TW: mentions of r*pe
I've decided to go ahead and make this story a Blaise/Harry/Dean. Thank you to everyone who let me know your thoughts!
I'm going to start adding the day of the week to dates in chapters from here on out just to help me keep my head straight. I might go back and fix past chapters to reflect that; it all depends on whether I actually remember to do that or not.
This chapter marks the end of the "world building" section of the story, from here on out we'll be getting heavily into the plot and start building the relationships with Blaise and Dean.
This chapter is about 1k words longer than my usual average. I hope that longer chapters will soon become the norm instead of the exception. Thank you to everyone who's stuck with me thus far!
Thursday, September 5, 1996
Harry gratefully sank into his seat in the Defense classroom and rested his head on the desk for a moment. Double Charms had been brutal; Flitwick had taught them the Defodio spell and proceeded to hand out blocks of stone for them to carve into various shapes. His first attempts had been a bit overpowered and he'd cut several long gouges into the table before he got a feel for the amount of power the spell required. Even then, his pyramid had still come out looking like it had been melted. An artist he was not.
Ron and Hermione settled into their seats on either side of him and he looked up, watching Hermione take out her note-taking supplies. Ron looked just as tired as Harry felt, and they knew Defense wasn't likely to help.
"Right, good afternoon!" Professor Ramat declared, closing the classroom door with a flick of her wand. "Today will consist of a discussion followed by putting theory into practice.
The room filled with the sound of rustling parchment as students put their wands away and pulled out quills and ink.
Once satisfied that everyone was prepared, the Professor continued speaking. "Now that you are N.E.W.T. students, the coursework and spells will be of a remarkably higher caliber than any you've worked with before. Before we can get to that though, we must start with the basics."
"Who can tell me what advantages nonverbal casting affords you, if any?"
Hermione's hand was instantly in the air, followed by a fair number of the Ravenclaws. After a moment's hesitation, Harry raised his own hand.
"Mr. Potter?"
"Casting nonverbally gives you the advantage of surprise. Without the audible indication of a spell being cast, your opponent loses that second of advance warning. Also, not using an incantation makes the spell used harder to identify," Harry answered.
Professor Ramat smiled at him in approval and Harry flushed, not used to speaking out in class so confidently. "Absolutely correct. Nonverbal casting gives you the element of surprise. However, the difficulty of casting without an incantation is not to be underestimated," she said.
"Incantations aren't just funny words you say to make things happen; they help shape the intent of your magic. When you get down to it, they are merely crutches, though effective crutches to be sure. The magic you use when you cast a spell takes its direction from the incantation and from your own intent," Professor Ramat twirled her wand between her fingers as she spoke. "Casting nonverbally means that you're only left with the force of your own will to exert upon your magic. It requires mental concentration and the ability to keep a clear head on and off the battlefield. I might add that those who practice Occlumency generally have an easier time casting nonverbal spells. So, the result — Yes, Mr. Macmillan?"
"Excuse me, but what is Occlumency, Professor?" Ernie asked.
Professor Ramat stopped twirling her wand. "You've not covered Occlumency?" she asked. Looking around at all the shaking heads that greeted her inquiry, she sighed.
"Occlumency is the art of defending one's mind against those who would wish to access it. It's a fairly obscure branch of magic, so I suppose I'm not that shocked it's not been mentioned before now."
For his part, Harry wasn't too surprised that no one except himself, Hermione, and Ron were familiar with the practice. He'd gotten the impression from Snape that the number of accomplished Occlumens and Legilmens out there were rather small.
"Occlumency and Legilimency are twin branches of magic. Occlumens can defend their mind from external attacks and Legilimens can attack others' minds and 'read' them, if you will." Professor Ramat continued.
"Will you be teaching us Occlumency, Professor?" Ernie blurted.
The corners of Professor Ramat's mouth quirked up. "I'm afraid we don't have the time to dedicate to it this year. Learning Occlumency is a process unique to each individual. If you're interested in more information, I'm sure you can find some books on it in the library."
Clapping her hands together, she stepped around to the front of her desk and perched on the top. "As you probably guessed, we'll be practicing nonverbal casting today. There's not much in the way of instructions or tips that I can give you. Nonverbal casting is quite literally just about intent and concentration. The more you focus, the more success you will have."
The chalk circles from the previous class suddenly appeared on the floor. An appreciative murmur sounded from the students; the Professor hadn't drawn her wand or said a single word to make it happen.
"I've deactivated the barrier and shock features of the circles, so don't worry about that. They're just for spacing reasons this time. I want you all to split off into pairs. One partner will cast nonverbal low-level jinxes at the other partner, who will be casting a nonverbal Protego. When I say 'low-level', I mean Flipendo, Impedimenta, Rictumsempra, things like that."
