Thank you again for all the reviews! Updates are hard to do right now with traveling and injury recovery, so the final chapters in this story may not be posted until after December 25th.

Part Four

Salazar tears into Moody's office as if he wants to suck all the reflections out of all the shiny objects on offer and tuck them away forever.

Harry laughs as he watches Salazar leap off the side of the desk, aim himself at a slightly higher box that seems to be full of disassembled Dark detectors, and land on the same level of the wall as the Foe-Glass. The Niffler's scrambling claws shatter the mirror, and shards of glass drop and swarm. Salazar jumps among them putting random shards (as far as Harry can tell) in his pouch, but he supposes they might be different to a Niffler.

Then Salazar goes after a silver object that looks like a twisted spiral of metal locked in place around a black spike. He squeals excitedly as he tears pieces of it off. Harry hopes that it was really precious and valuable.

Salazar spins about to see something that looks like a cauldron full of potions vials. Harry laughs as Salazar dives headfirst into it and begins smashing glass.

"BOY!"

Harry flinches; he forgot how much he hated that word bellowed after not hearing it like that for more than a year. He takes a deep breath as he turns around to face Moody.

The man is leveling his wand at Harry, but having to divide his gaze between Harry and Salazar. Harry holds the professor's eyes as evenly as he can while his heart pounds wildly away. The Niffler doesn't appear to have noticed Moody at all or decided that he should stop. He's still tossing vials into the air and apparently tucking some of the crystal ones in his pouch.

"What are you doing?" the man whispers. He sounds dazed.

"Paying you back for the hex you cast on Ahalam," Harry snaps. Ahalam has ducked into his robe pocket. Harry doesn't blame him at all. It's not like his familiar saw who cast the hex on him, but even knowing that Harry suspects Moody is enough to make him scared of the man.

"I didn't hex your snake."

"I think you did."

Moody gives a rattling laugh and stumps a little closer. Harry still doesn't retreat, but he does palm his wand down by his side and get ready to cast one of the hexes that Oliver taught him this summer, one that he thought would be pretty unexpected for anyone to use in a dueling situation.

"Yes, fine, so what if I did?" Moody's eyes glitter. "I'm tired of listening to Albus complain about that thing. If you'd done as you were supposed to in the first place and been a good little boy, I wouldn't have had to do it. So really, it's your own fault."

"I'm not a good little boy!"

"You're not the asset to the defeat of You-Know-Who that you're supposed to be," Moody snaps. "I know that Albus explained to you what kinds of international alliances you cost us, and you still don't care. So why should I care about your stupid snake? It's all part of that deception certain parties have enacted on you to make you think you're Lord Slytherin."

Moody doesn't draw his wand, but he does reach out as if he's going to grab hold of Harry's arm and drag him closer. And if he gets close enough, he can find the pocket where Ahalam is hiding.

Harry casts.

"Apum cera!"

Moody roars as Harry's arm, and the floor between them, and his wand, are abruptly covered the kind of beeswax that Oliver taught Harry to conjure to polish broom handles. Moody takes a step back with his wooden leg and slips. Harry darts the other way, carefully avoiding the waxed portion of the floor, and snatches Salazar out of the barrel of vials. Salazar squeals and tries to bite him.

Harry lunges for the door, but Moody casts some kind of charm that binds his ankles. Harry hops a few steps forwards, trying to carry Salazar and Ahalam at the same time and not fall and hurt either of them, but ends up rolling so that his shoulder is against the wall and his mouth is open in a snarl.

Moody is staring at Harry with fiery eyes. The hand that holds his wand is trembling with rage.

"And now," Moody says, his mouth trembling a little, too, "we'll see what Albus has to say about this."

"Harry. I cannot believe you did this."

"He hexed Ahalam."

"You have no proof of that."

Harry stares at Dumbledore, with the sensation of a tolling bell ringing somewhere deep within him. "That's not the same as saying that you don't think he did it, sir."

Dumbledore sits back behind his desk and rubs his forehead. Harry catches sight of a singed hair, or a hair that looks singed, on the side of his head. He hopes, viciously, that one of Oliver's Howlers got Dumbledore there.

"I am deeply concerned about how much influence that snake has on you, Harry," Dumbledore says at last.

"You know that it was Sirius who got him for me? Not some imaginary conspiracy of Death Eaters?"

Moody grunts from behind Harry and says something about the respect due the Headmaster. Harry ignores him. He's the one who's trembling with rage now. Did—did Moody hex Ahalam because Dumbledore ordered him to?

