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Chapter Text

“Why do you put the slippery stuff on the broom handle? It makes it harder to hang on. The broom shines, though. Is that what you want? Do you want the broom to light up and show you the way at night? Can you not use spells? I thought you could use spells. Why do you put the slippery stuff on the broom?”

Harry laughs and spirals towards the ground. He and Oliver have been doing a wicked practice for the last hour, and every one of Harry’s muscles aches.

But Ahalam, the snake Sirius got him—Harry still can’t believe Sirius got him a snake—is making it more bearable, clinging to the broom as they fly and chattering.

“The slippery stuff is called beeswax,” Harry explains, as he lifts Ahalam off the broom and coils him on his shoulder. The snake settles himself with an excited little wriggle. He’s the most cheerful snake Harry has ever met (not that he has a lot of experience with snakes, and angry Slytherins probably don’t count). “It polishes the broom handle and makes it last better.”

“Oh. Are brooms in danger of dying? Do brooms die? Does wood die?” Ahalam extends his tongue in the direction of the Firebolt. “Do you think that it would last longer if you would talk to it?”

Harry laughs again. He’s been doing that more this summer than he can ever remember doing during a summer. In fact, he thinks that he might be laughing more now than he ever has in his life.

“Excellent, Harry!” Oliver hops off his own Nimbus and gives Harry a serious nod. “But you should remember that Bludgers in an actual game will be faster. And you need to remember to imagine the Chaser pattern.”

“I don’t have to imagine it, Oliver,” Harry points out. “You enchanted those branches to run the Chaser patterns.”

“For me, not for you. I wasn’t working seriously on distracting you. When I do, I want you to remember that you should focus enough on them to not bump into one, but not enough to distract you from the game. And you should think hard about who you want to be Keeper after me. McLaggen has potential, but he’s a prat. And—”

“I’m not the Captain, though, Oliver, remember? That’s Angelina.”

“She’ll need your help. You’re going to be good at running plays and putting together strategies after this summer.”

“I am?” Harry asks in confusion.

“You are. It’s another thing we’re taking on.”

Harry ducks his head to hide both his groan and his smile as Oliver launches into another Quidditch-focused lecture.

Still the best summer.

*

“Harry! Happy birthday!”

Harry hugs Hermione enthusiastically as she leaps out of the Floo with Ron right behind her. Ron laughs and hugs him, too, and then proceeds to drag him towards the table, where an enormous birthday cake is waiting.

“Blimey, mate, I think you have more gifts than you did at Christmas!”

Harry grimaces a little. He assumed that the presents he got on the train were early birthday ones, because most of his “followers” wouldn’t be seeing him over the summer hols. But no, it turns out they were, what, “thank you for acting like Lord Slytherin” gifts or something, because the table in the Woods’ kitchen is piled high with more of them.

It’s not that Harry’s not grateful. He feels warm inside when he looks at the gifts. But he’s not Dudley. He doesn’t need these, and it feels a little unfair that people are spending all this money on him just for something he would have done anyway.

“Sit down and stop pouting so we can eat the cake, Harry.”

Harry starts and looks at Ron, who winks at him and then pushes him towards the table. It seems that Ron knows exactly what Harry’s thinking, and sympathizes, and also has no patience for it.

The cake is a towering thing that Mrs. Wood baked. (Mrs. Weasley will also bake him one, but it’ll be at the Burrow. Harry will be going over there for a celebration in a few days, to be combined with Ginny’s birthday). It’s made of so much chocolate that Harry drools just looking at it, and cream, and has sweets festooned all over it, and just makes him smile as much as the gifts do.

“Thanks, Mrs. Wood,” he tells her.

“I told you to call me Melinda, dear.”

Harry gives her a tremulous smile—it’s still weird to know that Oliver’s parents are so welcoming to him—and then they sit down in front of the cake and the gifts.

The first few that he opens make Harry laugh. They’re from his Slytherin “followers,” and they’re all books on various aspects of language, history, and defensive magic. They so obviously think that Harry is going to die before he reaches adulthood. Or die because he doesn’t know history. Or something.

“I want to read them,” Hermione says.

Harry hands them across the table, and then reaches for the gift from Hagrid.

“That one smells of small animal!” announces Ahalam. He’s been coiled around Harry’s neck, asleep, for the past hour, which is the only reason that he hasn’t been talking Harry’s ear off so far. “I want to eat it! What is it? Open it, open it, open it!

“You’re the weirdest snake,” Harry tells him, and ignores the way that Ron and even Hermione flinch a little at the Parseltongue. The Woods have got used to it.

“I am not weird for caring about food. Open it, open it, open it!

Harry shakes his head and opens it. He’s not surprised when it turns out to be alive, since Ahalam did say it smelled like that, but he’s a little surprised that Hagrid would give him a pet. He already gave Harry Hedwig.

Harry lifts the cage and eyes the small creature inside. It immediately sifts up and reaches towards the side of the cage. It appears to be a mole, he thinks, at least at first. But it’s bigger, and the fur is blacker, and it has brighter, clearer eyes.

Hermione gives a little shriek. “Harry, that’s a Niffler!”

Harry laughs aloud. Trust Hagrid to get him a pet like this.

It doesn’t take him longer than a moment to notice that the Woods look less than thrilled. Mrs. Wood clears her throat. “Harry, dear…”

“Don’t worry, I won’t let him loose in the house,” Harry says, and carefully reaches into the cage, which is covered with humming charms. At least Hagrid got someone to help him with the magic that would keep the Niffler contained. He strokes the black fur, and the Niffler cuddles closer to his hand, a rusty rumble coming out of it. Harry can’t remember learning in Care of Magical Creatures that they purr, but he supposes they sort of do.

Then the Niffler reaches up and tries to bite at Ahalam, who has come down Harry’s arm to flick his tongue at it.

“I do not want to eat it. It is rude. Perhaps it would make me rude if I ate it. I do not like being rude. I like being polite. What is it? What does it eat? Does it eat snakes? If it eats snakes, then you should let it go outside so that it can—”

Harry tunes Ahalam out the way he sometimes down with Hermione or the twins, and says, “I think that he’s trying to bite Ahalam because of the shine to his scales. Does anyone know a charm to make him less shiny?”

Mrs. Wood nods and casts one, and Ahalam wriggles a little as his scales turn a darker green color and stop glinting so much. The Niffler loses interest and accepts a bit of cake that Harry gives it, breaking off a piece near the side where it won’t be as obvious.

“That thing gets to eat cake before we do?” Ron looks pained.

“He isn’t that thing, he’s a pet,” Harry objects. He can’t stop smiling. He knows Nifflers are destructive, but it’s not like he’ll let this one run around unsupervised, and he knows the perfect name for him. “His name is Salazar.”

Everyone at the table stares at him. Harry ignores them and feeds Salazar another piece of cake.

“Why that—name?” Mrs. Wood finally asks.

“Because I think Salazar Slytherin was probably just as destructive as he could be,” Harry says.

He has other, private motives that he isn’t going to name, although from the wise way Hermione glances at him, she might be catching onto them. Harry doesn’t intend to glorify the Slytherin legacy or act as though he thinks Salazar Slytherin was right for hating Muggleborns. Calling his cute, destructive pet by that name is a way of undermining the idea that Harry might agree with that.

“Salazar he is, then,” Oliver says, after exchanging a glance with his father and giving a bracing nod, as if he likes the notion once he gets used to it. “Go on, open this one. And don’t tell the Slytherins about it.” He nudges a package with his name on it towards Harry.

Harry chuckles a little as he tears the package open. Oliver is paranoid as hell about the Slytherins learning any Gryffindor Quidditch team secrets. It’s the reason that Theo and Daphne and the other Slytherins Harry is closer to aren’t over at the Woods’ house today.

But Harry will have plenty of chances to see them, and they can let him know at any time if they’re suffering because of their families or anything else. Harry has sternly told them that, and he’s pretty sure they listened.

He gasps a little when he finds a complete set of Quidditch balls in the package Oliver got him, with the box shrunken so that it wasn’t as easy to recognize. “Oliver! Oh my God! This must have been so expensive!”

“I paid for it,” Mr. Wood interjects. He beams at Harry. “You’re the most talented player my Ollie’s ever worked with, he tells me. We have to encourage that talent! I want Britain to win the Quidditch World Cup one of these days!”

Harry smiles and ducks his head as he listens to Hermione and Ron bicker about how irresponsible Hagrid was to get him Salazar. There are their gifts to come, and one from Sirius, and one from Professor Lupin, and others, and…

Harry has just never been as happy as he has been lately. It’s like learning to do it all over again.

*

“Harry, the Minister is here to see you.”

Harry thought for sure he must have mistaken what Mrs. Wood said, because he couldn’t think of why the Minister for Magic would come to see him. But no, it really is Minister Fudge, who met Harry at the Leaky Cauldron last summer, standing in the middle of the Woods’ living room and staring at a moving picture of Mr. Wood on a Nimbus when he played as a Chaser.

“Er, hi, Minister Fudge,” Harry says, blinking at him. “How are you?”

“Harry!” The Minister spins around and advances on him, holding out his hand for Harry to shake. Harry lets his be shaken. He thinks trying to avoid it wouldn’t do him any good, anyway. “Very well, very well, thank you!” He winks at Harry as he herds him towards a chair in the corner of the Woods’ drawing room. He’s not as good at herding as Daphne or Theo. “Do excuse me not calling you Lord Slytherin, I feel that we’re such old friends that I couldn’t!”

“I don’t mind,” Harry says as he sits down on his chair and watches Minister Fudge sit on a huge wingback chair near the fireplace. “Sometimes it doesn’t seem quite real to me anyway.” He would have said it was silly with most other people, but he doesn’t trust the Minister enough to do that. He might try to treat Harry like a child if Harry said it, and that could hurt the people who depend on Harry for protection.

Minister Fudge chortles. “Yes, I can understand that. Coming into your Lordship so young!” He clasps his hands in front of him and sighs a little. “It’s a done thing now, of course, but I do wonder if you thought about it before you did it?”

Harry shrugs. “I didn’t think I had much choice, sir. There were too many problems at Hogwarts that needed fixing.”

“Ah, ah, yes, yes, I see,” Minister Fudge says, nodding his head, although Harry doubts that he does see. “It’s about Hogwarts that I’ve come to speak to you.”

“Sir?”

“Well, do you see, we at the Ministry intend to hold a little entertainment this year at Hogwarts.” Fudge winks at him and holds a finger to his lips. “Not something I can talk in detail about, not yet, it’s very hush-hush! But we think it’ll make a decent follow-up to the Quidditch World Cup.”

“Did you catch the people who floated those Muggles around at the Cup, sir?” Harry asks. He and Oliver and the Woods of course went, but they left early, before any of the terrible things happened. Oliver was mad to get Harry back to the house and have him try out Wronski Feints.

“I’m afraid not, but you don’t have to worry about them, Harry! They’re just random malcontents, not real Death Eaters or the like. There’s none of those left.”

Harry feels like he knows better. But it wouldn’t do any good to say that to the Minister. He just nods, and Fudge looks satisfied.

“Now,” Fudge says, and leans forwards and beams at Harry, “there’s just a tiny little matter of needing your permission to hold the entertainment at Hogwarts. Or rather, Lord Slytherin’s permission. It’s a formality, nothing more, and I do believe that the last time there was a Lord Slytherin, he granted permission without stopping to think about it. But we need it.”

“I—what kind of entertainment is it, sir? And why do you need my permission?”

“Oh, because you’re an underage Lord Slytherin and at Hogwarts.” Fudge winks at him again. “It’s just like asking your permission to come and hold the entertainment in your home, you see. And a lot of your followers are there as well, which makes it a little more complicated. You see?”

Harry doesn’t think he does see, but he did notice that he didn’t get an answer to his first question. “What kind of entertainment is it, sir?”

“Oh, now, Harry, it’s very hush-hush—”

“I don’t think I can just give you permission without knowing, though, sir,” Harry says firmly. “What if it’s something dangerous and people can sneak in and hurt students the way they hurt that Muggle family?”

Fudge hesitates, searching his eyes. Harry looks back calmly. Fudge has nothing on Theo when he’s in a mood, or, for that matter, Oliver when he thinks Harry needs to practice more.

“Well, there are going to be lots of people coming,” Fudge says at last, forcing a smile. “That much is true. But I don’t think they’ll be spending a lot of time with your followers. I mean, not most of them. Some will. But they won’t be the dangerous ones. The dangers are entirely to people who willingly volunteer.”

“What is it, sir?”

“Now, Harry—”

“I won’t tell anyone else, sir. I’ll make a promise that I won’t if you want me to.” Harry knows even as he says that that it’s kind of a risky thing to say. He can think of at least five people, starting with Hermione, who would be furious with him. “But I need to know.”

Fudge straightens up and sighs as though Harry is being very stupid about all of this. “It’s the Tri-Wizard Tournament, Harry, as a matter of fact.”

“The what, sir? I’ve never heard of it.”

“Well, that’s not surprising,” Fudge says, looking happy that he’s able to lecture Harry about something. Harry wonders idly if Fudge ever wanted to be a Hogwarts professor. “It was discontinued a few centuries ago. Only adults can participate in it, of course. The Tasks are dangerous, and the Champions go through three of them and the one who wins the most points also wins the Tournament. We’re going to have three magical schools competing in this one, of course—hence the name Tri-Wizard Tournament—”

The way he winks at Harry is really obnoxious. Ahalam, who is upstairs in the guest room right now because Harry doesn’t think he should bring a snake around the Minister, would have something to say about that.

“And those schools, besides Hogwarts, are going to be Beauxbatons, from France, and Durmstrang, the premiere school in Northern Europe. One Champion a school, of course. It’ll be great for building inter-school unity.”

“How dangerous are the Tasks, sir?”

“They used to be very dangerous,” Fudge says, and tries to look solemn for a second, which doesn’t seem to be a natural expression for his face. “But we’ve changed them so that they’re only moderately dangerous now. And we’ll have a magical artifact select the Champions, so no one can trick or bribe their way in and then fail because they’re not up to the rigors of the Tasks.”

“By fail, do you mean die?”

Fudge hesitates for a moment. “Well, yes, I suppose that would be right.”

Harry sighs. “Sir.”

“But we’ve changed the Tasks, like I told you! And from what I understand, all of your followers are far too young to participate in the Tournament anyway.”

Harry is sort of glad that Oliver won’t be at the school this year. “Sir, I need to know what the Tasks are. That’s the only way I would feel comfortable giving my permission for the Tournament to be held there.” Harry feels sort of strange thinking they need his permission at all, but this sounds like another thing that being Lord Slytherin can protect students from, so he’ll do it.

“Well, Harry…we want it to be a surprise…”

“I said I wouldn’t tell anyone, sir.”

Fudge bites his lip and fidgets in his chair. Harry thinks of the way that Sirius looked more dependable and trustworthy when he was fidgeting in the Healers’ custody and wonders idly how Fudge got elected.

“Well,” Fudge says at last, with a huge sigh and a nod at Harry to signal that he’s giving him an equally huge concession, “the first Task is traditionally having the Champions face some sort of dangerous beast. One Tournament in the past used Nundus. That, of course, is completely unacceptable. The expense alone! We’ll be using dragons instead.”

“Dragons,” Harry says faintly. All he can think of is Norbert, grown up.

“That’s right.” Fudge nods eagerly. “And the second Task is a situation in which the Champions need to seek and find someone lost. We’ll take a person dear to each of them and hide them at the bottom of the lake at Hogwarts. Of course, they’ll be completely safe.

“And for the Final Task, we’ll have a maze that they have to get through. Hagrid—the groundskeeper at Hogwarts, I’m not sure a Lord would associate with him, of course—has already promised us a few Acromantulas for that one.”

Harry takes a deep breath. He’s thinking of how he and Ron barely escaped from the Acromantulas in the forest their second year. And he’s thinking of how both basilisks and dragons are XXXXX creatures in the Care of Magical Creatures book.

Facing a dragon would probably be less dangerous than facing a basilisk, of course. But that doesn’t matter. What does is that it would be horribly dangerous.

“Sir, I can’t in good conscience do this.”

“Oh, you wouldn’t be required to help with set-up of the Tasks, Harry, of course not! We understand that you have classes. We might ask for a bit of funding from Hogwarts for—”

“I can’t give permission for the Tournament to be held there, sir. I just can’t.”

Fudge gapes at him. Harry looks resolutely back. Fudge’s face turns red, and Harry shifts in his seat. He hates people being upset with him, and he hates the way that Fudge looks like Uncle Vernon right now, but he’s still resolute.

“But that’s—that’s—” Fudge splutters. “What are we going to tell people? The Headmistress of Beauxbatons and the Headmaster of Durmstrang are already preparing their students to spend most of the year at Hogwarts!”

“I’m sorry, sir,” Harry says, which is sort of true. He doesn’t want the Tournament to happen, but he’s sorry that it will upset people. He’s going to do it anyway, though. “Maybe you can hold some other event for international magical cooperation at the school.”

“You’re being ridiculous, Harry,” Fudge says, and he tries to sound gentle, but the impatient tone in his voice ruins it. “Very much a child. I told you, we’ve moderated the Tasks! There won’t be any danger!”

“Dragons are still dangerous.” Harry’s certain of that. Less certain about the other two Tasks, which might be all right, but dragons are the first one, and he can’t allow that.

“You don’t understand,” Fudge practically wails. “We’ve spent all this money on it—”

“But you said it was hush-hush, sir. So people won’t be disappointed if you never announce it. They’ll never know.”

“The other magical communities will be very disappointed that it was the will of a stupid little boy that kept the Tournament from happening,” Fudge snarls.

Harry lifts his head, narrowing his eyes. “I don’t need to listen to that from you, sir.”

“Why? Because you’re Lord Slytherin?”

“No, because it’s rude,” Harry says. He stands up. “If you think that you can just go ahead and do it anyway, then do it. You said that this was just a formality. But you don’t have my permission, and if you go ahead and do the Tournament at Hogwarts anyway, then I’ll tell people how much I hate the idea.”

Fudge’s eyes bulge out. “Don’t say that!”

“Then don’t hold the Tournament.”

They stare at each other for a minute or so, and Fudge looks away first. Harry sighs and goes upstairs.

*

“What did the stupid man want? Was it something very stupid? Are you going to agree to it? I don’t think you should agree to it, because it’s probably stupid.”

Harry smiles and bows his head over Ahalam, who’s curled up in the corner of Harry’s pillow that he likes lying on. “Yes, it was stupid. It would have involved putting students in danger and bringing dragons to the school.”

“I would like to see dragons. But do they eat snakes? I would want to know that before I went near one. Do you have a sinew-thing about dragons? Could you show me the images and explain them to me?”

Harry chuckles a little, stroking Ahalam’s scales. Ahalam insists on calling books “sinew-things” because of the sinew that he can smell binding some of them, and he claims that he likes to look at the pictures, although he always wants Harry to tell him what they mean. “Yes, I have a book with pictures of dragons. Let me pick it up.” He rolls over and reaches for a book that Marcus Flint, of all people, sent him. Harry sent a polite thank-you note, but he’s not really sure why Flint would bother. He finally managed to pass his NEWTS and won’t be at the school anymore, either, so he can’t have any need for Harry.

“Dragons! They are very beautiful. Could you tame one? Could you get a small one that would breathe just enough fire to warm me up? Can you do the Warming Charm on the blankets? The last one you made has faded.”

Harry draws his wand and casts the charm. It still feels weird to do magic in the summers, but the whole Wood house is exempt from the Trace, so it’s all right.

As he explains the pictures to Ahalam, he turns the idea of the Tournament over and over in his head, as well as Minister Fudge thinking he has to get permission from Harry. It’s strange, the whole thing, everything from Fudge taking the “Lord Slytherin” business seriously enough to ask permission to wanting to have a Tournament that students can enter in the first place.

Harry kind of thinks his refusal won’t matter, and the Tournament will go ahead, anyway. But he’ll object and tell people he had nothing to do with it if it does.

And if his refusing to give permission really does keep the Tournament from going ahead…

Harry narrows his eyes. No one should be in danger. And I know that people like Fred and George would try to enter even if they aren’t supposed to.

No, I won’t allow it. It’s stupid.

Chapter Text

“The Minister really wants you to approve something that could kill people?”

Sirius sounds appalled. Harry nods and adjusts his wand to point more firmly at a dark patch on the wallpaper that scuttles around when it thinks no one is looking. “Yeah. Stupid, isn’t it?”

“Suicidal. With your popularity as Lord Slytherin and all.”

“Oh. I’ve only been reading the sports section of the Daily Prophet while I’m at Oliver’s house. What are they saying?”

The dark patch scuttles up the wallpaper. Harry casts, hard, and his cleaning spell lands and scrubs it out of existence.

Sirius cheers from his chair on the far side of the room. The Healers promised that he and Harry could come to Number Twelve Grimmauld Place, which is apparently the house where Sirius grew up, and start cleaning, as long as Sirius didn’t cast any spells. Harry is making sure to hold him to that. He doesn’t want Sirius to have to go back to St. Mungo’s and start the Healing all over again.

Remus chuckles from the chair across from Sirius. It was the full moon a few days ago, and he’s still tired and pale, but a smile blossoms across his face when he looks at Harry or Sirius. “At this rate, Harry, you’ll have curses cleaned up that are twenty years old. Or older.”

