[From Samhain to the Solstice]: The Dragon-Headed Door, gen, PG-13, 1/2, goblin Harry
Title: The Dragon-Headed Door
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Pairings: None, gen
Content Notes: AU (Harry raised by goblins), humor, angst, violence, present tense
Rating: PG-13
Wordcount: 5400
Summary: The second half of goblin-raised Harry’s second year and the first half of his third year at Hogwarts. Featuring cursed diaries, humans who don’t take a hint, starving dogs, and werewolves who for some reason want to keep it a secret. Oh, and what’s probably the beginning of the next goblin rebellion.
Author’s Notes: This is one of my “From Samhain to the Solstice” fics for this year and is the sequel to “Music Beneath the Mountains” and “In Their Own Secret Tongues He Spoke.” The title of the fic and section titles are from Tolkien’s poems “The Shores of Faery and “The Last Voyage of Earendel.”
The Dragon-Headed Door
Gateway of the Moon
Harry frowns at the door that stands in front of him. It’s not one that he’s ever seen before, but then again, he hasn’t come this far back in the Realm of Song, either. He mostly stays in the caverns and ravines near the surface.
But this morning he found a river of liquid mercury, which pleased him so much that he cast some protection spells and followed it. He expected to find the headwaters in a lake of pure silver or someone’s forge. He didn’t expect the mercury to be running from under a door.
It’s an enormous door, the kind of thing the Deep Ones would have built if they could build. The edges are hewn roughly out of basalt, but otherwise it looks like a giant boulder just set in the middle of a gap in the rock.
Well, the edges and the dragon’s head sticking out of the middle are probably carved, Harry has to concede. He takes a little step to the side to see the dragon’s head better. It reminds him of the basilisk’s that still hangs in the grove of honored enemies, but this is made entirely of stone. It has enough spikes that he thinks it’s meant to be a Hungarian Horntail. The eyes are closed and the muzzle projects forwards and fangs are visible around the edges of the mouth. Harry knows goblins could have created it, but it isn’t like his people to be this crude.
He already tried to use a few wizard spells on it, and to speak to the stone and hear back from it in the language of the goblins. Neither helped. The stone is aware, but it’s a sleeping awareness, Harry thinks. He doesn’t know how to wake it up.
Thoughtful, he goes back up towards the surface. Someone has to know what this thing is and how to open the door.
*
“You should not go near that door.”
Harry carefully examines Toothsplitter’s face. It’s not often that the Master Smith who raised him to journeyman a year ago speaks so seriously. And a warning of danger is not usually given, not when that would be an insult to another goblin’s fighting prowess. “Why not?” Harry asks, he thinks sensibly enough.
Toothsplitter sighs and puts down her hammer. Harry sits up from the edge of the carven stone seat where he’s been watching her work. It’s grave, then.
“I know you think the Deep Ones are the major enemies of goblins in the Realm of Song,” Toothsplitter begins. She pours him a mug of cool, gold-accented water. Harry accepts eagerly, and watches as Toothsplitter drinks from her own stone cup. He can see swirls of yellow near the top of hers. “But there were are other enemies.”
“Are or were?”
Toothsplitter toasts him with her mug. “They are both. We sealed them behind that door long ago, and so they only were our enemies, in a sense. But we couldn’t kill them. We had to put them to sleep. So they are.”
Harry sips thoughtfully from his cup, and appreciates the gold swirling around his mouth. He likes it better in drinks than in solids like biscuits. “I can appreciate that. But why is the door left unguarded?”
“Most young goblins never venture that far into the Realm of Song, Harry. You know that.”
It still makes a warm carazah spring to life in Harry’s chest that Toothsplitter and the others consider him a goblin. He finishes the water and nods. “Okay. Can I tell anyone else about this?”
“We do not want other youngsters getting ideas.”
“I meant my friend Luna, at Hogwarts.”
“Oh, the one who listens to animals.” Toothsplitter thinks about it while she strokes her forge, which is murmuring complaints about being left unused for so long in the middle of the afternoon. “Yes, I think that would be acceptable. But keep in mind that the situation is delicate right now, with war in the cave mouth if we don’t get straight answers from your Headmaster, so you will still want to warn her not to spread it around.”
Harry smiles, and he knows it’s sad. “That’s okay, Toothsplitter. Most of the time, no one listens to Luna anyway.”
*
“A dragon-headed door? How exciting!” Luna is bouncing gently on her feet as Harry finishes his story. They’re out in the Forbidden Forest, where they’ve just finished another language lesson with the thestrals. Harry is getting quite good at understanding them now, which makes both him and Luna proud. “I wonder if it’s like the entrance to the Chamber of Secrets here.”
“I don’t know, Luna.” Harry casts a Warming Charm. Luna is barefoot and gets uncomfortable when Harry asks her about it, so Harry uses lots of spells. “But probably not. I don’t think the enemies behind the door are basilisks, or there would be more basilisk heads in the crystal grove at home.”
Luna sniffles for a second. Harry told her about the basilisk’s funeral his first day back from hols, and she thought it was the most wonderful thing she ever heard. “But no, I didn’t mean that. I mean that someone must have been releasing the basilisk, right?”
Harry opens his mouth to argue that the basilisk was intelligent enough to crawl around the school on its own, then pauses. Luna is right. Why would it only get out now if it could always get out?
Grimly, Harry adjusts the hang of his knife on his belt. That means there’s an enemy out there, one he has to defend his humans and his stones and his objects in the school from. All his friends deserve to be safe.
“How are we going to find out if there is?” he asks.
“We have to listen to the animals,” Luna says earnestly. “Did you know that spiders are afraid of basilisks? They’re mortal enemies. We can ask them about it.”
“I don’t think you speak the language of spiders, though, do you?” That was one reason they had stayed away from the Acromantulas in the Forest so far, because Luna had admitted, a little ashamed, that she didn’t speak their tongue.
“Silly.” Luna beams at him. “All we have to do is learn it.”
Harry doesn’t really know why people bully Luna and say she’s stupid. She has the most common sense of any human he knows.
*
It actually takes more of the term to learn the language of spiders than Harry thought. It turns out to be full of vibrations that you can only make on a web, and so he and Luna have to study charms to make silk first. And the spiderwebs themselves, unfortunately, aren’t the kind of objects that talk to a goblin. Those are the ones like metal and stone and porcelain that were unalive first and come out of the earth. Ones that come right out of living beings tend to be mute.
But once they do start learning, it’s so simple that Harry wants to laugh. Luna even told him something last term about her friend Ginny and how she was acting strange, not like she did when they were children together and Luna knew her. The spiders are full of tales about her sneaking around-or, as they put it, vibration to the left-vibration to the right-two quick taps of the four feet in the middle.
