CoS 4
The summer heat faded away as autumn replaced it, and Hogwarts students adorned their scarves to protect against the gradually falling temperatures. The colder climate didn't hinder anyone from venturing outside the ancient castle they lived in.
In fact, the weekend saw a drastic increase in people travelling down the cobblestone road to Hogsmeade. Despite the grey clouds blanketing the sky, it was bustling with life outside. Pouches full of knuts, sickles, and galleons jiggled and clinked loudly with the bounce of its owners' steps. Everyone was skipping to the cozy magical village on their first Hogsmeade trip of the year.
Meanwhile, back inside the giant school, a lone third year student sat frustratedly on the floor with a wooden scrubber in hand. The boy was in a room that was filled to the brim with cauldrons of various shapes and sizes. And it was this boy's job to, meticulously and painstakingly, clean every one of them with the stupidly ineffective old brush.
It was the worst type of torture that a wizard at Hogwarts could face. Harry had heard horror stories about students having to clean the hunks of metal from morning to night and returning with inflamed numb hands. Professor McGonagall had sent Harry, without an ounce of hesitation, to suffer this fate, all because he simply tried to sneak out to Hogsmeade!
He might not have had a signed form, but that was only because he ran away from his summer prison. It wasn't like he could just stay at the Dursley's after turning his Uncle's sister into a human balloon. He had tried getting Snape to sign his form instead but was told to stop "needlessly pestering" his head of house.
In a last ditch effort to not miss out on an experience that had been talked up since first year, Harry decided to try go there even if they the school wouldn't allow him to. The desperate boy had managed to sneak past Filch and the prefects easily, thanks to the disillusionment charm, but McGonagall caught onto Harry almost immediately. A long fiery scolding had ensued, from which he couldn't remember a single word. And then, he had been sent to this demonic detention.
Harry sighed as he felt the palm of his hand, holding tightly onto the hard scrubber, bloat painfully as blisters formed. Looking at the next cauldron in line, feelings of hatred for a certain bumbling idiot of a Gryffindor welled up inside of Harry. It was a charred and grimy cauldron, mottled with sticky orange foam inside and out. Definitely another one of Neville Longbottom's works of art. Longbottom's cauldrons were by far the most time consuming and tedious ones to clean. And Harry had already killed himself cleaning at least a dozen of that hopeless moron's leftovers from potions.
The messy haired boy could almost feel his brain cells permanently shutting down after the second hour of repeatedly scrubbing cauldrons. He scrubbed the surface, wiped it down with soapy water, and then threw them aside, away from the unclean pile. And then he did it again, and again, and again.
"Screw. This," barked out Harry, finding in front of him yet another hideously mottled cauldron with fingerprints of Longbottom all over it. Harry flung the wooden scrubber into the brick wall, causing it to splinter apart into a million pieces. The fact that he would definitely be grilled for doing that didn't even register in Harry's mind as he pulled his quill out of his robe.
Using magic during detention was barred by all the professors. This was a sure fire way to get students to truly suffer through detention; however, Harry had found himself a convenient loophole. Magic that is used would leave a mark on the wand core which could be traced back to the user, but runes didn't necessarily need a wand to use. Therefore, Harry concluded that he could use runic magic and not be found out, nor punished, for doing so.
In order to successfully activate the rune, you simply needed to pour magic into the magic circle that has been drawn. The most time efficient way was to expel magic from your wand and manipulate it into becoming the runes you wanted. However, according to Babbling, you could also use magical chalk or a magic quill to draw the runes by hand. Harry had snuck a magic quill inside his robe's breast pocket for this reason specifically.
Before using the makeshift wand, the wizard tried to recall the lessons Babbling had taught, since she had returned from her stay at the infirmary, about runic spells. There were three ways that a person could use Ancient Runes: warding, enchanting, and spells. Runic spells were what Professor Babbling had demonstrated on the first day of class.
The quill's tip glowed, as Harry concentrated his magic there. Then he fluidly moved his fingers, leaving behind a trail of visible magic, in order to draw the water rune on the air. After confirming that he hadn't drawn anything incorrectly, he injected his magic into the rune to activate it. It began glowing a brilliant turquoise, but then it faded away as quickly as it appeared.
Harry wasn't surprised at the result. He would have been more worried if something had happened. Runic spells which used only one rune wouldn't—or, more accurately, couldn't—create anything. One rune was simply too vague, professor Babbling had explained, so it's intent wasn't strong enough to cause a magical reaction. Which was why there needed to be support runes, laying the rules out, around the base rune. Harry drew the rune again, but this time began drawing smaller runes circling the elvish character for water. Spray. Forward. Jet. Harry bit his bottom lip in absolute concentration, trying his best to remember the proper runes to draw around the base rune.
Harry finished drawing the support ring and fed his magic into the runic array. His breath caught in his chest as he waited in anticipation. If this worked, it would be Harry's first time using a runic spell without using a reference. The spell did activate, meaning that most runes were drawn properly. Not in the way Harry intended though. An explosion of water slapped him in the face. He roughly fell, after losing his footing, onto the cold hard cement floor, now pooled with liquid, dirt, and the strange byproducts of created potions.
