Happy birthday, Severus."

"How did you know today was my birthday?" Severus accepts the gift from Harry's hands, but also watches him with a healthy dose of suspicion that Harry can't actually blame him for.

Harry shrugs a little and smiles as he nods at the wrapped gift. "I pay attention."

Severus considers him with another side of wonder, but the gift is holding the majority of his attention. He probably also wonders why Harry gave it to him in the Defense practice room after class.

In truth, it's just because Harry thought Severus might like to savor the gift instead of having to think about the politics of opening a present wrapped in neutral white paper in front of the other Slytherins. But it also has the advantage of giving him a front-row seat to seeing Severus's face soften as he twitches the stirring rod out of the depths of the paper.

"Rune-carved glass," Severus breathes. "It's so expensive..."

Harry nods. The runes enhance the effectiveness of any potion stirred with that kind of rod and they're much in demand, but it takes so much skill to carve the runes into the glass without breaking it that they're also damn expensive. However, Harry has more than enough Galleons. Before he came back, he emptied the Potter vault of all the "gifts" that misguided people have made to him down the years. He didn't touch the main Potter money, so it would still be there for any children James and Lily have, but there's no extra anymore, either.

"Professor Salvare, I can't accept this."

Harry did anticipate this, because Severus hates charity, and he folds Severus's fingers gently around the stirring rod when he holds it out again. "I think you'll find you can."

"But it could be seen as a mark of favoritism...you could get in trouble..."

Harry smiles, marveling that Severus has changed so much his first concern is for another person and not himself. "I cleared it with the Headmaster already, Mr. Prince. And I think you'll find that I have other gifts for the students whose birthdays I know. The ones I don't know will just have to tell me, won't they?"

Severus blinks. "You think you'll be here more than one year, sir?"

"I intend to work on the curse and see if I can defeat it." And that's true, Harry thinks. He has studied the previous ten years' worth of professors who were sent away by the curse; that study just occurred before he came back in time, rather than here. "I think it's anchored to a specific place in the castle itself, but a hidden one, or someone would have noticed it before now. So I need to find and destroy it."

"If anyone can do it, it's you, Professor Salvare."

Harry coughs and clears his throat a little at the shining gaze that Severus turns on him. The last thing he wants is for Severus to make a different stupid, life-altering decision because of his admiration of Harry. "Yes. Well. I hope you enjoy your gift, Mr. Prince. And always remember that you're the only one who can really choose what you want to be."

Severus nods, looking unusually thoughtful, and leaves the classroom, cradling the stirring rod in his hand.

"Protego!"

Harry smiles in genuine triumph as he watches the Shield Charm spring up around Lily. He is, of course, holding back and not using the full strength that he could bring to bear to crack it, but that she's managed one this strong, a little over halfway through the winter term, is impressive. She couldn't do it at all at the beginning. "Excellent, Miss Evans!"

Harry sees Evan Rosier scowl out of the corner of his eye. He keeps his sigh to himself. Rosier always starts when Harry says Lily's name, probably because of the similarity of her last name and his first, and then acts as though he's entrenching himself even further in Muggleborn and Muggle hatred.

Well, Harry has a plan for that, too. He asks Rosier to stay back after class, and Rosier leans on the doorway with his arms folded. He sneers a little when Harry spells the door closed.

"You might as well know that I am not going to join your little cult," he says. "Cult?"

"Whatever you're drawing Prince and Black into. I don't admire you. I know that you must have a Mudblood ancestor."

"Muggleborn mother, actually," Harry says off-handedly. "No one so distant as an ancestor." He waits for the disgust to sink into Rosier's expression, and then nods and draws his wand. "Duel me, Mr. Rosier."

"What?"

"You seem awfully convinced of the superiority of what you call pure blood, and that must include magical superiority, mustn't it?" Harry draws up his power and lets it form around him in a coruscating white aura, visible to the startled student. Most of the time, he keeps his magic quiet, because there's no point in showing off. He doesn't want to alert Voldemort to anything unusual about the new Defense professor, and he doesn't want to frighten his students so badly that they stop trying in class because they think he's just so much better than they are.

Rosier's face pales rapidly. "But—but Severus and Regulus are always saying how good you are —"

"Are you saying you believe them and that it's not a cult?" Harry holds his wand out to the side and smiles winsomely at Rosier.

