A Darker Form of Magic

Harry spent the remainder of the holiday with the Weasley twins, mucking about the castle and in the warmth of the Gryffindor common room, much to the displeasure of the other two Weasley boys present and the Fat Lady who had to let him in. Even with the company, Harry was glad to see the holidays come to an end and the rest of the school come back, to be surrounded by Slytherins once more.

The small Slytherin glanced at those around him as they walked to the Great Hall for breakfast, together once more after too long apart. He watched as Balise and Pansy pressed closer to him almost instinctively and remembered the pitying looks that the pair had given him in the days leading up to their departure. He knew that he would need to speak with them about it soon, but not just yet. Not this morning at the least.

Today they had other plans.

—-

From the High Table, the professors watched as the students all came down to breakfast on the first day of the new term, smiles on the children's faces as they recounted their holiday for those that would listen to them.

Everything seemed normal, blissfully even. That was until the post came.

The owls swooped down in a great flurry, carrying with them more post than most of the professors had seen since one removable Valentine's Day in the seventies, but ever on the day after a holiday where the most that they should be expecting was some forgotten jumpers. Hundreds of letters soared through the air in the clutches of the school's owls, enough that McGonagall was sure that the sender had used just about everyone that the school had to offer.

The letters were all unceremoniously dropped onto the tables, and as a long beat of silence rang out, the Deputy Headmistress couldn't help but wonder if that would be it. But then she saw the Potter boy reach for one, his fingers barely brushing it before they all sprung to life.

I don't give a damn 'bout my reputation

Living in the past, it's a new generation

A girl can do what she wants to do and that's what I'm gonna do

An' I don't dive a damn 'bout my reputation

Oh no, not me...

Most of the Professor's eyes went straight to the Weasley twins as the Howlers came to life, finding them staring at the scene with false looks of innocence that no one in the Great Hall believed as the Muggle song continued to play. Though all of the professors were sure of where to put the blame, only the Slytherin Head of House saw the covert way that the twins glanced at a certain young snake across the hall, and the smile that the three shared. There was no question in the potion master's mind as to where the peculiar song choice came from.

The man sighed and took a sip of his tea, wishing silently that it was something stronger. He supposed that he should have expected something like this sooner or later, they all should have. Even if the boy wasn't much like James Potter, he had still befriended the Weasley twins. Snape figured that no other Professor would figure the boy's involvement though, so he only drank his tea and waited for the song to end.

Harry grinned as he watched the muggle born students start to sing along with the song, much to the confusion of the purebloods who were staring at the entire scene as if they had no idea what to make of it. When Blaise sent the other Slytherin a questioning glance, all Harry did was wink and mouth along to the chorus.

It hadn't taken the Slytherin very long to figure out how to cast the spell that had played the music at the common room party, especially when all he needed to do was envision orbs filled with magic as no one else was around to expect him to use a wand. The hardest parent had been figuring out how to create the Howlers themselves, but the Weasley twins had come through on that end. Then all the Slytherin had to do was sneak into the Owlery underneath the cloak that he had been given on the first day before term.

Easy.

Watching the way that half of the castle was dancing around the Great Hall and seeing the annoyed look on McGonagall's face, Harry thought that it was worth the hours spent having to record the song into each of the letters and spell them to open at once. An added bonus was the knowledge that Aunt Petunia would have had an absolute stroke if she were to have heard it.

—-

Term passed quickly after the holidays, classes continued and with them so did Quidditch.

The Slytherins drew tightly together as they headed down to the Pitch for what could be the last game of the season if it went the right way. All Gryffindor had to do was to lose to Hufflepuff and the point gap would be too large for another match with either to make a difference. Slytherin would win the cup.

The stands were filled to the brim with students from each of the houses coming to watch. Harry smiled apologetically at Neville as they passed him to sit with the older snakes, but the boy only shrugged. Something told the boy that the lion didn't really want his house to win either.

"Did you firsties hear?" Gemma asked as the group sat down at the bottom of the Slytherin stands, each of them drawing their wands to cast warming charms on one another.

"Hear what?" Tracey asked as she leaned into Daphne.

