665Well, call this a bit of a pre-Halloween gift (though I am working on a short that is Halloween themed, if not Halloween set). It was a bit of a long gap between this one and the last one, and this one's a bit more thoughtful, a bit more character driven, but it's laying the groundwork for one of the key moves of this book. It's a chapter about secrets and knowledge. And also, a fair bit of philosophy, showing how Ron and Harry, in particular, have grown and changed.
Ron was feeling… well. He wasn't totally sure what he was feeling, but he was feeling a lot about a lot of things.
His best friend turning up again, apparently reborn as – no. He stopped himself there. Harry wasn't who he'd once been, no matter what he had briefly hoped, and how much it had hurt when he'd realised it wasn't, and he'd shoved that deep down inside before he'd started crying.
Harry was different. In some ways, he was more different than he had ever been. That uncanny perception had shifted from being able to read faces to being apparently able to see straight through them, to not just knowledge but understanding.
It wasn't his telepathy, because Ron knew, one way or the other, that Harry wasn't looking into his mind (he might have tested this by considering a few mental images, ones that he was pretty sure would definitely get a reaction out of Harry. Thus far, no dice).
No, to his surprise, it was simply that the Harry-that-was-now just Saw things. It was like, yet unlike, talking to Dumbledore – and at times, similarly unnerving.
Yet at others, many others, it was a relief, because here was someone who understood. In a moment of insight, he'd brought this up with Hermione, with an addition.
"It's why he's so much more comfortable with Carol, isn't it? It's so much easier to be around someone when you don't have to explain something."
Hermione had been startled, but had considered it carefully. "Yes, I think so," she had said eventually. "That's very shrewd, Ron. I think you're exactly right, especially given how much of a tangled up mess he was. The way of it is different, though; they have a telepathic connection, and if what he's said about a magical blood transfusion to save her life is anything like what I think it is, it probably runs a lot deeper, now." She had then sighed, but this time, ruefully and with more than a little affectionate amusement. "He was just trying to help, of course. He didn't even consider the consequences, not for one moment."
"I mean, that's Harry," Ron had found himself saying, even when they both knew it was not. The brittle and breaking Harry they had seen before he had disappeared to the distant had been reserved, almost cold, and at times, utterly clinical. He had also been, by his own account, three quarters sane, and Ron had sometimes felt that was a decidedly generous estimate.
However, he had been observant and calculating, cautious and careful, paranoid of anything he might give away, of even the slightest perception that he was putting them in danger. He had been, one way or another, extremely careful of consequences.
This new Harry had very little resemblance to his brittle counterpart. He was thoughtful rather than cautious, measured and considering rather than paranoid. He was still astonishingly observant, and perhaps a touch calculating, yet that calculation seemed more like a calculation of how best to approach something or someone, rather than how best to nudge them to and fro.
The old Harry – not the old-old Harry – had been unsettling, at times. Eerie. At times… downright inhuman.
Now, it was hard to explain, but he wasn't inhuman… yet at the same time, definitely not human. Not entirely.
Harry when inhuman was human enough and at the same time, not quite enough, to be incredibly disturbing.
Harry when not human, on the other hand, seemed to have attained a balance. Balanced, Ron thought, was a good way to describe him. Balanced, and kind.
Even to Filch, which boggled the mind a bit at first, yet it made sense. Harry had always had an impulse to help those who needed it, and now he had the confidence, the understanding, and the ability to do so far more effectively than he once had.
And yet… something nagged at him.
Because in this Harry, more than ever, there was a sense of secrets kept and things unspoken. It wasn't as it was before, when those secrets were held close to the chest with a calculated paranoia, those eyes gleaming as they chose each word to move Ron around and away from them. It wasn't a sense of the eerie, either, of haunted eyes that carried darkness and horror in their emerald depths.
Now, it was a sense of uncanny knowledge; mysteries and secrets, yes, but worn relatively lightly, in a way that reminded Ron oddly of Dumbledore. There were undoubtedly a lot of them, some that Ron felt he should know, some that he was burningly curious about, and a fair few that he had come to realise that he didn't actually want to know about at all. These mysteries probably had their horrors and darkness too, but his eyes… he didn't see the darkness in them now. Not entirely, at least.
He looked in those eyes, and he saw starlight.
It was… well. Humans have always been fascinated by the stars. Distant, beautiful, and enthralling, a gateway to deep knowledge and awesome power.
Ron was no less fascinated, no less enthralled, even if he would not entirely admit to himself. But under that intense effect, under the sheer relief that Harry was now acting like, well, a person, rather than a mildly deranged spirit from the depths of Faerie on good days, and a broken force of nature in a human-suit on bad ones, something still nagged at him.
The inescapable fact was that Harry was still keeping secrets. Some, at least, he could accept, if a bit begrudgingly. Some, as noted, he simply did not want to know. Some, he felt he had a right to. And he was very well aware that he had no choice in what he did, or did not know.
That wasn't what really nagged at him, though. It was a part of it, a big part of it.
So was the fact that he still hadn't quite got the measure of this new version of Harry. The distinct sense that there was something about him that he would not, and potentially could not, ever understand was an uneasy one indeed. It reminded him that on a very fundamental level, Harry was not human. In fact, in many ways, he was less human and more other, more strange, than he had ever been. It unsettled him a little, like a game of chess where he couldn't see half his opponent's pieces, whose numbers and composition simply did not follow the rules.
What really nagged away at him was two simple questions.
How much has he changed?
How do I fit into his life?
Clearly, Harry was saner than he had been in a very, very long time. Perhaps, in some ways, more than he had ever been. He was older and wiser, in ways that astonished, impressed, and unnerved Ron in varying measure. That uncanny awareness of others was both muted, and somehow clearer than ever. He didn't seem to pluck those uncomfortable truths in other people's heads the way he had before, without malice or even awareness. Instead, it was like everyone was an open book to him – he didn't read the detail, but he casually skimmed the text as he went past.
He was comfortable, now. That's the only way Ron could put it.
But did that comfortableness extend to him? Or at least, did it extend beyond ordinary friendship and the kind of deep kindness and compassion and insight that Harry seemed to be inclined to hand out to everyone these days – even Snape, of all people!
It was a hard thing to say, nearly as hard to think, but it was very easy to wonder just how much of Harry's feelings towards him were actually personal, now. Or, indeed, if they were at all.
Sooner rather than later, however, he got proof to the contrary.
OoOoO
The classroom of Professor Trelawney was one generally entered with little enthusiasm by most students, even the Gryffindor fourth years, who had better reason than most to expect that something interesting might happen. After all, when your classmate was the Boy Who Lived, a demigod who rose from the grave with alarming regularity, and a psychic of nigh unparalleled power, interesting things were likely to be on the agenda, even if said classmate had a mild and retiring nature.
This was one thing that it was generally agreed that Harry did not have.
Moreover, while everyone present had got used to Trelawney's predilection for doom-mongering (especially since it usually focused on Harry, about whom such things were more or less expected), no one had forgotten the Tarot reading that had sent him bolting from the classroom. The general feeling was that if there was a class likely to shed some light on the more interesting parts of Harry's life, it was probably divination.
Since then, for the most part Harry had kept to the background, and occasional forbidding looks from Sergeant Barnes had discouraged Professor Trelawney from using him as a prop. But hope was still held out, and eventually, proved not to be in vain.
"Are you having difficulty with your crystal gazing, my dear?" she asked mistily.
Harry, for his part, was indeed gazing at the crystal ball, deep in thought. Or rather, he was gazing both at the ball, and at Ron, who was peering closely, though rather unenthusiastically, at the misty object.
