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Chapter Twenty-One—The Illuminated Path
I don't see the point in remaining silent about your abilities. All it does is encourage people to look down on you. Like that nosy Gryffindor girl you met in the common room. What business does she have telling you not to worry, that you'll get it someday, in that condescending tone?
Harry ignored the voice in his head. It was his own fault that it was there in the first place. Sitting in Transfiguration and carefully crafting the illusion of a beetle around his button didn't require that much concentration, which in turn let him ignore the voice more easily.
If I were an elemental wizard, I would burn anyone who looked sideways at me.
And they would have noticed you and thrown you out, Harry thought, unable to resist the urge to respond. At least the only people I killed were ones where I could disguise the killing as an accident or blame someone else for it.
You are so much more powerful than they are, Riddle immediately responded. So much more interesting.
So much more foolish, to sleep with your diary under my pillow.
Riddle laughed. Harry went back to ignoring him again. For all he knew, talking to Riddle made him more powerful and more able to influence Harry. He was already in almost all of Harry's dreams, smiling at him while the orange moon hovered overhead and the path led into the depths of the Forest.
"Mr. Potter, please show me your Transfiguration."
Harry nodded and wove the illusion around the button again, using light and air. Professor McGonagall smiled approvingly as the image of a beetle with waving legs appeared, and luckily didn't prod it with her wand to test that it was solid.
"Three points to Gryffindor, Mr. Potter," she said, and turned around and walked towards the far side of the classroom, where Anthony Goldstein was struggling with his button.
Wouldn't it be useful to know how to do real Transfiguration? Riddle asked coaxingly. To make it as real as you possibly can, and not just something that you have to fake?
Harry ignored him again as he tapped the illusion with his useless wand and unwove the light and air. He wondered if he could create more complex illusions. Probably, but not the same as actually changing the structure of the thing.
"Do you need some help, Harry?"
That was Hermione. Harry smiled politely at her. "That's all right, Hermione, but I already got the Transfiguration. I don't know if you saw. Professor McGonagall gave me a few points for it."
"But it's already gone off again. Do you need some help in getting it to stay?"
"No, thank you."
She's an interfering Mudblood, snarled Riddle in his head.
Harry struggled not to laugh, but the impulse must have got back to Riddle, because Harry's mind filled with an ominous silence. Harry sat back and looked around the classroom. It seemed that only a few people were still having trouble; Goldstein had just achieved his Transfiguration. That meant Harry was about where he should be. He couldn't seem like he was improving too fast when he had struggled with the subject all last year.
Why were you laughing at me? Riddle snarled.
Hermione's impatience and surety that she knows best have nothing to do with her blood status, Harry told him lazily. Maybe Riddle would shut up if he realized how unsympathetic Harry was with his basic position. Draco Malfoy is twice as arrogant as she is and nowhere near as clever, and he's a pureblood. You don't have anything to say I want to listen to because you base it all on blood status.
To Harry's astonishment, Riddle went silent. Harry blinked a little and then looked down at his button and pretended to focus on Transfiguring it again, while he considered this.
Riddle was smart enough to know when he was beaten, at least. Maybe he would leave Harry's head soon when he realized how boring Harry was.
Not hardly, Riddle snarled.
Harry just smiled and kept "working."
Ginny marched through the Ravenclaw common room and up into the first-year girls' bedroom. Luna blinked up at her from her bed, which was right next to her trunk. Her extremely open and extremely messy trunk.
"They took your shoes again, didn't they?" Ginny snarled.
Luna looked down at her hands. "Nargles," she said softly, but her voice lacked conviction.
It would have been all right with Ginny if Luna had been blaming nargles because she really believed in them. It was what she did at home when she lost things. But it wasn't all right when. Ginny knew very well that the "nargles" where their Housemates and Luna was only saying this because she didn't think anyone would believe her.
"I'm going to make them give them back," Ginny said.
