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Chapter Text

Harry sighed a little as he locked the compartment on the Hogwarts Express behind him for the last time. Honestly, he was looking forward to the peace and quiet of this year.

All right, maybe not peace and quiet, not when people would try to hex him, curse him, trip him, destroy his homework, and other things that the professors ignored or even added to. But at least Voldemort was dead now, and the Death Eaters who had been in charge of the school last year were all dead.

Harry had made sure of that.

He shifted a bit, calling up some of the spells that hovered under his skin. He had learned early in his first year that someone could take his wand from him, and the ability that people called “wandless magic” was just so purely accidental with him that it was always doing things Harry didn’t want it to. So he had studied book after book after book until he had learned a way to combine runes and magical weaving that would embed spells under his skin, where no one could take them from him.

Protego, he thought, and the shield manifested around him.

Harry picked up his Potions book and started reading. He had already arranged to take this particular NEWT by owl correspondence, with a witch out of the country who had no idea who he really was. Her letters were downright pleasant.

It had been a relief for Harry when Snape had got himself killed in the war, too, not that he would admit that, precisely.

*

Someone knocked on the compartment door less than an hour into the trip.

Harry looked up, eyebrows raised. He had the door locked and the shades down across the window, so he supposed that someone might have known the compartment was his by pure process of elimination.

But he hadn’t put the usual hex on the door that would sting anyone trying to touch it. An oversight. Harry shook his head, sighed, and cast the hex now on the inside so it would seep around the door to the outside.

The knocking continued for a minute, then ended with a pained cry.

Harry smiled a little and went back to reading.

*

Harry rode in the last, thestral-drawn carriage up to the castle. He had learned the hard way not to share one with anyone in his second year.

Harry sighed and leaned his head out the window to look up at the stars. Sometimes he mourned the boy he had been, the one who had been still looking for comfort and friends and had been painfully eager to believe that people like Neville Longbottom and Justin Finch-Fletchley wouldn’t try to hurt him.

And sometimes he couldn’t believe what a naïve little idiot that boy had been.

When the carriage drew to a halt, Harry got out and walked into the Great Hall without hurry. He was required to sit at the Gryffindor table, as Professor McGonagall had shouted at him more than once over the years, but he didn’t have to talk to them.

He concentrated, and the incantation for the Surrounding Silence Charm, which would keep him from hearing anything anyone said to him, swam up on his arm. Harry touched it and watched the Sorting with a little pity in his heart. There were always going to be kids up there who didn’t fit into their Houses. He had believed the Hat when it had said Harry could make friends in Gryffindor, and look at how that had ended up.

Still, he pitied them in the abstract. Everyone who got Sorted into Gryffindor hated him just the same as the rest, so he had no particular reason to try and help them.

The Gryffindor firsties this year sat at the end of the table and stared at Harry with their eyes as round as moons. Harry could hear a light murmur as the older students learned over to spread their poison about him into their ears, since those words weren’t addressed directly to him, but he was able to ignore it.

Someone spoke to him, but their voice was nothing more than a meaningless buzz. Harry turned to his food.

Someone buzzed again, and then someone tried to grab his arm.

Harry moved expertly away and glanced to the side. Ah. Hermione Granger, who had gone on more than one tirade over the years when Harry got anything above a Troll because she thought he must be cheating.

She was still stubbornly speaking to him, from the movement of her mouth, even though she must know that he was ignoring everything she said. Harry raised the Protego shield around him and went on eating.

Granger was persistent, he would give that. He could see her mouth still moving for another five minutes.

But Harry wasn’t in the mood to listen to whatever nonsense reason she had come up with to despise him this time. He filled his stomach with rich, warm food completely, for the first time in more than a year, and sat back with a contented sigh.

He noticed more than one person staring at him from the professors’ table, including a man who looked slightly familiar. Oh, right. Sirius Black. The man who had supposedly been a deranged murderer, but had turned out to be innocent, and Harry’s godfather. The man who had spewed bile at Harry at the end of his third year about how Harry’s parents would be incredibly disappointed in him for going after someone with murder in his heart.

Harry hadn’t seen the man since then, and really didn’t know how he had survived. But that wasn’t his problem.

*

On the way up to Gryffindor Tower, Harry peeled away from the other Gryffindors on the third staircase. He hadn’t slept in the Tower since third year, when Finnigan had lit the bed on fire with Harry in it.

Someone grabbed his arm.

Harry slid smoothly out of the grip and kicked backwards, making the other person gasp. He turned around, and shook his head when he saw Finnigan there.

“Sod off,” he said pleasantly. They wouldn’t be able to catch him to impose any harsh punishment, and if one of the prefects took points from Gryffindor, it wasn’t like Harry cared.

Finnigan opened his mouth, but Harry’s charm was still in effect, and Harry couldn’t hear anything the bloke said to him. Harry continued peacefully on his way, down the corridor, around a corner, and through a door set flush with the wall that led down a secret passage.

Harry’s bedroom was off the secret passage itself, originally an alcove that Harry had enlarged with stone-chipping spells and others he’d found until it resembled a slightly bigger cupboard. Honestly, that was all the space he needed. He’d found an old bed poking around in the dungeons that he’d fixed up with Repairing Charms, and with his trunk, a few hooks for robes on the walls, and a table beside the bed, everything fit perfectly.

Harry set up the wards around his bed that he’d always used since fourth year, changed into pyjamas, curled up in bed, and slipped into the sleep of the armed.

*

Harry groaned a little when he got his schedule the next morning, from Professor McGonagall, who peered at him over her glasses but at least didn’t offer the same mixture of scolding and dislike that she usually did. Professor Black was listed next to Defense Against the Dark Arts.

Harry had kept Defense on his schedule even when Snape was teaching it in sixth year because he considered it too useful to drop. But now, he knew plenty of ways to keep himself safe, and the end of the war had made learning others less urgent. He tapped his fingers on the table and considered dropping it.

“Potter?”

Harry’s charm had faded while he slept, so he had to hear someone else speaking to him. But he didn’t have to answer. He just glanced sideways at Granger and didn’t reply.

“Potter.” Granger leaned across the table. Beside her, Weasley—who had been “Ron” to Harry for all of one day—hovered and looked miserable. “Please, this is important.”