On being addressed, he blinked and looked up at her, tilting his head for a moment in thought.
"I'm not sure, Professor. Though," he went on, sitting forward, expression thoughtful. "I would like your advice. You see… I think I might be precognitive. Potentially."
Trelawney's magnified eyes blinked several times in surprise, a surprise reflected by the intensification of interest by the class. "Of course," she said. "I am not truly surprised, of course. Recently, it has become clear to me that something of your nature has changed greatly, a deep shift in your aura. With your evident psychic gifts, I knew that it was only a matter of time before you sought my counsel."
Parvati and Lavender looked impressed. No one else did. It was, after all, pretty obvious that Harry's demeanour had rather changed recently.
Harry himself was looking at Trelawney with an odd, small smile. It was quite plain that he knew that she was lying. However, he said nothing, and instead inclined his head politely.
"Thank you, Professor," he said. "Your insight and your expertise would be very much appreciated." To Ron's surprise, he sounded quite sincere. "Could we talk, after the lesson?"
Trelawney blinked two very large eyes, then smiled mistily. "I would be glad to do so," she said.
Harry responded with another bow of his head and a murmured thanks, and Trelawney wafted away, the murmur of the class intensifying in the background.
"You were just being polite, right?" Ron said.
"Not even remotely."
"You believe her?" Ron whispered in disbelief, voice lowered.
"About knowing this was coming, that I might be precognitive? Not even remotely," Harry replied quietly. "But she's got a gift, Ron, the gift. She's a powerful Seer, and I've met some strong ones."
Ron frowned. Once, he would have scoffed. Now, he thought it over, watching Trelawney thoughtfully. Truthfully, he couldn't see anything about her to take particularly seriously – she looked like a modern muggle stereotype of a witch (or, at least, one of those people who went out worshipping nature and stuff and called themselves witches). With all the beads and gauzy shawls and sequins, she looked like a bad joke.
However, appearances deceived, and he had to admit that at least once, Trelawney had managed to pull something off – those cards she'd used on Harry the previous year, the ones that had sent him running for the hills, for instance. He'd seen something in those, when she used them. And Harry had suggested once or twice that there was some real prophecy going on.
"Then why's she always coming out with nonsense?" he muttered.
"Same reason I couldn't keep everyone out of my head," Harry replied. "She doesn't know how to use her gifts properly, she was never trained." He glanced around the room. "I mean, technically speaking, I think she really knows her stuff." At Ron's incredulous look, he raised an eyebrow. "She wanted to tap into her gifts, to control them. Wouldn't you want to learn everything you could about how to make them work?"
"I suppose," Ron conceded, a little dubiously.
"Trouble is, she's trying too hard, trying to force it," Harry went on. "This is mental magic, and it's deep magic, the sort of stuff that's so old it's hardly even magic. It's old and primal and dangerous. You don't force that kind of power to do anything, you can't. You let it flow through you, you listen to it. She knows all the tricks of divination – and they are tricks."
"What, like it's nonsense?" Ron asked, frowning.
"Not exactly," Harry replied, frowning in turn, thinking as he stared deep into the crystal ball. "They're tricks, yes, but they're also tools, I think. They get your head in the right space, help you focus, and like, say, a wand, they focus your powers – sort of like a telescope for the future. Or the present, elsewhere. Or the past." He looked up. "Practically everyone's got the teeniest, tiniest bit of precognitive potential. Everyone human, anyway. It's that tiny bit of magic, tiny bit of psionics, that's in everyone. Most anyone's likely to get is a bit of a chill when they go somewhere spooky, or a sense something's off. With witches and wizards, there's a bit more of it – especially with Wandless practitioners. Every single Council class practitioner has a bit of the Sight. At minimum."
Ron's jaw dropped. "I didn't know that!"
Harry half-smiled. "Until recently, neither did I," he murmured. "I only started picking up on it recently, after my senses sharpened. I asked a few questions, got some answers. It usually happens in their early thirties, and it doesn't amount to much – a sense that somewhere is going to be important to them, or someone. Something like that."
"And since we have wands, we don't get that," Ron picked up thoughtfully. "I remember Hermione mention something about wands make us more precise, make it easier to learn faster, but they cut us off from a lot of raw magic."
"That's the gist of it," Harry agreed. "Anyway, stuff like this –" He gestured at the crystal ball. "– amplifies that potential, that sensitivity. If you know how to use it. If you can understand what you end up seeing."
"Doesn't sound like Trelawney usually does," Ron muttered.
"Because somehow she's even more dramatic than me, that's why," Harry replied, earning a snort from Ron.
"So why ask her?"
"Because under the drama and the need to prove herself, she knows much, much more than she realises," Harry murmured. "When she stops overthinking, when she stops thinking, when she stops trying fancy interpretations and drama, that's when her powers rise."
"Sounds like you should be teaching the class," Ron said after a moment. He was only half-joking.
Harry eyed him. "I've got a couple of useful insights, about using psychic powers and ancient magic," he said. "Insights which just so happen to be bloody useless without knowing how to actually perform some bloody divination. That's like saying because I'm a natural at flying and have a few insights that would help a pilot because of it, that I should be able to pilot a jet or a Helicarrier."
He paused.
"Of course, I actually can pilot most jets, and they're actually relatively easy to do the basics on once they're in the air, but that's another matter. You get my point."
Ron's nose wrinkled, but he didn't argue. He got the point.
"Can you see anything?" he asked.
Harry stared into the crystal for a long time. "I'm not sure if I want to," he said quietly. "Knowledge is power, and I'm done running away from mine. It can also be useful. But this kind of knowledge… it's so easy to get wrong." He sighed. "I know a lot, Ron. Maybe too much. Definitely too much, in some cases. However, too much can also, sometimes, be not enough. If you overhear part of a conversation, you might get completely the wrong idea of what's being talked about, for instance. You make a decision based off of that, it turns out to be a mistake, that leads to more mistakes…"
"Sort of like misreading someone's moves in chess," Ron mused thoughtfully. "You get their strategy wrong, and you're all out of position while they're clearing up the board."
"Exactly," Harry agreed. "There's a reason that most prophecies are self-fulfilling. Voldemort heard that a baby born on the day I was would have the power to defeat him. He targeted me. My mother invoked the Phoenix, Voldemort got incinerated, and I was protected by a fragment of cosmic power. The rest is history."
Ron nodded slowly, digesting this.
"So," he said. "You're saying that Trelawney's actually pretty good at seeing the future… but crap at understanding it?"
Harry winced. "Yes," he said. "Exactly. Though not very tactful."
"And you think you can do it too," Ron went on.
"I'm a full-spectrum psi, an extremely powerful mage, I've had a chaos blessing bending probabilities around me since I was born, and I've had a piece of the universe in my soul since I was fifteen months old," Harry replied. "Which, due to the downright weird way these things work, has also been connected to me since before I was born, and which I've just been wielding at a godlike and beyond godlike capacity for six months. Which, frankly, has changed me in ways I'm not sure I understand." He cocked an eyebrow. "Add to the fact that I've learned a bit of time magic from Strange, I'd say it'd be bloody surprising if I couldn't."
"… fair point."
Harry flicked his fingers, and the air around them seemed to pop.
"However, that's just the cover," he went on. "My probable precognitive powers? They're not doing anything at the moment. Maybe they will. Maybe I'll start getting visions. When I do, I will. That isn't what I'm really up to, or after."
He smiled at Ron.
"You see, I'm not the seer here, Ron. You are."
