Harry swallowed hard and said, "Greetings - ah, hssss, no, ah, greetingss."
"Sso," hissed the snake. "You sspeak, I hear. I sspeak, you hear?"
"Yess, I hear," hissed Harry. "You are an Animaguss?"
"Obvioussly," hissed the snake. "Thirty-sseven ruless, number thirty-four: Become Animaguss. All ssensible people do, if can. Thuss, very rare." The snake's eyes were flat surfaces ensconced within dark pits, sharp black pupils in dark gray fields. "This iss mosst ssecure way to sspeak. You ssee? No otherss undersstand uss."
"Even if they are ssnake Animagi?"
"Not unlesss heir of Sslytherin willss." The snake gave a series of short hisses which Harry's brain translated as sardonic laughter. "Sslytherin not sstupid. Ssnake Animaguss not ssame as Parsselmouth. Would be huge flaw in sscheme."
Well that definitely argued that Parseltongue was personal magic, not snakes being sentient beings with a learnable language -
"I am not regisstered," hissed the snake. The dark pits of its eyes stared at Harry. "Animaguss musst be regisstered. Penalty is two yearss imprissonment. Will you keep my ssecret, boy?"
"Yess," hissed Harry. "Would never break promisse."
The snake seemed to hold still, as though in shock, and then began to sway again. "We come here next in sseven dayss. Bring cloak to passs unsseen, bring hourglasss to move through time -"
"You know?" hissed Harry in shock. "How -"
Again the series of short quick hisses that translated as sardonic laughter. "You arrive in my firsst classs while sstill in other classs, sstrike down enemy with pie, two ballss of memory -"
"Never mind," hissed Harry. "Sstupid question, forgot you were ssmart."
"Foolissh thing to forget," said the snake, but the hiss did not seem offended.
"Hourglasss is resstricted," Harry said. "Cannot usse until ninth hour."
The snake twitched its head, a snakish nod. "Many resstrictionss. Locked to your usse only, cannot be sstolen. Cannot transsport other humanss. But ssnake carried in pouch, I ssuspect will go with. Think posssible to hold hourglasss motionlesss within sshell, without dissturbing wardss, while you turn sshell around it. We will tesst in sseven dayss. Will not sspeak of planss beyond thiss. You ssay nothing, to no one. Give no ssign of expectancy, none. Undersstand?"
Harry nodded.
"Ansswer in sspeech."
"Yess."
"Will do as I ssaid?"
"Yess. But," Harry gave a wobbling rasp that was how his mind had translated a hesitant 'Ahhh' into snakish, "I do not promisse to do whatever thiss iss, you have not ssaid -"
The snake performed a shiver that Harry's mind translated as a severe glare. "Of coursse not. Will disscusss sspecificss at next meeting."
The blur and motion reversed itself, and Professor Quirrell was standing there once more. For a moment the Defense Professor himself seemed to sway, as the snake had swayed, and his eyes seemed cold and flat; and then his shoulders straightened and he was human once more.
And the aura of doom had returned.
Professor Quirrell's chair scooted back for him, and he sat down in it. "No sense in letting this go to waste," Professor Quirrell said as he picked up his spoon, "though at the moment I would much prefer a live mouse. One can never quite disentangle the mind from the body it wears, you see..."
Harry slowly took his seat and began eating.
"So the line of Salazar did not die with You-Know-Who after all," said Professor Quirrell after a time. "It would seem that rumors have already begun to spread, among our fine student body, that you are Dark; I wonder what they would think, if they knew that."
"Or if they knew that I had destroyed a Dementor," Harry said, and shrugged. "I figure all the fuss will blow over over the next time I do something interesting. Hermione is having trouble, though, and I was wondering if you might have any suggestions for her."
The Defense Professor ate several spoonfuls of soup in silence, then; and when he spoke again, his voice was oddly flat. "You really care about that girl."
"Yes," Harry said quietly.
"I suppose that is why she was able to bring you out of your Dementation?"
