Harry Potter & The Hand God

He is the prettiest boy Harry has ever seen. Cedric Diggory, upper classmate, takes one look at the boy’s robes and tells him that green’s a dangerous color. “You know not what you would be involving yourself in.” He speaks as if from experience.

Harry disagrees. He thinks green is beautiful. “I know exactly what I am involving myself--” for there is no ‘would,’ no ‘mere possibility “--I have loved Slytherins before. It is only natural that I would come to love them again.” He thinks of Fred and George, following them around the castle the year before he started Hogwarts. They took a prank too far, though, and wound up expelled.

Still. There will always be a place in his heart for them. 

Cedric’s voice shakes him from his thoughts. “This time, though. This time’s different.”

“You do not know that.”

“I do.” Resolute.

“How?”

“The way you talk about him. There is something in your eyes and in your voice.” He gives a pitiful look. “Harry, you are gone. Already, you are gone. You do not even know him yet you speak of him like you are already in love.”

He doesn’t doubt it. “There’s nothing wrong with being whimsical.”

“Are you willing to bet on that?”

“With all my heart and soul.” As said, he loves strong. 

•─────⋅☾ ☽⋅─────•

Blaise Zabini sees Harry Potter and knows he’s bet all his heart and his soul on Blaise loving him. Literally. He sees past his skin and flesh and blood and bones and there, in the middle of Harry’s beating chest, is a heart. Half pink and half green, the two parts of him previously broken appear sewn together. Enough time had passed that, even if the Blaise can tell the difference, he’s sure the body cannot.

He has the prettiest heart Blaise has ever seen. And he’s seen a lot. In each and every waking and walking person, Blaise can narrow his eyes and focus his magic and, boom, there it is.

Before bad things happen -- and, at Hogwarts, there’s a lot of those -- there is an aura of black around them. Before good, there is gold. Often, they spur out of their resting playing, dwindling out and interacting with the hearts of others. If Blaise closes his eyes and loses himself to the rhythm of each resounding drum of life, he can feel himself, trapped forever in a web of pulsing connections.

Harry’s heart is constantly reaching out to him. It is the first to do so. Harry stares at him during class, surely donning a love-sick smile only a Hufflepuff can make look genuine. Blaise feels the makeshift arms of it gulf him, reach around his shoulder like a gentle lover. He has never been so complete.

Harry approaches the Slytherin table their first year. Blaise feels him before he sees him and holds back a grin and a love-sick expression of his own.

Love. Yes. He supposed that was what Harry would call this.

“Would you like to sit with us?” He tilts his head toward the Hufflepuff table, spotting the out-of-place Hermione Granger.

And Blaise wants that. To be out-of-place with her and more importantly with him, his soul sickly sweet and loud, hard to ignore and hard to want to. He wants it. Wants it all.

Harry wants it, too. Blaise can tell. 

He glances at Tom Riddle. He has made himself the leader here. Though he is not cruel or unkind, he does not like Hufflepuffs. He is not mean about it. Just open. That is all.

Blaise… he does not want to make enemies. He does not want to turn his House against him -- for the enemy of a friend is surely your enemy, too, right, just as well? 

But Tom’s heart is a dead black. Void of life and color and room for anyone but himself. He laughs at Draco Malfoy’s joke, but there’s no joy in his cheeks, no spark of connection reaching out from within. His heart stays dormant. 

And that… that is scarier than being disliked by Tom; being fooled by him. Blaise is a lot of things. (In love. Supernatural even in a world full of supernatural.) But he is not a fool. 

It's time to act like it.

He rises from his seat and, by now, they’ve drawn themselves sets of eyes, hearts all leaking ever slightly in their direction. Their pressure feels hot. Sickly. A Slytherin and a Hufflepuff, Merlin, what would they say? What are they saying? 

Well, he supposes. Whatever they damn well please. He takes one deep breath and takes Harry's now outstrecthed hand. 

"I'd love to." 

•─────⋅☾ ☽⋅─────•

Tom Riddle stands before their little group of five. He is an abyss in an ocean of color. Hermione's heart, reminiscent of a lime green apple, smooth and solid, resting firmly within her core, is tied, with strings tight and tough as wire, to Ron's. He has an ocean in his sternum. Neville's overflows with vines and ferns and spouts the results of time, care. Attention gifted to others and not himself.

