Chapter Text
October 1995
After what Angelina had said during the Chicken Incident Harry had taken to watching the Twins. He was determined to prove Angelina wrong. To prove they hadn’t change, they couldn’t. No one who could do such terrible things could have changed in such a short period of time. They were still the same awful people that had no care for the feelings of others, and thought it was fun to humiliate people in their stupid ‘pranks’. While he had agreed to tolerate them during Quidditch practices, he was determined to bring their true natures to light. He couldn’t believe Angelina was dating one of them, how could she? She had always seemed like such a nice person; how could she be with someone so awful and defend them so fervently?
Meanwhile, Hermione had received a response from Bill the Curse Breaker. His response had been long and complex, full of mathematical curse breaking jargon that Harry didn’t want to even begin trying to understand. Hermione however was ecstatic about the process.
“It’s a way to practically use both Arithmancy and Ancient Runes together! Those are some of my favourite classes but most of the work we do in them is all theoretical!” she explained to them that it seemed Curse Breaking was more like picking a lock than breaking anything. “In fact, truly breaking the curse or enchantment is only used as a last resort as it usually causes whatever the curse is on to explode. First you investigate the cursed object, looking for Ancient Runes and numbers, both written and in the amount of anything on it. Bill says a curse or enchantment will often tell on itself. If it does, then it requires no curse breaking at all, you simply unlock it.
“The next step, if that doesn’t work, is to bring your mind into the magic and see all of its moving pieces. The incantation for it is quite long, and you’re meant to repeat it over and over while doing it to keep your mind there. It’s Mentis Oculo Vide Magicae, Vide Mentis Oculo Magicae. Again, we don’t really break anything, we’re looking for the answer, how to unlock it, remove it, transer it to something else, or deactivate it. Figuring out what it requires. Apparently we can also move things around while in the magic, but that can also be dangerous if you don’t know what you’re doing. From how he describes it, it sounds like defusing a bomb. Cut the wrong wire, move the wrong thing, and the consequences can be disastrous.”
“What’s a bomb?” Neville asked, prompting Hermione to launch into a lengthy explanation about bombs that Harry didn’t feel Neville’s simple question warranted. Well, one thing was for certain, they couldn’t say Hermione wasn’t smart. Hopefully she was just smart enough to figure out that clock. After Harry had read the instructions he was quite glad she had joined them in this endeavour after all. She was quite determined about it as well, working on it even when the others weren’t there, writing down pages and pages of notes as she dissected every element of it, trying to figure out how it worked.
*
That Saturday was the start of their first Hogsmeade weekend. McGonagall had been kind enough during Harry’s Transfiguration one on one the day before to sign Harry’s permission form.
“Of course Potter,” she had said, “It’s not as though your guardians can sign it at the moment. And I’d rather you go with everyone else rather than trying to sneak in. I know Filch taught you all of the secret passages. You’re so much like your father.” A week ago a comment like that would have made Harry beam with pride, but now he wasn’t certain. He wanted to better understand what had happened between his father and Snape. Could his father truly be like the Twins?
The following day Harry, Luna and Neville joined the queue to Hogsmeade. Mr. Filch was checking forms irritably. The Twins were in line a little ahead of him, Harry watched them intently, this could be it, the Twins he remembered could never resist an opportunity to make Filch’s job harder than it needed to be. But once their form was signed they jogged away, not a word to Mr. Filch. He kept watching, thinking they could have set something up to go off once they’d left. Harry was strangely disappointed when he got to the front of the line and nothing happened.
“Hi Mr. Filch.” Harry greeted him.
“Form.” Was the man’s only response.
“How’ve you been? I know we haven’t really talked since—”
“Form.” Filch interrupted him. Could he still be upset about what they talked about last time?
“I mean, I know our last conversation didn’t go that—”
“Form, Potter! Don’t think yeh’ve got special privileges just ’cause we used to work together. Yeh can’t sweet talk yer way into Hogsmeade. Yer one o’ them now. Yeh’ve got to follow the same rules as the rest; no form, no village! And don’t think yeh can just sneak in, I’ll be watchin’ the passages!”
“Is this all because I have magic now? I didn’t exactly do that on purpose—”
“Form, Potter!”
“Alright, here!” he pulled out the form McGonagall had signed the day before. Harry tried to say something else to Mr. Filch, but he had already turned to the person behind him.