"More or less," Harry said. The statement was true in a way, just not exact; it was not that his Demented self had cared, but that it had been confused.
"I did not have any friends like that when I was young." Still the same emotionless voice. "What would have become of you, I wonder, if you had been alone?"
Harry shivered before he could stop himself.
"You must be feeling grateful to her."
Harry just nodded. Not quite exact, but true.
"Then here is what I might have done at your age, if there had been anyone to do it for -"
Chapter 50: Self Centeredness
Padma Patil had finished her dinner a little late, getting on toward seven-thirty, and was now striding quickly out of the Great Hall on her way to the Ravenclaw dorm and the study rooms. Gossiping was fun and destroying Granger's reputation was more fun, but it could distract from schoolwork. She'd put off a six-inch essay on lomillialor wood due in next morning's Herbology class, and she needed to finish it tonight.
It was while she was passing through a long, twisting, narrow stone corridor that the whisper came, sounding like it was coming from right behind her.
"Padma Patil..."
She spun around quick as lightning, her wand already snatched up from a pocket of her robes and leaping into her hands, if Harry Potter thought he could sneak up on and scare her that easily -
There was no one there.
Instantly Padma spun around and looked in the other direction, if it had been a Ventriloquism Charm -
There was no one there, either.
The whispering sigh came again, soft and dangerous with a slight hissing undertone.
"Padma Patil, Slytherin girl..."
"Harry Potter, Slytherin boy," she said out loud.
She'd fought Potter and his Chaos Legion a dozen times over, and she knew that this was Harry Potter doing this somehow...
...even though the Ventriloquism Charm was only line-of-sight, and in the winding corridor, she could easily see all the way to the nearest twist both forward and backward, and there was no one there...
...it didn't matter. She knew her enemy.
There was a whispery chuckle, now coming from beside her, and she spun around and pointed her wand at the whisper and shouted "Luminos!"
The red bolt of light shot out and struck the wall, which lit with a crimson glow that soon faded.
She hadn't really expected it to work. Harry Potter couldn't possibly be invisible, not really invisible, that was magic most grownups couldn't do, and she'd never believed nine-tenths of the stories about him.
The whispery voice laughed again, now on her other side.
"Harry Potter stands on the precipice," whispered the voice, now sounding very close to her ear, "he is wavering, but you, you are already falling, Slytherin girl..."
"The hat never called out Slytherin for my name, Potter!" She backed up against the wall, so she wouldn't have to watch behind herself, and raised her wand in an attack stance.
Again the soft laugh. "Harry Potter has been in the Ravenclaw common room for the last half-hour, helping Kevin Entwhistle and Michael Corner rehearse Potions recipes. But it matters not. I am here to deliver a warning to you, Padma Patil, and if you choose to ignore it, that is your own affair."
"Fine," she said coldly. "Go ahead and warn me, Potter, I'm not afraid of you."
"Slytherin was a great House, once," said the whisper; it sounded sadder, now. "Slytherin was once a House you would have been proud to choose, Padma Patil. But something turned wrong, something turned sour; do you know what went awry in Slytherin House, Padma Patil?"
"No, and I don't care!"
"But you should care," said the whisper, now sounding like it was coming from just behind her head where it stood almost pressed against the wall. "For you are still that girl
whom the Sorting Hat offered that choice. Do you think that just choosing Ravenclaw means that you are not Pansy Parkinson, and will not ever become Pansy Parkinson, no matter how you conduct yourself otherwise?"
Despite everything, now, small chills of fear were spreading out from her spine and running over her skin. She'd heard those stories about Harry Potter too, that he was a secret Legilimens. But she still stood straight, and she put all the bite she could into her voice when she said, "The Slytherins went Dark to get power, just like you did, Potter. And I won't, not ever."
"But you'll spread vicious rumors about an innocent girl," whispered the voice, "even though it will not help you attain any of your own ambitions, and without considering that she has powerful allies who might take offense. That is not the proud Slytherin of the old days, Padma Patil, that is not the pride of Salazar, that is Slytherin gone rotten, Padma Parkinson not Padma Malfoy..."
