A Lesson In Nuance

Today, Harry decided, was an odd day. In the two weeks since he'd agreed to learn what Voldemort called the 'mind arts', they'd worked on it pretty much every single day. She was surprisingly determined to make good on her offer, and it was to his great shock that he discovered Voldemort's unbelievable skill with teaching.

His talent for legilimency was apparently only rivaled by how absolutely shit he was with occlumency. Voldemort amusedly informed him that this was usually how it worked, mostly because the skill sets between the two were very literally exact opposites. When he’d asked her which one she was worse at, a pretty smile and a teasing tilt of her head told him she was the exception, and of course she was. 

To put it simply, he was hot garbage at protecting his mind, yet she was still able to cram some competency into his talentless skull. He never would've expected her to be a patient teacher, and he still didn't think she earned that title in its totality, but she was astoundingly good at working around his many educational quirks to get progress out of him. Harry never thought that Lupin would've lost his place as his favorite teacher, but two weeks with Lord Voldemort trying to teach him something was enough to win him over, and his bias against her meant that she was doing a damn good job. 

Today was weird because, for once, he was alone. For whatever reason, Voldemort didn't show up today. It was annoying that this fact made a day abnormal on its own, but a gigantic bright side to the situation was that the order had nobody posted on him today either. It was the first time this summer that both of the two were absent, and he relished in the feeling of solitude while he had it. 

Sitting down and enjoying his peace had never felt better. He was so relaxed that he rested his head against his tree and sat there for hours with his eyes closed, blind to the world. He stayed there until the setting sun slipped below the horizon, and he only finally came to because a twinge from what he now knew was his passive legilimency notified him that someone else was in the park. 

He groggily blinked his eyes a few times and wondered who the hell it was. His first thought was Voldemort, but he wouldn't have detected her presence if she was the one looking for him. Someone from the order was his next thought, but those fucks were present so much that he'd started to name them based on the feel of their magic, and this guy felt new.

Looking over at the dirt road that led to the park, he saw the shadowed form of a man hobbling toward the playground. It was dark, so all he really got was a blob, but he stood up anyway. It was probably some drunken fuck going wherever their inebriated brain took them. It was a Friday night, and he was stupid for believing that Harry Potter could get a day off. 

The man rather quickly shuffled off of the road and onto the park’s mulch. As the guy approached, he slipped into the light from the lamps, and they illuminated his face enough for Harry to see that his eyes were obscured by a thick, white mist that swam around his irises and over his pupils. The man’s face was eerily slack, as though his muscles weren’t working quite right, and his head was lolled to the side and limply jiggling with every jerky step he took. 

A chill ran up his back, and the hairs on his arms rose with it.

Focusing his magic more directly at the man, he almost gagged at the rotten, sickly sweet sensation that rocked his mind back and forth. He was about to call for Dobby when he felt a ward-scheme activate in a dome around the entire damn town.

Fuck!

His hand went down to his wand, and he wrapped his fingers around the handle. He didn’t want to pull it because he didn’t know what would set the guy off. If his commands had anything to do with hurting him, then drawing his wand was only going to pull the metaphorical trigger. Carefully, he took a step back, but retreating into the woods wasn’t what he wanted to do. Better to be out in the open where he could see everything around him.

A surge of dark magic shot from the man in a wave so strong that his legilimency almost physically forced him to run. The magic gave him a familiar feeling of unnatural anxiety, one that consumed his rationality bit by bit. It forced his eyes to flit around him, searching for a way out or some kind of answer to the danger before him. That was when he saw the light of a newly born full moon barely peeking at him from beyond the tree line. 

When his wide eyes went back to the man, he saw jagged lines of glowing yellow slicing through his cloudy irises. The park lights started flickering as the sheer output of magic interfered with the electricity, and the curse’s hold was hastily leaving with the approaching darkness. The lights died seconds later, and two yellow eyes shined through the darkness, its slit pupils hungrily stuck on him as it visually feasted on his flesh. 

That was when the screaming started, and the unbearable chill going up his spine flashed through his body when the man’s screams were matched by multiple others that echoed through the forest behind him. Harry pulled his wand as the man began to hunch, digging his nails into his face and dragging them across his skin as if he desperately needed to rip something out of him. A million things went through his mind in a second, but he couldn’t afford to hesitate with a werewolf transforming in front of him. 