“Don’t feel too bad,” Neville tried to say encouragingly as they walked away, “That’s how he treats all the students, it’s not just you.”
Harry didn’t respond, he was lost in thought as they walked towards the village. First Aunt Petunia, now Mr. Filch; how many others would hate him now that he had magic? Luna snapped him out of his melancholic thoughts as they stepped into the village,
“I overheard the older Ravenclaw girls talking about the Chicken Incident this morning in the common room.” Harry’s mind immediately jumped to Cho Chang, hoping she might have been one of them. Had she been at the race? Did she see what had happened? What did she think of it?
“What did they say?” he asked.
“They thought the whole thing was quite hilarious, but they do think you might be a bit dangerous if you’re able to do something so advanced without a wand.” Harry wondered if ‘dangerous’ could be attractive. Girls liked bad boys, didn’t they?
“What did you two think of it?” he realized he hadn’t asked them their opinions yet.
“They deserved it.” Neville declared immediately, “After everything they did to you in third year, and you said they kept bothering you at Quidditch practice too, acting like it never happened. Serves them right. Angelina’s just biased ’cause she’s dating Fred, of course she would defend them. They’ve done way worse than that to other people, it’s a taste of their own medicine. It’s just crazy you were able to do it at all, that’s why everyone’s being so weird around you. I know you said you didn’t think you were powerful, but normal fifth years can’t do stuff like that, especially without a wand. If I could do that, I…” but he trailed off.
Harry smiled, that made him feel a lot better about the whole situation. He was glad Neville was on his side. Then he turned to Luna,
“Hmmm, it’s not them I’m worried about.” She said wistfully, “I think this Chicken Incident was a good experience for them. Humility is a virtue after all. No, I’m more worried about you.”
“Me? Why?”
“You really hate them, don’t you?”
“How could I not after everything they did to me? Everything that happened because of them?”
“I’m not saying you don’t have a good reason to. But… my mother always said that hating someone is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die. You’re really only hurting yourself.”
“That doesn’t make sense.” Harry told her just as they arrived at J. Pippin’s Potions. If they succeeded in keeping the leaf in their mouths this month they would need extra phials, silver teaspoons and Death’s Head Hawk Moth Chrysalises. Harry was glad he had a lot of money from two years ago, the chrysalises were not cheap, and Luna wanted to get a lot of them, a lot of phials too, far more than the three they needed. But he didn’t mind, he had almost a year’s worth of earnings and nothing else to spend it on.
The shop keeper looked at their items curiously as they paid for them. As they left to go to the Three Broomsticks, he said,
“Best of luck to you, that ritual’s not easy.” It certainly hadn’t been so far. Harry was quite glad Luna had suggested they practice with the leaves last month. He had failed three more times in the next week alone. That was three months he could have failed had he waited until the full moon to start again. But for the last two weeks he had successfully kept it in his mouth. He barely noticed its presence anymore; he had taken to folding it up and keeping it between his cheek and gums on the upper right side. He felt much more prepared to give it another go tomorrow. But he had taken the leaf out today to give himself a break before he had to do it again for an entire month.
On their way to the Three Broomsticks, Harry spotted a broom servicing kit in the window of Quality Quidditch Supplies. He had been gifted a very expensive broom; shouldn’t he have something to take care of it with? He told Luna and Neville to go on ahead and save them seats before the whole place filled up with Hogwarts students. He would be there soon.
After looking through the kits and asking the shopkeeper to explain the differences between them. Harry decided on the most expensive one as it had the most in it, and since he had such an expensive broom he felt it warranted it. He put the kit into his magically expanding bag and began making his way to the Three Broomsticks. He had just turned a corner onto the street where it was when a hand grabbed his robes and pulled him into an alley. Harry started to fight the hand off until the man attached to it softly said,
“I’m not going to hurt you. I don’t know if you noticed, but someone was following you.” Harry stopped struggling and turned to look at the handsome young man that had grabbed him.
“No, I didn’t see anyone.”
“They were doing their job well then. I don’t know what they might have wanted with you, but I don’t think it would be anything good. I thought it best that you wait them out here.”
“You want me to stay here in this alley? But I have somewhere to be, people waiting for me—”
“Just for now, until they’ve gone.”
“Fine.” Harry gave in, taking a step away from the handsome stranger. He hadn’t seen anyone at all, but what reason would this complete stranger have to lie to him?
