Chapter 2

Victims of Muggles

"The surplus of stories about him as a young boy creates the false impression his future fate was clear to anyone who cared to look. Nothing can be further than the truth. Though recognizable at sight by the entire student body, neither of the Potter twins was doing anything unusual enough to create a sensation. It wasn't until Harry Potter started to gain influence in the political circles that many of us tried to recall his Hogwarts years in the light of him being anything more than the Boy-Who-Lived's brother. The only unusual thing I remember about him as a teenager, if my memory is not failing me in my old age, is that he seemed to devour monstrous books in the matter of hours, that he had the unshakable cockiness of a child who is adored by his family and that the girls he was involved with were always, invariably pureblood."

- From "My Life in a Turbulent Age" by Owen Cauldwell

September 1991 - June1992

The library of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry was one of the greatest archives of knowledge in the Wizarding world and held over half a million works of numerous authors, some dated as far back as the times of the Roman Empire. The hushed sounds of turning pages and fidgeting students, the musky smell of ochre parchment and halted time were things Harry Potter quickly grew accustomed to. The library was where he had spent a large portion of his first two weeks at Hogwarts, though not nearly as large as he had wanted to. Now that he had a wand and plenty of space around, Harry used every opportunity to go to one of the many unused classrooms in the castle and practice the spells he had learned by reading. "You're mad, Potter," Daphne had told him when she realized that he spent almost all of his time learning magic. "Madder than Dumbledore."

The two of them were now seated at one of the wooden tables in the library and several pieces of parchment were scattered over the table. Earlier that day Snape had assigned the first-year students an essay about Boil Cure potions and Harry wanted to start working on it as early as possible. The Potions master still treated him with contempt and his classes each week were an exercise in self-control and patience. Harry knew the answers to all of Snape's theoretical questions but that wasn't enough to earn him a good grade, not in Potions and not with Snape as a teacher. The git spent at least half of the class hovering over Harry's cauldron and waiting for him to make a practical mistake. And Harry rarely disappointed him because, as Draco Malfoy had smugly pointed out, "Potter, you may be perfect at everything else but you're rubbish at Potions."

"We need to talk," said a familiar voice and Harry looked up from his essay to find Charlie towering over the table with arms crossed in front of his chest and chin defiantly jutted out. It was the first time his brother deigned to talk to him since the night of their Sorting. "I think I should probably leave you two alone," Daphne said after a single glance at him and went to look for another reference book on the properties of Porcupine quills.

"What do we need to talk about, stranger?" Harry asked his brother. He had stopped trying to talk to him about a week ago. Charlie frowned at him. "You're spending an awful lot of time with Malfoy, Parkinson, Zabini and the rest of their crowd."

"They're my housemates," Harry pointed out. And I don't really have anyone else to spend my time with because my stupid brother is ignoring me, he thought but said nothing. Most of his classes were a constant source of boredom and irritation but they did have a certain advantage: they had raised his status in the eyes of housemates. The Slytherins had decided that his magical abilities made him a valuable ally and Harry had suddenly found himself surrounded by people willing to do him favours.

"They're not your only housemates. There must be someone better than Malfoy in Slytherin," Charlie argued. "I'm not letting you turn evil, you know. That's what I came here to say." After his declaration, he sat down in the seat Daphne had vacated and glared around as if he expected evil spirits to appear from behind one of the wooden shelves and try to abduct his brother. Harry lifted an eyebrow. "I thought that being sorted into Slytherin means I'm already evil."

"No. I've known you longer than anyone in the world and I say that some stupid hat sending you to Slytherin doesn't make you evil," Charlie announced in a loud voice. "But hanging around Malfoys and Zabinis will. That's why we, my dear brother, are going to spend a lot of time together."

"Pull out a book, then," Harry said with a shrug and returned his eyes to his work. As he expected, in the face this unexpected obstacle Charlie's resolve to save his soul from the powers of evil crumbled at once. "But… in the library?" his brother asked in a very small and scared voice. Harry laughed. "Books don't bite, Charlie. Seriously." "Ugh," his brother said. "Let's talk." "About what?" "About friends. How's life in Slytherin? Are you excited about flying lessons tomorrow? The girl who was here, what's her name?"