Everything was important to Granger, including accusing Harry of cheating. He kept ignoring her as he picked up an apple and stood.

“Come on! Listen to me!”

Granger always wanted everyone to listen to her. Harry wandered away from the Gryffindor table, contemplating the relative unpleasantness of speaking to McGonagall to get the class dropped compared to speaking to Black.

“We don’t hate you anymore!”

Harry snorted without looking back. That wasn’t even a good attempt to get his attention or make him listen.

Did Granger get more childish during the war?

Maybe she had. It wasn’t like Harry had been at Hogwarts during his seventh year, since he’d spent that time running from Death Eater patrols and killing the ones that cornered him, until Voldemort finally captured Harry and brought him before him.

And then he’d cast the Killing Curse at Harry, and Harry had still woken up and killed Voldemort.

Maybe something my mum did helped save me.

It was the best hypothesis Harry had, although he still did his best not to think about his mum too much. Or his dad, for that matter. It hurt to think about how much they would have disliked him, along with everyone else.

*

“Welcome to NEWT Defense. I am Professor Sirius Black, and as you have undoubtedly heard, I am not a mass murderer.”

A light chuckle swept the classroom. Black, meanwhile, was staring at Harry as if expecting him to respond.

Harry looked back, slightly bored. They’d moved the Defense classroom, and by the time Harry had found the new one, it was too late to tell Black privately he’d be dropping the class. But at least he’d only have to endure one day of this.

Black turned away and started lecturing about the Defensive uses for common spells. All the ones he brought up, Harry knew already. He leaned back in his chair and refused to take notes. It was a waste of his time.

“Mr. Potter? Do you have anything to add to this discussion?”

“No, Professor.”

“And why not?”

“Oh, I think I’d be a disappointment.”

Harry had done his best to imitate the cadence and intonation Black had used when yelling that word at Harry at the end of his third year. He didn’t know if he’d remembered them perfectly, but from the way Black drew away, he got the reference.

“Two points from Gryffindor,” Black said, and went on lecturing.

Harry flipped idly through the Defense book Black had assigned, which at least looked like it might have some new information, and wondered why none of the professors and prefects had ever understood that he didn’t care about points.

*

“Stay after class, Mr. Potter.”

Black had said that without looking at Harry, so Harry supposed that he was in for another lecture. He settled back in his desk and watched the rest of the NEWT students drifting out of the class. It was bigger than usual since it included the people who would have been sixth-years last term. Almost everyone gave Harry furtive looks, but no one attacked him.

Huh. A bit unusual. They had never hesitated to attack him before in front of a professor. Some, like Snape, had encouraged that.

“I need you to listen to me.”

Is this some technique that he and Granger discussed together? Harry had known, because Granger and the Weasleys had made sure to brag about it in front of him, that they were in some sort of secret organization that included Black. But Harry didn’t know why Black would be trying this when Granger ought to have informed him it didn’t work.

“We were cursed to dislike you.”

Harry raised his eyebrows. Black was leaning forwards with his hands braced on the desk. “I know that.”

“What?”

“Only a curse could explain the way that everyone turned on me so thoroughly,” Harry said. “It even affected animals like pets who are close to humans.” The memory of Hedwig clawing him and flying away forever the day after his Sorting still ached, but at least he’d never got another pet who could leave him behind that way. “And I know that Voldemort cursed me—honestly, why are you flinching like a child?”

Huh. Harry’s voice had emerged more contemptuously than he’d meant it to. He supposed that he still resented his godfather for betraying him more than he resented some other people.

“And you didn’t forgive us?”

“How was I supposed to know that the curse would end when he died? It didn’t end when I killed some various parts of him over the years.”

“What?”

“Parts of him,” Harry repeated slowly. “I don’t know what they were called. Dumbledore said he knew but he couldn’t trust me, so he kept the information to himself. But the diary I destroyed in second year was one, and the locket that tried to possess me after someone stupid brought it to school in fifth year was another. I assume there were more that I didn’t get. But the curse didn’t end when I destroyed either of them.”

“Diary? Locket? What are you talking about?”

“You know as much as I do about them. Various memories of Voldemort were in the things and tried to possess me and other people. That’s it.”

Black stared at him with wide, devastated eyes. Harry just looked back, slightly impatient. Dumbledore must have kept secrets from Black, too, but it wasn’t Harry’s responsibility to have told that to him.

“How did you kill them?” Black finally whispered. “How did you kill him?”

“Basilisk fang for the diary. Another one for the locket, once I managed to realize it was the same thing as the diary. And a Sawing Charm for Voldemort himself.”

“Sawing Charm?”

“To cut off his head.”

Harry had to admit he enjoyed Black’s flinch this time, the way he hadn’t enjoyed them at the name Voldemort itself. He leaned back in his chair and grinned at his godfather.

“You didn’t realize that the curse had ended with his death?” Black’s voice was subdued.

“Why would I? Like I said, various parts of him had died before. And the immediate aftermath of his death was people screaming at me for coming towards little kids covered in blood, so I Apparated away.”

Black closed his eyes, then opened them. “You—you could have come to us when you realized.”

“But I didn’t.”

“But you didn’t. Anyway, the curse—Harry, I’m so sorry. We should have realized there was one. It wasn’t natural for any of us to despise you as much as we did, especially when Hermione could admit that she never saw you cheating and Ron never saw you trying to hurt his siblings.”

Harry shrugged. “It’s in the past now.”

“So you can forgive us?” Black took an eager step forwards. “I’d love to have you live with me—”

He trailed off in the face of Harry’s incredulous stare.

“Of course I can’t do that,” Harry said. “I just meant that I won’t seek revenge because I know how to protect myself now and there would be no point.”

He stood up. “I think we’re done here. By the way, I’ll be dropping the class. I don’t want you to teach me, and things like defensive uses for common charms are ones I already know.”

“Harry—”

Harry glanced over his shoulder, and whatever Black saw in his face, it made him shut up.

“I’ll never get the memory of you screaming at me for being a disappointment to my parents out of my head,” Harry said softly. “I accept that the curse caused your behavior, but I can’t forgive it. We should just go our own ways and leave each other alone.”