“Where is it you need to be in such a hurry?” the man asked him. Harry told him his friends were waiting for him at the Three Broomsticks. Then one question followed another, he seemed very interested in hearing about Harry’s friends. He asked him what they planned to do when they met up, why they weren’t together now, how Harry had met each of them and what he liked about them.
The more they talked the more comfortable Harry became; the young man no longer felt like a stranger. It was odd, but there was a certain familiarity about him that drew Harry in, as though he was an old, mostly forgotten friend from his childhood. But that was impossible, Harry didn’t have any friends from his childhood, Dudley had made sure of that.
“Sorry,” Harry said, “I know we’ve been talking for a while now, but I just realized I don’t know your name.”
“Tom.” The man said with a brilliant smile, holding out his hand.
“I’m Harry.” He said as he shook it.
“I think we should have been here long enough now. I’ll check if the coast is clear, and then you can be on your way to Luna and Neville.” Tom then walked out of the alley and Harry was surprised how sad he was that they would soon be parting ways. Less than half an hour ago this man had been a perfect stranger, now Harry didn’t want their conversation to end. When Tom came back declaring that he was safe to leave, Harry quickly asked,
“Do you want to come with me? You could meet Neville and Luna; you’ve heard so much about them now.” Tom smiled wide, his bright white teeth glinting in the dim light of the alley.
“Thank you for the offer Harry, while I would love to meet your very interesting friends another time, I do have other things to do today. Saving a stranger from a stalker was not something I had planned in my schedule.” Harry nodded sadly, but he understood, it would be wrong of him to take any more of Tom’s time. “But if you ever wanted to see me again, my flat is in this building behind us, next time you’re in the area.” Harry smiled brightly as he said he would and waved goodbye to his new friend.
Luna and Neville had a lot of questions for him when he arrived, much later than any of them had anticipated. Harry gladly told them all that had happened and all about Tom.
“Oh, I wish I could have met him.” Luna said dreamily, “He sounds very interesting.”
“I don’t know.” Neville said, “You never saw the person he said was following you?”
“No, but what reason would he have to lie?”
“I don’t know, but it sounds weird. I don’t trust it. And you said he kept asking about us?”
“Yeah, but nothing weird like where you lived. He just wanted to hear how we met and became friends.”
Neville just shook his head, “I don’t know Harry, I just have a weird feeling about this guy.” Harry insisted that once he met him he would change his mind.
*
The following night was the full moon. Harry folded up his new mandrake leaf and put it between his cheek and gums, but then he noticed Luna had stuffed what seemed like five leaves into her mouth at once.
“Why are you using so many? We only need one for the potion.”
“Oh, I know,” Luna said, though her voice was muffled by the leaves in her mouth. “I thought I might have a better chance lasting through the month if I used more than one. If I swallow one again, I’ll still have more.” Harry shrugged, that didn’t sound like too bad of an idea, and he asked for another leaf. He folded that one up as well and put it between his cheek and gums on the other side.
As he stared out at the full moon through the castle window, he thought about what Remus must be going through right at that moment. He couldn’t imagine it was very pleasant to turn into a wolf against your will. He wondered if Sirius was in his dog form right now, safe from Remus’ instinct to bite. He wondered what they did all night during the full moons. Did they run and play together in their canine forms? What had it been like when they were in school? What had his father’s Animagus form been? Canine like them, or something else? He decided to ask about it in his next letter to them.
That Thursday during his one on one Potions lesson Harry decided to ask Snape what sort of pranks his father had played on him in school. While he wanted to maintain the heroic image he had of his father as a good friend to Remus and Sirius, and an amazing man who had sacrificed his life defending his wife and son from Voldemort, he had to know the truth. Was he truly like the Weasley Twins? Snape’s lips curled into a cruel smile as he shared story after awful story.
He seemed to relish in Harry’s horror as the image he had cultivated of the father he had never met crumbled. Each story was worse than the last until Snape told him of a time his father, along with his friends, had hung him upside-down in the air by his ankle and taken off his pants in front of a crowd of onlookers. It reminded Harry far too much of what the Weasley Twins had done to him, suspending him in the air time and time again, the last time completely upside-down so everyone could see his scar. Harry was reeling from it all, but Snape just kept going, telling Harry of a time Sirius had tried to kill him, telling him where to go to find Remus during a full moon, knowing he was a dangerous werewolf.
