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It goes like this:
“You have cunning”, the Hat says to Ron Weasley. “You want to be different from your siblings. So stand out.”
“You have ambition”, the Hat says to Hermione Granger. “You would thrive wherever I put you, but there is one house above all others that would sharpen your intellect.”
“You have power”, the Hat says to Harry Potter. “You need only to learn how to harness it.”
Words, as great thinkers seem to never tire of remarking, have a way of changing the world.
“So are we going to be friends now?”, Draco Malfoy asks on their first evening in the shared dorms. Harry Potter throws him a look of measured disgust and returns to his chess game with Ron Weasley.
“Mudblood”, Pansy Parkinson sneers, but Hermione hasn’t grown up in a world where that word gets thrown around, so it means less than a whole dozen playground insults she still remembers vividly.
It is only when Parkinson repeats the slur the next morning in their common room that she realises how offensive it is. Or rather, she realises this while watching Harry Potter pull his shockingly ginger friend off Parkinson who is now lying on the ground and wailing.
“I can fight my own battles”, she says primly to the both of them. The redhead snorts.
“Obviously”, he says. “Wanna go to breakfast together?”
It is impressed upon them rather quickly that they are not to fight with their housemates outside of their common room, that they are expected to excel academically, and that the presentation of a unified front is quite a bit different from actual unity.
It is impressed upon their fellow Slytherins nearly as fast that pranking the three of them is not a good idea. Firstly, they never really seem to care - Hermione is used to being a hated teacher’s pet, Ron is the younger sibling of Fred and George Weasley, and Harry… you don’t talk about Harry’s homelife. Secondly, whenever someone does manage to successfully prank them, they will somehow, inevitably, find themselves on top of the Astronomy Tower after curfew without their pants on. Even Crabbe and Goyle only take three repetitions of that pattern to understand the gist.
“Professor Quirrel”, Harry says conversationally somewhen after Easter. “You know, if you need help getting to the Philosopher’s Stone that is hidden in the Third Floor Corridor…”
“I’m quite sure I don’t know what you’re talking about, Mr. Potter”, Professor Quirrel replies, fully lacking his usual stutter. Harry smiles as sharp as a knife and leaves.
Three weeks later, the staff is thrown into an uproar when Quirinus Quirrel is found dead in front of the Mirror of Erised, appearing to have starved himself over the course of days spent frantically trying and failing to get the stone. Nobody is really all that upset about this part; he was the Defense Professor and the school year was nearly over, so some shenanigan ending in death or retirement was to be expected.
What is much more unfortunate, however, is that the Philosopher’s Stone is missing from the mirror. It is not found in Quirrel’s possession, and in fact, if the monitoring charms on the mirror are to be believed, has been taken, somehow without sounding any alarms, about two weeks before.
“No, I am not going back to my aunt’s house, Headmaster”, Harry Potter says with incredulity. “I am the scion of a very wealthy Noble House. I think I can afford to rent a room for the summer. Or visit my friends. Hermione’s parents are taking her to France, did you know that? I’ve never been, so that might be nice.”
“You do not understand, my boy”, Dumbledore says, wringing his hands. “You simply must go back to your aunt’s house, it is imperative-”
Harry Potter reaches into the left pocket of his robes, the one not containing the Philosopher’s Stone (there is absolutely no logical reason to have brought the stone to this meeting, but Hermione casts are very good Nullification charm and Ron thought it would be funny) and holds out a sheet of paper to the headmaster.
“This is a copy of my parents' will”, he says evenly. “Ron told me to ask the goblins about it, and Hermione did some research into the legal jargon. In it, both Alice and Frank Longbottom are named as the desired foster parents.”
Dumbledore starts. “Well, surely you know that they aren’t in any condition-”
“No”, Harry agrees almost pleasantly. “But that definitely wasn’t already the case when you decided to ignore my parents’ last wishes and place me with my mother’s sister instead. So I should have gone to them and then to Frank’s mother Augusta, who would have raised me alongside Neville Longbottom from First Year Hufflepuff. And even if that had not been possible, Minerva McGonagall is further named as a fallback option, as is Amelia Bones. Both of which are, to my knowledge, alive, well and fully able to raise a child.”
Dumbledore stares.
“Don’t worry, Headmaster. I won’t be moving in with your Transfiguration Professor any time soon, I’m sure it would be awkward for the both of us. But I won’t be going back to Privet Drive, and you will not try to make me, because in that case, you might open tomorrow’s Prophet to find a rather lengthy and exhaustive article detailing every single way in which you broke the law right there on the front page.” Harry Potter smiles. “I hope we understand each other?”
“Harry”, Dumbledore croaks, gathering his wits after the boy has already turned to leave. “You’re making a mistake.”
