Chapter Text
Harry followed Nahezzra's pull through the narrow alley, the serpent guiding him with sharp turns until the street opened into shadow. A teenage girl walked alone. The Great Serpent urged Harry onwards and he did as she encouraged. Harry saw her face in the moonlight and saw Nahezzra's target over her jacket.
The lamb slowed, sensing something wrong. She looked at Harry walking towards her and while she saw a child, she felt a rising panic with each step the two took towards each other. It was unnerving and it took her a few more steps forward before she turned around and walked back the way she came. It was too late. Harry picked up the cross out of the ash, wooden this time. The Great Serpent was content.
Harry turned to see Draco Malfoy, Pansy Parkinson, Theodore Nott, Blaise Zabini, Crabbe, and Goyle. But it wasn't Draco who spoke first.
"Harry, my father wanted to know why you don't subscribe to the Daily Prophet," Pansy said, shoving Draco aside.
Harry blinked, caught off guard by the question. Before he could answer, Theodore said with wide eyes.
"Forget that, Harry listen to this. Draco's house was burned down. The Carrow twins did it."
Blaise Zabini added to it. "Harry, it's a lucky thing you came to Hogwarts early."
Harry could tell that Theo and Blaise were trying to get a rise out of Draco. He still had to ask to make sure. "They burned down Malfoy Manor?"
Draco shook his head, reclaiming the story. "I'll tell you the story. Let's move to the back of the line." The Slytherin hopefuls obeyed, stepping away from the louder children.
"The Carrow twins burned down a house of my own in Muggle London. My parents gave it to me. They paid Muggles to burn it down. If you read the Prophet, you'd know they're investigating the arson spree. They're asking victims to send letters for a report."
Harry became much less interested in the entire story, anyone could burn down a Muggle building.
Pansy folded her arms. "My father expected you to send him a letter last week."
Harry frowned at how Pansy's words made little sense to him. Why would the Prophet ask victims for letters, only for him to contact Lord Parkinson instead? The logic made no sense. He wanted to ask but he was more interested in what was happening towards the front of the line.
He had very little interaction with the Weasley family but he considered his interactions to be enough for a lifetime. The Ron who Harry had tried and failed to avoid a conversation with was at the very front of the line, away from the Slytherin bunch. Harry was not aware that Ron would be in his year at Hogwarts. His memory was flawless but somehow he could not remember Ron expliciting telling him that they would be in the same year.
Draco snapped his fingers and pulled Harry's attention back to him. "Oh that reminds me, Harry. We have been keeping track of the students we like and don't like. It was Theo's idea and we discussed it on the train but you weren't there."
Pansy corrected him. "No, it's a list of people we allow to speak to Harry without paying us. Obviously, Harry, you control who you want to speak to but I assume most of the school is below you. We've been making a list and we'd like it if you'd follow the list for the lion share of the profits."
Harry nodded. "Sure, I don't mind. Have you written it down anywhere? It would be much easier if I could just read it." He looked at the two decidedly empty hands of Pansy and Draco.
Draco grimaced. "I left it on the train but we will recreate it at the Great Hall later, it's fine."
Blaise grumbled. "You're throwing an awful lot of 'we' in there when Theo and I haven't contributed to the list yet."
Harry laughed at Zabini's words. "I haven't had a chance to contribute either, it's fine."
Pansy cast an eye at the students ahead of them. "Soon we'll be going to the Great Hall and up to the Sorting Hat, Draco, just recite the names you remember."
Draco's voice droned on, listing names and pointing out who was worth their time and who wasn't. Sometimes Pansy would interject and together they would modify the list without taking any input from Theo.
Harry let the words wash over him. He thought the list was a brilliant idea but he wanted to quickly read a piece of parchment and be done with it. Even after they were escorted into the Great Hall, Draco whispered names to him.
Harry appeared interested, recited some names to make them believe he was listening but he was thinking and analyzing the magic. The line of students ahead was moving, one by one stepping forward to face the Sorting Hat. That was what he focused on, the magic that went into sorting.
Hundreds of candles floated above the tables, their flames steady despite the draft from the great doors. The candles were not what excited him, it was the generations of Headmasters using less and less complicated spells to set up the Great Hall over the centuries.
Once again, Harry had a direct yardstick to compare Albus Dumbledore to. He was the least powerful Headmaster to interact with the magic in this room. He was not the most powerful at the staff table. It became harder and harder to associate the wizard with magical power when his senses told him otherwise.
The murmur of students rose and fell with each Sorting, cheers erupting from one table or another. The Slytherin bunch were the only students talking, convinced that they would all make it to where they needed to go. Beside him, Pansy whispered something sharp to Theodore, who smirked. Draco continued his list commentary, oblivious to Harry's silence.
Students went, one by one. Zabini then Pansy, both sorted into Slytherin as expected. Harry wondered when he would be called, clearly it was not done in alphabetical order. Longbottom went before Bones, Parkison immediately after Abbot. Theodore Nott became a Slytherin and sat beside Pansy, waving at Harry.
Professor McGonagall's voice cut through Draco's noise, crisp and commanding. She called his name, and the list finally stopped. Harry was the last remaining wizard of the quartet, and he found himself wondering if the professor had deliberately left him for last.
Draco needed no time at all to be placed with the others. Harry grinned at him, though part of him wished McGonagall had called Draco sooner. Perhaps then the list would have ended earlier. Now dozens of names and families buzzed in his head. Draco did not look at Harry after being sorted, deep in conversation with Pansy.
Another name was called, another student sorted, and then her gaze swept the line. Harry felt it land on him.
"Harry Potter," she said. The hall quieted, there was absolutely no sound.
Harry stepped forward, the sound of his shoes echoing against the stone floor. He did as everyone else did.
Harry was keenly aware of the Sorting Hat. It was possibly the most heavily human enchanted thing he had ever sensed. Magically, it was an anchor, several other pieces of magic depended on this hat and drew from it. To destroy it would be to destroy Hogwarts itself. He was certain that if the hat was destroyed, the concept of Hogwarts houses went with it. This was informative, his quick analysis told him that this hat had the final say of where he went. There was no change after it declared something, it was an immutable property that existed until Harry or the hat died.
The Hat settled over his head, slipping low enough to cover his eyes. The hall vanished. Harry recognized the loss of vision and his hearing. The hat used magic to purposefully occlude his senses. Harry analysed the Sorting Hat and measured its capabilities based on the sortings it did previously. It did not do this for any other wizard other than him. He wanted to know why but he was more interested in the how.
A voice, sharp and wet, whispered inside his mind.
"Well, well. Another Potter. You've been touching something foul. I can taste it."
Harry could not sense the magic of the hat once it rested on his head. He considered the possibilities briefly before reaching a conclusion. The hat had not gone inert, nor was it concealing itself. It had blended in.
Every other kind of magic he had encountered remained distinct, foreign, and recognisable, even when interacting with his own. The hat was different. Its magic no longer felt separate at all. It had camouflaged itself as his own magic. That, more than anything else he had witnessed so far, was abnormal.
Having never experienced this strange camouflage, he was unsure how to properly study the phenomenon. It was unusual, but irrelevant at the moment. The blending was something he could not understand without further study and magical analysis.
However, the very fact that the hat's magic had merged with his own told him enough. With what little information he had now, he was certain he could still force the hat to send him wherever he wanted.
"Clever Potter, you have a fascinatingly deep knowledge of magic, rituals and magical mechanics. Your knowledge of potions is impressive for your age."