So now they’re near the entrance to the Chamber in the old bathroom where Ginny comes all the time, waiting for her. Harry doesn’t know why the thing that’s making her act strange, whatever it is, wants her to keep going to the Chamber when there’s no basilisk down there anymore, but it’s not as if Snape makes sense on a regular basis, either. So maybe an evil object, or person, or spirit, whichever it is, doesn’t have to make sense.
“What are you doing here?”
Harry looks over his shoulder. The ghost, Moaning Myrtle, who he met once before is floating behind him, her arms crossed. She nods to Harry. “You said that you were going to honor me as a fallen enemy. But you never came back to do that.”
“I’m sorry, Myrtle,” Harry says, and bows to her. Maybe she knows something about goblins, because her eyes brighten in a way that says she knows just how deeply she’s been honored. “But you do have to have a battle with me first, so that you can actually be my enemy. Right now, you haven’t done that.”
“That’s right. I remember you saying something about that.” Myrtle chews her transparent lip with silvery teeth. “Can I fight you now?”
“Right now, we’re waiting for a different kind of enemy. But you can watch the battle if you want. Maybe that’ll give you some ideas about how you want to be honored?”
“You’re so nice, Harry Potter,” Myrtle says, floating up so that she sits on top of one of the cubicles. “No one else has ever been so nice to me.” Tears well up in her eyes and dangle there, ready to fall.
“I know, he’s very nice,” Luna says calmly. “Not many people listen to me or help me, either, but Harry does. It’s because he’s a goblin, you know.”
“By adoption,” Harry adds, when Myrtle studies him as if she expects to see that he’s a half-goblin like Professor Flitwick. She must not know that much about goblins after all. “But they’re my true people.”
“If all goblins are this nice, then more power to goblins.”
Harry smiles and starts to say something, but then Luna touches his arm. Harry turns around and listens. Yes, Luna’s right. Someone’s creeping down the corridor, and they’re trying to be quiet, but they haven’t taken that much care. Any experienced warrior could hear them.
“Excuse us, Myrtle,” Harry says politely, taking out his daggers. “We have an enemy to fight.”
“Yes, do let me watch!” Myrtle leans forwards with her elbows propped on the top of the cubicle wall and her hands folded under her chin.
Luna moves out and stands in front of the door, while Harry ducks under the sink that has a snake on it. They both agreed it would be best if Ginny saw Luna first, someone she likes and has no reason to hurt, and wouldn’t suspect of setting an ambush.
Ginny comes in through the door, and still looks stunned when she sees Luna. She blinks and clutches something under her robes. With a bit of squinting, Harry can make out the hard square edges of something that looks like a book, which he has to admit isn’t what he expected. “Luna? What are you doing here?”
“I come here and speak with Myrtle sometimes,” Luna says, and for all Harry knows, it’s true. There are still strange and wonderful secrets about Luna. He doesn’t know everything about his friend. Luna blinks back at Ginny and adds, “What are you doing here, Ginny?”
“I-I need a private place to brew potions. I’m not very good at them, and Professor Snape makes me nervous when he insults them.”
Harry frowns. He doesn’t share Potions classes with the Gryffindors, and he heard about Snape bullying Neville Longbottom, but he didn’t realize it was general bullying with all Gryffindors. He’ll have to do something about that.
Then he remembers that Ginny is probably being influenced by some kind of evil thing, and that’s the more pressing problem. “Where’s your cauldron?” he asks casually, thinking he might be able to get close to her and wave an enchanted knife that would disrupt the spell. “I’ll help you get set up.”
“Um, um, it’s shrunken and in my pocket.” Weasley’s eyes are darting anxiously back and forth between him and Luna, and she has one hand on something in her pocket that’s probably not a cauldron. The square thing that looks like a book, Harry thinks. “I prefer privacy, really, so could you…”
“We know that you have Wrackspurts in your head, Ginny,” Luna says, a lot more gently than Harry would think she could. “We’re just trying to help you get rid of them.”
Weasley’s eyes grow desperate, and she pulls out the book and hurls it at their heads. Harry pulls Luna to the side, shaking his head when she doesn’t duck and the book soars past them to land in a puddle. Weasley is already running away. “Why didn’t you duck, Luna?”
“Because I knew you would save me.”
Harry sighs. Well, it’s true, he has to admit as he goes to pick up the book. It’s just not the kind of lesson that he would take from the situation, not when he’s been trained in the self-reliant ways of goblins since before he could walk.
He frowns as he turns the book over and sees the initials T.M.R. embossed on the surface. That argues that it’s not Ginny’s book. It sorts of looks like a diary, which probably belongs to this T.M.R. person. Still, when he opens it, it’s full of delicate handwriting.
“That’s Ginny’s handwriting,” Luna volunteers, looking over his shoulder.
Harry nods, trusting her impression of it. “Do you want to go tell the professors?” It’s not what he would prefer to do, but he’s trying to fit better into human culture.
Luna looks at him as if he’s a little thick, which Harry does sometimes feel like. “Not when it would get Ginny in trouble. And not when we might have to explain how we learned it.”
Harry winces. He hadn’t thought of that. Ordinary humans don’t believe that animals can really talk. They won’t listen to people who claimed that they learned the language of spiders.
He nods again. “Then I’ll keep this for right now,” he says, and drops the book into a pocket, “until we can determine what to do with it.”
East of the Moon
Harry opens his eyes and stands up with his hands resting on his daggers. There’s been something buzzing and nagging at his dreams for a few nights now. He’s ignored it because it’s elusive and flees when he turns to confront it. This way, it’ll have to come out and reveal itself.
And it has, but it’s not something Harry would have expected. A boy who looks about sixteen or so stands up from leaning against a dark doorway that is not a place Harry would have imagined when awake. He has a pale face and dark hair that it looks like he spends a lot of time on. “Hello. I thought you would never hear me.”
“I heard you, but I didn’t understand what you were saying,” Harry explains as he studies the boy. He doesn’t carry weapons, not even a wand, but he stands as though he’s used to fighting. That makes Harry cautious. Either his demeanor is justified or it’s arrogance, and either way, in a human, that’s trouble.
“Well, then. My name is Tom Marvolo Riddle.”
“The owner of the diary?”
“Yes, indeed. And I am most anxious to make your acquaintance…” Riddle lets the words trail off suggestively.
“Sorry, but I’m a goblin, and if you don’t know my name yet, I don’t think I should give it.” That’s not a luxury Harry has most of the time, since almost everyone knows who he is the second they see his forehead. But he’s going to take advantage of it for all he’s worth when he does meet someone who doesn’t know.
Not to mention, someone who might be an enemy.