Tom Riddle is out-of-place in the vanguard of out-of-place. A supernatural in their world of supernatural.

And for whatever reason, he wants to sit with them. 

Blaise holds his tongue as Harry lets Hermione decide -- Hermione, of all of us! Not that I have anything against Hermione, out of everyone, it's just that... Merlin, Harry, I am sitting right here! -- and when Tom takes his place beside them, Blaise cannot help but feel as if she’d failed some sort of test.

You have let a parasite into our nest, he thinks. He is taken aback by his own resentment. He is a wolf amongst sheep and he knows it.

He will devour us all. Can’t you see? Blaise can. He always, always can.

There is just one thing he's wrong about, though. Tom Riddle is not there for all of them. Just Harry. Maybe Blaise can tell that, too. Maybe he just doesn't want to.

•─────⋅☾ ☽⋅─────•

Harry Potter, the boy with the prettiest soul Blaise has ever seen, knows Blaise, the boy who is the prettiest wizard Harry has ever seen, very well. He has pages upon pages written about him. For others, this type of behavior borders on obsessive. For Harry, it is utterly normal.

When they first met -- or, more so before that, when Harry's eyes had fastened themselves onto Blaise and refused to let go, Harry had acquired Blaise's name. The grapevine had spit out a story or so, something about Potions or God or gods, he is never wholly sure. Be what it would, Harry ascertains Blaise's name and does not write it down. This is a fundamental mistake but it occasionally is inescapable. Sometimes, it cannot be helped.

But Harry remembers the name. 

That's the atypical part of this, Harry's mind grasping something only said once and refused to let go. Harry writes combinations of their names in the margins of his journal -- Harry Zabini, Harry Potter-Zabini, Harry Zabini-Potter, Harry Pabini -- when he realizes the anomaly. Hermione had to tell him her name five times before he could say it with confidence. He only knew Ron's because he wrote them down the second they were said.

He used to be angry at himself for the inherit codependence. What would he be without his journal, his magic toy not allowed in the essay halls? What would he BE?

... Lost. He would be lost; forsaken in the prison of his slowly decomposing mind. There would exist no escape. He would never again stand with sure footing.

Unlike most of his fury, this was abandoned as he grew older. Why be angry at something that is set in stone, or, rather, set in flesh and bone and brain? He reserves his rage for change, thank you very much.

Blaise... is different. He has never made him feel like that. Lost and flustered in stupidity -- "what was your name, again, I hate to ask again and again and again, but."

Something about Blaise just sticks. 

•─────⋅☾ ☽⋅─────•

“Can I tell you something?”

“Anything,” Harry says. They are on their first date in Hogsmeade, even if they do not call it that at the time. 

Blaise picks at a stray thread from his mittens, digging a hole into the grass with his heel. Harry frowns. He is not one to fidget. “I must warn you. It is ‘out there.’”

“I’m okay with ‘out-there.’”

“It sounds unbelievable,” he says, sounding uncertain in every symbol. Harry puts a hand on Blaise’s own, squeezing it reassuringly. He is ruining a perfectly good pair of mittens, after all. “It sounds deranged. I might be.”

“If you are, we will cross that bridge when we come to it. We will cross it together; no matter what it is.”

Blaise looks at him, feeling Harry’s soul wrap around him like a blanket. “No matter what?”

“Yes.” Harry kisses him on the cheek. 

“I can see the future.”

Harry lays his head on Blaise’s shoulder. “You’re a Seer?”

Blaise drags a hand through the streamers of Harry’s soul draped over him, though he cannot not physically feel it. “Convincibly. I surmise it goes beyond that.”

“Goes beyond the future?”

“To the heart,” Blaise says. “I see hearts and the connections they make and have made and want to make. I see regret and love and joy and despair and black swarms around the future victims of horrid acts. I see pick around those destined for love. I awake with clarity secondary and dreadful. But these thoughts, feelings, and emotions, the futures as they are laid out for me?” Blaise cries, gesturing wildly. He lowers his hands. He exhales slowly. “They are not mine,” he says at last. “I do not want them.”

“Would you give them up, if the ability came unto you?” Would it be worth it?

Blaise thinks for a long time, letting Harry’s colors dance around him. Harry’s arms -- his actual arms, this time, all flesh and warm and touchable -- are a spring of silent and unending support.

