A Darker Form of Magic

Harry shivered as he left the warmth of the Slytherin common rooms for the chill of the Hogwarts halls, the air so cold in the dungeons that his breath came out in little puffs the deeper that he went. He was the only Slytherin that had chosen to stay for the holidays, so he wasn't all that surprised when the Weasley twins cornered him on his way into the Great Hall and dragged him over to the Gryffindor table for breakfast, grateful for it even.

Basking in their balance.

"Little ickle Harry," Fred said, poking the boy in question lightly in the ribs.

"A lone snake in that castle that now has to be taken in by lions," George lamented dramatically from the Slytherin boy's right.

"Well," Harry said slowly, glancing up at the Head Table to see that most were watching the scene with what appeared to be interet, but all were too far away to hear, "I think that I may have an idea as to how to repay the favor."

"You Slytherins," Fred sighed as the three sat down in a neat line at the Gryffindor table, "always focused on getting even."

"Let's hear it then," George decided.

Harry smirked, looking between the two before reaching for a biscuit to appease the potions master that was sure to be watching to make certain that the boy kept a reasonable weight. "Tell me, do either of you know how to make Howlers?"

The twins only grinned.

—-

Harry drew his clothes close to him as he walked the long corridors of Hogwarts alone, peeking behind portraits and running his hand across the ridges of the cool stone. Hogwarts during the holidays was little more than a child's paradise as - other than the professors that had to stay as well - only a handful of students remained. The Slytherins always stuck with one another between and during classes, knowing that they were the most hated of the four houses and therefore the most likely to be cursed by another. This was the only time of the year that Harry could truly explore the vast castle alone if he wanted to.

There were dozens of little nooks and short descending hallways about the castle, hidden innocently behind the decorations on the stone walls. On the second day of the holidays, Harry found a set of stairs on the fourth floor that seemed to lead to an empty room that wasn't quite on the third or fourth floor but somewhere between the two. Harry grinned as he left and knew that he would find something to use the space for in the future.

There was a painting of the sky on the second floor that opened like a door to reveal a small reading nook with a window that showed off a view of the Black Lake glittering in the sunlight, the snow capped mountains behind it.

Harry didn't spend long exploring the castle each day though. With the other Slytherins gone, the sickness that had plagued the boy since stepping onto school grounds rose up inside of him was a fever, forcing the boy to finally feel the full force of what had become a tolerable ache over the past few months. The Slytherin commons room became something of a prison and a strange sort of salvation as he only left it for two hours at most each day outside of meals.

It was on the sixth day of the holiday that Harry made his way to the seventh floor of the castle not long after dinner. He didn't truly intend to be there, but his mind was drawn to a place that he hadn't thought of in a long time despite seeing its sky every night. To a person that he hadn't thought of. That was how he found himself pacing back and forth in front of a tapestry of a man trying to teach trolls how to do ballet of all things. Back and forth he walked, thinking of a place that he couldn't go, when suddenly the boy heard what sounded like stone moving and shifting in the walls.

When Harry turned around, he was met with the sight of a door that he was sure had not been there only a moment before. Gazing at it for a long moment, he thought of if he should go into it or not, or whether he would be able to leave if he ever did. After all, there was no telling if a door that magically appeared on its own wouldn't disappear in the same sudden way.

A part of him, a broken part that fed on the sickness that he felt and was born from the pain that the boy had endured all of these years, decided that it didn't care either way.

Harry opened the door.

Where a room should have been, there was a vast open field and a tree lining that Harry knew like the back of his hand. The grass went up to his knees and smelled just as sweet as it did in the spring. Weeds sprung up from the ground in patches, little false flowers that Aunt Petunia hated but Harry had always loved. The sky was the same night that he had conjured so that he may see it each night before he went to sleep, a vision or the night before he left for school. There was only one thing missing, and Harry's heart ached from the other boy not being there.