He didn’t know if he could kill one, let alone a pack of them…

“Metallica Gramen,” he whispered as he directed his wand at the grass beneath his feet.

It was a spell he came across while studying for the maze in the tournament. It was useful against a variety of creatures, but werewolves were its intended target. The reason why became apparent when the blades of grass around him grew a reflective, silvery sheen, one that glinted in the moonlight as they began to writhe and grow under the influence of his magic. 

Transfiguration like this was difficult because exactness was key. With most attacks, it didn’t matter if everything was right as long as the result was generally what the caster intended. Fire was fucking fire even if it was a slightly different color or didn’t flow and billow the way normal flames did. This time, though, the material had to be absolutely perfect. Only silver could permanently damage a werewolf; their healing factor made it damn near impossible to take one down with anything else unless its head was demolished in one go or it was torn to shreds enough to overwhelm its regeneration through the duration of the attack. 

He was attempting to replicate the metal with magic, something that could only be done if it was transfigured to such a fine degree that its magically induced likeness to silver could actually burn a werewolf like the original thing. One step off, one unconvincing or underdeveloped concept would result in transfigured silver that was just different enough for the werewolf’s magic to find it wanting. If that happened, he was dead.

Directing his wand above his head, he encouraged the grass to grow even higher as it flailed around like starving beasts getting ready to start a hunt. That was when he targeted the transforming werewolf, and he used the magically induced fear produced by the wolf to jam as much power into the spell as possible. 

He shivered at his own attack when the silver blades of grass extended across the clearing like a swarm of dashing snakes. They surrounded the man, stabbing at him as he curled into a fetal position to hide from the pain. It hurt his heart to attack an innocent man like this, but he would soon become something that only lived to eat, and he had magic, which meant the wolf was going to want him before anyone else. 

The man’s screams became more animalistic as his body mutated under the full moon’s influencing aura, and the more he fell into the wolf’s curse, the worse the blades of transfigured grass scalded him as they pierced through his skin and into his muscles. Even through the mass of silver jabbing at him, the transformation was already imbuing him with strength. As effective as the weapons were, the wolf was starting to stand under the pressure. Getting more desperate, Harry made the grass strike harder, and he cringed to himself as one blade in particular managed to stab through the man’s arm completely. 

Unfortunately, the transformation was already complete to the point that Harry was certain his attacker was now more of an it than a him. That was why he forced his discomfort to the side and latched onto the opportunity full stop. The blade that stabbed through its arm began to wrap around the limb as it continued to slide more of its length through the hole it’d created. More of the blades found purchase around its body, and the ones that couldn’t followed in the first blade’s steps and instead latched onto whatever they could grasp. 

The werewolf was finally revealed in its full glory, and it frantically struggled against its holds. Even with so many of them stabbing through it and restraining it, the damn thing was actually starting to put enough stress on the silver grass to perhaps break some of them with enough time. Knowing that the beast was far more dangerous on the ground, he allowed the grass to lift it into the air as he wove between the winding blades around him. Once he was free, he pointed his wand into the center of his grass circle and watched as they retracted into the dirt, slamming the wolf into the place he used to stand and encircling it completely. 

He could see the hunger and rage in the wolf’s eyes because it glared at him even as it screamed and yanked against its shackles. Harry turned and ran to the playground as his hunter’s burning skin filled the air around it with its horrific scent. The wolves in the forest responded to their suffering brother with howls of their own, and they sounded far too close for his liking.

Pumping his arms as he sprinted down the dirt road, he berated himself for not finding a way to take his broomstick with him. He wasn't even halfway to the regular streets when he felt the rest of the hunting party cross through the threshold of the forest. They were surrounding the one he’d trapped, apparently intent on helping it before gutting him like a pig, which displayed a level of empathy for each other that he wasn't aware they possessed. While it did fuck all for him now, he was sure Hermione would want to write a paper on it or something if he managed to get out alive and tell her what he’d learned. 

He hit the sidewalk by the time they managed to free their friend, and he could tell they'd started the chase. Werewolves were fast, insanely fast. They were capable of running faster than cheetahs if they had enough open space. Considering how fucking huge they were, those kinds of speeds were rightfully terrifying.

