Chapter Text
Harry frowned as he walked into the long, low tunnel opening up in front of him. The new word sounded like inat, his word for clouds, but not enough to matter. And he couldn’t think of what effect he would want to achieve with clouds that he couldn’t already do, anyway.
“Potter?”
And besides, the resemblance wasn’t that great, now that he thought about it. Linavir had emphasis on either the first or the last syllable, depending on how he pronounced it—and he would have to decide on that and if it was an exception to his usual rules of stress soon—and it was a more graceful, flowing word than inat. Sharing a few similar sounds in the same order wasn’t enough.
“Potter?”
Was it like lono, the word for white? No, not really. It only shared the first sound. Well, no, the n sound was—
“Potter!”
Harry blinked and jerked himself out of the almost-trance he’d fallen into, which was fairly usual when he thought about the words of his language. In front of him stood a tall, ugly man, scowling. Probably the one he’d come to find.
“Flint?”
“Yes.” Flint crossed his arms. They bulged with muscle. A good sign, Harry thought. Flint could probably help him. “You wanted my smithcraft to help you with something.”
“Yes.” Harry stepped forwards and took out the small box that he’d braved venomous snakes and raging seas to find. “I need a replica of this box forged and made reflective of my own magic.”
Flint stared at him for a long second, and then held out his thick, callused palm. Harry recognized a demand when he saw it, and tipped the box forwards.
Flint tilted the box from side to side. Harry watched the man’s face instead of the box. He knew what he would see if he looked there: a smooth receptacle, made of either ivory or bone the color of clouds, and lined with reflective steel on the inside. Or maybe it was silver. All Harry knew was that this box could store and reflect spells.
But it only did that for its original owner, and that owner was dead long ago. Harry needed a modern box that would do the same for him.
“This box is old,” Flint whispered, his attention wholly on the small thing. It fit easily in Harry’s palm, and even more easily in Flint’s. Flint bent down as if trying to sneak his nose into one of the mirrors. “I can usually sense something of the personality of someone who crafted it, but this is so ancient that the impression’s faded.”
“Yes. But the box is still only reflecting the magic of the original owner. That’s why I need a new one made.”
“I’m going to have to study this for a while before I can make you a replica, Potter.”
“Okay.”
Flint jerked a little, eyes rising to Harry’s face. “You’re—not upset about the length of time it might take?”
“I’ve spent years debating the meaning of a single word, Flint.” And for all that Harry was eager to discover the true meaning of linavir, he could wait. He had others to work on. “I know what patience means.”
“A single word?”
“My magic is based on words.”
“So is everyone’s.”
Harry blinked and then smiled. He supposed that Flint was being more literal than Harry was accustomed to anyone being now. The journeys had been truly long. “I mean that I craft a word that embodies a true description of a part of the world, the way it feels to me. And then I speak that word, and a certain effect happens.”
“That’s impossible.”
Harry tilted his head further to the side. “Would you like to see a demonstration?”
“Yeah, actually, I would.”
Harry nodded and faced back down the tunnel, the way he’d come. Since he’d been thinking about it anyway, he let the word form on his lips. “Inat!”
There was the feeling of a connection tightening around his shoulders and inside his belly, a whip that traveled from something that hadn’t been there a moment before and struck him. Harry shuddered with delicious power. It blew through him and out his mouth, and thick clouds filled the tunnel.
Harry had always pictured thick, white clouds with this word, like the ones a Muggle pilot might fly through, so that was what happened now. He stretched his hands out to the darkness and the cold and laughed.
“Enough, Potter!”
“Ravis aren alanis,” Harry whispered. He could have spoken just the word for “clear” and had it work, but a full sentence would get rid of the clouds faster.
They whirled into nothingness, leaving only a fringe of water beading around the hood of Harry’s cloak to show they’d been there. He shook it off and turned to face Flint.
Flint was staring at him with such narrowed eyes that Harry wondered he could see anything. He pointed at the box. “Would you be able to replicate that and create a copy for me?”
“I’ll need to see more demonstrations of your magic first,” Flint said, in the abrupt way that seemed to be how he approached everything, sharp as the edge of a cliff. “I’ve never met anything like that.”