Luna looked at her with wide eyes but said nothing, so Ginny whirled around again and marched down the stairs to the common room.
A third-year girl was displaying Luna's pink shoes there, sticking her feet out and waggling them up and down one by one. Ginny walked straight up to her and punched her in the nose.
The girl went down with a shriek. A friend in the chair next to her shot out of the chair, yelping, "Hey!"
Ginny glared at her, and the girl shrank back. Then Ginny looked down at the girl on the floor, who was clutching a bloody nose, and said coldly, "You stole those shoes from my friend Luna Lovegood. Give them back."
"You broke my nose!" the girl said, or at least Ginny thought that was what she said. She was saying it through her fingers and the bloody nose Ginny had given her, though, so Ginny wasn't sure.
"Yes," she chose to say anyway, and drew her wand and pointed it at the girl. The other girl, the one who'd jumped up, froze where she was reaching out for Ginny. "Because you took my friend's things. Give them back."
"Those aren't Loony Lovegood's shoes," said a boy, uncertainly. Ginny stared at him for a second. She thought he was a second-year and his name was Terry Boot, but it didn't matter that much right now.
"Oh, really? So when I went past a few minutes ago, she wasn't bragging about how she'd stolen them from 'the weird girl?'"
"It was just a bit of fun," said the girl with the bloody nose, getting back to her feet. "You can't hit people, not over a bit of fun—"
Ginny aimed her wand at her. "Give them back."
"Or what? You'll hex me?" The girl was already turning her head towards the fireplace, where a prefect was getting uncertainly to her feet. Ginny did know this one. Lanya Fawley, who had escorted them up to the Tower from dinner the first night. "Fawley, do something!"
"Yes," Ginny said.
"Come on, Weasley," Fawley said, lifting her hands. "It's all just a bit of fun. Nothing to make a fuss over."
"So if someone stole your shoes, you'd just stand around and laugh and smile?" Ginny asked. "Or if someone stole this git's shoes?" She aimed her wand at the girl wearing Luna's shoes again. "Okay. I'll keep that in mind. I'll have to learn wards for my trunk that bite."
"It's—it's not the same thing," Fawley said weakly.
"Who cares about Loony?" the girl with the shoes said sulkily.
"I do," Ginny said, and hexed her.
It was a hex she definitely wasn't supposed to know, one that made welts appear all along someone's legs as though they'd been hit with something. But the twins had taught it to her, and Ginny couldn't think of a better time to use it.
There was lots of shouting then, and Fawley came over and hauled Ginny to the entrance of the Tower by her arm. But Ginny got the chance to look over her shoulder and narrow her eyes at the girl wearing Luna's shoes, who the others were calling Marietta, and she shuddered and looked as if she was going to faint.
So that made it less likely that someone was going to steal Luna's shoes again.
Harry cocked his head when the twins came into the kitchens for their next elemental magic lesson. Blaise and Theo were already there, Blaise sitting with his eyes closed, meditating on wind. Jilly was also sitting on a small stone bench in front of the hearth, flickering fires rotating over her head like balls she wasn't using her hands to juggle.
"What's wrong?" Harry asked, ignoring the way that Theo's hand twitched towards his wand. There obviously was something, given the dark scowls on the twins' faces, but he didn't think Fred and George were about to attack them.
"Flitwick gave Ginny a detention," George said, and flopped into place on a bench. Riddle said something snide in Harry's head about purebloods who weren't graceful. Harry ignored it.
"She hexed a girl for stealing her friend Luna's things," Fred said. "And she'd deserve a detention for that, we agree—"
"The Welt-Littering Hex, couldn't be prouder of her—"
"But Flitwick didn't give detention to the girl who was stealing Luna's things. Apparently he really only gives detentions for—"
"Using or misusing magic," George said, pitching his voice high in what was probably meant to be an imitation of Flitwick's slightly squeaky tones. "Not—"
"Teasing people, calling them Loony, or stealing their things." Fred folded his arms, looking mutinous.