OoOoO
Where her friends looked to the future, Hermione was in the process of looking to the past.
She had, to put it mildly, not been happy to discover that her heritage was other than what she had thought. Being adopted was something she could have settled in her own right, but the fact it had been kept a secret from her and the way she'd found out about it (with her newfound powers blowing up in her face), had not left her very positively inclined towards her heritage.
A very large part of her was, and stubbornly wished to remain, Hermione Granger, muggleborn witch, the academically minded daughter of dentists, who achieved what she did through intellect and hard work, living what was – for a muggleborn witch – a relatively normal life. Of course, this was for a given value of normal, allowing for being in the immediate orbit of one Harry Thorson né Potter, but howsoever. Normal.
That very large part of her could have done without the chaos magic, or the spatial manipulation, but if they had come out of nothing, or even been earned in some odd way, then it could have lived with them. Perhaps harder to face was, indeed, her very face. Every time she looked in the mirror, she saw less and less of someone who might be described as 'pleasant' but little more.
Rather, instead she saw a fineness of feature, an almost elfin beauty, in the form of an unmistakeable profile that was emerging from beneath that 'pleasant' face, like a block of marble, being chiselled away by some mocking sculptor, intent on reshaping her in her birth mother's image.
She hated it.
Oh, she was woman enough to realise that this was not exactly a rational response. She could, and did, blame Wanda for a goodly number of things, but the genes that she had passed on were not among them. That much, she had had no say in.
However, this did not make it any easier, to look into every passing reflection and see the most potent reminder of how everything she thought she had known had been turned on its head. To see, more and more with every passing day, the face bequeathed by the woman who had given her up.
She knew the rational reasons for it. She knew the irrational ones, too. She knew that there were other reasons to be known, as well, including one that traced back to a certain John Constantine – her birth father, who was making himself stubbornly unavailable. According to Professor Lupin (Agent Lupin he might be, but she would always think of him as Professor Lupin first and foremost), this was perhaps the best way he had of showing he truly cared.
To say that she was unimpressed by this would be a monumental understatement.
However, the other takeaway from that particular discussion had been that her birth father was entirely capable of being a first class manipulative bastard, with an emphasis on the bastard, and he had done something to Wanda. What that something actually was remained unknown. By her estimation, four parties were likely to know: Strange was secretive, Lily Potter was technically dead (and secretive), and her birth parents were not saying.
However, it had been a very significant, very unpleasant something, given that it had sent him from her loving good graces to a point where it was apparently legitimately worth wondering how he was still alive, and implicitly, played an equally significant part in Wanda's arranging for her adoption.
All the reasons in the world didn't make her happy with the situation. However, they did mean that she was, for the time being at least, accepting the reality of it. Meeting and getting to know her grandfather had helped in this regard, as had exchanging a few cautious emails with Lorna, her half-aunt (who both girls were avoiding actually calling that because things were awkward enough as they were, even without a minimal age difference).
And when Hermione Granger accepted something, she would perforce be driven to research it.
That was how she had found herself, quite happily in her own way, up to her eyes in something of a scrapbook. While such things did occasionally find their way into the Hogwarts library, which tended to accumulate books both harmless (The Monster Fun Joke Book – supposedly biting humour that, frankly, was more of a nibble really) and emphatically not (according to Professor McGonagall when selecting this scrapbook, at various points, Heinrich Kemmler's books on practical necromancy. All four of them), it was on the unusual side. For one thing, it was neither a book of magic, nor a book about magic. It wasn't even a particularly magical book, aside from the general gentle layer of magic that settled like dust on everything that spent longer than a few years in Hogwarts.
This scrapbook documented the so-called 'Special Class' of witches, wizards, mutants, and others of unidentifiable origin who had been rescued from captivity by the Nazis, their collaborators, HYDRA, or Grindelwald. The latter two had, according to her reading, overlapped to a degree. While neither the Red Skull nor Grindelwald had trusted each other in the slightest, the Tesseract had made HYDRA too powerful to conveniently demolish without opening Grindelwald's flank to his enemies, while Grindelwald himself had been much too powerful for the Red Skull to defeat directly.
They also had certain shared goals and outlooks, leading to an alliance of convenience, no matter how distasteful either found it. As a consequence, Grindelwald had had access to a formidable logistical and intelligence network in the muggle world, and HYDRA had had sufficient protection to prevent their erasure from the Earth and repossession of the Tesseract – or, at least, a very large crater in what was left of Western or Central Europe when someone tried to do exactly that.
All of the factions had also had a certain interest in experimentation. One of the subjects of that experimentation had been her grandfather, of course. To her surprise, however, she found that as she studied the almost incongruously well-gathered class photo, another had been her grandmother: Magda Maximoff, a Romani wandless witch.
While she didn't exactly have lists of powers to compare against, scrapbooked accounts and notes had made for interesting reading, filling in the gaps. And sometimes, the pictures themselves spoke volumes. The group, the class, had been an unusual one, that much was obvious. Some had been young teenagers like her biological grandparents, while others had been notably older.
She ran her eyes over the photographs and the names attached, drinking them in, aching to know their stories.
Jason Gehrig, Charles Nuit, Shiera Haller (whose wings, Hermione noticed, somewhat resembled Warren's, and wasn't that curious), Joar Mahkent, Nelson Kant, Khalid Nassour, Jim Hammond (apparently a homunculus, a living and breathing alchemical construct of significant power, hijacked at one point by Grindelwald), Clare Gruler, and, oldest looking and most certainly the grumpiest looking of them all, a Doctor James Bradley.
For some reason that Hermione couldn't figure out, he was rather insistent on wearing a surgical mask over his face at all times. If it was to conceal the expression of irritable boredom, compressed energy, and disdainful contempt, it failed. Hermione was no Harry when it came to reading faces, but even just a look at Doctor Bradley's eyes had left her entirely certain that she would have been itching to hex him within a minute.
"You would hardly be the first," came the dry remark, and Hermione realised very abruptly that she had said that out loud.
Oh, and she wasn't alone.
"James Bradley was – and, I believe, is – an extraordinarily brilliant and deeply exasperating man with little tolerance for those he considered fools, and little interest, at the time, in anything outside of a laboratory," McGonagall went on. "A brilliant bio-chemist and alchemist, he worked with Abraham Erskine before the war. By the time he paid enough attention to object to his employers, he had the joint interest of Grindelwald and Johann Schmidt as well as the Nazi government, and no avenue of escape. They used his genius to create the most appalling things. Consequently, after the war, he developed a new interest, striking out with your grandfather to hunt down as many Nazis and HYDRA agents as possible. Where your grandfather ultimately decided, at least for a while, to make a life with your grandmother, Doctor Bradley vanished into South America, hunting Nazi and HYDRA fugitives."
"That sounds like quite the story," Hermione managed, after a goggle-eyed moment, resolving to start digging into this as soon as possible.
"It was," McGonagall agreed, taking a seat beside her. "They all led, or went on to lead, rather interesting lives. Your grandfather perhaps foremost among them."
"What was he like?" Hermione asked, intensely curious.
"Magnetic," McGonagall said after a long moment. "He drew others to him as easily as his powers drew metal. Passionate, with a terrible rage in him – and who could blame him for that? – and terribly intelligent. It was clear from the start that he would go far. He attracted attention from students, and teachers, of all backgrounds, and discussed all kinds of things with them, polishing what would be his philosophy. Even those who were becoming the first generation of Death Eaters listened to him, though those discussions were… tense, at best. While Erik was deeply embittered towards 'ordinary' humans, muggles, due to his treatment at their hands, that past meant he had an equal disdain to ideas of superiority by right of blood. He had more sympathy, I think, with Grindelwald's ideology, which was infinitely less concerned with blood purity than simple magical ability. Perhaps fortunately, Tom Riddle – the boy who would become Voldemort – tended to keep a careful distance from him."