Black was saying something else as Harry walked out of the classroom, but Harry raised the Surrounding Silence Charm, and the words broke into senseless murmurs.

*

“Mr. Potter, stay after class.”

Harry sighed a little under his breath. This was getting to be a theme with the professors. Flitwick had held him back to apologize and ask if there was anything he could do, and now McGonagall was probably going to do the same thing.

Harry would just tell her what he had told Flitwick: it was too late, he didn’t want anything, and they could leave him alone to get on with his studying. Just being left alone was a gift he had never had.

“I understand that you don’t sleep in Gryffindor Tower.”

Harry blinked and glanced up at his Head of House, not that she had ever acted that way. McGonagall was leaning forwards from behind her desk, attention focused on him.

“No, Professor.”

“Why not?”

Is she going to yell at me for breaking the rules? Harry had already seen a few people glaring at him. He reckoned that their irrational dislike of him had disappeared and they knew it, but they also couldn’t bring themselves to regret how they had behaved. Too much time and effort sunk into it. Maybe McGonagall was one of those people.

“I left in third year when Finnigan set my bed on fire with me in it and found another place to sleep.”

McGonagall put her hand across her mouth, her eyes huge. Harry reevaluated her. Maybe she didn’t hate him after hating him for so long; she just hadn’t known the way to approach it.

“He did that?” she whispered.

“I thought you knew, Professor. You laughed and gave him points the next morning for removing me from the Tower because you thought I was a danger to the little kids.”

McGonagall closed her eyes. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I—I do remember doing that, but my memories under the curse are so vague.”

Harry nodded. He hadn’t expected anything else, even if that wasn’t true and the memories were sharp and vivid. She still wouldn’t have wanted to admit it.

“You can go back to the Tower now, Mr. Potter. Trust me when I say your roommates have completely changed their opinion of you.”

“I don’t really want to go back, Professor, thanks all the same.”

“Why not?”

“That was the only time that someone tried to kill me in bed, but they all tried to kill me on more than one occasion. Spelling me to trip down the stairs, hexing me in the back with long-lasting bleeding curses, sending Bludgers at me after Weasley made the team, breaking the bones in my hand and trying to work their way up to all the bones in my body, using healing magic to stop my heart—”

McGonagall gave a little cry. Harry stopped. He didn’t know how many of those she’d known about, true, but being surprised by them was more than a bit silly.

“You didn’t ask for help.”

“You made it clear that you hated me. Why would I?’

McGonagall glanced to the side, her face on fire. “I am ashamed,” she said softly. “I am so sorry, Mr. Potter. I should have known that something was wrong and got myself checked over. I should have sent you a letter during the summer after the curse ended.”

Harry shrugged. He’d spent the summers in the Muggle world even after he left the Dursleys. The curse didn’t affect Muggles, and they might avoid him while he was living on the streets, but they didn’t automatically hate him. An owl would have attracted attention that he didn’t need.

“I do know a few other people who would like to speak to you,” McGonagall added. “Extend their apologies.”

“I’m not interested in hearing from them.”

McGonagall caught her breath, sounding stricken. Harry held back the chance to say something else sarcastic. It would only get him embroiled in a fight that he had no interest in.

McGonagall finally licked her lips and whispered, “Do you know that I’m the Headmistress? But I’m teaching Transfiguration until we find another professor. And Filius Flitwick, as my Deputy Headmaster, handles some of the Head duties for me.”

“All right,” Harry said, mystified as to why she thought this was important.

“But only I can access the Headmistress’s office.”

“All right.”

“There are some people there who would like to speak to you.”

Harry shrugged. He did wonder why they would want to meet in McGonagall’s office instead of somewhere else, but maybe they were the sort of “important” wankers who thought their reputations would be damaged to be seen apologizing, even to the Boy-Who-Lived. “Fine. I can come tomorrow.”

“I do insist we go now.”

Harry snorted a little, because she had sounded like she was giving him a choice, but he turned and walked with her. McGonagall continued darting little sideways glances at him. Harry just waited.

“If you know it was a curse,” McGonagall asked finally, “why not act more—conciliating towards us now?”

“I outgrew the need for your friendship and approval a long time ago.”

McGonagall opened her mouth and closed it like a fish. Harry entertained himself wondering how many times she would do that on the way up to her office.

Sadly, that was the only time. Harry wished people could be a little more entertaining when freed from the curse, but then again, he meant what he had said. The time when he had wanted them to like him and help him was years in the past. Curse or not, they had proven they weren’t the sort of people he could trust.

Chapter Text

“Harry, my boy.”

Harry blinked up at Albus Dumbledore’s portrait. The man was leaning forwards against a background of what seemed to be bookshelves, his beard and his eyes bright and twinkling. It was an unfamiliar sight since he’d never looked at Harry with more than detached loathing.

“Sir,” Harry said, very slowly.

“Potter.”

Ah, that was more familiar. Snape looked as if he might rip his portrait off the wall to either get away from Harry or strangle him. Harry reckoned that Snape had hated him for different reasons not based on the curse.

Harry didn’t bother acknowledging Snape, just looked at McGonagall as she moved around behind the Headmistress’s desk and sat down. She gave him a tremulous smile. “Professor Dumbledore and Professor Snape would very much like to speak with you, Harry.”

“If Snape starts yelling at me, I’m just going to leave.”

“No, Severus.”

Harry glanced up to see that Dumbledore was glaring at Snape, who was shutting his mouth with a sulky expression on his face. That was a little funny. Harry smiled.

“You still look like your prancing arse of a father, Potter.”

“Yeah, lots of people tell me that,” Harry said, unmoved. It had mostly been Snape yelling that at him, but sometimes one of the other professors would take it up as a lament about how Harry had supposedly caused more trouble than James Potter ever had.

“Do you know what happened to make us all dislike you so much, my boy?”

Dumbledore made it sound like what had happened was Harry’s fault. Harry looked at him with less interest, and no forgiveness. “I know that it was a curse that Voldemort cast.”
He could feel McGonagall’s flinch without looking, and rolled his eyes without moving them.

