True Freedom

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True Freedom

A soft heat pulsed on his chest. Harry opened his eyes and yawned, then dragged the silver acorn out from under his shirt. "Azure," he muttered, sitting up and patting down his hair

The metal acorn bloomed into a tree, then shimmered into a mirror.

Fleur's face appeared. "Bonjour, mon Cœur." Her eyes swept over him. "You look good like that. Come see me, I have your Polyjuice and we need to talk."

Harry's breath caught. "That sounds ominous." He dragged a smile onto his face; a bright, wide one. "Have I done anything deserving of being scorched?"

Fleur's eyes softened. "Nothing to worry about, Harry. I meant my promise."

Relief flooded through him. "Coming, ma princesse."

"Be quick." Fleur's face vanished and the mirror shrank back into an acorn.

Harry dropped it onto his chest and pulled some clothes on, then disillusioned himself and slipped out of Gryffindor Tower. He bypassed Filch, who stalked the corridors with a horrid grin muttering about beatings to his vicious cat.

You're on my to do list. Harry paused to watch him shuffle along the corridor. Dobby can't watch you and Umbridge at the same time. He hurried into the bathroom and gave Myrtle a wave. "Hi!"

She half-raised a hand, an odd, distant look hovering in her silver eyes. "Have you ever been to London?"

"A few times." Harry paused as the chamber opened. "Why?"

Myrtle shook her head. "Was I there?"

Harry blinked. "Er… no? I thought you couldn't leave the castle grounds?"

"Right." Myrtle drifted through the cubicle doors and stared down into the dark of the chamber. "It must've been a memory from when I was alive, but I'm sure you were there with me."

"I don't think so." Harry shot her a rueful smile and stepped into the passage. "Sorry, Myrtle."

A shiver rippled through her translucent, silver form. "Don't worry about it, Tom."

He froze on the step and a fist of ice clamped "round his spine; its chill rushed through his blood. Tom?! Harry hurried down into the chamber and stared into the pool. No. He let the chill fade. I must've misheard.

Harry shot a grin at Salazar and snatched a sufficient handful of galleons from what remained of his Triwizard winnings.

"Enjoy yourself, Harry," Salazar called.

"I will!" He spun the world back past him and stepped into the atrium of the Delacours" chateau.

Fleur sat on the bottom step of the stairs, her silver hair swept over one shoulder of her midnight blue dress. A single vial of Polyjuice rested on the ground between her feet.

"I'm here. How-"

She surged to her feet and crushed her lips against his. "Good. I missed you."

Harry fought down a thick, hot lump in his throat and blinked back tears. So that's what that's like.

"I have your Polyjuice." She scooped the vial off the floor.

Harry watched her bend over for it and felt a little heat trace through his veins.

She smirked as she stood up. "I saw that."

"Saw what?"

Fleur laughed and slipped her hand in his pocket, fishing out a handful of galleons. "That'll do it."

Harry took the vial and shook it. "This looks an awful lot like badly cooked porridge. Why is it that potions are always so unappealing?" "Not all of them are." Fleur tucked the galleons into her bra with a wince. "Why're these so cold?"

"They were in the chamber, it's chilly down here."

"It feels like there's ice cubes on my nipples."

Harry's gaze dipped to Fleur's cleavage. "Why on earth do you know what that feels like?"

"I don't." She shrugged. "But it's supposed to be a thing…"

"Weird." Harry tucked the vial away. "What was so important?"

I was accepted by the Bureau des Énigmes," Fleur said.

"That's brilliant." Harry swept her into a hug and pressed her against his chest. "I told you, you wouldn't fail."

Fleur rolled her eyes. "You just had to get your I told you so in, didn't you?"

Harry chuckled. "As if you'd have done anything different."

A peal of laughter burst from Fleur's lips. "I would've said it in a better French accent, mon Cœur." She took a deep breath. "I said no."

"What?" Harry leant back and stared her in the eye. "But that's what you've wanted for ages?!"

"I asked to delay the beginning of my role there until I had completed my contract at Gringotts," she said.

"You have a contract at Gringotts?" Harry frowned. "Why? For what?"

"I signed it a few days ago. I start in a few weeks as a liaison for Gringotts and the private magical artefact retrieval groups. I'll be based in London. This way, we won't have to endure another year like this one and I'll be there to help."

His heart seized. "But it's safer in France."

