Posted originally on the Archive_of_Our_Own at https://archiveofourown.org/
works/6151330.
  Rating:
      Explicit
  Archive Warning:
      Graphic_Depictions_Of_Violence, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
  Category:
      M/M
  Fandom:
      Harry_Potter_-_J._K._Rowling
  Relationship:
      Harry_Potter/Severus_Snape, Harry_Potter/Cedric_Diggory(briefly)
  Character:
      Harry_Potter, Hermione_Granger, Severus_Snape, Cedric_Diggory, Luna
      Lovegood, Albus_Dumbledore, Kingsley_Shacklebolt, Remus_Lupin, Molly
      Weasley, Ginny_Weasley, Other_Weasleys
  Additional Tags:
      Snarry_Final_Pairing, Eventual_Snarry, Time-Turners, fast_pacing,
      Increasingly_Dark_Harry, Increasingly_Dark_Hermione, Homosexuality,
      Heterosexuality_(not_Harry), Work_In_Progress, Tags_May_Change,
      unfinished_work, AU_after_Prisoner_of_Azkaban, slight_ron_bashing, Top
      Harry, Frottage, Oral_Sex, Anal_Sex, Azkaban
  Series:
      Part 5 of W.I.P._Collection
  Stats:
      Published: 2016-03-03 Updated: 2016-06-25 Chapters: 5/? Words: 33302
****** If We Had More Time ******
by FalconLux
Summary
     Inspired by the existence of time-turners, Harry and Hermione
     conspire to always have one on hand, a fact that will change much as
     events unfold.
     WARNING: This is a W.I.P. It is not completed and it may never be
     finished or even continued. READ AT YOUR OWN RISK.
Notes
     Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter and I don't make any money from
     this or any other fanfiction.
***** Chapter 1 *****
9 June 1994
“Hey, Hermione,” Harry whispered.  “Hermione!” he hissed louder when there was
no response.
“Hmn?” she hummed, and then he heard her yawn.  “Harry?  Is something wrong?”
“What?  No.  I just thought of something.”
“You thought of something?  Harry, it’s…” there was a pause and Harry saw her
blurry, shadowed form move.  “It’s three o’clock in the morning, Harry.”
“Really?  Sorry,” he grimaced.  “I couldn’t sleep, and I was just thinking… 
McGonagall really gave you that time-turner so that you could take extra
classes?”
“Huh?  Oh, yeah.  Harry, I thought we went over all this hours ago…”
“Hermione,” Harry interrupted, trying to keep himself calm.  “That thing lets
you go back in time!  It’s…  We…!  Hermione, you do understand that, if not for
that time-turner, Sirius would have died tonight.  Hell, Iwould have died
tonight!”
“…okay…  Harry, I know all of this.  Can we talk about it in the morning?”
Harry sighed expressively, “Hermione, are you even listening to me?!  Maybe
this is one of those wizard things that just don’t translate for me, but you’re
using a time machine – however limited – to take extra classes!  Is it just me,
or does that seem a little bit like using a nuclear bomb to demolish a house?!”
“Okay, Harry,” she said cautiously and her silhouette moved to sit up.  “I
understand what you’re saying, but I’m a little worried about what you’re
suggesting.  Harry, terrible things happen to wizards who meddle in time…”
“Yeah, I’ve got that so far,” Harry snapped irritably.  “Terrible things like
saving my life and my godfather’s life.”
“Har-“
“Look, I get the point that it’s dangerous, but my point is that the fact that
it’s dangerous doesn’t stop it from being really useful.  I mean…  I’ve almost
died at least once every year at Hogwarts.  This year, I would have died if we
hadn’t gone back in time.  What if…?  What happens when something tries to kill
me again next year?  Or what if it’s you or Ron or… or Dumbledore!?  Hermione,
what if someone had a time-turner the night that my parents died?!  I’m not
saying that we should use it to fix every little problem, but…”
“Okay, Harry,” she sighed.  “I understand what you’re saying.  I…  I wasn’t
really planning on using it again next year.  It was… exhausting, trying to
take so many classes this year.  I don’t know if I can do it again.”
“Hermione, if you can keep that time-turner, I’ll help you study.  I’ll even
take more classes myself.”  Despite the darkness, Harry could see her perk up
at his offer to take more classes.
“Really?  Well… okay, but Harry, you really have to take your classes
seriously, okay?  I was told that I wouldn’t be able to keep the time-turner
and the extra classes unless I kept at least an E average in allof the classes,
and I know you haven’t managed that in Divination or Potions…”
“There’s a reasonI haven’t kept up better in potions,” Harry argued.  “Snape
grades me unfairly…”
“So study harder!” she snapped.  “Honestly, I don’t understand you at all. 
Snape acts like a ten-year-old, and you act immature right back!  You want to
know what would reallyprove that you’re better than Snape, Harry?  Be the adult
between you.  Don’t rise to his bait!  Prove that you’re not the idiot he
accuses you of being.  Honestly, if you didn’t lose your temper, he would look
like a complete fool for attacking you unfairly all the time.”
Harry bit down on the urge to start ranting about Snape and the unfairness of
it all.  Truthfully, he knew that life wasn’t fair.  He’d never have had to
live with the Dursleys if his life was any kind of fair.  His parents wouldn’t
have been murdered if his life was fair.  He wouldn’t be the bloody Boy-Who-
Lived if his life was fair…  He’d just gotten his hopes up that the wizarding
world would be different, and Snape had been a rude awakening that it wasn’t. 
He should have figured out by now that Snape was notthe only thing wrong with
the wizarding world.  “You’re right,” he managed to growl after a minute.  He
didn’t want to be the adult, damn it!  He was thirteen!  Snape was supposed to
be the adult!
But Hermione did make a good point.
“I am?”
Harry laughed at the perfect shock in her voice.  “You’re right,” he sighed
more easily this time.  “It is time I grew up a bit.  Seems pretty certain I’m
gonna get killed if I don’t.”
===============================================================================
 
24 August 1994
The kitchen was eerily silent while Mr. Weasley tried to figure out how to
nottell his wife about the Ton-Tongue Toffee incident after putting his foot in
it.  The appearance of Hermione and Ginny in the doorway was a welcome
distraction that Harry eagerly latched onto.  “Hermione!” he crowed excitedly,
stepping forward to give her a quick, awkward hug.  Harry still wasn’t very
good at hugging, but he reallywanted out of that kitchen.  “Are you busy now? 
I was really excited to have you look at my potions’ essay.  I know that I’ve
messed it up, but I can’t be sure exactly where…” he trailed off as he led her
hastily up the stairs toward Ginny’s room where he imagined her homework would
be.  He ignored the wolf-whistles the twins sent after him.
“Harry, what…?” Hermione asked uncertainly as he all but shoved her into
Ginny’s room.  None of the redheads seemed to have followed them.
He shook his head quickly, “Sorry.  There was about to be a row, and I…”
“FRED, GEORGE!  WHAT WERE YOU THINKING!?” radiated up from below.
“See?” Harry said, pointing in the direction of Mrs. Weasley’s strident voice.
Hermione rolled her eyes and moved to sit on her bed.  “What didthey do?”
Harry sighed tiredly and sat next to her.  “Gave my cousin some prank candy
that made his tongue grow four feet long.”
She grimaced.
“Anyway!” he said cheerfully.  “I… ah…  I guess I don’t actually have my essay
with me at the moment.  It’s still in my trunk.”
She gave him a fondly exasperated look.  “Oh, Harry.  Well, that’s fine.  Here,
I’ll show you that book that I was talking about.”  She dragged her trunk out
from under the bed and opened it.
Harry blinked and frowned at the interior of the trunk.  He rubbed his eyes and
looked again, but it hadn’t changed.  “Um, Hermione…”
“Hm?” she asked distractedly as she shifted a stack of books so that she could
read the spines.
“I assume your trunk is supposed to be…”
“What?” she glanced over her shoulder to see him gesturing vaguely toward her
trunk.  She looked at it again, then grinned.  “Oh, yeah.  Neat, huh?  It’s an
Undetectable Extension Charm.  It’s NEWT level charms, honestly, but I managed
to figure it out a couple weeks before the end of last term.  I had to,
really.  I’d managed to buy so many books in Hogsmeade throughout the year that
I couldn’t fit them all into my trunk to take them home…” she blushed faintly.
Harry stared at her in amazement.
“It’s not that hard, Harry,” she chastised.  “Honestly, you learned to cast the
Patronus Charm last year, and that’s beyond NEWT level.  Only Aurors, Charms
Masters, and people in certain specialized careers even learn that spell, and
most of them never manage a fully corporeal patronus like you did…”
“Okay, Hermione,” Harry interrupted, trying to mitigate his blush.  “I get it.”
She grinned at him and turned back to her trunk.  “The Undetectable Extension
Charm is really useful.  I’ll teach it to you this year.”
“Okay,” he allowed, since he didn’t want her to start talking about anything
else amazing that he’d done.
“Now, you did read all of the books I sent you, right?”
“Yes,” Harry nodded dutifully.  Honestly, he’d been very grateful for the
distraction.  If not for all the extra homework she’d assigned him, he’d have
probably spent most of the last two months just thinking about how much he
wished he was with Sirius and berating himself for letting Pettigrew escape –
or thinking about his extra creepy dreams lately.  As part of their deal at the
end of last year, Harry had a lotof academic catching up to do, and Hermione
was determined to see him do it.
“Good,” she said decisively as she extracted a book from the depths of her
trunk.  “Read this one, too.”
Harry accepted the book and opened it, scanning through the introduction
curiously.  He’d been quite shocked this summer to discover that learning
wasn’t as hard as he’d let himself believe since starting Hogwarts.  Of course,
having almost literally nothing else to do all summer probably helped him to
focus and not get distracted like he tended to do at Hogwarts with Quidditch
and exploding snap and everything else that came with living in a dorm.
There was a knock on the door and Harry looked up just in time to see Bill peer
in cautiously.  His brow rose as he looked between Harry and Hermione.  "Wow,”
he grinned.  “You two actually are talking about homework.”
“What else would we be talking about?” Hermione frowned.
Bill coughed, but it sounded suspiciously like a laugh.  “No idea,” he
grinned.  “Mum wanted you two down to help get things set for dinner.  Either
that, or she wanted to make sure that you weren’t conceiving any future
generations up here, but I’m not reading into it,” he flashed them a wink and
then he was gone.
Harry blinked and looked at Hermione as he slowly processed Bill’s meaning. 
Then he instantly felt his face turn what he was sure was a shade of red to
match what Hermione’s was currently turning.  “Why would they think that?” he
finally managed, his voice a bit higher than was strictly manly.
She shook her head and was clearly trying to pretend that she wasn’t as
embarrassed as her coloring suggested.  “I suppose it may have looked a bit
suspicious, us disappearing so quickly like that… especially with homework as
the reason.  From me, that wouldn’t be surprising…”
Harry sighed, “Yeah, I guess they’re not used to that from me, yet.”
Hermione smiled at the “yet”.  “Well, we should probably get down there…”
“Right,” Harry nodded.  “I’ll just run up and put this in Ron’s room,” he
indicated the book, and made haste up the stairs while Hermione headed down. 
He really could not imagine how anyone could think that he and Hermione…  Well,
she was a girl, obviously.  And he supposed she was pretty enough.  But she was
Hermione!  She was like a sister to him.  He didn’t think of her like that!
===============================================================================
 
26 August 1994
“Come and have a game of Quidditch in the orchard, Harry,” Ron urged.  “Come on
– three on three, Bill and Charlie and Fred and George will play…  You can try
out the Wronski Feint…”
“Ron,” Hermione said tightly.  “Harry doesn’t want to play Quidditch right
now…  He’s worried, and he’s tired…  We all need to go to bed…”
Harry looked between them and he nearly took Ron up on the offer.  Forgetting
about everything and just playing some Quidditch did sound rather nice.  But… 
He sighed and shook his head, “Thanks, Ron, but I think Hermione’s right.  I’m
just gonna read a little bit and take a nap, I think.”  He picked up the latest
book that Hermione had given him.  It was about Potions, and pretty much the
last thing he wanted to read about at the moment.  But it was part of The
Plan.  And it was a good plan.  He knew that it was.  He needed the time-
turner.  He needed to learn more spells.  He was sick and tired of being
helpless.  Avoidance might be a really nice thing, but it was going to get
someone killed one of these days.
Hermione smiled proudly when he picked up the book.  Ron deflated at the words
“Hermione’s right” and looked at Harry like he was mad when he mentioned
reading.  Harry could relate.  Sometimes he wondered if he was mad, too.  Then
he thought about nearly being murdered by Quirrell/Voldemort in first year. 
About Ginny almost dying and that minute when he’d honestly believed that he
was about to die after the basilisk bit him in second year.  About being
surrounded by a hundred dementors and utterly helpless until he’d gone back in
time and saved himself.  He thought about his dream and about the Dark Mark
burning in the sky.  About that ominous voice casting the Mark in the sky –
with hiswand…
Voldemort was going to come back.  No matter how much he wished it wasn’t so,
he knew that it was.  The way he saw it, he could have maybe a couple years of
fun and relaxation in between things trying to kill him until one of them
succeeded – probably before he ever turned seventeen.  Orhe could devote
himself completely to learning and to keeping his hands on a time-turner as
often as possible, and he could maybe actually live until Voldemort was dead
for good and then he could really have a real life.
Maybe.
If he didn’t try, he knew that there would come a point some day when someone
that he loved was killed, and if it was his fault because he didn’t study more
or because he didn’t have a time-turner…  He couldn’t even imagine how he’d
live with that knowledge.
Ron left to try to get a Quidditch game going without Harry.  Hermione left to
go take a nap herself.  Harry opened the book with a sigh and started reading.
===============================================================================
 
1 September 1994
“Slave labor,” said Hermione, breathing hard through her nose.  “That’s what
made this dinner.  Slave labor.”
“Hermione,” Harry sighed, pausing when she turned a murderous glare on him. 
“Look, I don’t think Hogwarts’ elves are treated like Dobby or Winky, okay?” he
said reasonably.  “I mean… Dumbledore seemed happy when I freed Dobby, so
there’s no way he’d condone that treatment…”
“They’re still slaves, Harry,” she bit out, managing to make it sound like the
entire institution of enslaving house-elves must have been Harry’s idea.
“I didn’t say they’re not!” he protested.  “But, Hermione…” he tried to be
reasonable.  Hermione was a fairly logical person.  Surely if he could think up
a logical reason, she’d respond.  “Well, what’s your plan then?  Are you
dropping out of Hogwarts or are you going to demand meals made by a human,
because Hogwarts isn’t going to just fire all the house-elves and hire human
cooks because one student…”
“Fire them?!” Hermione snapped.  “Freethem!”
“Right,” Harry nodded.  “Like Winky got freed.”
Her mouth opened, then closed again with a frown.  “Mr. Crouch was really
mean…”
“There’s a lot we don’t understand about house-elves,” Harry reasoned, excited
that he seemed to be making progress.
“I suppose…” she said slowly.  “But that doesn’t mean-”
“I didn’t say that it does,” Harry interjected quickly, not exactly sure what
she’d been about to say, but certain that he didn’t want her to think he meant
it.  “Look at it this way, you’re not hurting anyone by eating here just as you
have been for three years.  Just eat your dinner and we’ll do some research
into house-elves as soon as we can, okay?”
She huffed a sigh and stared mutinously at her food for a moment before she
went back to eating.  She was pouting and unenthusiastic about it, but she was
eating.
Harry contained a relieved sigh.  He didn’t believe that it was right to keep
house-elves as slaves either, having essentially been one before coming to
Hogwarts.  He did not, however, think that he was going to be able to change
the way the whole wizarding world had worked for hundreds of years just because
he didn’t like it.  And he was the “Boy-Who-Lived”, he thought irritably.  If
he couldn’t change them, no one could.  Of course, he didn’t think for a second
that Hermione was going to give up her crusade based on that simple logic.
At least they had their time-turners.  McGonagall had taken them aside as soon
as they’d got to the school to give Hermione her time-turner back and give one
to Harry as well.  He didn’t think that his Head of House was very happy about
the situation, since he had to quit Quidditch – Ron didn’t know that yet,
thankfully – but Harry wouldn’t be talked out of it.  He wasn’t allowed to use
the time-turner in order to attend Quidditch practice, so he’d had to drop the
game in order to qualify.  That had stung quite a bit, but McGonagall had let
it go more easily than he’d have thought.  He loved Quidditch, but he loved his
friends more.  He wouldn’t let any of them get killed because he wanted to play
a game.  No way.  And he’d still find time to play or at least have a fly every
now and then.  Assuming, of course, that any of the Quidditch fans in
Gryffindor were still talking to him after they found out he quit…
Dumbledore drew the room’s attention to him as he rose to give his start-of-
year speech, and Harry tried not to think about the row that he knew was coming
when he told Ron that he’d quit the team.
“It is also my painful duty to inform you that the Interhouse Quidditch Cup
will not take place this year…”
Harry contained a sigh of relief as Ron practically screamed his indignation
along with the rest of the team and quite a few other people.
“This is due to an event that will be starting in October and continuing
throughout the rest of the school year and taking up quite a lot of the
teacher’s attention – but I’m sure you will all enjoy it immensely…”
“They’re not stopping me entering!” Fred said stubbornly, scowling at the head
table immediately after Dumbledore’s speech.  “The champions’ll get to do all
sorts of stuff you’d never be allowed to do normally.  And a thousand Galleons
prize money!”
“Yeah,” Ron said, a faraway look on his face.  “Yeah, a thousand Galleons…”
Harry gaped at his friend.  “Ron, you heard what he said about the death toll? 
A thousand galleons isn’t going to do you any good if you’re dead!”  Harry
couldn’t believe than Ron would really be willing to risk his life for money!
Ron sent him a glare that shocked Harry for its venom, “That’s easy for you to
say, Harry.  You’re rich!”
Harry froze in the middle of the corridor, astounded by what Ron had said, and
unsure if he was more hurt or angry.
“Ronald!” Hermione snapped.  “Could you be any lesssensitive?!”
“What?!” Ron demanded angrily.  “He is!”
“Whatever,” Harry muttered sullenly and started passed them toward Gryffindor
Tower.  “It doesn’t matter anyway, since none of us are of age.”
Harry made it up to the dorms without saying another word to Ron or Hermione
and he didn’t bother changing into pajamas.  He just shucked his shoes and
closed the curtains around his bed, spelling them closed and silenced, as every
boy in the dorm had been taught at the beginning of second year by a fifth year
prefect.  Given some of the… noises he’d heard when one of the others forgot
the silencing charm once or twice, he was glad they all had them.  Personally,
he mostly used it to keep his nightmares to himself.  He usually woke silently
after years of the Dursleys beating it into his head not to wake them with his
screaming, but he did sometimes call out in his sleep, as his dorm-mates had
informed him his first year.
Harry hugged his knees against his chest and pressed his face into his knees. 
He didn’t cry.  He never did.  Not since he was really little.  He almost felt
like he could though.  Ron had no idea what Harry would give to switch places
with him.  Who cared about galleons or brooms or robes or any of that?  Ron had
a family that loved him.
===============================================================================
 
