Work Text:
David Creevey had always been a quiet person. It was no hardship to move through a silent world, one of the few awake as he dropped off the milk and eggs to the residents of Surrey. His odd hours had the added benefit of allowing Susan to go back to work even though their son was only four months old.
It was 6:30 on a perfectly normal Monday when Creeveys’ lives changed forever. The route was nearly finished when he pulled the truck to a stop outside number 4 Privet Drive. Mr. Creevey double-checked the chart before trudging toward the door.
He was only halfway up the drive when he saw it.
There was a body on the front step of Number 4.
He winced as the glass bottles hit the ground with a loud crash.
In all his years, he'd never thought about the possibility of being the one to find a corpse, even if he was one of the first people out and about. He'd never gotten any training for what you were supposed to do when you found a dead body.
Creevey let out his breath when he saw it move. Not a corpse then.
But then if there was no training for corpses, there was certainly no training for sleeping toddlers.
There was a toddler asleep on the front step. An honest-to-goodness toddler. Wrapped in blankets, but still much too small to be lying in the cold autumn air. It couldn't be more than 10 degrees out. Who would be so brainless to leave a toddler out on a night like this?
He was kneeling on the pavement next to the little boy before he was aware of what he was doing. Creevey stripped off his gloves and brought a hand to the boy's forehead. Creevey let out a sigh of relief at the almost unnatural warmth. The boy couldn't have been outside very long, not to be this warm.
Unless it was a fever, the part of his brain - the part that had devoured every book in the public library on babies as soon as he knew Colin was coming - whispered. Either way, he couldn't leave him out here.
Creevey wrapped the blankets tighter. The boy nuzzled closer to him, but thankfully, he didn't wake.
The truck was warm and he would have to grab new bottles for the ones he had broken. It was a short-term measure as he figured out what to do, but it was better than the stoop.
Before this, he never could keep the slight smirk off his face when he thought of how his coworker mocked the shrill and near-constant complaints of the woman at number 4.
It's too hot. You didn't get my order right. How dare you let my milk get rained on? Does your company not have any standards?
"If I don’t mock ‘em," Andrew said as he placed the bottles into the crates harder than strictly necessary, "I'll end up punching them, and then what would you do without my splendid company?"
“There’s only so much I can bite my tongue. One of these days you’re going to need to help me hide the body. But I’m not about to do that to Susan I actually like her.” They’d both laughed, bonding in the way only possible through facing the horrors of customer service together.
He couldn’t possibly smile now. The idea of that woman raising a child was utterly horrifying. For all he knew, she could have been the one to leave him outside in the first place.
Creevey tucked the toddler into the passenger seat, trying to make him as safe as he possibly could. The boy was too small for the seat, but still too large for the bassinet they owned even if he had it here. His mind was already made up as he set the new bottles on the front step, completely missing the letter that had slipped out of the basket during the night.
When Petunia Dursley woke to retrieve the milk, she wailed about how her precious Dudders could have gotten himself hurt on the broken glass. The letter obviously from a freak with its thick parchment and wax seal was only an afterthought. She looked at it with disdain but ultimately tossed it in the fire. If her sister wanted to reach out, she’d have to do it properly. And just like that, any evidence Harry Potter had been there was gone.
Harry still grew up wearing second-hand clothes, but they were ones picked through with love, passed down from cousins who told stories about fairies stealing socks, played football together after Sunday lunch, and never could have thought of a cruel game like Harry Hunting. His dad helped him sort through the bins at the charity shop until they found a green jumper precisely his size. His mum taught him how to mend the rips in his jeans because if he and Colin were going to spend their time jumping out of trees pretending to fly, she wasn't going to keep doing it for him.
But there was never any need to dimmish his light to let Dudley shine. Every picture, even the most nonsensical scribble was given a place of honor on the refrigerator. Later magnets supported a myriad of tests boasting top marks. Mum kissed his forehead before hanging each one and told him how proud she was of him.
Pictures covered the house of a toddling Harry with his stuffed black dog, Paddy and his brother Colin only steps behind. Later when Paddy had retired to only being snuggled during the nighttime monster patrol, they were followed by a crawling Dennis. The three brothers were as close as could be.