"Do you think it's likely to continue?" Harry asked quietly. He could think of people who would be put off by hexes like the one George had mentioned, but it definitely wouldn't have worked with everyone in Gryffindor.
"Yeah." Fred frowned harder. "Which means that Ginny will keep hexing them or punching them—she punched the girl who stole Luna's shoes first, apparently—and she'll keep getting detentions."
"So we wanted to ask, O Fearless Leader—"
"If Ginny and Luna could learn elemental magic." Fred leaned forwards on his bench and concentrated on Harry as if he was the only person in the room.
That is as it should be, Riddle said, and then threw a private fit when Harry ignored him some more.
Harry blinked. He supposed he could bring Ginny and Luna into this. He still thought fondly of Ginny for giving him the diary because she thought he needed a friend—it wasn't like she could have known what was hiding inside it—and Luna was a gentle girl who seemed harmless. But he didn't know how well they could keep secrets.
He glanced at Theo. Theo inclined his head with a slight shake. Harry focused back on Fred and George. "It doesn't sound like Ginny is good at keeping secrets, and Luna might talk about it the same way she talks about her imaginary creatures. And if Ginny is using it to hex people, how is it going to stay a secret for very long?"
"We'll teach her some hexes that could cover for it," said George eagerly.
"And no one pays attention to lovely Luna anyway," Fred added.
"That's not acceptable," Theo said tightly, and Harry felt a slight shudder coming from him, like his magic was leaking into the air beyond his body with sharp motions. "Not when it puts Harry at risk."
"How would it put him at risk?" Fred looked baffled.
"My parents can't know," Harry said.
"How often do your parents—"
"Come to Hogwarts and talk to our little sister, anyway?"
"And you think they'd never talk to her during the holidays?" Harry shook his head. "It's not that I don't want to help them," he added, when he saw the way Fred and George were looking at him. "And I think it's cruel that people in Ravenclaw are bullying Luna by stealing her things, and I don't have a problem with Ginny hexing or punching people. But if they can't keep it a secret—"
"What would you need to bring them in?" It was Fred who asked. George had a stern mask on his face, but Fred's eyes were gleaming with something different. It was one of the few times that Harry had seen them not looking much alike.
"A vow," Theo said. "Nothing elaborate, just a Silencing Vow. They literally won't be able to tell anyone it's elemental magic. Their voices will give out whenever they try, and their hands will cramp up if they try to write about it."
Fred paused. "That sounds like a Dark spell."
Theo gave them back a smile that caused George to flinch a little. "I can cast it."
"Of course you can, Mr. Nott," Fred said, and Harry started to shift to move in between him and Theo. Theo just put a hand on Harry's shoulder and stood there. Harry sighed and moved back to his original position.
"All right," Harry said. "Approach them about it, and if they agree to the vow, bring them to the kitchen with you for the next lesson. But don't tell them ahead of time what they'll be learning or what they'll have to make the vow about."
"Thank you, O Fearless Leader!"
"Thank you, Prince of Gryffindors!"
This is the kind of loyalty that could make you a leader, Riddle whispered, stirring restlessly. If you only knew.
Harry said nothing, because that was the only way to deal with Riddle—other than what' he'd planned to work on tonight—and just nodded. "Get them to promise to swear the vow first, mind."
"We will," George said, and from the way Fred nodded along with him, Harry was sure that they'd at least propose it to Ginny and Luna that way.
What you plan will not work.
That was exactly the kind of thing Riddle would say, so Harry ignored him as usual. He dropped the diary by the shores of the lake and crouched down in front of it, closing his eyes as he drew on fire.
Do you hear me? It will not work.
Harry opened his eyes with fire churning in his palms and heating his blood. He stood up and extended his hands to point at the diary. The book seemed to shine, although that could have been a trick of the moonlight reflecting off the lake or the fire in Harry's hands shining on it.
It will not—
Harry took a deep breath and unleashed the firestorm.