“Good, I’d like to,” Harry says firmly. The atmosphere of Grimmauld Place gives him the creeps. He wants to live here with Sirius, wants to have a home of his own, but at the moment, it’s too creepy to do that.

Even Ahalam is talking less than he normally would and feels the oppressive atmosphere of the house, although now he sticks his head out from around the side of Harry’s neck. “What are you doing?”

“Cleaning up the patches,” Harry hisses, while he keeps an eye on Sirius and Remus. They jump a little, but just look resigned to the Parseltongue. Harry reckons that Sirius knew it would happen when he got Harry Ahalam, and Remus figured it out when he knew about the snake. “The Dark magic that lingers on the walls and in the corners.”

“What does it smell like?”

“Like something wet and disgusting. Like that mildew you smelled downstairs,” Harry adds, when Ahalam wriggles in the way that means he’s about to ask a lot more questions.

“Oh! Then I can smell it and point it out to you! Then you can destroy it quickly, and we can leave and go back to the nice place.”

Harry blinks. He didn’t know Ahalam could smell that kind of thing, or point it out. “I think there’s too much for me to destroy today. But it would be nice if you could point it out. It means we would have to come back tomorrow, though.”

“Then you should let Salazar destroy it.”

Harry blinks again. “Nifflers like shiny things. He wouldn’t destroy Dark magic.”

“What if you hide some shiny things around the rooms and then let Salazar run around them? Then he would concentrate on finding them and destroying the Dark things! You could do that. Then he would not be looking at me as if he wants to eat me. It is perfect. I am perfect. I am very smart.”

Harry laughs. And it is true that since Mrs. Wood’s charm on Ahalam’s scales faded, Salazar is watching the snake kind of hungrily through the cage bars.

“What is it, Harry?”

“Ahalam was just suggesting hiding some shiny things around the house where Dark magic is and letting the Niffler Hagrid got me run around and destroy the Dark magic.”

There’s silence from behind him, which isn’t really what Harry expected out of that announcement. He turns around and frowns at Sirius and Remus. “Have you lost your tongues to—Kneazles or something?” He reckons that’s probably the way that people in the magical world would say it.

Sirius and Remus exchange loaded glances, and Harry stiffens a little. He knows what that means. An adult is about to be upset with him.

“Hagrid got you a Niffler?” Sirius asks carefully.

“Yeah. His name’s Salazar. Don’t worry, I never let him run around the Woods’ house unsupervised, but I reckoned here would be different.”

“Hagrid got you a Niffler,” Remus says, and puts a hand over his eyes.

Oh. That kind of upset. “Yeah, he did. Like Sirius got me a snake,” Harry says, and strokes Ahalam, who slithers around his shoulders excitedly.

“Ahalam isn’t venomous or destructive.” Sirius has a hand over his eyes now, too. Harry wonders if he’s the only one who notices the way that Sirius’s hand still shakes. “But Nifflers are…”

“Do you care that much about anything in this house, though, Sirius? Like really?”

Sirius lifts his head and laughs helplessly. Remus scowls at him. “It’s not funny, Sirius!”

“Getting Harry a Niffler is exactly the kind of thing I would think about but not have the courage to do.” Sirius beams at Harry. “You’re right, Harry, I don’t care that much about anything in this house. But I don’t want to do anything to get your little pet hurt. So why don’t we just carefully scan the house first, and have Remus get rid of the most dangerous things when he’s feeling better, and then turn Salazar loose?”

Harry grins. “Fine by me,” he says, and translates the conversation for Ahalam, who it turns out knows a lot of different ways to talk about how clever he is.

*

Remus has got rid of most of the nasty curses and the doxy nests and the like when Harry brings Salazar over. Remus has also Transfigured a lot of small pieces of clothing and cushions into golden rings. Salazar goes mental when he sees them, bouncing around his cage and making high rasping calls that sometimes sound like chirps and sometimes like grunts.

“Go get them, boy,” Harry says, after Remus has scattered the Transfigured jewelry and Harry has opened the cage.

Salazar shoots out and blurs up the stairs. Harry and Sirius run after him—Sirius having to pause to catch his breath about halfway up—and laugh as Salazar tears into cabinets and corners and walls and couches and holes.

There’s a bit of trouble with the mad house-elf, Kreacher, when Salazar gets to a big cabinet on the second floor. Kreacher pops up and screams that he won’t allow the Niffler to “destroy the legacy of the House of Black!” Salazar plunges straight past him and rips open the cabinet.

“Go down to the kitchen, Kreacher,” Sirius says, more kindly than Harry has ever seen him act with Kreacher. “Remus just Transfigured a bunch of old objects into rings and hid them. That’s what the Niffler’s after. Nothing that’s actually valuable.”

Kreacher narrows his eyes at Sirius as if deciding whether to believe him, but finally nods stiffly and points at him with one finger. “Kreacher is watching,” he says ominously, before he vanishes with a loud crack.

“Creepy fucker,” Sirius mutters, and endures a lecture from Remus for his language.

Harry just grins and decides that he won’t tell them he’d heard worse from the Slytherin Quidditch team on the field. He watches with some contentment as wisps of Dark magic puff up from Salazar’s claws, and the Niffler comes out with his pouch bulging with lots of the Transfigured rings.

Harry does think he sees Salazar stuff a golden locket that definitely wasn’t one of the Transfigured things into his pouch, but Salazar is pretty good about letting Harry reach into his pouch, so Harry reckons he can get it back later.

*

“Harry.”

Theo’s greeting is quiet, but the way his eyes wrinkle at the corners tells Harry a lot. Harry grins at him and waves, and flops down on the seat next to him. Crabbe and Goyle, the only other people in the compartment right now, blink at Harry. They aren’t really his friends or “followers.”

Harry ignores them, focusing on Theo. “How are you? I’m sorry that I couldn’t persuade the Woods or Sirius to let you come over.”

“Considering my heritage, I expected it.”

Harry narrows his eyes. “That’s not an answer.”

Theo bows his head for a second, fiddling with what looks like a string on the hem of his robes. “It’s fine,” he says quietly. “With Wood, it’s not personal, I know. It’s about Quidditch. And with Black…well, he was fervently anti-Slytherin in school. There are still stories about it. I never entertained any hope of visiting you there.”

“Huh.” Harry isn’t really satisfied, but he supposes he has to act like he is. “Well, anyway, Sirius might not be as anti-Slytherin as you think. Look.” And he takes out the pouch that contains Ahalam and spills his snake into his hands.

Crabbe jumps back with something like a croak. Goyle stares with his eyes and mouth round and wide-open.

Actually, Theo isn’t much calmer. He has wide eyes and a mouth that’s open just a little, though. “Black got you that?”

Harry laughs. “Yeah. His name’s Ahalam, and he likes to talk all the time. Fair warning.”

“Those who talk all the time are those who are smart!” Ahalam pops his head up and waves his neck back and forth. “Are these the ones you were telling me about? The sneaky boy and the female who speaks like a sinew-thing? None of them smells female. Are female humans different from female snakes? Do you change back and forth from male to female at different seasons? Is one of them the sneaky boy?”

Harry laughs again and hisses back, “The girl I told you about isn’t in the compartment. And this is the sneaky boy.” He turns his hands so that Ahalam can see Theo, and Ahalam gives a delighted wriggle all over.

“I am honored to meet the sneaky boy.”

“What’s he saying?” Theo whispers, barely moving his lips.

“He’s honored to meet the sneaky boy.”

Theo exhales slowly and then bloody bows to Ahalam from his seat, one hand clasped across his chest. “I am honored to meet the snake of Lord Slytherin.”

Harry stares for a second, then snorts. Well, he supposes it’s fine for Ahalam to have fans. It gives Harry more people to leave him with if he has to go somewhere.

“Anyway, I’m going to go see if I can find Daphne and the rest who haven’t seen Ahalam yet,” Harry says. “I don’t want Justin to get upset because he might think I set a snake on him during second year at the Dueling Club.”

“He doesn’t think that anymore,” Theo says, and gives Harry a weird look.

Harry shrugs. “Anyway.”

“I’ll come with you.”

Harry doesn’t really understand why, since it’s not like he’s in any danger on the train, and Theo also isn’t in danger that he needs to be protected from. But he nods and lets Theo come with him. He does enjoy his friend’s company.

*

Professor McGonagall stops Harry when he’s walking into the school in a large, chattering group of his friends, Ron and Hermione just ahead of him and the twins just behind, Justin and Susan discussing snakes intently with him. (It turns out Justin likes snakes when they aren’t trying to bite him).

“Mr. Potter.” Professor McGonagall looks very old. “Someone told me that you have a snake.”

“Yes, Professor,” Harry says, and touches Ahalam where Ahalam is wound around his neck. Ahalam waves hello to McGonagall with his tail, something Padma Patil taught him in about three minutes flat after Harry not being able to teach him all summer. Harry is impressed and thinking about hiring her to be his Ahalam-wrangler if he ever gets really irritated with the snake. “His name is Ahalam, and Sirius got him for me.”

For some reason, McGonagall closes her eyes. Harry blinks and exchanges a glance with Justin. Justin obviously has no idea what’s going on, but Susan has folded her arms and is watching Professor McGonagall in a worrying way.

“Much as I am loathe to do this, Mr. Potter,” McGonagall murmurs, “the rules do say that you cannot have a snake.”

“No, they don’t,” Susan speaks up before Harry can protest the unfairness of this. “They say that you can have a cat or an owl or a toad. They don’t say that you can’t have snakes.”

“Miss Bones—”

“Ron had a rat last year,” Harry says, picking up on Susan’s argument. There’s no way that he would give up Ahalam. He would go to Beauxbatons first, and he doesn’t even know how to speak French. “I mean, not really a rat, but everyone thought that’s what Scabbers was. And before that, Percy had the same rat for years. And Lee Jordan has a tarantula, and I know Hannah Abbott has a dog. Why isn’t a snake allowed?”

McGonagall peers at him as if thinking that he’ll take off his glasses and turn into a different person. Harry lifts his chin and glares back stubbornly. Finally, McGonagall releases a long, rusty sigh and turns around, starting a little as she sees how many of Harry’s friends in the large group are staring at her. And some other people, too, who aren’t part of the group but know good entertainment when they see it.

“Very well, Mr. Potter,” she says heavily. “Keep the snake. Just don’t expect other people to be happy about it.” And she walks away, old-looking in a way Harry has never seen her before.

“Who cares if other people are happy with it?” Justin says to Harry, sounding baffled. “It was Petrified by a giant snake and I’m okay with it. So why would other people be upset?”

Harry can only shrug as he tucks Ahalam back around his neck so that the little snake won’t fall off on the journey into the Great Hall. “I don’t know.”

He thinks he might know a few people, but there’s no point in speaking their names aloud right now.

*

“I have two announcements to make,” Headmaster Dumbledore says, standing up at the professors’ table.

Harry doesn’t pay a lot of attention. He’s busy trying to keep people at the Gryffindor table from overfeeding Ahalam. Maybe it’s the snake’s small size, and maybe it’s his tail-waving, and maybe it’s because Harry and Ron and Hermione have told everyone that he’s friendly, but Seamus and Dean and Lavender and the twins and even the new first-years seem enchanted with him. And they keep trying to give him treats.

“Ahalam, no, that’s the size of your head—”

“It smells good!” Ahalam declares, and unhinges his jaw to eat the piece of cheese.

Harry sighs. Lavender giggles and holds out another one.

“The first is that there will be no Quidditch this year.”

Harry whips around, nearly dropping Ahalam, with his jaw hanging open. A similar sensation is happening at the other tables. Harry can see Draco actually lunging forwards, as if he’s a snake like Ahalam and can swallow the Headmaster. The other students at Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff are screaming. Angelina looks as if her broom has broken.

“That is because of my second announcement,” Dumbledore hurries on, and then he sighs heavily. He must have a Sonorus Charm on his throat, Harry thinks absently, or no one would be able to hear him over the complaining. “Or rather, what would have been my second announcement. There was going to be a grand entertainment at Hogwarts to replace Quidditch, and to be the reason Quidditch was canceled. We would have required the pitch for it.”

He turns and looks straight at Harry. “Unfortunately, Harry Potter needed to give his permission to hold the entertainment at Hogwarts, and he refused to do so.”

People turn to stare at Harry all around the Great Hall. He can feel his ears turn red and burn with embarrassment, but he lifts his chin and ignores the temptation to simply crumble. It’s bloody unfair of Dumbledore to blame this all on him.

And he hasn’t even announced what the entertainment was going to be. The Ministry is really set on keeping the Tri-Wizard Tournament a secret.

“I said no because they wanted to bring a dangerous set of tasks to the school the students could compete in,” Harry says steadily. Hermione taps him on the shoulder and casts the Sonorus Charm on him, too. Harry nods to her gratefully. “I won’t tell you exactly what it is because the Headmaster obviously doesn’t want me to, but that’s the truth. Those tasks would have involved things like bringing Nundus to the school. They have in the past.”

There, he’s telling the truth but not breaking his promise to keep the specific tasks quiet. It’s true that Nundus were used in the past of the Tri-Wizard Tournament. There’s probably a book about it somewhere.

“What?” Hermione shrieks. She doesn’t have the Sonorus Charm on her, but her voice is more than loud enough for everyone to hear.

Harry nods to her. “I don’t know if they were going to do that this time, but it’s a possibility. And students could compete in this entertainment if they were adults.” Harry turns around and stares at Dumbledore again, who appears frozen with surprise. “That’s why I said no. I don’t want people getting hurt.”

“People get hurt every day, Potter,” Angelina snaps. She must still be sore at the thought of Quidditch being canceled. Most of the time, she would never talk to him like that. “That doesn’t mean anything!”

“Not if I can prevent it,” Harry says, and stares hard at her until Angelina lowers her gaze, obviously still fuming. “I don’t care how fun other people would think it is. I protect the students at Hogwarts as best I can.”

“It would be for adults who could make their own decisions,” Dumbledore chooses to say then.

“If they want to go fight Nundus and the like, then they can go to Africa and do it,” Harry snaps. He thinks Nundus live in Africa. He’s pretty sure. “But I don’t need to let them do it here. And if they brought beasts like that to Hogwarts, who’s to say they wouldn’t get out of control and attack people who didn’t make the choice to face them?”

“We would take precautions against that, Harry, my boy.”

“What precautions, sir?”

Dumbledore doesn’t answer.

Harry shakes his head. The fact that he has to keep his promise to Fudge not to talk about the Tournament is irritating, but it also means that Dumbledore can’t really contradict him. “I won’t allow it.”

There’s a rustle at the Slytherin table. Harry glances over and sees Daphne, who he didn’t see on the train, stand up and straighten her robes. Then she clears her throat and says in her prissy voice—probably also courtesy of a Sonorus Charm—“The niceties of titles mean that you should yield the eminence you occupy by courtesy to respectful address of Lord Slytherin, Headmaster.”

Harry is a little gratified to see that even Dumbledore appears confused by what Daphne means. Then his brow clears, and he says, “I do not need to address a young boy by a title he was persuaded to take up by people who want to use him, Miss Greengrass. Indeed, it would be gross neglect of my duties to do so.”

“Let’s ask Lord Slytherin,” Daphne says, startling Harry with how short the sentence is, and she swings around to stare at him. “Do you dislike being called Lord Slytherin?”

Harry takes a deep breath and tells his heart not to pound so much. “Not when I can do things for people.”

“Define things, Lord Slytherin.”

Daphne seems to be deliberately making her voice simpler for the watching students. Harry tries to calm the prickling rise of heat in his own cheeks as he says, “I want to protect them. Help them?” He makes it too much like a question, and Ron’s elbow hits his side. Harry clears his throat and speaks as calmly as he can without glaring at Ron. “Solve problems that I can, within the school. If I can solve problems outside of the school, then I want to do that, too, but I’m not sure of the limitations of my power there.”

Daphne nods, as if approving, although Harry kind of doubts it. She never wholeheartedly approves of anything he does. She turns back to Dumbledore. “He doesn’t dislike being called Lord Slytherin, Headmaster, and the burden is one he takes up willingly.”

I wish she talked more like that, Harry thinks. Graceful, like I can’t, but understandable.

“Nonetheless, Miss Greengrass,” Dumbledore says, and his voice is cool, “we are getting off the topic.” He turns and faces Harry. “Will you or will you not grant your permission for the Tri-Wizard Tournament to take place at the school, Mr. Potter?”

Harry blinks in shock when Dumbledore names it, but a second later, he thinks he sees the logic behind that. People start buzzing and whispering to each other, and at least some of the older students at most of the tables seem to recognize the name, from the widening of their eyes. Harry hears Fred and George go utterly silent behind him.

But all he can think of is how someone would still manage to get into the Tournament and die. How they want to bring dragons here.

Harry meets Dumbledore’s eyes and shakes his head. “No, sir.”

“Then I am afraid that no Quidditch will be played this year, and nothing will replace it,” Dumbledore says, with regret that appears to be genuine, and sits down again.

Harry cringes a little at some of the glares that come his way. But he sits down and picks up another piece of cheese for Ahalam.

There are some things that are worth more than being popular.

*

“This is ridiculous.”

Susan’s voice is huffy, and Padma Patil, sitting beside her, nods emphatically. Harry gives them both a faint smile. They’re at the “Lord Slytherin and his groupies” table in the library, the one that Madam Pince tends to glare people away from. “If you think of something I can do, feel free to tell me.”

“Tell a professor.”

Harry shrugs. “I did.”

Professor McGonagall just looked at him with a distant pity in her eyes and told him that there was a simple means to stop people from hexing him in the corridors, and that was to agree that Hogwarts could host the Tri-Wizard Tournament. Harry again tried to explain about how he didn’t want anyone to die, and McGonagall shook her head and said he’s just fourteen, he shouldn’t worry about that.

She looked a little miffed when Harry asked why he’d nearly died three or four times in the school, and shouldn’t he worry about that?

“We’re going to hex them back.”

“No!” Harry snaps instantly, when he sees Susan standing up from the table. She’ll go out there right this minute and do it, he knows. That innate Hufflepuff sense of fair play is blazing in her eyes. “It’s not worth the detentions you’ll get.”

“They’re not getting detentions!”

“They’re being sneaky about it. Are you going to be sneaky about it?”

Padma laughs a little. “Susan has never been sneaky in her life.”

After a long moment when Harry thinks Susan might go do it anyway just to prove them wrong, she makes an angry sound and sits back down at the table. “All right, but we’ve got to do something!”

“Why, though? These are minor hexes, and I can handle them—”

“It could make you look weak, and that would weaken your political position, too.”

That makes Harry pause. Last year he might have cheered at the thought of something that would make people stop thinking of him as Lord Slytherin, but right now, he doesn’t want it. The only good things his title has done are let him protect people and get him away from the Dursleys. He doesn’t want his ability to help people in the future to be affected.

“Fine,” he says at last, knowing he sounds sulky. “But you know the professors know about them, and they haven’t stopped the people doing it. They keep saying they didn’t actually see it happen. So what are we going to do?”

Susan smiles. “Use the people who can be sneaky.”

*

“Why is McLaggen limping?” Ron asks, as he sits down next to Harry at the breakfast table a few days later.

“No idea,” Harry says, and it’s the truth.

He did suspect that McLaggen was behind some of the hexes he was getting, especially since the git wanted to try out for Keeper and seems to blame Harry for Quidditch getting canceled as well as the Tournament not being held. But he doesn’t know exactly who cursed McLaggen to limp like this.

Then his gaze goes across the Great Hall and lands on the Slytherin table, and he snorts a little.

“What, mate?”

Harry shrugs at Ron, but inwardly, he’s thinking that Theo’s perfectly blank face is as much of a tell as if he was smirking all over the place.

*

“Mr. Potter. Stay after class.”

Harry doesn’t much mind Professor Moody saying that, although he does think that Professor Moody is a little strange. He barks about constant vigilance all the time and glares at Harry with one eye while the other one is watching another student or his own wand or the words he’s writing on the board. But there’s no reason for about half the class to turn around and glare at Moody.

“Go on,” Harry says out of the corner of his mouth to Neville and Ron and Hermione and Seamus—since when did Seamus care about this Lord Slytherin thing?—and Susan and Justin and Hannah and Ernie Macmillan.

“We’re comfortable right here,” Ernie says in a loud, pompous voice.

Harry sighs. Ernie is kind of irritating, and Harry still remembers that Ernie suspected he was the Heir of Slytherin during second year. Then again, so did Justin, and Harry has fully accepted him among his friends.

And anyway, Ernie was kind of right.

“Ten points from Hufflepuff, Mr. Macmillan.”

Ernie turns ashen. Harry pats him on the shoulder and shoves him out of the door of the classroom at the same time.

Then he turns around to face Moody, who is glaring at Harry with both eyes now. Harry braces himself. This looks like it’s about to turn into a lecture or scolding the way he’s got from some of the professors about the Tri-Wizard Tournament. Professor Sprout and a few others just look at him with disappointed eyes, though.

But Moody says, “I want to know who told you the Tri-Wizard Tournament kills everyone who participates in it, Potter.”

“Uh. What?”

