Chapter Text
Harry gripped the side of the stool and thought, Not Slytherin. Not Slytherin.
“Not Slytherin, eh?” the small voice said. “Are you sure? You could be great, you know. It’s all here in your head, and Slytherin will help you on the way to greatness, no doubt about it.”
He bit his lip. Greatness… he didn’t care so much about that but to prove the Dursleys -- his uncle, who thought he’d be nothing more than a useless layabout -- wrong did mean something to him. Still, to be in the same house as Draco ‘I’m a ponce’ Malfoy, who reminded Harry as nothing so much as his odious cousin Dudley...
Is there somewhere else that can help me to be great?
“Hmm, hmm. Yes. This house will help encourage you to use that talent I see so clearly. Very well… best be RAVENCLAW!”
The rush of relief that he was Sorted somewhere, anywhere, hit Harry so suddenly he only noticed the odd looks from the house of gold and red as he was making way to the table clapping for him enthusiastically. A strange pair of redheads were even bemoaning ‘We don’t got Potter! We don’t got Potter!’ So strange that anyone would want him like that!
But then he was overwhelmed by the introductions being pressed at him from every corner and he forgot all about it. He’d found a new home, after all.
Ϟ
I am going to murder Michael.
‘Aren’t you curious?’ ‘It’s a mystery to solve!’ ‘What if Dumbledore means it as a challenge?’ ‘You solved the riddle, you should be the one who takes it, Harry.’ Bloody wanker. I should’ve made him take the potion.
“Potter,” the man said, cocking his head. “I didn’t expect to see you here. You didn’t seem to have the necessary lawlessness to be here tonight. Ah, the famed Ravenclaw curiosity I imagine.”
He narrowed his eyes back. “Were you faking the stutter the whole time? Do you know how hard you made it, learning anything from you?”
“Well, I did have to throw them off. After all, p-p-poor st-stut-tering Quirrell, afraid of his own shadow, couldn’t possibly have been a threat.” That made sense… but it was still a nasty thing to do, mucking about with people’s educations. "Now, wait quietly, Potter. I need to examine this interesting mirror.”
It was only then that he realised that Quirrell stood in front of the strange mirror Harry’d last seen when exploring under his cloak during Winter hols. This did explain Dumbledore ‘happening’ to find him in front of the mirror then.
Quirrell began to mutter to himself but Harry’s curiosity bubbled up. He started with the obvious. Obviously, the troll at Halloween when that Granger girl got so injured was a distraction but what about when he’d heard the professor pleading in the classroom, so close to tears?
“Is someone threatening you to do this?”
“What? No… Not -- “ A spasm of fear flitted across Quirrel’s face. "Sometimes,” he said, “I find it hard to follow my master’s instructions — he is a great wizard and I am weak —”
But there hadn’t been -- “You mean he was there in the classroom with you?” Harry hadn’t seen anyone else with the man but, then, he could have barely missed it, couldn’t he have?
“He is with me wherever I go,” said Quirrell quietly. “I met him when I traveled around the world. A foolish young man I was then, full of ridiculous ideas about good and evil. Lord Voldemort showed me how wrong I was. There is no good and evil, there is only power, and those too weak to seek it. . . . Since then, I have served him faithfully, although I have let him down many times. He has had to be very hard on me.” He shivered suddenly. “He does not forgive mistakes easily. When I failed to steal the Stone from Gringotts, he was most displeased. He punished me . . . decided he would have to keep a closer watch on me. . . .”
Lord Voldemort? Voldemort, the man who’d tried to kill Harry, who’d waged and nearly won a war against the government until something -- likely something his own mother had caused but that Harry had maybe been key in -- had blown him back so badly he’d been announced dead, was somehow able to watch Quirrell at any time? A fission of cold worry curled in Harry’s stomach and he swallowed hard.
“What do you want the stone for? No, what does your ruler -- leader?”
“Master.”
“What does your Master want the stone for?” Did the man want to be rich or did he properly know the Elixir of Life would truly make you immortal like Flamel was famed to be?
It was not Quirrell who answered him but a strangely high pitched second voice coming from somewhere behind him. “You know what is in the mirror? Do you know the mirror as well then, boy?”
“Don’t call me ‘boy’.” Harry bristled, glaring at the disembodied spirit. Well, more at Quirrell but he hoped the spirit could tell too.
“Brave child. I’d wondered after you were skipped over for Gryffindor.”
“The Hat said I could have gone there. Or Slytherin.”
