Disclaimer:
Harry Potter and all of its characters belong to J.K. Rowling.
I own nothing but the original characters I make.
"Dialogue"
'Thoughts'
-Author notes-
Chapter 23: The Weight of Secrets
On Sunday, heavy rain continued to pour, forcing all the students to spend their first weekend indoors. Even in the dungeons, they could feel the rain by the way it moved the lake above them.
Harry had barely slept.
He lay in his four-poster bed long after the others had risen, staring at the canopy above him. The words from the hidden book kept replaying in his mind. James Potter, the Grim Reaper.
His father had done those things. The war hero everyone whispered about had been a butcher.
And Harry could not look at Pansy without feeling sick after finding out how her mother had been killed.
'She doesn't know,' he thought. 'She can't know. If she knew, she would hate me.'
He forced himself out of bed, dressed, and followed Draco and the others to breakfast.
He ate mechanically, tasting nothing.
Pansy chatted about the upcoming Charms homework. Crabbe debated whether to have bacon or sausage, and Draco made a dry joke about Professor Flitwick's height.
Harry smiled when he was supposed to. He laughed when they laughed. But inside, he was feeling hollow.
By afternoon, the rain had not let up. The Slytherin common room was unusually quiet...most of the older students had retreated to their dorms or decided to spend some time at the library.
The green glow of the lake filtered through the windows, casting shifting patterns on the dark stone walls. The fire in the great hearth crackled warmly, its flames reflecting off the leather sofas.
Harry, Draco, Pansy, and Crabbe had claimed the cluster of armchairs nearest the fire.
"I'm bored," Pansy announced, tossing a glossy magazine onto the low table. "Someone do something interesting."
"I'll teach Harry wizard chess," Draco said, pulling a worn chess set from a nearby shelf. "If he's brave enough to lose."
"You're the one who's going to lose," Harry said, grateful for the distraction.
Draco set up the board with pieces carved of dark and light stone. When Draco made his first move, pawn to E4, the white pawn turned its head and sneered at Harry.
"You're going to regret this," the pawn said.
Harry stared. "Did that pawn just talk?"
"Of course, it's wizard chess," Draco said, as if that explained everything. "The pieces have personalities. They may even give you some advice… if they like you. If they don't…" He shrugged. "They'll make your life difficult."
"I once spilled tomato sauce on the Queen, and she refused to move after that," commented Vincent without moving his eyes away from his book.
"I see…" Harry moved his own pawn. The black piece grumbled but obeyed.
The game was more intense than he had expected. The pieces shouted insults and encouragement in equal measure.
It was obvious that Draco had a lot of practice, but Harry had an instinct for the game. He had played a lot of chess in his previous life...it was one of the few activities he could perform while in bed, though not against sentient pieces.
By the time Draco's king was cornered, the blond boy's jaw had dropped.
"Checkmate," Harry said.
Draco stared at the board. "How did you do that?"
"Beginner's luck," Harry said, though he knew it wasn't.
Draco shook his head, but he was smiling. "Okay, I want a rematch."
While Draco set up the board again, Pansy picked up her magazine. Witch Weekly, the latest issue, its cover featuring a smiling witch in emerald robes and the headline: "Who Wore It Best? The Top Ten Robes at the Ministry Gala."
"Listen to this," Pansy said, flipping through the pages. "Lady Weasley was seen sporting a new acromantula-silk cloak, rumoured to have cost more than most wizards earn in a year. When asked about her family's recent acquisition of a summer villa in the south of France, she said, 'Hard work and loyalty to the Ministry of Magic always pays off.'" Pansy made a gagging noise. "Hard work. Her husband sits in a chair and signs papers."
Harry glanced at Pansy's magazine for a moment and saw the picture of Lady Weasley. There was some resemblance to the gentle witch he thought he knew, although this version looked taller and thinner, and of course, very elegantly dressed.
He also picked up on her comment. "Loyalty to the Ministry of Magic," he had learned that loyalty to the Ministry actually meant loyalty to Albus Dumbledore, since he was the one pulling all the strings from his throne at Hogwarts.
"The Weasleys are the worst," Draco agreed, not looking up from the chessboard.
Crabbe, who had been quiet all morning, reached into his robe and pulled out a small parcel wrapped in wax paper. He unwrapped it carefully, revealing a golden-brown tart oozing with sticky filling.
"Treacle tart," he said, cutting it into four equal pieces with his wand. "The house-elves made it, because I asked them nicely."
"You asked nicely?" Pansy raised an eyebrow. "Since when do house-elves listen to students?"
Crabbe shrugged. "Some of them do. Also, I help them in the kitchens sometimes. I think they like me."
Harry took a piece of the tart. It was warm, sweet, and perfect...the best thing he had tasted since arriving at Hogwarts. For a moment, the weight on his chest lifted.
"This is amazing, Vincent," Harry said.
Crabbe nodded, looking very pleased.
They played two more games. Draco won the second, and Harry managed to scrape a victory in the third.
Pansy read aloud increasingly ridiculous gossip columns. Her snarky commentary was even able to get a chuckle out of Crabbe.