“I said,” Moody says, and stumps forwards with a crashing sound from his wooden leg, “who told you—”

“Right. I heard that part, sir. And no one told me that.”

Moody pauses. His magical blue eye zooms around his face and then comes back to the front to focus on Harry. “Then why are you opposing it?”

Harry stares at Moody, sort of appalled. But then again, Moody was an Auror. He might be too used to death to think much about it. “Even some people dying is terrible, sir. I don’t want that to happen.”

“The Tri-Wizard Tournament is essential for international magical unity.” Moody folds his arms and glares down his scarred nose at Harry. “When You-Know-Who returns, we’re going to need every wand we can get!”

“Then wouldn’t it be better for British Aurors to reach out to Aurors in other countries, sir? Not just schoolkids?”

Moody slowly shakes his head. “You have no idea about the larger ramifications of the situation, Potter,” he says. “But you’ve chosen to paint yourself as a political leader, and that means you’ll take the consequences that come with that. Detention, every night from seven to nine, from now until you relent and let the Tournament come to Hogwarts.”

“Detention for what?” Harry snaps, losing his temper so badly that he feels Ahalam wriggle anxiously in his robe pocket. “Being a moral person?”

“Cheek,” Moody rumbles. “And ten points from Gryffindor, Potter.”

Harry stares at him in silent outrage, but Moody is already turning away, growling, “Dismissed.”

Harry clenches his fists and steps out into the corridor. At least the others have taken him at his word and left. Harry stalks down the corridors. Some people still glare at him, but no one is hexing him anymore.

He knows he could tell someone, and they would help him take care of the problem. Well, his friends, anyway. His “followers.” Not the other professors.

But the Slytherins and the twins took care of Snape for him last year, and Justin and Susan and Theo worked on Dumbledore, and Oliver gave him a place to stay for the summer. Harry feels embarrassed at the thought of telling them about this, when he should be able to handle it on his own.

I can’t rely on other people all the time. They shouldn’t have to protect me all the time. They’ll just start thinking I’m weak, the way Padma said.

He needs to come up with something to get revenge on Moody, since Harry doesn’t think he can change his mind. But what—

Then Harry stops in the middle of the corridor, and a truly wicked smile crosses his face. Well, he assumes so, anyway. It feels like that. He doesn’t have a mirror.

He hasn’t been in Moody’s office yet, but the twins have—of course—and they told Harry about the Foe-Glass Moody has, and the various Dark detectors, and lots of other silver objects that apparently rival the number in Dumbledore’s office.

Harry has an Invisibility Cloak, and he can sneak up to Moody’s office undetected, if not actually into it.

And he has a Niffler who would love a chance to be turned loose in an office full of shiny things.

Chapter Text

“Blimey, mate. Isn’t that Oliver’s owl?”

Harry jerks his head up from his porridge (and plots of how to get past the wards on Moody’s door that stopped him when he took Salazar to the professor’s office) to stare at the large white owl soaring into the Great Hall. Her name’s Aria, and she’s not a snowy owl like Hedwig but an oddly large barn owl. Harry swallows when he sees that she’s clutching a smoking red Howler.

If that’s coming for him…

But it doesn’t. Instead, Aria turns and arrows straight towards Dumbledore.

Harry watches with an open mouth as the owl lets the Howler go in front of the Headmaster, who’s staring at it in bewilderment. The next second, the letter opens while hovering in midair and Oliver’s voice rings out over the Great Hall.

“YOU CANCELED QUIDDITCH! YOU CAN’T CANCEL QUIDDITCH!”

The Howler is trembling as though Oliver is there and ready to tear Dumbledore’s head off, or as if he was doing that when he dictated the letter. Harry can feel silence spreading through the Great Hall in waves, can sense more than one person staring towards Dumbledore with an open mouth, but he can’t actually see it since that would mean looking away from the Howler.

“AND YOU TRIED TO BLAME HARRY! THE BEST SEEKER I’VE EVER SEEN! THE SEEKER FROM GRYFFINDOR! I KNOW YOU WERE A GRYFFINDOR! DON’T YOU HAVE ANY HOUSE PRIDE AT ALL?”

Harry puts a hand over his mouth, because he’s snorting and he knows the sounds of laughter are going to escape and make more than one person stare at him. Or maybe not. They’re all staring at the Howler, too.

“THIS IS THE WAY THAT SLYTHERIN WINS WHEN THEY START PLAYING FOR THE HOUSE CUP AGAIN! DO YOU WANT THAT, DUMBLEDORE? DO YOU?”

The Headmaster is blinking slowly, as though he assumes this is a dream he’s going to wake up from. Ron is leaning against Harry’s left side, shaking so hard with laughter that Harry can practically feel every sound he makes even though he can’t hear them over the sound of Oliver’s shouting.

“I THOUGHT I COULD TRUST YOU TO PUT WHAT WAS RIGHT ABOVE WHAT WAS EASY, BUT APPARENTLY I WAS WRONG! STOP PRESSURING HARRY TO APPROVE THE TRI-WIZARD TOURNAMENT AND REINSTATE QUIDDITCH! OR YOU’LL REGRET THE CONSEQUENCES!”

The Howler dissolves in a wave of smoke and heat. Now Harry can hear Ron laughing, and what sounds like half the Great Hall. Maybe more Slytherins are laughing than other people, but it’s still pretty near universal.

Harry peers at the Head Table. McGonagall is sitting there as if turned to stone. Snape is staring down at his plate, the way he has pretty much every time he and Harry have been in the Great Hall together. (He ignores Harry utterly in Potions, and has McGonagall mark his essays). Flitwick, on the other hand, is laughing with his hands clasped over his belly.

Professor Moody looks far more shocked than he ever has in class, and is drinking backwards from his water cup in bewilderment. And Dumbledore…

The Headmaster looks old, and shrunken.

He stands up and catches Harry’s eye, and his face tightens a little. “Come to my office, Harry, please,” he says.

A hex shoots out from the Hufflepuff table, a Tickling Hex by the color of it. Harry watches open-mouthed as Dumbledore whips out his wand and stops it. Then Dumbledore turns his head and tracks the hex to its source with eyes that would make Harry cower.

“Miss Bones,” Dumbledore says.

“You should address Harry by his title,” Susan says, standing up. “You’re not even his teacher. Let alone his friend.”

Harry tries to telepathically beam no no stop this is suicide no no stop into Susan’s brain. But apparently she’s turned off her telepathic receivers. She has her arms folded and the stubborn look on her face that Harry dreads.

“This is a matter of extreme disrespect, Susan.”

“I’m following your example, Albus.”

At that point someone sitting next to Susan at the Hufflepuff table, whose face Harry can’t see from this angle, does reach out and try to tug Susan back into her seat. Susan totally ignores that. Her eyes are fierce and bright as she looked up at the professors’ table, and particularly at Professor Sprout.

“Why are you blaming Harry for canceling Quidditch and trying to protect students?” she demands of her Head of House. “Isn’t that your job? Shouldn’t you be grateful for anything that makes it easier?” Susan shakes her head with a disgusted expression. “Instead of upset?”

Professor Sprout closes her eyes. “Mr. Potter is being harmed and used and manipulated by people who want to take advantage of his technically having a Lordship title,” she whispers. “He’s too young to see that. I thought—if we showed that we are still the authorities at the school and shamed him into—”

“That’s stupid—”

“Miss Bones! Twenty points from Hufflepuff!”

Susan looks at McGonagall with totally unafraid eyes before she turns back to Professor Sprout. “We’re the House of fair play! If anyone shouldn’t be doing this, it’s us.”

“You’ll come to the office with me and Harry, Miss Bones,” Dumbledore says, his voice so cold Harry wouldn’t be surprised to see ice cubes appear in the air in front of him.

Susan walks around the end of her House table with a small smile. Harry is beginning to think that was her plan all along. She probably knew that Dumbledore would want to meet with Harry and didn’t want it to happen with them by themselves, so she came up with this way to accompany them.

Harry sighs. It’s understandable, and he admires Susan for standing up for her beliefs, and he should have foreseen this would happen…

But he wish it didn’t come with other people getting in trouble for him.

*

“Would you like a lemon drop, Harry?”

“I’d like you to get to the point, sir.”

Harry is tired of everything. He’s tired of being hexed in the corridors, even if that’s stopped now. He’s tired of professors frowning at him and acting like he’s a little boy who needs his hand held, while they also act like he’s an adult who needs to be manipulated into doing the right thing.

He’s tired of his friends being hurt, even if the only hurt for Susan so far is losing some points from Hufflepuff and having to endure Dumbledore’s thoughtful frowns.

Dumbledore closes his eyes and sits there for a moment. Susan opens her mouth. Harry steps on her foot.

Maybe Susan can tell that she’s gone far enough, what with having tried to hex the Headmaster of Hogwarts right in the middle of the Great Hall, so she subsides.

Dumbledore finally opens his eyes and nods. “Very well,” he says. “This has to do with the history of the title of Lord Slytherin that I asked you to look up, Harry, but apparently you did not.”

His voice is chiding. Harry bristles but manages to keep his reaction contained. “Go on, please, sir.”

“In the past, these kinds of lordship titles, or Heir titles, were used solely for manipulation when children wore them,” Dumbledore says, folding his hands together on his desk. “They were drunk with power, or rather, the illusion of power. Older people in the Wizengamot or their families used them like pawns to accumulate the most benefits for themselves. Of the last five children who carried the title of Lord Slytherin, four died violently, and the last was imprisoned in the Janus Thickey Ward for the rest of his life.”

Harry swallows, feeling cold. Then he takes a deep breath and says, “Who do you think is manipulating me, sir? Because it’s not my friends.”

“Your friends’ parents and guardians.” Dumbledore’s eyes are old, so old. “You may not know it, of course. I would not blame you for thinking that the suggestions your friends make are purely out of the goodness of their hearts. Your friends may even think so.” The glance he darts at Susan seems to indicate that he doesn’t think she does. “But in reality, those suggestions have been passed on to them by the adults in their lives, to find the best way of using the political power of Lord Slytherin to their advantage.”

“What’s to their advantage about holding a death tournament at Hogwarts?”

“In this case, their advantage would be that you do exactly as you are doing,” Dumbledore says quietly. “In other words, oppose the Tri-Wizard Tournament so that it is not held. And that will weaken international cooperation and increase animosity between different wizarding communities. If we have no allies beyond our borders that we can call on when Voldemort returns, he may well win.”

Harry stares at him. Dumbledore looks back. Harry doesn’t think the Headmaster is telling the whole truth, but he’s sure that Dumbledore is at least being sincere about what he’s saying. He really does believe it.

“I just don’t think a school death tournament will increase international unity that much.”

“It won’t,” Susan says unexpectedly. “I found a book on the Tri-Wizard Tournament in the library. Every time, the schools cheat to get their preferred Champions into the Tournament, and then cheat to help them win their tasks. The tournament was ended because of the large death toll, but also because it led to squabbles and assassinations and duels between people from the different schools.” She scowls at Dumbledore. “I don’t know why you think this time would be different.”

“We have an impartial judge that cannot be tricked—”

“That doesn’t have anything to do with increasing good will or helping people cheat!”

“This time, I have been assured no one will do that.”

Harry snorts. He can’t help it. “The way you were sure the Dursleys would treat me fairly, sir?”

“Stop calling him by a title, Harry,” Susan says, frowning at him. “At least until he does you the courtesy of using one back.”

Harry starts to argue that he’s polite even if other people are rude, but Dumbledore interrupts him. “I made the best guess I could, Harry. I was wrong, and you will never know how deeply I regret that—”

“Because you think confessing makes you look weak or something?” Susan asks.

Dumbledore ignores her. “But I still think you were safer with your aunt and uncle than you would have been in the magical world with Death Eaters able to arrange any number of accidents for an infant or toddler. And now you are out from under the blood wards’ protection, and my protection as well. I am offering you a chance to come back into it. To stop doing what Death Eaters like Mr. Nott and Mr. Malfoy tell you to do.”

“Theo and Draco aren’t Death Eaters!”

“I was referring to their parents, Harry, as I suspect you know. The younger Mr. Malfoy came with you to my office last year and was instrumental in convincing you that you had to emerge from behind the blood wards. And the younger Mr. Nott was one of the first to proclaim himself your follower, wasn’t he? Perhaps he was even the one who looked up your technical claim to the title of Lord Slytherin?”

Harry shakes his head, not in anger but disbelief. “And their fathers would want me to, what? Buy brooms for the school?”

“They would want you to come out from behind the blood wards. To believe that you could trust their sons. Who will deliver you into their fathers’ hands when the time is right. Now that you have been so useful to them as to destroy several international alliances in the planning stages, they can wait for a better time. Who knows how else you will benefit them in your uncoordinated thrashing around and determination to act like an adult?””

“I don’t have to listen to this,” Harry says, and stands up.

Dumbledore’s eyes widen. “Harry—”

“Neither Draco nor Theo have said anything to me about what their fathers want,” Harry snaps. “Some of the things they’ve wanted me to do, I’ve refused. I didn’t know anything about the Tri-Wizard Tournament until Minister Fudge came to the Woods’ house. I refused it because I want to keep kids safe. What about that don’t you get?”

Dumbledore sighs again. “You may have thought that is what you were doing, but they would have planted the seed of a suggestion—”

“You think my aunt has been, what? Using mental compulsions on Harry?”

Susan’s voice is soaring with outrage. Dumbledore turns a faint smile on her. “No, Miss Bones. I think that you have been caught up in this because you are a fair Hufflepuff who sees the potential good a person with Harry’s title can do. Unfortunately, everything good he has done has been outweighed by his opposition to the Tournament.”

“I don’t believe it would have gained you the international alliances you wanted. I don’t believe—”

“Come on, Susan.” Harry feels wearier than ever. He does think Dumbledore believes what he’s saying.

He also thinks Dumbledore is wrong.

“No reasoning with him, right?” Susan is looking back and forth between Harry and the Headmaster now, and nodding. “You’re right, Harry. I’ll follow you.” It sounds like more than just a promise to follow him out of the office.

Harry is too tired to deal with that right now, either. He leads Susan to the moving staircase, and ignores the soft sound behind him that might be Dumbledore sighing or uttering a call for him to come back.

He’s too tired.

*

But not too tired to notice that he’s apparently moving in a pack between classes now. Or a school like a fish school.

A school in a school. Someone cleverer than Harry could come up with a pun about that.

“Excuse me,” Harry says loudly when he’s sure it’s not just a coincidence. He emerged from Defense in a Hufflepuff-Gryffindor pack and got handed off to a Gryffindor-Slytherin one to walk to Potions, and then several of his friends from all the Houses followed him to the Great Hall for lunch after that, arguing loudly about Quidditch and possibly organizing their own teams in defiance of the rules all the way.

Theo glances at him. “Yes?”

“Yeah, mate?” Ron leans forwards from behind him.

Hermione just raises an eyebrow in that silent, judgmental way of hers that sometimes drives Harry mad.

“I don’t need bodyguards,” Harry says, and stares around at them, making sure to meet as many pairs of eyes as he possibly can. “No one’s hexing me anymore, and the kind of danger the teachers present can’t be defeated by them, anyway.”

Susan gives him a sunny smile. “We just don’t want you to get lonely, Harry.”

“It is right for Lord Slytherin to have bodyguards.” Ernie’s tone is lofty and pretentious, but his expression is, well, earnest.

“You’re not in danger right now, but you could be in the future,” Theo says.

“It’s better to have more than three people if someone does attack,” Ron says, with a decisive nod. “Good strategy.”

Harry wants to put his head in his hands, but with this group, they’re likely to start asking him if he has a headache. He sighs. “Look, I appreciate what you’re doing, but I also don’t want you to put yourselves in danger.”

“We would be in danger if the death tournament comes to Hogwarts,” Draco says, and struts towards Harry as if he can’t bear for every eye not to be on him at once. “We’re taking care of ourselves by making sure nothing happens to you now that might mean they could do that.”

Harry frowns. That’s true, but there’s also a hole in the argument somewhere, if he can just figure it out.

“We’re not bodyguards in any traditional sense of the word,” Justin says, and comes forwards to smile at Harry. Harry relaxes, a little. Justin is Muggleborn, and he wouldn’t put up with this nonsense if he thought it was really—feudal. “We’re just protecting a friend. We can’t do that for a friend?”

“Yeah, okay,” Harry says, and walks towards the Great Hall. The chatter about Quidditch immediately starts again, and Harry has to conceal a smile as he sits down at the Gryffindor table. It appears that he’s inspiring other people to rebel, too, and at this rate, the teachers will have to bring back Quidditch.

Besides, he can’t say that the main reason he doesn’t want people crowding around him all the time is that it makes it harder to scout out Moody’s office and come up with a plan to break past the wards.

*

Harry hasn’t bothered attending the detentions that Moody assigned him. Maybe Dumbledore talked to Moody, because he hasn’t bothered insisting, either. But now it’s night, and Harry is sneaking through the corridors under the Invisibility Cloak with Salazar’s cage, and Harry half-wishes he had attended the detentions so he would know the office better.

There has to be some weakness to the ward. Right?

“I don’t like this,” Ahalam says softly from Harry’s robe pocket.

Harry peers around a corner, dodges a Ravenclaw prefect who’s patrolling, and ducks into an alcove to draw his little snake out of his pocket. They’re both under the Cloak, so they can see each other, but Ahalam is wriggling unhappily. Harry could have told he was unhappy, anyway, since he talked so little just now.

“I’m sorry,” Harry says softly, holding Ahalam up to his face. They both ignore the way that Salazar stands on his hind legs in his cage and watches Ahalam hungrily. “I would have done something else if I could.”

“I don’t mean this,” says Ahalam, and his tongue flickers rapidly in and out. “You smell so unhappy. I want to do something. I want you to be safe. I want us to be in the nice place again. I want us to be hunting Dark things in the Dark-smelling place again. I want you to be happy.”

Harry closes his eyes and breathes calmness into himself, because getting upset or unhappy right now will just worry Ahalam more. “I want us to do that, too,” he whispers. “But we’ll get to do that at Christmas.”

“What is Christmas?”

“Like my birthday, but bigger.”

“Presents and cake? Can there be cheese? I like cheese. I enjoy cake. Will there be sinew-things in the presents?”

Harry chuckles and winds Ahalam gently around his shoulders. “I think there can be all those things.”

“All right. Then you will be happier now?” Ahalam winds himself tightly around Harry’s throat, but not tight enough to choke. They had to have a few discussions about that this summer when Ahalam went flying with him.

“I think I will.”

Harry steps up to the door of Moody’s office and crouches down. The ward has defeated him time and again, but he thinks he might have a solution now, and it’s thanks to Ahalam that he’s thought of it.

He closes his eyes, ignoring the way that Salazar bounces up and down in his cage and chatters, and focuses on the gentle thread of magic he can feel coming from Ahalam. He always feels it, but he doesn’t generally concentrate on it. After all, he can speak Parseltongue without needing to do that.

“Can you help me with the ward, Ahalam?”

“I am a very brilliant snake. I can do that. What is the ward? Where is it? Oh, I can smell it.” Harry can feel the gentle tickle of Ahalam’s tongue by his cheek as Ahalam darts it out again. “It is large and strong, but we are stronger. If you push with my magic and your magic at the ward, it should break. Break, ward, break!”

Harry can’t stop smiling. He reaches out and lets his fingers feather through the air above where the ward should be, and then he pushes magic as hard and sharply as he can into it, drawing on what he can feel offered from Ahalam.

For a moment, he wonders if this is what it’s like to have a familiar—

The ward shatters, and every alarm in the world goes off at once.

“Shit!” Harry curses, and then turns, picks up Salazar’s cage, yanks the Invisibility Cloak over his head, and runs off as fast as he can.

He hears drumming footsteps, and knows that the prefects and professors are going to be heading to Moody’s office. He navigates towards the dungeons, in the opposite direction, but still has to hide from them more than once.

He doesn’t know if they’re going to check that everyone’s in bed, but everyone knows about the animosity between Harry and Professor Moody, and the detentions Moody assigned him that he didn’t attend. They might check on him, if not everyone.

Harry is staircases away from the Tower, though, and he doesn’t know—

There’s a rumble as the wall shifts behind him. Harry stumbles away from it with a yelp he can’t stifle. At least it doesn’t sound as though anyone who’s running towards Moody’s office is taking this particular corridor to do it.

Harry turns around and stares at the hole in the wall. It’s a dark slot that opens onto a spiral staircase twisting up. He blinks and shifts a little, staring back and forth between it and a pair of rapidly approaching footsteps.

He wonders if he uncovered a secret passage by mistake or luck, or what.

Well. When in doubt, the randomly appearing secret passage it is. Harry ducks into it, and hears the wall slide shut behind him with a rumble. At least that means he can tuck the hood of the Invisibility Cloak back from his face and light his wand with a Lumos.

This looks almost like a regular part of Hogwarts, except dark and dusty (and enclosed inside walls, can’t forget that part). Harry walks up the staircase, waiting for it to move, but this one just stays still and steady.

He finally comes out near the Fat Lady’s portrait, and gasps the password. She lets him in as sleepily as she let him out, without opening her eyes. Harry sprints to his bed and jumps in, tucking Salazar’s cage down near the side of it. Then he gets up again to tuck away the Cloak and yank his robes off. At least he was already wearing pyjamas underneath them.