“It was a curse,” Dumbledore acknowledged slowly. “It was a curse of enormous power, one that I in fact had never encountered and didn’t know how to defend against.”

“All right?” So far, nothing sounded like an apology. Harry was wondering why they had wanted him to come here in the first place.

“It would have been easy to defend against if I had known what it was, as I was an Occlumens.”

Harry half-shrugged. Occlumency was something he had studied a bit, but it had been less of a priority to defend his mind than his body.

“And Professor Snape was an Occlumens.”

“Fine?”

“So it was strange that we were both fooled by this curse. Stranger still that Voldemort managed to cast it when he was in the body of such a weak wizard as Professor Quirrell.”

Harry blinked. “So this is more excuses?”

“It is an explanation, my boy, not an excuse.”

“Then please tell me what you think you’re doing.”

McGonagall coughed a little, with the word “sir” buried in it, but Harry ignored that. He kept staring, and Dumbledore wavered for a moment, then leaned back in his portrait with a sigh.

“Your theory that Voldemort cast the curse is not correct,” Dumbledore said. He peered at Harry over the top of his glasses as if about the judge him. “Professor Snape cast it.”

Harry stared at the portrait in silence. Then he glanced at Snape’s portrait. The man was still sneering.

So his hatred was genuine. So genuine that he cast the curse.

Harry took a step forwards. He didn’t entirely know what he was going to do. He didn’t want revenge. Revenge would get him in trouble, and it was too late anyway. He wished he could say words that would make Snape ashamed, but the time was long past for that, as well.

So, instead, he asked what he really wanted to know. “When did you know about the curse and what happened because of it?” he asked, turning to look at Dumbledore.

The dead Headmaster was still studying him from his portrait. “Only after my death. Because Professor Snape is a gifted spellcrafter, he created the curse from scratch, and I did not know how to resist it.”

“Did you have something to do with the curse being so thorough and entrenched in everyone in the school?”

Harry didn’t know what made him ask the question, other than an instinct that the Headmaster must have some influence over the school and have had some inkling that this had been a curse even if he hadn’t known who had cast it until he died. The Headmaster’s portrait blinked a little.

“Why would you think that I had something to do with it, my boy?”

“It would help if you answered the question.”

McGonagall made a louder noise than before, but Harry didn’t bother looking at her. He kept his eyes focused on Dumbledore, and the portrait took his glasses off and closed his own eyes, rubbing them for a long moment.

“Yes,” Dumbledore breathed at last. “Because I was entwined within the wards as the Headmaster, and the curse had spread to me before I could consider its sources. And because—well, I trusted Professor Snape, and I would not have considered that he could be responsible. My trust and my belief in the reality of the curse spread throughout the wards and influenced everyone in Hogwarts.”

Harry closed his eyes for a moment. Then he shook his head. “Thank you for telling me the truth, sir.”

“I thought you deserved it, my boy.”

Harry nodded. He supposed that he’d needed the truth, in the sense that he might have gone on believing the mistaken theory for the rest of his life. It was better to know reality, to know that something like this could happen, and that might mean he could escape it if it happened again.

“Do you have nothing to say?” sneered Snape.

Harry glanced at him and turned around. No, he had nothing to say to Snape. And nothing to say to Dumbledore, who still hadn’t apologized, even if he had explained.

“Are you sorry?”

“What?”

“Are you sorry that you hated me and mistrusted me and influenced so many other people to hate and mistrust me? You haven’t said that at all, sir. Are you sorry? I’m interested in why you haven’t spoken an apology.”

The Headmaster stared at Harry as if he were a strange Potions ingredient. Harry just looked back and waited.

“I am sorry, of course, for what you suffered,” Dumbledore finally said slowly. “But there were reasons that—things that I cannot explain to you—why it was necessary for you to go in front of Voldemort’s Killing Curse.”

Harry shrugged. He supposed Dumbledore was one of those literalists who thought he couldn’t apologize unless he was sorry for everything. “All right,” he said, and turned his back to walk towards the office door.

“Mr. Potter, you cannot leave until you are dismissed.”

Harry shook his head at McGonagall. “There’s nothing here for me. No apologies, no sympathy, nothing except an apparent desire to excuse yourselves.”

“You have no respect for anyone and are an unrepentant child.”

Harry glanced over his shoulder. He still had no words for Snape, but he hoped that the hatred in his eyes was enough for someone who was reduced to a portrait and trapped in his own bitterness for eternity.

Then, over the sound of McGonagall calling him back with increased urgency, Harry turned and walked away.

*

Harry curled up in the Astronomy Tower, scribbling away at the essay that he was writing on the interaction of Arithmancy with the stars. He had dropped Astronomy after the OWL, especially given that there were too many temptations for someone else to shove him over the side of the Tower during the class, but he had owled back and forth with a wizard in Spain who had indicated that he might be willing to tutor Harry in the intersection of Astronomy and Artihmancy.

It was all right as long as they just wrote back and forth, Harry thought. The wizard had indicated they should meet, but Harry wasn’t sure that was a good idea.

“Harry?”

Harry rolled his eyes. He recognized the voice, and it was ridiculous for her to think that they had some kind of personal relationship, the same way that it had been ridiculous for the Headmaster to think that he should call Harry his dear boy.

Ginny Weasley strode onto the roof of the Tower, and then stopped. Harry kept his head down, bent over the essay, so he didn’t know if she blushed.

“I—came to say thank you.”

“For the Chamber?” Harry revised one of the equations near the top of the page and then looked at the one an inch from the bottom. He sighed. Now the bottom one didn’t make sense.

“Will you please look at me?”

“Why should I?” Harry leaned back against the side of the Tower and finally looked at Weasley. The light was dim enough that he couldn’t be sure she was blushing, but from the way her eyes were locked on the stone floor, she probably was. “You were the one who claimed I was the Heir, turned a lot of people against me, and then lashed out at me after I rescued you claiming that I was the creep because I spoke Parseltongue.”

“I’m sorry! But I was cursed.”

“And I wasn’t. I endured more than you.”

“If you—if you knew how it felt when the diary possessed me—”

“You could just apologize and thank me and go, instead of making up excuses.”

Weasley swallowed. Then she mumbled something Harry might not have heard, except that the Tower was so quiet. “You could be nicer about it.”