He'd chosen his spot carefully, a part of the shore that was out of sight of both the castle and Hagrid's hut, and his time carefully, a little after midnight, when the prefects would have gone to bed and the patrolling professors wouldn't be especially alert. He could make this burn as long as he wanted to, and he could calm down any fire that got out of control so that it wouldn't burn anything beyond a small patch of grass.
The flames coiled around the diary and pressed in against the pages. Harry heard what sounded like a distant cry, one that had more than a trace of a hiss to it, and he smiled grimly. He didn't care how long this would take. He was going to destroy it.
But it wouldn't burn.
Harry paced slowly along the edge of the fire, staring. The inner heart of it was a flame so brilliant a white that it was hard to look at directly. Harry knew that the heat was perfect. It could have charred bones to ash with the temperature. In fact, it was crisping the grass and the earth below it and turning it to charcoal as Harry watched.
No, the diary wasn't damaged. Not a page had turned black or crisped. The distant voice still sounded like it was screaming, but no, it wasn't burning.
Harry dismissed the fire with a wave of his fingers. Coldness that had nothing to do with the air around him penetrated his bones and coiled in his chest as he stared at the diary lying quiet on the grass. He knew if he touched it, it would be cool.
I told you, Riddle's voice whispered.
Harry took a slow breath. He had done his best to ignore Riddle, sure that he would be able to destroy the damn book that had housed him. But obviously it wasn't working. He tilted his head a little and murmured, What do you want?
`Why, Harry. Riddle's voice was heavy with something that sounded like delight. Are you ready to bargain?
You can feel exactly what I feel, know exactly what I am, Harry said, and summoned the memories of putting Marcus Flint and the Figgs under the Imperius Curse to the forefront of his mind. You know that I would destroy you if I could. I'm not bargaining because I want to be a leader or want power, whichever you think would be a good idea to corrupt me. I'm bargaining because I don't have a choice.
Riddle was silent for a long moment. When he spoke again, his voice sounded odd. Why did you stand against Lord Voldemort?
He tried to kill Theo.
That's—that's not a reason, Riddle said. He sounded almost shocked. When he offered you the benefit of his power and expertise? When you learned so much from him during the year he was here?
Harry chuckled. He could feel Riddle shifting around the edges of his thoughts, poking at his memories. They lit up briefly as though someone was setting fire to them and watching them not-burn like the diary. He told me my magic was elemental and helped me practice the Imperius Curse. Otherwise? He offered me nothing. He wanted to control me. He tried to kill my brother. He tried to kill Theo. What would I take from him? He would have made me into a slave or killed me when he decided I was inconvenient.
He would have not.
And you know so much about his motives?
Riddle paused for long moments. Then he said in a careful voice, Why are those other boys so important to you?
Theo was my first friend. My brother is my only blood family who's worth anything. Harry didn't bother lying. It wasn't as if he could, with Riddle in his fucking head. I want to save them and protect them. They're loyal to me. I'm loyal to them.
That is a weakness.
Harry laughed aloud, and ignored the way that the air seemed to bend towards him, listening. There was no one near them. His magic would have reacted if there was, and at the moment, it was coiled around his shoulders, hissing like a snake contemplating its own scales.
You think so? You think that having friends and allies you can always depend on is a weakness? That my brother is keeping some of my secrets from my parents, and that's a weakness?
You should show yourself forth in strength. Dazzle your parents and everyone else who would look down on you. Prove that you don't need friends or allies by showing yourself as too powerful to touch.
That's not what I want.
You don't need friends or allies or brothers.
Maybe not. But I want them.
Riddle's voice fell silent. Maybe he had given them up in frustration. Harry stared at the diary, and decided that if he couldn't destroy it with fire, he would try with water.
Drowning it in the lake didn't work, and neither did trying to rip it apart with wind. Harry supposed the only thing he could do was bury it in the earth and hope that no one would find it. He turned and marched into the Forbidden Forest with it.
