Harry sighed as he sat on a stone bench in the snowed-in Hogwarts courtyard, looking at the parselscript inscribed into the Book of Eibon.
His mind arts had really reached a sort of pinnacle hard to describe.
Occlumency didn’t offer mythical abilities such as perfect memory recall and time dilation, but there were still clear benefits.
For example, yesterday, Neville had read Slytherin’s grimoire out loud once. Harry didn’t remember it word for word, but he clearly remembered the important parts
To think that back in his first year, if he hadn’t come up with the idea of asking the Room of Requirement for the sorting hat, he never would have had the opportunity to reach such a high skill level so quickly.
“Happy holidays!” a tinny voice suddenly said from beside Harry, causing the boy to glance to the side, where he found Flitwick standing there with a grin and a mug of hot chocolate.
Harry raised an eyebrow, at which the professor pushed the mug into his chest, forcing him to take it.
“Happy Holidays indeed, Filius,” he said as he swept his gaze over the courtyard, taking in the many happy students wandering about with smiles on their faces. Today had been the last day of school. Tomorrow morning, most would board the Hogwarts Express and return to their families. Harry could have technically just had Dobby bring him straight to Barcelona, but he’d decided to take the train with his friends and meet with Skeeter in London before leaving.
“Resolving that nasty chamber issue was certain Christmas come early,” the Charms professor joked as he swept away some of the snow on the bench next to Harry and sat down. “And to imagine we’re still going to celebrate actual Christmas!”
“It was certainly something,” Harry muttered, sipping at the hot chocolate.
“Unpleasant business,” Filius said with a nod. “And to think Severus accompanied you in taking down a basilisk. I still find it hard to imagine. After all, just twenty years ago, he was still sitting in my Charms class trying to make a pineapple dance.”
“You don’t mind, do you?” Harry asked.
“Mind what?”
“That I gave him the location of the Room of Requirement so he can also train his magic sense. You have to share it with one more person now,” Harry said briefly. In a way, he could somewhat imagine being a tad miffed in Flitwick’s position.
Of course, the half-goblin was basically a cinnamon roll in half-human form and simply laughed while adjusting his glasses. “I probably shouldn’t be saying this to a student who will grace these halls for three and a half more years,” the professor started, “but my greatest contribution to the world will likely be the footnote I will be in your life. You found Ravenclaw’s greatest creation, and according to the laws of magic, the accomplishment is yours to share with whomever you want.” He paused. “I would naturally be having some stern words with you if you were giving access to Death Eaters after falling in with the wrong sort, but Snape literally fought a basilisk for you and usually tries to do the right thing.”
“You taught thousands more. I’m sure your contributions to wizarding Britain are more than just a footnote,” Harry muttered. “Although most obviously won’t realise it.”
“You hold the position of a teacher in such high regard?” Flitwick asked quizzically.
Harry snorted. “Most parents fail to even serve as a positive example to their children, let alone teach them any morals or skills. Being a teacher who’s good at their job might not impact every child to a great extent, but when you put all those small bits of influence together,” Harry, in fact, still remembered the words spoken to him by a teacher in his past life when he’d been sixteen. Twenty years and they still stuck with him…
Flitwick laughed. “What a refreshing point of view!” he exclaimed. “Will I be facing competition for my position when you graduate, then?” he asked.
Harry grinned behind the rim of the mug. “Just because I respect the job doesn’t mean I want to do it,” he said.
“One should also be aware of one's limits,” Flitwick said humbly. “I imagine you’ll simply have to contend with being a duellist who will go down in history as perhaps the greatest to ever live.”
“It’s always important to set realistic goals.” Harry nodded, leaving out the fact that he’d recently decided to devote his life to the greater humanistic causes, although he was still finding out what those were. Preventing an inevitable war between magic and mundane would be the start, although he still needed to work on the how…
“I’m just happy you know how to take a rest. If I’d been your age, I would have stayed at Hogwarts to continue training instead of decisively taking the time off,” Flitwick said. “And I mean that as a compliment!” he added.
“The time turner allowed me to fulfil the dream of every workaholic in Europe,” Harry muttered. “The legendary 16-hour workday. The fact of the matter is, after I managed to lead Severus to the chamber, my mind broke. I returned the time turner to the ministry and skipped history of magic to stare at the ceiling for two hours.”