“No”, Harry Potter says without looking back. “You did.”
Harry spends a relaxing summer renting out a room in the Leaky Cauldron, except for the weeks he spends with Hermione and Ron, respectively. He also takes Ron to quite a number of meetings with his financial advisor at Gringotts, who talks about things like building a stable portfolio and strengthening his monetary alliances and investing in portrait cryptocurrency with a wholly goblin-atypical enthusiasm.
Harry mostly understands that he is rich and could potentially become even richer, at which point he typically checks out of the conversation and instead starts flicking through the books on “Most Ancient Magics” he found in the family vault. Ron gets much more into it, huddling over stacks of graphs and manila folders with a jubilant greed.
“No, of course I’m not the Heir of Slytherin, you idiots”, Harry Potter says to a common room of people who definitely do not have the levels of cunning that should be required to be sorted into Slytherin. “I’m not even Pureblood. And I’m friends with Hermione, in case you missed it.”
“You speak Parseltongue”, Malfoy drawls, to his credit seeming as put out with the whole idea as Harry himself.
“So did Merlin”, Hermione responds without looking up from her book. “And Francis Bacon. And a bunch of other people who weren’t even in Slytherin. None of them ever turned out evil.”
“As if you know anything about our history”, Parkinson says, wearing a bad imitation of Malfoy’s sneer. Hermione glances up and fixes her with a look.
“I’ve been living in a dorm with you for a year and I’m still not entirely convinced you can read”, she replies in a downright friendly tone. “So maybe shut up while the grown-ups are talking.”
“Harry, I have to ask”, Dumbledore says, his voice wavering. “Did you have anything to do with… with this?”
“Obviously not”, Harry says. “And I can’t believe you’re making me miss Potions just to have this asinine conversation.”
Dumbledore stares into his eyes for long enough that it begins to feel uncomfortable, but finally nods. “I did have to ask, my boy. I am sorry for doubting you.”
“Great”, Harry says, already at the door. “Oh, and by the way, Lockhart is terrible at teaching. I will be hiring a private tutor for Defense.”
“I can’t allow you to-”
“You really can’t forbid it. Hermione’s checked.” Harry dips his head. “Good afternoon, Headmaster.”
They don’t get bothered with the whole Heir of Slytherin business again until Ron burst into the dorms one day in early spring and drags Harry to the hospital wing where Hermione is laid out on a bed.
Something very interesting happens in Harry’s chest. He turns from the bed and clasps Ron on the back.
“I have a feeling”, he says, striding from the room, “that I’m about to commit my first real, intentional murder.”
Five minutes of sweet-talking a nest of grass snakes is enough to send them scurrying all over the castle, hunting for a room that is both big and secret enough to house Slytherin’s monster, whatever it may be. Harry has the hope that it might be a snake, which would make this whole thing much easier, but knowing his luck, it will probably be a giant fire-breathing dragon or something similarly uncivilized.
Finally, the snakes return and lead him and Ron to a girl’s bathroom (“Eww”, says Ron) where they wind around one of the sinks, hissing in excitement. Harry surveys the tiny snake on the side of the tap, thanks them for their help, and then hisses at the sink to open. It does.
They cast Featherlight charms on one another and then descend the tube in a slow, dignified float. Harry wants to write a note to the effects of “fixing your mess, be back for dinner - leave some of the treacle tart” and have one of the snakes deliver it to Dumbledore, but Ron is against it.
“If it is a giant snake”, he points out, “and if you can command it, we might be able to gain some sort of advantage by keeping that knowledge on the down-low.”
The thing in the chamber does turn out to be a giant snake, which is fun, and a basilisk, which is less fun.
“I can’t believe we didn’t think of that”, Harry says, determindly not opening his eyes. “Hermione is going to bite of her own leg when she realises - and stops being stone, I guess.”
“Can you talk to it?”, Ron’s voice says from somewhere to his left.
It turns out Harry can. It further develops the basilisk has quite a lot to say on subjects such as ringing the doorbell before entering a stranger’s house, and also telling the little girl with the diary that she is no true heir of Slytherin and is not welcome back here, thank you very much, and the next time someone tries to make it do anything like squeezing through narrow pipes and petrifying students, it will eat them for breakfast.
“What little girl?”, Harry asks once the avalanche of words has ceased. He hears the answer and can’t help but laugh.
“You won’t believe this”, he says to Ron, “but it turns out that this entire year, your eleven year-old sister-”
And then there is much angry muttering and yelling all the way up the pipe again, until Ron manages to get his hands on Ginny just outside of the Great Hall and repeats all of his carefully practiced muttering and yelling at a higher volume, which makes her break into huge sobs and relinquish the aforementioned diary.
