Survivor

A hand wrapped tightly around Harry’s upper-arm tossed him into a seat in an empty classroom. Once he was in the chair, he looked up at an inconsolably enraged blonde. She was practically boiling the air around her. 

"What the hell was that!?" she yelled.

“That,” Harry answered with a sigh. “Was me teleporting us to my room to give us an alibi and keep our teleportation from getting noticed. We are now officially ‘the kids who met up at night in one of our rooms’. It sucks, but it’s better than being the kids who tossed two students down the stairs while smuggling a dragon from the castle.”

"That's not what I'm talking about, and you know it!" she yelled. "How many times have you kept important secrets from me when it mattered!?"

"A few?" Harry asked, trying and horribly failing to divert her anger with humor. 

"Every single time, Harry."

"But I didn't have ti-"

"Bullshit!" she cut him off, cursing for the first time he could remember. "You could've told me literally anything, and we could've made a plan together, but you decided to keep your secrets and drag me along with whatever you wanted to do at the moment! You used me to get what you wanted, then made me take the fall for it without my input again!"

Harry desperately searched for some kind of defence he could put up against her accusations. He thought from every angle and tried to find at least one way to look at his actions that wasn’t condemning, but he couldn’t do it without lying. The truth, in actuality, was much worse than just keeping secrets and using her for his own ends. 

He chose his own vengeance over her safety… 

That was, really, all there was to it.

"You've gone too far this time! I chose to help you when you kept your secrets until it suited you, and then you stayed at the scene to do something we didn’t agree on when Prefects were on our tail before using something else you neglected to tell me about to get us only about half-way out of the fire. Well, I'm done, Harry!"

She was out of the door and slamming it before he could get a word out, and he slumped against the desk. It was the day after their scheme, and this was the first chance they’d had to talk after the eternity of scolding and punishments given to them. If Slytherin used to like him, they certainly didn’t anymore. Thirty points were lost by him alone, a good chunk of the points he’d earned for the house through his transfiguration prowess. He was now sitting around startlingly average earnings, and that didn’t bode well for his obviously muggle origins.

Those of imperfect breeding could make it in Slytherin; he was living proof. They could not, however, live peacefully in Slytherin if they weren’t useful. Slytherins respected power and potential as much as the next ambitious person. Once that was off of the table, well, blood was all they had left to make a judgement on, wasn’t it? 

Daphne certainly had it worse though. She was the one caught in his room. What was it that he’d said to Longbottom a bit ago? Scandalous?

Well, that was probably the perfect adjective to describe exactly what the school thought about them now. Two eleven-year-olds having a secret rendezvous in his room. A venerated pureblood going to see a half-blood too. Oh, he would’ve thought he was the devil if he’d heard the story from an outside source, and she was the one who lowered herself to his level.

Leaving the classroom, he walked over to the Great Hall for lunch and sat down alone. He had a feeling that was how he would be doing things for a while yet. It was absolutely soul-crushing that Daphne was supposedly done with him. He still hoped that he could somehow make it up to her and salvage the situation, but it hurt more than he’d ever admit that it was him who ruined things between them.

On the bright side, he looked over at the Ravenclaw house and saw that their numbers were a bit…

Lacking.

Undoubtedly, that was because the entire Runic team was under heavy scrutiny by the professors of Hogwarts. The evidence that they were so sorely lacking last time was laid to bare with intentional perfection on his part. It was the rune he drew himself and didn’t bother to charge; it would’ve been empty after tossing the two quidditch players over the stairs anyhow. 

The case was practically opened and closed. Nobody outside of their team and the professor they'd talked to about the rune project itself even knew about it, let alone how to draw it with the correct intent, and the Hufflepuffs, upon waking up with their barely healed injuries, had no recollection of the past few days. They were perfectly happy to let the Ravenclaws burn after seeing the rune that tripped them, knowing damn well that it was the exact rune they used on him. 

They weren’t going to press charges because their own collusion in Harry’s tripping might’ve slipped out in revenge, but they weren’t going to help either.

The aurors weren't needed for the investigation, especially since neither Hufflepuff requested their presence. The evidence against them was so damning that the only possible way they could've gotten out of expulsion was to request veritaserum. That could've ruined Harry's plan if he wasn't so sure that all of them were too clever to do something so stupidly self destructive.