“You’re not a goblin,” Riddle says, his forehead wrinkling. Harry takes a hard look at it, but he doesn’t have runes carved into it that might account for the sense of heavy darkness around them. Too bad. He must be causing this some other way. “Nor a half-goblin. You’re too tall.”
Harry sighs. It seems that so many wizards fail to understand this. He thinks he’s because they’re obsessed by blood purity and everyone being related to each other, and don’t understand other forms of relation. “I’m an adopted goblin. My parents died when I was young, and the goblins found and raised me.”
“So you were raised by non-humans.”
The way that last word rolls off Riddle’s tongue raises hair all over Harry’s body. He drops his hands to the hilts of his daggers but tries to smile to show his teeth. Riddle hasn’t been any more insulting than other people-yet. He deserves some warning before Harry attacks. “Yes.”
“And you wanted to remain with them?”
Harry shrugs. “Well, like I said, my parents were dead. There weren’t any other humans that had any kind of claim to me. Well, technically there were, but we took care of it with some paperwork. Humans don’t pay a lot of attention to what they’re signing when it comes from Gringotts.”
“You’re speaking as if…” Riddle studies him and stands up from his lounging posture against the doorway. He circles around to the side. Harry turns with him. He’s too well-trained to let another duelist have the advantage.
“And you’re speaking as if you have some kind of grudge against goblins. Let’s hear about it.” Harry is impatient with human society and its lies most of the time, but doubly so now. Does Riddle really think he can fool Harry about his nature?
“You’re speaking as if you’re proud of it,” Riddle says, which at least does bring the answer out into the open, although it doesn’t make Harry any fonder of him. “You’re a wizard.”
“And a goblin.”
“You’re human.”
“And a goblin.”
Riddle looks the way that some of Harry’s Housemates do when they realize that Harry can just ask his sheets to make themselves and they’ll do it. “But you’re talented in magic.“
“And a goblin.” Harry is starting to wonder if Riddle’s fallen prey to the common misconception that humans have more magic, or some fundamentally more powerful kind of magic, than goblins. It’s not entirely unknown to Harry, although it’s still stupid as whistling when you stand under a ledge of echostone.
“You will stop saying that. You will give me your answer. What is your name?”
The words echo in Harry’s ears, and they might sway him, but he’s had practice at throwing off the whispering blandishments of the Deep Ones by now. He draws his daggers. “Get out of my head, Tom Riddle.”
“You should call me by my other name,” Riddle breathes, although Harry doesn’t think he imagined the flash of fear in those dark eyes when the other boy’s attempt to control Harry failed. “The name that I have made myself feared under.”
“The Bloke Who Babbles Too Much?”
Riddle lunges at him with a snarl, but then the dream world dissolves, and Harry finds himself back in his bed. The diary has squirmed out from under the bed, though, and is lying on the pillow next to him, smoking furiously.
Harry has had about enough of the thing, and he thinks that he doesn’t need to keep it around to figure out how it influenced Ginny Weasley anymore; the diary’s ability to invade his dreams pretty much proves how that happened. He takes his daggers and stabs the bloody thing.
O’er the Darkness
“Now, Harry, I want you to tell me exactly what happened when you stabbed this diary that you claim was speaking to you.”
Harry sighs. He’s been over this with Headmaster Dumbledore seven times now. And they have Luna’s testimony and even the teary words of Ginny Weasley, who apparently broke away from Riddle’s enchantment the instant Harry destroyed the diary.
“I stabbed the diary with my daggers,” he says anyway, because fighting a human who keeps asking silly questions is beneath him. “It started to smoke, and a large hole appeared in the center of it.”
“And your bed began to smoke, too.”
“Yes. Then I stabbed the diary again to be sure, and black blood, or at least a substance like blood, began to come out of it.” Harry tried to compare the black liquid to coal tar at first, but everyone except Professor Flitwick made it clear they had no idea what he was talking about, so Harry gave up. Honestly, don’t they pay attention to anything important, like mining?
“But your bed caught on fire.”
That appears to be the point that Dumbledore is hung up on. Harry gives him the most patient look he can. “Well, yes. It had a magical fire burning in the middle of it. Or at least the diary was smoking, and the diary was lying on the bed, so-”
“Why did the diary smoke when you stabbed it with a dagger?” Snape interrupts. Harry has no idea why he’s here at all. At least Professor Flitwick is the Head of His House and Professor McGonagall is Deputy Headmistress, but Dumbledore apparently invited Snape because he’s afraid to be the only annoying person in the room.
Harry just looks at him for a long moment. Technically he doesn’t have to answer Snape at all. He issued a challenge to a duel last year and Snape refused it. Harry doesn’t have to speak with cowards, under goblin law.
“Harry.” Dumbledore sounds an inch away from sighing. “Please answer Professor Snape.”
In the end, Harry shrugs and does so. He supposes that it won’t cost him more pride or dignity than he’s already lost. “The diary was Dark magic, and one of my daggers is made from a basilisk fang. I assume it was the potency of the venom that ate through it.”
Snape actually jerks back and turns pale. Harry raises a curious eyebrow. Then he remembers that he threatened Snape with his daggers on more than one occasion, and grins. Yes, Snape’s probably thinking about how he could have been stabbed with a basilisk fang himself.
“Harry,” Dumbledore sighs, aloud this time, and from the expression on his face, he knows what he’s going to say next will do no good. “I must ask you not to carry basilisk fangs around.”
“Where does it say I can’t in the School’s Charter, sir?”
Dumbledore struggles for a long moment. Harry thinks it’s against his own impulse to reach over the desk and slap Harry. That’s too bad, though, because he earned this when he lied and made excuses. Harry waits, face fixed in the angelic expression that is making Professor Flitwick cough behind his hand.
Dumbledore finally says, “It doesn’t. Nonetheless-”
Professor McGonagall decides to add herself to the annoying list then. Harry wants to shake his head mournfully. He could have warned her that too great a commitment to the rules would get her in trouble. “The Charter does say that lethal weapons cannot be carried, Mr. Potter.”
“You mean, other than wands?”
“Mr. Potter-”
“A wand can cast the Killing Curse,” Harry says, and keeps his eyes very wide as he reaches up to flip the fringe back from the scar. “I have reason to know that.” He waits for the count of two, to be effective, before he flips the fringe back down and continues in his normal voice. “Besides, Professor, if you look at the Charter, you’ll find that it says human students can’t carry lethal weapons. I’m a goblin.”
“There are no exceptions for non-human students,” Professor McGonagall says, at the same time that Snape mutters, “You are not a goblin.”
“I’ve already given you my answer to that, which you aren’t courageous enough to accept,” Harry told Snape, and faced Professor McGonagall with a faint smile. “As a matter of fact, Professor, there are. A half-troll student can have a club, for instance, and half-Veela students are allowed to Transfigure their hands into claws. It’s cultural.”