Time passed, but Harry's mind kept drifting to something else.
He kept throwing sideways glances at Pansy, at her dark hair, sharp eyes, and comfortable smile. Even though he had only known her for a week, he had learned to like her. She was a good person who didn't deserve what had happened to her family. And now he knew that his father had been responsible for her mother's death.
'She doesn't know,' he told himself again. 'And she can never know.'
"Harry? You alright?" Draco asked, interrupting his thoughts. "You've been staring at the board for five minutes. Want to play another game?"
"Sorry," Harry said, shaking his head. "I'm just feeling a bit tired."
"Speaking of tired," Draco said, leaning back in his chair, "I've been practicing the Lumos charm, you know… for Professor Flitwick's class. I did it so many times yesterday that I got completely exhausted. My vision went blurry, and I had to lie down for an hour."
Pansy looked up from her magazine. "That's magical exhaustion. It's covered in one of our first-year books, The Young Wizard's Guide to Magical Theory, I think. Your brain gets overloaded when you use magic too often. You just need to rest."
Harry nodded, but then he realised something.
'Magical exhaustion,' he thought. She's wrong, though. Or at least, she's only telling half the truth. Magical exhaustion was not just about mental fatigue; there was more to it.
He knew this because he had been translating the Old English text from "A Treatise on Magical Cores" for a few days now. The text was difficult to understand, but he had managed to decipher several key passages.
As the title indicated, Morgana of the Fells had written about something called a magical core, a metaphysical organ that every witch and wizard was born with.
It was this magical core that distinguished magical people from Muggles, and it was in this organ where magic was temporarily stored before being channeled through the wand.
"The core is not a muscle to be tired," she had written. "It is a vessel. When it empties, the wizard feels weak. When it is full, the wizard is strong. To push beyond the vessel's limits is to risk permanent damage."
If magical exhaustion was simply a matter of the core being depleted, then resting was not just helpful...it was necessary.
However, the reliance on such a magical organ to store and use magic meant that magic could be lost or taken away, as long as this organ became sealed or damaged beyond repair.
And Harry had the suspicion that this was why the Ministry did not want people to know about this.
Why was it not taught at Hogwarts, and why had all the books about magical cores been banned or destroyed?
Because if people knew that their magic came from a tangible source that could be blocked or removed, they might start asking questions.
They might begin to understand how the Ministry performed its most severe punishment...the permanent stripping of a wand and the ability to use magic ever again.
How did they do it? Did they have a spell? A ritual? A device that could reach inside a wizard and take what was theirs?
Harry's stomach turned at the thought.
Dumbledore did not want anyone to know that magic could be taken. Because then they would know that he had the power to take it.
He looked at Draco, at Pansy, at Crabbe, who were his only allies in this twisted world.
He wanted to tell them. To share what he had learned. To warn them that the credit system was not just about points...it was about control. About the threat of losing everything.
But he could not.
'First,' he thought, 'because I might be wrong. My translation might be incomplete, or my assumptions might be false.'
After all, his only source of information for this was that old book written by an author he knew nothing about. So it could still be factually incorrect, even if its contents made sense right now.
'And second… if I'm right, this is dangerous knowledge. The kind that gets people disappeared.'
So, he decided that for now, he would need to keep his mouth shut about this. Perhaps there would come a time in the future when he would share everything with them, but not now.
The afternoon carried on, and so did the rain. They played a few more games of chess, ate the last of the treacle tart, and listened to Pansy's increasingly dramatic readings of Witch Weekly.
By the time dinner rolled around, Harry had almost managed to forget the book hidden beneath the library shelf.
Almost.
That night, long after the lights had dimmed and the other boys had fallen asleep, Harry sat up in his four-poster bed.
The diary was in his hands. His ballpoint pen moved across the page, filling it with words he could not say aloud.
"I found out who wrote most of that history book. It was Fleamont Potter ...my grandfather. He died the day I was born."
"Someone finished the book after he died. Someone hid it in the library, hoping someone would find it. Was it a coincidence that I found it? Or was it left there for me?"
He could not help but think about all the coincidences he had encountered so far and wondered if it was just fate or something else.
"The ancient book about magical cores that was left in a forgotten corner of Flourish & Blotts. The history book, the only copy in existence, shoved under a shelf, as if placed there for someone to discover."
"It can't all be luck. Someone is helping me. Someone who knows the truth and wants me to find it. But who? And why?"
Harry paused, his pen hovering over the page.
Eventually, he gave up, closed the diary, and hid it under his mattress.
Then, on impulse, he slid out of bed and walked to the window.
The dark water of the Black Lake pressed against the glass. Shadows
moved in the depths...fish, merfolk, or perhaps something larger. Harry pressed his face against the cold glass, trying to see beyond the light.
For a moment, he thought he saw a figure floating inside the lake. It was a tall, cloaked, barely visible humanoid figure.
He blinked, and it was gone.
Harry shook his head. 'No… I'm just seeing things. I must be too tired.' He told himself it was just his imagination running wild.
But he could not shake the feeling that someone had been watching him from the shadows.
He did not sleep well that night.
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