Rosier wavers for a second, debating between his pride and his good sense. His pride wins, but Harry hopes that's the last time it will for a while. He draws his own wand and says, "I'll show you that a pure-blood can beat a half-blood."

"And if you win the duel?"

Rosier pauses, as if he's so far off-balance that he's not even thinking about the usual wager that accompanies a duel like this. Then he narrows his eyes and sets his feet. "Then I want you to admit in front of the class that I won."

"Very well. And if I win, then I require you never to see the word 'Mudblood' again." "You want me not to call them what they are?"

"Relax," Harry murmurs, even as his magic wells up behind him and spills over his shoulders. "You'll win anyway, right? So you don't have to worry about finer points like the truth of a name."

Rosier hesitates, but then gives in to his own outraged pride and casts the first curse, a Body-Bind.

Harry pivots away from that and blows up the floor at Rosier's feet. He dives for cover with a yelp. Harry sighs at him and raises his voice. "Do you really think that you can impress me by running away, Mr. Rosier?"

Maybe it's the mocking, chiding tone or the way that Harry is acting as though he's still addressing Rosier like a student, but the Slytherin pops up from behind the desk that was sheltering him and replies with a long string of curses. Some of them are well-cast. Some of them are Dark Arts. Some of them are powerful.

Harry partially admires Rosier's skill while letting every single spell earth itself against the shield of brilliant magic that he's carrying around with him. He stands in the middle of the classroom floor without raising his wand to defend himself again and smiles, half-mockingly, at Rosier.

"I—how did you do that?" Rosier whispers.

"Because power doesn't depend on the color of your blood," Harry replies coolly, and then unleashes a single spell.

It's actually only an overpowered Lumos Charm, but Rosier falls back and away from it with a shriek, waving his arms around and then clasping his hands in front of his eyes. Harry folds his arms and regards him with a moment of silence. Rosier lies on the floor, whimpering, his hands still over his eyes.

"I assume that you would concede you have lost the duel?" Harry murmurs.

"Yes. I will not speak the word 'Mudblood' again, sir."

The tone of respect in his voice probably won't last very long, Harry thinks. But he hopes that it'll last long enough, which is to make Rosier think about the promise he made and do something about it that doesn't involve killing.

In the end, Rosier picks up his wand and creeps out of the room without speaking to him again. Harry rolls his eyes. He can only hope that the lesson will be lasting

"I don't really understand why we can't prank Snivellus anymore, Sirius. I mean, you made the

promise that you wouldn't, but we didn't."

Harry Disillusions himself with a simple wave of his wand and leans slowly around the bulk of the tree he's been walking towards. This is the first time that he'll be able to observe Sirius interacting with the other Marauders since the scene in Dumbledore's office. Harry has to admit that he's curious to see how Sirius handles it.

"I don't feel like it," Sirius says, standing with his head down and one foot kicking at the earth.

"That's a stupid excuse and you know it." James has his arms folded and a frown on his face. Harry wonders if he looked that petulant, once upon a time, and then dismisses the wondering; he knows he did. "You don't want to get in trouble with Professor Salvare. But don't you see, we could do the prank and then you wouldn't get in trouble."

"I told you what I was going to do to Prince that night." "Yeah, I know. You've said it five times."

Harry sees Remus, who is standing a little back and watching both Sirius and James intently, wince. He doubts that Remus got over it as well as James apparently has.

"I don't—Professor Salvare sort of shocked me into thinking." Sirius looks up. Harry is standing so that he can only see the profile of his former godfather's face, but it's dark and resolved enough that he looks more adult than he did most of the times Harry saw him in that former life. "I don't really want to hurt people. But that's what was happening when I was running around and letting my temper and my hatred control me. I was really no better than a Slytherin."

Harry frowns a little, but he listens closely to Sirius's voice, and he doesn't think he hears any real hatred behind it. It's just a way of getting James to listen—hopefully. Right now, James is leaning back and staring at Sirius skeptically.

"A prank's a prank. It's not a life-changing bloody situation, Sirius."

"It was for me! Weren't you listening, James? It would have changed Prince's life if it happened. And mine."

"And mine." Remus speaks up now, with a resolve that Harry has never known him to have. He moves forwards so that James has to pay as much attention to him as to Sirius. "Come on, James, if a prank is just a prank, why you are so insistent that we have go on playing them?"