18 September 1994
Fourth year had easily been the most exhausting year yet, and they were barely
three weeks into term.  Harry was officially taking more classes than Hermione,
and he now sympathized completely with her desire to drop the extra classes at
the end of third year.  Unlike Hermione, Harry was taking Divination, which
remained as useless as ever.  Harry had given serious consideration to just
dropping the class, and he would have if he hadn’t known that Ron would never
forgive him.  Between their little row after the feast and Harry’s new insane
study habits, Ron wasn’t very happy with him most of the time as it was.  At
least he’d avoided the topic of dropping Quidditch completely thanks to the
tournament.
Harry was also taking third year Arithmancy and Ancient Runes.  Somehow he’d
ended up paired with a barmy Ravenclaw in both classes.  Mostly that was
because everyone else had a friend to partner with and Harry hadn’t because he
was out of his year and neither Ginny nor Colin were taking those classes – not
that he’d have been that eager to partner with either of them…  Actually, there
wasn’t a single Gryffindor in either of those classes – besides him.  He was in
third year Muggle Studies as well – again, paired with the same Ravenclaw
girl.  Luna Lovegood was a very strange girl, but Harry kind of liked her.  She
didn’t seem to exist on the same plane as everyone else.  For Harry, that meant
that she seemed utterly unconcerned about him being the Boy-Who-Lived beyond a
single declaration of his identity upon first meeting him.  Since then, she may
have forgotten that he was famous.  That was muchbetter than Colin, who could
never stop talking about Harry or Ginny, who was virtually incapable of talking
to him at all. 
The first potions lesson had gone pretty much like every other potions lesson
in Harry’s Hogwarts career.  Snape had provoked him and he had responded
furiously.  Hermione had yelled at him afterward about his promises at the end
of last year.  He’d really meant them, but Snape was just impossibleto ignore! 
He pushed every single one of Harry’s buttons, and he did it intentionally!  He
didn’t even try to pretend that he wasn’t being unfair.
So, Hermione, genius that she was, had come up with what she called a
Behavioral Adjustor.  He called it a Happy Bracelet.  It was a simple silver
bracelet that fit snug around his wrist under his sleeve.  With his help,
Hermione had carved runes into the bracelet to enchant it.  Now, whenever his
temper started to rise to a certain level it hit him with a cheering charm –
and getting it set right had made for a very interesting weekend…  So instead
of struggling to avoid yelling back at Snape in class, Harry spent a lot of
effort trying not to snicker in the face of his worst insults.  It had been
weird at first, but after a couple weeks – it worked wonders against Malfoy as
well – he’d decided that it was the best invention ever invented.  His temper
had totally mellowed out.  Oh, he still got annoyed, but that pointless rage
that he used to feel whenever he thought about Snape or Malfoy was just a
memory now.  Instead, he left confrontations with them grinning like a loon.
Okay, so admittedly, most of the Slytherins in particular seemed to be
questioning his sanity, but with how much of his life he spent feeling stressed
about one thing or another, it felt really good to be able to brush off the
little things.
And on top of all of those classes and maintaining their E average, Harry and
Hermione were also devoting a lot of time to extracurricular research.  Namely
house-elves and time travel.  Hermione could not let the house-elf thing go. 
Since Harry didn’t fancy having her loathe him, he was being a good friend and
helping her out.  He’d mostly been able to keep her from going too crazy with
it, but they did spend all of their extra meals – the ones when they’d used
their time-turners – in the kitchens interviewing house-elves.  Hermione tended
to be a little too blunt for the poor creatures – they’d nearly been kicked out
when she’d asked if they wanted to be free – so Harry now read through and pre-
approved all of her questions before speaking to the house-elves.
Studying time travel was Harry’s idea.  It seemed to him that if they were
going to be “meddling with time” as Hermione called it, then they should know
what they were about.  Hermione had congratulated him on being responsible when
he’d first brought that up.  Harry had just nodded sagely and allowed her to
believe that.  Personally, he’d been more thinking about being able to
manipulate the timeline more effectively if they knew all of their limits. 
Sometimes, his more Slytherin tendencies made him uncomfortable.
Despite the longdays, Harry was remembering more and more a time when he’d
enjoyed studying.  It was back before the Dursleys had properly impressed upon
him that Freaks had no business knowing anything or being in any way better
than “normal” people.  Harry hadn’t even realized that his aversion to academia
came from them until studying with Hermione had started to shake it.  It wasn’t
that he took some perverse pleasure in studying and researching the way that
Hermione seemed to do.  It wasn’t even that he liked to know more than other
people so that he could prove he was smart, as Hermione seemed to.  No, Harry
just loved learning.  He loved knowing things.  He loved understanding things
and not always feeling like the idiot the Dursleys had wanted him to be.
Harry ducked into an alcove near the Defense classroom and checked his watch as
he pulled out his time-turner.  That looked just about right.  Four turns, and…
The world blurred, and then he heard the clatter of students moving around in
the corridor.  He tucked the turner away and checked the time again, then
peered around the statue he was hiding behind.  Should be any second now…
“…what do you think we’re studying today?  The Ravenclaws and Hufflepuffs had
this class this morning, and they were…”  Hermione’s voice chattered as they
came around the corner.  Harry saw himself from about four hours ago was
trailing behind Ron and Hermione and checking his watch.  Then he lifted his
eyes and looked directly at Harry, just as he remembered doing four hours ago. 
He gave a crooked smirk and glanced at Ron and Hermione to make sure they
weren’t looking, then darted into a secret passage behind a tapestry.
Harry waited a few seconds for his friends to pass his hiding place, then
slipped out behind them and fell into step.
“Did you notice?” Hermione asked, glancing back at him.
“Well, I think we’re about to find out,” Harry shrugged as they reached the
Defense classroom.
“Oh, I suppose,” Hermione frowned thoughtfully, then turned the frown on Harry
suspiciously.  Her eyes raked down him and back up again and he knew that she’d
picked out some minute difference that she couldn’t place.  Maybe he’d opened
one more button on his shirt or loosened his tie – something that had changed
in the last few seconds as far as she was concerned.  When you knew that
someone had a time-turner, you tended to be alert for little changes like that,
Harry had noticed.  He could almost always tell if Hermione had turned. 
She gave him a knowing look but refrained from commenting as they weren’t
alone.  Ron knew about their turners, of course – couldn’t really hide it from
him even if they wanted to after he’d found out about Hermione’s last year. 
The corridor was hardly a safe place to mention it though, even if there hadn’t
been other students around.
Harry and Hermione didn’t have exactly the same schedules, so they often turned
separately, but they usually always turned together for extra study time in the
evenings.  Hermione had argued against that in the beginning, since they were
only supposed to use the turners to get to classes that took place at the same
time, but Harry had argued that it only made sense to use the turners to get
extra time to study for the extra classes, not to mention to eat and sleep
extra since their days were longer.  They had had a bit of a row about that at
first, but he’d eventually convinced her by appealing to her logic.  Really,
she was almost scary easy to manipulate once you knew how to go about it.
And yes, Harry did feel dreadful for manipulating his friend, and he never used
it against her in any way that would hurt her.  Sometimes she was a little
crazy though, between trying to follow all the rules, crusade for creature
rights, and be the world’s biggest genius…  She needed his help to be more sane
and reasonable.  He was just being helpful.  Yeah.  Helpful.
The glare that he was getting at the moment was undoubtedly due to the fact
that she knew his schedule, and he didn’t have any other classes at the
moment.  He’d taken the extra four hours to work on a side project of his that
she didn’t know about just yet.  He wanted to wait until it bore fruit before
sharing or he’d just get a lecture that he didn’t need.
Blessedly, she had no opportunity to berate him at the moment.  He wished he
could believe that she’d have forgotten about it later, but he knew she
wouldn’t.
Hermione immediately began arguing the legality of the lesson when they were
told that they’d each be subjected to the Imperius Curse.  Harry had actually
known that already.  He’d run into Neville just after dinner and the other boy
had told him how impressed he’d been that Harry hadn’t been affected by the
Imperius Curse.  Harry had used his smile and nod technique to get through that
conversation without revealing his ignorance, but he’d managed to gather that
that had been the lesson – he’d been worried for a minute that he’d been
attacked.  He was rather impressed with himself for that, too.  Of course, as
he’d learned last year, knowing that he could do something because he’d already
done it made a huge difference.
Harry became more impressed with himself as he watched all of his classmates
put under the curse and unable to put up any fight at all against it.
“Potter.  You next,” Moody finally growled.
Harry got up, feeling both nervous to find out what this would feel like, and
excited to see how he’d do it.
“Imperio!”
It was the most wonderful feeling.  Harry was floating in a blissful bubble of
relaxed happiness.  Every worry he’d ever had in his life was gone.  Nothing
really mattered.
Except…  Of coursethings mattered, he mentally frowned.  How could nothing
matter?  Did Hermione not matter?  Ron?  Sirius?  Did Voldemortnot matter?
He blinked and the feeling was gone.  His eyes met Moody’s, both of which had
just focused on him. 
“Imperio!” he said again.
Harry felt the same feeling brush against his mind, but it vanished almost
instantly this time.  He was wise to that feeling.  It was a lie and it
wouldn’t fool him again.
“Now, that’smore like it!” Moody barked sharply.  “Look at that, you lot! 
Potter shook off that curse before I could even give him a command!  Imperio!”
he incanted again without warning.  Harry felt it brush over him even more
easily this time.  “Ha!  Very good, Potter!  Very good, indeed!  They’ll have
trouble controlling you!”
Harry frowned at the ex-auror.  For just a second there after he cast for the
third time, he could have swornthe man looked annoyed rather than excited.  He
shook it after a moment.  It might have been a lingering effect of the
Imperius.  Or it might have just been that it was hard to read the man with one
good eye and a face that was more scar than skin.
===============================================================================
 
“Where were you, earlier?!” Hermione demanded as soon as she’d closed and
warded the door of the small reading room behind her. 
“When?” Harry asked innocently.
“During Defense!” she demanded.  “Where were you?”
Harry made a show of checking his watch.  “Right here, Hermione.”
She glared and ominously crossed the distance between them.  “Don’t you give me
that, Harry James Potter!  I know perfectly well that you turned back with me
this time.  We’re in Defense right now, but you’re somewhere else, too! 
Where?”
Harry sighed, “Hermione, please relax.  Have a seat.  I promise that I’m not
doing anything I shouldn’t be doing – well, besides using the turner an extra
time.”
Her lips disappeared for how tightly she was pressing them together.
“I’m just doing a bit of extra research,” he promised.  “I’m not in the
library,” he added when she opened her mouth.  Being in the same place at the
same time was something they tried very hard to avoid.  Of course, Hermione was
a little more concerned with that than he was.  She didn’t even like to catch a
glimpse of herself when she could avoid it.  Personally, he wasn’t worried
about that.  The rules were in place for a reason.  He just didn’t care about
most of those reasons.  As long as he knew that a future him might turn up at
any moment and didn’t freak out about it or let anyone else see them together,
then it didn’t seem like it should matter.  Hermione wasn’t quite ready to know
about the time-turner rules he chose to disregard though.
“Look, I promise that I’m not doing anything wrong, Hermione.  I’ll tell you
everything once I make some progress.”
She frowned at him, pursing her lips in a way that she did when she was trying
to decide if she should press her lecture or drop it.  After a moment, she
sighed and sat down, indicating that she’d come out on the side of dropping it
– for which he was very thankful.  “Just be careful, Harry,” she urged.  “If
you get caught, you willlose that time-turner, and if you’ll recall, the entire
reason you’re taking so many classes this year is so that you can have a time-
turner.”
He smiled reassuringly, “Don’t worry.  I’m not likely to forget.  Now, can you
help me with my Runes?  I can’t figure out how to shape the protection rune
here.”
She just rolled her eyes and drew his assignment closer to her.
===============================================================================
 
17 October 1994
“Harry, what are we doing down here?” Hermione hissed nervously as they slipped
out of the secret passage Harry had found into some deep part of the dungeons
that he was sure she’d never seen before.  He’d never seen it until he’d
started searching.  “Are you trying to get us ambushed by Slytherins?”
“Not many of them come this deep into the dungeons,” Harry dismissed.  “Best I
can tell, most of this section was closed off about four hundred years ago.”
“That doesn’t explain what we’re doing here,” she huffed.
“I think it would be best if I showed you,” he smirked at her over his
shoulder.
She frowned, but didn’t complain again.
They walked only a few minutes more before they came to the blank stretch of
wall that looked exactly like every other blank stretch of wall – except for a
tiny snake carved into the wall just above the floor level.  Harry had spent
the better part of two months searching for just such a thing.  He hadn’t been
able to believe that Salazar Slytherin would have made the entrance to the
Chamber of Secrets – the onlyentrance – in a second floor girl’s bathroom.  Or
even if that hadn’t been a girl’s bathroom in his time, it seemed like
Slytherin would have had an entrance in the dungeons.  Something that didn’t
require him to slide down a pipe to reach.  Of course, he didn’t expect it to
be easy to find.  In second year, everyone had said that the school had been
searched many times over the years since the Founders’ time and no one had ever
been able to locate the chamber.  Of course, most of them probably hadn’t been
parselmouths.
Either way, Harry had strongly suspected that Slytherin had hidden more than
just the one chamber in this school, and he’d been right.  Merlin, had he been
right.  Once he’d started looking, he’d discovered quite a few secret passages
around the school that were marked only with a tiny carved snake in an out-of-
the-way location.  They only opened to parseltongue as far as he could tell.
This one though.  This was the one he’d been looking for.
“Open,” he hissed at the wall.
Hermione squeaked as the wall slid in a few inches, then to the side, leaving a
dark, narrow corridor now open to them.  “Come on,” he grinned before leading
the way inside.  “Lights,” the hiss sparked the candles to light, illuminating
a bright, cheerful parlor.
“What is this?” Hermione gasped.
“Welcome, Hermione,” Harry grinned, “To Salazar Slytherin’s personal chambers.”
***** Chapter 2 *****
Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes
30 October 1994
The last week leading up to the arrival of the Durmstrang and Beauxbatons
students wasn’t all that different from the rest of the first two months of the
school year for Harry.  Except, of course, that he was spending even more time
studying to avoid having any time to argue with Ron or listen to idiots going
on about how much they wished they were old enough to enter the tournament. 
Harry could not understand the appeal, but maybe he’d just had too much
experience fighting for his life to ever be willing to do it for money or
“glory”.  Staying alive was hard enough for him without that kind of insanity.
So he mostly did his best to avoid all of the pretournament excitement and
instead locked himself away in the library or in Slytherin’s private library,
studying for his classes, Hermione’s house-elf crusade, time travel, or
anything else that piqued his curiosity.  Slytherin’s library had some
reallyfascinating books.  Once he’d mastered the translation charms necessary
to read the antiquated script, he’d barely been able to pull himself away long
enough to maintain a façade of semi-normalcy to the rest of the school and to
attend all of his classes.  Writing essays and keeping up with lessons was
getting easier and easier as he fine-tuned his study techniques with the help
of Hermione and his time-turner, so that required less and less time even as
his grades continued to climb.
“Harry, we…  WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!”
Harry started and looked up from his book at Hermione’s exclamation.  He’d been
expecting it, of course, but he’d managed to lose track of time and hadn’t
realized it was coming so soon.  He quickly noted his page number and closed
his book as he got up.  “I’ll handle it,” he assured his younger self, who was
looking like a kid caught with his hand in the cookie jar from his seat at the
other end of Slytherin’s library.  That, of course, was Hermione’s gripe.  She
still supported the time-turner rule requiring you to avoid yourself.
“Hermione, relax, would you,” he started, his voice calm and relaxed, but
unrepentant.  As soon as she got it into her head that he thought he’d done
something wrong, she’d never relent.
“Relax?” she screeched, looking between the two Harrys.  “Which one are you?”
she demanded.  “Younger or older?!”
“Older,” he said calmly.
She turned on him completely then.  “What exactly do you think you’re doing
coming in here when you knew that your younger self was here?  You knowthat
you’re not…”
“Not, what?” he challenged mildly.  “Hermione, trust me, I understand the
reason behind the rule to avoid yourself.  It makes sense.  If you’re not
expecting to see an exact replica of yourself, it can be quite shocking and a
number of bad things could happen, including ending up in a duel with yourself
if you assumed that your elder was an imposter.  In our particular situation,
however, there is no basis for that concern.  When I saw myself walk into the
library earlier, I blinked once, nodded hello, and went back to my reading.  I
knowthat I have a time turner that I use frequently.  Really, my first
assumption upon seeing my doppelganger walking around is that I’ve used the
turner.”
She glared at him in that way that she did when she was sure she was right, but
was having a hard time thinking of a good reason as to why that was.
“It’s fine,” he reiterated.  “You and I are the only ones who know about these
rooms.  We’re the only ones who can get in unless Voldemort shows up, which
seems incredibly unlikely.”
She smirked very slightly at his humor and looked between the two of him
again.  Her teeth worried her lower lip while she considered the situation. 
“Just be careful, Harry,” she finally sighed.  “If you get too comfortable
doing this, and accidentally show up twice where anyone else can see…”
“It will be the end of having a time-turner, I know,” Harry finished for her.
She frowned at him.  “I always knew that you were smart, Harry – certainly
smarter than you let on – but this is getting a little ridiculous.  Are you
aware that the only shared class in which I am currently ranked above you is
Potions?  I know you’ve been turning more time than me, but howwere you hiding
being thissmart for the last three years?  Honestly, it’s disturbing.  How did
you make up for three years of skiving off in two months?”
He grinned in reply.  “We’re going to be late for the arrival of the Durmstrang
and Beauxbatons students, aren’t we?”
Her eyes narrowed, “Don’t evade my question!”
He frowned for a moment, then directed a glare at the wall behind Hermione. 
“What, exactly, would you like to hear, Hermione?” he said finally, his voice
quiet and devoid of emotion.  “That I was beaten and starved as a child
whenever I did well in school?”  He heard her gasp, but continued avoiding her
eyes.  “I honestly have no idea how smart I am or am not.  I just know that
I’ve just remembered that learning is fun and easy and no one can stop me from
doing it now.”  He huffed a heavy breath.  He’d heard himself say that a few
hours ago, but part of him had still foolishly hoped that he might avoid it. 
“Now, can we please go before we’re late?  You know it’ll be noticed if I’m not
there, and we don’t need McGonagall on us about not being able to be on time
when we have time-turners.”  He started toward the door without another word. 
He knew she’d follow.
They arrived in the Entrance Hall just in time to fall in with their yearmates
as McGonagall walked down the line like a general inspecting her troops.  She
eyed them both in a way that suggested she hadn’t missed their late arrival,
but she didn’t say anything before turning to lead them outside in a single
long line.
They gathered on the lawn in front of the castle to wait for the arrival of the
other schools and Harry cast a quick warming charm on his robe.  It really was
quite chilly in the Scottish Highlands the night before Halloween.  He pitied
the first and second years who hadn’t learned that charm yet.  He felt less
sorry for those older students apparently too dim to use the charm, as he
noticed quite a few students shivering and huddling in their robes around him. 
Sadly, Slytherin house alone seemed smart enough for every single student to
have used the charm as they stood calm and unaffected in the moonlight.  The
lower years weren’t shivering either, he noted curiously.  Someone must have
cast the charms on their cloaks before they left the castle.
He wondered why only the snakes seemed to look after their own like that…
Before he could get too deep into philosophical considerations of the Hogwarts
houses, his attention was drawn to a conversation starting among his housemates
about how the delegations would be arriving.  Hermione, he noticed, was quite
quick to lay into Ron about his idea that they might apparate through the anti-
apparation wards around Hogwarts.  She did have a right to be that annoyed, he
supposed.  She’d only told him and Ron that very thing ever since first year. 
She did not, however, offer up any suggestions on how they might turn up.
Harry, too, avoided speculating aloud.  There didn’t seem to be much point in
it except to fill the silence or pass the time.  They’d find out soon enough,
after all.  What was the point in wondering unless they were taking bets on
their ideas?  While that thought had some merit, Harry suspected that there
wasn’t enough time to get a good betting pool going.
Instead, Harry spent the time thinking about the anti-apparation wards around
Hogwarts.  And all the other wards, actually.  He wondered if Salazar had ever
recorded anything about the wards.  It would be amazing to get a first-hand
account of how the wards worked… 
Again, his thoughts were interrupted – this time by Dumbledore’s announcement
of the Beauxbatons’ delegation approaching. 
===============================================================================
 
22 November 1994
Harry closed his fist around the scroll he’d been reading, dropping it quickly
when he realized that it had begun to smoke.  He took several deep breaths and
tried to get a hold on his magic.  He’d never been this angry in his life.  Not
even when he’d heard that Sirius Black, betrayer of the Potters, had been his
godfather and their friend.
He’d felt betrayal then, but it hadn’t been anything like this.  He’d wanted to
kill Sirius Black with his bare hands, then.  He didn’t even know what to do
with the rage he was feeling now.  This was something so much stronger than the
anger he usually felt that his Happy Bracelet wasn’t making a dent in it.
He dropped his head into his hands and realized that he must be crying when he
felt the moisture on his cheeks.  He dug his fingers into his hair and
tightened them into fists, pulling harshly at the strands.  The pain helped to
clear his head and then all of the rage suddenly drained out of him and he just
felt very tired and very sad.
It had taken more than three weeks, but he’d finally gotten his hands on a copy
of the Triwizard Tournament Rules and Regulations and 1994 Amendments.  The
Rules stated, as amended in 1456, the headmaster may disqualify any participant
under the age of seventeen if he was concerned for the student’s safety, but
only within one hour of the drawing.  Apparently this amendment was made after
a first year was chosen and forced to compete in 1455, leading to the eleven-
year-old’s death during the First Task.  The fact that Harry had been made to
compete despite that had brassed him off.
What had pushed him into full-on rage, however, was when he’d noticed that the
rule had been amended in 1994.  It now stated that anyone under the age of
seventeen may refuse an appointment by the cup at the time of the drawing.  The
infuriating part was that the amendment had been proposed by none other than
Albus Dumbledore.  The headmaster had known that all Harry had to do was
immediately state that he relinquished his position and the cup would have
released him from the magic of the contract.  He had known and he’d said
nothing.  Indeed, he’d made it seem like he had tocompete.
And Crouch had abetted him, because he definitely should have known about that
rule, having been in charge of the committee amending the rules for the latest
tournament.
Harry let himself collapse onto the cold stone floor of Salazar’s library and
just stared blankly at the ceiling as his mind spun.  Did this mean that
Dumbledore was the one to put his name into the cup or that he’d just approved
of it happening and done nothing to stop it.  He and Crouch had made it sound
so convenient and they hadn’t even really lied. 
“…those people whose names come out of the Goblet of Fire are bound to compete
in the tournament,” Crouch said, and he was right.  The rules did state that
quite clearly.  Of course, had he continued to quote, he’d have soon reached
the small-print amendment from this very year stating, no student beneath the
age of adulthood may be forced to compete against his or her will.
And then there was Dumbledore.  “How this situation arose, we don’t know.  It
seems clear to me however that we must accept it.”  Yes, theymust accept it if
Harry didn’t speak up for himself, which no one had told him he was allowed to
do.
Whether Dumbledore put his name in that goblet or not, it was clear that he
could have gotten him out of it if he’d wanted to.  He obviously did notwant
to.  Harry didn’t know what the man stood to gain by making Harry go through
this tournament, and that bothered him quite a bit.  He was pretty surethat
Dumbledore wasn’t hoping he would die.  Surely he’d had more than enough
chances to make that happen in the past if that had been his goal.
And Harry had just learned last night that he was going to be facing dragonsin
the first task.  Dragons.  Beasts that required entire teamsof trained
professionals to handle and he was going to be facing one alone.
===============================================================================
 