The first-time strange things started occurring the Creeveys were able to pretend they were only imagining things. After all, they had one colicky baby, a toddler who was clearly traumatized by something, and impossible adoption proceedings because the NHS had no record of him at all. Sleep was hard to come by and the colored bubbles floating around the boy’s room were only a physical manifestation of that exhaustion.
But then even as their lives reached some semblance of normal, the unusual continued.
“Oh, children are just like that,” their grandmother had nodded sagely when Susan complained about Harry and Dennis sticking their itchy jumpers to the ceiling. “God gave mothers special instincts for a reason. If the flat was silent for too long, I knew you got into something horrible.”
Even knowing that this was probably her just dessert for drawing all over the walls of their estate flat, Susan nearly cried when she couldn’t figure out how to get the sweaters down from the ceiling despite finding no traces of glue.
After their third son successfully summoned the biscuit jar out of the top cabinet shelf, the Creevey parents were forced to realize that they were not just seeing things or dealing with normal levels of mischief.
They might not have the words for it that wizarding families did, but there were reminders to “Use your words not your superpowers to tell me something is wrong” and “practice breathing slowly to calm down because you can’t turn another teacher’s hair blue Harry just because she’s being unfair.”
When a strange letter arrived a week before his eleventh birthday, no one stopped Harry from opening it at the breakfast table. Mum and Dad exchanged looks at the name on the outside, but ultimately decided “the upper bunk bed” was too specific an address to be a simple mistake.
Harry ran his hand over the emerald ink several times before he fully accepted that it was real.
"What do you think they mean we await your owl?"
Mum ruffled his hair. "It sounds like wizards do have familiars, and they just happen to use them for post"
"Does that mean we have to catch an owl?" Colin asked with excitement.
Breakfast was only half eaten, but Colin was already bouncing in his seat, seconds from just running to grab his trainers.
"It seems silly, but what other option do we got?" Harry agreed. "We should go to the library first and see what we should use as bait".
"The pet store has frozen mice. Ernie uses them to feed his snake." Dennis piped up.
Harry nodded. "Library then pet store."
"Why don't we hold our horses for a second boys? I'm sure that Hogwarts is connected to the muggle post in some way. Or at least the magical community is. We should try sending it like a normal letter first."
"You don't even know if all owls are suitable," At her children's shared glance, Mum added, "And that is not an excuse to find multiple owls just in case one of them works."
Harry wrote six copies of his reply and they tried that anyways. Two letters ended up completely shredded. Three owls looked confused as Harry tied the letter to their legs, and one of those lost its cargo before it even left the garden. (The letters got rolled instead of folded and triple-knotted by Dennis after that failure). The last owl approached them looking far too smug than any animal had a right to, even holding out its leg for the letter. The boys assumed that was the one that made it to Hogwarts, although the one their parents sent by muggle mail might have actually been the reason a stately witch appears at their door.
When Professor McGonagall first arrived at the home of one Harry Potter, she scolded herself for not checking in sooner. She didn't feel any wards, so either Albus tied the wards to the location instead of the family or they faded over time. Both scenarios should have been noticed immediately when the Dursleys moved. But then a smiling woman answers the door and McGonagall is suddenly aware of how out of her depth she actually was.
The Creeveys were a nice family, even if the three boys have enough energy to rival the Weasley twins. Mr. and Mrs. Creevey were respectable people and Harry was vocal about his new family.
"Why can't I go by Harry Creevey at school? That's my name. I have all the government paperwork and everything."
"Different governments, dear."
"I'll be sure to set up a meeting with the goblins in charge of the Potter vault for our visit to Diagon Alley. You come from a long line of wizards. It would be only right to know your heritage."
Harry's heritage was a topic that while never avoided was complicated by the fact they knew so little. Every adoption pamphlet and book highlighted how important his history could be to his identity, so Mr. Creevey scrambled for additional information. "Did you know them? Or could you put us in contact with anyone who did? Do you have any medical records or family history?"
The questions lead to a much more in-depth introduction to their world than typically given to muggle-born parents. Harry was about to enter into a whole new world where he was not just expected to understand what was going on but to flourish. The boys were sent out of the room and listening at keyholes only could tell them so much about the war that apparently never made it into their history textbooks.
"We'll know what to expect for next year," Dad joked as they rode the cart to the Potter vault.
