unlocked.

Akkadian cuneiform.

At long, painful last - and with the help of a clay tablet of all things - Albus recognised the serpent's language as Akkadian, the writing as cuneiform. But this information came at another cost than just time and effort.

He was haunted. Akkadian was a Middle Eastern language that died out two thousand years ago. Still, the serpent knew to use it. What did that mean? It meant his irrational mind was flying ahead of him, constructing all sorts of monstrous theories as to the serpent's true identity, theories that shadowed his conscious and that he dare not touch upon with the rational mind he could control, as it would only needlessly drive him mad. Before he could afford to venture into speculation, he needed to keep on garnering every last piece of information the memory could equip him with. And for that, he needed his calm.

Now that Albus had the language, he could determine what linguistic roots it had, and thus select the appropriate translation charm. But even for the right charm he had to search, and partially improvise, because Akkadian was not only dead, but also an isolated language. Then again, he wasn't Albus Dumbledore for nothing.

Finally, and with no small amount of anticipation, he translated what the bloody writing capable of bringing him down said. And then he forced himself to keep a grip on his nerves because the results he got made no sense at all.

Except they did. Except that was in absolutely no way possible.

Albus went over the process again; He'd visited his memory, and copied what the serpent had written on the palms of its hands. The language it used was Akkadian. All that was fact. Where was the fault then?

He read over the translation again, and his heart was racing. From a magical standpoint, what it said couldn't be. At its core, all written magic, in runes, characters - or cuneiform - had to follow the universal rule that it spelled its own purpose out. This wasn't the case here, at all.

Albus ran the Akkadian writing trough the translation again. The results remained the same.

'Curious little bastard are you not' and 'Would you not like to know what this says'.

It made no sense. Plus, it was rude.

A pang of something raw shot trough his better judgement, because it made perfect sense for something like this to come from-

It made no sense. The serpent must have somehow managed to hide the actual writing under an illusion, a common method if one wanted to keep their means hidden. Exactly, and there was no need to get this worked up over such a banal trick - even if, in all his time spent reviewing the memory, Albus had failed to pick up any telltales of an illusion being cast… Which is why he went right back in, to focus and find and learn and resolve.

But first, focus. The recreation of an empty classroom all around, a cracked, ornate mirror on one side, and two - three - figures in the center. A familiar scene. Familiar soul-piercing green eyes were boring in on another familiar face, as familiar venomous words were spoken, preamble to a familiar exchange of attacks.

Familiar didn't necessarily mean pleasant.

Albus only noted his bated breath as the world around him froze up at his wand's flick. At least this he still had control over. In this unmoving moment, in the opening between the lights that hung in the air, he got another too good look at the thing's face. No- at Harry's face, and every feature that spelled out youth under the blood, the serpent's control, as it took and twisted what Harry was into the nightmare that was it itself.

Albus met its eyes, the one part that warned of its true nature the best, and knew in that one moment, that the worst misdeed the being before him had committed was to force control over this eleven year old child. If they were the same or not didn't matter, Harry had been in pain either way. It paraded his body around, bled all over the place with no indication it felt something, and Harry was left to be the one to curl up in agony once he awoke. Albus lightly touched his hand to his sternum, where the serpent's palm would soon again meet his past self's. Yes, no matter that either- this was its worst misdeed.

Then it dawned on Albus; He met the serpent's eyes. The serpent's eyes met his.

Not his memory self's. His.

In a still scenery, Albus stood frozen twice. Once, he was in the midst of aiming his wand, a spell on his lips. Next, he was standing there, not moving, and certainly not comprehending.

And then, impossibly, the serpent moved. With a grace that was too smooth for Albus' reeling mind to comprehend, it rose out of the mid-dodge position assigned to it by the memory, and gathered itself. The rolling of the shoulders to test mobility was deliberate.

It never broke eye contact.

"Wow, Albus", its dreadfully young-sounding voice pierced trough his stupor, brought him back. "Your face."