24 November 1994
Harry sat in the tent awaiting his turn at the dragons.  He was last, of
course.  It was just his luck that he’d have to sit and stew about his possibly
approaching death the longest.  The last two days since he’d learned that he
would have to face a dragon, Harry had turned enough time to have stretched it
into more than a week.  He’d spent as much time as possible in Slytherin’s
library, two or three versions of himself usually working side-by-side. 
Hermione had scowled when she’d caught him at it, but she’d said nothing.  She
was worried about him surviving the coming task as well.
Working with future versions of himself was helpful.  The older versions of him
were able to give the younger one advice about which books he should be
focusing on and what chapters didn’t have anything useful.
He hadmanaged to work out a plan in that time.  He wasn’t sure if it would
work, but he thought it was possible.  If not, he had a Plan B, which also may
not work.  If thatfailed, Plan C would be considerably more dangerous.  If Plan
C failed, he would be in trouble because at that point he’d be winging it.
The bell finally sounded for him and he swallowed back the urge to sick up the
few nibbles he’d managed for breakfast.  Gripping his wand tightly, he forced
himself to enter the arena.  The dragon looked about a hundred times bigger now
that he knew he had to face it.  He was barely aware of the audience or the
announcer.  He had no idea if they were cheering or booing or if Bagman was
saying anything.  All of his focus was on the dragon.
Merlin, this wasn’t the first time he’d been in mortal danger, but this was the
first time he’d gone into it intentionally without someone’s life on the line. 
He didn’t much care for the feeling.
Taking a deep breath, Harry tugged on his rudimentary occlumency barriers and
tried to keep a clear head.  The dragon was watching him mistrustfully,
crouched low over her clutch.
“Accio Golden Egg!” he shouted.
Nothing happened and Harry tried not to blush as he became aware of the
laughter coming from the stands.  He shook himself and tried to go back to
ignoring them.  Yes, he’d known that it was a slim chance the egg wouldn’t have
been protected with anti-summoning charms, but he’dhad totry.  With Plan A out
of commission, he switched to Plan B.
Pointing his wand at himself, he cast the complex flame protection spell he’d
found in a dragon handler manual that he’d owl-ordered.  He’d barely received
the book in time, but with his turner he’d had time to learn it last night. 
The spell was designed specifically to protect against dragon fire, but each
casting was only strong enough to ward against one good blast of flame.  The
next ward he cast was obscure – one he’d found in Salazar’s library.  It didn’t
protect against spells at all, which is probably why it had fallen into
disuse.  It did, however, protect against physical trauma.  For example, if the
dragon were to hit him with its tail or claws or toss him across the arena or
try to bite him in half, that ward would provide at least someprotection.  He
hoped it would at least keep him alive until the dragon handlers could rescue
him and get him to a healer.
Repressing a shudder, Harry steeled himself and started a slow march toward the
dragon, who was becoming increasingly irritable the nearer he came.  Finally,
she reared up to breathe on him and Harry took his chance, aiming his spell
under her lifted belly to shoot a simple impervious ward at the nest.  It would
keep her from accidentally crushing any of the eggs while he tried to get her
away from them.  He got his spell off just as he hoped, but it cost him the
chance to try to avoid her breath.
He heard a uniform rise of noise from the crowd before it was drowned out by
the roar of the flame around him.  And fuckit was hot.  The fire ward he’d set
on himself kept him from any real harm, but it was still very uncomfortable. 
He threw himself out of the path of the flame just as he felt the ward flicker
and die. 
He was nearly blinded as the light of the flame died away, so he didn’t realize
that she’d lunged for him until she was almost on top of him.  He did the only
thing he could and let his knees give out, dropping to the ground a hair’s
breadth beneath her snapping jaws that he really wasn’t sure would have been
properly deterred from puncturing him fatally despite his remaining ward.
Rolling, he spun back to his feet, but made it only a step and a half before he
felt the impact of one of her viciously clawed forefeet.  It slammed into his
back and left side with the kind of force he’d imagine he’d feel if he’d been
hit by a car.  It lifted him off his feet and he felt himself become airborne
for one endless moment before he crashed into the rocky ground of the arena. 
He tumbled over and over half a dozen times before he was able to right
himself.  He groaned as he struggled to push himself back to his feet, but he
didn’t think anything was broken or otherwise badly damaged.  That ward was
amazing, but he didn’t know how much longer it would last, so he really hoped
he could avoid taking another hit like that.
Any further thought on the matter was suspended when he managed to gain his
feet and realized that the dragon was bearing down on him again.
Now or never, he thought as he snapped up his wand, knowing that it would be
virtually impossible to run clear of the beast before she was upon him. 
Pulling on his magic more strongly than he ever had, he bellowed out a
“STUPEFY!”.
Then he watched in mild disbelief as Plan B actually worked.  It normally took
at least a dozen dragon handlers casting the spell simultaneously to knock out
an adult dragon, much less a breed as large as the Hungarian Horntail.  The
idea that he’d be able to manage it single-handedly had been a long-shot at
best.  He’d thought it more likely that he’d be able to stagger her, if
anything.  He knew that he was powerful.  He’d figured that out when he’d
properly researched the Patronus spell this year and discovered that the
average corporeal patronus could drive off as many as three or possibly four
dementors at a time.  There must have been at least fifty of them last year. 
Despite that knowledge, he really hadn’t had much more faith in the success of
this plan than he’d had for the accio to work.
Nevertheless, he found himself staring at the slumbering form of the mother
dragon as her unconscious form slid to a halt less than three meters away from
him.
He realized then that the arena was silent.
Clearing his throat quietly, Harry walked around the dragon at a measured pace
that he was able to maintain without his knees buckling.  There were definitely
a few seconds of dizziness after he cast that spell, and an unpleasant lethargy
pulling at his limbs that he’d never felt before. 
When he reached the nest, he banished the ward easily and bent to retrieve the
golden egg.
He turned back toward the judges once it was in his hand.  When there was no
response from the announcer or the audience, he lifted it over his head.
Finally, Bagman spoke.  “And he has the egg!”
The crowd suddenly erupted in applause and Harry wearily lowered the egg to
clutch it to his chest as he made his way to where Pomfrey was simultaneously
glaring and waving him toward her.  He tuned out the sound of the crowd and
tried to ignore Bagman’s ecstatic recap.  “He stunnedthe dragon! 
Singlehandedly!”
Madam Pomfrey quickly got him onto a bed in the infirmary tent and he was
asleep before she cast the first diagnostic spell.
===============================================================================
 
10 December 1994
“Hey, Luna,” Harry said conversationally as the loopy Ravenclaw sat down next
to him in Ancient Runes.  “Would you mind being my date to the Yule Ball?  Just
as friends?”
She gave him a bright, dreamy smile.  “I’d love to, Harry.  Thank you for
thinking of me.”
Harry snorted quietly in response.  “Who else would I think of?” he asked
rhetorically.  His only female friends were Luna and Hermione and Luna couldn’t
go unless she was invited by an upper year.  It hadn’t been a hard choice. 
Besides, he was pretty sure Hermione would like to have a real date to this
thing and he knew she didn’t fancy him any more than he fancied her.  As for
romantic interests, Harry was reasonably sure that he wasn’t ever going to
fancy any girl.  This theory had been reinforced a few weeks ago when he’d
happened upon Theo Nott and Su Li in a dark corner of the library in a
decidedly compromising position.  Despite the fact that Su was a perfectly
attractive girl, Harry had found himself giving much more attention to the way
Theo’s unbuttoned trousers rode dangerously low on his hips than the fact that
Su’s shirt was completely open in front.
===============================================================================
 
24 June 1995
Harry and Cedric looked at each other.  Cedric was considerably closer to the
cup.  Harry turned his ankle carefully and breathed a relieved sigh when he
realized the damage was no greater than a bruise.  Merlin, he loved that ward.
Harry and Cedric both got to their feet, eyeing each other warily.  Harry
glanced between the other boy and the cup.  He didn’t need the fame or the
money he would get by winning and he hadn’t wanted anything to do with this
tournament.  If he won, he’d probably cement the hatred of Hufflepuff House for
life.  Still…  He’d nearly died in this stupid tournament.  Numerous times. 
He’d be damned if he wasn’t going to at least try to win when he was this
close.
So he threw a smirk at the other boy and teasingly offered, “Race ya.”
Cedric looked at him incredulously.  He was twice as close to the cup.  There
was virtually no way Harry would overtake him, particularly considering that
Cedric had about a foot of height on him.  After a moment looking conflicted,
he shook his head.  “No,” he said resolutely.  “You take it.  You’ve saved my
neck twice in here.  You deserve it.”
Harry pursed his lips.  If Cedric were a Slytherin, this would be an obvious
trap to get him to let down his guard and turn his back to the other boy. 
Considering that he was a Hufflepuff, that was unlikely but not impossible. 
That cowardly little rat, Wormtail had been a Gryffindor, after all.  He’d be
an idiot to assume that everyone was a perfect cutout of their House Values.
“Come on, Potter,” Cedric prompted when Harry didn’t respond right away. 
“You’ve done better than me on every task andyou’ve saved me twice.  Besides,
you told me about the dragons or I’d never have made it through the First
Task.  You deserve that cup way more than me.  You stunned a dragonfor Merlin’s
sake!  Everyone knows you’re the most powerful wizard of our generation andthe
last one.”
Harry grimaced slightly, but couldn’t really refute any of those claims.  Ever
since the First Task, Harry had been labeled the most powerful wizard of his
generation.  The only people anyone compared to his power were Dumbledore and
Voldemort.  Harry and Hermione had done some research and figured out that it
was likely true that he was in the top three most powerful wizards in Britain.
“I’d feel better if you made me work for it,” he couldn’t help but grumble.
Cedric grinned at that.  “I kind of figured you’d have taken me out the second
I turned around, Potter.  I’d rather surrender graciously, thanks.”
Harry smirked at him and gave a conceding nod as he walked passed the other boy
toward the cup.  He kept a very careful focus on the Hufflepuff once he was at
his back, but he lived up to his House name and didn’t try anything.
Harry grabbed the cup and his eyes widened when he felt the hook behind his
navel.
He landed hard and looked around warily to realize that he was no longer on
Hogwarts grounds.  In fact, judging by the missing mountains anywhere on the
horizon, he’d traveled a very long way, probably hundreds of kilometers.  He
just had time to realize that he was in a graveyard, and then he heard a
whisper behind him.  He spun around in time to take the bright red stunner in
the face and the world went black.
===============================================================================
 
1 July 1995
“Potter, let go.”
Harry shook his head, unable to even consider loosening his hold on his
savior.  After an endless week as Voldemort’s “guest”, Snape had finally gotten
Harry out.  Snape had found him in his cell.  McNair had been…  He’d had Harry
pinned to the floor, his heavy, sweaty body holding him in place, moving over
him.  The pain that burned in his arse and shot up his back was barely noticed
after everything he’d been through that week. 
Then, suddenly, there was a gush of something wet over his back and then McNair
was gone.  He’d looked back and Snape had been there.  McNair’s throat had been
cut and Snape was just tossing away his body like so much rubbish, bloody knife
still in hand.  Then he’d stepped forward, ignored Harry’s instinctive flinch,
and scooped him into his arms.  “I’m getting you out of here, Potter,” he’d
said, his voice tight, but lacking the loathing it typically contained whenever
he spoke to Harry.  “Can you hold on?  I need my wand hand free.”
Harry had nodded and locked his arms and legs around his professor, ignoring
his nakedness and clinging to the only tangible hope he’d had in the lifetime
that had passed since he’d touched that cup.
At some point, after they’d apparated away, Snape had draped his cloak around
Harry’s naked body and probably used a sticking charm because it was clinging
improbably to his back.
“Potter,” Snape said again, his voice strangely gentle.  “Let go, Harry. 
You’re safe.”
Harry understood the words, but he couldn’t do it.  “Can’t,” he managed to gasp
because he truly could not make himself let go.
The body beneath him sighed, and then Harry was eased back just a bit and the
cool lip of a small glass bottle was pressed to his lips.  “Drink, Harry,” the
gentle voice said.  “It’s Dreamless Sleep.  Drink.”
And Harry did.  With a chocked off sob, he put his faith in Snape to keep him
safe, and swallowed the potion.
===============================================================================
 
2 August 1995
“EXPECTO PATRONUM!”
Harry stared in a sort of awed disbelief as he watched the dementor driven
away, not by the stag that represented his dad, but by a massive, rather
terrifying cat. Though it was brilliant silvery white as were all patroni, he
was pretty sure that it was a panther and it took no more than a fraction of a
second to figure out the cause of the change.
The panther was stealthy and deadly in a way that was very much Snape.  Snape,
the man who had rescued Harry in his darkest hour, revealing his true
allegiance in the process.  Harry hadn’t seen Snape since the man had poured a
vial of Dreamless Sleep down his throat.  He’d woken in the hospital wing and
he hadn’t left it until after everyone else had already left for the summer. 
After questioning him about all the horrid details of his incarceration,
Dumbledore had personally escorted him back to Privet Drive.
Dudley had been teasing Harry all summer about the things he’d shouted in his
sleep.
“…please, no! Please, it hurts.  No, don’t…”
He’d woken shaking with tears on his face nearly every night, and hearing
Dudley parrot those words back at him… the very words he’d never allowed to
escape him when they’d been hurting him…  Harry had come perilously close to
killing Dudley several times this summer.  He’d drawn his wand and very nearly
used it the first time.  Another time, Dudley had taunted him in the kitchen
and Harry had caught himself in a disturbingly enjoyable fantasy of putting the
knife he was washing to a more constructive use.
Now, he turned toward where his cousin was held at the mercy of the dementor. 
He saw the glowing speck of soul hovering between them as he had once seen with
Sirius, and… he hesitated.  It was only a second or two before he realized what
he was doing and quickly sent his patronus to Dudley’s aid.
Like it was slow motion, he watched the speck of light vanish into the
dementor’s mouth a moment before his patronus was able to drive it away and for
a long moment, he could only stare in disbelief at the breathing, but lifeless
body of his cousin.
===============================================================================
 