Moving deeper into the room and laying in the tall grass, Harry felt the sickness that had clung so desperately to his bones for months now slip away as his eyes fell shut, visions of stars and another boy that loved them because the younger did dancing across his mind.

—-

When he woke up sometime later, Harry didn't know how much time had passed, nor did he care to. The boy simply picked himself up from the ground and walked to the trees, placing his hands flatly against the warm bark as he passed each one.

There were no bugs or insects, animals or rivers in the strange room, but Harry didn't mind that, not too much anyways. The trees were tall and felt real, but Harry suspected that if he were to gif into the ground, he would find the stone flooring where the roots should be. And though the stars seemed to shimmer, Harry suspected that the sky was much more like the one in the Great Hall: bewitched, not something real.

Harry loved it all the same.

It was well past curfew by the time that the Slytherin finally left the strange room, the halls were deathly silent as he moved through them, the sort of silence that one only ever found at night when all others were asleep, and the world was finally still.

Until it wasn't.

Footsteps tapped lightly against the stone floor, drawing nearer to the boy, but Harry had no idea where to run to. The closest hiding place was the place that he had just come from, but the boy knew that he would be caught long before he ever figured out just how to get back inside to the field once more.

"Mr. Potter," a familiar voice crawled and Harry froze, silently cursing himself for not staying in the field for only a minute or two longer than he had, "what exactly are you doing wandering about the castle at this hour of the night?"

Slowly, Harry raised his head and met his professor's dark eyes, just barely being able to make out the image of the man in the dark corridor. He almost wished that he hadn't.

There was a look in the potions master's gaze that was much too similar to the one that the younger Slytherin had seen on the first day of class for the boy to be able to suppress the flinch that shook his body when the dark haired man moved closer to Harry. But just as soon as he had seen it, the expression had seemed to dissipate and shift into something that could almost foolishly resemble guilt.

"I was exploring the castle after dinner," the younger Slytherin said quickly before the harsh gaze could come back. "Fell asleep in one of the hidden rooms," he replied truthfully, not wanting to be in the hall any longer as that persistent feeling of sickness began to set in once more.

The Professor nodded, accepting the answer as fact. "Come on then," the potions master said tiredly, "let's get you back to the common room."

Harry followed silently and without question, not wanting to risk the man's anger returning, and knowing from experience that since agitates adults less. But as the pair made their way down into the mouth of the dungeons, Harry thought of a question that had bothered him for some time now and would be worth the other's ire.

Stopping outside of the common room, Harry turned to his Professor but looked just past him. "Sir?" He began tentatively, already treading on unsteady ground with the other. "May I ask you something?" The words almost choked him to speak then, so unused to even the idea of being allowed to do so by another that wasn't his age without immediately being screamed at.

He still felt as if he might be screamed at.

"You may," Snape said, though Harry could hear the annoyance in the man's voice.

"Do some people - witches and wizards that is - grow ill around magic?"

—-

Snape felt his body go rigid at the question that the boy had asked, at one of the few questions that the professor had never expected Harry bloody Potter of all students to ask.

Though he knew that some of his older snakes were afflicted in such a way, none of them had ever come to him so blatantly as the boy before him just had. None of them had been so young either. But Snape had seen the boy's almost sickly complexion in the halls, and had seen how the boy appeared to become healthier around the other Slytherins in his year, or in the dungeons in general. Most days he'd just chalked it all up to the condition that the boy had come to the school in, but he had to admit to himself that the excuse had begun to wear thin in November.

At least I can explain away the headaches well enough, the man thought bitterly, his mind flashing to a certain defense teacher that was almost certainly related to the Dark Lord somehow. One way or another.

Snape glanced suspiciously around the hallway, never more thankful that the school had forgone the enchanted portraits this far down in the dungeons.

"Let's speak of this inside," the man said, pointing towards the wall where the common room door would appear. "This is going to be a long conversation."

"One that you don't want anyone else to hear?" The Slytherin boy guessed in a way that didn't truly seem like guessing at all to the potions master.