It was the uninvited use of his first name. The disrespect with which it was once again done. All the time he heard his first name desecrated before, it was tied to the memory's routine. This was (impossible, unnatural, wrong-) new.

Albus acted.

The memory not only taught him about his opponent, but also himself. Time and time again he could watch himself try to overwhelm it with swift, confrontational spells, and each bolt of light met its end. So this time, he aimed at the floor below to do his bidding, to rise up and-

Then his thinking caught up with the situation. It even surpassed it, because as much as nothing here made sense, one of the pensieve's rules at least remained intact; Albus' magic had no effect on his surroundings. They were as much an untouchable illusion as they always were. The serpent was part of this illusion he couldn't touch. So it shouldn't be able to touch him.

…Right, just like there were many other things it shouldn't be able to do. Albus did what the memory repeatedly showed him was a bad idea, except this time, he wanted to achieve something different. He flicked his wand in a manner that, juxtaposing his memory counterpart, seemed almost unbothered. A bolt of light was sent flying again.

The serpent quirked an eyebrow as the bolt passed straight trough it.

"…and yet you can perceive me", Albus muttered.

That caused a reaction that floored him, in that what lit up briefly in the serpent's eye was something other than just malice. For once.

"Could it be that you're one of the marginally less mindless ones, little man?", it asked. It looked him in the eyes, and that was when Albus was out of his depths here. It was jarring to see the animosity drain from its expression for once. What glinted there in its stead could mean anything, from appreciation, to disdain, to awe.

Then, with a hiss, the serpent's malice was back on. Before it could say anything else, Albus seized the opening for himself and straightened up in the manner in which he approached disagreeable Wizengamot members and the wizarding world's fiercest enemy; He put on a polite façade, and a candid smile and tone.

Curious little bastard, and his smile grew even more civil.

"In the future, do refrain from referring to me in a manner that insults my birth", he said with a pointed glance at the Akkadian in the serpent's half-formed fists. "Though I shall give you credit where it is due." The serpent gazed up at him coldly, it did so because Harry was shorter than Albus, and he just noticed that. He leaned slightly forward, looming over it. "I really am curious."

As for the 'little' part, well, the serpent did continue looking up. Then it took a step forward. And another. Then another. Despite himself, Albus found himself taking a step back. And another. Then another. Though, to his credit, his steps were half the length of the ones the serpent took. It came to a stop next to the Albus who was frozen in casting a fruitless attack. That was the Albus it could reach and pat condescendingly on the shoulder, as it maintained ruthless eye contact with the real one. Its hand stilled, but remained where it was on his memory counterpart's shoulder.

"Aww, but make no mistakes. You're still so little", it sneered. The hand on memory Albus' shoulder curved its fingers like claws. "Little nothings, that don't deserve the everything they are supposed to get." And as it spat, and as the off coloured skin around its transfixing eyes tightened with its snarl, the formless theories in a part of Albus' mind ran wild.

Something was wrong with how it derailed to refer so something or someone beyond just him. If he hadn't known better - which meant he knew almost nothing at all, so he dare not assume anything he didn't know for certain - he would have recognised the bane of humanity right then and there.

With the hand that wasn't resting on his frozen duplicate's shoulder, the serpent flashed the Akkadian - the 'know what this says' one - at Albus as it finished mockingly:

"So little, that here I have been, babysitting you all this time."

The Akkadian that spelled out such impossible things, all this time- And, there it was. The reason the Hat got hung up between Ravenclaw and Gryffindor, way back when. Albus' mind was pulled from the edge of a downwards spiral by the sheer force of his curiosity. Yes, he was so very curious about this impossible situation. He wanted to seek answers. And he needed himself grounded in bravery for that.

"All written magic must spell its own purpose out", he said, speaking half-formed thoughts out loud. "This is a rule that applies to you. It has to be, if you imply that you have been here all this time…"

Yes, that made sense. With a look at how the in-memory him did not budge whatsoever under the serpent's touch, Albus realised he was not powerless. Among other things.

