"… " : speech

'…' : thoughts

//…: Elvish.

Italic : foreign language (Italian, Gondor local speech, Piedmont local speech, Latin)

Italic paragraphs : flashbacks

Italic & bold: emphasis

THE LONG WAY

Part Two: Traveling soldiers

CHAPTER I: THOUGHTS IN THE DARK

The rhythmic and soft ticking of the rain against the window glasses was the only sound in that gloomy winter afternoon. The only light in that red-and-yellow room – his House's colors – was the trembling fire in the fireplace, which wasn't enough to drive away the cold or the darkness.

But the cold the boy felt would never be driven back by a flame, even if it was the breath of a dragon. Soul-trapping ice is not easily melted.

The boy passed a hand over his forehead, running his fingers through wisp of hair as black as ink, then he took off his glasses and cleaned them with his t-shirt. He put them on again and went back to studying the photograph in his lap. From the sheet of paper, the violet eyes of a tanned girl were staring at him and the girl's dark brown hair badly tied framed her face, falling carelessly on her shoulders. She did not smile, nor did she make faces at the camera, as the students usually do when taking pictures for the year-book. Deciphering the emotions that stood out on that face and those eyes was very difficult. He could glimpse a pain that couldn't be measured or understood, deep wounds that would never heal, a burning anger and a deep hatred…And in those eyes there was something else, an alarming spark that would have scared anybody. Few could meet that gaze.

The boy shook his head: a lot of people said that it was the look of a mad girl, a lunatic… but he thought that it was just the reflection of all the tears she had cried in her young life.

He lowered his eyes. He couldn't bear the accusations that girl screamed even when she was silent. He who had defeated Voldemort more than once, the young hero of the Wizardry World, the Boy-Who-Lived, Harry Potter the epitome of the Gryffindor could not look at Victoria Cross, the Last Slytherin, in the face. He couldn't even look at her picture.

If he closed his eyes, a thousand images flashed behind his eyelids. He remembered how she had been during her first years in Hogwarts, he remembered her with Flint, Pucey and Malfoy, at that cursed match in his sixth year. He remembered her desperate screams, her sobs echoing in the whole stadium, her accusing looks, so strong and so angry, sharp and deadly as daggers, inerasable. He had never thought that someday those looks would have become even sharper, that those eyes could hold more hatred.

He felt a burden on his chest that cut off his breath, a lump in his heart. And he knew perfectly well why.

He looked at the photo again. A long time had passed from the last time he had taken it out to look at it. That day, Hermione had caught him and she had gotten very angry. She had told him that there was nothing he could do, at least not now. He could not waste his time dwelling on the past, he had to concentrate on the war and the next battle. In the dark, he curved his lips in a bitter smile: there was always a "next battle" the Boy-Who-Lived had to think about.

His thoughts drifted back to Victoria Cross, to the conversations they have had on the bridge outside Hogsmaede. They had met there two or three times, then he had started avoiding that place. He didn't want to meet Victoria, he didn't want to talk to her. Victoria's eyes troubled him, maybe even scared him a little. Her words did that, too. She always mixed up his whole world, shook it from its roots and turned it upside down completely….She tore down the walls of his certainties and left him in the power of the wind. Just like she was, after all: in the power of the cold wind, a prayer to the waves of life.

Slytherin tricks, Ron called it.

A point of view different from our own, Harry defined it.

And even if it was different, if didn't mean that it was evil. A whole House had to be destroyed before he realized that.

He turned his gaze on the decoration that adorned the bracket of the fireplace: Hogwart's Coat of Arms, with the emblems of the Four Houses. Here it was Slytherin's snake, in his quarter opposite Gryffindor's lion.

Another bitter smile. In the middle of a war there were certain people who had the nerve to fuss to have the school's Coat of Arms changed. At least, as long as Dumbledore and he lived, this would never happen. The Lost House of Slytherin would have been remembered at least upon that shield. It was the very least they could do.

Harry Potter stood up and slipped the photo between the pages of the book from which he had taken it. Slowly, he walked to the window: through the rain, he could see the towers and the huge walls of Hogwarts soaking wet.

The Last Slytherin had disappeared long ago. They waited for her at school months before, but she never arrived. Nobody knew where she was, she had no one to turn to. Her mother had been killed, her father had been found dead about eleven days before she disappeared without leaving any trace. Dead were her friends and her Housemates. Some people said she had run away to join the Death Eaters, but Harry knew that even the Imperius Curse wouldn't have brought Victoria Cross on the Dark Lord's side. Or on theirs, for all that mattered. She had said it loud and clear in that May afternoon, on the bridge. He could still hear her voice, "I don't fight with murderers."

Some people said she was dead. But Harry was quite sure that they were wrong. Victoria Cross was still alive, she was still out there.

Harry Potter did not know it, but he was right only about the first point. And he was wrong to believe that he was the only one who still thought about her. The world is not so small as we think. And the Universe is even bigger than we can ever imagine. Elsewhere, very far away, there were other people that were thinking about Victoria Cross...

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