Harry woke up to absolutely nothing. This was rather a let down from a storytelling perspective, but nonetheless, it was true.
He woke up and walked downstairs, and sat in the kitchen with no-one. And then, he let his magic pour out. He let it seep out, through every crevice of his body, undirected magic, with nothing to do. He stared around the room at the dark magic, reflecting of the night sky, nowhere near the pastel Hermione had told him about. Where had it come from? Voldermort didn't have light magic, Harry had seen it. Had seen the blood red that smelt like metal and subtly rushed along with each bright green spell that rushed towards Harry. Whose magic had ever-
His mother.
With love. With her magic that Professor Flitwick had, once the fighting was over, told Harry burned white, shone and made every spell she cast bright and blinding.
Could the shield have changed that much?
Changed how Harry's magic worked?
And why?
Harry missed his Hermione. The one at 18, who Harry would never see again. She would have helped find the answers. She would have pieced together information in seconds. Instead it was Harry, who didn't ask questions, and didn't care about much except his end goal.
And right now, the reasoning for his dark magic had NOTHING to do with his end goal.
So he just had some toast.
Then he went back to his room. He started drawing. He had intended to draw Voldemort. But then he gave the person too much nose. So the drawing was Tom. Then the eyes the wrong shape. The lips too large. The cheekbones too low. And then Harry was staring at himself. At himself with Tom Riddle's blood red eyes, and with a circlet on his head that looked like it was made of bones.
He ripped the page up.
His magic put it back together.
He threw the page in the sink.
It fluttered out, dried itself, and stuck itself to Harry's shirt.
He burned it with the stove.
The ash flew back together.
There was something else on the paper. Harry flipped it. Dumbledore's face stared back at him. He flipped it again. The drawing of himself looked young. Maybe 3 or 4. There was a cut onto his face, messy, jagged.
Harry remembered that day vividly. He remembered Uncle Vernon with a shard of glass. The screams.
The cut looked eerily like an M.
He heard a sound. He dropped the paper. Somewhere on the way, it turned into glass. Broken shards lay on the ground. Harry turned round. Severus Snape stood there.
Snape looked bored.
"Reparo," a flick of the wand.
Harry stared as the glass shards shifted back into paper, as they went back together. Until once again, it was his face staring back at him. He picked it out of the air before it fell. He looked at the cut. He remembered it healing by the next morning.
The joys of magic.
Then Snape said, "Potter. Why do you have a drawing of the headmaster? And why did it turn to glass?"
Harry looked up gradually. His eyes burned green, Snape failed to stop the flinch. "I didn't want it to. And I don't know how the drawing got there."
Snape reached to take the paper. As he reached over, he saw the magic, that smelt of death, that leaked out of each pencil stroke, "Potter, where did you find this?"
"I didn't," the boy looked genuinely confused, "I drew it. Well, not Dumbledore. I drew the other one."
Snape flipped the paper. He stared at the little boy with blood dripping down his face, with blood red eyes, with a resemblance to the 15-year-old boy in front of him.
"Potter, where did you get the red colour?"
Harry didn't know. He looked at his hands. He whispered, "I think here."
He lifted his palm, with a long cut, with blood that seemed trapped under a magical boundary. As Snape watched, the cut healed.
Snape had only ever seen one trance. That had been one of prophecy. He thought back to the three years of divination he had taken. He said, "Potter, have you ever shown any talent in Divination?"
Harry shook his head, no.
Snape said, perhaps the sixth question in the past minute, "Do you think you could have had a trance?"
Harry shrugged. Then he took the drawing back. His hand looked good as new.
Snape stared at him. Stared at the boy of one he loved and one he hated. He stared at the boy who he couldn't distance from his ghosts, and a little voice in his head told him to do something. To look further into this child who had drawn themselves with a ring of bones, and bled to paint their eyes and couldn't remember any of it. But hate often clouded ones visions, and so Severus Snape made himself breakfast, and waited for the meeting to start.
Harry sat in bed. It took another hour for Ron's eyes to flicker open. For him to blink around, and catch onto Harry. To watch his friend curled up, picking at his skin, over and over, a drawing next to him. Blood dripped onto paper, staining it, twisting till it seemed to come from the glass cut that decorated the artwork's face.
Ron slipped out of bed and sat next to Harry, Harry saw him. He didn't really look at him. Ron just slipped his hand into Harry's. A few moments later, Harry found himself silently sobbing into Ron's chest. He wasn't entirely sure why.
He shouldn't be crying.
He wasn't meant to cry.
That had always been made clear.
And there was no reason to cry.
But something inside said you truly are Tom Riddle. It asked have you ever been brave for a stranger. It whispered you're not a Gryffindor, a Gryffindor would save anyone. You've never saved just anyone. Lily Potter would have saved just anyone.
Something else inside said what obligation do you ever have to just someone else. Care about the people that matter. Who the fuck cares about the rest of them?
Harry didn't think anyone would appreciate that.
Ron felt Harry's ribs through his clothes. He held a boy almost half his weight and remembered the photos of Harry's parents.
They had never been this small.
So two children - though has Harry Potter ever been a child - clung to each other. And Harry Potter realised that Dumbledore had been wrong.
Your decisions make who you are, true.
But a moment of hatred for a school house, did not.
And Harry's decisions had never been fuelled by bravery.
