Ghostly Revelations
My thanks to Terra King for helping me with this chapter.
"Well, I'm waiting, are you gonna give me a reason why I shouldn't burn your portraits off the wall?" Harry's voice cut through the protests from the Potter's portraits.
For a long moment, nothing happened; the portraits of the Potter family's ancestors were left staring at Harry in shock, anger, and horror. But none more so than Lily and James; their portraits had longed to reunite with their child, whom they'd been separated from for so long.
And it had not gone the way they'd hoped; Harry had lashed out at them, speaking of a life of hellish tragedy the Potters could not comprehend and he had the physical and mental trauma to back it all up.
"Harry, think you don't want to do this," Lily wished she hadn't died. The life her son had led had her in tears and she wanted nothing more than to snap back into the land of the living and hug the living daylights out of him.
"Oh, yeah? Why's that? Is it 'cause I'm fighting madness, or because you think I'm disturbed?" Harry's eyes were spitting emerald fire and the tip of his wand in his tightly clenched fist was flaring, spitting sparks, and smoking with barely restrained magic he was holding back. "D'you even know how many times the Dursleys told me I was disturbed? How they made sure every single family in the fucking area was kept clear of me, telling everyone I was insane and a lunatic and making sure I dressed the part, by giving me their son's cast-offs?" Suddenly his voice turned hysterical. "Do you know I've often wondered how I'd react if I saw you two like this?"
Dorea Potter stared at her nephew sadly, seeing him warily and knowing he could easily lash out. "Tell him, James, Lily, quickly before he destroys the manor."
Harry turned to the portrait of the now-deceased witch. "Tell me what?" He asked, lowering his wand so that his parents wouldn't be intimidated into speaking.
It was James who started. "We only remembered when we were reduced into portrait form; the thing about the spells on the portraits is that a copy of our memories, our personalities are copied."
"Yeah, I know that, thanks, get to the point!"
James frowned at his son's rudeness but he carried on. "We'd been fighting Voldemort ever since we left Hogwarts, Harry, and we made the mistake of joining the Order of the Phoenix; it wasn't until we died we realised Dumbledore had been manipulating our minds."
"Did you know how Dumbledore led the war?" Lily spoke up now, her eyes sparkling with tears as she pictured (no pun intended), and imagined her son's anger and descriptions, of what he had been through. "He didn't. He rarely went into battle, but only when it seemed to benefit him. He never allowed us to use more harmful spells; we were dying in droves. So many families had died. I was friends with Marlene McKinnon, Alice Longbottom-."
"Alice Longbottom? Not Neville Longbottom's mother?" Harry interrupted.
"Yes," Lily's grim expression told him she was more than aware, even in portrait form, of what happened to her old friend. "Do you know what Marlene had wanted to be when she was at Hogwarts?" She asked rhetorically. "She wanted to be a plethora of things; a dancer, a cook, a musician, a writer, a charms mistress, an expert in different fields. She wanted to travel the world and see the sights. And she was talented in charms and transfiguration. What did the Death Eaters and their sick master do? They killed her, and her whole family. A whole family wiped out, for nothing," she shook her head. "But Dumbledore's reaction was to sit back and do nothing, even when we caught wind of what the Death Eaters were doing, the old son of a bitch did nothing. And he forbade us from getting involved."
"But why?" Harry asked.
"I don't know. Alice and I left with James, Frank, and a few others, but Dumbledore kept holding us back. We only got there in time to find the Death Eaters cutting Marlene's throat open, and she was partly naked. She'd been raped heavily," Lily shook her head and she sniffled at the thought of her friend. "It was so senseless. The McKinnons were an old family, they didn't deserve it. And to make it worse, there was even a little kid who was killed. She died before we could get to her."
James wrapped his arms around his wife and turned grimly at Harry. "Many of us joined the Order of the Phoenix because we believed it was our only hope. That Albus Dumbledore was our only hope. Some of us quickly realised Dumbledore either had no idea or had no intention of doing anything until the last minute. I remembered what my father told me, about the fall of Grindelwald; Dumbledore had spent years just sitting back as he amassed more power for himself, and he did nothing to prevent it. When he got involved, so many people seemed to have forgotten how many people - magical and muggle - had died."
"So, let me guess what happened?" Harry pocketed his wand and began pacing as he worked it all out. "You tried to leave, maybe even form your own group to fight Voldemort, and Dumbledore found out and stopped you?"