He thought of it briefly. But he refrained from flicking his wand and making the memory continue, just to see what happened. If his thinking was correct, it would either force the deviant serpent back in its place to play along, or memory Albus would burst into predestined, unchangeable action and hit it where it stood next to him. Either way, there was no need to upset this delicate balance.

He spoke on. He had the explanation for all this in his mind, but it was floating dangerously loose. He needed to capture it in words for it to not get lost, so he did. The serpent was listening.

"…Yes. All this time, you needed to be present to 'babysit' me. Make sure I don't see your real inscription. Because what that Akkadian says just cannot be. You-" a look at the blood it all was written in, Harry Potter's blood, "-were here to retroactively change it all this time. And you could change it to what you wanted, because whatever you do in this place, it has no effect on anything. Evident by how I am still up and well - in this iteration at least - and by the fact your touch has no effect on so much as the fabric of my replicate's robes there."

At that, the serpent's hand slipped clean off the other Albus' shoulder. It hadn't shifted the fabric there as its fingers clawed on top of it, it didn't shift the fabric now as it moved away. Interestingly enough, it left a smear of blood behind. The serpent's eyes were monstrously cold, but that appeared to be its default expression.

"But why would you be here insulting me in a language that, frankly, took me a little to decipher?", Albus continued, "Do you maybe not want me to know what the writing on your palms says in an unaltered state? Lay your methods bare to me? Dare I even go so far as to question whether Akkadian Cuneiform is your original language, seeing as you go to such impossible lengths to cover yourself?"

How are you even here?

Something was wrong. The serpent deflated, not visibly but palpably. Albus thought he may have landed a nerve with his assessment… and then his gut told him that that wasn't it. The serpent was off in a different way. It slowed down in its movement, its glazed eyes made small darting motions, as if it was reading something faraway, and its features slackened.

Then Albus jumped, as from one moment to the next it disappeared. A split second later it was there again, but its pose and position were changed considerably.

It was frozen in the same half-dodge it had risen out of earlier. The one that fit the memory's paused scenery. And its eyes were different. After all this time he spent here, Albus did not feel the need to glance back at them every few moments, because he felt nothing. He saw the malice on its face, but didn't feel it, and only now did he notice how much lighter the atmosphere was, and how empty the air was.

The serpent, in its grotesque glory, appeared less lifelike and more like an illustration in a bestiary. Was this how the memory was actually supposed to look…?

It was. The serpent was gone, now it was back. Albus could witness how the atmosphere grew loaded again, as it retook control of its mindless memory replica. It didn't bother to maintain the memory-correct spiel, it melted out of its pose immediately, but before it deigned Albus with its unsettling eyes, it checked its palms.

"Hm", it mused. "Would you look at that. All my hard work has been reset."

He shot the briefest of glances to his replicate's shoulder, where it had had its bloodied hand moments earlier. Indeed, the smear was gone. Reset. Then his heartbeat spiked.

Albus just so got to watch the serpent hide the writing by closing its hands into fists. But what was now out of view wasn't the Akkadian anymore, which he had poured over for so long. That was something else. That was the truth.

And now it was hidden again.

This was it. Albus needed to close in, he had taken no board to safely write down volatile inscriptions, but he could conjure something up, all he needed to do was-

"Yes, wouldn't you like to know what this says now?" The serpent spoke into his thoughts. It's cold tone froze him from doing anything, which contrasted the way it moved its hands in an amicable invitation, the palms tantalisingly just out of sight. "Or at least get a good look at my original script?"

Something was wrong. It was baring its unprotected secret just like that.

"But in turn, how about telling me which one among seven will let me move ahead?"

…What?

"Danger lies before me, whateverwhatever-", it mumbled off, dropping the act for something more at work, and again its eyes had that faraway look about them as they made quick darting motions. Like it was reading something that wasn't here. Like it wasn't fully here itself. Come to think, when it had slipped out of here moments ago, where had it gone to? Where was non-memory, real-world Harry Potter right now?