“And you could be less of a coward, or at least waste less of my time.”

Weasley took a deep breath and seemed to shake off some desire to leave. Harry wished she hadn’t. She sank down on the top step. “When I was little, you were the hero of my every daydream.”

“Hmmm.” Harry honestly couldn’t understand why correcting a mistake in the top equation had resulted in a mistake in the bottom one. Unless neither one had been accurate in the first place, of course.

“It was heartbreaking to come to school and then believe you were a horrible person. I’d listened to Ron ranting about it, but I hadn’t really listened to him.”

“Huh.” Harry erased the last number from the bottom equation and held his parchment up to the starlight. No, it honestly wasn’t bright enough to read more. He lowered the scroll and cast a Lumos with a glance at his left arm.

“Are you listening to me?”

“No, I don’t find it that interesting or valuable.”

“I’m trying to give you an insight into the way other people see you!”

Harry glanced at her. “If they still think that way, they aren’t worth any insight.”

Weasley closed her eyes. At least, Harry saw her do that in the brief time before he looked down at the parchment again. “I misspoke. I mean, the way that people saw you for most of the last seven years.”

Harry shrugged and glanced up at the position of the stars. That was the problem, then. He hadn’t aligned the Arithmancy with the right constellations. He would have to come back tomorrow night and do it. He stood up, letting the parchment snap shut. “I know how they saw me. I suffered through it.”

“But it would help you if you knew more about them now. It could help you live in the world without the curse.”

“Not necessary.”

Weasley gasped loudly and scrambled to her feet. Harry looked because he thought someone might be coming up the stairs, and Weasley was embarrassed to be caught apologizing. But instead, she stared at him with her mouth and eyes both wide open. “You aren’t thinking of jumping from the Tower, are you?”

“What in the world are you talking about?” Harry palmed his wand. Most of the spells he needed were woven beneath his skin, but he still had to use his wand for the more powerful offensive ones.

“You said that you didn’t need to live in the world without the curse.”

“I mean that I don’t need any of you. You tried your best, along with everyone else in the school, to convince me that my life wasn’t worth living for the last seven years. I’m not going to prove you right.”

“We were cursed!”

“Yes, so you keep saying.”

Weasley started babbling some more behind him. Harry turned and walked down the stairs, then had to Disillusion himself and dodge to the side as Weasley bolted down after him.

It took a little more work than normal to make his way to his secure bedroom, which of course only made Harry resent Weasley more. Was this a way to try and make sure that she mattered to him in the future? She was as incompetent at that as she had been at trying to drive him to suicide.

Harry shook his head and settled down to sleep.

*

“Potter.”

Draco Malfoy had approached him during the free period that Harry had now that he’d dropped Defense. Harry had thought Malfoy had been in the Defense group, so he wondered for a moment what the boy was doing here.

But he ignored it. Studying moss in the Forbidden Forest was necessary for his Herbology NEWT. This time, he didn’t want to have to retake the practical portions of the exams at the Ministry the way he had for the OWLS. He’d done that during the summer after fifth year in a hooded cloak.

He was still taking NEWT Herbology, but Sprout kept shooting him miserable looks. She’d broken down in tears the other day. Harry assumed this might be about the time in fourth year that she’d pretended not to notice the Venomous Tentacula that had hold of him.

Well, Harry had made her notice the fire he’d set to escape it. And the detention and scolding she had given him were just more in an endless line of them at Hogwarts, at least for him, so they hadn’t stood out as much.

“Potter! I’m talking to you!”

Harry had honestly forgotten that Malfoy was standing there. Malfoy had done his best to be Harry’s nemesis, for reasons that Harry wasn’t quite sure of, but he hadn’t succeeded. Harry had many more powerful nemeses.

Among them Snape, apparently. Harry had assumed, when Voldemort cast the curse, that it was so powerful due to the nature of Voldemort’s magic, but apparently it had been Snape’s power, his inventiveness, Dumbledore’s trust in Snape, and Dumbledore’s connection to the wards on the school. It was something Harry was still trying to absorb.

“Potter!”

Right. Malfoy wasn’t that memorable. Harry cocked his head and slid the moss he’d found on the right side of the tree into a vial. “Yeah? What do you want, Malfoy?”

“I came to ask why I don’t feel as much hatred for you anymore.”

“Seriously? You didn’t figure out there was a curse?”

Malfoy flushed slowly. “I knew that. But I still have some hatred left over. Why did it lessen but not disappear completely?”

“I don’t know. Why did you keep trying to stalk me to Gryffindor Tower and get upset when I didn’t know when your birthday was?”

Honestly, Harry hadn’t known someone could turn so pink. Malfoy’s cheeks looked hot enough for one of the wretched house-elves to boil an egg on. “You were supposed to be my friend!”

“Why?”

“It makes sense, doesn’t it? The Malfoy money and power could have helped you achieve more influence. And your being a half-blood hero could have made us more acceptable to the people who didn’t think that my father was under the Imperius during the first war.”

“But he wasn’t.”

“I said that it would have made us more acceptable! It’s about perception, Potter, not reality. Didn’t you learn anything during the years that you were under this curse?”

Harry shook his head. It seemed that, just like Snape’s hatred and inability to teach had been real, Malfoy’s immaturity and self-centeredness had been real. Supposedly he had grown up during the war, from some murmurs Harry had heard from other students and news in the Prophet over the summer, but that was probably a sham.

“I don’t care about what you wanted from me, Malfoy,” Harry said. “It was always going to be impossible with your stupid blood prejudice.”

“It’s not stupid! It’s not prejudice!”

Harry walked away from Malfoy just as he had from Snape, and hid himself without effort when the boy went blundering into the Forbidden Forest looking for him. Mildly hoping that Malfoy would get eaten by something dangerous, Harry went to find his next piece of moss.

*

“Seriously, mate, can I apologize?”

Harry turned around with a sigh. Weasley had followed him most of the way to dinner and had tried to talk to him in three classes now. And he had followed Harry away from dinner, so close behind him that Harry would have a hard time slipping away to his bedroom.

Harry could have just cast the Surrounding Silence Charm to escape Weasley’s words, but there was no way that he would reveal the sanctuary that had defended him for so many years.

