![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lomonaaerenTitle: Radical
Pairing: Harry/Theo, otherwise gen
Content Notes: AU (Harry is re-Sorted into Slytherin at the beginning of fifth year), angst, Slytherin Harry, violence, Blood Quill torture, radicalization, open/ambiguous ending
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Ron and Hermione knew Harry was upset about being left out of things during the first part of the summer before fifth year, but they’d never thought he’d be upset enough to request being Sorted into Slytherin, or to start believing that Voldemort is right. Or: A Slytherin Harry story, but as seen from Ron and Hermione’s POV’s.
Author’s Notes: This is part of my “More Theo/Harry in the World Project” and will have at least three parts. This was inspired by thinking about how Ron and Hermione would react to Harry starting to go down a blood purist path, and how they would have lots of reasons to be worried. I love and enjoy Slytherin Harry stories, but was interested in seeing how it would look from the outside.
Radical
“SLYTHERIN!”
Ron stared with his mouth open as the Hat spoke, and Harry swept it off his head with a smile that could only be described as a smirk, sauntering towards the Slytherin table. The only thing that reassured Ron even a little was that the Slytherins, led by Malfoy, were gaping as well, and no one seemed pleased about this or to have planned it.
And Ron knew that no one had forced Harry into this, either. Harry had just commented casually on the train that he had something to ask Dumbledore, and then Dumbledore had announced in a slightly strangled voice that an older student had asked to go beneath the Sorting Hat again.
“He expected this,” Hermione whispered.
“What are you talking about?” Ron leaned closer to her so that they could hear each other over the roar of speculation and gossip and outrage and laughter that had rushed across the Great Hall.
“Harry’s not upset,” Hermione said, and swallowed a little. “He—he knew that the Hat would probably Sort him into Slytherin. It must have said something to him during his original Sorting…did he ever mention that to you?”
It was possible that Harry had, but also that Ron really couldn’t remember it. He shook his head, something else a lot more worrying coming to him. “You think he did this just to get away from us?”
“I can’t think of any other reason. It’s not like he could think Slytherin House was going to be friendlier to him than ours after V-Voldemort came back.” Hermione looked at Ron with tears in her eyes. “He must not have been able to stand the thought of sharing a common room with us. And meals. And all our classes.”
Ron closed his eyes. He hated the thought that he had driven his best friend away from Gryffindor, or even just helped to do it. “Let’s find him tomorrow and talk about it.”
Hermione nodded. They both knew that trying to get away from the Gryffindor table right now, with people staring at them almost as eagerly as they were at Harry, and when they were both prefects who had to help with the firsties, would be impossible.
Ron gave Harry one last look. Harry stared back at him as if Ron were a stranger, and then turned to talk to Malfoy, of all people.
Malfoy, whose father had been there in the graveyard.
Even if he did this to get away from us, Ron thought darkly, that’s going too far.
*
“Harry, do you have a minute so we can talk?”
Hermione had spent most of last night listening to people speculating in the Gryffindor common room about why Harry would have abandoned them, and she was bloody tired of it. She did think that she and Ron knew part of the real reason, but only part. Harry had yelled at them when he’d first come to Grimmauld Place and discovered what they’d been leaving out of their letters. It stood to reason that he should have done that again if he was upset with them.
Not this—this.
So something else was going on.
Harry turned around. He was followed by Nott and Zabini, two of the Slytherins who had never said “Mudblood” aloud to Hermione but given her those cold glances that she knew meant the same thing. “Miss Granger,” Harry said in a faintly mocking voice. “Why would we need to talk? Why not just keep everything from each other like the Headmaster suggested?”
Hermione winced. She thought now that agreeing to follow Dumbledore’s instructions was the worst thing that she and Ron could have done. But she also still thought there was more going on. “It’ll only take a minute.”
Harry glanced at Zabini and Nott. They didn’t say anything, but after a moment, they stepped away and continued walking towards the Great Hall, which allowed Hermione to draw Harry into an alcove near the dungeon stairs. She decided to make it as blunt as possible, in case Harry wanted to be literal about the “minute” idea. “Why are you doing this if you’re angry at us, instead of just telling us? Shouting at us?”