The man didn't give a response though, and only gestures to the child once more to reveal the door.

" Pluto," the boy said, a password that was no doubt influenced by a certain former Slytherin herself and current Astronomy professor.

The common room looked as it always did at the start of the year, untouched by anyone else that might have been there. The only indication that a child had spent the past week in the room at all was a book on one of the common room tables, open to some page with parchment layed out next to it. Snape didn't get a chance to see what the book was about as the boy closed it and put it away.

The two sat down on opposite chairs and the potions professor noticed the way that the boy drew his legs to his chest and began to pick at the sleeve of his much too big clothes in a nervous and defensive way. A manner that reminded him to tread carefully with the child before him, and in a way that spoke more of a boy broken by the moon than the ghost of a long dead Marauder who had once roamed the castle with three others.

Snape may still hate the wolf for almost killing him all of those years ago - willingly or not - but in times like these, looking back with a more adult perspective, he thought that he might hate the one that had turned a child into a monster that tore itself apart more. Because children shouldn't look like this .

And he remembered all too well what it was to look like this.

"Tell me," the older man started, studying the boy before him like a particularly difficult potion that wasn't coming out the way that it ought to, "what do you know of the different types of magic?"

He watched as the boy's face took on a blank look, the type that children who didn't do their homework wore when asked a question from it in class the next day, but Snape didn't believe it for a moment. Not truly.

"I know that creatures like goblins and those of the elven family possess different magic than we do," the boy said carefully, giving no indication once so ever as to how he knew this other than by reading or by being told, neither of which the man believed it to be.

"Anything else?"

The boy shook his head and the potions master could almost believe the child.

Almost.

"Every witch and wizard has what is called an affinity," the professor explained factually, as if giving a lecture. "A natural inclination for one of the three types of magic that a witch or wizard can possess."

"Three, sir?" The boy asked, though Snape thought that the confusion sounded a little more forced than it should for someone that claims to know nothing of it.

"Light, dark, or gray - something which is also often called neutral," the man explained anyways, watching as the boy took a true glint of interest in those familiar eyes of his. "Most witches and wizards tend to be gray oriented, though there are those from quite a few older families that are dark inclined; however, there are very few light witches or wizards still around."

Ones that practice at least.

The boy was staring at the man intently, soaking in more of the knowledge then he did anything that was taught in class. Snape couldn't decide how annoyed he wanted to be by that. "But what's the difference between them, sir?"

Though he didn't ask it, Snape could hear the true question lying beneath the one that the boy had asked:

Does it make you evil to be one and not the other?

The Professor sighed solemnly and was glad that he had never had to ask anyone such things being as gray aligned as he was, even if he was a little more dark oriented than most gray wizards tended to be, though that was mostly from exposure.

"The only difference is where the magic comes from," the professor stated plainly. "Gray magic, which is taught here at Hogwarts as it can be cast by everyone, is all about intention. You want the match to turn into a needle, you cast a spell and it does. Simple as that. There's no emotion involved in it. A student being desperate for the spell to work won't make it do so anymore than a student who is casting with no emotion at all."

Snape watched as the boy nodded, seeming to understand what he had said thus and takes a second to marvel at the fact that he was teaching Potter's son about magical affinities and hopes that the poor sod is rolling over in his grave.

"Light magic, on the other," he continues, "is purely about emotion. There are very few light spells left, one of them being the Patronus Charm, but none of them require any silly wand waving, only an incantation and the correct emotion in abundance."

"The patronus charm, sir?" The boy asked, his brows pulling together in genuine confusion.

The man thought about how best he wanted to explain such a thing without going too far off of the topic at hand. "A spell that allows the caster to create an animal protector," he decided on. "You don't choose the form that it takes, and only know what it will be once you have successfully cast a full patronus for the first time."

"Can you..." the boy asks, his question trialing off as if he hadn't meant to ask it at all.

