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

[lomonaaeren]

Part Three.

Part One.

Title: The Transfiguration of the Soul (4/4)
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Pairings: Mentions of Ron/Hermione, otherwise gen
Content Notes: AU (Harry is Sorted into Slytherin), present tense, angst, violence, bullying, torture, canonical child abuse, minor character death, minor character suicide, Dark Harry.
Wordcount: This part 13,000
Rating: PG-13
Summary: AU. Harry is Sorted into Slytherin, and discovers that most of his yearmates seem to think he has some grand plan. Harry, fighting as hard as he can to hang on to his Gryffindor friends and his godfather, decides that if people like Draco Malfoy think he has a plan, then he’ll take advantage of that.
Author’s Notes: This is a side-story/Harry POV of my story “A Plan of Deepest Subtlety and Cunning.” Either can be read first. This should have four parts, to be posted over the next four days.

Thank you again for all the reviews! This is the last part of this story, as well as the last of my “From Samhain to the Solstice” fics for this year.

Part Five

Harry stares up at the head table, and connects with the eyes of the newest Defense Against the Dark professor, a woman dressed in pink who’s staring at him with open hatred. Harry hasn’t met her before, but then, his summer was quiet. He stayed with the Dursleys, or at least he did according to most of the adults, and when he roamed around the neighborhood, it was under his Invisibility Cloak.

They don’t know that Sirius visited almost every day, and took him somewhere they could Apparate. Harry’s now seen the sea, and the Forest of Dean, and the Lake Country, and the Orkneys, and more parts of the Continent than most would give credit to. Sirius always made sure to approach the house in his Animagus form, and to have him back before the Dursleys could miss him. They chatted over the communication mirror whenever Sirius couldn’t make it.

There’s been no news of Voldemort, on either the Muggle or wizarding news. Oh, except that the Daily Prophet is full of stories calling Harry a delusional liar.

This woman, Umbridge, must be one of those people who believes that he’s a liar. Harry gives her a bored glance and goes back to eating.

She’s not going to be a problem. He won’t let her.

*

Harry hisses and leans against the door outside Umbridge’s office, staring down at the bloody lines carved on the back of his hand. I must not tell lies stands out in stark letters for a moment before the blood fills them up again.

Harry closes his eyes. He thought nothing of speaking out against Umbridge in class, just answering calmly and coldly when she asked him directly if he thought Voldemort was back. When she said that they wouldn’t learn practical Defense skills because there was no need for it, Harry laughed.

He got detention for both, but it seems she’s more annoyed about the “stories” he’s spreading, if the lines she had him write are any indication.

Harry stands and goes to the private room where he can speak with the snakes. They immediately crowd around him, hissing and outraged, at the sight of the blood.

“Break into Snape’s Potions stores and take Murtlap Essence for me,” Harry tells one of the stone ones. Then he faces the portrait. “Most of you will now spy on Umbridge for me, and find out something I can use to ruin her.”

The snakes sway in excitement and set off to do his bidding. Harry leans back on the couch and stares at his hand.

He could destroy Umbridge now. He knows enough spells. But it would be obvious that it was him.

And frankly, he wants to ruin her. He wants to blackmail her. He wants to see the Daily Prophet blaring out all the dark secrets of her soul. He wants her to hurt more than he does, twice as much as he does, three time as much as he does.

For that pain, Harry is willing to struggle through more detentions, and let the cuts on his hand keep happening. He would endure more pain than this to take revenge on those who have hurt him.

*

“You need to stop whatever’s doing this to you.”

Harry takes a deep breath and turns around to stare at Theodore, who followed him when he left the common room. Harry came near to cursing a second-year who decided to taunt him about always having a bandaged hand. He knows that his magic’s been stretching around him and flaring outwards more and more of the time, but he doesn’t know how to stop it. He’s hanging onto his control by his fingernails as it is, waiting for the time when the snakes bring him enough information to destroy Umbridge.

It’s been four detentions. His hand is swollen and painful most of the time. It’s impacting his casting, and Sirius has been asking more and more pointed and concerned questions through the mirror.

Harry hasn’t told him. He knows it would bring Sirius down on Umbridge, and if he’s ever to be free, he can’t commit murder.

“I don’t know what you mean, Theodore,” Harry says, and lets the Parseltongue sibilance dance on the edge of his words, something that frightens most of even his devoutly Slytherin-worshiping followers. The shadows rise around him, snake-shaped and darting out flickering tongues. Theodore swallows, and his eyes swivel around.

But he doesn’t run. He stands tall and looks into Harry’s eyes.

“You’re losing your status among the Slytherins,” Theodore says. “We who swore to you can’t betray you, my lord, but the others can, and they will if they think you’re weak. There’s a lot they could do even if they can’t tell anyone about what we said in the common room that day.” He takes a deep breath. “You look weak because you let yourself get wounded and because you’re losing control of your temper and magic.”

Harry closes his eyes and forces his magic back under control. It wants to explode when he really listens to what Theodore is saying, which he supposes is a good reason to believe it.

“All right,” he says at last. He’s not willing to hurry up his revenge on Umbridge, so that means he has to find some way to calm and control his temper. Bleed off some of his magic.

And take revenge on her at the same time. It won’t be satisfying enough for Harry to put his all into it otherwise.

Thinking about how Umbridge doesn’t want them to practice practical spells gives him an idea, and he smiles and opens his eyes. “I’m going to find a private room in the school where we can all do the kinds of spells that Umbridge doesn’t want us to. It’ll give me something else to focus on and drain some of my excess magic.”

Theodore looks thrilled. “That’s a great idea, my lord. But how are you going to find such a private room?”

The snakes can find it for him, Harry’s certain. But he doesn’t intend to reveal that secret to anyone. He winks at Theodore and says, “I have my ways.”

*

In the end, the snakes find a room for him on the seventh floor that only appears when you walk past a certain tapestry three times thinking hard of what you want to use it for. Apparently, some of the older portraits remembered it, and the serpents traveled deep into their own memories to uncover those conversations they’d spied on.

Harry walks back and forth in front of the tapestry of dancing trolls, envisioning a large room with sturdy stone walls and floor, but also padding of some kind they can let down to cushion someone who falls from a spell, and books, and a fireplace.

When he turns around, the door is gleaming there, a small iron door with a knob that looks like it’s made of bone. Harry turns it, and steps into a room that looks exactly like he’s requested.

And even some of the things he was thinking of, but didn’t bother to put directly into his plea, such as an enchanted window that shows a starry sky, a calm vista Harry can look at when he feels himself losing control over his magic. He shakes his head in wonder and paces over to the center of the shiny stone floor, hearing his footsteps clicking loudly in the large space.

Hermione has a secrecy contract prepared, and more people than just him know about Harry’s intention to start a private Defense group. That’s the only reason he’s going to reveal the room to them. Otherwise, he would be tempted to keep it for himself.

Of course, he knows the secret of the room now, and he’s the only one the snakes told that walking back and forth three times in front of the tapestry is the way to get into it. Why can’t he hold onto the secret and come here to build a private training room just for himself, sometimes?

Yes. Harry thinks he’ll do that.

*

Harry knows some of his followers are annoyed with Umbridge and don’t like the idea of waiting to get revenge on her. But he didn’t expect Blaise to be the one who did something about it, or to do what he did.

Harry saw Blaise lurking around when he left Umbridge’s class after she assigned him his fifth run of detention, but he didn’t think much of it. He assumed Blaise wanted to talk to him. But then Blaise moved away from him, and from a staircase above, Harry saw him casting a spell on the top stair of a flight Umbridge would have to take to get to the Great Hall. From the wand movements, Blaise cast the Invisible Ice Hex.

And Umbridge fell down the stairs, and broke her neck.

Harry started moving the minute he recognized the hex, but he was too late. And then he had to hide out of sight while Umbridge fell and Blaise sounded the alarm, because it would look worse than bad if he was on the scene for her death.

But he does get there first and pretends to look at Umbridge’s feet for a trace of the hex, even though the Invisible Ice Hex doesn’t really work that way. It dissolves the minute someone touches it, in fact. Slips on it.

He gives Blaise a narrow-eyed look, and Blaise swallows. Good. At least he knows some of the reason that Harry is displeased with him.