31 August 1995
“Did you get…?”  Hermione looked at the Prefect badge in Harry’s hand and
squealed excitedly.  “Me too, Harry!  Me too!”
Harry huffed a quiet laugh and dropped the badge back into his envelope,
ignoring the way Ron was glaring jealously from across the room.  They’d called
a truce after the First Task, but their friendship had never recovered from the
blow of Ron turning his back on Harry about the Triwizard thing.  They’d
already been at odds because Harry had been ignoring him so much in favor of
studying.  It had been almost distressingly easy to focus on his studies and
let three years of friendship just drift away.
He gave Hermione a small smile.  It was the most he’d managed since the Third
Task.  “Good for you, Hermione, but really… Anyone who didn’t know it would be
you is deluded.”
She rolled her eyes at him, but didn’t seem capable of mitigating her enormous
grin.  “Well, of course I was sure it would be you, as well, Harry.  I mean,
honestly, you’re competing with me for top marks in every class that we share.”
Harry just shrugged.  He was glad that Hermione was happy, but he couldn’t
quite make himself care whether or not he was prefect.  Most things were hard
to care about these days.  Between what had happened after the Third Task and
the fact that he’d just stood there and let that dementor kill Dudley…  Little
things like school and drama with Ron just felt so petty.  He did his best to
act like he was less affected than he really was.  Hermione and Sirius didn’t
need to worry about him any more than they already did.
“Good morning, Professor,” Hermione said suddenly, and Harry stifled a flinch
when her eyes settled over his shoulder and he realized that he’d let someone
get behind him without realizing it.  He hadn’t been able to tolerate anyone at
his back since the Third Task.  He quickly turned and moved to stand next to
Hermione so that he was facing McGonagall and Ron was well off to his other
side.
“Miss Granger.  Mr. Potter,” she acknowledged with a nod.  “Mr. Weasley, would
you excuse us for a few minutes?” she asked, though it didn’t sound much like a
request.
Ron huffed as he left, but didn’t dare say anything in front of McGonagall. 
Harry really wished he could room with Hermione instead, but he figured that
was pretty unlikely.
Professor McGonagall closed the door before turning to face them again. She
pulled a pair of scrolls from her pocket and held one out and offer to each of
them. “We need to discuss your timetables for the coming year,” she said
stiffly.
Harry opened his scroll and scanned down what he realized was a list of
available slots in his timetable.
“We can’t use the time-turners this year?” Hermione asked, aghast. “But it’s
our OWL year.”
“I am sorry, Miss Granger, but no,” McGonagall said, her lips pinched tightly
but her eyes shone with remorse. “After Mr. Potter lost his time-turner last
year, it was decided that time turners will not be permitted for students
beneath NEWT level.”
Hermione’s jaw dropped and her eyes burned with outrage, “Harry didn’t lose his
time-turner, Professor! It was stolen from him. When he was kidnapped.”
“Let it go, Hermione,” Harry interjected mildly. “There is nothing we or
Professor McGonagall can do about it,” he pointed out firmly.
McGonagall nodded her agreement, but she didn’t look happy about it. “I am well
aware of those circumstances, Miss Granger. Unfortunately, Mr. Potter is
correct. I will need your revised class selections at the welcoming feast
tomorrow evening. Have a good day,” she added stiffly before vacating the room.
Hermione growled furiously as the door closed and stomped her foot in
frustration. “I cannot believe they are doing this to us!”
“I can,” Harry said with a roll of his eyes. He didn’t like it. Not at all. The
thought of going through the new school year without the convenience and
comfort of his time-turner was more than a little unsettling. The Turner hadn’t
helped him after the third task because they found it and taken it away from
him. Hermione had been accosted by Crouch Jr. in the course of his escape from
the school during the third task. She been unconscious for a day and a half,
negating any possibility that she could’ve used her time-turner to warn Harry
that something was going to happen. Nevertheless, it would have been a comfort
to have that little bit of insurance against something happening this year.
“I was abducted, Hermione,” he pointed out, pleased that his voice only wavered
slightly on that dreaded word. “I spent a week with Voldemort and his Death
Eaters. I barely made it out of there, and the ministry told me that I didn’t
know what I was talking about. They said I’d been captured by rogue former
Death Eaters. They said I had been traumatized. That I didn’t know what I was
talking about. They called me a liar. The daily Prophet made me into a running
joke. The dementors came into my neighborhood they took Dudley’s soul and
almost got mine, too. And the Ministry wanted to expel me for defending
myself.”
Harry shook his head, and tried to shake off some of his gravity when he
realized that Hermione was staring at him with that sort of horrified pity that
he hated so much. He sighed briskly and shook his head. “My point is that the
Ministry isn’t going to protect us like they’re supposed to. They would love
nothing more than throw me in Azkaban, and probably you to if you put up a
fight about it. So no, I don’t see them letting us have time turners this year.
We should just be glad they’re letting us go to Hogwarts at all.”
With that, Harry sat down on his bed and turned his attention to the parchment
McGonagall had given him. He needed to cut down his class list for this year.
Muggle studies was easy to drop. The only thing he learned in that class was
that wizards didn’t know very much about Muggles. Divination was an easy choice
as well. He’d only hung onto the class for Ron’s sake, and as they were no
longer on particularly friendly terms he felt no obligation to retain it this
year. That left his electives at Care of Magical Creatures, and fourth year
Ancient Runes and Arithmancy in addition to his core classes. He was certain
that he wouldn’t actually be missing those two classes, but he would certainly
be missing the time-turner.
Chapter End Notes
     I know I skipped the second task. His hostage was Luna if you’re
     curious. I didn’t feel like there was enough of interest to write
     about in that task and I’ve just read too many dozens of other
     renditions of the tasks to be that interested in writing another one.
***** Chapter 3 *****
9 September 1995
Harry stared in disbelief at the woman who had just ordered him to copy lines
with what he now recognized as a blood quill.  He’d read about them, but he’d
never seen one up close before.  He knew that they were used to sign magically
binding documents in your own blood, but that was about it.  Sadly, he’d never
given any real thought to them when he’d been reading.  Of course, he’d
imagined them as a simple magical tool, not a torture device.
“Yes?” the horrible woman smiled widely, clearly just waiting for an excuse to
make his life even more difficult.
“What if I refuse?” he asked tightly, barely managing to keep his tone
somewhere in the realm of civil.
If anything, his question caused her horrible amphibian smirk to broaden,
“Refusing to submit yourself to emplaced disciplinary measures is grounds for
expulsion, Mr. Potter,” she simpered even as malice burned in her beady eyes.
Harry nodded slowly, his eyes returning to the parchment containing the single
line written in his blood.  He didn’t doubt for a minute that it would happen,
too.  With the ministry’s current attitude toward him, they’d absolutely
lovethe excuse to expel him.  He doubted he’d even get a trial this time.
Taking a deep breath, Harry put the quill to the parchment again.  He
controlled his wince this time.  The bitch was taking far too much pleasure
from watching him inflict injury on himself.  He would not give her the
satisfaction of seeing how much it was hurting him.
Sometime later, when he was finally permitted to leave, Harry went directly to
McGonagall’s office.  This was still a school, surely it wasn’t permissible to
torture students.  No, it wasn’t the Cruciatus or any of Bellatrix’s more
creative methods, but she was forcing him to repeatedly inflict pain upon
himself while she watched with sick pleasure in her eyes.  He felt that he knew
enough about torture at this point in his life to accurately categorize it.
The conversation with McGonagall lasted less than a minute and left Harry
feeling a stirring of betrayal similar to what he’d felt last year when he’d
learned that he could have gotten out of the Triwizard Tournament had
Dumbledore actually cared about protecting him.  He wasn’t sure if McGonagall
knew what Umbridge had made him do, but he got the distinct impression that she
didn’t wantto know.  She didn’t want to hear it.  He understood that she was
worried about her job what with the bitch haunting all the teachers, but
McGonagall was a Head of House.  Wasn’t she supposed to worry about the
students first?
Feeling bitter and terribly alone, Harry headed directly for the lower dungeons
and Salazar’s library.  There was a lot of material in the Dark Arts there. 
While he wasn’t normally one to condone using the Dark Arts against others,
Umbridge more than had it coming.  She was a scourge upon the wizarding world. 
He didn’t know if she was a Death Eater or just in line with their ideals on
some things, but either way, she was out to do harm and clearly crazy enough to
torture children that were under her care.  And it wasn’t just what she felt
she had to do either.  It was disgustingly obvious that she was enjoyingit. 
Whatever he was going to do to protect himself and the other children from her…
he was uncomfortably comfortable with it being permanent in nature.
His conscience twinged at the mere idea that he was capable of doing something
like that, not in the heat of battle or desperate self-defense, but to coolly
and methodically plot it out…  It wasn’t something that he particularly liked
knowing about himself.
At the same time…
Voldemort was alive.  Harry was very high if not number one on his hit list. 
There was no getting out of this without either dying or killing, he was sure. 
If he wanted to live, he was going to have to learn to take life.
On his walk down, he tried to remind himself that soldiers were killers and
they weren’t monsters.  Their superiors who decided where to send them and when
– they weren’t evil either.  Killing, by itself, was not an act of evil.  If
you were defending an innocent, killing became a good thing.  If you were
defending a nation, killing became an obligation, almost.
Stood in the center of Salazar’s library, Harry took a deep breath and let it
out slowly.  Murder was a selfish act.  Murder was killing for your own
reasons.  He would say that murder was defined by killing illegally, but that
wasn’t quite right either.  Not when your government was as fucked up as the
British Ministry of Magic.  A government that let its leader get away with
summary executions.  A government that sanctioned the torture of school
children was not one on which anyone should base a definition of morality.
Yeah, maybe Harry didn’t have any right to be deciding who should live and who
should die, but someonehad to do it.  He didn’t see anyone else ready to defend
him and any other student unfortunate enough to end up with a detention under
that bitch.  And it wasn’t just the students in danger.  She also hated all
manner of magical creatures.
Honestly, Harry wasn’t too impressed with the wizarding world as a whole right
now.  The majority of them believed the libelous character assassination of the
Daily Prophet.  He was getting it better under control now, but it still burned
something furious every time someone called him a liar or looked at him like he
was crazy.  After the hell he’d been through…  With the memory clearly burned
into his mind of staring into those horrible red eyes while under the Cruciatus
or writhing under Bellatrix’s knife or with one of those beastsperched over
him, driving into him, shredding his soul one thrust at a time…
He forced his mind to stop and concentrated solely on taking slow, deep
breaths.
Umbridge got the same look in her eyes when she watched him hurt himself as
what Voldemort and the Death Eaters wore while they watched him tortured.  That
right there was honestly enough to make him want to kill her, and what bothered
him most was how little he really thought it would bother him.
===============================================================================
 
9 October 1995
“I think we ought to elect a leader,” Hermione interrupted right after Harry
started talking.
He took a breath and tried not to snap at her.  She was most certainly his best
friend and one of his only friends at the moment.  Happily, Luna hadn’t cared
any more about the Prophet’s defamation of him than she’d ever cared about his
being Harry Potter, so he had a total of two friends.  He wasn’t going to lose
one of them just because he couldn’t control his urge to lash out ala Snape.
“Harry’s leader,” Cho piped up at once and Harry restrained a wince.  As far as
he knew, she was still dating Cedric, but lately she’d been looking at him in a
way that made him a bit uncomfortable.
“Yes, but I think we ought to vote on it properly,” Hermione said reasonably. 
“It makes it formal and it gives him authority.  So.  Everyone who thinks Harry
ought to be our leader?”
Every hand went into the air, even that snob Zacharias Smith, which was good
because Harry had been of a mind to kick out anyone who hadn’t raised their
hands.  Hermione had talked him into doing this to help them learn and he’d be
damned before he put up with them fighting him every step of the way.
“Right…  Thanks,” he smiled tightly, fighting down the ever-present need to
avoid attention.  He’d gotten a little better at it since coming to Hogwarts,
but the ingrained sense that attention meant ridicule, punishment, and/or pain
was a powerful one that the Dursleys had instilled in him.  “Well, then…  What,
Hermione?” he snapped when she lifted her hand yet again.  Really, they were
going to have to talk beforehand next time about what she wanted to cover
because it was seeming a lot like he was leader in name only at the moment.
“I also think we ought to have a name,” she said brightly.  “It would promote a
feeling of team spirit and unity, don’t you think?”
“Can we be the Anti-Umbridge League?” Angelina put in hopefully.
“Or the Ministry of Magic Are Morons Group?” suggested Fred cheekily.
“I was thinking,” Hermione frowned at Fred, “more of a name that didn’t tell
everyone what we were up to, so we can refer to it safely outside meetings.”
“The Defense Association?” Cho suggested.  “The D.A. for short, so nobody knows
what we’re talking about?”
Cedric nodded thoughtfully before smiling proudly at his girlfriend and looping
his arm over her shoulders.
“Yeah, the D.A.’s good,” said Ginny.  “Only, let’s make it stand for
Dumbledore’s Army, because that’s the Ministry’s worst fear, isn’t it?”
There was a good deal of appreciative murmuring and laughter at this, but Harry
had to interject.
“Funny,” he agreed, “but we’re not an army, and we’re definitely not
Dumbledore’s.”
Quiet gasps were the result of that last statement.
Harry sighed and shook his head, “Yeah, I know what everyone thinks about my
relationship with Dumbledore, but it’s not true.  The only time I ever talk to
him is when I’ve nearly died, honestly.  More importantly, has Dumbledore
helped anyone in this room this year?”
“He made her let Gryffindor play Quidditch!” Angelina pointed out.
“You said yourself that you went to McGonagall and only guessed that she might
have taken it to Dumbledore,” Harry countered.  “Look, I’m not saying that
Dumbledore’s a bad person.  I’m just saying that he doesn’t hold my particular
loyalty and if you all name this group Dumbledore’s Army, then you can ask him
to teach it, because I won’t,” he said firmly. 
The murmuring this time was of a decidedly grimmer nature.  It was Cedric who
spoke up.  “Harry’s right,” he nodded.  “We don’t owe anything to Dumbledore.” 
Cedric had put all of his Hufflepuff loyalty into supporting Harry in all
possible ways after what had happened during the Third Task.  Cedric felt like
it was his fault that had happened to Harry because he’d been the one to make
Harry take the cup instead of doing it himself.  Harry hated talking about it,
so he’d let it go without much arguing after assuring the older boy that he
didn’t blame him.
“All in favor of the Defense Association?” Hermione posed.  She did a quick
count of hands and nodded, “That’s a majority.  Motion passed!”
She pinned the piece of paper with all of their names on it on the wall and
wrote DEFENSE ASSOCIATION across the top in large letters.
“Right,” Harry nodded.  “Was that all, Hermione, or is there anything else
you’d like to get done right off the bat?” he asked politely but with just
enough of a wry lilt to make his point.
She blushed and shook her head quickly, “No.  That was all.”
He nodded again.  “All right, then.  First, I was thinking we should work on
Expelliarmus.  You know, the Disarming Charm.  I know it’s pretty basic, but
I’ve found it really useful-“
“Oh, please,” said Zacharias, rolling his eyes and folding his arms.  “I don’t
think Expelliarmus is exactly going to help us against You-Know-Who, do you?”
Harry frowned and bit down on his temper.  “How many times have you faced
Voldemort, Smith?” he posed, resisting the urge to roll his eyes when Smith
flinched along with everyone else at the name.  “I’ve faced him threetimes,
since I started at Hogwarts.  I’ve faced a load of Death Eaters, too.  Do try
to remember that Voldemort isn’t the only one you might find yourself
fighting.  If you domeet Voldemort, do yourself a favor, and don’t fight.  Run
away.  That is the only sane response to meeting that man.  Trust me.
“Now, the Disarming Charm removes your opponent’s greatest weapon – his wand. 
Manage that, and most of the battle’s over.  Anyone here who thinks this basic
implement of dueling is beneath them may leave now,” he turned just a little to
hold out an arm toward the door.
No one moved and Smith kept his mouth shut this time.
===============================================================================
 
18 December 1995
Harry spent the night sitting on his bed at Grimmauld Place, leaning against
the cold metal bars of the bedstead, forcing himself to stay awake and trying
to think productively.
He’d been the snake.  He’d had a vision – a realvision.  There was no guessing
and no denying.  He’d seen it in his sleep and it had really been happening at
the same time.
What the hell did that mean?
He clenched his shaking hands into fists and fought the urge to scream in pure
frustration.  Why?  Why did these things always happen to him?
A shudder wracked his body and he quickly jumped out of the bed and moved to
curl himself into a ball beneath the desk instead.  He turned his head away
from the room and hunched into the corner.  He hated himself for being
comforted by dark, cramped places, but he was.  Too many years he’d sought
solace in the cupboard under the stairs.  He did fine out in the real world
most of the time, but when he was really, really stressed, the only thing that
could make him comfortable was something that reminded him of a boot cupboard.
He shook those thoughts and settled his forehead on his knees, concentrating on
his breathing and trying to use his shaky occlumency shields to organize his
mind into something more coherent.  He mentally reviewed all the magical theory
he’d ever learned and compared it against what had happened to him.  Visions of
any kind were classed as Divination.  Contrary to the worthless class at
Hogwarts, Divination was notonly about seeing the future.  It had to do with
see anything, past, present, orfuture by way other than the six natural
senses.  Visions, scrying, dowsing, reading cards or tea leaves, or gazing into
crystal balls, it was all Divining – the Art of Sight beyond Sight, as one book
had described it.
The problem, of course, was that there was nothing in Divination that Harry had
ever heard so much as hinted at that could put you into the very mind of
another person – or animal, in this case.  It didn’t work that way.  Not
without some pre-established connection.  It was possible to look through the
eyes of your bonded familiar, for example, but not someone else’s.
All of the magical theory Harry had studied since turning eleven, including
Salazar’s library and the many, many, many hours spent studying with the time-
turner last year, it all told him that what had happened a few hours ago was
impossible.
Unless…  Unless there was a pre-existing connection.  He couldn’t be connected
to Nagini.  Yes, he was a parselmouth, but that wasn’t a connection, merely a
similarity of language.  But Voldemort…  Nagini was Voldemort’s bound familiar,
Harry was sure.  If Harry had a strong enough connection to Voldemort it was
possible…  He shuddered at the unwanted conclusion. 
Dumbledore had said in Harry’s second year that Voldemort had accidentally
given Harry some of his magic when he’d tried to kill him.  That that was why
Harry was a parselmouth.  But then, this was Dumbledore, a man who had proven
his willingness to lie to Harry’s face and send him into extremely dangerous
situations for his own unfathomable reasons.  It was all too easy to imagine
the old man had lied about this, too.
He was connected to Voldemort.  Still connected in some manner.  It was the
only thing that made sense.  It explained the visions he’d been having
periodically since Voldemort’s resurrection.  Since before, actually.  Since
he’d gotten into the homunculus, they’d been coming.  But they’d never been
proven before.  Harry had been all too eager to tell himself that it was just
nerves.
“Idiot,” he whispered disparagingly.  He mocked the wizarding world for their
ostrich-like tendencies in letting themselves believe he was a liar rather than
facing an uncomfortable truth.  But he wasn’t any better.  Well, he
hadn’tbeen. 
No more, he promised himself.  No more lying to himself.  If he had to learn
how to properly brew Calming Draught and keep some on him at all times, he was
going to face the truth from now on.  No matter how terrifying or painful it
may be.
===============================================================================
 
11 January 1996
“Harry, dear,” Mrs. Weasley said, poking her head into the library where Harry
and Hermione were curled up on opposite ends of the sofa with their noses in
dusty old books.  After he’d explained to her about exactly what had happened
and what he feared it meant, they’d both been scouring the Black Library for
any hint of what the connection might be.  Considering that it involved
Voldemort, they both suspected the answer might be extremely Dark, and
therefore this library was their best resource.  “Could you come down to the
kitchen?  Professor Snape would like a word with you.”
Submersed in his struggle to understand the complex concepts expressed in the
archaic language, it took Harry a few seconds to process what she’d said, but
when he had, his head snapped up in surprise.  “Professor Snape?” he asked,
wondering vaguely at the way his heart had started pounding at the mention of
the man wanting to speak with him.  It wasn’t as though he hadn’t seen the man
plenty since he’d rescued him from an extremely slow and painful death at the
hands of Voldemort and his minions.  He saw him every Potions class and in the
Great Hall as well as passing him randomly in the halls.
This would be the first time the man had sought him out though.  He mentally
shook himself.  He was virtually certain that this had nothing to do with
that.  If Snape had had something to say about it, he’d have done it long
since, Harry was certain.  He wasn’t the sort of man to mince words nor to
spare anyone’s feelings.
“Yes, dear,” Mrs. Weasley smiled gently.  “In the kitchen.  He’d like a word.”
Harry met Hermione’s eyes for a moment before noting his page and closing the
book gently.
“Do you have any idea what he wants?” Hermione asked quietly as Mrs. Weasley
withdrew from the room.
Harry shook his head, “Not a clue.”
“Well… you’d better go and see.  Do you want me to come with you?” she offered.
“No.  Thanks.”  He wasn’t sure what else to say about it, so he left without
another word, feeling Hermione’s eyes on his back until he was out the door. 
He made his way down to the kitchen and took a single bracing breath before
stepping inside.
He found Sirius and Snape both seated at the long kitchen table, glaring in
opposite directions.  The silence between them was heavy with mutual dislike. 
A letter lay open on the table in front of Sirius.
“You wanted to see me?” Harry asked quietly by way of announcing his presence.
“Sit down, Potter,” Snape said perfunctorily.
“You know,” Sirius said loudly, leaning back on his rear chair legs and
speaking to the ceiling, “I think I’d prefer it if you didn’t give orders here,
Snape.  It’s my house, you see.”
An angry flush rose on Snape’s pale face and Harry clenched his jaw to keep
himself from snapping at his godfather.  Sirius really had been better with
Snape since Snape had saved his life this last time, but not nearly as much as
Harry thought he should.  He sat himself heavily in the chair next to Sirius
and refused to look at the man.
“I was supposed to see you alone, Potter,” Snape drawled with a sneer at
Sirius, “but Black-“
“I’m his godfather,” Sirius snapped, louder than ever.
“Sirius!” Harry interjected, not sure if he was more annoyed or embarrassed by
his godfather’s behavior.  Honestly, Harry knew third years more mature than
this.
Both men looked at him sharply and Harry swallowed discreetly, trying not to
blush.  “If Professor Snape wants to talk to me alone, it’s fine,” he said to
Sirius as evenly as he could manage, trying to pretend like he couldn’t feel
his professor’s steely gaze boring into the side of his head.
“Harry!” Sirius sounded scandalized.  “I’m not going to leave you alone with
this greasy-“
“Sirius!” Harry snapped harshly this time, surging back out of his chair and
slamming his palm down against the table in front of the stubborn fool
masquerading as an adult.  “Professor Snape is notgoing to hurt me!  If you
truly can’t help yourself but to insult him, I’d prefer you did it outside my
hearing!  Now will you please leave so that the professor can say what he came
to say?”
Sirius stared at Harry with wide, shocked eyes that made Harry want to sigh in
sadness.  They’d had this discussion before.  More than once.  Sirius should
notbe so surprised that Harry didn’t hate his Potions professor.  He knew how
grateful Harry felt toward him and how intolerant he was of anyone speaking
poorly about him.  Or she should haveknown.  Harry was really afraid that
Sirius wasn’t going to recover from his time in Azkaban.  At least not without
professional help.
“Fine, Harry.  Sorry,” Sirius said, sulking out of the room in such a way that
he couldn’t have looked more like a kicked puppy if he’d been in his animagus
form.
“My, my, Potter.  Such stalwart defense of my honor.  However did I rate such
loyalty from the boy hero?” Snape sneered once the door had closed behind
Sirius.
Harry sighed and slid back into his chair.  As he’d learned to do since July,
Harry let Snape’s words slide over him.  Snape was always going to be a prickly
bastard, and Harry was fairly certain the man wouldn’t ever take well to having
anyone defend him.  Despite that, the professor’s words had come out sounding
much more mild than they used to.  He sounded almost amused rather than
disgusted or angered.  “I’m sorry, Professor,” Harry said quietly, dismissing
the subject of his godfather as he knew it was one that never failed to get
Snape’s back up.  “You wanted to see me?”
Snape’s eyes narrowed and he scrutinized Harry, but he allowed the subject to
be redirected.  “The headmaster has sent me to tell you, Potter, that it is his
wish for you to study Occlumency this term.”
Harry’s brow rose in surprise, but quickly fell again as he nodded.  “To keep
me from having any more visions?” he hazarded.
Snape blinked only once, but Harry thought he’d managed to surprise the man
anyway.  “You are familiar with the discipline of occlumency?” he posed.
Harry nodded, “I read about it last year.  Who will be teaching me?” he asked,
trying to keep the apprehension from coming through.  He was thrilled about the
chance to take real lessons.  He’d made some progress on his own, but without
anyone to challenge his barriers and thereby show him exactly how to do it, he
wasn’t ever going to be good enough to keep out Voldemort.
Snape raised an eyebrow and drawled almost challengingly, “I am.”
Harry sagged slightly in relief.  Snape was harsh with him, yes, but Harry
trusted him about as much as he trusted anyone besides Hermione.  Harry noticed
that Snape’s brow had drawn down as he studied Harry as though trying to define
him.  He cleared his throat uneasily and sat up a little straighter.  “Thank
you, sir,” he smiled a little because it felt like some recognition was
definitely necessary.  “I really appreciate you taking the time to help me.”
Snape blinked twice this time and he looked more annoyed than anything, but he
did give a single, sharp nod to acknowledge Harry’s words.  “I will expect you
at six o’clock on Monday evening, Potter.  My office.  If anybody asks, you are
taking remedial potions.  Nobody who has seen you in my classes could deny you
need them.”
“Yes, sir.  Thank you, sir,” Harry said again, easily brushing aside the minor
insult.  He really had gotten much better at Potions since third year.  He
thought he might even manage to get into NEWT potions, but Snape continued to
grade him more harshly than any other student, meaning that he was struggling
to scrape E’s in that class most of the time.
Snape lifted and eyebrow again and his lips twitched as though he was
suppressing a smile, “Yes, Potter.  You said that,” he said dryly before
sweeping out the door.
===============================================================================
 