The town was empty, creepily so. Whoever planned this out made sure that he was completely isolated, going as far as to place wards around the area to keep witnesses away. Just who the fuck was so determined to kill him that they’d go so far!?

The wolves were on his ass when he finally reached the diner where he’d learned about legilimency with Voldemort. Unlocking the front door with a shouted charm, he pushed it open with his shoulder and swung it shut behind him. A wolf burst through the large glass window to his right as he ran past the tables between himself and the back of the diner. It snarled as it threw a chair out of its way and tried to cut him off.

“Leviosa!”

A table in his path was roughly dislodged from the flooring, and he chucked it at the wolf, knocking it away with a startled yelp as he sprinted past it and got to the alleyway door. His magic was working overtime, seeping even through the building’s walls to give him something useful. That was how he knew one of the wolves was waiting like a clever bastard to get him if he tried to leave through the back. 

They weren’t just beasts; they were humans succumbing to animalistic urges. They were just as intelligent as him, if not more so. If he forgot that, he was going to die.

“Pello!”

Harry’s shoving charm blasted the door off of its hinges, crashing into the waiting wolf and smashing it against the building on the other side of the alley. The wolf behind him was already running for the open door, and it was going to get him before he could turn into the alleyway. Spinning on the spot the second he made it outside, he leveled his wand at the open maw of the thing about to sink its teeth into his flesh.

A gout of concentrated flames so large that it engulfed the entire doorway streamed over the wolf, and he heard it scream as the pressure from his conjuration sent it violently flying further into the shop, bashing through tables and chairs along the way. He released the spell as quickly as he could, and he turned to rush down the alley when one of them tackled him from behind. He turned to face it as they both fell to the concrete, and he repressed a shout as it jammed its claws into his shoulders.

Terrified, he stared into the glowing, feral eyes of the thing that was about to kill him. His desperation peaked as his mind flashed through everything and anything he could do in the milliseconds before it tore his throat wide open. His wand arm was fucking pinned, and the only thing he could think of was an unpracticed skill mentioned by Voldemort during their mental training.

She’d told him that there was a method of using his magic to create a battering-ram of sorts. Passive legilimency, which was what he used naturally, was all about letting his magic tiptoe around, lightly brushing against things to give him information about them. Active legilimency was taking his magic and forcefully injecting it into something. When done on an object, it just gave him more information on it at a faster rate; on a human, it basically allowed him to punch his way into their very soul.

Unfortunately, in this case, that meant he had to experience whatever it was their soul had to show him. The upside was that it was very painful for the victim if he wanted it to be. 

Focusing on her vague instructions and praying that the stress would play in his favor, he stared into the werewolf’s eyes and pulled every ounce of magic around him into two points at the center of his pupils. He condensed it as far as he could, and then he crushed it a little further, trying with all of his might to make it as sharp and jagged as possible. It was about to close its jaws around him when he let it loose, and it speared through the thing’s measly defenses like he was stabbing jello with a steak knife.

It recoiled as it shrieked, harshly ripping its claws from his skin while his magic violated it completely and totally. At the same time, Harry’s mind was ruthlessly assaulted by the unbearable hunger that dominated the werewolf’s mind. It burned like lava in his veins, pulsing through his entire body and forcing saliva to drip from his open mouth as he silently screamed. He wanted to eat something, anything, everything. He felt like he was going to die if it continued for even a second longer.

Yet he pushed the spear further…

He couldn’t stop, not when it was still over him, and not when his mind was in such a chaotic state. He dug deeper, reaching the tendrils of his magic further into the creases of its brain. Every orifice on his face was bleeding from the stress put on his body, but that didn’t stop him either. 

The wolf finally fell onto its back and started writhing against the ground when his magic penetrated through its entire mind and held it in a death grip. The tension was excruciating, threatening to obliterate him completely. Right when he thought that both of them were going to die together on the street, he broke the tension in half and tore its mind to shreds in an instant.

The wolf was completely brain dead when the pain finally came to an end. Harry’s brain was still whirling with the overwhelming sensation of hunger that he still felt lingering in the back of his mind. He wasn’t sure if he’d ever forget the feeling, no matter how much he desperately wished he could. 