Harry paused as if the question had surprised him. Then he looked at Hermione with sharp eyes and said, “Maybe I’m reconsidering some things.”
“Like what?”
“Like whether Dumbledore has my best interests at heart, if he leaves me in the Muggle world all summer and wouldn’t care if my soul got eaten by fucking Dementors.”
The language surprised Hermione as much as anything else, and she blinked. Then she said, “So you asked to be Sorted again because you’re angry at Dumbledore?”
“Oh, and the government smear campaign. And being put on trial before the full Wizengamot for underage magic. And being abandoned in the Muggle world after I saw someone be murdered. And my best friends ignoring me while getting to spend time with each other and my godfather over the summer.”
Harry’s voice was a vicious hiss on the last words, and Hermione drew back. It was unnerving, this feeling that her best friend had been replaced by someone else. “Harry—”
“I didn’t forgive you, Hermione.”
“But we said we were sorry! And it was a mistake, I know that now—”
“You still did it in the first place. When I was isolated and needed my best friends to understand, instead of just dumping me in the Muggle world and—” Harry closed his eyes and shook his head. “It doesn’t matter. What’s past is past?’
“So you’re just never going to forgive us, is that it?”
“I thought I’d try being a Slytherin for a while. See what it’s like, since I rejected the chance the first time around.”
“You weren’t surprised. You did think the Hat would offer you Slytherin.”
“It already did.”
Hermione bit her lip. That was something Harry had never told them, but she thought she could see why. Ron had been pretty anti-Slytherin in their first year, and Harry might have thought his best friend would abandon him if he said anything. And Harry had just thought she was annoying at first. By the time the troll incident had happened and Hermione had really become Harry’s friend, the Sorting had been almost two months behind them.
“Is it safe for you in Slytherin, surrounded by the children of Death Eaters?”
“They’re almost the only ones who believe me that Voldemort is really back.”
Hermione still flinched from the name, but she stiffened her spine. She would have to get used to a lot of worse things in the name of fighting this war. “You know that I do, and of course Ron, and the other Weasleys—”
“Seamus doesn’t. I heard him talking about it on the train.” Harry’s eyes were flat. “I’m not going to spend a whole year sleeping in the same room as someone who’s known me since first year and should know that I wouldn’t lie about something like this. Who should have known that I wasn’t lying about putting my name in the Goblet of Fire, either.”
“So instead,” Hermione snapped, her temper getting the better of her, “you’re going to spend three years sleeping in the same room with people who don’t know you at all, and who wore badges telling you that you stank last year? At least four boys in the same room had parents who were at the graveyard, you said. Yes, that makes so much sense, Harry.”
Harry didn’t snap the way Hermione thought he would have most of the time. He took a deep breath, blinked a little, and then shook his head, an odd smile on his face.
“Nott said that you would react like this.”
“What?”
“That you would turn my choices back on me. That you would defend people who hate me for ridiculous reasons. Even though you were in the Prophet yourself last year and should have seen how hard it is to deal with it.” Harry turned and walked away from her.
“Harry! Harry, wait!”
Harry paused and turned to look at her over his shoulder. His eyes were distant, cool in a way that made Hermione recoil.
“I just don’t think there’s a reason to anymore, Hermione.”
And he went into the Great Hall and left Hermione standing, feeling lonely and cold.
*
“Potter and Weasley, I think.”
Normally Ron would have complained about being assigned to work with a Slytherin, but Snape was doing a bit of good for once in his miserable, greasy life, so Ron just nodded and moved his cauldron over beside Harry’s. Harry nodded to him as if they were meeting for the first time and spread out his Potions knives.
“Harry.”
“Yeah? Have something you want to say, this time?”
Ron did his best to keep his voice quiet, because no one else, especially no Slytherins with Death Eater parents, really needed to overhear this. But Merlin, was it hard with Harry staring at him as if he were a stranger. “You know why we had to do that.”
“Had to?”
“All right, why we did it. That doesn’t mean that we have to keep apologizing for it for the rest of our lives!”
Harry shrugged and turned to look at the instructions on the board. Then he stood and walked over to the storage cupboard. Ron debated following him, but then saw Malfoy watching him with eager eyes.