13 January 1996
When Harry stepped into Snape’s office for their first Occlumency lesson, his
eyes were immediately drawn to the wide basin on the professor’s desk.  It was
Dumbledore’s pensieve, he recognized.  He’d seen it in his office.  He had to
wonder what it was doing here.
“Shut the door behind you, Potter.”
Harry did as he was told before turning back to see his professor had moved
into the light. 
“Well, Potter, you know why you are here.  The headmaster has asked me to teach
you occlumency,” Snape said succinctly.  “To begin, I would like you to tell me
what you know of it already.”  He glared at Harry in anticipation.
Harry took a breath and nodded, “First, professor, I thought we should exchange
oaths.”  He kept his shoulders square and his face solemn but polite.  He
wanted his professor to take him seriously, especially when it came to this. 
Because Harry didtrust Snape.  And he trusted that he was loyal to Dumbledore. 
That was what had him scared.
Snape’s customary frown deepened and for a long moment, he just stared at
Harry, who refused to fidget under the dark gaze.  “It appears you know more
than I suspected,” he said at last, then gave a slow nod.  “An exchange of
oaths would be acceptable.”  He leaned over his desk and quickly scribbled
something on a piece of parchment.  When he was finished, he waved his wand to
dry the ink, then extended it toward Harry.  “Will this wording suffice?”
Harry accepted the parchment and looked over the lines scratched in Snape’s
distinctive scrawl.
I, [full name], do swear that all that is learned or imparted in the process of
learning/instructing occlumency with [full name] shall remain as sacred and
secret between us two until and beyond death unless explicit permission to the
contrary is given directly from [full name] and none other. So mote it be.
It was taken directly from The Occluded Mind by Devarius MacDougal, a book
Harry had found in Sirius’ library last year.  “It’s good,” Harry nodded.
“Well?” Snape sneered when Harry just looked at him.  “After you, Mr. Potter.”
Harry just nodded and drew his wand.  He read through the wording one more time
to be sure he had it all perfect, then lifted his wand and recited it.  He knew
that occlumency training often resulted in memories from the trainer’s mind
being exposed as well, so he had no problem giving the reciprocal vow.  Snape
had just as much right to his privacy as Harry had, though he supposed that
might explain the presence of the pensieve if Snape hadn’t been planning on
exchanging oaths.
Harry handed the parchment back when he’d finished and Snape tossed it into the
fire before lifting his own wand and reciting the vow.
“Very well.  Now,Mr. Potter, if you would be so generous as to share with me
what you know of occlumency.  I’m sure the task isn’t overly difficult, even
for someone of your meager intellect.”
Harry suppressed the urge to roll his eyes.  Honestly, Snape seemed willfully
ignorant of the fact that Harry’s marks had been in the top ten of his class on
last year’s exams and top five in the end of term exams this year.  Only
Hermione, Malfoy, and Terry Boot from Ravenclaw had ranked above him.
Instead of talking back, he reminded himself – as he sometimes had to do
several times a day – of exactly what this man had done for him.  What he’d
saved him from.  Why he deserved nothing less than complete respect from Harry,
even when he felt like being a dick, which was admittedly almost all the time
he was around Harry.  “I’ve read The Occluded Mind by Devarius MacDougal,”
Harry admitted, “which had that vow in it.  I’ve also read The Darkest Shade,
Intermediate Occlumencyby Vane Stanis and Deception, One Man’s Journeyby Barney
Tells.  I started trying to teach myself occlumency last year.  Just before the
Tournament started, actually.  I know I’m not very good, yet.  I’ve never had
anyone to practice against besides…” his throat closed up on the rest of his
words and he gagged down a swallow.  Voldemort had torn his mind to shreds on a
daily basis that week.  Harry still didn’t know if the Dark Lord had been
looking for something or just tormenting him.
Snape just nodded, thankfully not requiring him to finish.  “The Dark Lord is
one of the most highly skilled Legilimens alive today,” he said quietly, his
dark eyes as intense as always as the bore into Harry.  “Though, as I hope
you’ve gleaned in all that reading, it is usually necessary for a legilimens to
be in the same room as his… victim… even to maintain eye contact…” he trailed
off and examined Harry for a long moment.  “The usual rules do not seem to
apply with you, Potter.  The curse that failed to kill you seems to have forged
some kind of connection between you and the Dark Lord.”
Harry swallowed hard and fought through another swallow as he dropped himself
into one of the chairs next to Snape’s desk.  He’d expected this.  He’d known
it, really.  It was the only explanation.  To hear someone else say it though… 
Dumbledore knew this, of course.  He was the one who’d ordered these lessons. 
He’d probably always known it, the bastard.  At least since second year, for
sure.
“The evidence suggests that at times when your mind is most relaxed and
vulnerable,” Snape continued in that quiet voice of his that somehow managed to
be even more unnerving than when he yelled, “when you are asleep, for instance,
you are sharing the Dark Lord’s thoughts and emotions.  The headmaster thinks
it inadvisable for this to continue.”
Harry snorted.  He really couldn’t help it.  Dumbledore had decided that it was
inadvisable for the Dark Lord to continue snooping around in Harry’s mind at
his leisure?  He’d gone ahead and decided that, had he?  Bloody wanker.
“He wishes me to teach you how to close your mind to the Dark Lord,” Snape
continue, though his voice had taken on an extra bite after Harry’s snort.
Harry swallowed the urge to sick up and inquired softly, “Does the headmaster
know why I saw through the eyes of the snake?”  Harry had his own suspicions
and he was certain that the headmaster did as well, but he was curious as to
whether he could learn what Dumbledore was thinking.
Snape eyed him, looking something between thoughtful and suspicious.  One of
his slim fingers rose to trace idly around his mouth, drawing Harry’s eyes to
the thin lips that he suddenly found unaccountably distracting.  “He believes,”
Snape said slowly as though weighing every word, “that that is where the Dark
Lord’s mind was at the time.  He believes that the Dark Lord was possessing the
snake at the time and so you dreamed you were inside it, too.  But this time,
he was aware of you.”
“Voldemort realized I was there?” Harry’s eyes widened.  He hadn’t realized
that.
“Do not speak his name!” Snape hissed viciously.
Harry blinked, realizing what he’d said.  He didn’t even think about it most of
the time, but he knew that Snape hated to hear it.  “I’m sorry, sir,” he said
genuinely.
He saw Snape swallow and look away as he recollected himself.  He turned his
gaze back to the pensieve between them on the desk and took a slow, deep breath
before picking it up and moving it to the cabinet.  “As we’ve exchanged oaths,
I do not believe this shall be necessary,” he said dismissively as he closed it
away, but his eyes were hard when he looked back at Harry, as though daring him
to prove him wrong.
“Yes, sir,” Harry said quietly for lack of anything else to say.
Snape nodded and stepped around his desk, gesturing for Harry to stand.  “I am
going to attempt to break into your mind,” he began softly.  “We are going to
see how well you resist.  I am aware of how well you resist the Imperius
Curse.  You will find that similar powers are needed for this.  Brace yourself,
now… Legilimens!”
Harry felt his rudimentary shields shatter embarrassingly quickly under the
assault, and though Snape was infinitely more gentle than Voldemort, the
reminder of that week he spent as the Dark Lord’s prisoner was still stark
enough to make him physically ill.
The fact that that had come instantly to mind meant that those were the
memories Snape was seeing.
Harry was lying naked and bruised on the floor in front of Voldemort,
surrounded by a ring of jeering Death Eaters.  His body was trembling
uncontrollably from the multiple rounds of Cruciatus he’d experienced in the
last few hours.  There was pain and humiliation and terror and helplessness,
but it had all drifted into the distance over the hours they’d tortured him. 
Now, he was mostly numb.  Waiting and hoping that Voldemort would soon grow
bored and decide to kill him so that it could be over.
“Walden, I believe it is your turn,” Voldemort crooned and Harry shifted his
eyes without moving his head to look at the beast of a man who would take him
next.  He closed his eyes as the man opened his robe and his trousers.  The
next thing he knew, large, hot hands were groping at him.
Harry came back to Snape’s office as his knees collided painfully with the
floor and his vision swam into focus just in time for him to see his own vomit
splatter across the stones between where his hands braced himself.
He was shuddering and gasping for air by the time he managed to cease trying to
gag up more that his stomach did not possess.  Snape silently vanished the
puddle of sick and Harry forced his violently trembling body to sit back on his
heels rather than collapsing to the floor as he wished.  The last thing he
wanted to be after that memory was lying on the floor while someone stood over
him, even if it was Professor Snape.
“I’m sorry, sir,” he breathed.  “I just need a minute.  I haven’t…  Haven’t let
myself think about that, since…  I’m sorry.”  He struggled to control the
violent tremors seizing his muscles and making it difficult to stay upright and
impossible to stand.
He blinked when a bottle was abruptly shoved into his face and flinched back
before he comprehended the writing on the bottle.  Calming Draught.  He
accepted it with a shaking hand and a whispered gratitude and quickly uncorked
the bottle to swig it down.
Almost immediately he felt the tremors begin to subside.  “Sorry, sir,” he
muttered again as he finally felt able to push himself back to his feet.
Snape waved a dismissive hand when Harry looked at him again.  “Your apologies
aren’t necessary, Potter.  It’s to be expected, in your case, I’m afraid.  I
rather doubt it will be the last time that happens.”
Harry shuddered again, pretty convinced that his professor was right about
that.  He wasn’t looking forward to more of this and he was certain that the
nightmares that were just starting to fade would be back with a vengeance after
this.  He reminded himself quickly that he trusted Snape and that he wanted to
learn this more than almost anything.  He wanted to be able to protect himself
from Voldemort.
With a slow, deep, calming breath, Harry urged his mind to clear of all emotion
so that he could properly focus.  That last time had caught him unaware with
just how strong the reminder of his time with Voldemort had been. 
===============================================================================
 