Harry reasserted control over his sight. The pitch black receded, replaced by the dull brown fabric of the Sorting Hat.
"For practical magic, you possess far below average knowledge in everything other than combat transfiguration and conjuration."
Next, he took hold of his hearing. He expected the constant rumble of the Great Hall, but heard nothing at all. He waited. Two seconds, then five. For a moment he thought he had failed, until a single cough reached him. Relief flickered, followed quickly by irritation. The hall was so silent, so attentive, that it had almost convinced him he was still deaf. He rolled his eyes and moved on.
"It's quite impressive how you happen to know less than a first year at some of the most accessible types of magic. You never once became interested enough to crack open a textbook on charms? No interest in divination?"
Harry ignored the hat and reasserted a normal level of control over the sorting. He was roughly at the same level of control that all the other students had. Draco and his friends practically forced the hat to put them in Slytherin so Harry did the same.
"When can I go to Slytherin?"
"Impatient. Let me see more of your mind."
Harry was not ready for this give and take. He had known the Hat took its time, but he never imagined it truly decided. He had thought it merely asked what house a student preferred, offered commentary, and guided them toward a choice. Harry was not interested in playing games with the hat, he used his magic and forced the hat to make the correct decision, immediately.
"I'm ready to go to Slytherin now."
The Hat paused. It recoiled from Harry's magic. Then it shouted, "SLYTHERIN!"
"That was clever, Harry," the Hat whispered as it lifted away. "Whatever deal you've made for that much power and knowledge... I hope it will be worth it. I'm just glad to be off your head."
Harry could barely hear the hat over the noise of the Great Hall. Now that the hat no longer bore his magical signature, he was able to sense it once again. It did not have emotion in a human sense but there was something analogous there and Harry was certain it hated him for what he did.
Unbothered by the hat, Harry walked towards the Slytherin table without looking at anyone other than the wizards at his table. Blaise Zabini was the first one to say something. He was on the other side of the table and as one of the first Slytherins to be sorted, was closer to the second year students.
"Welcome to Slytherin, Heir Potter. I mean, that could be your title if you took asset reclamation more seriously."
Pansy hissed across the table at him. She was on Harry's side of the table, next to Draco. The three of them had their backs to the wall, looking at the other tables.
"You couldn't go a single day without trying to sell your mother's services to Harry?"
Theo wanted no part of what Blaise was going to say next. He let the two children facing each other bicker while he scooted closer to Harry. He was immediately beside Blaise and was clearly unhappy about the arrangement.
"Draco said you would be in Slytherin, I thought you were a Ravenclaw personally. You know so much about potions."
Harry laughed. "If I wasn't in Slytherin I wasn't going to spend the year here."
Some of the first years laughed, Millicent Bullstrode, Goyle and Crabbie were still not on speaking terms with Harry. Harry paid that fact no mind while the sortings were taking place.
"Claudia Demn"
Harry sensed the Sorting Hat and Claudia very closely during the sorting. He found no evidence that the hat blended as it had with him. It used magic from a respectable distance and instead filtered the top levels of her thoughts.
This matched with every sorting he sensed before his and every sorting after his. Only when the hat touched his head did the behavior of the hat and the magical techniques used change. That meant someone had altered it. The obvious suspect would be whoever last laid magic on the Hat.
The last person to perform any spellwork on the hat was Albus Dumbledore but Harry only found evidence that it was an activation spell and not powerful enough to single him out. That also had nothing to do with the fact that Albus, from what he could tell, was not powerful enough for such modifications.
Harry looked on as Claudia was sorted into Gryffindor. Their eyes met briefly before she was blocked by Draco shoving a neatly written page in his face. Harry read the first two names and immediately knew what he was looking at.
"You actually made the list? At the table? Where did you get the parchment?."
"Nevermind that. On the train we all made and decided on this list."
The boy handed him the parchment. Harry took it eagerly, scanning the names. He saw an interesting name underlined twice.
Blaise muttered to no one in particular, "It's the same case as the last list. Only Draco and Pansy made it."
Harry pointed at the parchment, catching Draco's attention. "I swear I just heard this name. Did Daphne Greengrass just get sorted into Slytherin?"
Even as the words left his mouth, Daphne stepped away from the Sorting Hat. Harry made space for her at his side of the table and bumped into the unmoving side of Draco.
"I'm not moving for Greengrass," Draco said imperiously, planting himself and crossing his arms.
"Nor I," Pansy agreed, leaning back and looking at Daphne with a mocking grin.
Draco crossed his arms and read his self made list. Harry poked him on the arm and even after that had no result, Harry turned to the newcomer and shrugged. He had no space to offer her and was unwilling to embarrass Draco for someone he just met.
"I don't plan on moving either." Theodore Nott remarked from the other side of the table. He was across from Harry, both of them at the end of the table.
"Fine to all three of you, I'll sit next to Blaise." Daphne went to the other side of the table with a huff.
Blaise shifted slightly closer to Theo. Daphne slid into the space between Crabbie and Blaise. She ignored Theo at the far end of her bench and turned her gaze toward Pansy and Draco, giving them a sharp, almost malicious glare.
Theo whined "Blaise, I thought you agreed with our list."
"What was I supposed to do? Make her sit with the second years? And Theo, don't call it out list, it was never 'our list'. We never got to edit it once."
"Well, her name was never getting off the list," Draco shot back. "No matter what you wanted edited, Blaise."
Harry let the argument fade into background noise. He wondered, not for the first time, whether forcing the Hat's decision had been a mistake. He knew he had been cornered into the choice, but the other tables were in plain view.
Ravenclaw was quiet, almost orderly. Gryffindor, he was fairly certain, was not keeping written tallies of allies and enemies before their first night had even ended. The list was only a few hours old, yet Harry had a strange feeling it was going to be the only thing he heard about for a while. Especially since Blaise had not yet been given the chance to modify it. Harry rolled his eyes at the thought of how irritating the Italian wizard could be when things did not go his way.
Then Theo spoke, and actually listened. There was something peculiar about Theodore Nott. He rarely said anything constructive and seemed to favour whatever remark would spark an argument in the shortest amount of time.
"I would wager five hundred Galleons that I outscore you in Potions, Daphne. Pity your family cannot afford the loss."
If there was one thing Harry could depend on, it was Theo trying his hardest to draw an argument from a stone. It was especially funny in this case because Harry knew Theo had no good reason to even make that remark. Daphne hadn't even mentioned Theo.
Zabini's head did a turn that almost seemed too fast for his neck to handle. He watched for her reaction.
Daphne Greengrass leaned forward, looking past Zabini. "Theodore Nott, first, my family is richer than yours. Second, last week your father made seven bad trades in a row. Keep that up and you won't have a KNUT to wager."
This time, Zabini was not the only head on a swivel. Pansy and Draco were taking interest now.
Theodore shrugged it off "You have to lose money to make money. My father will make that back next week. We could go out and make seven hundred bad trades in a row and still be richer than your family."
Daphne's eyes widened in exaggerated shock. She leaned slightly toward Zabini. "Blaise, did you hear that? I need to remind everyone at this table that his father sold my father three buildings at a loss just two years ago."
Zabini nodded, grinning at the exchange. "I heard it."
"What? Three roach‑infested apartments? Take it, that's nothing to us."
Daphne gasped, exaggerating every word. "So the same Nott high‑rises your father once advertised as luxury are crawling with roaches? Got it. Thanks for confirming."
Theo sputtered and Daphne never allowed him to return to the conversation.