"I don't like targeting Prince," Pettigrew says abruptly. He's been leaning against the tree opposite where Harry is, his hands in his robe pockets as he watches the other Marauders argue. "It was fun when he would turn all red and fight back, but now he just goes and tells the professors, and they believe him. I don't want another detention."

Harry lets out a slow, relieved breath. He's been trying his best to reach Pettigrew along with all the others, but he knows that his own distaste has slowed him down. At least Pettigrew has seen that there is someone who values his input in class, and in fact ignores James when he jumps in to try and show off. Harry is teaching them a lot of things that James hasn't learned, so his contributions aren't always as stunning as he tries to make them.

And that's okay, because he's as much a kid as the rest of them. Harry does acknowledge James when he isn't trying to show off and says something really intelligent. But he's not going to reward bragging.

"Honestly." James looks from one face to another and shakes his head. "Never thought I'd see the day when the Marauders turned into a bunch of bloody cowards."

Sirius tenses for a second, and then snorts. "Yeah, one thing I learned from Professor Salvare is how not to react to words. I didn't do it when my parents called me worse names than that over the bloody winter holiday, and I'm not going to do it now, James."

"But it was just pranking!" James is running his hand through his hair and looking at Sirius imploringly. "It's not like we did anything really wrong."

Harry holds in a snort, understanding now why James sounds so desperate. He doesn't want to admit that he did something wrong and have to start thinking differently of himself, any more than Sirius did at the start of their ethics lessons.

"We would have," Sirius says flatly. Harry can tell from the tilt of his head that he disagrees with James about whether they did anything wrong, but he's also smart enough to know that he won't get away with arguing with his friend about that right now. "Listen, James, I just want to go and eat, okay?"

"And then do what?"

"What about practicing some of those dueling spells that Professor Salvare taught us?"

James wavers for a second, probably because he's understandably a little prejudiced against Harry right now, and then brightens. "Yeah, the one he showed us on Monday was pretty brilliant, wasn't it?"

"Yeah," Sirius says, and then exchanges glances with Remus and Pettigrew as James runs towards the Great Hall. "Thanks for standing with me, you lot."

"I've wanted to stop for a while," Remus says quietly. "Professor Salvare is right. We were going to go too far and really hurt someone."

"And it's not as much fun when you get left out of lots of pranks and then have to listen to James Almighty Potter snickering about how impressed he is with himself," Pettigrew mutters, rolling his eyes.

"We ought to prank him," Sirius mutters. Pettigrew's eyes gleam. "I'm game."

"We just said we were going to stop," Sirius mutters, but the protest is half-hearted, and Pettigrew throws his arm around one of his shoulders and Remus grasps the other.

"But we can have just one more...just one..." Harry smiles, and slips away.

"Professor Salvare?"

Regulus's voice is shaking a little. Harry stands up at once, concerned. He was marking essays, but he can always put those aside when a student seeks him out in his office, and he can tell from the way Regulus looks that he needs help, badly. There's a long streak of blood down the side of his left arm, and he's limping as he comes into Harry's office and falls heavily onto the stool.

"What happened to you, Regulus?" Harry scolds himself a second later for slipping into use of Regulus's first name, but Regulus is sitting with his head drooping a way that says he doesn't resent it. Maybe even needs it.

"I told Mother and Father that I wouldn't be taking the Dark Lord's brand in a year the way they want me to," Regulus whispers. "They cursed me. They—I barely got through the Floo in time..."

Of course. That's why Harry stared like an idiot for a minute when he saw Regulus in the

doorframe. The students are technically supposed to be on Easter holiday at the moment, and not return until tomorrow. Harry was surprised to see a student in the castle at all.

"Can I—can you open the Slytherin common room for me, as a professor?" Regulus leans back on the stool and hisses in slight pain as Harry treats the cut on his arm. "I don't think that I'll be able to get in there on my own when the wall is spelled shut over the holiday."

"Of course. Or I can summon Professor Slughorn, if you would feel more comfortable with him."

Regulus snorts. "He's never seen me as anything but a Black, sir. You were the first one who found value in me beyond that. I trust you."

Harry nods. "Very well. And—Mr. Black. I am sorry about your family."

Regulus looks at the floor for a second, then takes a deep breath. "It doesn't matter. I won't let it matter. I hoped they would accept it, but—they don't define me. I'm not a Black the way that Professor Slughorn always tries to tell me I am."

Harry smiles at him. "That's right. We are more than our names."