"Same rules as last time, no drawing blood, nothing dangerous. Remember your stances! Also, your partner may not be in your House, nor can they be the same partner you had on Monday. Pair off!"
Harry found himself facing Blaise Zabini, a quiet Slytherin he'd never spoken to. Situating themselves between Parvati Patil and Susan Bones on one side and Theo Nott and Michael Corner on the other, the duo shook hands and retreated to their respective circles.
"Do you want me to shield first?" Blaise offered. Shrugging, Harry accepted and began to cast all the jinxes he could think of at the Italian.
Damn that bastard, Harry thought bitterly as the students packed up and left the classroom. Zabini had proven to be a worthy opponent. He'd shattered Harry's wobbly shield on the fifth spell and caught him on the ribs with what he assumed was a Furnunculus Jinx. He now had a painful boil throbbing where the spell had connected. Zabini had apologized and seemed sincere, which made it much harder to be resentful of him.
Harry had found that nonverbal spells were certainly not a strength of his. None of his shields lasted past the fifth jinx Zabini tossed at it and he could only get spells up to the third year level to work properly. He had tried to clear his mind like Snape had told him to all last year, but failed utterly. He simply had too much to think and worry about.
Harry shoved the parchment with his scrawled notes on it into his bag, followed by his quill and a capped ink pot. Shouldering his bag, he caught the Professor's eye. She gestured for him to stay behind and Harry, even more weary and tired than he'd been after Charms, heavily sat back down.
Hermione looked down at him in confusion. "Harry?"
"You can go back to the common room if you want, I just want to ask the Professor a question." Harry said, hoping she'd buy it.
"Right...come on then, Ron," she said, narrowing her eyes slightly.
The door slammed shut behind the pair and Harry turned back to Rami, silently asking for an explanation.
"Sorry for holding you back again," Rami dropped into the seat next to him, "it's just that Mr. Macmillan reminded me of something I meant to ask you; do you have any experience with Occlumency?"
Harry couldn't keep himself from wincing, his lessons with Snape were still a sore topic.
"In a manner of speaking. I took private Occlumency lessons with Professor Snape last year before he kicked me out," he answered.
"How did those lessons go?" Rami asked, raising an eyebrow.
"Er, not well," Harry admitted, "Professor Snape just told me to clear my mind and cast Legilimens at me for an hour each week."
"He did what?" A deep voice thundered. Startled, Harry looked around, spotting the Bloody Baron's pearlescent body rising through the floor. His face was contorted into a mask of fury. Glancing back at Rami for an explanation, Harry saw that she looked equally horrified.
"That...that…" she sputtered, as if she couldn't find a word bad enough to apply to Snape.
Harry was beyond confused at this point. "What's the big deal? And why is Alex here?" he asked helplessly.
Noticing that Rami was still lost for words, Alex spoke up, "Harry, repeatedly breaking into an unprepared mind like he did is never okay," the ghost's lip curled up in a grimace, "it's tantamount to mind rape."
"You can't practice Occlumency simply by clearing your mind. If he truly wanted to teach you, he should have been helping you build up your mindscape instead," said Rami. "I can't imagine what he thought he was doing," she muttered bitterly.
"Aye," Alex agreed, "Occlumency isn't an intuitive art, you can't have a natural aptitude for it. Legilimency on the other hand, there have been some natural Legilimens out there but they're rare."
"Like Queenie Goldstein," Rami put in, "Tragic, that was."
"Our point, Harry, is that Occlumency can't be taught by repeated exposure to the Legilimens spell; you've got to put work into your mindscape and have it tested by someone who knows what they're doing," said Alex.
Harry did not feel at all astonished to find out that Snape had not been teaching him correctly. He was, however, taken aback at the level of abhorrence the two adults displayed for his teaching methods. Being told that Snape had been essentially raping his mind made him feel a bit sick inside.
"All right, so Snape's a bad teacher, we knew this already," said Harry, trying to shift the topic of conversation, "why is Alex here? I thought our elemental training was on Mondays?"
"It is, but after you and Alex encountered each other in the dungeons, he came up here to talk to me and I told him when your Defense lessons were," Rami explained.
"So you don't mind having him here?" Harry asked. He was relieved that his spur-of-the-moment invite to Alex wasn't being rejected.
Rami shook her head, smiling, "Not at all! I was actually going to suggest that we invite the House Ghosts to our lessons, but you beat me to it. It's all well and good for me to give you the theory, but it's a bit useless without some ghosts to practice with," she said, pointing at said ghost who was now cheekily grinning and waving at Harry. "I've no clue why he's here now, though."
Alex shrugged. "I thought I'd come see if anything was going on. I can go, if you'd like," he said, sinking through the floor slightly.