"He was afraid of him? Even then?"
"No," McGonagall said, sounding very clear on that. "Erik was already strong, but far from the height of his powers. Riddle's skills were far more polished, his powers stronger. At this point, his concern, I think, was attracting the unwanted attention of Professor Dumbledore. While Professor Dumbledore was, by this point in the war, often occupied by countering Grindelwald. When he taught – this being some years before he became Headmaster – he only taught Alchemy for select students, and advanced courses in Defence against the Dark Arts for those looking to combat Grindelwald and his most senior Lieutenants directly. He did, however, reserve a considerable amount of time for the Special Class. On a day to day basis, however, I handled a good deal of their affairs. Which could be interesting…"
Hermione sat in rapt fascination, drinking in everything that McGonagall was willing to share with her (which was a good deal, while also hinting at a great deal more), from the hijinks of the Special Class themselves, to other students contemporary with them, to the involvement of senior members of the White Council, such as Joseph Listens-To-Wind and Ebenezar McCoy, and indeed, the mysterious and brilliant Margaret LeFay, now with the imprimatur of Strange's apprenticeship.
"A dangerous woman," McGonagall opined, with an odd mixture of respect and disapproval. "One who may well have been almost as clever as she thought she was."
This flowed into discussions of other 'Special Classes', which opened Hermione's eyes to a chapter of Hogwarts history she had never imagined.
First, there had been a handsome young man and his metamorph sister, who had tracked down Hogwarts from stray thoughts plucked from incautious minds. He had seen straight through the suggestions and persuasions to head elsewhere, politely waiting at the gate until a young and somewhat confounded Hagrid had let them in.
This young man, of course, had been Charles Xavier, and his sister, adopted and of indeterminate origin, had been known as Raven. The most powerful mortal psychic the world had ever seen, and one of its most comprehensive shapeshifters, had found an able teacher in a master of transfiguration and the mental arts.
"Young Raven was, regrettably, unwilling to push her abilities as far as they could go," McGonagall related. "I taught her what she was willing to learn, but…" She sighed. "The poor girl mostly just wanted to know how to be 'normal'."
"Why?" Hermione asked, baffled, and had flushed at the imperious arched eyebrow she had received in turn.
"I think, Miss Granger, that you would know that better than most," McGonagall replied, with something pointed in the rebuke. "Furthermore, while she was quite striking and her own worst critic, she did not have the good fortune to pass as human, much less inherit – as you have, whether you wish to admit it or not – the looks of a famous beauty."
Hermione, still flushed with shame, had changed the subject at that point.
Years after the war, Margaret Carter and Howard Stark had returned to Hogwarts, with a small blonde girl. "Alison Carter," McGonagall said. "Who politeness had previously dictated we were to accept as Peggy's younger sister, when it was screamingly obvious exactly who and what they really were to each other – and this time, it was no longer a matter of polite fiction, because the truth was at least somewhat out, and in the hands of the Red Room, for all Charles' efforts to erase suitable memories."
They had been accompanied by a number of others, as well, apparently: a massive, doleful, and very gentle young Russian man, little more than a boy, called Piotr; two young men who would otherwise have been considered tall and imposing if not for Piotr's presence, one of them bearing an odd resemblance to Harry, with an odd accent and an intense scientific curiosity by the name of Jor, and the other, bulky with bronze skin and a striking subdermal tattoo on his forehead by the name of Teal'c; an older man, weathered and wise, with a gold subdermal tattoo on his brow and clearly a mentor to this Teal'c, by the name of Bra'tac. He and his student were, apparently, clearly ill-at-ease in conventional muggle clothing, or indeed magical clothing. Jor, meanwhile, seemed to find it anthropologically fascinating, as had another of their companions, a young man by the name of Mar-Vell.
"Going by his accent," McGonagall had observed. "He was no relation to the 17th century poet. Though I would imagine that he wouldn't have objected to trying a little poetry, as he was quite clearly smitten by Peggy."
Having seen pictures of Peggy Carter, Hermione could hardly say that she was surprised.
The story had circled back, at how Xavier had gone to learn from the Askani ("An ancient cult, and a very strange and at times, unsettling, part of some of the stranger and more unsettling parts of our world, with an unseemly interest in genealogy and heritage. Blood, in a word."), then of a battle he had fought in Egypt, one that he had led to his fleeing to Hogwarts to seek out his old teacher for an urgent treatment that they had never spoken of, even to those they held in deepest confidence.
Years after, another consultation, jointly from Margaret Carter, Erik Lensherr (newly widowed), and Charles Xavier, regarding a young man with immense magical power who would be known to some of the secret parts of history as the Angel of Cuba.
("That was a question I never gained a satisfactory answer to, though I daresay that Sean Cassidy could answer it, if he could be persuaded to. Given that he hasn't for nearly fifty years, however, I don't think it's all that likely. In any case, I have my own theories as to who the Angel was.")
(So did Hermione, come to that.)
Then, some years after that, a young man with inoffensive brown hair, inoffensive brown eyes, and pleasant but not startling features had been sent to Hogwarts with a letter of introduction and a green ring around his finger.
His name was Alan Scott.
"This time, his education involved most of the faculty, some of the best that the White Council had to offer, and quite a bit more besides. SHIELD wanted only the best, and that is exactly what they received. Even Strange consulted, which itself tells you how significant this was. And for good reason."
The Green Lantern, the Wielder of the Emerald Flame, after all, was what might be called A Matter of Great Significance.
"He," McGonagall recalled. "Attracted all kinds of enemies, and I daresay that I hardly know the half of them. Some of the strangest, though, were other Lanterns. I hadn't thought that such a thing was possible – a Red Lantern, of Rage and Hate and Desire, and a Grey Lantern, of Sorrow, Desolation, and Despair. Professor Dumbledore, for his part, was hardly surprised. 'Every sound has its echo, and every light has its reflection', he said."
By this point, Hermione had started taking notes, which McGonagall swivelled a wry look at.
"Of course," she said. "I would say that you are not likely to find any more information on any of this, given the inclinations of SHIELD in particular to keep it secret. On the other hand, given who your friends are, I am well aware of how hard it would be to keep those secrets from you, if you so chose to seek them out."
Hermione tried to look innocent. There was, after all, an element of truth in that. Even if Harry was leery of sharing secrets (and she didn't think that was all that likely in these specific cases), she had some other new friends who would be quite happy to do so. Oracle, in her experience, was remarkably informative.
For now, though, she had questions to ask.
OoOoO
Ron, meanwhile, was busy being discombobulated.
"That's insane," had been his actual words.
Harry had just looked amused. "Depending on who you ask, so am I," he quipped, before shrugging. "Though, these days, I think it's more very… very sane. It was one or the other, really."
"Right," Ron said, not feeling totally reassured by this.
Harry, clearly being able to tell, smiled slightly. "I know that you don't get it," he said, devoid of rancour. "Frankly, I'm glad you don't. But…" His gaze turned reflective. "Maybe one day, you will. And I'm not sure if that's a good thing or not."
Ron stared at him, then shook his head as if trying to shake his jumbled thoughts into order. "Seriously, Harry. Me? A seer?"
"The beads, jewellery, and incense aren't exactly obligatory, you know."
Ron glared at him, and Harry raised his hands in concession – and some amusement.
