A Darker Form of Magic

Time passed as Halloween drew closer, but for the first year Harry wasn't excited to celebrate the holiday so filled with magic that you could taste it in the air. The only consolation that he could really find was the way that Blaise seemed to watch him closely now, making sure that Harry took the potions that he had brought back with him from Snape's classroom that day. Though it was always a bit of a toss up depending on the smaller boy's mood as to whether or not the boy was actually grateful for the other's constant care or not.
On the morning of Halloween, Harry decided that he was.
Opening his eyes, the boy wanted nothing more than to close them right back and ignore that the world even existed at all, but then the curtains to his bed were being ripped back and light was shining obnoxiously through. Harry could just make out the fuzzy frame of the other boy holding out his glasses to him wordlessly. The smaller boy took them in the same manner and sat on the edge of his bed as the other Slytherin handed him the last of the nourishment potion. They didn't speak, but Harry smiled weakly at the other snake and allowed himself to be pushed off of the bed to where Draco and Theo were waiting for the pair.
Charms class was almost fun enough to make the boy forget what day it was as Professor Flitwick had decided that they'd learned enough to be allowed to attempt the levitation charm, something that many of them had been waiting anxiously to do for weeks.
The charms Professor had put the class into pairs and Harry was very pleased to be with Blasie, the other boy acting as a quiet accomplice during the lesson.
The silent pair watched in amusement as Draco and Theo were paired together, knowing that the other two Slytherins were fine together outside of class, but often butted heads ruthlessly when academics were involved. Harry could hear Pansy, Daphne, Tracey, and Milicent making quick bets from the row above the boys as to how long it would take for one of the two to explode on the other.
Not long at all.
"You're saying it wrong," Theo said firmly, keeping his voice low so that the Hufflepuffs on the other side of the room wouldn't hear the pair.
Just as Slytherins do not fight in public, they don't correct one another either.
Blaise and Harry glanced at one another before turning their gazes to the other two boys, seeing that Greg and Vince were doing just the same from the other side.
"How am I supposed to say it then?" Draco whispered harshly. If there was one thing that Harry knew for sure about the other boy, it was that he never did like to be questioned. 'To be looked down upon' as Harry had quickly realized that Draco saw it, even when it was not so.
Pureblood bullshit.
"Like this," Theo said, picking up his wand surely and waving it at the feather, a simple 'swish and flick' as the Professor liked to call it. " Wingardium Leviosa! " The other boy said fiercely. Harry could feel the magic swell in the room for a moment before the feather between the two Slytherin boys began to float off of the table.
Harry, Blasie, and the Slytherin girls snickered quietly as Professor Flitwick clapped excitedly. "Well done, Mr. Nott. Well done!"
"Harry never does the reading in advance either," Draco said accusingly, drawing disappointed looks from almost everyone that heard the blond to be pointed at the boy. "Why don't you help him with it?"
Theo looked at Harry with an almost quietly accusatory gaze. "You haven't done any of the reading either, Harry?" The other Slytherin asked, sounding disappointed with him, a tone that Harry was all too familiar with and entirely against.
But Harry only shrugged. "I did all of the reading over the summer," he decided to say by way of explanation. While Theo nodded approvingly at that, Draco only rolled his eyes in a very unproven manner. Harry was pleased to see that he'd already been a poor influence on the posh boy these past few months.
Harry saw Blaise raise an expectant brow from his side of the desk and smirked before picking up his wand. Raising it, Harry spoke the incantation quietly and did the proper wand movements, feeling a little silly as he did each time that he had to use a wand at all in class. Two months of school and Harry still couldn't understand why wands were needed at all.
"Well done," the other boy complimented as Harry made his feather float lazily through the air, doing slow twists and turns. Blaise looked impressed and Harry found himself smiling at the other boy, just a small quirk of the lips, but an honest one.
—-
By the time that they all sat down for the Halloween feast, Harry was in a much better mood than he had been that morning, but was still considerably more reserved than his other housemates.
The Great Hall was decorated with thousands of live bats swooping about and carved pumpkins floating through the air above. The feast had just appeared before them all with the same suddenness as it had at the Start - of - Term banquet, when the doors to the Hall slammed open loudly, all other noise ceasing as Professor Quirrell sprinted into the room, a panicked expression marring his face.
"Troll!" The defense professor screamed. "Troll in the dungeon x thought you ought to know."
Harry raised a brow as the Defense Against the Dark Arts professor fainted, falling backwards hard onto the stone ground. The backwards part is what drew his attention more than the troll. Harry had passed out enough himself to know that you typically fall forwards .
Decent determination though , the boy was willing to admit as he eyed the sprawled out figure.
The Great Hall erupted with motion as each house was told to go to their dormitories. Curses were whispered by the Slytherins as they knew that their common room was in the bloody dungeons.
"Well fuck that," Gemma cursed harshly before running off to speak with the Ravenclaws prefects before they all left. A moment later the girl returned and told them to follow behind the other house.
