No Thing Not Earned

by john.mainer

Lilly Potter was an amazing witch and tricked her goblin account manager into a clause requiring them to protect Harry Potter from all curses, compulsions, charms and legal constraints until his legal majority. When Goblin Griphook finds baby Harry a living breathing breach of contract, something must be done!

12. Chapter 12 Mirror Mirror

Professor Sprout was so proud of her little Hufflepuffs. Three of the elemental guardians were of her own house. A full quartet of elementals, a full circle for the first time in half a century. While elementals were rare, elementals that shared affinity enough to balance with others in ritual practice were far rarer. To find four that balanced each other without years of practice and guidance was almost unheard of. It was as if magic itself had brought them together to balance something that was out of balance.

Professor Sinestra had paced out the inner circle, her wand opening the earth with a whisper and word, creating a boundary between the magic of the Forbidden Forest and the ritual, she defined the space the quarters would contain. Mad Eye Moody paced her two paces outside, the warder and drummer of the rite. His longer footfalls stomping heavily, the wood of his artificial leg being so worked with protective magics as to be a focus nearly as powerful as the (forbidden) battle staff that hammered home with the opposite steps. His warding was aided by his whirling artificial eye, as his muttered chant and the blazing runes of his staff tuned the wards to allow the passage of spirits without ill intent, and bar those of evil wishing.

There were a dozen witches and half a dozen wizards gathered in the shade of the Forest Lord, a tree so ancient it loomed over the Founders when the first stone of Hogwarts was raised. No power would move in the heart of the forest, save by its will. Here even the eyes of Dumbledore were blind, and the creatures of Voldemort could see only if they dared the heart of the forest to see with their own eyes. Moody grinned. These forests had accepted such sacrifices before, and Yule was a time for such offerings. He would not mind to hang Death Eater corpses from the ancient tree in return for the promise of a bright new year. He retired from the Ministry when they became more interested in protecting Death Eaters than hunting them. He had not forgotten. His war was not over.

Looking inward at the children Professor Sprout and Poppy Pomfrey were so excited about. Moody was a Hufflepuff before he was an Auror, and loyalty was written so deep in his bones the scars on body and soul could not scour it free, yet to put faith in four children, and one a Slytherin, smacked of Dumbledore level foolishness. He put no faith in prophesy, not trust in fate. There was no hope of redemption for the Death Eaters, no seed of good in Voldemort. They lived for cruelty and death, they were not sick, they were the disease. They needed to be purged, not saved. Children could not do it, but neither Dumbledore nor the Ministry even pretended to try.

Neville Longbottom, a boy Moody remembered as being afraid of his own shadow, through off his bearskin cloak's hood and turned to the North. He should have sounded foolish, a child of twelve calling on the power of the dark earth, the protectors of the dead; at this the darkest part of the year it was the time of reaping, of death, not of planting, growth and plenty. What did a beardless boy know of loss, of pain, of prices paid?

His voice rang slow and surprisingly deep.

"Hail to the guardians of the watchtowers of the North! I do summon, stir, and invoke thee. Let those spirits living and dead that hear us, and bear us no ill will, be welcome in our circle, welcome in our feast, welcome in our rite. Let those powers that bear us ill will be cast from this circle, let the forest gnaw their bones and the thirsty earth receive their blood SO MOTE IT BE!"

A power pulsed beneath the ground, washing out as far as Professor Sinestra's carved boundary, before washing back. Where it touched, dark roots of and serrated leaves crawled from the ground. Holly, the sacred plant of Yule, the mark of the Yule Father's favour on it as blood red berries hung from cruel edged leaves and thorned branches binding the circle. The power of the Earth Mother beat beneath the soil, a slow terrible thing that men and women worshipped at a time before words and wands, when muggle and magical stood united in wonder at the power of earth and sun.

Hermione threw off her robe entirely, standing only in her school robes, with Noodle's length coiled from her right arm to her left arm and about her shoulders, that his head hung past her left as her wand did her right.

"Hail to the guardians to the watchtowers of the South! I do summon, stir, and invoke thee. Here in the heart of the dark, I light the hearth fire, that all who come to us may find warmth and welcome. I light the beacon in the heart of the dark, when the memory of the sun is lost, that all may raise their voice in joy, that it may hear and return to us." Her voice was proud, and fire wreathed her like a cloak, wreathing the serpent in turn, then down to the earth where it raced along the holly, wreathing the ring of thorns in flames that coated each leaf and branch, each berry and root, but burned them not.

Moody's eye flared, but there was no illusion. No spell. Magic, the wild magic of the forest twisted and twined about them. The ley lines the castle was built to tap ran in the earth beneath them in quiet rivers, rivers that were beginning to stir and answer. This was not power to be shaped by spell, nor did they stand beneath ward stones crafted over months by rune masters working with the finest arithmancy calculations and the auspices of a gifted astronomer. This was ancient, prehuman power called by ignorant children. He was a warder, part of the outer circle, he drummed to keep those who danced in the power together, that they could weave their intent into what they called up, but this ritual was beyond him already.

Milicent tossed back her hood, black leather trimmed with white fur. Her face was strong and cold, her voice seemed to belong to the days before; to the time of scattered tribes hunting upon the ancient ice, offering blood to the night and stars for the promise of a successful hunt.

"Hail to the Guardians of the Watchtowers of the West. I do summon, stir and invoke you. Born from the mother of waters and reaching he final river, of Slidir that runs through the land of the dead, whose bed is the weapons of all man's wars and whose shores the living know not, I call forth the river that runs in the land of the final silence, the ice that is the end of all things."

Moody wrapped called up his power, letting it fill him, and beat against his will for release as he did in battle for the darkness roared from the trees in a wave to lap against the flame, and where it touched the scarlet flames wrapping the holly, the flames burned cold and blue. The light called corpse fire, the light that danced on the tombs of the unquiet dead. The magic that roared in the circle was black enough to stop Dumbledore's heart and cause the Minister of Magic to need a change of underwear. It was not evil, nor was it good. It was ancient and terrible, and cared little for the morality of man.

Harry Potter turned, and Moody saw the corpse fire turned his glasses into unreadable mirrors and clung to the curse scarred rune in his head with sympathic cold fire. His voice was sad, heavy, and shook with emotion.

"Hail to the Guardians of the Watchtowers of the East. I do summon, stir, and invoke thee. I call upon the wind, the first breath of life, the last breath of passing. I call upon the air that receives our will and our wish, our breath and our prayer. I call upon the inspiration that fills us, the memories that shape us, and the whispers that remember us. I stand in the heart of the dark and I call. Let all those who call to us, who are bound to us, who would share with us. If you be of good intent, living or dead, by the powers of earth and flame, ice and breath, come as thou will."

Harry's power released that which had gathered, and a heavy fog rolled in and beat at the edge of the circle. This was no earthly fog, for it was the Ginnungagap, the primordial mists of the void. Moody had seen this bound in the Viel in the Department of Mysteries. This mist was not of this world, though the world was born from it. It was not bound in time or space, and knew rules of its own that ran in directions magic of this world did not.

Moody heart nearly stopped. From the mist, shapes began to walk. He was a Hufflepuff, for all that he was the caricature of a rabid wolverine, that was a protective shell for one who cared too deeply, and lost too many. From the mists walked friends he had lost in the war, people he had tried and failed to save, and more than a few comrades who made it through the war, but could not live with the peace that gave all what they fought for away.

This was true Necromancy as Voldemort sought to practice, this was not the creation of undead nor the binding of spirits. This was the old magic, the forbidden magic from the time before the muggles church made magic a thing of fear and evil, from a time when the tribes remembered, honoured, and welcomed their dead. HIs good eye wept. This magic was forbidden, so forbidden it was worth a Dementors kiss to practice, but he had no regrets.

She was here. They both were. The wife and daughter he lost to Voldemort, when he dared to think he could leave war behind and have a home and life. That there could be a time for Alastor Moody the man, not the weapon. For whatever happened, he would forgive Potter and his friends. His wife and daughter were back, just for a moment.

Harry shook with emotions he could not describe. His father was there, a shade in black and white, looking a lot like him, but grown to fine strong man. Untamed hair and a casual confidence that was saved from arrogance only by the restful awareness of an apex predator, a warrior too secure in his own power to play petty dominance games. Harry began to understand why his father had the reputation he had at such a young age, yet that is not what stopped his heart.

His mother strode farther forward, and she was not rendered in shades of black and white from the fog of the Ginnungagap. Her hair was red like Hermione's fire, her eyes the bright green of the killing curse and her face, while beautiful, had a focus and clarity that spoke of ruthlessness that dripped blood at every edge and did not care.

Harry looked upon the face of his mother and felt love wash over him, but also, the soft whisper of fear.

"Mom, you aren't dead!" Harry said, the whisper of inspiration filling him. She had the colour that the spirits of the dead did not.

"Not while he lives." Lilly Potter said, then turned to share a sad soft smile with her long lost husband.

"I gave up eternity, so that Voldemort could not steal your life, and use it for something foul." Lilly said.

Harry reached out to touch her, and his skin burned where he touched her, the ghost of burning, and the memory of screaming filled his head. Lilly smiled, and in it was a flash of cruelty he hoped never to see again.

"What do I need to do to bring you back?" Harry begged, the power of the ritual beating within him, his friends holding and balancing the power while the adult witches and wizards plied centuries of combined experience to weave the power into something that could be endured, if not controlled.

Lilly smiled. "There is no coming back. I was not strong enough to stop Voldemort from killing me, but I sacrificed my soul to protect you from him. He put a fragment of his soul into you. He brought an object of power to contain it. A Horcrux, a spirit vessel designed to keep a fraction of his soul to save him even from death.