He probably wanted to see Ron panting after Harry. Ron lifted his chin and stared at Malfoy, and at last Malfoy made a rude little gesture and looked back at his own cauldron. Ron waited for Harry to come back before he spoke again.
“You could at least have started on the potion.”
“Why are you doing this, Harry? You’re being mean and rude for no reason!”
“Sort of like you.”
Ron narrowed his eyes. “If you want to act stupid over something that you said you forgave us for, fine. I’ll remember that next time you say you forgive us, you’re lying.”
Ron only had a moment to see Harry’s eyes flash before he slammed his expression shut. And Ron remembered all the people who were accusing Harry of lying at the moment, and he flinched and thought that maybe he shouldn’t have said that.
But Snape swept past and said something about Gryffindors distracting people and took points, so Ron gritted his teeth and suffered in silence. Harry worked faster and more efficiently than he had before, and Ron wondered if all Slytherins got special Potions tutoring or something.
On the other hand, given the friendly way that Harry walked beside Malfoy on the way out of class, maybe it was just becoming friends with a world-class git.
I really did think I knew Harry better than that.
*
“Why would you need to use spells, dear?”
Hermione gritted her teeth the way she’d seen Ron doing in Potions. It was terrible to watch Umbridge setting a new level of, well, terribleness for Defense professors. But Hermione had something to say, and if even one of the students sitting around and saying nothing listened to her, then it would be worth it.
“Because there’s a whole Death Eater army and You-Know-Who to fight?”
Umbridge stared with her mouth open a little. Hermione felt a stab of triumph. The awful woman hadn’t expected someone to resist openly, had she? The Ministry probably thought everyone agreed with their stupid stories about Harry in the paper.
But them Umbridge adjusted her cardigan and murmured, “If you had any idea how unreliable those rumors were, dear. Even Mr. Potter himself has issued a retraction, hasn’t he?” And she turned and looked at Harry.
Harry looked up with a cowed expression on his face that Hermione had never seen him wear. “Yes, Professor Umbridge,” he whispered.
“What?” Hermione knew her voice was too loud in her shock and that people were turning to stare at her, but she couldn’t get past this. “Harry, you retracted—you’re lying about V-Voldemort coming back now?”
There were flinches and shrieks and jumps. Umbridge said something about ten points from Gryffindor. Hermione ignored them. Her eyes were locked on Harry, and her stomach was sinking.
Personal revenge on her and Ron was one thing, even if Hermione thought it was childish. But that Harry would do this? He was betraying every sense of principle in the world! He was going to make people more complacent and put lives in more danger!
Hermione felt like vomiting. She and Ron had spent weeks with Harry this summer. How had they missed him turning into—this?
“Now, now, Miss Granger,” Umbridge said, with the expression on her pouched face that made her look like a toad who was happy to catch so many flies. “One mustn’t question the validity of another person’s lived experience, as I think the Muggles might say. I’m sure that you wouldn’t insist Mr. Potter should continue to spread his lies when he’s come around to the truth, would you?”
“When he’s lying,” Hermione said, her eyes fixed on Harry, “I will.”
She knew she sounded disappointed, upset. Well, she was. If Harry had got upset about them not being honest, Hermione was about to give him more honesty than he probably wanted.
Harry turned his head and gave her an empty look. “I have the right to do things that will protect my own life,” he said, and the words were like a punch to Hermione’s heart.
Hermione struggled to respond, ignoring Umbridge calling the class to order and telling them to go back to reading the Slinkhard book. She couldn’t look away from Harry, who was—who was a traitor. He might have turned into a Slytherin, but that didn’t mean he was a bad person, of and by itself.
His actions made him a bad person, though.
Then Hermione saw something she hadn’t noticed before in her focus on Harry. Malfoy was leaning back in his chair at Harry’s side in the front row and smirking, twirling a quill between his fingers. He winked when he caught her eye.
Hermione felt a rush of disgust and understanding at the same time. Of course. Malfoy was coercing Harry into this, or maybe the other Slytherins. Maybe they’d even threatened her and Ron to keep Harry in line.
Now that Hermione knew because Malfoy had stupidly betrayed their plan, she could do something about it.
She smiled back at Malfoy, which seemed to confuse him, and turned to face her book. She was going to fix this, no matter what.