Gemma smiled, something that Harry had noticed that the other half - blood didn't do all that often. "Snape is referring."

" Bloody Hell, " Theo cursed and when Harry looked at the other boy, he saw that the Slytherin had a pretty good imitation of Peeves's sly grin carved into his face.

"This should be good," Blasie decided as he pulled out a biscuit from breakfast that was under a stasis charm that Harry had cast when the other wasn't looking. The other boy gave Harry half. Neither said a thing about it.

"This will be bloody brilliant ," Draco said from Harry's other side, all but vibrating in his seat. Harry was inclined to agree with his friend. Even if Gryffindor won, he knew that the match would still be extremely entertaining to watch.

And he was right.

The players flew through the air with desperation that none of them had shown to this extent before, going higher than they normally would and throwing the Quaffle with enough force to make Wood and the Hufflepuff keeper work harder than they had all year, and make Flint hide a wince.

Harry and the rest of Slytherin house laughed as Hufflepuff was awarded a penalty shot on the Gryffindor goal for the lions having hit a bludger at rne potions master. Harry almost thought that he could see Fred's embarrassed blush from the stands as house points were no doubtly taken.

And then the fourth year Hufflepuff seeker, Cedric Diggory, was diving for the ground, going at a speed that Harry would have liked to have been flying himself at the moment. The older boy barely missed Snape by a few inches as he flew past the Professor in a shock of yellow. Diggory was holding his arm high over his head before the Gryffindor seeker, McLaggen, had even begun his own dive.

Hufflepuff had won the game, but the Slytherins cheered the loudest of them all. The snakes had just won the Quidditch cup.

—-

Harry never thought that he would have said that he would be happy to have exams closing in quickly upon them, but as the months grew warmer and the days closer to the end of June, he found himself thinking that very thing.

Theo and Tracey had taken to pouring over every book that they had been assigned that year, reading them together late into the night and asking anyone that they came across to quiz them, much to the surprise of some poor Hufflepuffs and the pleasure of quite a few Ravenclaws that were doing the same thing. The pair were horrible after curfew when there were only the other Slyherin first years to annoy and absolutely insufferable when put in a room together with Hermione, who was deeper into the frenzy than they were. Worse off, as exams drew closer, the other first years around Harry started to adopt a similar mindset to the trio, even Blaise who was easily the most coolheaded of them all.

"Just because you are extraordinarily gifted at magic doesn't mean that the rest of us don't need to study," the Slytherin boy had snapped one day when Harry had asked if he wanted to play Wizard's Chess.

Needless to say, Harry was glad when the exams finally did roll around, as he might have snapped and killed one of his mates the next time that they tried to ask him about Potions or Defense Against the Dark Arts if they hadn't.

The written exams were given in large classrooms that Harry had only ever been to on the days the he'd spent wandering the castle during the Christmas holidays, each of the sweltering with a heat that wordlessly explained to the small Slytherin just why that had been the only time that he'd been to them. Each of the students were given quills spelled with special anti - cheating charms that Harry could feel buzzing within them as he held it.

Gray magic, he thought, smiling to himself at the question that had he'd had since the welcoming feast and had been answered.

Besides the heat, the written exams themselves weren't all that hard, they were just the theory that stood behind the magic that they had all performed. Theory that Harry knew as well as he knew how to breathe. He had to understand the workings of magic to translate it - in a sense - from what he can do easily to what is expected of him at this age. After all, that was why he'd memorized all of the books before coming to school.

There were practicals too of course.

In Transfiguration, they were asked to turn a mouse into a snuff box and were given points for how pretty it was and how little animal features it had. Harry made his was an emerald green with deep accents of blue that was almost black, and silver trimmings and details on the outside. He knew that not even McGonagall with her disposition to him could find a fault in his work.

Charms was much more entertaining as they were asked to come up to Professor Flitwick's desk and make the pineapple there dance. Harry had his do a demented version of the Electric Slide.

Potions was by far one of the more mentally taxing of the test, as Snape had decided to loom over them even more than usual as they each attempted to remember how to brew a Forgetfulness Potion. The irony was not lost on any of them either.

