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Chapter Text

It is said that nobody knows a Boggart’s real form. This is untrue.

It is said that Boggarts feed on fear. This is true.

Harry Potter sleeps in a cupboard until he is four years old. 

At four years old, he runs away. It’s tiring, running away, and he ends up just a few streets over in the end. He crawls into an abandoned house, pushes and pulls until he’s under the stained floorboards. He likes the way the wind whistles through the rotted wooden boards and light shines into the enclosed space. His cupboard doesn’t have light or wind. Uncle Vernon took away his lightbulb a few months ago when he spilled juice on Dudley’s trousers.

Harry likes curling up real small. It’s the only thing about his cupboard that he likes, besides the spiders that sometimes keep him company when he’s lonely. He curls up now under these stained floorboards of this dilapidated house.

He falls asleep in that little space, huddled for warmth in the fall air. There are no spiders to keep him company.

When he wakes, with bruises and scrapes from his latest scrap with Dudley and the big, meaty palm of an upset Uncle Vernon, he opens his eyes to see he’s not in the hideaway space any more. He’s on the floor, facing a flickering figure that holds Harry’s attention without even trying.

It doesn’t seem to know what it wants to be as Harry looks at it, shuddering before changing its appearance time after time.

“Hi,” Harry whispers. He’s learned not to talk around Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia without being spoken to first, but he hopes whoever this is won’t be mean like his relatives are. “I’m Harry.”

It’s new, knowing his name. He only found out because he overheard Aunt Petunia on the phone with Mrs. Figg. Harry Potter is his name, and he thinks it’s a lot better than Freak or Boy.

The creature shudders once more before taking the form of Aunt Petunia. Harry frowns.

“I know you’re not Aunt Petunia,” he says. “Why do you want me to think you’re her? You’re not.”

It shudders again and becomes Uncle Vernon. Harry flinches away at first, but he knows it’s not his uncle, and he tells this creature so. Next it becomes dark and foreboding, like Harry’s cupboard.

“You’re not very good at this,” Harry says, inching closer to the creature. He speaks with all the self-assuredness of a four year old.

The creature shudders once more and morphs into a face that Harry’s only seen in his dreams, the one with the green light and the woman screaming, the one before the flying motorcycle.

“I don’t know who that is,” Harry says simply. He moves another few inches towards the creature.

The creature seems to slump. Harry’s close enough now to pat it sympathetically on its knee. Harry’s short, shorter than the other children his age, so he can’t reach much higher than this figure’s shadowy knee. He blinks in surprise when his hand goes through the shadows without hitting anything.

“How do you do that?” he asks, looking up at the creature with big eyes. “Can I learn to do that? I want to look like other people too.”

The figure stills. Harry blinks. Hands that don’t actually touch him hover over his shoulders, blurred imagining of hands that look more like storm clouds than actual hands. Harry trails his own hand through one of them lazily, smiling at the static feeling on his skin.

“Can you talk?” Harry asks, tilting his head curiously.

The creature shudders and becomes a man Harry’s never seen before.

“I can,” the man drawls, voice like acid in the air.

Harry grins. “Awesome. What’s your name? I’m Harry.”

The man grimaces.

“I have no name,” he says. “I am what your kind call a Boggart.”

“What’s that?”

He sighs. Harry doesn’t understand what’s so hard about the question, so he asks an easier one.

“Do you live in a cupboard too?”

The man stares for a beat, then a slow smile spreads on his scarred face. Harry likes the look on the scary-looking man. Harry likes it when people smile without anger in their eyes like Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia.

“I live in a chest in the basement of a haunted house,” he says. “Do you live in a cupboard, little one? Would you show it to me? Cupboards are the best homes for our kind, I have found.”

Harry grins. “Sure!”

That’s how it starts.

Harry names the man Scary. Scary likes his new name a lot, shifting into scary looking people in a way that Harry learns means he’s really happy. Harry claps and dances around as Scary changes his face and body in joy, and they celebrate by sneaking into the smallest places they can find.

Aunt Petunia throws him out of the house when she sees him talking to Scary. Scary transforms into a woman with long red hair and emerald green eyes, and Harry is hitting the pavement before he can comment on those familiar eyes, the ones he has too.

Scary helps him up after Petunia runs screaming for her husband. He brushes dirt off of Harry’s ratty clothes and pats his head with real hands. He still looks like the woman, but Scary said he was okay with being a ‘he’ even when he looks like a girl. Harry doesn’t really understand, but that’s okay.

It’s fine, Harry doesn’t need Aunt Petunia or Uncle Vernon. He and Scary will find their own place to live, preferably a small, cramped, shadowy space that feels like home for the both of them.

In the first week of searching, with Scary stealing clothes and food for Harry when he needs them, they find a place that reeks of fear. (Harry’s getting better at smelling fear like Scary does, but he has to open his mouth and inhale like a snake, flicking his tongue out just to smell the putrid scent-taste.)

The house is dark and old, perfect for what they need.

Harry makes a nest with the blankets he finds in one of the abandoned rooms, silver and green with a nice design of a snake. Harry likes snakes, so does Scary.

Scary finds a home in the grandfather clock next to Harry’s new nest. It has broken glass that hurts when Harry steps on it with bare feet, but Scary makes the pain go away by transforming into a big snake and chasing Harry around until he’s giggling and out of breath.

Just like every other time he’s been hurt in his life, the cut is gone when he wakes up the next day. Scary grins toothily, showing the crooked teeth of his current form, when he sees this.

“You have magic, Harry,” Scary says with a smile. There’s an undercurrent to his voice, like the sound of thunder before a hurricane or the shifting of earth before an earthquake. Harry relaxes at the sound. As scary as having magic sounds (Aunt Petunia would beat him black and blue if she heard them now), he’s happy that Scary is at his side.

He learns he’s a wizard. Scary doesn’t really like wizards all that much, but he likes the way they taste when they’re scared. Harry thinks he could learn to like that too, so he does.

It’s that simple.

Harry Potter is eleven when he gets his Hogwarts letter, and he is the closest to a Boggart that a human can get.

Harry is a fledgling boggart, that’s what Scary tells him. He’s still young by boggart standards, no matter his human age, and when they go to boggart gatherings, the other fledglings try to teach Harry how to shift his appearance.

He doesn’t get further than slightly different characteristics before he gets too tired to continue. He hates that. He just wants to be normal, even if his normal is that of a boggart.

Scary takes him to Diagon Alley, a wizard shopping district, in the body of a middle aged witch with soft features. She’s not scary in the least, and Harry pouts the entire walk there. He hates it when Scary can’t be himself, hates how weak his friend gets when he’s not creating fear to consume through his terrifying forms.

The goblins at Gringotts snap their teeth together rapidly when they see him and Scary, eyes shining with something like amusement. Their trip down to Harry’s vaults goes quickly and without trouble.

It is said that there is nothing beneath a Dementor’s hood. This is untrue.

It is said that Dememtors feed on happy emotions. This is only part of the whole truth.

Ron Weasley finds a friend at four years old.

At four years old, he is a lonely and tired child. He loves his family, of course he does, they’re his family, but it’s like there’s no room for him with Ginny and his brothers taking up every inch of the Burrow and his parents’ attention.

He leaves his towering house and sets off for an adventure. He’ll find a place for him if it’s the last thing he does, he tells himself. He keeps telling himself this even when his little legs burn from all the walking.

He runs into the first sign of life after what feels like hours walking in silence. Sometimes Ron will hum to himself, he doesn’t know a lot of words to the songs Mum sings to him, but he likes the way they sound, the melody. His throat hurts when he finds what looks like a very tall wizard wrapped in a black, shuddering cloak.

At first he doesn’t know who or what they are, but then he remembers the stories his Mum reads to him when he gets too antsy.

Dementors, he remembers. They guard the prison that makes Dad look sad when it’s in the news. Mum says not to worry about running into Dementors, that they only live at the prison, so that must mean Ron’s near the prison, right?

Ron walks up to the figure, ignoring the voice in his head that sounds like his Mum and tells him to run away as quickly as he can. He wants to be a Gryffindor someday, that means he has to be brave. Running away isn’t brave, Percy says, and Percy is always right, so Ron doesn’t run away.

The dementor inhales heavily, making Ron feel weak in the knees. He grits his teeth and continues walking towards it, ignoring the haze that falls over his mind as he does so. He’s brave, he’s brave!

The dementor looks down at this little red haired boy who dares to approach it, and it smiles under its hood.

“Hello,” Ron says, a grim set to his mouth that says he won’t be cast aside by anyone else. “My name’s Ron. What’s yours? Do Dementors have names?”

The dementor smiles, and that’s that. It doesn’t speak, none of them speak, but something buzzes and hums from beneath its cloak, and that’s enough for Ron. The boy grins back, though he can’t see the creature grinning, and looks around.

“Are we near your prison? The stories say that’s where you live. I don’t think I’d be that happy living in a prison, but if it makes you happy I guess that’s okay.”

The dementor inhales once more, and Ron staggers on his feet.

“Do you have to do that?” he asks with a wobbly frown. “It makes my heart hurt a little, but Mum says you need to eat just like I do, but that you eat souls. Is that true? Do you need my soul to eat?”

The dementor hums, and Ron nods.

“You can take a little of it if you’re really hungry, but not all of it.” Ron pouts and puts his hands on his hips like he’s seen Mum do when she’s being serious about something. “I need my soul, you can’t take it all.”

The dementor is pleased, and it shows in the way it sways in the wind. It opens its great mouth and breathes in the taste of little Ron’s memories and joys, swallows the child’s sadness and self-deprecation, hums around a mouthful of anger and determination.

Yes, this child will do nicely.

Ron follows the dementor back to a hole in the ground. He doesn’t ask questions that the creature cannot answer with a simple hum, but he sings his Mum’s lullabies when the silence gets to be too much.

He follows the creature underground and into a great cave system. There are carvings in the walls that show events and groups of dementors flying over witches and wizards, eating their souls. Some of the pictures show the creatures bringing the souls back to a place where they lay them down and glow brightly. Ron likes those pictures, stares at them until the cold hand of his dementor guide nudges him along.

Ron learns that dementors are cold, and they have hands. It’s weird that that’s something he had to learn, of course they have hands, but he’s glad he knows it for sure now. Dad’s always getting on him about knowing things for sure before he acts, says Ron can’t be too reckless even if he’s really brave.

Dementor hands are more than just cold, they’re slimy and covered in torn flesh. Ron catches a glimpse inside his dementor’s hood and sees decaying flesh. He doesn’t gag or flinch away, he just observes with curious eyes. Mum always says he’s too curious for his own good.

The dementor that takes him into its city buzzes heartily when Ron gapes up at the beautiful buildings and open space carved out of stone.

Ron is eleven when he gets his Hogwarts letter, and he has been going back and forth between the Burrow and this city of dementors for as long as he can remember. He has his own cloak that covers his gangly frame and runic scars that line the bottom of his feet to help him step more quietly.

The dementors have taken him in as one of their own, and he could not be more grateful.

It is said that there is nothing that an Inferi will not do at the behest of its creator. This is untrue.

It is said that Inferi reek of death and suffering of the ones who died to make them. This is true to those who look.

Hermione Granger is five years old. She is five years old, and she’s already proudly reading chapter books. They’re short ones, sure, but she reads them nonetheless, in spite of the looks her teachers give her. 

She is five years old when she gets lost on her way home from the library and finds a cave that feels like home.

She’s scared at first, of course she is, but she values knowledge above all else, so she walks into the cave. It’s dark and sends a shiver running down her spine, but she pushes forward. There’s a voice in the back of her mind, her mum’s voice, that tells her to ask an adult for help getting back home, but she doesn’t want to go home right now, there’s knowledge to be learned.

There are people in the lake. Hermione can feel them in her chest, in her heart, in her head. She watches them with wide eyes and sees that they aren’t breathing.

She’s intrigued. The fear vanishes in an instant, replaced by a vicious curiosity that takes her to the edge of the lake without any hesitation. She peers down at the unbreathing people and watches closely.

They move towards her as one. A hive mind.

Hermione does not flinch as cold, wet hands reach for her ankles. She watches, observes, catalogues.

The one in front, a man with high cheekbones and pale skin fit for old British nobility. His long, black hair is tangled with seaweed and moss, and Hermione can’t help but smile at him as he tries to pull her into the lake, mouth open and flooded with saliva, teeth sharp enough to tear into her.

She lets it happen, welcomes the water as it washes over her, welcomes the many cold hands that pull at her every which way.

Even as she watches them open their mouths and dart towards her, they do not hurt her. None of their teeth make contact with her skin. The leader, the one with the cheekbones and dark hair, keeps a hold on her ankles and peers up at her with dead, dull eyes that cut through to her very soul.

Hermione smiles and continues on watching.

She learns that these people with dead eyes cannot speak, but they can write in the sand by the edge of the lake when they want to say something to her. She’s a big girl, she’s just started reading chapter books, so she reads it and nods like she’s seen her dad do.

She learns so much.

These people she has found in this cave are dead. They are called Inferi, and they were brought back to “life” to guard something for a wizard that reeked of corruption. They didn’t like his smell, they tell her, but they listened to his commands all the same.

The man who first caught her and didn’t let go is called Regulus. He stole the locket that the dark wizard made the Inferi to protect, and he doesn’t regret it even in death.

So now this flock of undead Inferi live in the lake they are bound to. The dark wizard might be dead, might not be, but they cannot leave without a wizard to bind themselves to. Apparently, Inferi are seen as wrong, dark, abominations, to witches and wizards, so they don’t have many volunteers.

Regulus tells Hermione that she’s a witch. She binds them to herself on her ninth birthday, as soon as she has the power for it.

The bodies of the Inferi keep some of their memories, and they’re a hive mind, which means they share everything they know. Hermione uses that knowledge to learn more and more until she’s bursting with information. That’s how she finds the ritual to bind her Inferi to her magical core, and that’s how she learns magic without a wand.

She doesn’t go back to her nonmagical parents, she sees no need to. They’ve served their purpose, they raised her until the Inferi started that themselves. Sure, she misses the comfort they brought her as a child, but Regulus and the others can do that now in their stead.

Hermione is eleven when her Hogwarts letter comes, and by then she is more dead than alive. Her dark skin is pale from blood loss, her eyes are dull with an apparent lack of spark, and her frizzy hair cannot be tamed by anything less than a weed whacker.

She goes alone to Diagon Alley. Her Inferi look too dead to walk among the living without being noticed. Regulus is the freshest, but even he has still-bleeding bite marks and too-thin limbs to look at all alive. No, Hermione goes alone when she receives her letter, and she does it with that same vicious curiosity in her eyes.

They’ve been living in another cave, a different one from the one that housed the dark locket that Regulus stole. They want to be as far away from there as possible if the dark wizard, Voldemort, comes back to collect his Inferi, though they’re not really his anymore.

She Apparates to Diagon Alley, something that Regulus taught her when she was learning magic from him.

She has no money, but that doesn’t seem to be a problem. The goblins at Gringotts (and her eyes go wide at the sight of them, how many are there? Do they live underground? Would they give her their secrets for the right price?) take one look at her and lead her to an unclaimed vault that holds enough galleons to keep her happy for centuries.

“The Dead Witch,” they call her with greed shining in their eyes. “We have been waiting for you to come and collect. Death favors you, little Inferius, devote yourself to him if you wish, though this is not contingent on your worship.”

She buys every book she can get her hands on, which is enough to fill the three trunks she buys, each with expandable space to fit her libraries into.

Her Inferi greet her with splashes and groans when she returns to them and gets started on reading everything . Regulus sits at her side and gnaws on some animal bones he took from their latest hunt. He grunts and points to information in the books that he thinks she needs to know. She’s grateful.

She knows she can’t take her flock of Inferi with her to Hogwarts, the realization as such almost causes an avalanche as her magic lashes out in pure rage.

Regulus promises her that they’ll always be at her beck and call, she only needs to call for them. He tells her about the magic that connects them, though she can see it through their hive mind (she appreciates reading his stilted writing, appreciates that he cares enough to talk to her instead of send her messages through the hive), and how the dead can travel anywhere their tether wants them to.

They test that the day before Hermione leaves for Hogwarts. She grins when a horde of her flock emerges from the ground of an abandoned field, ready to serve.

Maybe this will work out.

Hm Zphs, the city that Ron spent half of his time in growing up, is a thousand times more elegant than the wizard castle of Hogwarts, but he gawks at the structure like all the other kids do so no one looks at him twice. He’s good at blending in with the people around him, he had to be for his family not to notice his absences in the Burrow almost every day. (The twins notice, but as long as Ron is safe they’ll let him go wherever he wants. Ron appreciates that.)

He’s spent years exploring the tunnel system that connects all the various dementor civilizations. He’s used to being underground, probably more than he’s used to being above it. He knows where he’s going to be sorted before he even enters the castle.

Azkaban is a tricky subject among his people. They like the free food, and they have easy access to it since no wizards can tell dementors apart from one another and the tunnels lead to right under the prison, so they can swap out whenever they want. At the same time, they hate that the wizard Ministry has the audacity to think they are tamed. Dementors are not and never have been tame. It’s a dirty word for a dementor.

Ron’s happy that he found the boy shrouded in fear on the train, he’s not sure he could put up with the other children without him by his side. (He misses his colony, but now’s not the time to dwell on that pain.)

The half-giant that takes them to the big double doors leaves them with a woman with the eyes of a cat. Ron takes a deep breath in and grins at the few memories he manages to glimpse. She’s lived a long life with plenty of experiences. Those are Ron’s favorite souls to taste, though he’s never eaten one on his own before. His colony is really very overprotective.

He learns that there are ghosts in this wizard school, which makes him hum happily, a buzz starting up in his chest that sounds like hundreds of bees trying to get out. Harry hums back, though with a hint of danger as most boggarts do.

The sorting relies on a hat, a piece of cloth. Harry cocks his head and breathes in the fear that the redheaded boy spreads by mentioning the possibility of a troll. The ghosts, too, feed him more than the feast laid out on the Great Hall tables ever could.

Hermione, the dead witch, goes to Ravenclaw after a minute's debate with the Sorting Hat. Harry watches the students react and catalogues their reactions, the way they behave. He needs to know who will be his regular source of food and who will be a challenge that he will relish in taking.

(Scary lives in the chest they bought to keep his stuff in for this wizarding school. He likes it there, and if he gets to scare Harry’s housemates, well, that’s all the better for him.)

A few more students get Sorted, and then it’s Harry’s turn.

There’s an increase in noise when people hear the cat woman call his name, but he ignores them. He wishes they wouldn’t stare, don’t they know that they’re telling him their deepest, darkest fears by even looking in his direction? Their self-preservation needs some work.

The hat doesn’t even talk to him, no, the moment its folded fabric hits Harry’s mop of black hair, it shouts out its choice.

“SLYTHERIN!”

Harry keeps his face blank as he walks to the house of snakes. He likes snakes.

Ron joins him at the end of the alphabet, sitting down at the Slytherin table with a toothy grin, inhaling deeply as he does so. Harry feels cold creep up his arms. He inhales as Ron does to taste the fear in the air from their fellow snakes as parts of their souls drift into Ron’s open mouth.

It’s delicious. And the best part? They can’t even see the bits of soul that follow Ron everywhere he goes.

The Head of Slytherin House is a man that tastes very clearly of a lack of fear. Harry takes it as a challenge, especially when the man, Professor Snape, glares at Harry like he’s killed his child.

Ron glares right back in Harry’s stead while Harry keeps his face a chilling blank that Scary taught him when he was eight.