"Yeah, pretty much," James nodded.
"Contrary to what many liked to believe, other groups were fighting against Voldemort, Harry," Lily added. "There were even pockets of muggle-borns. As Voldemort's biggest targets, it was logical for them to form into groups. Add in the fact many of them had been victims of the prejudice towards them from the Death Eaters and the Ministry of Magic, and they'd just about had enough."
Harry nodded. He already knew about these groups of muggle-born fighters; they had frustrated the Death Eaters, due to the embarrassment they'd always given them. When he'd looked into Voldemort's sick mind, Harry had first learnt of these groups his earlier research had brushed against. Using techniques similar to the French resistance, the muggle-borns of the country, tired and frustrated by the way they were victimised, began lashing out.
Dumbledore hadn't been happy about it. Harry guessed it was because the old wizard secretly didn't like muggle-borns, and was the worst form of supremacist.
Strangely there were also a few dark wizards and witches who opposed Voldemort and everything the Death Eaters were doing. They were more logical than the more extreme extremists in the Death Eater ranks.
They had taken one look at the way Voldemort was slaughtering the purebloods and called him out for being a liar, and at the same time, they carried out their attacks on muggles and used the Death Eaters to take the fall. Again Voldemort and Dumbledore weren't happy about it.
"So you decided to join them. So what happened? Was that when Dumbledore meddled with your minds?"
"We think so," James replied.
"It's hard to be sure; there was so much mental manipulation that we don't even know when it happened," Lily said.
Fleamont shook his head. "I told you never to have anything to do with Albus Dumbledore, James," he reminded his son for what seemed the millionth time. "But even we didn't expect this."
"Fleamont's right," Euphemia sighed as she looked sadly at her son and daughter-in-law, and she turned even more sadly towards her grandson, who'd suffered more for what Dumbledore had done.
"So that's why you stayed in this country, even when Voldemort was looking for us?" Harry clarified.
"No, not quite," Lily corrected.
"No? What do you mean, no?"
"When we found out about your mother's pregnancy, kid, we made plans to escape Britain. So did Frank and Alice when they learnt they were pregnant with Neville. We wanted to get you all to safety," James explained.
"The thing about the mind arts is that they're great if you want to use them to manipulate minds, but while you can use them to sing like Elvis, walk like a chicken, or jump around like a monkey, or make them do whatever you want and say whatever you want them to say while on the inside they're screaming to get out, but things like survival and family will always help them break free. The instinct's too strong," Lily added.
The explanation reminded Harry of something, and he closed his eyes and opened his own mind to the knowledge he had gleaned and stored from the Death Eaters. Voldemort had been a master of magic, and his skills in the mind arts came from both self-study and lessons with some of the top masters in the field, so he had a more varied knowledge. Snape and Bellatrix LeStrange hadn't had the balls or drive to leave the country, so they had only a small amount of knowledge compared to Riddle.
But if there was one thing they had learnt about mental manipulation it was the mind was a strong thing, and it would always fight back. Things like survival and family would always triumph.
"So, you wanted to leave?" Harry whispered although the portraits heard him. It was like all of his beliefs of his parents being so weak they didn't even care about living so long as Dumbledore was served, even to the point where they thought it was okay to play games with his life while he was being hunted by that psycho.
Harry silently flicked his wand absently and a nearby chair came towards him and he sat down.
"Impressive," Lily complimented.
"Thanks," Harry rubbed his head; all of this was fighting with his beliefs of his parents being careless fools. "So what happened? I saw memories of you fighting to stay and leave while Voldemort hunted you?"
Lily sighed. She knew what he was asking. "Potions," she said simply. "Dumbledore realised it wouldn't do any good to manipulate our minds any more, so he resorted to potions. He called us to an emergency meeting when we began planning our getaway; we only went to see if there was anything new. In hindsight, we should have been prepared for him to stun us and pour potions down our throats. It's harder to fight potions than mind manipulation."
"She's right young man," one of the Potter's portraits said, but Harry barely paid them any heed.
What he'd learnt was shattering his world and his birthday wasn't even finished yet. A part of him wanted to find Dumbledore and kill him for this, but he knew it wouldn't be worthwhile. There was no doubt in his head that this was something that just could not be proven, and Dumbledore was just too slick for anything to stick to him.
"Harry?"