History of Magic was the last of their exams and Harry found himself cheering along with the rest of Slytherin and Ravenclaw as they were told to put their quills down by the ghostly professor Binns. Harry thought that if he did poorly on any of his exams that it would be that one, but all of the other first years seemed to share a similar thought as well.

The first years all but ran out of the castle and into the fresh air of the courtyard the moment that they were let out of the classrooms, a strict 'talking about the exams would get you hexed by whoever is closest' rule set in place as the group made their way to the edge of the Black Lake, spending the rest of the afternoon under a tree watching as the Weasley twins and Lee Jordan tired to tickle the giant squid.

Everything would have been perfect if it wasn't for the steadily growing pain in Harry's scar.

Harry smiled at the boy as Blaise handed him a headache reliever potion, the other Slytherin still holding onto the, even after all of these months of him taking them. Harry found that Blaise had become very good at reading him because of this.

He also found that he didn't quite mind that at all.

—-

As the day progressed, Harry found that the now too familiar ache in his head didn't lessen, not even as he walked into the Slytherin common room, which took away his usual bouts of sickness. Blaise, Draco, and Theo looked at the boy pittyingly after dinner as the three got ready to leave for Litha, the Wican celebration of the summer solstice, but Harry just waved the trio of boys off and slunk farther into his bed. It wasn't until when he was sure that the rest of Slytherin house was either gone or asleep that Harry grabbed his father's cloak and snuck out into the hall.

It didn't take long for Harry to find his way back to the seventh floor corridor, the path now a familiar one to the boy after that first night. Pacing in front of the tapistry three times, he envisioned the field once more, the scent of the grass and the sounds of the summer night. The magic in the strange room was special, almost like the twins where all other magical influence seemed to fade away.

A safe haven.

The field was the same as the time before, an almost perfect copy of somewhere that was more of a home to the boy than any building had ever been. Harry ran his fingers through the grass and dreamed of another doing just the same at his side.

The stars shined like diamonds in the sky as Harry gazed up at them, naming each of them that he now knew and tracing the constellations that he'd known for a long time now. If someone were to ask him just how long he had spent like that, the only answer that the boy could possibly give was until his arm began to ache. But he did know that the pain in his mind didn't lessen in the least; in fact, it only seemed to increase as the night aged.

With a forlorn sigh, Harry pushed himself to his feet and threw the invisibility cloak across himself, figuring that if he were to be in pain until the rest of the castle rose, he could so in a place so breathtakingly filled with his sort of magic that he could almost taste it in the air.

Walking through the castle, Harry bit back an annoyed groan as the stairs moved beneath the boy and stopped at the third floor corridor rather than a main access landing to the Grand Staircase. Harry knew that he could probably will the stairs to come back if he wished to, but he figured that it would probably be best not to break the stairs if he could keep from doing so.

Cursing silently, Harry stepped onto the landing and decided rk wait for the stairs to come back and change direction once more to something more favorable. In the years to come, Harry would find himself wondering just how wise of a decision that was.

The door next to the Slytherin slammed open with enough force that it had Harry scrambling silently backwards so that he would not be hit. But Harry might as well have been as loud as a horde of hippogriffs because the newcomer was looking directly at him, and Harry was looking directly at the professor.

Dark magic.

Quirrell lunged forward and tore the cloak from Harry's body as the boy tried to move back from his grasp, but only found his back pressed against a stone railing. The only other way to go would be the opening in the railing, but that was more of a drop then Harry truly wanted to make.

"Potter!" The man said like some sort of curse, throwing Harry's cloak to the ground. "You've taken the stone, haven't you! Where do you put it?"

Harry tried not to let his confusion show, adopting a careful mask of calmness as the older wizard screamed. "I don't have it," the boy spat, staring defiantly into the Professor's eyes.

"I'm going to kill you tonight, Harry Potter," the man promised, raising his wand for the boy to see. "If you give me the stone, then I might be inclined to make it as painless for you as possible."