"You're more than your name, aren't you?" Regulus mutters, squinting at him. "Even though you chose Salvare on purpose. I know some Latin, of course."

"Of course," Harry says. "And I'm afraid that I can't comment on that, Mr. Black. It would mean telling you some things that no student should know."

Regulus looks offended. "I would never betray your secrets, Professor. You ought to know that."

"It has nothing to do with that," Harry says, with a quietness that makes Regulus sit back and seems to reassure him. "It has to do with children too young carrying burdens they aren't meant to bear. Your family has already asked you to do enough of that, Mr. Black. I won't."

Regulus hesitates, then nods. "All right, sir." He watches as Harry heals the bruising on his leg, and then adds, "Did you hear that most of the other Slytherins are turning their backs on the Dark Lord, as well?"

Harry's heart jumps, but he's glad that he's looking down, so that he doesn't have to look up and into Regulus's eyes. "That is wonderful news. Thank you for sharing it with me, Mr. Black."

"Do you know what they're going to do instead?"

Harry looks up and shakes his head. He sometimes comes upon a tight cluster of older Slytherins in a corridor, who always shut up when they see him, but he's deliberately tried to stay out of it. "They haven't shared their plans with me."

Regulus hides a smile and stands. "Then I'll let them share it with you, sir. Good night. Thank you."

"I'm sorry that you were injured because of my advice, Mr. Black."

"Oh, stop, professor. You say that we should make our decisions and own them. It was my decision to stand up to my family right then. I could have kept quiet and slipped away during the summer. I know Sirius is planning to do that. But I didn't want that. You just gave me the courage to do it. You didn't hurt me."

Harry holds Regulus's eyes for a second and then nods in relief when he can see that he means what he says. It's good to know that he didn't bring someone more pain by trying to help them.

"Good night, Mr. Black" he says, and sees Regulus's answering smile before he slips out of Harry's office. Harry leans back and considers the ceiling thoughtfully. He really did expect one of history's strikes before now. It doesn't seem right that it should let everything happen on an alternative course without moving to prevent it...

The chime sounds from the walls.

Harry narrows his eyes, and stands up to return to the essays, and, after that, his search of the school for the place where the curse on the Defense position is anchored.

Harry shakes his head with a snort as he examines the banister in front of him. He finally located the curse, but only because he's been searching for weeks and heightening his senses with spells all the while. Voldemort was clever for once, and he put it right where people would never notice it but have to pass it every day, giving it more chances to affect the Defense professor.

The banister of the Grand Staircase. "What are you doing, Professor Salvare?"

That's Severus, staring up at him in what looks like apprehension from the floor below. There are lots of students there, in fact, coming out of the Great Hall as dinner ends. Harry might or might not have planned that.

"Destroying the curse that destroyed my predecessors," Harry says, and brings his wand down. "Nihil!"

The countercurse is not exactly a countercurse, because Harry would have to study for much longer to understand the exact spell Voldemort used on the Defense position, but that doesn't matter. What matters, most of all, is that he studied the right word to use, and the right wand movement, long before he left the Department of Mysteries to come here.

The countercurse surrounds the banister with black light, and then rises up in what looks almost like a reverse waterfall. Students gasp and cry out, but Harry ignores them, just surrounding the magic with a barrier of red light so that it can't spread and harm anyone. But if he's right, it should only destroy what it's directed at.

And that's exactly what happens. The banister chunk that was cursed goes flying into the air, and then splits further and further apart, into tiny, glowing atoms that then scatter. Harry grins. He doesn't think he'll tell anyone who knows anything about Muggles that what he did was the nearest thing to a nuclear explosion.

He looks down to find that he has a silent, respectful audience. Well, Dumbledore is shaking his head at Harry a little chidingly—while smiling—and Horace is gaping and Minerva looks as if she's about to start scolding him, but what matters is the fact that Gryffindors and Slytherins are standing together, staring at him, and then they start to applaud.

And one of them is Evan Rosier, who so disdained him a few months ago, and one of them is Severus, who seems to have grown beyond his hero-worship to simply appreciate what Harry did here, and one of them is James, who is grinning like this is all some sort of grand prank. Regulus waves madly from the back of the crowd. Harry waves back.

