Chapter Four

"Life asked death, 'Why do people love me but hate you?' Death responded, 'Because you are a beautiful lie and I am a painful truth." - Anonymous

Harry took little notice of the outcome of the sorting. He honestly had never paid much attention to who had been sorted where at any point during his Hogwarts years, and it had simply been too long for him to remember every face.

Despite that, Harry undeniably felt the echoes of his past. Slytherin house tended to share a large number of classes with Gryffindor, and while the distinct lack of Hermione was quite strange the interactions between Weasley and Finnegan were similar enough to make his chest hurt. That was supposed to have been him. That had been him.

An interesting exception on the rather bleak future offered by Hogwarts was Severus Snape.

After the battle of Hogwarts, Harry had alway held a massive amount of respect for the Potion Master, but he had never been one to get sentimental for the man. Although everyone had believed it had been his decision to name Albus after the dour potions master, it had in fact been Ginny's decision. Ginny had never directly confessed what had happened in her sixth year, what exactly Severus had protected many of the students from, but Harry had eventually pieced together idea of what had occurred. Thus, Harry had not minded, nor had he protested as he had directly named James and later on would name Lily.

Still, Harry felt a bit odd going to his first Potions class, perhaps even odder than he had after Minerva's Transfiguration class. He had sat through that entire experience with his back ramrod straight and his teeth clenched tightly. Seeing Minerva hurt as much as anything else did, leaving a dull ache inside him as well as the intense desire to curse something. Her death had hit him hard, perhaps equally as hard as Severus's. Both of them had been fortunate enough to die before the fighting broke out though.

Harry found Severus Snapes's potions class to be quite odd. He had arrived on time, perhaps even slightly early, and settled into the frontmost table alone. He busied himself setting out his books and writing utensils, heading his notes and scrawling his name on the paper. Before he had finished the other students had begun drifting into the classroom and settling into predictable patterns divided by house. Some of the children were chatting and laughing amongst themselves, but as more individuals accumulated into the room a very distinct tension was building.

Harry had never noticed such a thing in his first life, as he had been so caught up in the magic. It was a subtle darkening of the air, the way every student shushed and suddenly glares were being fired across clearly defined lines of war. He was not sitting in a classroom any longer. He was in a warzone and schoolchildren were the only combatants.

An abrupt bang brought him out of his reverie, and Severus Snape burst into the room. Harry was shocked almost beyond belief. He had forgotten how young the potions master had been- was. Snape strode into the front of the classroom and stood towering over the sitting students, before glancing down at his roll book and calling out names. He eyed each of them individually, as if assessing their worth, his eyes hovering over ties as well as faces. His eyes froze on Harry's own and a sneer came to his face.

"Ah, yes," he said softly, "Harry Potter. Our new—celebrity."

Several snorts and quiet chuckles could be heard coming from the Gryffindor side of the room. Harry knew most of them to be coming from Ronald Weasley, although he was unable to identify the others without turning around. It did not matter, and his face remained stone cold and glued to the eyes of the man in front to him. Snape finished going through his roll easily enough and looked up at the class.

"You are here to learn the subtle science and exact art of potion-making," he began. He spoke in barely more than a whisper, but they caught every word. Snape had the gift of keeping a class silent without effort. "As there is little foolish wand-waving here, many of you will hardly believe this is magic. I don't expect you will really understand the beauty of the softly simmering cauldron with its shimmering fumes, the delicate power of liquids that creep through human veins, bewitching the mind, ensnaring the senses... I can teach you how to bottle fame, brew glory, even stopper death—if you aren't as big a bunch of dunderheads as I usually have to teach."

"Potter!" snapped Snape suddenly. "What would I get if I added powdered root of asphodel to an infusion of wormwood?"

Harry's expression remained unreadable, but inside he cackled madly. This turn of event was undeniably delicious. "The draught of the living death sir."

Snape's eyes flashed darkly and he fired off, "Let's try again. Potter, where would you look if I told you to find me a bezoar?"

"Well, while I would try the ingredient cabinet behind you sir, I would be hard pressed to not find one inside a goat's stomach." Harry could not resist adding the emphasis on sir. The answering glare was worth being cheeky.