“Whether it is appropriate according to the Charter or not,” Dumbledore interrupts, his voice stern, “the fact remains that you cannot carry a basilisk fang made into a dagger around this school, Harry.”
“Oh, you can take my weapons.”
“Thank you for under-”
“If you duel me for them, and win.” Harry stood up and fell into an expectant stance. “Of course, my weapons shall be my daggers. You can have your wand if you want. It doesn’t make much difference to me.”
“Insolent,” Snape breathes, while Dumbledore just looks despairing.
“You are human, Mr. Potter.” Professor McGonagall says it with a little sigh, as if she doesn’t really expect Harry to listen to her and might not blame him if he doesn’t.
“If you wanted me to stay human, you should have left me with humans who would take care of me and call me by name and not make me sleep in a cupboard and care about me enough that I couldn’t just wander off on my own when I was six years old.”
Professor McGonagall stares at him. Then she turns to face Dumbledore. “The Muggles he was with did that to him?”
“I don’t see how it matters now, Minerva.” Dumbledore just flaps a hand without taking his gaze from Harry. Harry conceals a vicious smile as he watches the disapproval creep across Professor McGonagall’s face. Dumbledore just lost the loyalty of one of the most important people to him, and he didn’t notice.
“Right now,” Dumbledore goes on, “we’re settling the question of what happened when Mr. Potter stabbed that diary.”
Harry shrugs. “I don’t see how it matters. It burned up. It started a fire that I put out without the Ravenclaw Tower being damaged. The end. Why does it have to be more involved than that?”
This time, Dumbledore sighs as if it physically pains him to give up information. “Because Tom Marvolo Riddle is the mortal name of Lord Voldemort.”
Harry blinks, then shrugs. “Well, he should put stronger defenses on his bits of soul or whatever he’s leaving lying around.”
Dumbledore’s face gets pinched. “Mr. Potter-”
Harry points to Professor McGonagall and Snape. “What? You didn’t want them to know about this? But I think it’s obvious. After all, there was a piece of soul behind my scar that the goblins removed, so it stands to reason that he probably left more than one scattered around.”
The conversation goes rapidly downhill from there.
*
“And he said directly that you are lying?” Toothsplitter is leaning forwards with a fanatical light in her eyes.
“Yes, he did.” Professor Flitwick looks upset as he sips his cup of pure molten copper. Harry is beyond impressed with his professor’s digestion. “Albus seems to believe that the impact of this knowledge is going to change the entire game.”
“Game?” Harry blinks.
“Excuse me, Mr. Potter. The political game. The engagement of opponents on the political battlefield,” Professor Flitwick adds, since both Harry and Toothsplitter have puzzled expressions.
“Games are things children play,” Toothsplitter points out sharply. “They have nothing to do with lives or politics. If this professor thinks that he may play with goblin lives, he will find out the difference between us and children quickly.”
Flitwick sighs and nods. “I’m afraid that humans think differently and frequently confuse goblins with children in way that have nothing to do with our size, Madam Toothsplitter.” Harry is pleased by the use of “our.” “They assume that we think about the world in simple ways and that means that we can be fooled.”
“But-thinking simply means it’s hard to fool you,” Harry says. He wonders if this is another one of those confusing human things, because it seems impossible that smart adult humans don’t understand something Harry has known since he was six. “Because you look at their complicated explanations and you pierce through them and see to the heart.”
“Some people think complicated is better.” Professor Flitwick appears pained. “Or that anyone who doesn’t use the same metaphors and the same kinds of approvals and governments that humans do is primitive and backward.”
“Let them think that.” Toothsplitter flicks her claws together. “That means they will be all the more unprepared when war comes upon them.”
“It is to be war, then?” Professor Flitwick glances back and forth between them in resignation. “This is something that cannot be avoided?”
“Why would we want to avoid it?” Harry points out. “They have accused me of lying. They tried to control a goblin. The school as a whole is run by people who don’t respect goblins and think that their tangled explanations should control my life. This is something we should address.”
“But the other goblin rebellions haven’t-worked out well for our people.”
Toothsplitter smiles, revealing the teeth she’s sharpened into fangs since Harry came back for the summer. Everyone prepares for war in their own way. “You’ve been reading too much of the human side of history, Master Filius. You should ask yourself what those rebellions were meant to achieve.”
“Respect, I thought. But the humans don’t show it even now.”
“Oh, that generation at the time did,” Toothsplitter says. “It’s just that humans live such short lives they need to be taught anew every few decades.”
Flitwick looks pained. “I didn’t think I would live through another goblin rebellion.”
“Well,” Toothsplitter says. “Now you have. And what side are you going to choose?”
Harry looks at Flitwick in some curiosity to see how he’ll answer that. His loyalties aren’t as simple as Harry’s. He’s a half-goblin, and Harry is wholly goblin, and so Harry can’t blame Flitwick if he feels torn, he supposes. But it would be brilliant to be on the same side as him.
Flitwick looks back and forth between them for a moment, and then shakes his head. “One can hardly say that Mr. Potter didn’t give the Headmaster fair warning. I’m on your side in this war, until the end.” And he repeats it in Gobbledegook to prove he means it.
Harry is smiling as he gets up to shake hands with Professor Flitwick. “I promise that you’re not going to regret it, sir.”
“I hope not, either.” Flitwick’s hand squeezes his, hard. Then he sits back and picks up his cup of molten copper again. “Oh, by the way, Mr. Potter, Professor Dumbledore was most interested in what you did with the diary you destroyed.”
“I found a safe place for it,” Harry says innocently. He avoids Toothsplitter’s eye, but then again, she would say it was safe enough as long as he didn’t get caught, and Harry didn’t.
*
He followed that river of mercury that flowed up to the dragon-headed door the day that began the summer holidays. He stood before it, studying it, for long moments. Then he spoke the words that would guarantee that it could open.
Those words aren’t a secret. Young goblins can learn them if they want. Of course, if a young goblin uses them and the door opens and swallows them, that proves they shouldn’t have used them after all.
The dragon-headed door swung open for Harry. He didn’t look into the darkness behind it or wait for something to come forth. Instead, he threw the diary into the gap and then spoke the words that closed the door again. It seemed to him that it moved much more reluctantly back into place than it opened.
But the important thing was that the door had accepted the diary, and so had the enemies of the goblins that lived behind it. It’s probably true that those things still hate goblins, but they would hardly accept the dominance of the arrogant shade that lived in the diary, assuming anything is left.
And Harry truly doesn’t think there is. Basilisk venom is good at destroying things.
Still, he leaves the door behind with a lighter heart.