They retreat to their dorms with the other Slytherin first year boys. Harry’s eyes rarely leave the blonde one, Draco, dragon. Harry wishes the boy were a dragon, as he doesn’t much like wizards, but he likes this one even if he’s not a dragon.

Ron watches Theodore Nott the same way, like a thing to be followed, coveted, possessed.

On his first morning as a Slytherin, Ron wakes to a chilled, clammy hand tugging at his ear. He smiles, inhaling deeply to catch the hint of his new friend’s memories. Dementors don’t have eyes, so Ron learned to recognise wizards like they do, by tasting their souls.

“Very scary,” Ron hums, buzzes. He can taste Harry’s joy at the comment.

He watches through tired eyes as Harry does the same to the other first year boys, making them shriek and panic until they realize they’re not in real danger. Harry is good enough to not be there when they look for the culprit, and only Ron sees when Harry pulls the bedsheets off Draco Malfoy and his vassals, Crabbe and Goyle.

Ron grins. This might be fun, living here most of the year for the next seven years.

“Harry,” Ron calls, not flinching when spiders appear on the boy’s skin at his attention. He knows it’s because Harry finds him safe to be himself around. “We should go check on Hermione. Who knows what she’s gotten up to without us.”

The gremlin boggart grins, flicking out his tongue eerily like a snake, and rushes to get ready (with a helping of wandless, wordless magic. The other boys don’t notice. Wizards are thick.)

They find Hermione in the Great Hall for breakfast and ignore the other Slytherins to sit with her at the Ravenclaw table. She has her nose in a book, practically inhaling the words on each page. Her aura shifts when they sit on either side of her, but she does not make any other move to greet them.

Ron likes that about her. After all, why does she need to greet them? She’s dead. Her soul is transparent like the ghosts’ are, so why should she follow the social rules of the living? Harry seems to agree, as he pulls food onto his plate without comment.

They learn something is wrong with Professor Quirrell when they first step into his class. Ron chides himself for not realizing sooner.

Quirrell has two souls. Even more interesting, the second soul is small enough to have been split many times, something that dementors despise.

(Also, why is it Defense Against the Dark Arts? Harry and Hermione don’t understand, why would anyone want to defend against the dark arts? They are something to be treasured, coved, possessed. Ron just grins and runs his hands over his shadowy cloak, amused at these two who he has claimed as his colony so soon.)

That night, the night of their first DADA class, Ron flutters into the Forbidden Forest with Harry and Hermione on either side of him. He sends a pulse through the floor towards the nearest dementor tunnel. They’ll get his message in no time.

“How did you die?” Harry asks Hermione, his head cocked. Ron stifles a snort into his cloak. “And why don’t you feel any fear? You’re empty of it.”

Hermione smiles, but it doesn’t make her dead eyes any brighter.

They’re sitting on the floor of the Forbidden Forest together, waiting to hear back from Ron’s colony.

“I’m not dead,” she says, “not yet, at least. Regulus, the undead that raised me, says he’s never seen anything like me, but I’m definitely not dead. The goblins say I’m favored by the primordial being Death.”

Ron sucks in a breath at that. Dementors know Death well, they revere it. He’s done well picking his new colony from these two not-wizards.

“As for the fear part,” Hermione chews on her bottom lip, eyes going fuzzy as she thinks. Ron understands why she’s a Ravenclaw. “What do I have to fear? I’m basically dead, and anything that could hurt me would be easily defeated by my flock.”

“Flock?” Ron asks. He doesn’t know many creatures that go by that term. He has a guess, sure, but it’s just that, a guess.

“My Inferi,” she grins, teeth just a bit too sharp.

Harry and Ron return the grin, Harry’s teeth like snake fangs and a little blurry around the edges, Ron’s mouth a gaping maw that swallows up souls with little effort.

His dementors send word that they will take care of the matter, but that they will let Ron take the soul that doesn’t belong to Quirrell for finding it first. Ron is proud of himself, buzzing like a horde of moths under lamplight.

They schedule their invasion for Samhain, when the wards are the weakest against the dementors.

Harry notices that the old wizard with the long beard, the one surrounded by so much fear and self-assurance that it makes Harry salivate, watches him too often to be normal. Ron hates the way Dumbledore’s soul vibrates when he catches sight of Harry, like he’s expecting him to be something he’s not.

When Harry mentions the eyes he can feel on him constantly, Hermione grins a vicious grin and mutters, “We’ll take care of it.”

By “we” she means her Inferi and an excited Ron. Harry doesn’t know what they do, but he notices Dumbledore’s focus straying to things other than Harry more often after that. He suspects Ron took a bit of his soul.

Thinking about it, Harry thinks Ron must be hungry after so long in this castle without a proper soul meal.

“I’m fine, mate,” Ron smiles fondly when he brings it up. “The ghosts give me enough nutrients to sustain me until I get Quirrell’s little parasite. After that, I’ll let you know if I get even hungrier, I promise.”

Harry nods and takes him at his word. Dementors don’t see the point in lying, Harry’s learned, they have no use for it. Boggarts are the opposite. Most like to lie because it’ll lead to more fear to consume, but Harry likes being honest, finds that it provokes more fear from his peers in the castle.

Halloween, or Samhian to the wizards and Fear Day to the boggarts, approaches quickly. Harry waits with fangs poised for the day where his brother, because that’s what Ron is, can consume Quirrell’s extra soul. He cannot wait, he wants to see the process, see the soul leave Quirrell’s body. He knows Hermione feels the same, even if she doesn’t show it the same way alive people do. (She’s a little too still, a little too cold. Sometimes Harry doesn’t see her breathe, and he wonders if her heart beats when she gets like that.)

“Why did you choose this form?” Hermione asks as they lay by the Black Lake one Saturday when they’re supposed to be doing homework they’ve already completed. Ron is in the castle somewhere, most likely following Theodore Nott around with greedy eyes.

“I like snakes,” Harry shrugs, hands behind his head, looking up at the clouds above. “I can speak to them and understand them better than most humans. When Scary told me I could shift my appearance, this was the first thing I thought of. I never got around to changing it.”

“You don’t have to work to keep up the transformation?” There’s that look in her eyes, like she’ll do anything to learn more. Harry loves it.

“No, not really.” Harry runs his tongue along his fangs. “Think of it like presets, right? I choose a form, and that becomes my new form, my natural form. I can save certain forms to my memory so I can cycle through them more easily than other ones, but this one is the one I like the most.”

It’s true, he likes this form. It’s close enough to his original body that nobody can tell the difference except those who look very closely. Teeth a little too sharp, eyes a little too green, tongue a little too long and just a bit forked. He still has his scar, he can’t get rid of it that easily. Scary says there’s something in it, and Ron agrees even if he can’t get it out any time soon.

“It’s a soul piece,” Ron said with wide eyes, looking fascinated. “I want it.”

Harry grinned and gave him permission, wanting nothing more than to feed his brother in some way, but Ron said he couldn’t take it just yet. He’ll need his colony’s guidance to do it without harming Harry.

So Harry’s left waiting for Samhain.

In the meantime, he stalks Draco with layers of shadow wrapped around his skin. His magic, the kind that Scary taught him to harness when he was little, wants to shift into a tall, blonde man that must be Draco’s father. Harry, who usually relishes in the fear of others, hates that Draco’s biggest fear is his father. Instead, he makes his skin gaunt and sallow, pale enough that he looks dead. It makes Draco jump and swallow hard everytime he sees Harry, which makes him hiss in excitement.

His courting of Draco Malfoy is going well.

“He doesn’t know you’re courting him,” Hermione tells him after watching him eye Draco like she eyes an ancient grimoire. “Wizards don’t know much about boggart culture, they don’t know that fear is a part of the process.”

Harry blanks, heart sinking in his stomach.

“Then how do I get him to know?”

Hermione grins, a different grin to her vicious one for knowledge, this one the one that makes her just as much a Slytherin as a Ravenclaw.

“Leave that to me.”

Harry loves his new sister. The day after their conversation, Harry sees Draco reading a clearly handwritten notebook titled, Boggarts: Fear In Droves. He can tell by the scent that Hermione wrote it all out last night.

He gives her a dead rat he finds in thanks. She grins her vicious grin and shoves it into the ground for her Inferi to keep safe.

“They deserve a pet,” she says with a mechanical shrug.

(The rat was Ron’s pet rat called Scabbers. Ron knew he wasn’t just a rat since he met his dementors, he can sense the human soul in the small animal, he just never got around to taking it. But now he’s in Hogwarts, Ron got bored of the rat. He took the soul and left it on Harry’s bed.)

Harry’s pretty sure that Draco is coming around to the idea that Harry might not be all the way human. He can see it in the way he considers Harry when he has his back turned.

He catches Draco reading a book from the library on magical creatures, and he smiles softly to himself. He’s eleven, sure, and just a kid by both human and boggart standards, but it’s nice to set things up early.

Finally, finally, Samhain comes, and Harry gets to see Ron in action. Scary is jealous he can't witness it, but he'll be busy haunting the kids that pass by his chosen classroom on the first floor. He's always wanted to see a dementor in action; Harry promises he'll get to see it another day.

Ron and his colony, dementors and his not-wizards, corner Quirrell after the feast. His dementors made quick work of the troll the man let loose, so it didn’t get the chance to hurt anyone.

As far as he knows, Dumbledore doesn’t even know there are dementors in his castle.

Quirrell is in his office, pacing when Ron gets there, his colony at his side. There are at least five dementors with him, though there might be more hidden throughout the castle, watching over the children. The five at his side bracket Harry and Hermione so Quirrell can’t hurt them if he panics.

Bodies have been known to panic when their souls are ripped from their chests.

He can taste the parasitic soul in the air as his mouth drops open, practically salivating. Quirrell is just noticing he has visitors, looking up from his agitated pacing. He doesn’t even have time to put on his fake stutter before Ron is pulling, sucking, consuming.

He’ll drop the soul off in Hm Zphs over winter break, but for now he savors the feeling of eating something other than ghost souls, flimsy as they are.

The dementors at his back make sure he doesn’t go overboard and take Quirrell’s soul as well as the parasitic one, cold hands lacking flesh resting on his shoulder over his shadowy cloak. If he focuses, he can taste Harry’s awe and Hermione’s curiosity at his back, which makes him grin as he sucks up the last of the soul.

It’s smaller than it should be, and one of his dementors hums at his back, conveying a message through the buzzing that Ron has become fluent at over the years.

“He has split his soul at least six times,” the dementor buzzes like bees. “Six parts along with the whole which you have consumed. I will send word to look out for soul pieces after we are done here.”

Ron nods, watching with cold interest as Quirrell collapses in a heap on the floor near his desk.

“I will eat this one,” one of his dementors conveys. “He will give us knowledge.”

Dementors don't have the same kind of hive mind that Hermione's Inferi have, but what they do have is close enough. A shared experience, a collection of memories and souls that everyone has access to. Ron thinks he's lucky to be a part of that, since they let him into the colony when he was a kid.

Ron hums back his agreement. He’s not the boss of his dementors, of course not, but he is one of their young, and they take that more seriously than wizards do. They’re the reason Ron never succumbed to jealousy as a child, though they foster every emotion of his with careful attendance and provided memories.

“Jealousy is important,” his guide told him once when he had learned enough of their language to get by. “As is every emotion. They all provide nutrients, and they all make up a healthy soul. Do not let those wizards tell you to abandon your anger or hatred, those emotions that they find distasteful. They are the ones who butcher their souls, they can give no advice to our kind.”

Ron watches dispassionately as his dementor sucks the soul out of Professor Quirrell.

“Serves him right,” Hermione says, voice completely monotone. “That’s what should happen to every professor who doesn’t teach correctly.”

He can’t help but grin while Harry giggles.

When they’re done with Quirrell and decide to leave his body in his office for someone else to find in the morning, Ron leads his colony into the dungeons. There’s a room at the lowest level that will fit their needs perfectly.

Ron sits Harry down in a comfy chair he dragged here just for this purpose, then goes to stand next to Hermione to watch his dementors scan Harry closely.

“There is a soul in his scar,” the creature confirms Ron’s suspicions. “You did well in seeing this, young cloak.”

Ron preens with pride. Hermione and Harry snicker, though they can’t understand the buzzing all that well.

“Can I take it out?” he asks in human words so the others can hear.

The dementor hums and buzzes in thought.

“Yes. We will be with you every step of the way. We will untangle the magic around the soul for easy removal. You will feast tonight, young cloak. It is a cause for celebration when one so young consumes those he’s identified.”

The buzzing in Ron’s chest increases in intensity. He licks his lips and focuses intently on Harry’s scar which seems to pulse in response to his seeking magic.

“I’m gonna take it out, Harry,” he says, stepping forward so he’s right in front of his little brother. “My colony is gonna help me, so you’re in no danger. Do you need anything before we start?”

Harry looks to consider that for a moment before shaking his head. “No, I’m good. Will this mean I’ll be able to shift without the scar after it’s gone?”

“Hopefully,” Ron grins.

Harry grins back, fangs leaking a bit of venom as he does so. Ron didn’t know they could do that. He loves his new little brother.

“Then let’s get on with it.”

Taking the soul piece in Harry’s scar is harder than the parasite was. The parasite was barely hanging on, but the one in the scar has been there for what looks to be ten years now. That makes Ron pause a moment as he swallows memories that aren’t his.

The soul piece is a part of the parasite, they taste the same.

And there’s only one person who this soul could be.

Ron feels himself frown as he swallows another mouthful of soul. Voldemort, that’s who this has to be. That means there are five more pieces that need to be collected for the main soul piece to pass on to Death’s realm.

He swallows the last of the soul piece with a determined grin. He’s sure his eyes are manic with the oath he’s just sworn himself, but he doesn’t care. The twins would share a look if they saw him like this, while Percy would back away slowly. Ron’s more predator than prey at the moment, and he loves it.

Harry grins back at him, those too-green eyes sparking with mischief fitting of a boggart, and Ron turns just a bit so he can see Hermione’s dead eyes too. She looks interested, a little too interested, and it reflects in her shimmering soul, tinting it black.

“We’re going to hunt down the rest of Voldemort’s soul,” he declares with no room for argument.

Harry and Hermione share a look, slick smiles blooming on their faces. They nod as one.

“Yes, we are.”

The dementors at Ron’s back buzz with pride at the colony he’s made for himself. He nudges the one closest to him with his shoulder, a buzz starting up in his own chest.

And in the meantime, he can start wooing Theodore Nott properly.

Hermione Granger is twelve years old when Voldemort’s soul is finally united in death. She watches on in idle curiosity as Ron consumes the soul in the diary that Draco brought to them. She thinks the diary is a courting offering for Harry, and she approves.

They found the locket through Regulus’ memories, then the cup from the goblins. Her Inferi found the ring in Little Hangleton after a few months of searching.

The last soul piece is housed in a crown in Hogwarts. This is the one they got rid of first after the one in Harry’s scar, as Ron’s dementors found it while searching the castle for anything interesting.

It’s late April when Ron consumes the diary’s soul shard. Draco sticks around to watch it happen, and Hermione observes him eagerly for any signs of sickness. She wants to see what happens when a regular human is around a dementor eating a soul, and it looks like it’s just the normal signs of dementor exposure: pale skin, shivers from the cold, a little bit of fear at the rasping sounds coming from Ron’s chest that Hermione doesn’t think he even knows he makes.

Harry watches Draco with adoring eyes, though a little obsessive. Hermione’s not one to judge, that’s how she looks at her books and her Inferi. (She’s starting to look at a certain Slytherin girl that way, a brunette by the name of Pansy Parkinson. Hermione really likes her ruthless fervor.)

She pets the rat that Harry gave her a few months ago, brought back to “life” by Regulus’ knowledge and her magic. He used to be human, the rat, but Hermione likes him how he is now, matted, bloodied fur and broken little bones.

She doesn’t know how Inferi court, she doesn’t think they’ve ever had reason to, but her new brothers are starting their courting processes, and she feels a little left out.

Ron has been whispering secrets he gets from breathing in others’ memories directly to Theodore Nott every time he sees him, appealing to the boy’s need for connections and knowledge. He could have been a Ravenclaw if he weren’t so ruthless. Hermione appreciates that about him.

Theodore Nott likes Old Norse magic to an extreme degree. He carves runes into every object he owns, which was the first thing about him that drew Hermione’s eye. The next was his obsession with knives. Ron crafts a blade from old, ancient souls and gifts it to him for wizard Yule. (Hermione’s jealous. She wants a weapon forged from souls, but she understands that they’re mainly used as courting presents.)

When Nott turns twelve, Hermione watches him carve a rune for power into his own shoulder in the Forbidden Forest. She hums from her position in the trees, her little rat in her arms, and watches Nott’s magic flare with unprecedented power.

Yes, he’ll be a good mate for her brother, just as Draco will be good for Harry.

The next day, she gifts him the rat. She can make another for Regulus to take care of while she’s at school. Nott looks at her with dead eyes, so similar to hers yet so different, as he accepts the mess of blood and fur.

“Thank you,” he murmurs quietly. His expression doesn’t change from its normal blank apathy.

Hermione nods and gets on with her day.

She has a meeting with Scary to get to, then time in the library. She and Scary are writing the true history of boggarts, and she wants to get everything right. It helps that Scary is enamored with her and her lack of fear. He's invited her to the next boggart meet-up, where hopefully she'll get to interview other boggarts about their lives, histories, families, magic, and everything else. But for now, she checks her schedule for the day and heads to the Slytherin dorms to meet up with Scary.

It’s almost exam time, after all, and she has a lot of studying she needs to do. She might get some cursed books and see if Pansy wants them if she has the time. Regulus’ memories say that gifts are the place to start in courting a witch, though Reg didn’t have a lot of experience with witches before he died, so she’s not sure he’s the best source.

And, as for Dumbledore, if he gets any more interested in Harry, she, Scary, and Ron will have to take care of him. She’ll do so with a smile on her face. (Maybe she’ll even reanimate his body after Ron takes his soul, just because she can.)

Chapter Text

As soon as Ron consumes the last soul piece, the Dark Marks fade on every Death Eater across the globe. By the end of first year, three quarters of Azkaban’s Death Eater population are dead. Hermione, sadly, has nothing to do with their deaths besides helping to kill Voldemort (who, if the diary is to be believed, was born Tom Riddle, a Slytherin half-blood.)

Second year passes quickly, though Hermione plots Lockhart’s demise the entire time. There were a few notable things that happen, but not many.

Since the true defeat of Voldemort, Professor Snape has mellowed out significantly. He still has his weird hatred for Harry, of course, but that dims down to a low hum after the Dark Mark disappears. Harry says that the man’s worst fear is Harry’s mother, Lily Evans, which leads Hermione into a research binge to better understand why the man hates Harry so much. It’s all in the eyes, the vivid, green, emerald eyes the color of the Killing Curse. Lily's eyes, and James' looks.

On Halloween, the trio are invited to Nearly Headless Nick’s Deathday party. The ghosts of the castle shy away from Ron, rightfully so, but converge around Hermione like flies to honey. The Bloody Baron in particular seems to revere her, almost worshiping her.

“I’m two Hallows away from being the Master of Death,” she tells her brothers when they ask why the ghosts act so peculiarly around her. “It’s natural that creatures of Death would see me as an extension of Him.”

On Christmas, Harry is gifted an invisibility cloak by the Headmaster, though he doesn’t know they know who sent it. The man’s scent is very strong, the boys recognize it instantly. Harry has no use for it since boggarts are naturally made of shadows. He’s a boggart even if he was born a human, so he gives Hermione the cloak. Ron has his dementor cloak anyway. They serve roughly the same purpose with the right intent.

