Harry Potter & Blood; Reprise
Harry finds that on a surface level, his life has returned to normal. He attends class, hangs out with his friends and his lovers alike, and plots a revolution long in the making. Snape hates his guts. Professors tire of his antics.
His memory has improved… but not by much, and at a rate far too slow for his taste. It seems that the damage done is at least semi-permanent. He still forgets his assignments and still relies on his journal for most things.
On a surface level, he thinks, everything is back to normal.
But if you look a little too closely, you’ll see that not everything is all as it seems. Harry Potter has shunned his guardian, Madame Pomfrey, and has no regets about it. He doesn’t understand why she hurt him and isn’t interested in hearing her out -- not that she’s all that open to being heard. Her mouth is zipped shut and she remains in Auror custody under the accusation of child abuse.
Harry sees Lily. He sees Lily in the way Blaise sees hearts -- in a manner that is only visible to him. Lily doesn’t say much. Right now, Harry hates her. He isn’t yet sure if that’s a fair feeling to have, but, then again, when is a person’s heart ever fair?
Tom is acting strange, too. He had a meeting with Draco Malfoy, unbeknownst to Harry, and came out of it with a downcast smile and plans of his own to be mulled over. Harry doesn't notice this, his turmoil, but Tom doesn’t blame him. In fact, one could say he’s grateful.
After all, it is everything Harry stands for that Tom is plotting against.
It always has been.
Blaise knows this, at least to a certain extent. He is haunted by a strange sense of foreboding. Something terrible is at play here. Blaise works through what he can do about it… and comes up with nothing. He has worked himself into a corner. How to escape it?
Harry, on top of all of this, has discovered that upon his spilt with Lily, there is a new power at play in his hands.
He spends his free time closing his eyes and setting out his hands. He pulls emotions from the world around him -- emotions that aren’t his, but could be, with the way he’s feeling them. And he gives them color and that color dances, an abstract on his hands. He shoots it off, flicking it off of him, and finds each color behaves like a spell does, with its own meaning and purpose.
He steals some of the red off his journal, and thinks it is not just red, this color in his palms. It is also desperation, trust… and inevitable betrayal. He shoots the color off and it reacts in the same way an bombara might, exploding the vase he aimed it at.
Blaise warns him to keep this new power a secret.
“You don’t know what they’ll do to you, if they figure out you have this,” he tells Harry, an arm wrapped around him.
“Who? The Ministry? I’m fifteen. I’m not a threat to them.”
Blaise sighs heavily. “You cannot switch between thinking yourself unbeatable to thinking yourself in any way not a threat. If you know it, sooner or later, everyone else will, too. So be careful. Do not run your mouth.”
“Right,” says Harry, rolling his eyes, “because I do that so much, right?”
“Right,” agrees Blaise. Harry pushes him lightly, chuckling.
Harry considers his condition. The fact that a ritual was used on him to conimbed his mother’s dying soul into his body; the fact that Lily and Pomfrey had been erasing his memory, effectively ruining his mind. Considers how things have changed, since he’s known about it.
And he thinks that things changed, but not enough. Not enough.
Harry lets his emotions, a dull blue so dreary it is nearly grey, dance on his palm. “Lily saved my life by revealing herself to me, by separating us,” Harry mutters, more to himself than anything. “For someone who saved my life, she sure had fun putting it in danger. I wonder, Blaise, why she did that.”
“Did what? Put your life in danger or save it?”
“Either,” says Harry, titling his head. “Both.”
Blaise hums. “We could ask Pomfrey.”
Harry keeps muttering to himself. “Pomfrey spoke about ‘something that non-Merliners will never understand.’ That’s why they did this. For Merlin. For James.”
“We don’t know that.”
“You weren’t there. Lily talked through my mouth and they spoke about me like I wasn’t even there. They love me, supposedly,” Harry rolls his eyes, “and they put me in danger for James. Because they love him more.”
“I see her,” Blaise says, quietly, and Harry pauses by the abruptness of the statement, and also its out of placeness.
Then it registers in his mind. He cannot help but gawk. “You can see her? You can see Lily?” he asks, just for clarification.
“Sort of,” says Blaise. “I can see her heart. It’s… pink.”
“Pink,” says Harry, tasting the word in his mouth. “Pink -- why does that matter?”
“Your heart used to be pink and green. Now… it’s just green. And Lily is on her own.”
Harry repeats, “Why does that matter?”
“Because everything matters. Because the colors in your hand matter, and they have correlation. Don’t they? You cannot think of anger and get a navy blue. You cannot think of happiness and get a violent red. EVerything has meaning.”
“You’re saying Lily’s heart being pink means something,” says Harry, only he doesn’t sound all that happy about it.