Part Two.
This entry was originally posted at https://lomonaaeren.dreamwidth.org/1070306.html. Comment wherever you like.
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Pairings: None, gen
Content Notes: AU (Harry raised by goblins), humor, angst, violence, present tense
Rating: PG-13
Wordcount: 5400
Summary: The second half of goblin-raised Harry’s second year and the first half of his third year at Hogwarts. Featuring cursed diaries, humans who don’t take a hint, starving dogs, and werewolves who for some reason want to keep it a secret. Oh, and what’s probably the beginning of the next goblin rebellion.
Author’s Notes: This is one of my “From Samhain to the Solstice” fics for this year and is the sequel to “Music Beneath the Mountains” and “In Their Own Secret Tongues He Spoke.” The title of the fic and section titles are from Tolkien’s poems “The Shores of Faery and “The Last Voyage of Earendel.”
The Dragon-Headed Door
Gateway of the Moon
Harry frowns at the door that stands in front of him. It’s not one that he’s ever seen before, but then again, he hasn’t come this far back in the Realm of Song, either. He mostly stays in the caverns and ravines near the surface.
But this morning he found a river of liquid mercury, which pleased him so much that he cast some protection spells and followed it. He expected to find the headwaters in a lake of pure silver or someone’s forge. He didn’t expect the mercury to be running from under a door.
It’s an enormous door, the kind of thing the Deep Ones would have built if they could build. The edges are hewn roughly out of basalt, but otherwise it looks like a giant boulder just set in the middle of a gap in the rock.
Well, the edges and the dragon’s head sticking out of the middle are probably carved, Harry has to concede. He takes a little step to the side to see the dragon’s head better. It reminds him of the basilisk’s that still hangs in the grove of honored enemies, but this is made entirely of stone. It has enough spikes that he thinks it’s meant to be a Hungarian Horntail. The eyes are closed and the muzzle projects forwards and fangs are visible around the edges of the mouth. Harry knows goblins could have created it, but it isn’t like his people to be this crude.
He already tried to use a few wizard spells on it, and to speak to the stone and hear back from it in the language of the goblins. Neither helped. The stone is aware, but it’s a sleeping awareness, Harry thinks. He doesn’t know how to wake it up.
Thoughtful, he goes back up towards the surface. Someone has to know what this thing is and how to open the door.
*
“You should not go near that door.”
Harry carefully examines Toothsplitter’s face. It’s not often that the Master Smith who raised him to journeyman a year ago speaks so seriously. And a warning of danger is not usually given, not when that would be an insult to another goblin’s fighting prowess. “Why not?” Harry asks, he thinks sensibly enough.
Toothsplitter sighs and puts down her hammer. Harry sits up from the edge of the carven stone seat where he’s been watching her work. It’s grave, then.
“I know you think the Deep Ones are the major enemies of goblins in the Realm of Song,” Toothsplitter begins. She pours him a mug of cool, gold-accented water. Harry accepts eagerly, and watches as Toothsplitter drinks from her own stone cup. He can see swirls of yellow near the top of hers. “But there were are other enemies.”
“Are or were?”
Toothsplitter toasts him with her mug. “They are both. We sealed them behind that door long ago, and so they only were our enemies, in a sense. But we couldn’t kill them. We had to put them to sleep. So they are.”
Harry sips thoughtfully from his cup, and appreciates the gold swirling around his mouth. He likes it better in drinks than in solids like biscuits. “I can appreciate that. But why is the door left unguarded?”
“Most young goblins never venture that far into the Realm of Song, Harry. You know that.”
It still makes a warm carazah spring to life in Harry’s chest that Toothsplitter and the others consider him a goblin. He finishes the water and nods. “Okay. Can I tell anyone else about this?”
“We do not want other youngsters getting ideas.”
“I meant my friend Luna, at Hogwarts.”
“Oh, the one who listens to animals.” Toothsplitter thinks about it while she strokes her forge, which is murmuring complaints about being left unused for so long in the middle of the afternoon. “Yes, I think that would be acceptable. But keep in mind that the situation is delicate right now, with war in the cave mouth if we don’t get straight answers from your Headmaster, so you will still want to warn her not to spread it around.”
Harry smiles, and he knows it’s sad. “That’s okay, Toothsplitter. Most of the time, no one listens to Luna anyway.”
*
“A dragon-headed door? How exciting!” Luna is bouncing gently on her feet as Harry finishes his story. They’re out in the Forbidden Forest, where they’ve just finished another language lesson with the thestrals. Harry is getting quite good at understanding them now, which makes both him and Luna proud. “I wonder if it’s like the entrance to the Chamber of Secrets here.”
“I don’t know, Luna.” Harry casts a Warming Charm. Luna is barefoot and gets uncomfortable when Harry asks her about it, so Harry uses lots of spells. “But probably not. I don’t think the enemies behind the door are basilisks, or there would be more basilisk heads in the crystal grove at home.”
Luna sniffles for a second. Harry told her about the basilisk’s funeral his first day back from hols, and she thought it was the most wonderful thing she ever heard. “But no, I didn’t mean that. I mean that someone must have been releasing the basilisk, right?”
Harry opens his mouth to argue that the basilisk was intelligent enough to crawl around the school on its own, then pauses. Luna is right. Why would it only get out now if it could always get out?
Grimly, Harry adjusts the hang of his knife on his belt. That means there’s an enemy out there, one he has to defend his humans and his stones and his objects in the school from. All his friends deserve to be safe.
“How are we going to find out if there is?” he asks.
“We have to listen to the animals,” Luna says earnestly. “Did you know that spiders are afraid of basilisks? They’re mortal enemies. We can ask them about it.”
“I don’t think you speak the language of spiders, though, do you?” That was one reason they had stayed away from the Acromantulas in the Forest so far, because Luna had admitted, a little ashamed, that she didn’t speak their tongue.
“Silly.” Luna beams at him. “All we have to do is learn it.”
Harry doesn’t really know why people bully Luna and say she’s stupid. She has the most common sense of any human he knows.
*
It actually takes more of the term to learn the language of spiders than Harry thought. It turns out to be full of vibrations that you can only make on a web, and so he and Luna have to study charms to make silk first. And the spiderwebs themselves, unfortunately, aren’t the kind of objects that talk to a goblin. Those are the ones like metal and stone and porcelain that were unalive first and come out of the earth. Ones that come right out of living beings tend to be mute.
But once they do start learning, it’s so simple that Harry wants to laugh. Luna even told him something last term about her friend Ginny and how she was acting strange, not like she did when they were children together and Luna knew her. The spiders are full of tales about her sneaking around-or, as they put it, vibration to the left-vibration to the right-two quick taps of the four feet in the middle.