"Hold on. I've a question I want you to answer first," Harry said. "What changed your mind?" He had known that Charlie wasn't going to ignore him forever but he had expected him to sulk around for much longer.

"Two things," Charlie replied readily. He lifted a finger. "First, dad's letter. You wouldn't believe the things he said, Harry. The way he talked, you'd think that full sainthood is required in order to go to Slytherin and I should be ashamed of myself for even thinking otherwise. Did you know that Merlin was a Slytherin? Of course you did, dumb question." His brother shook his head and lifted a second finger. "Anyway, I was still angry. But then I realized that, right now, Malfoy knows more about what my twin is doing and thinking about than I do and I am the one to blame because I'm ignoring you. That's why I came here. I want to apologize for being a git, Harry. I'm sorry. Really."

Harry smiled at the end of Charlie's speech, filled with love toward his brother. "You're forgiven," he said. "But next time you start ignoring me, I'll tell everyone about that time you stuck yourself to the toilet."

"I knew you'd use that against me one day!" his twin complained. "How in the name of your old housemate Merlin did I ever miss all the signs of you being a Slytherin?" They laughed together. It was a relief for Harry to know that, even if they weren't nearly as close as they used to be, there was still nothing he could do to make Charlie abandon him.

xxxXXXxxx

Harry had never thought it possible that someone could live at Hogwarts without talking to their housemates but in the next several months he achieved it. Since he had already mastered the spells taught to the other first-years and could answer most theoretical questions, his teachers no longer reproved him for reading books in their classes. He'd taken to bringing third-year student books from the library with him and when his housemates were not making a disaster out of things as simple as a Switching Spell or a Hover Charm, the Professors were more than happy to answer any questions he had. This set him apart in more ways than one. When he wasn't isolated in class, Harry was practicing magic or studying in the library. When he wasn't doing that either, he was spending time with his brother.

Soon the only Slytherins he occasionally talked to were Daphne and Tracey Davis. Tracey was a nervous, quiet girl who flushed red when someone spoke to her, bit her lip a lot and was more than happy to fade away into the background. When Harry had mentioned her to Charlie, his brother hadn't even known there was a Tracey Davis in Slytherin. Harry talked to the girl because she was Daphne's friend but he didn't really know what to make of her. She was like a female Neville Longbottom, only less noticeable. He couldn't understand why those two were so edgy and afraid to speak their minds. Harry himself was not the most talkative person in the world but that wasn't out of nervousness; it was by choice. He had been raised by James Potter, Sirius Black and Remus Lupin and, in a family like his, it wasn't speaking that was hard to learn. It was keeping quiet.

Harry didn't spend enough time with his housemates, however, to worry much about Tracey Davis. Charlie had promised him that he would leave him no time for the likes of Malfoy and Zabini and he was keeping true to his word, sometimes going so far as to spend time in the school library.

Today both Gryffindor and Slytherin had their second classes on the third floor and Harry had suggested to his brother that they go to lunch together. Leaning against one of the walls in the corridor with hands in the pockets of his robe, he deeply regretted that decision as he waited for Charlie to finish his conversation with Quirinus Quirrell. The Defence Against the Dark Arts professor was his brother's favourite teacher and often kept him for a few minutes after class. Harry was straining his ears to hear what they were talking about inside, but Ron Weasley made him lose his concentration.

"What's taking them so long?" the red-haired boy asked impatiently. "What if we miss lunch? Or, worse, what if there are no mashed potatoes left when we get there?"

"Do you think I can hear them with you whining in my ears?" Harry snapped at him. He had caught the words 'scar' and 'hurts' but nothing else. "No one's forcing you to wait for us."

The red-haired boy lifted his arms in feigned defeat. "Fine, I'll be quiet- don't cut off my head."

Ron was his brother's closest friend in Gryffindor but he always looked at Harry's green house tie with suspicion. To him, any person sorted to Slytherin was a person of questionable character.

Soon Charlie appeared from behind the heavy wooden door of the classroom and the three of them headed toward the ground floor. When Harry asked him what Quirrell and he had talked about, his brother shrugged. "Er, he wanted to look at my scar. You know, for traces of dark magic. It kind of hurts lately."

