Harry Potter: Dark Lord, Loving Father
Chapter 6: Slytherin Versus Gryffindor
Just like before, there was a fine mist that appeared as the soul in question was summoned by the Resurrection Stone. When the mist cleared, Salazar Slytherin was revealed to the two men, dressed in his emerald-green and silver attire, just as before, neatly groomed, his long hair pulled back into a simple tie, his crimson eyes glimmering in the low dungeon light.
"Well, if this isn't a familiar setting," the Founder proclaimed, smirking at Harry, his Heir, taking in his surroundings.
"Merlin," Draco breathed, blatantly staring at Slytherin, the Founder of his wonderful House. What pride the Malfoy had welled up in his chest, which quickly turned into completely un-concentrated awe upon seeing the ghost.
"Salazar, actually," he retorted smartly, seeming to be almost offended that Draco might even think to call him such a name. "I take it that you're a Malfoy, judging my the tall, slight, thin build, and silvery blonde hair. Am I correct?"
Blinking, Draco snapped himself out of his daze long enough to nod slowly, stating simply, "you are," before his eyes widened even further with amazement at the man before him.
"Good, well, it's a pleasure to finally meet you when you're conscience," he replied, knowing he wouldn't get much of a reaction out of Draco, as the man was totally enthralled with just Salazar's mere presence. So, he turned to Harry, "Hadrian," he addressed him, a bit more gently than he'd done with Malfoy.
"Yes, sir?" Harry acknowledged, starting to get used to the strange name that his ancestor was calling him.
"I've decided on a full name to give you, since no matter what other name your parents have given you, it is likely to reflect their ignorance of your true heritage," Slytherin explained. "I doubt that you should declare yourself as this newly christened name until it seems the appropriate time."
"It's an honour," came the reply, followed by a swift nodding of Harry's head.
"I now declare you to be Hadrian Xanthus Slytherin, my Heir, the next Dark Lord," Salazar issued, immense pride appearing to fill his eyes, the corners of his thin lips twitching slowly into a wide, satisfied grin. "I do hope that you will continue to prove yourself worthy of such a title. Do you swear on your magic?"
"Nothing under the heavens will keep me from bringing honour and glory to the name of Slytherin," he intoned, looking Salazar directly in the eyes, determined.
"And this Malfoy will bear witness to this pledge," the Founder continued, his hot gaze resting upon Draco, who immediately nodded his understanding of what was happening.
With that, the Slytherin Heir was enveloped in a loose knitting of silvery magic, which disappeared nearly as fast as it had come, signifying the forming of his pact to Slytherin permanently.
It was needless to explain to Harry what had just happened, especially after he'd spent so many of his summers with the Malfoys, learning much of the wizarding culture and customs than he'd been exposed to living with Ginny. Salazar felt this, since his Heir wouldn't have invoked such a powerful compact with even anyone, let alone the ghost of Salazar Slytherin, who he, himself, had summoned.
"Shall we discuss the current situation, then?" the red-eyed wizard suggested, his gaze still focused on the Malfoy, who was now becoming more conscience of the conversation between the two Slytherin men. "Now, I assume that you are Hadrian's... fautor?" Salazar directed his inquiry to Draco, this time.
"Pardon?" the blonde petitioned the apparition, not familiar with the term (neither was Harry, by the casual glance that he cast the brunette's way, earning a look of puzzlement).
"I suppose that in the day in age you live in, Latin isn't a commonly used language, then?" Slytherin asked, rhetorically. "Its meaning consists of the English words, 'supporter' and often, 'second'," he allowed, tilting his head, as he peered at the two sitting on the couch.
"Yes, my lord, I am your Heir's fautor," Draco finally replied, bowing his head slightly, the Latin a little strange on his tongue.
"Superb," the Founder's ghost nodded, thinking of how he should address the matter he needed to discuss with the two at the moment. "The situation that the two of you are up against -- I would like to be updated continually and regularly, so that I may assist my Heir and prevent any foolish decisions, until he becomes more capable of doing things on his own. In addition to this request, I would like to know more about my previous Heir: his mistakes, how he treated his followers, and anything else that you think I should know."