Do you think that will work?
I think that you're probably too proud to try and appeal to centaurs, and they're the only inhabitants of the forest I know about with hands to write back to you.
Riddle snarled in his head and then fell silent. Harry had the impression of him turning his head to sniff at something in the distance, and knew what he was sensing a moment later.
There was only a sliver of moon overhead, and no direct, clear path in front of him leading into the depths of the forest. But there was a voice in the distance, calling, exactly as he had heard in his dreams.
Help me. Please help me.
A voice in Parseltongue, Harry reminded himself. Even if part of him reached out towards the voice instinctively, wanting to help, thinking about helping a being trapped as he had once been trapped at the Dursleys', it was useless. It was a snake, who would probably attack him for releasing it.
Why do you think that?
Harry had gone back to his policy of not responding to Riddle. He picked a clearing that was several hundred feet from the edge of the forest and knelt, using his magic to scrape a deep hole in far less time than someone else would have been able to. He dropped the diary into it and considered it for a long moment.
An ordinary wizard would be able to put an alarm ward on it that would tell them when someone had disturbed the dirt, Riddle said snidely.
Harry shrugged and tamped down the dirt over the hole, then tugged on a boulder to roll into place over it. It was true that he couldn't be sure someone wouldn't disturb it and would have to come back at some point to check, but the boulder made it less likely that someone would bother. Then Harry used wind to sort the dirt so that it was less obvious the place had been disturbed at all.
You know that Dumbledore is going to figure out you did that?
Why? Harry asked, and then frowned because Riddle had tricked Harry into talking to him.
Riddle snickered. He can read minds. All he has to do is look into your eyes and pull your most recent memories to the surface, and he'll know what you did.
Harry felt something inside him freeze in a way that hadn't happened since last year, when he realized for once and all that the Potters would send him back to the Dursleys. But it didn't shatter. He said, Why hasn't he figured out so far that I had the diary or used elemental magic to kill the troll, then? Or that I used the Imperius Curse to free Theo?
He probably had no reason to look for that. But he could change his mind at any time and probe into your thoughts.
So what should I do?
There is a discipline called Occlumency that can shield your memories. It's difficult to learn. Lucky for you, I know it.
And what do you want in return?
There's the part of you that the Hat wanted to Sort into Slytherin, Riddle said, his voice bubbling like a mistaken potion. I do want something in return, but it should be simple for you do, since I can lead you to the entrance. Have you ever heard of something called the Chamber of Secrets?
Harry seemed more withdrawn in their next Potions lesson than Albus had ever seen him.
"My dear boy, is something wrong?" he asked, leaning forwards across the desk. He had been lecturing about the Draught of Peace—not something Severus would have his students brew for years yet, but connected to the Improved Calming Draught that Harry would be brewing next. Albus saw no reason not to introduce relevant knowledge when it appeared.
Harry finished writing down the sentence he was in the middle of and then glanced up, his eyes going to Fawkes for a moment before returning to alight on the bridge of Albus's nose. "No, sir."
Albus sighed and tried to catch Harry's eyes. That last bit had sounded like an obvious lie, and Harry was more important than most other students, so a bit of Legilimency wouldn't be out of order.
Harry looked down again.
"I cannot help you unless you tell me what is wrong," Albus said, as coaxingly as possible. This would have been easier with Felix, who had known Albus growing up and considered him a family friend. Harry appeared to consider Albus as nothing but the instrument of his suffering in the Muggle world. And while Albus was sorry for that, there were larger considerations involved in putting Harry in that position, including the fact that Harry never should have survived that night. "I know that I did not listen to you last year when you tried to tell me about Professor Quirrell attempting to kill your brother, and I should have, considering he was later involved in the attempted theft of the Philosopher's Stone. I am sorry. Will you not confide what you are concerned about to me now, Harry? We don't want another incident like the one where you lashed out at Professor Snape."