"Look, I don't know shit about any stone," Harry cursed, holding his hands up in a way that usually made Dudley's gang give a small enough pause for him to get a head start, "but if you tell me what it is maybe I can find it for you," but even Harry could hear the shake in his own voice.

Ever since he'd come to the castle, dark magic had been a sort of comfort to the boy, long before he knew its name. This was the first time that he'd met someone whose magic felt like something of a muddled version of his own, but was on the opposing side. It was the first time that he had felt magic that was stronger than his own pointed at him through the tip of a wand as well.

Instinctively, Harry moved to the side, but no spell was cast. The magic only built up inside of the older man, the rage waiting to be given purpose by the castor.

" Let me speak to him."

Harry felt his body freeze as a tired voice spoke, one that felt so close, but no one else was there. A chill ran down the boy's spine as the Defense professor spoke as if there was someone else to speak to.

" I have strength enough for this ," the voice insisted before Quirrell seemed to reluctantly pull down the turban that no student or teacher in the castle had seen the man go a day without.

Now the Slytherin knew why.

There was a face on the back of the professor's head, grotesque and snake - like. The boy thought that it resembled a monster from muggle fiction more than something that could ever resemble a man.

Pain exploded in Harry's head as he met the monstrous red eyes, a kind so profound that words and sound became useless things to the boy.

But his body still knew what to do.

Springing forwards while the older man's back was still turned to him, Harry grabbed not for his wand, but the blade that he always kept on his person since Judenhad given it to him all those months ago. Grasping onto the face for support, Harry ran the small knife across the throat of the now screaming defense Professor, much deeper than he had with the older Slytherin boy at the start of the year. Because this time he was moving to kill.

Blinding pain that Harry could only describe as a unique form of agony was what the boy was met with the moment that he touched the older wizard with his bare hands. But Harry has been in pain all of his life, so he held on, knowing that Quirrell was screaming too. Knowing that for some reason, as blood poured down the gash in the man's throat, ashes fell from the second face, created by his touch.

The body crumbled to the ground before the blood could hit it, only having soaked into the professor's clothes and the boy's skin, but the man that had worn them soon disappeared into ashes as well.

Glancing around, Harry quickly cast a silent cleaning spell on himself and the robes on the ground before levitating them above himself. With a quick flick of his wrist, Harry was able to open the door that the man had come from, silently forcing the empty clothes into the room before whatever sleeping beast inside of it had time to wake.

Then Harry ran, silent and quick, until he was back in his common room, in the warmth of the first year dorms.

—-

Blaise watched with interest as Harry tore into the dorm room like a man that was being chased, his cheeks flushed a deep red from what must have been a long distance. The Slytherin noticed a cold light in the other boy's green eyes as they looked at one another, it was the same gleam as what he saw in his mother's each time that another man fell mysteriously ill in their home.

The tremors that wrecked the smaller boy's body were entirely his own though.

Glancing at the sleeping forms of the other Slytherin boys in the room, Blaise wordlessly held out his hand, a silent invitation for the other boy to take. One that Harry accepted quickly, only shaking his head as Blaise pulled back his own sheets. Harry nodded to his own bed instead - the one that was always closed - and they moved to it, curling around one another as if that could keep either of them safe.

Neither boy said a thing when the smaller Slytherin woke them both up later that night, jolting up in the bed from a silent scream. They only layed back down and watched the stars that Harry had bewitched until the quickly approaching dawn had risen.

Neither boy said anything the next day either when they were told that Professor Quirrell wouldn't be in class, or when it was announced that night that he was dead.

—-

Two days after the incident Harry watched with a held breadth as Snape walked into the Slytherin common room, a stormy look on his face. The smaller Slytherin felt Blaise squeeze his wrist in reassurance as Harry went ahead and stood before the potions master's eyes had even found him among the crowd of anxiously watching snakes. A quick beckon to follow was all that the boy needed to know that he was right in his assumptions.

"The Headmaster has called you to his office," the potions Professor said once the common room door had closed firmly shut. Harry only nodded, figuring as much already. The older Slytherin sighed, clearly exasperated by the younger. "I want you to tell me exactly what happened," the man commands, using a voice that Harry hasn't heard from him in a long time now and hadn't missed in the least.