The wolf he’d pinned against the alleyway with a metal door was shaking off the disorientation, but the one he’d burned was running through the doorway with its skin still smoldering and vengeance in its starving eyes. Harry intimately understood the way it felt now that its friend had been lobotomized by his hand, but that didn’t mean he was about to let it use his flesh to sate its hunger. He almost couldn’t think through the pain in his mind, but he still had enough to point his wand at the approaching wolf.

“Depulso!”

Normally, that spell displaced whatever it hit, pushing it straight away from the caster. A slight modification of it, however, was meant to be an equal displacement of both parties. Instead of banishing something away from him, it banished everything away from a specific point, and he put a hell of a lot of power into it.

The werewolf was sent flying down the alley, and Harry did the same. Both of them were sent into the street on opposite sides of the diner on a collision course with whatever buildings were set to intercept them. 

“Arresto Momentum!” He ground out.

It worked… kind of.

It slowed him down enough to stop him from splattering against the building on impact, but he was so exhausted that the spell broke in the middle of it. The wolf was sent through the building it hit, so he came out a little better, but Harry still hit his building with enough momentum to force the breath from his lungs and possibly break something in his torso. He fell to the ground as the wolf that got clobbered by the diner’s metal door managed to set its vision straight enough to start clumsily running again. 

Forcing himself to his feet with a groan, Harry started limping toward his house. The last werewolf in the game was already chasing after him, and he couldn’t even run. He was just lucky the other wolf was probably still trying to heal from a nasty concussion. His legilimency was shot at this point, so he was also running blind. By now, he was just hoping that another one wasn’t lurking around the corner.

Of course, he should’ve just kept his stupid mouth shut because luck was something he possessed in mostly negative amounts. Running on nothing but adrenaline, he was forced to stop when the fourth wolf came skidding around the alley in front of him to cut him off. It was the one he’d initially trapped with his silver grass, and it was pissed.

Its body had winding burns traveling all up its limbs and across its torso. Its muzzle was half-disintegrated at this point, leaving its tongue limply hanging in the air and only its back teeth in workable condition. His hail-mary, last attempt to not brutally die tonight was to shoot an explosive curse right at the hole he’d burned through the thing's jaw.

It sailed across the space between them, slipped through its absent front teeth, and exploded in the back of its throat. If it’d hit its skin, the werewolf probably would’ve tanked it with just a few sore muscles to walk off. When his curse was tickling its uvula, the monster’s head popped like a balloon, showering the street around it with gore and blood. He ran by as its body collapsed on itself, and what was now the last werewolf sprinted past not a second later. 

With his house only about a block away, he flung a confrigo behind him, smacking it in the face. As he’d predicted when he hit the last werewolf, this one stumbled to the sidewalk, its face smoldering from the fiery explosion, but it was up not a moment later, its skin already healed over. He had about one last trick up his sleeve, but he really didn’t want to try it.

"Carpe retractum!" He reluctantly said anyway, pointing his wand at a lamp post down the street. 

It was a cool little spell that unfortunately fell to the wayside once the far snappier summoning charm was invented. A beam of orange light slung from his wand and stuck to the lamp like a gel. Normally, the spell worked like a muggle sticky hand, pulling whatever it caught to the caster. Unlike the muggle toy, however, it had enough strength to pull the user to things that were too heavy to be moved by the spell. 

That was why he went flying like a stone out of a slingshot. He went up and over the lamp, and his spell stretched with his second half of the journey, slowly siphoning energy from his almost lethal flight. Even still, he tumbled and flipped across the barely cushiony grass of the neighbor’s lawn when he finally landed. 

Groaning at the way his body showed its hate for him, he crawled to the fence separating their properties. He squeezed under the lowest wooden plank of the fence as the wolf went dashing down the street, only a bit behind his insanely fast travel time. Rolling onto his back, he instinctively raised his hands in futile resistance as it leapt over the fence at him. 

The second he’d crossed the property line, though, he entered his mother's realm, the one Dumbledore created with her sacrifice. For the first time ever, the damn wards that kept him coming back here served their purpose. The wolf's veins were flooded with a shining, white light that spread through its body from the center of its heart. Before it could even land on him, that light turned it to ash, and its remains floated away in the breeze. 