"Perhaps Ravenclaw would have been a better suit, Potter. What is the difference between monkshood and wolfsbane?"

"Why sir are you perhaps confused? There is no difference in those plants. They are also called aconite, although how you could confuse them is beyond me sir." Harry grinned and began picking loosely at his nails.

Snape scowled, his mouth tightening visibly. "Detention, Potter, for your cheek. My office at eight tonight."

"Looking forward to it."

Harry left the Slytherin dormitories at a quarter to eight to walk the short way to Snape's office. The walk would have been uneventful, except for the young red headed boy following him. Harry rolled his eyes. If Ronald Weasley wanted to waste his time following him around Harry was not going to stop him.

Harry supposed that the detention was peculiar, at least for Harry. Unlike any detention Harry had had with Severus in his first life, the man simply assigned him a small number of lines. Snape sat at his desk and Harry used the spare in the corner to write them. In the past Harry had always cleaned caldrons in the adjacent workroom, and it was a bit odd to be sitting and calmly working with Snape in the same room.

About thirty minutes into the detention, Harry began to appreciate the old detentions. Snape would not stop staring at him, his glare boring into his skull. He felt as though the man was attempting to drill a hole through his head with his eyes.

Harry tried to ignore it as best as he could, but the tension in the room began building between the two. Finally, Harry looked to the man his eyes narrowed several minutes later.

"Do you need something, Snape?" Harry said, laying his quill down.

"Professor Snape, Potter." The man intoned automatically, "and I have a question for you, as well as a requirement. First, while the Headmaster believes it is adequate for you to wander about carelessly, I require more restraint on the part of my snakes. I expect you to avoid being caught for any mischief you might get up to. Furthermore, I require information on the woman that you claim raised you. Either an address or some means of contacting her for those times where you find your way into trouble."

"My Mahi no longer needs me, Professor Snape. Her duty was to care for me until I could come to Hogwarts. I have no way to contact her." Technically, Harry was not lying. While Mahi was still bound to him, as was Anzu, they no longer needed to actively care for him or have a direct access to his magic, and technically, it had been Mahi's job to care for him. Technically, he wasn't lying.

"You are aware then that the ministry will seek to place you with another family. At some point, Petunia may be reconsidered, since she is your blood relation, but there is another family that has a claim on you."

"The Malfoy family."

"Yes, Narcissa is something like your second cousin through your maternal grandmother. If, and only if, you wish to pursue that contact, I can help get you in contact with her." Snape stood up before swallowing the distance between the two of them placing his hand on Harry's desk.

"I will be quite frank with you, Mr. Potter. I do not like you. I never liked your father, and I will not take kindly to your disrespect. Outside of class, I will treat you as if you do not exist, and inside I will verbally assault you. It is expected. If you must ask why, you do not deserve to know the answer. However, your grade will be dependant on your efforts as a student, and if you require assistance as a slytherin, either due to discrimination or whatnot, I will be available. Do not waste my time."

"Of course, sir. Thank you for informing me of your intentions. I had figured that your goodwill on account of my gift had simply expired."

"Gift, Mr. Potter?"

"If you have to ask sir, you do not deserve an answer." Harry's face was impassive as he stood up, sliding the lines across the desk and leaving .

Inevitably though, despite any fixations or minor amusements, his first two weeks at Hogwarts were quite boring. His homework was simple, the castle was quiet, and for absolutely no reason, Harry had developed a distinctive facial twitch. He had not considered the possibility of his growing addiction to the darkness he performed in his previous years, but, as the days went on, the absence of his daily rituals and his previous closeness to necromantic magics became clearer. His hands shook, his eyes went bloodshot, and his insomnia flared up again. Furthermore, when he did sleep it was to nightmares and screams and blood. Visuals of the war he had long since banished flooded his memories and Harry felt the pressures of surviving like never before.

That was why on the third week, he approached the two other boys sharing his room and proposed that they vacate the room for the evening. Nott accepted with ease, having decided early on that he did not much care about the boy who lived. Draco on the other hand had argued fiercely, and had almost succeeded in convincing Harry to allow him to stay in the dorm rooms before Harry, frustrated with the younger boy, had simple infiltrated his mind and implanted the order for Draco to avoid the dorm room for several hours.