So he did, though Harry found himself pausing at the mention of the invisibility cloak being ripped from him.

" Fuck !" The boy cursed suddenly and much louder than he had intended to. "The fucking cloak !"

"Five points from Slytherin," the professor said, seemingly subconsciously. "What did you do, boy?" The Slytherin Head of House asked lowly, not seeming to notice the way that the younger snake flinched at the title, the same one that his uncle had always used. Or maybe he did notice and finally didn't care.

"After Quirrell turned to dust," the boy explained, "I was so focused on getting his robes hidden that I forgot all about that damned cloak."

Harry watched as Snape sighed once more - something that he seemed to do a lot where the boy was involved - and drug his hand down his face harshly.

"An understandable mistake, given the circumstances, but an undeniably foolish one."

Harry couldn't really argue that.

The pair walked into the Headmaster's office not long after, Harry nearly falling over from the intense bouts of light magic coming from the man inside of it. But he held himself together, he had to.

Dumbledore was wearing dark robes of colors that did not go with one another and made the younger Slytherin fear just how wizards thought that muggles dressed if the almost ancient man before him thought that cyan went well with brown and the golden half - rimmed glasses that the Headmaster always wore.

"Ah, Professor Snape!" The man greeted as if he hadn't already seen the snakes walk in. "I see that you've brought young Harry, you may leave now if you wish," the man said in a too kind voice that had Harry drawing back as he didn't believe for a moment.

A quick glance at the potions master said that he didn't quite either, something that seemed to bother the older Slytherin.

"I think that I will stay, Albus," Harry was relieved to hear the older man say coldly, as if he found the very notion of leaving the boy alone with the Headmaster akin to the idea of leaving a snake in a lion's den. Harry knew that the comparison wasn't exactly wrong. "Potter is one of mine after all."

"Very well," the Headmaster said, but Harry could tell that he didn't like the idea at all. "Have a seat, why don't you?" The man instructed in a way that sounded like an offer, motioning to the chairs before him.

Dumbledore's eyes turned serious once both had sat down, cold even as Rhea trained on Harry, a pricking feeling tracing across the boy's mind that had him forcing it away as best he could. Harry barely heard the eldest wizard wince.

"Harry, my boy, I would like you to tell me what you know of Nicholas Flamel."

—-

The words shocked the potions Professor more than he thought that they rightfully should given the recent death of the defense professor. Snape cursed himself for thinking that Albus wouldn't attempt to connect the death of the bastard to the stone - an inevitable conclusion given where Harry had hidden the robes - and then to the boy himself.

The potions master glanced at the boy, expecting to find a mask of calmness there, but all he found was his student looking at the greatest wizard of the age as if he was some sort of fool. A memory Snape thought that he might have to look back on later when the older wizard concocts his neck scheme. But then the other Slytherin's eyes filled with a light so bright that the potions Professor had to physically fight back a wince.

It was the first time that the boy had actually looked like either of his parents since coming to the school, and yet he still managed to look like another dark haired boy that had disappeared without a word one night when the war was still new.

"Wait! You mean to tell me that he's real?" The boy asked, slapping his hands harshly on his knees in his hurry to lean forwards with that hungry gaze of his, the boy's voice more excited than Snape thought possible. "I mean of course I know that he was real ," the boy continued quickly, his hands moving animatedly around as he spoke in a way that was so different from the controlled mannerisms that the potions master had come to know over the last year, "he has a grave in Paris and everything. But you wouldn't be asking about him unless he was still relevant - still alive - so that means that the Philosopher's Stone should be real too, and the Elixir of Life.

"Holy shit!" Harry exclaimed suddenly in the middle of his tangent, looking quickly enough between both of the older wizards that Snape began to worry for the boy's neck. " That's why his grave was empty when they dug it up!"

Snape glanced at the older wizard and found him studying the boy with the contemplative look of someone that didn't know if the person before them was lying or not.

"You seem to know a great deal about Flamel, Mr. Potter," the Headmaster carefully observed when the boy finally took a breath.

