Chapter Text
In the end they decided to not tell Hermione. Not yet at least. They would first integrate her into their group and corrupt her a bit, like Harry and Ron had done back when life was normal and they didn’t randomly survive dying by traveling through time.
Then, maybe, they’d tell her about more of the things going on.
Hermione was the brightest witch of their generation, after all. But she also was a slightly stuck up, rule-abiding student that would probably not keep quiet about the planned murder of one of her teachers at the hand of time travelers, even if that teacher had been evil.
So, with that argument out of the way, Harry was bored. It wasn’t even Christmas yet, and they already had nothing to do anymore except go to their classes like normal people. He’d never been very good at that.
It did bother him that Dumbledore hadn’t even mentioned the philosopher’s stone or the third floor when they had talked after the Quidditch match. Maybe the old man just didn’t want Harry to know about what had really been the reason behind Quirrell being at Hogwarts with Voldemort on the back of his head.
That part, at least, he couldn’t keep from Harry. The headmaster already was convinced that the young Slytherin was traumatized for life because of what he had — not so — accidentally done to his teacher during his first Quidditch match. Not telling him that Quirrell was a bad guy, that supported the other bad guy that had killed Harry’s parents, just hadn’t been an option.
So that’s where they stood now. Harry couldn’t talk freely about anything that had to do with the philosopher’s stone, because he wasn’t told, and Dumbledore seemingly hadn’t even noticed yet that it was gone!
Merlin, sometimes he really doubted the competence of every teacher at this school.
——
Severus Snape had not expected the Potter boy to end up in his house, not after the boy had spent the last year with Sirius Black as his guardian. Neither had he expected the brat to befriend the Weasley twins of all people, land himself on the Quidditch team — which he himself had grudgingly placed the menace on after the stunt during his first flying lesson — or that he would go as far as to jump off his broom when Quirrell cursed it.
At this point, Professor Snape didn’t want to expect anything from the boy anymore. Every time he did, Harry Potter managed to do exactly the one thing that would be worse than anything Snape could have imagined.
Not that he felt sorry for Quirrell, not at all. The man had allowed Voldemort to posses him. He had deserved no less painful way to die.
But from what Snape had observed — which was quite a lot, since he was at the time murmuring the counter curse and the brat had been in apparent jumping distance to the teachers’ stands — Harry Potter had grinned when his broom had begun buckling, scanned the stand for Quirrell, and lunged for the man. And then, when the Defense professor had begun burning away under the child’s hands, he had held them down relentlessly.
Severus Snape was no fool, nor was he ignorant. He could recognize a planned attempt at murder when he saw it. The only thing he couldn’t in this situation, was make any sense of it.
The potions professor wandered the hallways of the school. Curfew for first and second years would be in effect in approximately twenty minutes, yet there were still masses of students out of their common rooms.
He was aware of the glare on his face, and how the students scrambled out of his way when he walked past, but he didn’t care right now.
What he cared about right now, was finding out how Harry potter had known about Quirrell when no one else had any idea.
“It’s just so boring when nothing happens, you know!”
Professor Snape’s left eyelid twitched at the sound of the boy’s voice. He, Fred and George Weasley had just rounded the corner a few meters away from him and the brat-who-lived was, as ever, complaining about his oh-so-boring life.
“Is the life of a normal student too monotonous for the great boy-who-lived, Potter?” Snape snarled, curling his lips.
Three pairs of eyes landed on him. The trio hadn’t even noticed him before he had spoken! The scowl on his face deepened.
“Oh, no, not at all, sir,” Potter piped up, “Learning about all of these subjects is really fun! It’s just that outside of classes and assignments there isn’t too much to do, really.” He shook his head and crossed his arms in front of his chest. “It’s not that we think we’re better than anyone else, everybody deserves someone out to kill them to make school more interesting!”
“Yeah,” one of the Weasley twins continued, Snape wasn’t sure which one it was, they weren’t wearing school robes. “It’s really our fault for dealing with that so quickly, we should have known better. Now we’ve got nothing to do!”
The other Weasley nodded along this twin’s words, then spoke up himself, “Well, I have tried to convince them to do some extracurricular potions studies with me, but they just don’t want to.”
That last one was the Slytherin Weasley, then. George, if Snape’s memory served right.
His mind stopped abruptly. Extracurricular potions studies? Surely the brat couldn’t mean experimentation?
He wanted to inquire about the subject of some second year student experimenting with potentially highly dangerous potion ingredients, but when his brain sprang back into action the trio was gone.
Merlin damn it.
——
Christmas rolled around the corner and Dumbledore hadn’t seemed like anything was out of the ordinary yet. The trio was starting to think that he would never notice until he tried to give the stone back to the Flamels.
But such things weren’t important right now, because it was Christmas morning!
When he woke up he hadn’t expected much of the celebrations and unpacking of the presents in the Slytherin common room, and while he was correct in thinking that it wouldn’t be as boisterous as it had always been in the Gryffindor common room, the few remaining students around him were in no way as cold and reserved as usual.
Harry got a few packs of fudge and a thick, green sweater with a big silver H on the front. He really would need to thank Mrs. Weasley for it, not just because she made him one, but because she also changed the normal warm colours for ones that suited the Slytherin aesthetic he had taken to quite a bit. And she didn’t just do that for him, either, but Fred also had gotten a green sweater.
When Fred had put it on for the first time that morning, Harry had barely been able to hold back tears he was laughing so hard. The older Slytherin on the other hand didn’t even seem surprised.
