Harry Potter and the Illithid Inquisition

by Empirialtank

In the summer before beginning his third year Harry runs from his home to escape his relatives for an evening and cool his head. Unfortunately a passing Nautiliod SpellJammer briefly passes through the neighborhood looking for hosts to snatch. Now Harry's got a tadpole in his head. And while his magic can hold off his inevitable transformation into a mindflayer, it can't stop it.

8. Chapter 8

Chapter 8: Failure

Later Harry would admit that he probably needed to apologize to the Ravenclaw seeker: Cho Chang for what he did to her during the big Gryffindor Ravenclaw quidditch match. Harry had been the subject of enough bullying over the course of his life to know when someone was taking out their frustrations on someone who couldn't properly fight back. And that was exactly what Harry did during that match.

It was especially bad since it seemed like Cho was a good person. Certainly she was polite and fairly attractive Harry would admit and definitely a good sport. She was also a pretty decent quidditch player. She was a bit shorter than Harry even though she was a year older, so she would be tighter in the turns. She had a good record and had done well in every game she had played. But due to an unfortunate string of accidents and injuries, often coming suspiciously close to the usual Ravenclaw Slytherin match, she actually had played less games than Harry had.

This meant there was actually a fair bit of difference in their respective skills. Harry was actually more practiced at riding a broomstick and had a better feel for the flow of a match than she had. Harry had a better record for being the one to find the snitch than she did, and there was also a not inconsiderable gulf between the abilities of their respective brooms. Her Comet Two Sixty wasn't a bad broom, but the Firebolt was a new international standard. It was the equivalent of a mid-budget performance car, good for revving the engine at a stop light and shooting down the highway at ten miles over the speed limit. But Harry was in the equivalent of a hyper-car, built by companies to show off what their engineers could do with an entire car park full of money and caffeine.

It didn't help that the Ravenclaws had made a bad decision for their strategy in this game. Rather than sending Cho off on her own to chase the snitch, she had orders to tail Harry and simply keep him from getting the snitch. They were betting that if they dragged the game out their chasers could outscore the Gryffindors to the point that even if Harry caught the snitch they still wouldn't lose, or at least wouldn't lose by enough to get knocked completely out of the running. Unfortunately while Harry was the star player of the Gryffindor team this didn't mean the rest of the team was bad, just that no one knew how monstrously good Angelina Johnson, Katie Bell and Alicia Spinnet all were as a chaser group.

So Harry was more than happy to play to the Ravenclaw strategy, and keep Cho busy while the rest of her team beat their heads against the brick wall that was Oliver's defense. While Fred and George kept total control over the bludgers. And their three chasers dismantled any defense they tried to put up with machine-like precision and near perfect coordination. Which wasn't to say that Harry played passively, he had all those frustrations to work out after all.

The first time Harry nearly got her to grind against the stadium walls by flying around the edges as fast as he could go, she was probably annoyed. The second time he led her into a wild dive that almost plowed her face first into the dirt, she was most likely frustrated. The third time she only barely just avoided slamming into one of her team mates as Harry barreled through their formation to help break up one of their attacks she might have been getting angry. And when Harry led them into a series of corkscrew rolls that ended with him flipping over her head to snatch one of her hairs free before doubling back away from her he could actually hear her cursing him.

By that point the Gryffindors were up by a hundred points and it had been an embarrassing long time since Ravenclaw had last scored. So Cho decided to abandon the strategy they had agreed to and actually went looking for the snitch herself. To her credit she spotted it within five minutes which forced Harry to race her for it and beat her to it by just a hair's breadth. It was the right call on her part and meant her team only lost by two hundred and sixty points. They were out of the running, and Gryffindor had a chance to actually win.

The only hiccup in the whole game was Draco Malfoy along with his pair of perpetual cronies: Crabbe and Goyle; had dressed themselves up as dementors possibly out of some desire to throw Harry off his game and get him to crash. Their disguises were fairly good, so Harry might have mistaken them for the real things if he had just seen them at a glance while moving at high speeds. But Harry easily recognized the shape of their minds and so just fired a quick body bind hex in Draco's direction while also throwing out his patronus at them for good measure. Neither thing had taken more than a moment and it all happened while Cho was still looking for the snitch so it barely amounted to even a distraction. In fact it was a relief to know he could make a corporeal patronus when there wasn't a dementor around to distract him, and the sight of Professor McGonagall giving them all an earful at the end of the game was well worth it.

Although Cho gave Harry quite the death glare as the two teams shook hands at the end, her mind was actually very excited, quite happy with how things had gone, and more than a little intrigued by Harry. Harry wasn't certain how he felt about that. Esharry ribbed him over it for a solid three days. It was almost enough to make him forget about everything else going wrong in his life.

