Thank you to new Patrons: Tryell Facey, Mystical Myst, Kunta
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Warnings: Mentions of SA and extreme depression
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I woke up today feeling happy. I don't know why. My stomach is heavier than ever before, and I feel like I'm bloated with all the world's ills.
Pandora's box is in my womb, and I am just waiting for it to release something beautiful rather than something horrible. Or will it be something horrible rather than beautiful? I can hardly tell what I think of it sometimes.
Severus, James, Remus and Sirius came by again, asking their incessant questions. Asking if I can remember anything. What a ridiculous question, and what a ridiculous motive. They want to catch the perpetrator that Dumbledore couldn't. They want to make right a crime that can't be reversed.
Sometimes, I think that when I give birth, the grief and pain will leave my body alongside the disgusting creature inside of me. But it will be beautiful. But it will be ugly. It will be me, unfiltered and unaffected by the horrors of the past, bearing only my face and having only my blood course through its rotten veins. An appearance of innocence, the ugliness purely metaphysical.
The fact that whoever implanted this creature will attribute its success to their genes, instead of mine, the only ones present, will be my last laugh in regards to this matter.
James and Severus want to reverse what has been done by finding whoever did this. I will use the results of their investigation to kill, but the more time I spend planning the how, the more I realise that while it must be done, there is no healing in the act. I will feel whole once this thing is finally out of me, stops kicking me, making me barf, making me cry.
It is a boy, I recently learned. I wonder how many signs of his creation he will show. I plan on giving no hint. We will live elsewhere in a place without ugliness. I will teach him to respect himself more than I did, to listen to himself more, to distrust fate and its wretched weave, to uphold logic, and to know that he is loved.
Most of all. I will teach him to be strong, like I wasn't.
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Harry put down the diary and rubbed at his eyes, putting it away inside his Hogwarts robe. He'd arrived early at the Hogwarts Express, not being dependent on his family to get around anymore. There was nothing that quite beat Dobby Express in terms of efficiency, speed and service.
As the diary continued, it became clear that his mother was becoming more and more unhinged as the date of delivery approached. She kept switching between referring to him as either ugly or beautiful, malignant or a blessing, a baby she would cherish or abandon in the nearest orphanage.
But there was one consistent feature within all the writing. Firstly, she wanted him to grow up and be strong, and secondly, she wanted to erase whatever was not herself in him before he came to the world. She talked about genes and how some didn't deserve to propagate, especially not inside her.
While such ramblings could have easily been dismissed as asinine and metaphorical, his mother had been a witch, one of, supposedly, quite a lot of talent. It had been her in the original books who had been the only person alive to deflect the killing curse, even if it had been at the cost of her life.
Harry suspected that rather than just talking about it, she had, in fact, done something. What she was now talking about fit eerily with the fact that whenever he looked in the mirror and compared himself with a picture of Lily at his age and tried to find where the outward appearance deviated, he couldn't find any reasonable traces of his father. He had a more feminine face than was appropriate for a boy, going into an androgynous direction. It was only his muscles, gained through specific targeting and sword training, that offset his femininity. Otherwise, he had the same shade of red in his hair, the same shade of green in his eyes and the same pale colour of skin.
He knew that if he skipped to the end of the diary, he would likely be able to decipher more quickly what Lily had done, if she had done anything, but he knew that he would only ever read the diary once. Front to back. Never again.
"You look lost," a voice suddenly said from the door to the compartment he'd occupied.
Harry had been too distracted to notice it sliding open. He looked over to see the pink-haired girl looking at him with some concern.
"Tonks," Harry said as a greeting. "You want to sit with me?" he asked, at which the older girl shrugged and sat down opposite of him. Once she'd settled in and levitated her trunk to the holder above the seats, she reached over and ruffled his hair.
"What's got my lil buddy so down?" she asked in a teasing voice.
Harry tilted his head and wondered if there was a point in sharing that he'd been reading his dead mother's diary. He shook his head.
"What do you think about Professor Quirrell?" he asked instead. The man had been teaching, not stuttering. He didn't seem unstable either, but Harry was nevertheless getting the strong suspicion that the man was not only possessed by Voldemort, but in fact was Voldemort.
Everything he said and did didn't fit the actions of a muggle studies professor in his twenties or thirties.