“Talk,” Harry said, leaning against the wall beside the staircase.

“What?”

“I said, talk. I’m giving you three minutes to say whatever you think is so important, and then I’m going to leave no matter what you say.”

Weasley wasted at least ten seconds by staring at him, but then drew a deep breath and started to babble when Harry looked pointedly at his watch.

“I’m sorry, mate. I should have known something was wrong when I woke up the morning after the Sorting and stared at you sleeping in the opposite bed and felt this wave of hatred. But I didn’t. I didn’t question it. I just thought that you were evil and I hadn’t noticed the day before.

“I shouldn’t have shoved you on the stairs and hexed you in the back like that. I shouldn’t have laughed when Seamus tried to burn you in your bed like that. I should have tried harder to report it to the professors. I should have done that, and I didn’t, and I’m really sorry.”

Weasley trailed off, well before the end of the three minutes Harry had given him, and stood there panting. Harry studied him. Then he nodded.

“Apology accepted,” he said.

“What?”

“I said, apology accepted. But don’t think that this really makes us the best of friends. Or mates, the way you keep trying to call me.”

“I know, I know it doesn’t. I’m sorry. That’s what I really wanted to say. That I was sorry.”

Weasley turned around and trotted down the staircase before Harry could respond. He raised his eyebrows at the other boy’s back. Who would have thought that Ron Weasley was better at apologizing than ninety percent of the school?

Chapter Text

“Potter.”

Harry had been moving through a back corridor that led to the library, one he’d taken many times before, when he heard the voice. He kept moving. There was nothing awful enough to make up for what Snape had done to him, so Harry would do nothing at all.

“Potter! I’m talking to you!”

Snape had appeared ahead of him in a portrait frame attached to the wall that had always been blank, and one of the attractions of this corridor to Harry. He stopped and looked up at his former professor, saying nothing.

His silence appeared to infuriate Snape. The man dug his painted hands into the portrait frame and snarled, “Aren’t you the least bit curious what you did to deserve the curse I cast on you?”

Harry knew he’d done nothing that could possibly be that bad, especially when Snape had cast the curse before interacting with Harry. He shook his head and walked past.

“Your father bullied me! He took my best friend away!”

That made Harry a little curious, but he already knew his father hadn’t killed someone when he was at Hogwarts, or people would have flung that back in Harry’s face when he was under the curse. He kept walking.

“Your mother was my best friend! He took her away! Convinced her to turn against me!”

That did explain some things like the form of the curse Snape had cast on him, but Harry still wasn’t interested enough to stop.

“You deserved everything that happened!”

That was untrue, but Harry just shook his head. There was nothing to be gained for him by engaging with Snape. No matter what the man said, he would just have another excuse. No matter what Harry said, his words wouldn’t make any impression on Snape.

And no matter what form of revenge Harry took, one of the other professors would say he’d gone too far.

“Why did you stay in Hogwarts instead of leaving, you little brat?”

Harry kept walking without answering. But really, he’d have thought Snape was “brilliant” enough to figure that out.

Harry hadn’t known that the curse extended mostly to the inhabitants of Hogwarts and would be less brutal or nonexistent with other magical people. (Hell, he hadn’t even known it didn’t affect Muggles until the summer after third year, since the Dursleys acted like that all the time). At least in Hogwarts, he was fed and the house-elves might hate him but didn’t try to poison him. If he’d left, he would have had to try to earn money and scrounge food elsewhere. It would have been less secure in Hogwarts in that respect.

And there was the Hogwarts library. Again, Harry wasn’t aware of such a collection of books that existed anywhere else in the British magical world. Maybe there was one in some pureblood house somewhere, but people would have done their best to keep it away from him, even if not because of the curse. Most of those purebloods had been Death Eaters.

While Harry had access to the library, he could learn all sorts of spells beyond the ones taught in class. He never would have made the progress that he did with the runes and stitching of spells beneath his skin if he hadn’t read the right books.

And since fourth year, Harry had been able to access the Restricted Section by using the Disillusionment Charm beneath his skin. He’d promptly started making copies of the books, but it took a long time, and he still wasn’t finished.

Once he was, if he finished before the end of the school term…

Yes, he would consider leaving Hogwarts for good at that point.

“You’re a worthless, idiotic brat with nothing of your mother in you!”

It was interesting, Harry thought as he slipped into another passage and down onto the staircase that would actually let him reach the library doors, that Snape got worse at insults the more furious he was. Snape’s curse had made damn sure that Harry had never really had a chance to get to know his parents from anyone who had known them. Why would he care about Snape’s opinion of his mother’s opinion of him?

Harry put it out of his mind as the door of the secret passage shut behind him and Snape’s shouts faded. He had a tome on rare potions to finish copying, and he wanted to gather some more ingredients from the Forbidden Forest, especially if he really would leave the school behind forever soon.

*

“I really do need to talk to you, Harry.”

This time, since Harry wasn’t showing up at the Defense class anymore, Black had resorted to confronting Harry when he was coming out of the library. Harry sighed as he stared at the man who had claimed the position of his godfather. Probably this would waste less time if he just let Black got through what he wanted to say, the way he had with Weasley.

“All right.”

“Not here.”

Black turned and swept off mysteriously down a corridor with his cloak flaring. Harry shook his head as he followed. He thought at least half the magical world’s problem was their addiction to drama.

Black turned around on a staircase that rarely got used because of its tendency to swing erratically back and forth without attaching to floors long enough for more than one person to get off. Maybe because Black was a professor, or “professor,” the steps stood still. Black’s hands clenched on the railings as he stood facing Harry.

“Don’t you want to learn about your parents?”

“Why would I?”

Black closed his eyes, then opened them. “I deserve that, I suppose.”

Harry’s comment hadn’t really been directed at what Black deserved or not, so he just waited.

Black licked his lips and said, “I found—Hagrid was assembling these. He wanted to give them to you, but he feels too bad about the part that he played in the curse.” He slowly got a packet of what looked like small slips of paper out of his pocket.

Harry cast several detection charms before he decided to accept them, and then cast a net-like charm in the air for Black to put the paper in. Black made a wounded little sound.