"I promise there won't be, sir."
Harry's voice was heavy with certainty, which intrigued Albus. "Can you tell me why?"
"Half the people who were in the class with me that day have told me how stupid it was and how I can't do things like that."
"I must confess," Albus said quietly, "I had hoped to hear an answer that touched on your regretting it, Harry."
"I do regret it, sir." Now Harry sounded a little surprised.
And that sounded as truth. Albus nodded. Perhaps Harry was less sunken into the mindset of a sulky child than Albus had feared. "Good. Now perhaps we'll return to the Potions lecture?"
He hoped for a small smile from Harry, but Harry only nodded seriously and reached for his quill. Albus sighed. He had known less serious Slytherins.
Perhaps one day, he will have the right mindset.
Ginny stepped slowly into the kitchen. She had expected a prank out of the twins, and had let them know she would hex them if they were lying. But several people were gathered in the kitchen, and although she didn't really know Nott or Zabini at all, the twins being here reassured her a little. So did the house-elf, and Luna walking so close to her back that Ginny could feel her warmth.
She couldn't help disbelieving a little, though, once she had figured out what the twins were probably hinting at and had combined that with her memories of the accidental magic that had saved Luna's life. Elemental wizards and witches were legendary. Why would one just randomly pop up at Hogwarts? And be Felix Potter's older brother, who was weak with a wand the way Mum had clucked about last year?
Harry turned towards her. Ginny started. He looked different here than he had in the corridors or the Great Hall, and now she remembered how he had looked over the summer. When he had somehow saved Luna from falling off a broom.
Mastery of wind would do that, Ginny thought. She cleared her throat. "We have to swear an oath to learn this?"
"Yes," Harry said, and nodded a little off to the side. "Theo."
Nott turned and came towards her. Ginny studied the way he walked, as if he was a stalking cat, and thought she'd like to learn how to do that. If everything went well, maybe they could learn more than elemental magic.
"This is a Silencing Vow," Nott said calmly when he stopped in front of them. "It will help stop you from talking about what you learn here. Your voices will give out whenever you try. Your hands will cramp up if you try to write about it. I would advise you not to attempt to find ways around this. The charm can't technically prevent someone from putting your memories into a Pensieve, but it will try. And you may not like what it does."
Ginny could see the twins looking a little pale from the side of her vision. She didn't care. She nodded. "I want to learn how to protect Luna and do more about protecting myself." Marietta Edgecombe had been hexing Ginny in the back whenever she could in the corridors. Since she kept it out of the common room, the prefects weren't doing anything about it.
And neither was Flitwick. Ginny was pretty disappointed in him. He had said that punching and hexing were worse than insults and stealing, but he hadn't done anything to Edgecombe, which meant Luna's things were still getting stolen. Apparently Edgecombe denying that she'd stolen Luna's shoes and saying she'd just "found" them meant it was her word against Ginny's and their Head of House just gave up.
If he wouldn't do anything, then Ginny would.
"Speak the words after me," Nott said, drawing his wand and swaying it back and forth over Ginny's head. "I promise I will not try to tell anyone else about Harry Potter's elemental magic."
"I promise I will not try to tell anyone else about Harry Potter's elemental magic," Ginny and Luna chorused together, Ginny feeling a bit of smugness that she'd guessed right. Ginny watched as some of the sparks falling from Nott's wand changed color, becoming black and then red. They hovered in front of Ginny and Luna's faces for a second before blazing forwards and settling into their lips and hands.
Ginny jumped, because it stung. Luna just looked wide-eyed back and forth from Harry to Nott and then said, "You have loyal friends."
"Yes," Harry said, smiling for the first time. He looked a lot younger when he did that and a lot more relaxed. "And I hope that I'll be able to count you as two of them." He nodded, and Nott put his wand away and walked over to stand beside Harry. Ginny squinted.
They might be friends, but they didn't stand like it. Nott stood like he was Harry's employee or something, ready to be ordered to do things.