“To you father’s credit, he stopped me from going in, but only to save his own skin from being expelled. Murder was apparently a step too far for him, but not for your precious Godfather.” They got no work done in that hour, but Harry was alright with that. As soon as Goldy returned with Remus and Sirius’ response letting him know that his father’s Animagus form was a stag, a male deer, he sent her back out with an angry letter demanding to know if what Snape had told him was true.
They wrote back explaining their side, once again calling their bullying ‘light-hearted pranks’, and describing times when Snape and his future Death easter friends had attacked them with illegal curses far worse than any prank they pulled. After all of that their biggest defence seemed to be that they had been young and stupid, but Harry was about the same age they had been when a lot of these incidents had occurred, and he knew he would never do those things.
Except to the Weasley Twins or Draco Malfoy. A little voice in the back of his head nagged at him, but he shook it away. That was different, after everything they did to him when he had no magic and was completely powerless, they deserved it. But then, did his father and his friends deserve to be attacked with illegal curses? The stories Snape had told him were seared into his mind, haunting him, giving him only a small taste of what Snape had experienced at his father’s hands, but did it warrant that level of retaliation? Which had happened first, who had retaliated against who? What was worse, awful humiliation or illegal curses?
He didn’t want to think about it anymore. It just made him angry and confused. Harry chose not to respond to the letter.
*
As the month wore on, Professor Delores Umbridge began flexing her power as High Administrator. She put Professor Trelawney and Neville’s Muggle Studies teacher Professor Burbage on probation. The students whispered about why those two teachers in particular had been singled out, and if Umbridge really had the power to fire teachers now. Harry brought it up while he, Luna, Neville and Hermione were spending time in the corridor by the clock, and while Luna and Neville also seemed concerned about her level of power, Hermione defended it. She said those were the two classes she wasn’t taking, and she was glad for it if the teachers were so terrible to need to be put on probation.
The following week Umbridge shut down the Gobstones club after she had been inspecting a match and was squirted in the face with gob goo. Professor Flitwick was fighting to get it reinstated, but so far had had no luck.
“I’ve always thought it was an awful game.” Hermione dismissed their concerns, “The loser gets squirted with a disgusting slime, and who knows what it’s made of! They clearly didn’t have it under control if it got all over a teacher just passing by.”
“I doubt she was ‘just passing by’…” Harry argued, “I’ve walked past their games plenty of times and I’ve never been squirted. But that’s not the point, if she has the power to shut down a school club, what’s next? What if she cancels Quidditch? We haven’t even gotten to play our first match yet.”
“Well, it’s not exactly safe, is it?” Hermione scoffed, “I’ve never heard of a more dangerous game! It certainly doesn’t belong in a school.” Harry decided to change the subject, there seemed to be no reasoning with her, and it was only making him frustrated to try. He looked around for an idea of what they could talk about, and his eyes fell on the tufty ginger cat curled up next to Hermione. He had never looked at it too closely before as it came and went.
“Your cat, where did you get him?” he asked, staring at its face.
“Crookshanks? Oh, I bought him two years ago at the Magical Menagerie, the same time I bought my owl, Barnabas. My parents were feeling quite terrible for pulling me out of Hogwarts away from my friends, so even though we had only gone for an owl, I convinced them to let me buy him too. I just couldn’t leave him there, the shop keeper said he’d been there for years, no one wanted him, it was so sad. Really, I’m quite glad that Hogwarts allows pets, Beauxbatons only allowed owls, I had to leave him at home with my parents all last year—”
“Did you know he’s part kneazle?”
“What? No, I didn’t, how do you know that?”
“I know someone that breeds normal cats and kneazles together, his face is a bit squashed, and his legs are really short, but I know a kneazle-cat when I see one. I wonder if he’s one that Mrs. Figg bred.” Hermione seemed very interested in hearing more about kneazle-cats and Mrs. Figg, and Harry was much happier with the new direction of the conversation and was more than happy to tell her all about it. The next time Harry wrote to Mrs. Figg, he brought it up to her, asking if anyone else bred kneazle-cats sold in the Magical Menagerie, or if she was the only one.
He received her response a few days later as Hermione was chanting the incantation Bill had provided in his letter which allowed her to see into the working of the magic of the clock. She had been at it for a few days now, but still had no luck figuring out how to open it. Mrs. Figg wrote that she was the only one that bred kneazle cats in all of Britain, she had a patent on it, no one else was allowed, so any half-kneazles, especially being sold in Diagon Alley, would have come from her. She even said she knew what cat he was talking about. The poor thing had been runty and deformed from birth, with a squashed face and short, crooked legs, hence why the lady in the shop had called him Crookshanks. She was glad the poor dear had finally found a loving home.
