"Wait a minute, you can't just leave, are we not going to talk about what just happened?" Had he imagined it? Judging by the blush on Draco's cheeks, he definitely hadn't.
"Meet me tonight. Usual time, third floor classroom." Draco dropped his gaze for a moment, then met Harry's eyes. Harry was glad he didn't seem to be the only one whose entire worldview had been rocked in the last five minutes. He thought about pulling him closer, demanding they talk about it now, but they really didn't have time. He stepped back, letting Draco smooth down the front of his robes. "See you tonight, then," he agreed, and with one last lingering look, he was gone.
.-.-.
Harry was noticeably distracted through the rest of his classes. Luckily, people seemed pretty happy to put it down to the shock of having faced a dragon the day before.
Hermione seemed to know better, by the suspicious looks she kept shooting him. Things like that were just another day in the life of Harry Potter. "What's the matter with you today?" she asked at lunch, and Harry shrugged, wishing his brain could think of anything except the feel of Draco Malfoy's lips on his own. Someone could have walked up to him and given him the solution to the second task, and he probably wouldn't have paid attention.
"Nothing," he lied easily. "Just tired."
The curly-haired girl levelled him with a long, slightly sad look. "I miss the days when you used to tell me things," she said eventually. A tendril of guilt wormed its way around Harry's heart. Should he be trusting her more than he was? What if he'd misjudged things?
He shook it off. If Hermione wanted to be told things, she should have stuck up for him when Ron was being a pillock.
"I don't have to tell you everything about my life, Hermione," he replied, slightly harsher than he'd intended. Hermione flinched, and Harry felt bad about it for a minute.
There was a moment, right there, that Harry would later look back on and wonder if he could have changed things. If he'd just opened up to Hermione, she might have come around. But he was tired, and he'd just faced a dragon, and kissed Draco Malfoy, and he really didn't have the brain capacity for anything more complicated. So he let it go, and Hermione pursed her lips, and walked away.
.-.-.
Other things that Harry didn't have the brain capacity for included a meeting with the heirs right before dinner, but he didn't know when he'd next get the chance, and the clock was ticking. They deserved to know the truth.
They were all gathered when he arrived, slumping down into his usual empty chair.
"What's all this about, then?" Anthony asked, quill tucked behind his ear as he looked up from an essay he was writing. "Surely you don't want to study that desperately after yesterday."
No, if Harry had his way, he'd be in bed until dinnertime. "I was talking to Neville, and I think it's time I tell you all about the full reason Dumbledore can't know about this. About me. I'm trusting you with an awful lot, and it's unfair that you're not being told why. Also, you'll need to be in on it if we're going to achieve what I'm hoping for."
"And just what is it, exactly, that you're hoping to achieve?" The question came from Padma, her gaze shrewd. Harry winked at her.
"World domination." The answer made several people laugh. Harry sat up straighter, and took a long breath.
"When I was a baby, Dumbledore did a ritual to block my family magics from my core."
There was a beat of silence. Everyone was too horrified to speak. Then finally, Susan swore loudly. The sound of such a filthy curse mild-mannered almost as announcement.
coming from the Hufflepuff's lips was shocking as Harry's
"How dare he!" she exclaimed. "If my aunt ever found out, he'd be dead before he could make it to Azkaban!"
"One day, maybe," Harry said with a shrug. "It's not worth getting the truth out just yet. I need too much information from him first."
"He's turning you into a weapon." Harry whipped around to look at Sullivan Fawley, whose dark eyes were frighteningly aware. "A block that extended from a man like him on a person as powerful as yourself, you'd explode as soon as you turned seventeen. Or the moment the block was released."
The realisation went around the room quickly. Harry nodded. "Whatever he's planning, he's aiming for a moment in my life, before I turn seventeen, where he can pull the pin and make me go boom. Along with the block was a Compulsion charm — to make me reckless, and to make me easily influenced. Dumbledore made himself my saviour, with just enough magic to stop me looking for other options. So that when I was surrounded by people who said that all Slytherins were dark wizards and I should hate them, I agreed. When someone told me all Hufflepuffs were the Hogwarts rejects, I smiled and nodded. When I heard that Ravenclaws had their noses too far in books to be worth talking to, I didn't question it. Obviously, I know better now. I got the block and the charm removed before third year, and it's only a matter of time before he finds out. But I'll be ready when he does."
"So where do we come in?" Blaise asked quietly.
"When I expose Dumbledore, it's going to rock the foundations of the wizarding world. As far as they're all concerned, he can do no wrong, and I'm just an idiot teenager with a death-wish and a puffed up sense of self-importance. Skeeter isn't helping with these articles."
"Aunt Amelia's working on that," Susan assured. "You should get a letter from her at the end of the week." Harry nodded; that was one angle covered. "Between us we have thirteen seats to inherit. I know of three more I can trust. And I'm betting there's a few more, if we can go about it the right way." He glanced pointedly at the Slytherins. There was no way they and Draco were the only Slytherins who didn't want the dark to rise. They just had to be wary of their parents.
"I'm not counting thirteen," Anthony cut in, looking around the room. Harry bit his lip; he had to tell them eventually.
"I'm the heir to the Potter, Black and Peverell seats," he declared. There was no point in telling them about Slytherin; from the sounds of things, that would sit passive his whole life. "Well, fuck," Daphne muttered incredulously. "That'll take three of Dumbledore's proxy seats away." A catlike smirk flashed across her pale face. "You're going to cause all sorts of trouble, aren't you, Potter?"
"That is how it usually ends up, yeah," he admitted, because even though he didn't try and cause trouble, it always just sort of… happened. "So there's enough of us to have a good safety net when it all goes to shit. But there could be more. Even if they're not with us, if we can make them neutral at the very least — in an ideal world, every student who leaves this castle in the next five years would do so wanting to serve neither Voldemort nor Dumbledore. Because the way things are going, that's a very real choice they're going to have to make."
"Who would you rather we serve, you?" Cassius asked somewhat snidely. Harry winced.
"Merlin, no. I'm asking people to serve no one, but to fight with me. For themselves. For the good of the wizarding world."
A long silence followed his words. It was Daphne who broke it by snorting. "Bit dramatic." Harry flushed.
"You're proposing a third side to the war? Right under Dumbledore's nose?" Susan's sharp gaze met his. He nodded slowly. "Yeah. Yeah, I suppose I am."
Harry looked around the room at the children gathered in front of him because that's what they were. Children who had seen too much, who had been raised in a time that didn't give them a chance to be young, but children nonetheless. What was it the muggles were always saying? Children were the future?
If Harry didn't take a stand, he'd be dead before he was seventeen. And if the only people willing to help him were kids his own age, well. He was constantly surprising people — why couldn't they, as well?
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