"A parent certainly didn't write this packing list. Three sets of clothing. You boys could go through that in a day. And no underclothes or deodorant. Where even are we supposed to find that here? We'll just bring the normal stuff," Mum fretted as she eyed the list and compared it to the tables of Madame Malkin's.
"Harry's not that much older than me. Can't I go now too?" Colin begged, before finally just offering Harry his camera, "Because we have to know absolutely everything."
And while Harry had slipped lots of extra little things into his trunk, he drew the line at the camera.
“I’m not as good as you, Colin. Wouldn’t you rather take the pictures yourself next year? You know I wouldn’t get the framing right.”
Harry was excited to go to Hogwarts. He spent the last month of summer pouring over his new textbooks and the supplemental reading Professor McGonagall suggested. Mornings were spent trying to get the hang of using a quill even if he was very close to packing enough pens to last him the year instead.
But the excitement didn’t stop him from tagging along on a few milk runs with his dad, letting the worries spill out of him into the darkness. He’d never been alone before, not truly, and what if the boys at school kept picking on Dennis and Harry wasn’t there to stop it? Or Colin might actually go through with his plan to run a darkroom from their closet if he wasn’t there. He didn’t want to miss anything being so far away even if magic was exciting.
Then there was the question of his other parents. Harry had always known he was adopted, but it hadn’t felt so real before. He had other parents besides the ones who’d plastered every scrapped knee and pointed out every backward “s” on his homework until he could finally write them correctly.
Mum and Dad had always been enough, and it wasn’t that they weren’t anymore.
He just had other parents too. The other parents had miraculously transformed from a nebulous concept to actual real people, dead people.
They were wizards and they died. In a war that he’d apparently helped end. Everything about this magical world seemed crazier than the last, but the idea that he could possibly have killed anybody while still teething was laughable. What was he supposed to do, drool Voldemort to death?
Would they be proud of him? Would they have cried like his Mum did? Or snuck extra sweets into his bookbag for him to find on the train like Dad?
Would he even be himself if he wasn’t Colin and Dennis’s brother? If he’d grown up in the wizarding world? Were the Professors at Hogwarts expecting him to be like people he’d never met?
When Ronald Weasley complained about his six siblings, Harry rolled his eyes and told him about his two brothers. About how he couldn’t wait for Colin to join him next year even as he worried about Dennis suddenly having to deal with their parents alone. But Harry also knew that siblings are only ever three steps away from unleashing the Cain instinct and that he isn’t going to hold the complaints against his new friend.
Neville reminded him of Dennis, the way he shies away from eye contact but can talk nonstop about herbology with just a little prompting. They laugh nonstop as they walked around the edge of the lake, Neville detailing plants and Harry looking for the best sedimentary rocks for Dennis to analyze.
In the end, Harry included both his lake sample and one of Hagrid’s rock cakes in his letter to Dennis. If nothing else, Dennis will enjoy a new object to place on his personal “Mohs Hardness Scale.”
He was not the boy Albus Dumbledore expected, but it’s a happy child that arrives at Hogwarts. A well-adjusted child who sees Dean’s football posters and sends for his ball so they can play on the weekends. The sort of child that took to being a big brother like a duck to water and sent letters weekly complete with sketches of suits of armor, three-headed dogs, and baby dragons.
The last ones were hung using Sellotape on the wall of Dennis’s room, right next to his Christmas posters comparing dragons and dinosaurs. He would lie to their parents about copying them from a library book. To his brothers, he whispered about a midnight rendezvous, dragon reserves in Romania, and sacred big brother responsibilities, because there is no trouble too big to stop him from getting involved.
“I don’t think my friends actually like me,” Harry whispered to his dad when he joined him on early morning car rides again. “They haven’t sent me any letters yet this summer. I keep writing and nothing.”
“It’s only been a week Harry, but both Dean and Hermione have telephones. Just because you’re a wizard doesn’t mean you have to always think like one.”
When Dobby landed in his room to warn him away from Hogwarts, Colin gets about twenty pictures, and they reported their concerns, pictures included to Professor McGonagall.