Ron and Hermione hadn't patched up their friendship yet.

In fact it seemed like they might never do so. Because both of them had desperately wanted to have the last word during their great fight, neither had let it end even when they had run out of things to say about Scabbers and Crookshanks. So their fight had changed to instead be about every single thing they found difficult or annoying about one another. Words had been said which would almost certainly be regretted for years to come. Harry had tried desperately to break the fight up, to get either of them to see reason. It only meant that by the end of it both of them were convinced that Harry had taken the others side. And so neither had spoken to him for a full day afterwards

With dogged and stubborn persistence he did wear both of them down into talking with him not long after that. And he had immediately went about trying to get them to make up with each other. First he tried to get each to admit that maybe the other had a point but that only exploded in his face.

"Go ahead take his side!" Hermione had shouted at him when he finally cornered her outside the library. "This is just like that broomstick incident all over again! You two are always ganging up on me."

"Hermione no one else in our dorm even keeps a cat that hunts and stalks as much as Crookshanks does." Harry tried to argue. "And he's always been unhealthily interested in Scabbers. If you would just apologize on your cat's behalf, we could all put this behind us and move on."

"I will not apologize for something that wasn't my fault. Or Crookshanks's fault for that matter." Hermione denied. "Ron has no real proof and has been biased against my cat since that day in the pet shop when he jumped on Ron's head."

"Ron, you do have to admit that the door to our room was closed." Harry pressed after he had bribed Ron with a chance to ride Harry's Firebolt and so lured him down to the quidditch field for practice one evening. "Everyone in our room knows not to let Crookshanks in, even Neville is super careful to keep that door shut tight whenever he leaves. There really isn't anyway that cat could have done it."

"And what are you suggesting that Scabbers just bled out over my bed sheets all on his own?" Ron rejected. "That he just had a terrible rat nosebleed? Or do you think I've made some elaborate set up just to get mad at Hermione?"

"I think that maybe you're jumping to conclusions." Harry suggested. "Yes, Crookshanks is suspect number one I agree. But suspicions aren't proof, and they certainly aren't worth destroying almost three years of friendship over."

"So what, I'm just supposed to say nothing?" Ron exploded. "I'm supposed to just shrug and say well these things happen and then get over it? I won't do it Harry. If our friendship is really worth that much than Hermione can admit that she's wrong for once and apologize to me!"

Harry tried to convince Hermione that she was just hurting herself with further isolation. He tried to convince Ron he was only piling further stress on Hermione while she was at her most vulnerable. He tried to convince them both that they were about to make him pull his own hair out and if they kept this up he might just leave them both to their misery.

"I'm not being stubborn!" Hermione insisted. "Ron is just being childish! He's done nothing but complain about what an awful pet Scabbers is for as long as I've known him. Then once I got a pet of my own, and suddenly Scabbers is the most important thing in his life. Ron is just jealous and trying to ruin things for me."

"This is all her fault not mine!" Ron declared. "She's the one who pushed us away going over our heads to McGonagall, she's the one who never even tried to keep her cat restrained and she's the one with the impossible school schedule she refuses to tell us anything about! So she's the one that can get over herself or else she's the one that can bloody well rot!"

It wasn't any use. And for Harry it was extra painful since the whole time he was arguing with either of them or had sit and watch as they shot glares at each other from across the room there would be that small voice in the back of Harry's head telling him he could end this all anytime he wanted with the bond. And it was right too.

Of course, mind controlling his friends wouldn't solve an argument, just force them to ignore it. But if Harry had been able to make the kind of bond he had wanted between the three of them from the get-go, none of this would've happened. And if he made it now, the ability to know what was really going on in each other's heads would've ended this argument in an instant.

The real problem was that this argument wasn't any more about Scabbers and Crookshanks than Harry's argument with Hermione had been about the fate of his Firebolt. Ron was angry because Hermione hadn't taken his warnings about Crookshanks seriously, that she had assumed she had everything under control and that Ron had been overreacting about the danger. He felt she had dismissed him and now his pet rat was dead as a result. He felt insulted and belittled. He knew he wasn't as smart as Hermione was but that didn't mean he couldn't notice when something really was wrong or dangerous. He felt he was an equal partner in their little trio of friends, perhaps not as skilled and commanding as Harry in a moment of crisis, but certainly just as brave and active, and perhaps not as smart as Hermione but certainly not so thick that he never had good ideas or slowed them down. He wanted to be treated as an equal and was scared that one day, Hermione and Harry would lose respect for him and move on to someone else.