*
Pairing: Harry/Theo, otherwise gen
Content Notes: AU (Harry is re-Sorted into Slytherin at the beginning of fifth year), angst, Slytherin Harry, violence, Blood Quill torture, radicalization, open/ambiguous ending
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Ron and Hermione knew Harry was upset about being left out of things during the first part of the summer before fifth year, but they’d never thought he’d be upset enough to request being Sorted into Slytherin, or to start believing that Voldemort is right. Or: A Slytherin Harry story, but as seen from Ron and Hermione’s POV’s.
Author’s Notes: This is part of my “More Theo/Harry in the World Project” and will have at least three parts. This was inspired by thinking about how Ron and Hermione would react to Harry starting to go down a blood purist path, and how they would have lots of reasons to be worried. I love and enjoy Slytherin Harry stories, but was interested in seeing how it would look from the outside.
Radical
“SLYTHERIN!”
Ron stared with his mouth open as the Hat spoke, and Harry swept it off his head with a smile that could only be described as a smirk, sauntering towards the Slytherin table. The only thing that reassured Ron even a little was that the Slytherins, led by Malfoy, were gaping as well, and no one seemed pleased about this or to have planned it.
And Ron knew that no one had forced Harry into this, either. Harry had just commented casually on the train that he had something to ask Dumbledore, and then Dumbledore had announced in a slightly strangled voice that an older student had asked to go beneath the Sorting Hat again.
“He expected this,” Hermione whispered.
“What are you talking about?” Ron leaned closer to her so that they could hear each other over the roar of speculation and gossip and outrage and laughter that had rushed across the Great Hall.
“Harry’s not upset,” Hermione said, and swallowed a little. “He—he knew that the Hat would probably Sort him into Slytherin. It must have said something to him during his original Sorting…did he ever mention that to you?”
It was possible that Harry had, but also that Ron really couldn’t remember it. He shook his head, something else a lot more worrying coming to him. “You think he did this just to get away from us?”
“I can’t think of any other reason. It’s not like he could think Slytherin House was going to be friendlier to him than ours after V-Voldemort came back.” Hermione looked at Ron with tears in her eyes. “He must not have been able to stand the thought of sharing a common room with us. And meals. And all our classes.”
Ron closed his eyes. He hated the thought that he had driven his best friend away from Gryffindor, or even just helped to do it. “Let’s find him tomorrow and talk about it.”
Hermione nodded. They both knew that trying to get away from the Gryffindor table right now, with people staring at them almost as eagerly as they were at Harry, and when they were both prefects who had to help with the firsties, would be impossible.
Ron gave Harry one last look. Harry stared back at him as if Ron were a stranger, and then turned to talk to Malfoy, of all people.
Malfoy, whose father had been there in the graveyard.
Even if he did this to get away from us, Ron thought darkly, that’s going too far.
*
“Harry, do you have a minute so we can talk?”
Hermione had spent most of last night listening to people speculating in the Gryffindor common room about why Harry would have abandoned them, and she was bloody tired of it. She did think that she and Ron knew part of the real reason, but only part. Harry had yelled at them when he’d first come to Grimmauld Place and discovered what they’d been leaving out of their letters. It stood to reason that he should have done that again if he was upset with them.
Not this—this.
So something else was going on.
Harry turned around. He was followed by Nott and Zabini, two of the Slytherins who had never said “Mudblood” aloud to Hermione but given her those cold glances that she knew meant the same thing. “Miss Granger,” Harry said in a faintly mocking voice. “Why would we need to talk? Why not just keep everything from each other like the Headmaster suggested?”
Hermione winced. She thought now that agreeing to follow Dumbledore’s instructions was the worst thing that she and Ron could have done. But she also still thought there was more going on. “It’ll only take a minute.”
Harry glanced at Zabini and Nott. They didn’t say anything, but after a moment, they stepped away and continued walking towards the Great Hall, which allowed Hermione to draw Harry into an alcove near the dungeon stairs. She decided to make it as blunt as possible, in case Harry wanted to be literal about the “minute” idea. “Why are you doing this if you’re angry at us, instead of just telling us? Shouting at us?”