(There is no warning from the Ministry of Magic about improper use of magic. There are two kids in the house that haven’t yet begun school and while their magic isn’t strictly accidental anymore, Dennis is only nine. A rogue house elf is the least of their worries when it comes to accidentally exposing the wizarding world.).
Part of the summer was spent teaching Ron how to ride a bike, an endeavor which Mr. Weasley takes great joy in observing while Mrs. Weasley and Mrs. Creevey gossip in the kitchen. Dennis took to following Percy around asking every question he can think of and then listening enraptured even when Percy talks about international trade agreements and statutes that go over his head. Ginny still had a couple of days of hero worship, but they are short-lived because Colin set her straight in a way that only a brother could.
“You’ve met him. Harry’s an idiot.”
“Hey!”
“Your answer to the platform is closed was maybe we should fly Mr. Weasley’s car there.”
“I didn’t actually do it.”
“That’s your excuse?” Colin gave Ginny an exasperated look and suddenly the giggles were for an entirely different reason.
When Harry started to hear voices in the walls, he thought about going to Professor McGonagall’s office. He hadn’t been failed by adults yet, not really, even if the business with the stone last year came close. This felt like an adult problem. But he doesn’t because it felt like a coincidence, and he didn’t want to be crazy, and it was just Filch’s cat.
Until suddenly it wasn’t
Colin lying frozen in the hospital wing was frankly the worst thing that’s probably ever happened to him. (That he remembers, he quickly corrected, because having to go by a name that still doesn’t really feel like his is enough to drive home the dead parents’ side of things.).
Harry hated looking at him. Colin was just so still and wrong. The color slowly leached from his cheeks and his hands never moved from their hold on the invisible camera. He can’t stand being in the hospital wing, but he can’t stand not being there more. Mum and Dad can’t come to Hogwarts and even St. Mungo’s can’t seem to source mandrakes, so he just sat. He and Hermione took turns reading the first-year textbooks aloud. Ron helped by pestering Ginny into giving her notes from classes. But it still doesn’t feel like enough.
“We should stay. If Malfoy is the heir of Slytherin isn’t it better that we know?” Hermione argues as she tries to figure out how to schedule their Polyjuice brewing.
But Harry can’t stay at Hogwarts. He won’t. He needed to cry into his mother’s arms and make sure Dennis is all right because he really can’t lose both of them and go on early morning car rides with Dad.
“It’s not your fault, Harry.”
“But if I hadn’t been in the hospital wing-“
“No. I’m not going to let you blame yourself for this.” Dad pulled over to the side of the road. “Why were you in the hospital wing?”
“Quidditch,” Harry whispered back.
“I seem to remember things a bit differently. Pretty hard to forget the fact a professor removed all my son’s bones.”
Harry grumbled.
“It wasn’t your fault you were in the hospital wing. It wasn’t your fault Colin came when he did. He could have waited till morning. You both would have survived.”
Harry winced at that before forcibly reminding himself that Colin would be fine.
“I don’t like this any more than you do. If it wasn’t for the magic keeping Colin’s muscles from atrophying and everything else that Madame Pomphrey is doing, I’d want him home. If the school isn’t safe for you or your brothers, we’ll find something else.”
“But I don’t want something else. I want Hogwarts.”
“And I want my boys to come home safe and sound at the end of the day. That’s more important to me.”
Harry leaned across the seat for an awkward but much-needed hug.
Everything was going to be fine. It had to be.
"Christmas was weird. We told Grandma and the others that you had come down with some strange highly contagious flu that had you quarantined."
Harry tugged the blanket a little higher, tucking Colin in tighter even though it looked completely undisturbed.
"I don't know if they bought it. Mum and Dad kept getting strange looks all night. Next year you're going to have to look super-duper happy so that no one can say anything."
He didn't think the disbelieving looks would have bothered him before, but he'd spent every day before break receiving glares from people, he thought were his friends. It didn't even make sense to him. How could anyone think he would hurt his own brother? How could being able to speak to snakes suddenly change everything about him? He wasn't Dark. He lived with muggles most of the year and was part of the small group of muggle-raised who had played pickup football matches by the lake. (Although he wasn't welcome to do that anymore not as long as people believed he was the Heir of Slytherin.) He loved his brother more than life itself and would trade everything he had to be the one in the hospital bed instead.
