[From Samhain to the Solstice]: The Transfiguration of the Soul, gen, PG-13, 2/4

[lomonaaeren]

Part One.

Title: The Transfiguration of the Soul (2/4)
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Pairings: Mentions of Ron/Hermione, otherwise gen
Content Notes: AU (Harry is Sorted into Slytherin), present tense, angst, violence, bullying, torture, canonical child abuse, minor character death, minor character suicide, Dark Harry.
Wordcount: This part 6300
Rating: PG-13
Summary: AU. Harry is Sorted into Slytherin, and discovers that most of his yearmates seem to think he has some grand plan. Harry, fighting as hard as he can to hang on to his Gryffindor friends and his godfather, decides that if people like Draco Malfoy think he has a plan, then he’ll take advantage of that.
Author’s Notes: This is a side-story/Harry POV of my story “A Plan of Deepest Subtlety and Cunning.” Either can be read first. This should have four parts, to be posted over the next four days.

Thanks for the reviews!

Part Two

Harry learns so many interesting things from the snakes.

For example, he learns that Snape and Dumbledore have regular meetings. About him. They don’t seem to know what to make of him. According to Snape, he should be playing pranks and swaggering around the school like his father. According to Dumbledore, he should be acting more like a Slytherin if he was Sorted into that House.

Then they seem to notice that he’s regularly spending time with Millicent, and Dumbledore’s tune changes. Now he’s being corrupted by Millicent, and corrupting Ron and Hermione.

Ron and Hermione are good Gryffindors, of course. There’s no way that they could be true friends with a Slytherin.

Snape leaps to the defense of Millicent, but not of Harry. Harry has to sort of admire the way he does it, as he leans back on the couch in the secret room and listening to the snakes’ rendition of the words. (The snakes can’t do human tones of voice, so Harry has to imagine that, but he’s got pretty good at it). Somehow, Snape manages to wriggle around the main issue, that Harry is also a Slytherin, and claim that Millicent is only associating with him out of pity and kindness, while Ron and Hermione are naïve fools who can’t see the glory-seeking, prank-playing Harry Potter.

Harry smiles. He has to wonder what Snape would say if he knew that Harry is playing pranks on him. Just not the kind he was watching for.

When Harry can use stone snakes to break open the locks on Snape’s Potions cupboards, go in and take what ingredients he wants, and then hang the lock back almost invisibly, that’s better than any silly jinx or charm any day of the week. Snape also has to keep buying new locks, and setting new alarms that go off harmlessly on the stone of Harry’s servants-or not at all, given that they’re searching for humans.

*

“You can tell me, you know,” Millicent whispers coaxingly one night as they sit near the fire, under the portrait of the jungle snake.

Harry glances up at her, and catches Malfoy’s eye just in time to see him turn hastily away. Harry snorts to himself. Malfoy and Nott are always there lately, lurking about. But since they don’t talk to him except to accuse him of being the Heir of Slytherin, Harry has mostly been ignoring them.

“Tell you what?” Harry asks Millicent, not worried about being overheard. He did look up privacy charms after he saw Nott perform that one last year, and he’s pretty good at them by now.

“About how you keep breaking into the Potions storage cupboards without getting caught.”

Harry’s eyes widen before he can stop himself. He’s still not as good at controlling his facial expressions as he wants to be. Needs to be. “That’s not me. You know that Snape would put me in detention forever if he had proof.”

“But I know it has to be.” Millicent’s eyes shine as she leans forwards. “I know.”

“Why? Just taking Snape’s prejudices to heart, are you?”

“Because you’re the only one powerful and clever enough to get away with constantly breaking in and not getting caught! He even catches the Weasley twins.” Millicent’s hand creeps towards him, but she doesn’t touch him, just letting her hand linger on the arm of the chair. “Please tell me, Harry?”

Harry studies her, his eyes half-lidded. He hasn’t told Ron and Hermione about the snakes, which means he certainly won’t tell her. But he can give her some sort of clue to remain intrigued and useful to him.

He smiles. “You know how Snape always assumes I’ll play pranks because he believes I’m exactly like my father?”