Mine. She was mine to destroy.

Harry says nothing about that as the others arrive, though, professors and Madam Pomfrey and members of Umbridge’s Inquisitorial Squad, Ravenclaws and Slytherins from the years above them, none of them sworn to Harry. There’s loud accusations, and more than one person says that Harry must have done it.

“I promise he didn’t,” Blaise says loudly, looking happy as the attention refocuses on him. “I saw Professor Umbridge fall. She was carrying this huge stack of parchment.” He nods at the papers lying around Umbridge’s body as proof. “I don’t think she could even see the stairs properly. Harry was nowhere around.”

There’s some grumbling, but most of them seem to buy the story. Harry knows that Professor McGonagall, as Deputy Headmistress, is going to question him anyway. Dumbledore abruptly cut off their lessons at the start of this year and has been avoiding all contact, including eye contact, with Harry. Harry knows why, from the snakes. Dumbledore thinks that Harry still has an active Horcrux inside of him, and that meeting Harry’s eyes will let Voldemort read the secrets out of Dumbledore’s mind through some kind of eyehole-double-Legilimency.

It’s stupid, but Harry was willing to let it go until he had dealt with Umbridge. It appears that he’ll be talking to Dumbledore sooner than he thought.

They have a moment of clear space between the departure of most of the people around them to follow Umbridge’s body to the hospital wing, and the arrival of Ministry personnel who want to question Harry. Blaise catches Harry’s eye, and his grin fades. He makes a questioning noise.

“Blaise,” Harry whispers. “I appreciate, in some ways, what you did.” He reaches out a hand to Blaise’s shoulder, and squeezes, deep and hard, enough to make a bruise appear later. “But don’t do it again.”

Professor McGonagall starts calling Harry’s name. Harry impresses the point one more time on Blaise, and then stands up and walks away towards the Deputy Headmistress.

He meant what he said. In some ways, it’s better that no one be able to associate Umbridge’s death with Harry, and that he can even answer under Veritaserum if he has to that he had nothing to do with it.

In other ways, Harry had the fleeting impulse to hurt Blaise with much more than a bruise.

She was mine to kill.

*

“You wanted to see me, sir?”

Harry tempers his voice with an effort. The Ministry interrogation about Umbridge’s death the other day was long and complicated and tedious. They had no right to feed him Veritaserum since he’s underage and they had no permission from his guardians—the only time Harry has ever been glad about living with Muggles—but they did everything short of that. Harry put up with it, and now comes a summons from Dumbledore like he’s never been away.

“Ah, yes, sit down, my dear boy.” Dumbledore beams at him as Harry takes his place on the other side of the desk, but still doesn’t meet his eyes. “You’ll be happy to know that one of Voldemort’s Death Eaters has turned on him, and is willing to feed us information.”

Harry arches his eyebrows a little. “You mean, besides Snape?” Dumbledore tried to assign Snape to teach Harry Occlumency earlier in the year, and Harry refused point-blank. That’s when Dumbledore started avoiding his eyes.

“Professor Snape is not a Death Eater, Harry,” Dumbledore says, with the long sigh of someone who wants to be done talking about it.

“I saw the Dark Mark myself at the end of last year.” Truthfully, Harry knew before that, thanks to the serpents, but it wasn’t the kind of knowledge he could reveal until he had an excuse.

Dumbledore only sighs a little more. Then he murmurs, “Her name is Bellatrix Lestrange, and she’s one of the Death Eaters that Voldemort broke out of prison over the summer.”

Harry chokes on air. He still doesn’t eat or drink anything in these private meetings with Dumbledore, as tempting as it sometimes gets. “What? My godfather’s crazy cousin? Are you mental? Do you think anything she says can be trusted? Sirius told me that she was utterly devoted to Voldemort!”

“We do have to give the people we think are evil another chance.” Dumbledore looks at Harry over his glasses. “And she has already given me valuable information about what Voldemort is seeking in the Department of Mysteries.”

“You sound as though you knew already.”

Dumbledore sighs yet again, as if it’s his hobby. Maybe his only one besides redeeming Death Eaters. “There is something he believes can be a weapon against me, against you, against anyone who opposes him. Bellatrix told me that, and now we can set up a trap for him.”

Harry leans back, considering the wisdom of revealing this particular tidbit to Dumbledore. In the end, he decides to do it, just to see what happens. “The corridor that leads to a door of dark wood? What’s behind it?”

Dumbledore’s hand jerks so that he flings tea all over himself. “What?” he asks, his voice low and hoarse.

“I’ve been having dreams of that corridor for months now.” Harry shrugs and stares back at Dumbledore, who’s avoiding his eyes as usual. “I knew they weren’t my own. The emotions feel foreign.”

“I wish you had continued pursuing Occlumency with Professor Snape, Harry.” Dumbledore’s voice is ancient and sad.

“He doesn’t. He tells me regularly how stupid and useless I am. He wouldn’t want to be responsible for my failure to, ah, ‘clear my mind.’”

Dumbledore breathes slowly for a long moment. Harry has the feeling that he’s stunned the man or made him more deeply uncomfortable than he meant to, not that that matters much. He waits, and Dumbledore cleans the spilled tea up with a wave of his wand and shakes his head.

“I cannot tell you what the weapon is, Harry. Only that it is there. And I trust Bellatrix’s information.”

Harry lasts through the rest of the meeting, but other than dropping a few cryptic hints about Horcruxes, Dumbledore says nothing of interest. Apparently their private training in jinx spells and the like isn’t to resume.

Well, that’s all right. Harry is getting enough of a workout with his private Defense group.

*

“Can you show us how to do a Patronus Charm?”

It’s Luna Lovegood, the oddly charming Ravenclaw fourth-year who joined the Defense group a week or so after Harry formed it, asking that question. And it seems as if her words are a signal everyone’s been waiting for, because the chatter falls silent and they all turn to stare at Harry expectantly.

Harry sighs as he surveys them. A group of his Slytherins are over in the corner, practicing spells with each other as they most often do. They’ll interact with others, but not that many people show enthusiasm about interacting with them.

Ron and Hermione look hopeful. Zacharias Smith, the Hufflepuff who Harry only admitted to the group because his friends begged, looks bored. Cho and Marietta Edgecombe are standing towards the side of the group as if they want to be elsewhere.

Marietta thinks Harry doesn’t know about the owls she’s tried to write to the Ministry, revealing the location of the Defense group’s meeting room and the names of the students in it. She must be wondering why she’s not getting a response.

One of the most useful things Harry ever learned was the charm he put around the windows of the Owlery to make any bird who takes off with letters from certain people lose its memories of who it’s supposed to take the letter to a minute later. They fly in circles for a while, then drop the letter somewhere and return to their perches.

He based it on a prank spell Dumbledore taught him, too.

“I don’t know the Patronus Charm,” Harry admits, which makes a few people droop. “But we can learn it together.”

“You know the theory?” Smith sounds doubtful.

Harry smiles at him, and Smith flinches back as if he knows that Harry is thinking about picking his teeth with Smith’s bones. Sometimes he’s unexpectedly insightful. “I do. And I know that it can take months to master. But we have months left in the term, still.”

It does take most of those months, but by near the start of summer, nearly everyone is producing silvery fog, if not the actual shape. Harry is alone in the room one day when he casts it, thinking about the memory of spending Christmas with Sirius—when he got lots of Defense books and brilliant robes—and the silvery tornado forms into the shape of a stalking great cat.

By researching in a few books, Harry learns that it’s a cougar. Prone to scream in a way that frightens humans and stalk its prey from ambush. One of the most widespread and adaptable large predators in the world.

Harry thinks it’s appropriate.

*

Harry never would have tried riding another hippogriff, but he gets a call from Sirius on his communication mirror near the end of his fifth year.

Harry smiles, but the smile falls rapidly from his face as he realizes that Sirius has blood splashed across his face, and one of his eyes is swollen shut. His breathing is raspy as he shifts the communication mirror around.

“What is it?” Harry demands, his mind leaping rapidly between conclusions that don’t make enough sense. Sirius has been living under extraordinary protections at Grimmauld Place, the house where and Harry spent Christmas. Not the Fidelius, because Sirius didn’t trust it after the way that Lily and James got betrayed, but ones that should be strong enough to hold back other enemies.