"Look, Ron. I've met some very powerful seers, and I've got some very powerful psychic senses," he said. "I know a seer when I sense one. There's something about their presence that I can't explain. It's like an openness, except not. They see in more than just three dimensions." He nodded at Ron. "Or rather, you do."
"But, I've never predicted anything," Ron said weakly.
"I can think of a few offhand things you've said that might have come true," Harry remarked. "As it is, that isn't surprising. You haven't been trained, you didn't even know it was there. You never cast any spells before you came to Hogwarts. Did that mean you weren't a wizard?"
Ron frowned, opened his mouth to argue, then frowned again and shut it reluctantly.
"If I had to guess," Harry said slowly, leaning forward and thinking hard. "It's been manifesting here and there all your life, like accidental magic. Psionics and magic, there's a big overlap, you see. They do a lot of similar things in very similar ways. Out East, where they really know about psionics, they don't see much difference – there is a difference, I mean, but it's like two sides of the same coin." He tilted his head. "Looking back, I was always that little bit better at dodging Dudley and his gang than maybe I should have been."
Ron's mood soured somewhat at that reminder of how his friend had been treated. Harry affected not to be bothered by it, having put the past in the past. He suspected otherwise, even if the Dursleys – all of them – had got what they deserved.
That brought those green eyes swinging around to him. Not snapping around as they might have when angered, full of censure and fury. Simply looking at him, no, looking through him, almost eerily calm, taking in all that there was to see and pinning him to his seat.
Once again, Ron found himself thinking that it was very much like being looked at by Dumbledore, and all the more unsettling for that.
"Deserve?" Harry said softly. It wasn't the dangerous softness, the kind that either made you want to run as far as one could, or froze you in place with the certain knowledge that nowhere could be far enough, as the ice creaked beneath your feet. It was almost thoughtful. "An easy word to use. Very easy. Yet it becomes harder to define the closer you look."
"What do you mean? They treated you like –"
"Scum? Like a servant? A slave, even? And then expected me to be grateful?"
A chill ran down Ron's spine, as an edge appeared in that soft voice, like a blade being bared for just a moment. Then, it was gone, and Harry shrugged.
"All appropriate descriptions, and not covering the half of it," he mused, still not looking away from Ron. "Yet they were imprisoned for their crimes, thrown in as deep a hole as Peter Wisdom could find – though not before they knew what those crimes had done to their precious reputation. A loss, I think, second only to that of their son. Who, for all their flaws, and his, they truly loved. They raised him badly, but with the best intentions." His lips twitched in an ironic smile. "Oddly, the way they raised me set me up better to deal with the real world, to be a decent person. Though they'd have had to go some way to do worse."
He regarded Ron.
"What they did was evil."
"They're evil," Ron put in, feeling that this was a statement of the blindingly obvious.
"Purely? Completely?" Harry asked in response.
Ron frowned. "I think so," he said slowly. "But you don't. Do you?"
Harry's gaze was unblinking. "Evil – truest, purest evil – does not understand the meaning of love." He paused. "They did. They still do. Which, arguably, makes what they did even worse. They weren't ignorant – they knew better, and they did it anyway." He was silent for a long moment, collecting his thoughts. "Pure evil, and pure good, may exist. But they are much, much rarer than you'd think. The world, the universe, even the multiverse, is so much more complicated than that." This time, his lips canted into a much more amused smile. "Only a Sith thinks in absolutes."
Ron stared at him blankly, not getting this reference, before frowning again. He got the point, incomprehensible reference aside, and he wasn't sure he liked it. Harry noticed.
"There is right and wrong, just as there is good and evil," he said. "But what is right at one time can be wrong at another. Or, being right to one person can mean being wrong to someone else. Wanda and Hermione, for instance. I didn't tell Hermione the truth, because Wanda asked me not to and because I thought I would wrong her if I did. But by not doing so, or at least not pushing Wanda to do so… I wronged Hermione." He sighed. "I wronged her badly."
He waved a hand.
"You see my point," he said.
"But there was still a right choice," Ron retorted, wondering how on earth this had turned into a philosophy argument. "It's like you said, there was right and wrong. You chose wrong."
"I made the wrong choice," Harry replied, a subtle but firm emphasis. "Important difference. I didn't choose to do something wrong, I chose what I thought was best. It just happened to be the incorrect choice, a choice which was wrong, and did wrong. But if I had done the opposite, I would still have done wrong by Wanda. It would have been the right choice, if it had come to it, but… it's shades of grey, Ron. And that's one of the simpler choices I've faced." He looked at Ron, that same clear, intent gaze. "The point about only thinking in absolutes. It applies to morals, to allegiances, to everything. I chose to protect Wanda over Hermione. That doesn't mean I was against Hermione, or that I cared any less for her – I love her, I love you both."
Ron flushed, caught off-guard by this sincere yet matter-of-fact statement, enough not to interrupt. This did not prevent his jaw from tightening a little, though.
"Likewise, if I disagree with you, that doesn't make you my enemy, or vice versa. If I'm playing chess with you, I want to beat you, and if I do, I enjoy it, as you do when you win. That doesn't mean I want to hurt you, or dominate you, or anything like that. Thinking in absolutes is a mistake, because absolutes are rare."
"Is that what you learned while you were away?" Ron asked eventually. "Weird philosophy, shades of grey, all that… stuff."
The ellipsis was only a thin cover for something rather less complimentary. If Harry reacted to it, since he couldn't fail to notice, there was nothing more than a faint exhalation to show it.
"Learned," he replied evenly. "And still learning. Always learning. I'm not perfect, Ron, I can slip into that way of thinking myself. It's comforting and it's easy."
"And it's right more than you'd think," Ron retorted. "Absolutes might be rare, but they exist."
"If you think in absolutes, then you will never learn how to use your gifts," Harry replied flatly. "Which I'm sure you can live with, just as I could without my psychic powers. I get that. You don't need them, and you might not even want them. It's not exactly an easy gift to manage, so I can sympathise. But as I also learned, once powers like that are awake – and thanks to New Orleans, they are – they don't go away. And if you don't master them, they master you. Which means that they'll drive you completely bloody mad. Not the kind of mad I went, oh no. The kind where you don't the difference between yesterday and tomorrow, now and then, where replying before someone thinks of a question is a good day. Especially with gifts like yours, especially after they got woken up the night you were attacked by a god-eating mind-murdering eldritch horror."
There was a long silence, as Harry's intense gaze finally shut off, in favour of rubbing at his closed eyes, tired and frustrated. Ron swallowed.
"You think that?"
"My psionics woke up when I was attacked by Dementors, Ron," he said tiredly. "Then got another boot up the arse when I was attacked last Easter. And you remember how much trouble I had with them."
Ron did, in fact, remember how much trouble Harry had with them. He remembered the Pensieve Incident very well, thank you, usually at about three o'clock in the morning. He would, someday, like to be able to forget it.
"You can contain most psionics," Harry went on. "Going outwards, anyway. Being a seer? That's something different. It goes inward. Inward, and beyond."
"So… this was all about getting me to realise I need a seer teacher?" Ron asked slowly.
"Well, the discussion on morality got a little away from us," Harry admitted with a grimace. "That happens, especially recently. I've had a lot to think about in that department. I wasn't really intending to bring that up, but when it came up, I thought it might work as a metaphor, or a teaching tool. And generally be helpful."
Ron's eyes narrowed. "You think I see things in black and white," he said. "You think that's a mistake. You think it's stupid."
Harry was silent for a long, long time.
"Well?" Ron pushed. "What are you waiting for?"