*
As Harry, Luna and Neville were making their way towards the Great Hall for the Halloween Feast, Crookshanks wound himself around their feet, a note in his mouth. Harry took it and smiled. Hermione had figured it out. Skipping the feast the three friends raced to the clock they had been trying to break into for nearly a month and a half. When they arrived Hermione was practically vibrating with excitement.
“Good, you’re here! I didn’t want to open it without you. I figured it out! When I was searching in the magic, I realized that each of these hands wanted to point a certain way, like the tumblers in an old lock! I’m fairly certain I know the right direction for each hand now, but I wanted you all to be here before I tried it.” They waited with bated breath as she pulled out her wand, and moved each clock’s hand in turn. When the last hand had been moved, they all begun to spin wildly, and the clock swung open. They cheered and celebrated, hugging Hermione and thanking her for all she had done.
They cautiously stepped inside the dark room lit only by candles and torches which flickered to life as they entered. Grand archways stood on wide stone pillars; a few dusty stacks of books six feet high stood between them. A pile of rotting wood vaguely resembling a stack of barrels sat in a corner of the wide room.
Harry’s eyes were drawn immediately to the source of the glowing, a wooden cupboard mounted on one of the walls. He approached it warily, half expecting the magic to suddenly jump out at him. He reached out a hand to touch it, the magic around his skin intermingling with the magic around the cupboard. In one swift motion he threw both doors open to reveal, not a cupboard, but a painting of a landscape, with thinner paintings on the inside of each of the doors he had just thrown open.
“It’s a triptych.” Hermione said from behind them.
“A triptych?” Neville asked, “Is that a type of magical item or—”
“No,” Hermione laughed, “It’s a type of painting, with three panels that can close up.” Harry thought it didn’t really matter what the painting was called. He wanted to know why it glowed when nothing else in the room did.
“I found something over here.” Luna said dreamily from where she’d wandered off. Leaving the triptych for now they crossed to the other wall where she stood before a great coiled snake made of stone with a glinting ruby red eye. Across its scales was written over and over in an elegant cursive script:
Speak to me and be spoken to.
“Hello?” Harry said experimentally, when nothing happened he felt silly for trying to talk to a statue and went back to analyzing the triptych. There had to be something special about it, or else, why would it be glowing with that strange magic only he could see?
November 1995
Despite having opened the clock, Harry felt no closer to any answers. They had solved one puzzle only to find two more. Hermione had started studying the triptych and the snake the same way she had done with the clock. After a few days of that she moved on to step two, sending her mind into the magic. She tried with the triptych first. She described its magic as a long tunnel, but when she tried to move into it, she was blocked by an invisible barrier.
Frustrated with it, she took a break and tried the coiled snake. If there was anything magical about it, she would be able to see it. She began chanting,
“Mentis Oculo Vide Magicae, Vide Mentis Oculo Magicae. Mentis Oculo Vide Magicae, Vide Mentis Oculo Magic—” her chanting suddenly stopped and she screamed. They all rushed to her side. “The magic is snakes!” Hermione said through laboured breaths, “A tangled mess of snakes squirming around and hissing, there was so much hissing!”
“Hmmm,” Luna hummed in consideration, “Harry, when you spoke to it before, maybe you were speaking the wrong language. It is a snake after all.”
“You think—? But I’ve only spoken to real ones, I don’t know how to…” Hermione looked thoroughly confused as Harry stared into the stone snake’s glinting red eye. He moved his head back and forth, willing himself to believe it was alive and moving. “Hello, it says to speak, I’m speaking.” Hermione backed away from him as a series of hisses escaped his mouth.
The stone snake’s body suddenly began to move, its tightly wrapped coils loosening and widening until they formed the shape of a large picture frame surrounding a moving portrait of a young man. He had blond, almost silvery hair, eyes that were clouded over, and he held a wand whose tip glowed red.
“There are four of you here, which one of you spoke to the snake?” the portrait asked, pointing his wand in their direction.
“Er, I did.” Harry said.
“You are who I’ve been waiting for. My name is Ominis Gaunt, and you are my descendant.”