“Bravery and cunning. I do value both. Quirrell, restrain him for now.” He flicked his wand out, throwing a spell at Harry, who dodged behind a pillar. Harry Hunting had been good for duel practice this year and now he saw it in a practical application. He needed to distract them. “Come now, child, there’s no need to die here tonight. Don’t be a fool. Better save your own life rather than meet the same end as your parents.”
I don't want to die. Harry shivered. “It’s the mirror of erised. Desire.”
“Quite clever you are. I’d left you alone this year because I was curious. Both that a Potter would be in Ravenclaw and at your strange presentation. Your parents were both quite intelligent, are you aware? Your mother, for all her… limitations, was a prodigy in multiple fields. It pained me to kill her. She needn’t have died but she was quite determined to defend you.”
“Defend me? I was the target?” Harry stepped closer, though without straying too far from the safety of the pillar, trying to think of a good way through this somehow. He needed to think. If only he could prevent Quirrel from getting the stone by getting it first he’d have something to bargain with!
“Bargain?” Can he hear me thinking? “Yes, we can bargain… if you deliver the stone to me. What is it you wish, child? Riches? Power? Respect? I can teach you how to achieve any of these things.”
He snorted. His vault had money enough to see him through school. Power was only good if he wanted to deal with his fame and he didn’t. Respect? That was -- Well, he’d rather earn that on his own. No, the thing he wanted most, as the mirror of Erised itself had shown him, he couldn’t have. But that didn’t mean he had to walk away with only his life. What good was his life if he ended up back with the Dursleys?
“Is there a way to guarantee you hold your side? With magic?”
“Yes. A vow… even in my current, diminished form, I can perform this. Quirrell, give me your wand. I will speak to him face-to-face.”
“Master, you tax yourself!”
“I have strength enough for this.”
Harry felt as if Devil’s Snare was rooting him to the spot. He couldn’t move a muscle. He watched as Quirrell reached up and began to unwrap his turban. What was going on? The turban fell away. Quirrell’s head looked strangely small without it. Then he turned slowly on the spot. Harry couldn’t make a sound. Where there should have been a back to Quirrell’s head, there was a face, the most unusual Harry had ever seen. It was chalk white with glaring red eyes and slits for nostrils, like a snake.
“Harry Potter . . .” it whispered. Harry tried to take a step backward but his legs wouldn’t move. “See what I have become?” the face said. “Mere shadow and vapor. I have form only when I can share another’s body… but there have always been those willing to let me into their hearts and minds...”
That this man had power enough to convince someone, even in his current, monstrous form, to share their very body with him made something in Harry’s chest pound. That was power, wasn’t it? True power, better than any fame. But, no, this was a man others called ‘master’. He wouldn’t share this power. And, anyway, there was still something Harry desired even more.
“I want you to take me with you this summer. To live with you. And vow not to beat me or starve me or lock me in a cupboard.” He panted as he got the demand out. He could do this and protect himself.
“Believing Dumbledore’s propaganda... the dastardly Dark Lord, so terrible to starve a child... He does get to them quite young now, doesn’t he Quirrell?”
“Yes, Master.”
“Propaganda? What’s --”
“Lies that Dumbledore has told you to poison you against me.”
“No. He’s never -- We’ve barely spoken. I just --” Don’t want you to be like the Dursleys. “I want to be sure I’ll be safe.”
“These… relatives of yours -- they’ve done these things to you?”
“They’ve never exactly starved me.” Even if it felt like it sometimes during the long period after he let the snake loose in the zoo on Dudley’s birthday. Or the time he Apparated onto the school roof and couldn’t get down.
“I disagree. I can see your memories as well, child.”
“Oh.” His face flushed with shame that someone had seen how the Dursleys treated him but he rallied. “I want a vow.”
“You will join me, child. That is the exchange. I will make certain you are looked after and you will join me.”
He gulped. “... Yes. Okay. How does a vow --” But he hadn’t even finished the question when he felt a warm glow and a mental voice, a great deal deeper than the reedy one coming from the snake-ish part-man, who vowed those things. He felt the vow take and breathed a sigh of relief.
“Help Quirrell figure out how to retrieve the stone.” It reminded him of Quirrell’s fearful recall that his master did not forgive mistakes easily.
