On Punching Gods and Absentee Dads
Enigmaris
Chapter 46: Weight Training
Summary:
Autumn starts passing Harry by quicker and quicker, the world moves forwards churning closer and closer to a future that not even Frigga could predict.
Notes:
Hey ya'll! Welcome to February! January was a heck of a year wasn't it? Please enjoy this update! I wanted to speed things up so we could have a good Christmas update or two. I was in the mood for some Weasley Sweaters.
Chapter Text
Hogwarts had always been somewhat divided.
It was not that the concept of houses was flawed, no. That was a fine system to encourage healthy competition between students as well as provide a support system for students who were far from home for the first time.
On paper, Hogwarts should have been unified.
And yet.
Well the founders had never really been all that unified themselves had they? Godric and Salazar loved nothing more than to tear at each other. Sometimes it seemed their arguments were truly friendly and then other times their fights would end in blood and duels and bitter silences that wouldn't end until Helga made them make up again. Rowena was always ¾ in the future and only ¼ in the present. Her mind was always focused on a place where her problems had been solved or put to rest and she was more concerned with the problems of people who would not be born for centuries more.
Perhaps because their problems were easier for her to deal with as they didn't actually exist yet.
Either way Rowena, when she was present, could switch being supportive and level headed and being almost manic with new ideas and systems. She'd float into the feasting hall and explain she'd been up all night enchanting the staircases by hand so that they'd move. It had to be done for a reason she could not elaborate on but would not be relevant until long after all of them were dead and no why should she have to ask for permission to do something so utterly necessary?
Helga was the only one amongst them who had a lick of sense but even then, when faced with her three impossible friends, there was only so much the healer could do.
Things were unified to a point at the beginning. Yes cracks were starting to form but all four of them were able to consistently patch them up to keep the school running. But then there had been that final fight and Salazar had left in a huff and the unity of the school had been…well quite shattered. And it was as if that shattering had imprinted itself on the very stones of the castle.
Salazar's students remembered the cruel words Godric had spat at their teacher and taught the incoming students who joined them not to bother with those Gryffindors over there and Godric's students remembered how desperately sad their teacher had been after Salazar had left and told the new incoming students that Salazar was quite the traitor. And then the new students taught the same thing to the next batch and those lessons morphed from don't trust Salazar and don't trust Godric to don't trust that house.
Hufflepuffs remained mostly neutral but would often be pulled into one side of the conflict or the other depending on the politics at the time.
Ravenclaws would often rip themselves apart in academic debate over which house was better and end up not really siding with anyone at all.
Certainly, there were times over the school's 1000-year history where things were not so bad. In times of peace and prosperity it seemed as if the fractures had sealed themselves up but then without much warning at all the schism would form again and the rivalry would erupt as if it had never stopped at all. During war it got oh so much worse. What house you were sorted in determined what side of any war you'd fight, good or bad.
Slytherins weren't always the bad guys.
Neither were Gryffindors always the heroes.
The only constant was that they always struggled to get along.
Sure you'd have exceptions every year, a few students making an attempt to befriend people from other houses, but that was always on a case by case basis and often those friendships would be torn apart at the seams due to outside pressure.
Every generation someone tried to fix it of course but they always tried to start from the top. Push the professors to work towards unity, or talk to the oldest students who were about to leave about how perhaps they should stop fighting with one another even though those students were far too focused on their exams to consider the socio-political issues that could be solved if they all put down their notes and held hands for awhile.
Which is what made Harry Potter's strategy so incredibly unique.
Harry wasn't targeting individuals in other houses he thought he could be friends with he was targeting every single person in the school. Harry wasn't targeting the professors or the administration, he didn't really much care what the headmaster did for all sorts of reasons. Harry wasn't trying to convince the 7th years to change themselves and distort everything they'd learnt in the past seven years to fit his agenda.
No.
No Harry had decided to start from the ground and work up. With his friends by his side and while feeling like he had nothing to lose, Harry had become the mentor for every single first year and a large majority of the second years at Hogwarts. It was revolutionary.
It was also the thing that Harry was focusing most of his energy on these days.
If someone were to ask Harry what it was like to be a horcrux he'd probably tell them that it was none of their business. If someone he trusted asked him, Harry would probably mumble about how it didn't hurt like it used to and while he didn't like it, he wasn't suffering or anything. If someone, anyone, managed to get the real answer out of him, it would probably sound something like this.
He felt as if he had weights on his legs.
His Uncle Vernon had bought these ankle weight things when Harry was 7, part of his New Year Resolution to get fit. For the three days that Vernon 'jogged' (calling what he did jogging was not at all accurate), he'd put on these black bands, tight around his ankles as a form of resistance training. Each one of the bands weighed about two and half kilograms and was meant to increase the amount of work Vernon did for each stride.