14 February 1996
“Hey, Harry!”
The summoned boy and his two companions paused on their way to the Three
Broomsticks.  They’d been wandering around for hours and were more than ready
to have a break and a butterbeer or three.
Cedric smiled as he jogged to catch up with them.  “Hey, can I talk to you for
a minute?” he asked Harry, then almost hesitantly added, “Alone.”
“Sure,” Harry nodded at once.  He couldn’t imagine what Cedric wanted, though
he imagined it must have to do with the DA because they didn’t have much else
to talk about.  “You guys go ahead.” He nodded to Luna and Hermione.
Though Hermione looked slightly hesitant, they left him alone.
“So?” Harry asked curiously as he turned his full attention to the older boy.
“Walk with me?” Cedric smiled hopefully, turning his body in the direction he
clearly wished to go.
Harry nodded and let Cedric lead him out of the village in the direction of the
school.  Had it been almost anyone else, Harry may have worried for a setup of
some kind, but Cedric Diggory was about as far from a Death Eater as it was
possible to get, and the boy didn’t have a dishonest bone in his body.  Add to
that the way he’d been practically fawning over Harry all year because he felt
guilty about the Third Task, and Harry was sure he had nothing to worry about.
“Did you actually want to talk or just take a walk in silence?” Harry joked as
they approached the Shrieking Shack with the other boy still having said
nothing.
Cedric chuckled a bit and for the first time he sounded somewhat nervous. 
“Yeah, I did.  I’m just… not quite sure how to start,” he admitted.
Harry nodded and backed off the humor in deference the other boy’s unease.  He
was starting to wonder if this had something to do with Cho.  Had Cedric
finally noticed the way she stared at Harry?  How she seemed to find excuses to
touch him whenever she got close enough?
Finally, when they stood just outside the shack, Cedric coughed a bit and
suggested, “Why don’t we sit down?”  A few flicks of his wand banished the snow
near the base of a tree, created a bubble of warmth around them, and
transfigured a stick on the ground into a comfortable blanket.
Harry made a mental note to learn those spells, because that was just too
convenient.
He joined the older boy on the blanket next to the tree and politely waited for
him to figure out how to say what he wanted to say.
Finally, Cedric just sighed heavily.  “Maybe it would be easier if I showed
you,” he finally decided on.  “Don’t curse me, okay?” he said with a nervous
smile.
Before Harry could figure out what the Hell he was talking about, Cedric had
quickly leaned forward and pressed his lips firmly against Harry’s for just a
moment before sitting back.
Harry blinked several times and tried to make sense of that.  Apparently,
Cedric wasn’t mad about Cho, but having the same problem, his mind sluggishly
supplied.  Harry had noticed that Cho liked him and he hadn’t been too pleased
with the fact.  He had managed to entirely miss the fact that Cedric apparently
liked him.  It had never even crossed his mind, though in hindsight, it was a
better explanation for his behavior than just the Third Task.
“Okay?” Cedric asked, cringing slightly as though he was expecting a blow, be
it physical or verbal.
“Ah… What about Cho?” Harry asked first because he was surprisingly not averse
to that kiss despite the fact that he hadn’t given much thought to his
sexuality before.  Again, hindsight was much clearer.  He’d never felt the
desire to let his eyes linger on any of the girls the way they sometimes did on
the boys.  He’d spent a lot of time notlooking at Oliver Wood in the locker
room after quidditch.  Fred and George had never done anything for him.  Maybe
he liked darker hair?
He felt like he’d just discovered an entirely new part of himself and he didn’t
quite know how to react.
“I broke up with her,” Cedric’s still hesitant voice drew Harry’s mind back
toward the present.  “She, ah…  I don’t think she’s actually been that
interested in me lately.  And honestly, I’ve been pretty distracted by you
recently.”
Harry couldn’t help but admire the way Cedric’s cheeks pinked at the
admission.  “Why me?” he found himself asking before he realized that the
question made him sound either extremely insecure, which he sadly was, or could
be construed as him fishing for compliments.
Cedric’s laugh was self-deprecating.  “Really?” he smiled his very pretty smile
and rubbed self-consciously at the back of his neck.  “I can’t really imagine
why anyone wouldn’tlike you, Harry,” he informed his lap.
Harry wasn’t entirely sure what to do with a shyCedric Diggory.  In all the
time he’d known the boy, Cedric had seemed so self-assured.
“Um… So you’re not taking this too badly, but you don’t seem to be taking it
too well either,” Cedric said uneasily after a moment of silence.  “You can
just tell me if you’re not interested.  I promise I won’t mention it again – to
anyone.”
“It’s not that,” Harry said rather more quickly than he’d planned.  “I…
honestly haven’t ever really thought about it before,” he admitted, fighting a
blush with his budding occlumency shields.  He was pretty sure he succeeded. 
He’d been doing very well against Snape lately.
“I could… try to help you figure it out,” Cedric said with a sly smile as he
slid himself slightly closer to Harry on the blanket.
Harry’s breath caught at the intrinsic promise in that statement.  “Okay,” he
managed to say fairly naturally.
Cedric’s answering smile was breathtaking as he leaned forward to press his
lips to Harry’s again.
It was… surprisingly pleasant, Harry acknowledged privately as he let his lips
respond however they felt was right.  Cedric’s lips were full and soft and warm
and just a little moist as they worked gently against his. 
Then he felt those tantalizing lips part and the barest brush of a hot, wet
tongue against his mouth.  Harry’s breath hitched as he opened his mouth to
return to favor and Cedric leaned forward a little more, deepening the kiss. 
Harry heard himself moan and couldn’t quite be arsed to care as the sweet
flavor of the other boy filled his mouth and the slick muscle snaked in to
massage against his, to flick teasingly against the roof of his mouth, and to
trace over his teeth.
Harry’s arms rose to wrap around the other boy.  He wasn’t sure if he wanted to
make sure he didn’t pull away, drag him closer, or if he just wanted to touch. 
He couldn’t quite bring himself to care about examining his intentions.
Cedric moaned then, too, and leaned forward, using his greater height to
maneuver Harry backward until he was resting on the blanket with the larger
body hovering millimeters above him.
And just like that, though he knew this was completely different, his mind
flashed back to his only previous experiences with a larger body lurking above
him like this.  His breath caught again, and not in a good way this time. 
Before he’d even had time to think of it, he’d twisted his leg for leverage and
roughly rolled them over so that Cedric was beneath him. 
“Gods, yes,” Cedric gasped and the needy, breathy two syllables were all that
was necessary to push away the flash of memory and return Harry to the much
more pleasant present.  Feeling more comfortable and even more aroused by the
new orientation, Harry leaned down this time and locked his mouth over the
willing one below him.
Another moan was torn from the throat beneath him and this one was so desperate
and wanton that an answering sound was wrenched from Harry instantly and his
hips bucked forward.  He almost whimpered as his suddenly straining erection
came into contact with his companion’s hip, providing glorious friction.
With a strangled sound of pleasure, Cedric bucked up and Harry changed the
angle of his leg between the older boy’s thighs to provide him the same relief
Harry was taking.
He had no idea how long that lasted as their tongues tangled and they thrust
into each other, so completely lost to the pleasure and novelty of the
situation, but it ended with strangled cries and a sticky mess in both their
pants.
Breathing heavily, Harry rolled himself off the other boy and spent a minute
staring up at the sporadic clouds and listening to Cedric’s heavy breathing
begin to slow.
“So what do you think?” Cedric asked at last.
Harry tipped his head to look at the madly grinning older boy and managed a
small grin of his own.  “Not bad,” he admitted.  “Not too bad at all.”
“So…?” he asked hopefully.
Harry sighed at the tone.  “I… I honestly don’t know if I can handle a
relationship, right now, Cedric,” he admitted regretfully.  Between Umbridge’s
detentions, Snape’s rather painful lessons in occlumency, Dumbledore’s eerie
aversion toward him, and the renewed nightmares that never let him get a full
night of sleep, Harry really didn’t feel like he had much to offer anyone.
“It wouldn’t have to be anything official,” Cedric responded almost
immediately.  “We don’t have to go on dates or anything.  Un-unless you want
to.  We could just… um… meet to relieve tension…”
Harry was powerless to prevent the snort of amusement at that turn of phrase,
“Cedric Diggory,” he said in mock chastisement, “are you suggesting we use each
other for sex?”  Harry felt a little uncomfortable saying such a thing out
loud, but his occlumency allowed him to pretend that he didn’t.  Watching the
golden boy of Hufflepuff blush right to the roots of his hair was completely
worth it.
“I… er…  I didn’t mean it like that,” he said weakly, though he was smiling.
“In that case,” Harry laughed at the older boy, “I suppose I could use the help
relieving tension.”
Cedric’s smile was brilliant in response to that, embarrassment evidently
forgotten.
Harry leaned up to kiss that irresistible smile.  He grimaced immediately after
as he was reminded of the mess in his pants.  Knowing that he wasn’t going to
walk back to Hogwarts like that, he drew his wand and pondered how
uncomfortable a scourgify would be on that particular body part.
“Abluo,” Cedric offered, apparently guessing his line of thought.  Before Harry
could ask for a clarification, the other boy gave his own wand a gentle twirl
over his groin and the wet patch vanished.  “It’s very gentle.  Good for…
sensitive areas,” he smirked.
Harry nodded and copied the spell on himself.  It was as simple as it looked
and he had no difficulty with it.  Now feeling wonderfully clean and dry once
more, Harry smiled as he sat up fully.  “Well, as… enjoyable as this has been… 
I really do have to get back to Luna and Hermione before they think I’ve been
kidnapped.”  He bit off the last word with a grimace and wished he hadn’t even
thought it.  Merlin, he was sick of fighting off flashbacks.
Cedric had apparently caught on just as quickly because he went rather pale and
said nothing as they both stood.  He removed the transfiguration on the
blanket, letting it revert to a stick, then dispelled the localized warming
charm, letting the icy February wind remind them they were outdoors.
“So, ah… Are we keeping this a secret?” Cedric asked cautiously, gesturing
vaguely between the two of them.
Harry grimaced a bit, “I don’t know.  Are you comfortable being speculated
about on the front page of the Prophet?”
Cedric grimaced, too, nodding his understanding, then took a breath and squared
his shoulders.  “I don’t care,” he said determinedly, “but I’ll understand if
you don’t want to.”
Harry shrugged and waved it away.  “It wouldn’t be all that different from the
garbage they’re writing about me now,” he admitted, “but with the way they’ve
been treating me this year, you’d better be ready to share every dirty secret
they can find about you with the whole wizarding world.”
“I don’t have any dirty secrets,” Cedric grinned, “but I suppose we could make
a few together if you want.”
Harry fought a blush and elbowed the other boy gently.  “Well, my image
couldn’t actually get much worse at this point,” he dismissed.
“So does that mean we’re notkeeping it a secret?” Cedric asked hopefully.
Harry gave it a bit of thought, but he really couldn’t be arsed to care what
the Prophet had to say about his love life.  They did enough speculating about
it even when he didn’t havea love life.  He was honestly a little worried about
how Cedric might take it, having not had to deal with that sort of thing before
– not on this scale, at least.  Saying that you didn’t care was something
different to actually not caring when the entire Great Hall was gossiping about
the latest bit of trash published in the national paper.  At least he knew that
homosexuality wasn’t the major taboo in the wizarding world that it was in the
muggle world.  Homosexuals were in the minority in the wizarding world as well,
but they didn’t inspire gawking and hatred like in the majority of the muggle
world.  So while it would be a scandal, it wouldn’t be thatbig of one.
“We’re not,” Harry relented.  He felt it was worth it when he was rewarded by
another of those blinding smiles.
“Does that mean I can do this in public?” Cedric posed, leaning down to steal a
steamy kiss.
Harry swallowed and tried to ignore his body’s immediate reaction.  It didn’t
seem to care that it had just been appeased like five minutes ago.  “I guess it
does,” Harry admitted.
“Can I walk you back to your friends?” Cedric posed.
Harry nodded with a small smile and they started back.  After a few seconds,
Cedric’s arm came to rest on his shoulders and Harry instinctively shrugged it
off.
“Not okay?” Cedric asked warily.
Harry gave him a facsimile of a smile and shook his head.  “Makes me feel
trapped,” he whispered and Cedric’s eyes widened.
“Not okay, then.  Got it,” he nodded immediately, thankfully asking no
questions.
Harry counted his blessings that the tale of exactly what he’d gone through
when he’d been captured hadn’t ever made public knowledge.  Though he’d told
the whole story to Dumbledore and Fudge right after he’d woken up in the
hospital wing, he hadn’t ever heard anyone else hint at the fact that he’d
been… that they’d done thatto him.  He hoped that Cedric was just thinking
about the fact that Harry had been held prisoner.
After walking for a bit in silence, just as they were entering the village
again, Cedric cautiously threaded his fingers through Harry’s.
Harry just gave them a small squeeze and allowed the contact, which made the
older boy smile.  Harry easily ignored the looks they got when people noticed
their linked hands.  Of course, everyone was interested in who Harry might
choose to hold hands with.  When they reached the Three Broomsticks, they
paused and faced each other, hands still together.
“I should leave you here,” Cedric admitted with a small grimace.  “I’m sure you
want to talk to your friends and I really do need to do some shopping before I
go back to school.”
Harry nodded, concealing his relief.  He liked Cedric and he reallyliked the
kissing and touching and everything, but he hadn’t been kidding when he’d said
he couldn’t handle a relationship.  He would be glad to get a little space to
think about how he felt about all of this.
“Can I kiss you?” Cedric asked very quietly so as to avoid being overheard by
the more than a few people pretending not to be watching them avidly.
In answer, Harry put his hand behind Cedric’s neck and dragged him down for a
brief but very nice kiss, silently cursing his short height and Cedric’s
freakish tallness at the same time.
Cedric was smiling that brilliant smile again as they parted.  “I’ll see you
later,” he grinned, finally wandering off when Harry released his hand.
Harry just shook his head with a slight smile and let himself into the Three
Broomsticks where a pair of wolf-whistles immediately informed him that the
twins were in there and had witnessed the kiss.  He quickly found Hermione and
Luna at a table in the back.  Hermione was smiling and blushing at the same
time, but she looked happy enough.  Luna didn’t look like she was paying any
attention to what was going on, but somehow Harry suspected that she’d known
before he had.  She had a tendency to do that.
With a sigh, he started toward them, glad that he’d learned how to control the
urge to blush and hoping they wouldn’t have too many invasive questions for
him.  He briefly lamented the fact that both of his best friends had to be
girls and therefore incomprehensible.
***** Chapter 4 *****
18 June 1996
“Oh, Gods, I needed this,” Harry breathed happily, bracing himself against the
wall of the well-warded empty classroom and tipping his head down so that he
could watch his cock disappear between Cedric’s gorgeous lips.  After a long
two weeks of OWLs, he was finally finished.  Cedric had finished his NEWTs a
few days ago, but as per their “arrangement” Cedric was very kindly helping him
to relieve the stress heaped on by the tests on top of everything else.
Though Harry was doing well in occlumency now, Snape was determined to continue
the lessons right up until Harry left for the year, pushing him harder and
harder every time.  Dumbledore wouldn’t so much as glance at him and Harry
wasn’t sure if he should be grateful for the lack of attention or unnerved
about the reason for which the old man might be avoiding him so stridently. 
Now he wasn’t in the school at all anymore.  Umbridge was as sadistic as ever,
though he’d gotten better at avoiding her detentions as his growing skill with
occlumency allowed him to control his temper better.  Perhaps most unnerving of
all, however, was Voldemort.  Though Harry was no longer subject to visions
from the Dark Lord’s mind, he couldn’t help the feelings of frustration and
impatience that had been steadily building in the back of his mind.  It was
enough to leave him permanently on edge.
Except, of course, for when Cedric helped him to forget everything but how
wonderful he could feel.  The older boy had been as good as his word, expecting
nothing “couply” from Harry over the last few months despite being open in
their affections and their increasingly physical relationship.  Harry had
officially lost his virginity last month.  He’d “topped” of course.  He still
couldn’t handle being underneath Cedric and he couldn’t even consider taking it
in the arse without feeling panicky.  Luckily, Cedric seemed exceedingly happy
to “bottom”, so it hadn’t been a problem.
The worst part of being with Cedric so far had been the one day Snape had
gotten an unintentional eyeful during their occlumency lessons.  It had been
the very day after he’d first officially had sex and it had been on Harry’s
mind a little too much.  He’d failed to keep the blush away after pushing Snape
out of his head to find the man staring at him with a completely unreadable
expression.  Harry would have felt worse about that if Snape’s cheeks hadn’t
been the slightest bit red as well.  Snape had given him a few minutes to get
his mind onto something else and they’d continued without ever mentioning the
incident, thankfully.
“Fuck, Cedric…” Harry gasped when the older boy loosened his throat and slid
all the way down until his lips were pressed to the thick patch of hair at the
base of Harry’s cock.  Cedric was incredibly good at this.  Harry had picked up
a few tricks, but he still couldn’t take it into his throat like that.  “Oh… 
Oh, I want to fuck you,” Harry breathed through the pleasure.
Cedric seemed to like that idea based on how his mouth was suddenly withdrawn
and his hands were fumbling with his belt.
Harry groaned at the sudden loss of sensation, but didn’t complain as Cedric
dropped his trousers and pants and bent himself over the dusty old table.  “You
look so hot like this, Cedric,” Harry muttered as he gripped the smooth cheeks
and pulled them apart gently.  The older boy moaned as Harry ran a thumb over
his puckered hole.
“Please, Harry,” Cedric gasped.
Harry smiled just a little.  He’d discovered that he quite liked the way Cedric
begged.  It was a kink that had alarmed him at first, but he’d gotten over that
since Cedric seemed to enjoy it just as much.  Pressing his thumb more firmly
to the tight opening, Harry whispered the spells his lover had taught him, one
to loosen the muscle and another to lubricate.  They’d experimented with manual
preparation as well, of course, but they didn’t often have that much time as
most of their meetings took place between classes in a hastily warded public
room.
Harry’s smile widened as the magic flowed easily.  He’d discovered that he
could do these spells without his wand kind of by accident.  In the heat of the
moment, he hadn’t even realized he’d done it until after, when he’d looked for
his wand to clean them up and realized that it had never left his pocket, which
was in his clothes across the room.  He’d practiced other wandless magic since,
but none had come quite so easily as this.  He suspected it was the result of
superior motivation.
After quickly repeating the lubrication charm on his cock, Harry slid slowly,
carefully into the older boy.  When he was fully seated, he forced himself to
remain still, leading forward to kiss Cedric’s neck while he waited for the boy
to give him the go-ahead to continue.  Thankfully, it was only a few seconds
before the moaned, “Please, more, please,” came from beneath him. 
He, of course, obliged.  He picked up his pace gradually, making certain that
his lover had a chance to adjust.  It took a minute to settle himself at the
perfect angle, and he knew he’d found it when Cedric keened.  Grinning in
elation, Harry took hold of the older boy’s hips and began pounding faster and
harder directly into his lover’s prostate, taking almost as much pleasure in
the sounds he was wringing from him as the glorious friction was providing his
hard flesh.
As much as they both enjoyed the more leisurely couplings they could indulge on
the rare nights they met after curfew in the Room of Requirement, Harry knew
they didn’t have the time now.  All they needed was to get caught by the toad
or her Slytherin lackeys.
Within ten minutes, Harry felt his release approaching the point of no return
and he quickly reached around his lover to take his cock in hand and ensure
that they could finish together.  Only a few quick pulls and Cedric spilled
over his hand, clenching around Harry and sending him over the edge as well.
There was little time for conversation after, but they did share a passionate
kiss before Cedric snuck out first.  Harry took a few extra minutes to make
absolutely certain that there was no evidence of their activities either in the
room or on his person.  Satisfied, he took his leave.
He probably should have worn his cloak, but being that it wasn’t even dinner
time, much less after curfew, he hadn’t thought it was necessary.  He
discovered that he was, in fact, wrong on that account when he almost
immediately found himself in the clutches of the vile toad.  He’d done nothing
wrong, but she’d told him to follow her to her office and he couldn’t refuse or
she’d just give him a detention, effective immediately, and then he’d have to
follow her or be expelled for “refusing to submit to disciplinary measures”.
So, he willingly followed her into her office.  She pointed him to a chair then
settled her own overly large arse into her pink monstrosity of a chair.
Harry tried to ignore the constant mewing from the painted felines covering the
office.
“Have a cup of tea, Mr. Potter,” she simpered at him.
Harry managed to restrain his are-you-fucking-serious? expression only with the
application of his occlumency shields.  Instead, he forced an approximation of
a polite smile on his face.  “Thank you, ma’am, but I’m really not thirsty.”
Her “sweet” smile faltered.  “It’s only polite to share a cup of tea with your
professor, Potter.  You wouldn’t want to be impolite, would you?”  Her tone
made it very clear that it wasn’t optional but cemented in his mind the fact
that the tea was tainted.  He didn’t know if it was veritaserum, some kind of
compulsion or suggestion potion, or good old-fashioned poison, but he’d let
himself get expelled before he would drink it.
“I’m terribly sorry, Professor, but I’ve been feeling a little under the
weather.  I don’t think my stomach could take any tea right now,” he lied
smoothly, something else that had become enormously easier with occlumency.
“Drink it, Potter!” she finally snapped.
He started and played up the flinch, letting the cup slip from his fingers and
crash to the floor, cracking the china and spilling the liquid.
“I’m so sorry, Professor!” he burst out at once even though he knew even the
dim toad would see through that ruse.
“You think you’re clever, Potter?” she snarled, scrambling out of her chair and
drawing her wand – looking not a little bit mad.  “Insubordination,” she
muttered to herself, nodding along as though to the plan forming in her mind. 
“Insurrection.  …sedition.  That’s what it is.”
Harry started to ease himself out of his chair when he realized that she
sounded a lot like she was trying to justify something really bad.
“Desperate times,” she nodded to herself again.  “Desperate times call for
desperate measures, Potter.  I am a patriot and I will not let you and
Dumbledore destroy this great nation.”
If Harry hadn’t been so frightened of her intentions, he’d have snorted at the
idea that the corrupt ministry could be considered a “great” anything.  Not to
mention how everyone seemed to think he was Dumbledore’s little lap dog when he
couldn’t stand the man.
He was just beginning to reach for his wand, concern that she’d give him
detention every night for the rest of the year if he pulled his wand on her
warring against the fear that she meant to do him more harm than a dozen
detentions ever could.
She hissed out the spell before he could realize the severity of her
intention.  “Crucio!”
The pain brought him immediately to his knees, but it took only a pair of
seconds to realize that, while it was inordinately painful, it was an order of
magnitude weaker than the same spell cast by Voldemort or Bellatrix.  He was
able to think through the pain well enough to finish drawing his own wand and
gasp out a hasty, “Expelliarmus!”
His spell hit straight on and he saw her eyes grow very wide.  She probably
hadn’t thought anyone capable of casting while held under the torture curse. 
He’d been distracted enough that he’d not paid attention to how much power he
put behind the curse and even he was a little surprised when the force of it
not only knocked away her wand, but tossed her obese arse into the air.
To his shock, she impacted against the window and went right through it.
Scrambling to his feet despite the lingering tremors of the torture curse,
Harry rushed to the window and looked down.  His eyes opened wide in disbelief
when he found her.  She’d fallen the three stories and landed on a bench.  She
was almost folded over it, her back and neck obviously broken by the angles at
which they lay, and there was a large and growing puddle of blood beneath her.
Harry did the only thing he could think to do.  He turned and ran, using every
secret passage he knew in order to reach Snape’s office in record time.  He
pounded on the door, grateful that he hadn’t passed anyone on the way down.  It
was a beautiful day, so most people were outside.  It wouldn’t be long before
someone found her.
“What?!” was snarled at him as the door was yanked open.
Harry looked up at Snape, praying that the man would know what to do.  “I
killed her,” he managed to gasp out.
Snape blinked, his face going blank.  He leaned out of the office to quickly
glance up and down the empty corridor, then all but dragged Harry back inside
and closed the door, flicking his wand through locking and silencing spells. 
“Whom did you kill?” he then demanded very coolly.
“Umbridge,” Harry gulped.
Snape’s eyes widened and his wand snapped up.
Harry felt the man crash into his mind and quickly dropped his barriers.  He
didn’t have to call up the desired memory because it was very much at the front
of his mind.  Snape pushed back from the incident itself to watch what had
happened from the moment he’d entered her office.
When he left Harry’s mind, he immediately turned to the fireplace and grabbed a
pinch of floo powder.  “Ministry of Magic, Auror Office,” he barked out as soon
as the flames burned green.
While Harry waited, trusting in Snape to know what was best, he found a chair
and curled up on it, tucking his arms around his legs and burying his face in
his raised knees.  How many people had Harry killed now, anyway?  Three?  Or
Four?  He didn’t know if Tom Riddle in the diary counted.  It hadn’t really
been alive, but it had seemed sentient.  Quirrell was a definite.  Whatever
Dumbledore claimed about Voldemort killing him as the specter left his body,
Harry remembered that night.  His touch had burned Quirrell terribly and Harry
had held on.  He’d deliberately held him until he’d stopped moving, stopped
fighting, stopped breathing.  Only then had Voldemort left him.  Then there was
Dudley last summer.  Harry hadn’t killed him directly, but he’d hesitated long
enough for the dementor to devour his soul, so that was as good as.
And now Umbridge.
He couldn’t decide if it was better or worse that he couldn’t make himself feel
the smallest bit badly about it.  She may not have been a Death Eater, but that
woman was a monster.  Even Quirrell he’d felt some guilt for.  It had seemed to
him that the man was more of an idiot than a bad person.  He’d let Voldemort
possess him and then he’d been trapped.  Umbridge though…  She was a true
sadist.  Nothing less could have taken such pleasure in watching him hurt
himself over and over again.  And he wasn’t the only student.  She’d gotten
most of Gryffindor House’s upper years at least once and he didn’t know how
many of the Ravenclaws and Hufflepuffs.  As far as he knew, Slytherin House was
all clever enough to lick her boots and remain in the crazy woman’s favor.
And now she was dead.  Because of him.
Perhaps the most unnerving part of the whole experience was the virtual
certainty that she would not be the last life he ended, directly or
indirectly.  Voldemort was alive.  War was coming.  And, like it or not, he was
at the heart of it because Voldemort wasn’t going to stop until Harry was dead.
Well, that and the fact that the Ministry had spent the entire last year
looking for any reason to chuck him in Azkaban and lose the key and now he’d
killed a highly ranked Ministry employee.
He cast a look at the black back of Severus Snape where he was crouched in
front of his hearth, and then buried his face in his knees again.  There was no
way this was going to end well.
===============================================================================
 
1 July 1996
Harry shivered in the dark, icy cell that had been his home for the last week
and would continue to be for the foreseeable future.  Despite Snape alerting
the aurors friendly to Dumbledore, the investigation did not go in Harry’s
favor.  With the majority of the wizarding world ready to believe almost any
horrible thing about him after a year of the Prophet’s libelous articles, Fudge
hadn’t had a hard time turning the trial against him.  The woman had used an
Unforgiveable on him.  He’d fought back with a disarming charm.  Her death was
an accident.  Despite all of this, the entire judicial process from
investigation to conclusion of the trial had been exactly one week.
He’d been tossed in here on the 24th of June.  One year to the day after he was
abducted by Voldemort.  The real irony was that the Ministry never would have
put him in this position if he hadn’t been abducted by Voldemort.  If he hadn’t
told the truth about it and refused to recant.
The only point in Harry’s favor at the moment was that he’d been working on the
animagus transformation for a couple of months now, utilizing the mental
discipline learned in occlumency to speed through the meditation needed for the
animagus transformation to be learned.  He’d not been able to transform prior
to his incarceration, but he was relatively close. 
He was fully intent on following his godfather’s example on this.  There was no
chance he was going to wait around and hope that justice would eventually
prevail.  He’d seen how well that worked for Sirius.  Harry was going to get
himself out of here.
===============================================================================
 
8 August 1996
An occlumentic meditation, Harry had discovered through pure necessity, made
the presence of the dementors bearable for him.  They still conjured his worst
memories, most of which centered around his week with Voldemort, though he
sometimes saw his mother’s death and a few forgotten memories with the Dursleys
from his early childhood, before he learned how to take care of himself as well
as they would allow.  As terrifying as watching his mother die was, it was much
worse going from loving parents to hateful strangers and not understanding why
he couldn’t see his parents and why they shouted and slapped and shook him and
locked him away in the dark even when his stomach cramped with hunger and his
nappy was wet and cold and his bottom sore.  It was no wonder he’d blocked out
those first years from his conscious memory.
Through occlumentic meditation, however, he was able to pull himself back from
the memories and view them as in a pensieve.  He still saw them, but as an
outside observer rather than fully reliving the worst moments of his life.  It
was that ability that had kept him sane in here.
It wasn’t just the dementors that drove one to the edge in this place.  It was
the isolation.  Being locked alone in a cell that he could never leave and no
one ever entered.  It was the cold.  Shivering day and night on the hard stone
floor so that one could never properly sleep or even relax.  That alone would
be enough to drive a person to the edge of sanity.  That’s when they threw in
dementors repeatedly sending you into your worst memories, and eventually, that
pushed just about everyone over the edge.
Harry hung onto his sanity with the meditation to keep the memories at a
distance and by spending his every spare moment working toward achieving his
animagus form.  It helped a lot that he believed he would get out of here
soon.  As soon as he could achieve his form.  He already knew what form he
would take and he knew that he would be able to easily slip through the bars
once he’d completed the transformation, and he was making progress.  It was
slower than it would have been had he not been distracted by hunger and
exhaustion and dementors, but it was progress.
===============================================================================
 
13 August 1996
Grateful that no one had ever figured out how Sirius escaped and thusly that
they hadn’t improved on security, Harry slithered between the sightless
dementor guards who could not properly sense him as an animal.  This form did
not appreciate the cold that permeated the island and his whole body ached with
it, but he pushed on, forcing himself to keep moving.
It seemed to take forever to get out of the prison and down to the shore. 
Transforming back, Harry did a quick four-point spell to make sure he was
pointed the right direction.  When he’d first begun studying wandless magic
last year, he’d never imagined such a need for it as this, but he was grateful,
nevertheless.  He hadn’t mastered any real dueling spells, but he could do some
simple spells, such as the direction spell, a warming spell, and a bubble-head
charm, and those were the three that he used now before throwing himself into
the sea.
By the time Harry reached the other side, he was once again freezing and more
exhausted than he’d ever been in his life.  He couldn’t stop yet though.  This
is exactly the area they would search when they discovered that he was missing
and he had no idea when that might be.  It could have happened already or it
might be several days.  Happily, it was much warmer now that he’d put Azkaban
behind him.  His sodden clothes weren’t helping, but he didn’t know if he could
manage a drying charm and didn’t care enough to try at the moment.  Instead, he
cast another warming charm, then shifted back into his other form.  Even if
they did figure out that he’d used an animagus form to escape, no one in the
entire world would ever guess that his form would be a snake, of all things.
Well… Snape might.  After their occlumency lessons, that man probably
understood him better than anyone else alive.  Happily, he wouldn’t be telling
anyone that might mean Harry harm.
===============================================================================
 