"Inspiration," Harry muttered. "For an answer that won't make you start shouting at me." He sighed. "Ron, I think it's great that you have a very clear sense of right and wrong. Really, I do. It helps make you a truly good person. I actually envy it, and you. You may not realise it, weirdly enough, but you know exactly who you are."
"So?" Ron asked, frowning.
"Practically no one else does," Harry replied. "Me included. Me especially, at times. And… I suppose it doesn't actually surprise me." He smiled slightly. "You're very definite in everything you do, Ron, everything you are. You're decisive. That's good." The smile faded. "It also makes you uncompromising. And that's not. Once your decision is made, it's set in stone, and it shouldn't be. You have to learn to bend, Ron, or you'll break. Trust me. I know."
"Sounds like you know everything sometimes," Ron muttered, aware that he sounded petulant and not caring one bit.
That got a wry, humourless laugh. "Not even close. Not even when I've been quasi-omniscient. The more I learn, the more I realise how little I know. A lot of what I do know comes through experience, both good and bad, and a lot of mistakes." He sighed, and looked up. "You know when I talked about the Dursleys? They did evil things, and they did good things. Because they were, maybe still are, horrible bigots, they did good things to some people and bad things to others because of what they were. Their son, Dudley. He was a bully. He was spoiled. He was cruel, often enough. He used his size and strength and threats to get what he wanted. Like the worst of Draco, the way he used to be, mixed with Crabbe or Goyle. But that was what he'd been taught. That was what he'd been rewarded for being like. His parents knew better. Did he? Not when we parted, I don't think."
He sighed, something truly sad in this one.
"Then Sinister got hold of him, and through him, the Red Room. They gave him power, woke up his x-gene, and encouraged all his worst aspects. 'Want, take, have'. That was his mentality going in, what he'd been taught, with the only exceptions being things that someone else, someone more powerful than him, stopped him from taking." He half-smiled, mirthless. "He used to whine at his parents and fake tears when he wanted something he couldn't take, but I doubt that really worked with either Sinister or the Red Room, oddly enough." The smile evaporated. "So he learned more violence. And he learned that if he pointed it at people who were given to him as targets, he was rewarded. He was a big, strong man, just like his father had taught him to be. As for those rewards… first, food and games, then alcohol and drugs… and girls."
Something cold burned in those green eyes, something cold and deadly, and suddenly, that fire Ron remembered wasn't so far away at all.
"Girls and women. Bought, stolen, taken, from anywhere and everywhere. Both Sinister and the Red Room had networks of human trafficking set up decades, even centuries, ago. For recruits and test subjects, mostly, though also as living currency. Even without magic, you'd be amazed how easy it is for someone to just… disappear. So, plenty of variety, set before him, that big and strong man, strong enough to take a punch from my dad halfway into a mountain. Strong enough to do what he liked, to who he liked."
His gaze turned to Ron, who felt like he was about to throw up.
"'Want. Take. Have'. Or, in a word: entitlement. He wanted something, so he felt he had a right to get it, whether by manipulation or simple strength. It started with sweets. Single, simple sweets. Even with what I've said, believe me when I say that you don't know the half of how far it went."
He looked away, this time into the distance, mulling over the still patterns of dust in the sunlight, hanging in frozen time.
"In practically no time at all, Dudley went from a comparatively harmless bully, to a complete monster so vile that when he was turned into a vampire, the only thing about him that truly changed was his diet," he said eventually. "Not because of some inherent evil, or even some Red Room indoctrination. They encouraged him a little, but he walked down that slippery slope because he saw something he wanted. And then he saw something else. And something else. And… because, like everyone else in his life, they gave it to him, save those few occasions when they needed to smack him down. Because no one ever really, properly, told him 'no'."
He looked at Ron, and now, he looked indescribably sad.
"When I last saw him, before I left for Hogwarts, back in third year, he was just a kid," he said. "Not a particularly pleasant one, maybe, but I've known plenty worse, even at Hogwarts. Not even the baby Death Eaters, either, just the ones who are, or were, simply nasty. As Draco's shown, people can change. If they want to. If they're taught how."
He looked at Ron.
"If Dudley had been scooped up by someone better than Sinister, if he'd been raised properly, if someone had consistently told him 'no', and told him why, if someone had helped him learn how to decide what was right and what was wrong, by someone who just did a half-decent damned job of parenting… he wouldn't have become a monster. He'd probably be a decent person, actually, learning from his mistakes, remorseful for his bullying. He'd be big and strong, with those powers of his, but he might even be a gentle giant, like Hagrid. You know the sort – huge, but they'd never hurt a fly. Without good reason."
Ron, who'd caught a glimpse of Dudley once or twice, and heard more than enough about him long before he'd transformed into supersized monster, grimaced. "Having a hard time seeing it, mate," he admitted. "But I think I understand."
Harry nodded. "We are the sum of our choices," he said softly. "And his made him a monster. A monster who could have been something different, but a monster all the same. A monster that I killed."
The words hung in the air for a moment. Ron said nothing. What in Merlin's name could you say?
"Technically, I killed the vampire that had once been him, but again – there was so little difference between who he was before, and who he was after. He was practically a demon already. You could say that I killed the thing that killed him, but I didn't think of it like that. I didn't care. Truth be told, if he wasn't a vampire, if he'd done what he had anyway, then I'd have done just the same, and counted it a mercy. A mercy that, at least at the time, I'd have felt he didn't deserve."
He sighed.
"I don't regret that," he said. "But I do regret that it was necessary. I wish that someone had shown him a better way." He looked at Ron. "And what I said earlier about deserving… I think that the monster he became may have deserved to die. But the boy he used to be? No. He didn't deserve that. And his parents, horrible as they were, or are, didn't deserve that either."
"That boy was long gone by the time you ran into each other again, mate," Ron replied bluntly.
"I know. And there was nothing I could have done. I know that too. I've accepted it. At peace with it? More or less. But I do think about it sometimes." Harry shook his head. "But that's not what I was thinking about now, as such. More about deserving. It can be complicated. Not always, but sometimes." His gaze tilted towards Ron. "What would you say that they deserved – all of them? Bearing in mind that Dudley would, whatever happened, not be arrested and would instead live to see his parents vanish for the rest of their lives, of his life, after having their reputations destroyed, seeing the people he loved painted as monsters – even if they'd earned it – with mobs baying for their blood, with the very name 'Dursley' becoming a slur…"
The inference, 'surely this would be punishment enough, for him, at least' hung between them.
"Well, a lot of me would want him given a piece of his own medicine," Ron said, thinking. "There's some properly nasty hexes that would teach him a lesson."
Harry made a wordless noise of acknowledgement, bobbing his head. "And his parents?"
Ron scowled, less at him, more in a mixture of thought and at the spectre of the Dursley parents, who he still remembered clearly, hanging out of Harry's window, having tried to prevent his escape – escape! – from their house, to the point of sticking bars on the windows… it made his blood boil to think of it, all the most unpleasant curses he knew coming to mind.
As they did, he felt a light touch on his arm, on his mind. Not pressing close, physically or mentally, just breaking the spiral. The green gaze that met his was non-judgemental. Just calm, and patient.
"A taste of their own medicine too," he said. "Like what they were doing to you that summer we came to get you."
That drew a small smile from Harry, clearly remembering the escape.
"So, solitary confinement for practically twenty four hours a day, and starvation rations?" he mused.
"Or that cupboard they used to keep you in," Ron said.
"I'm not sure Vernon would fit," Harry murmured. "Petunia might." He flicked his fingers. "Still, allowing for that. Solitary confinement in something even smaller than my old room."