“All right. How about this? Aerte!”
There was a sharp spark of green above him, and Harry held out his hand to catch it. He could have tried to manifest it closer to his palm, he thought. He must not have put all the stress on the first syllable the way he was supposed to.
“Is that…an emerald?”
Harry smiled and held it out. Flint plucked the gem from his palm and stared at it as if he expected it to vanish like dew. Then he breathed on it and shook it and tossed it to the ground. Harry went on smiling. The gem didn’t crumble or break. It was a real emerald.
“Why did you come up with a word for emerald in this private language of yours?” Flint asked, his eyes fastened on the jewel.
“Because the word came to me, and I searched until I figured out what it meant. That was what it meant.”
“And do you have endless wealth?” Flint asked, his eyes rising to linger on Harry for a second. “If you can conjure jewels? Not that but you might have that anyway, given the Potter fortune.”
Harry blinked. “I spent the Potter fortune on my travels to find the box, and a few other things.” He hadn’t thought of the money his parents had left him in quite a while, he supposed. The sharpest memory of it was his excitement when Hagrid had first led him into the vault, and the dream of what he could do with it once he was grown.
He’d always wished for that, honestly. School had been a necessary evil while he waited to grow up.
“You didn’t answer my question.”
“Oh. No, the jewels and the other objects I conjure are like Transfigurations. Long-lasting, but not permanent. I’ve only used them to pay people I’ll never see again and who I didn’t mind tricking.”
Flint bent a stare on Harry that seemed to dig into his soul for secrets. Harry raised an eyebrow. Despite maybe an ambition to look like one, Flint was no Dementor.
“I had better not be one of them.”
“No, of course not.”
Flint nodded and looked back at the emerald, turning it from side to side the way he had the box. Harry assumed that might be part of the magesmith process, although admittedly he didn’t know much about Flint’s brand of magic. “I’d still like to keep this for a while. See what I can accomplish by chipping bits of it into the replica box.”
Harry beamed. He hadn’t thought of that, but it seemed likely to work. “Sure.”
“Come see me in five days. I’ll have something for you then.”
Harry nodded and turned to amble out of the tunnel. His mind was already returning to linavir. But he supposed he would have to put it aside until Flint had finished the box. He’d been struggling with the word for over a year now. He wouldn’t find it until he had the help of the box’s magic.
“And Potter?”
Harry glanced over his shoulder, surprised that Flint wanted to speak to him any more than he already had. The man was leaning forwards, eyeing Harry’s travel-stained robes as though they were a personal affront.
“Dress better the next time you dare to show up at my place of work.”
Harry blinked. He supposed he could see why Flint might be bothered by that, if he held his place of work sacred. It just seemed a bit much to Harry when said place was set near the back of a tunnel that no one would randomly walk down anyway, unless they were on their way to see Flint.
But he’d abided by sillier sets of rules, especially at Hogwarts.
“Okay.”
He could still feel Flint’s eyes on his back as he walked away. Had the man expected him to object?
Maybe. Harry did know there were people who wore robes like this out of choice and refused to change them. He’d met some of them in Knockturn Alley.
But he’d known much sillier people at Hogwarts. Starting with the Sorting Hat.
*
“Where shall we put you? Not a bad mind at all, and you would face danger bravely for the sake of…”
The Hat trailed off. Harry supposed it must have found the memories of Harry’s cupboard in his mind, where he would lie alone without toys, without friends, with nothing but the words in his head to play with.
“I want to be somewhere I can study and people won’t think it’s stupid for me to work on my language,” he said, swinging his feet. The Great Hall was full of people peering at him, but Harry had got some of that at the Dursleys’ house, too. So he was used to it. “And somewhere people won’t be too upset about me being the Boy-Who-Lived or whatever they call me.”
“You truly don’t care about that, do you, child?”
“No.”
The Hat paused to mull things over. Harry could hear people muttering and shifting around at their tables. He sighed.
“I think you ought to Sort me,” he told the Hat apologetically. “People are already getting upset because I’m taking so long.”
“Do you think they make the Sorting decisions in this school?”
“Um. No?”
“Exactly. I do. And I will take as long as I need.”