"What do you mean it hurts?" Harry asked, alarmed. He had a scar on his stomach from his encounter with the muggles and it didn't hurt. Scars weren't supposed to hurt.

But he should have known better than to hope for a satisfying answer from Charlie. His twin had never been comfortable to talk about his scar. It reminded him that their mother's fate had been much worse than a scar on the forehead. "It's not important," his brother said. "It doesn't hurt a lot anyway."

"It's not supposed to hurt even a little," Harry pointed out but then decided to let the matter drop.

Ron Weasley had another question on his mind. "So, ugh, Harry? I wanted- to ask you something," he said. "Don't take it the wrong way or anything." Harry looked at him with bored expectation and he took it as a sign to go on. "Have you heard your housemates say anything about those stories in the Daily Prophet lately?"

"What stories?" Harry asked. He didn't get the Prophet.

"I told you, Ron," Charlie interfered. "Our dad thinks the Prophet is the saddest excuse for a newspaper in the world. He says it's not even worth the paper it's printed on. We're not subscribed."

"But where do you learn when something important happens?" Ron demanded.

From the Chief Warlock of the Wizengamot, Harry thought. From one of the best Aurors in the Ministry, from the Head of the Investigation Department. "We manage," he said aloud. "Now tell us about those articles."

"Well, recently there has been a lot of stories published about muggles abusing magical children - bullying in muggle orphanages, abuse by religious parents and the like," the red-haired boy told them with a frown. "I thought that, if anyone would be talking about it, it would be, you know, the Slytherins."

"They probably do." Harry agreed and suddenly regretted not being subscribed to the newspaper. Ron gave him a strange look. "Shouldn't you know? You being a Slytherin and all…"

"I don't really talk to my housemates." Harry said.

Ron gaped at him. "I don't blame you or anything but… what do you do when you aren't here?"

Harry didn't like the way the red-haired boy made it sound as if he was just tagging along behind his brother and him. "I'm studying," he drawled. "It won't hurt you to try it."

"Why are you studying so much for?" Ron asked. "You're already the best in the year. Worse than Granger even." Charlie laughed. "Don't you mean he's better than Granger, Ron?"

"That's what I said."

Harry promised himself to find out more about those articles. Ron was right. If anyone in Hogwarts would pay attention to them, if anyone would discuss them with eagerness and fervour, it would be the Slytherins. Not all of his housemates were purists, of course. Daphne Greengrass certainly was not and neither was the prefect, Gemma Farley. Not all of them were even pureblood. Tracey Davis was a halfblood, just like Harry himself. They were all interested, however, whether politically or economically, in the relations between their community and the muggle world. Harry felt ashamed and a bit betrayed by the fact that he had to learn about those articles from Ron Weasley and not from the numerous discussions that were, without any doubt, held in the Slytherin common room.

"I'll sit at the Slytherin table today," he told his brother and Ron when the three of them entered the Great Hall. For the first time in months, Draco Malfoy was the one Harry looked for when he wondered where to sit. First-years usually sat at the end of the table but Malfoy and his cronies were sitting closer to the middle. Gregory Goyle and Vincent Crabbe were, as usual, stuffing food into their mouths but Malfoy, Zabini and Pansy Parkinson were talking animatedly about something. Harry saw a copy of the Prophet in the hands of the black-haired girl and also distinctly heard the word "riddle".

They quietened when Harry came near. Their eyes were narrowed, hostile and suspicious, and Harry wondered why he hadn't noticed the change before. In the beginning of the year Harry had been accepted as one of them, as an ally and perhaps a friend, but now that he spent most of his time with his brother and the Gryffindors he was, apparently, no longer welcome among them.

There was enough space for one more person to sit and Harry decided to use it. Just when he was about to sit down, though, Malfoy put his foot on the bench. "What do you want, Potty?" the git challenged.

"To sit," Harry answered. Malfoy made such a grand gesture toward the Gryffindor table that it drew the attention of older students. "In case you've forgotten, you usually sit right there, Potty. Next to Scarhead and Weasel."

Harry narrowed his eyes and tried to keep in mind a lesson his godfather had once told him was the most important thing he learned in Auror training: if your opponent is goading you into feeling a certain way, Harry, the worst favour you can do yourself is to let them. "I'd rather sit here," he said but Malfoy laughed mockingly. "Oh, but you can't. Don't you see? My foot sits here." The other Slytherins sniggered and Harry realized that, if he allowed Malfoy to chase him off like a whipped dog, his future in house Slytherin would be very bleak. His housemates were now watching them, waiting to see what the Boy-Who-Lived's brother would do when challenged.