He does see some of the older pure-blood Slytherins towards the back of the group, like Tiberius Wilkes, nodding deliberately to each other. Harry narrows his eyes a little. Well, if they have some plan to ambush him and deliver him to Voldemort, or even just hurt the students under his protection, he'll deal with it when it manifests.

Harry leans back in his chair and sips mulled wine from a silver cup that the house-elves brought him, even though the weather is warm enough that by now, it should really be something other than mulled wine. Well, today Lily accepted one of James's invitations to Hogsmeade. Things are changing, Harry thinks, and with only a few weeks left until the OWL and NEWT exams, he might not have time after today to celebrate how much.

But right now, he thinks he's allowed to drink a toast to the people who will no longer be his parents, if he wants to.

A brisk knock sounds on the door, and Harry grimaces. Of course, he thought about toasting and celebrating, and this is what happened. He sighs and sits up. "Come in."

He's not surprised when Severus walks into the room, but he is surprised to see Regulus behind him, and Evan Rosier, and Tiberius Wilkes, and some of the sixth- and seventh-year Slytherins who seem to have been whispering the most about him since he destroyed the curse on the Defense position. "Gentlemen. And ladies," he adds, seeing Andromeda near the back of the group. That puzzles him, since she graduated a while ago. "What can I do for you?'

Severus glances around. People grumble and shift, but no one actually disagrees with the fact that he's elected himself speaker. Severus grins in satisfaction—an expression that Harry never saw on his face before this—and draws his wand.

Harry fights the impulse to snap up his magic around himself the way he did in the duel with Rosier. The last thing he wants to make it seem like is that he doesn't trust them. "Yes, Mr. Prince?"

Severus kneels, shocking Harry utterly. Behind him and around him, the other Slytherins draw their wands and kneel, too. Harry stares at their faces, the expressions of determination and—

Awe. And Severus's hero-worship. And Regulus's narrow-eyed look that he used when he said that he would never betray Harry's secrets.

Oh, shit.

Harry sits up, while the smug chime rings from the walls. Perhaps he can head this off before it gets started, history's counter-strike. It's replacing Voldemort with him as the young Slytherins' leader.

"You know that I've taught you to stand up for yourselves," he says hurriedly. "To honor something other than your names and your purity of blood. You know that blood purity doesn't matter next to—"

"Next to chosen allegiances, that's right, sir." Severus's gaze never wavers. "And we've chosen you, the man who has the most power of anyone in this school and taught us right from wrong and never scorned us even though the Dark Lord came from our House. The one who gave us refuge from our pasts and our families and taught us honor."

"The one who taught us to make our own decisions," Regulus pipes up, and damn him, he's

grinning. "It's our decision to follow you, Professor Salvare."

"It's not an honor I can accept," Harry begins in a frosty tone.

And then he stops. As though he can see the future, as though he's had a vision of it the way he finally had the vision of what could stop the war when he was planning to come back, he knows what will happen if he refuses them.

The more easily-offended ones like Wilkes and Rosier will drift away and probably become Death Eaters after all. Regulus will feel abandoned and like he can trust no one, and might die battling alone. Severus will draw himself back and start asking if Harry's decisions were trustworthy ones, and turn his back on adults again—adults who never even put on a show of standing up for him.

History is fragile, but it's also strong. It will force these young men and women back into the same positions Harry came to save them from.

Harry takes a deep breath and says, "I won't be a lord. I won't brand you. I won't claim your allegiance the way the Dark Lord does."

"We don't want that, or we wouldn't be here," Wilkes says in a patient voice. "We choose to give our allegiance, and that's what we want. Someone who leads us but lets us think for ourselves."

"Someone who's going to help us use our power to make things better for everyone," Regulus says. "You know. The way you once told me."

Harry wants to bang his head into something. He understands the meaning of the chime that night he spoke with Regulus, now. Regulus was understanding "we" to be "you and me," not "everyone who has the same kind of power."

Harry sighs and reaches out to claim Severus's wand. Severus smiles and bows his head. "I do offer my freely-chosen allegiance to Henry Salvare," he begins. "To fight beside him, to fight with him, to keep my promises to him, to do him honor..."

And Harry knows he will make the same promises back, and they will be binding. He looks across the sea of eager, expectant young faces, and sighs a little.

Well. He came back to teach them to stand on their own, and he gave them another leader to follow, instead. But at least they're stubborn enough to ask questions and think about the answers, and some of them have rejected opinions they grew up with all their lives.

It will have to be enough.