"You are growing more used to speaking Parseltongue since you have had him with you," Dumbledore is saying now. "There are people who think that you are legitimately Lord Slytherin, and the more they treat you like that, the more inclined you are to act like it."

Harry closes his eyes. "Sir, did you tell Moody to hex Ahalam?"

"Professor Moody, Harry."

"Did you?"

Dumbledore sighs. "I did not, Harry. I merely expressed my concerns about the snake to Alastor. About the way that you are acting more and more as if you believe that you have a claim to a title that means people should treat you differently and offer you respect you have not earned. Last year, I had the impression that you found the whole thing silly more often than not, and were only using it to do what good you could find to do, while placating those who expected you to do more. This year, you are acting as if you think you are a Lord."

"I am not. I'm only—"

"Defying your professors, breaking into one's office to destroy it with a Niffler, refusing to let the Tri-Wizard Tournament come to Hogwarts—"

"I'm trying to protect people!"

"You are still a manipulated child," Dumbledore snaps, and his hands clench briefly on the desk. "I have tried and tried to make excuses for you, Harry, to make you understand that you are not a Lord and those who treat you such are using you—"

"I never asked you to look out for me!"

Dumbledore closes his eyes and sighs through his nose for a moment. Then he opens his eyes, his voice low and determined as he says, "And yet, I will guard you whether you think I ought to or not."

Harry shakes his head. He supposes that he can't blame Dumbledore for Ahalam getting hexed, not exactly, but obviously Dumbledore didn't think that Harry ought to have Ahalam and told Moody, who's famous for not responding proportionately.

"Can you stop trying, sir?"

"No."

"I'm not going to say yes to the Tri-Wizard Tournament no matter what you do, you know. It doesn't matter what sort of punishments you give me or what kind of enticements you dangle before me. It doesn't matter."

Dumbledore looks him straight in the eye. "And that is how I know you are not yet an adult ready to look after yourself, Harry. Because you do not care that you cost us those international alliances."

"Can I go now, sir?"

"There have got to be consequences, Albus," Moody says.

"Yes, you're right," Dumbledore says heavily. He looks at Harry. "For breaking into Professor Moody's office, you will serve the detentions he originally assigned you. Seven to nine, every night."

Harry says nothing. He sits there, and after some more talking in his general direction, they end up having to let him go. Harry walks in silence back towards Gryffindor Tower, holding Ahalam on his shoulder and Salazar in his cage.

Neither of them actually said anything about the Niffler or tried to take him away. They were talking about Ahalam and how Harry takes the title of Lord Slytherin too seriously and the bloody Tri-Wizard Tournament the whole time.

"Are you all right? You smell unhappy. I wish you didn't smell unhappy. I wish there was something I could do to make you happy again."

Harry gently strokes Ahalam's back. "It's not you. It's nothing that you did. It's nothing that you can cure."

"What will you do now?"

"Tell my friends what happened," Harry says, and runs a hand over Ahalam's back. "I didn't do this so well on my own. They need to know, so they can help."

Ron and Hermione give him a scolding that combines red ears and shouting with a low-voiced, precise lecture and makes Harry feel bad. It's not even that Hermione is upset with him for releasing a Niffler into a professor's office. They're just upset that he didn't include them.

His other friends give him combinations of the same disappointed looks and talks. Then most of them leave the library, and Harry is beginning to think that they coordinated this, given that Theo sits down at the table and stares at him.

"What were you thinking?" Theo asks quietly.

"I was thinking I wanted revenge on Moody."

Harry doesn't look up at Theo, keeping his eyes on Ahalam as Ahalam winds back and forth in and out of his fingers. He doesn't know why he flinches the most from Theo's quiet voice. He doesn't know why he feels the worst about disappointing this particular friend.

"You could have told us. You could have brought us along. You could have invited me."

"Why are you so angry about me not inviting you along?" Harry snaps, looking up. "I mean, I didn't invite Ron or Hermione or Susan, either."

"I could have protected you," Theo whispers. "I'm better at dueling and curses than the rest of us. Moody hexed your snake. It's my job to protect you."

Harry leans forwards and grabs Theo's hand, making Theo start and look up at him. "I didn't tell anyone," he says quietly, "and it wasn't a special attempt to cut you out. I wanted to get revenge on my own, and I wanted to—I wanted to protect myself."

"Why?"

"I didn't want to put you in danger."

"Was that the only reason?"

Harry hesitates, then ends up shaking his head slowly. "I also wanted to make sure that I could still do something on my own," he says. "I didn't want to be—to lose any independence because I have people who would be willing to do things for me."