Harry and the other Slytherin frost years peered out at the crowd of blue, looking for one girl in particular, but they all had to keep walking before any of them could find Hermione.
The Slytherin boys rushed down the halls at the back of the group, the other three hovering to deal with a - while now considerably more healthy - still ill Harry that couldn't seem to escape the effects of his... condition even in times of panic. It was because they were at the back of the houses that the four heard the definite scream of a girl coming from the other hallway.
Theo, Blaise, Draco and Harry all fell still at once, their breathing ragged as the four looked between one another and the hall that the scream came from.
Theo looked at Harry and the smaller boy could tell that gray the other snake could read the intention in his eyes. Theo sighed heavily. "You three go, I'll let you lot in," the other boy decided. "Don't die."
"As if," Draco scoffed, though Harry could hear the fear in the undertones of the blond's voice. "We're not a bunch of Hufflepuffs, Nott."
"Or idiot Gryffindors," Blaise added helpfully.
Harry only nodded at Theo and pulled on the sleeves of both of the other boys, drawing them away. "Tell the girls that we're okay, and to keep their mouths shut about it."
Theo only nodded back and the four parted quickly.
They smelled the troll before they saw him when the three boys ran into the girl's bathroom to the sound of another terrified scream. The monster was easily twelve feet tall, gray, and smelled of rotting flesh left to decompose out in the summer sun. The most alarming sight though was that of Hermione Granger crouched beneath one of the sinks, moving out of the way just before the troll brought its club down upon her.
" Expelliarmus!" Blaise screamed. Harry watched as the club in the troll's hand gave a small leap, but remained firmly in the creature's grasp. Though it seemed to distract the troll enough to bring its attention to the three rather than the Ravenclaw.
Harry knew that they could try the levitation charm to incapacitate it, but that would risk angering the troll further if something went wrong and it didn't fully go under. An idea sprung to the boy's mind, and as much as he hated it, he knew that it was all that he could hope to do.
"I'm about to do something, but you lot can't tell anyone about it. Alright?" Harry asked, looking quickly between both boys as panic and magic filled his veins. They both nodded just as hurriedly, fear coursing through theirs as the other two boys realized just how out of their depth they were.
Harry stepped forwards surely, much to the horror of all three of his friends that were in the room. He could feel someone try to pull him back, but simply raised his hand, the magic in the bathroom swelling around him until he felt as if he could feel it all, taste it even, in the air before him.
" Stop. "
Harry could feel the magic in the room rush forwards as the magic inside of him curled and twisted almost intoxicatingly so, finally being let loose. He watched as the troll went stock still from his command, every muscle freezing with the spoken word. The creature didn't so much as breath .
He twisted his other hand quickly, a sure flick as the club in the troll's hand was ripped from it and brought down upon the beast's head, knocking it out clean. Only then did Harry relinquish his control of it.
Harry looked around at the other three faces in the room, his eyes flitting from shocked expression to shocked expression. The surprise didn't last long though.
"That was bloody brilliant," Blaise cursed, something unidentifiable filling the other boy's voice as he spoke, but Harry was still intoxicated by the power inside of him, filled by the rightness of it, to care enough to try to figure out just what it was.
"Wicked," Draco agreed almost breathlessly. Both of the boys looked almost as affected by the magic as the caster had been.
Harry heard a rustle from behind him and was reminded of just why they had come into the girl's bathroom in the first place.
"Is it... dead?" Hermione asked slowly, speaking to Harry for the first time in over a month.
Harry was right in thinking that the girl hadn't been pleased with the fight that he'd gotten into with the younger Weasly brother. There was a big difference Harry supposed, in a single hit - to defend another and make a point - and trying to beat another boy bloody. Knowing that he would do it again in a heartbeat, Harry let her keep her silence even as all of the other Slytherins spoke to her in class.
Hearing the girl's horrified voice, Harry thought that he had made the right choice in doing so.
"No, it's just been thoroughly knocked out," the smallest Slytherin said surely, watching as the troll took in shallow breaths that were slowly growing deeper. "We should leave before the teachers come searching for the thing."
The other three agreed and the four of them took off with a speed that they hadn't posted before as magic still sung so pleasantly in the perpetually ill boy's veins, just managing to catch up with the other Slytherins. The two houses had taken longer to climb the stairs than they normally would have due to the sheer number of students that had to go to the common room, and the riddle having been one of the more tricky ones that the door had to offer due to the mere presence of the Slytherins.
Theo raised an eyebrow at them as the four joined the boy at the back of the mass, but knew better than to ask right now where everyone else could so easily hear. They tell him the story later in the confines of their own dorm room.
The five students went and sat down next to the girls and Greg and Vince. Though they couldn't see the Ravenclaw common room all that well due to all of the students gathered within it at the moment, from the telescope to the books on the walls, Harry didn't think that it would be all that bad of a place to spend time. He could almost forgive the lot for all of the books that they had read at the beginning of the school term due to the stunning sight of the stars enchanted on the ceiling. Almost .
Hermione sat down silently next to Harry and bumped her knee against his, the touch there one moment and gone the next. He knew that this was the closest that he was ever going to get to an apology for the past month, or a thank you for the past hour.