Hermione, however, had taken Ron's concerns seriously. She always kept Crookshanks locked up in her room when she was at her classes. And whenever he was out and about she stayed in the common room and kept an eye on the stairs to the boy's dormitories so that her cat couldn't sneak up there. She had even put an alert charm on those stairs that would make a little bell noise in her ears whenever a nonhuman tried to cross that barrier. But it hadn't been enough. Crookshanks had found some way out of her room at the very least and so Hermione was terrified that Ron was right, and her cat had killed one of her best friend's pets. But Hermione refused to concede that point without irrefutable evidence to the contrary because she worried that if it was true Ron would never forgive her. She didn't realize that her pride on the subject cut Ron far more deeply than the event itself did since it meant she was dismissing him and his beliefs out of hand.

Hermione also wasn't really angry that Crookshanks may have been falsely accused. What she was really mad about was that Ron was putting a rat he hadn't really liked above their friendship. Being ignored over the Firebolt had really hurt her since it made her feel that Harry and Ron cared more about some stupid broomstick than they did about her. Harry had done his best to explain this wasn't the case, but she still felt how she felt, and Ron seemingly doing the same thing over a pet he hadn't even liked only confirmed it in her mind. It made her afraid that maybe their whole friendship had been fake, that maybe Ron and Harry had only ever been friends with her to use her or out of pity. That what had been meaningful and important for her had just been a matter of convenience for the two of them. And that fear made her defensive.

Sadly, Harry couldn't just tell his friends that he could read their minds and so knew that really this whole thing was actually about two of their innermost vulnerabilities and most deep seated insecurities. That they needed to get over their fears, deal with each other openly and honestly and they could work these things out. It was so infuriating that Harry could see what the real problem was and couldn't do anything about it. It was almost bad enough that Harry thought maybe he should go back to the Illithid colony, grab a pair of tadpoles and awaken Ron and Hermione's own psychic potential just so they could finally wise up about each other.

That would kill them. Esharry shut down that thought in an instant. Your mind managed to absorb me because it had twelve years of practice trying to break down that cursed soul fragment in your scar. They don't have that experience so the tadpoles would just eat their brains and take over their bodies. The only way that could work was if the tadpole already was a psychic copy of their soul, then the two might resonate with each other and fuse as we did.

Harry had been on his way back to the common room after his last anti-dementor lesson before the big quidditch match against Ravenclaw when this thought occurred to him. So, he ducked into an alcove, closed his eyes and slipped into his inner world for a more thorough talk with Esharry. This line of thinking intrigued him. If Ron and Hermione did get Illithid brains then Harry wouldn't be able to so casually overpower their minds and he might be able to then bond with them as equals like he had originally wanted.

"But making a copy of a person's mind wouldn't be that difficult." Harry pointed out as he mentally took a seat in Esharry's study. "You already explained how we could make a copy of our own mind. We just have to make a net of telekinetic and empathetic energy and push it through their heads. Then we impose that image on a tadpole, and we will have it."

Esharry considered this. His own mind whirling with the possibilities of this. It was a fascinating puzzle to consider.

"It could work." Esharry agreed. "But there are still two big problems. The first is that the tadpole doesn't have enough gray matter to contain a copy of a human mind. So, we would need to make the copy, force the most important bits of it directly to the tadpole and then anchor the rest of it in such a way that the rest will be fed into it once it has access to enough brains to contain it all. Then it would all fuse together nicely I think."

"Tricky." Harry noted. "We might be able to do it with a proper set of runes. Something stable that can be carefully set up beforehand. Perhaps even a set of runes that will nearly match the mind we're trying to copy. We know runes can interact with psychic energy, so we can use them to hold the copied mind while we tie the important bits to the tadpole, then set runes on the tadpole that will pull in more of the mind from the runes as the tadpole can handle them."

"That is doable. I think." Esharry nodded in agreement. "We'll need to know more about magic runes. The Illithids also have a runic language of their own that is meant to contain psychic energy. That could certainly help. But it doesn't solve the much larger issue."

"And that is?"

"Making the image of a brain isn't just a matter of forcing an empathic web through it. The brain you're copying also needs to release a pulse of telepathic energy at the same time to link the image to itself. Otherwise, you end up with just a snapshot of what the brain was, rather than a link to what that mind is. And Ron and Hermione have no psychic power with which to release that pulse. If they were already bound to you, their minds could mimic the image of your own that would be buried in their subconscious to produce limited amounts of psychic energy which would be sufficient for our purpose. But if they were already bound to you then you wouldn't need to make them Illithids to solve this conflict."

"No, this could still work." Harry pressed on. "I can't bind them because their minds aren't strong enough to keep me from accidentally making them into puppets. But if I bound them and then almost immediately gave them Illithid brains then they would be able to match me, and the bond wouldn't be dangerous to them."

"With Illithid brains their minds would be stronger, but still not match for our Ulitharid brain." Esharry shot down. "And Ulitharids are anomalies. There is no way to tell which tadpole might produce one, and much evidence to say it is largely dependent on the host, not the tadpole. Most likely any of your friends you made gave tadpoles to would be Illithids, and there would be no doover for that step."