When Hermione touches the shimmering material of the invisibility cloak, she feels something snap into place in her soul. She grins. It feels like death.

She now has two of the Deathly Hallows, and her soul feels more complete than it has since she got lost that fateful day when she was five years old. She knows where the third Hallow is, of course, but she doubts she could steal Dumbledore’s wand without incurring some amount of public suspicion. She'll wait until the old man kicks the bucket, sure that it won't be that far from now.

There’s a blonde girl who catches all three of their attention, one Luna Lovegood. Hermione is absolutely infatuated with the way she sees the world, to the point that Pansy has been trying to kill the blonde in less-than-subtle ways since second year started. Luna says she doesn’t mind, that Inferi don’t have a known courting method and that they’re finding it out as they go. It is an interesting concept, that the Inferius courting method is to make their beloveds jealous to the point of anger. Hermione starts a journal on the subject, same as she's done for her brothers' species.

Hermione isn’t interested in Luna like that, but she likes the way Pansy turns red with sheer rage. It excites her to see the girl she’s courting lose control so easily when she is normally so unfazed by everything. She likes to see that pureblood mask drop and give way to extreme emotion.

Other than that, Hermione studies for exams and reads for pleasure. Her hunger for knowledge doesn’t abate, and she doesn’t stop reading obsessively. Regulus talks to her when she’s not reading, and sometimes when she is reading. He likes to make notes on her current subject, saving them in the hive mind to be accessed later.

Hermione thinks that Regulus misses having a working, living body. She lets him commentate over her life like a messed up monologue with resigned amusement.

Dumbledore continues to watch Harry with a light in his eyes that makes Ron and Hermione want to cross a boundary they wouldn’t be able to come back from. Sure, Ron’s killed before to eat, and Hermione’s brought the dead back to life with her Dark Magic, but killing the leader of the Light? They wouldn’t get away with that that easily.

Third year starts.

Hermione has a new library to make her way through. Nott Sr., horrible man that he is, rarely spends time at the Nott Manor while Theo is at Hogwarts. He spends most of his time at various bars or meeting with other Death Eaters. This leaves his very prestigious library free for Hermione to copy books and then read them in droves. All with Theodore's permission, of course.

Her Ravenclaw roommates eye her piles and piles of books in awe and a bit of envy. No one comments on the dark nature of most of the books, though she hides the truly dark ones in her trunk. Dumbledore is still around, after all.

She watches Harry stew in a whole new year of fear, watches him eye the first years with hunger. Ron does the same, though he’s a lot more subtle about it.

There is one thing that might put a damper on literally anyone else’s lives, though not Hermione and her brothers'.

Sirius Black has escaped Azkaban.

He was one of the few Death Eaters who survived the culling after Voldemort’s final death, which Hermione would congratulate him on if not for the rumors he’s coming after her littlest brother. As it is now, she doesn’t care much about him as long as he leaves the three of them alone. She doesn't have the motivation to hunt the man down like a prey animal right now, she has a library to read.

She creates more Inferi, just in case, and stations them around the Forbidden Forest. There are magical pets that she collected from various graveyards and muggle animals she got from her local zoo after an illness swept the population.

She has yet to create more human Inferi from living beings. She doesn’t want to go through the act of infusing a living body with Death Magic, not until she at least turns fifteen, so she sticks to already dead bodies for now. (She can’t quite bring herself to kill the stray cat that’s been staying in her cave, which means he can live another day. Regulus likes the little idiot.)

The first night of third year, she throws on the invisibility cloak and sneaks into the forest. It’s easy to call her flock through the ground and pull them into the Forbidden Forest. She positions them all around the ward line. The hounds she summons are the best at finding people, so they take the pivotal spots.

Regulus insists that she take an undead cat with her when she returns to the castle. His name is Crookshanks, and he’s a kneazle Inferius. Hermione loves him.

The next morning at breakfast, she catches Harry and Ron’s eyes and nods. She knows that the new first years are eyeing her at the sight of her cold, dead eyes and her stiff posture, but she got used to that with last year’s batch. It amuses her more than anything, and she knows it provides Harry with more fear to feed off of, so it's worth the isolation.

Harry grins with pointed teeth, and Ron inhales slowly, tasting the memories of the Slytherins around him. The other snakes pale subconsciously, goosebumps pricking their skin.

Her brothers are settling back in well, and so is she. Her expandable bag is full to the brim with her new reading list.

The first week of class goes by in a blur for Hermione. She pays attention when she needs to, but she spends most of her time reading the books from Theodore’s family library. None of her teachers get on her for not paying attention, not when she can perform all of the spells wordlessly and wandlessly.

(That was a fun day. Professor Flitwick squeaked and fell off his chair. Professor McGonagall watched her with almost greedy eyes, though not the same type of hunger as Hermione gets when she sees a new book to read. Hermione likes Professor McGonagall a fair amount.)

She’s long stopped downplaying her skills for the benefit of others or to blend in.

Of course, she still has to hide the undead status of her pets, but that’s a given. Necromancy is illegal in wizarding Britain. She doesn’t see that changing any time soon. So she grooms Crookshanks’ matted, bloody fur and sets his broken bones. This specific kneazle was hit by a car on his way to his owner’s house, which is where Hermione found him. It’s imperative that nobody firmly in the Light sect realizes what exactly Hermione has been leading around through the castle and calling her familiar.

Theodore kept the rat she reanimated, he isn’t seen without it, but Hermione isn’t worried about that. Nott is experienced in covering up Dark Magic.

Hermione tends to keep away from other students, which fits her needs just fine, but it leaves a vacuum in her awareness of those around her. That’s where Ron comes in. The dementor is skilled at extracting information from the memories of the people around him that he breathes in with every breath. She learns a lot from her brothers.

This year, Percy has made Prefect. There’s a new Firebolt broomstick for sale, which her brothers are going crazy over. The new DADA professor is a werewolf named Remus Lupin, which is, wow, very original. Hagrid is the new Care of Magical Creatures professor. And apparently the Ministry still thinks they have the dementors firmly under their thumbs. Ron is livid.

In the first week of class, Hagrid introduces the class to hippogriffs, mainly one called Buckbeak. They’re proud creatures, Hermione has read, and she approaches them slowly when no one else volunteers. Her boys watch her with matching grins. Buckbeak bows back when approached. Hermione takes note of the other hippogriffs shifting on their feet as she gets closer, sees their wings fluff and shuffle until their feathers are flared. She steps back with a bow, and Hagrid lets the other students take their turns. Turns out Hippogriffs don't particularly prefer Death Magic.

Draco gets very close to offending Buckbeak, but he’s learned a lot from Harry on creature culture, and he bites his tongue when he feels the air shift with something dark. Hermione grins. He’s learning.

The second week of class, Professor Lupin brings each DADA class to the staff room to face their first practical lesson. Hermione watches with a grin as her classmates go up against a young boggart.

She heard about Ron and Harry’s encounters with this particular boggart, how Lupin didn’t manage to jump in between Harry and the creature quick enough.

Ron’s boggart was a giant spider, but he calmly said the counterspell without hesitation. He’s been seeing spiders crawling on Harry’s skin since they met, he’s used to it by now. Besides, dementors are good at pushing down unwieldy emotions while still acknowledging them and feeling them.

Harry’s worst fear didn’t exist. The boggard shifted so many times trying to find something that the class got dizzy. Lupin had to cast the spell when Harry did nothing, just smiled at the boggart.

(She learned that this particular boggart has been given the name Fright by Harry. Harry definitely went back after their lesson to meet the creature and share scare stories. Fright was very happy to meet another of its kind, as it’s only a kid in boggart terms and hasn’t even gone to its first boggart convention yet.)

When it’s Hermione’s turn facing Fright, Lupin looks almost relaxed. He’s looked tense since they started, probably because of Harry’s confrontation with the boggart he was supposed to fear. She grins with too many teeth and dead eyes when Fright can’t seem to pick a form in front of her.

“Hello there,” she murmurs, watching as the boggart shifts and shifts. “You met my friend Harry, didn’t you?”

That’s the extent of their interaction, as Lupin steps in between the two and casts the spell with a harried expression. Hermione sighs and shrugs in her own stilted way. (Ron’s told her it looks mechanical, like she’s a puppet being moved without her control. She loves that description.)

Lupin’s face makes it worth it.

“He was friends with your parents and Sirius Black,” Ron says as they’re all huddled together one night. “He… cares for you, but he’s so far into self-hatred that he thinks he shouldn’t get you involved in his life.”

“That’s stupid.” Harry snorts. “Is it just because he’s a werewolf?”

Ron bites his lip, considering, “Yeah, from what I can tell. He also feels guilty for not claiming you in the first place, but it’s too late to change the past so he’s just stuck in a cycle of guilt and self-hatred.”

Hermione sighs. She doesn’t understand people, especially people so firmly in the Light. She suspects she’ll never understand them fully.

“How do we fix that?” Hermione asks. Then, turning to study Harry’s face, “Do we want to fix that? It’s up to you, he’s your family.”

Harry hesitates for a moment. His skin flickers with shades of shadow, body losing form as he reverts back to his boggart state that he’s just gotten access to over the last few years. Hermione studies it with hungry eyes. One of these days she'll get him to sit down and let her study his biology, but today is not that day.

“We’ll fix it,” Harry decides at last. “We’ll fix him. ”

Hermione and Ron share a look, nodding. Then that’s what they’ll do.

If Hermione stays after DADA a few days a week to ask Professor Lupin questions that she already knows the answers to, that’s nobody's business. If Ron asks the man to teach him the Patronus Charm with a grin on his face and darkness in his eyes, well, Lupin doesn’t need to know the real reasons. (Ron detests that charm, he knows what it can do to a dementor, but he thinks he can build up a tolerance to it if he tries.) If Harry starts coming to Lupin with idle comments about his day, or talks to the man when he doesn’t have to, Hermione doesn’t think anyone notices. She watches as Professor Lupin’s self-confidence grows each day until he looks younger than he has probably in years.

Werewolves, she has learned, change with their mental states. When Lupin is downtrodden and full of hatred for what he is, his scars get more prominent, his eyes get duller. When he is happy, his transformations go so much better. He transforms in the Shrieking Shack, she knows, and she and her brothers watch him from afar to track the improvements of his spirit. Ron says that Lupin’s soul tastes way better than it has since the year started.

In October, Hermione hears from Ron that Lavender Brown’s rabbit died. She hums and cocks her head, but Ron gives her a look that tells her not to act on her first impulse.

“Binky doesn’t need to be reanimated,” Ron says with a fond smile. “If you did wake her up, Lavender would recognise her and report you instantly.”

Hermione huffs, “Good point.”

She doesn’t reanimate the dead bunny, but it’s a close thing.

Throughout October, Hermione’s scouts inform her of a dirty mutt that’s living in the Shrieking Shack. The mutt smells like a wizard, they tell her through the hive mind. Hermione knows that this must be Sirius Black, but she does not do anything about this information.

It’s curious that he hasn’t yet attacked, especially if he’s going after Harry with such viciousness that he broke out of Azkaban, the most fortified wizarding prison. (Ron disagrees.)

It comes to a head on Halloween, as it always seems to do. Black tries to sneak into Hogwarts and hurt a Slytherin, and he almost manages it too.

Most of the Slytherins are in the dungeons, participating in a Samhain ritual. Harry and Ron have joined, since they have a closer connection to death than anyone besides Hermione. Hermione is there solely for the opportunity to gain knowledge. She doesn’t participate in the ritual, she doesn’t know what her particular brand of Death Magic would do to it.

Her flock alerts her to the mutt that’s on the move before he can get close to the castle. She lets him in and watches him with curious eyes through the mind of her undead hounds. Regulus pulls himself out of the ground to guard the tunnel that leads to the ritual room the Slytherins are using.

Sirius gets into the dungeons. He seems to know where he’s going, which means at least he won’t try to hurt anyone besides his intended target.

Then Black tries to attack Theodore Nott, which is a big mistake for many reasons. One, Ron is a young dementor with a lack of control over his abilities when it comes to someone threatening his colony. Two, Theodore is a Nott.

Theo has the human-shaped Black on the ground with a knife to his throat before Ron can move to protect his intended mate.

Hermione grins.

The other Slytherins whisper and back away, maintaining a safe distance from the situation. Black is lucky the ritual has just ended, or he would have more than just a knife to his throat. Messing with a Samhain ritual is deadly to those unaware.

Draco creeps up behind Harry, pale eyes fixed on who should be considered his cousin.

“Sirius Black,” Harry says, bypassing Ron’s worried look easily. He takes a step closer to the perplexed mutt, and Hermione watches his skin shift as he picks up the man’s deepest fears.

“You can let him go Theo,” Ron says, gritting his teeth. He takes a deep inhale and relaxes slightly as he scans Black’s memories. “He’s not the one who betrayed the Potters, and he doesn’t want to kill either you or Harry. He’s here for the dead rat.”

Hermione is once again impressed with all that Ron can get from a single breath of soul wisps, but she doesn’t show it.

“Interesting,” she says instead, head tilting. “Was the rat the real traitor? We knew it was human before it died.”

Ron nods, looking intently at Black while breathing slowly in and out.

“Dead?” the man rasps. He looks horrible, truly, but Hermione feels no sympathy as she watches him. “Peter’s dead?”

“Yes,” Ron says. “I killed the real traitor when I got bored of carrying around his Animagus form all day. He’s been dead for years.”

“Is that why you broke out of Azkaban?” Harry asks, eyes alight with mischief. “To kill the rat? How’d you know Theo had him?”

“The Prophet,” Black croaks. He stiffly pushes himself up to a sitting position, wary eyes fixed on the blade Theodore still holds. “They ran a picture of Nott and his little pet when they did a piece on Hogwarts’ improved grade average. The Minister left a copy of it in my cell to mock me.”

“And you never got a trial,” Ron concludes, “so he didn’t know you were innocent.”

Draco clears his throat, valiantly not flinching as all eyes turn to him.

“We need to call my mother,” he says. When Black narrows slightly-mad eyes his way, he shrugs. “She’s a Black, all that she became a Malfoy. She would get Black the best lawyers and get him a proper trial. Father won’t be too happy, but Mum would just be acting on her House duties.”

Hermione nods slowly. “Yes, we will send an owl to Narcissa then contact a reliable source in the Ministry.”

“There is no one reliable in the Ministry,” Theo scowls. Black looks reluctant to agree with the Nott heir, but he tilts his head like he agrees nonetheless.

“Amelia Bones,” Ron grins.

That’s how it starts.

Harry proposes that they go to Lupin after sending out their first volley of owls. The werewolf doesn’t take it well, but Ron and Sirius manage to convince him that Black is actually innocent. Theo presents the dead rat as proof, though Hermione thinks they should be more careful about who they reveal her abilities to. Not many wizards take Death Magic lightly.

They decide to leave out the rat in their statements to the Ministry. Sirius agrees after some prompting from Harry. When Madame Bones answers their owl the next day, they’re all in agreement. Peter Pettigrew used to hide as the Weasley rat before he heard about Sirius’ escape and decided to flee Hogwarts while he could. Black saw an old picture of the rat on Percy’s shoulder in one of the newspapers the Minister left him years ago but didn't notice until now.

Remus shoots Hermione odd looks throughout the whole ordeal, but he says nothing about her use of the Dark Arts. Same with Sirius Black, though he’s clearly more used to it coming from a Dark House.

(Hermione ignores Regulus’ thoughts and memories that start to swarm the hive mind when she looks at Sirius. Now is not the time.)

Amelia Bones is a stern woman. Hermione admires her skill and stubbornness. She takes each of their statements, starting with Lupin and Black, then the Slytherin heirs that were present at the time of the confrontation. She does not react when they mention the Samhain ritual. She clearly knows that the act is not quite illegal, even if Dumbledore and his followers have tried so hard to make it so.

All in all, the whole affair only takes a week to resolve.

Harry, Hermione, Theo, and Draco give their memories to the Ministry for Black’s upcoming trial. Narcissa Malfoy, a woman that Hermione admires maybe just a bit too much, arranges for everything with a forceful yet subtle hand. The Ministry and the public are puppets in her grasp.

When the Minister hears word of Sirius Black turning himself in once the week is up, he appears in a rage, face red and blustering profusely. The dementors he has called to his side do not Kiss Black as he asks, no matter how much he begs. Ron grins, his mouth an open, gaping void.

“Wizards don’t see it yet,” he mutters to Harry and Hermione, “but their reign over my kind is close to coming to an end.”

They return his grin with dead eyes and pointed fangs.

Lupin still says nothing about Hermione’s use of Death Magic. She wonders how long that will last. She also wonders why a Dark Creature such as himself has such a bad view of Dark Magic but chalks that up to his time with Dumbledore and being forcefully bitten as a child.

Time passes without much consideration.

The three of them continue courting their intended mates. Draco starts returning the favor by bringing people to Harry for him to eat their fear. He doesn’t even flinch when Harry shifts form. Harry’s gotten a lot more practice in shifting forms recently, mainly thanks to Draco finding other students and adults that agree through threats to face a human boggart. Hermione makes them take an Oath of Secrecy, even if Harry doesn’t care who knows what he is.

It’s winter break when Dumbledore calls Harry up to his office. The three share a look. All of them had decided to stay for the break to watch over Harry until Black can be declared fit enough to be his guardian, and they’re glad they did now. Scary is a good guardian, but they can't let the Ministry know that Harry is technically homeless.

Ron dons his dementor cloak with a grim look in his eyes. Hermione wraps Death’s invisibility cloak around her frame, her flock buzzing with possibilities inside her mind.

Every time Dumbledore calls Harry ‘my boy’ or by his first name with such familiarity that he doesn’t have the right to, Hermione has to remind herself to rein in her wild magic. She could make the old man drop dead right here, right now, but that would be too risky. They might need him in the next few years. Hermione can feel Ron’s frost brush over the Headmaster’s office the longer the old man talks. She grins as Dumbledore shivers, eyes casting around to search for something that isn’t there.

Apparently, the reason the old man called Harry up to a meeting is to “check in” and see how he’s taking the news of Sirius Black’s innocence, like Harry should be fearful about having an actual guardian who won’t beat him and starve him. Hermione sees Harry tense, sees him work hard to contain the instinct to shift forms and scare Dumbledore away with his own worst fear.

“You did well,” Hermione says once Harry is out of Dumbledore’s clutches. “You were strong. He won’t expect what I have planned for him now.”

Harry cracks his joints, letting his skin twitch and shudder as it shifts into a comfortable form. He sighs and gives a tired smile to his new siblings. He looks exhausted, all from talking to the idiot Headmaster and suppressing his natural urges, and Hermione wants to help him but doesn’t know how.

“Thanks, ‘Mione,” he says, leaning into her shoulder. He does not shy away from her cold, damp skin.

Ron throws an arm around Harry’s shoulder, a hard set to his eyes.

“We’ll take care of you, Harry, we swear.” He meets Hermione’s eyes. “We’ll have to change out plans for the Headmaster if he continues on like this.”

She nods her agreement. They’ll always take care of each other, no matter what.

These two boys have become her flock whether she likes it or not.

A month after winter break, Professor Lupin tries to teach a few of the older years the Patronus Charm. Hermione shuts that down as soon as she can with a few well-placed threats. Harry shakes his head at her and pulls Remus aside to talk about the issue like sensible beings. Hermione grins. She wants the werewolf to bond with Harry, even if she has to place some threats that are considered uncharacteristic of her. Regulus sounds resigned in their joined minds.