"No, I've heard enough. Over budget, past deadline and crawling with roaches? Sounds about right for the Nott family."
Everyone other than Theo started laughing. Harry and Draco died laughing as Pansy removed an underline from the Greengrass last name.
Harry liked his classmates, they were just a little dull at times. It was a gift that they kept themselves occupied and were generally content to leave him to his own thoughts.
The feast dragged on, though Harry barely noticed. Plates refilled themselves, laughter rose and fell, and the chatter of alliances and wagers filled the Slytherin table. He sat apart from it all, drinking only water, his mind elsewhere. He heard everything. He laughed at Draco's ridiculous claims, smirked as Pansy fired barbs at Theo, and nodded along with Zabini's side conversation, clearly entertained by the chaos around him.
When he glanced up, curious eyes flicked away. No one asked why he hadn't touched the food. Pansy and Blaise intercepted the curious second year students. He was thankful for this, he never asked Pansy to do such a thing and had very little interaction with Blaise so his actions were unexpected.
It was only the first day and based on the stares from the other tables, he was certain the Gryffindor students would have something to say to him. He could imagine how strange his placement in Slytherin would seem.
Eventually, the prefects called the first‑years to order. The long procession wound down into the dungeons. The air grew colder, heavier, as they descended. Harry walked in silence, the voices of his classmates echoing around him.
This was a place Harry explored by himself, there were some brilliant magical experiments centered around the dungeons. Spells unrivaled in their cruelty but never unleashed towards magical opponents, spells used to punish but not to strike. Regardless of wherever the Sorting Hat decided to put him, this was where he wanted to be.
The magic here was experimental, boundaries crossed just to cross them. Spells designed by Severus Snape were conceptualised here, weaved by Ravenclaw and dozens of variations were used by Gryffindor days later. The birthplace of true genius was Slytherin, not Ravenclaw. It was here he wanted to be.
The Slytherin common room opened wide, green light shimmering from the lake beyond its windows. Shadows moved across the glass as fish drifted past. The room was grand, but it felt submerged, cut off from the rest of the castle. Harry lingered only a moment before following the prefects to their dorms.
The warding was excessive by any stretch of the word. The dorms were warded for situations and magic that Harry was certain did not or could not exist. Unlike the other houses, Slytherin offered no shared dormitories. Each student was given a chamber of their own, doors lining the corridor like cells. Harry was given his choice of first year dorms and he picked the one furthest away from the entrance.
Like much of the castle, there were far more unused rooms than occupied ones. Hogwarts had clearly been built to house several times its current student population. Harry's room lay apart from the others, down a stretch of corridor where door after door remained closed and unused. The rest of them had chosen rooms close together, leaving six empty rooms on either side before Harry's solitary door.
He stepped inside to find a narrow room with a tall window pressed against the lake, shelves bare, and a bed draped in green. Most interestingly, he found a much smaller and lighter version of Mandy's desk. He did not spend much time going through the common room but he imagined that her desk would resemble one of those found in the Slytherin study area. This desk had no graffiti and looked to be of a much higher quality than what Mandy threw during her duel.
He checked the wards around the window and found less warding than he liked. It was when he looked past the window, he noticed that the lake itself was warded to not enter Hogwarts property. He had to assume that there was some reason for such a thing but he could not find the reason.
Warding the lake was a completely ridiculous concept that baffled him, but it lined up with the other types of extravagant magic. During his week, he spent time in the library and quickly ran into the restricted section. Before enchanting his book to act as a pass into the library, he found that the wards were similarly extravagant. They did not react to authorised entry or the act of crossing the boundary itself, only to attempts to bypass them. When triggered, the wards alerted the librarian about an unauthorised access and changed the hands of the wizard to books. However, instead of performing a simple transfiguration of the hand, the wards tricked the minds of anyone who saw the hands to see books instead.
There were many instances in Hogwarts where he suspected the enchanter made it harder just because they could. He could respect their dedication to the art of magic but he could not respect the wasted time.
After this quick analysis of the wards and the lake itself, he moved onto his actual plan. He closed the door behind him. The muffled laughter of his classmates faded. Alone at last. He first took out Lord Voldemort's journal and levitated it to the desk.
Harry was not willing to experiment with the journal when there were less than twenty wizards in the entire school. If anything went wrong, he wanted someone to hear him. He left the door unlocked, he did not have faith in Draco or anyone else below seventh year breaking the pre-applied wards to the door.
"I said it's not exactly a group list if Theo and I haven't had a chance to modify the list. Don't be angry at me because I am right!"
Harry sighed, the shrill voice of Blaise rang out from somewhere down the hall. There was another, more important reason why he waited until more students were in school. It was possible that tampering with or activating the journal tripped any of the dozens of dark detecting wards or enchantments. If push came to shove and teachers came to investigate the source, he was fairly confident that he could make it point elsewhere. Blaise Zabini would be the one on a trip to Azkaban,
Lucius handled the book with his bare hands, something Harry attributed to bravery. Lucius was powerful enough to know that the book was dangerous and even confirmed as much when handing it off. Harry was more aware of the true nature of the journal and refused to touch it.
Harry learned the basics of ward breaking at Malfoy Manor. He was able to break and understand ward schemes without needing any of the complex analysis spells experienced wizards used. One of the skills he was awful with was ward documentation, a critical component that was the very first step of the profession.
Harry could not describe the book's protection in any way that a professional could understand. It looked like a bomb. If a professional asked him, he would call it a bomb and he treated it as one.
To store it, he kept it warded. Wards layered over and distinct from the pre-existing ones. The journal detected a series of magical signatures and referred to them as 'observation wards'. Knowing this, he warded it carefully, deliberately underpowering his wards. He played it on the safe side, even omitting known protective wards that the book did not have a problem with.
Harry knew that this was not enough. His next move was to wrap it in a magic nullifier. Something that prevented the expulsion of magic outside of that ward. He identified very quickly that the book had contingencies for such ward types.
Lord Voldemort's journal detected, negated and went into a complex series of actions if encased in any type of magic nullifier. He used the next best option. Harry wrapped the book in Spellotape but he first enchanted the tape to remove its adhesive qualities. He did not touch the book even while wrapped. He knew what this book was, he had the strangest feeling that even without his ability to sense magic that he would avoid this object.
With a flick of the wrist, Harry erected low level wards around the desk and removed the tape. He levitated a quill, using his wand with precision and dropped it.
He sensed a wizard coming to his room. Two sharp knocks, Zabini's emotions were hidden but he was concerned about Harry. Concerned as far as Slytherin children could be, Harry noted. The emotions declared that there was something in it for him and while Harry could not guess what it was, he knew to not respond. He waited for the wizard to leave his doorway to continue his work.
'I must be written in, lifeforce must be drained from the writer, I must consume.'
Lord Voldemort's journal kept it honest with him, he could appreciate that. He had never imagined a wizard would create something that literally told its would-be attacker where to strike, but this was Tom Riddle. The undefeated Tom Riddle, at that point. Tom did not believe anyone could break his wards, and Harry had to respect that kind of reckless arrogance.
A knock sounded at the door.
Harry shifted his attention and identified Pansy Parkinson through the wood. She was irritated, tightly controlled, and her anger was not aimed at him. Harry knew it was something to do with the list and the sudden absence of Draco's magic from the corridor.
"Harry, I know you're awake. I need you to unlock Draco's door," Pansy said.
"Harry, blow his door down like Draco says you can," Zabini shouted from the corridor. "You hear that Draco? Harry says he's coming out here if you don't give us the list."