"And having to do everything they made you do."
"Similarly scaled up, I assume?" Harry asked with a raised eyebrow, and at firm nod, considered. "Prison labour. Possible. All right. For how long?"
"For life," Ron said harshly.
Harry made a considering noise.
"I'd imagine that's more or less what they've got now," he mused. "Though I doubt even Wisdom would squash each of them into something that small. And I doubt he'd starve them. If only because feeding them less would probably cost more with medical bills later. Still, it says a lot that the total sociopath who hates anything that harms his country, including its reputation, would be more humane than they were to their own family for simply existing."
"Yeah," Ron said pointedly. "It does."
The clear inference was 'and that's why it should be for life'.
"Maybe," Harry said. "But if they don't learn something from it – other than that they pissed off the wrong people – then what's the point?" He shrugged. "I suppose 'actions have consequences' is a valid lesson, but even so…" He trailed off. "I note that you don't mention that they would have deserved their son dying."
"Well, no," Ron said, frowning.
"Even if he didn't change from the simple bully he was?"
"No!"
Harry nodded slowly.
"Then maybe they've already suffered enough," he murmured.
When Ron looked at him in disbelief, he explained.
"My mother is dead. Maybe you could be smart and say 'for a given value of dead' or just 'not really', but while she really is always with me… she's also further away than you can imagine. So close that I can reach her, any moment… but I can't." For a moment, the pensive philosopher, the thinker, the older-than-his-years friend vanished, and Ron just saw, in a flash of insight, a sad boy. "And that just makes it worse."
He shook his head.
"For nearly thirteen years, as far as I was concerned, she was dead-dead," he said. "So was my father. I have him now, but I haven't forgotten what it was like not to. I know what it's like to have a big, gaping hole in your life where someone should be." He looked at Ron with undisguised sympathy. "And so do you."
Ron swallowed.
"Yeah," he managed, in a strangled whisper.
"They have that too, or they will, when they're told," Harry said. "Maybe worse, because he's their son, who they were meant to guide and protect. They might even feel responsible for what he became, given they laid the groundwork. If they were completely evil, they wouldn't care. But they would, and do. Because for all their flaws, and his, they loved him. And still do."
He shook his head.
"I don't know about you, Ron. But that's a worse life sentence than any prison I can think of."
Ron sat in a troubled silence for a long time. Then, abruptly trying to switch topics, from the uncomfortable one they'd walked upon, and the edge of the yawning abyss of pain it had ended up treading, he raised the question of his seer powers.
"If you're so insistent about me getting this sorted," he said. "Which, by the way, you seem to be doing to everyone at the moment. What's going on there? Anyway, why not just take me to one of these super-powerful seers you know? Trelawney might know some technique –" This came out with pronounced scepticism. "– but wouldn't it be better to learn from someone else who actually knows how to use it?"
"In reverse order," Harry replied. "Yes, it would, because I'm not expecting you just to learn from Trelawney. Most of those seers aren't on Earth, though I might ask my grandmother to send a few lessons." Ignoring the way Ron's eyes bulged, he considered the last. "As to what's going on there... I suppose that I've been ignoring a lot of things around me. A lot of things that I could help with. A lot of things that I could set right. Some are new. Some aren't. Maybe it's too late, for some, to really 'fix'. But the least I can do is try."
"Like with Snape?" Ron asked. "He's been properly weird since you had that chat with him."
"That wasn't entirely me," Harry replied. "Actually, that was mostly my mother. I invited him inside my head – like Hermione, but on purpose. Mum, due to weird cosmic Rules, can't talk to me much, not directly. She could, however, talk to him, through my mind."
Ron's eyes widened. "How's he not toast?" he asked incredulously.
"I think that a part of mum probably did want to toast him," Harry remarked. "The rest… mostly just wanted to give him a stern talking to and a kick up the metaphorical arse, and/or in the metaphorical bollocks. But also to help him. Once upon a time, they were friends, very good friends." He smiled slightly at Ron's incredulity. "No one ends where they begin. If I've learned one thing, it's that. Anyway, they grew up together, were best mates, he was head over heels for her, not that I think she knew, but he was also into the Death Eater crowd. He ended up choosing them, called her a mudblood – yeah."
Ron had let out a long, low whistle.
"He apologised, but she rightly had none of it because he called every other muggleborn that, he was just showing who he'd become. He got in deep with the young Death Eaters, while my dad stopped being a prat and my mum fell in love with him. Cue Snape joining the Death Eaters, cue prophecy, cue me, cue him becoming a spy to protect her… or rather, all of us. Though only after Dumbledore shamed and blackmailed him into it." He smiled thinly. "He'd tried to bargain with Voldemort for her life, you see. Hers. Not ours. Just hers. And it's pretty clear what he was thinking."
The smile turned grimmer at Ron's expression.
"Dumbledore's exact words were 'you disgust me.'"
"Too bloody right they were!"
"And being basically omniscient, mum knows that. It's sort of how I know that."
Ron stared at him in a mixture of lingering disgust and utter disbelief.
"And she still didn't toast him?"
"Nope," Harry said dryly. "Though I think the verbal and mental flaying was more painful. All the more, for him, for who it was coming from."
His expression was sombre now.
"In fact," he said quietly. "I can say with absolute certainty that in his position, I'd prefer being toasted. I would infinitely prefer it."
"How do you mean?" Ron asked, concerned.
"I don't believe that Snape loved my mother, not in the truest sense of the word," Harry replied slowly. "He was too selfish for that. That is not the same as saying that he is not capable of love, because he is, or that his feelings might not develop into love, given time."
"But she's dead," Ron retorted, utterly bemused.
"She died, yes," Harry agreed. "But death is most certainly not the end. And… when you think about it… your relationship with someone… it doesn't end with their death. It just changes."
Ron considered this in silence. On the face of it, it sounded like the same sort of cryptic oddness – sometimes nonsense, sometimes not – that Harry came out with these days. When he thought about it, though, it actually made more sense than it didn't. His dad, for instance… that relationship still mattered to him.
"Snape has been in the same pattern since she died," Harry continued quietly. "He hasn't been able to move on, to change or grow. Perhaps now, he will. But regardless, as he was then, as he is now… he cared for her, very much. That, I do not doubt. He wanted her, but he also valued her. He regretted the loss of her friendship deeply." He nodded slowly. "The fact that she married dad, who he hated for reasons both good and bad, and had me, chewed away at him. It still does. He had regrets, he has regrets. He cared for her."
His gaze turned distant. "I'm in love," he said, with remarkable frankness. "I'm not just saying that. I've learned what 'true love' looks like, from a psychic perspective, how it feels in other people. I've turned my powers inward." His expression tightened. "It was both much easier than I imagined, and much harder than I had thought." The tightness faded, into a kind of serene acceptance. "I saw a lot of things there. They were good, bad, awkward, embarrassing, disturbing, surprising, delightful… they were practically everything. And one of them, fierce, prominent, and true… was love."
He paused, thinking, considering his next words.
"I've hurt people that I care for," he said. "And people that I love. Not on purpose, but when I've been called up on it, been condemned for it, I've deserved it."
He sucked in a deep breath, and exhaled.
"And it hurt," he said frankly, more open than Ron had ever seen him, an almost uncomfortable yet breathtaking kind of intimacy. "It hurt that I'd hurt them, it hurt because I knew I'd got it wrong, because I had done the last thing I ever wanted to do, the last thing I could bear to do. It hurt because I was not the one in a position to help them, because I was the one who had hurt them in the first place. It hurt. And it hurt all the more because I felt that I had no right to even feel bad, let alone hurt, after how I'd hurt them. My pain was nothing. It did not deserve to exist, and if it did, well, good. It was what I deserved. A suitable penance."