There, at the front of it, was a big, proud, silver G.
“George probably got the one with an F.” Fred shook his head. “Really, I know this is our fault, but doesn’t mum have any motherly instincts?”
——
“She also made one for Hermione,” Fred told him when they sat down in the Great Hall for breakfast. “George sent mum one letter about “the girl that he studies with sometimes, because she doesn’t really have friends” and she immediately sprang into action.”
Merlin, that woman really was the epitome of a mother.
——
Exactly three days after Christmas Fred noticed two things when he sat down for dinner.
The first was that Professor Dumbledore looked old. Old and very serious.
The second, and more important of the two, was that the headmaster’s eyes weren’t twinkling. Not even a bit.
Harry shot him a look and mouthed, “Think he noticed?”
So that’s what this was about. It was about time the old professor noticed something wasn’t quite right, really. Shouldn’t he have checked on the stone immediately after the Quidditch match where Quirrell was… revealed as the bad guy?
Harry had told them that around this time last time around the mirror had first been moved into the room protected by the other professors’ traps and challenges. So he finally noticed when he did that. Great! At least he checked on the stone this time!
Ah well. As long as he doesn’t know who exactly took the stone.
The definitely not twinkling but still startlingly blue eyes scanned the Great Hall until they landed on Harry.
Of course he knew.
——
When Dumbledore asked Harry to meet him in his office the second time that school year, the boy-who-poofed was a lot more nervous. At least he didn’t have to worry about the headmaster using legilimency against him; He was pretty sure that the mental shields he had would keep anything out of his head.
That still left him with the problem that he actually was responsible for the disappearance and destruction of the philosopher’s stone and that he had no idea why the headmaster wanted to speak to him now.
Merlin he did hope Dumbledore didn’t just want to check up on him because of his apparent trauma. Harry might actually prefer being asked to come to the office to talk about the stone’s disappearance if that was the case.
“Lemon drop.” The Gargoyle slid to the side, revealing the staircase leading up to the headmaster’s office. Honestly, anyone who knows the old man’s theme for passwords would be able to guess themselves inside! Unless, of course he only set candy related passwords when he expected guests, but Harry doubted that. How often had he seen some teacher enter this office at a random time?
“Ah, Harry, I’m glad you could come so quickly. I hope you are doing well?”
The headmaster’s voice shook him out of his thoughts. The security measures of Dumbledore’s office weren’t too important for his own goals, he had to admit.
He shrugged. “It’s no problem, it’s the weekend after all.”
A nod followed that statement. “Good, good.” The old professor sat down and sighed heavily. “Harry, I feel that the only times we get to talk are when something bad happens, and I apologize for that, but there has been a development I see prudent to inform you of.”
Harry raised an eyebrow. That didn’t sound like Dumbledore suspected him to have had anything to do with the stone’s not-so-sudden disappearance. “A development, sir?” This was something he wanted to hear.
“Something I hadn’t seen necessary to inform you of during our last talk was that there was a very powerful magical artifact hidden in this school over the past months.”
Harry did his best to put on a surprised expression. “Is that the reason the third floor is banned for students, sir?”
“Indeed, my boy.” The headmaster looked at him with something akin to joyful surprise. Merlin that was strange. “This artifact had specific uses, one of them would, for example, allow a person that is close to dying, to save themselves. And the fact that it is gone now is so much more worrying after the events of your first Quidditch match.”
Dumbledore stood up again, started pacing, and set up to start talking again, but Harry thought he knew now what the headmaster was going to say. Voldemort’s soul was still out there, weak as it was, but if he managed to possess someone again and had that someone steal the stone all sneaky like that was a problem.
Well. Harry wasn’t worried. He knew, after all, how the stone really vanished from its place in the mirror. He couldn’t tell the professor any of that, though, so he settled for playing up the blissfully ignorant first year, who was just worried that something bad might happen.
“There is almost certainly no need for worry, but I did see it as necessary to inform you of this, since there still resides the small chance that another supporter of Voldemort was the one to remove the artifact from its place in this castle. If that is the case they might succeed in bringing him back, too. As I already told you the last time we spoke-“ One of Harry’s eyes twitched slightly, this most certainly wasn’t a conversation as much as a monologue “-a small part of Voldemort’s soul continues to survive, in whatever twisted way such a half-life can be called surviving.
It is because of this possibility that I wished to inform you of this development.”
Merlin he’s finally done. With a slight pang of terror Harry noticed that a non-verbal humm didn’t pose as a satisfying answer to the headmaster in this situation.
“I- Thank you for telling me?” He scrambled for things to say. What could one conceivably say to a “revelation” like this? There was no script for these situations!
“I see that this must come as quite a shock for you.” Dumbledore had, as so often, analyzed Harry’s expression and body language and interpreted them in exactly the wrong way. The Slytherin was very glad for this innate gift of the headmaster’s and opted to just nod, instead of attempting to answer again.
They stood in silence for a few seconds more, before Dumbledore sent him off to “enjoy the rest of the weekend before classes start again”, so now here Harry was, all but running to the room of requirement, where Fred and George would be waiting for him.
At least he had nothing to worry about when it came to Dumbledore suspecting the three of them of having anything to do with the stone. He really didn’t want that on top of the stress of trying to survive school like a normal student. Harry made a face when he remembered what other “fun” adventures he had in his first year the last time around wouldn’t happen now.
Why did they have to do all this so early in the year?