Esharry thought a bit for another second and then added, "Which also brings up the small issue that doing all of this would force your friends to change species, expose them to the same risk of ceremorphosis that we are, and might ultimately make them monsters in the eyes of the wizarding community. I don't think you really want to put your friends through all of that."

Harry felt absolutely mortified that he had completely skipped over that whole part in his eagerness to make the bond workable. He felt deeply ashamed of himself for failing to think of friends and being so selfish in his thoughts. This desperate need deep in his soul really was getting to him.

"I don't know how much longer I can keep this up." Harry confided in Esharry, who immediately hugged him and offered him every mental comfort he could. "Every day I feel the need getting worse and worse. It keeps getting wound up with my own feelings. I miss my friends. I want them back. And I can't shake the feeling that if I don't take them back, I'll lose them forever."

"You've got to have faith in them, Harry." Esharry reassured him. "They're good people, you know this. They're just having a bit of a rough spot. Give them time. They'll get over it. You know how much they matter to each other. Stay by their side and trust that eventually that love will win out over their frustrations and insecurities. You'll have them again eventually."

So, Harry did his best to be there for both his friends. After the Gryffindors won their big game against Ravenclaw the whole house raucously celebrated. When Harry saw Hermione was the only one not joining in, he sat by her side and tried to draw her into the celebration. Hermione refused, citing that she had too much homework to get through. This certainly seemed the case.

Last year when they had signed up for their electives, Hermione had decided to take every class that Hogwarts offered. This meant that she often had to attend classes that were happening at the same times as each other. Harry had seen in her thoughts that she was doing this using a special device called a time turner, which allows her to send herself back in time by a few hours. This meant there often were multiple copies of Hermione running around the castle at the same time and that Hermione herself was working a twenty-six to thirty hour day.

Harry could understand why such a thing was supposed to be secret. He couldn't imagine the kind of trouble that could be caused by people trying to change the past. But he thought it was an especially irresponsible thing to let a thirteen-year-old girl use it, even one as smart and responsible as Hermione. For one thing it was clear that Hermione was burning the candle on both ends as it were and running herself ragged.

Harry had tried to convince Hermione to maybe drop a class or two to make things easier to handle. Perhaps muggle studies, Hogwarts token attempt to make wizards understand the non-magical people of the world better, which was pointless for Hermione to take since she was muggle born and so probably understood how the mundane world worked better than the class's professor did. But Hermione insisted that everything she was taking was fascinating and incredibly important.

So, Harry had resolved to help her out by getting her to take breaks, eat regularly, get to bed on time and help her as much as he could with the subjects they were sharing. Harry also took every chance he could go question her about runes and arithmancy. This gave Hermione a chance to talk through any problem she was having, and it also seemed to get her spirits up as they were the two extra courses she most enjoyed.

Arithmancy was a study for the magic that surrounded numbers. The special properties of prime numbers, holy numbers, happy numbers, and irrational numbers. How the appearance of certain numbers could indicate magical effects going on around a witch or wizard. And how probabilities and mathematic formulas could predict the effects of magic and what making certain changes to how a spell was cast could change that spell or even make a whole new spell.

Ancient runes was a class which taught how to translate the ancient languages used by witches and wizards long ago to practice magic. The runes themselves weren't magical at all, but they could contain magic. Thus, runes could be used to activate enchanted items by absorbing magic from a wizard that touched them, and could be used to anchor a spell so that it lasted much longer than it normally would. Hermione said that at more advanced levels they would explore why it was that the spells they cast seemed to be this odd mix of vaguely Arabic, Latin and English words.

Arithmancy seemed interesting, but as Harry went over the textbook he seemed to find a lot of things that reminded him of divinations. Despite Hermione arguing that it was much more serious and grounded than the more wooly processes of divinations, Harry found the same indistinct methodology present along with overly precise interpretations. It had a person cast a spell, measure the results and then compare the values of those results to charts and tables to see what the most important numbers were and what they meant. How someone measured a spell to get those numbers was largely up to the caster so Harry thought it would be just as easy to rig the data as it was for a supposed sear to claim they had seen the sign of the machine over someone's shoulder.

But ancient runes was a properly interesting class. Harry would definitely be taking it next year. In preparation whenever he had to convince Hermione to take a nap, he stole her ancient runes textbook and started reading ahead.

But for that night as the Gryffindors celebrated victory, and Ron tried to make the occasional comment over how much he missed his pet rat, Harry kept Hermione distracted talking about every manner of topic he could get her interested in. How witches and wizards believed electricity worked. How to spell her own name in the various versions of Futhark she had learned. What the dates of their respective births likely meant. All the while he gradually coaxed her into eating and joining the celebrations at least a little bit.