My ritual to protect you allowed me to use my soul to wrap his, and bind it in you. I gave all my magic, all the soul that survived the killing of my body to bind it to your blood, and your power. I grave runes upon you so that you could eat that bit of his power, and bound myself to your blood until it was done."

Lilly threw back her head and laughed, and her laughter was the laughter that made muggles hide inside behind doors bound in cold iron and whisper quiet prayers that the witches pass them by.

"Then the goblins found you, and bound my runes in goblin silver, binding my power and Voldemort's to you. You ate is Harry. With my magic and their runes, your soul and your power ate that little bit of Voldemort that he needed to be immortal. I only sought to protect you from him, but with the goblin runes of power binding my magic to your soul, they have made me into the weapon you need to devour Voldemort's soul." Lilly had tears in her eyes, a suffering he could not guess buried behind a mother's resolve to do anything for her child.

Harry shuddered as she spoke.

"I'm not strong enough mom. I think I found his agent, and I know what he is after, but he crushed two wizards stronger than me without even speaking a word or touching a wand. I can't beat him." Harry wept. He was a goblin warrior. No goblin could walk upon the same earth as the killer of his father or mother, and Voldemort killed both. Yet, against Voldemort, he was helpless. Dumbledore could not kill him when they fought, and Harry would not dare lift a wand against the Headmaster.

Lilly laughed again, this time slow and soft.

"Oh Harry, I could not face Voldemort either, but together, we can end him." She said softly.

"I don't understand." Harry said, anger rising.

"Dumbledore has moved you like his little chess piece, so determined to sacrifice you for the Greater Good as he did James and I, all in the name of stopping Voldemort. Voldemort is happy to play, because he plans on sacrificing you to pay the price for his immortality, but they are both fools."

LIlly turned to look at Neville who struggled and sweated to hold the power of the earth and underworld in balance as the dead trod the land of the living on the night the veil was thinnest. She bowed, and with her wand carved the rune Jera in the air. It burned with green fire that matched their eyes, that matched the flash of Voldemort's killing curse on the last night he saw her alive.

"Sacrifice means to make sacred that which is offered. I am not half the witch that Voldemort, or Dumbledore is, but I am a witch, and I remember the power of sacrifice. They both seek to sacrifice others to win their war, but they have forgotten the truth of magic."

Lilly turned and faced her son. "Remember this, sacrifice has power proportional to its cost to you. Voldemort has split his soul so much his is more shadow than man, each sacrifice holds less and less power, for no price paid by anyone else is real to him. Dumbledore let half the world burn before he could be bothered to raise a wand to Grindewald, letting others pay the price to put an end to what he created, and in the end would not dirty his soul or hands with blood to stop him. He has sacrificed more to his Greater Good than even he remembers, but not himself. I imagine he barely feels it anymore."

Harry looked upon his mother in growing horror.

"Mom, what does that mean? What about you?" Harry demanded, suspecting the truth already.

"Voldemort sought to sacrifice you to live forever, Dumbledore wants to sacrifice you to save the world. I sacrificed myself to stop Voldemort. As long as I am bound to you, your touch and your power will consume him. When he is gone, I will be no more." Lilly said softly.

The ghost of James moved to face her, and they shared a look. Harry's eyes grew wet with tears. He was willing to let her go. At least she would be with his father again.

"At least you will be with dad, and I can see you again when I pass." Harry said, his resolve firming.

James ghost cast its eyes down, and Lilly flinched as if hit.

"The reason you can defeat Voldemort is the power of my sacrifice. I didn't offer my life. Voldemort would have taken that anyway. Magic would not honour something that would be lost anyway. I sacrificed eternity. When Voldemort dies, his soul and mine will be no more."

Lilly faced her son, and two sets of green eyes burned into each other; neither willing to give.

"You will die!" Harry raged.

"You will live." Lilly stated.

"Go to him. Deny him what he wants. Let him dare to touch what is mine to protect!" Lilly snarled, an unseen wind whipping her hair like a crown of fire and blood.

The title of "Boy Who Lived" took a new and bitter tang upon his tongue. Grave dirt and blood mixed and he threw up violently, all that he had eaten in the feast. Lilly looked on sadly, and James nodded in mute understanding.

Looking over at Hermione, Milicent, and Neville who were straining to containt the power of the ritual, he raised voice, power and wand.

"The circle is open, but unbroken. Stay if you will, go if you must." Harry spoke, and the mist of the underworld swept from the circle as if driven by a powerful wind, the trees bent and moaned in the wind but those in the circle were untouched.

Moody looked upon the weeping boy kneeling in the circle before a puddle of puke. He grinned. He watched as the Longbottom boy, a Slytherin half blood, and a Muggleborn with a ruddy great magical snake wrapped around her descended on the Boy Who Lived and gathered him into their protective embrace.

Dumbledore had no idea what he was fostering in Hogwarts. He thought to truss a lamb for slaughter, sought to play his ruddy games of sacrifice and redemption. Moody had been one of the few who fought in Albus bloody Dumbledore's precious "Order of the Phoenix". Most only gathered and plotted and kept count of the dying. They raced from battle to battle, defending and capturing, while their enemies killed.

The Prewit brothers, James and Lilly Potter, his own wife and child, Frank and Alice Longbottom (not dead, but better dead), Peter Pettigrew dead, and Sirius defected (not the way Moody would have bet), and all the while, those they caught and caged mostly escaped to fight again, or bought their way out of prison. His friends and loved ones remained dead, but their enemies got Dumbledores precious second chance.

He looked at those four, twelve years old, marked by magics as dark and forbidden as anything Voldemort or his Death Eaters used, yet clean and human. These four were wild and untamed, not dark or light. They fought for each other and for whoever they cared enough to defend. They sang no hymns to the light, their eyes and souls were scarred with loss already. They would fight for their own, and the grave could hold who stood against them.

Moody grinned. He turned to Poppy and Sprout. "Keep these ones from doing something noble or stupid until they grow some fur and fangs. I don't think Dumbledore will find them easy to control as we all were the last time. Who knows. Buy them enough time, they might even win."

Fresh from the chance to talk to those he had lost so long ago, and buoyed by the promise this next war would not be fought with stunners and group hugs, he stumped off into the night, singing softly.

The four friends were lost deep in thought as they snuck back into Hogwarts. They were not that observant as they dealt with processing the ritual that connected them both with the touch of magic as a living entity extending far beyond the understanding and laws of witches and wizards, and with their own dead come back for a shared Yuletide.

Noodle on the other hand, was on the job.

"$ Nasty, sneaksy, snitchy-cat. Snitches get stitches!$" HIssed Noodle as he pounched on and pinned Flitch's cat Mrs Norris.

"$ Don't kill her Noodle!$" Harry hissed in alarm.

"$ Don't kill Stinky Dead Turban, don't kill Yellow Haired Prey, don't kill Death Eating Crow, don't kill angry Squib Child Beater, don't kill Snitchy-cat. Honestly, how is one snake supposed to keep you alive if you keep stopping me from killing your enemies?$" Noodle hissed angrily.

Hermione frowned and looked at Milicent. "Is it wrong that I am starting to think Noodle has a point?"

Neville groaned. "I am the only one with a shovel. I am not burying all of them. Besides, my Gran says that you should never murder anyone anyplace you don't either own or never have to return to."

Milicent shrugged. "Pure blood have etiquette rules about everything. You just sort of pick them up growing up."

Hermione complained. "Someone should write them down. It isn't fair if only muggle borns and muggle raised don't know the unwritten rules about murder when there are so many people trying to murder us."

"$ In Parseltongue. Don't write your rules in monkey speak. If I wait for Speaker to share what is important, you will all be years dead before he gets to the important bit. Get Mouse Giver the Book of Allowable Murder. Choking out cats is tiring, and I am not dragging away anything I don't get to eat! $"

Noodle hissed, having successfully choked out Mrs Norris. The unconscious cat was still breathing as Noodle released her. They decided to take the secret passage off the main stairs down by the kitchen to get to the dungeon where both Slytherin and Hufflepuff common rooms were found. If Flitch was actively hunting them, they couldn't chance the main stairs.

"$ Can I eat this one? $" Noodle asked, crawling over the frozen and terrified face of Professor Snape. He poked the professor with his head and tested his cheek for temperature and firmness.

"$ Not dead. Fresh and helpless. It is almost like an offering mouse, only without the health potions for good skin that Mouse Giver adds. $" Noodle asked, having tested Professor Snape and found him to be both quite alive, and unable to resist.

Milicent was the first to put it into words. "This is bad. Professor Snape was the only one with power to even slow Quirrell down that was left in the castle. Sprout, and Sinestra went off with Moody to do a private feast, McGonagall, Flitwick and Babbidge are down at the keystone working on the wards, and Dumbledore is off on a bloody broom to London, probably stopping to play Father Christmas for some Light family propaganda on the way."

Harry felt his blood go cold. "We have to stop Quirrell, and get past Dumbledores defenses to do it." He turned around to go upstairs when Milicent grabbed him by the collar.

"Oh you sweet summer Hufflepuff, we all know you are brave, but lets not be Griffindor about this. If we are going to walk into a trap, let us at least get prepared." Milicent said, quoting her only favorite Griffindors.

Hermione chimed in. "She is right. We know which professor's made defenses. We know we need music to get past Fluffy, we know there are plants under that, we know Quirrell gave some sort of dark creature, McGonagall did some transfiguration, Flitwick some sort of charm, and Snape would have found a way to do potions and dark magic enough to remind Dumbledore that the post should have been his. "

Neville smirked. "You know, Milicent and I had been brewing potions for your Yule presents."

Hermione grinned. "Harry and I had been making a potions belt with the space expansion sacs from teh Acromantula."

Harry thought for a second. "Brooms and bats?" He asked, as any sort of beater tended to feel more safe with a broom under him, and a nice solid bat in hand.