A few minutes after he’s lain down again, the door does open and one of the prefects looks in. Harry keeps his breathing light. His curtains are open. He doesn’t think any of the prefects know him well enough to know that he normally keeps them closed, anyway. Fred and George might, but they’re the only fifth-year students who could get him in trouble.

(And if Fred and George were prefects, everyone would be in trouble).

The door to the bedroom closes again. Harry opens his eyes and breathes.

*

“—HUMAN RIGHT TO PLAY QUIDDITCH! RESTORE HARRY’S HUMAN RIGHTS RIGHT NOW, DUMBLEDORE—”

Oliver’s Howlers have become a near-daily occurrence. Ron leans over towards Harry now, with his eyes narrowed, and asks, under cover of the shouting, “Did you go somewhere last night?”

Harry looks at him with innocent eyes. “I was in bed when you woke up this morning, Ron, wasn’t I?”

“Hmmm.” Ron does not look convinced.

Harry just beams back at him.

*

Harry doesn’t expect it, which is stupid of him.

Some of his friends eased back from accompanying him everywhere, maybe because of the bodyguard comments. Normally, Harry would still have Ron and Hermione with him, but they went to lunch and Harry went outside to walk on the grounds and think.

He still doesn’t want to ease his opposition to the tournament, and he won’t, but he does want to think through what Dumbledore said and why Dumbledore believes it. And if there’s some way that the Death Eaters will try to use him in the future.

A hex comes flying from nowhere. Harry twists away from it, and for a second believes that whoever it was has bad aim, because the hex shatters the stone next to his head. But then he realizes it wasn’t aimed at him.

“I am bleeding.”

Harry raises a trembling hand to pull Ahalam off his neck. Ahalam flickers his tongue out weakly at him. There’s a long cut down the middle of his back, pointing towards his tail.

“I am bleeding,” Ahalam says sadly again. “I hurt.” And he slumps over.

Harry grabs him and runs as fast as he can to Hagrid’s hut.

*

“The little thing’s going to be all right.”

Harry nearly falls over Hagrid’s table. He didn’t realize how much he was worried about Ahalam until he heard those words. Hagrid took Ahalam from Harry the minute they reached the hut and set about cleaning and bandaging his wound. He can’t cast the healing charms that would close the cut completely, and Harry doesn’t know them, but apparently Ahalam didn’t lose all that much blood, according to Hagrid.

“I just thought he did,” Harry whispers, still shaking.

“What’s that, Harry?” Hagrid’s hands are absurdly large as they cradle Ahalam’s small body, but they still do it gently.

“Nothing.” Harry sits up and shakes his head, taking a deep breath.

He doesn’t know who cast that curse. He can’t say for sure that it was Moody. It could have been one of the students who’s still upset about the Tournament and Quidditch being canceled.

But those students have largely stopped casting hexes, especially since there’s a movement now to get a semblance of House teams going, and some of his “followers” are still hexing people who try to hex Harry. (McLaggen’s limp is going to be permanent if he doesn’t watch out).

Harry thinks it was Moody.

And even if it wasn’t, he still yells at Harry about the Tournament and international alliances and Death Eaters using him and all the other stuff that Dumbledore was worried about and doesn’t have any examples of.

Harry is breaking into that bloody office tonight.

*

Harry asked for some books on wards, not from the library—that would mean Madam Pince and the professors would know what he was doing—but from his friends. Blaise supplied one with a wink and a smile.

And Ahalam has come along with him, insisting that he’s strong enough to lend his magic to Harry without collapsing from the blood loss. So here Harry is again, under his Invisibility Cloak with both Ahalam and Salazar, and aiming straight for the door of Moody’s office.

This time, he thinks he knows how to break the bloody ward.

He halts well short of it. One of the things Blaise’s book said is that the alarms tend to react not so much to the breaking of the ward—which happens in a small way every time the door opens—but to the presence of an intruder right next to the door. So Harry will break it from down the corridor and then see what happens.

He lifts Ahalam gently from around his neck and cradles him, closing his eyes. Ahalam wriggles with purpose, dancing in circles across Harry’s palms. Harry breathes in, breathes out, and then pushes with his magic, along with Ahalam’s.

And at the same time, his wand is in his hand, casting the alarm-muffling charms that Blaise’s book taught him. There are probably silent ones that will go off and bring Moody, but that’s different from bringing everyone patrolling in the corridors at night.

The ward breaks and splinters around them. Ahalam says, “We are very smart,” and sounds more like his old self than he has since the curse cut into him.

Harry opens his eyes, smiling. He’s pretty sure that it’s not a nice smile, but, well, Moody isn’t a nice person.

He walks swiftly to the door and sticks his lit wand into the office. Even he catches his breath at the flashes of glass and silver, and Salazar is practically drumming on the bars of his cage with his paws now.

Harry smiles, and opens the cage door.

Chapter Text

Salazar tears into Moody’s office as if he wants to suck all the reflections out of all the shiny objects on offer and tuck them away forever.

Harry laughs as he watches Salazar leap off the side of the desk, aim himself at a slightly higher box that seems to be full of disassembled Dark detectors, and land on the same level of the wall as the Foe-Glass. The Niffler’s scrambling claws shatter the mirror, and shards of glass drop and swarm. Salazar jumps among them putting random shards (as far as Harry can tell) in his pouch, but he supposes they might be different to a Niffler.

Then Salazar goes after a silver object that looks like a twisted spiral of metal locked in place around a black spike. He squeals excitedly as he tears pieces of it off. Harry hopes that it was really precious and valuable.

Salazar spins about to see something that looks like a cauldron full of potions vials. Harry laughs as Salazar dives headfirst into it and begins smashing glass.

“BOY!”

Harry flinches; he forgot how much he hated that word bellowed after not hearing it like that for more than a year. He takes a deep breath as he turns around to face Moody.

The man is leveling his wand at Harry, but having to divide his gaze between Harry and Salazar. Harry holds the professor’s eyes as evenly as he can while his heart pounds wildly away. The Niffler doesn’t appear to have noticed Moody at all or decided that he should stop. He’s still tossing vials into the air and apparently tucking some of the crystal ones in his pouch.

“What are you doing?” the man whispers. He sounds dazed.

“Paying you back for the hex you cast on Ahalam,” Harry snaps. Ahalam has ducked into his robe pocket. Harry doesn’t blame him at all. It’s not like his familiar saw who cast the hex on him, but even knowing that Harry suspects Moody is enough to make him scared of the man.

“I didn’t hex your snake.”

“I think you did.”

Moody gives a rattling laugh and stumps a little closer. Harry still doesn’t retreat, but he does palm his wand down by his side and get ready to cast one of the hexes that Oliver taught him this summer, one that he thought would be pretty unexpected for anyone to use in a dueling situation.

“Yes, fine, so what if I did?” Moody’s eyes glitter. “I’m tired of listening to Albus complain about that thing. If you’d done as you were supposed to in the first place and been a good little boy, I wouldn’t have had to do it. So really, it’s your own fault.”

“I’m not a good little boy!”

“You’re not the asset to the defeat of You-Know-Who that you’re supposed to be,” Moody snaps. “I know that Albus explained to you what kinds of international alliances you cost us, and you still don’t care. So why should I care about your stupid snake? It’s all part of that deception certain parties have enacted on you to make you think you’re Lord Slytherin.”

Moody doesn’t draw his wand, but he does reach out as if he’s going to grab hold of Harry’s arm and drag him closer. And if he gets close enough, he can find the pocket where Ahalam is hiding.

Harry casts.

“Apum cera!”

Moody roars as Harry’s arm, and the floor between them, and his wand, are abruptly covered the kind of beeswax that Oliver taught Harry to conjure to polish broom handles. Moody takes a step back with his wooden leg and slips. Harry darts the other way, carefully avoiding the waxed portion of the floor, and snatches Salazar out of the barrel of vials. Salazar squeals and tries to bite him.

Harry lunges for the door, but Moody casts some kind of charm that binds his ankles. Harry hops a few steps forwards, trying to carry Salazar and Ahalam at the same time and not fall and hurt either of them, but ends up rolling so that his shoulder is against the wall and his mouth is open in a snarl.

Moody is staring at Harry with fiery eyes. The hand that holds his wand is trembling with rage.

“And now,” Moody says, his mouth trembling a little, too, “we’ll see what Albus has to say about this.”

*

“Harry. I cannot believe you did this.”

“He hexed Ahalam.”

“You have no proof of that.”

Harry stares at Dumbledore, with the sensation of a tolling bell ringing somewhere deep within him. “That’s not the same as saying that you don’t think he did it, sir.”

Dumbledore sits back behind his desk and rubs his forehead. Harry catches sight of a singed hair, or a hair that looks singed, on the side of his head. He hopes, viciously, that one of Oliver’s Howlers got Dumbledore there.

“I am deeply concerned about how much influence that snake has on you, Harry,” Dumbledore says at last.

“You know that it was Sirius who got him for me? Not some imaginary conspiracy of Death Eaters?”

Moody grunts from behind Harry and says something about the respect due the Headmaster. Harry ignores him. He’s the one who’s trembling with rage now. Did—did Moody hex Ahalam because Dumbledore ordered him to?

“You are growing more used to speaking Parseltongue since you have had him with you,” Dumbledore is saying now. “There are people who think that you are legitimately Lord Slytherin, and the more they treat you like that, the more inclined you are to act like it.”

Harry closes his eyes. “Sir, did you tell Moody to hex Ahalam?”

“Professor Moody, Harry.”

“Did you?”

Dumbledore sighs. “I did not, Harry. I merely expressed my concerns about the snake to Alastor. About the way that you are acting more and more as if you believe that you have a claim to a title that means people should treat you differently and offer you respect you have not earned. Last year, I had the impression that you found the whole thing silly more often than not, and were only using it to do what good you could find to do, while placating those who expected you to do more. This year, you are acting as if you think you are a Lord.”

“I am not. I’m only—”

“Defying your professors, breaking into one’s office to destroy it with a Niffler, refusing to let the Tri-Wizard Tournament come to Hogwarts—”

“I’m trying to protect people!”

“You are still a manipulated child,” Dumbledore snaps, and his hands clench briefly on the desk. “I have tried and tried to make excuses for you, Harry, to make you understand that you are not a Lord and those who treat you such are using you—”

“I never asked you to look out for me!”

Dumbledore closes his eyes and sighs through his nose for a moment. Then he opens his eyes, his voice low and determined as he says, “And yet, I will guard you whether you think I ought to or not.”

Harry shakes his head. He supposes that he can’t blame Dumbledore for Ahalam getting hexed, not exactly, but obviously Dumbledore didn’t think that Harry ought to have Ahalam and told Moody, who’s famous for not responding proportionately.

“Can you stop trying, sir?”

“No.”

“I’m not going to say yes to the Tri-Wizard Tournament no matter what you do, you know. It doesn’t matter what sort of punishments you give me or what kind of enticements you dangle before me. It doesn’t matter.”

Dumbledore looks him straight in the eye. “And that is how I know you are not yet an adult ready to look after yourself, Harry. Because you do not care that you cost us those international alliances.”

“Can I go now, sir?”

“There have got to be consequences, Albus,” Moody says.

“Yes, you’re right,” Dumbledore says heavily. He looks at Harry. “For breaking into Professor Moody’s office, you will serve the detentions he originally assigned you. Seven to nine, every night.”

Harry says nothing. He sits there, and after some more talking in his general direction, they end up having to let him go. Harry walks in silence back towards Gryffindor Tower, holding Ahalam on his shoulder and Salazar in his cage.

Neither of them actually said anything about the Niffler or tried to take him away. They were talking about Ahalam and how Harry takes the title of Lord Slytherin too seriously and the bloody Tri-Wizard Tournament the whole time.

“Are you all right? You smell unhappy. I wish you didn’t smell unhappy. I wish there was something I could do to make you happy again.”

Harry gently strokes Ahalam’s back. “It’s not you. It’s nothing that you did. It’s nothing that you can cure.”

“What will you do now?”

“Tell my friends what happened,” Harry says, and runs a hand over Ahalam’s back. “I didn’t do this so well on my own. They need to know, so they can help.”

*

Ron and Hermione give him a scolding that combines red ears and shouting with a low-voiced, precise lecture and makes Harry feel bad. It’s not even that Hermione is upset with him for releasing a Niffler into a professor’s office. They’re just upset that he didn’t include them.

His other friends give him combinations of the same disappointed looks and talks. Then most of them leave the library, and Harry is beginning to think that they coordinated this, given that Theo sits down at the table and stares at him.

“What were you thinking?” Theo asks quietly.

“I was thinking I wanted revenge on Moody.”

Harry doesn’t look up at Theo, keeping his eyes on Ahalam as Ahalam winds back and forth in and out of his fingers. He doesn’t know why he flinches the most from Theo’s quiet voice. He doesn’t know why he feels the worst about disappointing this particular friend.

“You could have told us. You could have brought us along. You could have invited me.”

“Why are you so angry about me not inviting you along?” Harry snaps, looking up. “I mean, I didn’t invite Ron or Hermione or Susan, either.”

“I could have protected you,” Theo whispers. “I’m better at dueling and curses than the rest of us. Moody hexed your snake. It’s my job to protect you.”

Harry leans forwards and grabs Theo’s hand, making Theo start and look up at him. “I didn’t tell anyone,” he says quietly, “and it wasn’t a special attempt to cut you out. I wanted to get revenge on my own, and I wanted to—I wanted to protect myself.”

“Why?”

“I didn’t want to put you in danger.”

“Was that the only reason?”

Harry hesitates, then ends up shaking his head slowly. “I also wanted to make sure that I could still do something on my own,” he says. “I didn’t want to be—to lose any independence because I have people who would be willing to do things for me.”

Theo sighs out slowly. “So it wasn’t you distrusting me because I’m a Slytherin.”

“No, of course not. I sort of am, too.”

Theo’s mouth quirks at the corner, and he finally turns and looks at Harry again. “Only technically.”

Harry just grins, too happy to see Theo happy to argue about that. “So, I suppose that your idea to start training people in Defense because Moody is so hostile will have to wait, since I’ll be in detention from seven to nine most nights—”

“You planned to attend those? You didn’t attend them when Moody first assigned them!”

“I thought, since Dumbledore assigned them, that I should.”

“Because you still respect him that much?”

Theo’s voice is a lash, tipped with acid. Harry bristles. “It has nothing to do with respect, Theo! He could get me expelled from Hogwarts!”

“You—think he would try.”

Theo’s voice is faint now, as if he never envisioned such an outcome. Harry sighs and leans against the back of the library chair. Madam Pince comes out and frowns at them for a moment, then disappears back into the shelves. “I don’t know if he would seriously try,” Harry says softly. “But I think he would hold the threat over my head.”

“Why?”

“He’s convinced that everyone is manipulating me if they want me to be Lord Slytherin. You and Draco, especially, but even the other people are going along with it and not realizing what they’re doing.”

“He thinks that I’m passing along suggestions from my father. Or acting on his orders.”

“Yes.”

Theo ducks his head. “I can’t pretend that he was—uninterested when he heard about your title.”

“But you haven’t told me anything that I thought was acting on his orders.”

Theo gives him a baffled look. “Of course not. You’re my lord, but my friend, too.”

Harry smiles back, warmth spreading through him. “Do you have any ideas what I can do as far as resisting going to those detentions and not getting expelled, either?”

Theo smiles, a narrow thing that glints all along the edges as if made out of steel. “Do I.”

*

The next morning, Harry keeps glancing towards that owls that are flying in with the post. Hermione finally notices. “Looking for Oliver’s owl?” she asks, around the corner of a book on the history of the Tri-Wizard Tournament. “I’m sure he’ll be on time with the Howler to Dumbledore. He always is.”

“Not his,” Harry says, nodding to the high windows. Aria is indeed flying through the window with the Howler aimed at Dumbledore, but a large flock of owls that aren’t school ones or student ones are on her heels. Every single one of them is carrying a smoking red Howler.

And every one of them is making straight for Dumbledore.

“Harry, did you have something to do with this?” Hermione hisses beneath her breath in the one moment when she can still be heard, the moment before the Howlers start exploding.

Harry beams at her. “Would I do something like that?”

Hermione would probably like to say something else, but the Howlers all start yelling then, and the only thing anyone can make out is snatches of the shouted words.

“QUIDDITCH IS A HUMAN RIGHT—”

“YOU’RE PUTTING THAT SWEET BOY IN DETENTION ON THE WORD OF A PARANOID—”

“DO YOU UNDERSTAND WHAT WILL HAPPEN IF LORD SLYTHERIN ENDS UP WITH DETENTION??”

“CAREFUL, ALBUS, IT SEEMS YOU’RE RATHER LOSING—”

The Howlers continue to explode, despite some of the other professors interfering to try and calm down their shouting, and Harry sits back and enjoys the glorious chaos. He can see Theo grinning, more openly than he usually does, and Ron laughing.

Susan and Hannah have their heads together, quietly plotting. Or more quietly than the shouting Howlers, anyway. Harry can’t be sure what they’re planning on doing.

But he’s sure that it will have something to do with the way that Dumbledore grows first red and then pale in the face.

*

“Will you accept a compromise, Harry?”

“He won’t, unless you address him by his proper title. It is quite unfair of you not to do that, Headmaster.”

Harry blinks at Ernie. They lingered behind the rest of the class as they left Herbology, because Ernie wanted to talk to someone about the Defense homework Moody assigned them, and then he started talking about how he always feels like he’s in the shadow of his older brother. Harry was prepared to listen sympathetically since he knows Ron complains about the same thing, and then Dumbledore came strolling up to them.

And now Ernie is standing up for him. Harry feels a soft warmth creep up the inside of his chest. He really does have good friends, ones who do things for him even when he hasn’t done anything in particular for them.

Dumbledore looks as if he’s on the verge of rolling his eyes, or at least of pinching the bridge of his nose. “Mr. Macmillan, this is truly none of your business.”

“Don’t think that, sir,” Ernie says, with a doubtful frown that seems to indicate the whole world is his business. “Don’t think that at all.”

“Instead of the Tri-Wizard Tournament,” Dumbledore says to Harry, as if determined to ignore Ernie’s existence, “what about a different kind of international competition between the schools? One that wouldn’t endanger anyone, but would foster the good will that I told you we need for—the same reasons.” He darts a keen look at Ernie.

Harry wants to roll his eyes, but manages to refrain. There’s no way that Dumbledore thinks Ernie’s a Death Eater or his parents are Death Eaters. He just wants to keep secrets. “What kind of competition would that be?”

“It would play to each school’s traditional strengths,” Dumbledore says, relaxing a little. “Hogwarts is well-known for Quidditch. We would put on an exhibition. Beauxbatons has a large number of part-Veela or full Veela students attending; they would exhibit fire magic. For Durmstrang, it would be Defense.”

“Durmstrang isn’t known for Defense, Headmaster,” Ernie says. “The last I heard, they were known for Dark A—”

“They have agreed that such an exhibition would be in poor taste, in the light of what happened to Britain in the last war,” Dumbledore says smoothly. “Defense is the closest kind of magic to that that would enable their students to put on a good show.”

Harry sighs a little. He wonders if Dumbledore was really thinking about an alliance at all with Durmstrang students and people who teach there, then, or if he really wanted the Tri-Wizard Tournament for some other reason and never intended to ally with Durmstrang at all.

It’s frustrating that he won’t just tell Harry things.

“I’ll think about it, sir.”

“Only think?”

“Yes. I don’t know what would happen if I gave my permission and then it turned out that you used that to instate the Tournament after all. I’ll have to talk with my friends who are more knowledgeable in law and see what would happen if you did that.”

Dumbledore’s smile dims. “I wish you would stop acting as though a pack of teenagers hold all the wisdom and goodness in the world, Harry,” he says quietly.

“I have to, sir. Given what the adults in this school have done.”

Dumbledore turns and walks away without a word.

“I say,” Ernie says in a shocked voice, “he didn’t even try to address you by your title, even after I told him that he should try! This is most irregular. Was he always like that, Harry? Did he always act rude and abrupt with you?”

It’s hard for Harry to think back to his first two years in Hogwarts and the relationship he had with Dumbledore then. Such as it was. He really only saw and talked with the Headmaster a few times. But he ends up shaking his head.

“I didn’t think it was rude and abrupt then. I just thought it was the way he was.”

“Then he is rude and abrupt,” Ernie says, in a tone of stuffy satisfaction. “I shall write to my father. I really think he deserves to know how the Headmaster of Hogwarts is treating Lord Slytherin.”

Harry sighs, his eyes on Dumbledore’s back. He still regrets the necessity that forced him to say the blood protections on the Dursleys’ house were necromantic. He wishes there was a different way, a way that could have left him allies with Dumbledore. He’s not a bad person. He keeps too many secrets and he doesn’t think enough people are important, but that’s not the same as being bad the way Pettigrew and Voldemort are.

And he feels more than a little squirm of uneasiness when he thinks about how upset people are that Harry is being treated this way, but no one got upset for years when Snape assigned people unfair detentions or bullied Neville in class.

If this is only because he’s Lord Slytherin…

That’s not fair, either.