Fleur's eyes narrowed and darkened several hues. "Have you forgotten your promise, mon Cœur?"

"No," he whispered. "But I still don't like it."

"I would be upset if you did," she murmured. "But I will not be sitting here like some shiny, silver cup for you to win at the end of your

fight."

Harry clawed for a way around it. Someone else might be able to persuade her to stay here.

"Did you speak to your parents?" he asked.

"I did." Fleur's eyes shifted to midnight blue. "They weren't ecstatic about it. They knew straight away the reason I'd taken the role, I've little interest in the enchanted trinkets they scrape out of holes in the ground and hike to fools; it's basically part time and not very challenging."

Harry's heart sank. "What did they say?"

"They told me to be careful in Britain. Maman suggested I apply for a role at Hogwarts."

"And your father?"

"Papa asked what our plans were. I think he understands anything we plan will be for the both of us now."

A warm glow and a tangle of fear wrestled back and forth beneath Harry's ribs. "So they don't mind."

"They're not going to be able to stop me either." Fleur's eyes flashed black. "So stop trying to find a way to keep me here without breaking your promise!"

He sighed. "I'm sorry, mon Rêve. I am, it's just-"

"I know." Fleur kissed him on the cheek, then rested her forehead against his. Her eyes faded back to summer-sky-blue. "The only perfect thing you've got. Something you can't bear to lose."

He pulled her against him and tried to smooth out the tangle of emotion. "I can't lose. I can't. "

A small pout crept onto Fleur's lips. " We can't lose. I will work at Gringotts, it pays well enough to cover the cost of renting."

"Have you chosen anywhere?" Harry ran a hand through his hair. "I could ward the place to make sure it's much safer."

"How?" Fleur cupped his chin and tilted his head up. "I'm better with wards than you are, remember?"

"Blood magic." Harry grinned. "It's not the sort of thing I want to be caught doing, but it will keep you safe."

"Us," Fleur said. "You're not living with your muggle relatives when you could be with me. You don't need them anymore, you have moi."

"You want us to live together?"

She flinched. "You don't want to?"

Harry shook his head and grabbed her hands. "Nothing like that, I just didn't expect it. I'll only be sixteen in a couple of months. Although, thinking about it, the time-turner might actually mean I've already made it."

"We've been together for almost a year," Fleur murmured. "It's not such a short time and, well, I refuse to let you go back to that place."

"I've never even talked about it." Harry quirked an eyebrow. "Why do you think it's so bad?"

Fleur's eyes flashed black as pitch. "I know because you don't speak about it. I know because you used to avoid even touching me and because people don't cling to o ne perfect wish if they didn't spend all their lives wishing and never watching any of them come true."

Harry grimaced and studied the vial of polyjuice. His heart sank down into his stomach. "I guess I'm a bit weird, aren't I? I'm sorry."

Fleur turned her nose up. "Don't apologise for being yourself, mon Cœur."

"I want to live with you," he murmured. "I do."

"Really?" Her heart hovered in her blue eyes. "I know it's a big step, but I - I would very much like it, mon Cœur. I would come home every day for the whole summer and you would just be there…"

"I just, I don't want anyone to know about us."

"Hiding me away, mon Cœur?" Fleur's lips curved into a smirk. "Afraid all the girls at Hogwarts will realize you're just toying with their hearts?"

Harry snorted. "More like I'm concerned about getting unexpected house calls from Dumbledore or Voldemort."

"So we do it in secret," Fleur said. "You go back to your relatives, then you disappear and come live with me. We keep our distance in public, but that's fine, because we're not likely to cross paths anyway."

"Dumbledore will find me," Harry said. "The Dursleys will tell him I left and that I'm able to use magic outside of school. They've no reason to keep my secrets."

"Memory charm them," Fleur replied. "I know most of the theory behind the Fidelius Charm, with a few months I'm sure I can learn how to cast it, then we can't be found even if he knows you're gone." "How does it work?" Harry asked. "Because I'm fairly sure my parents relied on that charm…"

"It can only be used to protect the permanent location of living, sentient, magical beings, and by permanent, I mean in almost constant residence. It has something to do with souls." Fleur frowned. "The book I read on it makes it sound as if the soul is something like an enchantment. Magic cast by subconscious intent or perception, like the belief you're alive."

