Chapter Twenty-Five of 'For the Game'

[lomonaaeren]

“Is it really true that you destroyed a giant basilisk?”

Harry gave Ron a tense smile over the rim of the cauldrons they sat between. They were brewing a particularly nasty potion that day, and Harry hadn’t objected to partnering with Ron, but he’d thought they would just be concentrating on ingredients. “Yeah.”

“How?”

Ron was whispering, but not softly enough to escape Snape’s attention. Snape swept past, gave them a remote look, and said, “Five points from Gryffindor for talking, Mr. Weasley,” before he sailed away to another part of the classroom to prey on someone else.

“Slimy git,” Ron muttered under his breath as he tossed a leaf of spinach towards the cauldron.

Harry nodded in response, but prevented the leaf from going in. They wouldn’t need it until later in the recipe. “Marched a rooster down to the Chamber and let it crow at the basilisk,” he said.

Ron eyed him for a long moment. Harry eyed him back, and picked up the spinach leaf to drop into the cauldron after a moment when he realized that Ron wasn’t going to do it himself.

“That’s mental.”

“Basilisks are vulnerable to a rooster’s crow. Everyone knows that.”

“I didn’t know that!”

“I was reading about snakes,” Harry said, which at least ought to make sense to Ron now that his friend knew he was a Parselmouth.

Ron turned a sort of sickly hue and swallowed. For a few minutes, they worked in silence, and their potion edged towards the green-grey color it was supposed to be. Harry watched it and thought it was still off enough for Snape to take points, but not enough to explode and shower them with slimy stuff, which was all he cared about.

“Can we talk, mate?”

“Thought we were,” Harry said lightly, as he picked up a vial of moondew and scattered in a few drops.

“You know what I mean. You and me and Hermione.” Ron’s voice quivered a little, but his jaw was firm in the way that Harry knew meant he would have trouble talking his friend—if Ron was still his friend—out of it. “I think we need to—to talk to each other about things like this.”

Harry eyed him skeptically, but Ron seemed to be sincere in asking. He finally shrugged and nodded. “All right.”

“Potter. Get back to work.”

“Knew he was going to say that,” Harry said, under his breath, for the benefit of making Ron smile, and went back to stirring.

*

“So are you angry at us?”

Harry sighed a little. Days had passed since he’d spoken to Ron and Hermione about his Parseltongue. Days had passed since the basilisk, for that matter, and since he’d returned to the Slytherin common room with the knowledge that he had Blaise and Theo beside him, come what might.

“No,” he said. And if that was because time had outworn his anger, he didn’t think he needed to make that distinction.

But Hermione was biting her lip and shifting her weight, as though she were worried that he might snap at them. “Are you sure?”

Harry shrugged and leaned back in the comfy chair they’d found for him in the Gryffindor common room. This time, Harry’s intrusion had caused nothing but a couple stares and some applause from Gryffindors who believed the rumor about Harry killing the basilisk. “Sure, I am.”

“But you were angry.’

“Yeah, but friends don’t have to stay angry at each other forever, Hermione.”

She smiled at him in relief. Harry smiled back. He didn’t regret their argument, not really, even though he’d felt so lonely afterwards. It had given him a better understanding of Ron and Hermione, and even of himself.

Now he knew exactly how far he could depend on them, and what he wouldn’t be able to trust them with.

“Does this mean that we can start working together on the issue of freeing house-elves again? They were more reluctant to talk to me when you weren’t there.”

They’d probably thought that it was some kind of trick if two humans showed up and then only one did, Harry thought. He nodded. “Sure.”

“Can we talk about something more interesting now?” Ron broke in. “Like Quidditch? Why don’t you want to play Quidditch, Harry?”

“I wouldn’t really want to have to watch my back around the Slytherins who would be jealous of me if I did.”

Ron started ranting about that, and Hermione broke in to try and redirect the conversation, and Harry held back a laugh with effort. It was as if nothing had changed, as if he’d never been gone.

But he had. And now he knew more than he used to. So it wasn’t a waste.

*

“Come with me.”

The voice was a low hiss, and the wand that had jabbed into the middle of his back as Harry walked down the corridor away from Potions was hard and kept him from turning to look. Harry marched with the person who must be the Heir of Slytherin towards what he only needed a few corners to identify as Myrtle’s bathroom.

Then he filled the air behind him with fire.

There was a scream and a shriek, and Harry rolled and ducked and came up with his own wand in his hand. He almost lost it again to a Disarming Charm while he stared at the person behind him.

A short, red-haired girl—in fact, her hair was the exact same shade as Ron’s. His sister? His little sister, Jenny something?