His variety of magic is invasive, Blaise knows. Legilimency is banned, for good reason, and Blaise feels his power is eerily similar to that, even if he has no malintent. Love and hate and friendships are not made to be laid out. He is privy to things he is not supposed to be privy to.

And then, for another matter, there’s his future-telling abilities, these foreign convictions. Blaise has heard stories both horror-filled and grand in nature. Seers are hunted down and trapped, used as tools against and for one army or another, or they are gifted the backdrop of fame. They are both in danger and dangerous. 

This power, he thinks, is not mine. I do not want it. But that is not exactly true. This power is his. He has heard only rumors of cases like this. 

(In the fathomless depths of his heart, he feels special.)

I do not want it. Mostly. Mostly, that is true. He looks at Harry’s heart and watches it curl and whirl around him like he is the Most Important Thing, like he’s the Only Thing. Again, and for completely different reasons, he feels special.

I would not give up this sight for the world. Certainly not for my magic. “It is worth it.”

“Then don’t be ashamed of it,” Harry says.

“I’m not--”

“You waited,” Harry says, “years to tell me. Do your parents even know?” Blaise’s silence is telling. “That is shame. It is unwarranted.”

“It’s not shame,” Blaise says.

“What is it then?”

“Fear.” Blaise looks at his hands. They are shaking. “I do not feel myself. I worry if it was looked into, I would reveal myself not to be.”

“You know,” Harry puts his head on Blaise’s shoulder, looking him in his eyes, “I don’t feel myself, either.”

Blaise feels his face heat up. “No?” 

“No.” Harry sighs. “I say things and the words don’t feel mine.” 

You, Blaise thinks, are just like me. But that doesn’t feel right. Blase clears his throat and says, “Whose do they feel?” Why doesn’t that feel right?

“I don’t know. They feel close.”

“Close.” You are not just like me -- Blaise shakes the thought away. “What do you mean by close?”

“Like they are not might, but could be.” 

Close… as close as another half of your heart? 

Pink and green.

The prettiest heart he’s ever seen.

“But I’m me,” Harry says. “Even if I don’t feel myself, I am me. So stop being afraid. You’re you, too.”

Too. Where does this ‘too’ fit into? 

You are not like me. I am whole, even if I don’t feel myself. My heart is one. 

Who are you? 

You don’t even know, do you? If I asked you, could you answer?

“Are you sure?” Blaise says. It feels acidic on his tongue. 

“About what?” Harry looks unbothered and Bliae begins to think that maybe his question wasn’t that big of a deal, but his heart.

Merlin. It glows pink. Completely and totally pink.

Harry does not look himself because he isn’t.

“Are you sure you’re you?” 

“I am his mother,” Harry -- no, Harry’s mother -- says. “Isn’t that close enough?”

“Does Harry know?” Blaise asks.

“No.”

“Shouldn’t he?”

“Why?” she asks. “He is happy not knowing. I do not wish to cause unnecessary turmoil.”

“Why would he feel turmoil?”

“Because I am here,” she says. “Because the fact that he is, too, makes me unable to live fully could cause him guilt.”

Blaise scoffs. “You do not know him as I do.”

She smiles condescendingly. “Sure. But will you keep quiet? For him.”

“For him?” Blaise thinks of how sure Harry said I’m me. Why would he say if he knew he wasn’t? Does…

Does the fact he’s not even matter? She only slips in when necessary. She only slips in enough to make Harry still feel whole. Harry’s still Harry. Even if he’s Harry and Co.

I don’t know. 

(These thoughts don’t feel his own. They feel tainted. They feel pink.)

“For now,” says Blaise. “But if things go haywire, I’m informing him.”

“I would not expect any less from you. Do you know the spell Obliviate?”

Blaise jerks back. “What?”

“Do you know the spell Obliviate?”

“Yes, yes, I do, it’s just--”

“Use it.”

“What?”

“Erase Harry’s memory of this meeting.”

“But -- I had -- I had told him about me -- me--”

“And you will have every other opportunity to do so again.”

Blaise takes his wand out of his pocket, frowning. “I don’t want to.”

“You have to.”

“Is it because Harry’s listening?”

“Always is.”

“I’m sorry,” Blaise says.

“You have no reason to apologize.”

“I wasn’t talking to you,” Blaise snaps. “I love you. I do hope you know that.

“Obliviate.”