If they used the truth potion, then they'd be absolved of the crime Harry committed. The little fact that they did do the exact same thing to Harry a few months ago, however, was certain to come out during their questions about his crime considering the identical crime they committed beforehand. The funny thing was that one couldn’t particularly control what they spewed when they were on that potion, and that wasn’t even to mention the absolutely crazy can of worms that’d come out when they admitted to their wonderfully executed plan to play vigilante across the castle for about two weeks, getting their own henchmen brutally injured in the first place and sounding insane at the same time.

Obviously, the fact that they truthfully thought they’d been chasing a dragon-smuggling Longbottom wasn’t evidence that could lock the Boy-Who-Lived up. In fact, since they failed to catch him or get any of the material evidence they needed, the reputational gain they would’ve received for succeeding was almost doubled in the opposite direction. At worst, they were the crazies who thought Longbottom was some kind of criminal and popped a dangerous plan involving illegal vigilantism to catch him; at the very best, they were the idiots who found incriminating evidence, didn’t report it to the authorities, and then bungled it up bad enough that their own allies almost died.

No, Harry was certain that it was better to go down as the ones who sent two Hufflepuffs down a flight of stairs than it was to be seen as the students who sent a first-year down the stairs and then did all of that borderline criminal, absolutely idiotic stuff with the dragon-smuggling debacle. Either way they went, the ravens were screwed, and, even if they were dumb enough to go with the veritaserum option, all that could’ve been proved was that someone figured out their rune and tried to frame them for the attack on the Hufflepuff players. 

That the culprits were two first-year Slytherins who had about as ironclad of an alibi as they could’ve possibly possessed, well, it was unthinkable. They were all the way across the tower at the time of the chase according to the eye-witness accounts of about half of Slytherin house and their house’s head at the same time.

All it took was being seen as the two rambunctious, inappropriate pre-teens exploring themselves a bit ahead of the curb.

It was absolutely brilliant if he didn’t count the devastating damage it did to his actual relationship with the partner in his supposed… adventure. He was slightly depressed to find that, in the face of Daphne’s departure, he didn’t feel anywhere near as good about his success as he otherwise would’ve. Instead, it was bittersweet, and he hated bitter things. He wanted unilateral, indisputable victory, not whatever the fuck this broken success was.

His classes were even less fun than before now that Daphne was determined to sit pretty much anywhere that he wasn’t. At least Slytherin left him well enough alone once it became clear that he was toeing the line and earning points like a machine in transfiguration like always. Natalie was a welcome presence once Daphne chose to leave, one he was very thankful for. At the same time, she was more of a teammate than a friend. It was true that they got along and hung out occasionally, but she was a poor substitute to the constant support and friendship he found in his posh companion.

Well, technically, it was kind of hard to be alone with someone else sharing his head, but that was beside the point.

With nothing else to do and nobody to distract him, he spent an inordinate amount of time sifting through his recording rune. It was his one distraction, the singular thing that made him feel as though he was doing something worthwhile. Instead of receiving the fulfillment he needed to stave off his boredom with Severus's life, his scheme with the Ravenclaws and the subsequent effects of his plan only forced him to sink himself further into his research.

The stranger, as per usual, had little to no understanding of what made Harry so upset. He could understand the anger Harry felt at the Dursleys, the Hufflepuff duo, and the Ravenclaws, even if he would’ve been a bit more overt in his dealings with them, especially in the case of Harry’s family. He couldn’t even begin to fathom, however, why Harry was so affected by Daphne leaving, and he said just as much to him on a consistent basis.

Harry knew why the stranger was confused and irritated with him, but that didn’t have much bearing on his current emotions. The man wanted him to throw away that emotional tie to his first Hogwarts friend for some time. To his partner, this was nothing but a plus. With her out of the way, their plans were much easier to accomplish, and that was really all that mattered to him. 

Listening to his rune and furthering their plans was, coincidentally, exactly what Harry was doing at the moment. It was quickly approaching nighttime, and he had places to be tonight, but he wanted to get as much time as possible out of the way before he left. He counted the seconds, hoping that maybe something would show itself in the recording. 

Of course, nothing happened.