So now they’re near the entrance to the Chamber in the old bathroom where Ginny comes all the time, waiting for her. Harry doesn’t know why the thing that’s making her act strange, whatever it is, wants her to keep going to the Chamber when there’s no basilisk down there anymore, but it’s not as if Snape makes sense on a regular basis, either. So maybe an evil object, or person, or spirit, whichever it is, doesn’t have to make sense.
“What are you doing here?”
Harry looks over his shoulder. The ghost, Moaning Myrtle, who he met once before is floating behind him, her arms crossed. She nods to Harry. “You said that you were going to honor me as a fallen enemy. But you never came back to do that.”
“I’m sorry, Myrtle,” Harry says, and bows to her. Maybe she knows something about goblins, because her eyes brighten in a way that says she knows just how deeply she’s been honored. “But you do have to have a battle with me first, so that you can actually be my enemy. Right now, you haven’t done that.”
“That’s right. I remember you saying something about that.” Myrtle chews her transparent lip with silvery teeth. “Can I fight you now?”
“Right now, we’re waiting for a different kind of enemy. But you can watch the battle if you want. Maybe that’ll give you some ideas about how you want to be honored?”
“You’re so nice, Harry Potter,” Myrtle says, floating up so that she sits on top of one of the cubicles. “No one else has ever been so nice to me.” Tears well up in her eyes and dangle there, ready to fall.
“I know, he’s very nice,” Luna says calmly. “Not many people listen to me or help me, either, but Harry does. It’s because he’s a goblin, you know.”
“By adoption,” Harry adds, when Myrtle studies him as if she expects to see that he’s a half-goblin like Professor Flitwick. She must not know that much about goblins after all. “But they’re my true people.”
“If all goblins are this nice, then more power to goblins.”
Harry smiles and starts to say something, but then Luna touches his arm. Harry turns around and listens. Yes, Luna’s right. Someone’s creeping down the corridor, and they’re trying to be quiet, but they haven’t taken that much care. Any experienced warrior could hear them.
“Excuse us, Myrtle,” Harry says politely, taking out his daggers. “We have an enemy to fight.”
“Yes, do let me watch!” Myrtle leans forwards with her elbows propped on the top of the cubicle wall and her hands folded under her chin.
Luna moves out and stands in front of the door, while Harry ducks under the sink that has a snake on it. They both agreed it would be best if Ginny saw Luna first, someone she likes and has no reason to hurt, and wouldn’t suspect of setting an ambush.
Ginny comes in through the door, and still looks stunned when she sees Luna. She blinks and clutches something under her robes. With a bit of squinting, Harry can make out the hard square edges of something that looks like a book, which he has to admit isn’t what he expected. “Luna? What are you doing here?”
“I come here and speak with Myrtle sometimes,” Luna says, and for all Harry knows, it’s true. There are still strange and wonderful secrets about Luna. He doesn’t know everything about his friend. Luna blinks back at Ginny and adds, “What are you doing here, Ginny?”
“I-I need a private place to brew potions. I’m not very good at them, and Professor Snape makes me nervous when he insults them.”
Harry frowns. He doesn’t share Potions classes with the Gryffindors, and he heard about Snape bullying Neville Longbottom, but he didn’t realize it was general bullying with all Gryffindors. He’ll have to do something about that.
Then he remembers that Ginny is probably being influenced by some kind of evil thing, and that’s the more pressing problem. “Where’s your cauldron?” he asks casually, thinking he might be able to get close to her and wave an enchanted knife that would disrupt the spell. “I’ll help you get set up.”
“Um, um, it’s shrunken and in my pocket.” Weasley’s eyes are darting anxiously back and forth between him and Luna, and she has one hand on something in her pocket that’s probably not a cauldron. The square thing that looks like a book, Harry thinks. “I prefer privacy, really, so could you…”
“We know that you have Wrackspurts in your head, Ginny,” Luna says, a lot more gently than Harry would think she could. “We’re just trying to help you get rid of them.”
Weasley’s eyes grow desperate, and she pulls out the book and hurls it at their heads. Harry pulls Luna to the side, shaking his head when she doesn’t duck and the book soars past them to land in a puddle. Weasley is already running away. “Why didn’t you duck, Luna?”
“Because I knew you would save me.”
Harry sighs. Well, it’s true, he has to admit as he goes to pick up the book. It’s just not the kind of lesson that he would take from the situation, not when he’s been trained in the self-reliant ways of goblins since before he could walk.
He frowns as he turns the book over and sees the initials T.M.R. embossed on the surface. That argues that it’s not Ginny’s book. It sorts of looks like a diary, which probably belongs to this T.M.R. person. Still, when he opens it, it’s full of delicate handwriting.
“That’s Ginny’s handwriting,” Luna volunteers, looking over his shoulder.
Harry nods, trusting her impression of it. “Do you want to go tell the professors?” It’s not what he would prefer to do, but he’s trying to fit better into human culture.
Luna looks at him as if he’s a little thick, which Harry does sometimes feel like. “Not when it would get Ginny in trouble. And not when we might have to explain how we learned it.”
Harry winces. He hadn’t thought of that. Ordinary humans don’t believe that animals can really talk. They won’t listen to people who claimed that they learned the language of spiders.
He nods again. “Then I’ll keep this for right now,” he says, and drops the book into a pocket, “until we can determine what to do with it.”
East of the Moon
Harry opens his eyes and stands up with his hands resting on his daggers. There’s been something buzzing and nagging at his dreams for a few nights now. He’s ignored it because it’s elusive and flees when he turns to confront it. This way, it’ll have to come out and reveal itself.
And it has, but it’s not something Harry would have expected. A boy who looks about sixteen or so stands up from leaning against a dark doorway that is not a place Harry would have imagined when awake. He has a pale face and dark hair that it looks like he spends a lot of time on. “Hello. I thought you would never hear me.”
“I heard you, but I didn’t understand what you were saying,” Harry explains as he studies the boy. He doesn’t carry weapons, not even a wand, but he stands as though he’s used to fighting. That makes Harry cautious. Either his demeanor is justified or it’s arrogance, and either way, in a human, that’s trouble.
“Well, then. My name is Tom Marvolo Riddle.”
“The owner of the diary?”
“Yes, indeed. And I am most anxious to make your acquaintance…” Riddle lets the words trail off suggestively.
“Sorry, but I’m a goblin, and if you don’t know my name yet, I don’t think I should give it.” That’s not a luxury Harry has most of the time, since almost everyone knows who he is the second they see his forehead. But he’s going to take advantage of it for all he’s worth when he does meet someone who doesn’t know.
Not to mention, someone who might be an enemy.