*

“I can’t find anything that says they could use your permission to hold a different kind of competition to reinstate the Tri-Wizard Tournament. But Harry, I’m not a lawyer of any kind. You should hire one to look this over.”

Harry chews his lip as he walks into the office of a little solicitor in Hogsmeade. That was what Justin said, and he’s probably right. And Harry has Sirius with him, since it’s a Hogsmeade weekend and they could meet up in the village.

It will probably be all right. Dumbledore handed Harry a document that Harry looked over detailing what will be shown at Hogwarts, and how nothing is more dangerous than an ordinary Quidditch game or practice duel. Harry was tempted to sign it right away just to get Quidditch back, but he managed to make himself calm down and wait.

“I don’t trust him,” Sirius says for about the fiftieth time as the solicitor, a white-haired witch named Esmeralda Crake, motions them into the office.

“Who would that be, Mr. Black?”

Madam Crake looks older than Professor McGonagall, and so stern that probably not a hair on her head will dare fall out of place or her glasses move as she inclines her head to them. Sirius just grins at her as if he isn’t intimidated at all. Maybe he isn’t, after dealing with some of his Healers. “Albus Dumbledore. He wants to get Harry to give permission to hold the Tri-Wizard Tournament at the school.”

“Yes, I did hear about that. And you made an appointment with me to talk about that?”

“Mostly about this document, ma’am,” Harry says, and extends the document talking about the competition the three schools want to hold. “I don’t know if it’s legally binding or not. If I sign it, could they just use this to claim that I gave them permission to hold the Tournament anyway?”

Harry hoped it would be a simple thing to have Madam Crake look over the document and tell them yes or no. But from the slow way she reads through the document and flips various pages back and forth, Harry suspects the truth even before she puts it down on her desk, shaking her head.

“Most of the document is straightforward,” she says, and Harry’s heart lifts for a second before she frowns and it drops back down. “But the parts that refer to the limitations this places on your title as Lord Slytherin are not. If you signed this, you would in essence be giving up the power to say no to events like the Tri-Wizard Tournament in the future.”

Harry sighs and scrubs a hand across his face. He wishes he could understand why Dumbledore is so determined to do this kind of shit.

“That bastard!”

Harry reaches out and gently presses Sirius back into his seat. “Is there a way to make sure that we can change the document so that we can get rid of all those parts and just keep the parts that would allow a different kind of competition at Hogwarts?”

Madam Crake has a lot of teeth when she smiles. “Of course. It will cost you a pretty Galleon, of course.”

Harry shrugs. What does he use the Galleons in his trust vault for except paying for school books and robes and things on Hogsmeade weekends? The money he made from selling basilisk skin and venom is all going to the school, and he won’t touch that.

“I’m going to pay for it, Harry.”

Harry has to duck his head to hide his smile. Sometimes it’s still amazing to know other people care about him.

*

Dumbledore stares in silence at the document Harry and Sirius have placed on his desk. Sirius has come along this time, and is sticking his tongue out at the portraits of the former Headmasters and Headmistresses on the wall. Some of them are sticking their tongues out back, which makes Harry work to hide another smile.

“Why did you take this to a solicitor, Harry?” Dumbledore says at last. “Don’t you trust me?”

Harry gives him an incredulous stare, but Dumbledore looks up, and Harry realizes that he means it. “No,” Harry says. “Of course not.”

“I am only doing the best I can to try and make sure that you are kept safe, as a child, from the manipulations of those older than you.”

“Then you should count yourself,” Sirius says, and pulls on the sides of his mouth to make it extra-wide so he can stick out more of his tongue at Dumbledore.

The Headmaster evidently decides to pretend that Sirius doesn’t exist, and turns to look at Harry. “Have you still not done any research on the title of Lord Slytherin?” he whispers. “Have you not seen that it is all manipulation and lies, and that other adults will inevitably seek to use you?”

“Maybe they will,” Harry says. He’s thought about this a lot, since the day when he decided that things were unfair because he was getting special treatment as Lord Slytherin. “But they always would have.”

“What?”

“They would always have tried to use me because I’m the Boy-Who-Lived. I have fame and too much power either way. People care too much about me because of who I am, in a way they don’t care about other kids.” Harry frowns at Dumbledore. “I think that you don’t want to leave kids in abusive homes. But you don’t care about rescuing someone like one of my friends.” He almost said Theo’s name, but he doesn’t know for sure who abuses Theo, and Harry keeps offering Theo a rescue that he evidently doesn’t want to take.

“Who is it?”

“Not someone you cared enough to rescue,” Harry says firmly. “And you put me in one.”

“You know as well as I that those wards were not necromantic, Harry. Not in the way that anyone means.”

“Close enough for there to be an ongoing investigation against you,” Harry says evenly.

He didn’t know the exact status of the investigation against Dumbledore until he looked into it. There were a couple of big announcements, and then it mostly slid off the front page of the papers. But it’s still ongoing. Apparently the Wizengamot, or their solicitors, or whoever it actually doing it, wants to gather every available scrap of evidence before they try to charge Dumbledore with anything in particular.

Or come up with the decision not to charge him with anything. Harry knows he has to be prepared for that, too.

“If I am removed from my positions,” Dumbledore whispers, “other abused children will suffer in the future. You know that, Harry.”

“I know that they suffered with you here. I don’t know what the difference will be. It might be none. But I know that it’s right for the investigation to go on, and it’s right for you to sign this document the way it is.” Harry nudges the one that Madam Crake prepared closer to Dumbledore.

It specifies that Harry agrees to hosting the Quidditch-fire magic-dueling exhibition at Hogwarts, but doesn’t give his permission for anything beyond that. It keeps his rights as Lord Slytherin intact, and it means that he won’t agree to any competition that endangers students. It gives him the right to shut down anything that does.

Dumbledore gives a long, low sigh when he reads through it. Then he reaches for his quill and signs his name.

Harry does the same thing. Ahalam wriggles on his shoulder.

“Are you going to be happy now?”

“Happier,” Harry says in a quiet voice, eyes locked on Dumbledore.

The man winces at the sound of the Parseltongue, but merely looks resigned. “I hope you will not come to regret this, Harry,” he murmurs.

Harry shrugs. “I haven’t so far,” he says, and that’s the end of the conversation.

Chapter Text

“Straighten your hair, Mr. Potter,” Ron says in a low voice as they wait for the Durmstrang and Beauxbatons students on the front steps of the school.

“Excuse me, that’s ‘straighten your hair, Lord Slytherin,’” Harry says, sticking his nose up as far as it will go.

Ron snickers, then yelps as Hermione takes the opportunity to lean over and swat him on the back of the head.

“Honestly, you two!” Hermione hisses under her breath as an enormous carriage drawn by Abraxans swoops down from the sky. “Can’t you be respectful of the other schools even if you aren’t respectful of the competition?”

“I’m very respectful of Durmstrang,” Ron protests. “They field Viktor Krum!”

“You should be thinking about—”

Harry allows Hermione’s voice to fade into the background as he watches Dumbledore and Hagrid come out to welcome Madame Maxime and the Beauxbatons students. Hagrid looks like he’s in love, his eyes almost bugging out. Harry wishes him luck. Madame Maxime might be Hagrid’s size, but she looks far too elegant to fit into Hagrid’s world of rough walls and wounded beasts.

The Beauxbatons students all seem to be clad in filmy robes and to not have an idea about Warming Charms. Harry frowns a little, wishing he could do something to help them as he watches them troop into the school.

There’s a loud whoosh, and two huge bonfires spring into life on either side of the entrance doors, apparently burning on air. The Beauxbatons students murmur excitedly and extend their hands to them.

“Was that you, Harry?”

“Come on, Hermione, did you see me move my wand?” Harry objects.

“Whenever something unexpected happens near Hogwarts, it’s usually you,” Hermione retorts.

“One of the professors probably saw that they were cold and started the fires.”

Harry’s voice lacks conviction, though. He remembers the odd secret passage that took him back to Gryffindor Tower the night he tried to break through Moody’s wards and set off the alarms. He thought at the time he was just desperate and lucky, but he’s looked for the passage since and couldn’t find it.

Did Hogwarts sense his concern and start the fires burning the same way it probably opened up the passages?

Harry supposes it would make sense of otherwise inexplicable things like why the Ministry thought they needed “Lord Slytherin’s” permission to hold the Tournament at Hogwarts.

But it needs more testing, so Harry watches as the Durmstrang ship surfaces in the lake and then thinks as hard as he can, It would be very convenient for them if there was a bridge that went from the ship to the shore.

The air shimmers and turns bright and glossy for a second. Then a bridge of ice forms between the ship and the shore. At least it’s made of thick, heavy ice, Harry thinks, with high railings that will prevent anyone from slipping off. It’s also covered with carvings of Quidditch players for some reason.

There’s an excited murmur from the students. Karkaroff, Durmstrang’s Headmaster, seems to think the bridge is a tribute to his own presence and practically struts across it.

Harry snorts into his hand. He could make the bridge tip Karkaroff into the freezing cold water, he’s fairly sure.

For a moment, a section of the bridge around the middle flexes eagerly.

Harry takes a mental step back and shakes his head. He shouldn’t use the power he has in Hogwarts for petty reasons or reasons that would endanger people, only ones that would help them.

The bridge seems almost disappointed as it settles back down. Hermione takes the opportunity to thump Harry on the back of the head, and Harry turns around rubbing the back of it and glaring at her.

“What was that for?”

“A warning.”

Harry sighs mournfully.

*

It turns out that the Goblet of Fire, which would have been the method used to select Champions for the Tournament, is also what they’re using to select student leaders of the various schools’ demonstrations. It chooses Krum to lead the “Defense” demonstration for Durmstrang, a part-Veela girl named Fleur Delacour to lead the fire magic one for Beauxbatons, and Harry to lead the Quidditch teams.

“Of course it chose bloody Potter,” says Angelina Johnson, slumping down in her chair and scowling at Harry.

“You like Harry, Angelina,” says Fred, sounding a little shocked.

“Still,” Angelina mutters.

“Why didn’t it choose Cedric?” asks a Hufflepuff loudly from their table. “Cedric’s as good a player as Potter, and it’s about time that a House other than Gryffindor got some glory for once.”

There’s an answering mutter, and Harry winces. He glances at the Goblet and wonders if there’s any way he can influence it. After all, they are in Hogwarts, and the Goblet is inside the school if not a part of it.

The Goblet abruptly burns bright blue and tosses out a scrap of parchment. Harry blinks. He thought that the professors submitted the names of students they believed would do well in the demonstrations and the Goblet would pick one for each school. Not multiple.

Dumbledore unfolds the bit of parchment and wrinkles his forehead. “Cedric Diggory has also been named a leader of the Quidditch demonstrations for Hogwarts,” he says.

Amid the cheers from the Hufflepuff table, students from Beauxbatons and Durmstrang can be heard loudly complaining that the favoritism of Hogwarts isn’t fair. That’s not something Harry thought of, and he winces as he contemplates it.

The Goblet lights up brightly again and spits out two more pieces of parchment.

Karkaroff leans forwards, one hand spreading out. “Let me see the name of the other student chosen for Durmstrang, Dumbledore.”

“I am not sure that this one is for Durmstrang, Igor—”

Karkaroff ignores him and snatches away the second piece of parchment, just as Madame Maxime does the same on the other side. They read them and then look at each other, narrow-eyed, as if trying to figure out which one of them interfered with the Goblet of Fire.

“Ivana Karkaroff,” Karkaroff says, softly.

“Etienne Dupiax,” Madame Maxime says.

Two students stand up at the Ravenclaw and Slytherin tables. Harry notices that the girl who must be Karkaroff’s daughter or cousin or something is thin and dark-haired, with a sullen expression on her face. Etienne Dupaix looks as if he might be made out of moonlight, hair and skin alike.

“Now that we have two students each to lead the demonstrations,” Dumbledore says loudly, “the Goblet of Fire will be going out now.”

The Goble does flicker and die. Harry is still a little stunned about his apparent ability to influence it through “Lord Slytherin’s” connection to Hogwarts and doesn’t try to do anything about it.

What he has done, he thinks, is more than enough.

*

“Did you influence the Goblet of Fire to provide more leaders for the demonstrations?”

“What if I did?” Harry mutters. He and Padma Patil are the only ones at the Lord Slytherin table in the library right now, and Harry, at least, is head-down in an essay for Snape. Or he’s supposed to be. Padma keeps distracting him.

“I can’t decide if it was a kind thing to do, or a disturbing thing.”

Harry takes a breath and looks up. Padma is sitting with her chin propped on her hand and her eyes narrowed as she looks at him. He shakes his head. “Does it really matter? And what do you mean, ‘disturbing?’ Because I have too much power?”

“Yes. I don’t know if that kind of power over Hogwarts and ancient artifacts is really a good thing.”

Harry half-shrugs and writes down another description of what powdered moonstone can be used for. No matter how good the essay is, Snape will give it an Acceptable, so Harry doesn’t try to do more than make sure he isn’t copying the book word-for-word. “I don’t intend to use it to, I don’t know, trap people I don’t like in the stone and suck them into the walls to lie trapped forever.”

Silence. Harry looks up and blinks at Padma, who’s staring at him with stunned eyes.

“You thought of that,” Padma says weakly.

“I’m vengeful sometimes. But I wouldn’t do that.”

Padma just nods with wide eyes, and they go back to their writing. But Harry thinks, sighing, that the silence is less tranquil than before.

This is why I should tell them what I’m going to do but not everything I think. It’s just disturbing to them.

*

Harry circles down towards the pitch on his Firebolt, tired but well-satisfied. The practice for the Quidditch demonstration has been going well, and he and Cedric actually work pretty well together. The demonstration will be in the middle of December, just before the apparent Yule Ball the school is hosting.

Harry doesn’t quite understand why everyone is aflutter about the Yule Ball, but he supposes it’s because some people like dancing.

“Harry.”

Susan is waiting for him in the middle of the pitch, arms folded. Harry sighs to himself. He likes Susan, but lately, every time she shows up, it’s bad news.

“Yeah?” Harry asks, and hands his Firebolt to Ron, who takes it with reverent hands. Harry knows that the Firebolt will be polished and taken care of as well as he could himself. Maybe even better.

“Have you heard that you have to bring a date to the Yule Ball?”

“No,” Harry says slowly. “Why would I? I wasn’t even planning on attending. I’m going to go to Grimmauld Place and stay with Sirius.” Sirius has been writing that they’ve got the house mostly cleaned up now.

“It’s something to do with the rules for who would have been Champions in the Tri-Wizard Tournament.” Susan’s mouth is pinched. “They would have had to attend the ball with dates, so now they’re saying that the leaders of the demonstrations have to.’

“That’s stupid.”

“I agree. But that’s what they’re saying. And you should also consider that, depending on who you take, people might think that you’re growing closer to one of your followers than another, or showing favor to someone over another person.”

“And it’s political because everything involving Lord Slytherin is political.”

“Precisely.”

Harry sighs. “Okay. So probably the best thing for me to do is not attend the Ball at all.”

“Why do you think that?” Susan is blinking.

“Because I can’t think of any way to prevent someone from taking it wrong.”

“If you took a follower—”

“I can’t prevent other people from thinking that they’re my official partner and they should approach them to get to me. Or, what was what that word Theo used the other week, consort. Ew.” Harry shudders.

Susan smiles, but there’s a gleam in the back of her eye. “You don’t want to date anyone?”

“I don’t want anyone to be a consort,” Harry says sharply. “I want them to stand on their own and date who they want to and not be overshadowed by the Lord Slytherin business.”

Susan nods, with a distant look on her face. “You don’t know how you would protect them.”

“Exactly.”

“So we need to find someone who can stand on their own and protect themselves.”

“What? Susan, no—”

“Don’t worry, Harry. We’ll find you a consort who isn’t overshadowed by Lord Slytherin. Someone who’s famous and good at magic and not inclined to use you…” Susan frowns over the last words. “The last one is going to be hard, but we’ll find you one.”

“Susan, no, don’t matchmake me—”

“I don’t know if we’ll find them in time for the Yule Ball, though,” Susan goes on, turning around and walking back towards the school with a faint frown audible in her voice. “But we’ll try our best.”

“Susan!”

“Don’t worry, Harry, I understand why you don’t want to attend the Yule Ball with anyone you couldn’t protect. I just need to figure it out so you can still go and enjoy yourself.”

Harry regrets giving his Firebolt to Ron, since it means he can’t slam his head against the wood.

*

“Hmmm, what about this dueling champion? Her name is Araminta Evermist, and she’s just sixteen, so a few years older than you but not too old, and she could certainly protect herself, and she grew up in Australia so she probably won’t try to use you, and she’s famous in her own right—”

“Actually, Susan, you know what I really need?”

“What?”

“Dancing lessons! I really need dancing lessons!”

“So no to Araminta Evermist, then?”

*

“Did I tell you that Viktor Krum asked me to the Yule Ball?”

Harry gapes at Hermione. He’s sitting on the couch in the common room and just came in from another practice for the Quidditch demonstration, preceded by more dancing lessons. His brain is drifting aimlessly in circles and he’s not sure he heard her right.

But Hermione is standing nervously in front of him with her chin lifted, and she seems serious about it.

Harry bursts into a grin. “Congratulations, Hermione! That’s fantastic!”

“You—don’t mind?”

“No,” Harry says, wondering. “Why? Did someone say something to you that made you think I would care about you dating Quidditch competition or something?”

Hermione laughs. “Harry, no offense, he’s a professional Quidditch player, and you’re not. The competition only goes one way.”

Harry smiles. “No, but why?”

Hermione looks down, hands twisting around each other. “Ron snapped congratulations in this really snotty voice, and stomped away.”

Harry sighs. “Sorry, Hermione.”

“It’s—okay. I didn’t know he would do that, but it’s okay.” Hermione looks up and smiles. “Thanks for your congratulations, and do you know who you’re going to the Yule Ball with?”

“I’m not going.”

“Harry.”

Harry shrugs.

*

“And demonstrating on their brooms the skill at the game they’re known for, the HOGWARTS INTER-HOUSE QUIDDITCH TEAM!”

Harry grins and slings a leg over his broom. Ludo Bagman’s enhanced voice booms across the pitch. The stands that surround the pitch have been extended up and sideways and maybe actually under the ground with magic for all Harry knows, and are crowded with students from all three schools, professors, spectators, and professional Quidditch players. All of them cheer their heads off.

“Ready?” Cedric asks, leaning over with a grin. Harry nods at him, and they kick off.

They’re zooming around the pitch soon enough, tossing the Quaffle and Bludgers back and forth between them in dizzying patterns—dizzying even to Harry, who worked on them with Cedric, so he should know what they look like—and chasing the Snitch in the patterns of a compass rose. The Snitch cooperates beautifully, although that might be because four Seekers at once are chasing it, Harry and Cedric and Draco and Cho Chang from Ravenclaw. At one point, Draco acts as if he’s going to get higher than everyone else and snatch the Snitch for real, but Harry gives him a stern look and he calms down.

It’s exhilarating, and Harry laughs aloud as he makes a tight turn near the stands.

A Blasting Curse comes zipping at him from the direction where the Slytherin and Durmstrang students are sitting.

Harry makes a few calculations that proceed so fast they seem to flow through his brain and down his arms like lightning, and then turns to the side and manages to avoid the curse without breaking the compass rose pattern. He does cast a Shield Charm from his wand, which he brought with him to create the grand finale of the demonstration, and the Blasting Curse slams harmlessly into a glowing dome in midair, right in the center of the Snitch’s pattern.

That helps, and it makes people gasp instead of scream. But then they do start screaming as more Blasting Curses begin raining out of the stands. At least the placement of them means that Harry is pretty sure it’s just one person casting them, not multiple.

He raises Shield Charm after Shield Charm in midair, catching as many curses as he can, but he knows it’s only a temporary measure. And even if some of his friends are standing up and using shields of their own, it won’t stop someone this crazily determined.

The only thing to do is take out the problem at the source.

Harry turns and soars straight for the caster.

He can see one other person on a broom coming after him, from a direction that’s unexpected given the patterns they worked out, but he can’t turn his head to concentrate on who it is. He’s too busy focusing straight ahead. He dives, and the next two curses miss him, flying wild. But they must have hit someone, because there’s a crash and a crack and a shriek of real pain.

Harry sees red.

He unleashes the Firebolt’s full speed and casts a Summoning Charm, which they’ve been practicing with in class, at the same time.

He blurs past wide mouths and gaping eyes and different-colored robes, and hits Vincent Crabbe in the chest with his broom, and in the forehead with the Snitch that he’s Summoned. Crabbe’s eyes cross, and he gasps loudly. He sags forwards and goes unconscious.

Harry twists to the side and just manages to loft the Firebolt above the next person in the stands. He glances back, and sees Oliver, of all people, hovering over Crabbe and Gregory Goyle, who’s apparently drawn his wand. Well, Harry knew Oliver was coming, but he didn’t know he would be riding a broom.

Oliver sees Harry watching and jerks his head frantically back at the pitch. “Go on, go on!” he calls. “I was going to handle them, but you were faster. But you can’t let anything disrupt Quidditch!”

Harry grins and laughs aloud, and then turns back to the pattern. The last of the Shield Charms are fading in the air. He can see the other Seekers hovering anxiously, waiting for him, and the Snitch flies into his hand as he Summons it.