"Quirrell?" Tonks asked before biting her lip. "Now there's a man I wouldn't mind seeing next to me when I wake up," she sighed dreamily. "He's so competent and commanding. Shame for the turban, but a bad fashion sense can be fixed."
Harry threw Tonks a look of abject disgust and horror.
The girl huffed and crossed her arms. "What, you're jealous? Just because he's a professor doesn't mean I can't think he's hot."
Harry opened his mouth, then closed it, and opened it again. No sound came out. He'd thought that the twins having hit Quirrell in the back of the head with snowballs in the books was madlad enough. But saying you wanted to fuck Voldemort. That was just…
Maybe when the war was over he could explain to Tonks what sort of batshit insane thing she'd just said.
"I meant more as a teacher," he managed to croak out.
Tonks rolled her eyes. "I mean, I liked Professor Potter a lot; he's also the only real competition. Twix was ok, but you wouldn't believe the four clowns we had to suffer before that. Quirrell…" she hummed. "Uncle Sirius and James will hate me for saying it, but I think he's the best teacher we've had yet, for any subject at that. Nothing against Flitwick," she hurried to say, worried she'd offend Harry and his relationship with his duelling mentor.
Harry shook his head. Voldemort, for all his faults, likely understood much more about the Dark Arts and its creatures than Flitwick did about Charms. Realistically speaking, the only way Hogwarts could gain a teacher comparable to Quirrell was if Dumbledore started teaching transfiguration. He sighed dreamily at the thought. Now, wouldn't that have been an amazing thing to see?
"He's good, isn't he?" Harry said. He didn't feel as worried about the dark lord in the castle as he'd originally thought he would be. In a way, his ability to hold up his occlumency against Dumbledore had increased his self-esteem. Similarly, just like Quirrell had said, Voldemort was bound to impotence in his ability to harm students by his own self-interests. He couldn't do anything to blow his cover until he had the stone, and he couldn't target a student after he got the stone because the priority would be escaping the castle.
The stone was a trap, of course, so in a way, Harry could simply rely on Dumbledore to do his job and protect him.
"I just think that he really gets the Dark Arts, you know," Tonks muttered. "Almost to a suspicious degree."
Harry snorted.
"Yeah, yeah, I know, Dumbledore hired him, so it's probably fine, but still. Did you know he took on our entire class at once recently in a duel while using a simulated killing curse? It was crazy."
"I heard, yeah," Harry said absent-mindedly. The Hogwarts rumour mill was quite efficient for circulating the dramatic events occurring in the castle.
"So yeah, what I think about Quirrell," Tonks finished with a shake of her head. "Best professor I've ever had, and Hogwarts has some great professors. Maybe Slughorn is a bit odious, McGonnagal a bit strict, and Fliwick a bit excitable, but they're all at the top of their game."
"If only someone would get rid of Binns already," Harry muttered.
"No, no, we need him," Tonks quickly interjected, insisting. "It's great for catching up on sleep."
"You're a reprobate," Harry accused her.
"But I mean," Tonks suddenly started slowly in a more serious tone of voice. "Why are you asking me about Quirrell? You're the one taking private lessons from him. How is he in those?"
Harry thought of the man's malicious smile as he sent fake killing curses at him at ever-increasing speeds, broke his shields in painful ways and laughed when Harry fell and hurt himself in an effort to survive their duels. "He's a sadist, a competent one, but I don't want to talk about him anymore," Harry said with a shake of his head. Quirrell had been able to sense him when he'd been invisible back with the troll. He needed to figure out a way to erase his magical presence one of these days…
"You're the one who brought him up," Tonks complained. "Anyway, I finished the Patronus," she said proudly.
Harry straightened up. "Really? That means your O+ in DADA is basically secured, no? Show me!"
Tonks smiled and pulled out her wand. "I had a really nice Christmas; it was the perfect memory," she said. "I managed to do it right there at the dinner table. Sirius was really surprised, and he'd been acting weird the whole night. He screamed so loud he fainted; I think he was on drugs that night; he was twitching the whole time!" She explained before waving her wand. "Expecto Patronum!" she exclaimed, a bright white jack rabbit emerging from her wand and frolicking through the compartment a few times before dissipating.