"Denis seems to be the only one excited about this whole Parselmouth thing. He practically pounced on me at the station, wanted a demonstration right there and everything."
It would have been cute if Harry wasn't scared of alienating his classmates more, but he couldn't tell Colin that, even if Madame Pomphrey was pretty sure he couldn't hear him. The one silver lining to Colin's petrification was that he didn't have to try and hide how angry he was all the time. He couldn't be the good example he was supposed to be right now. In his worst nightmares, he watched Colin desert him too and that unlikely outcome would have broken him more thoroughly than anything else.
"His friend Ernie has this snake, and he was going away for the holiday, so Mum let us keep it in our room." He paused, practically hearing Colin's disbelief. "I know, I have no idea how it happened either. She wouldn't even go in the reptile house at the zoo and suddenly there's one in our house."
He thought back to the several days of experiments. Dennis had apparently taken the one letter he'd sent before the break and ran with it. He had a list of common phrases that he wanted to learn, working under the assumption that Parseltounge was a language that could be taught and not merely inherited. Harry wasn't sure if that was true or not. Maybe it took magic to be able to differentiate the minutia between the hisses because so far Dennis just had a clipboard full of nonsensical notes and his strangled repetitions didn't sound like much of anything.
"I don't know how you feel about snakes, but I feel like this is going to be Dennis's new big project, so you're going to be hearing a lot more about it. He'd probably want to be the one to tell you everything so you can't tell him I told you."
Harry shook his head at how foolish that sounded. He tried to think of what else to say, looking for something to say that wouldn't make him want to cry. It had been so nice to just catch up with his friends from Primary who weren't afraid of him or stopped whispering whenever he entered a room. He hadn't realized how even the few days before the break had made him feel so isolated. He had Hermione, Neville, and the Weasleys, so he thought it had been okay. It was only when he felt himself relax as he slid into his seat in the kitchen that he realized the extent of how on edge he had been.
Things didn't look like they were getting better either. He thought the break would make people forget but Seamus didn't even accept the Mars bars he had brought for him as a present. Dean had rolled his eyes but didn't say anything at that, which hurt more than he wanted to admit. The Weasley twins kept trying to make him laugh with Heir of Slytherin jokes, but the startled stares they'd get from everyone else made Harry want to sink into the stone floors.
Luckily, he was saved from thinking of something good by Madame Pomphrey, "Visiting Hours are over Mr. Potter. Best be getting back to your dorm."
He readjusted the blankets one last. “Bye Colin. I love you. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
Ginny was acting odd.
It wasn’t hard to notice when you were looking for it, but Harry had been preoccupied. He only noticed because he started going to her directly for assignments and class notes instead of asking Ron for help.
For the most part, Harry figured his own notes were fine. Hermione had asked her parents to send her old notes and Neville drew clearer diagrams of different plant parts. The stack, even subdivided between his trunk, his dorm, and Colin’s bedside table was getting overwhelming. He hadn’t felt like he learned that much first year. Why was there so much stuff?
But essay topics and worksheets differed from year to year, so even if McGonagall had said something about waving work requirements for all those petrified, Harry still worried. He turned to Ginny, the only person in Colin’s year he actually knew for help.
Most of the time it was a good system. Ginny didn’t seem annoyed by his constant badgering, and he could help her when she had a question with Defense. (Quirrell might have been possessed by Voldemort, but he had done more actual teaching than Lockhart.).
All in all, it was probably more helpful for Ginny than for Harry. Ginny wasn’t the best student. At least that’s what he thought at first. There would be whole chunks of class where she had no idea what was going on. Her notes didn’t even have the doodles or commentary that his or Ron had. She kept forgetting assignments. And yet it still didn’t completely make sense. Sometimes, she caught on to things so quickly, even making jokes about the material, but other times it felt like she was barely present.
“It’s nothing, Harry. Stop worrying. It’s just different than Mum’s tutoring,” Ron said. “I’m lucky Hermione set me on track”. He flushed and quickly added, “But don’t tell her I said that.”
In February, during one of their evening study sessions, Harry mentioned potentially meeting her friend Tom soon since she spoke so highly of him. The effect was instantaneous.
Ginny froze in place as if she had been struck by a spell, but their table in the library was in an isolated corner. No one else was around. Hermione had left ten minutes ago to search for something and who knew when she would be back.