She was getting more creeped out than she ever had been in her life, and the possibility was starting to occur to her that this might really be a ghost. She hadn't ever heard that ghosts could hide themselves like this, but maybe they just didn't usually do it - not to mention that most ghosts weren't this eerie, they were just dead people after all - "Who are you? The Bloody Baron?"
"When Harry Potter was bullied and beaten," the voice whispered, "he commanded all his allies to refrain from vengeance; do you remember that, Padma Patil? For Harry Potter is wavering, but not yet lost; he is struggling, he knows himself to be in peril. But Hermione Granger made no such request of her own allies. Harry Potter is angered with you now, Padma Patil, more angered than he would ever be on his own behalf... and he has allies of his own."
A shudder went through her, she knew that it was visible and she hated herself for it.
"Oh, don't be afraid," breathed the voice. "I will not hurt you. For you see, Padma Patil, Hermione Granger truly is innocent. She does not stand on the precipice, she is not falling. She did not ask her allies to refrain from hurting you, because the thought did not even occur to her as a possibility. And Harry Potter knows very well that if he hurt you or caused you to be hurt, for Hermione Granger's sake, then she would never speak to him again until the Sun burned low and the last star failed in the night sky." The voice was very sad now. "She truly is a kindly girl, a person such as I could only wish to be..."
"Granger can't cast the Patronus Charm!" said Padma. "If she was really as nice as she pretends to be -"
"Can you cast the Patronus Charm, Padma Patil? You dared not even attempt it, you feared what the result would be."
"That's not true! I didn't have time, that was all!"
The whisper continued. "But Hermione Granger did try, openly before her friends, and when her magic failed she was surprised and dismayed. For there are secrets to the Patronus Charm that few ever knew, and maybe none now know but I." A soft, whispery chuckle. "Let it stand that it is no stain of her spirit that halts her light from coming forth. Hermione Granger cannot cast the Patronus Charm for the very same reason that Godric Gryffindor, who raised these halls, never could."
The corridor was becoming colder, she was certain of it, as though someone were using the Chilling Charm.
"And Harry Potter is not Hermione Granger's only ally." Now there was an undertone of dry amusement in that whisper, it reminded her suddenly and frighteningly of Professor Quirrell. "Filius Flitwick and Minerva McGonagall are quite fond of her, I do believe. Did it occur to you that if those two learned what you were doing to Hermione Granger, they might become less fond of you? They might not intervene openly, perhaps; but they might be a little slower to award you House Points, a little slower to steer opportunities your way -"
"Potter snarked on me?"
A ghostly chuckle, a dry heh-heh-heh. "Do you think those two are stupid, deaf and blind?" In a sadder whisper, "Do you think Hermione Granger is not precious to them, that they will not see her hurting? As they might have been fond of you once, their bright young Padma Patil, but you are throwing it away..."
Padma's throat was dry. She hadn't thought of that, not at all.
"I wonder how many people will end up caring for you, Padma Patil, on this path that you now tread. Is it worth that much, just to distance yourself further from your sister? To be the shadow to Parvati's light? Your deepest fear has always been to fall into harmony with her, back into harmony with her I should say; but is it worth hurting an innocent girl, just to make yourself that much more different? Must you be the evil twin, Padma Patil, can you not find a different good to pursue?"
Her heart was hammering in her chest. She'd, she'd never talked about that with anyone -
"I have always wondered at how students bully each other," sighed the voice. "How children make life difficult for themselves, how they turn their schools into prisons even with their own hands. Why do human beings make their own lives so unpleasant? I can give you a part of the answer, Padma Patil. It is because people do not stop and think before causing pain, if they do not imagine that they themselves could also be hurt, that they might also suffer from their own misdeeds. But suffer you will, oh, yes, Padma Patil, suffer you will, if you stay on this road. You will suffer the same pain of loneliness, the same pain of others' fear and distrust, that you now inflict on Hermione Granger. Only for you it will be deserved."
Her wand was shaking in her hand.