"I will, my liege," Draco conceded, informing the Slytherin Founder of what he had requested in the few hours that he could spare before Harry and he had to retire. Salazar was very understanding and was willing to wait until the next night for the rest.
A few weeks later, Harry received an owl from his wife, Ginny, demanding (in a rather polite way, of course) that Harry would meet her and discuss a few things concerning their marriage and Albus. After talking it over with Draco, Harry arranged to meet Ginny at the house (that was now hers) for a supposedly present evening and dinner.
"She's likely going to serve me with papers," Harry said glumly to his supporter and friend. "I'm not really looking forward to this weekend at all. If I don't come back, do you promise to take care of Albus for me?"
"Harry," Draco began, dispassionately, not even pausing to glance up from his book at the overly-worried Potter across from him, whose book was lying unopened on the table next to him. "She's not going to murder you. You're still the Boy-Who-Lived, for Merlin's sake. Try being a little realistic occasionally, hm?"
"I suppose you're right; I just can't help but thinking about it, that's all," he sighed in return, too distracted by his own thoughts to read the book sitting next to him.
"Try not bothering me with it, then, since I'd rather finish this book of mine, thank you," the blonde retorted, flipping a page.
"Sorry," Harry said, keeping to himself for awhile, until something else began to nag him about the event coming up. At first, he wasn't going to say anything, not wanting to procure Draco's wrath. It was only because the man so suddenly closed his book and glared half-heartedly at him that he gained enough courage to even consider mentioning it. "What will Ginny think of me being... well, so much taller, now?" he questioned, a bit flushed from embarrassment concerning the topic.
"Just tell her the truth, I'm sure she'll understand, Potter," the blonde responded sarcastically.
"Oh, like telling her that my second-in-command-to-be was too ashamed of having a lord that was shorter than the average wizard to instill any fear in the masses is the reason why this individual in question forced me, his lord, to take numerous disgusting growth potions to make me just a few inches taller than a certain ghost that goes by the name of Salazar Slytherin. Yeah, I'm sure that she'll buy that, not at all suspicious of anything," the Potter rejoined, snidely. "Add on top of that, I should also just come straight out and tell her that you and I are so close now, that I'm wearing your clothes."
"If you think that'll work," Draco agreed, grinning widely, obviously amused. "And I was thinking for a minute there that you enjoyed the torture that went along with those wonderful potions that've made you much less identifiable, if you were going to keep this double life going as long as you certainly will want to."
Taking a long, deep breath, Harry held up both hands in a sign of surrender. "I know you were just trying to help and all, but it really was painful," Harry complained, groaning as he remembered the days he'd taken to lecturing sitting down, spelling the notes to appear on the board, due to the rather intense pain the growth potions had caused.
"Well, if you'd been taller than the average witch to begin with, the process wouldn't have been nearly quite so painful," the Malfoy informed.
"Yeah, so you keep telling me, Malfoy."
"Then, just tell her you'd requested me to make them for you, if you'd like?"
"Sounds like a better plan that any other I could have come up with. But, concerning Salazar, I'm sure you couldn't wait until you got to see his reaction to seeing that I was now so much taller than him, rather unexpectedly," the Slytherin Heir replied, shifting in his fair, his now long fingers tracing the patter on the face of the locket around his neck. "What I still don't get is why the potions also made my fingers longer... I thought that was more of an inherited trait?" Harry pondered aloud, rather seriously.
"It happens, sometimes, if you take enough of them -- and you most certainly did, compared to what most do," Draco answered matter-of-factly, shrugging his shoulders lightly.
"I don't suppose that we could make a trip to Hogsmeade, maybe, before I have to go over for dinner at Ginny's?" he wondered, thinking of the free tie he had between Thursday and Saturday evening.
