Switched

“Harry?” Blaise said, startled to find Harry curled up in his bed, alone in the dark, for the second time in two weeks. The first time was right after returning to school, obviously. So far he hadn’t found any hint of the basilisk anywhere in the Castle, and when he wrote to Dru and asked her to ask Tom for a clue, she said that he said that the entrance was in Slytherin, but Harry would have to discover it for himself. Even if Tom wanted to help him, the passages down there shifted too much for fifty-year-old directions to be of much use. So while it was sort of neat to be able to use all the secret passages behind tapestries and paintings with snakes in them, he wasn’t entirely sure the two-day headache which followed having an entire language crammed into his head in the space of twenty minutes was worth it, really.

This time...

“I think I may have buggered something up,” Harry admitted, glaring at the blank stone wall above Blaise’s desk, uncertain whether he was more angry at Bane or himself and whether he should have seen this coming. The former sort of depended on the latter. If he should have realised that this would be the centaurs’ reaction when they found out — and he was sort of leaning toward, yeah, he probably should have (it wasn’t reasonable, but he knew how they felt about the unicorns being killed and the danger they supposedly posed for the Forest, if not for Harry himself, apparently) — then he was more angry at himself...he thought. Now that it wasn’t lying there right in front of him, it was easy to say it wasn’t worth it, he shouldn’t have done it, but in the moment... 

He took a deep, shuddering breath. There weren’t a lot of things that scared Harry, he couldn’t think of any, really, off the top of his head, but the need he’d felt, his inability to resist it because he didn’t want to, because in that moment, it was the most important thing in the world— that was scary.

So was the fact that he just knew that if he somehow found himself in the same position tomorrow, he’d do the exact same thing. Even though he knew better, even though he didn’t want to suffer the consequences of this particular action, he wouldn’t be able to stop himself, because the moment he stepped into the situation, he would completely lose control of himself, his priorities shifting so there was nothing more important than reaching the source of that absolutely intoxicating magic. 

This hadn’t been a Midnight Pie Incident — he’d wanted that, but he hadn’t needed it, he could have resisted it with sufficient motivation (like, on pain of death, for example) — or even astral projection or sacrificing someone to the Family Magic, which he’d needed, but he’d still been in his right mind about, able to hold off long enough to be smart about it, learning his focusing exercises and taking precautions so he wouldn’t be caught. 

This was Yule, trying to eat Danny, completely out of his mind, except without the excuse that he’d been possessed. He’d needed it like oxygen, he didn’t know if he would have been able to resist if he’d been certain it would kill him — and that was legitimately terrifying.

If Bane and Rowan hadn’t held him there, made him watch them purify the site — struggling futilely to stop them the entire time — so he would know it was gone, if they’d just dragged him to the edge of the Forest and kicked him out, he wouldn’t have been able to walk away, he would have had to go back. 

If Blondie had tried to stop him again, now that he’d tasted it, now that he knew what she was trying to keep him from, he would have killed her to get to it, and in the moment, with that sweet corruption within arm’s reach, driving him mad, he would have thought it was worth it...even though right now, he found the idea horrifying. She was his friend! He would have hesitated to kill her for the Family Magic, if it were still dying and there had been literally any other option, but...

He was glad they had made him watch, because now that it was gone and he knew that, he could think straight again — it was a want now, not a need — and knowing the consequences — the centaurs would probably (try to) hunt him down and kill him, but more importantly, he’d be putting himself in a position where he didn’t have any control over himself again — he could resist the urge to go try to kill another unicorn to get more, even if he also hated them for it, and he just—

He suddenly had a lot more sympathy for the acromantulae and their inability to resist mating on pain of death, that was all.

“...Care to elaborate?”

No, he thought back, a silent invitation to just look at the memory, rather than try to explain it in words. 

Since he’d handed over Dru’s ward scheme and advice to Dumbledore and filled Bane in on the situation, their attempts to negotiate had reached a stand-still, which meant there was no need for Harry to play post-owl for them, and that meant that he could help the younger wolves maintain their perimeter around the spiders’ territory on weekends. By which he meant, tag along with Star or Blondie as they patrolled their section of the border, noses twitching to scent any spider which dared cross the line. So far, none had (as far as Harry knew), so they were basically just pacing in circles for hours and hours without so much as seeing a spider, much less fighting them. 