“You need a vacation,” Flitwick said with a nod. “After what you did with the chamber, I don’t think anyone would fault you if you took a sabbatical to gather yourself.”
Harry shrugged, finishing the rest of the hot chocolate. “I realise now that time was not meant to be distorted like this. Considering everything turned out well with the basilisk, I’d claim that my dwindling sense of reality is the biggest casualty of this year.” He narrowed his eyes. “Although I certainly benefitted as well.”
“Focus on your school work,” Flitwick said, somewhat not helpfully. “You’re doing your O.W.L in Charms one year early alongside sixth-year transfiguration and arithmancy. Managing that would already be a victory.”
Harry shook his head. “The duelling tournament this summer,” he reminded. “I also got a pretty good clue about the librarian issue for the book.” He looked at Flitwick and saw a questioning gaze. “Paintings, “ he explained briefly.
“Ah, yes,” the professor said with a sagely nod. “One of the most complex enchantments currently in existence, a blend of enchantment, ritualism and potions, something that I’d hesitate to ask my seventh years to explain. You’ll need to adapt it to your purpose, of course, completely altering a magic so complex it requires a Charms mastery to even tackle using it.”
“Yes,” Harry said with a nod, before frowning. He tilted his head, but refrained from explaining that he was going to be becoming an animagus soon enough, that he still needed to understand the ritual he’d cast on himself by sacrificing two of the deathly hallows, that he was considering the benefits of making his own wand not that he knew how from Slytherin’s notes and that he was helping Snape creating a partial cure for lycanthropy. “I’ve also been thinking about creating a curse with Snape’s assistance while he’s still here.”
“Of course, of course,” Flitwick said with a series of increasingly jerky nods. “All in a day’s work, I’d say.” He stood up and clapped his hands together. “All I can say to that is, bonne courage, and I’ll see you next year,” he said happily, grabbed the empty cup from Harry’s hand and turned around to leave.
He paused in his movement. “You’re still holding those somewhat secret sessions with Longbottom, Granger and Black, right?” he asked.
“Of course.”
“Well, I guess there is at least one person on whom youth is not wasted, although I imagine that many would argue you’re simply doing so in a more roundabout way!” Flitwick said lively before finally departing with a wave over his shoulder.
Harry sat there in silence for a few moments. “What did he mean by that?” he eventually asked. He furrowed his brows. “Is he, is he calling me boring?” he suddenly realised.
-/-
The train whistled loudly as it arrived at King’s Cross.
“You know what I’m grateful for?” Cedric said with a serious look on his face.
Harry looked up from the Book of Eibon, where he was reading about portrait enchantment. “What?” he asked.
“I’m grateful that you and Neville managed to find the Chamber of Secrets before the winter holiday. If it was still open, my parents might not have let me go back to Hogwarts,” the boy said.
Penny, sitting across from the two, crossed her arms and glared at the brunet. There were dark rings under her eyes; she’d been studying a lot to catch up on the two months she’d missed.
Quite frankly, it was a bit unfortunate to miss out on two months of school just as she’d advanced grades in Potions.
“I was petrified,” she told Cedric with a deadpan voice.
“Don’t mind him,” Harry said. “He’s just reached that awkward stage of being a teenage boy when he doesn’t know how to express his emotions. He cried himself to sleep every second night and visited you every day.”
“Harry!” Cedric exclaimed with a red face before quickly jumping up, grabbing his trunk and running out of the compartment.
“Ups,” Harry said sarcastically as he watched the boy leave. “Was I not supposed to say that?”
Penny shook her head, blonde hair flying. “You really are one of a kind. I got petrified, and you went to kill the basilisk that did it.”
“Technically,” Harry started, they hadn’t revealed that Voldemort had been the one to open the chamber, thus the entire debacle was in a way missing the perpetrator, even if the weapon was gone, “Snape fought the basilisk.”
Penny rolled her eyes. “Already being in the same chamber as the basilisk is braver than any Gryffindor could imagine. In the end, it really was two Hufflepuffs and a Slytherin that saved the school,” she said with a laugh.
“It was the right thing to do,” Harry said as he stood up, leaving his trunk, knowing Dobby would take it the moment he and Penny left the compartment.
“You’ve changed while I was petrified,” Penny commented as she joined him in exiting the train.
“How so?”