Theo sighs out slowly. "So it wasn't you distrusting me because I'm a Slytherin."

"No, of course not. I sort of am, too."

Theo's mouth quirks at the corner, and he finally turns and looks at Harry again. "Only technically."

Harry just grins, too happy to see Theo happy to argue about that. "So, I suppose that your idea to start training people in Defense because Moody is so hostile will have to wait, since I'll be in detention from seven to nine most nights—"

"You planned to attend those? You didn't attend them when Moody first assigned them!"

"I thought, since Dumbledore assigned them, that I should."

"Because you still respect him that much?"

Theo's voice is a lash, tipped with acid. Harry bristles. "It has nothing to do with respect, Theo! He could get me expelled from Hogwarts!"

"You—think he would try."

Theo's voice is faint now, as if he never envisioned such an outcome. Harry sighs and leans against the back of the library chair. Madam Pince comes out and frowns at them for a moment, then disappears back into the shelves. "I don't know if he would seriously try," Harry says softly. "But I think he would hold the threat over my head."

"Why?"

"He's convinced that everyone is manipulating me if they want me to be Lord Slytherin. You and Draco, especially, but even the other people are going along with it and not realizing what they're doing."

"He thinks that I'm passing along suggestions from my father. Or acting on his orders."

"Yes."

Theo ducks his head. "I can't pretend that he was—uninterested when he heard about your title."

"But you haven't told me anything that I thought was acting on his orders."

Theo gives him a baffled look. "Of course not. You're my lord, but my friend, too."

Harry smiles back, warmth spreading through him. "Do you have any ideas what I can do as far as resisting going to those detentions and not getting expelled, either?"

Theo smiles, a narrow thing that glints all along the edges as if made out of steel. "Do I."

The next morning, Harry keeps glancing towards that owls that are flying in with the post. Hermione finally notices. "Looking for Oliver's owl?" she asks, around the corner of a book on the history of the Tri-Wizard Tournament. "I'm sure he'll be on time with the Howler to Dumbledore. He always is."

"Not his," Harry says, nodding to the high windows. Aria is indeed flying through the window with the Howler aimed at Dumbledore, but a large flock of owls that aren't school ones or student ones are on her heels. Every single one of them is carrying a smoking red Howler.

And every one of them is making straight for Dumbledore.

"Harry, did you have something to do with this?" Hermione hisses beneath her breath in the one moment when she can still be heard, the moment before the Howlers start exploding.

Harry beams at her. "Would I do something like that?"

Hermione would probably like to say something else, but the Howlers all start yelling then, and the only thing anyone can make out is snatches of the shouted words.

"QUIDDITCH IS A HUMAN RIGHT—"

"YOU'RE PUTTING THAT SWEET BOY IN DETENTION ON THE WORD OF A PARANOID—"

"DO YOU UNDERSTAND WHAT WILL HAPPEN IF LORD SLYTHERIN ENDS UP WITH DETENTION?"

"CAREFUL, ALBUS, IT SEEMS YOU'RE RATHER LOSING—"

The Howlers continue to explode, despite some of the other professors interfering to try and calm down their shouting, and Harry sits back and enjoys the glorious chaos. He can see Theo grinning, more openly than he usually does, and Ron laughing.

Susan and Hannah have their heads together, quietly plotting. Or more quietly than the shouting Howlers, anyway. Harry can't be sure what they're planning on doing.

But he's sure that it will have something to do with the way that Dumbledore grows first red and then pale in the face.

"Will you accept a compromise, Harry?"

"He won't, unless you address him by his proper title. It is quite unfair of you not to do that, Headmaster."

Harry blinks at Ernie. They lingered behind the rest of the class as they left Herbology, because Ernie wanted to talk to someone about the Defense homework Moody assigned them, and then he started talking about how he always feels like he's in the shadow of his older brother. Harry was prepared to listen sympathetically since he knows Ron complains about the same thing, and then Dumbledore came strolling up to them.

And now Ernie is standing up for him. Harry feels a soft warmth creep up the inside of his chest. He really does have good friends, ones who do things for him even when he hasn't done anything in particular for them.

Dumbledore looks as if he's on the verge of rolling his eyes, or at least of pinching the bridge of his nose. "Mr. Macmillan, this is truly none of your business."

"Don't think that, sir," Ernie says, with a doubtful frown that seems to indicate the whole world is his business. "Don't think that at all."

"Instead of the Tri-Wizard Tournament," Dumbledore says to Harry, as if determined to ignore Ernie's existence, "what about a different kind of international competition between the schools? One that wouldn't endanger anyone, but would foster the good will that I told you we need for—the same reasons." He darts a keen look at Ernie.