“Dumbledore permitted my cousin passage through the wards,” Sirius gasps. “And she attacked me. I don’t know—” There’s a loud cracking noise from behind him, and Sirius nearly drops the mirror. “I don’t know what I can do! How much longer I can hold out. Kreacher prefers to serve her. He’s helping her.”

“I’m coming. Hang on.”

Harry shields the mirror, grabs his Invisibility Cloak, and slips out of the dorms. It’s after curfew, but like he gives a fuck. He only takes the Cloak to stop busybodies, like certain prefects, from stopping him and getting in his way.

He runs to the Forbidden Forest, and finds the herd of hippogriffs not far from Hagrid’s cabin. He’s changed up his Care of Magical Creatures class so that only upper-year students can approach them, and only at the end of the year rather than the beginning. The herd is still nearby from where Hagrid lured them for the fourth-year lesson less than a week ago.

Harry doesn’t know any other way to get to London fast enough. The Firebolt won’t take him, and he can’t Apparate. He doesn’t know what Floo in the house would be safe.

But hippogriffs can fly like blazes. And apparently they can orient on certain locations if their rider wishes. Sirius told him that last year, when he got to the Azores after he discussed with Buckbeak where to fly.

One of the hippogriffs trots towards him, a curious grey female. Harry bows to her and holds it, and after a second, she bows to him and holds out her wings.

Harry whispers, “Please carry me, beautiful one,” and scrambles onto her back. The address burns in his mind, seared deep. Number Twelve Grimmauld Place. Take me to Number Twelve Grimmauld Place.

The hippogriff flings herself out of the forest on the strength of his urgency. Harry winds his hands into the feathers springing from her eagle-head, and holds on.

*

Sooner than he would have thought possible, Harry and the hippogriff are spiraling down towards the Black townhouse. Harry has her land in the garden behind the house, hoping that no Muggles will look out the windows and see this. But at the moment, he would pay almost any price to keep his godfather safe, including violating the Statute of Secrecy.

The hippogriff has been snorting uneasily since she caught the scent of the city, and she flies again almost at once. Harry doesn’t care. If everything goes well, then he can take the Floo back to school.

And if it doesn’t…

Harry might lose his life in the killing of Bellatrix Lestrange. And then he won’t have to worry about schoolwork again.

He walks with footsteps softer than snow through the back garden and the back door. The house is dark and still. Harry wonders if that means that the battle is done with. Did Sirius force Bellatrix out? Is he dead? Is she dead? Is Sirius wounded and lying on the floor, recovering?

Harry moves from room to room, aiming towards the top of the house as he clears one room at a time. He can see broken wood and shattered dishes in the kitchen, but few other traces of battle. No blood. No sign of Kreacher, either.

Harry steps at last through the doorway of Sirius’s bedroom, and stops.

Bellatrix Lestrange is standing in the middle of the room, smiling. Harry has no doubt that it’s her, although he’s only ever seen the picture on the Black tapestry. She has wilder hair than Sirius did during his year on the run, and she has bright black eyes, and she’s laughing.

In the corner of the room is Sirius, bloodied and bound. He turns desperate eyes towards Harry.

Harry already has his wand drawn. He whirls to face Bellatrix, his movements controlled and coordinated. He doesn’t say anything.

Bellatrix does more than enough talking for both of them.

“Does the itsy-bitsy Potty baby want his widdle godfather back?” she croons, her wand swinging back and forth in her hand. “Did the iddle-widdle Potty baby run into an ambush?”

Harry remains silent. Bellatrix chatters some more about her own cleverness in getting Kreacher to open the Floo in the old house for her, and her knowing that Sirius was there at all because Dumbledore told her it was the headquarters for the Order of the Phoenix. Harry burns at that, but still keeps silent.

Bellatrix loses her patience at last. “Itsy-bitsy Potter baby!” she screams, and points her wand at Sirius. “You beg for his life or he loses it!”

Harry pays no attention to the words that flow from his lips, begging Bellatrix to spare Sirius. They’re only words. They mean nothing to his pride. What means something to him is Sirius living, and continuing to care for him, perhaps killing the Dursleys for him someday.

He speaks the words, and Bellatrix laughs and nods along. And then she spins around and launches the Killing Curse at Sirius. He’s dead in seconds.

Part of Harry freezes, and then shatters, forever.

He doesn’t scream. He doesn’t make a sound. He simply lunges forwards and curses Bellatrix in the back.

She drops to the floor with a cry, as the fire he’s engendered in her flesh curls and begins to burn towards her organs. But probably because it’s a Dark curse, she subdues it with a harsh word, and gets up, shaken and burned but not much the worse for wear.

“You little brat,” she spits, as if it’s the worst word she knows. “Crucio!”

Harry dodges, and leaps towards her again. His mind is absolutely clear, crystalline, and he lashes out with another spell that he’s been teaching the Defense group, a curling ribbon of cutting power that lashes above Bellatrix’s head and then down like a whip. Unlike most spells, it’s not visible until it strikes, and Bellatrix either doesn’t recognize the incantation or thinks she can dodge it until it lands.

Harry cuts her right breast off.

Bellatrix screams in genuine pain then, and probably madness, and horror, and claws at herself, and then grabs hold of something that seems like a button on her robes. The Portkey activates and swishes her away.

Harry goes up to Sirius and sees how quiet and still his eyes are. Harry wonders for a moment if his parents looked like that, where they lay.

But he didn’t know them, not really. He knew Sirius, and Sirius is gone now.

Harry closes his eyes, does one other thing, and goes to Floo Hogwarts.

*

Dumbledore tells him off for leaving the school by himself. So does Snape. Professor McGonagall subjects him to an interrogation much like the one the Ministry used in the wake of Umbridge’s death, even though she’s part of the Order of the Phoenix and presumably knew that Sirius was innocent.

They imply, or outright say in Snape’s case, that Sirius’s death is his fault, that his godfather wouldn’t have died if Harry had got “a responsible adult” to go with him to Grimmauld Place.

His friends don’t. They come into the hospital wing where Madam Pomfrey has placed him for the night, treating him for shock and a Cutting Curse that Bellatrix got through his defenses and Harry didn’t even feel. His friends stand quietly about his bed.

Then Hermione touches his hand, and leans forwards to hug him. Harry rolls on his side and returns her hug with a quiet, desperate tightness. He wouldn’t, most of the time he’s not this weak, but right now, he needs to.

Hermione has tears on her face when she pulls back. “I know how much you valued him,” she whispers.

Ron awkwardly pats Harry’s shoulder. “I know, mate. But you’ll get through this. We’ll help you get through this. Promise.”

Millicent nods. “Do you want us to help you get revenge on her?”

Harry runs his tongue around the inside of his mouth. It feels as if his teeth should have loosened from the pressure of his lips, even though that’s ridiculous. “No. I’m going to do it.”

The good thing about Millicent is that she can listen. She nods and steps back.

“I know he wasn’t a Death Eater,” Draco murmurs. “My father never reported him at the meetings.” He holds Harry’s eyes. “I’m prepared to do what we discussed, and bring you any information you need.”

Harry nods. He and Draco began discussing their plans the moment they found out that Draco’s father intends to have him Marked as a Death Eater this summer. They’re going through with it, due to Harry’s ability to affect the snake in the Mark with Parseltongue, and then Draco will report on Voldemort’s movements.

And Bellatrix’s, too, now.

“I wish I’d been there.” Greg has an unhappy scowl on his face. He’s a simple sort who lives mostly for guarding Harry. “I wish I could have stopped her.”

“You weren’t, but it’s appreciated,” Harry says simply, and rolls over to look at Blaise.

Blaise lifts his hands in the air, a bit pale despite his dark skin. “I won’t touch her. She’s your kill. That’s understood, Harry.”

“Thank you,” Harry says simply, and glances at Pansy and Theodore.

Theodore nods a little. “My father hasn’t said anything about me getting Marked. I’ll be leaving if he does. I have no plans to let him sacrifice me to an insane monster.”

Harry just smiles. Theodore isn’t Draco, who volunteered to go through with the Marking himself. And Harry knows that people forced into something against their will are much less loyal and cooperative than people who are freely going along with his instructions.