“I’m saying it has to. And pink… most people associate pink with love.”
“Most people,” echos Harry. He raises an eyebrow. “But not you?”
“Me?” he says, softly. “I associate green with love.”
Harry places a hand to his chest, above his beating green heart. “But,” he stutters out despite this, “Lily doesn’t love me. Lily spent my whole life hurting me.”
“Mon amour,” says Blaise. “Don’t we all hurt the ones we love, sooner rather than later?”
Harry takes offense to that. “It’s almost like you have something to confess. Tell me, how have you betrayed me?”
“I didn’t mean for this to turn into a confessional.”
“That’s a deflection,” says Harry.
“Maybe,” says Blaise. He watches the colors swirl on Harry’s palm, like a God holding the bright yellow of the sun. “But I have nothing to confess.”
He thinks of Tom, and knows he is a liar. But this is what it means to love: to battle, and Blaise has yet to win the war with Tom Riddle.
One day, he swears, he will tell Harry the truth, regardless of the personal consequences. He will tell Harry what a monster Tom is and he will get Harry to believe him.
But not yet.
Not yet.
•─────⋅☾ ☽⋅─────•
Draco hugs his cloak to his too-thin body. He is so obviously troubled and so it is with interest that Tom accepts Draco’s offer to talk. “You need to open the Chamber of Secrets,” is the first thing coming of out his mouth.
Tom is overcome with the audacity. Also with fascination. Where did Draco, little Draco, get the gall? “I do not know where the Chamber is,” he lies. “I am still searching -- I’ve said this during Knight meetings.”
Draco waves a hand, dismissing his lies for what they are. It is only then that Tom notices his heavy eyebags, dark stains on his otherwise pale face. “You say that, but the second you leave Hogwarts at the end of this school year, the Chamber’s going to pop open and the beast within will run free, without a possibility of tying it back to you.”
Draco is… not an idiot, Tom decides. He’s determined this much. And why deny him the pleasure of confirming it? It doesn’t matter anyways; Tom has no intention of changing his plans because of one measly Malfoy. “So what?” asks Tom.
Draco blinks at him with tired, beady eyes. “You need to open it,” he says, like it’s obvious. “There’s no reason to delay our plans any longer.”
“My plans,” chides Tom.
Draco glowers. “Our plays. The situation is dire. The Church of Merlin is aware of Harry’s condition, and the divide between the Old Merliners and the New Merliners is ever growing. We must act now.”
“Whose side are you on?” Tom demands, harshly. “The Old, the New, or mine?”
“I am on whoever’s winning.”
“You’re too sporadic a servant. And I do not answer to servants.”
“Then you’ll answer to this,” says Draco. He narrows his eyes. “If you do not open the Chamber, I will tell Harry Potter all about your Knights.”
“You’ll never hear the end of it, if you do that,” says Tom, eyes squinted in displeasure. “You swore an oath to me.”
“Oaths can be broken,” says Draco, “At a price.”
“And you’re willing to pay that price?” prompts Tom.
“I’m paying no matter what I do,” says Draco, his shoulders the opposite of slumped. “I am making the right decision.”
“I’m not a good enemy to have,” says Tom, stalking closer. Drao takes a step back, then one step forward. “I’m not -- I promise you, I can make your life Hell.”
My life is already Hell, thinks Draco, solemnly. He remembers the somber tone of his father, the letter he sent, the hushed, worried voice he spoke in. The trembling of his quill strokes in the writing. The warning that things are about to come crashing down and that Draco must stake his claim now, or he will be sorely facing the consequences. Thai is what it means to be a Pureblood; to be hounded constantly about what you want your life to be.
And this is what it means to survive: to make the right choice, no matter the consequence. And making Tom, his leader, his enemy is a tough consequence. It is also nothing Draco cannot handle.
“And I promise you,” says Draco, pushing forward until his chest is nearly up against Tom’s, they are so close, “I can ruin everything you care for. I can do things unimaginable. And most importantly, I can take Harry away from you. I have nothing to lose.”
Draco turns on his heel, making it where his abc is to Tom, and Tom muses about how easy it would be to slit his throat from behind. A simple cutting curse.
But that is a fleeting thought, for he cannot risk getting caught, and opening the Chamber a few months early is nothing, really, and might even work out well for him.
Draco says, “Find me within the next twenty four hours with your answer. If it is a no, I will commence with telling Harry of your little misdeeds effective immediately.”
“There’s no need,” says Tom, and he’s relaxed again, having thought this through. He’s a smart boy. There’s no need to act like anything but. “The answer is a yes. I will open the Chamber of Secrets within the week.”
Draco smiles, but it is a small thing