Harry wants to roll his eyes, but manages to refrain. There's no way that Dumbledore thinks Ernie's a Death Eater or his parents are Death Eaters. He just wants to keep secrets. "What kind of competition would that be?"

"It would play to each school's traditional strengths," Dumbledore says, relaxing a little. "Hogwarts is well-known for Quidditch. We would put on an exhibition. Beauxbatons has a large number of part-Veela or full Veela students attending; they would exhibit fire magic. For Durmstrang, it would be Defense."

"Durmstrang isn't known for Defense, Headmaster," Ernie says. "The last I heard, they were known for Dark A—"

"They have agreed that such an exhibition would be in poor taste, in the light of what happened to Britain in the last war," Dumbledore says smoothly. "Defense is the closest kind of magic to that that would enable their students to put on a good show."

Harry sighs a little. He wonders if Dumbledore was really thinking about an alliance at all with Durmstrang students and people who teach there, then, or if he really wanted the Tri-Wizard Tournament for some other reason and never intended to ally with Durmstrang at all.

It's frustrating that he won't just tell Harry things.

"I'll think about it, sir."

"Only think?"

"Yes. I don't know what would happen if I gave my permission and then it turned out that you used that to instate the Tournament after all. I'll have to talk with my friends who are more knowledgeable in law and see what would happen if you did that."

Dumbledore's smile dims. "I wish you would stop acting as though a pack of teenagers hold all the wisdom and goodness in the world, Harry," he says quietly.

"I have to, sir. Given what the adults in this school have done."

Dumbledore turns and walks away without a word.

"I say," Ernie says in a shocked voice, "he didn't even try to address you by your title, even after I told him that he should try! This is most irregular. Was he always like that, Harry? Did he always act rude and abrupt with you?"

It's hard for Harry to think back to his first two years in Hogwarts and the relationship he had with Dumbledore then. Such as it was. He really only saw and talked with the Headmaster a few times. But he ends up shaking his head.

"I didn't think it was rude and abrupt then. I just thought it was the way he was."

"Then he is rude and abrupt," Ernie says, in a tone of stuffy satisfaction. "I shall write to my father. I really think he deserves to know how the Headmaster of Hogwarts is treating Lord Slytherin."

Harry sighs, his eyes on Dumbledore's back. He still regrets the necessity that forced him to say the blood protections on the Dursleys' house were necromantic. He wishes there was a different way, a way that could have left him allies with Dumbledore. He's not a bad person. He keeps too many secrets and he doesn't think enough people are important, but that's not the same as being bad the way Pettigrew and Voldemort are.

And he feels more than a little squirm of uneasiness when he thinks about how upset people are that Harry is being treated this way, but no one got upset for years when Snape assigned people unfair detentions or bullied Neville in class.

If this is only because he's Lord Slytherin…

That's not fair, either.

"I can't find anything that says they could use your permission to hold a different kind of competition to reinstate the Tri-Wizard Tournament. But Harry, I'm not a lawyer of any kind. You should hire one to look this over."

Harry chews his lip as he walks into the office of a little solicitor in Hogsmeade. That was what Justin said, and he's probably right. And Harry has Sirius with him, since it's a Hogsmeade weekend and they could meet up in the village.

It will probably be all right. Dumbledore handed Harry a document that Harry looked over detailing what will be shown at Hogwarts, and how nothing is more dangerous than an ordinary Quidditch game or practice duel. Harry was tempted to sign it right away just to get Quidditch back, but he managed to make himself calm down and wait.

"I don't trust him," Sirius says for about the fiftieth time as the solicitor, a white-haired witch named Esmeralda Crake, motions them into the office.

"Who would that be, Mr. Black?"

Madam Crake looks older than Professor McGonagall, and so stern that probably not a hair on her head will dare fall out of place or her glasses move as she inclines her head to them. Sirius just grins at her as if he isn't intimidated at all. Maybe he isn't, after dealing with some of his Healers. "Albus Dumbledore. He wants to get Harry to give permission to hold the Tri-Wizard Tournament at the school."

"Yes, I did hear about that. And you made an appointment with me to talk about that?"

"Mostly about this document, ma'am," Harry says, and extends the document talking about the competition the three schools want to hold. "I don't know if it's legally binding or not. If I sign it, could they just use this to claim that I gave them permission to hold the Tournament anyway?"