Snape watched as the boy almost physically deflated at the reminder that the eldest wizard was still in the room, a cold gleam taking over the boy's eyes.

"Of course I do, sir ," the boy said, speaking the title as if it was some kind of curse rather than a sign of respect. "The Dursleys hate magic more than anything in the world," Harry informed, and only a fool would fail to notice the bard in the boy's voice. Albus Dumbledore was not a fool. "So of course I had to know all that I could about it. And since it was Alchemy I could always lie and say that I was studying science, something perfectly muggle."

Slytherin indeed , Snape thought, vowing to never question the boy's placement again.

"Yes, well," Albus said awkwardly, adjusting a trinket on his desk as he spoke. "This has been rather informative, you are free to leave now, Mr. Potter. Ah and take this."

Snape watched as the younger snake took the folded cloak that the Headmaster was holding out to him with a grandfatherly smile, but was proud to see that the boy didn't rise until the potions Professor nodded at him to do so. Proud to see that the boy still saw the eldest wizard as something of a threat as he was sure Albus still saw the boy.

But then Harry paused before he left, still standing before the Headmaster's desk. "Sir?" The boy asks clumsily, his tone much more respectful than it had been before. "Why did you ask?"

A strange light entered the other man's eyes before he spoke. "Until only a day or so ago the famed stone was being held within the castle," the older man said in a strange bout of honesty.

Snape watched as the boy baked at the Headmaster once more, truly a sight to behold. "You mean you were keeping a thing like that in a school , with children ?" The younger Slytherin asked ludicrously, still looking at Dumbledore as if he had lost his mind. "Wait! The elixir has to be brewed on the full moon of each month or else the Flamels age very quickly, all of the years catching up with them within the month, but if the stone has been here all year... Did you kill Nicholas Flamel?!"

—-

It took longer than Dumbledore would have liked to assure the young Slytherin that he hadn't killed the Flamels and that they still had enough elixir to set their affairs in order as they wished. The headmaster would be the first to admit that the boy is just about as stubborn as they come, so much unlike his trusting father and his mother who saw the kindness in everyone that she met - though the stubbornness no doubtly came from her, she just usually required a reason to lose faith first.

The boy, it seemed, did not.

Yet, he was so much like another Slytherin boy that the headmaster had known all of those years ago. Dumbledore remembered well enough how that had ended.

"Albus," Severus said, reminding the elder that the former spy was still within the room, "while we are here, I must explore that you reconsider sending the boy back to those people this summer," the younger man said, reigniting a conversation that he had hoped to leave dead. "You heard what the child said, they hate magic-"

But Dumbledore only had to hold up his hand to silence the younger man. "I heard," he agreed, "but I'm sure that the boy is only exaggerating as children so often do about everything."

The blood protections that are in place will make sure of it, the man thought, the Quirrell incident having only proven that, the Order members observing the house as well.

Dumbledore frowned as the other man did not fight him on his decision, but didn't truly seem to agree with it either.

—-

The last week of school passed quickly, but Harry found that he was never alone for long, not even as he slept, Blaise pressed comfortably at his side like that first night. The other Slytherins seemed to have now noticed the silent battle between the Headmaster and Harry as each moved carefully around the other.

For now.

It wasn't until just before the End of the Year Feast that Harry spoke to the potions master once more.

"I did try and speak with the Headmaster about not sending you back to those muggles, but-"

"But he wouldn't hear of it?" Harry guessed, too tired from sleepless nights to care about being imprudent. Though he knew that it wasn't truly a guess at all. He knew that Dumbledore wouldn't remove him from a place that he had placed him there himself.

Everyone always wants to believe that they are infallible. Hardly anyone ever is.

Harry only shrugged. "I'll survive," the boy insisted. "I always do. It's why I'm a Slytherin after all," he insisted in case his Head of House had seen fit to forget.

Neither Slytherin mentioned that surviving was not the same thing as living.

—-

Slytherin won the House Cup that night and in the morning the students were boarding the train home. To most of the others in his compartment, it felt like going home, but to Harry it felt a bit like a sort of death.