He sighed.
"As you can probably tell, I've been working through a lot. I still am. And probably will be for the rest of the century."
That last might, Ron thought, have been a joke. He hoped it was a joke. But he wasn't entirely sure…
"Anyway," Harry said. "I'm in love. Snape cares for my mother very much, he thinks he is in love, and you know what, for this, it makes no difference. Because if I had hurt Carol the way he hurt my mother?"
He looked at Ron with utter clarity.
"I can tell you this with absolute certainty: I would rather die. Because dying hurts. Death is easy, but dying? No. Even as many times as I've done it. And coming back? That's worse."
"Worse?!" Ron burst in, in utter disbelief, unable to comprehend this.
The look in Harry's eyes, sad and distant and full of knowledge, chilled him to the bone. The response, as soft as winter's breeze soughing through branches, stole any heat remaining.
"Worse."
Ron shuddered. Instinctively, he didn't believe it, he couldn't believe it. But looking into those eyes… he shuddered again. He had heard of fates worse than death, a concept he was trying to figure out still. Not that horrible things were beyond his imagining, far from it (infinitely far from it). He just had a hard time imagining the idea that they were worse than dying. Death, after all, seemed to him to be an end.
"Anyway, dying, returning, even torture… pick your poison. They would hurt, oh yes. But I can tell you that whichever you choose, it doesn't hurt half so much as that would. Bring on the flames. Bring on the punishment. It would be infinitely easier. And if I, as he did, had to face her judgement, a judgement that I knew in my bones that I would deserve?" He nodded slowly. "Yes. Bring on the flames. They would hurt infinitely less than either the knowledge, or the judgement. And I think that he would agree."
He smiled slightly.
"Of course," he added, as Ron stared at him, trying to process this. "As Professor Dumbledore likes to say, we have a choice between what is right, and what is easy, do we not? Embracing suffering, begging for punishment, it's incredibly self-indulgent. It does nothing to move forward. It helps neither the living nor the dead. Refusing the courage to face up to the judgement we have earned, ignoring it, defying it, running from it, in favour of a bit of bitterness, pain, and hatred, of ourselves or someone we choose to blame… that achieves nothing."
He tapped the fingers of his right hand on the armchair to emphasise his point.
"That, Ron, is what Snape has been doing to himself for the last decade and a bit," he said. "Mum ripped off the bandage, tore down the self-image and self-hatred he's built up over the last however long. She made him face the truth, of what he did, why he did it, and what he has been and become. She made him face judgement, for that and more. And she did it… well, partly out of a desire to give him a well-deserved bollocking and tear several well-earned strips off him. But also, partly, because sometimes you have to destroy before you can rebuild. The old must burn away before there is new growth. If we want to move forward, we must first face what we have done."
He nodded.
"There were other reasons to talk to him, too. All else being said and done, once he was her friend. And, despite his reasons, he did try and protect her family. And whatever else you can say about Snape, that is a man who lives and breathes suffering. It's why he lashes out at practically everyone else. He's miserable, and responds by making others as miserable as he is. Or trying, anyway." He shrugged. "She wants him to get closure, to heal. So do I. Maybe it'll make a better person of him."
"Yeah, and maybe the Cannons will win the League," Ron muttered.
Harry smiled wryly. "Well, as the godson of a probability manipulator, I can tell you that practically anything is possible… even if some things aren't necessarily all that likely."
Ron rolled his eyes. "What's the point of all this, mate?" he asked bluntly. "I'm… I mean, thanks for saying it. For feeling that, you know, you can."
What passed unsaid, but entirely understood, was that this was a very welcome change from Harry's utter refusal to say anything of significance to Ron, whether about his deeper troubles or about his stranger life.
Harry inclined his head. "And I want to thank you for being patient and listening," he said quietly. "You're my oldest friend, except for Hagrid, and I've trusted you less than you deserved. I mean to change that." His gaze turned distant, and a sigh escaped him. "Though not without cost."
"What do you mean?" Ron asked, as a strange mixture of warm squirming delight and twisting pain warped within his chest.
"Not all the secrets I've kept have been mine to share," Harry said softly. "Others, I wasn't lucid enough to even process, let alone ready to face. Some, I still can't share. But I can face them now, and there is one that I should have stopped running from a long time ago. I won't do all of the sharing." He grimaced. "It's not to avoid talking about it, exactly. It's just that it needs some context, for you, that I can't entirely give. Remember, Ron, I didn't grow up in the Wizarding World." He looked a little mournful. "And sometimes, I'm not sure how much I really belong here." He smiled, but this time without any pleasure, brief and grim. "Also, there's no way, I think, that I can explain it as it deserves without the two of us getting in a shouting match."
Ron swallowed, a sense of vertigo opening up like a yawning pit before him, deep trepidation swirling in his mind.
"What kind of secret is this?" he managed to ask.
"The painful kind," Harry said tiredly, after a moment. "The kind where there was no 'right' thing to do, for all that you'll probably – and understandably – think otherwise. Why did I talk about all of this? Well, part of it was almost getting my thoughts out loud. From my point of view, it's been about six months since we spent any real time together, and I spent a lot of that time travelling alone, with plenty of time alone with my thoughts. When I wasn't alone, a lot of the people I was around lived on a scale of seasons, or on a scale of decades, centuries, or millennia – tens of millennia, even. There was time to spare, and a lot of them had a lot of patience."
Ron, having a large, tangled, and much extended family, found himself recalling older relatives who didn't seem to have anything better to do than hold forth at great length about whatever interested them at the moment/had happened about a hundred years ago, and didn't seem to know or care how they were going on and on. If you stretched the lifespans, he thought, it made sense.
"Part of it, though, was leading up to this," Harry said. "Not to justify." He wrinkled his nose. "Well," he reluctantly admitted. "Not intentionally. Maybe subconsciously. But the truth is, only you can decide whether you think it was justified or not, and you probably won't. It won't change what has been done, or why it was done. All you can do, all any of us can do, is decide how we react."
"And you think I'm not going to react well," Ron said grimly.
Harry cast a long look at him. "No," he said bluntly. "And frankly, I won't blame you. In your position, I'm not sure if I'd react well – in fact, I'm very sure that I wouldn't. Practically no one would, to be honest, but the way you'd react…" He sighed again, more heartfelt. "In some ways, Ron, we're a lot alike. We really are. And besides, I'm many things these days, but one thing I'm at least trying not to be is a hypocrite." He grimaced. "I'm not sure if I'm doing well at that."
"Harry," Ron said. "What is this secret?"
Harry was silent for a long moment, closing his eyes. It was hard to tell whether he was thinking, or bracing himself. Maybe both.
"Your brother, Bill, is visiting," he said abruptly. "Technically to sniff out any interference in the Second Task, help set it up, that sort of thing – and because of the vibranium-mithril mine that MI13 have. Gringotts are in negotiations, I think."
As Ron angrily demanded a straight answer, he looked him in the eye. His expression was mournful, but sincere.
"After we talk to Trelawney, Ron. I promise. After that. I'll tell you the first part. The important part, maybe. Bill is here… he's also here to tell you the rest."
Ron levelled him the hardest look he'd ever given anyone. "I'll hold you to that."
"You should," came the soft, sad reply.
Ooh yes, it's coming to the tipping point! Secrets unveiled! Many more things, unveiled, changes galore to come! Maniacal cackling to be performed by your author!