Harry was irked enough with the boy that he left a terrible headache behind as well, without feeling the slightest smidgen of guilt. After all he could only endure so much nagging.

Originally, Harry had considered using either the Chamber of Secrets or the Room of Requirement rather than his own dorm room. After all, the dorm room would require extensive amounts of warding to prevent the magic from leaking out and either of his dorm mates could become suspicious of what he was doing. That meant it would be several days more that he would have to go without if he used his dorm. Unfortunately, Harry had been forced to recall the fact that there happened to be a massive basilisk living in the Chamber, and even worse, the Room of Requirement refused to let him in.

He had actually tried to go into the room once more after the incident with fiendfyre in his first life. The room had not opened then and he, Ron, and Hermione had simply assumed that the room had simply been damaged beyond what magic could repair. That was not the case.

The Room of Requirement refused to let him enter.

Harry had actually run into the same problem when initially trying to collect Ravenclaws diadem from the room. At the time, he had thought that perhaps the room existed outside of time, that perhaps the room had been destroyed completely by the fiendfyer. Eventually though, Harry had enough of trying to force his way into the room. It obviously didn't want him to enter, but he had to get his hands on the horcrux Voldemort had left inside.

After a quick word to the house elves convinced Harry that the room was not broken, and that he simply could not access it, a plan began to form.

The solution would have been simple if not for the wards surrounding Hogwarts. An imperio on one of the weaker willed teachers would allow Harry access to the contents of the room, if not actual passage. The wards however prevented such an easy method. Imperious was a dark spell, one that would definitely register on the wards and probably trigger some form of alarm.

Fortunately, Harry had a solution, albeit a risky one. There were of course other methods of controlling people. Potions, other dark curses, complex forms of the mind arts. What Harry decided on was a neutral curse incanted as 'sua totus mens', the spell would allow suggestions to the subconscious, but was heavily influenced by the cursed.

Harry had the perfect subject in mind.

Trelawny probably had no idea she was being manipulated as she teetered down to hide sherry bottles again. She didn't generally hide them this early in the year but she supposed that there was no reason not to. Storing them away was the easy part, but as she often did, she found herself going through the copious amounts of junk stored in the room. And if she never remembered this particular occurrence, why should it matter?

That was why Harry found himself on his dormitory floor raising wards so powerful he was left almost light headed. As Harry began the ward, he invoked each rune calling it's name. Harry took a deep breath as he felt the wards slide into being, testing the runic magic within the barriers. Uruz stood on the wall behind Draco's bed, Kenaz behind his own, Eihwaz at Theo's. Each of these runes existed within Harry's magic, but the most important for this ward was Algiz. Each required an invocation in blood magic in order to seal the ward to the room. Otherwise Harry ran a high chance of binding a merkstave rune to his dormitory, something he was unwilling to have happen. So Harry turned toward Theo's bed facing the south and ran the knife blade along his inner arm. The gash was not obscenely large, but it bled profusely. He turned sharply north, towards Draco's bed and ran the blood across Uruz. East came next, and with it Kenaz. Eihwaz followed suite. Harry then turned to the west and used the blood to draw Gebo on door, praying for balance and direction as well as offering up his willingness to sacrifice. He then turned abruptly to the north, facing Draco's bed and inscribed Algiz on the floor once again with his own blood.

Algiz was the rune of protection, and sealing it was vital for erecting a ward of any power, but when coupled with Gebo and a blood sacrifice, especially one willingly given, the magic would flow through the ward with little to no resistance. Magic would want to comply, possibly doubling or even tripling the protection it offered.

Technically speaking, all blood magic was highly illegal, but Harry found that both stupid and irreparably damaging. The closest thing he could compare it to was someone outlawing flour and then opening a bakery. Plenty of the wards and defenses used to protect the Ministry, Hogwarts, and any older influential Pureblood family were blood wards regardless of magical leanings. That included the Malfoy homes as well as the Longbottom Manor. It was because those wards were effective and because they were probably one of the most permanent forms of magic.

Harry snorted refocusing on the ley lines underneath the school with his mage sight. One of the perks of doing this in the dorm rooms was the direct connection he had with Hogwarts Ley Line. He could tie the ward circle to the ley line and have an almost permanent circle of undetectable protection focused on the dormitory.