Harry stared hard at the mirror. What I want more than anything else in the world at the moment, he thought, is to find the Stone before Quirrell does. So if I look in the mirror, I should see myself finding it — which means I’ll see where it’s hidden! To his surprise, he saw more than his own pale, worried face in the mirror. His mirror-self smiled at him and put its hand into its pocket and pulled out a blood-red stone. It winked and put the Stone back in its pocket — and as it did so, Harry felt something heavy drop into his real pocket. Somehow — incredibly — he’d gotten the Stone.
He pulled it out of his pocket and held it up, carefully offering the stone over to Quirrell, whose hand trembled as he took it.
“Well done… yes, well done indeed. I will retrieve you early in the summer… away from the machinations of Dumbledore. Now, I must rest. Quirrell, see the boy and his housemates back to their dorm.”
“Yes, Master. Of course.”
Harry breathed out a final sigh of relief. Maybe this deal would end awfully but he knew the Dursleys were awful already so it seemed worth the risk. He had the vow and the promise of meeting again soon. It would have to do for now.
Ϟ
After Harry convinced his friends that the end of the third-floor corridor had been emptied out by the time they’d got there, the fortnight flew by. Before he knew it he was nestled in a train compartment with Michael, Sue Li, and Morag, half-dreading and half-fluttery about what would happen when the train arrived. To his disappointment, only his Uncle, angry at having driven out to London to pick Harry up, met him at the station and as soon as he got back to the Dursleys his things were locked up in his cupboard and him behind five locks on the outside of Dudley’s second bedroom.
It wasn’t until a week later, as Harry sweated over the bed of petunias, looking a bit worse for wear (both him and the flowers, truly), that Voldemort made good.
He appeared in a swish of lush black robes and a bespoke suit, unusual only in how he looked a bit like a posh telly star and not someone meant for the streets of Little Whinging. One moment Harry was tugging hard at a stubborn weed, his hands stinging from the gloveless effort, and the next a warm, human hand touched his shoulder and a little rush of electricity jolted through his body.
“Are your guardians in?” Voldemort asked by way of greeting. Harry nodded and the hand touched his chin now. “Words, little one.”
“Yes, sir. They're watching telly.”
“Very well. Let’s collect your things.”
The next few minutes, short as they were, burned themselves into Harry’s mind. The fear of his trembling, whimpering tormentors. The way they screamed for once. How Dudley pissed himself and Vernon blustered and Aunt Petunia whinged that she’d never ‘wanted the brat’ but that Dumbledore had forced Harry onto them. He felt bad for them for a moment there until Voldemort broke into the cupboard to secure Harry’s meagre belongings and saw the space where Harry spent most of the first eleven years of his life.
The man glittered with his rage at the treatment of Harry, a deliberate, striking nature to him that peeled back the Dursleys’ excuses, their actions, their bloody awful justifications for treating Harry like an animal, and then the man, his voice gentle, his touch soft, asked to see it inside Harry’s mind.
The Dursleys screamed a lot after that, living every moment they’d forced on Harry over the years, and only after did Voldemort bring the torment to an end. It ended with a spray of blood, glossy red and flowing from gashes of white, and the flickering of flames taking the stupid house on Privet Drive towards its own death.
I hope the fire makes it to Piers’ house.
Side-apparition, as Voldemort called it, afterwards was quite unpleasant and then they were somewhere altogether different. The alleys were cramped amid rows of small houses and a towering estate took up the skyline close by, but he simply took Harry’s hand and led him through the streets.
It felt good, the hand in his, a low, warm pulse that seemed to give the Dark Lord pause when they first touched. It was something special, he was sure of it. They stopped at a modest but neat house at the last of a road called Spinner’s End and knocked. When Snape answered Harry froze, his stomach clenching over seeing his awful Potions’ Master out of school. Snape wasn’t as awful to Harry as he was to Gryffindors, according to Harry’s friend Neville, but he liked to bully.
It wasn’t better that Snape seemed as surprised to see them, though he snapped out of it to bow for his master and let them in. “My Lord, please, come in. Potter.”
‘My Lord’... of course his people wouldn’t call him ‘Voldemort’. They used ‘my Lord’ or ‘Master’.
“Prince,” the Dark Lord said, in a soft drawl. “Our young friend here was so enterprising as to ask for an exchange when we met late this school year. You were right that Quirrell was up to something, Severus.” A mocking smile slipped onto him as he led them into a cozy, neat kitchen and ran his fingers over the back of Harry’s messy hair along the neck. It made the boy shiver but the touch, so kind as it was, felt so good he melted into it.