23 August 1996
Harry slithered up the hand rail on the front step of the Fidelius-protected
house and pulled the bell chord as he didn’t even want to try to reach the
knocker and wasn’t masochistic enough to use his body to pound on the door.
He heard the reassuring sound of Mrs. Black’s portrait screaming obscenities. 
He waited, but no answer came.  He began to grow concerned, now.  Sirius was
alwaysat headquarters.  After a while longer, he decided there was nothing for
it.  He was going to have to go in himself.  He took a careful look around, but
he couldn’t see anything suspicious or alarming anywhere on the street.  He
thought that the doorstep was hidden by the Fidelius, but he wasn’t entirely
sure.  Deciding that he’d have to risk it, he transformed very quickly and
immediately reached for the handle, which opened easily.
He let himself inside and promptly closed the door behind him.
“Who are you?”
Harry started at the calm, sane question issued by the portrait that he’d only
ever heard screaming madly.  He blinked at the thing, astonished that it didn’t
recognize him.  Then he realized he must look frightful after almost two months
in Azkaban followed by two weeks living mostly as a snake as he traveled across
England and then London to get here.  His hair had grown and was both filthy
and snarled.  He’d even started growing facial hair during his incarceration,
and had a small, scruffy, patchy beard.
He chose to ignore the portrait for now, not wanting to listen to her start up
again the moment she realized his identity.
He took one step into the entryway and Kreacher appeared before him with a
pop.  “Foul master has come home,” he bowed while muttering none too quietly.
“Master?” Harry asked incredulously, wondering if the elf had finished going
mad while he was gone.
“Yes, Master?  Would nasty halfblood master require something of Kreacher?”
Harry stared in slowly mounting horror as it occurred to him the only reason he
could be Kreacher’s master.  “Kreacher, what happened to Sirius?” he asked
gravely, “I order you to tell me the truth and nothing more.”
The elf struggled for a moment, probably being prevented from spewing his usual
filth.  “Master Sirius went out to find Master Harry.  Everyone told him to
stay, but Master Sirius was not listening.  He sneaked out at night, he did. 
The next morning Kreacher feeled his Master die and he’s now belonging to
halfblood master.”
Harry fought down the urge to be sick.  Sirius was dead.  His godfather was
dead.  Killed trying to save Harry.  He shouldn’t have been surprised.  Of
course, Sirius wouldn’t have wanted to leave Harry there.  He’d have tried to
save him even if it was suicide given the Kiss On Sight order still in effect
for him.  “Damn you, Sirius,” Harry breathed as his chest ached.
“Is there anyone else here, Kreacher?” he inquired after a moment.
“No, nasty halfblood master,” Kreacher sneered.
The elf was annoying, but Harry was too physically and emotionally exhausted to
address it at the moment. 
“Do the Order come here anymore?”
“No one bes coming here since old master got himself killeds.”
Harry nodded, then forced himself to think productively.  He could grieve and
feel sorry for himself after he was sure that he was safe.  He didn’t even know
if this building was protected by the Fidelius anymore.  He stumbled up the
stairs to the second floor library and found some leftover writing supplies on
the desk.  He ripped off a piece and scribbled “Headquarters” on it, then
called Kreacher.
“Take this to Severus Snape,” he instructed the elf very clearly.  “Make
absolutely certain that he is alone at the time and that you are not seen.  You
are not to speak to or in any other way communicate with anyone beyond the
delivery of this parchment exactly as it is now.  Do you understand your
orders?”
“Kreacher understands,” he sneered.
“You are not, now or ever, allowed to take any action that you believe would
bring harm to myself, Severus Snape, or the Order of the Phoenix, nor anything
that may benefit Lord Voldemort or any of his followers, including Bellatrix
Lestrange, Narcissa Malfoy, and Draco Malfoy.  If you feel like any action that
may cause such harm has been asked of you, you will inform me of your
suspicions and explain them.  Should you ever find a way around my orders that
may bring harm to anyonewithout my explicit permission, you will inform me
immediately.  Do you understand these orders?”
The sneer tripled in strength.  “Kreacher understands,” he snarled.
“Good,” Harry nodded.  “And finally, you are to treat me with respect and care,
exactly as you would treat a master that you considered worthy.”
Kreacher’s face went forcibly blank and he bowed so deeply that his nose
brushed the floor.  “Kreacher understands, Master.  Can Kreacher be doing
anything else for his master, sir?”
“That will be all for now, Kreacher,” Harry dismissed.  “Inform me when you
have delivered the message.”
With another bow, Kreacher disappeared.
Groaning quietly, Harry forced his exhausted body to move, just as he’d been
doing for the last two weeks.  He managed to make it up one more floor to a
bathroom with a shower in it.  There was no soap, but Harry didn’t rightly
care.  Shucking his filthy prison garb, he stepped under the hot spray with a
moan of elation.
It wasn’t long before he heard Kreacher pop into the bathroom.  “The message
has been delivered, Master.”
“Thank you, Kreacher,” Harry replied wearily.  Snape had read enough of his
essays over the years that Harry was confident that man would recognize his
handwriting and put together the rest.  “Please bring me a clean, dry towel and
some soap and shampoo if there is any in the house.”
“Kreacher will, Master,” he heard a moment before there was another pop and the
soaps appeared on the little tile shelves right in the shower stall.  Confident
that Kreacher could not give him something harmful, Harry put the soaps to good
use, scrubbing away layer after layer of grime and filth.  When he was as clean
as he thought he would get, he shifted into his animagus form and spent a few
minutes washing that form as well and just enjoying the luxury of real warmth
for the first time in so long.
Eventually, he shifted and left the shower.  Drying himself with the warm, soft
towel, he left the bathroom.  As Kreacher said they were the only ones in the
house, he wasn’t concerned for modesty as he made his way to the room he
normally shared with Ron when he stayed here, hoping that his trunk might have
been left.  Finding the room bare, he headed for Sirius’ bedroom as well.  If
there was anything left in the house, Harry figured it would be his godfather’s
things.
He felt a pang in his chest when he found the room exactly as he remembered
it.  Harry and Sirius hadn’t really gotten along all that well.  Sirius had
been so damaged from so many years in Azkaban, and all he’d really wanted was
to find his best friend’s son was a chip off the old block.  He’d always had
trouble with the fact that Harry wasn’t like his father at all, especially
after Voldemort’s resurrection when he’d found it so much more difficult to
smile and laugh and have fun with silliness.
None of that changed the fact that he’d been Harry’s godfather.  The man who
might have been his family, had things happened differently.
Harry wasn’t sure what to do with the emptiness that had taken up residence in
his chest since he’d learned of his godfather’s fate.  The man had died trying
to save him despite the fact that they’d never really bonded.  Then again, the
idiot had died trying to rescue him from Azkaban when he knew he’d be Kissed on
sight.
He shook those confusing thoughts with an effort.  He didn’t know how he was
supposed to feel.  He was sad and angry and he wasn’t really sure if he had
much right to feel either.
Instead of thinking, he forced himself to raid his godfather’s wardrobe for
something halfway decent to wear.  He refused to put on the rags they’d put him
in when they’d tossed him in that cell.  Luckily, Sirius was taller than him,
but otherwise similar in size, so it was only a matter of rolling up the bottom
of the black slacks and dark blue shirt he found.  It was all wizarding style,
of course.  He found some socks, but the boots had no chance of fitting him. 
He wasn’t too concerned for that.  It wasn’t cool in the house, so socks would
do fine for the moment.
Now clean and dressed, Harry turned his attention to his next priority.  He was
very pleased to find the kitchen still fully stocked.  The Order probably
hadn’t wasted any time in vacating this place after Sirius’ death.  Maybe they
thought ownership passed on to Bellatrix or something.  Harry wasn’t worried. 
He knew enough about warding to understand the fact that he’d not have gotten
in had the house not belonged to him.  Not after Sirius’ death.  It would have
locked itself down.
Tired as he was, Harry didn’t bother trying to cook anything fancy.  He just
fried up some eggs and bacon and toasted a couple slices of bread.  He ate it
all with a tall glass of milk, then pillowed his head on his arms on the table
top and just tried to rest for a few minutes.
He started awake to the sound of Kreacher popping into the room.  The elf bowed
as Harry sat up and rubbed the drool off his cheek with his sleeve.  “Potions
Master Snape is being at the door, Master.”
“Show him in,” Harry said quickly, blinking his dry eyes a few times and trying
to wake up properly.  The last time he’d had a decent night’s sleep was
probably the day before Umbridge died, over a month ago now.
Snape stalked into the kitchen a moment later and stopped in the doorway, his
intense gaze raking over Harry several times.  “Potter,” he said at last.  “How
did you escape?”
“I’d almost gotten my animagus form figured out before I was arrested,” Harry
shrugged.  “It was a little harder to perfect it in Azkaban, but I got it.”
“What is your form?” Snape demanded.
Rather than tell him, Harry just shifted right there.
Snape blinked once, then his lips trembled as though he might smile, though he
managed to restrain himself.  “Lachesis Muta,” he said after a moment.  “One of
the largest breeds of venomous snake in the world, named for one of the Fates. 
How incredibly apt, Potter.”
Shifting back, Harry managed a half-smile for his – now former – professor.  “I
missed you, sir,” he admitted.
Snape lifted one eyebrow and gave him a rather flat stare.  “The dementors
clearly damaged your brain.”
 Harry sobered, “Kreacher told me about Sirius.  Did anyone else die while I
was gone?”
“No one you know,” Snape replied without expression.  “What do you plan to do
now?”
Harry shrugged.  “There’s no point trying to prove my innocence with the
Ministry as it is now.  They’d have me Kissed on sight, I’m sure, now that I’m
a fugitive.  Is it safe to stay here?”
“It should be,” Snape nodded thoughtfully.  “The headmaster can reapply the
Fidelius.”
Harry swallowed uneasily and cautiously asked, “Would you be my Secret Keeper,
sir?”
Snape’s eyes widened in response to the question.  “Why not the headmaster?  Or
one of your little friends?”
“I don’t fully trust the headmaster,” Harry admitted quietly, looking down at
where his hands rested on the table.  “I found out during the Tournament that
he could have gotten me out of it at any time.  There was an amendment to the
rules made for that tournament by a committee that Dumbledore was part of.  It
stated that no one underage could be forced to participate.  If I’d known, all
I would have had to do was immediately refuse the position and I’d have been
free of it.  He didn’t tell me.  He…  He sent me to the Dursleys and kept
making me go back even knowing how they treat me.  Even right after…  He made
me go back and Dudley wouldn’t shut up and I killed him.”
“Potter, your cousin was Kissed by a dementor,” Snape said as though Harry was
a complete idiot – not an unusual tone, really. 
“I could have stopped it,” Harry admitted aloud for the first time.  “I cast my
patronus in time, but I just…  I hated Dudley so much.  I could have saved him,
but I didn’t want to.  I hesitated, and he died.”
After a long moment of silence, Harry finally dragged his eyes back up to
Snape.
The professor was staring at him with a vaguely annoyed expression. 
“Potter…!”  He sounded for a moment like he was going to yell, then he just
shook his head.  “Fine.  If not the headmaster, then why not anyone else?”
“You’re the only adult I trust,” Harry admitted, somewhat uncomfortably.
Snape blinked once.  Then he shook his head briefly again.  “Very well,
Potter.  If you truly wish it, I will be your Secret Keeper.  I will not take
it personally should you change your mind, however.  You look like you are
likely delirious with exhaustion at the moment.  Get some sleep.  I will alert
Albus that you are here safe.”
“Thank you, sir,” Harry nodded, dragging his tired body out of the chair.  He
was just starting to wonder where he should sleep when Kreacher popped into the
room again.
“Kreacher has prepared the master suite for Master, sir,” the elf bowed.
Harry thought about protesting that another room would do, but he found that he
was too tired to bother.
“What did you do to that elf?” Snape asked as it popped away.
Harry shrugged, “Ordered him to treat me as he would a master that he
considered worthy.”
Snape snorted quietly and swept back out of the house at a speed that Harry
could only envy at the moment.  It took him a relative eternity to climb the
stairs up to the master suite on the third floor.  Happily, he found the room
had been immaculately cleaned – or maybe Kreacher had always kept this one in
good shape – and the linens smelled freshly laundered.  He managed to drop his
trousers before climbing into the unspeakably comfortable bed. 
Sleep took him within moments.
***** Chapter 5 *****
Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes
5 October 1996
Harry took care to be very quiet as he returned to Grimmauld Place a couple
hours before dawn.  His attempt at discretion was proven moot when, before he
could begin up the stairs, the kitchen door below opened and Dumbledore’s voice
called up, “Harry.  Would you join me?”
It didn’t sound optional and the old man did not sound happy.
With a put-upon sigh, Harry turned toward the steps that would lead him down to
the kitchen.  It had been a long night and he really just wanted to go to bed
now.  The fact that Dumbledore was waiting up for him at whatever ungodly hour
of the morning it happened to be probably meant that he was unlikely to be put
off, however.
“Yes, sir?” Harry asked politely enough as he entered the kitchen.  He wasn’t
surprised to find that it was just the two of them, but it did make him
slightly nervous.  He trusted that Dumbledore wanted to bring down Voldemort,
but that was as far as Harry’s trust of the old man went.  He remained standing
near the door where it would be easier to make a quick exit should that become
necessary.
“Have a seat, Harry,” Dumbledore offered amiably.  “Would you care for some
tea?”
“No, thank you, headmaster,” Harry declined.  “I’m quite ready for bed, so I’d
prefer if we could make this quick.”
Dumbledore sighed that “you’ve really let me down” sigh that he had down so
well, but nodded his agreement.  “Where did you go tonight?” he started with.
“Out,” Harry answered curtly.
Blue eyes that were not twinkling looked at Harry over the top of half-moon
spectacles.  “Harry, my boy, just because you are not in school does not mean
that you’re not subject to discipline.  You are not an adult yet.”
Harry barked a derisive laugh, “Headmaster, I’m a fugitive from the law.  Are
you honestly telling me that I have to mind some sort of legal guardian?  That
doesn’t seem at all contrary to you?”
“I want you to understand your situation, Harry,” Dumbledore said gravely. 
“You’re not on a holiday, here.  You cannot come and go as you please…”
The condescension was too much for Harry, who cut the old man off with a harsh
laugh.  “Oh, I understand just fine, Professor.  Now I hope that youunderstand
yoursituation here.  You are not my father, my guardian, or my headmaster.  You
are not my protector or my jailor.  What we are at the moment, is allies. 
Nothing more.  We both want to see Voldemort dead.  You’ve offered to supply me
with tutors as I can no longer attend school and I have offered you the use of
my very convenient house in exchange.  You have no more right to tell me when
and how I may come and go than I have to tell you the same.
“My age became a moot point as soon as I became a fugitive.  I absolutely
refuse to lock myself away in this house all the time.  I take precautions when
I leave.  I wear glamors and I only go into the muggle world, which has no
means with which to detectglamors.”
Dumbledore nodded gravely, looking not a little annoyed.  “Well, I believe I
can see the reason for which you’ve chosen to risk your life this way,” he
said, looking pointedly at Harry’s neck, where he didn’t doubt there were a few
love bites.  Tonight’s lover had been rather… exuberant with the love bites.
Harry gave a bland smile in return.  “I’m a sixteen-year-old fugitive on the
run from my own corrupt government as well as an extremely dangerous dark lord
and his followers.  I may not live to see seventeen or I might spend the rest
of my birthdays in some cold, dark cell.  I don’t know.  What I do know is that
I’m not going to waste what may be the rest of my very short life.  I’m not
being stupid, but I think being able to enjoy my life just a little bit is
worth the risk.  And frankly, sir, I don’t give a damn if you disagree with
me. 
“Now, I’m exhausted.  I’m going to bed.”
Harry left the room without turning his back to the old man and didn’t relax
until he’d locked the door of his suite behind him.  Merlin, he hated having
Dumbledore and his loyal sycophants here whenever they pleased, but the old man
had offered him tutoring.  Harry hadn’t been able to pass that up.  He was good
at teaching himself things, but he would learn much faster with tutors and
given the way his life seemed to go, he was sure his life would probably depend
on those skills sooner rather than later.
That didn’t mean that he trusted any of them.  Well, except Snape. 
Dumbledore’s spy, the man may be, but Harry had gleaned enough during their
occlumency sessions to know that Snape considered himself on his own side and
merely allied with Dumbledore toward a common goal, which is how Harry had
decided to regard himself since he’d become a fugitive.  He didn’t like
Dumbledore and he didn’t trust him, but that didn’t mean that they couldn’t
work together to bring down Voldemort.  It was highly unlikely that any of them
were going to manage it alone, after all.
He just had to remember to keep his wits about him lest he get caught in
Dumbledore’s webs and find himself a puppet dancing to the old man’s tune once
more.
===============================================================================
 