Harry paused as if the question had surprised him. Then he looked at Hermione with sharp eyes and said, “Maybe I’m reconsidering some things.”
“Like what?”
“Like whether Dumbledore has my best interests at heart, if he leaves me in the Muggle world all summer and wouldn’t care if my soul got eaten by fucking Dementors.”
The language surprised Hermione as much as anything else, and she blinked. Then she said, “So you asked to be Sorted again because you’re angry at Dumbledore?”
“Oh, and the government smear campaign. And being put on trial before the full Wizengamot for underage magic. And being abandoned in the Muggle world after I saw someone be murdered. And my best friends ignoring me while getting to spend time with each other and my godfather over the summer.”
Harry’s voice was a vicious hiss on the last words, and Hermione drew back. It was unnerving, this feeling that her best friend had been replaced by someone else. “Harry—”
“I didn’t forgive you, Hermione.”
“But we said we were sorry! And it was a mistake, I know that now—”
“You still did it in the first place. When I was isolated and needed my best friends to understand, instead of just dumping me in the Muggle world and—” Harry closed his eyes and shook his head. “It doesn’t matter. What’s past is past?’
“So you’re just never going to forgive us, is that it?”
“I thought I’d try being a Slytherin for a while. See what it’s like, since I rejected the chance the first time around.”
“You weren’t surprised. You did think the Hat would offer you Slytherin.”
“It already did.”
Hermione bit her lip. That was something Harry had never told them, but she thought she could see why. Ron had been pretty anti-Slytherin in their first year, and Harry might have thought his best friend would abandon him if he said anything. And Harry had just thought she was annoying at first. By the time the troll incident had happened and Hermione had really become Harry’s friend, the Sorting had been almost two months behind them.
“Is it safe for you in Slytherin, surrounded by the children of Death Eaters?”
“They’re almost the only ones who believe me that Voldemort is really back.”
Hermione still flinched from the name, but she stiffened her spine. She would have to get used to a lot of worse things in the name of fighting this war. “You know that I do, and of course Ron, and the other Weasleys—”
“Seamus doesn’t. I heard him talking about it on the train.” Harry’s eyes were flat. “I’m not going to spend a whole year sleeping in the same room as someone who’s known me since first year and should know that I wouldn’t lie about something like this. Who should have known that I wasn’t lying about putting my name in the Goblet of Fire, either.”
“So instead,” Hermione snapped, her temper getting the better of her, “you’re going to spend three years sleeping in the same room with people who don’t know you at all, and who wore badges telling you that you stank last year? At least four boys in the same room had parents who were at the graveyard, you said. Yes, that makes so much sense, Harry.”
Harry didn’t snap the way Hermione thought he would have most of the time. He took a deep breath, blinked a little, and then shook his head, an odd smile on his face.
“Nott said that you would react like this.”
“What?”
“That you would turn my choices back on me. That you would defend people who hate me for ridiculous reasons. Even though you were in the Prophet yourself last year and should have seen how hard it is to deal with it.” Harry turned and walked away from her.
“Harry! Harry, wait!”
Harry paused and turned to look at her over his shoulder. His eyes were distant, cool in a way that made Hermione recoil.
“I just don’t think there’s a reason to anymore, Hermione.”
And he went into the Great Hall and left Hermione standing, feeling lonely and cold.
*
“Potter and Weasley, I think.”
Normally Ron would have complained about being assigned to work with a Slytherin, but Snape was doing a bit of good for once in his miserable, greasy life, so Ron just nodded and moved his cauldron over beside Harry’s. Harry nodded to him as if they were meeting for the first time and spread out his Potions knives.
“Harry.”
“Yeah? Have something you want to say, this time?”
Ron did his best to keep his voice quiet, because no one else, especially no Slytherins with Death Eater parents, really needed to overhear this. But Merlin, was it hard with Harry staring at him as if he were a stranger. “You know why we had to do that.”
“Had to?”
“All right, why we did it. That doesn’t mean that we have to keep apologizing for it for the rest of our lives!”
Harry shrugged and turned to look at the instructions on the board. Then he stood and walked over to the storage cupboard. Ron debated following him, but then saw Malfoy watching him with eager eyes.