Pansy rapped on the door twice with her knuckles. "Ignore Zabini. Do not do anything of the sort. Just unlock it. He did not give us enough time to amend the list before he took it back."
Theo whined, "Stop saying 'us.' It is just you and Draco hoarding it."
Zabini picked up the thread. "Exactly. He did not give you enough time."
Harry stifled his laughter. The list was barely a day old and it was already destabilising them. He kept quiet until Draco emerged from his room and they swarmed him.
The boy respected the journal. It took effort to sense the enchantments around an object and that required him to analyse the magic. He was unwilling to, he sensed just enough to understand that the book needed to be written in but he did not go any deeper than that.
The young wizard sat on the bed and considered what he was looking at. Lord Voldemort made an object so obscenely powerful and foul and did not try to disguise it. He protected it but gave the wizard the correct way to access the object,
The protections were crude. A warning sting to any wizard who tried to pry. But beneath that shallow defense lay something vast, something that wanted to be touched, wanted to be opened. Only if something was given in exchange.
Harry did not plan on writing in the journal. Now that it gave him an access point, he decided to interact with the wards in an attempt to find a foothold.
'If this enchantment is interacted with, ???, until ward twelve and ??? are interacted with.'
'If this ward is interacted with by enchantment four, ???, ???.'
'If this ward exists but enchantment fifteen exists, negate this ward and enchantments one through twelve.'
'If enchantment five is negated, ward five exists and ??? is negated, ???.'
This was not a piece of land. A warded location had to account for an effectively infinite number of possibilities. Wards relied on activation sequences, and there were trillions of potential methods by which a wizard might attempt entry. Even the timing mattered, with entry possible at any moment, down to the millisecond.
Unlike a fixed artefact, a place could not be controlled through a single condition. It had to respond correctly to variation, intent, sequence, and timing, all at once. This fixed artefact wanted only a single condition, that a wizard be drained, and that the book receive what was taken.
To bypass a ward, all one had to do was identify a leniency and stretch it far enough to slip through. Harry had experience with that. Enchantments, however, were a different discipline. They were not broad or adaptive, they were precise, built to serve one object and one purpose.
'I must be written in, lifeforce must be drained from the writer, I must consume.'
Tom Riddle told him that there would be a rule buried somewhere in the spellwork, a check that asked a single question. Was the wizard writing, and were they draining themselves to do it. If the answer was yes, most of the protections would step aside.
There were two options, he could isolate and manipulate that rule until it returned true. Even if he managed to isolate the enchantment or ward responsible for that singular check most of the protections were not all of the protections. The second option looked worse. He would have to unravel the entire layered mess, a task that had clearly taken months to construct.
Both of these ignored the part of this that he was not able to resolve. There was a soul in that book. A soul that could access and use magic from what Harry could guess. There was no evidence to back up this belief but he believed that the soul was the final, near unbeatable safeguard.
Everything else existed in a constant, magical state with its own magical signature. Enchantments and wards could not change by themselves nor could they do anything outside what they were made to do. Wards could influence other wards magically but no ward could decide to change on their own.
Harry had the distinct impression that the soul could simply intervene. The soul could have a final switch. If Tom's soul determined that defeat was inevitable, it could act as its own safeguard. A realm where an active, non rule-based entity was making changes at will. Something with its own agency.
Tom was brilliant and the boy knew he had no chance. Harry lowered the wards around the desk. He levitated the book and began wrapping it once more. The fragment of Lord Voldemort told him no lies thus far, he would need to write in the book and Lucius would have it. Still, he would have to be the dumbest person in the school to write in a book layered with that much magic.
Harry put the wrapped book on the desk, sighing deeply as a familiar presence raced to the door. The boy knew to expect no knocking from this visitor. Draco burst into the room.
"Harry, listen, my mother insists you write in the Great Hall tomorrow morning. Lady Selwyn too, they sent me letters to remind you."
Harry responded without turning around, keeping his eyes on the book.
"Write what? We've got our first class tomorrow, I have nothing to write yet."
"Write anything. You've been given a new column in the Prophet. It's about your daily life in Hogwarts. On top of that, you have the old articles. Lady Selwyn has a new idea for Harry's Advice but that will only be once a week so you don't need to be seen writing those."
He rattled off Harry's commitments like a minister briefing a reluctant colleague. When he reached for the desk, Harry flicked his wand, levitating the book onto his bed. Draco sat in Harry's chair, not interested in the book in the slightest.
"So I have to pretend to be writing those things? Even now? I thought you said people didn't believe I was the one behind them."
"No," Draco corrected smoothly, "I said our friends know you aren't writing them. But the wider public believes every word is yours. That belief is power, Harry. Your articles sell because your name is attached to it."
Harry smirked faintly. "You sound like a young version of your father, Draco."
"Thank you," Draco replied without irony. "My mother has offered an alternative. She could name me as your closest confidant and I can take up some of the responsibilities. Works well with our idea to have me answer questions on your behalf at school."
Harry waved a hand dismissively. "Sure, whatever that entails."
"I'll draft her a letter tonight. Some of the upper year Slytherins wish to meet you. They're not just students. My father sent me a letter about networking. These older students represent the next generation of Pureblood power brokers. My father wrote that word for word. He wants to ensure that you meet them. It doesn't matter how or where, only that you see them."
Harry shrugged, unconcerned. He had sensed the others steering older students away from his room earlier but hadn't realized those encounters were being choreographed like political audiences. It was as if these children did nothing but treat everything like a courtroom. Draco noisily crossed a name from the list to emphasize the point.
Draco continued to make edits to the list while Harry watched. He was curious about the list but never got confirmation about it. Both of the controlling Slytherins seemed to have a different idea on what the list actually was.
Pansy Parkison seemed to think of it as a list of people who could speak to him. Treating Harry as an asset to be monetised similar to how he was used in the Pureblood circles. This lined up with the Parkison business model. They were a ruthless business family if the lessons he had to attend taught him anything.
Draco seemed to think of it as a global list of people to not speak to. This was the narrow sort of view he expected from Lucius and his son. An us against them mentality, something not viable for most Pureblood Houses but par for the course for the Malfoy family who were the strongest English family. They could afford to deal only on a social level, they were above the others.
Unlike Pansy, the youngest Malfoy seemed to lose track of the goals of this list. He clearly had no problems speaking to Daphne Greengrass no matter how many times he underlined her name. Harry sensed the arrival of several more Pureblood children who took Draco's unannounced entrance as an opening.
Daphne Greengrass led the day, immediately engaging him.
"Harry, let me ask you something. Have you ever worn any clothing with the name 'Zabini' on it?"
Harry shook his head, glancing at Draco for confirmation. He simply wore whatever Narcissa instructed him to. She nodded and swiveled towards the seated Draco.
"Draco, would you be caught dead in anything with the name 'Zabini' on it?"
Never missing a chance to rag on Zabini, he looked up at Daphne and laughed haughtily. "Of course not."
Pansy snapped her fingers at Blaise. "That's everyone in our year. We wouldn't be caught dead in anything your mother designed."
Blaise shot back, "I could take that from a Greengrass but not from a Parkison. For the life of me, I don't know why you're talking. Only one family in this room released clothing so bad it was handed out to war orphans."
Pansy retorted, "Someone wore my father's clothing."
Blaise put his arm around Theo's shoulder. "Is that something to be proud of? I had no idea your family was proud of such a thing."