Millicent rolls her eyes. “Yes, of course I know. Which is ridiculous. You can’t even remember your father, how can you be like him?”

Harry blinks, caught off-guard. That sounded…sincere. It makes him wonder if perhaps Millicent is more capable of independent thought, more capable of really being a friend, than he assumed.

But it doesn’t change his immediate plan. Harry looks at her, winks, and says, “What would you say if I told you that I could persuade other people to play those kinds of pranks? So that I needn’t ever be caught?”

Millicent stares at him, and Nott and Malfoy shift closer, probably intrigued by the expression on her face. It doesn’t matter, since they can’t hear anything from beyond the privacy charm. Harry gives them a smile that makes them look away.

“You mean-you’re getting the Weasley twins and other people to do it for you? But then, why isn’t Snape catching them?”

“It might not be the Weasley twins. You don’t know how far my power extends, Millicent.”

“But I want to,” Millicent almost whines, before she catches herself and flushes. “All right, I’ll think about it. Are there any other clues that you can give me?”

“I have some around me who aren’t exactly friends, but will still do as I ask,” Harry says.

Millicent’s eyes visibly almost cross as she mentally pursues that. Harry smiles a little. She probably thinks that he’s casting the Imperius Curse on someone.

It doesn’t matter. As long as there’s no proof. As long as she still doesn’t betray the few secrets of his she’s been permitted to learn.

As long as she respects his power.

*

The snakes tell him about more interesting things than just the meetings Snape and Dumbledore have in Dumbledore’s office-surrounded by portraits that they never notice are sometimes replaced by snakes when the human ones go wandering and leave an empty frame-and one of those interesting things means that Harry is lingering near the second-floor girls’ bathroom on a morning near the end of term.

There hadn’t been any Petrifications in the last little while. But now both Penelope Clearwater and Hermione have been Petrified.

And Hermione is his friend.

Harry is a little startled at how strongly he feels that. Yes, there are things he doesn’t tell Hermione, like how he cursed Flint; he just told her the situation got handled. He hasn’t told her about the snakes who serve him. He hasn’t told her about how much Snape hates him.

But then, he hasn’t told anyone about the snakes. And Snape’s hatred is such an accepted thing in Slytherin House that they don’t really discuss it with him, either.

Harry feels alone so much of the time that he accepted his friendships would always be shallow, in a way that they might not have been if he’d been Sorted into Gryffindor. But this friendship is strong enough that his first impulse when he saw Hermione lying so still on the bed in the hospital wing was an intense, overpowering rage.

And now the snakes have told him about the snake on the faucet in this bathroom, and how there has been a red-haired girl coming in here often. They didn’t tell him before because they didn’t think it was interesting enough. Humans are always doing strange things in bathrooms, they told Harry when he asked.

Harry draws back under the Invisibility Cloak when the girl walks into the bathroom. The minute he sees her face, he recognizes her, Ron’s little sister. Ginny. He supposes he should have known before. There just aren’t that many students in the school with red hair.

But something’s wrong with Ginny. She walks stiffly, and she has glazed eyes. She walks straight up to the sink and hisses it open. And Harry has a certainty as strong as rocks that she doesn’t naturally speak Parseltongue.

The sink slides back with a grinding sound, and Ginny jumps down the black hole that’s revealed without a backwards glance. Harry casts a Lightening Charm on himself that will let him float down the distance, and follows her before the sink can close.

When it does, it’s very dark in the tunnel, and there’s a terrible smell rising up to greet him. Harry holds his breath as much as possible as he floats down after Ginny. Since she’s sliding, she goes a lot faster, but she’s not out of sight when he reaches the floor of a tunnel littered with small animal bones.

And the shed skin of an enormous snake.

Harry feels his body tense. He knows a lot more about snakes now than he did near the beginning of the year when the jungle serpent approached him. This is a basilisk. There is no other snake so large.

It makes sense of the Petrifications, too. There was always a mirror or a camera or something similar around, so no one met the basilisk’s eyes directly. Or they were already dead, like the Gryffindor ghost.