Harry smiled to himself, beneath the brim of the Hat. It probably wouldn’t make the people whose House he eventually went into very happy, but people had been upset with him because he wasn’t interested in shaking their hands in Diagon Alley. And he had asked the Hat for a place that wouldn’t be that awkward.
In the end, the Hat gave a long sigh that sounded happy to Harry. “While you would suit more than one House, there’s only one you fit into that also has the traits you asked for. Better be RAVENCLAW!”
That last word got shouted to the rest of the Great Hall, from the fuss that the table in blue and bronze started making. Harry put the Hat down on its stool with a little pat, and stood to walk over to the fussing table.
“We got Potter! We got Potter!”
Harry shook his head as he sat down next to Terry Boot, one of the kids who had been Sorted into Ravenclaw earlier. People were chanting and cheering and trying to shake his hand, but he put up with it. He was pretty sure that it would fade away soon enough.
Once they saw that he really didn’t care about most things outside his own head.
*
“Harry!”
Harry turned around with a blink and then a faint smile. He remembered Cho Chang, the girl who had dated Cedric Diggory at the Yule Ball. And one of the only people who believed that he hadn’t put his name in the Goblet of Fire the year that happened, because she’d been helping him find language books in the library the evening before.
“Hi, Cho,” he said, and slowed down so that she could come up beside him. He’d been heading to Knockturn Alley so that he could chase a few rare books through some of the shops there, but he didn’t mind waiting. Knockturn was open day and night, after all. “How are you?”
“I’m well. Cedric and I got married last year.”
“Congratulations.” Harry leaned over to admire the bracelet around her wrist, something people had started doing after the war when they got married, especially ones his own age. He called it enneta in his language. This one flashed silver and emerald, although there weren’t any actual emeralds in the metal itself, indicating protective spells.
“We’re never going to forget what you did for us.”
Harry could feel his ears heating up. “It was nothing, honestly,” he muttered. And he meant it. Saving Cedric hadn’t been work, because Harry had already given the other Champions a name in his language, and shouting a sentence about Cedric being safe had scooped him up and punted him back to Hogwarts. A pity that Voldemort had set up anti-Apparition spells before Harry could do that to himself.
Well, and it might not have worked, anyway. Harry hadn’t thought of himself as a real Champion, and his words were sensitive to such things.
“I hear you make your living as a rare artifact hunter?”
“Sure,” Harry said agreeably. It was as true as anything else. When he went hunting for the obscure objects he wanted in the deep and hot and high places of the world, he was likely to find others he could sell to people who wanted them.
“That must be so exciting!”
“I’m sure life as a Quidditch player is more exciting. Especially one married to another Quidditch player. How do you handle your practice schedules?”
Cho beamed at him and started chattering about that. Harry walked beside her, nodding along and asking the occasional question. He had found it was remarkably easy to get people talking about themselves, which meant they would leave him alone, or not ask questions he didn’t want to answer.
He’d learned that his very first term at Hogwarts, as a matter of fact.
*
“Don’t you ever do anything other than study those weird books all the time?”
“What do you think I should do instead?” Harry asked, looking up from the tome spread out in front of him. It was teaching him some technical terms that the books in the small library near Privet Drive couldn’t, but some of them were new, strange terms that wizards and witches apparently used for parts of language.
Draco Malfoy put his hands on his hips and scowled. He’d tried to introduce himself to Harry on the train, but Harry had locked the compartment door and told him to go away. And he’d been in the robe shop, too. Harry had mostly been trying to name some of the different colors in Madam Malkin’s robes with new words and had ignored him.
“You’re strange. Everybody says so.”
“Yeah, I get told that a lot.”
“What?”
“The Muggles around my family’s house think I’m strange because my relatives told them I’m a criminal and a liar.”
Malfoy took a step back. Harry hopefully flipped a page, but the Slytherin didn’t go away. Instead, he said in a shocked voice, “You take that back.”
“What can I possibly take back when I’m telling the truth?”
“I’m not like Muggles! I wouldn’t say things that sound like what Muggles say! You take that back!”
Harry smiled a little. Here was a real chance to make Malfoy go away and stop bothering him. “Well, you don’t have to sound like them. But if you go around proclaiming that I’m strange and stupid and weird and everyone hates me all the time, then you’re going to sound like them anyway.”