Theo burst out laughing. "The bar for success can't get any lower for the Parkison family. The bar's in hell. Some squib child wore a pair of my socks with the Nott House Crest on them. If I were a Parkison, would that be the highlight of my season?"
Harry, Draco, and Blaise howled with laughter as Pansy left the room. Daphne was left standing alone after her partner against Blaise stormed off. Harry, knowing Blaise would make another attack, decided to speak to her instead, hoping to learn more about Daphne. He sat down on his own bed. He pushed the journal behind his back and asked the Pureblood girl.
"Daphne, what does your father do?"
She tilted her head to the side, confusion clear on her face. Harry realised immediately that the question had not landed as intended. He remembered that the Pureblood Lords didn't really do anything.
"The Nott family controls trade routes and portkeys, the Blacks own buildings and property, and the Parkinsons are known for high fashion. What is your family's domain?"
"Our family are the peacemakers of our wizarding society..."
Theo immediately started giggling, and Draco cut in. "Not this again."
She turned away from Harry and snapped back at the seated Draco. "Alright then, tell him what your family does."
Draco shrugged and smiled with an incredibly smug grin. "We win. The Malfoy family represents excellence. We own trade routes, we have tons of rental properties, and my mother is the highest authority in Pureblood fashion. We are the winners."
"Winners run away from the Carrow twins I guess, good to know. Oh AND get outbid by Yaxley, winners do that, got it." She turned her body fully toward Harry, shutting the others out. "Seriously though Harry. We were neutral in the last wizarding war. We kept the peace and acted as arbiters for both sides."
Theo cut in. "Harry, that's just fancy talk for being too poor to support and too weak to fight."
Daphne shot back immediately. "Theo, we are richer than your family right now. We are the fourth richest family in London right now, today. We are third if you don't count the Black family anymore."
Theo dismissively sighed. "That's not true."
Harry vowed to investigate which family was richer. He had a feeling that Daphne was not lying.
Draco drawled, "Right now sure, right now you are. Your family was barely hanging on before the war. Nott and Malfoy are both richer than your family if we look at historical wealth."
Theo laughed. "You owed the Avery family money, you still might. Your grandfather failed to turn a profit developing racing brooms. How is that even possible?"
Daphne ignored them. "Harry, if we're talking about historical wealth, the Malfoy family isn't even in the top fifty. We're higher than them historically."
Draco stood and looked at Harry. "Historically? Her family claimed to actually own an entire Portkey Hub and Gringotts made them a top twenty family. They were poor and because of one mistake they became a rich family."
"Harry, Gringotts accepted it because our finances already supported that scale. It wasn't some wild fantasy, it was plausible at the time. The Portkey Hub story did happen but people like Draco and others use it to discredit how rich we actually were. We always were a wealthy family historically."
Harry nodded, "I can believe that. If I told Gringotts I purchased Malfoy Manor they would take a look at the amount of money in my vaults and know I couldn't do it. If your ancestors had the funds, they would think it was possible."
Draco and Theo both tried to speak over each other while Zabini chuckled. Daphne gracefully accepted Harry's words. "Thank you Harry, good to see that living with Draco didn't make you as deranged as him."
The Slytherin students argued back and forth while Harry listened. It was interesting. Harry had no idea why Daphne was on both Draco's and Pansy's lists. The two arbiters of the list were both in agreement on her name but he liked her so far.
She was interesting and her ability to silence Draco and Theo was great. Harry kept the bickering going between the students. PWhen Pansy returned and reignited the dispute between Zabini and Daphne, the argument collapsed into noise. It was hilarious and a wonderful way to end his first night in Slytherin.
By morning, the Great Hall was alive. Owls swooped overhead with letters and newspapers. Draco had insisted Harry bring parchment and quill, and now Harry sat at the Slytherin table. Like the night before, his back was to the wall, allowing him to watch the rest of the school over the shoulders of Blaise and Theo.
Harry's parchment sold the idea that he was actually the author of his own work. The people who saw him making notes and checking it were unaware of the game the Slytherin first years were playing.
On his parchment, there were no words about haircare or general advice but a hastily written balance sheet. Harry had no assets, no liabilities and a baseline net zero Galleons according to his parchment.
Harry opened letters next to Draco. Any correspondence to a member of House Malfoy was first directed to the manor, checked for unpleasant contents, and then redirected by Malfoy owls to its final destination. Harry was, in truth, a member of House Black and House Potter, but his and Narcissa's old House Black owl‑redirection system had collapsed.
As Draco received mail for them both, he gave Harry four letters of note. One came from House Black, congratulating Harry on his sorting. Narcissa Malfoy's signature was the only one on the insignia. Another arrived from Lord Selwyn, offering similar congratulations and enclosing a pair of tickets to the Quidditch World Cup. The last was from Rita Skeeter, requesting an interview.
Harry showed Draco the Rita letter. He frowned after reading the contents of the letter and borrowed some of Harry's parchment and his quill to pen his own letter to his father. Zabini snapped his fingers impatiently, unhappy that a player of their game was disrupted.
"Draco, give Harry back the parchment and quill. He's in a game. You always do this, just because you aren't playing doesn't mean you can disrupt everyone else." Theo looked up from his cards, using Zabini's distraction to look at the financial situation of his opponent.
"Fine Fine Blaise, the school isn't going to burn down, just relax." Draco pulled out his own writing equipment after returning the items to Harry.
When Harry had his pen, Zabini waved his hand at Pansy to restart play. All the players looked to Pansy as she raised her auction card and gavel. She put the card in the middle of the Slytherin students and said.
"The last bid was from Daphne, one hundred and thirty thousand Galleons for number fifteen, Golden Road."
Zabini did some quick maths and bid. "One hundred and thirty five."
Theo glanced at Zabini's parchment, then at his own. He turned away, then risked a look at Daphne's, though her hand obscured most of it.
"One hundred and fifty. It's a steal."
Daphne leaned forward. "Theo, you called it Bankrupt Road five minutes ago."
Theo called his partner in crime to lie for him. "Draco, last week at your house, did I not say Golden Road has the best returns?" Draco nodded absently, focusing on his letter.
Zabini declared "You know the worst part. I know Theo does not want this. He just wants to run up the price."
"Why would I bid if I did not want it," Theo said. "At this price, it is absurd not to. Golden Road always performs well. You know that." Theo did not even bother to hide the joy in his voice.
"No," Zabini said. "Let me tell everyone exactly what happens next." He paused and wrote the address onto his sheet. "I bid one hundred and fifty five. You say, 'you can have it'. Then you laugh."
Theo whined to the auctioneer. "Pansy, he is stalling. End it."
"One fifty five," Zabini declared, already logging the sale.
"You can have it," Theo shot back, already grinning. "Massive overpay, that street is potentially the worst place to invest. I have never turned a profit anywhere on that street."
Pansy brought the gavel down. The players reached for parchment at once, recording the result. Blaise took the card for his property.
Blaise glanced over his parchment, lips moving faintly as he did the maths in his head. He ticked off another line with his quill before leaning back. "YOU have never turned a profit but that does not make the street bad. You are just the worst investor at this table and that's fine. You're young and you will have time to learn to invest."
Draco heard what Blaise said and could not let it go. He was not in the game and had not been following every auction, but he remembered one particularly awful purchase, and it had been Zabini who made it.
He inhaled to speak at the same moment Daphne and Theo did. She said what was on the mind of the two others.
"This is coming from the person who spent one hundred and twenty five thousand," Daphne said, slowly circling the figure on her parchment. She looked around the table. "On number thirty six London Lane. Three turns ago."