Neville and Milicent offered thumbs up. Noodle and Hermione exchanged a weary sigh.

It was a well equipped and woefully underexperienced quartet and snake that approached the terribly forbidden and all but labelled door "Death or Glory, enter at own risk".

Hermione pointed her wand "Alohomora" she cast softly, and the door opened. Hermione frowned.

"It's more than a little insulting. I mean, a first level unlocking spell, one that could defeat a basic muggle lock and the most basic sealing charm, but would not have a chance against the second or third tier locking charm that a forth of fifth year would be expected to know. It is almost advertising that this is a trap for first years. It is like they aren't even really trying to hide it." Hermione ranted quietly.

Harry grinned. "Remember, I was supposed to be Griffindor. Brave and bold, charging in to sacrifice myself for revenge and the Greater Good. I was raised Goblin. We don't do greater good. We pray our vaults overflow with gold, and our blades drip with the blood of our enemies. We very much live to go home, count the gold, and take great pleasure in cleaning off other people's blood."

"$ See? This is why I keep him around! $" Noodle cheered, at last happy his designated human was showing signs of survival instinct at last.

Neville grinned. "$ That, and you were Hufflepuff enough to bring friends. You don't have to be Voldemort's equal, you just have to have friends enough to cover the obstacles to get you there, and just one trick more than he was expecting when he catches you."

Milicent sighed. "First rule, don't get caught. Second rule, don't let anyone survive catching you. Third rule, deny ever employing rule one or two. It is like Hufflepuff's don't have any sayings on their common room at all. Don't badgers get taught anything vaguely survival related?"

"$ Water Witch is wise. This is why none of you can be allowed out without reptile supervision. Honestly, so far she is the only one showing half enough sense to be trusted with Mouse Speaker! $"

Hermione squeaked, and three other humans shouted in protest, just in time to wake a large three headed dog the size of a muggle tractor-trailer, or elephant if those came in three headed carnivore.

Harry pulled out his pan pipes, and began to play a lullaby he remembered Frithweaver singing to him when he was a child under Gringotts. The Cerebos who had roused from the ground and readied to charge instean ambled casually over to give them all a sniff, and then settled in on his paws to listen.

Harry continued to breathe into his pan pipes, pouring his memory of the lullaby into his breath. Magic infused his breath and he bound the memory of being sung to sleep into the pipes. The charm would not hold forever, he would be lucky if it held until dawn, but as he let go the pipes, they hung in mid air and continued to play.

Neville and Milicent both had to heave on the heavy iron ring on the trap door. They supposed a grown wizard would just levitate it, but their only levitation charm worked best on organic matter that was not alive (robes, feathers, clubs and brooms), and not so much stone trap doors. Beneath was a wall of writhing dark thorns that hissed and slithered across each other like an orgy of plant chainsaws.

"Wahoo!" Shouted Neville as he jumped happily into the plant based food processor, the mass of flesh shredding tendrils causing him not a single neuron's worth of fear or caution.

As the three human's with good sense opened their mouth to scream at Nevilles pending gruesome death, they saw him bouncing happily as the Devil's snare acted like a frisky living bouncy castle for the Longbottom heir.

"I love this stuff. There is a forbidden greenhouse on the grounds of Longbottom manor. When I was a kid, my Uncle Algie brought me to see, then accidentally locked me in. I was terrified because the sign out front had a big skull and said "Danger", and I started to cry. The next thing you know tentacles of thorn came and grabbed me. They took me into the main roots and made a nest for me. They caught me a rabbit to eat, which was kind of gross uncooked, but I was hungry, and they cut it up for me so nicely. I was napping in there for hours before Gran came all panicked and found me." Neville said, without any irony at all.

Milicent began swearing, using some words that would get her mouth Scourgified even in Slytherin, while Hermione shook her head and told Neville not unkindly.

"Neville, we really are not letting you go home alone until your Uncle Algie is dealt with." She said, and this time Harry and Milicent nodded emphatically to agree.

Neville looked concerned, but gestured and tendrils of green reached up and grabbed the other three teens, slowly lowering them through the saw toothed deadly plants as if they were a nanny transporting a baby for its bath, not a man eating defensive plant.

Walking down the tunnel, they smelled a smell that Neville found more familiar than the rest, the essence of troll being his personal curse as he sweat out his Suppressor toad poisoning. The four slowed as the tunnel started to open into a rather large and high ceilinged room.

"Well," said Harry, three guesses what Professor Quirrell supplied for a monster.

"And the first two don't count!" Cheered Milicent.

"I don't see why you are so happy." Said Hermione, some rather unfond memories of her last troll blossoming in her head.

"I never got to do the troll the last time, because someone went to the bathroom alone, breaking the very sensible first rule of Slytherin girls." Said Milicent piously.

"For a house that produces lawyers, politicians, dark lords, and crime lords, you have a lot of rules." Complained Hermione, eyeing the irritated troll that was rubbing its eyes as if clearing off the effects of a stunner powerful enough to break through even troll defenses.

Harry pulled out his club . "We have clubs this time!"

"$ I will bite you. We are bound, so you probably won't die. If you say something that stupid again, I am going to test this.$" Noodle hissed.

"Harry," Hermione said slowly, "I know Dumbledore has been trying to program you to be his little sacrifice since you were born, but try to do a little critical thinking. The troll has a club that weighs more than all of us combined. You can't block it, and I don't like your chances for getting past it without someone getting hurt. This isn't a girl's bathroom, he has room here."

Neville grabbed at his belt, and pulled out a handfull of berries, he grinned softly.

"That's right Hermione, he has a club. A great big tree trunk. This is Yule still, and the circle isn't broken yet." Neville held up the Holly berries to Harry.

"What do you say Harry, could you get those berries to the club?" Neville said, a smile that belonged on either a killer whale with a fresh sunk yacht or a Weasley when a long planned prank was about to erupt looking oddly at home on Neville's face.

Harry pointed to the berries in Neville's outstretched hand and chanted "Ventus!" as he cast his wand through the movement of the gust of wind spell. The berries flew in a twister of summoned wind to spatter along the trolls club.

The great beast turned in alarm, looking for enemies it could not see, as his true enemies hid in the tunnel that was too small for a troll to pass. The troll did not notice the branches beginning to sprout, or the vines that began to snake backwards until they wrapped themselves around his wrist and arm.

The troll began to try to pry them off, but this was the Yuletide and the power of the dark and hungry earth was in the holly, and its serrated leaves cut the flesh of the troll as its roots dug into its flesh, seeking the blood and nutrients to fuel its growth.

The troll howled in pain as the holly flowered within the body of the troll, consuming the unnatural vitality to fuel its own growth. Soon the howling and twitching stopped, and only the brooding Holl with its bright blood berries stood in the silence of the cavern. The power Neville has been holding since the ritual was expended, he was again just Neville. The boy who would never be his father. Normally, that thought would be enough to break him.

"Gran says Herboligy is unbefitting a warrior. That my dad would want me to focus on Defense against the Dark Arts, but Longbottoms have been studying Herboligy for a thousand years. It's in our blood. Just because I love growing things doesn't make me weak." Neville said, the ghost of a thousand old wounds bitter in his voice.

Milicent gave his bottom a pinch as she went past. "Strong enough for me troll killer." She smirked as Neville jumped in surprise. Neville smiled. The lonely boy who could never fill the shadow of his forever suffering but undying father was not alone anymore. Here, far from the Longbottom name and legacy, he had grown into strength of his own, and with friends beside him for when that wasn't enough.

The next chamber beyond was clearly Professor Flitwick's task. There was a door bound with runes from Professor Babbidge, the great orichulum keyhole being fashioned after the alchemical gold alloy argued that Dumbledore himself had made sure that while the door itself was resistant to any offensive or transformational magic, the lock itself was even further protected. Only the key would open it.

There were keys of course. Hundreds of them. Great golden keys, winged like so many snitches, flying and swooping like so many angry birds. They were clearly agitated from the passage of Professor Quirrell who had done something either unspeakably clever or amazingly powerful to overcome the charms of Professor Flitwick on the hundreds of golden keys to find and use the one legitimate key.

Hermione looked at the keys, noting that each of the keys had a long dagger point, and dove with the speed of an arrow as they flew in agitated clouds like so many magical cruise missiles looking for a target.

"You know if we were Ravenclaws, we would have done countless hours of research to find a clever way to magically sort the one key we needed from the flock, and then found some way to overcome the enchantments on the single key we need." Hermione said.

Neville looked up and smiled. "Look, there is a single Clean Sweep 7 in the corner. Whoever set this up was ready for a Griffindor. A lone hero to take to the sky and seek out the one key we need and somehow get the door open before the other ninety nine angry birds turn him into feast bacon."

Hermione turned to Milicent and asked. "What is the Slytherin solution to this problem?"

Milicent grimaced and shrugged. "Same as Dumbledore's honestly. Trick some idiot Griffindor into getting himself killed doing it, then get through the open door as he bleeds out."

Harry grinned wildly and started to pull something improbably large from the expanded space pouch in his potion's belt. It was his own Clean Sweep 7 broom, with it's beater's bat hanging off its clip.

"Fear not my friends. We will Hufflepuff this out. Hard work, brute force, teamwork and a complete and utter refusal to consider any smarter options will carry the day. This is the Hufflepuff way!" Harry cheered as he tied his beater bat to his wrist, and mounted his broom.

Milicent and Neville were also grinning and pulling their own brooms from their spacial expansion pouches in their potion belt, and tying them to their own wrists. Hermione pulled out her own broom, having neither any experience in Quidditch, nor a bat to defend herself from homicidal keys enchanted by the retired duelling master of Europe and Charms Master of Hogwarts.