“Last year, you wouldn’t have said that it was the right thing to do. You would have said that you had no choice,” she analysed.
Harry remained silent, walked her over to her family and said hello to them, before answering the silent question.
“I guess people change,” he said to the girl, unable to explain the change that had come from meeting Grindelwald and completing that ritual. “It’s become somewhat clear to me in these last weeks that one must sometimes do what is right, instead of what is convenient.”
Penny hugged him goodbye, enveloping him in her arms and burying her face in his neck. “Thank you,” she whispered into his ear, then turned around and left the station through the floo.
Harry watched the green flames calm after she was done, hands in pockets, standing there.
The train station slowly but surely emptied, and it was with the last stragglers that he finally exited into the greater King’s Cross, where he went down to sit at the very same cafe where he’d met Skeeter once before, in what felt like decades ago, but was actually just two years.
It was the same overtly fake and kitschy place, filled with the same busy and rushed-looking commuters. The coffee smelled cheap, and the tea was shit.
The only difference was that this time he cast the notice-me-not, not before ordering two hot chocolates, however. It was probably not going to be good, but he was still too polite to take up space without being a customer.
Skeeter eventually sauntered in, taking the attention of half the men present with her incredibly short green dress and red heels, before she disappeared under the notice-me-not charm and sat down.
“For me?” she asked with a smile, picking up the hot chocolate, before taking a sip and pulling a disgusted face.
“I can drink two,” Harry said calmly and started doing just so. It was sugar, but sometimes sugar was alright. If anything his body fat percentage was becoming too low with the amount of hours he was adding every day without necessarily always increasing the size or frequency of his meals.
Skeeter pulled out her quill and parchment, laying them down on the table, separating them as she steepled her fingers. “What did you get up to this time?” she asked sardonically with a shake of her head.
“The focus should be primarily on Severus Snape as the combatant who took down the basilisk,” Harry clarified first. Claiming it was him who’d done it would be too unrealistic. Helping to find the chamber was already enough. “I found the chamber, while Neville was critical to accessing it due to his ability as a parselmouth.”
Skeeter brought up a finger to her temple. “Hunting basilisk with Britain’s lost prodigious potions master and the boy who lived,” she muttered quietly. “Back when I went to school, we simply had a civil war. Much less exciting, much more dangerous.”
“My stories can apparently afford you to disdain non-artisanal hot chocolate,” Harry joked quietly. “It’s what helps me get out of bed in the morning.”
Rita leered at him. Harry nodded that they were now the same height. “You do know how to please a woman, I’ll give you that.” She shook her head. “But we’re here for work, so let’s start at the beginning. Your tear-stricken, melancholic green eyes when you found out your friend was petrified will do.”
Harry laughed and began recounting his tale, not thinking much of it.
It went against his natural instincts to seek out attention like this, but now that he’d actually sat down, all the anxiety was gone, and he simply knew he was doing the right thing.
What indeed was the point of a good deed if one didn’t shout it from the rooftops?
The interview was pleasant. Skeeter and Harry had been collaborating for many years now.
Unfortunately, the unpleasant part was to come after they’d finished and stood up to say their goodbyes. Rita’s quill had drawn up a dozen parchments, and she was struggling to push them into her purse, which dislodged a photograph that she’d apparently been carrying around.
It landed face up on the small plastic table, and Harry, for his part, immediately understood the implication.
It was a picture of Minister Fudge taken from outside his home while he rushed through what must have been his living room. The interior design was absolutely hideous, but what was more interesting was the fact that the man was pulling off his burning robes in a rather panicked manner, almost as if someone had doused him with napalm.
Harry did idly remember that he’d blasted Voldemort in the chamber with a bit of conjured potassium hydride as a cheeky little prank in case the man came into contact with water. The man had fled through the pools present in the chamber… This picture must have been taken immediately after, when Voldemort had reached Hogwarts’ boundaries somewhere in the lake and apparated home.
And as to why Voldemort and Fudge were the same person. Well, even though the not-so-strong chemical reaction weakened by the conjured nature of the potassium, one could still see the rather iconic golden locket hanging off the man’s neck.
The lingering taste of sugar turned to ash in Harry’s mouth, and a violent headache promptly assaulted him.
His vacation.
He could feel it, slipping away…
-/-
AN: Well, it’s been teased long enough! Now the action starts!