It was that evening, as Harry was getting ready to go out again, that he once
more found Dumbledore summoning him.
Masking his wariness with annoyance, Harry entered the drawing room in which
the old man waited.  His frown deepened at the sight of the pensieve situated
in the middle of the table.
“What you said yesterday made me realize something.  This is something I,
perhaps, should have done sooner, but you made a valid argument.  You are not a
child anymore.  Perhaps I should have done it six years ago when you first
arrived at Hogwarts.”  His eyes unfocused slightly as he remembered.  “You were
safe and whole.  As I had intended.  Well, maybe not completely whole.  You had
suffered.  As I knew that you would when I left you on your aunt and uncle’s
doorstep.  I knew that I was condemning you to ten dark and difficult years.”
Harry sneered expressively, pure hatred bubbling up in him, superior even to
that which he’d felt for Umbridge while she’d gleefully watched him maim
himself.  “I will never forgive you for that,” he stated flatly, and it was the
truth.  The man had deliberately left him with people that he knew would make
his life hell.  “Ten years of sleeping in a boot cupboard.  Ten years of being
called a freak.  Being called a worthless burden who should have died with my
parents by the only parental figures I could ever remember having.  They
drilledit into my head that I was nothing.  That they’d have been happy if I
was dead.  They worked me to exhaustion, then locked me in a small, dark place
without food and left me there until they had a use for me again.  Do you think
that’s something that you just get over?  That I’d discover the wizarding world
and make friends and suddenly an entire lifetimeof abuse would just go away?” 
He clenched his jaw shut and turned his eyes to the floor.  He couldn’t bear to
look at the old man’s pitying expression.  He couldn’t go on or he’d lose it
completely and try to curse the bastard.  He yanked up his occlumency shields
with an extreme effort.
“Harry, my boy,” Dumbledore said quietly, his voice choked with sadness and
regret.  “In my own defense, I can only say that my priority was to keep you
alive.  You were in more danger than perhaps anyone but myself realized. 
Voldemort had been vanquished hours before, but his supporters – and many of
them were almost as terrible as he – were still at large, angry, desperate, and
violent.  And I had to make my decision too with regard to the years ahead. 
Did I believe that Voldemort was gone forever?  No.  I knew not whether it
would be ten, twenty, or fifty years before he returned, but I was sure he
would do so, and I was sure too, knowing him as I have done, that he would not
rest until he killed you.
“I knew that Voldemort’s knowledge of magic is perhaps more extensive than any
wizard alive.  I knew that even my most complex and powerful protective spells
and charms were unlikely to be invincible if he ever returned to full power.
“But I knew too where Voldemort was weak.  And so I made my decision.  You
would be protected by an ancient magic of which he knows, which he despises,
and which he has always, therefore, underestimated – to his cost.  I am
speaking, of course, of the fact that your mother died to save you.  She gave
you a lingering protection he never expected, a protection that flows in your
veins to this day.  I put my trust, therefore, in your mother’s blood.  I
delivered you to her sister, her only remaining relative.”
“I’m confused,” Harry glared.  “You’re saying that Voldemort doesn’t understand
sacrificial blood magic?  Seems right up his alley.”
“Unwilling sacrifices, perhaps,” Dumbledore acknowledged.  “What your mother
did was willingly sacrifice her life out of her love for you.  That is a very
different magic, indeed.”
“Even if all that is true,” Harry allowed, because he really wasn’t stupid
enough to believe that the old man couldn’t be lying his arse off, “it doesn’t
change how I feel.  I was a child.  The first lessons I ever remember learning
involved pain, fear, and loneliness.  The fact that it kept me alive is not
much consolation given how many times I wished that I could have died with my
parents.  If you’d truly had mercy, Dumbledore, you’d have taken my life
instead of leaving me on that doorstep.”
A long moment of silence followed, in which Harry again averted his gaze and
tried counting in his head to help him to calm down enough for his occlumency
to more effectively clear his mind.
“You said that you had something to tell me,” Harry reminded him when he felt
calmed enough.  “Is your plan to sit there all night and explain to me how
you’ve fucked my life over repeatedly?  Because, I gotta say, I’ve got better
things to do.”
“Five years ago, then,” Dumbledore rallied after a moment.  “You arrived at
Hogwarts, neither as happy nor as well-nourished as I would have liked,
perhaps, yet alive and healthy.  You were not a pampered little prince, but as
normal a boy as I could have hoped under the circumstances.  Thus far, my plan
was working well.”
“Your plan?” Harry sneered.  “And what was that, exactly?  No, don’t tell me. 
You sent me into an abusive home so that I could grow up tough, used to hard
work and pain, yet with such non-existent self-esteem that I would willingly
and repeatedly throw myself into suicidal situations?  The Dursleys made sure
that I had so little self-worth that I would be willing to give my life for
almost anyone, because surely they are all more deserving of life than me.” 
These were the issues that Harry had begun to discover about himself in fourth
year, after realizing how the Dursleys’ crap had influenced his ability to
learn for so long.
“You really think so little of me?” Dumbledore asked, looking hurt and shocked.
“Kind of hard to think anything else,” Harry glared in return, “given the way
you tested me year after year.  And don’t bother trying to deny it.  I know it
probably wasn’t all your plans, but you sure didn’t do anything to protect me,
did you?  Like with the Tournament?”  A cold wave of nausea swept through him
at the reminder of his week after the Third Task.  “I was entered into that
tournament because Voldemort wanted me to be.  I was forced to remainthere
because of you.  Did it truly never occur to you that I might be proactive
enough to send for a copy of the Triwizard Tournament Rules, Regulations, and
Amendments of 1994?  Were you so sure that I wouldn’t discover that you were
part of the committee that wrote the amendment to insure that no underage
student could be forced to compete?  Yeah.  I figured it all out.  Not in time
to help me.  You could have helped though.  All you’d have had to do is tell me
that it was my right to recuse myself.
“You didn’t.  It’s your faultthat I was captured – that I was held prisoner
there for a week.  That is on you.”
There was another long moment of silence before Dumbledore tapped his wand
lightly on the rim of the pensieve.  “You need to see this, Harry,” he said
quietly.  “I should have shown it to you sooner, but I did not.  Another in
what is clearly a very long line of mistakes I have made where you are
concerned.”
“And you wonder why I have no faith in you to keep me safe?” Harry asked
rhetorically.
Dumbledore ignored the comment.  “On a cold, wet night sixteen years ago, in a
room above the bar at the Hog’s Head Inn, I heard a prophecy,” he said quietly,
his focus on the silvery memory floating in the pensieve.  “I had gone there to
see an applicant for the post of Divination teacher, though it was against my
inclination to allow the subject of Divination to continue at all.  The
applicant, however, was the great-great-granddaughter of a very famous, very
gifted Seer, and I thought it common politeness to meet her.  I was
disappointed.  It seemed to me that she had not a trace of the gift herself.  I
told her, courteously I hope, that I did not think she would be suitable for
the post.  I turned to leave.”
Dumbledore touched the tip of his wand to the memory and prodded it gently.
A figure rose up out of it.  A familiar figure.  Trelawney, in fact, albeit a
considerably younger Trelawney.  Her face and inflection were exactly the same
as the prophecy that Harry had seen her give in third year just before Wormtail
escaped.
“The one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord approaches, born to those who
have thrice defied him, born as the seventh month dies… and the Dark Lord will
mark him as his equal, but he will have power the Dark Lord knows not… and
either must die at the hand of the other for neither can live while the other
survives…  The one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord will be born as the
seventh month dies…”
The room fell into silence again as the figure sank back down into the pensieve
and Dumbledore gave Harry time to process what he’d heard.
Either must die at the hand of the other.  That, Harry supposed was the key to
his entire life.  “So this is what you’ve been grooming me for,” he said
quietly.  “Suddenly, my whole life makes sense.”  His almost wistful, bitter
smile faded abruptly.  “No, wait.  It doesn’t.  If I’m supposed to kill
Voldemort, why haven’t you been training me properly?  Why the games and
manipulations?  Why not give me extra lessons or even send me to some special
training when I was like five?”
Dumbledore sighed his tired, sad sort of sigh and his shoulders sagged, making
him look old and frail.  Harry wondered if it was supposed to make Harry feel
bad for him or something.  “I didn’t want to take away your childhood, Harry,”
he said, looking almost desperate for Harry to understand that it had been all
for his own good.
Harry just rolled his eyes, his occlumency shields succeeding in keeping his
temper at bay this time.  “If that’s true, then you’re an idiot.  You can’t
just erase a lifetime of abuse by letting me play Quidditch and slack off my
lessons in between fighting for my life.  That’s the most asinine thing I’ve
heard you say yet.”
Dumbledore sighed sadly and spread his hands helplessly before him.  “I wish
that there was another answer I could give you, my boy.  It was an old man’s
mistake to not realize how badly they would hurt you.  To think that I could
ever make it right.”
“Whatever,” Harry dismissed impatiently.  He wouldn’t be able to hold his
temper for long if he had to keep listening to the old bastard trying to
justify himself.  Like anything could make right what he’d done.  “Whether or
not this prophecy is true doesn’t matter much to me.  Obviously Voldemort isn’t
going to stop trying to kill me while he’s alive.  He’s made that very clear. 
It’s therefore in my best interests to kill him.  I assume that this ‘prophecy’
doesn’t mean you’re going to expect me to do everything now that I’m sixteen
years old and lacking any real training – thanks for that, by the way.  You and
your Order are still planning to helpright?”
“Of course, Harry,” Dumbledore agreed, and now he just sounded tired and
slightly exasperated.
“Brilliant,” Harry frowned.  “If you think I’m going to kill Voldemort, then
I’m going to need realtraining.  Auror style training or better, not a
continuation of DADA.”
“We can do that,” Dumbledore nodded.
“Good.  We’ll talk about it more tomorrow.  I wason my way somewhere before
this lovely little chat.”
He left swiftly, without turning his back to the old man. 
One of the first things Harry had done after recovering from his stay in
Azkaban was figure out how to cast a good glamor.  He refused to rot away in
this old house like Sirius had done.  He hadn’t escaped to make himself a
prisoner again, even if the accommodations were infinitely better.
After making a couple trips into the muggle world under glamor, Harry had
returned to the Black Library and figured out how to transfigure a muggle I.D.
card.  Admittedly, he’d had to “borrow” some muggle’s wallet to figure out
exactly what the I.D. was supposed to look like, but he’d sent the wallet back
to the rightful owner when he was done with it.
That identification had allowed him to get into pubs and clubs.  Pubs and clubs
were where he found people willing to take him back to their homes and let him
work off some frustration the fun way before he bid them a polite farewell and
returned to Grimmauld.  He never slept in a stranger’s home.  He didn’t care
how tired he was, he’d have to literally pass out, and he never drank that
much.  Dumbledore was worried about him, but he had no idea how paranoid Harry
was.  He wouldn’t be caught easily, that’s for sure.
And now, after spending all that time with Dumbledore, Harry’s need to burn off
frustration had just increased exponentially.
===============================================================================
 
17 November 1996
Harry winced as he rolled his aching shoulder.  Apparently, reaching the books
on the higher shelves should be done with his left arm today.  He did just that
and made his way back to the chair by the fire where he’d taken to doing most
of his reading in the library.  He had a slight limp, but it wasn’t anything
more than a little pain.  Kingsley had been vicious in his dueling lesson
yesterday.  Not that Harry was about to complain.  It was exactly what he
wanted from his tutors.  He didn’t have ten years to learn this stuff.  He
needed them pushing him as hard as he pushed himself or harder.
With Harry’s approval, the Order had converted some of the cells and a couple
torture chambers in the dungeons below Grimmauld into a proper dueling room for
his lessons.  Assuming that he survived the war, he figured a dueling room
would get a lot more use than torture chambers, anyway, so it was a good
investment.  All of his tutors assigned him reading between lessons, and he’d
be verbally quizzed on it at the next one.  He’d gotten very fast at reading
over the last few years, so he didn’t find it difficult to keep up with.  In
his spare time, Harry delved into the Black Library as he’d done in Slytherin’s
Library at Hogwarts.  He studied anything that struck him as interesting or
useful.
Today’s book was an ancient thing held together with preservation charms.  The
title was simply, Time.  It had reminded Harry of his fourth year and how
fascinating he’d found temporal magic.  He’d begun researching it because of
the time-turners.  He’d wanted to know how many of the rules for using them
were based off magical safety and how many of them were arbitrary.  The more
he’d read though, the more interested he’d become.
Fifth year, unfortunately, had mostly put a stop to that research.  With the
introduction of Umbridge and everything else that had been going on last year,
he’d turned his focus more to Dark Magic and Defense.
He’d barely made it through the introduction of the book when he put it down to
search out some parchment and a quill to make notes.
Several hours later, he sat back with a sigh, rubbing his eyes tiredly.  This
book was exceptional.  He’d only ever read about time magic as enchantments and
rituals before, but this book discussed spellsutilizing time magic.  Most of
them were fairly long spells or brief chants, but he was still incredibly
intrigued by the possibility of manipulating time with nothing more than one’s
own magic.  None of the runes, potions, and other components involved in
enchantments and rituals.
He flinched a bit when the door abruptly swung open, his hand reaching for the
wand tucked into his sleeve – the sheath had been purchased for him by Kingsley
after the man had realized he didn’t have one during their first dueling
lesson.  His eyes darted up just as his fingers closed around his wand and he
immediately relaxed when he identified the potions master.
“Potter,” Snape frowned at him, eyeing the book and pages of notes briefly
before focusing on him again.  “Shacklebolt is otherwise occupied today.  I
will be providing your lesson, and now is convenient for me, so let’s go.”
Harry smiled slightly at the man’s brusque order, but didn’t hesitate to get
up.  He cast a quick obscuring ward on the parchment he’d marked and then
another ward to alert him if the first suffered any form of tampering.  None of
it was really sensitive, but he didn’t care to think Dumbledore was
figuratively reading over his shoulder all the time.  The ward wasn’t strong
enough to keep out most of the Order if they were determined, Harry was sure,
as it was a relatively simple spell, but it was enough to know if someone was
snooping and whom it was.
When he looked back toward the door, Snape was eyeing him curiously, but the
man didn’t comment before turning to lead the way down to the dueling room.
Two hours later, Harry was trembling from head to toe with exhaustion and in
pure reaction to how much magic he’d funneled through his body.  Snape was an
incredible dueling instructor.  He was harsh and merciless, and he pushed Harry
to his limits and then unapologetically shoved him passed them.  As he did when
teaching potions, he gave a minimal amount of instruction and expected his
pupil to be smart enough to figure it out.  Luckily for Harry, this was dueling
and not potions.  He was good at this and he’d done a ton of reading on the
subject, so it wasn’t difficult for him to understand new concepts.
Snape was infinitely superior to Kingsley because he didn’t stop every time
Harry got hurt.  He just kept pushing him harder, forcing Harry to function
through the pain the way a real battle scenario would demand.
“Enough,” Snape finally called and Harry’s body reacted without a conscious
decision, collapsing where he stood.
Rolling onto his back with considerable effort, Harry closed his eyes and
focused on calming his breathing, letting his extremities tremble as they
would.
“Adequate, Potter,” he heard Snape announce as the man drew closer to him.
Harry cracked open an eye to look up at the blurry man above him.  Snape had
stolen his glasses hours ago with a well-executed summoning charm, then forced
him to function without them.
The man pointed his wand at him and Harry’s wand had twitched, though he didn’t
try to move to defend himself.  He trusted that Snape wouldn’t curse him like
this, after calling an end to the lesson.
He blinked when his shirt and trousers were spelled away, leaving him in just
his boxers and shoes, but he wasn’t left to wonder long when he heard his tutor
incant a diagnostic charm followed by a string of healing spells that had the
various cuts and scrapes he’d accrued sealing themselves up and his worst
bruises fading.  A brief levitation spell turned him over and Harry grumbled
about being able to move without help while Snape ignored him and healed the
worst of his injuries on his back.
“You can turn back now, Potter,” Snape said eventually and Harry hurried to
comply before he was subjected to another levitation.  He didn’t much care for
how helpless it made him feel, even if only for a few seconds.  Snape lowered
himself to one knee then, and presented Harry with a potion.  “Revitalizer,” he
explained.  “It will help with the shaking.”
Harry closed one shaking hand around it and swallowed it down, sighing at the
almost instant relief that began soaking into his trembling muscles, giving
them some strength again.
“Healing potion,” he said next, handing him another vial, which Harry didn’t
hesitate to swallow down.  Though Snape had healed the more serious damage, the
potion would clear up the rest of the bruising and scrapes and heal his abused
muscles and joints, preventing him from being in agony tomorrow.
“Those potions require energy to function, Potter, and they’ll take it from
you.  Eat a large supper and get at least ten hours of sleep, is that
understood?”
“Yes, sir,” Harry nodded tiredly.  The sleep sounded better than the supper and
he’d love to just skip it, but if he knew Snape, he suspected the man wouldn’t
appreciate that.  The last thing he wanted was to annoy the man to the point
that he wouldn’t be eager to do this again.  Training like this would keep him
alive the next time he found himself in trouble.
===============================================================================
 
19 December 1996
Harry approached his room cautiously, seeing the light shining beneath the
door.  He knew he hadn’t left any candles burning and Kreacher never lit them
when he was out.  Someone had been in his room…
Taking a deep, silent breath, Harry extended his magic wandlessly as he’d been
practicing with the aurors that tutored him.  Apparently, it was a skill they
learned during auror training.  They used it to search areas ahead of
themselves to detect any hostile magic before they walked into it.  It also
functioned to locate the presence of any magical person or creature.
It took him a moment to recognize the magical signature that he felt inside
because it wasn’t one he’d ever felt in this particular manner, but he didknow
it.  A smile stretched his face as he relaxed and pushed open the door.  He
smiled softly at the sight of Hermione curled up asleep on his bed, a single
candle burning on the bedside table.
He closed the door quietly and waved his wand to lift the usual array of
privacy and security wards, then sheathed his wand and moved to sit next to the
sleeping girl.  He brushed a stray curl from his face and she stirred with a
quiet hum before her eyes opened.
She blinked at him, then her eyes snapped open and she sat fully upright to
wrap her arms securely around him and bury her face in his neck.
“I’ve missed you, too, Hermione,” he chuckled.
“Missed me!?” she demanded, leaning away from him and giving him a light shove
against one shoulder.  “You’ve missed me, have you?  How do you think I’ve
felt?  How am I supposed to handle my best friend being sentenced to life in
Azkaban?!  How am…” her brow furrowed as her rant derailed.  “You smell like
alcohol and sweat and… sex.”
Harry lifted the front of his shirt to his nose and gave it a sniff,
immediately cringing.  “Merlin, I do.  In my defense, I was on my way to the
shower before I found you sleeping in my bed, Goldilocks.  I didn’t think you’d
even be here until tomorrow.  What happened?”
She blinked, then glared.  “Oh, no.  You do not get to smell like alcohol and
sex and answer no questions about that fact.  Are you seeing someone?  Is it
someone in the Order?”
Harry sighed, but he hadn’t quite expected her to allow the change of subject. 
“No, I’m not seeing anyone.  Now, before you yell at me, let me just say that
I’m taking all applicable precautions.”
“That’s good,” she frowned, “now tell me the rest so that I can yell at you.”
He smiled a little.  “I wasn’t going to become a prisoner in this house,
Hermione.  I’ve been going out, usually in the evenings.  Muggle clubs,
mostly.”  She furrowed her brow and opened her mouth, but he answered her query
before she could state it.  “I made myself a fake I.D.,” he shrugged. 
“Are you…” she paused, looking somewhat uncomfortable before pressing forward,
“Are you sleeping with random strangers, then?” she asked warily.
He gave a simple nod.  “Look, we both know that a relationship would be a
million kinds of impractical for me right now.  I have little interest in
practicing abstinence until the war is over when there is every chance that I
won’t live that long.”
She huffed unhappily, but didn’t try to refute that claim.
“I know you don’t like to hear it, but it’s true,” Harry admitted neutrally. 
“So I’m living a little while I can.  I ambeing careful, though.  I never go
out without glamors andmy wand, I choose my partners carefully, making certain
they’re muggles, and I always wear a condom.”
She grimaced faintly at that last bit, a faint blush touching her cheeks and he
smiled a little at her innocence.  She wanted to wait until she could lose her
virginity to someone special, and he could respect that.  It wasn’t a view that
he shared, but he wasn’t going to judge her for not being as big a slut as him.
“I wantto yell at you,” she admitted after a minute, “but I can’t quite manage
it.  If anyone deserves some happiness, it’s you, and if this makes you happy…”
she shrugged helplessly.
“It does,” Harry shrugged.  “Well, happy might be a bit of a stretch, but it
does help to keep me sane.  Otherwise all I do here is study and train.  It’s
great!” he added quickly.  “I mean, it’s exactly what I want to be doing.  But
I need a chance to unwind.”
Hermione shook her head sadly, “Honestly, I wish you could find a safer way to
unwind, but I understand.”
“‘Course you do,” Harry smirked at her.  “That’s why you’re my best friend!  I
seriously do have to take a shower, as you’ve smelled, but hang out here.  We
can talk some more when I get out.  We could really freak Mrs. Weasley out and
you could stay the night here with me,” he teased.
“Harry!” she scolded, though it wasn’t greatly effective when she was smiling. 
She shook her head as he grabbed a robe.  “It’s nearly three in the morning,
Harry.  We can talk in the morning.  I’m going to bed in my own bed.”
“Spoilsport,” he mock-frowned as he let himself into the massive ensuite that
came with the master bedroom.
===============================================================================
“Harry!  There you are,” Hermione announced exasperatedly as she entered the
library where Harry was working.  “Why weren’t you down for breakfast?”
“Kreacher brings my breakfast upstairs for me,” he answered with a small glance
up from the books and parchments spread around him.
“Why?” she sounded bewildered as she sat down across the table from him.
Harry cast a brief glance at the door to be certain they were alone, then waved
his hand with a silent, wandless spell to close it.
Hermione looked impressed by the wandless spell, but didn’t let herself become
distracted from her question, staring at him impatiently.
“Honestly, I’m avoiding Mrs. Weasley.”
“Why?” she asked again, and this time she just looked confused.
Harry huffed a short, annoyed breath as he sat back, accepting that he wasn’t
going to be getting anything done until Hermione’s curiosity was satisfied. 
“Surely you’ve noticed the fact that she takes it upon herself to mother
everyone around her, even those older than herself.”
Hermione nodded slowly, her brow furrowed as she thought about it.
“Well, I’m an orphan and an escaped fugitive.  She would love nothing more than
to wrap me in cotton wool and hide me away from the world forever.  She hates
it that I’m being trained to fight and kill.  She hates that I have no parental
figure here telling me when to sleep and what to eat and tucking me in at night
and whatever else she thinks I ‘deserve’.  If it was up to her, I would be a
perfectly innocent and naïve child right up until Voldemort or the Ministry
killed me, and she cannot see anything wrong with that philosophy.  So, yes, I
spend a great deal of time here avoiding her, because whenever I’m within
sight, she spends all her time worriedly lecturing me on everything she thinks
I’m doing wrong and alternately getting into shouting matches with every other
adult in sight who doesn’t completely agree with her on the way I should be
‘raised’.  As though there’s any childhood left in me at this point,” he
grumbled that last bit to himself.
Hermione was silent a moment before she heaved a tired sigh.  “I see what you
mean,” she relented.  “You know that she only means well, right?”
Harry’s face darkened at that comment.  “Yeah, well I’m right quit of the good
intentions of well-meaning adults.  My whole life is like a running joke, and
that right there is the punch line.”
A long moment of silence followed the bitter statement before Hermione asked
brightly, “So, what are you working on?”
Harry managed a tiny smile at the question.  A few years ago, Hermione wouldn’t
have known when to drop a subject.  She’d have kept gnawing on it until he
ended up shouting at her.  She was starting to grow up, too.  It made him
wonder what Hogwarts had been like for her with only Luna as a close friend. 
Or maybe she’d made more friends in his absence.  Who knew?
“Temporal theory,” he admitted.
“And spellcrafting,” she observed curiously, recognizing one of the books. 
“I found a book that contains temporal spells,” he admitted, gesturing toward
the book in question.
Her brow rose sharply, “Time manipulation through spells?  Alone?”
Harry’s smile twitched a bit bigger as they settled into the familiar and
comfortable territory of discussing magical theory.  It was good to talk to her
again.  He’d gotten a little too accustomed to his only human interaction being
during his lessons or with random strangers as they used each other for mutual
sexual gratification.
===============================================================================
 
Chapter End Notes
     The pacing is starting to slow down now. Jumps will more often be
     days or a week or two instead of months.
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