The Killing Curse kills because it affects the soul, and dementors are meant to affect it, too. Perhaps they strip away part of that sense of self from the body, somehow. The Killing Curse does it so thoroughly a person can't endure it without an anchor elsewhere. He turned it over in his head. But how does the Fidelius use that principle to work?

Harry? Fleur poked him. "You've gone very quiet."

"Souls are tricky," Harry murmured. "A magic-powered sense of self, I read."

Fleur blinked. "I would love to read whatever it was you read that in. It sounds very similar to what I read and the book I read wasn't intended to be read by students or teachers or anyone but the head of the school." She wrinkled her nose. "It was a gift from Grindelwald to the headmaster back when he was seeking support."

"What did it say?"

"The Fidelius isn't something to be done lightly, mon Cœur. If we do it, we create a bubble within which our sense of self, as you called it, will be concealed beneath the secret keeper's own. While we're in the bubble, our existence, and the existence of anything within that bubble, requires the sense of self of our secret keeper to understand. Like a key, it unlocks the ability to perceive anything within the bubble. Our secret keeper can share that key with any deliberate action that confirms the existence and location of us and our bubble. The risk is that it requires a lot of trust. Without that trust, it simply can't be cast, because of the incompatibility of the souls." She shook her hair out and tossed it over her shoulder. "It also necessitates that the charm only be cast for things that take a great deal of trust to share. You can't just Fidelius your favourite library table, it has to be something important and secret."

"Is it dangerous to cast?"

Fleur hummed. "I don't think so. Just difficult. If you get it wrong, you can just cancel the bubble."

"So we'd just need to choose a secret keeper we can trust completely and who won't be in any danger whatsoever."

"I know just who to choose." Fleur smiled. "Someone most don't even know exists, but who has no reason in the world to give us away. Someone who will be safely here in France."

One of her parents?

"Who?"

"Gabby, of course." Fleur laughed. "Who knows about the two of us? And who of them knows about my baby sister? She's well protected here in France out of the eye of either Voldemort or Dumbledore."

She pulled a face. "Why are you so worried about Albus Dumbledore?"

Harry swallowed a bitter heat. "I am beginning to believe he would rather make a martyr of me than anything else."

Fleur's eyes flashed ink-black and swelled to twice their usual size. Her chin and nose thrust forward into a serrated beak and feathers sprouted through her skin everywhere Harry could see. Her magic tugged at his thoughts, pulling his gaze to the swell of her breasts and the curve of her hips. White-hot sparks danced over her hands and heat washed over Harry's face.

Harry swallowed. "Fleur?"

She took a long deep breath and her face shifted back. "Pardon," she murmured. "I hope you don't find my other form too unattractive."

"Your magic makes that literally impossible." He cupped her cheeks between his palms and kissed her soft, rose lips. "And it's you. I love you, covered in feathers or not."

Fleur's lips curved into a pout. "But you'd probably prefer there was no beak."

"It does look moderately terrifying." He grinned. "If a kiss goes wrong, you might bite off my nose and then I'd look like Voldemort." Harry caught her eyes and tapped his temple. "Besides, I'm more than a little weird myself."

Fleur stared at him for a long moment, then crushed her lips against him, knocking him back against the wall. "You are staying mine," she whispered between kisses. "Weird or not."

Harry smiled and pulled her tight to his chest. "I can live with that."

"You will have to. I am not letting you go." She tucked her head into the crook of his neck. "It's decided, then. We will find a place for ourselves, I will get Gabby to be our secret keeper, then we will ward the whole place. You will come join me as soon as the summer starts and we will go from there."

"I have a trust fund," Harry said. "It's around fifty thousand galleons from memory."

"That's some trust fund." Fleur shook her hair out of her face and swept it back over her shoulder. "Enough for us to discreetly find a small place for ourselves if I help."

"From what Nagnok said, I suspect that the Potter family fortune is around six times that." He grinned. "Though I can't access any of it, except the trust fund, until I'm seventeen."

"Your fund tops up every year, doesn't it?"

"Yes."

"Good. That means we won't have to get a loan to buy somewhere, only combine what we have."

"Have you looked at anywhere?" Harry asked.

"A few places that seemed like they might be affordable," she said. "I saw a nice apartment I liked, but having muggle neighbours can cause a lot of problems. There was a small house in one of the magical villages in Dorset and a nice little place in Godric's Hollow…"

Harry winced.

"You don't like Godric's Hollow?" Fleur asked.