Harry lifted his head and looked at Euphemia's portrait. His grandmother was looking at him with worry. "We have a pensieve, with memory projection runes; do you think we could see what you've been going through?"
"Why?" Harry was automatically on his guard and his hackles were raised.
Euphemia's eyes widened when she realised she'd offended him. "Harry, we're your family, we want to help you."
Harry calmed down and sighed. "You and the Potters living in the MACUSA are the only ones who've said that," he commented, "I'm sorry, it's just I've led a lonely life and everyone has taken advantage of me in one way or another."
"You got in touch with the MACUSA?" Charlus grinned. "That's brilliant."
"Yeah. Dumbledore's spent much of his life in nearly twenty years keeping them away. He didn't want them to take me out of the country because he wanted me to kill Voldemort," Harry said solemnly. "Where is this pensieve?"
"Just call for the House Elves. They'll bring it."
"That order will make them happy," James remarked. "It's been a long time since they had a Potter giving them a command."
-8-
Albus Dumbledore was currently finishing the meeting. He had summoned the Heads of House, introducing Andromeda Tonks, who was taking over as the Head of Slytherin House, and reintroducing Horace Slughorn, whom he had persuaded to come out of retirement. Both of them would take over the Head-ship position together to try to repair the damage caused by Snape.
Both of them would take over the upper years, while an army of potions teachers would take care of the lower years. For the first time in a long time, Albus Dumbledore had been taken to task for the low standards of Hogwarts, and no matter what he had tried to say to reassure people, no one would listen; Hogwarts's reputation had taken a huge battering because of Snape and the way Dumbledore had allowed the slimy man to cause so much damage, to say nothing of the scandals caused by Umbridge and Harry Potter.
But in truth, this had been coming for a long time.
When Albus Dumbledore had taken over Hogwarts, he had deliberately cancelled several classes. He'd done that so then he could make sure the purebloods would rise to the top. In many ways, Dumbledore was a blood supremacist but he wasn't as blatant about it as the Malfoys and the Parkinsons, and since both lines were now endangered, it was hoped they would grow up.
But the ICW were alerted and rallied by powerful witches like Augusta Longbottom and Amelia Bones, who'd also rallied the parents of the students who'd been most affected by Umbridge, who had tortured them, had raised one hell of a storm in the Ministry and in the school itself.
The ICW were the only people powerful enough to back Dumbledore into a corner, and he'd been forced to accept their decisions lately. They had not been happy with the reports they'd received, of how he'd allowed Snape to abuse the students and stop them learning potions. And they were furious that nobody had intervened to bring standards back up.
The ICW had made it clear they didn't care why he'd dumbed the students down. All they did was strip away a lot of his power and they had backed him into a corner he could not get out of. The magical world had come dangerously close to falling and revealing themselves to the muggles, and the ICW didn't want a repeat of Grindelwald.
They knew how insane Voldemort was. The last thing they wanted was for a psychopathic wizard to open the doors to their oblivion.
Hogwart's reputation had suffered enormously over the years, and in the last few years, the disaster of the Triwizard Tournament, Umbridge's reign of terror where the Ministry wanted to make sure the school was up to standards, which meant a lower standard as Fudge had gotten it into his head he was smart.
Umbridge had used brutal torture methods because of her sick fetishes, and angry parents had stampeded the Ministry before the ICW got involved and publicly executed her as she was too dangerous. All this had happened a week before Voldemort's death. But the fact Umbridge's presence, and Harry's imprisonment on top of the disastrous performances in DADA and potions meant the ICW and the Board of Governors led by Augusta Longbottom had used the DMLE's protests and those of St. Mungo's to justify the opening of new classes, and the ICW had jumped on it.
There was nothing Dumbledore could do except accept them, and if he protested anymore then he would lose.
If Hogwarts was bad, then the ICW had made it their life mission to make things impossible for Fudge. Never a popular man in international circles, he was a joke, and after a year of ignoring the signs of Voldemort's return, the Dark Lord's actions had shattered any trust in him, and the revelation of the injustices to Harry Potter made things worse.
The international wizarding communities were horrified Fudge had thrown an innocent child into prison, surrounded by Dementors, and everyone had taken petty potshots at him. The ICW wanted to meet with Harry, and Dumbledore had hopes he could avoid it since he knew that Harry's foreign relatives would take advantage of it.