They had, however, seen something much more interesting, just today. (And if that wasn’t the understatement of Harry’s life...)

The sun was still rising, fog burning off as it crept between the trees, when they spotted the first drop of silver glinting like a lost sickle on the ground. Blondie trotted over to it, curious, only to recoil as though she’d stuck her nose in something foul. She hesitated long enough for Harry to come see what it was as well — silver paint? it didn’t smell bad to him...faintly sweet, actually...maybe from turpentine or something? He reached out to touch it, get a better whiff, but Blondie snapped at him, warning him off with a little growl. Then she gave a little follow me yip, abandoning her patrol route to track whatever had left it, he assumed, deeper into the centaurs’ territory.

They walked for what seemed like a very long time, though it couldn’t have been, really, because the sun still wasn’t fully risen by the time they found it, dried drips leading to splashes, leading to a puddle, bled from a gaping wound in the neck of the most beautiful creature Harry had ever seen. 

It didn’t look like a horse. Not really. It had a mane, yes, and a long tail, tangled, now, in the dirt. But it was more delicate than a horse. Like a very large deer, or an antelope, maybe. Its legs, tangled and broken, and neck, twisted and torn, were longer and more delicate than that of a horse, its body clearly not suited to riding or labour. It was so white it seemed to glow against the muddy ground, all the more perfect and beautiful for having been brought low like this, for having died a slow, painful death, struggling through the Forest until it simply couldn’t any longer — tragic and compelling and wrong in a way that he found absolutely irresistible. He couldn’t take his eyes off it. It was all he could do not to fall to his knees beside it and– and he didn’t know what then. 

He wanted to touch it, dig his hands into it and tear it open, feel its perfect hide part under his knife — he didn’t actually have a knife, but he could make one, it wasn’t hard — exposing more of its purplish-blue flesh to the harsh light of the sun, watching it grow grey and cold and mundane, the magic of life seeping out of it, poisoning the very ground and air around it. The nearby plants were already starting to wilt, and though there were insects about — it was barely May, but it was already warm enough that flies should be swarming around any dead thing in droves — not one of them landed on a glazed eye or the puddled blood.

Blondie whined, dancing indecisively in place as though torn between running for help and staying to guard it — against what, Harry couldn’t imagine, but whatever. “I’ll stay,” he told her. “You go...tell Bane, or whoever. That they need to, uh...purify it,” that was what Dumbledore said they did when they found dead unicorns. Not that he actually wanted it purified, they were going to ruin it, he knew, but before that, he would have it all to himself, and he needed to touch it, to luxuriate in it, in the perfect corruption of the goodness and light it had represented in life and the act of wanton violence and violation its death spoke to. And Blondie wouldn’t even let him touch a drop of its blood, so he had to get rid of her somehow. 

Still, she hesitated, whining again, looking up at him like she knew what he was thinking, like she was weighing whether she trusted him alone with the corpse, and whether she could force him away from it without hurting him. 

...Or maybe like she was afraid he would do something stupid and poison himself. She popped into her human shape to speak aloud. “You stay here,” she insisted, pointing at the ground at their feet. “Away from dead plants. Dead unicorn is very dangerous, understand? Kills like a spider bite.”

“Yeah, it’s poisonous, I know. I’ll be fine, go on.”

“I will return,” she promised, popping back into her wolf form and bounding off into the brush in the same motion. 

Harry held himself back until he could no longer hear her moving away, holding his breath, anticipation almost painful. Then he crossed the few yards separating him from the fallen unicorn in the space of a heartbeat, kneeling beside it, his hands in its blood, breathing in the sweetness of it — not like turpentine, more like magnolia flowers. 

Like Angel, though he hadn’t consciously registered her scent while he’d been vampiring her arm. 

Just touching it wasn’t enough, he wanted to taste it, take it into himself, savour it and let it strengthen the darkness and corruption in his soul—

He should, he thought, save some of it for her. For Angel. He didn’t know when he would see her again, but that seemed like the sort of thing a good dedicant would do, right? Like, as a gift, or a sacrifice, or something — It made me think of you... — but for that he would need a phial, and to conjure a phial, he would need his wand, and he didn’t want to get unicorn blood on his wand, so maybe just a little bit for him first, licking his hand clean — he had learned that contact vanishing spell Dru had insisted on, but vanishing it seemed like a waste. 