They get news on Black’s trial not long after. The man has been declared innocent by the opinion of the Wizengamot. The evidence was overwhelming, the papers say, and there was no doubt in anyone’s minds that Black was illegally incarcerated. The public isn’t too happy about that.

There are riots and protests in the Ministry building, all wondering the same thing: if this could happen to a Black, how many others are imprisoned without trials?

Hermione loves it. The chaos gives her more time and energy to make her way through the rest of the Nott library of books.

She reads all about Soul Magic and Death Magic. The Notts have the best books and grimoires on the Darkest Arts, and she shamelessly takes advantage of this. Regulus and the hive mind already know most of what she reads, but there are a few bits that she’s learning for the first time. Pansy sits with her in the library when she disappears into a research binge on the theory of Alchemy after reading something about the relationship between the subject and Death Magic.

Hermione likes Pansy, especially the way the girl looks at her when she thinks she’s not looking.

“Are you a ghost?” the girl asks one day while they sit together in a secluded corner of the library. “Your skin is cold, your eyes are dull, and you don’t move like living people do. Even Potter and Weasley, who clearly are not human, move in a natural way that you lack.”

Hermione grins, the smile stretching eerily across her face. The younger years run when they see her like this, but Pansy only smiles, her Slytherin mask dropping to let emotion show through.

“In a way.”

That’s all she gives away, and Pansy accepts it with a resigned sigh and a nod. She’ll wait, she tells Hermione, she’ll wait until she is ready to tell her. Hermione appreciates that more than she can convey.

She gives Pansy one of her newest creations the next week for Valentine's Day, also known to the purebloods as Lupercalia.

It’s an undead snake, one that Hermione found in the Forbidden Forest a few days before. It has green, shiny scales that glitter in the sunlight and dull, dead eyes that peer around with curiosity. It’s newly dead, so there’s not much blood or rotting smells, but Pansy goes still when she sees it all the same.

They’re in an abandoned classroom, far from all the other students. Hermione puts up the privacy wards herself, so Pansy doesn’t feel the need to quiet herself when she asks her next question filled with breathy awe.

“Are you a Necromancer, Hermione?”

“In a way,” Hermione says again, much to Pansy’s frustration. 

It’s times like this that she sees the past Pansy come through, arrogant and hateful. Hermione’s unnatural smile widens at the sight of it.

“Hermione Granger,” Pansy almost snarls.

She chuckles, gives in.

“Yes,” she says. “I am technically a Necromancer, though I didn’t know I was until I was introduced to magic at age five. It’s a funny story, actually, involving a cave full of Inferi and a little girl who cared more about knowledge than her own parents.”

Hermione watches Pansy’s face carefully as she says this, looking for any discomfort or signs that she’s said too much.

“Okay,” Pansy says, nods sharply. “Okay.”

She looks down at the writhing snake in her hands.

“Is this mine now?” There’s a spark in the girl’s eyes that makes Hermione hum with joy. “Are they my snake, my familiar? Can an undead animal be a familiar?”

“Yes,” she says in answer to it all. “She does not yet have a name, but she’s looking forward to living with you. She says she’ll bond to you when you want to do the ritual. She’s a little eager, if you can’t tell.”

Pansy smiles softly down at the creature, catching dull eyes with her own.

“I will call her Ketos after the famous Greek serpent.”

Hermione grins.

Time passes quickly while Hermione spends all her time reading and learning. There are Quidditch games she misses that Harry and Ron participate in, but she has their permission to stay in the library and not show up at the pitch.

Sirius Black is a permanent resident of the best Mind Healer Hospital in the world in recompense for his illegal incarceration in Azkaban. The riots and protests die down as Minister Fudge simpers and makes promises he’ll never fulfill to the public. Hermione makes note of everything in the hive mind so she can look back on it later.

When Pansy turns thirteen, she officially asks Hermione to be her Intended. Honestly, her father doesn’t care what Pansy does with her life as long as she becomes influential while she does it.

Hermione accepts the proposal. Ron and Harry look jealous when she holds it over their heads. Only some of them are thirteen, the proper age to declare an official courting.

One day in June, Harry gets an owl from his godfather.

By now, Professor Lupin has taken Harry under his wing, even with Harry being a boggart. It doesn’t seem to bother the werewolf now that they’ve brought him out of his shell and helped him accept his wolf and inherent Darkness, but Hermione would have expected just a little bit of trepidation at Harry being a being that relies on other people’s worst fears. To her surprise, there is none. In fact, there’s more hesitation about Draco's heritage than Harry’s creature status.

Sirius wants to meet, Harry tells them. He’s progressed from his Azkaban-induced insanity, and he wants to meet his godson properly.

Ron and Hermione go with him to visit the hospital, of course, they’d never let their little brother go alone. Lupin, ‘call me Remus when we’re not in class’, comes too, and Hermione watches the man almost collapse in relief when Sirius greets them all with a wide smile and open arms. The man looks healthy, his black hair shining in the light and his eyes clear of any madness.

He’ll be a good guardian for Harry, as long as he accepts Scary, but Harry’s saving that little surprise for another day.

It’s only at the end of the visit that a thought occurs to Hermione. With Sirius Black as Lord Black and Harry as Heir Black, Hermione might be allowed to look through the famous Black library! She practically salivates at the thought, dead eyes fixed on Black as Harry says his temporary goodbyes.

As they leave, Harry catches Hermione’s eye with a giggling laugh that makes the nearby wizards shiver with fear.

“Don’t worry, ‘Mione,” he grins with sharp teeth, spiders crawling along his skin, eyes shining like a full moon. “The Black library will be free for your perusal as soon as school lets out. Sirius agreed that you should be allowed in there to further your education, as long as you pace yourself.”

Ron snorts at that last comment. “Like Hermione could ever pace herself when it comes to learning something new.”

Hermione grins. Regulus laughs in her head, already telling her all about the Black library that spans the Black Manor, Grimmauld Place, and the Black Castle. She gets chills as she imagines all the knowledge contained in those three libraries.

At the end of the year, Remus Lupin resigns as DADA professor because of personal reasons. He tells the three of them that Sirius will need someone to look after him when he gets out of the hospital, which is true, but Hermione has a hunch that there’s more than just platonic friendship in his motives.

Exams come, and Hermione goes through them all without blinking. She knows all of the answers from her vicious studies, knows them well enough that she gets rather bored throughout the school years, especially since they got rid of Voldemort in first year.

Headmaster Dumbledore pulls Harry aside once more, and Ron and Hermione follow behind, invisible.

The old man talks about a future danger, hinting heavily that Voldemort is still alive after that fateful Halloween when the Killing Curse rebounded. He must know from Snape that the Dark Marks have disappeared, so Hermione has no idea why the man still thinks the Dark Lord is alive and lying in wait. The trio ignore the old man who’s probably gone a bit mad over the years. It’s not hard, they know they have nothing to worry about concerning the torn soul of one Tom Riddle.

Ron’s brother, Percy, graduates at the end of the year, and the twins go all out in their celebrations. For as much as they put on a funny face and present themselves as uncaring of their perfect brother, they care as much as their parents do.

They set off dragon fireworks in the Great Hall during the last Feast. The dragons burn red and gold as they twist and turn, breathing fire across the Gryffindor table until the twins have pulled Percy onto the table to present him to the school. The twins, Ron, and Ginny holler and shout as Percy blushes and climbs back into his seat.

Hermione swears she sees Professor McGonagall suppress a small smile at the sight.

Another graduate this year is Oliver Wood. The Gryffindor Quidditch team throws a brilliant party in the common room after the feast, helped of course by the Weasley twins who will continue next year as the team’s Beaters.

Slytherin wins the Quidditch Cup while Ravenclaw wins the House Cup, as most have expected with the trio being sorted as they are. Hermione’s yearmates cheer when the news is released, shooting her pleased looks that drop as soon as they see her dead eyes. She grins as they shiver from mere eye contact. They still haven’t gotten used to her quirks, and she’d be lying if she said she doesn’t enjoy it.

On the train back to King’s Cross, Ron and Hermione follow Harry to their regular compartment.

The three of them sit on the floor after shelving their trunks and letting their familiars out, cross legged in a staggered triangle. Harry lets his body take on its natural shape, shadows flickering at the edge of his form. Ron smiles fondly at the boy who’s barely grown since he started eating regular meals. Surprisingly, fear does not contribute to a malnourished child’s overall weight. Hermione calls Crookshanks over to sit in her lap as her brothers banter and tease each other about their respective partners. She listens and learns.

Harry says that Draco will be in France with his mother for the first part of the summer only to return for the Quidditch World Cup which they of course have tickets for from the Minister himself. Theo will spend his summer at his Manor, ignoring his father best he can.

Summer is spent in Hermione’s cave with her flock. She swims when she has the time and practices her magic, discarding her wand as soon as she gets off the train. Of course, she makes copies of every book in the Black library, all three of them, and settles in to read all she can in the two months of summer break.

There are tons of books on Death Magic, way more than were in the Nott library. There’s a reason that black magic is called what it is. The Black family has always been notorious for its fascination with the Darkest Arts, and Hermione is happy to learn the secrets and knowledge that they had collected over the many years of their existence. There are even some books on Inferi, which has her flock’s hive mind abuzz with interest.

In August, one of her hounds in the Forbidden Forest tells her something that has her practically vibrating with excitement. There have been many foreign wizards in the forest in the last few weeks, some French and some Bulgarian, though always accompanied by a Ministry official. They’ve talked about dragons and other hostile creatures while they look through the forest. They’ve mentioned a maze and a stadium for people to watch as players compete to win a trophy worth more than galleons. Hermione watches from afar as they agree to a final deal.

This next year, Hogwarts will be hosting the next Triwizard Tournament, and Hermione cannot wait.

The Quidditch World Cup takes place on August 25th. Hermione’s brothers attend, but she’s too busy making plans for the upcoming Tournament to care about a stupid sport. Regulus takes offense to that, of course, but she doesn’t care. She’s never liked Quidditch, especially not when she could be reading instead.

Ireland wins, to the protests of Ron and Harry who Hermione suspects might have crushes on the Bulgarian Seeker Viktor Krum. She wonders how their Intendeds feel about that crush. That will no doubt be a source of entertainment when the Tournament starts up.

In the wake of the game, Bartemius Crouch Sr. is found dead in the forest near the stadium. It’s a surprise to everybody, and Hermione watches as the Wizarding World falls into chaos, speculating on who killed him and why he was killed. The Ministry releases a statement a week later: Barty Crouch Sr. was killed by a Killing Curse from his own wand.

Most see it as a suicide, but Hermione sees it as murder. It might be the Death Magic coursing through her veins or her paranoid tendencies, but she knows that the man was murdered.

By the end of August, Sirius Black gets out of hospital and takes up residence in Black Manor. Harry joins him despite Dumbledore’s protests about Blood Wards and other useless excuses. The man still doesn’t know that Harry hasn’t lived with his relatives since he was four and ran away to become a boggart. Useless old man.

Sirius, with the help of Remus and a few House Elves, welcome Harry to Black Manor with friendly smiles and warm hugs.

The part of Hermione that can still feel jealousy watches the green monster rise up in her chest at the sight of Harry’s guardians taking such an interest in the boy’s well being. The rest of her hums and shoves the emotion away. She has her flock, and that’s enough for her.

Who knows, maybe one day she’ll get to introduce Sirius to an undead Regulus. She looks forward to witnessing that.

The week before fourth year starts, the three of them meet up in Diagon Alley. Hermione has an important question for her brothers after they buy their supplies and sit down for ice cream.

“Do you think an Inferius could become an Animagus?”

The look in her eyes is positively unholy.

In his office, Albus Dumbledore considers what the next few years will bring. He has goals, of course, but those are proving to be more difficult than he thought they would be.

Harry Potter is an enigma to Ablus. In all of his years of experience with children, he has never met a boy so odd, so different from his peers. The Weasley boy and the Granger girl as well, of course, are both different in the same way that Harry is.

Sometimes Albus will look at his pawn, really look, and see what he could be, but most of the time he just sees hints of Tom Riddle and Gellert Grindelwald. It’s eerie how much Harry looks like one of them in one moment and the other in another, almost uncanny. In the depth of his mind, Albus wonders if he imagines it, imagines the shadows that lick at Harry’s skin and the fangs that leak venom when he’s excited.

Albus is not imagining it.

He sighs, peering down at the paperwork that a Ministry owl delivered to his hands just this morning. It’s about the Triwizard Tournament, of course, and he takes a quill from a nearby inkwell to sign his name elegantly on the highlighted areas.

The Tournament will be hosted at Hogwarts this year. Hopefully dear Harry will come into his own and learn what’s best for him. He will need to follow Albus’ advice and gentle guidance if he wants to survive what is coming for him. After all, Voldemort is still out there, no matter what Severus says. If Harry refuses to see that even after the events that must take place this next year, well, then Albus is sad to say the boy might have been lost to the darkness in his scar.

Albus knows that his friend Alastor Moody is not himself. He’s known the man for decades, he can clearly see that his behavior and accent are just a tad off. He does not know for certain which Death Eater is imitating his old friend, but Albus hopes they will help push Harry into his true path and away from his two friends that feel so strongly of Dark Magic.

Well, all he can do is wait and plan. He has many plans, he’s always had many plans for every possibility and contingency. The choice will lay in dear Harry’s hands. It will be up to the boy how the next war will play out, and Albus will be right there beside his pawn to guide him towards the Light. When Tom Riddle awakes once more, Albus will be ready for him, and he hopes that the Boy Who Lived will be ready to fight as well.

It wouldn’t do for Albus’ little martyr to get ideas of rebellion, after all.

Chapter Text

Fourth year begins, and Harry tucks Scary away into his chest with his school books and potion supplies. Sirius had screeched when he was introduced to the older boggart, a memory that he shares with his sister and brother with a grin on his face. There are a few classrooms on the first floor of the castle that Scary has taken as his own, his haunting grounds, and it’s become a rite of passage of sorts for first and second years to venture into them and test their mettle against Scary.

The train to Hogwarts is a prime hunting ground for Harry, so he leaves his stuff with Ron and Hermione in their chosen compartment and sets out to feast. It’s tradition at this point, so really it’s the students’ fault for not making themselves scarce at the first sight of him.

It’s become an open secret at this point that Harry is mostly a boggart. He has no idea how Dumbledore doesn’t know about it. The man is thick.

Harry grins with a nonexistent mouth as he makes an older Slytherin scream in fright at the sight of a cloudy, stretched centaur with a sickly bow and arrow and blood dripping from its face. He sucks up that tasty fear scent-taste until his hunger is satiated. He idly feeds off of the general fear of the first-years, being careful not to take too much at a time from any individual child. They’re human, they need fear to live, and so does he. He’ll cultivate their fears until they’re perfect to feast upon when they’re older.

There’s a fifth year that is so afraid of snakes that Harry just needs to hiss a little and flick his forked tongue to eat enough for a week, and he licks up the venom that drops onto his tongue at the form he’s taken. He likes this form the most.

The Opening Feast in the Great Hall is full of raging emotions like happiness, anger, and adrenaline. Ron’s mouth is open, a slight haze to his eyes as he takes it all in and feasts like their peers are doing around them with the provided food. There’s a rasping, grinding sound that comes from Ron’s chest, and Harry watches as little bits of soul get sucked into his brother’s gaping maw. He’s a little envious, and he unhinges his jaw just to prove he can, catching Ron’s eye and winking.

Hermione and Luna make conversation at the Ravenclaw table. No one bothers Luna, not after she joined the little group of Ron, Harry, and Hermione. They know what the Dark Trio would do to them if they did. Hermione in particular has gotten a lot better at her untraceable curses and potion work.

It’s nice to see Draco again, after the World Cup only a week prior. The boy has gotten taller, Harry thinks, and his jaw is defined. Harry’s eyes catch on the shade of his eyes for maybe a little too long, but Ron is too busy eating and gazing at Theo to tease him about it.

At the end of the meal, Headmaster Dumbledore stands up and makes a few announcements. Harry practically vibrates in his seat when the words hit him, a manic smile overtaking his face. (He’s found that a manic stretch of a smirk against his face provokes more fear than the blank mask of apathy does, these Slytherin pure bloods are used to the blank look of a mask.)

The Triwizard Tournament has returned.

Harry giggles and watches as Hermione’s dead eyes light up with the prospect of more knowledge, of learning from the schools that will come to visit and the tasks set over the course of the year. He gets the feeling she already knew about the tournament, but that’s okay. Hermione likes to hoard knowledge. She’s like a dragon in that way. Harry likes dragons. Maybe one day he’ll get to meet one.

They are dismissed from the Great Hall, and Harry lets his skin crawl as he sinks into the migrating crowd of Slytherins heading towards the dungeons. He brushes up against a few seventh years to taste the potent layer of fear they give off, wiggling in place at the slight crack in their pure blood masks. He likes watching them lose their composure.

The rest of September passes in a haze of anticipation. Harry can’t wait to taste so many new food sources, Ron can’t wait to take their memories and pass them on to Theo’s growing empire, and Hermione cannot wait to pick their brains about their school systems.

Scary relocates to the seventh floor. There have been rumors lately that have gotten a little too loud and have reached Dumbledore’s ears, rumors about a monster on the first floor that the Headmaster had no part in bringing in. It’s safer for Scary to find a new haunt, and Harry lets the adventurous (mostly Gryffindors) younger years know where the boggart has gone so they can test their bravery against a relatively safe enemy.

At least once a week, sometimes twice, Draco brings a new student to Harry for Harry to practice transforming with. It’s getting easier and easier to shift into someone’s darkest fears. It only takes a bit of effort to become what makes someone cry out in pure fright, and it actually becomes harder for Harry to hold his preferred form now that he’s practiced so diligently with the help of his Intended.

He still hasn’t met Lucius Malfoy yet. He’s saving a special form just for him, the subject of Draco’s worst nightmares. Narcissa is fine, though Hermione has claimed her in that subtle way she has, the same way she has taken in Luna. Harry can’t wait for the day that Narcissa realizes she’s basically been adopted by a fifteen year old Inferius/undead necromancer.

“What are you on now?” Harry asks, peering up from his place resting on Ron’s lap. They’re sitting near the Black Lake, their go-to spot to relax and do homework.

“Boggart death rites,” Hermione says. She has an array of books spread out around her, though she keeps her focus on the notebook in her lap that contains the draft of the book she’s writing on boggart culture. “We just discussed significant ages and maturity levels, but we stopped at what happens when a boggart dies.”

“Oh, well that’s simple enough,” Harry says with a grin. “We eat them.”

Draco gawks from where he’s dragging a stick through the sand beneath him. “You eat other boggarts? Why?”

“As a species, we’re made of fear. We consume it and use it to power our transformations, right? When we die, the fear we’ve gathered over the years has to go somewhere, and where better than to another boggart? Eating our dead feeds us for months or even years depending on the age and experience level of the boggart who’s died. Though it’s considered a privilege to eat a powerful boggart, one that only goes to those who need the fear to heal themselves from curses or defects, so I’ll probably never get to eat one. Scary’s grandfather was eaten by the boggart that haunts the Queen! It’s a real honor for his family.”

His friends blink down at him, Draco becoming paler and paler. The tone looks good on him, and Harry grins with venom on his tongue. Draco gets prettier every day, he thinks.

“Interesting,” is all Hermione says as she makes note of it in her book.