Malfoy stood there for a minute, breathing through his nose like a bull. Then he sat down across from Harry. “What are you doing that’s so normal?”
“I’m looking into the origin of Latin,” Harry said, something he had planned on doing once he realized that the spells around him were cast in another language, just not his language. The fact that he hadn’t actually found the Latin books to do it didn’t matter. “You must have a lot of experience with Latin, right?”
“Of course I do.”
And Malfoy started prattling on in the tones of someone who loved to hear himself talk. Harry nodded and asked little questions in the right places. Then Malfoy got up and went to get a Latin book to show Harry.
Someone who could be easily fooled and found books for him?
Harry had a sort of friend. It hadn’t even taken much of an effort.
*
“Back again so soon, Mr. Potter?”
A distant relative had taken over Borgin and Burke’s while Harry had been out of the country, but it didn’t matter much. Gertrude Borgin knew Harry from times when he’d visited the shop and she’d been there, and she knew exactly the terms of the bargains that her cousin had made with Harry before he left.
“If you can call two years soon.” Harry reached into the expanded sack of artifacts he’d been carrying around for the last fortnight, eyes on Gertrude’s hands.
“I do, compared to the amount of time I expect to live.”
Harry shrugged. It wasn’t the first time that a member of the Borgin or Burke families had referred to a longevity secret they apparently shared. Harry might be interested in it if he didn’t know the price would be beyond his ability to pay. “Do you want to see what I found or not?”
“Fine.”
Gertrude was pouting until she looked at the glittering treasures Harry had spread out on the counter. Then she drew in a sharp breath. “Is that a Staff of the Merfolk?” she asked softly, picking up a golden scepter that lay near Harry’s left hand.
“Yes, I think so.” In truth, Harry wasn’t sure if the carvings of mermaids and krakens dancing around the scepter’s shaft meant that or not. Staffs of the Merfolk were legendary, rare things that supposedly meant the wielder could breathe underwater, call merfolk to appear before them, and command their obedience.
Having met a lot of sirens and merfolk and the like during his dives into underwater caves and deep lakes, Harry couldn’t imagine them obeying anyone except their own rulers. But Gertrude was free to believe it if she liked.
“Wonderful.” Gertrude eyed the staff and the sapphire wrought into the pointed cage of gold at the top, then turned canny eyes on Harry. “Five Galleons for the lot.”
Harry laughed at her.
Gertrude drew herself back, her hands folding. “If you don’t want to sell anything to the shop who’s been your most trusted partner for years—”
“Five Galleons for the lot? That’s not an offer to buy them, that’s an insult.”
“Then you can find someone else to buy them from you.”
“Fine, I think I will,” Harry said cheerfully, and started scooping his artifacts back into the sack.
“Fine! Ten Galleons for the lot.”
Harry rolled his eyes and kept scooping.
“If you insist, then we can settle down and start talking seriously about things like this.” Gertrude reached out to touch the scepter again with a hand that trembled. Harry was pretty sure it was just greed, or maybe the awe of holding something that was so valuable. He couldn’t imagine Gertrude diving into deep water to use it herself.
“Yes, as long as you stop your insulting offers.”
“Tradition of the family.” When Gertrude smiled, Harry could see her pointed teeth, which she might have cast a spell on herself to create or paid to have done or inherited from some Borgin ancestor. Harry really didn’t care. “Let’s bring the tea service out so that we can discuss the circumstances behind each find.”
Harry nodded agreeably enough. He knew that Gertrude used the stories he told to add to the “luster” of the objects and sell them faster, but honestly, that was fine with him. He had no use for the artifacts after he unloaded them, and he didn’t take them from anyone living, so he didn’t have to look over his shoulder when it came to revenge-seekers, either.
Everything was just extra money for the sake of the words, which were the center of his life.
*
“Please sit down, Mr. Potter. Or can I call you Harry?”
“If you want to, sir.”
Harry blinked as he settled into a chair across from the Headmaster’s desk. He hadn’t been in the office before. If he were going to pick one of his words to describe it, it would be elendot. There was light everywhere, from the flickering fire on the hearth to the phoenix shaking out his brilliant feathers on the perch.