He didn't think that it was quite enough.
Harry decided at that moment that he would never show her such an honest display of the power that he held again, not if he wanted to keep her as a friend.
—-
Professors Snape, Quirrell, and Deputy Headmistress McGonagall hurried down to the girl's bathroom near Ravenclaw tower, a loud noise that sounded almost like something akin to snoring drawing the three near, the horrid smell encouraging their course of action. When the three entered they quickly found the source of the peculiar noise.
Some of the sinks were smashed along with a good few of the stalls, but a clean wave of McGonagall's wand was enough to make the pieces of wood and porcelain strewn across the room begin to rectify themselves. No, the main issue was that of the fully grown Mountain Troll that had been set loose within the castle, and was now knocked out cleanly on the ground as if it had fallen asleep where it stood. But all three teachers could feel the sheer amount of magic in the air that disproved such an easy theory.
While Snape and McGonagall whispered hurriedly about who could have done such a thing, accusations from both houses being brought up by the other and quickly dismissed by the Head of House that the student in question belonged to, Quirrell moved closer to the beast, to the source of what had been affected the most by the magic.
While all three of the Hogwarts Professors could easily feel the raw well of power permitting from the room, only the vessel could tell the nature of it with an absolute certainty that would have drawn unnecessary questions from the other two Hogwarts staff members if voiced, from Snape in particular. He knew exactly who cast the spell - if you could even truly call it one - but he also knew that accusing Potter without any evidence would only draw the potions Professor's ire, even if McGonagall might be reasoned with on the matter. Though the Defense Against the Dark Arts Professor doubted that even she would agree to accuse a first year of such a feat of magic, accidental or not.
So, he'd let the boy keep his secret. For now at least.
—-
The Slytherin house table was silent at breakfast the morning following Halloween, plates of food being left prepared and untouched at the center of their table as everyone carried on eating their own meals as if it wasn't strange to do so. Harry wanted to ask, but it somehow felt wrong to the boy to break the silence that had so unanimously formed among his housemates. He was perfectly fine with letting it stand anyways as the usual sickness had returned after the initial high of magic had finally worn off from the night before and Harry felt like a complete wreck.
"So what was with all of the silence back there?" Harry asked quietly as the Slytherin first years made their way to their Transfiguration class, some of the Hufflepuffs in it following behind them, though well out of ear shot.
The other Slytherins glanced at one another, even Greg and Vince had the gall to look embarrassed for the smaller boy, but it was Daphne who took pity on him and spoke. "Sometimes I forget that you were raised by muggles," the pureblood said almost pityingly. "There are eight major wixen holidays that most of the Oder magical families still observe," the blonde girl explained, earning her a nod from the other snakes.
"One of the major eight," Tracey cut in, smirking at the other Slytherin girl with no shame once so ever for doing so, "is Samhain, or more often called the Day of the Dead," the girl explained factually. "One of the common practices of the holiday is to hold a silent meal, leaving food for the dead as the barrier between life and death is thinner today."
Harry nodded, taking in the information as he thought back to any ghost that he might have seen this morning. He could remember seeing the Gryffindor house ghost, Nearly Headless Nick, for a moment before the ghost had fled as he always seemed to do so where the Slytherin boy was concerned. Looking back now, it had seemed harder for the ghost to go through the wall than it normally would have.
"It's also the beginning of the wixen year," Theo explained as the group drew close to the Transfiguration classroom, seemingly abandoning that topic altogether as they walked inside of it, as the boy immediately turned to Draco to talk with him about some strange wizarding game as if they'd been doing so the whole time. Harry didn't bother being annoyed by the sudden change, having used something similar to it himself more than a few times. It was no secret that the Head of Gryffindor house held about as much fondness for the snakes as Snape did for her lions.
Curiosity is how Harry found himself rushing down the grounds towards the Forbidden Forest that night with the other Slytherins around him, magic running through his veins like blood. From the edge of the woods, the boy could see the familiar shadows of some of the students from other houses moving in the night as well, the groups each heading in varying directions, though the number was much smaller than that of Slytherin house that had almost everyone from all seven years moving about the woods that night.
The Slytherins soon split off into groups of seven as well, forming vast circles in the clearings that each of the years managed to find. Harry grinned, his blood singing as he was brought in too, standing between Blaise and Draco as Theo, Daphne, Pansy, and Tracey made up the rest.
The others muttered words and enchantments that Harry didn't yet know, blessings that felt of the same sort of magic as that taught throughout the castle, but twinged with something more . Though Harry didn't yet know the words, he could feel the magic swell in the air and added his own to it, letting it be bent and shaped into whatever it was the rest of the group had seen fit.
An hour or so later, the seven first years giggled and laughed among themselves as they made their way back into the castle for the night, each of them drunk on magic- though not nearly as much as they could have been.
That night as Harry laid in his bed and stared up at the stars about him, he knew that this was a feeling that he wouldn't want to give up for all of the normalcy in the world.