"That is fine for you Quidditch nuts, but I won't last a minute in that clout of murder hornets. I don't have a bat, and can't even keep track of which key is Oriculum not gold; the colour difference is very slight after all." Hermione complained, getting on her broom and looking like she was going to shake apart from barely suppressed fear.

Harry smiled. "Relax Hermione, you will ride in the center, and Neville, Milicent and I will run a standard bludger drill to bat away any key that even tries to get near you. You just have to keep the broom circling in the cloud until the mightiest hunter of Hufflepuff makes his debut as a Seeker." Harry teased.

Hermione, fear making her slower than normal didn't immediately follow what Harry was saying until Noodle crawled up her leg and wrapped himself around her broom stick, leaving about four feet of whipping black serpent free like some sort of broom mounted whip.

"$ This is why I keep Speaker around. He understands who is the mightiest hunter in all of Hufflepuff, in all of Hogwarts. If the golden ball that cannot be eaten was made of meat, or even fruit, I would have won every game before the other monkeys could fight over the other balls you can't eat."

Noodle preened as he turned to rub his face against a scared Hermione.

"$ For your service, Mouse Giver, this once the mighty Noodle will hunt for you prey he cannot eat. For all the mice you have given me, I will hunt the magic key. The three monkeys will hit things with sticks, which they seem to like to do while rational beings like you and I stay warm and nap. $"

Harry hissed back at Noodle.

"$ Did you just call us monkeys $" Harry hissed in mock outrage.

"$ Pay attention Speaker! I called you monkeys with sticks. Do not forget your sticks. I cannot save the day and keep Mouse Giver safe at the same time. If she is struck, I will be greatly upset. $" Noodle hissed giving clear and precise instructions about how the world was to be reshaped for his whim.

"$ What about the rest of us? Don't you care if we are killed? $" Milicent hissed in feigned alarm.

"$ I would be most disappointed in you. Grevious injury is allowed, as you are warm and very snugly when the Witch Who Heals has you in the hospital wing. Try hard not to die. If you could keep the two dimmer monkey's alive as well, I would consider it to be a personal favour." Noodle hissed, bowing slightly to Milicent.

"Harry, I think your snake is sexist." Neville said, and Hermione giggled, her tension failing under the ridiculousness of Noodle's very serious proclamations.

The strangest Quidditch formation known to Hogwarts took to the sky in what was to Hermione's mind, an attempt to make a three electron Helium atom, or a Lithium atom where all three electrons had decided to share one shell. Hermione focused on the atomic models and electron shell theory that none of her friends even pretended to understand or care about, to distract her from the very real fear that should be paralyzing her right now as a swarm of a hundred winged keyes with long sharp arrowheads began accelerating towards her very pierceable flesh as if a hundred invisible cherubs decided she needed to fall in love right now.

She giggled, as the image of a hundred mad cherubs shooting arrows at her was much easier to deal with, as the worst she would suffer was a crush. She was relatively certain that the keys were moving fast enough to punch at least as deep as her outstretched hand through any of her tender and mostly required body parts.

Hermione decided it was hail. If it was hail, then she could pretend she was driving in her car, and the steady banging of hailstones on the roof could be ignored. The truth that she was racing around in a loose circle at speeds belonging to motor cars, while three of her friends deflected murderous crossbow bolts that all seemed to be after the one flying figure that was not madly dodging and fighting.

Noodle was in his element. He ignored the swarm of keys seeking their lives. That was monkey work, and he brought three very well trained monkeys to handle it. he was hunting, and he was the mightiest hunter in Hogwarts.

"$ Faster Mouse Giver! It flees before me. Run little bird, Mouse Giver has given me wings! $" Noodle hissed, as close to a cheer as was reptily possible.

Harry took a slash on one cheek, Neville grunted as he took a through-and-through through his calf that was bleeding enough to worry him. Milicent's broom rocked as it lost a chip from a collision, but it missed any of the rune formations, and didn't impair function.

Hermione learned to follow the direction of Noodles head, and stopped looking ahead altogether. She was beyond thought, beyond fear, and still accelerating. If she thought for a second, she would lose control as she was flying far past her own meager ability to control a broom, but she was simply the extension of Noodle's will, and he called for more speed.

Circle after circle she had been rising higher in the swarm, and Noodle had finally forced the one slightly greenish tinged gold key, the single Orichalcum key in the flock, to the top and out of formation. In a programmed evasion move, the key, realizing it was isolated, dove straight down, and for a second, its forward momentum was slowed, and Hermione had closed without noticing.

"$ I am the god of the sky, fear me! $" Noodle hissed and struck, extending almost full length to catch the Orichalcum key in his mouth. Trusting that Hermione would keep flying straight, he let her broom catch up to him before he could fall, and coiled happily to present her the key they sought.

"Harry, I have it!" Hermione said. Not thinking about the next step, as this was her strategy to avoid blind panic.

"Right, next loop, dive for the door and stick it in the key hole. I will land and keep the keys off you while you open the door. Neville, Milicent, do one more lap in the air, keeping as may of them busy as you can, then when I open the door fly through and we will close it behind you!"

Certain she was going to die, Hermione screwed her eyes closed and turned the key in the lock. It was just hail on the roof. Just hail. A sharp agony in her left buttock brought her back to painful reality as Harry's deflection of the key was almost in time, and she was stuck looking at a key that drove four inches into the door, leaving a trace of her blood on the oak as the door wiped the key clean of her blood as it penetrated.

"NOW!" Harry screamed, opening the door. Harry held the door as Neville and Milicent flew through, slamming it to the thunder of dozens of keys driving themself into the nearly foot thick oak and reenforcing runes with force that would have indeed turned the students into statistics in the Hogwarts survival rate.

Four keys had made it through, but Harry no longer had to play nice, and with a roar, he released some of the power of his own air magic from the ritual.

"Ventus!" He roared, and a blast of wind caught the keys before they could start to bank and blasted them into the standing chess pieces of the next room.

Hermione and Neville slowly consumed healing potions from their belt, and Milicent swiftly bandaged Nevilles deep leg wound. Making a brave face, Neville fumbled three times trying to get the cap off a blood replacement potion before Harry took it off and steadied Neville's hand while he drank the restorative draft.

Hermione, standing because the sore bum wouldn't let her sit down, was looking at the chess board.

"Oh look, more wonderful chances to sacrifice us for the Greater Good. Notice how there is a place empty for all four of us on the white side of the board. Harry is King, because it wouldn't do to have your chosen one die too early, and we get to choose between knight, bishop, and queen. I mean, I get it, you are supposed to sacrifice yourself nobly, but this is laying it on a bit thick." Hermione raged, tears in her eyes.

The chessboard was Professor McGonagall's work, great stone figures in the form of wizard chess pieces. Each of them was animated like the great defensive statues of the castle. They were not quite indestructible, but to first year students, the difference between impossible, and highly unlikely was not enough to measure.

To attempt to cross the board in anything other than a legal chess move would get you killed. To win the game without losing some or all of your key pieces against any sort of competent opponet was unlikely. McGonagall was an amazing transfiguration professor and one of the greatest witches alive. She was undeniably brilliant. How much of a tactician she was was unclear. The could not match her power, but Harry's gift for tactical insight had been growing since their first ritual. Between Quidditch and the readings on strategy, tactics, deception, and espionage that Milicent had been forcing on him, Harry was a lot less of a linear thinker than he used to be.

Hufflepuff won by working hard, but unlike Griffindor, they didn't have to just plow blindly ahead trusting courage and the right to carry the day. They were not Slytherin to only rely on deception, but people forgot too often, Helga Hufflepuff was one of the most feared of the founders because she worked both smarter and harder. Her house worked hard to teach the same.

Harry used to play wizard's chess against Fred and George's younger brother Ron, but when Noodle kept trying to kill Ron's pet rat, Scabbers ( $ Not a Rat $ insisted Noodle, but Scabbers was a family rat passed down from Percy). One too many attempted murders of the beloved family rat and Ron no longer was willing to play wizard chess with Harry. Honestly, he was just about even with Ron before he refused to play him, but Harry hadn't lost to anyone since.

Of course, clever piece exchanges never threatened to kill any friends before either, so that was a thing.

Neville took the Knight position, which suited him. Milicent took the bishop spot, the diagonal movement somehow suiting the Slytherin, and Hermione stepped into the Queen position with a defiant air. Noodle slid back up Harry's body and hissed softly to hiim.

"$ Speaker, I do not like this. The board smells of old blood. The pieces cannot be damaged until they move, and nothing I do can harm them!$" Noodle hissed angrily. While reptiles do not actually process fear, the awareness that reality may not include survival was an irritant they felt free to complain about. In Noodle's specific case, it was becoming true that survival for him included more than himself.

Harry knew chess, and harry knew McGonagall. She was a very straightforward person, not much given to deception. She would be a good player, he assumed, but not a subtle one.

Harry wasn't unable to sacrifice pieces, he was unable to sacrifice pieces that were people. This fortified, he had a plan. He would set up a series of sacrifices with a revealed check. If he did it right, he would be able to put McGonagall into check and force her moves after the initial check to keep her from further attacks until her king was pinned.

The opening moves worked, and the mid board became a mass of interlocking pawns, each one supporting either another pawn, or more powerful piece on a diagonal, so that no one could take anything without starting a series of exchanges.

Then Harry sent Neville deep. He could strike the enemy castle, a very powerful piece, and a good exchange, but instead, Neville struck deep and to the flank, taking a poor pawn that threatened nothing but secured both the pawn ahead and a bishop.

Neville stepped through the square occupied by the bishop, and with a shouted "Flipendo!" caused the enemy pawn to flip backwards and shatter on the square behind.