Zabini ran his quill down the parchment, ticking off another line on his neatly ordered property list before speaking. "So what? London Lane has been good to me. The Zabini family appreciates talent and sound assets. These are good assets. Great assets."
The corner of his mouth kept lifting despite his effort to suppress it. "It is a strong board I am building," he added.
Harry evaluated his own paper. There was nothing to report, as always. He was winning, with absolutely nothing. No properties and zero Galleons. Everyone else was in debt.
On the other side of the table, Theo began humming a tune. Draco looked up from his letter, brightening.
"That's my favourite song," Draco said. "Have you heard it before?"
Theo glanced at him. "You played it in the dorms for half an hour."
"Since we woke up," Pansy added dryly. "Until we came here. It's crazy that you think everyone in our year hasn't heard the song."
"Hello Harry." Harry looked up as a Hufflepuff second year girl and her younger, first year sister looked at him.
"What do you two want?" Theo hid his paper and cards as though the two girls behind him were planning to bid on something he needed. He hunched over the desk, casting a suspicious glance over his shoulder at them. Blaise and Daphne turned their heads to look at the new arrivals.
They ignored Theo's behaviour, as well as the shared sneers from Pansy and Draco, and looked instead at Harry.
"Harry, we were wondering whether you really believe Madame Velt's hair dye is subpar. Witch's Weekly claims it is good enough to replicate your golden colour."
"Velt's dye does not do our hair justice. Not Harry's gold, nor our silver." Draco's phrasing was identical to something Narcissa had once written under Harry's name.
"Shut up Malfoy, I was asking Harry." Yet another person who said the name 'Malfoy' like it was an insult all by itself. Once again, he found it hilarious but he composed himself and instead took another message from Narcissa's writing and spun it to work in this instance.
"Draco's right, his family has silver hair and I have gold. Those are royal colours and Velt's dye isn't up to the task." Harry shrugged.
The two girls exchanged a glance, clearly dissatisfied with Draco's interruption. Without another word, they turned and walked back toward the Hufflepuff table. As soon as they sat down, their heads bent together, and within moments they were engulfed in a lively conversation, their voices carrying faintly across the hall.
Blaise turned to Pansy and said. "Draco doesn't know the first thing about hair dye. It's funny." He did not get the reaction he wanted from Draco, Pansy was the one who reacted angrily instead.
Pansy threw the remaining cards into her bag along with her gavel. "I'm heading to class early. Maybe you can spend the year learning your own hair routine, unless you plan to have Draco answer everything for you."
Harry blinked, thrown off by this strange swing in emotions from her magic.
Pansy leaned over and snapped her fingers in Theo's face. "Come on, Theo."
Theo gave a small shrug as he began packing his own things.
Harry the sharp edge of anger in her magic pulled away down the corridor. He watched them turn the corner toward the classrooms. He turned to Draco right after.
"What do you think Pansy was angry about?"
Draco scanned the other tables. "Theo had the right idea, It seems like those two are making others more confident to approach you. We should go to our first class, what is our first class?"
Blaise looked through his papers but Harry remembered it. "Potions with Grinffendor."
"Let's get to it then."
Draco did not know the way to the classroom and stubbornly refused Harry's assistance. Through trial and error, they made it but only right before Snape himself had. The three of them slipped into the Potions classroom, the cool air of the dungeons wrapping around them. Snape swept past without a word, robes billowing, and the students scrambled to their seats. Harry, Draco, and Blaise headed for the back. Theo and Pansy were in the seat directly behind them.
Blaise dropped into the seat beside Harry.
"You've got half the class staring at you like you're something that escaped from the zoo."
Harry grinned and turned to the two students in the back. "Theo, didn't your father own a zoo?"
Pansy rolled her eyes, brushing off the boys' chuckles. "Forget the zoo. We made a list, stick to it. If random third years can just dash over, then what's the point of me keeping track?"
Draco turned back to Pansy. "We're not exactly bodyguards you know, we can't stop people from talking to Harry the way our parents can. The only one here who knows any serious magic is Harry."
Pansy responded tartly. "If you can't follow the list we all decided on, maybe we just abandon the entire thing and call it quits."
"Silence," Snape snapped, his voice cutting through the air. He walked past the talking Slytherins without looking at them. He did not have the same grace for the Gryffindor half of the room.
Snape's eyes fixed on Neville, who was fumbling with his quill. Harry did not know the boy's name, but he judged him a little slow all the same. Severus had great instincts for bullying, something Harry could appreciate as a useful but off putting talent.
"Longbottom," Snape drawled, "tell me the difference between monkshood and wolfsbane."
Neville stammered, his face turning red. "...I think they're the same plant, sir?"
Snape's lip curled. "You think? You think? Ten points from Gryffindor for wasting my time with guesses."
Hermione's hand shot into the air, eager to answer, but Snape's gaze turned on her with equal disdain.
"Put your hand down, Miss Granger. I did not ask you."
He remembered her name from Pansy's list. The list expanded steadily every time he saw it, the original list did not have her but she was one of the many dozens written down after the sorting ceremony. Draco's stories about Neville Longbottom were not exaggerations.
Hermione lowered her hand reluctantly and Blaise whispered to Theo behind him. "What is the difference between monkshood and wolfsbane?"
"What are you asking me for? Harry's right next to you." Theo leaned over the desk, elbow knocking into Pansy's. He grinned, whisper-shouting at Harry. "Oi, Harry, what's the difference between monkshood and wolfsbane?"
Harry tilted his head, half‑smiling, ready to toss back an answer just to shut Theo up. He opened his mouth and Snape's voice sliced through the air.
"Something amusing, Potter? Why don't you enlighten us all with the answer to my question."
Harry froze with his quill dangling between his fingers. Theo snorted under his breath.
"They're the same plant, sir. Monkshood and wolfsbane are just two different names for Aconite."
Harry remembered Raken's excessive need for Aconite as an ingredient. His answer was inaccurate, wrong even but it would do for this class. Snape's eyes narrowed but he accepted the answer regardless.
"Five points to Slytherin. At least one of you has been paying attention."
The lesson dragged on with Snape prowling between cauldrons, his voice sharp whenever Neville or Ron fumbled and dismissive whenever Hermione raised her hand.
Harry could not understand what was so hard for Neville. The instructions were labeled and written neatly on the board. There was no potionscript to decipher, no specific requirements for ingredient potency or temperature. There were no requirements at all, they just had to do the bare minimum.
He helped the students in his house, starting with the duo at the table immediately behind him. Theo and Pansy's cauldron gave off a faint, muddy discoloration, the surface of their potion swirling in uneven shades of green and brown. Harry leaned in, frowning, then quickly sliced his own ingredients into finer pieces. He sprinkled them into their brew, watching as the mixture brightened and smoothed into a more consistent hue.
At the next table, Draco and Blaise's potion gleamed with a near‑perfect shimmer. Harry noted that Blaise had a real skill for cutting. He was still not that familiar with Blaise but their argument last night seemed to suggest that his family were into fashion. Harry resolved to find out more about Blaise and moved on to the next Slytherin team.
He received some resistance from the other two students. He shrugged and moved on to the next table but Draco intervened. He convinced Goyle and Crabbe to let Harry intervene in their disaster. Their cauldron hissed and steamed from a missed step.
Draco muttered mean words to Harry, calling them dunderheads, though deep down he suspected the duo were sharper than they let on. To make the potion manageable for first years, Snape had added a stabilizing ingredient. Its only purpose was to slow the reaction and remove the need for careful temperature control.