At one in the morning Professor McGonagall finally ordered them all to bed. Harry was out like a light almost as soon as his head touched his pillow. His dreams had been pretty pleasant since the Illithid abduction. He sort of shared them with Esharry. Seeing an Ulitharid walking around the otherwise normal landscape of his dreams often let Harry realize that he was dreaming, and things could get pretty fun after that.

But Harry didn't sleep long. He awoke to a feeling of pure rage and hate blazing across the room. Someone had just entered the dorm who meant to do murder that night. Harry had taken off his glasses to go to bed, so his eyesight wasn't clear in the least. He dared not reach for them less he alerted the intruder to his wakefulness. Instead, Harry tracked the man's movement by the feel of his mind as he slowly reached towards his wand. He didn't need to see the man to guess that he must be Sirius Black.

Sirius Black did not make for Harry's bed though. He made his way over to Ron's and pulled back the curtains. Harry's hand found his wand, but he hesitated to cast. What if he hit Ron by mistake? Surely Black would realize his mistake in a moment and then start moving towards Harry instead. Then he would have a clear shot.

"Where are you my little friend?" Black muttered as he drew out a knife that gleamed in the moonlight. "Come out my little friend, I've got great plans for you."

Black was searching for something around Ron's bed. But for what? For Ron? For his wand? Did Black mean to first arm himself and then come after Harry? Did he plan to kill Harry with his best friend's wand?

Harry's thoughts were interrupted when Ron suddenly screamed. He must have woken up and seen Black looming over him with a knife. Black was startled by the noise. He jumped back slightly and held the knife before him. Harry had his clear shot.

"Fulmitten!" Harry shouted as he brandished his wand. With a snap a thin bolt of blue crackling light shot from its tip and crashed toward Black. But Black's form shifted and shimmered for a brief instant. He became much smaller and the bolt missed him completely. With almost inhuman speed he turned and lunged for the door. Harry prepared a second spell, while Esharry reached out to telekinetically wrap him up, but all of a sudden Black's mind just vanished. He completely disappeared from Harry's ESP, and what little dark vision he had, had been blinded by the flash of lighting he had set off in their room.

"Bloody hell!" Ron cursed. "Bloody hell filled balls of Merlin. That was Sirius Black!"

"What?!" Neville, Seamus, and Dean all shouted at once as they had woken up with Ron's screams.

"Sirius Black!" Ron said again. "He was standing over me with a knife and then Harry chased him off with a ruddy lightning bolt. You saved my life mate."

But Harry wasn't listening. He had put on his glasses, lit the tip of his wand with a lumos spell, and then rushed for the door. He was beyond furious. Black had come for one of his friends! Hadn't the man taken away enough good things from Harry's life? Now he had to come after other children just to make Harry suffer more. He was going to end things here and now.

But Black was nowhere to be seen. The man must've run like the wind because he had completely vanished from not just the hallway outside their dorm room, but from Gryffindor Hall entirely. The noise of Ron's shout along with the crack of a thunderbolt and now the noise of six boys running around looking for an intruder quickly woke up the rest of the house.

Ron tried to explain to Percy what had happened, but Percy didn't believe him. Neither did Professor McGonagall when she turned up trying to send everyone back to bed not long after. But when they questioned the portrait of Sir Cadogan who had been managing the Gryffindor entrance ever since the Fat Lady had been attacked, he confirmed that he had let a man into the castle.

"Why in God's name did you do that?" McGonagall all but shouted.

"He had the password of course. Read all the ones I had planned to use for the whole week off of a list he had." The painting happily explained.

"And you didn't think that was odd?!" McGonagall was shouting now, while shooting a flash of white light off from her wand. "You didn't think that maybe you shouldn't let a fully grown, strange man unescorted into a dorm full of children? You didn't stop to think of maybe he looked like all those wanted posters we showed you?"

"Well yes, I did think it was a little strange but he had the password. You said I'm supposed to open for people with the password." Sir Cadogan concluded.

"Oh for heaven's sake!" McGonagall very nearly cursed. Then she rounded on the common room. "Which of you all was foolish enough to have left out a list of passwords where an intruder could find them?!"

Neville was the one who raised his hand to that question. He explained that since Sir Cadogan changed the password so often he had asked for a list of them in advance. He confessed to having lost that list earlier this week. His apologies that he thought he had only misplaced that list somewhere harmless like their room or the common room went ignored.

Sir Cadogan was given a new password that he was only supposed to accept from a schoolteacher. The Gryffindors were then left in their resecured common room while the teachers once again searched the school for any sign of Black. Once again aurors from the ministry came to aid them, Professor Lupin led two of them to the Gryffindor common room to guard it while the search went on. Those aurors questioned Ron and everyone else who had been in their room when Black attacked. When Harry confessed, he had woken up when Black had entered the room he was questioned more thoroughly by auror Shacklebolt and then again by Madam Bones.

