Daily Updates: Please understand that this isn't sustainable for other stories. This is just a personal challenge to myself. Thank you to everyone who is taking the time to review!

Chapter 7 - Scar Face

Sirius cursed as he tripped over yet another dusty piece of rubbish -or rather, his mother's ornate furniture. He had a feeling he would have to go to war with this place in order to make it livable.

He cursed again. He couldn't believe he was here, that he was planning on bringing James' son here. Never, ever, ever would he have imagined returning to Grimmauld Place, much less in the hopes of making a home out of it.

But Harry's letter had been deeply disturbing. Reading between the lines, Sirius saw too much of his own desperation where his godson had described not trusting the Headmaster and refusing to go back to his relatives. He knew that Harry would be staying with the McGonagalls, which was for the best, however, he hoped to at least see Harry for a few visits.

Sirius hadn't yet told Dumbledore where he was staying, and after Harry's letter, he had no intention of ever doing so. As much as they had messed up by not trusting Dumbledore to be Secret Keeper all those years ago, there had been a reason why James and Lily hadn't wanted to put their son's security in his hands.

James had never told Sirius why it was exactly that the Dark Lord wanted Harry dead, and like Harry, Sirius believed that Dumbledore did, in fact, know. However, while surviving the Killing Curse was a first, there were ways to figure out what the Dark Lord had originally been planning. The types of magics he was playing with were out there, and where better to research the Dark Arts than in the House of Black. His father's library was rather extensive.

When Sirius finally reached the fireplace in the center of the house -his father's study as it happened, he let out a deep sigh.

He really didn't want to be here and he really didn't want to do this. He sighed again, this time coughing on the dust in the room. Steadying himself he grabbed the ornate knife on the mantle, unsheathing it he rolled his eyes at the serpentine design and the emeralds set into the silver hilt.

He took the knife and slid it across his palm. He watched, a bit disgusted as his blood spilled onto the marble before the fireplace. "I, Sirius Orion Black, Heir of House Black rescind all invitations and access to the House of Black. All but myself and my heir, Harry James Potter, shall be denied entry. By the Black in my blood I say it is so, and so shall it be."

The words didn't matter as much as people thought in the Dark Arts, it was all about intention and will and power. And Sirius let his blood flow, pushed his power through the ceremony, into the ancient wards of the house, and the property. His Grandfather Pollux liked to say this property was receiving Black Blood before London was more than a wide spot in the road. Sirius thought it probable that it wasn't just their blood that got spilled.

He finished the reactivation of the warding with a downward slice of his wand. It wasn't quite as good as the Fidelius Ward, but these wards didn't have such a simple workaround either. No, getting through these wards would require a number of martyrs and even then…

If he had been heir Black when James was still alive, Sirius would have moved them here.

Sirius reaffirmed his intent, his desire and spoke the Latin that sealed the wards. Now, only Harry and himself could enter at will, and only Sirius would be able to apparate someone into the house. He could let the McGonagalls into the wards later, but for now, it could serve as a sanctuary for Harry if he ever needed it.

He had even gone as far as expelling any portkeys that he hadn't made, and house-elf apparition. A ward that his family was particularly good at, considering the way they treated their house-elves was quite necessary in some circumstances. The idea that elves never rebelled or betrayed their masters was pure fiction. Given the way he had been treated by the little vermin growing up, Sirius was well aware of that fact.

The Black house elves had enjoyed inflicting his mother's punishments on him.

Which reminded him, he took a deep breath before calling out, "Kreacher!"

Harry was not having a good year, aside from time travelling and then almost dying by Dumbledore and a dragon, everyone, and he did mean everyone, was treating him differently.

He should be used to that by now, but he wasn't.

He hadn't been pointed at this much in his first year, not even sixth year had been this bad, but as it had been his first year, the topic was the same, his scar.

Ron had approached him once, seemed to lose his nerve looking at his scar, then turned away.

It was depressing, especially knowing it had been after the dragon last time that things had mended between them. But Harry didn't have the energy to chase after Ron.

The days seemed to blur into one another, each day seeming to drag on and on. He was soul wary and the only time he felt truly at ease was around Snape.

With everyone else… it wasn't as if he didn't know how to be himself, it was like he no longer knew what that meant. He was seventeen, but he was fourteen. He didn't care about his new scars, but he was sometimes startled at his own reflection. He no longer had a Horcrux in his head, but sometimes… sometimes his nightmares weren't his own.

"Mr. Potter," Professor McGonagall called, "Stay after class when the bell rings."

He nodded.

At the end of class, McGonagall made an announcement about the Yule Ball.

Harry was not thrilled at this reminder, though he was far less concerned and knew better than to ask Cho this time around.

"You will need to find a partner," McGonagall told him after the room ended.