In the next term, there would be dozens of potions lessons and potion-based topics, covering the basics and the most esoteric aspects of the subject, before moving up.
And it didn't stop there.
There would be reopened classes, and things like Runes would no longer be an elective but a compulsory topic; they wanted to make sure Magical Britain flourished again without anyone being dumbed down and to repair the damage Snape and he caused.
"Which House is Harry going to be re-sorted into?" McGonagall asked, looking at him pointedly when they came to a close. This meeting always happened at this time of year, but in this case, they had to talk about the new subjects and new policies. Dumbledore was unsurprised Flitwick and Sprout welcomed it, and Andromeda had said it was about time they took education seriously.
Albus Dumbledore sighed as he glanced at his Deputy, who looked down. Minerva McGonagall had been ageing horribly ever since she saw for herself the truth of Harry's innocence, and heard with her very own ears his public oath to never return to Gryffindor House, but there was also absolutely nothing he could do. For what could he possibly do, when whether he liked it or not, he was anything but guilt-free? When he was the one whom Harry loathed the most, and literally every single person in the world knew it for a fact?
Dumbledore glanced at Andromeda next and saw her eyes narrow into a hateful glare. He had a feeling she was waiting for her moment at this point.
Keeping his spirits up was difficult enough. Increasingly hard by the day.
"I am afraid we will only know on that day itself, Minerva." He sighed wearily, reflecting on how many plans had been upset because of Harry's oath. "Regardless of which House Harry is re-sorted into, I pray he still finds it within himself to reconnect with the Weasleys and Hermione. For he needs to forgive them as much as they need his forgiveness. Without it, none of them will ever heal completely. No matter how impossible it may seem, Harry needs to befriend them again. They are, after all, the very first friends he had made since his return to our world, and I will go as far as to say that they are his first true family."
Pomona Sprout, Andromeda Tonks, and Filius Flitwick exchanged one silent glance, and then the Charms Master spoke up, "None of us here are in any position to take any moral high grounds here, Albus, but I am still going to be shameless enough to say this: what friends would treat Harry as the Weasleys and Hermione Granger had? And what family would treat him as they had?"
Dumbledore blinked in surprise. "Filius, please-"
But the half-goblin charms master had had it. "No! Albus! I have been silent to the point of blind willful indulgence for far too long!" Flitwick glared at him spitefully. "No more! Not after everything that has happened!" The Charms Master's eyes were blazing with a rare intensity as he looked at the Headmaster in the eye, his every syllable dripping with gravity and meaning, "I know that you cannot be candid, for you do not even know the meaning of that word, but I do, and I am going to be as candid as possible here: the most important thing to you is not Harry's healing. It is not his welfare - never has been, considering how you have treated him all these years. It is that he continues dancing to your tune and your tune alone for the rest of his life! As if he is a puppet whose strings only you are allowed to pull! For pity's sake, Albus, what has that poor boy ever done to you that you must treat him so?! Why must you continue to break him further and force him to sing your notes?!" Flitwick snapped.
Dumbledore was startled, was that how everyone viewed the situation?
"Indeed, Albus." This was Pomona, while Andromeda just sat there and watched and listened with narrowed eyes, whose own gaze was steely and unnerving as she regarded the old fool who had opened his mouth in what was undoubtedly self-defence. She, too, had her failings, her sins where Harry Potter was concerned, and while she knew with absolute certainty that it was far too late for her to apologise and make amends to him, she was still grimly determined to not venture further down the path of darkness she had once strayed into. "As Filius had just said, none of us here - including me - are in any position to cast stones, but I will still ask you this: what has Harry Potter ever done to you that you must treat him like this?! Why must you be such a tyrant to him?! Why must you always go out of your way to dictate every single thing he says and does and thinks and feels?! Throughout all this time, you have always insisted that you alone always knew what was the very best to be done, but what has happened in the end?! "An innocent young wizard lost his childhood where he lost his parents to that madman - I hate to say this, but I can understand his contempt for Lily and James for not bothering to run away - being abused for a decade while you were sitting in this cosy castle and his lazy bastard godfather sulked in a prison cell and didn't take his finger out, his teenage years where you sat back and manipulated him into doing your dirty work, and was condemned to prison for crimes he did not commit! Mass Murder! Everything he said and did at this school was twisted by Granger and Weasley at his original trial, and you think he's going to trust them, reach out, and forgive them?!" Sprout sneered at him.