"I see," he said and people around him laughed. "You or your foot, then?"

A hush suddenly fell over the table and Malfoy knitted his thin brows in confusion. "What are you talking about, Potter?" Harry smiled. "I'm asking which one you want to keep on the bench, Malfoy – your foot or yourself?" His hand was in the pocket of his robe, fingers wrapped around his wand, and he saw Malfoy look at him with sudden apprehension. "The teachers are watching, Potter. If you curse me here, you'll serve detention to the end of your seventh year!"

"I will," Harry agreed. "But you'll be planted head-down in the soup by the time they get here, Malfoy."

Most of the hall was now watching them. Malfoy crossed his arms in front of his chest stubbornly, as if willing Harry to go away, but his resolve was crumbling. His grey eyes kept moving between Harry and the soup tureen, back and forth and back again. The decision showed on his face long before he could bring himself to do it.

He lowered his foot.

"Thank you," Harry drawled mockingly, swirled around and went to sit near the end of the table, next to Daphne Greengrass and Tracey Davis. Behind him, Malfoy sputtered in indignation.

He wasn't the only one who had noticed Harry's absence at the Slytherin table, however. "Oh Merlin, something's wrong with my eyes," Daphne said in feigned surprise. "Harry Potter? Is that you? It can't be yet it is!" she drawled, then pointed toward the Gryffindor table. "In case you have forgotten, you usually sit right there, Potter. With our revered Quidditch star."

"I guess I deserved that." Harry sighed. "I'm sorry."

Beside her, Tracey was beaming at him with joy. "That was amazing, Harry!" she said with rare confidence and animation. She wasn't very fond of Malfoy. "Everyone is laughing at the other tables."

They were; Gryffindor loudest of all.

Daphne was less than impressed. "That was stupid," she said. "You made him an enemy."

"Did you see how he acted?" Harry bristled. "There's nothing else I could have done! What do you want me to do next time – lick his shoes?"

"Well, you could have not ignored us for months," Daphne proposed innocently. "Anyway, I think that if you go talk to them as if nothing happened before we return for dinner, Malfoy will be the first to jump at the opportunity. He knows you're better than him at magic and I bet he wants this incident forgotten."

"I-I don't get it," Tracey murmured, nervous again. "Why was it stupid? Why do you want to be friends with them?"

"Because," Harry said grimly, "no one at our table is laughing."

He had spent too much time hanging around his brother; ignored his housemates for far too long. When Malfoy had told him that his place was not at the Slytherin table, many of the other students agreed – Harry had seen it in their eyes. If he had been someone invisible, someone whose brother wasn't hailed as the saviour of the wizarding world, he thought bitterly, no one but the other first-years would have noticed his isolation from the rest of the Slytherins. But he was not invisible and now he had a huge problem. For a minute there, he had even been afraid that one of his own housemates was going to fling a hex at his back.

That was not going to happen again.

xxxXXXxxx

Large grey clouds scudded across the blue sky as Hogwarts Express rolled over the rails, past mountains and rivers, down south toward London. Harry was sitting in one of the compartments with an old fifth-year Transfiguration student book on his lap and the voices of his housemates droned on around him without registering in his mind. 'The Inanimatus Conjurus Spell is one of the simpler conjurations in this most intricate branch of Transfiguration. It brings into being inanimate objects that (like any conjuration) will not last long. The spell is restricted by law and nature-'

"Harry!" Harry lifted his head to see Draco Malfoy staring him with annoyance. "Yes, Draco?"

"Well, it was about time you heard," the boy whined. "I was just saying that I'm not sure what I like more – that Slytherin took the House Cup for the seventh consecutive year or that Gryffindor finished last."

"That's just you," Harry said and returned his eyes to the book. "I am more interested in me winning than in other people losing."

The two large boys who sat in the seats next to Malfoy laughed with their mouths full of cake and Harry pursed his lips in distaste. Vincent Crabbe and Gregory Goyle seemed to think that laughing at anything they couldn't understand made them look smarter. They laughed a lot, but no one was deluded.