“You’re insane if you think that I’m touching those with bare skin.”

Black dumped the slips of paper into the net without looking at Harry.

Harry studied the slips. They turned out to be photographs, rather than just random slips of paper, after all. There were glimpses of a face that resembled his. Harry supposed that would be his prancing arse of a father.

His mother looked a little more interesting, with hair a bright shade of red that no one had ever described to Harry and green eyes that truly did look like his. Harry cocked his head and studied her. Then he tipped the magical net to the side and reached for one of the photographs of her.

Black seemed to be holding his breath.

The picture Harry had plucked was one of his mother in a wedding dress, or, Harry supposed, a wedding robe, white and lacy. She was clutching a bouquet full of white flowers and laughing at the camera. Harry wondered idly if she would have looked like that laughing at him, if she had lived and the curse had struck her.

“Well?”

“Well what?”

“What do you think of them?”

“That they’re pretty?” Harry offered. It was true. Moving the picture of Lily had shown him a picture of James, and he had been handsome and tall and better suited to the wild black Potter hair than Harry was.

“But now you can get to know them! I can tell you stories about them!”

Harry shook his head. “I’m not curious about them.”

Black gave him a heartbroken look that probably fit well on his dog Animagus form. “But why not?” he whispered.

“The curiosity I could have had withered in my first year,” Harry said simply. He put the picture of Lily back in the net and then shoved the magical net at Black with a little effort of will. He grabbed it and held the pictures as if they were much heavier than Harry knew they were.

“But you don’t want to keep them? Every orphan wants photographs of their parents!”

“No.”

“I don’t understand you.”

Black sounded anguished, not like he was blaming Harry, so Harry shrugged and answered, “I had to grow beyond that. The only things I heard about my parents were about how much better they were than me, or how I had all my father’s negative traits. And even though it was Snape who cast the curse and Dumbledore’s portrait knows that now—”

“What?”

Harry studied him curiously. Black had been close to Dumbledore and Snape, he’d thought. At least, Granger and Weasley had hinted often enough that Snape was part of the secret group they had joined, along with Black. “Yeah. He cast the curse, and because Dumbledore trusted him and Dumbledore was connected to the wards of Hogwarts, the curse traveled through that link and affected everyone in the school. And apparently Dumbledore’s trust of Snape also made people trust their own perceptions of me and ignore the contradictions in their attitudes.”

Granted, that last part was speculation, but Harry was fairly sure it was true.

“They didn’t tell me any of this.”

Again, Black sounded heartbroken. Harry supposed it was his hobby. He shrugged. “They called me up to McGonagall’s office to have the portraits tell me. Until then, I thought Voldemort cast the curse.” Black jumped. Harry rolled his eyes. “Maybe they’ll tell you if you ask nicely.”

Black turned and ran the other direction.

Some of the photographs dropped to the floor. Harry looked at them, then turned and walked away.

*

“You need tutoring.”

Honestly, Harry should just keep his Surrounding Silence Charm up for every meal he’d eat at the Gryffindor table, he thought. He glanced sideways at Granger and shook his head.

“You must! Since you could barely concentrate in class or turn in your homework with—” Granger stopped and flushed.

“With what you were doing to me. Among other people.”

Granger flinched.

Harry shrugged and went back to eating. At this point, he thought that Granger might regret what she’d done but be too proud to admit it. Maybe the tutoring offer was supposed to serve as a redemption gesture.

But Harry had no interest in being the instrument of her redemption or anyone else’s. He had only defeated Voldemort in the first place because the man wouldn’t stop hunting him, and he had been as surprised as anyone else to survive the Killing Curse and finally be able to kill Voldemort.

“You need help.”

“If I don’t pass the NEWTS because of lingering bias, I’ll just retake them in the future.” Harry grabbed the last scone on the plate in front of him and stood up, careful not to let the marmalade spill on the floor.

“What about not passing them because you don’t know enough?”

“I know more than you.”

Granger puffed up like some of the more outraged owls Harry had seen over the years. Harry just shook his head and turned his back.

Before he could get out of the Great Hall, Black entered with a rapid stride. He looked around, saw Harry, and came over to him. His face was twisted with what looked like a complicated mixture of outrage and hatred. Harry sighed, wondering what Black had it in his head that Harry had done now.

“Here. This is yours.”

Black held out what looked like a handful of light to him. Harry cocked his head. He had never tried to hand a spell to someone, but it might make a great trap for someone stupid enough to touch it.

Come to think of it, he knew a lot of people like that. If only he wasn’t certain that he would have been blamed.

“It’s yours,” Black insisted, shaking his hand at Harry.

“It looks like a spell. Why are you giving me a spell?”

Black blinked at him, and then muttered something under his breath and shook his hand back. Now Harry could see that part of Black’s arm was invisible, and the handful of light he was holding glittered more like a weave of cloth. Harry blinked in turn.

It might be an Invisibility Cloak, but if so, Harry had never seen one as fine or well-made as this.

He peered at Black. “I’ve never seen this before,” he said, and ignored the obvious joke that he could already hear people making behind him, about how he wouldn’t have seen the Invisibility Cloak. “Why do you say it belongs to me?”

“Because it used to belong to your father, and Dumbledore borrowed it early on in the first war. He was supposed to give it back to you when you came to school, but he kept it.”

Harry slowly accepted the cloak. It slithered over his arms, mostly visible only where a fold of it here or there caught the shimmer of the candles overhead. Harry shivered absently. It felt cold in a way he couldn’t define.

“Why didn’t he give it back to me?” Harry almost asked, but caught the asinine question before it could escape his mouth. Of course he knew.

Black was talking anyway. “I went to demand some answers from his portrait about the things he never told me, and he was the one who confessed that the cloak was still hidden in a cabinet in his office. So I got it, and now you should have it. It belongs to you.” Black’s nostrils flared. “James always intended to send you to Hogwarts with it. He got sent that way.”

Harry supposed that he knew one good fact about his father, after all.

“What do you expect in return for this?” Harry asked, lifting his gaze to Black’s face.

“Nothing. It’s yours. Use it, or not.”