Harry follows Ginny grimly, his wand sliding into his hand as he does. She strides along, more like an adult or at least an older student than one who’s really her age, until she comes to a pair of stone doors with an enormous pair of serpents on them. She speaks to them in Parseltongue, saying only, “Open.”

Harry rolls his eyes. So this is the legendary Chamber of Secrets? Slytherin was simultaneously pretentious and not cunning enough.

Maybe the Hat Sorts us based on the Founders’ relative level of intelligence.

When they come into the Chamber, Harry only feels more convinced of that. There’s water everywhere, and snake decorations, and a huge statue of Slytherin. Harry just stares at it. Who would build a huge show-off statue, and then put it in a place where only a few people would ever see it?

It gets harder and harder for him to hear the snakes call Slytherin “the Great One” every day.

Ginny doesn’t do anything special, however. Instead, she just folds over on the floor. Harry moves cautiously closer, making sure the Cloak covers every inch of him. He sees a little black book lying next to her, and the book is glowing, a figure slowly rising from within it.

The snakes were wrong. This is the most interesting thing anyone has done in the school all year.

Terrifying. But interesting.

As Harry watches, the figure becomes more and more solid. He’s a black-haired boy with dark eyes, and handsome, Harry supposes, if you like that sort of thing. He’s wearing Slytherin robes, the only part that isn’t a surprise. He steps back from the book as he gets clearer, and stands watching Ginny with the expression of someone watching an experiment.

Harry doesn’t know who he is. But he’s pretty sure that he doesn’t want that figure to form fully. Ginny was possessed, or maybe under the Imperius. She didn’t turn the basilisk loose on the school.

Harry skirts closer and closer. When he’s almost there, the boy raises his head. His eyes sweep over the place where Harry is without stopping, but he hisses in Parseltongue, “Who’s there?”

Harry times it just right, and springs forwards, seizing the book, which snaps shut. He retreats to a safe distance and flings the hood of the Cloak back.

The boy doesn’t stop solidifying, though. He just gives a slight start, and then stares at Harry. Ginny’s face is visibly getting paler, and her breathing is slowing down.

“Who are you?” Harry demands.

“Tom Marvolo Riddle, at your service,” says the boy, with a bow that Harry could call polite if he didn’t see into those furious eyes. “I suppose you don’t know who I am?” His voice gets intense at the end.

“The one who’s been setting the basilisk loose, I’m pretty sure. Heir of Slytherin.”

Riddle’s face twists into a snarl. Then he smooths it out, but too fast for it to be natural. Harry knows the kind of person he’s dealing with now-a much more dangerous version of Dudley. Dudley is good at concealing his real emotions like that, too fast, where adults other than his parents are there to see him.

“And who are you, if not a fellow Heir of Slytherin?” Riddle whispers. “If not the person little Ginny has been writing in my diary about all year? Harry Potter.” His gaze traces back and forth as if trying to outline Harry’s body, which he still can’t see. “You should support what I’m doing, not oppose it.”

“No,” Harry says. “Not when you possess people and hurt my friends.”

“A true Heir of Slytherin has no friends.” But Riddle’s voice is soft and weirdly distracted, and his eyes have gone so wide that Harry has to resist with all his might the temptation to look behind him. “What-what are you?”

Harry doesn’t bother answering. He doesn’t think he knows the answer anyway. He drops the book on the floor and aims his wand at it.

“Incendio!”

The fire sparks out and doesn’t do anything to the book. Harry doesn’t think it’s because he’s just a second-year, either. He’s used that spell to destroy parchments and robes by now. He tries it one more time, and the same thing happens.

“You can’t destroy my diary,” Riddle whispers, and smiles, before continuing in Parseltongue. “I am a memory called a Horcrux, preserved in a diary for fifty years. A piece of the greater soul, the greater being that is Lord Voldemort.”

Harry feels cold sweat spring out on his body, soaking him under the robes. But he also feels the hatred that he discovered for Voldemort last year rise up, and he knows he’s going to do his best to destroy both Riddle and the diary.