“My father agrees with you.” Pansy lifts her head, radiating concern and sternness like light. “He’ll give you the support you need, and the books that you need.”

“Thank him for me.” Harry knows that Pansy’s father was a major force behind getting Cornelius Fudge elected. Without that support, then Fudge’s denial of Voldemort’s return, which is still ongoing, is less likely to succeed.

“I think Crabbe is going to be Marked,” Draco adds in a low voice. “It’s all he can talk about. As if he—as if he’s looking forward to it.”

“Well, he’s always been a bit of an idiot,” Ron mutters.

Greg nods fervently. That surprises Harry, but he does recall that he saw Greg with Crabbe fewer times this year, when they always used to be together following Draco around. Now Greg follows Harry around instead.

There’s a loud sigh, and Madam Pomfrey walks up to the bed, shaking her head and flapping her robes in front of her like a housewife herding chickens. “All right, you lot, I gave you as much time as you could reasonably expect. Get out now, and leave Mr. Potter to his rest.”

“Yes, Madam Pomfrey,” his friends obediently chorus, but they look at Harry in a way that he knows means they’ll fight to stay if he wants them to.

Harry shakes his head a little. He could use a chance to think and rest by himself. Obediently, they turn and file out.

“It’s nice that you have so many people concerned about you,” Madam Pomfrey says, and sighs as she offers him a Calming Draught. “It would be nice if some of the professors in the school were among them.”

Harry nods, although he doesn’t really agree, and swallows the potion. The only adult he wanted to care about him was Sirius, and he’s gone. But he could use a clear head to think through his position, to decide what he wanted to do next.

He lies back and thinks about several things. About how best to use his advantages in the upcoming war. About the torture curses he’d like to cast on Bellatrix Lestrange. About the fact that Sirius already told him he would be leaving his house to Harry if he died in the war, and that’ll be a refuge for him this summer, rather than having to live with the Dursleys.

About the fact that he cast a Preservation Charm on Bellatrix Lestrange’s severed breast, and hid it before anyone else could come through the Floo.

About what he might do with it.

*

The summer before sixth year, and sixth year itself, are honestly a bit of a blur for Harry.

He stays at Grimmauld Place throughout the summer, unable to bring himself to enter Sirius’s bedroom but having full run of the rest of the house. The first thing he did was bind Kreacher with spells that force him to accept and experience Harry’s emotions during the battle with Bellatrix and Sirius’s death. Kreacher goes gibbering mad within a week, and kills himself. Harry hangs his head on the wall.

He spends a lot of time with the Black library, too, including books on Horcruxes that he doubts exist anywhere else, and researches the connection that he appears to still share with Voldemort, dreams and visions, despite the fact that the Horcrux in him is gone. The books admit that living Horcruxes could exist, and the removal of a soul-piece from one could leave a hole behind. The hole happened in objects that had a Horcrux removed from them instead of just being destroyed; they were charred and broken, and, if they were magical artifacts, never worked as they had before the removal of the soul-shard.

Harry does not intend to be charred and broken. And he thinks the hole should probably close with Voldemort’s death.

For now, he uses the hole to go swimming in the depths of Voldemort’s mind.

It seems odd, at first, that Voldemort never notices that Harry is there, what with being a great Legilimens and all, but Harry finds the answer to that, too. Even a master Legilimens will have trouble reading the mind of someone similar to himself, or viewing memories that are too similar to his, says one Black library book. It’s one reason that a Legilimens probably won’t try to view memories that he’s part of, in case that distorts his own perspective or leaves him blind to one aspect of the new memories.

Harry thinks that his hatred, his cruelty, his purpose is probably too close to Voldemort’s for him to feel like an intruder in the monster’s mind.

He watches Draco’s Marking from inside Voldemort’s mind, and snorts at the glee that rises when Draco promises, in a firm voice, to be the end of Dumbledore. There’s no way that Voldemort can notice Harry’s own glee in the tide of his, or guess its purpose.

He sees Snape walk into the man’s presence and kneel and kiss his robes, and Harry rejoices a little every time he watches Snape writhe under the Cruciatus.

He laughs when he sees Bellatrix stumbling around, her chest oddly misshapen, and healing spells having no effect on her due to the curse that Harry used. It’s the beginning of a payment, but it’s not enough.

And Harry studies, and studies, and studies, and studies. Far more important material, all of it, than will ever end up on the NEWTS.

*

The other notable part of the year is that Dumbledore starts giving him lessons on the Horcruxes, while carefully not using that word. And he has a blackened hand that, eventually, he admits to Harry is from the destruction of a ring used for a Horcrux.

Harry passes along the word to Draco, so that he can do only as much as is necessary to further his mission to kill Dumbledore and keep Voldemort’s favor. There’s no reason for one of Harry’s friends to put himself in danger when the poison from the ring is going to kill Dumbledore anyway.

Based on the memory that Harry obeys Dumbledore’s instructions to get from the new Professor Slughorn because he’s curious himself, Voldemort’s likely created seven Horcruxes. Or, rather, he meant to create six and keep his soul in his body. He doesn’t know about the one that used to be in Harry.

Dumbledore never mentions it, either. Now and then he glances at Harry with disquieted eyes, as if he thinks that Harry is going to pick up something he doesn’t want him to pick up, or else not do what he’s told like a good little wind-up toy.

Harry smiles blandly back, and makes his own notes. Yes, it makes sense that the snake who confronted him in the graveyard is probably another Horcrux. Harry suspects that he’ll have to save that one for last, since Nagini is never far from Voldemort’s side.

The Slytherin locket and the cup belonging to Helga Hufflepuff also make good candidates. Dumbledore claims to not have any clue where either of them is, but he makes the statement in a firm voice while looking directly into Harry’ s eyes—one of the telltales of a master liar.

Harry is fairly sure that Dumbledore does know where one of them is, and waits patiently to see if Dumbledore is going to pass any clues on to him about that before he dies.

The last Horcrux, Dumbledore says he has no clue about. But following the pattern, Harry is fairly certain that it should be an artifact belonging to Rowena Ravenclaw. That would make sense: three Horcruxes personally important to Voldemort—his diary, his snake, his ancestral ring—and three Horcruxes based on Founders’ artifacts—the locket, the cup, and an important artifact to Ravenclaw. It could, of course, be one belonging to Gryffindor, but Harry thinks that’s less likely, as Gryffindor was the Head of Voldemort’s rival House and left only two famous artifacts behind, the Sorting Hat and the Sword of Gryffindor, both firmly in the possession of Hogwarts.

Luna is the one who volunteers, after a few hours of Harry talking idly about important Ravenclaw artifacts, that her House’s Founder once wore a diadem that supposedly increased her wisdom. Only no one’s seen it for the last thousand years or so.

Harry at least has that much of a clue, which he doesn’t bother to share with Dumbledore. Fair is as fair does.

*

The end of the year is chaos. Draco introduces Death Eaters into the school. Harry makes sure that his friends are out of the way, warned in time. Dumbledore takes Harry to an isolated cave where he claims the locket Horcrux is, but it turns out to be a fake. Harry has to force-feed him poison before they find that out, though.

(That part, Harry enjoys).

Snape pretends to kill Dumbledore, or maybe actually does it, but Harry knows from the snakes that it’s on Dumbledore’s orders. And then he chases Snape away from the school, roaring and pretending to swear vengeance for his “mentor’s” death, while Snape snarls at him about using spells from the Half-Blood Prince’s book, a minor (compared to the books from the Black library) but useful treasure Harry discovered earlier in the year.

Harry responds with a curse that removes Snape’s left ear. He also enjoys the look of shock and hatred he gets before Snape Apparates.

Draco, who’s been following Snape after being on the top of the Astronomy Tower when Dumbledore got offed, pivots briefly on his heel to look at Harry. Harry nods. Draco nods back, and Apparates after Snape.

It’s a risky move, being in the center of the Death Eaters while bearing Voldemort’s Mark, but Harry does think that Draco can do it. He’s successfully avoided detection so far.

Harry turns back to the castle, resolved to gather up the fake locket and study the note some more. He has a suspicion, which might only come from his mind being full of Sirius and the Black family at all times, and he wants to see if it works out.