Harry had been the one who had to put them away when Vernon gave up. They'd been stuffed into his cupboard and Harry had put them on out of curiosity one afternoon. The weight around his feet was odd, it wasn't impossible to walk with them, but the sensation of something pulling down on his feet was difficult to describe. Petunia had almost caught him wearing them when she sent him outside to mow the lawn. Harry had been forced to keep the weights on for the entire day so that no one would know he'd been playing with things that didn't belong to him.
He'd mowed the lawn, pruned the bushes, pulled up weeds, cleaned the windows, and emptied out the gutters all while wearing the weights beneath his too large jeans.
Eventually he'd gotten used to the weight, he forgot it was even there, as if his brain had decided that the weights were there to stay and there wasn't any point in bothering with sensing them anymore. When the day had been over and Harry had been able to take the weights off, his feet had felt almost painfully light. His muscles were now overcompensating with every step and he worried he'd knee himself in the gut.
That wasn't even mentioning how sore his legs had been.
So, Harry felt like the horcrux was just like those ankle weights, a far more malicious version of it at least. And just like with his Aunt Petunia that summer day, Harry couldn't take it off. He knew there was something attached to him, something that was not meant for him, some painful thing that was genuinely pushing down on him. But he couldn't really feel it, his body had gotten used to the weight, the pressure. It was normal.
It shouldn't be normal.
But Harry didn't know what life was without it. He didn't know how his soul was always meant to feel. He had only ever experienced the world with Voldemort's soul stuck to him, the weight of a malignant tumor. Everyone in his life knew what it meant to have their soul be their own but not Harry. No one else could imagine what he was feeling either because well…who knew what their soul actually felt like anyway?
His friends just felt like themselves.
Harry was aware that what he felt wasn't himself, it was him plus Voldemort.
Harry didn't even know what Harry felt like.
Idunn didn't either, she explained. She could not see what shape his soul would take if he was ever free of Voldemort. No one knew what sort of thing Harry's soul was meant to be.
All they knew was what he was with the weight.
And just like that summer day with those stupid weights, Harry just had to keep going and doing what had to be done. He had to pretend he wasn't being weighed down, that he wasn't being tethered by something against his will. He had to do his homework and go to class with the knowledge in the back his mind that he had that thing stuck to him. He had to put together his house's quidditch team and practice for their games all the while trying his best to ignore the imagined pressure on his forehead.
And he had to run the DA without constantly scratching at his scar.
So that's what he did.
He played the first Quidditch game of the season against Slytherin, the Avengers watching in disguise in the stands, and he won against Draco.
He turned in his homework on time, he even did the extra reading Hermione kept suggesting he do.
He went to his weekly training with Tyr and he practiced all the moves and promised to be more aggressive in his fighting.
He returned the sword to the goblins and signed a contract swearing that he would destroy all of the horcruxes and kill Voldemort as payment for use of the sword. The goblins requested Harry keep the sword on his person and so Harry now had to walk around with the sword (in a scabbard) attached to his back.
He ran the DA sessions, taught first years how to do their charms and how to defend themselves. He kept fights from breaking out amongst older students. He even removed a couple Dark Marks from 7th years who'd been marked against their wills and wanted out. (Draco had done the background interrogation on those Slytherins for Harry and Harry decided to trust his judgement on that one). He offered help to anyone who wanted it and in the end did more good for the unity of the school than anyone before him had ever dreamed of.
He scratched at his scar when he thought no one would notice.
The school began to knit itself together as a cohesive whole while Harry wasn't looking. Winter came before he even knew it, snow covering the grounds as students had snowball fights picking teams based on friendships and not on houses. First years who hadn't been indoctrinated into the 'your house first' mindset were more concerned with spending time with their friends and learning magic than they were the war or with blood purity. Oh, sure there were some first years who'd been raised on the pure blood ideology but within the first two months of school they'd dropped it because it wasn't very fun to tell your new muggleborn friends that their parents thought they were scum.
So suddenly Voldemort had his incoming recruits swiped out from under his feet. Being a Death Eater wasn't cool.
Harry Potter was cool.
Somehow Harry didn't notice this. Draco was the one who explained to him in cutting tones that Harry had become handsome and popular.
"They're all blushing because you're attractive, you idiot."
"Huh."
Harry still felt like scratching his scar but the blush on his cheeks was a nice distraction.
"Really Potter, I can't believe you couldn't tell. No one gets that fit over the summer without noticing."
"Well um…"
"Doesn't matter. We're using it as part of the branding."
"Branding?"
"Yes. For our side." Draco said. "Honestly, you're not Dumbledore's and you're not the Dark Lord's. You're your own side. We need a good brand for people to follow and your face is what we're using. Now the next time you're out if you could make sure to smile so that they get good pictures of you for the papers I'd be appreciative."
"You're mental."