“And you? You are a weak thing, hardly a fitting victim even of the basilisk. But what must be done will be done.” Riddle whirls around and faces the statue of Slytherin. “Speak to me, greatest of the Hogwarts four!”

Harry doesn’t know exactly what’s going to happen, but when the statue starts to open and reveal a long tunnel, he has a good idea. He ducks his head and vanishes under the Invisibility Cloak, although he knows the basilisk can still use scent to find him. Then he hisses, “Come to me, servants of the Great One!”

Riddle looks towards him, eyes hard and speculative, but then laughs as an enormous shadow slides out of the tunnel. “Good-bye, Harry Potter.”

Harry can hear the grind and glide of real scales on the stone, but he can also hear the stone snakes on the decorative pillars climbing down towards him. They pool around his feet, hissing inquiries.

Harry gestures towards the basilisk as it comes fully out of the tunnel. “Delay it! Blind it!”

The stone snakes swarm the basilisk, ignoring Riddle hissing-screaming-for them to stop. They don’t obey someone who isn’t really a student, then. Harry has never been so glad to be right, even though he never wanted to test the theory under battlefield conditions.

The basilisk shrugs off the stone snakes, but they climb up again, and the basilisk is delayed by its need to keep darting its tongue out and scenting Harry as he dodges wildly around the Chamber. Riddle laughs and calls instructions to the basilisk now and then, seemingly confident in Harry’s inability to escape.

Harry does think, briefly, about running back down the tunnel and trying to close the basilisk in the Chamber. But Riddle would just hiss the doors open again, and then Riddle would probably take solid form. And Ginny would die. And Voldemort would win.

Harry doesn’t want him to win.

The basilisk hisses loudly at one point, and Harry glances over his shoulder. The side of its head nearest him just has a pit instead of an eye. The stone snakes are writhing inside the pit, filling it. Harry smiles, triumphant, especially when the basilisk swings around wildly, still seeking him, and the stone snakes burst its other eye.

But Riddle is still shouting, still directing it, and Harry finds himself pinned against a wall. And the basilisk’s head driving down, shedding stone snakes all over the place.

One of the fangs pierces Harry’s arm and breaks off.

Harry reels backwards, his head falling against the wall. He feels the pain start to drive up his arm like another fang, and then stop. That’s weird, but he has no time to think about it. He’s panting, and he’s afire with hatred, and Riddle is laughing at him.

He looks down at his arm. There’s a dark line that’s curling and pooling on his arm. Harry blinks, not understanding. He would think it was his blood, but it appears to be under the surface of his arm, not on top.

“Why are you not dying?” Riddle asks abruptly, sharply. “With that much venom in your blood, you should be dying.”

Harry glances up. He wants to ask what makes Riddle thinks he’s not, but maybe Riddle can feel it when he’s draining the life from Ginny, or maybe he knows how long it takes basilisk bites to kill in general.

The black pool gathers under Harry’s skin. And then it lashes through him, past him in some way Harry can’t define, and up through his arm and to his shoulder and up to his face. Harry flinches as he feels it in his cheek, and then his forehead.

There’s a noise like a satisfied hiss, the Parseltongue word for fed, and a shriek, distant and dire and painful. And blood and venom both drip out of Harry’s forehead and onto his hands, but the venom doesn’t harm him.

He reaches up and realizes that both of them are coming from his scar.

“What-what-”

Harry turns back to Riddle. Riddle is staring from Harry to the diary he holds, and then at his scar, his eyes growing wider and wider.

“The basilisk’s venom prefers delicate prey…” he whispers.

“What are you on about, Riddle?” Harry’s not sure that he needs to know, though. It’s enough that he’s alive when he expected to die.

“You carried a Horcrux.” Riddle’s voice is soft, but he’s talking as if he’s inching out over a tightrope. “Behind your scar. There’s no other explanation for why the basilisk’s venom went after that instead of simply killing you.” He swallows. “I told you that I was part of a greater being.”

“Lord Voldemort, yes.” Harry can only stare at him. “How did you know I carried a Horcrux?”