"The first step to mastering elemental magic is meditation."
Ginny narrowed her eyes a little. "That's going to take forever."
Harry didn't move, but a curl of flame rose from his shoulder and slid down to encircle his wrist like he was charming a snake. He smiled at her, and the fire turned into a ball hovering above the center of his palm. Harry flexed his hand, and it became an arrow. Then it turned into a small fiery dragon with real wings. Ginny gasped as she watched the dragon nestle on Harry's shoulder, against his neck.
It didn't appear to take any effort on his part. It was dazzling.
"It takes a while, yeah," Harry said. "But the rewards are worth it."
Luna had already plopped down in the middle of the kitchen floor and closed her eyes with a look of determination on her face. Ginny nodded slowly and sat down beside her.
Yes. If we can do this, it will be more than worth it.
"Do you know anything about the Chamber of Secrets, Theo?"
Theo blinked and looked up in surprise from his Charms homework. Harry was leaning back in his chair on the other side of their usual library table, and the stillness of the air around them meant he had set up his elemental equivalent of Privacy Charms. Theo put his quill down slowly.
"Not a lot," he said. "It was supposedly opened fifty years ago, and a student at the time died. And then the attacks stopped. It can supposedly only be opened by Slytherin's Heir."
"Slytherin's Heir," Harry said softly.
Theo leaned in. He hadn't considered this before, but he thought now that he should have. "Do you think that's you? Since you can speak Parseltongue?"
Harry blinked and looked at him. "Is that supposedly a defining feature of Slytherin's Heirs?"
"Yes," Theo said, as patiently as he could. Harry had worked, in the last few weeks, on improving his marks and doing the homework for classes that the professors assigned instead of exclusively practicing with elemental or wandless magic. But he was still determined to ignore what Theo thought might be his most fascinating kind of magic. "Haven't you looked that up at all? Isn't it interesting to you?"
"It's mostly inconvenient, because animals don't like me."
Theo sighed. "Yes," he repeated. "Yes, it's a defining feature of Slytherin's line. You might be able to find the Chamber of Secrets and open it, at that."
"It seems odd that no one would claim that the Potters were a Slytherin family, given that," Harry said, and toyed with his quill for a second. A wind blew past his hair, and Theo suffered a distant pulse of envy. He was getting better with elemental magic himself, and he suspected his best element would be air, but Harry just used it so easily. "And that no one else in my family has it."
"How close have they ever been to snakes?"
"What does that matter?"
"I mean that perhaps they are Parselmouths, but they don't know that because they don't spend enough time around snakes."
Harry pondered that, but ended up shaking his head. "I don't see how they could be. Owls and other animals act perfectly normal around them."
"I've never heard that Parselmouths have animals react to them the way you do, either."
"So you think it might not be the Parseltongue, but something else?"
Harry sounded so discouraged that Theo blinked at him. "Why do you sound so upset?"
"It could be a Dark curse, the way Lily thought at first, just not one the Healers were prepared to find." Harry tugged on his hair for a moment. "I just—I'm tired of being cursed and special and different, Theo. I wish I was normal."
"Do you? Really?"
Theo had pitched his voice in the low way that he only used when he wanted to attract and hold Harry's attention. Harry blinked at him, and then lowered his head and chuckled, wiping a hand down his face.
"All right, no," he admitted. "I wouldn't be able to protect or teach other people then, and we wouldn't be friends."
Theo just shrugged. He personally thought he would have found something in Harry Potter worth paying attention to even if he hadn't had wandless magic and had just been the Boy-Who-Lived's shy, Muggle-raised brother, but he could see why Harry didn't think that, and it wasn't to Theo's advantage to try and make Harry think that.
What mattered was what they had here and now. Their friendship.
Only much later did Theo think about how strange it was for Harry to be asking about the Chamber of Secrets given that he wasn't interested in researching Parseltongue, and by then it was too late.