"I don't think I want to live in the village my parents were killed in," he said. "Every time I pop to the shops, I'd walk past the memorial to their deaths. Maybe the other small house?"

"It's in Budleigh Babberton," Fleur said. "A charming place. It's in the West Country. I could happily choose there."

"I leave it up to you," Harry replied. "Just not Godric's Hollow, or

Ottery St Catchpole, the Weasley's live there and they'd alert Dumbledore."

"You're going?" Fleur narrowed her eyes. "You're in that much of a hurry to get away from me, mon Cœur?"

"I would very much prefer to stay."

"Then why do you have to go?" Fleur moaned.

"Now I have the Polyjuice, I can sort out a vicious old man with a broom, get rid of Umbridge before she hurts anyone else, and go prophecy hunting before Fudge gets thrown out of office and Dumbledore pops back up in the Great Hall like a giant, wrinkled, sherbet lemon sucking, bad penny." He paused. "Know anything about veritaserum? Or, more specifically, how to resist it?" "Couldn't find a book?" Fleur jibed.

"You're much prettier than a book and you smell nicer."

Fleur's lips quirked. "Flattery will get you everywhere, mon Cœur. It's a very powerful compulsion, it sedates the mind to sap will and focus, and creates a sense of trust to get the person to talk. If you can fight the sedation and keep your wits, then you can resist it, but the best way is the antidote."

"Which you just happen to conveniently have?"

Fleur laughed. "It takes a long time to brew and Maman doesn't have the license for it."

"Damn."

"You will be fine." She slipped a hand into his hair and gave it a light tug. "Because if you are not, I will melt your face off."

Harry winced. "And on that tender, loving note, I need to go."

"Go on then." Fleur scowled. "You come visit me as soon as you can, and now you owe me cake, too."

"Oh I do, do I?" A smile spread across his lips as her scowl morphed into a huge pout. "I'll find you something sweet, mon Rêve."

"Marzipan," Fleur ordered. "And plums."

"Of course, ma princesse." He stood up and bent to kiss Fleur goodbye. "I'm sure that'll be an easy combination for me to find." "The harder it is to get, the more satisfying it is to get it." She tangled her hands in his hair and held his mouth against hers. "I was expecting you to stay," she murmured. "I had plans."

"Sorry." He kissed her once more. "But you've got the whole summer for plans now."

Fleur's pout curved into a smirk. "What an excellent idea."

Harry shot her a grin and twisted the world past himself, reappearing in the study.

"No vampires this time?" Salazar asked.

"No." Harry activated the Marauder's Map. "It's time to sort things out before Fudge is deposed and I run out of time."

"Up to something nefarious?" Salazar peered at the map.

"I'm going to encourage the caretaker to be nicer to the students." Harry grimaced. "It's a good opportunity to test out my ability to modify memories; I would rather practice on someone who deserves anything that goes wrong."

And if I hear about him hitting another eleven year old girl afterward, I'll feed him to the giant squid in small pieces. He spotted Filch patrolling the third floor, his name marker floating up and down the corridor as if he was pacing.

Harry set off at a brisk pace, spinning his wand around on his palm. Filch's name drifted down the stairs, so he tucked away the map and waited halfway down them.

"What's this?" Filch cackled. "A student out on his own? Up to no good, I reckon."

"Hello, Filch," Harry said.

"What are you up to, Potter?" He snarled and clutched at his broom. "You think I've forgotten what you did to my Mrs. Norris?"

"Legilimens," Harry whispered.

Harry tore through his mind, following the trail of hatred and resentment back to its birth half a century ago. The beaming visage of a young, dark-haired, pale-eyed girl wielded a wand in

Ollivander's, surrounded by yellow sparks. She bathed in the pride of her parents while Filch watched on, forgotten, forlorn, and furious.

"Obliviate," Harry murmured.

He purged every moment of bitterness, forcing every memory of watching magic to shift from discontent to calm acceptance. Harry twisted the resentment toward the parents who'd ignored him rather than the sister who'd been driven away, then drew all the small moments in which she'd tried to help her brother to the front of Filch's mind.

Let's see if that works. He severed the connection. Otherwise, I'll have to get rid of him.

Filch's eyes rolled up into his head and he slumped to the floor. Harry flicked his wand back into his sleeve, turned on his heel, and strode back in the direction of the chamber.

Dobby stumbled into the puddle of Myrtle's bathroom with a loud crack.

"Dobby?" Harry asked.