Harry hoped it would be a simple thing to have Madam Crake look over the document and tell them yes or no. But from the slow way she reads through the document and flips various pages back and forth, Harry suspects the truth even before she puts it down on her desk, shaking her head.

"Most of the document is straightforward," she says, and Harry's heart lifts for a second before she frowns and it drops back down. "But the parts that refer to the limitations this places on your title as Lord Slytherin are not. If you signed this, you would in essence be giving up the power to say no to events like the Tri-Wizard Tournament in the future."

Harry sighs and scrubs a hand across his face. He wishes he could understand why Dumbledore is so determined to do this kind of shit.

"That bastard!"

Harry reaches out and gently presses Sirius back into his seat. "Is there a way to make sure that we can change the document so that we can get rid of all those parts and just keep the parts that would allow a different kind of competition at Hogwarts?"

Madam Crake has a lot of teeth when she smiles. "Of course. It will cost you a pretty Galleon, of course."

Harry shrugs. What does he use the Galleons in his trust vault for except paying for school books and robes and things on Hogsmeade weekends? The money he made from selling basilisk skin and venom is all going to the school, and he won't touch that.

"I'm going to pay for it, Harry."

Harry has to duck his head to hide his smile. Sometimes it's still amazing to know other people care about him.

Dumbledore stares in silence at the document Harry and Sirius have placed on his desk. Sirius has come along this time, and is sticking his tongue out at the portraits of the former Headmasters and Headmistresses on the wall. Some of them are sticking their tongues out back, which makes Harry work to hide another smile.

"Why did you take this to a solicitor, Harry?" Dumbledore says at last. "Don't you trust me?"

Harry gives him an incredulous stare, but Dumbledore looks up, and Harry realizes that he means it. "No," Harry says. "Of course not."

"I am only doing the best I can to try and make sure that you are kept safe, as a child, from the manipulations of those older than you."

"Then you should count yourself," Sirius says, and pulls on the sides of his mouth to make it extra-wide so he can stick out more of his tongue at Dumbledore.

The Headmaster evidently decides to pretend that Sirius doesn't exist, and turns to look at Harry. "Have you still not done any research on the title of Lord Slytherin?" he whispers. "Have you not seen that it is all manipulation and lies, and that other adults will inevitably seek to use you?"

"Maybe they will," Harry says. He's thought about this a lot, since the day when he decided that things were unfair because he was getting special treatment as Lord Slytherin. "But they always would have."

"What?"

"They would always have tried to use me because I'm the Boy-Who-Lived. I have fame and too much power either way. People care too much about me because of who I am, in a way they don't care about other kids." Harry frowns at Dumbledore. "I think that you don't want to leave kids in abusive homes. But you don't care about rescuing someone like one of my friends." He almost said Theo's name, but he doesn't know for sure who abuses Theo, and Harry keeps offering Theo a rescue that he evidently doesn't want to take.

"Who is it?"

"Not someone you cared enough to rescue," Harry says firmly. "And you put me in one."

"You know as well as I that those wards were not necromantic, Harry. Not in the way that anyone means."

"Close enough for there to be an ongoing investigation against you," Harry says evenly.

He didn't know the exact status of the investigation against Dumbledore until he looked into it. There were a couple of big announcements, and then it mostly slid off the front page of the papers. But it's still ongoing. Apparently the Wizengamot, or their solicitors, or whoever it actually doing it, wants to gather every available scrap of evidence before they try to charge Dumbledore with anything in particular.

Or come up with the decision not to charge him with anything. Harry knows he has to be prepared for that, too.

"If I am removed from my positions," Dumbledore whispers, "other abused children will suffer in the future. You know that, Harry."

"I know that they suffered with you here. I don't know what the difference will be. It might be none. But I know that it's right for the investigation to go on, and it's right for you to sign this document the way it is." Harry nudges the one that Madam Crake prepared closer to Dumbledore.

It specifies that Harry agrees to hosting the Quidditch-fire magic-dueling exhibition at Hogwarts, but doesn't give his permission for anything beyond that. It keeps his rights as Lord Slytherin intact, and it means that he won't agree to any competition that endangers students. It gives him the right to shut down anything that does.

Dumbledore gives a long, low sigh when he reads through it. Then he reaches for his quill and signs his name.

Harry does the same thing. Ahalam wriggles on his shoulder.

"Are you going to be happy now?"

"Happier," Harry says in a quiet voice, eyes locked on Dumbledore.

The man winces at the sound of the Parseltongue, but merely looks resigned. "I hope you will not come to regret this, Harry," he murmurs.

Harry shrugs. "I haven't so far," he says, and that's the end of the conversation.