He doesn’t know when she’ll finish and publish her studies, she’s been working on it for four years now, ever since she met Harry and Scary. Even the boggart from Remus’s class last year, Fright Harry named him, helped her research, though he was young enough not to know much. He looks forward to seeing Hermione’s hard work published. He suspects it’ll be a hit at the boggart conventions he and Scary go to every few years.

The two other schools arrive at Hogwarts the day before Halloween, Samhain. It’s one of Harry’s favorite days, as the boggarts call it Fear Day. He practically feasts every minute of every hour of Fear Day, thanks to the enchanted decorations and the mischievous Weasley twins.

Durmstrang is full of quiet fear masked with anger and pride. Harry shifts his eyes red to see how the Headmaster there squirms, something to do with Voldemort no doubt. The famous Seeker, Viktor Krum, sits next to Ron and Harry when dinner starts. Draco sits at Harry’s side, making moon eyes towards the older boy. Viktor doesn’t have a physical fear, Harry tastes, instead he fears failing and letting his family down. Harry decides not to feed off of that for the time being. After all, Harry is a little enchanted with the Seeker as well. It might have to do with his looks or his skill on a broom, but Ron, Harry, and Draco don’t even look at the Veelas when Viktor is available to stare at.

Beauxbatons sits at the Ravenclaw table, and Harry catches a glimpse of Hermione staring down one of the Veela that dare try and use their Thrall on her. Luna giggles and shakes her head at the sight, but Harry can feel Pansy glaring at the daring Veela not too far away at the Slytherin table. He looks forward to Pansy’s attempt against the Veela girl’s life in the coming days. It’s their way of flirting, Pansy and Hermione.

It becomes clear that some of the other students have read up on the tournament, because Harry can taste fear at the very mention of it. He savors the taste of mortal dread that fills the castle and the grounds as the days churn slowly past.

He thinks the Durmstrang students pick up on his true nature more than any other students do. They seem to be able to hear the thrum of a thunderstorm in his voice when he speaks, not yet as powerful as Scary’s hurricane but moving towards it as he grows. Viktor Krum and his friends watch Harry when they think he’s not looking, and Harry blurs around his edges just to hear their heartbeats speed up, letting his skin crawl to taste their delicious fear and adrenaline. They’re not properly scared of him, not like they are when he truly changes shapes to terrify someone within an inch of their lives, but the hum of terror is there. He likes it. He wants more of it. He can’t wait until he has the power to feast upon an entire group like this.

Professor Moody watches Harry sometimes, his mad eye turning and spinning until the other kids in his class get dizzy at the motion. He doesn’t do anything except watch. Harry makes sure to catch his eye and grin with sharp teeth as class ends each day. Venom drops onto his tongue, and he swallows the burn with pleasure. 

There’s something off about Moody, though Harry doesn’t care as much as he probably should. The soul inside of Moody doesn’t match how it should, Ron says, and when the imposter looks at Harry and unknowingly grants him the knowledge of his greatest fears, Harry sees Barty Crouch Senior, one of the Ministry workers that are involved in the tournament. He lets his form shift when he knows Moody is watching, just to freak him out.

How Dumbledore doesn’t know Harry is a Boggart, Harry will never know.

He’s good at shifting into fears now, after years of practice. When he got to Hogwarts in his first year he could shift his features and hope his magic would let him change shape once in a blue moon, but that was about it. Now he can change everything about him, stretch himself and blur around the edges until he can become anything. It’s all from practice and experience. Scary says that he’ll be able to become many fears at once when he gets to Scary’s age, though that might take a decade or so to achieve.

The unpredictable happens at dinner one night, the night that the champions are chosen. Harry sits in between Draco and Pansy, with Ron, Viktor, and Theo sitting across from them. He can feel something building in the air as they wait for the cup to spit out names. Moody practically vibrates with anticipation. Harry wants to haunt him for it, feast on the rising fear in the air until Moody is nothing but a shell of an imposter.

When Harry’s  name is pulled from the Goblet of Fire, he drops his jaw and sticks out his tongue, breathing in the mass amounts of fear as his eyelids get heavy with pleasure. It all tastes amazing. Draco is the one who pushes him off the bench to get him up to his feet. He walks with his face stretched into an inhuman grin, slowly approaching the room that holds the other champions. The students flinch as he walks past them, but he says nothing. He does not protest nor cheer, and that unnerves his peers more than anything else.

Viktor Krum takes one look at him and sighs. They’ve got to know each other in the past few days, well enough that Viktor clearly has doubts about Harry’s participation with the goblet of fire.

“Did you put your name in, Harry?” he asks, and there’s a layer to his voice that only Harry picks up. His accent is thick as he speaks.

Cedric and Fleur blink at him with wide eyes. It’s clear they don’t know what to think, but their first thought isn’t to get mad and yell at the small, skinny boy that gets hazy if they look at him for too long. They know Harry likes to be in the background, that he would never put himself into center focus over such a silly thing as fame and money. He much prefers lurking beneath beds and peering out of closets than being in the spotlight. 

Cedric in particular has seen Harry and his siblings grow over the last four years, and he’s been jump scared by Harry enough that he knows the boy isn’t one for confrontation in the daylight. Fleur, on the other hand, does not know Harry as well as she could. All she knows is the dead-eyed Ravenclaw that hangs out with him and the redhead, along with the stories she’s heard from the other Claws about the Dark Trio and their need to be left alone. The Veela inside of her, only part of one that she is, shudders when in Harry’s presence.

“Nope,” Harry says calmly, deliberately popping the P and settling into a nearby chair, grinning with too many teeth to feel the way his fellow students shiver subconsciously.

Viktor sighs again, closing his eyes and shaking his head. Harry thinks he’s regretting hanging out with the Slytherins, probably looking back and thinking he should have sat with the Hufflepuffs instead.

The rest of the adults flood into the room, watching Harry with narrowed eyes. Durmstrang’s Headmaster opens his mouth to speak but shuts it with a click when Harry does that thing with his eyes again, turning them red like blood in an every imitation of Voldemort.

The other adults, Ministry officials and staff alike, clamor over each other to reprimand Harry and demand to know how he got past the age line. The only outlier is Moody. Harry licks his lips at the sight of the man.

“I didn’t do it,” he says to cut their interrogations short. “I can make a vow if you want me to.”

That seems to shut them up. Headmaster Dumbledore turns to the Ministry officials whose names Harry hasn’t bothered to remember. They talk in hushed voices while Harry slumps back into his chair, bored already.

He hates wizards, especially Ministry wizards. The things they’ve done to Dark Creatures are horrible, inhumane enough that even the worst Boggart could never imagine it. The discrimination against werewolves alone is enough to make Harry want to crawl into the Minister’s closet and haunt him until he dies of fear. Hm, that sounds like a good idea. Maybe he’ll do that. He needs to prove his ability to get a spot on the local boggart council, and what better way to do that than to haunt the actual Minister of Magic? He shelves that idea and yawns into his hand.

He’s pulled out of his musings by Dumbledore saying his name, an exasperated layer to his voice like this isn’t the first time he’s called for him. Harry lifts his head and locks eyes with the man.

“Harry, my boy,” Dumbledore says, a sadness etched into the lines of his face. Harry can’t tell if it’s real sadness or not. Dumbledore’s a very good actor, good enough to fool even Harry’s senses. “There is no way to remove you from this competition. The magic involved is strict and precise.”

“Not precise enough to keep someone from entering someone else’s name,” Cedric says so Harry doesn’t have to. His comment is ignored, as expected. 

Harry shrugs, “Okay.”

The adults look taken aback by his carefree proclamation, well, all except Snape. Snape looks resigned. Karkaroff shivers and reeks of fear so strong that Harry’s surprised his blank facade hasn’t cracked. One day he’ll make that man cry out in fear. Snape just sighs and leans against the wall. As Harry’s head of house, the man has gotten used to the Dark Trio’s antics. He’s even ignored the way Harry’s form stretches and condenses when he’s excited, though that may have more to do with apathy than anything else. Snape can’t be bothered with children, specifically James Potter’s child. It’s a wonder he’s still a teacher.

That’s that. The adults in the room protest and argue for a bit longer, but nothing gets done. Harry wonders if this is what the Ministry is always like, nothing ever getting done despite the sheer magnitude of talking. He prefers the boggart conventions.

Harry goes back to the Slytherin dorms and lets people say what they want about him. He doesn’t care that much. All he cares about is letting spiders and snakes and other creepy crawlies crawl against his skin so he can suck up the fear he creates in his peers. Marcus Flint shudders when Harry walks into the common room, eyeing him like he’s a werewolf hunting on a full moon. It’s flattering.

(Draco looks at him with such fondness at the horrifying display of transformations that it almost overwhelms him. Harry pulls him into an empty classroom and snogs him within an inch of his life.)

“Should you be preparing at all?” Draco asks. “The tournament has killed people in the past, right?”

Ron snickers, a horrible gasping sound that makes Draco and Theo shiver for different reasons altogether.

Draco flushes, “I know you’re powerful, Harry, but it’s better to be over prepared than underprepared.”

“If you want me to,” Harry agrees with a shrug, “then sure.”

Dobby, a Malfoy elf that Draco freed over the summer after Hermione saw how unhappy he was with the family, is a great help in Harry’s efforts to pacify Draco’s protective leanings. The elf has been employed at Hogwarts, and as such he knows the best hiding places that even Harry hasn’t found in his haunting the halls. He takes them to the Come and Go Room and instructs them on how to get a perfect training room.

Harry makes sure to practice at least once a day, mainly because Draco gets pouty if he doesn’t. Ron and Hermione duel him when they can, but they’re both basically masters of nonverbal and wandless Magic at this point, so he asks Theo to go against him when he gets the chance. Notts are vicious in a fight, both magical and physical. Harry himself is pretty good at nonverbal and wandless Magic, being a boggart and all, but Hermione says he needs to practice all the same.

“If you want to show the world what you can do so early, then go ahead,” she says when Harry pouts and whines. “I was under the impression that you didn’t want Dumbledore to know you’ve slipped out from under his thumb just yet.”

Harry huffs, “I mean, I don’t really care what the old man knows, but I see your point."

His skin crawls and stretches as he swallows down venom, his tongue running along sharpened fangs. He thinks Dumbledore has to be ignorant to not notice his peculiarities, and he’s been having fun teasing the man when they see each other in the halls. It would be nice to keep that going for as long as he can, so he nods and practices using magic the normal way.

The first task is easy to figure out. Ron leads him through the Forbidden Forest one night, letting his Dementor cloak flow around him while Harry’s shadows keep himself obscured. Ron buzzes and hums like a cloud of moths in lamp light. They are invisible to those who traverse the forest. They find caged dragons in a charred clearing. Harry’s skin ripples with scales as he watches them with slitted eyes and fangs that drip venom. Dragons! He’s always wanted to meet one, and now he gets to fight one? Even better. He makes sure to visit the dragons every night he can, watching their movements and listening to their hissed conversations.

The dragons can sense him, Harry knows, but all they do is roar and spit some fire before settling down and returning to their eggs. Harry eyes a nearby egg with wary fascination. He will never understand wizards, he thinks. Their obsession with dominating magical creatures makes his skin crawl, and not in a good way. 

He tells Cedric the next day, since he figures the other champions’ Headmasters will let them know anyway. Cedric thanks him and volunteers to face off with Scary in payment for the knowledge the next time the full boggart needs a meal. It’s a generous offer, especially since Scary is way more powerful than Harry or Fright. Cedric does look a little pale when he offers, but he offers nonetheless.

The Weighing of the Wands pulls Harry from his usual stalking of the Hogwarts population, and he pouts as he follows Colin Creevey to the room they’re using.

His wand of holly and phoenix feather is examined with care. Olivander says nothing about the Boggart shadow that lurks in the phoenix feather, though Harry doesn’t know if that’s because he doesn’t notice or if he’d rather not mention it. The other champions go through the same process, and then it’s time for pictures. If Harry lets his form blur just a bit when the reporter’s henchman takes wizarding pictures, no one will know, they’ll all blame it on a faulty bulb or something else inane like that.

Rita Skeeter pulls Harry aside into a broom closet and asks him all sorts of questions, not leaving a lot of room for Harry to respond or debate what she says. He grits his teeth at the incessant nattering, humming when she pauses for a breath before she continues on her interrogation. 

In the end, he lets his shape morph and flow until his entire body is a large spider that hungers for beetles. That’s a good secret to know, Harry thinks. He can use that later. Skeeter goes pale and runs out of the room, her heartbeat beating a mile a minute. Harry strides out calmly, letting the others make their own theories on what happened there. Dumbledore eyes him warily; the old man is only starting to understand who he truly is. He sees Viktor smirk along with Fleur and Cedric.

They’re dismissed after a few more pictures, and Harry knows that Skeeter won’t be mentioning him in any of her articles. He grins when he leaves, showing fangs to Skeeter and her cameraman. Their fear is delicious.

He has an appointment to keep with Theo in the Come and Go Room, so he slips into the shadows and sprints up the stairs towards the seventh floor.

In the middle of November, Hermione publishes her first book with Scary as the co-author, one all about the true history and culture of Boggarts as a sapient species. Harry buys copies for all of his fellow fourth-years. He gets considering looks in the halls for the next few weeks, like they’re starting to all figure out what’s been in front of them for the past four years.

Dumbledore is still as unobservant as always, though he seems to be inching towards a thought, and Harry has started playing a bit of a game with the man to see when he notices that his chosen one isn’t quite human.

Hermione’s book, titled Boggarts: Tucked Away, is a big hit among the creature circles of Knockturn and the other forgotten alleys. She sends out free copies to a few newspapers and practically vibrates with excitement, her eyes dead, when the Quibbler and two other lesser known news outlets send letters back. They thank her for the copies and promise to post excerpts into their next few papers.

“Amazing,” Harry says with thunder in his throat when Luna hands him a copy of her dad’s paper. He looks down at the little excerpt on biggart social dynamics and wiggles in his seat. “I can’t wait to see Scary’s face when he sees this. I don’t think he actually believed that you could do it.”

Hermione blinks, a shuttering motion like the click of a camera, and says in a monotone voice, “That is his own fault.”

“Yeah,” Harry giggles. “Wanna come with? Ron’s with Theo for the day, hunting for secrets in the dungeons.”

“Sure,” Hermione says, mechanically shrugging her shoulders. 

There’s a gleam in her dead eyes at the thought of scaring Scary, an unthinkable thing, frightening a being made of fear. She just has that effect on people, no matter their species. It’s one of the reasons why Scary agreed to take part in writing the book in the first place, Hermione’s control over her own fear and the fear of others.

The Ministry doesn’t acknowledge Hermione’s studies, and neither does the Daily Prophet, but that’s okay. She doesn’t care about what those idiots think. After all they’ve done to the creature population, they don’t deserve her thoughts.

The first task comes on November 24th. It comes as no surprise to anyone when the dragons are brought out, not even the audience. Fred and George have been selling dragon-themed merch for the last three days, earning a pretty sum.

They reach into a bag to decide the order of the champions, and Harry isn’t surprised to get the last spot with the most ruthless dragon of them all. He grins, wiggling in place when Ludo Bagman shivers in fear. Percy, acting in Barty Crouch Senior’s place until his position is filler after his death, barely reacts. The boy is used to odd, scary things. He’s lived with Ron for all his life, after all.

Cedric gets to go first. He distracts his dragon partly with some transfiguration. He looks a little guilty when the transfigured dog he makes gets roasted by the roaring dragon. From the stands, Hermione takes note of each move with eyes a little too interested. It’s fascinating to see the actual effects of something being burned alive. If there’s enough of the dog left when Cedric is done, she could probably bring it back to “life” and give it to Regulus and the others of her flock. Pansy really likes the undead snake, and Theo still carries around the dead Pettigrew rat with him everywhere he goes.

Fleur is next. She puts her dragon to sleep with a little bit of help from her Veela magic, feathers poking out from her hair and neck as she pops her joints and sneaks towards the snoring dragon. 

Ron inhales as deeply as he can when the others in the audience start to react to Fleur’s Veela allure, breathing in as much emotion and bits of soul that he can without taking too much. He’s made it this far without being caught, even with the runes etched into his bones and the Dementor cloak on his shoulders, so he limits himself for now. He’ll need a full meal by the end of the year, but that’s still some time away.

Viktor is third in line. He aims for the eyes of his dragon with a disabling curse, posture perfect and voice thick as he snarls Bulgarian instead of Latin. He reacts quickly when the dragon teeters and starts to fall. If not for his quick thinking, his dragon would have trampled her own eggs. He safely removes the golden egg from the nest and leaves the arena.

Harry is up fourth, facing the Hungarian Horntail, the toughest of all four dragons. The crowd goes wild as he steps out of the entry tent.

As for his approach to the task, he’s thought about what he should do, and in the end he’s realized that in this case the easiest solution is the best one. He takes a deep breath as he approaches the hissing dragon and waves to his friends with a fanged grin. He can taste the anticipation in the air, thick with fear and excitement, blending in well with the venom on his tongue.

Ron and Hermione wave back, Hermione’s motions stilted like a corpse being jerked in uncomfortable motions. Ron’s eyes are alight with all he’s been eating, with souls. Harry smiles up at them and turns to face the dragon that’s impatiently waiting for him to make his move.

The dragon doesn’t have a fear to feed off of. Dragons fear nothing strong enough to influence a boggart, and even if they did Harry isn’t strong enough to reach that fear and control it.

He cracks his neck before he shifts, something that’s become as natural as breathing or tasting the air for fresh sources of fear. 

Harry’s form blends and blurs until his body is gone and his primal state rests in his place. Fear leaks off of the crowd in waves. He takes in all that fear and uses it to grow stronger, the sheer intensity of their fear enough to let him expand and rise until he’s face to face with the now-curious mother dragon. She huffs, spitting fire that dissipates in his cloud of shadow without harming him. It tickles, and he finds himself giggling without a mouth or vocal chords to make the sounds.

He hisses, Parseltongue dripping off his shadows and vibrating through the air. It’s a magical language, he knows, and along with his boggart magic it reaches out like tendrils of darkness until it reaches every inch of the arena.

“The humans have given you a false egg,” he says to the beast. “I wish to retrieve it. Would you allow me to do that?”

The dragon growls low in her long, red-hot throat, fire building up, up, up. Her eyes glint in the sunlight, and if Harry had eyes in this form he would be looking at her in awe. She’s ethereal in the light, unimpressed by the crowd of humans watching her every move. He wants to be a dragon. Maybe he’ll have enough power and experience to become one one day.

“The humans will pay,” she roars, spits, snarls. The sound echoes and booms, making the audience cower in their seats. They don’t understand her words, but they understand their meaning. She declares with solemnity, “The fear demon will take the false egg.”

His form ripples at her acknowledgement of his true species. He hasn’t gotten to meet a lot of creatures that aren’t his new siblings since he got to Hogwarts, though Sirius’ place has a few other boggarts that like to pass the time competing with him. He should really talk with the centaurs and big spiders in the forest.

“Thank you, Mother Serpent,” he says, and his shadowy cloud carefully envelopes the golden egg, not touching the real eggs.

It’s a bit anticlimactic, actually. He resumes his mostly-human form on the ground once more and catches Hermione’s dull, dead eyes. Her head is cocked to the side mechanically and there is a stretched, static grin on her face that sends waves of fear through the students in the crowd around her. Ron nudges her with a broad shoulder and lets his mouth drop open wide, bits of unseen souls drifting into his mouth for him to taste and savor. Harry wiggles at the thought of providing for his siblings in such an intimate way.