Harry expected McGonagall to withdraw the now vulnerable bishop to safety, and allow him to advance his own pawn to take the now unsupported pawn and secure Neville's position. Instead, McGonagall's programed response was to use the bishop to attack Neville. That was stupid! That exposed McGonagall to mate in three, but it was too late to do anything. The bishop figure turned and stomped backwards on the diagonal, raising its cross topped staff over its head and bringing it down like a headsman's axe on poor Neville.

He raised his beater bat up, and raised a magical shield into flickering light, but he was almost out of magical power after the troll, and neither shield not bat held. His club and arm shattered as Neville fell broken to the board.

Milicent shouted as Harry gave the command that freed her to attack. She dashed across the board and her shouted "Flippendo!" blasted the black bishop off the square. McGonagall's pieces moved to cover the previously exposed castle, but it was too late, and the wrong threat.

Harry waited painfully for Milicent to set Neville's bones before using her own skeligrow potion to start his bones regrowing, and administering a pain potion to stop his shaking. When she signaled she was ready, Harry gave the command that sent her to take a defended enemy pawn. There was another pawn securing it, and Milicent should have been swiftly taken in response, except clearing that square left Hermione, Harry's Queen, with a direct line to the enemy king. Revealed check.

The enemy king moved, sideways. Milicent took the pawn threatening her, and now put the king in check a second time. Forced to retreat, the king moved back, only to see Hermione charge straight across the field to face the king, wand to wand. The king could not take Hermione, as Milicent could reach Hermione's square. The king is not allowed to move into danger.

The black king, who looked the spitting image of Gellert Grindewald, bowed deeply to Hermione, and shattered into a thousand pieces.

"Neville!" Harry shouted, and charged ahead to his wounded friend.

"It's okay Harry. I'm out of magic, bum leg, down an arm. I guess I'll just wait here for you to finish things." Neville said, and put on a brave face over one drawn with a mix of fear, pain, exhaustion and shame. Neville pretended to be okay, and Harry pretended to believe him. Of such lies are friendships forged.

The door beyond the chessboard was lit with scarlet flames, but when the black kind surrendered, the flames died down. The three remaining heroes charged into the gap to see the next room. The flames burst up behind them in hungry fury.

The next room was a riddle, potions, and dark arts trap. There was a table with seven potion vials. Beyond was the last doorway, and it was closed by a black fire. Harry did not have to approach to realize this fire burned more than just flesh. This fire was made from the darkest arts, it burned the soul as well as the flesh.

Harry walked over to the potion table and read the riddle. He was honestly pants at riddles. If he was a Ravenclaw, he would have spent half the nights sleeping in the hallway, unable to enter the common room.

Hermione walked over to the riddle and read it. Then she walked over to the potion vials and sniffed them. She found herself reaching out to pick one when Noodle lunged off Harry's shoulder to strike her hand with an open mouth but retracted fangs.

" $ Mouse Giver! Do not touch those $" Noodle hissed.

Hermione staggered back from the table and started laughing. Harry was shocked to see she was crying too.

"Did you figure the riddle out Hermione?" Harry asked.

"Of course I figured the riddle out Harry, who do you think you are talking too?" She snapped. Then she hugged herself and Harry pretended not to notice as she smeared snot on her face trying to wipe her tears and snot away.

"Then I remembered the point of all this was to prepare you to sacrifice yourself, and the one who set this up was Snape." She said.

She hissed now, angrier than he had ever seen her.

"It's a trap isn't it. I could tell you right now which potion will protect you from the flames, and which potion will allow the two of us to cross back and be safe, but that is the trap."

She waved her wand at the table.

"The whole thing is covered in compulsions, in Legimancy locked in runes, and concentrated into the 'safe' potion." Hermione raged the anger in her voice a poor fit for his studious friend.

"If you take that potion, you will do whatever Dumbledore has programmed in that potion, and you will think it is your idea. Milicent and I will take the other two potions and think it is entirely our idea to leave you alone to face Quirrell and the bloody mirror!" Hermione said, sounding bitter and broken.

Milicent grabbed Harry's arm and kept him from stepping to the table.

"Hold your badgers there Hufflepuff. I can practically see your whole 'save my friends at all cost' programming starting to kick in. Stop. Think. Find your inner Slytherin. This game is rigged. Dumbledore has it rigged so that you sacrifice yourself to kill Voldemort, and Voldemort figures he can game it so he gets what he wants and you die anyway.

Stop playing by the rules. According to the rules you die and somebody else wins. Dumbledore, Voldemort, the tooth fairy, I don't care, it isn't supposed to be you."

Milicent grabbed Harry by both shoulders and began to shake him with each word.

"You. Need. To. Cheat." Milicent said, and while Harry believed her, he didn't know how.

Unfortunately for everyone, Hermione really was the smartest witch in her generation, and she had found another way out. While Milicent was talking Harry out of noble suicide, Hermione set about committing probable suicide.

She ran into the black flame. She was a fire elemental, and fire was hers to command, hers to embrace, hers to understand. This however was fire born in black magic, in soul magic. This was the fire that consumed not just flesh but soul, a fire that no living thing could endure.

Hermione felt it burn her. Not her flesh, the flames could not touch her flesh. She was fire in every magical sense of the word, and while the heart of the sun would crush her into an infinitly dense speck, that speck would not burn. Yet this was the Yuletide, and she was bound to the circle. The circle of the darkest night, the circle of endings, the circle of the dead.

Her fire was rooted in the underworld, bound by Neville in the roots of reality far below the earth, quenched by Milicent in the primordial ice that preceded the birth of the universe and bound by Harry to the mists of Ginnungagap the chaos from which life and death, being and nonbeing were first formed.

Hermione screamed, as no mortal thing could hang on the bleeding edge between existence and annihilation and not burn, but as she burned, she made that fire that was not fire her own. Her soul writhed in torment that was not allowed to consume her, her body writhed in fire that hated life with a hunger beyond hunger, but her mind was free. Her mind was a witch who was learning to make fire do as she chose, and she chose this fire to not burn Harry and Milicent.

"CROSS NOW!" Hermione screamed, and the black of the flame seemed to pass through her flesh and show the shadow of black bone beneath, so that it seemed to be her skull screaming at them to run into the flame, but run they did.

Harry and Milicent charged through the black flame and for a moment the pain was rather more than their minds could process, but they had hit the flame filled doorway at a run, and they fell into the room quite beyond the fire.

Quirrell was there. He stood before the Mirror of Erised, his face grey, his lips blue, the stench of garlic from him stronger than every, yet he gripped his wand firmly and his muttered incantations and wand motions were smooth and precise as any textbook description.

Harry and Milicent both struggled to rise and grab their wands.

"Expelliarmus!" shouted Quirrell as he disarmed Harry.

"Incarcerous" Quirrell commanded, as Milicent was wrapped ankle to chin in magical ropes that turned her into a pillar rather than a person.

With a casual hand motion, Quirrell summoned Harry's wand and tucked it beneath his belt. Harry grabbed his goblin silver dagger, a metal that no magic would transform or block.

"Fulgir!" Sneered Quirrell, a lightning bolt lancing from his wand and shocking Harry so bad he dropped his dagger and fell spasming to the ground.

"Enough of that Potter. You are not here to fight. You are here to fetch. Dumbledore rather fancies you as his attack dog, but make no mistake, it is for my master you will be fetching." Quirrell hissed angrily.

"You serve Voldemort. I would rather die than fetch anything for you!" Harry said, frustration and humiliation at his helplessness making him angry.

A voice colder than the grave sounded from behind Quirrell.

"Let me speak to the boy. You do not know how to motivate his kind. He is not a coward like you." The voice rasped almost breathlessly, as if the effort to speak was a strain.

"Master, are you sure? You are not well. I can do this. I can figure out how the old fool used the mirror to trap the stone. I know Potter is the key, I just need to find out how!" Quirrell insisted.

"$ Obey me $" The voice hissed in a spell that Quirrell could not understand, but was forced to obey. He unwrapped his turban and turned, showing the grotesque sight of another face and tiny vestigal limbs stuck on the back of Quirrell's head."

"$ Voldemort! $" Hissed Harry in Parseltongue.

"$ Yes Harry, or what that mudblood bitch of a mother left of me. It was her protection of you that left me this way. Half alive, kept sane only by my own unconquerable will and by my soul anchors. It was you that left me this way, so it's only fitting you would restore me. $" Voldemort hissed.

"$ You aren't even worth biting. Less even than that rotting corpse you ride. You will not touch my speaker. Take what you want, and leave. If the corpse you ride could die, I would have killed you already. $" Noodle hissed.

Quirrell asked, his voice rising in fear if not stuttering as he did in class.

"Master, what does the beat say?" Quirrell begged.

"He says he would strike you down, but he fears your power. Do not worry." Voldemort said smiling softly.

"$ Taste. I fear his taste. He is rotting so badly I would puke out my soul before his taste would be gone. Do not pretend I fear your monkey. $" Noodle hissed.

"Not even my snake will obey you, Voldemort. You have lost. Nothing you do to me will make me obey you." Harry insisted.

Voldemort smiled and whispered. "Accio Hostage"

The rope wrapped bundle that was Milicent gave a shriek as she shot from where she was tottering to directly between Voldemort and the Mirror of Erised.

"Now boy, face the mirror. Face the trap Dumbledore set for me, and get me the philosopher stone, or I will burn her mind with the Cruciatus curse before I begin to burn her limbs, or perhaps I will use the Imperius and make you do it." Voldemort said with a slow silky laugh.

"NO! Don't hurt her!" Harry begged.

"Dumbledore was right about only one thing. You are stronger alone. Bringing a child was just bringing another weapon to use against you. In the end, all men of power stand alone boy. It is a pity you didn't learn that before you died." Voldemort rasped into laughter, then coughing, as his weakened body was pushing its limits.