"No. I'm pragmatic. You've already got the Americans, the Avengers, Asgard, and somehow the goblins on your side."
"I'm pretty sure the goblins just see me as the least objectionable."
"Something I cannot relate to I assure you." Draco sneered. "You've managed to convince a majority of the school that you're a better option than either of the other two, that'll spread back when everyone goes home for Christmas. We need to cement what your side represents before then."
"Justice? Equality? Safety?"
"Boring." Draco said waving a hand as if to dismiss it. "The others claim the same thing for their sides too. What we need is something neither have."
"And that is?"
"I believe your muggle friend Stark called it Sex Appeal."
"I hate you." Harry said. "I'm not going to go out and take pictures. I'm not Lockhart."
"Lockhart was effective. We should be too. The public needs a reason to like you."
"Saving them isn't enough?"
"Was it before?"
Draco like everyone else in his life was making plans for the future war that didn't involve him dying. They were all in denial about the real possibility of the horcrux being irremovable. Harry listened and agreed to all of their plans, he wanted to hope. He did. He didn't want to die.
But there was a part of him that…
Well he couldn't help but wonder if he had to.
It wasn't that Dumbledore was certain of it. It was the look in Idunn's eyes when she reported that her first test on the Hufflepuff cup had resulted in the destruction of the cup. It was the tension in his dad's shoulders as he took the diadem they'd found in the castle up to her to test.
(And wasn't that just a turn up? Finding one of Voldemort's horcruxes in the school, not even hidden, just in the room of requirement, waiting for them.)
Harry's fear lay in how many books Hermione consumed. It was in Ron's outlandish theories. It was in Tyr's voice as the man gave him advice on how to be brave, something he'd never done before. It was how Frigga weaved and reweaved on her loom, looking and begging for something that she could not find. It was in Odin's hands, as the man gifted Harry a crest to wear that proclaimed him part of the royal family, something he shouldn't have received until he was an adult.
What if he had to die?
Was he willing to do that? To go that far? To lose that much?
He had just discovered how wonderful life could be. He'd found family and pockets and sparks of joy. In just one summer he'd changed from a frightened angry kid to a proud young man ready to win this war. He had so much to lose now. Things he'd never even imagined having.
Could he give it all up?
Could he give up his dad's hugs and Thor's booming voice? Could he give up Tyr's lessons and Quidditch games? Could he say goodbye to his friends, the friends he'd tied his heart to in a magic vow?
More importantly could he live in this world for long with the knowledge of the weight he carried.
Harry had no one to talk to this about, no one but Idunn, because she was the only one who was willing to consider him dying. Every week when Harry went to Asgard she would greet them, and when Harry finished his training, he'd go with her and she'd do more scans of his scar, trying to divine some weakness she could exploit. Idunn was willing to let Harry talk about the weight he felt, the fear he carried.
When he told her that he had no idea who he was outside of his mum's sacrifice and Voldemort's soul parasite, she told him that he'd learn one way or another. Answers would come to him and until then he could comfort himself with the fact that he was a good sort of being.
It comforted him. At least sort of.
Winter exams snuck up on Harry. He only realized they were happening when the students in the DA started frantically studying for them. He had to open up extra sessions just for the rush of students. Three times a week the room they'd reserved was filled to the brim with students studying and trying to learn everything they were meant to know for their tests. Slytherins leaned up against Hufflepuffs as they looked at plant diagrams. Gryffindors and Ravenclaws corrected each others essays. Hufflepuffs practiced dueling with Gryffindors. Slytherins and Gryffindors learnt to brew side by side in a display that would make Snape break out into hives.
Hogwarts was unified in a way it had never been and it should have filled Harry with warmth.
Harry himself worked alongside Draco, Blaise, Pansy, and a few other Slytherins as tutors. He learnt their names and their skills. He became good friends with everyone on the Slytherin Quidditch team. In fact, all of the quidditch teams became something like friends and would have rousing discussions about different professional teams after DA meetings. The fact that Draco and Ron both were fans of the Chudley Cannons made Harry laugh a bit too hard.
Things were going well.
Harry's scar was quiet aside from a few flashes of rage and fear that would appear occasionally. There had been no other attacks in Europe, and only a few in America that were quenched quickly thanks to the Avengers and the American Aurors. Tyr's training was going well and he was becoming quicker to move into the offense than he'd ever been before. His friends in Asgard knew him by name and were always eager to play and joke with him.
Life was good.
They had plans for Christmas, a few days at the Burrow, a few days in Asgard, and a few in New York. Harry was going to have his very first family Christmas. He'd even gotten gifts for everyone, they were wrapped up in his trunk and safely tucked away. Tony had this huge party planned that was bound to be fun, even Asgard was getting into the spirit of things. His life had never been better. He should be running towards that happiness with abandon.
But he had weights on his feet.