Hefting the egg under his arm, Harry starts toward the tent on the other side of the arena. He’s running on a bit of an adrenaline high. He hadn’t actually expected that plan to work, not after days of sparring with his siblings and Theo in the Come and Go Room. At least Draco won’t kill him for getting hurt.

Dumbledore stands in the entrance of the tent, face so slack and surprised that Harry can’t help but giggle, a giggle tinged with the shrieking of banshees. His form blurs for just a moment as he settles further into his human skin. It takes a surprising amount of work to tuck all his shadows away into a small fleshy package.

He sustained no injuries during the task. Madam Pomfrey waves him away with a look in her eyes like she just knows she’ll be seeing more of him in her infirmary in the future. She’s probably right. He doesn’t get hurt a lot, but this tournament might be the thing that changes that.

He celebrates with his fellow Slytherins that night after dinner. The Weasley twins sneak in butterbeer and alcohol for the upper years, and for the first time in a long time the Slytherin common room is alight with people from all houses. Ron and Draco hoist Harry up onto their shoulders and parade him around the common room, chanting and cheering his name. The other Slytherins cheer with them, Harry having earned their respect and fear years ago.

They fall asleep early the next morning, before the sun rises, warm and tired from having so much fun. Even Cedric showed up to the Slytherin party at some point last night, along with the other champions, though Ced returned to the Hufflepuff party after half an hour.

Just before lunch, as usual, Harry wakes up his roommates with cold fingers on their skin and air blown into their ears. It’s his favorite way to start the day. He loves their screams, even if they’re mainly humoring him after years of living together. Draco in particular reeks of happiness instead of fear.

As the day progresses, the other students and staff eye him like he’s a wild animal. He loves it.

After his display at the first task, Dumbledore doesn’t seem to know what to think of him. He watches Harry from the head table of the Great Hall, not taking his eyes off him for a second. There’s something in the man’s expression, something that lets Harry know that something monumental has changed in their already tenuous relationship. Honestly, Harry’s happy about that, it stops him from itching at the eyes on him just waiting for him to prove he’s his father’s son.

He eats well that day, in both fear and food. He needs physical food to refill the magic he used to project his voice to the dragon yesterday, and the fear he breathes in satiates him until he’s glassy eyed with contentment.

He gets a lot of questions from the more curious students as the day progresses. He hands them all excerpts of Hermione’s book, telling them that they can buy a copy for just a few sickles. The Ravenclaws get a familiar look in their eye, one he’s seen so many times before on Hermione, and rush off to draft a letter to buy one.

When dinner finally comes, after Harry gets done sparring with Ron, a piece of parchment drifts down to his plate from the head table.

Peppermint flakes, it says. The password for the gargoyle guarding the Headmaster’s office, Harry thinks. He frowns down at the paper and its looping handwriting in ink. He doesn’t really want to meet Dumbledore tonight, not when he and the other champions had planned to open their eggs before class starts up again, but he doesn’t think he has a choice in the matter.

“Do you want us to kill him?” Hermione asks with dead eyes, glancing down at the paper at his side. “We can make it look like an accident.”

Harry sighs, long and drawn out, “No, it’s fine. I can deal with him for a little bit.”

“I’ll get the twins to cut the meeting short,” Ron says. “They’ve been working on a new project, something to do with a swamp. That should draw the Headmaster out of his office long enough for you to get back to the dorms.”

“Thanks,” Harry says, bumping his shoulder into Ron’s with a smile.

His siblings are the best. Who else would murder the Headmaster of Hogwarts for him? Well, Sirius might if Harry asked, but Remus would stop him before he could leave Grimmauld. Unfortunately. (The Black Madness is a wonderful thing, Harry thinks.)

He makes his way to Dumbledore’s office in silence. He can feel Ron nearby, his dementor cloak keeping him from being seen, the runes carved into his bones keeping him from being heard. If he concentrates hard enough he can feel Theo nearby, though the boy’s own runes carved into his skin shield him from all senses.

The gargoyle turns to let him in when he says the password, and Harry marches up the steps to get to the Headmaster’s office.

“Harry, my boy,” Dumbledore’s jovial voice says, inviting him to sit down with a sweep of his hand. “Thank you for meeting me. It feels like forever since we last met like this.”

That’s because it has. Whatever Ron and Hermione did to get the man to ignore Harry the last time he paid too much attention to him worked perfectly. Harry suspects it was what wizards call ‘dementor overexposure,’ but his siblings never really told him. They’re good like that.

“It’s nice to see you too, Headmaster,” Harry says with a smile. He’s not lying. He likes the passive fear that leaks from the old man at all times, the fear that makes him into the paranoid chess master that he is.

Dumbledore smiles, his eyes twinkling, before he drops it with a sigh.

“You must know why I have called you here today,” he says, voice grave. “I am afraid that you are delving into the darkest of magics.”

Harry doesn’t respond, just blinks up at him with innocent eyes.

“What you did during the first task, Harry. I have only seen that kind of magic performed by Dark Lords and their followers. The ability to spread into shadow like that is the antithesis of light magic, and I worry for you, my boy. Were you aware of what you were doing? Were you aware of the type of magic you were using? This is important, Harry. I need you to be honest with me.”

Harry blinks. “Sir, I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Oh, Harry,” the Headmaster sighs again, looking more solemn than he ever has before. “Alright then, if you truly don’t know what I am alluding to, then I must ask one more thing. The language you spoke to the dragon, do you know what it was?”

“Of course!” Harry chirps with a wide grin, teeth just a little too pointed. “Hermione says it was Parseltongue. I got it from either when Voldemort tried to kill me or my mum’s family. Hermione says that my eyes are Peverell eyes, and I got that from my mum, so my mum must have had Peverell blood.”

Dumbledore looks taken aback, but Harry carries on before he can say anything, anticipation growing.

“Or it could be from my creature nature,” Harry muses, pretending to ignore the old man’s palpable surprise. “The boggart who raised me, Scary, says that there aren’t a lot of records of wizards that become boggarts, so no one really knows how that’ll affect me.”

He makes sure his eyes are wide and innocent as he looks up at the man who has his jaw dropped.

Dumbledore tries to pull himself together, and Harry grins further, betraying his innocent look. The old man pushes up his circular spectacles and runs a hand through his long, white beard, gathering his wits.

“Can you clarify that for me, my boy?” His voice sounds frail, showing his true age for once.

“What? My creature nature?” Harry cocks his head, humming when Dumbledore nods his assent. “Well, when I was really little, I ran away from my relatives. I was starving and bruised, so I hid in an old house. That’s where Scary found me. I could tell he was trying to scare me, but it didn’t work. Nothing’s more scary than Uncle Vernon with his belt, ya’ know, so I talked to the creature. Things kinda went from there, I guess.”

“Things… went from there?” The man shows no reaction to Harry’s casual admission of being abused by his relatives. Ron and Hermione will want to know about that when he’s done here, he thinks.

“Yeah! Scary taught me how to be a boggart, and I’ve been one ever since.” Harry pauses and furrows his brow, “Is that what you were talking about when you mentioned the darkest of magics? It wasn’t a spell, Headmaster. It was just the form I take when I’m not corporeal.”

Dumbledore looks tired now, and Harry tastes weary fear starting to build up.

“Are you saying that you are a boggart, Mr. Potter?”

Ooh, he must be in trouble now if Dumbledore is dropping the familiarity that he has a history of weaponizing.

“That’s exactly what I’m saying, sir. Do you want proof?”

The headmaster falters before nodding hesitantly. “If you would, yes.”

Harry grins. Venom leaks onto his tongue, and he flicks it out to show Dumbledore the fork at the tip. 

He closes his eyes and focuses on the overwhelming fear that Harry tastes at his actions. He latches on to Dumbledore’s greatest fear and stretches and condenses until he takes the form of a little girl. He rolls his new shoulders and runs a small, frail hand through his blond hair, eyeing Dumbledore with curiosity. The man has gone deathly pale. The room is heavy with the scent of fear. Harry loves it.

“Who is this, Headmaster?”

Harry knows who it is, but he wants to hear the man admit it.

“Ariana,” Dumbledore breathes out, such sorrow on his face that Harry takes pity on him and changes back to his favorite form.

“Do you believe me now, sir?”

“Yes,” comes the faint reply. Dumbledore isn’t moving. He’s barely breathing.

“Can I leave now?”

“Yes.”

Harry leaves, saying a final goodbye as he closes the door behind him. He’s grinning when he passes by the stone gargoyle, giggling and swaying on his feet as his siblings and Theo join him walking to the Come and Go Room where Draco is waiting.

He tells his siblings and friends what happened in the office and wiggles happily when Hermione’s face takes on an expression of sadistic glee. Draco groans, covering his face with his palms.

“You’re ridiculous,” he whines. “My father will hate you.”

Harry just grins wider. He can’t wait to devour the fear of the man who gives his beloved nightmares. Lucius won’t know what hit him.

It’s not much later that they get news of a dance that will be held in Hogwarts on the 25th of December, a Yule Ball. Harry doesn’t quite see the point, but the other Slytherins are out of their minds with excitement at the formal event.

Harry avoids Pansy the best he can for a week, ducking into the shadows when he sees that glimmer of manic anticipation in her eyes. Hermione just sighs and lets herself be pulled from shop to shop in search of the perfect dress, making good use of their Hogsmeade weekends.

Of course, Harry invites Draco to the ball. As a champion he has to go, so he might as well have fun with it. Hermione takes Pansy, Ron takes Theo, and Luna finds a nice Slytherin boy in her year who asks her shyly to accompany him.

Getting the outfits together is a nightmare, matching colors and fabrics, styles and cuts. Draco and Pansy take care of most of it while the others sit back and watch with a healthy dose of wary respect.

When the time to gather and get ready comes, Harry and Draco make their way up from the dungeons to stand with the other champions and their dates.

Harry is a little surprised to see Neville with Viktor Krum, but Draco scoffs and says he saw it coming a mile away. Fleur has an arm linked with a dashing French witch at her side while Cedric stands together with Cho Chang.

Despite all the lessons Draco and Pansy forced him into, Harry is an atrocious dancer. He can remember the steps just fine, but he has a hard time getting his limbs to actually cooperate and move as he wants them to. He whines that it has to do with not having a true body height, but he can tell that Draco doesn’t buy it.

They dance until their legs hurt and their faces ache from smiling. It’s nice to see Draco drop his pureblood mask in public, even if it’s just for the night.

The next morning, Skeeter makes some messes. It’s quick, too, kind of impressive.

It seems that scaring Skeeter in that closet wasn’t enough to hinder her horrible writing. He’ll have to be more clear in the future when he threatens her. After all, he doubts the woman is on the official Animagus register list. That should get him some time free of propaganda before he has to sick Hermione and Ron on her.

Boy-Who-Lived dating Death-Eater-Spawn? The article stares up at Harry from the table as he eats breakfast. 

He snickers and elbows Draco when people start to look in their direction, hungry for gossip. It’s not like they haven’t known about Draco and Harry for years, but now that Rita Skeeter has called attention to it, using provocative wording, it’s all the student body can seem to concentrate on.

Draco groans, burying his face in his palms.

“I hate that woman,” he murmurs into his hands, words coming out garbled.

Harry pats Draco’s back and hums soothingly, flipping through the rest of the Daily Prophet while he eats.

On the next page, after Rita rambles on about Draco “corrupting” the golden boy (like she hasn’t seen the Golden Boy at his scariest in a dark, confined space), there’s an article on Hagrid and the Headmistress of Beauxbatons. He skims that and moves on to the next, since it’s nothing he doesn’t already know.

Weasley going dark? Read more about Ronald Weasley’s journey to the Dark side and his relationship with Theodore Nott, grandson of known Death Eater.

Harry shakes his head. Going after Theo? Skeeter better hide and hide well if she wants to keep her soul when Ron gets ahold of her. The only reason Harry isn’t going after the woman is because he knows Draco doesn’t truly care about what the media says.

He spies Hermione over at the Ravenclaw table reading her own copy of the Prophet. She looks unmoved as normal, but there’s a slant to her shoulders that says she’s excited for violence. It’s a specific look, one that Harry and Ron have learned through the years they’ve known each other, and Harry has no doubt that Skeeter will be dead in the near future. Maybe she’ll even make the reporter into an Inferius, as a treat.

Skeeter goes missing on January sixth.

Shortly after the Yule Ball, Hermione publishes her research on Dementors in the form of a new book, citing the species as a whole as her co-author. It becomes a big hit in the Dark Creature circles, and a few reach out to her about writing more books on their species. Her writing is detailed and unbiased enough that the Ministry ignores every reporter that brings it up, as expected.

She titles it Azkaban’s Secret . It builds enough intrigue to draw in those who don’t normally read these types of books, coaxing them to spend some coin on her book. As with the boggart research, Hermione reaches out to various newspapers with teaser chapters. The Quibbler does an entire edition on it, thanks to Xenophilius’ fascination on the subject.

She’s planning on writing a second part to her book on dementors, as she’s learning more and more every day on the creatures, but for now her book on Inferi takes precedence. She’s slowly working her way through the species she knows about. She might even take up one of the offers she’s gotten from the werewolves or vampires that have reached out for books of their own.

Weekends are her writing time, though she spends one day every two weeks to go over new research that her brothers have come up with. There’s been some progress with the dementor side of things, though boggart research will have to wait until the next boggart convention, as she’s used up all of Harry and Scary’s knowledge on the subject.

Ron is still trying to build up a tolerance to the Patronus charm, and he’s starting to make some headway. He can withstand the white light for half a minute before it starts to hurt, which is much better than the ten seconds that he could stand by the end of last year.

Overall, Hermione is raking in galleons with her work on Dark Creatures. She keeps it all in the vault that Gringotts introduced her to when she visited before first year, the vault of the Master of Death.

Harry has his own vaults he has access to, though he doesn’t spend any of it except on Quidditch gear.

He likes the sport, especially likes the flying, and he spends most of his time when he’s not haunting the halls riding his broom. Draco joins him when he’s not making inroads with the older students, preparing for his political career.

The other champions stay in their own lanes for the interim between tasks. Viktor stays with a few select Gryffindors, mainly Neville, and his own Durmstrang students. Fleur hangs out with the Ravenclaws and her fellow French peers, and if she avoids Hermione, she hopes nobody notices. They’re all avoiding her too, anyways. The Veela inside her doesn’t like the smell of death that comes from Hermione and her various pets that show up every so often.

Cedric, on the other hand, keeps his promise and volunteers to be Scary’s plaything the next time the older boggart is bored. He gains a few points in Harry’s book for that, even with the fear that comes off of him in waves. Maybe Harry needs to befriend a few more Hufflepuffs if they’re all like this.

Harry is called to Dumbledore’s office before the month is up. He sighs and treks through the castle to greet the gargoyle and settle on a seat across from the old man. Dumbledore looks happy, which is different from their last meeting. Harry’s hesitantly worried about it.

And then the old man opens his mouth and says the last thing Harry expected.

It’s official, the Headmaster is an idiot. 

“I’m not a metamorphmagus,” Harry says, oddly disappointed. “I’m a boggart.”

“My boy, you have Black ancestors in your lineage, a family that has clear ties to the metamorphmagus ability,” Dumbledore starts. His eyes are sparkling like fireworks, like he’s figured out the secret to life and can’t wait to share it. “This would explain everything that you have told me about your abilities. You are not a boggart, Harry, you simply have a rare magical trait that is passed down from your grandmother, Dorea Potter nee Black.”

Harry sighs.

There’s really no way to convince the man otherwise, no matter how much Harry wants to. He hates it when his heritage is denied, and that is what the Headmaster is doing now. At least with other students and wixen Harry can transform and feed off their fear, but he gets the feeling Dumbledore is so set in his opinion that nothing will work.

“You seem to have made up your mind, Headmaster,” he says, voice as monotone as it gets. He’s upset. “So I will take my leave and hope you come to your senses. I am a boggart, and I will never not be a boggart. Goodbye, sir.”

He leaves without another word, ignoring the protests that fall from Dumbledore’s mouth like rainfall. He needs to be with people who understand, and the best bet are his siblings and Scary.

Creatures have never doubted Harry’s nature, not like wixen do. He wishes they would just get with the program already. Harry was born a wizard, sure, but he is now a boggart. It’s that simple.

“Are you sure we can’t kill him?” Theo asks, eyes sharp. He’s holding Draco back from storming out of the Come and Go Room with a hand on his shoulder.

“Just a little bit of his soul? Please?” Ron begs, hands clasped together and eyes wide and pleading. It’s a little ridiculous, making Harry smile, the sight of a dementor begging with puppy-dog-eyes.

“It’s not time yet,” Hermione rebuffs them, though she does scan Harry’s face to make sure that’s the right answer. He knows she would kill for him anyday, but she knows that’s not yet what he wants.

“But when it is, you’ll all get a go at him,” Harry confirms.

The four champions all figure out their golden eggs by the beginning of February. Harry gets it first, he recognises the magic from his few visits with the merpeople that show up as allies to the boggart conventions.

Now that he knows the second task will take place at the Black Lake, it’s time for Harry to prepare. He knows how to swim from living at Hogwarts for the past four years, Hermione wouldn’t have let him waste away in the hotter months, but now that he’s shown the world what he is he doesn’t want to do something as simple at eat gillyweed and swim down to retrieve his object. No, he wants to show off a bit. The more people that know what he’s capable of, the more fear he’ll be able to take in.

It takes a little while, but Harry manages to find a student out of the three schools who has the perfect fear. Scary’s been teaching him how to shift without a fear to prompt him, but having some groundwork is best if he wants to get it right on the day of the task.

February 24th approaches quickly as he prepares.

Morning dawns, and Harry knows something is wrong almost instantly. It’s more than the prickle at the edge of his consciousness. It’s more than the vultures picking away at his intestines. It’s the fact that when Harry looks around the dorm room, Draco is nowhere to be found. It’s the fact that Draco, Neville, and Cho don’t show up to breakfast. It’s the sparkle in fucking Dumbledore’s eye.

They took him. They took Draco, and Harry will not stand for it.

His form blurs as he marches towards the shore of the lake. The other champions are already there, looking panicked. They must know what’s happened to their “trophies.”

Spiders crawl up his skin, snakes licking at his throat. His eyes are red, he knows, as he looks Karkaroff straight in the eye, avoiding looking at Dumbledore for fear of killing the man right where he stands. That wouldn’t be fair, Harry promised his friends would get to face off with the man before he dies.

Standing at the shore, Harry tunes out the cheering and clamoring from behind him. He focuses on the form he wants to take, the form that will get Draco out of the water as soon as possible.

This isn’t what he prepared for, but it’s what is happening, so he has to adjust.

The sparks go off, signaling the start of the task. The other champions cast charms and transfigurations, but Harry calmly swims into the water, face dark. He can feel his magic flaring, wanting to take on the biggest fear and use it to make his enemies cower, and he doesn’t fight against that impulse at all.

In the space between seconds, Harry lets his form shift and stretch until all he knows is the water. He was born for this, born to cleave through the waves like an ax, born to roar and strike fear into the hearts of other sea creatures.

Harry is a Sea Serpent, one of old, and this is his territory.

He darts down, down, down, until his eyes adjust to the dark and start to pick out tiny creatures that stare at him with fear. If he had a human mouth he would smile, but he makes due with his gaping maw full of rows and rows of sharp teeth. He rather likes this form, he thinks.

Passing underwater villages and entire communities of creatures, Harry agitates the water to the point of meter tall waves that crash against the shore up above, splashing the judges’ panel.