At least the spell had activated, Harry thought in defeat, it had been his best effort so far. He reluctantly whipped out a small piece of parchment stashed inside of his satchel, which sat in the corner of the dimly lit room. The parchment opened to what the runic array was supposed to look like. Babbling had assigned the class to learn this spell without reference before Christmas break, so it wasn't like Harry was short on time, but he still wanted to learn it as soon as possible. If he spent too much time dawdling at the basic stuff then it would be nigh impossible for him master the more complex spells.
After a a quick once-over of the correct array, Harry put the parchment inside his robes and prepared himself. Once again, he drew the runic array, finishing much faster this time. Upon activation, it glowed turquoise again and activated again. This time, a large strong jet of water exited the rune and hit the dirty cauldrons powerfully. The forceful jet's pressure threw the cauldrons all away, into a corner of the room, where they couldn't move any further. The creator of that jet had been him—Harry, a third year. He had used a runic spell for the first time in his life, two months ahead of schedule. But he didn't feel very proud too long. He couldn't allow himself to feel proud for achieving something so easy.
Another aspect of runic spells was that it ate up a lot of magic. An average wizard would only be able to use a couple dozen average runic spells before they reached magical exhaustion. For Harry, even that one spell, two spells counting the failed one, had drained most of his magic. The boy wizard wobbled as he walked to the door, feet splashing the completely flooded floor of the room.
Harry exited the room before realizing that he didn't know a drying charm. Meaning that he would be hearing an earful soon, definitely from McGonagall, when the detention room was found looking as if a hurricane had passed through. Leaving the issue for another day, the boy began his trek, utterly drenched from head to toe, back to the mostly deserted and chilly Slytherin common room.
Mumbling the password to a plain dark wall, the exhausted third year, shivering from now being in the chilly dungeon, walked into the common room. Wet squelches from his shoes hitting the now marble floor made his presence known to a group of kids in the grand room, making the rambunctious laughter coming from them die down. Parkinson and her gang, Harry recognized, were all surrounding a cowering figure, snickering as they lobbed a small book to each other. It was apparent, at first sight, that the poor kid in the middle was getting bullied.
The small trembling boy raised his head in confusion and looked Harry's way. Their eyes met, and Harry could almost hear the cry for help coming from his teary visage. The boy's face felt familiar, almost as if they had met somewhere before. Harry shook his head and looked away before he let his emotions build up, killing the reckless urge to help the poor kid that had grown. He began walking towards the stairs down to his room but was called out to.
"How come you're soaked, Potter? You're making the common room wet," the overly sweet, nasally voice of Parkinson asked. Harry's pace slowed. The dirty blond haired girl, a head shorter than him, strutted towards him nonchalantly, as if she hadn't just been harassing a first year a few moments prior.
"Detention went a bit awry—let's just say," Harry mumbled his answer and attempted to walk past Parkinson. The longer he stayed there, the more likely it was that he would do something he would regret. However, Parkinson stepped in front of him, jerking him to a stop.
"Right, I heard you tried sneaking out," Parkinson said in an appraising tone, giving him a once over.
"What? Didn't expect the boy-who-lived to do something so rebellious?" snarked Harry, annoyance bubbling out from within him.
"No, in fact, I didn't," airily replied Parkinson. She took out her wand and Harry's immediately stiffened up, drawing his own in return. "Don't worry, Potter, I'm not going to bite you."
A warm sensation breezed over his body, and his drenched clothes dried up. Her action surprised him, causing him to stare at the short girl dumbfounded. She just grinned at him and went back to her lackeys. While he appreciated her help with the drying spell, it didn't change the fact that she was about to go and harass someone two years younger than her.
His conflicting feelings were clashing but it didn't matter. No matter how much he wanted to step in and stop the assholes, he couldn't. He couldn't get involved. Following your impulses and acting like a hero were for stupid Gryffindors. Slytherins had to consider their every move and how it would affect their future. To be strong, you had to be smart. That's how it worked in Slytherin. If Harry were to intervene and help the poor kid being bullied then it would paint a giant target on his back.
Most of the pure bloods in Slytherin held not-so-positive regards for Harry, the person who defeated Voldemort, and had made sure to make his life as difficult as possible during first year. But they tolerated him for the time being because they thought he might be a supporter of pureblood supremacy, after learning of him being a parseltongue and possibly the hier of Slytherin. And Harry desperately needed to in to be in that grey area, remaining as neutral as possible, for him to stay an outcast and not end up like the kid being bullied.
He would be tormented endlessly, for years to come, if he chose to side against the purebloods, since they had a stranglehold on power in Slytherin. The smartest thing to do for his own survival was to walk away, not raising a finger at the injustice. The status quo had to preserved. It was the smartest thing to do. It was the Slytherin thing to do.
A dull painful thud resounded through the spacious room, followed by a hoarse wheeze. Harry shut out his heart and walked down to his room. Not even bothering to turn on the lantern, he crumbled onto the squeaky mattress. He felt drained.
His goal was to become great. And in order to achieve greatness in Slytherin, this was the way things had to be. He was already alone in this tumultuous house; not a single person could be called his friend. Without a single ally to have his back, he couldn't afford to make dangerous enemies for the sake of some random kid.
"I had to leave that kid," Harry muttered into his pillow, "it's what a true Slytherin would do."
His words didn't magically make him come to terms with his actions. In fact, he felt even more guilt well up inside him. Harry released a long breath and tried, in vain, to think about something else. Eventually, all his worrying and thinking, while he tossed and turned in bed, tired out his brain and he fell asleep, forgetting about the feast completely.