With a sigh, he stopped giving the rune power and stood up from his bed. He hid the rune away in his trunk and walked through the door, throwing a locking charm behind him. Harry knew by now how little help that was against someone with creativity, power, or knowledge, but that was all he could come up with on the fly, so that was what he went with, and it was better than anything most of his yearmates in Slytherin could do. He found solace in the fact that Jason was there to swiftly and harshly punish anyone who thought his personal items to be easy pickings.

Silently, he walked through the first-floor of the Slytherin dorms, into the common room, and out of the door through the portrait of an ashwinder. There was nobody around, but that suited him just fine. He walked up the stairs and toward Filch's office. If he was going to be honest, he had no strong opinions of the man. Harry figured out early on that the caretaker here was nothing more or less than someone to leave alone. 

The man never used magic, never talked to anyone, and really only focussed his efforts on being unyieldingly angry at people who made a mess. Since he wasn’t someone who was prone to being messy because, growing up, making a mess was one of the worst things he could do in his home besides magic, he never really had any interactions with him. That was, at least, until tonight.

Walking up to the door, he knocked on it and awaited the man’s presence. The door was opened moments later, and it was revealed that Daphne was already inside of the room. She was resolutely staring at the wall on the opposite side of the entrance, and he had no intention of trying to persuade her to look at him. Instead, he waited for both of them to walk out of the room and followed behind the caretaker as he led the way to the location of their detention.

The walk was slow and monotonous, lacking in just enough progress to make things awkward. He’d been in many situations where he was forced to be around people that felt negatively toward him, but never before had he considered any of those people to have been his friend. It was just perfect that this seemed to only make the experience several times worse. 

Pointedly avoiding looking in her direction, he followed the man as they left the castle gate and walked down to the forest, the forbidden forest. Harry was suddenly much more concerned about their detention. He could understand, surely, being punished for such uncouth behavior as to allow a female into his room at night at his age, but to be sent into the forest that was, supposedly, forbidden to everyone but the students who pissed off their teachers seemed a little excessive.

Nevertheless, he followed along and said not a word. The closer they got to the edge, the better view he got of a small hut that seemed to toe the line between the school and the presumably very deadly forest. The caretaker approached the door of the hut and gave a few knocks. The house shook from the force of extremely heavy feet falling against the floor as the person on the inside moved to open the door. 

When the door swung out, it was revealed that the owner was the groundskeeper; Harry thought the man’s name was Hagrid. The first time he saw him at the beginning of the year, he was rather frightened by the man’s size. That changed somewhere between the time that he ran into a horrifically large snake that could kill him with a glance and fought a pack of dogs with armor harder than diamond. 

“Oh!” the large man exclaimed. “Forgot you were coming down here!”

Harry had to stop himself from visibly reacting to the heavy accent of the man they were spending their detention with. It wasn’t hard to understand, per se. It was, however, an inarguable butchering of the English language. That aside, Harry had to say that the man seemed very amicable and open. 

“Well, no need for you to spend more of your time out here, Filch,” Hagrid said as he came out of his hut. “I know you had a long day already.”

The caretaker didn’t say a word as he turned on his heel and marched back to the castle. As he moved away into the distance, Hagrid approached them. Despite no longer being intimidated by the man’s size, it still made him rather uncomfortable to have the giant man in his personal bubble. He thought Daphne noticed it if her subtle glance had anything to say about it, but she looked away just as quickly.

“Both of you are here for the night,” Hagrid said. “We’ll just be filling in some holes the nifflers have been digging. Little rascals have been getting braver by the day.”

With that, they were released to their detention. Harry had to admit that Hagrid made a damn astute observation. Whatever was digging holes - he thought the man called them nifflers - were going absolutely insane on the grounds. The detention wasn’t bad in a strenuous way because a single incantation was enough to push some dirt around and cover up the holes, but it was tedious if only because there were a stupid amount of holes. Every one he filled up was matched by another three he could see just a small distance away. 

He sighed to himself. This was going to be a long night…

Watching the two children clean up the grounds, Hagrid leaned against a tree on the edge of the forest and sighed to himself. He remembered Lily and James so very well, and he saw much of them in their son, especially James when it came to the looks. One thing he knew about both of them was that they weren’t scared of anything. He very much doubted any son of theirs was going to be scared of much either. The other child he was supposed to look after tonight didn’t seem particularly scared either.