Dobby slumped to the floor. Threads of red twisted their way across the surface of the puddle.

Merde! Harry turned the elf over.

A trio of deep, gaping cuts ran from Dobby's collarbone to his waist.

Bone gleamed beneath bright blood. Harry muttered the healing charm, but the cuts refused to close no matter how much magic he poured into them.

"Master Harry Potter," Dobby whispered. "Dobby saved the students. Dobby saved them all."

Crimson blossomed across the white tiles. Harry watched it spread through the lines of grout and choked on a knot of thorns. "Well done, Dobby."

"Dobby did well?" Dobby blinked and shifted. A fresh wave of red gushed across the puddle. "Dobby tried to do what Harry Potter would have done, but the nasty pink teacher was faster than before."

"You did well, Dobby." He caught Dobby's hand. "I won't forget."

But everyone else will. A spot of ice spread across his chest; it screamed Umbridge's name like the distant shriek of foxes in the night. T hey'll celebrate they were saved and never even notice you're gone. You'll be nothing. Harry smothered the words.

"You're free forever now, Dobby," he murmured.

"Free…" A small smile curved Dobby's lips as his fingers slipped from Harry's arm. "Dobby is free."

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For the Greater Good

Disclaimer : Nothing is mine; everything is J K Rowling's. Still.

AN : The Discord server's still up, running, and steadily growing. Do come join us!

You can find the links to the audiobooks hosted on Spotify and Apple Podcasts via my website or my discord!

All the early access chapters are all on my website, but, of course, require a detour through the-site-that-must-not-be-named.

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For the Greater Good

A bright, sun-lit sky spread over a flat, still stretch of water. The pines bristled away over the rolling hills beyond it.

Quite a nice day. Harry watched the smoke rise up and drift across the lake, then slipped his wand back into his sleeve. Everyone will wake up, look outside and be happy. And nobody will even notice Dobby's vanished.

Freezing fury swirled through his veins and clenched its fist around his heart.

"Goodbye Dobby." He watched the breeze snatch the last of the ashes away. "You died a hero."

And Fleur's right about heroes: they die.

Harry took a deep breath, then apparated back to the study in the chamber. He honed the ice in his chest to a razor sharp edge and cradled it close to his heart.

Salazar watched him pace back and forth past the desk. "You burnt him?"

"I didn't like the idea of him being trapped under the dirt and rotting away." Harry grabbed the Polyjuice. "Now I'm going to give Umbridge a reason to come after me."

"I never understood why the muggles insist on burying themselves." Salazar ran a finger along the back of his serpent. "Get rid of this woman, Harry. House elves are selfless, loyal, creatures, to kill one out of spite alone…"

"She's already gone." He stalked the length of the chamber past the glinting eyes of the serpent effigies.

A thick pool of red covered the bathroom floor. Myrtle wrung her pearl-white hands over the crimson, floating in small circles around its edge.

He vanished the blood.

"Harry!" Myrtle swooped over. "I thought something terrible had happened to you."

"It's not my blood."

"A student?" Myrtle asked. "Will I have company?"

"I don't think so," Harry murmured. "He's free now, he'd have no desire to linger here and be bound to this world."

"It depends," Myrtle whispered. "All it takes is a reason to stay."

"I don't think he'd want to stay."

"No regrets?" She drifted to the entrance of the chamber and peered down into the dark. "No strange echoes of emotion? Nothing missing? "

"He wanted to be free." Harry sighed. "He is."

"Free," Myrtle breathed, drifting past to the top step down into the chamber. "Free to disappear."

"Not to the next great adventure? No well-earnt rest?"

"There's nothing after death, Tom." Myrtle's form shivered and flickered as she slid away into the wall. "Once you let go, you fade away like the light of dying embers."

Tom?! The hairs prickled across the back of Harry's neck. He pushed it from his mind and seized hold of the sharp cold beneath his ribs. No time to worry about that now. Umbridge has to go.

Harry prowled through the corridors beneath his disillusionment charm to the door of Umbridge's office. Wards thrummed on the doorframe; small, crude, misshapen runes notched the frame.

You'll vanish. He slid his wand from his sleeve, honing his hate to a sharp edge. I'll eradicate every trace.

Harry thrust his wand out and poured cherry-red fiendfyre into the room. The wards melted like frost. The lurid, pink carpet burst into flames, releasing billows of acrid smoke. He forced the fire hotter and scourged everything from the stone, then extinguished the flames with a slash of his wand.