The actual sealing took twenty minutes because although Harry's ward was tamed and willing to be guided, it quickly became apparent that the Ley Line was anything but. He felt as if it was similar to trying to tie a knot around a wet beach ball with a pair of shoelaces. The line fought fiercely bucking and twisting away from the seal. It tried to reverse his wards, flip his runic symbols, and destroy the protective circle around him, but Harry was exceedingly patient with the magic. He knew how difficult complex protection rituals were, and so he had planned for the magic to struggle. Afterall, a ley line would not want to be bound, even in part. Magic naturally did not want to stagnate, it wanted to flow and coil and breathe.

Finally, a warm light began seeping out from the five points of power around the room. Harry felt his eyes light up as he stood to his feet and stretched. He had not felt this accomplished in ages. He was nicely exhausted and his protective wards would guard any necromancy he did from the school wards.

Suddenly, Harry felt the all encompassing urge to take advantage of the new ward. While the protection ritual had been fun and had gotten his blood going, it had not suppressed his addiction. After all, the ritual had only legally been dark arts, it was not physically tainting. No, Harry felt the burning desire to perform necromantic arts. He had gotten good at them, enjoyed them to a degree, but never had they controlled him as they attempted to on this night.

Harry pulled out his wand tried to cast cleaning charms at the blood on the walls. He was surprised to feel his magic responding sluggishly, albeit answering him. He did not attempt a healing charm at his arm though as he knew sacrificial magic required him to heal naturally. Harry contemplated attempting a summoning, just a small one in order to ease that craving inside of him but he knew it was not going to be possible. He doubted that he would be able to do much of anything tonight. He could feel the beginnings of magical exhaustion settling into his skin.

He could tell that the extended contact with the Ley Line had in fact drained him of a significant portion of his magic. He had barely risen from the floor to stumble towards his bed when the sheer weight of his exhaustion hit him. He ached physically from the amount of magic he had channeled, and almost cried out at the thought of forcing himself to do more. He still wanted it, but he knew that it would be at least a week before his magical reserves had reached a reasonable amount to perform any kind of necromancy.

Still, the desire remained. Harry lay there whimpering as every facet of his body ached in time to his magical core and he sulked at the unfairness of his magical limits. This was not the first time he had pushed his core to magical exhaustion, although it had been decades since the last occurrence. It was likely that it would not be the last time because Harry knew how powerful he could be. He could feel every ounce, every speck of his power from his previous life, It felt just close enough for him to use it, but it was as if a massive veil kept it from him. He could not touch it but he could feel it behind every spell he cast.

Harry felt the full weight of his exhaustion hit him again and again as he lay in the bed whimpering pathetically. Finally, Harry, exhausted from the intensive ritual, fell asleep.

Harry dreamed.

He dreamed of blood covering every room of Hogwarts, of every child decorating the hallways, of screaming. He dreamed of terror and smoke and crying. He dreamed of the Muggle-Wizard war. He could not move, could not breathe for the smoke was filling his lungs drowning him, pulling him under faster he could force the air into his lungs. And suddenly, he was back underneath the Hunters with a giant hole in his stomach staring into eyes that delighted in his pain.

Harry relived that torture again and again and again. They broke every bone in his body, and ripped every tendon from his bones. They cut him to pieces and laughed at his pain. His eyes were gouged out, his skin was branded, and his teeth were shattered. Harry was deemened and demolished and broken and every adjective in between. When they raped him, because of course they would not leave him even that small bit of dignity, they fucked him hard and dry and raw. There was nothing that he could do to stop them. No word that meant no, no word that meant stop, no word that allowed him to beg for mercy.

There was only pain, and then there was only death.

Harry awoke flailing wildly at the air. His mouth was dry, although he had obviously bit his lips to keep from screaming, as his mouth was full of copious amounts of blood. He surged up from the bed, nearly falling to the floor in his hurry to reach the bathroom before he regurgitated the remains of whatever had been in his stomach.

He reached the toilet in time, vomiting profusely until he was simply dry heaving, but it wasn't enough. Harry felt raw again, as though it had just happened tonight and not a solid decade ago. He felt used and degraded and worthless. He had tears running down his face mingling with the blood. Finally, he collapsed to the floor holding his knees to his chest as he tried to concentrate on his occlumency shields.