Harry wasn’t sure what to do. He grabbed the book they’d been looking at and dropped it on the floor. No reaction. He talked loudly and said outlandish things like “The Chudley Canons are going to dominate the league this year.” It would have been enough to earn threats if she were herself. Instead, silence.
Dragging her to the infirmary was clearly the only option.
From the moment they got there, Madame Pomphrey was in a panic, muttering about how she hadn’t seen something like this since The War.
Harry didn’t understand what was happening, but from the way she aggressively grabbed potions and floo-called the others, he could tell it was probably worse than he thought. And considering he thought whatever was petrifying students was trying a new form of petrification, he felt completely out of his depth.
“Really Albus, its control is weak but still stronger than I’ve seen one passively held. We’ve got a highly dangerous Dark object in Hogwarts. I need at least two healers and a Cursebreaker, in addition to whoever is going to help look for it.”
Professor McGonagall shepherded the Weasley boys and Harry into one of the petitioned-off areas surrounding an unoccupied bed once they had arrived. Then the questions started, an absolute torrent of them.
Was there anything Miss Weasley had done that was out of the ordinary before today? When did you notice she was acting differently? Has she become attached to any object recently? Has she gotten any odd packages by owl?
If Harry felt overwhelmed, it was nothing in comparison to how the Weasleys must feel. Percy looked like he was seconds away from crying, his defensive demeanor worn down by the guilt of not noticing. Fred and George were uncharacteristically somber. Harry thought it was the first time he’d ever seen them frown. Ron stared listlessly at Professor McGonagall, barely reacting when Harry grabbed his hand.
He just didn’t know. One second everything had seemed fine and the next was chaos. How were they supposed to make sense of this when the adults hadn’t noticed? How long would this have gone on if the incident hadn’t happened today? Pure luck couldn’t honestly have been the only thing that saved Ginny.
“Are there any friends who might be able to provide more information about Miss Weasley’s condition?
The most recent question forced Harry out of his own thoughts. He’d asked about her friend right before the symptoms started. It hadn’t seemed relevant before but now it felt crucial. It could have even triggered her reaction. “Have any of you met Tom?”
“I sent out the acceptance letters myself, Mister Potter. There is no Tom in Miss Weasley’s year or yours. Dean Thomas has the most similar name, but based on your reaction, you’re not referring to your year-mate”
“That’s not possible, Professor.” Percy sat up straighter. “My sister talked about Tom all the time. There must be someone. Perhaps someone from a different year.”
“I will look, but for now can you think of any place Miss Weasley might have hidden something? It is too dangerous to involve students in the search, but I recognize that your insight would be valuable.”
Percy stood, “I think her bag is still in the library.” He rocked his weight from side to side, “I can fetch that.”
“She likes to slide things beneath the mattress.” George offered.
“At home, the weak floorboard by her wardrobe is where she hides her sweet stash, but I-“ Fred trailed off.
There was an empty feeling in the pit of his stomach as he watched Percy scurry for Ginny’s things and Professor McGonagall leave to contact the Weasley parents. He could only watch as Madame Pomphrey frantically gestured to the new wizards in lime-green robes.
Harry didn’t feel he belonged in the hospital wing anymore, but he also didn’t feel like he could leave the hospital wing since he was the one who brought Ginny there. Everyone else either had a clear purpose, some job to keep them going, or they were her family melting down and clinging together in the chaos.
He felt helpless. He wanted to do something, but he also knew from the way Ron and the twins had their arms wrapped around each other and their frantic whispers of “She’s going to be all right. She has to be” that this was something that needed privacy as they waited. He’d be there for Ron and the Weasleys every step after this if they wanted it, but for now, he went to sit with his family as they panicked.
Harry ran his fingers through Colin’s hair, the only part of his brother’s body that didn’t feel deeply wrong. The hair was still soft despite the months in the infirmary. But the rest of him was hard like stone and unbearable to touch. His skin, in particular, was too foreign and cold. It was easy to lose track of time like this, tuning out the world around him since it was all too much to handle. Harry only looked up when he heard Dumbledore’s voice.
“I will hold onto it for now,” Dumbledore said.