They just looked bored and aggravated.

He wasn’t sure if the detention he was meant to oversee was going to serve its intended purpose before, but he was absolutely certain that it wasn’t working now. It was a classical punishment for the lower-years. They get out of line a little, do something precarious or fishy after normal hours, so the professors send them out to the spooky forbidden forest because 'if they can spend their time messing around at night, then they could spend it out here too'.

The amount of repeat offenders after a night spent so close to the forest was very low, to say the least. Of course, there was no danger. All of the bad stuff was deep enough in the forest that nobody was sent out to deal with it because it wasn’t worth the hassle. Everything in there knew what would happen if they actually did something. There wasn’t even a risk worth mentioning, but just being close to it was enough to scare the trouble right out of most troublemakers. 

These two kids didn’t seem to fall for it in the least. They might as well have been cleaning the trophy room, and they even got to use magic for this. More than likely, this was going to turn out to be the easiest detention they’d ever have in their seven years of school, and, if he was going to be completely truthful, he felt as though their particular infraction probably should’ve warranted something a bit more than what they ended up getting. 

A crunch behind him got his attention. He turned around to see what it was, hardly frightened in the least. He was a half- giant; the acromantula didn’t even properly scare him. At worst, he was expecting one of those damn nifflers to come out and dig around for a bit. What he was met with was the light of a red spell coming straight at his face. 

He didn’t bother to move, instead getting ready to bulldoze through it and pummel whoever it was that tried to catch him by surprise in his domain. His heritage was notoriously hard to handle with magic. A single stunner shouldn’t have caused a problem.

He dropped to the forest floor a second later.

“I really must apologize,” a smooth voice said in a soft whisper. “But I need to borrow your students for a moment.”

Filling in yet another hole, Harry glanced over at Daphne. It seemed as though their paths were naturally leading toward each other. He hoped that meant they were making a lot of progress and were naturally running out of space to cover. He didn’t feel as if they’d been out for long, but he also wasn’t sure exactly how strenuous this detention was supposed to be. So far, the whole thing seemed rather mundane. It wasn’t as if he was bothered by the task; he just felt vaguely bored.

He’d expected more.

It was when Harry had almost reached Daphne’s location that something strange made him come to a stop. He wasn’t exactly sure how to place the feeling he got. His magic, thanks to him naturally using it for reconnaissance for such a long time, tended to rest around him often. It was a reflex, one the stranger said they’d have to work on, but it just so happened to have been excellent when it came to making himself comfortable with the more refined version of what he used to do. It wasn’t rare for him to stumble across something, now that he knew what to look for, that he hadn’t even noticed with his old version of magical information gathering. 

Curiosity was one of the best tools for learning Legilimency. That desire to peek into anything and everything, no matter the reasons behind it, was what drove a new practitioner to familiarize themselves with the things around them. The stranger told him that a legilimancer’s “power” was actually little more than how much they could recognize and how precisely they could identify things for what they actually were with their magic alone. 

That was why, as always, he immediately reached out to the feeling and focussed on it. He didn’t need a lot of time to figure out why it felt so queer. It was almost like he was staring at a hole, like he could perceive everything around it but simply stared into nothing at that particular spot. 

“Run!” the stranger shouted at him, possibly even more intense than he was with the basilisk.

The words kicked him into gear, and his head whipped around to find the physical location of the nothingness he felt with his magic just in time to see a glowing, poisonous, yellow light about to hit him right in the chest. Running wasn’t going to help him here. It was too close, and the transformation time to teleport with the zouwu would’ve taken far too long. Not even the stranger could help him here, not really. 

That was a spell, probably a curse, shot by a living wizard with a genuine core of power. The stranger, as skilled and brilliant as he was, probably wasn’t able to block the curse in its entirety. Harry didn’t even have time to ask the man. He squinted his eyes shut and prepared for the impact when something much more physical rammed into his shoulder, pushing him violently to the ground.

His eyes snapped open, and they latched onto the form of a young girl with startlingly blonde hair. Far from the fury he saw in them the last time they talked maybe a week and a few days ago, they were filled with an odd mixture of relief and terror. She shoved him out of the way of the spell, but she didn’t have enough force to get herself out of the way as well. 