“Are we ready to see some Quidditch?” he calls, and the crowd roars assent.

Harry throws the Snitch back into the middle of the compass rose pattern, and they begin weaving it once more.

*

Harry sighs a little as he takes a step into the middle of the dungeon room where Draco and Daphne, unusually solemn, have led him. He already had a confrontation with Crabbe and Goyle in Dumbledore’s office. Apparently Crabbe cast the curses because his father told him to, told him he had to do it, with Voldemort coming back. Goyle only drew his wand to defend his friend from Oliver.

Dumbledore promised Crabbe that he could stay at the school and wouldn’t have to return home for any holidays, until the end of term. He had nothing to say when Harry asked him what would happen after that. And from Crabbe’s grey face and the way he stared at the floor, he seems to believe he won’t escape his father.

Harry got a message from his “followers” that they would demand more justice than that.

Yes, he heard that, but still, the last thing he expected was to find a circle of his friends standing around Crabbe and staring at him like silent judges, like the Wizengamot must have looked when they tried Sirius. All of them, or most of them, have wands drawn. Hermione is shaking her head. Ron is quiet, but his eyes glint. As Draco and Daphne filter in among them, they don’t look different than the rest.

(Well, Oliver does, but that’s because he’s pointing his broom at Crabbe instead of a wand and probably primarily cares about the disruption to Quidditch. Harry has to smile. It’s nice to know some things never change).

The person Harry is worried about, though, is Theo, who’s prowling slowly back and forth in front of Crabbe in the clear space inside the circle. Harry steps up next to Theo, and Theo turns his head to acknowledge Harry, but his eyes are distant.

And violent.

He wants to hurt Crabbe, Harry realizes with a jolt. Maybe he wants to kill him.

“Theo,” Harry says softly.

“Yes, my lord?”

Theo’s voice is as cold and distant as the dark side of the moon. Harry narrows his eyes. He does not approve.

“What would you cast? A Killing Curse?”

Theo jumps and spins around, staring at Harry. The people behind them gasp. Crabbe is the one who seems to react the least; he just bows his head further and clasps his hands on his arms and sways a little in place.

“What?” Theo asks. His eyes are wide and he looks more normal than he has since Harry stepped into the room.

“Are you going to cast a Killing Curse on Crabbe?” Harry asks as he takes a step forwards. “Is that why you’re pacing up and down and glaring at him like you want to kill him?”

“I—no, of course not.”

“Then stop looking like you want to kill him,” Harry says, and turns to face Crabbe, feeling his heart pound through his ears. He’s going to solve the problem. He’s not going to just sit around and let people use him. Not Crabbe’s father and not Voldemort, if he’s lurking around, and not Theo or other friends of his who might want him to handle this like Lord Slytherin. “I’m not going to kill him.”

Crabbe flinches and looks up. “What are you going to do with me?” he whispers.

“I want to keep you safe from your father and make sure you never do something like this to me again.”

“Harry—”

“Mate, you could—”

“I think you should consider this carefully, my lord,” Theo hisses underneath his breath, stepping towards him. His eyes have gone cold again.

“I think you should stop calling me lord,” Harry snaps, and Theo frowns and takes a step back.

“You can’t keep me safe,” Crabbe says.

“Yes, I can,” Harry says. “What good does it do for me to be Lord Slytherin, if I can’t protect someone Voldemort tried to use to hurt me?”

Crabbe flinches at the sound of the name, but looks up with round eyes. “I could swear to you and you would protect me?”

Harry blinks a little. “You mean become my fr—follower?” He thinks that using the word “friend” right now might make Theo actually curse Crabbe.

“More than that. They’re your followers and they didn’t swear to you.”

Harry half-frowns. “How do you know that?” He’s going to be upset if someone told Crabbe about things his friends have said and done in private. Or not said and done in private, in this case.

“Because they would act different if they did.” Crabbe is standing a little taller now, although he still cringes when one of Harry’s friends glances at him. But his voice has a tiny bit of hope. “I could swear to you. I’d be your servant. You would protect me.”

“Servant?”

“The status an oath like that would give him is somewhere between a free wizard and a house-elf,” Theo says. His voice is so blank that Harry could probably only learn what he’s feeling by looking into Theo’s eyes, and right now, it feels dangerous to look away from Crabbe. “He would be protected by your magic and because his first loyalty would be to you, it would literally take him away from his father.”

“Like he’s property?”

“Yes,” Crabbe and Theo say at the same time. Theo seems to be glaring at Crabbe. Crabbe just looks down.

“You can’t, Harry,” Hermione says, low and urgent, more passionate than Harry has ever heard her. “It’s wrong.”

“Yes, I know it is,” Harry says, and shakes his head when Crabbe opens his mouth to protest. Or do something. Harry isn’t sure what. “I’m going to swear the kind of oath that will mean my magic is bound up in protection of you and I can be Apparated to your side if something happens to you, okay? Like your father trying to take you out of the school.”

“You can’t do that without me swearing as your servant.”

“How do you know?”

“You just can’t.” Crabbe sounds baffled.

“He’s right,” Draco says, moving a step forwards out of the circle. His voice just sounds young instead of arrogant. “There’s not—there’s not enough of a return on that kind of oath. Your magic will need something stronger from Crabbe than just your commitment to protect him. Swearing it without making him a servant won’t work.”

“At the very least,” Theo says, his voice slow and cold and almost dreamy, “you should make him swear an oath not to attack you again.”

Harry nods, irritated with himself for having forgotten that. “Of course I will.”

“That won’t be enough.” Draco shakes his head when Harry glares at him. “It doesn’t matter how much you wish it was different, Harry. It just—the imbalance of magic isn’t—it would be worse if that Blasting Curse that landed had hit one of your followers, but still—”

Harry nods. The Blasting Curse hit Professor McGonagall in the shoulder, apparently, and although Madam Pomfrey easily fixed the broken bone, Harry is still irritated by the reminder of what happened. He scowls at Crabbe. “You’ll also have to swear an oath not to cast curses except in self-defense.”

“I can do that.”

“You cannot,” Daphne says, voice high and precise. “In the exchange of powers between parties as oathbound to each other as this transaction will make you, the party of the first part must swear to become a servant, and the party of the second part must swear to accept that oath. There is no other trade of magic that will work.”

“Do you know that?”

“Of course I know that, Potter—”

Harry does prefer the moments when Daphne drops her Madam Pince act and sounds more human. He smiles at her with a slight shake of his head. “I mean, have you seen it happen? Or is it just a theory?”

Hermione narrows her eyes at him across the circle. Harry knows she’s angry that he might be risking Crabbe’s freedom on essentially a roll of the dice, but he feels it’s a pretty good roll of the dice.

“No one has seen it happen outside of the Death Eaters,” Theo says quietly.

The name brings a chill to the room. Harry takes a deep breath and watches the way Crabbe shakes. Of course he’s still angry that Crabbe was casting curses at the demonstration and injured Professor McGonagall, but he sees the fear in him, too.

It’s not just the good people who are afraid. It’s not just the good people who need saving.

“And there’s been no Lord Slytherin for decades.”

“Harry.”

Harry can’t even tell who that low, concerned voice belongs to. He draws his wand and says, “I’m powerful enough to risk it.”

“Harry!”

Harry gestures with his wand towards Crabbe, who’s watching him with wide eyes but also crouching as if to protect his head. It says a lot about what his life has been like. Harry says simply, “I swear to you that I will protect you, and I will Apparate to your side if you need me.”

The surge of magic that leaves him is so powerful it nearly knocks him off his feet. The lights in the room seem to flicker—although that’s probably just Harry’s perception—and he staggers but doesn’t go down on one knee. Then he manages to straighten up again, just in time to receive Crabbe’s babbled oaths about not acting against Harry again and not casting curses except in self-defense.

The “weight” of the magic that has left Harry and is now pooled around Crabbe doesn’t lessen at all. Harry snorts quietly to himself, making sure that Crabbe can’t hear it, since he would probably assume Harry was refusing his oaths.

So. Yeah. There’s no “return” on the oath Harry made Crabbe. It does bind them, and it does take a lot of magic, but, just as Harry suspected, people either made up the bit about having to have someone swear themselves to a lord as a servant or just took advantage of the perception for their own gain, like Voldemort.

Or just can’t imagine that someone powerful would want to protect someone less powerful without a servant oath.

His friends drift out of the room after that, Crabbe scuttling out first. Hermione leans forwards and hugs him, and Harry hugs her back. Ron shakes his head, stares at Harry, and claps him on the shoulder.

“I don’t know if you’re mental or the sanest person I ever met.”

“I’ll go for ‘alive,’” Harry says dryly, and Ron laughs like he’s made a great joke.

Oliver claps him on the shoulder, too. “He won’t threaten Quidditch again!”

“No, he won’t,” Harry says happily. (He is happy Oliver will never change).

In the end, Susan, Theo, Draco, Daphne, and Ernie stay. Ernie’s expression is pinched. Susan leads with, “You didn’t feel the drain of the magical exhaustion, did you? I mean, it didn’t knock you out. And you weren’t compelled to make Crabbe swear a servant oath.”

“No,” Harry says quietly, holding her eyes.

Susan nods, sharply, once, and leaves.

Daphne still looks as though someone has taken her favorite legal tome and ripped it apart in front of her. “You could have acquired so much power,” she says. “Why didn’t you decide to make him pay the price?”

“I’m not into making people pay those kinds of prices.”

Daphne leaves, then, too. Draco opens his mouth, looks at Harry, and sighs and goes with her. He probably knows he’ll not get an answer to any of his questions.

Theo watches Harry with wintry eyes. “I’m afraid you’ll regret it,” he says.

Harry says the one thing he thinks will make Theo drop it and pay attention to the really important things. He doesn’t know where the inspiration comes from, only that it’s there. “Then it’s up to you to make sure I don’t.”

Theo’s shoulders immediately lift, and his eyes become warmer. He touches Harry’s shoulder gently, as if afraid to clap it like Ron, before he departs. Harry watches him go and thinks that caring for people and keeping them safe doesn’t just involve fighting for them. Sometimes it involves letting them fight for him.

And that leaves Ernie. Harry turns towards him, a little curious. Ernie is still not as close to Harry as some of the others and tends to hover on the outer fringes of the group.

“You’re one,” Ernie says.

“Pardon?” Harry asks, and then winces internally. That’s the sort of thing Daphne would say.

“You’re—one of them,” Ernie says. “A real lord. I didn’t think they existed anymore.” To Harry’s shock, confusion, and embarrassment, it looks like Ernie’s eyes are a little damp, and he keeps reaching up as if to brush tears, then snatching his hand back.

Harry coughs. “I try to be.”

“Then I should do everything I can,” Ernie says, and marches out of the classroom.

Harry blinks after him, wondering if he should be worried about that.

*

As it turns out: yes.

Chapter Text

“Who are you taking to the Yule Ball, Harry?”

“I’m not going.”

“You can’t just say that and not tell us, mate! We’re your best friends. And the Ball is tomorrow.”

“I’m not keeping anything from you, because I won’t show up with a last-minute date or whatever. I’m not going.”

“Harry, I think Professor McGonagall—”

“Might just frog-march you down there if you don’t show up yourself—”

“Excuse me, please?”

People turn around and blink. Harry turns around and buries his head in his hands. One glimpse is enough. Ernie is standing up at the Hufflepuff table with a stern expression, his hands folded behind his back.

Oh, no. Harry doesn’t even know what Ernie is going to announce, and he’s still certain that it deserves that phrase.

“Yes, Mr. Macmillan?” Dumbledore is the one to ask. Harry wonders whether Dumbledore is genuinely curious or thinks that the announcement is going to relate to the Yule Ball or the schools’ competition.

It does. But not in the way that anyone except Harry can anticipate, because no one else has the premonition of forthcoming disaster.

“Thank you, Headmaster.” Ernie turns around and looks at every one of the student tables, then turns back to the professors’ table. The Great Hall is pretty quiet because of what seems to be sheer curiosity about a Hufflepuff fourth-year student talking like this, but Harry thinks Ernie also has some kind of modified Sonorus Charm on. “I witnessed something last night that made me change the way I think.”

“He’s not going to tell anyone about Crabbe, is he?” Hermione hisses.

“He’d better not.”

Ron sounds murderous. Harry waves a hand frantically at him before they reveal the secret of Crabbe all by themselves.

“It was an act of bravery and sacrifice and refusing power that he could have taken, by Lord Slytherin.” Ernie raises his chin. Harry is already learning to dread those moments. “Like, I’m sure, many people here, I’ve told myself over and over that I don’t have to do anything to address injustice. I always told myself it was a lack of power. If I was stronger magically or politically, then I would do something about it.

“And Lord Slytherin has the power to accomplish that. So there are a lot of people who’ve come to rely on him in the last thirteen months.”

Trust Ernie to be precise about it when making an announcement like this, Harry thinks irritably, when some people crane their necks towards him.

“But last night, he reminded me that fighting injustice is, in fact, not always dependent on power. Everyone might not be able to do everything, or as much as other people, but we can do something.” Ernie’s chin lifts higher, to the point that Harry doesn’t know why his neck doesn’t hurt. “I’m going to stop putting off some of the things I can do but didn’t do because I was lazy or afraid. Lord Slytherin makes me ashamed.

“I’m going to try to do more. I call on everyone here who held back because of thinking they needed more power to join me, to try and find out what they can do, and to ask Lord Slytherin for advice if they run into trouble or have questions. Or you can ask me. I have some ideas. Thank you.”

Ernie sits down, looking very pleased with himself. Whispers and murmurs and arguments and outright shouts spring up all around the Great Hall. Susan and Hannah and Justin, meanwhile, are nodding as if this makes any bloody sense.

“The badgers are plotting?” Ahalam asks, lifting his head to look over Harry’s. He’s understood that the Hufflepuffs’ symbol is a badger, but he still sounds doubtful. “I thought they did not plot. I thought they dug in and waited. And complained about Quidditch. Why are they plotting? What are they plotting? Why do you smell exasperated? Did you know that I could smell exasperation? I am very smart.”

Harry strokes Ahalam’s back and sighs. “It’s great that you can smell that, Ahalam.”

Providing his snake with uncomplicated answers and praise makes Ahalam happy.

At least Harry can do that, when numerous other people look unhappy with him.

*

“I think you really need to think about the reasonable limits of your power, Harry.”

Of all people, Harry didn’t expect Angelina to be the one to bring that up to him. Of course, she’s not one of the people in his circle, so mostly they only worked together to create the Quidditch demonstration, but she seemed happy enough to have Quidditch back. “Er, okay? What do you mean?”

Angelina looks at him soberly. Harry is on a couch in the Gryffindor common room playing chess with Ron and waiting for Hermione to come down the stairs to go to the Yule Ball. Other people are watching, of course, because they always are, and because for some reason, they’re obsessed with how Harry is going to get out of going to the Yule Ball.

(Harry told them he wasn’t going. And he isn’t dressed up in formal robes or anything. He doesn’t know why so many people are curious about the method).

“I mean that I’ve read books and studied more history than most people, because I’m Muggleborn.” Angelina sits down on another couch facing him. “And I know that lords aren’t a good idea and tons of people have fought revolutions to get rid of them.”

Harry leans forwards. “Do you think you could come up with some other method than the Lord Slytherin title to protect the students in the school?”

“What?” Angelina blinks at him. “Of course I could. They exist. They’re called rules and professors.”

“But Dumbledore wanted to hold the Tri-Wizard Tournament here, and Professor McGonagall and the others didn’t see anything wrong with that.”

“I’m sure they would have taken precautions to keep people safe.”

“Really? After they didn’t stop the Petrifications two years ago, or keep Sirius Black from sneaking into the school last year?”

“Sirius Black turned out to be innocent, I thought.”

“Well, right, but the Ministry and the professors didn’t know that at the time. And they didn’t catch the fugitive Animagus Death Eater who had been here for years either, did they?”

Angelina frowns and taps her fingers on her knee. “I thought a certain amount of danger was just—inherent to magic, I suppose. People fall off their Quidditch brooms all the time and it doesn’t matter because Madam Pomfrey can just patch them up.”

“I had to spend all night in the hospital wing before because of losing bones in my right arm and Dementors, remember?”

“I thought…” Angelina trails off. “Well, I suppose I thought that just one student suffering from that kind of thing is pretty good.”

“Sure,” Harry says, ignoring the way that Ron swells up like a bullfrog, “but the Tournament would have put a lot more people in danger. And I don’t really trust the professors to just randomly protect the students anymore after they pulled that.”

“Hm.” Angelina nods and stands up. “I suppose I can see your perspective, Harry. But I’ll be keeping an eye on you just in case you start doing objectionable things.”

“Sure. Thanks, Angelina.”

She gives him a slightly surprised look as she walks away, and Ron pounces on him immediately after she steps out of the common room. “What was that, mate? Were you really agreeing with her that putting you in danger is a good idea?”

“Compared to putting lots of people in danger? Sure.”

“But you shouldn’t be!”

“I know, Ron. I don’t want to be, either.” Harry pushes past the look of insulted disbelief Ron gives him. “I promise. But Angelina isn’t really close to me or someone who’s relying on the title of Lord Slytherin to protect her from her parents or something like that. She doesn’t have any reason to see it as a bad thing if I’m the only one in danger.”

“I’m starting to agree with Macmillan,” Ron says darkly.

“What?”

“Never mind, you wouldn’t get it,” Ron says, and goes on before Harry can protest that he would too get it and Ron should trust him. “How are you going to avoid going to the Yule Ball? You know that Professor McGonagall said she would come and drag you out of the common room if you tried to not show up.”

Harry smiles.

*

“Mr. Potter, as one of the leaders of the Quidditch demonstration, you do need to attend the Yule Ball.”

“Why, professor?”

“Because those are the rules that were originally put in place for the Tri-Wizard Tournament—”

“But the Tournament never happened, so abiding by its rules doesn’t make sense.”

Professor McGonagall slowly shakes her head back and forth for a second, as if saying that she’s too tired to deal with Harry right now. Then she reaches for his arm. Maybe she thinks magic is less likely to work.

A stone wall grows up out of the floor and stands between Harry and Professor McGonagall.

There’s a low murmur of excitement and interest from around the room. Most people are dressed up but haven’t left for the Yule Ball yet, since the demonstration leaders (not Champions) needed to be there earlier than other people. McGonagall herself just stares at the stone wall as if she thinks that someone conjured it.

Her next words confirm that. “Whoever did that, please cease to interfere,” she says, glancing around the common room and making more than one person look away. “Mr. Potter needs to go the Yule Ball.”

“I don’t have any robes, professor.”

“I will Transfigure you some.”

“I don’t have any date, professor.”

“Then you will simply have to dance by yourself, Mr. Potter,” Professor McGonagall says, and steps around the stone wall to reach for him again.

Another stone wall grows up between them. Professor McGonagall starts and casts a spell at it that Harry supposes is meant to destroy it, or Transfigure it into something else. It doesn’t work. The spell fades and the stone wall is still standing there.

“Who is doing this, and why?” Professor McGonagall gives another slow glance around the common room, even though Harry is pretty sure even the seventh-years in their House aren’t as strong as she is.

“I just don’t want to go to the Yule Ball, professor.”

“Mr. Potter, if you are somehow doing this—”

“How, professor? I don’t even have my wand out. And you know that I’m not the best student in Transfiguration.”

“That is true enough,” Professor McGonagall mutters, which is a little irritating. But Harry decides to be happy that she believed him instead. “Well, Mr. Potter, you will still have to go to the Yule Ball. It will be good for you to do as you are told for once.” She makes a little gesture with her wand, a familiar-looking swish and flick with an added jab at the end.

Harry starts to float off the couch. One of the couch arms promptly reaches up, forms into a hand, and yanks him back.

“Mr. Potter!”

“I promise I’m not doing any spell or anything, Professor McGonagall. Promise.”

And Harry isn’t. He’s just sitting there and thinking about how he doesn’t want to go to the Yule Ball, and Hogwarts is defending him.

McGonagall tries several more spells, including ones that Harry thinks are meant to skid the couch he’s sitting on around the stone walls, get herself over them, float the couch in midair, and create some sort of transportation effect between him and the door to the common room. Nothing works. She looks exhausted by the time she stops. Harry looks innocently back at her.

“I suppose you will not be attending the Yule Ball, then,” Professor McGonagall says at last.

“Yes, that’s what I was trying to tell you, professor.”

McGonagall turns and leaves. Hermione looks as if she doesn’t know whether to disapprove or not, but in the end, she has to leave for her dance with Krum, so she doesn’t have the choice to quiz him. Neville is on his way to the Ball with Ginny, but he lingers for a moment by the couch.

“Why did you take dancing lessons if you weren’t going to the Ball?” he asks.

Harry grins. “There was no point in warning her ahead of time, was there?”

Neville laughs, looking a lot like he wonders if he shouldn’t, before he leaves. Ron wanders over and sits down on the couch next to him. He couldn’t find someone he wanted to go to the Ball with and he finds his dress robes embarrassing, so Harry always knew he intended to stay.

“What do you think they’ll say when they find out you can command Hogwarts?” Ron asks.

“I don’t command it. I just want things and it decides how to fulfill those wants.”