“You’re not a goblin,” Riddle says, his forehead wrinkling. Harry takes a hard look at it, but he doesn’t have runes carved into it that might account for the sense of heavy darkness around them. Too bad. He must be causing this some other way. “Nor a half-goblin. You’re too tall.”
Harry sighs. It seems that so many wizards fail to understand this. He thinks he’s because they’re obsessed by blood purity and everyone being related to each other, and don’t understand other forms of relation. “I’m an adopted goblin. My parents died when I was young, and the goblins found and raised me.”
“So you were raised by non-humans.”
The way that last word rolls off Riddle’s tongue raises hair all over Harry’s body. He drops his hands to the hilts of his daggers but tries to smile to show his teeth. Riddle hasn’t been any more insulting than other people-yet. He deserves some warning before Harry attacks. “Yes.”
“And you wanted to remain with them?”
Harry shrugs. “Well, like I said, my parents were dead. There weren’t any other humans that had any kind of claim to me. Well, technically there were, but we took care of it with some paperwork. Humans don’t pay a lot of attention to what they’re signing when it comes from Gringotts.”
“You’re speaking as if…” Riddle studies him and stands up from his lounging posture against the doorway. He circles around to the side. Harry turns with him. He’s too well-trained to let another duelist have the advantage.
“And you’re speaking as if you have some kind of grudge against goblins. Let’s hear about it.” Harry is impatient with human society and its lies most of the time, but doubly so now. Does Riddle really think he can fool Harry about his nature?
“You’re speaking as if you’re proud of it,” Riddle says, which at least does bring the answer out into the open, although it doesn’t make Harry any fonder of him. “You’re a wizard.”
“And a goblin.”
“You’re human.”
“And a goblin.”
Riddle looks the way that some of Harry’s Housemates do when they realize that Harry can just ask his sheets to make themselves and they’ll do it. “But you’re talented in magic.“
“And a goblin.” Harry is starting to wonder if Riddle’s fallen prey to the common misconception that humans have more magic, or some fundamentally more powerful kind of magic, than goblins. It’s not entirely unknown to Harry, although it’s still stupid as whistling when you stand under a ledge of echostone.
“You will stop saying that. You will give me your answer. What is your name?”
The words echo in Harry’s ears, and they might sway him, but he’s had practice at throwing off the whispering blandishments of the Deep Ones by now. He draws his daggers. “Get out of my head, Tom Riddle.”
“You should call me by my other name,” Riddle breathes, although Harry doesn’t think he imagined the flash of fear in those dark eyes when the other boy’s attempt to control Harry failed. “The name that I have made myself feared under.”
“The Bloke Who Babbles Too Much?”
Riddle lunges at him with a snarl, but then the dream world dissolves, and Harry finds himself back in his bed. The diary has squirmed out from under the bed, though, and is lying on the pillow next to him, smoking furiously.
Harry has had about enough of the thing, and he thinks that he doesn’t need to keep it around to figure out how it influenced Ginny Weasley anymore; the diary’s ability to invade his dreams pretty much proves how that happened. He takes his daggers and stabs the bloody thing.
O’er the Darkness
“Now, Harry, I want you to tell me exactly what happened when you stabbed this diary that you claim was speaking to you.”
Harry sighs. He’s been over this with Headmaster Dumbledore seven times now. And they have Luna’s testimony and even the teary words of Ginny Weasley, who apparently broke away from Riddle’s enchantment the instant Harry destroyed the diary.
“I stabbed the diary with my daggers,” he says anyway, because fighting a human who keeps asking silly questions is beneath him. “It started to smoke, and a large hole appeared in the center of it.”
“And your bed began to smoke, too.”
“Yes. Then I stabbed the diary again to be sure, and black blood, or at least a substance like blood, began to come out of it.” Harry tried to compare the black liquid to coal tar at first, but everyone except Professor Flitwick made it clear they had no idea what he was talking about, so Harry gave up. Honestly, don’t they pay attention to anything important, like mining?
“But your bed caught on fire.”
That appears to be the point that Dumbledore is hung up on. Harry gives him the most patient look he can. “Well, yes. It had a magical fire burning in the middle of it. Or at least the diary was smoking, and the diary was lying on the bed, so-”
“Why did the diary smoke when you stabbed it with a dagger?” Snape interrupts. Harry has no idea why he’s here at all. At least Professor Flitwick is the Head of His House and Professor McGonagall is Deputy Headmistress, but Dumbledore apparently invited Snape because he’s afraid to be the only annoying person in the room.
Harry just looks at him for a long moment. Technically he doesn’t have to answer Snape at all. He issued a challenge to a duel last year and Snape refused it. Harry doesn’t have to speak with cowards, under goblin law.
“Harry.” Dumbledore sounds an inch away from sighing. “Please answer Professor Snape.”
In the end, Harry shrugs and does so. He supposes that it won’t cost him more pride or dignity than he’s already lost. “The diary was Dark magic, and one of my daggers is made from a basilisk fang. I assume it was the potency of the venom that ate through it.”
Snape actually jerks back and turns pale. Harry raises a curious eyebrow. Then he remembers that he threatened Snape with his daggers on more than one occasion, and grins. Yes, Snape’s probably thinking about how he could have been stabbed with a basilisk fang himself.
“Harry,” Dumbledore sighs, aloud this time, and from the expression on his face, he knows what he’s going to say next will do no good. “I must ask you not to carry basilisk fangs around.”
“Where does it say I can’t in the School’s Charter, sir?”
Dumbledore struggles for a long moment. Harry thinks it’s against his own impulse to reach over the desk and slap Harry. That’s too bad, though, because he earned this when he lied and made excuses. Harry waits, face fixed in the angelic expression that is making Professor Flitwick cough behind his hand.
Dumbledore finally says, “It doesn’t. Nonetheless-”
Professor McGonagall decides to add herself to the annoying list then. Harry wants to shake his head mournfully. He could have warned her that too great a commitment to the rules would get her in trouble. “The Charter does say that lethal weapons cannot be carried, Mr. Potter.”
“You mean, other than wands?”
“Mr. Potter-”
“A wand can cast the Killing Curse,” Harry says, and keeps his eyes very wide as he reaches up to flip the fringe back from the scar. “I have reason to know that.” He waits for the count of two, to be effective, before he flips the fringe back down and continues in his normal voice. “Besides, Professor, if you look at the Charter, you’ll find that it says human students can’t carry lethal weapons. I’m a goblin.”
“There are no exceptions for non-human students,” Professor McGonagall says, at the same time that Snape mutters, “You are not a goblin.”
“I’ve already given you my answer to that, which you aren’t courageous enough to accept,” Harry told Snape, and faced Professor McGonagall with a faint smile. “As a matter of fact, Professor, there are. A half-troll student can have a club, for instance, and half-Veela students are allowed to Transfigure their hands into claws. It’s cultural.”