The next...while passed in a frenzied blur, from the moment the blood touched his lips — the most delicious thing he’d ever tasted, the corruption of it even sweeter for the underlying hint of bitter death, like the nectar of the bloody gods — until Bane knocked him away from the corpse with a spell, pulling him out of the corrupted space and pinning him to the ground with another.

“What, by all the gods and the stars in the sky, are you doing, boy?!”

Harry had snarled inarticulately for a few seconds before the question registered and he actually recognised the shaman. He didn’t even have the excuse of being possessed by the Family Magic this time, he’d just lost himself in instinct and need and, “I don’t know, but I want more. Let me go!” he insisted, squirming against the spell. 

Bane thumped the end of his staff on the ground, doubling down and pinning Harry so firmly that he couldn’t even squirm. “I will not!”

“Please, Bane! I need it!”

“It’s poison, boy! You’ve cursed yourself— I’m surprised you’ve not already died, but— What were you thinking?!”

“I wasn’t, and it’s not poison to me, and if I’m already cursed and it’s already dead— I didn’t kill it, you can ask Blondie, it was like this when we found it — but since it’s not hurting anyone, there’s no reason not to let me have a little more, is there?” Please...

Another voice, out of sight from where Harry was lying, repeated Bane’s own words from the meeting when they’d first discussed the matter of the dead unicorns: “It is possible, Teacher, that the child is correct. He is a creature of darkness. This we know. That he is a creature of such destruction and corruption that the cursed blood is not poison to him, but serves to strengthen him is not so much of a stretch.” Rowan, probably. He was Bane’s apprentice, basically, it would make sense for him to call him Teacher.

“Yes,” Harry gasped desperately, heedless of the fact that it was probably not a good idea to tell them that, actually. (Looking back on it, he thought he’d been thinking that they were just concerned about him and Rowan was making an argument that Harry was right, he wasn’t poisoning himself. He should have known better, because he’d met Rowan all of once — he lived in one of the other villages, deeper in the Forest — and he’d taken an instant dislike to Harry.) “That. It’s good for me, I promise. Let me up!”

Blaise, as though he was uncertain whether Harry could really have done something that stupid, did a double-take, re-watching the last few seconds of the memory:

“He is a creature of darkness. This we know. That he is a creature of such destruction and corruption that the cursed blood is not poison to him, but serves to strengthen him is not so much of a stretch.”

“Yes. That. It’s good for me, I promise. Let me up!”

Then he withdrew to give Harry a raised-eyebrow, wow, you’re an absolute moron look. “Yeah, I’d say you buggered that one up. Quite frankly, I’m surprised they didn’t kill you.”

“They exiled me, Blaise,” Harry grumbled, still furious about it. “They don’t think I’m the one who’s been killing unicorns and I promised I wouldn’t start now, but apparently I’m now an agent of darkness and they’re just assuming that since the unicorn blood didn’t hurt me, my very presence is corrupting, and I’m no longer welcome in the Forest.” The fact that he wasn’t sure he wanted to be out there when the unicorn killer was still on the loose and there was therefore a possibility of stumbling across another dead unicorn was completely irrelevant, since he wasn’t allowed.

“Well, in fairness to them, you are dedicated to the Dark, and you did actually tell them that you’re a creature of destruction and corruption.”

“Yeah, but in fairness to me, they didn’t notice me being inherently corrupting to the world around me at any point in the last four months!”

“Please tell me you didn’t try to make that argument...” 

Blaise trailed off like he knew the answer was going to be, “Yes, I did, and no, they didn’t consider it to be a good point. Stupid superstitious arseholes.”

“Okay, don’t bite my face off for playing devil’s advocate, here, but it doesn’t really seem like stupid superstition to suspect that a bloke going mad over something that kills everything it touches, might in fact be bad news and not the kind of person you want hanging around your home.” He flopped onto the bed beside Harry, as though to make it clear that he, at least, didn’t mind that Harry was so mad and twisted that he’d been begging to be allowed to drink more unicorn blood not three hours ago, and wasn’t afraid of being corrupted simply by proximity, which was nice of him.

“Blaise?”

“Yes, Harry?”