Orange-glowing stones shimmered, wreathed in heat-haze, molten mortar wept from between them, and ashes drifted down to the floor. A soft satisfaction swelled within him. He bent and etched his message into the floor in purple flame.

For the Greater Good. Harry stared at the words. And for revenge.

Because it's people like you that ought to vanish, not ones like Dobby.

"And now I wait."

He strode back to the Great Hall and took a seat, watching Umbridge's smug smile out of the corner of his eye. You're not going to be smiling for much longer. He smothered the yearning to see the moment arrive and sliced the pastry off a slice of chicken, ham, and leek pie with the very tip of his knife.

Malfoy slunk into the hall and approached the dais. The warped, scorched sole of his right boot let off little wisps of smoke as he bent to Umbridge's ear and whispered.

Her face turned bright red and a vein throbbed in her temple.

"Professor Snape! I want every last drop of veritaserum in my office.

Immediately!" She sputtered and clutched at her handbag. "And bring Potter with you. He's behind this. He and Dumbledore are behind all

of it!"

"Very well. Malfoy, escort Potter to Professor Umbridge's office." Snape left in a swirl of black robes.

Snape probably didn't even bat an eyelash at Filch beating first years.

"Now, Mr. Potter," Umbridge hissed.

Harry shot Katie a small smile as he stood. She frowned at him and squirmed on her seat, her lips pressed into a thin, white line. He gave her a little wave and strode back toward Umbridge's office.

Malfoy and the members of the Inquisitorial Squad flanked him, trailing after him with their wands in their hands.

Snape lurked by the entrance to the classroom holding a clear vial. A small smirk graced his lips as he stepped in ahead of them. "There is enough veritaserum in this vial for every student on that list." He sneered. "There are no children with the strength to fight off even a single drop."

"I have to be sure," Umbridge snapped. "Will it be enough?"

"It takes considerable mental strength to fight the effects of veritaserum. It would be a very rare student who was capable of it." Snape threw a long look at Harry. "Three drops ought to be more than enough."

"Very well." Umbridge snatched the vial from him and poured three drops into a pewter goblet.

"May I ask what's happening?" Harry enquired.

"Drink up, Mr. Potter," Umbridge instructed. "We shall discuss what's happening at length and in great detail."

"I look forward to it." Harry smothered a smile and tipped the veritaserum onto his tongue; it burnt like he'd pressed his tongue against ice and an odd numb crept down his throat, then seeped through him.

Emptiness. Harry almost laughed. This faint numb is sedation? It has no hunger. No bite. It's nothing. He crushed it.

"Allow a few seconds for it to take effect," Snape said. "A test question is advisable to begin with, something simple."

"What is your name?" Umbridge demanded.

A strange sense of trust rose up, a desire to spill everything surging through him. "Harry James Potter."

"Where were you this morning?" She glanced at the blackened, heatwarped remnants of her office.

"Hogwarts," Harry let the compulsion drive his tongue.

"Specifically?" Snape drawled. A small smirk hovered at the corner of his lips.

Damn him. He suspects. He squashed the compulsion.

"Gryffindor Tower." He kept his tone flat and even.

A broad grin spread across Umbridge's pallid face. "Where's Dumbledore?"

Harry smothered a quiet sense of triumph. It's almost too easy.

"I have no idea," he said.

"Have you attended any meetings of this Dumbledore's Army organisation, since the first?"

"No," he droned.

Umbridge's face fell. Snape's eyebrows rose into his hairline.

Not good. He knows I might be lying.

"Why did you not attend any meetings?" Umbridge pressed. "Surely these students are your sort."

"I wasn't welcome, not after all the stuff that was written about me. They said it would put people off from joining."

"Did you destroy my office?" Umbridge glowered. "Did you?!"

Yes. I razed every trace of you from the school but yourself. He stilled his cold fury before it reached his face. And I'll get rid of you soon, too.

"No," he said.

"You may go, Potter," she spat. "Mr. Malfoy, if you would be so kind as to fetch… Mr. Smith."

Harry lingered outside the door for a moment.

"You want to check Potter's answers against another, more insignificant member?" Snape asked.

"I want to know what the list really is." Umbridge's heels clicked back and forth beyond the wall. "If Potter wasn't directly involved because the founders thought he was bad for their reputation, then I'll have to ask someone else who was there."