"Your spell was very powerful," she went on, "and the conjuring of the pigs was quite remarkable."

Harry frowned, "It was just a multiplication spell, wasn't it?"

McGonagall half smiled at him, "No, Mr. Potter. Had it been one, the reversal spell I used would have undone it. Conjuring of that nature isn't something students begin until sixth year."

"But I based it off the fowl," he argued, he really hadn't been paying attention to what he was doing today. Everything felt grey and dull these days, his thoughts empty or thinking up all the ways Voldemort would act in this upcoming war.

So far, Snape said he hadn't been making any waves yet.

She nodded, "Yes but the spells most of your classmates create are not permanent, given time their creations would disappear, only the base of what the creature was would have remained. When conjuring is brought into transfiguration, you are not just using one thing to make another, you are bringing into the equation matter that had not existed previously, at least not in a recognizable form."

"Soooo… what does that mean?"

"It means you made fifteen real pigs from one real fowl. Rather than making a magical duplication and enlargement of the pig."

"Which means what? I don't think I understand the difference," he said, not quite following her logic.

"If I hit the other students' animals with a reversal spell it would have reverted them back to a single fowl. If they had made duplications they would have simply disappeared. But your conjured pigs, well, we could have served them up as tomorrow morning's bacon.

"Making something real and permanent, Mr. Potter, takes a great deal of power."

Harry met her gaze and asked, "So what?"

"It means Mr. Potter that you need to be practising more, both to burn off some steam and to better gauge how much power you need to exert for smaller tasks. From now until the end of term, I don't want any more essays from you for this class. But for your sixth year detention period instead. I expect you to be mastering those spells and writing those essays."

"You're giving me extra work because I am doing well in classes," he stated, barely repressing a sigh.

She gave him a searching look, "I am very glad you're alive, Mr. Potter."

His lips turned up in a half smile, "Me too."

"Your parents would be very proud."

Harry looked away, "Thanks."

"That being said, you should have died when the Horntail got loose, it is remarkable that you were able to hold off a Horntail. Do you know that dragonhide is resilient to magic? Her slamming herself against your shield should have broken it. But you held it off. You should ask Professor Flitwick for some extra spellwork to do as well."

He lifted his eyebrows at that, "Why would I ask for more work?"

Jade eyes to emerald, she said, "Because students come to Hogwarts to learn magic, and I fear, Mr. Potter, that you must learn how to harness yours or be ruled by it."

Harry did sigh this time, "I will talk to Professor Flitwick."

"Good, and," her voice softened, "If you ever want or need someone to talk to, my door is always open to you."

Harry nodded, and said, honestly, "Thank you." Before leaving.

But he wouldn't confide in McGonagall, because he didn't want to be the one to explain to her how screwed not only he was, but their entire world.

Determined to make up for his mistakes, he asked Parvati to the Yule Ball again, only this time, he was determined to show her a good time.

No one deserved to suffer for his own self-pitying.

Parvati's smile was brilliant, her brown eyes lighting up. As Harry hadn't waited to ask her out this time, it didn't at all seem like she was his last choice but his first.

"I would love to, Harry," she said, before her sister snagged her arm and pulled her along, giving Harry an annoyed look.

Padma thought he was trouble, while Parvati had been among the first to stop gawking at his face. He didn't need the ties to tell them apart.

He waved to Parvati who waved back even as she was pulled around the corner.

The rest of the day passed without incident, until he turned too quickly into the crowd and collided with Draco Malfoy. Draco who immediately shoved him away, "Watch where you're going Scar Face, or did you suffer more brain damage this time?"

Draco's two cronies and Pansy left him seething as they walked away chortling.

Scar Face.

Harry shut his eyes and tried to breathe in deeply, attempting to calm himself. Malfoy had called him Scar Head before, but the adaptation of the old insult affected him more- more than he thought it would.

And he felt shame that he would let his appearance, and what someone like Malfoy said, get to him. It bothered him that it mattered, that each and every day he found himself thinking about his stupid face about the opinion of others.

He decided to head to pull on his invisibility cloak as soon as he was able to and headed to Snape's apartment. A place both warm and welcoming. Where he could make his own damned tea and study on the sofa without a bloody audience.

"'Arry," Fleur began on one of their training days, "do you have a date for Yule?"

Harry nodded before shooting a smile at Hermione who grinned back. Hermione had been very pleased that Harry had asked out Parvati who had begun to be more inclusive of Hermione even if they still weren't exactly close friends.

Hermione said it had made living with the girls easier.

"That I do," he answered Fleur, "How about you? I know Krum does."

Fleur's face went cold and Harry worried he had offended her. Her tone was impersonal as she said, "Not yet."

"I'm not sure there are many boys who would say no if you asked," he said kindly.