“I humbly offer you the seat of honour: only the thickest and most knobbly of stalagmites for my most esteemed guest.”

“Did you just tell me to go screw myself in goblin?”

“Pretty much, yeah.” 

“Druella is a terrible influence on you,” Blaise drawled, no more offended than Harry was really angry (at him, at least). Then he changed the subject. “So, this means you’re at loose ends this evening.”

“I guess so. Why?” 

“Because it seems to have slipped your mind, but it’s your birthday— Happy birthday, by the way.”

“Oh, yeah, happy birthday to me,” Harry said, as scathingly as possible. Seriously, this was about the worst birthday present he could think of... And no one else knew that it was his birthday, so it wasn’t like they were celebrating it or anything. “Thanks?”

Blaise nodded. “Mira and I bought you a present, but I’ll wait and give it to you when you’re in a better mood.” 

Well, having a present to wonder about did help his mood a little... What is it?

It’s a surprise...obviously. “But it’s still officially Danny’s birthday, so we’re having a party for him — Theo and I, and Hermione of course, and a few people from Gryffindor and Hufflepuff we used to hang out with more before we started school. You should come.”

Harry pulled a face. “Seriously, Blaise? I cannot think of anything I’m less in the mood for at the moment, and I don’t think Danny will appreciate me being there.” They’d been getting on...better since Easter hols, but only because Harry had come back still slightly miserable from learning Parsel, and Danny had taken that as an indication that Harry had changed his mind about Dru being great (which he hadn’t, obviously) and Harry had been too bleh to set him straight, and they’d just sort of avoided the subject since.

“If you don’t come, it’ll be insulting. Yes, even though it’s not even really his birthday, and it really is yours.”

Harry groaned. He hated having friends...

Blaise grinned. It’s not all bad. Hermione’s making a cake.

...Where? As far as Harry knew, students weren’t allowed to cook in the school kitchens. The elves would feed them whenever, but the kitchens were their domain.

One of the old alchemy labs. She and Theo got a drying oven working.

Harry could think of at least half a dozen things that could go wrong with that, including the oven exploding, lingering traces from whatever alchemical compounds had been dried in it tainting the cake and poisoning everyone, and most importantly... Can Hermione bake?

Nope. She says, and I quote, “How hard can it be, Blaise? It’s just cake. Six-year-olds with easy-bake ovens can make cake...” The nice thing about legilimency “quotes” was that they were really just memories, which meant they came complete with the image of Hermione glaring at him like he had some nerve challenging her confidence in her ability to follow the bloody instructions and turn out a perfect cake on her very first try. She had to write to Andi and ask her to send up flour and sugar and shite. Eggs. There are a lot of eggs in cake, apparently? Andi reportedly thinks this is adorable and has refrained from warning Danny. Sorry, I mean spoiling the surprise, he corrected himself with an impish grin.

Harry laughed, in spite of everything. Well, this should be good... “Can’t wait to try it.”

Harry managed to (mostly) forget about the unicorn for the next few weeks...except when he wanted to go out to the Forest and remembered that he wasn’t welcome, and when Dumbledore asked him to run a message down to Bane and Harry had to explain that he couldn’t (without actually explaining how he’d offended the centaurs and gotten himself banned from their lands), and any time he happened to glance out a north- or east-facing window and catch a glimpse of the Forest. So, not very often, and only for a few minutes at a time. 

He spent most of his newly Forest-free hours sitting up on the recently ice-free roofs, playing around with the guitar Mira had sent up for his birthday. Apparently Blaise had noticed that while Harry did really like playing the piano, he really didn’t like that he could only play it in the Common Room, which was very thoughtful of him. Harry should probably reciprocate the gesture, but Blaise didn’t really seem to want anything, and apparently his birthday had been back in October.

The desire to go see if he could find another one — not kill one himself, just maybe check if there happened to be one lying around out there just waiting for him — faded a little more every day that he didn’t act on it, though it didn’t entirely go away, and he definitely recognised the trace of the same corruption when he stumbled across it again, almost exactly four weeks later, in a Defence Against the Dark Arts lesson, of all places.

“Er. Harry?” Danny asked, when Harry hesitated to follow him back toward the Great Hall and lunch, instead watching the professor toddle slightly shakily back toward his rooms.