“The minute you touched the diary.” Riddle turns and hisses at the basilisk, which is still making pained noises. It draws back and says nothing, although it keeps turning its blinded head in search of prey while its tongue makes darting motions. “I sensed it.”

There’s a moment of silence. Harry keeps still because he doesn’t otherwise know what to do, and he’s not sure that he understands. Riddle watches him obsessively, only now and then looking at the diary.

“So how did I get it?” Harry asks.

“It must have been the night you defeated the main soul that I used to be a part of,” Riddle answers instantly. “Little Ginny kept talking about that.” Ginny. Harry’s eyes go back to Ginny, and find that her lips are turning blue, but her chest is still rising and falling. “She didn’t know much, but what she did, she told me. If he went after you and used the Killing Curse when his soul was already unstable, then perhaps it could happen.”

“Professor Dumbledore said something about my mother’s love saving me,” Harry ventures. He doesn’t have much time, but he wants to know what Riddle is talking about. And he has an idea. He straightens and makes as if to wriggle the fang out of his arm.

Riddle snorts. “As though any true Slytherin’s Heir would think it was love. No, most likely a combination of powerful and Dark magic that he didn’t understand banished him. Or even the fact that you were a Parselmouth like him.” He leans forwards. “What I am saying, Harry, is why should we not be allies?”

“Um, because you were trying to kill me a minute ago?” Harry grasps the base of the fang and pulls it out of his arm.

Riddle only watches him do it. “But we are both parts of one greater being, shards of his soul. We are both Heirs of Slytherin in the true sense. And I know that you don’t care for little Ginny. She talked about it all the time, how you never even glanced her way when she sent that singing dwarf Valentine after you.”

Harry feels his face burn. It’s good, in a way, to have confirmation that it was Ginny, and that he doesn’t have some other deranged admirer lurking out there somewhere.

“We don’t have a use for love,” Riddle whispers. “But we have a use for companionship. Don’t we? We could be allies. We could prove our value to Lord Voldemort. And then he wouldn’t try to kill you anymore. He would never try to harm someone who carried such an intimate part of himself.”

Harry wrinkles his nose. That makes it sound like he’s had sex with Voldemort or something. “But he’s vengeful. He probably wouldn’t care and he would try to kill me anyway.”

“I promise that he would not. He would cherish you. He would value you.” Riddle’s voice is rapid and low. “I promise, Harry. Ginny told me things that made me think you haven’t had very much cherishing in your life. This would be a means of getting it.”

Harry looks at him. He’s holding the fang now, and Riddle hasn’t moved to take it from him, which means that Riddle can’t stop him. “But he’s the reason I never grew up with my parents. And I no longer carry a Horcrux. Do I?”

Riddle’s eyes widen in the second before Harry plunges the fang into the diary.

If the venom took care of one Horcrux, it ought to take care of another.

Riddle screams, and black liquid bursts from the book and covers Harry’s legs. It burns where it pours. Harry doesn’t move, though, just sits there and watches as Riddle reaches for him-

And tatters like a bad dream. A bad memory. He tries to hiss one last command to the basilisk, but the basilisk only continues turning its blind head back and forth, searching for prey, and doesn’t listen.

When Riddle is gone, Ginny looks better. Harry stands up and walks over to her. She’s breathing regularly now, and the blue tint to her lips is completely gone.

Harry drops the destroyed diary next to her, and stares down at the burns covering his legs, wondering what happens next and how they’re going to get out of the Chamber of Secrets when one of them is unconscious and the other’s injured.

A soft trill of song startles him, and Harry glances up and blinks at the fire that’s appeared in the air. He’s never seen it before, but he knows what it is, because the snakes have told him. Fawkes, Dumbledore’s phoenix, who usually sits on a perch in the man’s office.

The basilisk lunges up, maddened, at the sound of the song. The stone snakes covering it patter to the floor, and Harry scoops them up as they hurtle over to him.

He watches a strange battle, then, with the phoenix dancing and dodging above the basilisk, and the basilisk trying as best as it can to kill the bird with its eyes and one fang missing. Harry asks the stone snakes in a low voice, “Why is the basilisk trying so hard to kill the phoenix?”