“He was working for you. I regret attempting to impede him if so, my Lord. If I may ask, why…” Snape gestured with a graceful hand at Harry. “I would expect you to have dealt with him.”
Harry swallowed hard and reminded himself that he had a vow. Voldemort had promised him safety and care. “As I said, he leveraged as well as a child years older than him. It seemed a shame to snuff out such potential in a young wizard. There is a matter, now, of a vow. I promised him that he would be cared for, did I not, Harry?”
His mouth went dry but after two swallows he managed a quiet, “Yes, sir.”
“And it occurred to me you were quite attached to his mother. So much so that you begged for her life, as I remember.” Snape sucked a breath in and stared as hard as Harry had ever seen someone stare at another adult. “I offered, thrice, but she refused to abandon her child and her trap. She wished the boy to live. Now, Severus, you have the opportunity to fulfil her last wish. Dumbledore’s choice of guardians was --
“Oh, you grew up together, did you not? You’d know, then, the boy’s aunt. Petunia. Dreadful hag as she was.”
“Tuney?” Snape’s eyes snapped to Harry as if he’d never seen him before. “Dumbledore put you with Lil -- Lily’s sister?” His eyes went to the Dark Lord. “Was, my Lord?”
“I’m afraid there’s been a terrible accident. She perished in a fire quite recently.” With the ease that Harry envied the Dark Lord snapped off a few, silent spells and tea things came zooming out of the cupboards. “Harry, please make the three of us tea. Severus, come with me.”
The adults disappeared into the next room, abandoning Harry to his tea making but he didn’t complain. Making tea was a simple task and he lost himself to the rhythm of it until he heard a snarled, “cupboard? That spiteful bitch”, before a sudden, unnatural silence fell.
When they came back Snape was even more pale than usual, the sallowness in his skin nearly white now, and he looked at Harry with a pained expression. Harry ignored it, serving up tea easily with milk and sugar, and then stood around as the two adults sat at the kitchen table, unsure what he should do now. It was Voldemort who noticed, telling Harry to sit down and drink his tea, and Snape watched him for a moment while he did that too.
Finally, the man spoke, his voice softer than it’d ever been when directed at Harry before. “The Dark Lord has decided you will stay here with me for the time being, under conditions of your vow.”
Harry’s eyes shot over to the man, who reached out and stroked a hand over Harry’s head. “I’m not in a position to raise a child at the moment, Harry. Severus has given his own vow to me to take care of you. From now on, in my circles, you will be Harry Prince. Prince is the name of Severus’s mother’s family and the one he goes by within our own ranks. For a while it will be necessary for you to play at being Harry Potter still, but not forever.”
“Alright.” Harry bit his lip for a moment before he nodded at Snape. “Sir. Um. Thank you for taking me in.” He knew the man didn’t have a choice, of course, but Snape nodded back.
When tea was finished Voldemort stood. “I’ll return soon. Severus, I’ll expect a room cleared out for him by the time I return.” And then he was gone.
Harry swallowed hard. “I won’t be any trouble, sir.”
“Good. Come along. As it happens I do have a room I’m using for storage. Let us get to sorting what can and can’t be shrunken.” Snape stood, swooping out of the room, leaving no room to argue with him, and Harry hurried after so he wouldn’t get lost.
The next hour was quiet, the only exchanges about where to place things or what to shrink, and he settled into it easily enough, calmly following instructions. Snape didn’t say a mean word or make a snide comment the entire time, directing the moving and taking things too heavy to be moved by hand with the ease of spells. Harry wanted to learn this magic, all the magic he’d seen today, but he couldn’t bring himself to say so.
Maybe I can ask Vold -- the Dark Lord for some book recommendations.
But that turned out to be unnecessary. When the Dark Lord did return around dusk, as Harry was devouring food as if he hadn’t seen it in a week (and, well, the Dursleys had been churlish again), it was with belongings -- clothing, a few pieces of furniture, and an entire chest of books.
He called it a library chest and said, “They’re age coded,” as Harry opened it, his eyes going wide at how very many books there were. “Consider it an early birthday gift. I may not see you again this summer.”
Oh. His stomach clenched but he nodded. The Dark Lord would be busy and Harry was a little kid, not really important in the grand scheme of things. “Of course. Thank you.”
And by full nightfall he was saying his goodbyes again, leaving Harry in this strange house with this strange version of Snape, a ton of new items, and the dictate to write every fortnight even if he hadn’t much to say except that things were going well. Then he was gone.