There, he sees a group of merpeople with weapons and beady eyes fixed on Harry. He can smell their fear, no doubt at his sheer size. He doesn’t know how big he really is, but he’s big enough to tower over the merpeople like they’re ants. He lets out a low hiss to scare them off, ignoring the spears that poke at his scales. They do nothing.

He shrinks as he approaches the hostages, becoming small enough to pinch the rope that holds Draco in between his teeth and shred it beyond recognition. With a sweep of his tail, he whisks his beloved into a curl in his spine and starts back towards the surface.

It’s odd swimming with a fragile human tucked into his snake-like body, but he makes do. He tries to be careful with him, he knows that Draco would pout for days if he even gets so much as a bruise, so he swims up slowly.

He passes the other contestants on his way back. They reek of fear at the sight of him, but they must know it’s him, so they don’t change their course as they pass him by. They’re tiny to him, insignificant.

The shore gets closer and closer, but Harry doesn’t shift out of his new form. Let the judges see what they’ve done to him, let them pale and shiver at the sight of him.

A roll of his body, working in tangent with the waves of water, and Draco is deposited safely on the shore. Harry flicks his tail to push himself onto the sand beside his beloved, growling, hissing, spitting at those that are nearby. 

He eyes Dumbledore in particular. How dare he take Draco! At least Hermione or Ron would have a defense against whatever they did. Draco is just human, and Harry doubts that the Headmasters asked for consent before they gathered up their merry little group of hostages.

Satisfied at the pure fear coming off of the humans nearby, Harry shifts and shrinks until he is back in his human skin once more, tongue forked and fangs dripping venom down his throat. He glares at the healer that approaches warily, baring his pointed teeth.

It’s Ron and Hermione that calm him down enough to get him to uncurl from Draco’s body and let the wizard healers take care of them both, Ron on one side of him and Theo on the other while Hermione and Pansy stick with Draco.

“I’ll kill them,” Harry whispers into the empty healing tent as Pomfrey looks over Draco. “They touched my mate. I’ll make them suffer for that.”

“We’re with you,” Ron says. “Nobody hurts my colony without an equal exchange.”

He’s sure Hermione would agree, but she’s standing carefully at Draco’s side, watching over Pomfrey and the other healers with cold, dead, dull eyes. Pansy stands behind her, a hand on her arm to keep her from ripping into them.

When everything calms, and Harry receives the most points out of the four champions, their group meets in the Come and Go Room. Viktor brings Neville, the boy’s lips blue from the cold. They haven’t interacted with him very much throughout the years, but Harry likes him. Apparently they were supposed to be godbrothers before everything went down in the war.

Fleur just barely brings herself to leave her sister in the capable and protective hands of her parents who are just as enraged as she is, but she makes it to the Room alongside Cedric and Luna.

“You can’t kill him,” Luna says when they’re all there, ever the voice of reason.

The newer additions look shocked at her words, at the blatant accusation that Harry and his friends would murder the Headmaster for such a small thing. Fleur, on the other hand, looks ready to protest.

“You really can’t,” Neville says, inching towards Viktor. His voice is surprisingly steady as he looks Harry, Ron, and Hermione straight in the eyes and metaphorically puts his foot down.

“We could,” Hermione says. “Easily.”

“All it would take is a breath,” Ron adds.

“Or a knife to the chest,” Theo finishes, already brandishing one of his knives.

Harry huffs a sigh. He looks at his friends and family and shakes his head. “That would be too obvious. If we’re doing this, it needs to look like an accident.”

“A dementor’s kiss wouldn’t work,” Pansy says, eyeing Ron. “As soon as he realizes what’s happening, Dumbledore would cast a Patronus and drive you off. How long can you last in the face of one of those, Weasley?”

“A minute,” Ron says through gritted teeth. “But I bet I could take most of his soul in a minute, even with a Patronus in my face.”

“And any trace of Necromancy would get us all thrown in Azkaban,” Draco speaks up from his place curled into Harry’s side. He’s still shivering. “So Hermione and her flock can’t do anything without consequences.”

“Then what are we left with? If we can’t use physical or magical weapons, I mean,” Theo asks.

“Waiting to kill him,” Luna says. Her eyes are a little glazed over, in that familiar way that Harry knows is because of whatever Seer blood she might have hiding in her lineage. “If there’s no way to do it without getting caught, then it will have to wait.”

Neville shakes his head with wide eyes, “Are you seriously talking about killing Albus Dumbledore? That’s mad.”

The group of creatures and their mates stares back at the boy. Draco raises an eyebrow, as if prompting Neville to realize what they’ve all already known for years, the truth about the so-called Light Lord.

“Okay, fine, the last few years have proved that he’s not the paragon of morals that he’s made himself look like, especially towards you and your friends,” Neville gives in, “but murder? Isn’t there a better option?”

Hermione hums, making those around her still. It’s an instinctive response, freezing in the face of the undead, but Harry shakes that off before it can reach his bones. That sound means Hermione has an idea, and that can only be dangerous.

“Maybe there is,” Hermione says. Her dead eyes gleam in the light of the Room, and the other three champions take a careful step back, away from the sadistic undead girl.

Hermione has a plan.

As they’re leaving the Come and Go Room, Harry and Ron pull Neville aside, chuckling at the look Viktor throws at them before he takes his leave. The man is already so protective of Neville, it’s sweet.

“Hey, Neville,” Ron greets with a smile. Neville smiles back, though his confidence visibly falters. “Did you really mean what you said earlier? That you’ve noticed Dumbledore showing his true colors?”

“Yeah,” Neville shrugs. “He’s not as subtle as he thinks he is.”

“But I thought Gryffindors love the Headmaster,” Harry says, eyebrows raised in question.

“Most of us, sure,” Neville agrees, “but some of us have started to notice the little things that everyone else passes by. Things like the way he looks at you, Harry, like he’s looking at a soldier or a tool instead of a student. Then there’s the meetings he’s pulled you into over the years, and the disappointed look he gives you when you do anything other than be a reckless lion. Viktor said he didn’t fight for you when your name came out of the cup, which he should have since you’re underage. Merlin, he let Professor Moody use the Unforgivables on the first day of class. No good wizard acts the way Dumbledore does.”

Harry blinks. Huh.

“I didn’t think anyone else noticed,” he murmurs.

Neville smiles softly, hesitantly raising a hand to squeeze Harry’s shoulder, “Like I said, some of us have, and we’re with you all the way. Though, maybe no murder.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Harry grins with pointed teeth, “you lions are no fun.”

“Thanks, though,” Ron says to Neville. “For seeing it. It’s nice to know that we’re not the only ones who can see through the old man’s bullshit.”

Neville blushes and shrugs again. He escapes when the two of them just look at him and smile. They’re scary, even when they’re thanking him for standing by them against an unjust tyrant of a wizard.

It takes a while for the hype around the second task to die down.

The whole boggart thing is out for real now, the Prophet has done multiple articles on it in the last week, but Harry doesn’t mind. If anything, he can be more free with it now then he was before. People are already afraid of him before he even shifts.

The Ravenclaws are a fun mix of curiosity and fear that Harry can’t get enough of. He gives them a proposal: ask a question, get an answer, and submit to a fear tasting for Scary or Harry. A surprising amount of them take him up on that offer actually, making Harry think that it’s not just Hermione that has that insatiable hunger for knowledge.

It’s not until lunch about two weeks after the second task that Harry gets to answer a question that seems to be on everybody’s minds. They’re too scared or proper to actually ask, though the lions are brave enough to speculate around him when they think he’s not listening.

“How did he become one, though?” a nearby seventh year asks. “Wizards can’t just become something else, that’s not how that works.”

Harry smirks, sharing a look with his siblings. They’re sitting at the Gryffindor table today to visit Neville, since they’ve been growing closer to the boy since the Yule Ball where they all danced together.

“You’re right,” Harry says, loud and pointed enough that the older lion knows he’s talking to them. “That’s not how wizards work. But I grew up with muggles, and they treated me like a house elf. I was never a wizard to them, so I was never a wizard to me.”

He sees that he has the attention of the entire Great Hall now, and he chitters low in his throat, dropping his mouth open to taste the fear before he continues.

“If you think about it, they raised me to be a boggart. They kept me in a small cupboard for the first four years of my life, they starved me so much that the only thing left for me to consume was their fear of me, and they looked at me like I wasn’t human. What else was I supposed to do but become what I am now?”

There’s a beat of silence before a Ravenclaw speaks up, frustration clear in her voice, “But that’s not how magic works! You can’t just change species because you don’t know you’re already a wizard!”

“Watch me,” Harry says with a grin, pointed teeth peeking out from his lips.

Nobody says anything about it for the rest of lunch.

Behind the excitement of the Triwizard Tournament, exams approach. Hermione and Theo make study tables for them all, even though they’re only in fourth year and don’t have to worry about their OWLs for a while yet.

“The written portion doesn’t care that you’ve mastered wandless and wordless magic,” Theo says, eyes made of flint. “All they care about is the theory, and to master that you have to study.”

Harry and Ron share a look and give in to their friends’ pushing.

It’s not long before Ludo Bagman calls the four champions to the Quidditch field with a grin that makes Harry want to eat him whole and spit out his bones. The tournament has completely devastated the pitch, and Harry just knows that the Quidditch teams will be revolting sometime in the future.

A giant maze is starting to take shape in front of them. Viktor sighs, sharing a look with the others. Fleur in particular looks unimpressed; she hasn’t quite gotten over what the judges did to her little sister.

Finally, exams are upon them, and Hermione’s plan kicks into action.

Skeeter, returning from a “vacation,” publishes a series of articles on the great Albus Dumbledore. She has a little help from Hermione, along with a new fear of jars with barely enough air holes, but she publishes them nonetheless and mentions nothing about where she actually was.

Harry’s favorite of the bunch is Dumbledore: Dark Lord in Disguise? Mainly because he’s had that said about himself so often that he’s become desensitized to it. That article in particular covers Dumbledore’s past with Grindelwald, with quotes from Bathilda Bagshot and Aberforth Dumbledore.

Another is: Is Hogwarts really safe? The Cerberus says otherwise. While it’s not the best one, it’s certainly provocative, and it lets the parents of the students know things they should have been made aware of years ago. It even mentions the Philosopher’s Stone.

Hermione has a little smirk on her face for the entire week. It unnerves her housemates so thoroughly that they escape to other tables during mealtimes, leaving Harry’s group to sit at the Ravenclaw table mostly alone.

Dumbledore does not react to the articles, but Harry tastes the fear increase with every new paper exposing his many, many secrets.

Exams are rough for those who haven’t studied, Harry notices. If not for Theo and Hermione, Harry might have been one of those students. He’s lucky he has such good friends. His practical and written exams go well, better than he expected even, and Draco congratulates him with a kiss when all of them relax in the Slytherin common room. Nobody bats an eye at seeing a Ravenclaw in their space.

Harry does best in his DADA exam, though he still doesn’t know why it’s named that. Moody eyes Harry throughout, like he doesn’t know what to do with him. His fear makes Harry salivate.

“We’ll need to take care of him soon,” Harry muses idly the day before the third task. “He hasn’t made any moves so far. We still don’t know why he’s impersonating Moody in particular.”

“We can interrogate him the day after tomorrow,” Hermione concedes, sitting back on a couch the Room provided to watch Harry spar with Theo. “Though there’s always the possibility he was the one to put you in the tournament, if it wasn’t Dumbledore, of course.”

The third task dawns on the 24th of June, bringing the four champions and their families to the beginning of the maze taking up the entire Quidditch pitch.

Sirius and Remus arrived early that morning, excited to see Harry compete even if he doesn’t plan on winning. He likes having them near, he finds. It’s a different feeling than he gets when he spends time with Scary, it’s… warmer, in a way. He thinks this might be what it’s like to have a real family, with Sirius, Remus, and his new siblings.

“Remember,” Theo says, looking at Harry intently with hard eyes, “if you run into an acromantula or a sphinx, fetch me venom, silk, or the jewel that rests upon the sphinx’s neck.”

Harry nods, not even bothering to act putout. Theo has been asking him for that for days now, and he has no intention of making his brother’s mate upset with him, so he’ll do as he’s asked.

Percy and Bagman call the champions into place, letting them know the order they’re going in. Harry’s in second place with Viktor, while Cedric has first and Fleur has third. (Harry thinks that the tasks haven’t been very fair. The water was too cold for a Veela, and the dragons don’t like the smell of Veela in particular, since they’re also creatures of the air and fire. Likewise, Harry didn’t get a lot of points from his dragon trick because it wasn’t as flashy as Cedric’s was.)

The first cannon goes off when everyone’s in place, their families sitting in the stands. Cedric rushes into the maze, disappearing into tall, wild hedges that swallow up all the light around them.

Harry and Viktor go next, through different entrances. A few seconds later, Fleur goes in.

Harry steps into the hedge maze with a smile on his face. He’s practically wiggling at the prospect of using his full power against more than just Theo and his siblings, and he can taste venom at his excitement.

He does run into an acromantula, but a smooth Incarcerous and a few other, lesser known spells keep it from being anything close to a threat. He collects both venom and silk, enough to satisfy his brother’s mate. There are two blast-ended skrewts that cower at the sight and feeling of Harry’s aura, the one he so naturally exudes after years of strengthening his boggart magic.

Two times red sparks are sent up into the air. Harry thinks he tastes the magic of an Imperius Curse off in the distance, but he isn’t quite sure.

There is indeed a sphinx further into the maze, after an angry chupacabra, a bored boggart who greets Harry with familiarity, and a few more blast-ended skrewts. It seems Hagrid has been raising the fiery creatures to die here.

Harry dispatches the sphinx without much issue. The hard part is taking the gem from around its neck, but Harry shifts into the form of a mountain troll and relies on brute strength when his magic isn’t physically strong enough. He tucks the gem away with the silk and the vials of venom in one of his expanded pockets. No need to carry them around with him.

From there it’s only a short meandering stroll to the Triwizard Cup. 

Surprisingly, he sees Cedric enter the center clearing at the same time. Huh. Hufflepuffs are formidable, Harry thinks.

Harry knows it’s a portkey as soon as he sees it. Maybe that’s why he dashes towards it before Cedric can offer for both of them to take it, like he knows the man would. Cedric is predictable like that, no matter how formidable he is.

As he’s swept away in a whirlwind of magic, Harry barely has time to see Cedric gape at him.

Well, he thinks as he lands on his feet and stares out at a desecrated graveyard, someone knows how to plan a welcome. There are four wixen standing amongst the graveyard, clearly expecting to get the drop on Harry, though he has no idea why. Maybe this has to do with Fake Moody?

He shifts into a bigger form on instinct, flicking through images and personalities as he scans the wixen in front of him to pick the best, most frightening one. He’s between a hulking giant and a starved vampire when one of the wix takes action. Finally. They’re really not the best fighting team so far. 

One of the cloaked figures, Harry thinks it’s a Death Eater named Macnair, shouts a spell with desperation in his voice. He’s one of the older ones who never went to Azkaban, Harry remembers Draco telling him.

“Riddikulus!”

The spell does nothing, and Harry grins with too sharp teeth, getting an itch to shift into a werewolf before deciding otherwise. Lucius is an easy target off to the side, one that will be quick to subdue with a well-placed threat.

Harry shudders his way into the form that Lucius fears the most, though Abraxas Malfoy is a close second. His eyes blink red, his wand feels right in his hand when he knows it shouldn’t. He takes the form of Lord Voldemort from the height of his power, and Lucius cowers. Disgust rises up in Harry’s throat. Draco would never show such weakness, not even when confronted with his worst fear, his father.

“You really think that would work on me?” Harry says in an oily voice. He feels confident like this, arrogant, and he knows he’s taking on the attributes of his form. Sirius and Remus have stories from when Voldemort was at the height of his power, and arrogant certainly was a word to describe him.

Even Macnair cowers at the sight of his Lord standing tall once more, a sight which usually would precede a Crucio or two.

Harry won’t kill Lucius, he knows he can’t. That would hurt Draco, even if the boy hates his father more than anything else in this world. But he can terrify Lucius beyond recognition.

Harry dodges a killing curse shot his way by one of the four Death Eaters. Their aim is off, sloppy.

Macnair falls to an overpowered stunner paired with the flickering form of Fenrir Greyback. Harry doesn’t like the taste the man’s fear leaves in his mouth, maybe because it’s tinged with awe. There’s nothing Harry hates more than people who hurt children, and Fenrir is the number one example of that. Anyone who feels awe for such a despicable creature isn’t worth the fear they produce.

Another hooded figure, Nott Senior, falls solely to Harry as a dementor, sucking the life out of the Death Eater below. Harry calls upon years of knowing Ron to make his act a convincing one; what is an actor without a show, after all?

“Avada Kedavra!” Avery shouts.

Harry fades into mist as the green light shoots towards him, his murky form splitting in two to avoid the Killing Curse.

Avery collapses with agonized wails when Harry casts a Bone-Breaking curse his way. He doesn’t have to worry about Lucius moving with a swift Incarcerous, but he makes sure to project his aura all the same. As he gets closer to the fallen Death Eater, Avery begs for his life.

“Pathetic,” Harry sneers in Voldemort’s voice, just to make them both shudder once more.

He Stuns Avery before turning to his final opponent, Lucius Malfoy. He shifts into his normal form for this, he doesn’t need Voldemort’s appearance to terrorize his beloved’s father. Lucius is, above all else, a coward who chases money and power, not worth Harry’s best, most terrifying forms.

“Do you know who I am, Lord Malfoy?” Harry asks, head cocked to the side at an alarming angle. He grins with too many teeth and a mouth that stretches from bellybutton to eyes, breathing in the wave of fear that that causes.

Lucius nods stiltedly, and Harry smiles wider.

“Harry Potter,” the man murmurs, afraid enough not to look him directly in the eye.

“Now, now,” Harry chides. “I was formal, though I’m not sure you deserve it. I expect the same in return.”

“Lord Potter,” Lucius says through gritted teeth. He’s shivering at the pure aura of darkness that Harry gives off, more intense the closer he gets.

“Correct.” Harry tilts his head and sighs, “What am I going to do with you, Lucy? Draco wouldn’t like it if you died, and I doubt Narcissa would be happy with me either. So I can’t send you back with the others, but I can’t let you go. You might get another foolish idea like this one, trying to corner me and get the upper hand.”

He watches Lucius wince, clearly trying not to sneer and upset the boggart hovering above him.

“No, I can’t just let you go. Not until you understand that I cannot be cornered, that you will never gain the upper hand with me.” Harry crouches down, only a foot away now. “So here’s what’s gonna happen, Lucius. You are going to return to Malfoy Manor, and you are not going to talk to your son before he reaches out to you. You will be a good father, for once, and leave us alone. Do you understand?”

Lucius doesn’t get a chance to answer, though the fear in his eyes is clear enough of one. Harry glances behind himself, blinking in surprise at the noise that echoes through the graveyard.

Not too far away, the ground erupts, giving way to decaying flesh and exposed bone. A decomposing corpse claws at the dirt until there’s a large enough hole for a smaller body to pass through, a more together body.

“Having fun without us, brother?” Hermione says with dead eyes, stepping out of the hole. Her Inferius climbs out with her, standing right behind her like a horrible bodyguard.

“Oh yeah, lots,” Harry says, eyebrows raised. He looks pointedly at the bodies of the fallen Death Eaters splayed out across the graveyard. “Though Lucy and I were in the middle of a conversation.”

Hermione grins, an unnatural thing, and drawls, “My apologies, Lord Potter. Please, continue.”

Before Harry can do much more than sigh, there’s an incessant fluttering just above them. The sound makes him grin, paired with the low humming of a hundred swarms of bees and moths flocking around a lamppost. He raises his head to greet his brother.