They agreed with Harry that most likely Black had been after a wand of his own. Though an odd light flashed in Dumbledore's eyes when Harry mentioned Black looking for "his little friend." Madam Bones said Harry had been reckless waiting for a good shot and should've cried for help the moment Black entered the room. Shacklebolt thought Harry was very brave for protecting his friend.

The next morning the news was all over the school. Harry was happy to let Ron tell the story and embellish it up as much as he wanted. It wasn't often he got to be the center of attention like this, and Harry was happy to let him enjoy it.

"Thanks for saving my life mate." Ron had said to Harry when they tried to at least get a little sleep that fateful night, and he meant it. Ron's gratitude was strong enough that Harry was able to use it as leverage to get Ron and Hermione to actually spend time together. Hermione was happy to have him, the thought that Black might've killed Ron that night had shaken her.

Well really it was that they both spent time with Harry while the other was present. For the most part they still weren't speaking to each other. But being together meant that, try as they might to prevent it, sometimes their old banter would break through, and they would forget to be mad at each other for a time. Harry felt increasingly certain that their friendship would soon pull through. All it needed was for one of them to do something the other truly approved of and they would forget why they were mad in the first place. It wasn't the same as them actually working out their issues with each other. But it would do.

Harry had hoped their impending reunion would make it easier to deal with his growing desire to bond them. But it didn't. In fact, that desire only grew stronger. If it was denied a real reason to assault Harry's mind, then it would invent some.

Now it called to mind scenes of Ron and Hermione abandoning him for different reasons, such as being disgusted to find out he wasn't human anymore, angry at him keeping secrets from them, or being killed by Black. Now it warned him that one day they would all grow older and grow distant from one another. It declared that one day new loves would catch their eyes and they would move on to chase after them. The pressure was growing more constant, more demanding and harder and harder to fight.

It was spilling over into other things as well. Harry had to watch himself whenever he empathically touched Ron or Hermione's minds so that he didn't end up pushing too deep within them to seize control of them. He began to dream of holding them under the bond, of having them as his thralls when he was a full Illithid. His first impulse whenever he saw them now was to reach out for their minds. And when Hermione spent time away from him for a different class or even just to sleep in her own dorm, Harry began to worry and grow nervous that something had happened to her, or she had run from him.

By the beginning of March, it had all become too much for Harry. He was losing the struggle against his own desires and was reaching the end of his rope. He decided he needed to talk to someone about this. But he wasn't certain who to turn to.

Normally he would talk this kind of thing over with Ron and Hermione. But how was he supposed to start a conversation like that? "Sorry, please help me. I desperately want to smother your mind beneath my power and make you into my mind-controlled slaves." Yeah, that would go over really well.

His second thought was to turn to Professor Dumbledore. Everyone was always saying how he could solve any problem. But Harry had no idea how to go about making an appointment with someone like Dumbledore. He also wasn't certain that the headmaster had time for him. Ministry officials were coming in and out of the school all the time now, constantly seeking Dumbledore's advice on how to hunt down Black. They had even interrupted one of Hagrid's lessons on pixies and picties, how to tell the differences between them and which ones could be bribed with flowers and which ones could only be bought off with hard liquor. They had wanted his guidance for a trip into the Forbidden Forest.

Hagrid! Now there was an idea. Harry could trust Hagrid with just about anything, the giant man had been the first person to ever treat Harry decently after all and had always been there for him. And while Hagrid wasn't the sharpest tool in the box, he was surprisingly wise and knew a lot of unexpected things. So, the week before the next Hogsmead weekend, Harry sent him a letter asking if he could visit. Hagrid invited him to have some tea after dinner that night.

Hagrid's hut was the same as it always was. He served Harry a bowl sized mug of hot but soothing tea and offered him one of his rock cakes. Harry declined the cake since it actually was as hard as a rock. He also saw that Buckbeak the hippogriff was still laying in the corner of the room.

"How's the case going?" Harry asked more than a little embarrassed since he had completely forgotten about it since Christmas. "Sorry I haven't been much help."

"That's alright." Hagrid reassured him. "Reckon you've got enough on yer plate right now. Friends not talking to one another, quidditch getting so intense this year, and Black coming into the castle after ya. Hermione's been a real help on the case. Reckon I've got a chance thanks to her."

"Really?" Harry said a little too surprised, it had looked quite hopeless to him.

"Well, we've got good precedents." Hagrid explained, but then his spirits dropped a little. "But Lucius Malfoy is dead set against us, and he's got the committee all wrapped up around his finger. I'm hoping for the best though."