Harry clapped. "Very nice. Have you thought about my suggestion to keep pushing for an O+ in another subject as well?" he asked.
Tonks nodded. "I think the patronus can get me the plus in DADA. I recently learned the same spell can't upgrade two separate classes, so I'd rather use it there than Charms. Transfiguration is a given anyway, I guess," she said with a sigh, "and I don't feel like doing even more Potions."
"Then it's Charms, no?" Harry asked. "Other than the cores, you're only taking care, and I don't know what you'd have to do there. Tame a dragon?" he joked.
Tonks frowned at the mention of the dragon. Harry quickly remembered that her boyfriend, who'd wanted to be a dragon handler, had died last year.
"I don't think I can manage an O+ in care. But an O+ in two cores would be something. My parents sometimes can't believe how much I'm working for my grades now. I should probably do Charms," she said.
"Any idea what charm?" Harry asked.
Tonks shiftily looked around and leaned in. "Get this: I asked Sirius and James for Christmas, and they recommended a charm that the Auror Academy would love. It's called aqua eruptio."
"Oh, it's the one that can quench Fiendfyre?" Harry asked.
Tonks blinked at him. "How did you know?" she asked.
Harry thought back and realised that he'd read that in the book on magical fires, particularly fiendfyre, that he'd gotten from Burkes back then in Knockturn alley. "I read more than you. Why are you surprised?" he retorted.
Tonks frowned. "Then you can explain the spell to me, Mr. Overachiever," she harrumphed.
"Well, Fiendfyre is a spell wrongly classified as dark magic," Harry muttered. "But nonetheless banned for good reasons," he hurried to add. "It creates a connection to a place that supposedly really exists in some dimension somewhere. A place of cursed fire that eats magic and propagates endlessly as it does so. The spell makes a connection to that place and summons the fire, which can then propagate as it eats through material and magic. It can't be quenched by normal or conjured water, but aqua eruptio isn't conjured; it's summoned. Same theory; it opens a gate to the dimension of water from where it draws the very essence thereof. The pressure difference, however," he paused. "It makes the spell very hard to control. Seemingly, it comes from somewhere deep, so even a small connection will create an absolute explosion of water."
"It's technically dimensional magic," Tonks muttered. "You're not doing anything with water, just opening an entry point to the dimension where it exists already. What makes it hard is that you have to control it with water manipulation after it arrives. Two very hard things to do, in one spell. James gave me the manual. I think I can get it down by the end of the year," she said determinedly.
"Maybe we can try to learn it together," Harry said thoughtfully. "Before our mind arts practice."
Tonks grimaced. "Ugh, I was really enjoying my headache-free vacation," she complained but hastily raised her arms at Harry's quirked eyebrow. "But I'm very grateful for the opportunity!"
Harry sniffed. "You better be," he muttered. Draco's reverence of Charon had reached levels where the boy hung on every word out of Harry's lips like they were some sort of holy revelation. He was making immense progress and was still ahead of Tonks, who could just about notice a probe but struggled to fight it.
The train whistle blew loudly. The Hogwarts Express started chugging along.
"Otherwise, how was your vacation?" Tonks asked, switching topics.
Harry thought back to the social mingling with halfbloods and Grindelwald supporters in Germany, to reading his diary, to having a mental battle with Dumbledore, to talking with Voldemort.
"I lived, I guess," he sighed.
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After the train had arrived at its final station, Harry, Tonks, Cedric and Penny, who had joined them later, exited the train and started walking towards the carriages which would take them to the castle.
As they boarded the carriages, Harry made sure to pet the thestrals, pulling them to the weird looks of many other students. He couldn't help but overhear Hagrid and Filch as they shared a hushed discussion next to the gates of the castle.
Hagrid really didn't do quiet, so his whispering could hardly be called as such.
"Just found a dead unicorn in the forest. I'll have to go ter Dumbledore after," the giant man muttered.
Filch shook his head. "The students at this school are getting more and more brazen, why back in my day…" he replied, the rest of the words blurred out as Harry shut the doors to the carriage.
"The beginning of the end," the red-haired boy muttered to himself.
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AN: As you can sort of tell by that last phrase, this chapter signals the beginning of the end of this arc. There aren't many more chapters left after this. Anyway, if you want to read ahead or support me, there's Patreon, otherwise, have a great week!