She gave him an unfathomable look, her sapphire eyes seeming to bore into for a long moment. "I suppose not," she said quietly before turning back to the practice dummy and wordlessly cast a spell that cut the dummy in half.

Harry frowned, not understanding what he had done to upset her, and she was obviously upset, though neither Hermione nor Krum seemed phased by it.

"Harry, show us the spell you did in Charms class," Krum ordered, his accent not so heavy that Harry couldn't make out the words. His speech was getting better the more time he spent with Hermione.

He sighed, pointed his wand at the wall and tried to keep his focus on just the wall, "Scourgify."

Every surface in the room scrubbed itself clean as if a hundred house-elves had rubbed at the stone walls, ceilings, floors, and glass windows (inside and outside), until the room looked new -or at least as new as a castle could look.

Fleur turned to him, and he felt warmed by her expression of shock and a slight hint of awe on her face. "C'est pas vrai. The stones look newly cut from the mountain."

"Flitwick gave our house fifteen points," Hermione said proudly.

"He also talked to me after class," Harry said less enthusiastically.

"Well, it couldn't have been anything bad," she said, her smile brilliant. "It was -is an amazing feet of magic, and no one got hurt."

He forced himself to meet her brown gaze, "He gave me a new schedule."

"He what?"

"It was a test, the spell, McGonagall made it up and she told Flitwick that if I over succeeded in my next class that he should give it to me."

He wasn't a genius, he was a time traveller. Now he was beginning to regret not confiding in Hermione, but once he told her any of it, e knew he would fold to her demands and tell her everything. He missed the older Hermione who knew him better than he knew himself sometimes.

"So, are you getting switched out of fourth year Charms?"

Harry couldn't keep the regret off his face. "Not just Charms, Hermione."

She stood up from the window seat and strode towards him, "How many classes?"

He sighed, "All of them, except for Magical Creatures, Astronomy, and Magical History."

"So you are basically a sixth year!" Hermione exclaimed more harshly than she likely intended, "I can't believe this is happening. Why? You're advancing fast, sure, but I mean you're not- I mean, it is just…"

This was mainly Snape's fault, because apparently, when McGonagall and Flitwick suggested they wanted Harry to transfer into their six years classes, Snape had spoken up on his behalf.

Severus Motherfucking Snape, suggested something positive in Harry's favour. Apparently, it had moved all the teachers to have faith in his skills.

Hermione shook her head, "It doesn't make any sense."

"Sure it does," Fleur said, "There have always been a few students who go through the system faster, and it has very little to do with how smart they are."

It made Harry wonder why Voldemort hadn't, but then maybe it was why a Dark Lord had so much free time to gather his little terrorist sect and study the Dark Arts. Plus, until he became of age, he would have to stay at the orphanage.

Voldemort had been as desperate as Harry had been to stay at Hogwarts over the summers.

Victor nodded, "Most schools have systems in place for this kind of thing."

"What kind of thing?" Hermione asked as Harry asked, "Wait, this is normal?"

They shook their heads and Fleur explained, "Non. It isn't normal, but it isn't unheard of for students who have suppressed powers to be suddenly advanced. It is not about how smart you are, it is about learning control. The point of the early years of education is to build a foundation and strength of your magic."

"But," Viktor picked up the explanation, "if your magic is out of control, and too strong, then you need things that are more complex. Like using wordless casting."

"We are already halfway through the year," Hermione said, "How is Harry supposed to keep up?"

Little did she know Harry had already done the sixth year curriculum as well.

Viktor shrugged, "It isn't about grades, if his powers keep building as they have been since his fight with the dragon then he might get himself and others hurt."

Which was funny to Harry, he was a 'late bloomer'.

Fleur nodded, "Most people don't survive what Harry is going through."

"Or they are thrown in prison," Viktor added.

Harry paled at that, "Wait, what do you think is happening to me? And what do you mean I could go to jail?"

"Magical repression," Fleur said gently, "has a lot of negative effects."

Harry laughed, "I haven't suppressed my magic."

"Harry," Hermione said as gently as Fleur, "I think maybe you have been."

"When?" Harry demanded, because that wasn't it at all. He was eighteen goodness sake.

"Well," she said, "Look what you did last year, with the Dementors, and holding off the Horntail… I've heard people talking and most fully grown wizards couldn't have done what you did. But those are only two incidents."

"But I have difficulty in classes with simple spells. Until the first task, you were always ahead of me."

"Exactly," she said.

"Exactly what?"

"Think, if you always had the power to fight off major threats but could barely change your tortoise into a teapot… If you were always that strong but were unable to use it most of the time..."

"It usually -in the rare cases that it happens at all," Viktor said, "with children for one reason or another never attended school, their magical outbursts sometimes cause enough damage that they get sent to prison. They become creatures."