"Oh, it's fine," Rami said, waving off the comment. "I'm glad I held you back now. Occlumency is an extremely useful skill to learn, doubly so for you as you've got that link with Voldemort. I can teach you, if you want to learn."
"Yes," Harry said immediately. He hated having a two-way link with Voldemort permanently lodged in his head and that hate had only intensified upon finding out that the link was a byproduct of having a piece of the madman's soul in him.
"Fantastic! Let's see, Monday is already for your elemental lessons...would you mind staying after on Thursdays for Occlumency? I hate to ask you to stay after every class, unless you want to do Occlumency on the weekends," Rami mused.
"Thursdays are fine," Harry agreed. He was reluctant to give up any time on the weekends as he knew that he'd likely need every minute he could get for essays and practical homework.
"I would honestly feel better knowing that you've got a foundation in Occlumency. Voldemort is an accomplished Legilimens and now he's aware of your bond after the fiasco at the Ministry," Rami admitted.
The trio fell silent, each thinking of different atrocities perpetrated by the man who haunted most of the wizarding world's nightmares. Harry was attempting not to dwell on thoughts of Sirius when it finally occurred to him to ask the question that had been nagging at him for a while now.
"Rami, how did you get this job? You're a Reaper, I would think being a Defense teacher isn't in your job description," asked Harry.
"A few forged papers go a long way," Rami laughed, and the morose mood lifted. "The goal was to make me the most qualified applicant. The papers had some embellishments, although some experience from my life before I died was added too. Dumbledore didn't even ask me too many questions, I think he was so desperate to find a Defense teacher that he didn't question the perfect one practically falling into his lap.
Alex had drifted closer while Rami talked, clearly interested. "Real life experience? If you don't mind me asking, who were you before you died?" he asked.
"You are looking at Queen Semiramis of Assyria," Rami said amusedly, mocking a bow as much as she could while sitting down. "I used to lead the Assyrian army into battle as queen regnant. The details are fudged a bit, but all Dumbledore needed to know was that I have experience in battle. Killed by an arrow, of all things," she added, wrinkling her nose.
Alex made a funny choking noise and immediately swept into an elaborate bow, holding his form as stiffly as he could. "Your Highness. Your name had all but fallen into myth and legend in my time, but your deeds were still well known," he proclaimed.
Bewildered, Harry could only watch. He had never heard of a Queen Semiramis, leading him to assume that while her name was well known in Alex' time, her story must have been gradually lost to time.
Rami nearly laughed at the ghosts antics, it was a close thing. "Alexander, I haven't used my title in millennia. Stop the formalities and join me as an equal."
"Right, yes, of course," Alex said, hastily standing back up. Harry thought that Alex would be blushing furiously if not for the fact that he was a ghost and incapable of such a thing.
"As I was saying, Dumbledore hardly questioned me before handing me the job. He did ask me what I thought of Voldemort and the war, though," she said thoughtfully.
"What did you say?" asked Harry.
"I told him the truth, obviously. He's a hypocritical megalomaniac who ought to take a long walk off a short pier at the nearest opportunity," she snorted.
Harry considered that for a moment. Of all the words he could apply to Voldemort, none of them good, hypocritical was not one of them. He'd always viewed Voldemort as someone who said what he meant; he never lied about his aims and followed through on what he said he was going to do, often in violent and destructive ways. No, Voldemort was many things but he was not a hypocrite, and he told Rami his thoughts.
"He's a hypocrite, all right. It's not common knowledge, but Lord Voldemort was born Tom Marvolo Riddle, son of Merope Gaunt, a squib, and Tom Riddle Sr, a muggle. He's a halfblood masquerading as a pureblood Lord, when in reality he's not got a knut to his name. All of the funding for his war came from his supporters. He spends all his time preaching the superiority of magical blood when he has the blood of a muggle and a squib running in his veins," said Rami, clearly disgusted by the man's actions.
Harry gaped at his teacher, blown away by the bombshell she'd just dropped. He'd already known of Voldemort's birth name, the Chamber of Secrets saw to that, but the revelation of his blood status was news to him. How many of his supporters knew that they were bowing and kissing the robes of a halfblood, he wondered. It couldn't be many, the numerous avowed pureblood supremacists in his ranks would run for the hills if that fact ever came out.
"Well," Alex said at last, "I believe that 'hypocrite' is entirely accurate."
"And then, to make matters worse," she went on, "the bastard made Horcruxes, which no self-respecting pureblood would ever do. There's something to be said for being raised in the magical world; children understand the importance of your magic and soul and the irreversible impact using such dark rituals can have on both."
"Horcruxes, plural?" Alex gasped.