*

“This place is awfully gloomy.” Hermione glances around Grimmauld Place and shivers.

“Well, it’s been hard to keep it clean when I was only here over Christmas and Easter,” Harry murmurs, flicking his wand to get rid of some of the dust and to light candles as they walk through the kitchen of Grimmauld Place and towards the library.

“Where’s Kreacher?”

Harry glances back at her. “I didn’t tell you? He was raging at me after I inherited the house, and saying that he wasn’t going to serve anyone who was less than a pureblood. I sent him to work in the kitchen at Hogwarts.” He shrugs. “I would have set him free, but I couldn’t chance him going to Bellatrix.”

Hermione flinches a little at his tone on the last name, but nods. “That makes sense.”

Harry takes care to lead her by a different route that doesn’t pass the house-elf heads. There are some things Hermione doesn’t need to know.

It’s easy enough to find the cabinet of curious, mostly Dark objects that Sirius showed him in happier times, and illuminate the whole of it with a soft charm. Harry began using magic in the house last summer, when he’d decided that he didn’t care if the Ministry expelled him from Hogwarts, and no one ever sent a notification. Maybe there are wards on the house that prevent it. Maybe it’s still registered as a residence where adult wizards and witches live.

Harry frankly doesn’t care. He’s going to use magic, and he doesn’t give a shit about the archaic laws.

“Oh, that’s pretty,” Hermione says, as Harry moves a few trinkets and reveals the gleam of the locket. Harry smiles a little. His intuition was right. R.A.B., Regulus Arcturus Black. “Can I wear it?”

Harry throws a glance at her, a little surprised that she can’t feel the Dark magic beating out of the locket like heat, but sees her eyes are glazed. Maybe she does feel it, but it’s acting as a compulsion instead of repelling her like it should.

“No, sorry,” Harry says. “It’s cursed pretty heavily.” That’s even true. He gets his wand beneath the locket’s chain and flips it out of the cabinet. “In fact, I’ll probably have to destroy it. It’s what Sirius would have wanted.”

The mention of Sirius is enough to snap Hermione out of her trance, the way it has been for most of his friends since Sirius’s death. Her face is the picture of remorse as she nods. “Of course, Harry. I’m sorry.”

“It’s not your fault. You couldn’t know.”

Harry made one more trip to the Chamber of Secrets before they left school, and gathered up the same fang that pierced the diary, still lying gleaming and undecayed amid the wreckage of the place. When he stabs it through the heart of the locket and hears the screaming of the wretched thing, he feels nothing but deep satisfaction.

*

“You know that if you do this, then lots of people are never going to look at you in the same way again.”

Harry laughs softly and stretches back against the huge wingback chair that’s in the sitting room of Grimmauld Place, close to the fire. It’s taken a while, but he’s made it as comfortable as it used to be when he stayed here with Sirius. (And put up a permanent illusion around the house-elf heads so that no one can see them. That was an interesting spell he might use in the future).

“They don’t already hate me?”

Ron grimaces. “Point.” The stories in the Daily Prophet that Harry is lying have continued, despite numerous Death Eater raids on the homes of prominent Wizengamot politicians and the deaths of several of them. Voldemort has essentially taken over the school, too, appointing Snape Headmaster. Harry supposes that’s the final proof that Voldemort hates children.

“Come up with a strategy for me, Master Strategist.”

Ron visibly flushes with pride, while still giving Harry a skeptical glance. “I’m not going to worship you or have whatever fucked-up relationship it is that you have with your Slytherins.”

Harry smiles a little to hear Ron call them “his” Slytherins. It’s the closest he can come to acknowledging what Theodore and Millicent and Draco and the rest are to him. The spell on the Slytherin common room those two years ago still prevents him from talking about the Lordship ceremony in any detail.

But that doesn’t matter. “You don’t have to,” Harry says, leaning forwards. “I want you to do what you do best, besides…”

“Besides what?”

“Standing with me.”

Ron reaches out and wrings Harry’s hand hard, once.

*

None of his people except Draco go back to Hogwarts that year. The rest are in Grimmauld Place with him, under a Fidelius with Theodore as their Secret Keeper. There are certainly more than enough rooms, and now that all of them are of age, casting magic in the rare cases where they need to make a room bigger or the like is no problem.

Harry is working on a spell that will let him track down Hufflepuff’s Cup. Draco is very subtly working on Ravenclaw’s diadem, asking questions of the pureblood Ravenclaws who remain in the school. They’ve left the problem of taking care of the snake until later. It’ll take someone who can get close to Voldemort, and right now, Draco, while still their best choice, isn’t favored enough to do that.

(Harry gave Draco Sirius’s mirror because it’s the only secure way they can communicate with each other. At least he managed to impress on Draco the consequences that would follow from a breaking of that mirror).

“My lord?”

Harry glances up from his notes, and smiles a little at the sight of Greg in the doorway. “What is it, Greg?”

“I—I just needed to know.” Greg licks his lips. “I got an owl from Vincent yesterday. He said that he didn’t understand why I was gone from the school and I should be there and taking the Dark Mark. I’m doing the right thing by being here with you, aren’t I?”

Harry feels his heart swell a little. Sometimes he finds Greg’s single-minded devotion trying, but on the other hand, it’s good to know that there’s one person he doesn’t have to struggle to reassure.

“Yes, you are,” Harry says. “You know that Draco can only be close to the Dark Lord because there’s no other way he can please his parents and make sure he doesn’t suspect him.” Voldemort’s put a Taboo on his name, the bastard, so Harry has to refer to him other ways. “The Dark Lord would kill you for being away from him for even so short a time. I, on the other hand, want to protect you. And you don’t want to leave me and Draco and the others, do you?”

“No.” Greg’s brow is already clearing, and he gives a nod to Harry that’s also a half-bow. “Thank you for clearing that up for me, my lord.”

“Any time,” Harry says warmly.

*

When Harry finally manages to use a spell to track the Hufflepuff Cup to its resting place in the Gringotts vault of Bellatrix Lestrange—something he only knows because he got an image of the vault door to appear in front of him, and Ron’s brother Bill, still working in the bank, was able to tell them who it belonged to—then he has to come up with a way to access it.

And he does. But the magic required is so Dark that Theodore is the only one willing to explore it with him. Or come to the bank with him once Harry determines what he has to do.

“You don’t mind what I’m doing?” Harry asks as he places the severed piece of Bellatrix’s breast in the mold that he’s constructed.

“What does minding and not minding have to do with any of this?” Theodore leans against the door of the potions lab, watching with keen interest as the Preservation-Charm-touched flesh writhes and shapes itself. “This is war. The Dark Lord threatens our existence. He’s threatened your existence since the moment you were born, for a reason that I still don’t know about.”

Harry shrugs. He’s not entirely sure, but he’s come to know that the Department of Mysteries holds prophecies. He supposes that might be the reason. Dumbledore never saw fit to share the exact reason with him, though. “That’s the way I feel, too,” he says, and jerks the newly-formed flesh key that should grant them access to Bellatrix’s vault out of the mold. “But I think it’s a step too far for Ron and Hermione. They still like to think of themselves as good people.”

“And Greg is just too gentle for this, much as I hate to say it,” Theodore mutters, his eyes locked on the key with fascination. “And Blaise…you realize that he’s writing to his mother behind your back?”

“He thinks I don’t know. It’s sort of cute.” Harry smiles a little as he tucks the key into the specially-built wallet he’s prepared. When they come back, he does have a lesson to teach Blaise that Blaise is not going to enjoy.

“I am kind of surprised you didn’t ask Millie or Pansy, though.”

Harry sighs. “Pansy is still researching the binding spell we’ll need, and she doesn’t deal well with being pulled away from that sort of thing and asked to take on another project. Millicent could go with us, but I think she has some of the same gentleness problem as Greg. She practically burst into tears when I told her what I intended to do.”

Theodore blinks. “She did?”

“Yeah.” Harry shrugs. “It’s all right. Bill’s going to get us in, and the rest is easy.”

*

It isn’t easy. But they do, in fact, get into the bank with Bill’s help, introduced as regular customers who need to check on Theodore’s vault, and they Imperius the goblin who drives the cart to take them where they need to go. They get to Bellatrix’s vault and open the door with the key.