Harry faced the mirror, but shut his eyes. He felt fear, shame, helplessness. He felt...cold?

Noodle whispered. "$ Water Witch strikes. Buy time Speaker. When I tell you, use the monkey stick!"

Harry screwed his eyes shut, he did feel cold. Milicent must be working her part of the ritual power into the mirror. Her rune was Issa, the ice, stassis. He remembered her talking about how she could use it to slow or stop even runic arrays from working for short periods. She was carrying the power of the whole Yuletide circle, the circle of endings, the heart of the dark, where all souls living and dead were closest to the veil.

The Mirror of Erised was a soul trap, and magic beyond Harry's understanding, perhaps forever. It was however, a mirror, and mirrors are made of glass.

"What do you see boy? Do you see the stone? If you give it to me, I will let the bitch live. You won't die, but you will earn your friends lives by your sacrifice. Isn't that noble?" Voldemort laughed again, so sure of his victory.

"I see my mother. She is holding a stone in her right hand, and she is saying something. A message for you!" Harry said, his eyes screwed closed, frost forming on his eyebrows and struggling to keep from shaking in the cold. Noodle was already burrowing under Harry's robes for what warmth he could find.

"What has that bitch to say? Is she ready to watch her son die this time? Is she going to beg me again to spare you? Maybe I will. Maybe if she hands you the stone, I might let you live!" Voldemort teased, still confident in his victory.

"Mom has a message Voldemort. She says to remind you that glass isn't a solid. It is a slow moving liquid." Harry said, remembering something from his muggle school chemistry.

Voldemort hissed. "What sort of muggle nonsense is this. GIVE ME THE PHILOSOPHER STONE."

Harry was shaking now, the cold from the mirror was making his fingers numb. Luckily, playing Quidditch in Scottish December makes gripping the beater bat dangling forgotten from his wrist almost easy.

"Mom says mirrors are slow moving liquids, and bad things happen when they stop!" Harry shouted, and swung his bat.

The Mirror of Erised was a remarkable magical object, one that had grown in power and darkness far beyond the point it was controllable, but in the end, when Milicent bound the whole power of the end of the year, the elemental power of cold, the runic purity of stasis, into its substance, it became, for one instant, a very fragile frozen piece of glass.

Harry was in Noodle's words a monkey with a stick. No. Not a monkey. A painstakingly trained competitive monkey with a stick. One of the best trained monkeys with a stick in Hogwarts, and a monkey with a stick in front of a very breakable magical object he cannot possibly understand.

But a monkey with a stick doesn't have to. Harry swung with all the rage in his soul, with all the helplessness for his slaughtered family, with all the shame for all the suffering of his friends to get him here. Harry swung blindly at a big piece of glass directly in front of him that could not move.

It took a genius of a wizard six years to finish the charms, and runic constructs to make the Mirror of Erised, but once Milicent had frozen it and its enchantments, it took one angry monkey with a stick to shatter it.

The mirror shattered, and inside its extradimensional trap, all of the souls and objects that had been suspended inside its prison shattered too. Broken across dimensions that could not be mapped and could not be reached, the souls and objects splintered across realities in fragments too small to qualify even as subatomic particles, quite beyond even magic to restore.

Rather like Voldemort's grip on reason.

With a wordless rage, Voldemort screamed his rage, flooding the half dead and rotting Quirrell with unreasoning hatred. Quirrell spun and charged Harry, determined to punish the boy for the destruction of his beloved master's dream of renewal. Closing on Harry, he gripped his throat to snap his neck with the unnatural strength the rituals binding Voldemort to his willing body imparted, but the second he touched Harry's flesh, his own began to burn.

"What is this magic!" Quirrell screamed as his hands flaked away like overdone pastry. Harry spread his own hands over Quirrell's face, and felt the pain of the burning as something was torn from Quirrell and into Harry.

Harry leaned forward and whispered into Quirrell's ear in Parseltongue.

"$ Hey Voldemort, mom says hi! $" Harry hissed

With a wordless howl, Voldemort's shade exploded from Quirrell's body, cutting off the flow of something that Harry had been drawing through Quirrell's body. He felt it fill his veins, like magic but different. His own power wrapped around it, rather like Noodle wrapped around Mrs Norris as he gently choked her out. Whatever he had taken, it was Harry's now.

Harry crawled over and used his left hand to pick up his dagger. He slowly began to cut away the ropes binding Milicent. Somewhere above, he could hear adult voices, and the sounds of powerful spells. Oh good. Responsible adults were coming. He cut Milicent free, then slumped down beside her. By the time rescue found them, they were both passed out, with an angry Noodle between them, unwilling to let any but the Witch Who Heals touch them.

Dumbledore sat with a smile on his face in his office, the picture of serene repose. Fawkes, his phoenix, eyed him warily, the bond they shared was deep enough to react to the constant stream of power Dumbledore was using to connect him to the Elder Wand sitting placidly in its holder. Only the phoenix was aware that Dumbledore was far less than a heartbeat away from summoning the Death Stick to his hand and unleashing the rage that ran through his veins like bottled lighting, searching desperately for a target to strike.

"I found it Albus, I found it in the wards. Someone with access and authority, and that is supposed to be only you and me, had disabled the wards for detection of possession and the undead. The UNDEAD Albus! You Know Who used Inferi to kill so many of us in the last war, and he possessed one of our own teachers and walked right past the wards into the shool."

Dumbledore reached across the charmed sherbet lemons that he used to make the students more calm and suggestable. He offered one to Minerva McGonagall, wrapping his own magic around it so that she would not notice the potion until it was already metabolizing and effective.

"Sherbet Lemon?" Dumbledore offered. "I rather fear we will have to write this off to use of the Imperius. Tom has used that on so many people, forced access to defended areas and betrayal from so many trusted people with that curse. I cannot abide another witch hunt, so many innocents have been cast into suspicion because of that curse. I won't have another witch hunt among my staff." Dumbleore said, his countenance that of the beneficent and forgiving Saint of the Light he had actually named himself.

Minerva McGonagall looked every inch the angry cat of her Animagus form as she hissed back at him.

"Witch hunt among your staff? Voldemort was sitting at the staff table. Voldemort was given the care of our youngest and most impressionable students to learn about how to protect themselves from the dark arts. If not among the staff, perhaps we should look higher!" McGonagall said, her own hand falling upon her wand with a very conscious move. A challenge?

She had as much chance against him with wands drawn as her cat Animagus had against a basilisk, yet she seemed ready to try. He sighed. Of all the positions of power he had won for himself, it was Hogwarts that remained the key. The war had cost him too many of his allied seats in the Wizagamot, and the ICW was really only able to be effective when terrified of an imminent threat. No, for long term creation of his network of influence, for shaping the next generation to fulfil the vision he and Gellert began so long ago, controlling their education remained key.

Even if sometimes murdering the weaklings who DARED to question the Champion of the Light over the necessary and painful things he must do seemed all but irresistible. Was that what drove Tom to become Voldemort? One too many times of being forced to pretend lesser beings had any place to question those with vision?

He popped the lemon drop in his own mouth, and felt the calming draft begin to work on him. The suggestion to listen to Dumbledore and accept his wisdom was actually a positive thing when he consumed the drops himself. He learned that from a muggle self improvement book. Seeing him eat them often fooled others into believing they were safe. Well, wasn't it safer if they obeyed him? Look what happened when IGNORANT CHILDREN chose to ignore the plans of their elders and betters.

"Now now Minerva. What is important is that you found and corrected the issue. Rather unfortunate that you had to do that because I was away from the castle on an errand to the Ministry that proved to be a lie. I had planned on doing the wards myself and not involving other professors." Dumbledore said smiling softly and trying not to grind his teeth.

Of course he planned on doing it himself. He had to put a lot of work into blocking Hogwarts detection of Voldemort possessing Quirrell. With Voldemort's use of Horcrux, simply killing him would never be enough to stop him. Only the Mirror of Erised could trap him forever, living and bound for all time. For the simple cost of one of his Horcrux, the noble sacrifice of the Boy Who Lived, the wizarding world would be safe from Tom Riddle or Voldemort as he now named himself forever.

Like Solomon the Wise, he would bottle forever the power he could not kill. It worked for the Djinii thousands of years ago, it should have worked for Voldemort today. Except a boy with a stick broke it.

Dumbledore felt a tooth crack as he bit down too hard on the Sherbet Lemon. Damn. Have to see Poppy for that later. Dental magic was not something he ever delved into, and an unbalanced bite gave him headaches.

"There was rather a lot of dark magic used last night. Old magic. Forbidden magic." Dumbledore said, determined to get McGonagall onside to correct Harry Potter from a dangerous dabbling into unsafe and unclean things.

"There was a bloody zombie running around the school with a lich riding the back of his head plotting to murder students and steal the one thing that could give him his full power back, oh, and an immortal body. Something he couldn't even get with all HIS dark rituals last time. A zombie you invited to be a teacher here, a stone you demanded Nicholas Flamel put in the middle of a school as bait for the worst mass child murderer in history. Even Grindewald never killed children Albus. I don't care if they skinned and ate him, I don't care if they sacrificed his heart to Mrs Norris, if two first years are facing the Dark Lord on their own when the only attack spell we have allowed them is Flippendo I don't care what they use. I want them to live Albus. They are STUDENTS!" McGonagall said, perhaps not noticing her wand was now in her hand and tendrils of lightning were wreathing her witch's hat like lightning around a thunder cloud.

Minerva was an excellent second. She was a natural born educator. She ran ninety percent of the school's actual administration, allowing him to devote his time to advancing the Greater Good. A vision she was too limited to grasp, and too weak to pay the price to make happen.

Dumbledore spread his hands and lowered his voice.