He probably wanted to see Ron panting after Harry. Ron lifted his chin and stared at Malfoy, and at last Malfoy made a rude little gesture and looked back at his own cauldron. Ron waited for Harry to come back before he spoke again.
“You could at least have started on the potion.”
“Why are you doing this, Harry? You’re being mean and rude for no reason!”
“Sort of like you.”
Ron narrowed his eyes. “If you want to act stupid over something that you said you forgave us for, fine. I’ll remember that next time you say you forgive us, you’re lying.”
Ron only had a moment to see Harry’s eyes flash before he slammed his expression shut. And Ron remembered all the people who were accusing Harry of lying at the moment, and he flinched and thought that maybe he shouldn’t have said that.
But Snape swept past and said something about Gryffindors distracting people and took points, so Ron gritted his teeth and suffered in silence. Harry worked faster and more efficiently than he had before, and Ron wondered if all Slytherins got special Potions tutoring or something.
On the other hand, given the friendly way that Harry walked beside Malfoy on the way out of class, maybe it was just becoming friends with a world-class git.
I really did think I knew Harry better than that.
*
“Why would you need to use spells, dear?”
Hermione gritted her teeth the way she’d seen Ron doing in Potions. It was terrible to watch Umbridge setting a new level of, well, terribleness for Defense professors. But Hermione had something to say, and if even one of the students sitting around and saying nothing listened to her, then it would be worth it.
“Because there’s a whole Death Eater army and You-Know-Who to fight?”
Umbridge stared with her mouth open a little. Hermione felt a stab of triumph. The awful woman hadn’t expected someone to resist openly, had she? The Ministry probably thought everyone agreed with their stupid stories about Harry in the paper.
But them Umbridge adjusted her cardigan and murmured, “If you had any idea how unreliable those rumors were, dear. Even Mr. Potter himself has issued a retraction, hasn’t he?” And she turned and looked at Harry.
Harry looked up with a cowed expression on his face that Hermione had never seen him wear. “Yes, Professor Umbridge,” he whispered.
“What?” Hermione knew her voice was too loud in her shock and that people were turning to stare at her, but she couldn’t get past this. “Harry, you retracted—you’re lying about V-Voldemort coming back now?”
There were flinches and shrieks and jumps. Umbridge said something about ten points from Gryffindor. Hermione ignored them. Her eyes were locked on Harry, and her stomach was sinking.
Personal revenge on her and Ron was one thing, even if Hermione thought it was childish. But that Harry would do this? He was betraying every sense of principle in the world! He was going to make people more complacent and put lives in more danger!
Hermione felt like vomiting. She and Ron had spent weeks with Harry this summer. How had they missed him turning into—this?
“Now, now, Miss Granger,” Umbridge said, with the expression on her pouched face that made her look like a toad who was happy to catch so many flies. “One mustn’t question the validity of another person’s lived experience, as I think the Muggles might say. I’m sure that you wouldn’t insist Mr. Potter should continue to spread his lies when he’s come around to the truth, would you?”
“When he’s lying,” Hermione said, her eyes fixed on Harry, “I will.”
She knew she sounded disappointed, upset. Well, she was. If Harry had got upset about them not being honest, Hermione was about to give him more honesty than he probably wanted.
Harry turned his head and gave her an empty look. “I have the right to do things that will protect my own life,” he said, and the words were like a punch to Hermione’s heart.
Hermione struggled to respond, ignoring Umbridge calling the class to order and telling them to go back to reading the Slinkhard book. She couldn’t look away from Harry, who was—who was a traitor. He might have turned into a Slytherin, but that didn’t mean he was a bad person, of and by itself.
His actions made him a bad person, though.
Then Hermione saw something she hadn’t noticed before in her focus on Harry. Malfoy was leaning back in his chair at Harry’s side in the front row and smirking, twirling a quill between his fingers. He winked when he caught her eye.
Hermione felt a rush of disgust and understanding at the same time. Of course. Malfoy was coercing Harry into this, or maybe the other Slytherins. Maybe they’d even threatened her and Ron to keep Harry in line.
Now that Hermione knew because Malfoy had stupidly betrayed their plan, she could do something about it.
She smiled back at Malfoy, which seemed to confuse him, and turned to face her book. She was going to fix this, no matter what.
*