Snape withdrew his wand and thought of the years before the war took hold, of simple times and friends fnsr were now long gone without a whisper of what had happened to them, locked up, or buried deep within the ground. Lazy days by the lake and the rush of learning a new spell. And as always, a girl that would never love him back. " Expecto Patronum!"

A doe burst forth from the tip of the older man's wand, glittering with silver light as it ran through the air, circling the boy as if it knew who it was cast for. Snape watched as green eyes filled with honest wonder, something that otherwise seemed to be stripped from the boy that held it, but noticed that the child made no move to attempt to touch the creature. The doe bowed its head before disappearing just as quickly as it had come.

"It was beautiful," Harry said and the professor could hear the raw honesty in the boy's voice.

"Hogwarts was built mostly on light magic," the man continued, bringing them back to the topic at hand. "Back then, when magic was known and those that held it were hunted by those that didn't, the founders wanted to create a safe haven for the magical youth to learn and created Hogwarts. At the time, magic was mostly light and dark, gray not being nearly as prevalent as it is now. Since three of the founders were light oriented, they cast the enchantments that warded and built the majority of the school, weaving it together so that it would be stronger."

"And the fourth founder?" The child asked in a way that sake he already knew, had figured it out on his own but wanted to hear it still.

"Salazar Slytherin, he wove his magic into the dungeons."

And when the boy nodded, it seemed as if he had been given little more than a death sentence.

"Dark magic, Harry," the potions master said much softer than he had ever meant to, "is simply emotion driven magic with intention," the man explained and he could see the boy's mind working, running through the actions of his life at breakneck speed. Snape would bet anything that the boy had a dark affinity. "Dark magic isn't evil, just as light magic isn't necessarily good, no matter what some might say to the contrary. The only reason that the dark arts are seen in such a poor light is that those who wield them often have something of a temper that drives their magic to more violent places and intentions. Nothing more, nothing less."

—-

Nothing more, nothing less.

The words rang in Harry's mind like some kind of saving grace. Like a salvation that he hadn't known that he was ever asking for. But there was still one thing that he needed to know, even as he now knew more than he ever could have hoped to before.

"And the illness?" Harry asked, voicing more questions then he ever had dared to ask before.

Harry watched as the Slytherin head of house sighed like a man that had hoped some things would be left forgotten beneath the weight of everything else that had been spoken. "Some wizards - mostly those with dark affinities - will perform a ritual to declare themselves to their practice," Snape explained tiredly. "When they do this, places such as Hogwarts that are very light oriented can make one ill. Though I suppose the same could be said of someone with a very strong affinity even before the completion of the declaration rights."

But when the man spoke, Harry could tell that he was also attempting to convince himself.

That night, as Harry laid in his bed, he thought of the magic within him, of the darkness that he was now sure that it had. But he also thought of the magic in the walls of the Dursleys' house, the magic that felt so like his own even as he knew that it surely wasn't.

He wondered just who it came from.

—-

Christmas arrived and with it came the first presents, true ones, that Harry had ever received. There were chocolate frogs from Hermione, and a stack of speller parchment from the twins. Wizarding jelly beans from Treacy and Theo, and a case of something called Butterbeer from Daphne. Harry smiled as he ran his fingers over the leather of a green journal from Draco, who didn't 'believe in giving something as cheap as candy for a holiday. Merlin Harry, why would you even suggest such a thing?' and a set of expensive sketch pencils from Pansy who held similar views.

His favorite though, was a book on the constellations from Balise. It told the stories of each of the recognized constellations in the sky - ancient and modern alike - and was spelled to illustrate them, bringing the words to life on the page after it had been read. Harry smiled as he watched a dog come to life among the stars, a water stream on another, and arrows were knocked by a hunter on a third.

The most interesting though was a package with no name attached to it, one that when opened held a shimmering, silvery cloth that felt like water of a long forgotten steam instead of fabric. When he drew it around himself, Harry watched with fascination as his body disappeared from view as if it hadn't ever existed at all. The only thing that came with it was a note telling him that the cloak had been his father's, and to use it well.