Harry had never drained his core to the point where it ripped away his occlumency shields before, but as he retreated inward he realised that that was exactly what he had done. He had expended too significant of a portion of his core on the protection wards and now had to consciously power his shields to keep them in place. Harry shuddered at realising the danger he had placed himself in by draining himself that much. The collapse of his occlumency was one thing, but reliving his darkest memories was another. Harry had long since established massive fixtures inside his mind to contain the horrible things he had done and suffered in the last war. He could not handle those things. He refused to deal with them and over the years they had become something akin to a mental tumor. Occlumency alone protected his already questionable sanity. It allowed him to function above those horrors, but it also proposed a great weakness. Underneath his functioning mind lurked a maelstrom of psychological agony. In order for Harry to function, his occlumency shields could not be disrupted.

It took Harry hours to reconstruct his shields. The fabric of his mind had nearly collapsed due to the sudden depreciation of his magic and that forced Harry to act. He reassembled his mind, building it up from the ground up. The first thing he did was restructure the way his magic flowed through him. He gave number one priority to his mental shields, powering them before anything else. Harry then changed the structure of his memories, allowing the positive ones to freely float through their classifications. He designed an indexing system for his memories tracking every thought before redividing his mind into the two bodies that had existed previously.

Harry awoke on the bathroom floor exhausted and visibly shaking from the experience. Something like this could never happen again.

Even with his shields restored, over the next few days Harry still had memories drifting past his eyes. Many faces were paired with horrific deaths, some sooner than others. He ignored it as best he could, forcing him mind to focus on the mind numbing effects of school and homework, although he ignored the teachers and classes as much as they would allow him.

While in theory, approaching Quirrell was relatively simple, Harry found that in practice getting the man alone was anything but. Quirrell actively avoided him. Only two days after his occlumency shields failed, Harry had already been diverted, avoided, or by some other means, Quirrell had managed to circumvent him. And thusly, Harry was very irritated.

Severus was not quite sure what to make of the Potter boy. He was polite to a point, and outside of that initial meeting, he had not expressed much inside his classes. The boy knew too much for a muggle raised child. Where would he have learned all the information he knew,after all, almost no one could not have taught him occlumency. It was just strange occurrences piling on top of strange occurrences. Where had the boy been all these years? What had he done to the sorting hat?

Severus hated puzzles and the Potter boy was turning out to be a puzzle inside of a puzzle wrapped inside of an alphabet he had never seen before. Potter was just as arrogant, just as snotty as his thrice damned father. It had not made any difference that the boy had sorted into Slytherin rather than Gryffindor. At least, he kept trying to convince himself of this at least.

More than that, Severus refused to take points from his own house, and he had reservations about giving detentions to his snakes outside of his purview. That alone made him want to tear his hair out, since it meant Severus would be forced to spend time with the Potter brat.

And it was not as if Dumbledore did not have some secret plan involving the boy. Severus could almost imagine some form of hairbrained scheme that the headmaster had concocted at the last possible moment involving the boy. No, Severus knew Albus was a crafty beast, capable of horrors just as anyone else was. Snape snorted. Slytherin or not, the brat was not his concern.

At least, not until Albus Dumbledore and his large twinkling blue eyes intruded on his well- frankly irritating- existence.

Albus ran a weathered hand across Fawkes head. Everything revolved around Harry Potter. Albus had always know that. His heart ached in remorse for everything the boy would have to accomplish. It did not matter that the boy was only a boy. It did not matter that his sorting had been unexpected.

Severus had to be kept under control of course, it would not do to lose control of him especially since Dumbledore felt that everything was slipping through his fingers. He loathed to make any moves before he had a more complete understanding of the situation, but as things had progressed he only felt that he had made more mistakes. Perhaps he should have forced the boy to explain where he had been, rather than accepting Harry's explanation of his Mahi saving him.

He had not felt this lost in years. Dumbledore hoped that he simply was offbeat from the boy's reappearance, but he was beginning to suspect that that was not the case. He just had to trust that destiny would pick up where he himself was failing.