An encapsulating feeling of uselessness that was perhaps stronger than he’d ever felt before wrapped around him as his brain tried to calculate any possible way he could somehow stop what he knew was about to happen. It was different from the Dursleys, worse. He’d always felt at least some sense of control there, the feeling that, despite being trapped, he held something that they didn’t. He knew that, in the end, there was no possible way for them to prevail. He was in a prison, yes, but he always knew there was going to be an end to the sentence.

… but was there?

Because he would swear to the sky and back that he could feel the cold sting of a metal shackle wrapping around his ankle as the yellow light washed over the only friend he had at this place. The world was closing around him as she screamed. 

Her legs… God, her legs.

Through the magic he’d long since settled around her, he felt them twist and bend, crackling in hundreds of places at the same time in every direction he could’ve possibly imagined. It was sickening, maddening, the way they writhed as she fell to the ground, her head falling by his feet where he sat prone against the grass. It was hard to exactly tell through the robes she wore, but they looked ripped, mangled, shattered.

The places where her bones stuck out from her skin were bleeding profusely. She was out from the pain before her torso hit the ground. Her gore was leaking into her robes and onto the grass, and he turned over to let go of his dinner with his eyes wide and wild. This was bad…

This was really bad.

He didn’t know if she had much time. There was so much blood. His head whipped around to the place where the spell came from, and he saw the form of a cloaked, hooded figure walking calmly toward them, his wand held loosely by his side as if this was nothing more or less than a stroll through the grounds of Hogwarts. His eyes felt as though the figure was male from the way the person’s shoulders filled out the upper part of the cloak, but he couldn’t be absolutely sure.

He didn’t know what to do; he felt so useless. Chains were trapping his limbs on all sides. He was, through sheer panic, falling back into the beast. The thing was tailor-made to handle the situations he felt he couldn’t, and that was where his mind instinctively went at times like these. The upturned tusks were already growing from his top set of teeth when the stranger forcefully pulled him back.

“NO!” the man yelled in his mind. “If you turn, you’ll just make a bigger target for someone as strong as him! You have to run!”

“I can’t just leave her!” Harry shouted back.

“You don’t have a choice!”

A slash of the cloaked man’s wand sent another flash of light flying toward him. His outstretched magic felt the power of the spell, but he didn’t have any clue what it was. He wasn’t even sure if he could do anything about it when the stranger tried to shout some kind of instructions. Harry didn’t hear a word of it; all his ears collected was static. 

That was when he felt something slide across his wrist. It extended all the way up his arm, around his shoulder, and into his field of view. It was a gigantic snake forged of bronze. The spell was about to hit him in the chest when it reached out with its mighty jaws and bit it out of the air. Whatever spell it was had no effect on the metallic make-up of the snake because it sat there undamaged as it turned its head to face the threat. He looked down at its point of origin and saw nothing sitting where he used to wear the snake bracelet he hadn’t taken off since he got it for Christmas.

Iris…

She gave it to him the day after her parents left. He remembered her asking him to promise that he’d wear it. Harry, of course, didn’t even hesitate to give his word. He’d kept that promise without even considering taking it off for a day. His desire to keep it around had only increased when Daphne chose to leave. 

Whatever this was… it was far more than a bracelet.

The stranger didn’t even spare the snake a thought, instead commanding Harry to move. He did, diving to the side as a gust of wind tore through the place he used to stand. He was still on the ground when the bronze snake slid from his shoulders and dashed toward his assailant. Miracles rarely happened twice though. 

Now that the man knew it was there, he swiped his wand and tossed the snake many meters away, succinctly blasting it with an explosion before it even hit the ground. Whatever he used that time certainly had an effect. The snake fell in multiple busted pieces, but it did its job as well as it could.

Scrambling to his feet, Harry moved to stand in front of Daphne, unable to keep himself from sparing a worried glance at her worsening condition. 

“Transfigure something now!” the stranger commanded him.

“What do I make!?” Harry shouted back frantically.

“ANYTHING!”

Tearing off his cloak, Harry tossed it in front of him. Standing in only his trousers and undershirt, he did the first thing that came to mind. It was exactly what Professor McGonagall did with him in his last lesson. Sharply gesturing with his wand in a way that felt comfortable, he grasped onto the feeling of his cloak as it floated to the ground and forced it to change with his incantation. 