Their missed step was the addition of this ingredient. Their attempt to correct the potion was correct, they doused the fire beneath the cauldron. Their only problem was that Snape did not include potionscript, they had no idea what the final result was meant to be. The stabilizing ingredient added several new reaction steps which gave different colours. What Snape wrote on the board as the final colour was not what the two students should have been looking for. The hissing and steaming were clear signs the mixture had slipped outside the safe temperature band.
Harry relit the flame, poured in water, and stirred with sharp, deliberate strokes until the froth subsided and the potion settled into something workable. Two of their four ingredients were scorched, but the brew was finished in half the usual time. It was passable in Harry's estimation.
Daphne and Millicent Bulstrode, completed the potion perfectly. There was nothing to adjust there. Daphne smiled at him while Millicent frowned at him.
His gaze drifted across the room. Ron, Neville, Hermione, and Sheamus were clustered together, though it was impossible to tell whose cauldron belonged to whom. The potion they all focused on sputtered dangerously, far too thick. Hermione stood beside them, trying to impose order, but it looked as if they had ignored half the instructions on the board and simply hurled random ingredients into the brew. Hermione looked at the board and the textbook but the textbook was not going to be the solution to their problem.
What Harry assumed was Neville's cauldron looked warped, almost as if it were beginning to melt. None of the ingredients they were using should have been capable of that. Harry's eyes narrowed. Sheamus's magic was erratic, more unpredictable than any student Harry had sensed so far. He suspected Sheamus was the cause of the melting cauldron. Harry ignored the group of students and instead focused on a lone student.
Theo leaned back in his seat, grinning as Ron's cauldron sputtered. The classroom was tiered like a small lecture hall, each row rising above the last, and from the back he could look straight down into their work.
"Merlin, it looks like they're brewing soup instead of a potion. Snape's going to serve it to them with bread."
Draco turned in his seat. "Do you think you can throw things into their cauldron from there?"
Draco's question was for Theo but Blaise already knew the answer. "Theo absolutely can. My aim was off earlier and Snape stared at me." He glanced toward the front of the room towards Snape. "Look at him, he's right next to Neville's cauldron."
Draco looked forward as well. Snape was prowling between the Gryffindor benches. "His attention is caught by the disaster Ron's creating in the front row. Theo, cut some root up and aim for the girl in the back."
Theo scrambled for the excess root he had, chopping it into what he considered to be the best shape for throwing across the classroom.
"Don't do it, that's Claudia's cauldron."
Draco frowned. "Who?"
"Claudia Demn," Harry said. "She was sorted after me." The lone student had a good brew going from what he could observe.
Harry sensed the disappointment in the wizards around him but he paid it no mind. Harry hadn't started brewing his potion as yet. The potion only took fifteen minutes to create and with fifteen minutes until the end of the class, he began his potion.
He followed Snape's instructions exactly, measuring each ingredient to the stated amount and adding them in the prescribed order. He adjusted the heat when told, stirred for the correct intervals, and stopped when the colour reached the specified shade. He kept his head down throughout, producing a potion that matched the written instructions perfectly and nothing more.
"Class dismissed."
Chairs scraped against the stone floor as students hurried to pack up. The Gryffindors shuffled out first, muttering under their breath about unfair treatment, while the Slytherins lingered a little longer, gathering their things with far less urgency.
Pansy had spread far more than her list across the desk. Rulers of varying widths, charcoal pencils, and folded sheets covered in precise line work lay arranged with deliberate order. After standing and turning around to speak to Theo, Harry's eyes caught on a sleeve sketch. He had seen her drawing clothing before, even in Malfoy Manor, he wanted to learn more about her talent. She took the most time to organize and soon, all of them were loitering around her table, waiting for her.
Draco slung his bag over his shoulder. "Well, that was thrilling. Fifteen points for you, Potter. You're practically Snape's favourite now. If this keeps up we'll win the Cup on Potions alone."
Theo nudged him with a grin. "Right up until he separates Harry and makes us brew without him."
Pansy snorted, still gathering her things. "Don't give him ideas. It's bad enough we're relying on Harry as it is."
Blaise leaned over her shoulder, eyes narrowing as he took in the parchment. "Pansy, we're going to need a new list. You've added half the school." She hid her drawings which left her last edited version of the list in plain view.
Draco snatched it from her. "Let me see that." His expression shifted immediately. "Pansy. There is all of Ravenclaw on this list."
Harry whistled softly, scanning the names as he committed a few unfamiliar ones to memory.
Pansy jabbed a finger into Draco's chest. "Yes. If they want to speak to Harry, they book a meeting. And they go through us, same way our parents did it."
Harry shook his head. "I have nothing to discuss with most of the school. Just strike Claudia Demn and we're fine."
Blaise frowned, then jabbed a finger at the parchment. "Why is my name here?" A remnant of one of Draco's ideas, Harry noticed, and Blaise's name had been added and crossed out several times. He looked at Draco for a moment, then turned to Pansy.
Harry laughed, sliding his bag over his shoulder. "Sorry, mate. According to Draco, you're not allowed to talk to me."
While the others argued, Pansy quietly stacked her drawings. She folded them twice and checked that the edges were aligned. She glanced up once, making sure Draco and Zabini were distracted. She did not look at the only wizard who was actually looking at her.
"Why do you draw clothes privately?" he asked, low enough that only she heard.
Pansy paused, then scooped the rulers together with more force than necessary. "What do you mean?"
Harry had the ability to derive the emotions from the magic surrounding a person. It required active concentration on that person and the magic around that person. He was not nearly focused enough to notice how irritated that question made her.
"I mean, you're a Parkinson. Your family is known for fashion. Shouldn't you be showing these to someone?"
Harry Potter was an interesting case. He was raised in a children's home for the wealthy and as such, was trained and groomed as children to be accustomed to higher society. He had good manners, was very intelligent and had a slight French accent, something that signaled sophistication.
This and questions like this one from Harry, broke the illusion.
"What kind of question is that," she hissed.
Her eyes flicked briefly to where Blaise and Draco were still arguing, then back to Harry.
"Harry, look at who is around us. That's Blaise ZABINI and Draco MALFOY. I'm not drawing dresses because I'm a struggling designer. I am drawing for fun and I enjoy drawing dresses for fun. If I send this to my father or our Quartermaster, it's not something I'm designing for fun, it's something I have to follow through on. If Draco sees this, he sends it to his mother and suddenly it's next season's line. If Blaise sees it, the same thing happens, just with better tailoring and decent colours."
Harry hadn't thought about that before. What he knew about Pureblood society came only from the Malfoy family. Lucius spoke often of training as a Pureblood Heir to protect House Malfoy. Training dueling and working towards greater magical competency under the guidance of the House Trainer and House Guard.
He knew Pansy had an interest in fashion and had studied it, but little beyond that. He knew she had talent, Narcissa Malfoy had praised her publicly for it. What he had not considered was that being forced to treat that talent as a serious profession at all times would strip it of any space to exist as a hobby. The Slytherin children were often at Malfoy Manor while he was training with Valhein, if he spent more minutes talking to them, he would know these things.
Harry ignored the inflated ego from Pansy Parkinson. He highly doubted that Draco would need to steal designs from an eleven-year-old when she was already the queen of fashion. "I understand," he said. "Is this just a hobby for you? You create for fun, without worrying about it being stolen?"