“You go on, I’ll catch up.”

“Okay, but whatever you’re doing, make it quick. Hermione wants to go over Herbology shite this afternoon, you said you’d come...”

“Uh huh,” Harry muttered, barely listening, honestly. Exams were less than two weeks away, so of course Hermione was driving everyone else insane over them. Even though they were completely pointless and she didn’t need to revise any more than Harry did. She’d made colour-coded schedules and insisted that whenever Gryffindor, Ravenclaw, and Slytherin had a free period together, they needed to come to their study room and revise whatever topic she was most concerned about failing on any given day.

At this rate, the ridiculous girl was going to give herself a mental breakdown by third year. Harry couldn’t even imagine what she would be like when they started studying for exams that actually mattered. Everyone else had been humouring her for the last week or so because they didn’t want her to crack up this year. Harry had been attending every third study session or so just to annoy her until she lost her temper and got into a shouting match with him over something stupid, like whether Snape was likely to test them on shite they hadn’t even covered this year (Harry thought yes, because just asking them to repeat what he’d told them in lessons wasn’t much of a test; Hermione thought that would be insane, even for Snape), which was, he thought, probably more effective in terms of avoiding a crack-up. 

For everyone, not just her. He couldn’t run around blowing off steam in the Forest anymore, and Hermione was doing a hell of a job driving her friends away from her with this shite. If she didn’t give them a break every so often, it was only a matter of time until Danny or Theo snapped and said something they’d regret, like that they didn’t even know why they were friends with her, somewhere she would actually hear them.

Harry had every intention of keeping his word, keeping it quick, but he couldn’t not follow that faint-but-unmistakable scent/feeling/trace of pure corruption, not quite lost under the smell of that damn garlic, and before he knew it, he was lurking outside the door of an unused classroom, listening to Professor Quirrell of all people, begging a high, angry voice not to hurt him, he was s-s-sorry to have failed (at what, Harry wasn’t sure), but he would try again now that he was feeling a bit stronger, “it” w-would be done, my Lord, I– I promise. 

Peeves had bobbed around the corner at the end of the corridor, forcing Harry to make a break for it before the poltergeist alerted literally everyone to his presence, so he didn’t actually see who the professor was talking to, if they were actually there at all — he might have been using a mirror or something — but he didn’t really think he needed to. How likely was it, really, that Quirrell had been killing unicorns just to eke out a few more months or years of misery, teaching idiot children and slowly dying of some weird vampire STD? And that wouldn’t explain that high, angry voice threatening him, would it? If he was possessed, though...

The free period was half over by the time he finally made it to the study group.

“So kind of you to join us, Harry,” Danny drawled, all disapproving of his tardiness, like he couldn’t just tell Granger to piss off and leave him alone for an afternoon by himself. 

Hermione made an equally disapproving little hm. “Danny was just telling us about—”

“I don’t care, Hermione,” Harry interrupted. “This is more important.”

“Excuse me, Harry, but exams are in two weeks! What could possibly be more important?”

“Um, literally anything, but especially: I’m changing my vote on the Quirrell thing.”

“Literally— Ugh, you—”

“What? You think he’s possessed now, too?” Danny asked, surprised because they just talked about this a few days ago. 

Danny had asked Dora a while ago if she’d ever heard of symptoms like Quirrell’s, and she’d said it sounded kind of like major possession, which did admittedly sound like what Dumbledore and Dru said they were probably dealing with with Undead Riddle and/or the Unicorn Killer. On the other hand, though, Dru had said that the STD thing was plausible, and both Harry and Blaise thought that Professor Snape would probably notice if Quirrell was actually possessed.

It had come up last Friday because the professor had been feeling so unwell that he’d cancelled all of his lessons for the day. Harry had been a bit preoccupied because he’d been feeling decidedly unwell himself — he hadn’t eaten anything unusual (he was the only person who had eaten the black pudding at breakfast, but he had it every time it was on offer, and it had never disagreed with him before) and no one else was ill — and then he’d had an adverse reaction to the stomach-settling potion Pomfrey gave him and spent the whole morning sicking up everything he’d eaten in the past week, but he distinctly recalled reiterating that it was ridiculous to think Quirrell was possessed. It had been lunch, and he had been picking at a particularly bland, dry ham sandwich, wondering if he dared put mustard on it. 