"Gently Minerva, gently. I agree, with the Mirror of Erised somehow destroyed, something I would have sworn was impossible for any save Tom and myself, then the safety of that boy remains our only hope of salvation." Dumbledore said.

"The prophesy." McGonagall sighed, and visibly deflated. "You know I never trusted that stuff. I was muggle raised, and half blood. I tend to trust what my own magic can do, and what my own senses can see. Divination always seemed like hogwash more than Hogwarts to me."

Dumbledore smiled. "And yet a first year boy stood against a fully qualified Hogwarts professor. For whatever else he was Quirrell was qualified to teach Defense Against the Dark Arts in his own right, whatever Voldemort may have also given him. Surely, outside of the prophesy, there can be no other explanation?"

McGonagall took off her hat and twisted it in her hands.

"I remember his father, one of my most gifted transfiguration students. Filius Flitwick still raves about Lilly's genius with charms. They followed you into your war and were dead too young, with a baby in the crib left behind. Now you want us to drag the boy into the same war, not even allowed to grow to a man before you make him a weapon." McGonagall said, shame and weariness in her voice.

"He is the Boy Who Lived. The Prophesy offers a path to salvation for the whole world, if only he can be guided to follow it." Dumbledore smiled at her, as she nodded. No matter how squeamish she may be, not even she can see any other path to salvation for their world but the sacrifice called for so long ago.

McGonagall sniffed. "He isn't exactly one of my lions. His father and even mother would have agreed with you and charged into the fray to save the world. Harry and his friends are Hufflepuff. They don't go off and have adventures, they run bake sales and rebuild houses. One of them is even a Slytherin, and they are more likely to assassinate than impersonate heroes!" McGonagall said in frustration. The children in question should have been hers, but now were more likely to be repotting plants with Professor Sprout, or making medical potions with Poppy Pomfrey.

Dumbledore smiled. "Leave that to me Minerva. He may have turned to Hufflepuff out of loneliness, but all it takes is a sip from the heady cup of glory to awake the lion in any man. I think I can start him on the path to being the hero the wizarding world needs him to be, and away from the dark practices the old and dark houses traffic with."

Dumbledore overrode Poppy Pomfrey in the medical wing to visit Harry. While his legal right to do so was questionable, the list of people who had said no to Dumbledore stands at Gellert Grindelwald and Voldemort. Since neither were free or in anything a rational being would claim was healthy, she did not press the point.

He cast a muflatto spell with a number of gestures that were not really required. Harry noted the spell took effect before he said or did anything, so the Headmasters visible spellcasting was more or less just theatrics. The degree of power and skill so casually demonstrated reminded Harry that he was like a fly and Dumbledore like a dragon. While both had wings, one of them offered no possible resistance to the other.

"Ah Harry. I thought it was time to have a chat about what happened in the forbidden section of the third-floor corridor."

Noodle rose up and coiled, seemingly to rest, but Harry noticed his body was coiled to strike, and his tongue flashed out, tasting the air, which he only did to detect illusions and test for suspicious air movements indicating invisible shields. Noodle seemed ready to kill Dumbledore. Harry found he was not reflexively objecting, and decided to have a good long think about that later.

"Quirrell took out Snape, and as the only combat capable wizard left in the whole of Hogwarts, took that chance to steal the Philosopher Stone and make Voldemort freaking immortal as well as alive, powerful, and without any adult opposition in a school filled with the largely defenseless magical children of his enemies.

Objecting to being slaughtered in our beds, we decided, just for a lark, to stop him. If it's any consolation, Hermione looked for the "Field Trip to Stop a Resurrecting Dark Lord" permission form, but could not find one, or we would have asked permission first."

Harry had not noticed becoming angry. He remembered his mother's face. His mother's words. To give him the chance to destroy Voldemort, she had given up forever. There was no next great adventure for her. She had given up eternity with his father, had given up being reunited when he died, just to buy Harry a chance to live. Dumbledore and all his talk of sacrifice, it was always someone else who got sacrificed. Never him.

Harry heard Dumbledore snap and with his shouted "ENOUGH!" Harry felt Dumbledore's bare will pinning him to the bed.

Noodle struck, and Dumbledore's eyes grew wide as his first passive shield from some object he bore failed under the rune enhanced magical snake's own power, and his own golden shield flare into visible existence.

Dumbledore kept his protections up, and palmed his wand. He considered oblivating the boy, but considering Poppy Pomfrey had come from her desk and was watching like a hawk since his shield flared to visible light, she would probably notice and object. Medical Oaths rather annoyingly protected her from the obedience oaths that bound the rest of the staff. He sighed softly. He was getting old. This used to be easier. He used to be kinder. The cost of all of those he had been forced to sacrifice only grew heavier over time, and he was so tired of carrying them all.

"Calm your pet, Harry. Above all other men, I mean you no harm. For reasons you are too young to understand, you are the most important student at Hogwarts. In many very important ways, the most important person in Wizarding Britain." Dumbledore said, using passive Legimancy to read the truth of Harry's words, as he played very carefully with the truth of his own.

"$ If he even points that wand at me, kill him. $" Harry said softly.

"He won't hurt you, professor." Said Harry truthfully.

"$ He will be dead before he knows I have bitten him! $" Agreed Noodle.

Dumbledore read only truth in those words, but somehow still felt threatened. When did children lose their ability to trust? He blamed that Slytherin girl, and the snake. Slytherin had been Tom's house, and Tom had talked to snakes too. The boy should have been a Griffindor. Griffindor's did not need to understand, they trusted, and accepted they didn't need to know, they just needed to fight. He was running a war not a democracy!

"You are special Harry. You alone. You have something that Voldemort does not. Your mother gave her life for you out of love, and that love is the power that Voldemort knows not. That is the power that can destroy him. The Power He Knows Not. You alone can face him in the end, protected by that love." Dumbledore smiled.

Harry laughed.

It started as a giggle, then he laughed so hard he rolled back and forth on the bed. He laughed until he farted. Tears were streaming down his face and he was gasping for breath as Dumbledore looked on in rising fury.

"Love, love?" Harry laughed. "What utter bollocks." Harry stopped laughing and raged at Dumbledore.

"My dad was loved, and I heard him die. My mom was loved, and I watched Voldemort kill her. Mad Eye Moody's wife and daughter were loved, and Voldemort killed them himself too. Fred and George's uncles, the Prewit Twins were loved, and he killed them too. Half my goblin clan died when Voldemort stormed Gringotts for whatever was locked inside that he needed in the last war, and I can tell you they were loved. I have tended their memory stones, stones black with the blood shed by every living member of the clan that pledged their blood and magic to avenge them. If that is supposed to be The Power He Knows Not, then you had better put a lesson in Defense Against the Dark Arts on writing your will, because we are all going to die!" Harry was crying now, his body slack with spent rage. No longer caring to hide anything.

"$ Should I kill him Speaker? $" Noodle asked softly.

" $ No Noodle. He is so full of crap you would probably get sick and make Mouse Giver mad again. $" Harry said, and Noodle head butted him in quiet commiseration.

Dumbledore rose and looked at Harry with an unreadable expression, before withdrawing from the Hospital wing under Poppy Pomfrey's glare.

It was time for the Great Feast, and the four first years who saved Hogwarts were to be released from the medical wing to enjoy it, Students had returned from winter break to find the DADA instructor was, in no particular order: a zombie, a Death Eater, Voldemort, and killed by Harry Potter and his band of first year Hufflepuffs, with token Slytherin and serpent guidance. To say that reaction was mixed was putting it mildly.

Luckily, or unluckily, the Quidditch community had gotten the story from the First Years in question while still drugged out of their minds on various healing potions and spells, so "How the Beaters Saved Hogwarts" was, if not the official story in the Daily Prophet, at least circulated on magically duplicated broadsheets in all four common rooms, from what was rather disingenuously noted as the Ginger Press.

There was in fact a very hot debate between Slytherin and Hufflepuff about who gets to claim Noodle as a Seeker for next year. Griffindor voted and cheered for whoever was behind, because they found the fight absolutely hilarious, and Ravenclaw looked on in a sort of existential horror.

This may explain how when the time came for the quartet to finally walk down to the Great Hall for the second term feast they were not permitted to do so.

The Four (and snake, riding Hermione with whom he won seeker fame), were carried to the great Hall on palanquins bourn by the Quidditch teams of Hufflepuff, Griffindor and Slytherin with much ceremony.

Professor Snape sneered, Professor Flitwich cheered, Professor McGonagall and Professor Sprout were weepy messes sharing a hug at the staff table. Dumbledor alone was frowning. This was not in the script, and tonight's script was essential in shaping both the wizarding communities understanding of the Yule night battle, and shaping young Harry Potter into at last becoming the child of Prophesy, and accepting at last the mantle of the Boy Who Lived.

The students, being students, and Quidditch being the closest to both professional celebrity and shared religion in the Wizarding world, were too busy going insane and cheering wildly at the ridiculous sight to notice their Headmaster's odd reaction.

When the noise died down, Professor Dumbledore took his chance to give the start of term speech. Now the great hall hung draped in the Green and Silver of House Slytherin, as they had won the last House Cup, and had a comfortable points lead this year as well.

Ravenclaw earned well academically, but lacked the sort of communal spirit to really rack up any extracurricular points, and tended to remain outside of conflicts that didn't concern them, leaving fewer community based point opportunities.

Hufflepuff didn't care about credit, and all sort of pitched in to whatever needed doing. They were far better at doing the work than about taking credit for it. The didn't produce a lot of stellar scholars, but the ones they did produce were so quick to share what they learned that the knowledge and points tended to distribute around them fairly swiftly. This was the first year in ages their Quidditch team was not last, and while not first, they were at least in range to catch second.