But her distorted face and the hissing that emerged from her mouth brought Harry back to reality. He ducked under another curse and came up clutching his wand and backing away until his shoulders touched the stone beside what he knew was a tapestry covering a secret passage.

“Why couldn’t you just die?”

Harry didn’t bother responding, watching Jenny’s hands and face. He didn’t know how she was a Parselmouth, or how she knew the curse that had flown over him and had been cast silently. It didn’t matter. What mattered was making sure that she couldn’t hurt him.

“Die!”

Jenny hurled another curse. Harry dropped smoothly to her knees and held out his hand, willing power to coalesce around it as hard as he ever had when Malfoy threatened Hedwig.

Fire.

Flames sprang into being around Jenny’s legs and licked and bit into her skin. She shrieked in horror and flailed around, and Harry took the chance to get back to his feet and fire a Stunner at her.

Jenny jerked back, so it missed, and glared. “I am going to kill you!” she snapped in Parseltongue.

“You’re already not doing very well.”

Blaise and Theo would probably have something to say about him taunting the Heir of Slytherin, Harry thought, while Jenny responded with a wild scream and a Stunner of her own that Harry ducked. But it was worth it. Her movements kept getting more and more uncoordinated, and Harry was pretty sure that he could make her curse her own face in a moment.

“Coward!”

“Bold to say when you’ve been hiding behind the mask of a little girl.”

Strangely, that made Jenny stop screaming. She stood with an unnaturally calm expression on her face instead, staring at him. Harry stared back.

“You do not know who I am.”

“No. You’re not important.”

Fury built in the girl’s eyes for a moment and then as quickly disappeared from her expression. Yeah, this was creepy. “I am the true Heir of Slytherin. The shadow that looses the basilisk in the night. I am Lord Voldemort.”

Harry felt hair rise on the back of his neck, and controlled the urge to run away the way he had with Quirrell. He controlled it even harder when her eyes turned red in the next second. This was probably a case of possession.

But she would curse him in the back if he ran. And if she was possessed by Voldemort, she probably knew all the secret passages.

“You’re not very impressive. And your basilisk is dead.”

Abruptly Jenny was screaming with rage again, and this time she caught him with something that made his ribs break the way they had when Dudley had punched him one time. It gave Harry access to his own rage, though.

He flung out his hand in front of him, and the net of power he had first conjured when he’d trapped Dobby spread out like a flower, winding around Jenny and lifting her from the ground. One strand tore the wand from her hand.

“Let me go!”

“Self-evidently, that would be a stupid move.”

She called him some more terrible names in Parseltongue as the strands wrapped around her. Harry stood, breathing hard and watching her, while she tried to hurt him with wandless magic. Something about Harry’s own wandless power got in the way, though. She was helpless.

“Mr. Potter! What are you doing with Miss Weasley?”

Harry just rolled his eyes, although he smoothed his face out before he turned around to look at Professor McGonagall. Of course she blamed him. That was what professors did, it seemed. “She attacked me. I was keeping her from doing it again.”

“What could she possibly have done to you?”

“Spoken in Parseltongue and proclaimed herself the Heir of Slytherin.”

At least it was satisfying to watch Professor McGonagall pale dramatically, although it wasn’t as fun to watch her dismantle the net of magic holding Weasley hostage. McGonagall escorted them to the Headmaster’s office.

Harry wondered idly if he could coax Dumbledore into telling him the password to the gargoyle, given that he seemed to visit every other day or so.

*

“And he confirmed she was possessed?”

Harry nodded, leaning back against his pillow. The snake had eaten a rat and was asleep in the middle of Harry’s stomach with a bulge in the middle of its stomach. “Yeah. He cast some spell that could tell it. Apparently, she came into contact with a Dark artifact. She tried to lie and say she hadn’t, or maybe the spirit possessing her did. But Dumbledore wasn’t fooled.”

“And they took the artifact away?”

“I assume. But McGonagall took Weasley back to the dormitories in Gryffindor Tower, so I didn’t see it happen.”

“And Dumbledore kept you for scolding.”

Theo’s voice was cool in a way that made Harry glance at him curiously. “Yeah,” he said slowly. “I expected it, really. Apparently I could have damaged a fragile younger student by catching her the way I did.”

“Let me guess,” Blaise said. He was lounging, or at least so it looked like, in the middle of a mess of parchment that had Transfiguration notes on it. But his voice was just as cold as Theo’s. “He said that you should have gone and got a professor when Weasley appeared behind you and tried to take you hostage.”

“Yeah.”

Theo rolled his eyes enormously. “Is it because Weasley’s a Gryffindor?” he demanded. “Is that it? Is that all it takes to be a coddled and spoiled professor’s pet? Or is it something else?”