And Albus - before he had even come to terms with what it meant if this was actually happening - recognised its words.

"-don't fancy nettle wine or moving back, poison could be useful but if the thing acts up once out the room, nah- so."

It clapped its hands. It met his eyes, full force, and it asked again:

"Do you know which bottle will spare me the door burns or not?"

One among seven, danger lies before, poison and nettle wine- the riddle. The flaming door. Good at being in several places at once echoed in Albus' head like a taunt.

"Could it be- you are elsewhere as well in this very moment, aren't you?" he heard himself ask.

It was a question that slid by his strategic mind unnoticed. Yes, Albus urgently needed the answer to it, but one does not ask their questions direct like that. From a hostile opponent like the serpent answers are to be deduced or gotten by manipulating the conversation, because Albus had no leverage against it to force it to answer directly. Now, it would know in advance what his goal behind his chosen words was, and would have its guard already up.

And then, as if the situation wasn't impossible enough, his blunder was to be rewarded.

"Mighty curious, are we…", the serpent breathed, looking at him with that same head tilt that had cost his memory counterpart repeatedly. Then it lit up and started explaining.

"This world forms when you enter, and it ceases to exist when you leave. When you enter, I'm given a front row seat to be here, an accessible platform-", it flicked its arms out in an enveloping gesture, "-and it just dissolves when you go and that's very rude. But before that, it costs me to be here. A brain that's built to support one stream of consciousness can't concentrate for two."

This was fascin- wait, wait, wait. Again, why was it telling him this? Why was it laying this secrets bare just like that, but kept its fists closed? Albus shelved the spoken words away carefully, to pick them apart for all their layered meaning later, because now he needed his mind for something else.

"So yes", the serpent concluded. "I'm here. But I'm also elsewhere else."

One place being here, and the other the last room to the Philosopher's Stone, but what was it aiming at by just offering this information freely to him-

The serpent was on the way to the Philosopher's Stone.

"…and I'll need my full attention for this somewhere else very soon, do you understand?", it conceded in a purr.

Albus was silent. The serpent nonchalantly turned his back to him, and prowled over to stand in the spot it had deviated out of. Over its shoulder it hollered:

"Oh, and, thanks for nothing! I figured the right bottle, you're not gonna have me get crisped just yet!"

That break in tone jarred him. From velvet to holler. From words spoken in a tone that was iridescent with many flavours of malice, to an upbeat exclamation and the remainder that, all this time, Albus had been dealt with by something that had the voice of a boy who had not yet hit puberty.

It was too good at making him see it as a beast and a creature and a serpent. Make him that that was still Harry Potter's face in the end. Which grinned at him.

"Enjoy yourself" it laughed. "Bye!"

The wretched thing knew what it was doing, as it abandoned ship with one last mirthful smirk. It left Albus to watch how the illusion of its empty shell snapped back into dictated place. This was the unaltered memory.

And that was the real inscription on its open palms. Which did indeed not resemble Akkadian at all. The truth.

That Albus could not afford to focus on.

Something much more urgent was going on. It had told him as much itself. And there was no doubt that that was a lie, because from where else could it have gotten to quote Severus Snape's riddle?

Oh Merlin, that two-faced snake was good.

He ran.

Once he exited the pensieve and was in a place where the real world could reach him, the ward could alert him. The entrance to the Philosopher's Stone had been trespassed twice.

"Albus, you look bad", a concerned past Headmaster called out. "Do you need our aid?"

But by then, Albus was gone. He hurried out the spiral staircase, past the gargoyle statue, and the moment the hem of his billowing robes disappeared around the corner was the moment Severus Snape came into the hallway from the other side.

And that was right about when the past catches up into the present.

•≠•≠•≠•≠•≠•≠•≠•≠•≠•≠•

Harry takes the potion from the smallest bottle and walks on, willing to face what awaits him past the flaming door.

Though, if he's ready, that's another question entirely.

•≠•≠•≠•≠•≠•≠•≠•≠•≠•≠•