“I can’t believe you forgot dad’s number one rule”, Ron says, shaking his head. “Don’t trust it if you can’t see where its brain is!”
“Is everything alright over here?”, Dumbledore asks from behind them, eyes twinkling over his glasses.
“Perfectly”, Harry says, swiftly depositing the diary in one of his pockets. “Is there treacle tart left?”
“This is a really interesting bit of magic.” Hermione still looks exhausted from petrification, but she will murder anyone who suggests she take it easy, and with final exams horrendously and unfairly having been cancelled, she has instead focused all of her attention on the diary.
“We had to cast the Nullification charm three times before it snapped the connection to Ginny”, Harry says from outside of the magical maladies containment circle that they have set up in the now empty vault of the Forbidden Third Corridor. “Whatever it is, it’s really strong. And intelligent.”
“Yes”, Ron says icily. “Which is why we should get rid of it immediately, and not poke our wands at it.”
“Absolutely not”, Hermione says. “This is so intricate, it’s revolutionary. We can’t just destroy something like that.”
“You do remember that it’s also probably evil?”, Harry asks.
They agree to postpone their decision until after the summer holidays and leave the diary trapped in its containment circle - they are sensible enough, however, to not put the Philosopher’s Stone in the same room.
“Thank you so much for this”, Harry says to Fred and George Weasley. They shake their heads in unison.
“It’s the least we could do”, Fred says.
“After the whole Thing We Don’t Talk About with Ginny last year”, George says.
“That we definitely will not talk about.”
“So mum doesn’t find out.”
“Because if she did, Ginny would kill us.”
“And then mum would raise us from the dead and kill us again.”
“Sounds sensible”, Harry says with a smirk. He looks down at the Marauder’s Map and frowns at something in the Slytherin Dungeons. “Um, who is that guy sleeping in Ron’s bed?”
“You never thought to ask me about the guy literally in a bed with me?!”, Ron bellows at the twins who are standing on the other side of the room in the Forbidden Third Corridor, separated from Ron only by Harry’s arm on his chest and the containment circle that now holds the diary plus a very pathetic looking man that had honestly somehow been more handsome as a rat. “For two whole years?!”
“Um”, Fred says, looking at George.
“Well”, George says, looking at Fred.
“It didn’t seem like our business”, they both say with a shrug.
“Not to insult anyone”, Hermione says, in the middle of weaving some kind of complex truthtelling spell, “but I feel like your family really doesn’t have the best track record when it comes to making absolutely stupid decisions.”
The man - Peter Pettigrew, according to the Marauder’s Map, and an absolute waste of air according to Harry’s rapidly deteriorating opinion of him - tells them everything they want to know, including the fact that Sirius Black was friends with Harry’s parents and has only ever committed the crimes of bad communication, lackluster haircare and general stupidity.
“Looks like we’ll have to break someone out of Azkaban”, Harry says at the end of it, but Ron shakes his head.
“Not just Black. If the justice system can be so wrong about one case, what makes us certain that they aren’t wrong about other cases as well?”
“So we’ll push for everyone arrested without a trial to get one retroactively”, Hermione says, gnawing on her lip. “A fair one under Veritaserum. It won’t even be hard to accomplish if we hand Pettigrew over to the aurors.”
“Could we find a way of doing this that doesn’t involve Pettigrew?”, Harry asks.
“Sure”, Ron says with the absent look in his eyes that betrays a lot of calculations happening very quickly. “You have the political capital to pull enough neutral seats, and Dumbledore can’t decline a motion like that out of principle, while Malfoy might hope to get one or two of his own people free. And even if he doesn’t actually hope for that, he has to pretend that that is his angle so that his own supporters don’t lose faith in him, which means…” He cuts himself off. “In short, yes. We can even introduce the motion to the Wizengamot anonymously. I’ll go write a letter to Percy.”
“But why not use Pettigrew?”, Hermione asks. “He’s right here.”
“Remember how we were really interested in what the diary would do to a person if they successfully established a connection for long enough, but we had to break its connection to Ginny because she’s Ron’s sister and we like her?”, Harry asks with a grim smile. “Well, we don’t like Pettigrew.”
Harry and Ron don’t spend much time in the Forbidden Third Corridor afterwards, because they aren’t psychopaths. Hermione, however, spends hours upon hours watching and recording Pettigrew’s slow decline. Finally, about five months after the initial contact, she tells them that he seems near the end, so the three of them sit down at the furthest wall of the room with a bunch of snacks and watch Pettigrew wither away.
“What are those runes on the book?”, Ron asks through a mouthful of crisps. “Those weren’t on there before.”