"Gryffindor took the Quidditch cup, though," Daphne reminded. She was reading the Daily Prophet and Harry wondered if there were any new articles published on muggle-wizarding relations. At least a hundred of those had been published in the past few months and none of them painted the muggle world in a positive light. Each article and its implications had been discussed at great length in the Slytherin common room and Harry couldn't help but agree with the predominant opinion that those articles only proved the simple truth that muggles and wizards could never live peacefully together.

"We'll take it back next year," Malfoy declared with certainty. "Your brother may be the youngest seeker in a century, Harry, but that just because McGonagall bent the rules for our precious saviour. Now we have to watch him show off with that snitch all the bloody time, like he's the only one who can catch it. Who gave it to him, anyway? Next year I swear I'll show him how real wizards play. "

"Do try," Harry urged him. "When he takes the snitch from under your nose, I won't laugh- too much."

"You're just saying that because he's your brother," Malfoy huffed.

"Sure," Harry said with a smirk that would make his father proud. "Keep on believing that."

The door of their compartment opened and Pansy Parkinson stepped inside. For some reason she seemed very pleased with herself; her dark eyes were laughing and her lips were twisted in a devilish smile. Knowing the girl well, Harry couldn't help but ask, "Whose life did you ruin, Pansy?"

The black-haired girl looked at him with an expression of pure innocence. "Why do you think I ruined anyone's life?"

"You're smiling, Parkinson," Daphne told her in a dry voice. That was, really, the only explanation.

"Let's just say," Pansy began and her smile widened, "that I taught our dear little horse-faced Lavender what happens when she talks behind someone's back."

"Hypocrite," Harry drawled and Malfoy sniggered. The girl crossed her arms and looked at them with an air of icy superiority. "Shut up. I don't want her talking behind my back. And because of what you just did, I won't tell you what she said about the two of you."

You'll tell us because you want to, Harry thought. Aloud he said, "Fine. See if we care."

"She said you were an arrogant muggle-hater who thinks the world revolves around him just because his brother is a hero and he's good at some spells," Pansy told him. "But don't worry, Harry, I left the little horse face crying in the toilet. She'll keep her mouth shut from now on."

Harry was careful to keep his face expressionless, but bitterness and hurt gnawed at him. That wasn't the worst he had heard about himself during his stay at Hogwarts – far from the worst, actually - but it hurt, just like the rest. While he had hanged around the Gryffindors and his brother, he had helped Lavender Brown master the Curse of the Bogies and, arrogant muggle-hater that he was, even given her tips about the essay on the Warlocks Convention of 1709 that professor Binns had assigned them shortly before Christmas break. Next time, he vowed, she would have to deal with her problems on her own.

"Merlin, shouldn't Brown register at the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures? No human should be that dumb," Malfoy said. "What did she say about me?"

"I'm not telling you, Draco."

"But you told Harry!"

"I told him because he didn't care," Pansy said with a smirk. "You, on the other hand… you keep begging. I may change my mind."

For the next half an hour, Malfoy and Pansy bickered, Crabbe and Goyle played exploding snap, Harry and Daphne read, and Hogwarts Express went on. The plump witch pushing the food trolley opened the door of their compartment and offered them sweets. Dark clouds gathered outside. A couple of older Hufflepuffs broke up in the middle of the corridor. Daphne gasped, "Merlin's beard!"

"What?" Harry and Pansy asked at the same time.

She looked up from the newspaper and shook her head. "Nothing, just reading an article about muggles executing people for sorcery."

"The Witch-hunt?" Harry asked and they looked at him with lifted eyebrows. "From the fifteenth to the eighteenth century Christian muggles burned at the stake about fifty thousand women of their own for using 'sorcery'. Real witches, of course, weren't really harmed."

"You read ahead in history, too?" Pansy exclaimed, horrified.

Always thinking about his own benefit, Draco Malfoy threw her a look of derision. "At least he's winning points for Slytherin," he said. "And who cares if muggles burned some muggles? I say good riddance, burn some more. They can't capture real witches anyway."