"He made seven, but he thinks he's currently got six. Two of them are gone, Harry destroyed Voldemort's diary in his second year and Dumbledore destroyed the ring Horcrux this past summer," Rami confirmed.
"Hang on, Dumbledore knows about the Horcruxes?" Harry demanded. He was furious that the old man knew about the Horcruxes and had never said anything to Harry. If he believed Harry was the only one able to defeat Voldemort due to some prophecy spouted by a crackpot seer, he ought to have handed Harry the answer to killing him!
Rami gave Harry a commiserating look before answering, "Dumbledore's done a lot of research. He's closing in on the location of another one but most of the evidence he has is a lot of guesswork and speculation. I don't know if he's purposefully leaving the majority of the work to you or not, Harry."
"Can't you get rid of them yourself?" Alex asked almost desperately, unknowingly echoing Harry's thoughts. Death had explained that he himself couldn't interfere, but Harry didn't know if those restrictions extended to Reapers.
"Sorry," Rami grimaced, "I can't. Death and all of his Reapers are governed by the same rules that all the primordial deities are: no mortal interference. We're all supposed to stay within our spheres of power and we can't stop events once they've been put into motion. As Death's servants, we only interact with mortals once they've died and bring their souls to the afterlife."
Harry had never considered that all-powerful beings might have restrictions to work with as well, and hearing the frustration in Rami's tone made him feel the slightest bit better.
"However, not being allowed to interfere doesn't mean that we can't observe. That's how Death, and by extension myself, know of the Horcruxes. Death is everywhere. You cannot escape; Death has peered into the soul of every living being on earth and found them wanting in the end," said Rami.
Ghost and boy absorbed those words and shivered. It was rather unnerving to hear something like that stated so matter-of-factly.
"On that note, I think it's time you go back to your friends, Harry," Rami said, smiling kindly at him.
"Thank you, Professor," said Harry, shouldering his bag and standing up. "Nice to see you again, Alex," he added as he exited the room and closed the door behind him.
Clambering through the portrait hole into the common room, Harry made a beeline for the stairs to his dorm. He fully intended to take a nap and worry about essays later. Two double periods in one day had thoroughly exhausted him. It was not to be, however, as Hermione spotted him and called him over to the table where she and Ron were working. Well, Hermione was working, Ron was doodling on a spare bit of parchment.
"Hey," Harry said, sliding into the seat across from Ron. "What's going on?"
"Why were you gone so long?" Hermione asked instantly.
"We got to talking," answered Harry. It was true, they had done a lot of talking, albeit about topics Hermione had no clue about.
"About what?" she pressed.
Harry was saved from having to answer by a house elf appearing at his elbow.
"Er, yes?" he asked tentatively.
"This be for Mister Harry Potter, sir," the elf squeaked, shoving a rolled up scroll of parchment tied with a ribbon at Harry and popping away. Fumbling to catch the scroll, Harry tugged on the ribbon and unrolled it. He recognized the thin, loopy handwriting immediately.
Dear Harry,
I would like to start our private lessons this Saturday.
Kindly come along to my office at 8 p.m.
I hope you are enjoying your first week back at school.
Yours sincerely,
Albus Dumbledore
P.S. I enjoy Acid Pops.
Ron had finally looked up from his doodles and watched Harry read the scroll. "What's that?" Ron asked.
"Just Dumbledore wanting to meet with me on Saturday, that's all," said Harry dismissively, tucking the scroll into his bag.
"Oh," said Ron, losing interest and returning to his sketches.
Hermione, however, would not be so easily swayed. "About what?"
"I don't know, Dumbledore hardly tells me anything," Harry bit out. He immediately regretted it when he saw Hermione reel back as if she'd been slapped. "I'm sorry, I shouldn't have snapped. I'm just exhausted from class, I'm going to go take a nap."
With that, Harry abruptly left the table and went up the stairs to his dorm to do exactly that.
Hermione watched until she was sure Harry was out of earshot before turning to Ron and asking, "Do you think Harry's been a bit different lately?"
"Hm?" Ron said distractedly. He was trying to draw a game of Quidditch but couldn't quite get the wings right on the Golden Snitch.
"Ron!" snapped Hermione, "I don't know what's going on with Harry. He's not talking with us and he's got his nose in a book half the time and he's actually doing his homework the night before it's due."
"Sounds like you," Ron snorted. "That's not such a bad thing, Hermione."
Hermione huffed and returned to her Ancient Runes homework, still pondering the mystery that Harry had become.
You probably know the drill by now, but I've got a discord server! It's still pretty small, but fun. You can choose to get pinged whenever I post a new chapter and opt into getting spoilers from me on future content for any of my three in progress fics (When Spirits Call, The Black Fortune, and Sundering Seas).
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