"I can't imagine there's anything more to that piece of paper than the names and a particularly childish jinx to punish anyone who betrays the group."

Harry pulled out the Marauder's Map. Zacharias Smith's name floated at one end of the Hufflepuff table.

Polyjuice time. He set off at a brisk pace. I'll have to go out into the forest as myself, I won't be able to impersonate an auror or something similarly clever.

He paused at the doors to the Great Hall. "Imperio." His will seeped through Smith.

The boy rose, drifted from the end of his table, then followed Harry into a broom closet. Harry stunned and disillusioned him, then tugged a couple of hairs out of his head and dropped them into the vial of Polyjuice; it shifted to a sludge-like brown. Pinching his nose, he downed the potion.

A fierce heat spread across his body, burning just beneath his skin. His bones twisted and shifted, his skin rippling like liquid wax, and muscles melted away from under his skin. Harry clenched his jaw and waited it out.

I hope Fleur's change doesn't hurt like this.

He checked his reflection in the window. Then he charmed his robes, changing their size and colour to match Smith's.

Malfoy spotted him and dragged him off the bench before he'd managed to put his weight on it. "The Headmistress wants to speak with you, Smith."

Crabbe and Goyle took an arm each and half-marched, half-carried him down the corridor.

"Mr. Smith." Umbridge simpered and pushed a plain china cup full of steaming tea in his direction.

No doubt full of veritaserum. He eyed the tea and picked out a thin, clear film of liquid over the top. She didn't even mix it in to hide it. It's just been poured on top.

"Have a drink, Mr. Smith. Relax, you're not in any trouble. I just want to ask you about some of the members of that group you were part of. They've done a great deal of criminal damage to Hogwarts and my own possessions."

Harry picked up the tea cup and took a sip. Hot, sweet tea and the ice of the veritaserum slid down his throat.

"What's your full name?" Umbridge asked.

Harry pictured the name from the Marauders" Map. "It's just Zacharias Smith." He took another cautious sip of tea.

"So how many meetings of this group did you go to?" she asked.

"There was only one meeting."

"That's good. What did you plan to do at the meetings?"

"We wanted to practice magic," Harry said. "I was afraid I wouldn't be able to pass my OWLs otherwise."

"You're right to be concerned, the exams are very important."

Umbridge nodded. "But you must be careful who you listen to."

"Of course, professor." Harry took another gulp of the tea, which had cooled to reach that small window between scalding and icy.

"How was the group organized?"

"The DA was run by Hermione Granger, Neville Longbottom, and Ron Weasley, but several different students were going to teach; whoever could help, really." He paused for a moment. "They had a big list with all the names on."

"What was the list?" Umbridge purred.

"It had all the names on and some magic to stop anyone from ratting us out." He wrinkled his brow as if in thought. "But they were very careful with it. I think it was more important than that." He glanced around, then took a sip of tea. "I listened in when they were hiding it."

Umbridge leant forward with baited breath. A gleam of triumph hovered in her eyes. "What did they say?"

Good thing Snape left, he wouldn't believe any of this for a second.

"They said it was a map," Harry whispered. "There was a phrase to reveal it, one Dumbledore gave them."

"Do you know the phrase?" Umbridge pried open her handbag, clawing out her wand, the vial of veritaserum, a small notebook, the chittering diadem from the Room of Requirement, and the list.

"I think so." He screwed his face up. "It was…"

"Take your time," Umbridge cooed.

"For the Greater Good," Harry murmured.

And for revenge.

"For the Greater Good." Umbridge tapped her wand on the list. She scowled and flipped the page over. "For the Greater Good."

The rough map revealed itself.

"Oh, yes," she breathed. "Thank you, Mr. Smith. You may go, just remember to be much more careful about who you listen to in the future."

Oh I will. He smothered a small, thin smile, stepped out and disillusioned himself, then crept back in. Perhaps you should've done the same.

Umbridge plucked the circlet from the floor and placed it on her brows, cocking her head. "Yes. Yes…" She snatched a handful of floo powder and tossed it into the flames. "Dawlish. Come at once and bring a partner." She paused. "No don't bother telling Amelia Bones, there's no time, this is of critical importance to the Minister."

Harry wandered back toward the Great Hall. The clicking of Umbridge's heels as she paced her classroom faded behind him.

One more step on the road, Umbridge. One more perceived victory. Then ruin.

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