"It doesn't matter if the witches are real or not, Malfoy. It's the intention that's important. And the intention clearly was to get rid of magical people," Daphne said. "The article mentions the Witch-hunt in Europe and the Salem witch trials in the US but also executions of sorcerers in," she continued and turned down to read from the article, "'Ancient Egypt, the Antiquity, the Middle Ages, Early Modern Europe and even today. In some places women are still sentenced to death or driven to commit suicide if they are accused of having magical powers.' How sick is that? There's even a statistic, look- that's how many people muggles are willing to kill if they think they're magical."

They looked. The article estimated the people executed because of witchcraft or sorcery in Europe, Africa, the Americas and Asia throughout the entire history of muggle civilization in the hundred thousands. It even listed some recent cases. "That's more than twice the entire population of Wizarding Britain, Germany and France!" Malfoy exclaimed.

"Imagine if they could catch us," Harry said darkly, imaging that all too well.

"There's no chance of that happening," Pansy interfered. "Those creatures shouldn't even be considered human. They're dumb, completely useless and inept."

"I think you're underestimating them," Daphne said. "You remember that article a few months back? The one about their weapons and 'tecknology'?"

"Why are they publishing all those articles anyway?" Harry asked. He didn't remember his father mentioning such articles before. They had started to appear earlier that year, seemingly without reason. The Ministry wasn't happy and there were rumours that Minister Fudge had threatened to punish Barnabas Cuffe, the editor-in-chief of the Daily Prophet, if the articles didn't stop. The Ministry didn't have much tolerance for people expressing opinions harmful to their policies and Cuffe wasn't exactly known for his strong belief in impartiality. Under his leadership, the Daily Prophet had turned into an instrument of the Ministry and it was nothing less than a wonder that the articles continued to be published.

Malfoy smirked and threw out his chest, as he always did when he knew something that Harry didn't. Harry didn't miss the glances he exchanged with Pansy, Crabbe and Goyle. "What, Malfoy?" he said. "You know something."

"I do, Potter," Malfoy said. "But father wouldn't want me to tell anyone."

"Just like McGonagall wouldn't want me to help you with your homework," Harry reminded.

Malfoy mulled things over for a bit, obviously weighting the satisfaction he'd get from bragging against his father's anger over him revealing some tiny minor detail to a housemate. Harry knew which side would win without any doubt. "I can't tell you a lot," Malfoy whispered conspiratorially. "But you'd have learned in a few months anyway. I overheard father say that Tom Riddle might be back in Britain."

Harry knew very little about Tom Riddle. From the bits and pieces he had managed to put together from various conversations, he knew that Tom Riddle had been an extremely influential politician who thought that the Ministry was useless. He had gained popularity by being very effective in dealing with He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, had almost become the Minister for Magic and had mysteriously disappeared about the time Charlie had defeated the Dark Lord. Some wizards even joked about him being the Dark Lord because of the coincidence of his disappearance and the Dark Lord's defeat, but no one really believed it. Tom Riddle was a half-blood and had lost his wife and son to the Dark Lord; that was a well-known fact. Besides, Harry hadn't ever heard anyone say that Tom Riddle was a raving lunatic so, clearly, he couldn't be the Dark Lord.

"Do you think he'll try to take over the Ministry?" he asked his housemates. They looked at each other, and shrugged. "If he does, I hope he gets rid of the mudbloods," Crabbe said. Harry narrowed his eyes at him, "Don't use that word!"

"Do you have to do that every time someone says 'mudblood'?" Malfoy whined. "It's not like you're some muggle-lover anyway."

"Muggles and muggle-borns are two different things," Harry said. "One has magic, the other doesn't."

"If you don't hate them," Pansy said, "why haven't I seen you talk to any mudbloods?"

Harry had no answer for her. He just wasn't comfortable with muggle-borns. He couldn't tell that to his housemates, though, so he just said, "Don't use that word!"

A few minutes before Hogwarts Express arrived at Platform 9¾ many of the other students in their carriage could be seen wearing what Harry presumed were muggle clothes. Loud colours, ridiculous dresses and tiny shorts made him glad that his father had bought one of the expensive portkeys that allowed them to avoid going out in the muggle world. His housemates made no move to change either, though he wouldn't have minded seeing Pansy in tight muggle wear. Recently he had started noticing that her breasts were more developed than those of the other Slytherin girls in their year and stared at them whenever she wasn't looking. Her smirk told him that she knew, though.