The goblins seem to suspect something is up on the way out of the bank, but they don’t actually attack. Harry keeps his eyes straight ahead.

He doesn’t have that many Galleons left in the trust vault, and he has a large store at home, the money that Sirius cleaned out of his own vault when he thought the Ministry might try to track him down by keeping a watch on his transactions. If the goblins do prevent him from coming back here again, Harry has enough to survive.

And now they have the cup, and they’re putting together the last parts of the plan they’ll need to confront Voldemort on the battlefield. Harry would really like it if they could destroy the last Horcrux from Voldemort, either the cup or the diadem or the snake depending on how it falls out, in front of him.

He would like Voldemort to know that he’s mortal before he dies.

*

“You have to know that the binding spell we’re going to be using is a precursor to anti-Apparition spells. But because they focus on one particular person, and prevent them from leaving an area no matter what, they were banned as Dark centuries ago.”

Harry stares into Pansy’s eyes as they sit in the Black library. “I know that. What is so important that I have to study them separately?”

Pansy grimaces and leans forwards over the table separating them. Her voice is so quiet that Harry has to strain to hear her above the crackle of the fire. “These spells require intimate knowledge of the target. They were often used to imprison ex-lovers. I don’t know how you can use them on the Dark Lord.”

Harry has to smile. “I’ve been inside his mind. We share a link of sorts, forged the night that he tried to kill me.”

“Which time?” Pansy snaps, even though she looks a little awed.

Harry laughs. No matter what happens, Pansy remains intensely practical. He does like that about her. “The first time.” He doesn’t intend to tell her about the Horcrux he once carried, or the hole left behind by it, in any detail, but this is enough to be going on with. “My hatred is so similar to his that he never even knew I was in his head. I can tell you some of his memories, and what he hates, and what he enjoys. Will that be enough?”

“Yes,” Pansy says, sounding a little dazed. “Yes, that will be enough.”

She eyes him cautiously as they discuss how to prepare the spell that will prevent Voldemort from fleeting the battleground, which they’ve already chosen as Hogwarts. Harry frankly likes that caution, too.

*

“Blaise.”

Blaise whirls around, dropping the letter he was about to post on the floor of the Owlery. Harry leans on the doorframe and stares at him. Blaise hesitates, then says, “This isn’t what it looks like.”

“Oh, this isn’t another letter to your dear darling mother putting everything down as insurance in case I Memory Charm you or the like?”

Blaise backs up a step. He visibly wants to ask how Harry knows that, but checks himself. Harry stands up straight and considers Blaise against the background of the soft, nervous hooting of the owls.

In truth, another charm like the one that Harry once put on the Hogwarts Owlery’s windows has the birds bring him the letter first, so that he can read it and decide whether to send it on or not. He’s only let a few of Blaise’s messages through.

“I wasn’t betraying you,” Blaise whispers. “I swear. The owls will never be captured by the Dark Lord’s forces. She would never join him.”

“She might if she saw profit in it.” Harry takes a slow step forwards. “I told you once before, Blaise, that I don’t appreciate it when you interfere like this.”

Blaise shivers. “You didn’t specifically say that Umbridge was your kill or that I shouldn’t send post to my mother…”

“Because I thought you would be smart enough to deduce it on your own.” Harry shakes his head. “And I do have a punishment for you, Blaise, little as I liked the idea of it at first. But twice is no coincidence.” He draws his wand and begins to make the intricate motions he needs, while hissing the incantation in Parseltongue.

“My lord…”

Blaise only calls him that when he’s desperate for something to stop happening. Harry looks him dead in the eye and keeps casting.

In the end, an ice-blue serpent with white stripes forms on the floor of the Owlery. With a near-soundless rush of wings, the owls take flight in fear. The serpent moves a few inches forwards, and then stops and glances back at Harry.

“Bite him and ensure his loyalty,” Harry commands it, then stares at Blaise as the snake crosses the last distance between it and the other boy. “Do you know what this snake will do?”

“No, my lord.” Blaise looks close to fainting.

“Bite you and inject a venom into your body that will kill you if you ever think about betraying me again.” Harry smiles pleasantly. “And I do mean think. Actions aren’t enough, not anymore, not when I need to correct a fault in your thinking process.”

Blaise bows his head and keeps himself there as the snake wriggles closer. “Thank you for your mercy, my lord.” Then he screams as the snake bites.

Harry watches from the frozen part of him that showed up when Sirius died, and nods when the snake is done. There’s a reminder, a blue scar on Blaise’s arm, but it won’t do anything until and unless he thinks about betraying Harry again.

“Don’t make me feel like a fool for letting you live,” Harry says casually over his shoulder as he aims for the entrance to the Owlery.

“No,” Blaise whispers, still on his knees, shaking from the pain. “No, I won’t.”

*

Draco does finally manage to charm the story of Ravenclaw’s diadem in more detail from a few of the Ravenclaws—including Luna Lovegood, who stayed at the school and apparently escaped targeting by the Carrows because they never knew that she was part of Harry’s private Defense group—and provides Harry with a detailed description of it. Harry uses the detailed description to cast a second tracking charm.

He has to cast it again and again. Each time, the vision widens a little, but it still doesn’t give him much to go on at first. The diadem hangs on an ugly bust…which stands on top of a cabinet…which is next to a broken armchair…which is next to bare stone walls…

Harry vents to Draco about his frustrations through the communication mirror, only to have Draco’s eyes widen and a small laugh escape his lips.

“But I know that cabinet, my lord,” he says. “That’s the Vanishing Cabinet I brought the Death Eaters through last year. It’s in a version of the room that we held our defense group in. It’s full of rubbish and broken things.”

Harry grins, and can feel his lips stretching in victory. “Don’t go after it, Draco. I don’t know what a Horcrux like that would do to an unprotected mind. The diary managed to charm someone into writing in it. I think the diadem would try to charm someone into wearing it.”

“My lord.” Draco bows his head, flushed with triumph.

“But, Draco? Very well done.”

And Draco’s flush at that is even brighter, and Harry closes the mirror with a smile and goes to talk to Ron.

Their strategy moves into its endgame.

*

Summoning Voldemort to Hogwarts turns out to be simple enough. Harry sends him a letter full of “coy” references to diadems and cups and lockets, and that makes Voldemort reply in a maddened fashion on the front page of the Daily Prophet, threatening to execute every non-Death Eater student at Hogwarts unless Harry comes there on such and such a date.

And so they go, armed with their wands and memorized spells and shrunken brooms and the basilisk fang. Harry sends Ron and Hermione in through the tunnel that leads from Honeydukes, with instructions to go down to the second-floor girls’ bathroom, where one of the carved snakes is waiting to open the way to the Chamber of Secrets. Harry suspects they’re going to need the second basilisk fang, since he’ll probably have to give the one he carries to Draco when he gets close to the snake.

Harry then casts the binding spell around the grounds of Hogwarts, sitting on his broom outside the window of Gryffindor Tower to get the height he needs and visualizing the pitch, the Forbidden Forest, the lake, Hagrid’s hut, and every other feature he’s come to know so well before he casts. Voldemort will be able to Apparate or Portkey in, but he won’t be leaving.

He’s barely dropped his arms from casting the spell when the communication mirror in his pocket glows. Harry frowns as he takes it out. This isn’t part of their strategy.

Draco’s face is there, but his voice is so low Harry knows that he’s in company. “My lord, the Dark Lord is sending Crabbe and me to the Hidden Room.”

To retrieve the diadem. He doesn’t need to say it. Harry nods and closes the mirror. Then he turns and nods to the others, who are hovering nearby on brooms of their own, the better to be faster and maneuverable around the grounds when the Death Eaters begin to arrive.

“Ready to fly?” he asks them.

*

Retrieving the diadem from the Hidden Room doesn’t go at all like Harry thought it would, despite it being easy enough to find on top of its bust and cabinet once Harry knows what he’s looking for. Crabbe and Draco show up faster than Harry looked for, and Draco takes one look at Harry and backs out of the room.

Draco does mouth one word before he goes. Fiendfyre.

Harry smiles, delighted. Fiendfyre is a proven way to destroy Horcruxes, he knows that much from his research, but none of them ever managed to master the spell enough to count on it. Their one big experiment almost burned down Grimmauld Place.