"And when do you suppose we go on this proposed jaunt?" Draco asked, cocking an eyebrow at Harry's rather late thought to by himself some new clothing items. As not to anger Ginny further, as he gathered was the reasoning behind this particular thought process.
"Er..." he cringed, unable to come up with any reasonable amount of time to make a visit anywhere and purchase any clothing item at all.
"Precisely what I thought, which is why I'm willing to let you borrow my clothes for the time being -- even a nice, traditional Slytherin cloak that my father gave to me upon my marriage, years ago," the blonde offered to Harry, knowing the man wouldn't refuse, no matter how questionable the articles of clothing may seem for the occasion of visiting his wife.
To Harry, it seemed like this was just another good excuse of Draco's to dress him up in anything remotely Slytherin-looking. True, he'd gotten a number of compliments lately from his co-workers about how the green in the robes (and the silvers and the blacks) brought out the colour of his eyes.
So, the time finally came when Harry was to arrive at the home he'd used to live in with Ginny on Saturday evening. He appeared in the front of the main entry way a minute early, checking his cloak, robes, and hair one last time before he knocked on the brown, wooden door. His hair had been tied back as best as Draco could manage, the rest of the hair that could not be pulled back hung loose around Harry's face, often getting in the way of his eyes. Salazar had worn his hair in a rather similar manner, which is likely to be what had inspired Malfoy in the first place. The cloak (an ebony black with silver trim) and robe (a dark forest green -- very Slytherin, Harry noted) that his friend had lent him were almost the perfect size, strangely enough. He could have sworn that he was still just a bit shorter than Draco was, which made the fitting robes that much more curious. The Slytherin locket was carefully hidden beneath the robes and the Pervell ring was now on his right hand, the ring Ginny had given him back on its proper place on the left hand.
After taking a deep breath, Harry summoned up some courage to knock on the door, heart pounding in his ears.
A few seconds later, Ginny (who was a bit flustered once she realized who was at her door) did a double take. "Harry?" she asked, sounding shocked. "Come in," she said, finally, opening the door wide enough to let her husband inside.
Harry felt just as flustered as Ginny acted. He certainly hadn't been expecting this sort of reaction from the redhead.
"Well," he began, sitting down in the offered chair at the table in the dinning room. "I see you've been doing some redecorating ... I like it -- it's different."
She nodded, a bit awkwardly. "Thanks, I guess," Ginny replied, her voice soft, still sounding unsure of what she was saying. "Um... you've gotten taller since the last time I remember seeing you, Harry," she noted, staring at him, the bashfulness suddenly gone.
"I asked Draco to brew some growth potions for me -- I was tired of being treated inferior by him; granted, I'm not as tall as he is, but at least I don't feel like I have to crane my neck to meet anyone's eyes, now," he joked, attempting to make it seem like a much smaller issue than it might be with Ginny.
"There's nothing wrong with that," Ginny allowed, meeting Harry's eyes for the first time that night. "Except for the fact that the Harry I knew and loved wouldn't do such a selfish thing."
"Ginny!" he hissed, taken aback by what she'd just said. "I'm still the same person -- how can you accuse me of --"
"Easy," she started, interrupting him abruptly. "Neville, your son, James, and your daughter, Lily, tell me that you've been wearing that locket that had the note from Regulus Black to Voldemort in it: that little trinket used to belong to Voldemort, remember? Your worst enemy? And that's not all I've heard. You've been hanging around with Malfoy almost constantly since you'd accepted the Defense position at Hogwarts, not hanging out with your old, true friends. Luna, Neville, and even Percy have told me that despite their offers to take you out for dinner and a fun evening, you've been holing yourself up in that damp dungeon with Malfoy. Not one day have you spent away from that bloody bastard!
"Also, I've been told that you pointedly declined the position as the head of Gryffindor, repeatedly. Where's the Gryffindor spirit that you used to have so much of? Maybe you'd rather be the Slytherin head, after all that time you've spent with the ferret, since he's rubbed off on you so damn much. More than you'd thought, perhaps?" Ginny continued, becoming more infuriated as she continued to list more and more things she found wrong with everything Harry had done since last Spring when he'd consulted Draco about the position.