“That isn’t an important distinction.”

“It is to me.”

Ron sighs.

*

Harry blinks his eyes open and looks around, confused. The last thing he remembers is falling asleep in the kitchen of Grimmauld Place after opening so many presents from Sirius that they’ll probably need to build another room onto the house just to contain them all. He didn’t expect to be…

Where is he, anyway?

The room seems to have five beds in it, which makes him think of the Gryffindor boys’ bedroom at Hogwarts, but this is definitely not that. This room is quiet, with only one fire that’s burning down low, and dark green walls and dark green curtains on the beds. And only one bed is occupied, by someone who’s shaking.

Harry walks slowly towards him, convinced he knows where he is now, even if he doesn’t know how he got there.

Crabbe rolls over on his side and stares at Harry. His eyes are wide and confused, and he’s knuckling tears away. “What are you doing here?” he whispers.

“I don’t know.” Harry sits down on the side of the bed. “Why are you crying?”

For a long minute, he thinks Crabbe won’t answer, but finally Crabbe whispers, “I was having a dream about being home for Christmas with my mum and dad. My mum always makes cocoa and won’t let the elves do it. My dad…” He trails off.

“Hey, it’s okay to miss them.” Harry reaches out and puts a gentle hand on Crabbe’s shoulder. “I think your dad isn’t a total bastard.” Well, Harry does think that, actually, but he does think that maybe he’s one percent not a bastard, which probably still counts.

Crabbe shudders. Then he says, “I don’t want to be alone.”

“Okay.” Harry looks around and notices a small bowl of Floo powder on the fireplace mantel, which makes him snort a little. Yeah, of course the Slytherins are connected to the Floo. Theo and Draco and Blaise haven’t mentioned it, but it’s the sort of detail that might slip their minds because they would assume every House was as spoiled as theirs. “I’ll sleep over here in this bed for tonight, okay?”

“That’s Draco’s bed.” Crabbe seems a little shocked.

“But he went home for Christmas, right?” Harry asks, and waits until Crabbe nods. “So he won’t mind me using it.” Draco would probably be thrilled, even, and make some sort of comment about how Harry was finally exercising his Lordly privilege or whatever. “He might not even know.”

“Draco knows if people touch his stuff.”

“But this will just be for tonight, and then I’ll use the Floo powder in the morning and go back home.” It feels a little weird to call Grimmauld Place home, but that’s what it is for now. Harry and Sirius and Remus haven’t decided if they should live someplace else yet or not.

“Where do you live?”

“In the old Black family home with Sirius Black. He’s my guardian.”

“Wicked!” Crabbe practically bounces in his bed. “Did he teach you all those spells he murdered the Muggles with?”

“You remember that he was found innocent, right?”

“The Wizengamot always says they’re innocent, though. Unless they’re like the Lestranges and just proclaim that they love the Dark Lord and did it all on purpose. They found Lucius Malfoy innocent and D-Dad…” Crabbe swallows for a second and goes on. “So I thought Black still murdered the Muggles.”

Harry settles in for a long night.

*

Neither Sirius nor Hermione nor anyone else Harry asks can figure out why he would have been Apparated to the Slytherin dormitory in the middle of the night. He just thinks that since he could come home by the Floo in the morning, it’s not a big deal.

Theo and Draco seem to think it is a very big deal, but they don’t have any ideas, either. Harry continues to ignore it.

*

“Let’s go.”

Harry sighs as he follows Oliver across the Quidditch pitch to where the Beauxbatons students are practicing for their fire magic demonstration. He doesn’t think this is a good idea.

But no one can convince Oliver that anything related to Quidditch isn’t a good idea, and Harry will feel bad if he talks to the Beauxbatons contingent alone and gets scorned for it. It doesn’t matter that Oliver is older than Harry and had this idea all by himself. Harry still wants to protect him.

It seems for long moments as if they’ll get ignored instead of scorned, given that the patterns of unfolding fire keep going and the Beauxbatons students are all concentrating on them, but in the end, the tall girl with the pale hair and the Veela heritage comes over.

“Yes?” Delacour says, studying them both as if they’re mildly interesting bugs.

“I’m on a professional Quidditch team called Puddlemere United here in Britain, and Harry is training to be a professional Quidditch player,” Oliver says instantly. “It’s hard to find a new challenge most of the time, though, especially when we’re practicing with equipment and people we always practice with.”

“How is that our problem?”

Harry winces and wants to back away, given the hint of a fiery shimmer that’s gathering around Delacour’s hair. Oliver doesn’t appear to have noticed. “It’s not your problem, but I hoped you would let me help with your demonstration. And Harry could watch.”

“You are trying to interfere to help Hogwarts win this competition.” Delacour tosses her thick silver hair over her shoulder. “I will not be allowing it.”

“I’m not a Hogwarts student,” Oliver insists. “I just want to practice flying with fire while you try to hit me, because it would make me a better player. And it would make your demonstration more dramatic.”

Delacour stares at him. “You want us to try to…burn you alive.”

“Yes.” Oliver beams at her.

“So you can get…better at Quidditch.”

“That’s exactly right! And so Harry can watch and get better at Quidditch by watching.”

Delacour’s eyes stray towards Harry. Harry tries to look as supportive of Oliver as he can while also looking sane.

“We will have to discuss this more,” Delacour says with a frown, and then goes over to talk to Etienne Dupaix, the other person the Goblet chose to lead the Beauxbatons demonstration.

“We don’t have to do this,” Harry says under his breath as he and Oliver watch the two debate in French. “There are other ways to get better at Quidditch.”

“I’ve reached the limits of my current skills and what my teammates can teach me,” Oliver says firmly. “And you have to make sure that you keep practicing, or you won’t be ready when regular games resume next year. But none of the people here can really give you a challenge.”

“Uh, don’t you see the contradiction in that?”

“What do you mean?”

“I won’t be ready for regular games next year without training with the Beauxbatons students but nobody here can give me a challenge?”

Oliver frowns at him. “Are you saying that you don’t want to be better at Quidditch?”

“No…”

“Then I don’t see the problem.”

Harry sighs. Sometimes he can see the appeal of just acting like an autocratic Lord and stomping around roaring at people.

*

“Harry? What are you doing here?”

Harry doesn’t kick something, but he wants to.

He went to sleep this time in his Gryffindor bed, he knows he did. Ron’s snoring and Neville’s light breathing and Seamus’s constant tossing and turning and Dean’s muttering in his sleep were all around him.

And yet here he is, right in the middle of the Slytherin dormitory again, only this time with a tousled Theo pushing his way up on his elbow to stare at him.

“I don’t know why I’m here,” Harry begins, but Crabbe’s timid voice interrupts him.

“Lord Slytherin?”

Harry turns around. Crabbe has crept out of his bed and is keeping his voice down, something Harry wasn’t even aware he knew how to do. His face is woeful and seems to be different, somehow. Harry squints, wishing he could see better, and the fire on the hearth flares up.

Harry’s blood turns cold when he sees the pustules all over Crabbe’s face. They run from one cheek to another and straight across, and they spell out the word TRAITOR.

“Who did this?” Harry whispers. His hand is on his wand, even though he doesn’t remember drawing it.

“I…I got a letter, from, from my dad.”

Harry nods. He should have known, really. “Did you open it at breakfast?” He doesn’t see how, given that someone would surely have noticed, but maybe Crabbe opened it after most people left for classes.

“No. He sent it to me this morning but I waited until now…”

Harry is at least relieved that Crabbe hasn’t been suffering with this painful, humiliating thing all day. He steps closer and glares at the pustules. That changes nothing, and he doesn’t know any healing spells, but he also doesn’t know if it will do any good to take Crabbe to Madam Pomfrey.

“I want those to heal,” Harry says, and taps his foot a little on the thick green rug as he contemplates Crabbe’s face. If Hogwarts can’t heal this curse, after all the other things it’s managed to do, then he won’t think much of it.

The rug seems to shiver beneath his feet, and the walls to shiver around him. Then the whirl of light from the fire curls into the air, and storms straight at Harry. Harry finds his wand moving in patterns that he doesn’t know, an unfamiliar incantation burning on his tongue.

The rush of magic leaves him, not as strong as the night when he swore to defend Crabbe, and Harry sags a little. The pustules on Crabbe’s face dry up and drop off, making a patter and crush of scabs on the floor. Theo draws his wand and Vanishes everything with a disgusted sound.

Crabbe stares down and then lifts his hand to feel at his face. His lip quivers. “Thank you,” he whispers, and then he bursts into tears.

That, of course, wakes everyone up, although at least Goyle only hovers on the edges of the group and looks awkward instead of making trouble. Harry tries putting his arm around Crabbe, but that only makes him pull away and try to get on his knees, which Harry doesn’t like. In the end, Harry summons a house-elf to give Crabbe a cup of warm milk and bundle him into bed. Crabbe turns his head towards Harry with a faint smile.

“Thank you, Lord Slytherin. You’re always here when I need you.”

“You don’t need to call me Lord Slytherin.”

“Okay, Lord Slytherin.”

“Harry,” Theo says in a high voice, “can I talk to you?”

Harry gives him a confused look. He was going to take his chances sneaking out of the Slytherin common room and up through the dungeons, since he doesn’t have his Cloak with him. “Okay? Walk with me to the Tower?”

Theo gives him a clipped nod, and they head out as Crabbe slips into sleep. Draco and Blaise are complaining that they can’t get back to sleep, and Goyle has drawn his curtains about his bed. At least Theo’s voice is bound to be more pleasant than complaining or snoring.

*

“No.”

“But it is your oath to Crabbe that’s bringing you to our dormitory! It has to be! You promised that you would Apparate to his side if he needed you! And you just show up there without any warning, and each time he needs you! Or thinks he does.”

“Yes, I believe you about that, Theo.”

“Then you should believe that you need to change the oath so it doesn’t happen.”

“No. Then something like that awful letter from his father could happen and I might not know or be able to do anything about it.”

“But bringing you to our dormitory and then having to have you sneak out again puts you in danger! Change the oath.”

“No.”

Chapter Text

“Showing off their fire magic, THE STUDENTS FROM BEAUXBATONS!”

“They could have tried for a more creative name,” Lavender complains from behind Harry in an undertone. “I thought Veela were supposed to be more creative than the average wizard or witch.”

Harry grins a little, and wonders what Lavender will say when she sees Oliver’s part in the fire demonstration’s creativity.

It starts out with Delacour and Dupaix standing on opposite sides of a half-circle of students, most of them with the pale hair and sharp features of Veela, but not all. For a moment, they’re still as throbbing drum music soars around them. Harry supposes the music must be conjured, since he can’t see anyone playing it.

Then ribbons and whips of fire begin to uncoil from the students’ hands. They spring into the air and wind around each other, forming intricate braids and spirals and other patterns like a chessboard, while people in the stands gasp and cry out. Harry is impressed to see that all the students seem to be controlling fire with their hands, not just the Veela-looking ones.

Then Oliver flies out of the stands and into the middle of the pattern.

There’s more gasps, and indignant cries from a few people who seem to assume this is cheating or someone trying to disrupt the pattern. But the Gryffindors who recognize Oliver are laughing and cheering as he soars in wide rings around the ribbons, just barely dodges the whips, and spirals down around one large comet-like stream of fire while more and more ribbons rise to meet and almost fry him.

It’s amazing, impressive flying. Harry claps until his hands are sore and wonders why people think he’s such a great Quidditch player, when Oliver is so much better.

*

“Can you help me with a research project, Harry?”

Harry looks up and blinks at Ernie, who’s standing by the library table. Harry and Hermione are—were—the only ones here for once, and Hermione shifts in irritation and pulls her Defense book closer to her. “If you want,” Harry says slowly. “But I’m really not the best person to conduct research, you know. Other people are better.”

“It’s not a traditional research project.” Ernie sits down across the table from Harry and takes out a long piece of parchment and a quill. He fixes Harry with a stern gaze. “I’m collecting ideas for things I can work on. Injustices to solve.”

“Oh.” Harry blinks and is quiet for a minute. Last year he would have talked about Snape and Trelawney and the fights between Houses, but the first two are solved problems and the last one has calmed down due to Hogwarts students feeling like they have to unite against Durmstrang and Beauxbatons.

But someday those schools will leave and we might be right back to where we started, Harry reminds himself. He nods. “Okay, I can think of a few things.”

Ernie arranges his inkwell fussily off to the side, dips his quill in it, and nods. “Ready,” he says, ignoring the way that some of the ink splatters on the parchment.

“The rivalries between Houses are a little ridiculous. I mean, they make the Quidditch Cup and the House Cup competitions exciting, but people get hurt in them, you know? I’d like to see more precautions set up about that. Maybe wards around the Quidditch pitch that react faster when someone is hurt and falling off their broom. Or wards attuned to cheating. If they have those.

“And bullying does happen, not just because of Houses. I want to see more people stand up against that. I can’t be everywhere all the time, and not everyone listens to me. So people in the different Houses should watch out for children who are being bullied and help them.”

Harry draws his breath in to go on, but stops when he notices that Ernie is looking troubled. “Ernie? What is it?”

“Have you heard about Luna Lovegood?”

“I know that she was being bullied last year, and I told the bullies off and asked some of the Ravenclaws to watch over her.” Harry can feel himself shifting forwards, leaning over the table, but mostly he feels cold outrage. “What happened?”

“I don’t know if the bullies stopped last year, but they haven’t this year.” Ernie’s face is settling into stubborn lines. “I know she’s been having her books stolen and her clothes ripped and Transfigured. She came to class barefoot a few times. She’s really good in Ancient Runes, so she takes it with the fourth-years, and we have it together.”

“Why didn’t anyone tell me?”

“I don’t know. You don’t have that many Ravenclaws followers, do you?”

Harry grimaces at the name “followers,” but shakes his head. “Not many. There’s really just Padma Patil in our year, and she’s been avoiding me lately.” The last time they talked, Padma expressed reservations about Harry’s power that sounded sort of like Angelina’s.

“Time to show them that we won’t tolerate this, then.”

Harry smiles. Ernie’s smile gleams back.

*

“I’ve heard that some of you have been bullying Luna Lovegood.”

Ernie decided to make an announcement at dinner, which isn’t necessarily the way Harry would have chosen to do this, but does catch a lot of people’s attention. And because Ernie is the one making the announcement—he insisted—Harry is the one who gets to watch the Ravenclaw table and notice some flinches.

Including ones among Michael Corner and Stephen Cornfoot in his year.

Harry’s eyes narrow. He hopes that those flinches are because they haven’t been watching out for Luna and feel guilty about it, not because they’ve been participating in the bullying. But he will find out.

“She’s at least a year younger than almost everyone doing the bullying,” Ernie says, frowning at the entire Ravenclaw table from the Head Boy on down. “And she’s harmless. She hasn’t done anything to you. Why did you do that? What possible justification could you have? Finally, for those of you who are followers of Lord Slytherin, he asked you to watch out for you last year, and you didn’t. I am very disappointed in you.”

More people wither under Ernie’s stern disapproval than Harry thought would, but they also stubbornly start to argue back. Well, mostly not the same people.

“She’s annoying,” Marietta Edgecombe snaps, her earrings bouncing as she leans back and folds her arms. “Always talking about imaginary creatures and expecting people to pay attention to her father’s stupid newspaper. Why shouldn’t we fight back against that?”

“You tell someone being annoying to stop,” Ernie says. “You don’t steal her shoes.”

“Mr. Macmillan,” Dumbledore says, because apparently he feels this conversation has had a critical lack of the Headmaster so far. “While I applaud your desire for justice towards younger students, must we hurl accusations like this in public?”

“I haven’t named any names, Headmaster,” Ernie says, with a sideways glance that’s hilariously lacking in respect even compared to the way Susan treated Dumbledore. “I’ve simply called on Ravenclaw House to stop bullying one of their own. Edgecombe chose to reveal herself as someone who does that.”

Dumbledore gives a nearly soundless sigh. Harry wonders if he can only hear that because he’s got so used to trying. “Regardless, Mr. Macmillan, the prevention of bullying should be left up to the professors and the Heads of Houses.”

“You’ve done a bloody poor job of it so far.”

“Mr. Macmillan!”

“Sorry, Professor Sprout, but it’s true. Maybe professors also need to think about bullying. You participated in the bullying of Lord Slytherin to attempt to get the Tri-Wizard Tournament brought to the school. I think you should all be ashamed of that.”

“And it happened last year, too,” Blaise says unexpectedly. He seems to have the same modified Sonorus Charm Ernie does on his throat. Harry really needs to learn that one. “With Professor Snape’s bullying of Lord Slytherin.”

“Why did you allow Luna Lovegood to be bullied, Professor Flitwick?” Susan asks, practically batting her eyelashes. “She can’t have done anything to you, surely?”

“Hell, a lot of us witnessed Professor McGonagall bullying Harry to go the Yule Ball,” Ron says.

“I wonder why it took so many people asking the Wizengamot to look into Professor Dumbledore before someone noticed the necromantic wards on the house of Lord Slytherin’s Muggle relatives,” says Theo, and his smile is thin like a blade.

Harry sighs to himself a little. At least Susan mentioned Luna, but the other parts are all about him again. As usual. He stands up, and some people turn to look at him as if their heads are on springs.

“I think a lot of us don’t trust the professors to prevent bullying,” he says into the silence, his neck prickling as he realizes that people are so quiet they can hear him perfectly well without a Sonorus Charm. “But that means they need to become better, without abandoning us altogether.”

“I am glad that you see the need for cooperation between students and professors, Harry,” Dumbledore says, looking relieved.

“We need to do something about Luna,” Hermione says, standing up. “And we need to do something about bullying by professors, too. Professor Moody talked about the Unforgivables the other day and practically yelled the details about the Killing Curse while he looked Harry in the eye.”

Harry looks up at Moody, who only stares back at him, magical eye fixed on Harry and face fixed in a grumpy expression. He’s sipping from the large mug of ale that he always seems to have on hand no matter what the meal. (Harry has heard stories that he once only drank from his own flask, but he doesn’t do that anymore, if he ever did). Moody plops the mug down on the table as students stare at him and says in a carrying voice, “You have to know what kind of spells you’re going to face in the field. Be grateful I didn’t yield to what Albus asked me to do, which was show you the Unforgivables.”

Several hundred people gasp, or at least it sounds like that. Harry finds himself turning towards Dumbledore as if he’s underwater, but Hermione is the first one to speak. “Headmaster! Why would you do that?”

Dumbledore’s gaze seems old, but he doesn’t flinch from all the people staring at him. “Better that you face them in a controlled classroom setting than for the first time on a battlefield,” he murmurs.

“But you r-refused,” Neville stutters, and Harry remembers abruptly that he did hear Neville’s parents were in St. Mungo’s after damage from the Cruciatus. He reaches out under the Gryffindor table to pat Neville’s arm. Neville gives him a faint, ghostly smile.

“Yes,” Moody says, and snorts as he slugs back a drink of ale. “I refused. I don’t think children that young need to see them. Hear about them, sure. But not see them.”

Dumbledore shakes his head and sits down. Harry remains standing. “Is anyone going to do anything about people like Luna getting bullied?” he asks, staring around the room. McGonagall and Sprout and Flitwick look embarrassed, but Flitwick most of all.

“I will,” says Padma, who’s standing up now at the Ravenclaw table with her mouth like a slash across her face. “I didn’t know this was going on, Harry, I swear to you.”

“I kind of meant the professors,” Harry says, and people swivel around to stare at the high table.

“I will,” says Professor Flitwick quietly. He really shouldn’t be able to be heard, he’s so quiet, but he is. With a start, Harry realizes it might actually be the Great Hall itself making people easy to hear, not charms. “It is to my shame that I did not know this was going on and trusted my Ravenclaws to govern themselves. Thank you for bringing it to my attention, Mr. Potter.”

Harry nods and looks at the other professors. Dumbledore still looks pained, and Professor McGonagall sort of looks that way, too. Professor Sprout is wringing her hands and avoiding Harry’s eyes. Professor Moody is just drinking his way steadily through some ale.

Ahalam coils tighter around Harry’s neck and says, “I want some cheese.”

Harry sighs and fetches cheese for his snake, wishing he could solve all of their problems that simply.

*

There are raised, shouting voices in the corridor ahead. Harry hesitates. He had to go back to Gryffindor Tower to get his Potions book and Snape is going to kill him if he’s late, truce or not, but he wants to hear what this is about.

Harry can recognize Moody and Dumbledore’s voices when he hears them.

“No, Albus! I told you why not!”

“Alastor—”

“No! Those children don’t need to see the Killing Curse performed in front of them or have the Imperius used on them! If you want me to show the NEWT classes, fine, they should know what they’re in for, but the younger ones don’t need to see the fucking Unforgivables!”

Harry is kind of impressed with Moody’s use of “fucking.” He peers very cautiously around the corner and sees Moody and Dumbledore standing on one of the moving staircases, which isn’t moving right now. Maybe it’s as interested in listening to the conversation as Harry is. Moody has his arms folded and his wooden leg stamping in place. Harry can’t see Dumbledore’s face because the Headmaster’s back is to him.

“I was merely hoping that some of them would come to understand how serious the war is and how we all need to stand united on the same side.”

“Is this about Potter again?” Moody demands, with his eye zooming around his face.