“Obedience and Peacefulness”, Hermione answers without ceasing her furious note-taking. “I wanted to make sure that whatever came out of the book didn’t go on another Petrifying spree.”
“How thoughtful of you”, says the boy that suddenly stands next to the diary, staring at all three of them with hungry grey eyes.
“Yes, that’s me”, Hermione replies deadpan, and a second later Harry catches his bearings enough to activate the advanced warding circle Hermione has had them set into the stone, and then Ron is on his feet, rounding the perimeter of the room three times while throwing heaps of Himalayan salt liberated from the kitchens.
“Tom Marvolo Riddle”, Hermione says, and the boy shrinks from his true name as if stung. “You are bound by name, by magic, by soul.” He shrieks and staggers toward them, but the binding has already taken effect before he can even begin to fight against it, and the magic sends him to his knees retching.
“Now”, Hermione says and shuts her book with a thump. “I do believe we have some questions.”
Talking to Tom is fun, honestly, once he gets over his “I’m going to kill you and torture your families” thing. He knows a lot of advanced and forgotten magic, and he is more than willing to trade his knowledge for a copy of the latest Charms Review. Harry spices things up by bringing in the Transfiguration Journal sometimes, which Tom also accepts, although he draws a clear line at The Potion Master’s Guide, claiming that potions make his hair look horrible and also take ages to brew when he can often achieve the same effect with a single spell.
“Also, our potions professor is a really unfortunate sort of person”, Harry adds. “Better not to practice potions too much, so it doesn’t rub off on you, you know?”
Much more than anything else, however, Tom is interested in everything there is to know about Lord Voldemort to a frightening degree.
“You don’t think he might be Lord Voldemort?”, Hermione asks one evening. “A younger version of him, I mean.”
Ron gapes at her in disbelief. “Obviously he is”, he says. “I thought we were all clear on that weeks ago.”
“How is that even possible?”, Harry asks, and then immediately regrets this when Hermione drags both of them to the library.
“Is there something you feel like telling me, Headmaster?”, Harry says one June evening. Albus Dumbledore, who has so far believed himself to be alone in his office and has been cheerily reading the Daily Prophet’s latest article on the upcoming Death Eater Trials while consuming unholy amounts of lemon drops, squeaks.
“How did you get in here?”, he asks.
“You gave me an invisibility cloak and Hermione a time turner”, Harry reminds him with a saccharine grin. “Now if only you gift Ron a multi-use international portkey, we shall be truly unstoppable.”
“Miss Granger was not supposed to tell-”
“Hermione doesn’t keep secrets from us. Unlike some other people that come to mind.”
Dumbledore rests his head on his steepled fingers in what is probably supposed to be a grandfatherly gesture.
“Now, Harry, my boy, I’m sure you understand that I can’t put the weight of the world on the shoulder of a thirteen year old child.”
“Perfectly, my old man”, Harry responds primly and without a hint of sarcasm. “However, I would really appreciate it if in the future you could endeavour to mention important things like, oh, the Dark Lord I supposedly killed as a baby not actually being dead at all because he made a ton of horcruxes, which also probably explains why he got progressively more insane later on, and definitely means it’s only a matter of time until he’ll try to rise again. And, I’m assuming, try to kill me again. He doesn’t seem like the most creative type.”
“Harry”, Dumbledore says very slowly. “How do you know all of this? What have you been doing?”
“Dumbledore”, Harry says equally slowly. “The question is rather, what have you been doing? Voldemort has been a disembodied spirit for more than twelve years at this point, and you’ve just been sitting here fiddling your thumbs.”
“Such things are easily said when one hasn’t fought a war.”
“And even more so when one is a pretentious old bastard.”
Dumbledore sighs. “I realise that I haven’t been as open with you as I should have been, but it was out of the simple desire to protect you. To let you have a childhood.”
“My childhood ended the moment that I was deposited on my aunt’s doorstep. By you.”
“Let us not hold onto old grudges. Whatever else you may think of me, we are on the same side in this war. We must work together.”
Harry smiles. “No, I don’t think so, Headmaster. I think I shall be my own side. And the only reason I’m informing you of this is common courtesy.”
Dumbledore is silent for a long moment and finally sighs. “So you would let Voldemort destroy this world simply because you are holding a grudge?”
“No, obviously not.” Harry frowns at him. “I am simply saying that I certainly won’t be sitting around and waiting for your help in defeating him. You may consider yourself retired from this war, Headmaster. I will make my own path.”
He turns to go, then turns again. “And, by the way, we will be waiting on that international portkey for Ron. If you can’t enchant it yourself, storebought is fine.”
The Boy Who Lived descents the stairs, and Dumbledore gapes after him in a mixture of horror, shock and reproachful amusement.