"Draco is an excellent friend; he understands me better than you do, sometimes," Harry retorted, doing his best to control his temper, which had flared up in him at the insults Ginny was throwing at him and at Draco.
"So, you think that way about him. Just like the rumours say, then?" the redhead inquired, looking straight into the other's eyes once more, attempting to extract the truth.
"No, nothing like that," he replied, overly frustrated with both Ginny and himself for having such a huge misunderstanding. "He's helped me out with some of my lesson plans; he's funny too! He's a totally different person than from before his wife passed away, completely changed from that nasty jerk we both knew in school. Draco's matured and become very knowledgeable about the current events and such."
"Probably some Dark Arts, too," she snorted, mainly addressing that comment to herself. It took a few minutes of silence for Ginny to mount a proper counter to that, something that the Slytherin Heir was dreading.
"You're saying that you willingly engage in this supposed 'friendship' with him, which could be a complete and utter lie to use you over the friendships that have lasted and proven themselves again and again to be loyal and true for decades? You'd rather be with someone who was a Death Eater than those who fought on the same side as you did in the war?" she pursued, her eyes inflamed with passion directed against Harry, much to his despair.
"I do, yeah," he retorted smoothly, his fiery temper slowly dissolving into small embers in the pit of his stomach. "Because I don't think he's using me and I don't see anything wrong with being friends with a Malfoy. After all, I trust him -- I saved him and I don't think he would betray be after that."
"Oh, I see how it is, now," Ginny raged, standing up, abruptly. "You pretend to still be a Gryffindor on the outside, occasionally, but it'd just be better if you stopped trying to be something you obviously would rather not be." She went and got a folder of ominous-looking paperwork. "Sign them, then leave," she ordered, dropping the large folder onto the table in front of him.
"At least, let me keep Al?" Harry appealed, gripping his knees, hoping that Ginny would be somewhat reasonable with his request.
Ginny and Albus hadn't really gotten along all that well from the start, for some reason, and that relationship had just gotten even worse after Al'd gotten sorted into Slytherin. At first, it was just her anger and frustration with him choosing Slytherin over Gryffindor after he'd told her what Harry had revealed to him that one fateful day at the platform. Then, when family came over (especially Ron's side), Albus was teased and ridiculed for a while at school and at these gatherings, eventually isolating himself from his relatives -- all except for Harry, his father, who seemed to understand him better than his mother had.
Considering the inquiry for a while, Ginny glared at Harry for a minute, then came up with a reply: "As long as you're not going to come back and tell me that raising him on your own is too tough for you and attempt to dump him on me."
And so, any hopes that Harry had before of clearing up the misunderstandings and making up with his wife were completely extinguished once he opened the first page of the divorce papers that were all filled out, awaiting his John Hancock. Harry signed the revolting things in silence as Ginny watched him, peering over his shoulder. He didn't care what she wanted from him, as long as he got to keep Al with him, knowing just how much he would regret it if he'd left him with Ginny and the other two children, Harry just wanted this whole thing over and done with.
"I suppose that I'll see you around, then, huh?" he asked, not willing to meet her eyes, afraid of what he'd find there.
With that, Harry pulled off the wedding band, setting it down on the table, walking to the door, swinging it open deftly, almost out the door when he heard a timid: "wait!"
He didn't turn around, but he paused, shifting towards Ginny a little more, to indicate he was listening.
"Tell him that I love him, will you?" she whispered, her voice shaking with emotion.
With a nod, Harry closed the door behind him, Disapperating once he was sure that Ginny wasn't going to run after him, holding back his tears until he got to the Forbidden Forrest.
Thanks in great part to Moogle (or Boogum) for some ideas about the end, here, and of course, to Grae, who's been so loyal and helps out so much.
Of course, and to the readers and the reviewers! Your input is always highly appreciated.