Harry could only see him through the gap in the curtains. He left Colin’s bedside for a slightly better view Dumbledore stood near the entrance to the infirmity with two grim-faced men. He held a little leatherbound journal in his hands. Even from a distance, the book looked vaguely familiar.
“It’s a dangerous artifact that we can’t just leave in your hands, Headmaster,” the shorter of the two new men argued.
“I’m aware, Williamson. However, the item has more worth than you could possibly know.” Dumbledore’s eyes gave an extra little twinkle.
"Worth more? That means you have more of a responsibility to turn it over to Ministry custody." Williamson pushed, holding out his hand aggressively for the diary.
"Professor," the bald man interjected, his voice surprisingly calm. "Is it a question of turning over to Ministry custody at all or not at this point in time? I believe we can wait until the girl is cured to hash out the details at least."
"Thank you, Shacklebolt. Yes, my priorities as always lie with my students. I worry that with possession as powerful as this we may have to destroy the entity before any true healing can be completed."
"All the more reason to bring in Unspeakables," Williamson noted, now sounding thoroughly exasperated.
"If the experts employed by my school cannot deal with the problem, I will call Alastor and have him process it personally."
Williamson grumbled something that Harry couldn't catch.
"Well then gentlemen, I thank you for your presence and will walk you to the Floo."
Harry let himself step out entirely from behind the curtain to keep a better eye on the retreating party. He looked first at the Weasleys several beds down, who looked like they had finally just passed out where they were waiting, and then the new large curtains completely blocking where he knew Ginny lay. Ultimately though he approached Dumbledore, the only person who could possibly answer his burning questions. It reminded him eerily of the year before, Dumbledore appeared by his bedside with all the answers.
This time he was less certain Dumbledore would know, but he still had to ask, “Sir, who was Tom?” He wasn’t sure why he was so fixated on knowing this specific answer, but from the moment he asked Ginny, it had felt crucial.
Dumbledore tucked the diary into one of his pockets quickly, but he did turn to look at Harry. He wore a slightly bemused expression that made Harry wonder if he knew he had been listening in the entire time.
“That Harry is a question I have been trying to answer for years.” He gave a deep sigh and gestured to the double doors. It was only once they were outside the infirmary proper that he continued speaking, “Tom Riddle was a remarkably talented young wizard. He disappeared for several years and then returned all the more powerful. Miss Weasley is merely one of many to have been hoodwinked by Tom Riddle. ”
Harry felt like there was a great deal more Dumbledore wasn’t saying, but it also didn’t feel like the most important thing to investigate right now, not when they still didn’t know if Ginny would recover.
“Professor, how was he able to do whatever he did to Ginny?”
They were isolated in the corridor but still, Dumbledore took his time answering as if weighing the answer first, “A memory held in a diary for fifty years.”
“But Sir that doesn’t…how could that even work?” He didn’t know everything about magic but that didn’t seem possible.
“Memories hold far more weight than we allow ourselves to realize.”
It was another half-answer that Harry didn’t have the energy to fight right now.
Tomorrow he could go to the library and try to sort out what that was supposed to mean. But then he remembered Ginny sitting deathly still and unresponsive in the library chair. He could wait. He didn’t need to know that much.
In fact, the only thing he really needed to know was, “Will Ginny be all right, Sir?”
“Undoubtedly Harry. I wouldn’t be surprised if you returned in the morning, after some sleep, to Miss Weasley in much better spirits.”
He gave a knowing look and Harry sheepishly looked out the window at the gleaming moon already halfway across the sky.
“Of Course, Professor. “
The rest of the school year passed relatively quickly. There were no more attacks. Although the news that Ginny might have been behind them never surfaced, she took a few months off to focus on healing, which sparked rumors of its own.
The student body as a whole was convinced that Ginny must have also been attacked since she just stopped attending classes one day. And while there was general unease around that at first, people had stopped fleeing away from Harry. Two Gryffindors, a Hufflepuff and the Gryffindor ghost, two muggle-borns, and a pureblood. The odds of a Gryffindor being the one to organize the attacks seemed ludicrous now even if one of them could speak Parseltounge. Harry hated how in the wizarding world, house ties were apparently deeper than blood, or at least adopted family bonds. They'd rather believe he'd hurt his own brother for taking too many pictures at his first quidditch game than accept he wasn't the perpetrator. It was enough for Harry to swear off ever trying to figure out public opinion.