“Phoenixes are creatures of true immortality and true beauty,” one of the snakes says. “Basilisks are only immortal if something doesn’t kill them, and they terrify all others and cannot breed naturally. They can never have another being tell them how beautiful they are. The phoenix has all the basilisk wishes to possess.”

Harry blinks, and watches as Fawkes dives like a falcon and finally achieves what he must have wanted to achieve all along, piercing one of the ruined eyes and driving his talons into the brain beyond. The basilisk sways for a long moment, probably too big to realize it’s dead all at once, and then slumps over to the floor of the Chamber.

Fawkes turns and streaks towards them. Harry braces himself, not sure if a phoenix will think he’s a good person or not, but Fawkes perches on his shoulder and begins to softly cry. Harry stares in disbelief as the tears roll down his beak and fall upon Harry himself. From there, they streak down in little waterfalls to touch his burned legs.

And where they touch, they heal.

Harry tries to remember if he’s heard anything about phoenix tears being a cure-all, and thinks he may have read it in one of his books. It’s not like he paid much attention at the time. Phoenix tears are rare and precious, and who would think that one would ever cry for him?

But it’s happening, and when it’s done, Harry feels so much better. He glances back and forth between Fawkes and Ginny. “Can you help her, too?” he asks.

He’s barely finished asking when Ginny’s eyes open, and she starts up and stares around the Chamber. “What happened-Tom?” Then her gaze falls on Harry, and she blushes.

Harry sighs, but he grasps Fawkes’s tail when the phoenix offers it. There’s little other option for getting out of here, probably.

*

There’s an…interesting…meeting with the Headmaster after the Chamber incident.

Headmaster Dumbledore twinkles madly away at him, and asks about the battle. Harry makes up stories about how he’s been concerned about Ginny for a while and used his Cloak to evade the basilisk-and that’s not even a lie, given all the different meanings “a while” and “evade” can have. That’s how he found out that she was in the Chamber.

And he puts the ruined diary, which he brought with them when Fawkes carried them out of the Chamber, on the desk in front of Dumbledore.

Dumbledore peers down at it, and the twinkle in his eyes fades away. He sighs. “You say that you managed to stab this with a basilisk fang that broke off in your arm?”

“Yes.”

“And yet you survived with only a scar to show for it?” Dumbledore’s gaze moves to Harry and sweeps up and down him.

“Fawkes cried for me.” Harry smiles at the phoenix, who’s sitting on his perch and preening himself. “Thanks, Fawkes.”

It’s a lie that once again flies right under the Headmaster’s nose. Fawkes looks up, twitters briefly, and goes back to his preening.

“I see,” Dumbledore says, and pauses dramatically. Harry waits him out. Dumbledore finally gives in a minute or so later. “I think it is very interesting that you managed to descend into the Chamber and use the Cloak to slow the basilisk down. But I think that your Parseltongue ability may be gone now.”

“Oh, sir?” Harry knows it isn’t, since he spoke to the snakes in the Chamber after the destruction of the Horcrux in him. But he widens his eyes and waits.

“Yes. I have a pet theory that Tom Riddle-the mortal name of Lord Voldemort, of course-transferred some of his powers to you the night he attacked you. Such powers would include Parseltongue, which doesn’t have a history in the Potter family.”

Well, I have a pet theory that you’re full of shit. Harry keeps that to himself, of course, along with his idea that Parseltongue doesn’t have a public history in the Potter family. Perhaps some of his ancestors weren’t fool enough to expose themselves.

“And it would explain why he deigned to talk to you instead of killing you right away.” Dumbledore nods thoughtfully. “Of course, in the future, if Voldemort learns of this, it might only make you more of a target for him. I would like to mentor you, Mr. Potter, and make sure that you have some training to prepare you for the future and Voldemort’s attempts on your life.”