His breaths came shallow and desperate as his head fell limply against the ground, and his entire muscular system felt like it was on fire. Even worse than his muscles were the holes pierced through his shoulder and the nagging memory of insatiable hunger still swimming around in his head. Lifting a shaky hand to his chest, he gingerly felt the two holes left at the very top of each pectoral made by the wolf’s thumb claws when it’d lunged. 

Those were gonna fucking scar.

How he dragged himself to his feet, he didn’t know, but he managed to find himself fumbling with the door handle of Privet Drive a few minutes later. Pushing it open, he limped through the door to the immediate shrieking of his aunt. 

“What are you doing, boy!?” she yelled after her distress was properly vocalized. “You’re getting filth all over the house!”

“I’ve been attacked, you daft cunt!” Harry yelled back as he went for the stairs. 

Gasping at his language with her hand flying to her chest, she stomped up after him. “Just where do you think you’re going!? Stay by the door before you get the house even filthier; I’ll get the bandages.”

Not even slightly shocked that the first time she’d ever offered to get him a single thing in his entire life was when he was getting dirt and blood on the fucking floor, he stumbled up to his door. “That won’t work with this, Petunia. It was made by a werewolf.”

“A WHAT!?” she screamed, making him cringe at the pitch of her voice because his head was still pounding. “Are you going to turn!? Out of my house this instant!”

“If I was going to turn, I’d’ve already been slaughtering the neighborhood, woman!” He exclaimed, already more than angry enough to bite back at this point. “The wolf didn’t bite me; it got me with its claws. The only thing that can heal it is Essence of Dittany.”

“Essence of what? Just what do you think you’re going to be doing in my house!?”

“I don’t have it on me, so I have to brew it myself before the wounds get infected.” He dragged his potions kit from his trunk, thinking through the steps as he flung it open. “I just wish I wasn’t so shit at potions.”

“No, no, no, there’s no way you’re making your freakish concoctions in my home!” 

“Oh, just fucking shove it already!” He took out the ingredients and started organizing them. “I don’t have time for you right now, so leave!”

Of course, when Petunia didn’t get her way, there was only one person she turned to. “Vernon!” 

Harry groaned as he started crushing the dittany leaves and listened to his uncle’s lumbering footsteps. The man entered his room only to almost immediately turn a disgusting shade of purple upon seeing him sitting by his cauldron. The man seemed to have been shocked speechless for a few seconds, but it didn’t last long.

"What do you think you're doing, boy?" His uncle growled as he went to grab Harry by the scruff of his neck.

"I swear to God, Dursley, I'll blow your hand off!" Harry threatened as he delicately dripped the specific amount of saltwater required for the brew.

The man froze solid, and his eyes flickered between the wand sitting next to his leg and the cauldron on the floor. It seemed that he was struggling between his fear of magic and his hatred of the very same thing. He was actually pretty sure that Vernon was going to throttle him when an explosion burst through the front door.

"WHAT THE DEVIL!?"

Harry abandoned the potion in favor of going for his wand, and he got a shield up right as somebody wearing dragonhide robes spun around the doorway and sent a stunning spell flying at him. Unfortunately, he was so exhausted that the knockback jinx sent right after it crashed through his shield and sent him spiraling into the wall. His aunt and uncle were screaming as they were sequestered into the corner of the room with magic, and that was when he recognized the uniform. 

"You're under arrest for the use of combat magic in a muggle residential area!" The man declared as two more robed aurors filtered into the room behind him, each with their wand trained on his downed form.

"What are you talking abo-!?" Harry tried to demand, but he was immediately encased by an overpowered binding spell.

With his eyes almost literally shooting fire as he glared through the gap in the ropes constricting him, he tried to communicate just how fucked all of them were once he got out of this shit using nothing but pure willpower and drive. That glare was very quickly turned into nothing but reflections of pain, and he screamed against the ropes trapping him as the lead auror on the scene stomped on his wand and snapped it in two. The way it felt to have that bond forcefully broken was unlike anything he could possibly describe with words.

He struggled to force himself out of his binds, but a red spell sent his vision to black just a few seconds later.

Snapping into existence right by the tree she usually sat against, Voldemort took a calming breath of fresh air, only to suspiciously squint her eyes right after. Something felt off.