"Anything I can do?" Harry offered.

"Not much I expect." Hagrid denied. "Just a week to go and the case is as strong as it could get. Really, I'm just worried about being too nervous to argue it properly, but that's my problem not yours. What did you need to talk about Harry?"

Now that it had come to it, Harry wasn't certain how to proceed. He didn't want to talk about the abduction, that was for sure. Maybe because he was worried that Hagrid would think he was a monster if he learned about Harry's impending transformation. Maybe he thought Hagrid wouldn't believe him at all if he talked about monsters abducting him from a different world. Maybe he just didn't want to relive how powerless he had been or how many people he had left behind to die. So, Harry decided to say as little as he could get away with, and see what conclusions Hagrid would come to on his own.

"I wanted your advice Hagrid." Harry said honestly. "I've been changing since this last summer and I thought maybe you had seen something like it before, you've been at this school for so long after all. Maybe you could help or at least point me to someone who could."

"Changing ya say?" Hagrid asked curiously. But strangely he wasn't surprised. He was surprised that Harry had this issue but not that such an issue could exist. Maybe he really had seen something like this before. "Ya seem much the same to me as ya did last year. Look the same too. So, are ya telling me you've developed some kind of new ability maybe?"

"Yes actually." Harry said stunned. Hagrid did seem as if he knew what was going on. "Ever since last August I've been able to tell what people are thinking. I can feel their emotions, see what's happening in their brains, hear their thoughts even. So, I know you think this is a…. creature inheritance? What in Merlin's name is a creature inheritance?" Harry demanded to know as he plucked the words from Hagrid's mind as proof of what he could do.

"Wandless wordless legilimency." Hagrid surmised in a little bit of awe. "That's an impressive bit of work. Dumbledore's the only wizard I know of that can pull that off, and he needs direct eye contact to even get at someone's surface level thoughts. Very impressive. Well, I can help ya a bit, I think. Can at least tell ya a few things."

"Ya see there are plenty of magic creatures and beings in this world that can have children with a witch or wizard." Hagrid explained, leaving Harry stunned silent as was given a way to explain his abilities without bringing up the Illithids. "Centaurs and satyrs for one. Most any kind of shape shifter for another. Some undead like vampires, as well as things from higher or lower planes. Angels and demons and the like."

"Are you saying my mother, or my father-" Harry started a little bit outraged at the thought.

"Not James or Lily, no." Hagrid quickly denied. "I knew them, Harry. They were as human as anyone else, and Lily would skin me alive if I ever even thought she had cheated on James. Besides if yer parents are creatures that makes you a half breed and ya would've been born with these powers. A creature inheritance means that someone way back in your family line was a half breed. That kind of stuff stays in the family blood and often leads to young talented wizards suddenly developing new abilities as they grow up."

"Ya probably get it from yer dad's side." Hagrid speculated. "Potter is as old a family as ya can find in England. Why there were Potters on the first list of students for Hogwarts, studying under Godric Gryffindor and Salazar Slytherin themselves. Back then blood purity wasn't as big a deal as it is now though some people did rather dislike muggle borns. Some of the old families would bargain for power with magical beings and those bargains often included making a child or two. So now creature inheritances show up from time to time."

"Ya ain't even the only one in the school with one." Hagrid encouraged. "There's two girls in Ravenclaw who are so good at illusions that they may as well be metamorphmagi. They've probably got some kitsune blood in their ancestry. Malfoys are well known for having a bit of vampire in their past so it wouldn't surprise me if Draco learned to turn invisible in a year or two. And everyone knows it's dangerous to teach any Weasley fire spells more powerful than incendio."

"Well, that's good to know." Harry said hesitantly.

"And there's nothing wrong with knowing people's thoughts so long as you're polite about it." Hagrid continued. "Ya never struck me as the gossiping type, so ya should be alright."

"Well, it's not the mind reading I'm worried about." Harry explained, taking a deep breath. "I can also push my thoughts into someone else's head. I think I could control them if I did that."

"Ah." Hagrid said simply. "Well, that's a bit more complicated. Ya haven't done that to anyone right?"

"No, of course not." Harry denied.

"Ya can tell me if ya have." Hagrid pressed. "It would only get ya into a little bit of trouble cause I would have to tell Dumbledore but we could work it out. Probably just need an apology and maybe a detention."

"I haven't taken control of anyone. I promise." Harry insisted.

"That's good." Hagrid said with great relief. "That could get ya in a fair bit of trouble Harry. One of the most unforgivable curses ever designed is a powerful mind control spell."

"But that's the problem, Hagrid." Harry brought the conversation to its climax. "I don't know if I can avoid it. I want to control people. I want to control Ron and Hermione, to stop their pointless bickering, to make them know how much I care about them. To make them mine forever."