The cloak twisted together, darkening and hardening into a large, wooden grandfather clock. It was blown to pieces in a second, but it blocked the spell.

“You made a clock!?” was the stranger’s incredulous, almost angry question.

“I don’t know what else to do!” Harry snapped back, equally furious at his own powerlessness. 

“Enough!” the stranger told him. “Throw it at him!”

“Wingardium Leviosa!”

He could only lift a single piece of the shattered clock, but he still managed to throw it with a decent amount of speed. As if brushing away a fly, the cloaked man lazily beat the hunk of wood to the ground beside him. Harry cursed even as his assailant's magic sent him sprawling to the ground by doing little else but throwing his wand to the side. 

His shoulder hit the dirt hard, and he slid for a second before he came to a stop. He turned onto his back, and he begged his wand to shoot something he’d learned in Quirrell’s class. 

Nothing came…

“We’re going to die,” the stranger whispered under his breath. “... Harry, we are going to die. You need to give me control.”

Cold fear, which he was ashamed to admit hadn’t hit him until that comment, spread through his spine. Death was knocking on his front door, but it wasn’t until the stranger’s suggestion that he truly felt fear. He was disgusted with himself, terribly worried for his friend, angry at his attacker, and desperately looking for a way out of the chains trying to hold him. None of that, however, equated to fear.

This was what terrified him. The very thought of giving up control like that, letting the stranger trap him in his own body, it froze him to his very core. 

“No… I can’t do that.”

“You have to!” the stranger demanded, only getting angrier. “Did you not hear me!? We are going to die unless you give me control! You aren’t good enough yet!”

“I’d rather be dead than enslaved!” 

“Then you are a fool!” the stranger screamed, showing what might’ve been his basest instincts for the first time since they started interacting. They were at an impasse, and the stranger’s mind was hysterically running through every single inch of knowledge he had until he came upon the thing he knew would work. In a cold, low, deadly voice, he talked again. 

“ She’ll die too.”

That stopped Harry’s denial cold in its tracks. “Shut up!”

“Oh,” the stranger almost cooed, all of his lethal charisma coming back now that a path was visible. “But she will, Harry. He will kill you, the biggest threat, first. After you are dead, he will walk over to the little girl and finish the job. She saved you tonight, Harry, and she saved you many times before. Are you going to abandon her now?”

He knew this was going to be how it ended. The moment he'd accepted the stranger’s offer, he knew the man was waiting, lurking. Harry was sure of it, and it was proven now, when the stranger finally got what he wanted. He was now in a position where he had to let go. He didn’t think there was anything he could do about it, and it was only right before snatching the reins that Harry was allowed to see the face behind the stranger’s mask.

“... This can’t be it,” Harry said more to himself than the stranger, trying to convince himself that there was another way despite the shuttering certainty in his broken tone. 

He was on his feet when the cloaked man’s wand lit with orange power. He could feel a shackle closing around his neck. On principle alone, he despised the thought of crying. The weakness it inspired within him made him sick, but his eyes were starting to burn against his will. After everything he’d been through and gained, everything, he knew that his ability to choose had just been taken away from him. 

“You promise me right now that you’ll give it back!” he desperately demanded.

“What did you just say to me, boy?”

“You heard me!” 

“You're going to die if I don’t take control, and little Daphne will too. You have nothing to negotiate."

Harry had possibly never felt more disgusted by himself when he realized that he wasn’t swayed by that fact. “I don’t care. I had everything, and you want to take it away! I’ll die right now, and she will too! I don’t fucking care! You might be a monster, but you said we were partners, and now you’re going to prove it! Swear to me right now that you’ll give it back! Swear to me I can trust you, or we are both going to die together!”

When he didn’t answer, Harry only pushed further. “DO IT!”

The orange light was sent flying at them, and, while Harry didn’t know what it would do, he knew the stranger did. He was about ready to spread his arms wide in open acceptance of his fate when he felt the change occur.

“FINE!” the stranger growled menacingly, knowing that what Harry said was true, dreading his only possible decision, and begrudgingly accepting it all the same. He had to admit that, in his heart of hearts, the scheme was bold, clever, and effective. There was a reason why, despite the boy’s proclivities, he actually kind of respected him. “I swear.”