“Of course, sir.” Harry smiles demurely. He would be a fool and more to turn that down. And he’ll still have the snakes to spy for him and see if Dumbledore tells anything to other people that’s the opposite of what he says to Harry. “Do you think I’m old enough now to know the truth of why Voldemort wanted to come after me?”

Dumbledore shakes his head a little. “I’m sorry, my dear boy. I do not want to burden you and make your childhood a misery.”

What childhood did I have, stuffed in a cupboard under the stairs, made to do all my disgusting relatives’ chores-

Harry cuts the thought off, and nods. “Of course, sir. Thank you.”

*

Harry is studying furiously by himself in the library one day a few months into his third year when someone lets fall a stack of books next to him with an ominous thud.

Harry blinks and looks up. Parkinson is standing next to the table with her arms folded, her face full of judgment as usual.

“What do you want, Parkinson?” Harry sees no need to soften his words. Millicent is more of a friend to him than anyone else in Slytherin, and Malfoy and Nott aren’t as bad as they used to be, but he’s never associated with Parkinson.

“I know that you’re studying spells to get revenge on Sirius Black.”

Harry nods once. He hates Sirius Black. The man made his relatives keep him locked up in his room for almost every day this summer once a “well-meaning” official from the Ministry of Magic visited them and let them know that Black might be after Harry, specifically.

And Black should have been his godfather, should have been his parents’ friend, should have been one of those people Harry could actually trust to cherish and value him, like Tom Riddle said. Yes, Harry wants to curse him, wants to see him break like Tom Riddle broke in the moments before the destruction of the diary Horcrux.

That memory still makes Harry wake up smiling, sometimes.

“There isn’t much here.” Parkinson dismisses the whole of the Hogwarts library with a raking glance and a contemptuous sniff. “Not like my father’s library, which has all the books you could ever ask for.”

Holding Harry’s eye, she slides one of the books in the pile she dropped a little ways out from the others. Harry knows his mouth opens wide, and he can’t stop it from doing that. The book is one on torture curses that he’s been seeking for months, but there’s no shop in Diagon Alley that has it, the library at Hogwarts doesn’t have it (unless it’s in the Restricted Section), and Harry wasn’t able to get to Knockturn Alley this summer.

“What do you want in trade?” he asks quietly, leaning back to look at Parkinson.

“I don’t know if I believe that you’re the Heir of Slytherin, but you’re something,” Parkinson says. “I know that you don’t tell everything to Theodore and Draco, but probably not to your friends, either. And Millie thinks that she knows all your secrets, but I doubt it. One book, one secret.”

It’s a much more generous bargain than Harry knows he would get elsewhere. He looks from the book to Parkinson.

“And my assurance that you won’t spread those secrets around?” he asks.

Parkinson laughs. “What, you think I’m like Lockhart?” Lockhart, after trying vainly to claim that he defeated the basilisk, gave up and left last year with a vague threat to “spill other people’s secrets” that Harry doesn’t understand. He doesn’t need to understand it, as long as the buffoon is gone. “No. I don’t want other people to know the secrets I know. It diminishes their value.”

“I still want you to make the oath.”

Parkinson shrugs. “Fine. But it has to not cost me anything but pain if it’s broken. Not my magic.”

Harry is satisfied with that, and they make the oath, and Parkinson hands him the book. Harry’s fingers tremble as he touches it, although he tries to look as calm as he can.

“The secret,” Parkinson says, leaning forwards.

“You know that announcement Dumbledore made at the Leaving Feast last term?” Harry asks.

Parkinson nods. “About how you defeated the basilisk and lost your Parseltongue?”

“It’s not true.”

Parkinson’s face is so delighted that Harry doesn’t see any reason to spoil the delight by telling her that Ron and Hermione already know about the Parseltongue thing.

*

Harry drags himself slowly upright, and spits blood. Then he checks with his tongue. The teeth he thought were loose are still in his mouth, and that’s a good thing.

What is not a good thing is how stupid he feels.

Harry leans back against the wall in one of the corridors on the third floor, and reflects.