And Black turned and stormed out of the Great Hall. Harry ran the Cloak through his fingers, watching the way they appeared and disappeared, and then turned and tucked it into his robe pocket. He would have to cast some more detection charms to make sure the Cloak was really as harmless as it looked, although since Black had touched it with his bare skin, it probably was.

“That’s not going to be useful.”

“Hmmm?” Harry had almost forgotten Granger was there.

“Since everyone knows you have it, it’s not going to help you sneak around.”

Harry shrugged and didn’t say anything. Maybe Granger was right, but on the other hand, he was hardly going to be sneaking into people’s bedrooms to steal their secrets or their homework or whatever Granger was thinking. He would use it most of the time, if it didn’t hurt him, to disappear from the view of annoying people.

He stepped out of the Great Hall and faded into the rush of people, ignoring Granger calling from behind him.

*

As it turned out, the Invisibility Cloak was both free of harmful magic and excellent at helping Harry sneak into the Restricted Section, fooling the wards more successfully and for a longer time than the spells woven under Harry’s skin.

Harry hummed as he duplicated another large swath of the book on advanced potions-making into the notebook he’d chosen. The copying spells took quite a bit of magical energy, and now he could do more of them per night since he saved the strength that fooling the wards had taken.

Maybe he would have everything he wanted copied by the Christmas holiday, and he could leave Hogwarts after that.

Harry decided that would be a good goal to aim for.

*

“Harry?”

This time, it was Dumbledore stalking Harry from a portrait frame on a wall he passed that was usually empty. Harry just kept walking, as he had with Snape. Dumbledore could follow him, but he couldn’t make Harry pay attention.

“Did you not want to know what the locket and the diary you destroyed were?”

Dumbledore must mean their formal name, Harry thought as he sped up a little. And the answer was no, honestly. He was a little curious about the process Voldemort had used to implant pieces of his memories into objects, and he suspected there had been more he hadn’t known about that Dumbledore had probably destroyed, but he wasn’t curious enough to linger and talk to the Headmaster.

“And what you were?”

Harry couldn’t help but glance over his shoulder at that, and Dumbledore pressed closer to the edge of the portrait frame. “Yes, you,” Dumbledore said, loudly enough that Harry would have Silenced him in a corridor with anyone else nearby. “You carried a piece of Voldemort’s soul within your scar. You were what is known as a Horcrux.”

Harry blinked slowly. That name was news to him, and while he had of course suspected that something was odd about his survival of the Killing Curse at Voldemort’s hands, he had thought it was more likely to do with his mother’s sacrifice to save him.

She loved me, once.

Harry pushed away the memory that would do him no good, and shook his head. “I can understand why you didn’t tell me this when you were alive, because you didn’t trust me. But why keep it from me after you were dead?”

“It was—you might have told someone who did not know. Not even Minerva knows about the Horcruxes.”

“Who would I have had to tell? You helped make sure I had no one.”

Dumbledore gave him a sad frown. “I am trying to make sure that you have a life beyond the war, my boy, by explaining everything as clearly as I can. I know you are intelligent. Surely you wondered how you survived the Killing Curse?”

“You’re saying that the curse killed the Horcrux living in me instead of my own soul,” Harry said, ignoring the question.

“Yes, that is what I am saying.”

Harry nodded. It was good to have a minor mystery solved, although he could have gone for the rest of his life believing that it was his mother’s sacrifice that had saved him from the second Killing Curse, too. One explanation was as good as another. “I’m glad to understand that.”

He walked on, ignoring the way that Dumbledore called after him. The man wanted him to make a promise about something, maybe a promise not to talk about Horcruxes with anyone else.

Harry didn’t intend to make it. This secret was one Dumbledore had kept from him, and now it was up to Harry to decide whether he would keep it or not.

*

Harry let his head lean back on the stones near the top of the Astronomy Tower as he studied the constellations above him again. Yes, this time they were clear, and the starlight shining down on his equations told him what he had done wrong.

He scribbled two answers, adjusted a few numbers, and held up his parchment to the sky once more.

Something swooped across the stars, getting in his way. Harry frowned up at the darkness, wondering if someone was trying to approach him on a broom, and thinking about the most effective way to discourage them if so.

But instead, the shape turned and pivoted in front of his eyes again, revealing itself to be much smaller than a human on a broom. An owl, then. Harry raised his arms, ready to call up the most useful defenses against a hostile bird or a poisoned letter.

It neither attacked him nor tried to hand him a message. Instead, it landed on the stone parapet in front of him, hooting softly.

Harry stared. Even with the limited illumination the starlight provided, he knew those white feathers, those sharp talons, those golden eyes. It was Hedwig.

Harry closed his eyes, controlled the fine tremor in his limbs, then looked at her again.

Hedwig looked back at him with wide eyes that might be conveying sadness, for all Harry knew. How could one tell, with an owl? She shuffled closer to him, then stopped, her eyes focused on his hand.

His left hand, Harry thought, where she had scarred him when she flew away forever.

Or not forever.

For the first time in years, Harry didn’t know what to do. He had sometimes not known how he would do something, like dodging a patrol of Death Eaters or killing Voldemort, but his goals had always been clear.

Now, he supposed, he had a choice. Did he want to reject Hedwig, the way he’d rejected so many other people? Or accept her? There were excuses he could make, like the other people he’d rejected being human and Hedwig an animal, but ultimately, it came down to his own choice.

Harry took a deep breath and held out his arm.

Hedwig hopped onto it, her weight a warm comfort. She sidled towards him, then stopped, as if unsure of her welcome.

That fit with the way Harry was feeling. He lifted one shaking hand to hold out to her.

Hedwig nipped gently at his fingers, the way he remembered from the summer before first year all those lifetimes ago. Then she settled into place on his shoulder.

Harry bowed his head. He was still not going to forgive the others. He was still going to leave Hogwarts as soon as he could, as soon as the books in the Restricted Section were copied, and never look back. And he wasn’t there to redeem anybody or save them.

But it was a kind of redemption of the lonely little boy he’d been to sit there and feel Hedwig cuddled close to him, warm and accepting, and to know at least someone had come back to him the way they could have been, the way they used to be.

Harry rested his cheek on Hedwig’s feathers and leaned back to look at the stars.

The End.