Hermione had asked whether Quirrell had been up in the hospital wing as well, and if Harry had been able to sneak a look at his chart, which no, he hadn’t been, but that didn’t mean much of anything, did it? He was a bloody adult, and obviously unwell. The other professors probably trusted him to self-certify, if he decided he needed an extra day off now and again. Why haul himself all the way down to the Hospital Wing just to get Pomfrey to tell him to go back to bed and take it easy? (He’d been rather short with her about it.)

“Why?” Theo asked. 

“Because there are traces of the same corruption on him as there were on the dead unicorn I found last month, and I was late because I followed him after our lesson and just overheard him talking to someone, apologising for failing at something and promising to try again now that he’s stronger.”

The others exchanged a series of looks. None of them questioned the fact that Harry had been out finding dead unicorns and hadn’t mentioned it to anyone other than Blaise, or that he recognised the traces of corruption, they just seemed variously concerned and uncertain. 

Blaise broke the silence: “Well, I suppose it always was a bit incredible that any self-respecting vampire would have sex with Quirrell...”

“It could have been a vampire with no self-respect,” Harry pointed out. “But it doesn’t matter. I’m pretty sure Quirrell’s the thing killing unicorns, and that’s definitely not a symptom of any S.T.D., magical or otherwise.”

Theo and Hermione exchanged another look, Theo raising an eyebrow in a silent question, and Hermione nodding grimly before closing her textbook with a snap and pulling a thin, red folder from her bookbag. Ha! Apparently she agreed that this was more important than revising! 

“Theo and I did some research earlier this term, looking for methods of exorcising and trapping a malicious spirit. He found a ritual over Easter that we think will work—”

“And you’ve just been carrying it around with you ever since?” Danny said incredulously.

“She was waiting for this exact moment, obviously,” Harry pointed out. “I mean, it’s definitely worth the effort just to be able to whip out a solution to a completely ridiculous problem like that.”

Hermione glowered at him. “You are such a jerk.”

“What? I wasn’t even being sarcastic... Ace showmanship, full marks. I won’t even ask what other completely random shite you’re carrying around, because that’ll ruin the surprise when you just happen to know where the entrance to the Chamber of Secrets is, or the relative density of cheese and moon rocks, or a charm to vanish nose hairs, or whatever.”

She huffed at him, like she wasn’t sure if she believed him or not. “Fine, whatever. We have a ritual we think will work, we just need someone stupid and reckless enough to lure our possessed professor into a trap.”

She, Theo, and Blaise all turned to look at Harry. “I sort of feel like I should be insulted,” he informed them. “I mean—”

“Or,” Danny interrupted before he could say that he wasn’t, he just thought he probably should be. “We could tell Professor Snape and let him do something about it? Or my mum? Or literally anyone more qualified than us? Which is pretty much everyone, so...”

“Well, Snape thinks he has an S.T.D., so I’m not sure how much good telling him would do,” Blaise reminded him.

“What, you don’t think he’d believe Harry if he told him about the unicorn thing?”

Personally, Harry didn’t even think they’d get to the Quirrell part of the explanation. Snape would probably get stuck on what Harry was doing close enough to a dead unicorn to recognise its magic. So would Dumbledore, or practically anyone else, he figured.

“It doesn’t matter if he would or not,” Hermione said. “If it — the thing possessing Quirrell, that is — suspects an adult is onto it, it might escape and take Quirrell with it, and we’ll miss our only chance to save him.” Harry was pretty sure it was already too late to save him, but he didn’t say anything. Capturing the wraith themselves would be infinitely more fun than just telling Snape so he could do it. “Besides, we already have a plan. We can do it the day after tomorrow, it will hardly take any time away from revising at all.”

Danny frowned at her for a long moment, apparently considering, but then sighed. “Fine. But if this all goes terribly wrong, I’m blaming you.”

“Fair, but if it all goes perfectly according to plan, I want all the credit.”

Harry laughed, almost certain that had been a joke. Not that he thought she wouldn’t want the credit, just, he was pretty sure she meant it to be funny, saying it like that. 

She fixed him with a very McGonagall-like stare. “So, you’ll be the bait, Harry?”

“Well, yes, obviously.”

“Excellent, here’s the plan...”