"Wake up, Albus. For once in your damn life, wake the hell up! It is not going to happen! Those two are never going to be forgiven and if what was shown in the trial was the truth, Harry has known for a long time that those two cannot be trusted, so why bother? Why must you always be so stupid, so blind? For goodness' sake, Albus, did you not see that his hair had gone whiter than yours?! And he is supposed to be young enough to be your great-great-great-grandson!"
Albus Dumbledore's countenance alternated between shades of red and white as he glowered at the Herbology Professor and the Charms Master while one of the Senior Potions Mistress just sat back and listened - he was reminded of the Siamese fighting fish which would wait while others of its kind tore each other to bits before striking - and she looked ready for a fight, but the other professors… both of whom had hit nerves with lethal accuracy. He would never tell anyone, of course, but he had been suffering from a nightmare disorder ever since he saw Harry's white hair and saw and heard for himself how much Harry loathed him.
Night after night, he dreamt of his offering Harry a cure for his white hair, only for Harry to utterly destroy the cure right in front of him, go on to literally spit on him, curse him, and tell him brutally that he would be keeping his white hair to serve as a daily reminder of his (Albus) sins, and then, amidst peals of Gellert Grindelwald's and Lord Voldemort's wicked laughter, he would wake, sweating and shaking and silently sobbing like he never had before, and utterly unable to go back to sleep for the rest of the night.
The very worst part was, of course, that he had no doubts about those nightmares becoming grim reality if he tried to offer Harry a cure for his white hair.
Ariana had been bad enough. But this...
It must be noted, though, that if Dumbledore were not so upset by Sprout's and Flitwick's tirades, he might have noted how Minerva McGonagall, who was always the very first to spring to his defence, had not breathed a word at all. She did not even glare at them. She just sat there like a stone statue, looking away into space.
"I am not trying to-." he tried to say, but what could he say?
"Oh, save it, Albus!" Sprout spat, now eyeing him with unmistakable disgust and contempt. "No more of your games! Goodness knows we have had more than enough of those to last for lifetimes! It was never about, as you had so shamelessly, heartlessly, and evilly put it, the Greater Good! It was never about Harry's best interests! It is about you wanting what you want and being perfectly willing to do anything and everything you can to get it! Yes! You, you, you!" Sprout savagely gestured to him while he watched her in shock. "You and your thoughts and your wants and your beliefs! As I have said, I am a sinner, so I have no rights, but I still thank all that is good that I am not the monster of selfishness that you are!"
"A monster of not only utter selfishness but also utter stupidity!" Flitwick put in before the furiously flushing old fool could speak. "May the Gods forgive me for being so blind until now, but I see now that you truly are the stupidest creature to ever walk this Earth, especially given how, in your determination to have Harry continue dancing to your tune and your tune alone until he dies, you have signed Wizarding Britain's death warrant! And you and yours do not even know that you have!"
Andromeda chose that moment to speak, but unlike her fellow Heads, her voice was quiet and solemn. "I wanted Harry when Lily and James were murdered, but you kept him away; you kept saying he was safe. But he wasn't. He wasn't. You had some pathetic, senile old squib watching him, and anything could have happened and she would never have known, and neither would you." There was unhidden disgust and loathing in Andromeda's features that reminded him uncomfortably of her late Death Eater sister. "A squib! If a Death Eater attacked, they wouldn't stand a chance, and what would you do then? Just ignore it? You don't think your schemes up well, do you? I could have raised him in a loving environment but that wasn't what you wanted; you wanted a boy who was so mentally hurt, I am amazed he even came out of that hell the way he did. Anything could have happened to him, you old fool. And I won't forget how you brainwashed my daughter into following you! I don't even know if I can make things better between Nympadora and Harry, who used to be as thick as thieves growing up, so well done for that! I doubt I can ever make things right between them, ever. And it's all your fault. And it will be your fault is anything happens to make Harry snap!"
There was a pause of absolute silence, then...