“Thank you, Harry.” Professor Dumbledore smiled at him, but Harry thought he looked old and tired. “I trust you heard about Miss Hermione Granger being injured by the troll last night?”
“Oh. Yeah, I did. Is she going to be all right?”
“It will take her some time to be able to walk again.”
“Wow.” Harry frowned, wondering if he should send some books to the hospital wing for her or something. He knew that she loved to read. But he mostly read about languages and magical theory, and he didn’t know if she’d like the same things. He was still struggling with a lot of wizarding terms for linguistics himself. He’d thought they would use the same ones because the basis of their spells was Latin, but it seemed not.
“Harry?”
Harry jumped and looked up. Professor Dumbledore was watching him. Harry smiled sheepishly at him. “Sorry, sir. I was just wondering if Granger would like me to send her some books or not.”
“That’s a very kind thought, Harry. You would need to send them to St. Mungo’s, however. The magical hospital,” Professor Dumbledore added, when Harry blinked at him. “Unfortunately, we can’t treat her at Hogwarts. She needs skilled healing, especially if she’s to return before the end of term.”
“Oh. Well, did you just ask me here so that we could talk about that, sir?”
“No. I wanted to ask you a question that may seem to be simple on the surface, but needs a deep answer. I want you think about it when I ask it.”
“Okay, sir.” Harry sat up. This was pretty serious, then. He wondered if Professor Flitwick had complained about how Harry was always scribbling ideas down about possible definitions in class instead of taking notes on Charms.
“How do you feel about the Dark Lord Voldemort?”
“Well, I think he’s evil,” Harry said, puzzled about what else he should say. “Hagrid told me that when he picked me up from the Dursleys. And I know that a lot of people think I somehow defeated him as a baby, but I don’t think that.”
“What do you believe, then?”
“That someone else did it.”
“But how?”
“Well, I was just a baby, professor. I don’t know how.”
Professor Dumbledore looked like he wanted to walk away from this conversation, the way a lot of Harry’s teachers in primary school had. Harry hid a sigh. He never knew what he did wrong, exactly, that made a lot of people not believe him and others act exasperated and like they were glad to be away from him.
“But you don’t have a speculation as to how?”
“No?”
“How can—I find it very unusual that you’re content to dwell in uncertainty instead of coming up with an answer, Harry.”
“I don’t know a lot of things, though, sir. Complicated magic, and wizarding linguistics terms, and the truth of what really happened that night, and most magical history, and why my relatives hate me, and why Professor Snape hates me, and why you called me up here to talk about Granger. Why’s that, sir?”
“It was more to talk to you about Voldemort, and find out what you thought of him.” Professor Dumbledore looked older than he had when the conversation began, although Harry didn’t know why that was. “I don’t—you really don’t spend much time thinking about Voldemort at all?”
“I could start if I have to, sir,” Harry said, puzzled but obedient. He was sure that he could find fifteen minutes a day to do it in.
The Headmaster looked off to the side, and closed his eyes with a long sigh, shaking his head. Then he stood. “It doesn’t matter,” he said. “It truly doesn’t,” he added, when Harry started to open his mouth again. “I’ll take care of it myself.”
“Thinking badly about Voldemort?”
“At least you don’t fear to say his name.”
“I think the things people call him are kind of silly.”
“Ah.” Professor Dumbledore managed to dredge up a smile. “Yes, I’ve always thought that they could at least have found a more interesting moniker for him than You-Know-Who or He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named.”
“Yeah. It just makes him sound like a dog no one can think of a good name for.”
Professor Dumbledore laughed then, and waved his hand. “You may go, Harry. I’ll tell you how you can owl those books to Miss Granger in St. Mungo’s, if you’d like.”
“Yes, sir.”
Harry left down the moving staircase, shaking his head. It seemed odd to him that the Headmaster everyone said was so smart and wise would want to ask him about what had happened with Voldemort. How could Harry know? Even if he’d had a clear memory of that night, he doubted that he would have understood everything that led to Voldemort dying, or being banished from his body, or whatever had really happened.
And then he put that idea aside, because there was already an idea stirring in his head about how he could describe a phoenix in the words.
If he could only find the right ones.