"I have an idea for next year," Harry said while they made their way through the disorderly crowd in the carriage. "You can refuse if you want, I don't care. I want to find a club. For practicing magic. Duelling, mainly. Exercises in class or alone are not enough."

Malfoy had that particular expression that he wore when he was trying to decide if something benefited him or not. "Father would approve," he said in the end. It meant that he agreed. Crabbe and Goyle grunted their agreement a moment later. "I'm in," Daphne said. "But we'll have to get permission from Snape and I think someone else should ask him. Anyone but you, really."

"We should tell Blaise and Nott, too," Pansy said.

When they stepped outside, they promised to write over the summer, bid each other farewell and scattered, each looking for their family. Harry and Charlie had agreed that they should travel in different compartments because they had the whole summer to spend together while they wouldn't see their housemates for another three months. Harry hadn't wanted to travel with his grumpy brother anyway. Charlie had been in a bad mood all week, after he had learned that Professor Quirrell had decided to quit his post and would not be returning the next year. "I was so sure he'd be the first to stay more than a year!" his brother had told him. "And what, he quits to go work for some friend? Imagine the loon we could get next year."

Harry needed no more than a minute to find his family in the crowd, standing in the middle of a circle formed by whispering observers. His father had gained weight over the months they hadn't seen each other but he looked happier than Harry remembered him. Sirius was there beside him, joking with Charlie. The three of them laughed.

Alphard saw him first, gave out a cry of triumph and sprinted toward him. Harry ruffled the little boy's hair. Six-year-old, with his father's curly black hair and his mother's dark eyes, Alphard Black was a ball full of life, laughter and, most of all, curiosity. "How was Hogwarts? Did the Slytherins steal your blood and sell it on Knockturn Alley? Did you do any pranks? Is Dumbledore really crazy? Did your DADA teacher die?" the boy asked in one breath. "Is it true that you have to fight a troll to get sorted? Daddy and Uncle James say you have to but I don't believe them. They also said that beetles are tasty but they were so yucky! Have you eaten beetles? What did you eat at Hogwarts? Was-"

"Al, I think you have to stop talking if you want him to answer even one of these," a laughing girlish voice said and Harry lifted his eyes to see Andromeda, Sirius's nine-year-old eldest child and only daughter, shaking her head at her brother. "Welcome back, Harry," she said and gave him a hug. He grinned. "Thanks, Andy. Where's Leo?"

"He went with mum to buy you presents," Alphard said, then quickly covered his mouth with his palm. Andromeda sighed in exasperation. "We weren't supposed to tell him, Al. Can't you keep just one thing a secret?"

Harry laughed and shook his head. It was good to be home.

Later that night, he shared with his father the things Malfoy had told him and was surprised to learn that he already knew. "Albus is worried," his father said. "I don't know why. There's nothing that suggests that Riddle is anything more or less than what he claims to be – an overly ambitious politician. But if he really is behind these articles, then Albus has every right to be worried about him."

But the articles only say the truth, Harry thought and kept silent.

A/N: This is my first (and, hopefully, last) author's note. I just wanted to address something - this story is, obviously, set in an alternative universe and its main focus is politics. Even in our own world, where people rarely live more than 100 years, an influential politician who is under the age of 40 is considered extremely young. Harry will be, of course, younger than that, but he still won't make a particularly believable politician as a teenager. I decided to give him time to grow while also dealing with my biggest pet peeve in the books - the complete lack of anything resembling an intelligent plan of action or social policy that Voldemort displays. That's why the most important part of the story takes place after Harry graduates from Hogwarts and while I could write chapters and chapters of filler and show you all the spells he masters/the friends he makes/the exams he takes, I decided that it would be best to show you only scenes that will have some impact later on and get to the main story faster. I apologize if time seems to fly too fast now.

Thank you all for the support.

P.S. A reviewer pointed out that Merlin can't possibly have been a student at Hogwarts and I want to say that I'm completely aware of that. But it's what JKR said at Pottermore so, in her universe, Merlin (apparently) lived some time after the founding of Hogwarts. Also keep in mind that the article Daphne is reading has a certain political purpose and that purpose is not to provide objective information.