Dumbledore sighs. “He does need to understand—”

“Oh, listen, I agree that Lord Slytherin’s a little bastard, but you can’t force him to do what he wants by bullying him. Use some of that famous persuasion, Albus. You got me to listen to you during one of my paranoid spells, you should be able to do the same to him.”

“I don’t feel comfortable sharing all the information that might persuade him, Alastor. Otherwise, I agree, it would be a simple thing to do.”

“You trust him to see the Unforgivables performed in front of him but don’t trust him with this information you have?” Moody asks incredulously.

Dumbledore doesn’t answer.

Moody shakes his head, his grizzled hair flying around him. “I told you, Albus, one year, one favor, and I’m gone. I can’t wait to get back to my quiet retirement.” And he turns and hobbles away up the corridor.

Harry has to run to make it to Potions, but it’s so worth it.

*

“We present for your education and delight THE DURMSTRANG DEFENDERS!”

Harry settles down into the stands and prepares to be amazed. Because Oliver evidently didn’t think he should come back to Hogwarts specifically to dodge spells from the Durmstrang students, Harry doesn’t have any idea what their demonstration is about. It ought to be interesting.

Viktor Krum and Ivana Karkaroff—who is Karkaroff’s niece, Harry found out—step forwards from the group of gathered students and bow. The others bow behind them, a rippling motion that is abruptly obscured by a large, dark-feathered raven rising from between the backs of the students, wings spread, screeching.

Harry isn’t the only one to gasp as the raven rises above them, wings trembling, beak opening. Silver javelins came jetting out of the beak straight at the audience. Harry instinctively tenses, and the stands flex beneath him, Hogwarts’s magic rising to the fore.

But the Durmstrang students fling up shields before the javelins get as far as the crowd, and Harry slumps back with a little gasp as he watches the silvery things deflect and fly back towards the raven. He thinks it’s only illusion, but it screams and flaps its wings in what looks like real pain before it fades.

After that, there’s almost no time to think. The curses and the jinxes and the hexes fly back and forth, and since the Durmstrang students are mostly casting silently, Harry sees all sorts of spells that he has no idea about. He applauds and whistles with the rest when the shields of the defenders become an overlapping roof above them, and gasps when curses stab down between them, and laughs aloud when the curses crash harmlessly into the ground of the pitch and release glittering clusters of flowers and lightning.

At the end of the demonstration, all the Durmstrang students bow at once to a storm of applause, and Harry thinks that it’s clear who the winners of the competition are. Karkaroff seems to think the same thing, since he’s preening.

Harry scowls idly at him, and the bench Karkaroff is sitting on abruptly breaks underneath him and lodges the Durmstrang Headmaster’s arse in a hole surrounded by splinters of wood. That gets lots of laughter, too.

*

“And the winner of the First Inter-School Demonstration Competition is…Durmstrang!”

Karkaroff stands up to accept the cup, which is a huge glittering silver thing covered with what look like sapphires and rubies, and makes a pompous speech. Harry doesn’t listen to it, and he doesn’t think anyone else really does, either. In Harry’s case, though, he doesn’t listen to it because he’s keeping an eye on the Ravenclaw table, and the way Luna Lovegood is eating.

Padma is sitting beside Luna and scowling at everyone who catches her eye, although she manages to turn that into a stiff nod at Harry. Luna herself seems serene and is reading what looks like a magazine about Ancient Runes upside-down. She’s wearing shoes and her robes seem fine.

Harry is grateful that she wasn’t embarrassed by Harry and Ernie and the rest of them discussing her being bullied in the middle of the Great Hall. Maybe other people would be, but Luna just seems to take it in her stride.

And Harry is going to make sure she never has any reason not to.

*

“Okay, Vince, I was on my way to Dumbledore’s office, what—”

Harry breaks off when he realizes that he’s in a large room with high ceilings and a chandelier above him, and stone walls, but ones that are far away. This isn’t the Slytherin dormitories.

Harry dives and rolls as quickly as he can.

A Stunner flies through the space above his head. Harry scrambles back and ducks behind a large, heavy green curtain that is shielding a window. A spell lights the edge of the curtain on fire.

Harry doesn’t let that drive him out into the open. He just conjures water that damps the fire down to a smolder and then peers out from behind the curtain. He can’t see anyone at first. Salazar’s cage, which he was carrying because Dumbledore has been really annoying, stands a meter or so away, but Salazar is quiet and not scrabbling at the bars with his claws.

Ahalam has no such self-preservation. “What is going on? Are you afraid? You smell afraid. I do not like you to smell afraid. Can I bite people? I am not poisonous but I will make them regret it!”

Harry raises a hand to Ahalam’s side to stroke him and hold him still without responding. He doesn’t know if anyone here would be able to hear or understand Parseltongue, but he’s afraid one person would.

The silence fills with echoes. Harry keeps still. There must be some reason they haven’t attacked him yet, even though they know where he is.

“Bring him out.”

That voice rolls from side to side of the room, and sounds like the voice that Harry remembers in the Chamber of Secrets, calling to the basilisk. He takes a deep breath and wraps his hand around his wand.

He wishes this confrontation was taking place in Hogwarts. He could depend on the school there and its eagerness to work with him, as well as keep the students safe. He doesn’t know if Crabbe is here or has already been removed, but if they have any intelligence at all, they have Vince—as he’s started insisting Harry call him—as a hostage.

And Harry won’t be able to simply crouch behind a curtain and listen as they torture Vince.

But he can be smart about it.

“Yes, Master.”

The voice is thick and bubbling and not one he knows. Harry watches from behind the curtain as the speaker’s feet make their way towards him. They’re clad in thick boots and have leather dueling robes swaying above them.

Harry readies his wand. When the boots are a few steps away from the curtains, he casts the spell that he’s heard Remus cast now a few times in Grimmauld Place, most recently over the Easter holiday when he played a prank on Sirius.

“Omnes aureus!”

The world seems to vibrate around him with as much power as Harry’s pushing through his wand. But the spell works the way it’s intended. The hems of the wizard’s robes and boots, and the floor, and the curtain Harry’s hiding behind, and everything else in sight, is suddenly covered with golden rings.

The boots halt, and the thick voice says, “What in the—”

Harry is exhausted, but he has to cast another spell, he knows he does, and he manages to do it. This one breaks the lock on Salazar’s cage.

The lock falls apart, and for a moment, nothing happens. Harry slumps against the curtain, which is weighted down by the gold and doesn’t immediately spring open, and hopes that Salazar isn’t too scared to do what Nifflers do by nature.

But it seems he isn’t. Or else the sight of all that gold tempts him more than their strange surroundings frighten him.

Salazar squeals in glee and rockets out of the cage. Harry arranges the curtain around himself like a shroud, sets up a Shield Charm on the side that isn’t protected that well, and peers out.

He’s in time to watch Salazar swarm up the legs of the booted wizard, who must Vince’s father. He has the same round eyes and the same thick jaw, but he looks a lot worse, like he’s been drinking and casting torture spells for years. And right now, he’s battling Salazar for control of his wand.

Harry grins.

Mr. Crabbe’s wand is covered with golden rings, and Salazar’s frantic squeals say that he wants them. Mr. Crabbe is trying to stop him, but Salazar’s powerful claws rip and tear, and a few seconds later, he’s holding a splintered wand with what looks like a dragon heartstring hanging pathetically out of it.

Harry moves while Mr. Crabbe is still staring at his wand in dumb surprise. He casts and casts again, and Mr. Crabbe’s wand comes flying over to him and the hem of his robe wraps up and around his head and blinds him. Mr. Crabbe flails and shouts and crashes to the floor, his arms still vaguely moving.

Harry immediately runs over and binds him with a variation of the Incarcerous Charm. Then he looks around cautiously.

He can’t see or hear anyone else, but Voldemort is still here somewhere, and so is Vince.

Against the background of Salazar’s satisfied little grunts as he strips the rings from Mr. Crabbe’s robes and the floor and the curtains, Harry cautiously walks around the room. It seems to be some kind of huge ballroom, maybe, or the Crabbes’ equivalent of the Great Hall. There’s no furniture in it, though.

“Harry Potter.”

Harry whips around. There’s a figure standing towards the back of the hall-ballroom-thing. Harry’s first thought is that it’s kind of short for Voldemort, but then, he only ever saw Voldemort possessing Professor Quirrell and as a memory-ghost.

Then the figure comes closer, and Harry sees the red glow of the eyes in the familiar face. His stomach writhes and feels sick, and he clutches his wand so hard that for a second he’s afraid he’s going to snap it like Salazar snapped Mr. Crabbe’s.

Voldemort is possessing Vince.

“I’m going to kill you,” Harry says, and almost doesn’t recognize his own voice, which wavers back and forth but also contains the hiss of a deadly snake far larger than Ahalam.

“You can try,” Voldemort says, and waves one of Vince’s hands in an elegant gesture that just looks wrong with Vince’s wrist and fingers. “How is it that you can speak Parseltongue? I had heard of your absurd claim to be Lord Slytherin, but assumed it was only a publicity stunt.”

Harry doesn’t answer. His heart is pounding furiously and his breath is short. He knows that he needs to calm down, and also that he’s dangerously near magical exhaustion with the spells that he’s already cast.

But he wants to hurt Voldemort for touching Vince. For touching one of his.

“No desire to speak? Ah, well.” Voldemort moves Vince’s tongue in a darting, serpentine, unnatural motion. “Then I suppose we will not have a conversation before I harvest your blood for use in my resurrection ritual.”

“What makes you think I’m going to let you do that?”

Voldemort laughs, soft and low. “Because I will hurt your little friend if you do not. And I know that by the nature of the oath you swore to him, you are always brought to his side when he needs you. You will not be able to escape and leave him here even if you want to.”

Harry’s eyes widen before he can stop them. That’s information that almost anyone who sleeps in the Slytherin fourth-year boys’ bedroom could have told Voldemort. And honestly, it was probably Goyle.

But there’s other information that he won’t know unless one of Harry’s own betrayed him, Theo or Draco or Blaise. Harry is going to have to gamble that that would never happen, trust them as much as he trusts Ahalam and himself.

It’s hard. But Harry makes his mouth move. “I’m still not going to give you my blood.”

“Then I shall have some fun,” Voldemort says, and draws a long white wand from somewhere inside Vince’s robes. It looks unnatural in Vince’s hand, too. He spins it around and smiles at Harry. “A possessing spirit feels no purely physical pain to the body he holds. Your last chance to do this, Mr. Potter.”

Harry lifts his chin and rolls the dice. “That’s Lord Slytherin to you, Red-Eyes.”

Voldemort snarls, Vince’s face distorting, and he aims his wand at the back of Vince’s hand. “Crucio!”

And…

Nothing happens.

Harry breathes out shakily. Okay, okay, so his faith was justified and the oath Vince swore not to use curses except in self-defense held, whether or not he’s in his right mind at the time. The oath was still sworn with his body, and Voldemort can’t leave that unless he wants to try possessing Harry.

“What is this?” Voldemort snaps, and stabs his wand back and forth, then into the soft flesh of Vince’s wrist, as if he’s hoping for some different result if he just repeats the motion often enough.

Harry does his best to Disarm Voldemort silently, but a little grunt of effort slips past his lips, and Voldemort turns towards him like a snake. He whips his wand towards Harry and casts some spell that makes purple light flare around him for an instant.

And the light goes out, and nothing happens.

The oath that Vince swore not to act against Harry is holding, too.

“What did you do?” Voldemort’s red eyes flare like the purple light, and he comes a step closer. “You did something.”

Harry doesn’t think that anyone except him would hear the undertone of fear in Voldemort’s voice. Well, maybe Dumbledore, but they’re the only ones who have ever heard Voldemort speak that much. Everyone else would be too busy running away and shrieking in terror, Harry thinks.

“I did something,” Harry agrees, and smiles at Voldemort. “So convinced the Lord Slytherin business is a publicity stunt?”

“You could not have become Lord Slytherin!”

“That’s what you think,” Harry says, and then he does the only thing he can think of to do, when attacking Vince would break the oaths and allow Voldemort to curse one of them. He reaches out, imagines the oath connecting them like a chain, and pulls on it as hard as he can.

Voldemort shrieks as Vince’s body stumbles a little forwards. Harry reaches out and catches him on a web of air with a quick jab of his wand. He’s afraid to touch Vince with his hands in case he burns him up like he did with Professor Quirrell.

I believe in you, he tells Vince with each tug on the oath, with each rattle of the invisible magical chain between them. I know you can overcome it. And you’re my friend, I’m yours, we’re ours, and not his!

The air in the ballroom trembles and catches on fire. Harry doesn’t have time to worry about it. He’s aware that Ahalam has reared up on his shoulder and is swaying back and forth, but he doesn’t have time to worry about that, either.

All of his being is pouring into that magic, and catching Vince, and calling on him to come back, and telling him that Harry is proud of him, and he can resist, and Harry hasn’t even killed his dad, he’s just over there on the floor.

There’s a sharp slashing feeling that leaves Harry feeling dizzy and sick, and then Vince stumbles towards him, sobbing, and clutches him. Harry grabs him and holds him tight.

He looks up as something dark zooms overhead, and realizes that he’s looking up at Voldemort’s spirit, which hisses in something far darker than Parseltongue as it stoops towards Harry.

“You can’t do that!”

The voice is small and powerful and proud and not Harry’s. Ahalam rears up and snaps at Voldemort’s spirit, and then, as part of the spirit ducks beneath Harry’s skin and agonizing pain tears through him, Ahalam turns and bites him.

It’s a sharp, fresh pain, different than the creeping corruption Voldemort is trying to impose on him. Harry gasps and wrenches himself back into his body, then pushes outwards with all his magic left to him.

He’s tired, but he still has Ahalam, and Vince is trying to help with all his clumsy strength. Together, they drive Voldemort out of Harry’s body and make him hover overhead, staring down at them with pits of eyes that burn with hatred.

“You will regret this.”

“I already regret every moment of your fucking existence,” Harry snaps, too tired to concentrate the way he would have to to use Parseltongue. “Get out of my sight, you bloody wanker.”

And Voldemort turns and swoops across the ballroom and out through the window. Harry watches him go, and supports Vince as best he can. They’re both panting, and Harry isn’t that surprised when Vince slumps on the floor in a dead faint.

It makes things more inconvenient, since Harry has to find the Floo powder and Floo Sirius by himself, but he’s not surprised.

*

Everyone makes an enormous fuss, because of course they do.

Mr. Crabbe is arrested and taken to the Ministry. They find Vince’s mum locked up in an attic with a house-elf bringing her meals, and the first thing she does when she gets out is fling her arms around Vince with bruising force. So everything there turns out to be all right, although Harry will be paying close attention in case Mr. Crabbe gets out of the Ministry or they never put him in Azkaban.

From what Theo and Draco have said in the past, though, even Death Eaters will pressure the Ministry to put Mr. Crabbe away. They know that he risks bringing attention to their own paper-thin excuses about the Imperius if they protest his imprisonment too much.

Sirius grabs Harry and holds him. He refuses to let go, meaning that they have to Floo back to Dumbledore’s office with Sirius clutching Harry awkwardly. Harry at least tries to get Sirius to let go so that they can sit in separate chairs, but nothing doing. The only concession Sirius is willing to make is that Harry can stand next to Sirius’s chair with Sirius’s arm around his shoulders.

Dumbledore makes a long speech about Voldemort and the importance of international cooperation. When it’s done, Harry nods and asks, “Sir, why does Voldemort want to kill me so badly? Why did he need my blood?”

“There are some things that you are too young to understand, Harry.”

Harry nods again and turns to Sirius. “I think that I’m ready to go home, Padfoot.”

Sirius nods and stands up, picking Harry up again. At least he casts a Lightening Charm. He carries Harry to the Floo again. Harry rolls his eyes and does his best to just put up with it.

“Sirius, wait. Harry at least ought to be looked over by Madam Pomfrey—”

“Shove your suggestions up your arse, Headmaster,” Sirius snarls over his shoulder, and then they’re whirling through the flames.

*

Sirius hugs him for most of the afternoon, and Remus comes over and sets up half a dozen wards around Harry’s bed that he says briefly will prevent Apparition out of Grimmauld Place even if Vince needs him. Harry nods meekly and accepts it. Vince is at home with his mum right now, anyway and part of the reason Harry’s oath summoned Harry so often was that he didn’t have anyone else he felt comfortable going to when he needed something. His mum ought to cover it.

If Harry’s feet are covered that night by a large black dog curled up on them, it just means that he goes to sleep feeling safer.

*

“Where’s Goyle?” Harry is peering over at the Slytherin table a few days later, at the Leaving Feast. He expected to have a little talk with Goyle about betraying important information, but he doesn’t seem to be there.

“You didn’t hear?” Ron looks at him in surprise. He’s sitting closer to Harry on his right side than normal, but that’s okay. Hermione is sitting closer to Harry on the left. “Goyle is going to Durmstrang next year. He left early because he’ll need to take special exams to prove that he has the marks to get in there.”

“What?” Harry blinks.

“Going to Durmstrang,” Hermione says, and nods. “I don’t think it was entirely his idea.” She leads Harry’s gaze to a small cluster of Slytherins that includes Draco, Theo, and Daphne.

Harry catches Theo’s gaze. Theo nods to him, a short, sharp motion that is closer to a bow than Harry likes, but, well, that’s the way things are.

Harry nods back. It’s better than what they could have done to Goyle, and with that, he’ll be more than content.

*

“I’m going to swear the same oath to you that you swore to Crabbe.”

“Theo. No.”

“I’m not getting left behind when you need us like that again! You could have died, and none of us could have reached you!”

“Theo—”

“You could have died!” Theo shouts, and his voice echoes off the walls around them, the quiet walls of a Silenced corridor deep in the dungeons.

Harry stares at Theo, and sees the desperation burning in his eyes. He never looked like this last year, even when he thought Sirius was out to kill Harry or when he was hinting at his own abusive relatives. And Harry senses this isn’t the moment for jokes or attempts to put Theo off.

He nods. “Okay.”

Theo kneels when he does it. Harry is silent apart from his acceptance and keeps his winces to himself.

*

“You are not to perform such stupidity again.”

Harry blinks at Draco as Draco barges into the compartment on the Hogwarts Express where Harry and Ron and Hermione and Fred and George and Neville and Padma and Theo and Blaise and Susan and Justin are playing Exploding Snap. “What?”

“You are not to perform such stupidity again,” Draco repeats. He’s rapidly flushing pink, probably because he has more of an audience than he anticipated, but he stands tall and folds his arms. “I will not be pleased if you get yourself into such a situation, Potter.”

With Theo, Harry couldn’t joke. With Draco, he’s more tempted, but he really doesn’t want to embarrass Draco enough to turn him back into an enemy. He holds up his hand. “I promise not to go alone into empty enemies’ manor houses in the middle of the night.”

“Harry—”

“I can’t go alone,” Harry says, and catches Draco’s eye.

From the way Draco nods, slowly, he gets it, even if he doesn’t know exactly who swore the oath. “Very well. That will do.” He glances around the compartment, nods regally to no one in particular, and departs with a swirl of robes.

There’s a long moment of silence before Susan turns to Harry and says, “I think we ought to work with you this summer to make sure you have a bigger repertoire of defensive spells. Being saved by a snake and a Niffler shouldn’t have to happen again.”

“Hey, they were both awesome.” It actually took Remus, who stayed behind in the Crabbes’ house while Sirius took Harry back to Hogwarts, almost an hour to catch Salazar, who was running around after the rings and trying to stuff them all into his pouch. In the end, Remus had to borrow a ruby necklace from Vince’s mum to lure him close enough.

“Nonetheless,” says Susan, and her smile has something bright and brittle to it.

Harry looks around the compartment. Worried looks and similar smiles and frowns and nods come back to him. He lifts his hands.

“All right.”

*

“Who’s that from?” Harry asks, eyeing the shaking Howler in Grimmauld Place’s kitchen nervously. He didn’t expect Vince’s mum to have sent it, but he also can’t think of anyone else who would have.

Maybe one of his followers decided to express their anger like this, though.

“No idea,” Remus says. “I didn’t recognize the owl.” He reaches over and pulls at the letter before Harry can ask if there’s a spell to disarm Howlers. Not that there likely is, when Dumbledore didn’t know one.

It turns out Harry was right. One of his followers did decide to express their anger like this.

“—INCREDIBLY RECKLESS, HARRY! DO YOU REALIZE THAT APPARATING INTO CRABBE’S HOUSE MEANS THAT YOU MIGHT NEVER HAVE PLAYED QUIDDITCH AGAIN? WHAT IS THE FUTURE OF PROFESSIONAL QUIDDITCH IN BRITAIN GOING TO BE LIKE IF YOU JUST DIE BEFORE YOU PLAY IT?? WE’RE GOING TO MAKE SURE THAT YOU CARRY YOUR BROOM WITH YOU AT ALL TIMES—”

It’s a really long Howler. Harry sits there with a martyred expression until it finishes.

At least both Sirius and Remus are laughing their arses off.

And if Harry doesn’t think this summer will be quite as carefree and happy as last summer, with the knowledge that Voldemort’s spirit is out there and his followers want to participate in training him…

Well, at least he has the happiness of knowing Oliver will never change.