“I should have known you’d have been near where the ring was found,” Ron mutters to himself as he lowers to the ground. His cloak flares around him, covering him in flickering shadows.

If Harry squints, he thinks he can see a few more dementors flying high above them. The edge of cold that creeps into his awareness confirms his suspicions.

“Wasn’t really a choice, Ron,” Harry says. He’s grinning at the sight of his siblings eyeing the Death Eaters on the ground with distaste.

“Don’t lie to me, Harry Potter.” Ron scowls and points a finger straight at him. “You could tell it was a portkey before you even touched it, and you still decided to let it take you, didn’t you? Stupid boggart, no concern for your poor siblings’ worries.”

Harry smiles happily, abandoning a prone Lucius to assure his siblings of his safety.

“They weren’t even a challenge,” he says. “A few Killing Curses and a boggart banishing spell were all they got off before I took them out. Lucy and I were having a conversation before I sent him back to his cushy manor. I want to make sure he knows where we stand.”

Ron eyes Lucius, a cold smile creeping onto his face.

“Did you say everything you wanted to say?” Hermione asks. “If you stay here much longer they’ll send out a search party.”

Harry sighs and looks down at a very pale Lucius Malfoy. 

“I’m done, for now.” He gets down on his knees and peers right into the man’s eyes. “But I hope you know, if you lay a hand on Draco, I will rip you into pieces before letting Ron take your soul. Then, if you’re lucky, Hermione will resurrect you so Death doesn’t get you in the afterlife. Trust me, Death is not as merciful as we are.”

He’s not bluffing, not really. Hermione is close to being the Master of Death, so they’ve done a lot of research on the subject.

“Well,” he stands, brushing his palms off on his trousers, “what now?”

He can always trust his siblings to take over when he’s done being impulsive.

Hermione waves a hand, a nonverbal Incarcerous binding each of the three Death Eaters in rope and floating the unconscious bodies towards the Cup. She summons their wands, mercilessly snapping them in two while staring Lucius straight in the eye. Harry enjoys the burst of fear it invokes.

“Send a Patronus before you take them back with you,” Ron advises, looking a little frustrated with the entire concept of the Patronus. He’s still not above a few minutes with his experiments of withstanding the light spell, so there are some feelings there.

Hermione nods, “Let the crowd hear what happened, and ask for aurors to be there to take these three in. That way none of the students will be hurt if one of these guys gets loose.”

Harry does as they tell him to, summoning a Patronus Charm, smiling at the shimmering shape of Scary that erupts from the tip of his wand. He sends it off with a tense message informing the staff and Ministry officials that he’ll be bringing three Death Eaters back with him through the portkey that took him here. He does not mention Lucius.

“You two’d better go before Dumbledore tracks me down,” Harry says, looking at his siblings. “I’ll be gone by then, but I don’t want him to mess with you any more than he has to.”

Hermione disappears back into the hole she made, her rotting bodyguard Inferius following her without a word. Ron does the same, flipping up his hood and disappearing into the shadows to return to the Third Task.

He takes a moment to pat himself down and make sure everything’s in order before he approaches the Cup-turned-portkey.

Harry lays his arm across the three tied up men. He confirms that he has a good hold on them, then he reaches out with his other arm and grabs hold of the portkey. His body, along with the other three, melts into the swirling tumultuous wave that is wizarding portkeys. He feels like he’s being pushed through a tube and blended by a muggle blender, and he loves it.

When he appears in front of the clamoring crowd that is the audience to the Third Task, he’s instantly surrounded by aurors and adults with vested interests in Harry’s safety. He lets Amelia Bones take the three Death Eaters into custody with a promise to give his testimony when he’s next free.

People crowd him from every direction, asking him what happened and reaching out to touch him. Luckily, his siblings are there to hold the worst of them back, and if not then Harry flashes fangs at the more persistent ones.

The Minister is there, clutching his bowler hat and sweating already, but Harry is distracted by the Headmaster looking at him intently, his eyes no longer twinkling. He looks serious, and the crowd goes silent as the old man, the paragon of the Light, speaks up.

“Is he back, my boy?” The Headmaster gets closer, way too close for comfort, his face in Harry’s. “Is he?” 

“Who?” Harry blinks, looking up at the Headmaster with wide, innocent eyes. He has a feeling he knows what this is about, and he doesn’t like it.

“Voldemort.” Gasps ring through the listening crowd, people flinching back and cowering at the name. Dumbledore looks a little pleased at the reaction.

Harry gapes. The old man is still in denial even though the Dark Marks have been gone for years? Surely he can’t be that stupid. Though, this is the Headmaster he’s talking about, and the old man clearly only believes in his own powers.

“What, no, of course not. He’s dead,” Harry says, brow furrowed and tone not unlike one talking to a naive child. “He died years ago, Headmaster, you know that.”

Dumbledore looks disappointed, but Harry glances over his shoulder to watch the crowd around them.

“The Dark Mark disappeared entirely in my first year, probably because the anchor he left in me was taken out and he could finally move on,” he explains, ignoring Dumbledore’s wide eyes at the admission. Harry’s lying, of course, but they don’t need to know that there were more Horcruxes. “Voldemort has been dead for real since I was eleven, and anyone who pays attention knows that. I think some of the survivors of the disappearance of the Dark Mark wanted revenge, or whatever stupid reason they had, so they enchanted the Cup and planned an attack.”

Dumbledore has gone pale now. The crowd fidgets under Harry’s gaze, just trusting enough in his fame to believe what he says, more so than they believe Dumbledore after the week of articles that have badmouthed him.

“Of course,” Harry continues, “they didn’t take into account that I’m a boggart, so their plan didn’t work. I reformed around their Killing Curses and knocked them out. That’s when I sent the Patronus and grabbed back hold of the portkey with the Death Eaters in tow.”

The Minister looks way too relieved about the fact that Voldemort isn’t back and better than ever. Harry decides he likes the overwhelming taste of this man’s fear. He’ll have to haunt him when summer starts.

Harry watches Dumbledore step away, letting Draco and the others crowd Harry and reassure themselves of his safety.

“You idiot,” Draco growls against Harry’s neck.

“Yeah,” Harry says with a smile, “but I’m your idiot.”

He meets Theodore Nott’s eyes over Draco’s head.

Theo gives him an understanding nod. If anything, he seems happy that his grandfather, his guardian, has been captured and arrested. Maybe now he’ll have unlimited access to the Nott Family Library. That would make Hermione happy, at least.

A few steps away, trying to inch forward but constantly being blocked by the crowd, Fake Moody scowls and twitches, licking his lips as he glares at Harry.

“It might be time to deal with him,” Pansy remarks, leaning into Hermione who’s leaning into Ron and Harry. “He’s probably the one who arranged this all. I don’t know about you all, but I would like to hear what he knows.”

Harry hears the underlying meaning to her words, that she wants to learn his secrets before the dark trio kills him.

“Mr. Potter,” says the devil they’re speaking of, his voice gruff. He’s clutching at the flask he keeps on him at all times. “Come with me, we need to get you checked out in the Hospital Wing before the aurors come back for your statement. Your friends will be fine, lad, you’ve taken care of the horrid dark wizards who were after you.”

Harry sighs quietly and pulls himself away from Draco’s grip. He’ll go along with this for now, since he knows the man can’t actually do anything to hurt him at all.

Moody leads him through the crowd and into the castle without another word, though that fits the man’s usual behavior. Something’s building beneath the surface, a tension that makes Harry fight off a sadistic grin. It’s time, he thinks, finally.

They go to Moody’s office instead of the Hospital Wing, but Harry doesn’t comment on it. He watches the grizzled man look through the things on his desk, the magical eye scanning the room for anything out of the ordinary. Any minute now, Harry hums.

He practically cackles when Imposter Moody whips out his wand and shoots a spell in Harry’s direction. These wizards never learn, do they?

Harry disappears into the shadows in an instant. He reaches out with his magic to disarm the man, a silent Expelliarmus, then digs the tentacles of his boggart magic into the potion coursing through Moody’s blood. With a heaving effort, he pulls the potion out and watches as the imposter returns to his true form.

He isn’t surprised to see Barty Crouch Jr. He got that much from the forms of the man’s greatest fears being Crouch Senior, his wife, and the manifestation of the Imperius Curse.

Stepping out of the shadows, Harry looks down at the panting Death Eater who’s clearly struggling with his quick, unexpected transformation back into his own body.

He cocks his head to the side as he examines the man. He doesn’t look good, but Harry’s not sure whether that’s because of the Polyjuice purge or the aftereffects of the Dark Mark’s disappearance. Most who had the mark died within weeks of Voldemort’s death, but those who held, in any way, an ambiguous loyalty to the Dark Lord survived with certain caveats. Snape, for example, only suffers arm pain when around particularly dark magic. Crouch, on the other hand, seems to suffer from far more, probably due to having a stronger loyalty to Voldemort, for whatever reason.

Crouch spits and sneers up at Harry, looking greedily at his own wand in Harry’s left hand, but he makes no move to reach for it. He looks like he’s in too much pain to move.

Ron flutters into the room, pressing out from the walls like something out of a horror movie. His hood is up, obscuring his face from view. If Harry didn’t know any better, he’d think Ron was a true dementor in body and not just magic.

The buzzing of a thousand moths starts up in his brother’s chest. The dementor cloak that wraps around his broad shoulders flickers like a shadowy fire, and Harry watches Barty Crouch Junior go pale. The man shudders at their feet, his head hitting the floor with a crack that reverberates through the room.

Hermione isn’t far off, and she makes her way into the room, magically locking the door behind her when she sees what has occurred inside.

The room gets cold. Harry’s breath fogs the air in front of him, making him shiver with delight. Crouch’s fear skyrockets as Ron moves towards him. Ron lowers his hood to show his face, but this does nothing to calm the man down. Instead, Crouch chokes on a scream when Ron opens his mouth.

“He entered your name,” Ron says, his mouth a whirling, gaping maw of void, sucking in pieces of soul and memory without regret. “He hated his father more than anything. He killed him over the summer.”

As they suspected after the year they’ve been through, Harry thinks. He watches Ron breathe in more bits of soul with a detached fascination, same as Hermione does at his side. It goes on like that for a few minutes.

“Dumbledore will want to talk to you about the anchor piece,” Hermione mentions as they watch Ron do his thing, breaking the silence outside of the low, rasping sound coming from Ron’s throat. At Harry’s confused look, she sighs and says, “The clever term you came up with to avoid saying Horcrux, Harry.”

“Oh, yeah,” he smiles abashedly. “It wasn’t technically a lie, at least.”

Ron mutters to himself, looking high on memories and emotions that he sucks mercilessly from Crouch’s soul, “So many spells, so much knowledge. Can’t wait to try some of this out.”

That sufficiently distracts Hermione enough for Harry to get away with not having a plan for his next meeting with Dumbledore, inevitable as it is.

When Ron gets all the information out of Crouch Junior, Harry does the noble thing and ends the man’s suffering. Or, well, he tells Ron that his soul is up for grabs if he’s hungry enough.

Ron takes him up on his offer. Crouch dies in the space between heartbeats, his soul drifting up to rest in Ron’s maw.

“I’ll fetch the pensieve from Grimmauld,” Ron tells them, already grinning at the information-hungry look that Hermione is shooting at him. He disappears in a whirl that screeches in Harry’s head like nails on a chalkboard.

Harry meets the other three champions in the Hospital Wing while Ron is gone. Hermione accompanies him, and he’s pretty sure their partners are still out in the field gathering information about what the Ministry plans to do with the three Death Eaters suddenly in their custody.

Harry gives the others his winnings. He doesn’t need them, not really, since he has vaults and vaults full of gold. They look pensive when he tells them what he plans on doing, but other than a few protests from Cedric they don’t deny his claims of wealth.

In the end, Cho stares Cedric down until he gives in. Ravenclaws can be scary when they want to be, or maybe Cedric’s just whipped for his girlfriend.

When Harry goes to sleep that night, it’s with Draco right next to him. His beloved won’t let him out of his sight, especially not after hearing about Crouch Junior. Draco’s blond hair and fair skin looks ethereal in the refracted light coming in from the windows open to the Black Lake. Harry falls asleep with Draco in his arms, soothing him from the fear of Harry disappearing to fight his father.

Harry doesn’t think too much about the Third Task, not like his friends do. It wasn’t much trouble, if he’s perfectly honest. He’s known how to dodge a swinging fist since he was young enough to know what pain is, and dodging spells is similar enough. The Death Eaters were a little unexpected, but he took care of them easily. And he got to talk to his beloved’s father, which was helpful. It’s always good to threaten someone before they go too far. In this case, too far would be involving Draco in any way. Lucius wouldn’t live long if he involved Draco, no matter what Draco feels for him.

The next day, the castle is ablaze with rumors. Apparently, a dead man was found in Professor Moody’s office in the early hours of the morning. Found with the man was a stash of Polyjuice potion. In the trunk hidden behind the desk, the real Alastor Moody sat, without his leg, eye, and covered in filth.

The Gryffindors are up in arms about it, apparently because of Real Moody’s reputation of being on the side of the law, perhaps too much so. The Weasley twins go around asking for signatures for a singing card for the man, who’s in St. Mungo’s after his prolonged stay in an expanded trunk without sufficient conditions for a healthy body, to say nothing of his mental state.

Harry meets Dumbledore’s twinkling eyes at lunch without hesitation. He expects the slight probing at his mental shields, but that doesn’t make him any less angry about it. The old man is horribly curious.

There’s only a week until summer break, and Harry spends it haunting his usual halls and abandoned classrooms with Scary.

The Headmaster does not call Harry up for a meeting in his office until the last day of the semester. It’s suitably dramatic, Draco thinks, which is one of the only compliments Draco has ever given the old man.

“Do you know why you are here, my boy?” The twinkle in his eye shines particularly bright today.

“Yes,” Harry says simply. There’s no use trying to avoid the issue, not when he’s found Dumbledore to be so persistent. “You want to talk about the thing that was in my scar. But before we do that, sir, may I ask you something?”

Dumbledore’s eyebrows raise, curiosity brimming in his eyes. He nods graciously.

“When did you learn about Tom Riddle’s Horcruxes?”

Eyes go wide with shock, and Dumbledore visibly startles. This is clearly not what he’s been expecting. Harry grins slightly, but he’s too focused on the lack of twinkle to properly enjoy the moment.

“How did you come upon that term, Harry?”

Harry sighs, disappointed. “You really think I’m ‘falling to the Dark Side,’ don’t you, Headmaster? You have purposely ignored the facts of my identity just so you can continue to believe your falsehoods. First it was the dark spell that I have never touched in my life, and now you think that I have followed Riddle’s path to becoming a Dark Lord?”

He thinks he sees a bit of guilt in the old man’s expression, but it’s gone before long and replaced with grandfatherly disappointment.

“Answer the question, my boy,” is all he says.

“I have known about Riddle’s Horcruxes since first year. I happened upon a dementor who informed me of the soul piece in my scar, and within the year we had found all of the other pieces. We destroyed them a few days before the Dark Marks started disappearing.”

“You talked to a Dementor?” There’s clear disbelief in the man’s eyes.

Closing his eyes briefly, Harry considers simply leaving. But no, that would leave him with more trouble to deal with.

“Believe it or not, Sir, there are things that you don’t know, especially concerning Dark Creatures,” he says blandly. Looking him right in the eyes, he scoffs, “Have you even read Hermione’s research? What am I saying, of course you haven’t. To answer your question, yes, I talked to a Dementor. See, they’re not big fans of soul pieces, especially those that belong to the man who tried to force them to rebel and give up their position in Azkaban. They helped me destroy all of Riddle’s soul with only one thing in return: peace.”

Harry sighs, rubbing a hand across his face. He has the urge to shift and scare the old man out of his wits, but he knows that that would be a bad idea. When the time comes, and it will, he and his siblings will have no public connections to Dumbledore’s death. That means he has to keep his temper, for now.

“Sir,” he says, “with all due respect, there are people other than you who can solve problems and learn new things. Hermione has been doing a wonderful job at that so far, publishing books on both boggarts and dementors, including their origins, culture, and literally anything else you can think of. Merlin, just this year my guardian and I learned how to resist the Boggart-Banishing charm, something that has never been recorded before!”

He tries to put as much earnest determination into his expression as he looks up to meet the old man’s gaze.

“We learned all about Tom Riddle’s life from just a soul shard in my scar, and then we dismissed his entire soul from this realm and into Hell, if that actually exists, without any of your help. You’ve been fighting this war so long that I don’t think you know how to do anything else, sir. I mean, when’s the last time you looked at the Slytherins with anything other than wariness?”

There it is, a pang of guilt so intense that Harry almost feels sympathetic. Almost. He remembers the fear that each year’s new batch of Slytherins hold for the Headmaster, all because they’re in the house of cunning and ambition, as if that has anything to do with their moral alignment.

Harry’s not one for thinking too deeply about things like this, but when it involves his family and friends, well. He can’t let it continue if he has the chance to stop it.

There’s a moment of silence where Harry watches Dumbledore close his eyes and look older than he ever has before. It’s clear that something is happening, something monumental, though Harry’s not sure what. He lets it settle within the man without interruption.

“Voldemort is truly dead, then?” Dumbledore asks at last. His voice is low and solemn, the most real that Harry thinks he has sounded in decades. “His soul is gone?”

“Yes,” Harry says with a gentle smile. “Check it if you can, but it won’t change. Tom Riddle died in my first year at the hands of a dementor. He’s gone, for good this time. The war is over.”

Dumbledore visibly swallows, and there’s such sadness on his face that Harry has to look away.

“What have I done?” 

Harry barely hears him mutter to himself, and he decides to get out while he still can. He’s not equipped for this, a crying old man who probably has been planning out Harry’s life down to the letter for the last fourteen years.

He disappears into the shadows. Before Dumbledore can realize he’s gone, Harry is in his common room, snuggling up to Draco and ignoring the shocked yelps at his sudden appearance from the younger years who aren’t yet used to it.

Summer begins before he knows it.

The week after school lets out for the summer, something finally gives. The tension between the wizarding world and the dementor population reaches its breaking point, after so long in the making. The dementor cities are ablaze with motion and planning, humming and buzzing loud enough that muggles report an increase of static electricity across the continent.

What will soon be called the Dementor Revolt starts to kick into motion, and Ron has his marching orders. The first to go will be the ones who have harmed Dark Creatures the most.

It’s a big first step, but it’s necessary. They’ll never be taken seriously if they continue on as they’ve been doing, peacefully. Or, well, as peacefully as a colony of dementors can be.

One day, while he’s at the Ministry to visit his father, Ron takes a diversion and goes to properly greet the Undersecretary to the Minister. All it takes is a gulping gasp for Dolores Umbridge to lose her soul. Her body is easily gotten rid of with a Banishing spell that can’t be traced.

The next step is the abandonment of Azkaban.

Some of the worst bigots in the magical world die of natural causes, all in the span of a month, then, when they’re paranoid about another rising Dark Lord, all dementors within magical Britain receive the same marching orders to escape while they still can. Aurors scramble to protect the islands as the resident guards disappear. The Ministry is in uproar.

No one knows why this is all happening, no one but the ones involved. Well, there are two wizards that have an inkling, but they’d never tell. Not without their brother’s permission.

(Arthur Weasley heads to work that morning after they get news of the brewing rebellion. Within their room, surrounded by bubbling potions and open notebooks full of coded notes on various inventions, Fred and George Weasley share a mischievous grin.)