Hagrid was silent for a long time after Harry's confession. Harry was afraid to look at him, terrified of what he would see. But Hagrid's mind felt odd. He felt sympathetic in a way. Like he knew what Harry was going through and could relate. When he finally spoke, it was slowly. As if he were looking ahead in his mind, thinking through every choice of his words to make sure it was exactly right.

"Have I…." He started. "Have I ever shown you a picture of my dad?"

"Your dad?" Harry asked confusedly. "No, I don't think you have."

Hagrid stood up from his chair and walked over to the top of his china cabinet. Off the very top of it where no one who wasn't as tall as Hagrid could see anything he grabbed a small picture frame and brought it back to his chair. He looked at the picture very fondly, but with a strange ache in his heart at the same time.

"My dad died when I was fairly young." Hagrid said. "Only about a year or so after I started coming to Hogwarts. Which is fine I suppose. It meant he weren't around to see me wand get broken. Here have a look. This was taken when I was about nine years old."

Harry looked at the picture and for a moment it hardly made any sense. The picture looked at first glance like there were two men in it. One was a fairly, short balding man, the other a tall, broad shouldered man with odd patches of fat on his face. Harry was startled. He looked back and forth between the picture and Hagrid. It was almost impossible to imagine Hagrid without his big bushy beard and wild hair, but if Harry could, and he could put some baby fat on him….

"You were very tall for your age." Harry said when he couldn't think of anything else. Hagrid laughed uproariously.

"That I was." He eventually responded. "By the time I was ten I could pick my dad up and set him in the top of our cupboard if I was mad at him. He was a gentle man my dad. Taught me a lot about being careful with my strength, but also to stand up for myself and for what was right."

"I get my size from my mother's side." Hagrid said with that same deliberate slowness. "She was a giantess. My dad never told me how the two of them met. I don't think their marriage was a happy one, or even really a marriage at all. But it did happen and so I'm a half giant. Which means like full giants I have my own magically encouraged behavior."

"But you said a giant's magic makes them violent." Harry said, confused. "You're one of the kindest people I ever met."

"Bless ya fur saying that Harry." Hagrid said happily. "But it's true. I've got a fearsome temper. It shouldn't surprise ya. I fought in the war against you know who. All without a wand, with just me fists I was a terror to the Death Eaters. You know who himself came after me more than once cause I had grabbed one of his followers, dragged them out of their house and thrown em to the aurors all on me own. It's very easy fur me to draw on that strength and fury. It takes a lot of work to be safe around you kids."

"Dumbledore helped me when I first came to this school, but it was old man Ogg the groundskeeper back then who really helped me figure it out." Hagrid explained. "He taught me a bunch of tricks so that my first impression of a person isn't to see em as a threat. It's why I take the first years into the castle every year. That way I'm bringing em into my territory so that means they ain't a threat. It's why I always see the good in a creature and figure out how to best get along with em and I don't assume anything is dangerous cause then I'll attack it as soon as look at it. And it's why I'm always polite and bring gifts with me when I visit someone cause that means I don't plan on taking their territory from em."

"So you can't just ignore your magical behavior." Harry said with a mounting sense of resignation.

"No, ya can't." Hagrid confirmed. "The harder ya fight it the more the magic fights you. But ya can work with it. Magic isn't there to make ya evil. It's there to make ya yourself. If ya look fur ways to work with it, it'll work with you. What my magic wants is fur me to be safe and secure in what's mine. So I made these grounds mine, the forest mine, and the students mine. Mine to guard and mine to share. And that's worked."

"But my magic wants me to control people!" Harry complained.

"And that's obviously off limits." Hagrid agreed. "Just how it's off limits for my magic to want me to rule, exploit and hoard what's mine. I compromised and gave my magic some and it was satisfied. The same can be true for you. My guess on how to start would be with something that is really meant to be controlled. Like say, your monster book of monsters. It's got a mind of its own but one that is meant to be owned. So no harm in controlling that right? Try it out and see how ya feel. Maybe ya just need a pack of rats or snakes to use as familiars. Maybe ya don't really need control itself, just the chance to control if things get too out of hand. But if ya work with yer magic I'm sure ya can work it out."

Harry considered this. It seemed like he was giving in. But he tried for months now to fight the sensation head on and had gotten nowhere. Perhaps there was something to this. He doubted he could get away with just having animals for thralls or magical minds like the monster book. But perhaps if he did practice with the bond then as Hagrid suggested he might find a way around the worst parts of it.

Harry thanked Hagrid for the tea and turned the conversation to lighter subjects. The two of them had a fairly enjoyable talk until the light began to fade. Once it did Hagrid escorted Harry back up to the castle. And Harry went to bed with much to occupy his mind for the night.