Chapter Text
A little over a week later, and Harry found himself wishing he hadn't told his two best friends about the spell he had created.
“Stupid Gryffindor honesty, why couldn't I just have done it while they slept or something?!” he grumbled as he trudged down yet another dungeon corridor, trying his best to ignore the cold seeping through his cloak into his bones.
The pair had been unbearable ever since he'd revealed the spell to them, asking him when he was going to tell Dumbledore about it, and making impossibly long lists of people he was to cast it on. He'd tried pretending that he couldn't speak in English yet – the effects of speaking in Parseltongue for an entire day had actually worn off on his second morning back at Hogwarts (he'd nearly shat himself when a mirror in the boy's bathroom had spat a snide “Well, it certainly ain't pleasant for me either honey” when he'd wondered in grumbling about mornings) – but this hadn't stopped Hermione from nagging him to research ways to cast the spell on a large scale, or Ron from insisting that his family be the first to receive this new protection.
Thankfully, Dumbledore had agreed to let the trio remain at Hogwarts, so there was no shortage of places Harry could hide when he'd reached the end of his tether – he'd even spent a day in a small alcove in the library, reading a large tome on spell creation, all the while keeping an eye on the Marauder's Map. This af ternoon he'd taken the opportunity to sneak away from his best friends at lunch time, miming that he needed something from the dorm, and waiting for them to head for the Great Hall before grabbing his cloak and map from where he'd stashed it an d high-tailing it as far from the Gryffindor tower as he could – the Slytherin Dungeons.
He'd been down here a couple of hours now, wondering the passages, searching the abandoned classrooms he found along the way, all the while nibbling on the toasted sandwich he'd gotten from the elves on the way. It was cold down here, but quiet, the only inhabitants being a few spiders (he hoped they were in no way related to Aragog), a small garden snake – he'd offered to take her some place warmer but she refused, knowing the dungeons were safer than any other part of the castle, so he'd placed a warming on her burrow and promised to come back later with a more perm anent solution – and a rather large rat he had wanted to kill on sight.
He was staring at a locked door a few corridors away from the Slytherin common room, chewing thoughtfully on the last bit of his toasted sarmie, when he heard the unmistakeable sounds of footsteps and whispers heading his way. Swallowing the last bite of bread and cheese, Harry quickly wiped his greasy fingers on his jeans, before pulling the hood of his cloak up and slinking away from the well-lit corridor and into a darkened alcove. Not five minutes later Hermione and Ron came striding passed, obviously looking for him, the latter looking vaguely uncomfortable.
“Come on, Hermione, why in Merlin's name would Harry be down here? I'm telling you, he's probably down by the Quidditch Pitch!”
“Because, Ronald, I'm fairly certain he's been avoiding us, and why would he go somewhere he'd know we'd look?”
“Why would he be avoiding us?”
Hermione frowned, “I'm not entirely sure... He's been acting oddly ever since he came back from where ever he ran off to...”
“You don't think...”
“What?”
“You don't think it's not actually Harry, do you?”
Hermione drew to a halt, staring at her friend with wide eyes, “What do you mean, not Harry?”
“Well, he's not spoken a word of English since he got back, he keeps vanishing on us, and he seems annoyed every time we mention that spell...”
“But he told us about the spell, he even cast it on us?”
“Yeah, but what if that was some sort of the cover to make us think it's Harry?”
Hermione stared at Ron wide-eyed for a moment, before shaking her head vigorously, “No, Ron, Dumbledore spoke to Harry yesterday; he would have known if it wasn't really Harry!”
“Yeah, you're right; Dumbledore would have known,” Ron agreed, though he didn't sound thoroughly convinced, “I still don't think he'd be down here,” he grumbled as they continued down the corridor, passing the alcove where Harry stood frozen, horrified by their conversation. Moments later the raven-haired boy was scrabbling for the snake pendant that was hanging beneath his t-shirt, needing desperately to be somewhere else – anywhere else.
How could he tell his friends that the “friend” who had tested his spell had also found a counter-curse that would kill anyone it was cast on in the most horrible manner, and had threatened to use it should Harry cast his spell on more than seven people?
This was Voldemort, after all.