“I think it’s me.”

“You did nothing wrong!”

Theo half-surged off the bed as he shouted the words. Harry blinked, and then half-smiled. It was nice to have friends who would get angry on his behalf. “No, I mean, I think it’s the combination of my fame and their somehow expecting better of me.”

“Better.”

“Right, but I can’t give it the emphasis you do, Blaise. They think I should be a Gryffindor. They think I should find ideal and non-violent solutions to problems. I should protect other students, but not by putting myself in danger. That’s what they think.” Harry thought a moment, then added, “Except Snape. He has his own reasons for hating me, but he does seem to think I ought to behave differently.”

“They’re mental,” Blaise said. Because he wasn’t speaking as passionately as Theo, his words sank down like stones on Harry’s skin, and made him shift a little uneasily. Even Theo looked at Blaise with his head tilted. “They don’t want to solve problems in the school, but they don’t want you to solve them the way you do, either.”

“They want someone perfect.”

“Which means they’ve fallen victim to the legend of the Boy-Who-Lived like anyone else.”

“I reckon,” Harry said, and then sighed. He had almost decided not to tell Blaise and Theo this, because it would just make them angry, but there was nothing they could do about it. But from the way they were staring at him, they already knew he’d been keeping something back. “Dumbledore decided he had to talk to me after McGonagall took Weasley back to the Tower.”

“About what?”

“Apparently the Dark Lord’s real name was Tom Riddle. That’s the name of the shade that Dumbledore thinks possessed Weasley. And he was a Parselmouth, of course, and a Slytherin. And he could practice wandless magic.”

“And…?”

“Like me. Dumbledore wanted to give me some kind of caution about letting power tempt me to become like the Dark Lord.”

Blaise and Theo just stared at him. Harry nodded and leaned back with his eyes closed. He was getting used to the professors’ suspicions, he thought, at least somewhat. He didn’t like it, he would never like it, but at least this made sense of some things that just hadn’t made sense before.

“They’re so stupid,” Theo whispered. “You’ve stood up to the Dark Lord twice now. Three times if we count…” He let his voice trail off in dismay. “And they think this?”

“Some people have always thought that Harry Potter defeated the Dark Lord because he was like the Dark Lord,” Blaise said, his voice precise. “I don’t want to say that everyone thinks that, but it’s a suspicion I’ve heard discussed among—people in my mother’s circles.”

Harry took a deep breath and opened his eyes. He wasn’t going to ask about Blaise’s mother, even though he was curious, since Blaise so rarely spoke about her. “Yeah. I think Dumbledore is afraid of that. Maybe doesn’t suspect it, but he really expected me to Sort into Gryffindor.”

“I just don’t know why. You’re the perfect Slytherin.”

“That’s silly, Theo.”

“It is not.” Theo leaned forwards and waved his arms at Harry, luckily not as vehemently as he’d done when he and Blaise were speaking to Harry the other day. “You’re powerful and cunning and you seize the advantage. You don’t bother competing for those things that you don’t want. You don’t want power, but that’s fine, because you already have it.”

Harry opened his mouth, then closed it. He hadn’t thought about it that way.

“I don’t know if I would say the perfect Slytherin,” Blaise murmured, with a glance at Theo that just made Theo roll his eyes. “Snape is my idea of the candidate for that. But it’s true that they expected you to be something you aren’t. And now we have to make sure that they can’t get in your way.”

“What?”

“Whatever you want to do, we’ll make sure that you can do.”

“Why’s that?”

“Wouldn’t friends do that?”

“Maybe, but would Slytherin friends?”

Blaise half-smiled himself. Then he said, “It’s true that we’d like to come along with you on whatever climb to power you manage to make, Harry. It’s also true that we’ll help you there because you’re our friend, and not in spite of it.” He leaned back on the bed. “And you’re honest enough to tell us if you find something we do offensive, or if our goals ever conflict.”

Harry bit his lip hard enough that he was a little surprised he didn’t draw blood. Then he nodded, slowly. This was conditional. Every relationship he had was conditional.

Except—it wasn’t really conditional in the same way that Ron and Hermione’s friendship was.

And he thought that Blaise was right, and they could trust each other to be honest. And Blaise and Theo were no longer going to be going around whispering about whether he was a real Slytherin, or mocking him for his blood status.

Or wondering about whether he was going to turn into Voldemort.

Harry smiled at Blaise and Theo, and they smiled back. And maybe it wasn’t that conditional after all. At any rate, Harry felt his heart calm down in his chest.

I can do a lot, with them at my side.