Pansy studied him for a moment, as if deciding whether he had actually grasped it. She gave a short nod. "Exactly."
Zabini's voice carried from the class doorway. "What are you two whispering about?"
Pansy didn't look at him. She snapped her clasp shut. "Nothing that concerns you." She caught Draco watching. "Or you either."
Draco narrowed his eyes. "That can't be true. Everything eventually concerns me. Are you still modifying the list?"
Pansy turned away. "We have class in a bit, let's get moving."
They filtered into the corridor with the rest of the students. Theo fell into step beside Draco almost immediately, hands in his pockets, expression bright with mischief.
"You know," Theo said, glancing sideways, "I actually think Blaise is going to win. He's got London Lane!"
Draco laughed. "I've noticed that if I'm not in the game, the quality of the game just goes down. I can't believe Blaise called someone else the worst investor."
Blaise shrugged. "Draco and Theo can laugh all they want but London Lane is good. Anyway, my family is better at talent acquisition anyway."
Ahead of them, two Ravenclaws had stopped in the middle of the corridor, voices rising as they argued over a stack of books. Blaise watched them for a moment. He leaned slightly towards Harry, lowering his voice. "Do you know any good curses? Maybe you can hit one of them while they're distracted."
Harry looked at him. "It's slightly concerning how often you ask me to curse others."
The classroom was already half full when they arrived. Once again, Harry took a spot to the back with the other Slytherins. Theo chose to sit further away from them to speak to a Ravenclaw Pureblood Heir. Daphne slipped into the seat behind them and pressed a wrapped sweet into Harry's hand. He accepted it, smiling, and laughed when Blaise and Draco both reached back and were promptly ignored.
Then the room changed. Harry ignored the students around him as his focus tightened, drawn toward the office behind the classroom. The magic behind that door was unmistakable in its darkness. As Quirrel approached the door from within the office, Harry's attention narrowed until nothing else registered.
Quirrel was covered in darkness. There was a difference between grey and truly dark, a spectrum Rita had never understood. Harry had served witches and wizards in France who lived in the grey, political, ruthless, pragmatic. Darkness was something else entirely. Those who hungered for power, not influence or stability but power for its own sake. Magic called to Magic and Quirrel's magic screamed of a desire. Harry's magic screamed the same thing.
Quirrel was a killer, unashamed and unrepentant. Yet he entered the room in a turban, reeking faintly of garlic, stuttering through his words. The act was convincing enough to fool Draco and the others. Harry was not fooled by the act, his magic revealed the truth. It also revealed a weakness, Quirrel was clean.
Lord Voldemort, according to non English history, was another Dark Lord filled with dozens of them. Harry knew this to not be true. He was a blemish upon the natural order. Lord Voldemort was something like a gateway to darkness. It was easy to fall into the promise of total power if guided by someone who was truly powerful. This was no different than any other Dark Lord with followers.
However, Devotion to something like Lord Voldemort left residue. In the same way that living in filth left a stench that clung to skin and cloth, proximity to Lord Voldemort stained a wizard's magic. A blemish that never disappeared.
Just as he could sense that Lucius was critical to the war effort, he knew that Narcissa had never met Lord Voldemort. Her magic was untouched. Quirrel was the same. Harry was certain he had never stood in the Dark Lord's presence, never shared a room with him, and his magic reflected that absence.
This was Quirrel's weakness. He was clean of the mark. He had never been a follower of Lord Voldemort, and while it was technically possible that he had once followed Tom Riddle before the transformation, Harry judged it unlikely. Voldemort did not tolerate independent desire among his followers. He used his own magic to carve these emotions from his lower followers.
Voldemort correctly understood greed to be a harness. Greed, either for magic or money was what he used to control others. His lower followers were rendered unable to feel the pull of greed. Only his inner circle was permitted to feel that hunger, the craving for more strength. The inner circle of the Death Eaters were so magically powerful that there was only one other wizard who had the chance to make them greater than they were. Greed enslaved them to Voldemort.
Nahezzra trained him to derive emotions from magic but that in itself was preparation for recognizing what she called the seven weaknesses. Harry detected no sloth in his magic. Greed ran through it, constant and paired with a gluttony that was never satisfied. His magic was focused and honed toward a single purpose. This man wanted power and would do anything for this power.
Magic called to magic and the greed from the man's magic told him of a certainty. Quirrell could help him with the diary. The easy part was identifying the greed but the harder part would be leveraging that greed. Harry observed the wizard, not magically but visually.
The man in front of him wrote illegibly on the board, tripped over his own feet and constantly wrapped his turban. Then, there was what Harry alone could see. The disfigurement to the face. Quirrel's face was deformed and covered in blasphemies, massive gouges and sores covered his face. There were sigils, symbols cut and burned into the flesh. Harry sensed no magic from these individual ritual markings and he correctly identified them as a madman's grasp at power. Someone had lied to him or perhaps sold him these rituals and he carved them in blind belief.
The ironic fact was that these carved ritual markings did make Quirrel a far more powerful wizard. It was nothing about the markings but the belief that the pain and sacrifice made him a stronger wizard. The thought fascinated him, even as it raised a far more troubling question. How had this man been allowed into Hogwarts at all.
Harry did not believe Albus Dumbledore was powerful, even though every report about the man insisted on his overwhelming magical strength. He accepted that Dumbledore was a powerful wizard, but he could not deny what he knew to be true, a bias he could not shake. When he thought of power, Dumbledore was never his first thought. Instead, his mind went to Lord Parkinson or to Lucius.
The problem was always Dumbledore's magic and actions. As someone who could sense magic, he knew that Lord Parkison was easily the most powerful wizard he had encountered. If the reports of Dumbledore's knowledge and ability to sense darkness in others were even remotely true, he wouldn't be looking at Quirrel pretending to trip over his own legs for the third time in this class.
Harry thought of Dumbledore's long standing defence of Snape, a defence that had endured despite Snape's past. Both Dumbledore and Harry knew that Snape had once been deeply saturated in darkness, that he had killed without remorse. Neither wizard regarded Snape as being any darker, in his present state, than Dumbledore himself. Whatever Snape had been, he was no longer defined by it.
This assessment aligned with Harry's own perceptions. Snape's darkness had not been innate or self-sustaining, it had been cultivated under influence and ideology, and more importantly, it had fractured once Snape lost faith in the man and the cause that had drawn him into it. His rejection of those actions and that authority had been his way out, a conscious break that allowed change.
Harry considered that Dumbledore may have been attempting something similar with Quirrel, extending the same cautious patience and benefit of doubt. The boy could not agree with the attempt. Snape had been shaped by Lord Voldemort and ultimately recoiled from him. The man standing in front of Harry was not being led, he was the origin of his own darkness. His actions were driven by personal ambition and greed rather than loyalty or belief, and there was no sign of doubt or internal conflict. This was not corruption imposed from outside but something self chosen and self reinforced.
Harry sighed and watched his teacher pretend to be afraid of a first year waving their wand at him. It was embarrassing to even interact with this pathetic fool but he needed the journal's secrets.
The rest of the lesson passed in a blur. Harry did not participate in the open chatter between the other Slytherin students. When the class ended, Harry instructed the Slytherin students to leave. Students filed out one by one, their magic fading into the sea of students heading to lunch. When the door closed behind the last of them, Harry remained.
Quirrel went for his office door, keeping his turban in both hands. Harry prevented it from opening. Non verbal, intent based magic. Harry willed the door to remain closed and so it did.
Quirrel and Harry were alone.