“Whether it is appropriate according to the Charter or not,” Dumbledore interrupts, his voice stern, “the fact remains that you cannot carry a basilisk fang made into a dagger around this school, Harry.”
“Oh, you can take my weapons.”
“Thank you for under-”
“If you duel me for them, and win.” Harry stood up and fell into an expectant stance. “Of course, my weapons shall be my daggers. You can have your wand if you want. It doesn’t make much difference to me.”
“Insolent,” Snape breathes, while Dumbledore just looks despairing.
“You are human, Mr. Potter.” Professor McGonagall says it with a little sigh, as if she doesn’t really expect Harry to listen to her and might not blame him if he doesn’t.
“If you wanted me to stay human, you should have left me with humans who would take care of me and call me by name and not make me sleep in a cupboard and care about me enough that I couldn’t just wander off on my own when I was six years old.”
Professor McGonagall stares at him. Then she turns to face Dumbledore. “The Muggles he was with did that to him?”
“I don’t see how it matters now, Minerva.” Dumbledore just flaps a hand without taking his gaze from Harry. Harry conceals a vicious smile as he watches the disapproval creep across Professor McGonagall’s face. Dumbledore just lost the loyalty of one of the most important people to him, and he didn’t notice.
“Right now,” Dumbledore goes on, “we’re settling the question of what happened when Mr. Potter stabbed that diary.”
Harry shrugs. “I don’t see how it matters. It burned up. It started a fire that I put out without the Ravenclaw Tower being damaged. The end. Why does it have to be more involved than that?”
This time, Dumbledore sighs as if it physically pains him to give up information. “Because Tom Marvolo Riddle is the mortal name of Lord Voldemort.”
Harry blinks, then shrugs. “Well, he should put stronger defenses on his bits of soul or whatever he’s leaving lying around.”
Dumbledore’s face gets pinched. “Mr. Potter-”
Harry points to Professor McGonagall and Snape. “What? You didn’t want them to know about this? But I think it’s obvious. After all, there was a piece of soul behind my scar that the goblins removed, so it stands to reason that he probably left more than one scattered around.”
The conversation goes rapidly downhill from there.
*
“And he said directly that you are lying?” Toothsplitter is leaning forwards with a fanatical light in her eyes.
“Yes, he did.” Professor Flitwick looks upset as he sips his cup of pure molten copper. Harry is beyond impressed with his professor’s digestion. “Albus seems to believe that the impact of this knowledge is going to change the entire game.”
“Game?” Harry blinks.
“Excuse me, Mr. Potter. The political game. The engagement of opponents on the political battlefield,” Professor Flitwick adds, since both Harry and Toothsplitter have puzzled expressions.
“Games are things children play,” Toothsplitter points out sharply. “They have nothing to do with lives or politics. If this professor thinks that he may play with goblin lives, he will find out the difference between us and children quickly.”
Flitwick sighs and nods. “I’m afraid that humans think differently and frequently confuse goblins with children in way that have nothing to do with our size, Madam Toothsplitter.” Harry is pleased by the use of “our.” “They assume that we think about the world in simple ways and that means that we can be fooled.”
“But-thinking simply means it’s hard to fool you,” Harry says. He wonders if this is another one of those confusing human things, because it seems impossible that smart adult humans don’t understand something Harry has known since he was six. “Because you look at their complicated explanations and you pierce through them and see to the heart.”
“Some people think complicated is better.” Professor Flitwick appears pained. “Or that anyone who doesn’t use the same metaphors and the same kinds of approvals and governments that humans do is primitive and backward.”
“Let them think that.” Toothsplitter flicks her claws together. “That means they will be all the more unprepared when war comes upon them.”
“It is to be war, then?” Professor Flitwick glances back and forth between them in resignation. “This is something that cannot be avoided?”
“Why would we want to avoid it?” Harry points out. “They have accused me of lying. They tried to control a goblin. The school as a whole is run by people who don’t respect goblins and think that their tangled explanations should control my life. This is something we should address.”
“But the other goblin rebellions haven’t-worked out well for our people.”
Toothsplitter smiles, revealing the teeth she’s sharpened into fangs since Harry came back for the summer. Everyone prepares for war in their own way. “You’ve been reading too much of the human side of history, Master Filius. You should ask yourself what those rebellions were meant to achieve.”
“Respect, I thought. But the humans don’t show it even now.”
“Oh, that generation at the time did,” Toothsplitter says. “It’s just that humans live such short lives they need to be taught anew every few decades.”
Flitwick looks pained. “I didn’t think I would live through another goblin rebellion.”
“Well,” Toothsplitter says. “Now you have. And what side are you going to choose?”
Harry looks at Flitwick in some curiosity to see how he’ll answer that. His loyalties aren’t as simple as Harry’s. He’s a half-goblin, and Harry is wholly goblin, and so Harry can’t blame Flitwick if he feels torn, he supposes. But it would be brilliant to be on the same side as him.
Flitwick looks back and forth between them for a moment, and then shakes his head. “One can hardly say that Mr. Potter didn’t give the Headmaster fair warning. I’m on your side in this war, until the end.” And he repeats it in Gobbledegook to prove he means it.
Harry is smiling as he gets up to shake hands with Professor Flitwick. “I promise that you’re not going to regret it, sir.”
“I hope not, either.” Flitwick’s hand squeezes his, hard. Then he sits back and picks up his cup of molten copper again. “Oh, by the way, Mr. Potter, Professor Dumbledore was most interested in what you did with the diary you destroyed.”
“I found a safe place for it,” Harry says innocently. He avoids Toothsplitter’s eye, but then again, she would say it was safe enough as long as he didn’t get caught, and Harry didn’t.
*
He followed that river of mercury that flowed up to the dragon-headed door the day that began the summer holidays. He stood before it, studying it, for long moments. Then he spoke the words that would guarantee that it could open.
Those words aren’t a secret. Young goblins can learn them if they want. Of course, if a young goblin uses them and the door opens and swallows them, that proves they shouldn’t have used them after all.
The dragon-headed door swung open for Harry. He didn’t look into the darkness behind it or wait for something to come forth. Instead, he threw the diary into the gap and then spoke the words that closed the door again. It seemed to him that it moved much more reluctantly back into place than it opened.
But the important thing was that the door had accepted the diary, and so had the enemies of the goblins that lived behind it. It’s probably true that those things still hate goblins, but they would hardly accept the dominance of the arrogant shade that lived in the diary, assuming anything is left.
And Harry truly doesn’t think there is. Basilisk venom is good at destroying things.
Still, he leaves the door behind with a lighter heart.
Part Two.
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