Harry felt the magic twirl around and within him. He felt the promise take effect, and, despite his turmoil and self-revulsion, he smiled one of the most genuine smiles he could’ve come up with because now he knew that this inevitability was no different than what he'd already been through. This was now exactly like the Dursleys. He could see the ending in sight, and he knew that, no matter how long he had to wait, there was an end to his confinement. The shackle around his neck yanked him backward…

And he almost relished the sinking pit in his stomach as it dragged him into oblivion.

Voldemort was almost impressed by the boy’s performance. There was something about the boy that simply appealed to him. He could tell just by being in the same room, and he saw it plain as day when they talked about the dementors. It was the kind of potential that didn’t come with magic but with the person. Harry Potter, in his mind, simply had the grit to be good enough. 

He saw it once again in the way he defended himself and his little friend so valiantly despite his abysmal defensive skills. The clock was as shocking as it was creative. The explosion would’ve hit the boy head on, but it took out the clock instead. That metal snake was something else all together. He didn’t think it had the feel of something Potter would come up with, and it was certainly beyond his skill. The fact that he had something like it, however, was interesting enough on its own. 

He was even impressed enough that he decided minimal injury was required for this. The Greengrass girl went quicker than he’d thought. He’d hoped to hit Potter with that and take him down before he had the chance to turn into the beast he knew resided within him. Her getting in the way made everything so much more complicated. That spell, had it landed, would’ve been mostly fine considering how much magical power the boy had.

Her taking the spell instead of Potter caused far more injury than he was planning for because, believe it or not, he didn’t much enjoy the idea of needlessly brutalizing children. Now that the boy was fighting back, he wasn’t sure if it was possible to take him down without resulting to something more damaging. The boy’s zouwu was sure to come out if he experienced too much pain. Potter needed to go down painfully and fall unconscious at the same time. That was why the spell he’d just launched was designed to rock the boy’s brain, giving him a nasty concussion and hopefully knocking him out in the same move. 

He still needed both of them damaged for his plan to work…

Voldemort saw the tears building in the boy’s desperate eyes right when he loaded his spell, and he found himself understanding the feeling. It was one he’d felt many times before. It was one of the very many reasons he worked so hard to get where he was. Those were the emotions of a human with their heels bordering the edge of a cliff with nowhere to go but down. He empathized, but it didn’t stop him.

That was when things changed.

Even as the first bit of liquid fell over the boy’s eye-lids, his grim smile of acceptance turned into a smile of a different kind. The panic was no more, and the boy’s eyes became analytical to an extreme. The real give, however, was the grip on his wand. He was a master in all forms of magic, and that included everything down to how a person held their magical foci. 

Potter usually had a grip that was painfully built for transfiguration. It wasn’t trained, and it had the signs of a green magic user, but it was still impossible to miss. The boy’s grip was a bit more stiff, and he held his wrists and fingers in such a way that the technical, decisive movements of transfiguration spells came easily. 

The one he was looking at now was loose, confident. It was as if the boy’s fingers were merely splayed across the handle, letting it rest gently in the palm of his hand. It was malleable, more suited for the whippy, flowing movements of combat magic. The grip spoke of experience and a comfortableness with a wand that Potter shouldn’t have.

The single tear that now looked vastly out of place on the boy’s face slunk over the corner of a disgustingly elated smile as the boy pulled his wand across his body and threw it to his side, smacking the approaching curse into the depths of the forbidden forest as if his spell was little more than a nuisance. It was expertly done, and it was performed with a nonchalance that hardly anyone could match. The boy let out a satisfied, dark chuckle as he inspected the wand in his hand. Voldemort stared at the boy but couldn’t, for the life of him, figure out how this change was possible. One thing he did know was that the boy he was facing now looked startlingly familiar.

Just what the hell was going on here?

The boy looked up and met his eyes from across the open field, and his gigantic grin turned into something much more subtle and cocky. 

“Hello, Tom ,” Harry Potter said with enough volume for his voice to travel all the way to his adversary, obviously delighting in the shocked look on Voldemort’s face. “It’s so lovely to see you again after such a long time apart.”