"An Obscurus," Hermione said in a hushed tone, the other two nodded.

"The ones who do go to school," Fleur answered Harry's horrified expression, "they get -as they say, fast-tracked for the practical magic."

"Am I dangerous?" Harry asked.

They all gave him the same look.

He shook his head, "I mean accidentally? Could I really hurt someone? Kill someone by accident?"

He felt like he was going to be sick. He needed to speak with Snape. Surely, his jump in power level was due to his being a time traveller not a suppression of his magic.

"Didn't you blow up your aunt last summer?" Hermione asked.

Viktor raised a single eyebrow at this and Fleur looked equal parts horrified and scandalized as if she had been tricked into hanging out with a murderer.

"Blew up like a balloon," Harry clarified, "she floated into the air but was otherwise fine. My relatives weren't too pleased though."

"But you could have really hurt her," Hermione noted, "Maybe… maybe you do need to be with the older students." She said the last almost reluctantly.

"But why now?" Harry asked. "Why not when I was younger?"

Although a horrible idea was forming in his thoughts, one that Viktor unknowingly reinforced.

"Perhaps it has something to do with your scar," Viktor said.

Harry didn't say anything to this, because maybe it was. Maybe the Horcrux in his head had been draining life from him, or perhaps even suppressing his own abilities and magic somehow.

"You have been different," Hermione said.

"Yeah," he grumbled, "more annoyed with the world."

And maybe slightly suicidal.

She shook her head, her mass of frizz turning with her, "No, actually, you have been easier to get along with. You've been- well not happier, that isn't the right word… you've been more stable. Less moody."

Less moody? He thought wryly, if she only knew how untrue that was. Most of his 'stability' came from being better able to hide his moods from others.

Fleur fiddled with the sapphire pendant that hung from a silver-chain necklace her mother had gifted her. She and her date were among the first to arrive. Her date, Cedric Diggory, a good looking Hufflepuff, who didn't grovel when she spoke to him. It was likely that he didn't completely fawn over her because he was in love with someone, but apparently not enough to turn Fleur down, which absolved her of any guilt she might have had about possibly ruining his relationship.

Soon Viktor and Harry joined them. Harry looked handsome in his emerald robes, the color bringing out the spectacular hue of his eyes.

She wished very much that she was on his arm, rather than the mystified seventh year who seemed not quite able to think of her as a real person.

It was all well and good to be thought of as beautiful, but altogether something else for beauty to set a woman as a thing apart from other girls.

Hermione came down the staircase, and Fleur wished more than anything that she could have been her. The way Harry's eyes lit up when she came to the head of the stairs made her heart twist.

"You look beautiful, 'Mione," he said.

"Yes," Viktor said thickly, "most beautiful."

Hermione flushed, "You all look handsome as well. And Fleur, you look stunning."

She nodded stiffly, she knew she looked wonderous in her silver gown. She wondered if Harry had noticed her at all, as he smiled at Hermione, his full attention for the brilliant girl.

Fleur berated herself for her wandering thoughts, reasoning she was only interested in Harry because he wasn't interested in her as an object of want.

Viktor's date came down the steps. She was lovely, in a colourful sari, hair dark straightened, flowing down her back in ebony cascade.

Only Viktor barely spared her a glance, before returning to whatever Hermione was babbling about.

It was Harry who stepped forward to compliment the girl.

Which is when Fleur realized she had made a mistake.

Harry and Hermione weren't here as a couple, they had truly been just friends. Fleur was humiliated, having missed that after months of being friends with both of them.

The Hogwarts' Transfiguration teacher came and had them line up. Fleur and her Hufflepuff first, followed by Viktor and Hermione and then Harry and his actual girlfriend.

Harry wasn't the best dancer, but he was a quick learner and by the fourth dance he was leading with some confidence. Parvati was more interesting than he had ever given her credit for. And watching her light up on the dancefloor made him grateful he had given this another chance.

He met Hermione's gaze a few pairs away and grinned at her. She grinned back, looking like a contented princess in Viktor's arms.

Fleur looked far less thrilled in Cedric's company, and Harry wondered what had changed that she hadn't asked Roger out.

Harry ended up dancing the second to last dance with Fleur, reminded ever of her beauty. He remembered what she had said after Bill had been attacked.

What do I care how he looks? I am good-looking enough for both of us, I think! All these scars show is that my husband is brave!

He wondered how many people appreciated this lovely woman who she was rather than what she was? Because Fleur had within her the ability to see to the core of a person and know their worth no matter their appearance.

Daily Updates: Please understand that this isn't sustainable for other stories. This is just a personal challenge to myself. Thank you to everyone who is taking the time to review!