But Crabbe knows how to cast Fiendfyre. And when they can close it in a magical room and outfly it, it won’t matter if they can control it.

It certainly won’t matter what happens to Crabbe.

Crabbe is so easy to taunt, so easy to fool. Harry gets him to believe that the diadem, which of course belongs to the Dark Lord, has an enchantment on it that can only be broken by Fiendfyre, and then casts the thing into the flames when Crabbe casts the spell.

They circle above the flames, Millicent spitting at Crabbe when he looks to her in what might be a desperate plea for help. They dive through the door of the room, and Harry looks back—

In time to see the green flash of what must be the Killing Curse, as Crabbe kills himself rather than face death by Fiendfyre.

Harry shrugs. As if it matters.

*

Outside the Hidden Room, Harry places the basilisk fang in Draco’s hand, and murmurs, “The snake. Whatever you have to do.”

Draco nods, his eyes brilliant. And then he runs to “deliver the news” about the diadem and Crabbe’s death to Voldemort.

Harry intercepts Ron and Hermione on the fifth floor. They proudly present the second basilisk fang to him, and Harry hefts it and smiles. He can feel the deadly potency of the venom straining to get out of the fang and mark its way into his flesh. This time, it would kill him, not having a Horcrux to feast on.

But it can’t get out of the fang without help. And Harry is going to use it to kill the cup, and he is master of it.

There is an exquisite pleasure in mastery.

*

Of all the places that Harry expected to track Voldemort, he didn’t expect to find him in the Shrieking Shack.

But that’s where his tracking spell led him, and Harry wonders if he’s going to have to kill Voldemort here, without an audience. No, wait, an audience of one person. Two people. Nagini coils on the floor, and Snape kneels in front of Voldemort.

No, Harry doesn’t want it to happen here. It would be too easy for the Death Eaters to construct conspiracy theories about Voldemort still being alive if he does, and Harry doesn’t know that he could kill the snake, and the cup, and Voldemort, in one move.

He wants their strategy to work, besides. They spent so much time on it. With a sigh, Harry starts to ease back into the tunnel.

Then Voldemort’s rambling turns to accusing Snape to being the Master of the Elder Wand. Harry blinks in surprise as he remembers the fairy tale of the Three Brothers, and Draco mentioning in passing that Voldemort appeared to be obsessed with the Elder Wand. He thinks he needs the most powerful wand in the world to face Harry.

And he does have a wand that might be elder wood, and certainly isn’t the yew one, turning and turning in his hands. But it won’t work for him, and he thinks Snape is the reason why, since the wand belonged to Dumbledore and Snape conquered Dumbledore and must have won the wand’s allegiance by killing him.

But didn’t Draco actually disarm Dumbledore…? Harry has to conceal a muffled, hilarious laugh as he crouches under the Invisibility Cloak and watches Voldemort unleash Nagini on Snape. When Snape lies on the floor with blood running from his neck, Voldemort turns, blasts a hole in the wall, and departs with the snake.

Harry crouches down next to Snape, staring at him. He could certainly save him. This is a snakebite, and Harry ought to know how to heal one.

But should he?

Then Harry thinks of one very good reason why he should. And his smile is dark as he goes to work.

*

“VOLDEMORT!”

Harry’s shout rings across the battlefield, and turns every head there.

Greg and Millicent have chopped their way through the Death Eater ranks, getting them close enough to be heard. Draco is standing beside Voldemort, his eyes wide with excitement. Nagini curls between the two of them, her head uplifted and her tongue flickering back and forth. Harry thinks he can see a trace of Snape’s blood on her fangs.

“Harry Potter.” Voldemort says the name like a curse, like a prayer. “You are—”

He cuts off as Harry holds up Hufflepuff’s cup, and smiles.

At the same moment, he nods to Draco and Blaise, and they strike, perfectly in unison. Draco stabs the basilisk fang deep into Nagini’s neck, and then beheads her with a Cutting Curse as she shrieks and struggles. Blaise, who begged for the privilege of wounding Voldemort to make up for the letters he sent to his mother, casts a spell that releases a glittering chain of white lightning into Voldemort.

He swore it would wound Voldemort. Harry didn’t know if he should believe him. But, in fact, that is what happens. Voldemort shrieks like his dying snake, leaning over to the side, cut almost in half.

Blaise and Draco retreat in haste. Harry drops the cup on the ground and lifts the basilisk fang above it.

“I destroyed the locket last summer,” Harry says casually, “and the diary in my second year. Dumbledore destroyed the ring the summer before last. You know the fate of the diadem and the snake. How much for the last Horcrux, Voldemort? For the last—the very last—of your immortality anchors?”

Voldemort swallows, trying to look as if he would spare Harry if he spared the cup, Harry’s certain. “Give it to me,” he says hoarsely. “I will swear to spare you if you give it to me.”

Harry laughs, and brings the basilisk fang down on the cup.

Voldemort screams along with the dark mist that rises from it, and starts to inch backwards. But Blaise’s curse has cut him too deeply, and he has to pause and deal with it.

Into the gap, screaming the way she did when Harry cut off her breast, Bellatrix Lestrange hurtles.

It really is too good. Harry’s heart beats with gladness as he launches the spell that will behead her, and the curse behind it that will preserve her head in a living state so that he can do whatever he likes with it. As Bellatrix’s body falls one way and her head the other, Harry nods to Millicent, and she dodges towards it and scoops it up.

And Theodore smiles and strolls forwards as Harry draws the hood of the Invisibility Cloak around his head and fades from view.

“I’m so glad that I ignored my father and chose not to follow you,” Theodore says casually, eyeing Voldemort with just the right amount of disdain. “Look at you. Almost cut in half by a seventeen-year-old. You can’t protect your followers, you can’t protect your pet snake, you can’t even kill a baby. Why is anyone afraid of you again?”

He shakes his head, and Voldemort answers with a howl of rage. Harry chuckles inwardly as he gets behind him. When he asked for someone to distract Voldemort’s attention from him after the destruction of the cup Horcrux, Theodore immediately volunteered. Apparently these are things he’s been wanting to say to Voldemort for—a while.

Some of the Death Eaters dash forwards and try to rescue their Lord. Millicent, Greg, Hermione, Ron, Blaise, Pansy, and Draco are all in their way, and the air flashes with the spells that Harry’s taught them.

From hiding, like the “cowardly, dishonorable” Slytherin Dumbledore always thought him, and as he’s not sure he would have been able to do if Voldemort had been able to see it coming and counter it, Harry launches the spell he’s chosen to end the murderer of his parents.

It hits Voldemort and spreads in through his back, liquefying his organs. He begins to scream and doesn’t stop. Harry drops his hood again and turns to watch him, wondering if Voldemort will turn and see him as he dies, just a hovering face in the air. That might be its own brand of horror.

But that doesn’t happen. Harry’s spell, combined with Blaise’s, is too much for a mortal Voldemort to overcome, the way Blaise promised it would be when he discussed being the one to hit Voldemort with the curse. The writhing, snake-like creature goes up with a flash of blood and gore, burning where it falls. Harry uses another fire curse just to make sure.

When he glances up, the Death Eaters are already fleeing. Harry lets them go. He needs a few of them to hunt down in his old age.

And now, he has a visit to make.

*

“Welcome back, sir.”

It’s hilarious how Snape flinches and jumps when he comes awake. He grips the blankets as if he thinks that he can take them up and fling them like a weapon. Harry grins inwardly and lounges back in the chair next to the bed. Yes, he thought about leaving Snape to die, but this is a much more drawn-out revenge than he’ll be able to take on anyone else but Bellatrix.

Snape works through his coughing, and his glaring. Harry enjoys the first and endures the other, and finally Snape gets to the point where he can speak.

“What are you doing here, Potter?”

Of course, Harry knows why Snape is asking that question. The snakes did tell him a lot about the conversations between Snape and Dumbledore, and what they assumed Harry would have to do to get rid of the Horcrux in his head.

“I lost the Horcrux when I was much younger.”

Snape’s eyes go wider than they’ve probably been in his life. “What?”