*

He was supposed to meet Ron and Hermione in the library. When they didn’t show up, he wasn’t overly concerned; sometimes they can’t meet him because of their differing schedules, or because older Gryffindors are harassing them about spending so much time with a “snake.” He got involved in writing his Charms essay.

“Potter! Potter!”

Harry glances up and blinks. He recognizes the girl standing in front of him, but he’s never spoken to her before.

“Spinnet?” he asks, after a moment of struggling to remember. She’s a Chaser on the Gryffindor team, that’s right.

Spinnet nods urgently. “You need to hurry up and come with me! Ron’s in the hospital wing!” She lowers her voice a little, as if that will make what she has to say less concerning. “They think it was Slytherins who did it.”

Harry scrapes his essays and books into his bag. He’s learned the hard way never to leave anything that belongs to him in the open, even though Crabbe and Goyle haven’t tried to destroy anything of his in years. Someone will do it for spite, for fun. Maybe Sirius Black would do it. He tried to break into Gryffindor Tower on Halloween and almost destroyed their guardian portrait, just for insanity, maybe.

Harry shoulders his satchel and follows Spinnet as she runs towards the hospital wing. They get to the third floor, and Spinnet glances around. Then she nods. “This ought to be far enough,” she says.

Harry falls back as he realizes that other people are waiting for him. Tall people. Older Gryffindors.

It’s more than half the Gryffindor Quidditch team. Not the twins, but Oliver Wood, and the three Chasers, and a fellow called McLaggen who’s their Seeker.

Harry swallows. McLaggen is only a year above him, but he looks so much bigger.

“Like we discussed,” Wood says, nodding to Spinnet and the rest. “Not that hard. Just enough to make sure that he can’t play that game against Hufflepuff.”

“What is going on?” Harry says.

He whispers it, but Wood still hears him and glances at him, sighing. “It’s not personal, Potter,” he says. “But this is my last year at the school, and we are going to win the Quidditch Cup. I’m sick of losing to Slytherin every year, especially when you lot cheat all the time.” He slaps his left fist into his right palm. “So this was McLaggen’s idea. We’ll do this as quick as we can. Don’t fight back. It’ll make it less painful for you.”

Up until the moment they begin hitting him, Harry thinks they won’t actually do it. They play with the twins. The twins like him. And they’re Gryffindors. House of honor and chivalry and all that. Harry knows Ron and Hermione are pretty typical Gryffindors, and they’re good people.

Knowing that doesn’t make the punches that hammer home on him, mostly given by McLaggen, hurt any less.

*

Harry spits more blood out and gets up to walk to the hospital wing. The Gryffindors seemed to assume he wouldn’t tell anybody, or go seek medical attention. In fact, Harry intends to, although he won’t spread around how he was so stupid and weak as to fall for Spinnet’s nonsense and run after her alone. Telling people it was an ambush will work well enough.

Why did he run after her alone?

It hurts him more than the wounds to admit it, but by the time he gets to Madam Pomfrey and drives her into a fussy passion about his bruises, Harry knows the right answer.

He had a romanticized view of the Gryffindors. He still yearned for that House as the one he should have been Sorted into. He thinks of Slytherin as the Death Eater House, the one he was put in against his will. Yes, he believed in a hot second that Slytherins would have bullied Ron badly enough to put him in the hospital wing, because he’s been on the receiving end of that bullying. He never believed that Gryffindors would do the same thing.

By the time Madam Pomfrey has finished casting charms to heal his teeth and spreading the Bruise Balm over his shoulders and stomach and legs and arms and hips, Harry feels the familiar cold rage spreading through him.

Well, no more. From now on, he’ll judge people purely as individuals. Purely on whether they’re friendly to him or not. Or useful to him or not.

*

Two days later, Harry catches the Snitch and ensures that Slytherin wins the Hufflepuff game 410-80.

As he wheels in a circle, fist with the imprisoned Snitch held high, and the Slytherin section of the stands cheers themselves hoarse, Harry looks towards the Gryffindor section, and smiles.

Conspicuously, two of them are missing. Oliver Wood and Cormac McLaggen are in the hospital wing with cases of mysterious, lingering snakebite.

Part Three.