Griffindors were in the thick of everything and generated more points than any other house. Since the ratio of good and bad points shifted wildly, or sometimes Weasley, on any given day they soared or plummeted up and down the ranks.

Slytherin worked smarter not harder, but the House of Ambition was all about success and it showed. Their unchallenged Quidditch mastery was being challenged for once, but their constant concentration on areas of greatest reward to effort ratio, and having a Head of House that could award Slytherin as many as a dozen points for good breeding, and dock Griffindor as many for the crime of breathing in a single class, Slytherin had a comfortable points lead for the House Cup.

Dumbledore understood the House Point system was about peer pressure and using the pressure of your Housemates to instill the behaviours in students that the Professors desired without their having to try to trail hundreds of the little feral beasts themselves. It was time to use this system to simultaneously reward and isolate the boy who needed to become a hero.

Rising to his feet, and pointing his wand to his throat to activate the sonorous charm and amplify his voice perfectly throughout the hall, he began.

"While it is tradition to award the House Cup only at the end of the year, this has been quite an unprecedented year and I think you will have to bear with me as we take an unprecedented look at teh House Standings.

In fourth place is Hufflepuff with 312 points. While the house of hard work, it seems they can be a little too hard on cauldrons, and considering how much replacing them eats into Professor Snape's potions budget, that has been a bit costly." Dumbledore smiled apologetically at Professor Sprout, and Professor Snape glared as House Slytherin and a good portion of Griffindor laughed uproariously, pointing to Potter and Longbottom who waved in bemused embarrassment.

"In third place, Griffindor with 350 points. The best Quidditch showing in the last decade. Yes, yes, give a roar you lions! Yet also the second highest detention total since the glory days of the Marauders. Yes yes, you know who you are, and so do we." Dumbledore smiled and shook his finger at a pair of Weasleys who looked comically affronted.

"In second place is Ravenclaw with 426 points. Well done Ravenclaw, well done!" Dumbledore beamed, bowing towards the diminuative Professor Flitwick who puffed out his chest in a very goblin pride at the achievements of his house.

"And in first place is Slytherin with 472 points!" Dumbledore paused as the Slytherins broke their usual icy control to cheer, for if the ambitious do not revel in their victory deeply, they will not be driven to the next one as strongly.

"Yes, yes. Well done Slytherin, well done!" Dumbledore boomed, but his eyes were twinkling, and settled on Harry. Harry could feel a growing sense of alarm. What was he planning?

"Yet it seems we must take recent events into account! As I said, these were unprecedented events, and deserve an unprecedented action. I have given the matter much thought, and as is my right as Headmaster, assigned a few additional awards.

For cool use of intellect in the face of fire which surely could have injured her, to Hermione Granger fifty points for Hufflepuff."

Hermione felt a look of shock and horror steal over her face. "$ Harry$" She hissed in parseltongue.

"$ He thinks I solved the riddle and drank the potion. He thinks I am under his magical compulsion. If he figures out I used ritual magic and elemental affinity to beat the trap we are in trouble! $" She hissed in fear, and a most un-Hufflepuff paranoia.

Dumbledore continued, unaware that Hermione had not in fact bothered with the riddle, and poisoned herself with the potion Dumbledore had intended to control and compel Harry into self-sacrifice.

"For Mr Longbottom, who had the courage and the loyalty to sacrifice himself for his friends in the most demanding game of wizards chess Hogwarts has ever seen, I award Hufflefpuff fifty points! Your parents would be so proud." Dumbledore said, unaware the balling of Neville's fist and red in his face were rage not embarrassment at having his parents living death for following Dumbledore again waved in his face.

Harry frowned, turning to his friends and complaining loudly enough for the whole table to hear.

"Hey, is he stealing the House cup for us? That isn't right." Harry complained.

Hermione looked up and shook her head. "Don't worry. Even if he gave you sixty points, we would be tied at best. He still has to award Milicent too, even if he gives her a single point, Slytherin still ends up with the cup. I mean, they had a hundred and sixty point lead on us." Hermione offered, her faith in the fairness of teachers and the accuracy of textbooks being legendary for its fanaticism, rather than its evidentiary basis.

Dumbledore touched his throat again, and whispered something. A new depth filled his voice, and his words reached not just the student's ears, but their minds and hearts as well. This was an active use of Legimancy to affect the core beliefs of all who heard it without strong Occulemency shields or the defense of an Heir's Ring to a noble house with its own inbuilt protections.

"Lastly, to Mr Harry Potter, for having the courage to stand alone against the Dark Lord, to defy Voldemort himself without even a wand to defend himself, I award Hufflepuff house seventy points!"

A roar of approval came from Griffindor and Ravenclaw, and those Hufflepuff too far away to have heard Harry's earlier objections.

Rather than continuing on to award Milicent and Slytherin House its points for her brave and above all else, cunning, actions in the final confrontation, Dumbledore pointed his wand to the decorations around the hall, and the Slytherin Green and Silver quickly turned into the gold and prancing badgers of Hufflepuff.

Dumbledore concluded happily, having planted the seed into minds made magically suggestive due to his Legimancy enhanced speech, and the very subtle magics enhancing the Headmaster's Authority when he spoke to the students. Now both Harry and everyone else accepted that Harry was destined to stand alone against the Dark Lord. When the time came, even his best friends would smile and push him forward alone.

After all, the prophesy only needed him to sacrifice one more child. He didn't need to carry the weight of any more. Dumbledor smiled. Harry would be the last. Even the Greater Good could ask no more of him.

Hermione's dawning horror finally shatteed the dam of her reserve. She stood up and pointed at a stoney faced Milicent Bulstrode who was clapping for her friends, and swallowing the lack of her due respect. She was a half blood daughter in a pure blood House. She was used to it.

"Milicent was with us. Milicent fought too, and she gets nothing? THAT ISN' T FAIR!" Hermione shouted.

Neville rose. "NO! We didn't earn this. This isn't right."

Harry rose, he drew his wand and cast "Sonorous"

Harry began turned to the House of Badgers and began to hammer his wand into the table in time with his chant.

"NO THING NOT EARNED!" He began the chant, but Neville and Hermione touched their wand to their throat to cast Sonorous on themselves, and soon three of them were chanting and hammering the table together.

A dozen, then two dozen, soom half of Hufflepuff was hammering the table and chanting together.

"NO THING NOT EARNED!" They roared.

Dumbledore's booming voice cut through the student's best efforts with power and enough anger to terrify those who hadn't already worked themselves into a frenzy.

"PREFECTS!" Dumbledore roared. "Control your House!" The Headmaster ordered.

To be a Prefect is to be the hand of the school's authority among your fellow students. You were a student, but at the same time you were part of the administration. You were an extension of your House.

The house of badgers, the house of duffers, the house of nobody else wants me. The nicknames for Hufflepuff house are as many as they are derogatory. However, not Slytherin in their malice, not Griffindor in their arrogance, not Ravenclaw in their superiority ever outright attacked Hufflepuff.

House Hufflepuff defends its own. The House of Badgers is hard to rouse, but impossible to quell. When you come for one, you face them all. Helga Hufflepuff was the founder who cherished those who worked hard, accepted the cost of what needed to be done, and took no thing unearned. What they did not do, ever, was back down.

Cedric Diggory felt Dumbeldores words hit his mind, backed by the power of his Legimancy. Cedric was not just a Hufflepuff. In many ways, Cedric was the Hufflepuff. The most Hufflepuff of Hufflepuff. He heard the Headmaster's demand that he stop his juniors, dug in his claws, and snarled back.

"NO THING UNEARNED!" Boomed out in his classicly trained baritone, and by the next repetition, all the Hufflepuff prefects, and seniors, had joined the chant.

Dumbledore had turned and begun arguing with Professor Sprout, only to have Professor McGonagall step between them and get directly in the Headmaster's face in an agurment kept private by both sound masking and slight veiling charms to prevent lip reading.

Professor Sprout, a stout looking woman who wore her formal robes with more charm than elegance marched towards the Hufflepuff House banners surrounding the great hall like a rather plump badger come to very angry life.

With an angry wave of her wand, she cast "Vexillum Restitue!"

One banner reverted from Hufflepuff gold, to Slytherin Green and Silver.

Poppy Pomfrey, the Mediwitch being another Hogwarts staff member of Hufflepuff origin strode to the other side of the hall, bowed to Madame Pomfrey, and set about changing the other side.

"Vexillium Restitue!" The two Hufflepuff professors chanted, one by one brute force transforming what had reshaped itself from Slytherin to Hufflepuff with a lazy wave and whispered word of the Headmaster.

Yet he was wrong. Hufflepuff hadn't earned it. If it took a lot of hard work to change it back, well, they were Hufflepuff. They were not afraid of a little hard work.

Harry felt a hand come down on his shoulder and squeeze. He looked up into the troubled eyes of Professor Dumbledore looking down on him and frowning.

"I don't understand your objection Harry. I only sought to honour you for your sacrifice. The whole school, the whole of wizarding Britain owes you at least that much." Dumbledore said, his eyes probing, as at last he drove his matchless mind in active Legimancy into the mind of the Boy Who Lived to find out what he needed to do to control him.

Dumbledore fell back with a cry, as his mind dove deep into Harry's mind, only to recoil in blind terror from the black serpent, glowing with eldritch runes of power that coiled deep within Harry's mind, just waiting for prey to enter.

As Harry stepped past his professor to go apologize to Milicent for her own contribution being utterly ignored by everyone, he offered Dumbledore the secret he had been trying to steal.

"There are really only two things you have to understand about me professor. The only person who calls it a sacrifice is the one making it. Everyone else is just a murderer. " Harry said as he walked away.

Dumbledore asked in confusion "And the second?"

Harry just shook his head. The whole of the Hufflepuff table chanting "NO THING UNEARNED" utterly unheard behind the Headmaster.