“When I destroyed the diary in my second year.” Harry leans back and smiles, just a little, at the little noise that Snape can’t stop from escaping him at that point. “I got bitten by the basilisk, and the venom slashed through me and destroyed the Horcrux in me. I lied about being healed by the phoenix tears. I was never in danger, not when the venom actually preferred to destroy something like the Horcrux. It would have made better prey for the basilisk. More delicate prey.”

“But—how did you know what it was called? Or what it did?” Snape is half-choking, and Harry doesn’t think it’s because of his mostly-healed throat-wound.

“When the shade of Tom Riddle saw that I wasn’t dying, he broke,” Harry says, and Snape jumps at his tone. “He already knew what I was, apparently, from the feel of me when I touched the diary. He told me about Horcruxes and that I was one, and that he was, too. There was no one reason why we couldn’t ally, he said. Two smaller pieces of one greater being.”

“And then what happened?”

Harry smiles, because he has to, at the way Snape is leaning forwards. “I stabbed the basilisk fang through the diary anyway, and watched as Tom Riddle was destroyed, the way he always should have been.”

“But you retained Parseltongue,” Snape says, and squints at the scar on Harry’s forehead.

Harry shrugs, although he’s a little impressed despite himself that Snape apparently never bought the lie Dumbledore spread around about Harry losing his Parseltongue after that. “The Headmaster had a theory that I got it from the Horcrux, but that was just a theory. It turns out to have always been in me. With how common the hatred for Parseltongue is, maybe a lot of my ancestors were Parselmouths and just hid it.”

“As if a Potter would be that intelligent.”

“More intelligent than you would believe.” Harry chills his tone, making Snape flinch. Good. He should understand what the future will be like. “I used snakes a lot, you know. Real ones, carved ones, painted ones. I knew all about your plot with the Headmaster to make me walk to my death. Neither of you noticed that a snake had replaced Dippet in one of those portraits in his office and was listening to you.”

It’s something of a sacrifice to tell Snape about the snakes, but not much of one. The time is coming very soon when Harry won’t be a student anymore, and thus he won’t be able to command the snakes of Hogwarts. And unless he’s very much mistaken, Snape won’t be a professor for much longer if he has a choice.

Snape stares at him. “You—you had a connection to the Dark Lord. Or why would he be able to send visions through it to you?”

“That was the hole left by the Horcrux, not the Horcrux itself. It didn’t close until I killed him.”

“How did you kill him?” Snape is whispering, and looks annoyed with himself for the fact, but also as if he can’t stop. That weakness is everything Harry has always wanted to see on his face.

Harry lifts one shoulder and lets it fall. “I destroyed his last Horcrux in front of him. The cup. Hermione and Ron fetched a basilisk fang from the Chamber, and I got Draco to behead his snake. He was the only one who could get close enough.”

“Draco Malfoy is a Marked Death Eater.”

“Oh, dear. And you still doubt my Parseltongue? That a powerful Parselmouth couldn’t convince the snake in his Mark to work for me instead of the master who brought it into being in blood and pain? He’s been mine since first year, through his own decision that I was up to something, and once he realized that his father intended to brand him and sell him as a slave, he was even more mine.”

And that is true, except perhaps the way that Draco was his from first year. Although Harry will maintain that Draco made himself Harry’s with his obsession with him. If he had never thought there was a grand plan, would they be sitting here?

Perhaps not. Harry might have been mostly a Gryffindor and have trod Dumbledore’s path.

Not that he’ll be thanking Draco for it. His minion has a swollen-enough head as it is.

Snape hesitates, shrinks away from him, and then seems to brace himself. “You were telling me how you killed the Dark Lord.”

“Yes, I was.” Harry looks up and away for a moment, savoring the memory. “He went mad, essentially, when he realized he was mortal. Well, madder. He tried to flee. But I’d already used binding spells around the battlefield to make sure he couldn’t—”

“How did you learn those?” Snape demands, and starts coughing again. Harry patiently waits out the fit. He wants Snape to hear everything, to savor everything.


“Pansy,” Harry says, and lets Snape see the carelessness of his shrug. “Her father’s library. Then Gregory and Millicent fought for me against the Death Eaters, and Blaise launched a spell that wounded Voldemort.” Snape clutches at his arm, which makes Harry want to sneer—Draco never reacted that badly to the pain from Voldemort’s name—but he keeps talking. “I don’t even want to know where he got it. Theodore distracted the bastard by taunting him and reminding him that he hadn’t followed his father’s footsteps into the Death Eaters while I crept up behind him and stabbed him in the back with a curse that liquefied his organs.”

Snape remains silent for a long moment, and finally says, “That is not the way I expected you to fight,” just as Harry starts to stand, thinking he’ll have to create a moment to reveal the rest of what he wants to reveal.

Harry turns to look at him, and finally, finally lets the hatred surface. Snape flinches back from him harder than ever.

It’s so sweet that it’s hard for Harry to speak. But he has to, to complete his revenge.

“You were intending to have me march to my death. You made my life hell every day in Potions because of your grudge against a dead man I can’t even remember, while you refused to take my part against any Slytherin who tried to hurt me because ‘Slytherins stick together.’ Not something you remembered when I was the Slytherin in question, of course. I studied defensive spells on my own because our Defense professors were bloody useless, and you wouldn’t let me even cast in class when it was your turn. I put up with Dumbledore making constant little comments about how I couldn’t trust Draco, or Millicent, or Pansy, or any of them, and acting like my friendships with Ron and Hermione were corrupting them. I lost Sirius, and everyone except my friends told me it was my fault, even though Dumbledore was the one who believed Bellatrix Lestrange when she came to him and pretended to have repented. Every adult I knew sent me back to a hell every summer. I was on my own, and every one of them thought I wasn’t a real Gryffindor or a real Slytherin.”

Harry cuts himself off then, pretending to be so deeply-affected he’s about to lose his temper. Let Snape still underestimate him, if he ever comes against him again. But Harry doesn’t think he will, not after the revelation he still has to give. Harry’s just too used to planning two steps ahead to give it up now.

He glances away, and continues, “I won anyway. Despite you. Despite Dumbledore. Despite Bellatrix.” He smiles, to get to see Snape’s horror. “Whom I beheaded on the battlefield. That felt bloody good.”

Snape touches the wound on his neck. “How did I survive?”

“I found you in time, and healed Nagini’s bite.” Harry has to snort at the look on Snape’s face. “The spells I learned on my own, and you think I never learned ones that could heal a snakebite? Being a Parselmouth helped as well, of course.”

“Why?” Snape breathes. “Why did you save me, if you hate me?”

Here it is. Here’s the part he’ll hate most. Harry steps forwards and stares at Snape.

“Partially for my friends,” he says, and he’s not lying. “There are still some Slytherins you were a good Head of House for, and you turned some of them from the Death Eaters’ path. I reckon you can go on doing that in the future, standing up for them against the common bigotry and leading them away from the temptation of Dark Arts. And they didn’t need the grief of your death, little as they would have had to grieve for if they really knew you.”

“Partially—that. And partially what?”

Harry smiles. It’s the first real smile he’s ever given Snape, and it freezes the man. As well it should.

“My father saved your life, and that meant you owed me a debt by inheritance,” he says. “But you paid that back by saving my life in first year when I might have died after I burned Quirrell. Now you owe me a debt.

“I want you to live a very long, long time, Snape. And know that you breathe by my grace. Every day.”

Harry turns and stalks out of the hospital wing. He can feel Snape falling to pieces behind him, but if he stays he’ll laugh, and that’ll let Snape recover some ground.

Harry doesn’t want him to. He wants to keep Snape under his thumb for every day for the rest of his life.

Harry leans on the wall outside the hospital wing and breathes out slowly. He can hear distant screams, still, as wounded from the battle are treated. But he needs this moment to ride out the last of his immediate revenge, and reflect on how good it feels.

Is this how sex feels? He’s never had it. Some people say it’s really good

I get to find out, now, Harry reminds himself, as he stands up and starts walking towards where his friends wait. Life can’t be all tormenting Bellatrix’s head with memories of when her lord fell.

But I don’t know for sure what comes next. I don’t know what a normal life is like.

Harry smiles. He thinks that, for a certain dose of “normal,” he’ll enjoy finding out.

But for now, he has a head to torment.

The End.