There were always a few dissenters but they at least were shut down rather quickly as each week passed without a new attack.
"I still think he's just lulling us into a false sense of security!"
"Oh shut up McLaggen!"
School was easier to handle when he no longer heard whispers everywhere he went. Quidditch also acted as a marvelous distraction. Wood was obsessed, scheduling quidditch every day as if he would somehow prevent the Hufflepuffs from beating them if he could only keep them off the field. Professor Sprout and McGonagall had come to some agreement regarding practice times, so it was a bad strategy but still, Harry felt so sore from hours spent on his broom practicing different dives, even if the Chaser formations looked absolutely perfect.
There was no rogue bludger this time. Nothing but a perfect game of quidditch. The screams when he caught the snitch right under the Hufflepuff goalposts were electric, only beaten as one of the best sounds he'd ever heard by the almost otherworldly elation as the team was given the Quidditch Cup after the Ravenclaw game. Wood cried as he hugged every member of the team. Fred and George provided enough refreshments for the party to last for days, and McGonagall didn't try and stop them until four in the morning.
Still, the year didn't feel complete until May.
When Neville mentioned that the mandrakes would be ready soon during one of his mini-lectures on recent weather patterns and temperatures' impact on growth, Harry barely said goodbye before he was rushing to Professor Sprout's office and then practically skipped to the Hospital Wing.
"The antidote still needs to be brewed, Mister Potter. It'll be at least a week."
He bounced up and down on the balls of his feet when he finally got the letter that today was the day. He had to stay out until after the potion was administered, but then he got to sit next to him and wait.
Colin's breathing came back first, his chest gently rising and falling. Harry never thought he'd seen anything so beautiful before, at least until Colin blinked his bleary eyes.
"Did I faint or something?" Colin looked at him with such a perplexed look that Harry almost started to laugh.
"Most definitely or something." He hugged him tightly feeling better at the warmth. “What do you remember?”
"Did they end up saving my film? It was this gigantic snake Harry, had to be at least fifty meters long and as thick as I was tall! It was incredible and why are you looking at me like that?”
“Like what, I’m not looking at you any special way.” He couldn’t stop the goofy smile from growing on his face.
“I’m serious.” Collin moved over to create space on the bed next to him. “You’re sad.”
He slid into the spot, wrapping his arm around his brother. “What has Madame Pomphrey told you about what happened?”
“Nothing yet.” The woman in question bustled in, carrying several potions on a tray in one hand and a wand in the other. “Mr. Potter, will you please stop crushing my patient?” She asked, completely exasperated.
Collin seemed to take offense to that. “I’m crushing him.” He wiggled his body as if to prove his point, snuggling closer to Harry. “And he’s my emotional support for whatever this is because this doesn’t look good.”
Madame Pomphrey gave them both a deeply disappointed look. “I need to run some tests to make sure there are no lingering problems from the incident.”
Colin mouthed “the incident”, before responding “I feel fine. It couldn’t have been that bad. Did the giant snake bite me? That must’ve been so cool.”
Harry jolted upright, dislodging Colin in his hurry to be able to look at him directly. “You’re not allowed to joke about that.”
Madame Pomphrey’s face visibly whitened, “A Giant snake? I believe the headmaster will likely have some questions for you later, but for now, Mister Potter if you will just wait outside.”
Harry sighed. He didn’t want to leave but he also knew this needed to happen. “Just shout if you need me.”
“Course, Harry.” His voice dropped softer. “I’m really okay. I’m sorry I scared you.”
Harry gave him one last tight squeeze, "You're never allowed to leave me again. You got that?"
“I didn’t try to this time,” Colin said in a petulant manner as if he had just been wrongly accused of stealing biscuits from Auntie Rosa’s special tin instead of giving Harry the worst year of his life.
Harry gave a glare that he knew was half-hearted at best. He couldn’t be anything but relieved right now, and he knew that showed on his face. Still, it did its job.
"Yeah, I promise." Colin gestured toward the door. “Now go away, so you can come back.”
He laughed, an actual laugh; he hadn’t been able to do that in months. But now, with his brother back and the end of the term in sight, all was well.