"You say that you do not want Harry to follow in Gellert Grindelwald's or Lord Voldemort's footsteps?" Flitwick said before Dumbledore could use one of his standard replies concerning Harry's upbringing. "You say that you do not want him to become a third Dark Lord?" The Charms Professor went on, his tone now a little calmer, but all the more unnerving for that calmness, "Well, you and yours may never admit it, but we all know that even if that happens, the truth is that it is nothing less than what we deserve. You and your lap cat here and all your other turkeys may believe and say and act otherwise, but the gospel truth here is that none of us have any right to prevent or stop Harry Potter from turning to the Dark Side. Especially not you, Albus Dumbledore. You have no right at all. Oh, neither Pomona nor I may be your pet seer, who is hopelessly and most shamefully drunk for the goodness-knows-what time, but we do not need the second sight to know for sure that the more you try, the more Harry would loathe, and you know what, Albus? Pomona and I are keeping our fingers crossed. For what is to stop him from demolishing this school and, by extension, Wizarding Britain as a whole when he snaps?"
Dumbledore gasped while Andromeda looked down and closed her eyes. McGonagall hissed like her animagus form.
All three of them had their own thoughts on what that meant.
Sprout could not help but chuckle at the look on Dumbledore's face at that, though it was a bitter unhappy sound that was utterly uncharacteristic of her, "It has not occurred to you that he might do that, right? You do not believe he will go that far, right? Well, you remember how you had always defended Severus Snape, Albus? How you had always spoken for him? How you had always insisted that he had your absolute trust? That he was just misunderstood? That he must be allowed certain privileges for the Greater Good? Well, what says you now to that, Albus Dumbledore? Was Severus Snape the person you had believed him to be? And given that, you dare say your beliefs of what Harry Potter will and will not do are perfectly accurate?"
"Did you ever really know Harry, Headmaster?" Andromeda took his title and twisted it like an insult.
Dumbledore was unable to say a word.
"All right. Let us say, for the sake of argument, that Harry Potter needs to return to Hogwarts." This was Flitwick, who was also taking a secret sour pleasure at Dumbledore's downcast flushing countenance at Sprout's reminder of how stupidly unforgivably wrong he had been about Severus Snape, "What can Hogwarts offer him, Albus? What can we offer him?"
Dumbledore raised his head, but whatever he had to say suddenly died away as he locked eyes with Flitwick's. He was so stunned by the argument he could barely even get his head around it.
The Charms Master was hardly done. "Which House can he re-sorted into? Slytherin? Out of the question. Hufflepuff? My apologies, Pomona, but we all know that that is also a no."
"No, it's okay," Sprout looked down, remembering how she and her Hufflepuffs had abused Harry over the years.
Ravenclaw? Ah! I wish! Perhaps I am being as presumptuous as you, Albus, to say this, but I honestly believe that Harry Potter is now firmly and adamantly convinced that he does not belong to any of our Houses, and we all know for a fact that we have no one to blame but ourselves for that. What is to stop him from declaring that, while he does not want to be a Gryffindor anymore, he also does not want to be a Hufflepuff, or a Ravenclaw, or a Slytherin, and even giving his official oath to seal that? How can he be a Hogwarts student if he does not belong to any House? And what will you do if he does make such a declaration, Albus? What will you do? Force him even though his breaking his oaths would result in his death? Expel him?"
Andromeda thought that would make Harry's day.
Flitwick went on, "Besides, what can we teach him, Albus? This is a wizard who had defeated the second most dangerous Dark wizard of all time and all his minions, and even successfully concealed his true self and his secrets from you, the first most dangerous Dark wizard of all time, for so many years. Goodness only knows how powerful and dangerous Harry Potter is, Albus, and believe it or not, I would not dare brave him in a duel. I don't know whether you noticed this, but during his second trial, Harry showed those thoughts from You-Know-Who's mind, the ones where he wished he had blood adopted and brainwashed Harry into becoming his own son. Who's to say Harry didn't get much more than that? Who's to say he doesn't have all of You-Know-Who's knowledge of magic, and we all know how extensive that was."
Dumbledore shuddered. He had been scared of that. Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed Andromeda look both awed and horrified.
"None of us should dare presume to be stronger and more knowledgeable than he is, especially given what he has done," Flitwick went on, "and what he could do despite our ignorance of his true capabilities. Given that, what can we possibly teach him? And...let us face it, are any of us at ease with teaching him? Especially after all that has happened? And with his utter contempt for every single one of us being as plain as day? Or...are you going to insist that we treat him as if he were a normal student? Award him points and detentions like any other student? Well, Albus, let me ask you this now: what are you going to do if he irreparably destroys the House-Point Hourglasses? If he were to pack his bags the moment he is given detention?"