Yesterday was an interesting one for sure. An inspection of the Hogwarts ward system, courtesy of the ever-bothersome Ministry, was being conducted with a shocking lack of warning. She’d only found out herself many hours into the inspection because of a few Ministry workers gossiping in the Leaky Cauldron. 

Not quite believing her stroke of luck, she’d taken a shot as a show of thanks to the Ministry for being the corrupt cesspool it had always been before apparating over to Hogsmeade. With the wards under inspection and Dumbledore properly occupied by the Ministry, she could finally get into the wizarding village without possibly inciting a village-destroying pissing match between herself and the esteemed headmaster. That meant she could catch up on all of the info she’d been missing for the past decade, information that she could only collect in a timely manner by talking to some of Aberforth’s frequent clientele. Of course, Dumbledore's little minions were all over the place, trying to keep her out and the Ministry under their watchful eyes, but they were about as useful as ever, so it wasn't a problem.

She was actually in quite a good mood today because of the progress she’d made, which was why her eyebrow twitched with annoyance when she realized that something was probably about to ruin all of that. She wasn’t even sure why she felt like something was wrong. It wasn’t anything overt. In fact, everything seemed perfectly in place if she discounted her gut feeling that something wasn’t quite clicking.

Casually flooding the entire park and most of the forest with her magic, she was once again irked to find nothing out of the ordinary. Kicking dirt for a few seconds, she let out a huff of air and started walking toward the playground. Maybe she’d find her answers at the swings because there was nothing to see back at the tree line.

… Wait…

The gears in her head finally clicked into place and she blasted an overpowered finite across pretty much everything around her. That was when the charm broke and all of that juicy shit someone wanted to hide came into view. The Notice-Me-Not was a bitch of a spell, literally forcing the mind to trick itself into believing that there wasn’t anything worthy of note to be seen in an area. It was only because of her general attentiveness to detail that she noticed when she was abnormally disinterested in observing the things around her.

What she saw was a good amount of blood and a trampled section of grass. Finding it odd that somebody would go to such lengths to hide some blood, she got closer and immediately made a face at the scent of it. Well, that explained the charms. Werewolf blood was cursed, so magic couldn’t clean it or get rid of its magical residue. Naturally, that meant hiding it was the best option. 

It looked like her day was officially not good anymore, which was a damn shame.

Walking up to the front door of Privet Drive, she gave a small knock, and it was opened with record speed. The person who greeted her was the woman charged with caring for Potter. Knowing that her care apparently consisted of long stints in a cramped, dark cupboard did amazing things for her already astute curse recall, but now wasn’t the time. She hadn’t seen Evan’s sister often while she was around this summer, but she was certain that the nasty bitch had never looked happier. Assumedly, that was a bad thing for her small, temporarily unwilling companion.

“Hello, I haven’t seen you around here before. I’m Petunia Dursley.”

“Riddle,” was her only response other than a nod because she had no desire to be on a first-name-basis with a despicable muggle who reminded her so much of Miss Cole. “Is Mister Potter around?”

Immediately, the woman’s face went sour. “You’re one of them, then?”

“Yeah, I’m one of the people you only wish you could be, Dursley,” Voldemort told her with a mocking smirk. “That’s why I’m looking for Harry Potter and not your fat husband or his worthless son, so is he around?”

“No,” the woman snapped, her face contorting into the ugliest scowl Voldemort had ever seen, and it made a sharp, amused grin like no other grow across her face like a weed. “Your Headmaster came to pick him up last night.”

Dumbledore picked him up? Not fucking likely when he was stuck babysitting the Ministry at his school. She looked into the muggle’s eyes and fell into them, poking around for anything fishy within the last day. She found it almost immediately and hammered straight through; the Ministry was never careful nor thorough with muggles because there was never a reason to be, and she was Lord-Fucking-Voldemort. Luckily for her, that meant their work was unanimously easy to see through.

With a sigh, she saw the kid’s condition through his aunt’s eyes and watched the Ministry’s attack dogs conduct an arrest like they usually did: with extreme force and woeful incompetence. Making sure to poorly reseal the hole she’d left in the obliviation and taking their own confrontation with a much more competently performed bit of magic, she turned away from a confused Petunia Dursley and vanished on the spot. There was still a chance for some good to come out of this, but only if she acted soon.

God damn it. Dinner parties with Malfoy were starting sooner than she’d hoped.