"You did not choose sides when you went to Ravenclaw, girl. You choose your side by the way you live your life, what you do to other people and what you do to yourself. Will you illuminate others' lives, or darken them? That is the choice between Light and Dark, not any word the Sorting Hat cries out. And the hard part, Padma Patil, is not saying 'Light', the hard part is deciding which is which, and admitting it to yourself when you begin down the wrong road."
There was silence. It went on for a time, and Padma realized that she had been dismissed.
Padma almost dropped her wand, when she tried to put it back into her pocket. She almost fell, when she took a step forward away from the wall, and turned to go -
"I have not always chosen rightly between Light and Dark," the whisper said, now loud and harsh directly into her ear. "Do not take my wisdom as a final word, girl, do not fear to question it, for though I tried I have sometimes failed, oh, yes, I have failed. But you are hurting a true innocent, and you will achieve none of your ambitions by doing so, it is not for any cunning plan. You are inflicting pain purely for the sake of the pleasure it brings you. I have not always chosen rightly between Light and Dark, but that I know for darkness, for certain. You are hurting an innocent girl, and escaping retribution only because she is too kindly to tolerate her allies moving against you. I cannot hurt you for that, so know only that I cannot respect it. You are unworthy of Slytherin; go and do your Herbology homework, Ravenclaw girl!"
The final whisper came out in a louder hiss that sounded almost like a snake, and Padma fled, she fled down the corridors like Lethifolds were chasing her, she ran heedless of the rules about running in the corridors, even when she passed other students who looked at her in surprise, she did not stop, she ran all the way to the Ravenclaw dorms with her pulse pounding in her neck, the door asked her "Why does the Sun shine in the day instead of the nighttime?" and it took her three tries before she could make her answer coherent, and then the door came open and she saw -
- a few girls and boys, some young and some old, all staring at her, and in one corner at the pentagonal table, Harry Potter and Michael Corner and Kevin Entwhistle, looking up from their textbooks.
"Sweet Merlin!" exclaimed Penelope Clearwater, rising from a couch. "What happened to you, Padma?"
"I," she stuttered, "I, I heard - a ghost -"
"It wasn't the Bloody Baron, was it?" said Clearwater. She drew her wand and a moment later she was holding a cup, and then an Aguamenti later the cup was filled with water. "Here, drink this, sit down -"
Padma was already striding toward the pentagonal table. She looked at Harry Pott
er, who was looking at her with his own gaze, calm and grave and a little sad.
"You did this!" Padma said. "How - you - how dare you!"
There was a sudden hush in the Ravenclaw dorm.
Harry just looked at her.
And said, "Is there anything I can help you with?"
"Don't deny it," Padma said, her voice shaking, "you set that ghost on me, it said -"
"I mean it," Harry said. "Can I help you with anything? Get you some food, or go fetch a soda for you, or help you with your homework, or anything like that?"
Everyone was staring at the two of them.
"Why?" Padma said. She couldn't think of anything else to say, she didn't understand.
"Because some of us are standing on the precipice," Harry said. "And the difference is what you do for other people. Will you let me help you with something, Padma, please?"
She stared at him, and knew, in that moment, that he'd gotten his own warning, same as her.
"I..." she said. "I've got to write six inches on lomillialor -"
"Let me run up to my dorm room and get my Herbology stuff," Harry said. He rose from the pentagonal table, looked at Entwhistle and Corner. "Sorry, guys, I'll see you later."
They didn't say anything, just stared, along with everyone else in the dorm room, as Harry Potter walked over to the stairs.
And just as he started up, he said, "And no one's to pester her with questions unless she wants to talk about it, I hope everyone's got that?"
"Got it," said most of the first years and some of the older students, a few of them sounding quite scared.
And she talked about a lot of things with Harry Potter besides lomillialor wood - even her fear of falling back into harmony with Parvati, which she'd never talked about with anyone before, but then Harry's ghostly ally already knew. And Harry had reached into his pouch and pulled out some odd books, loaning them to her on condition of complete secrecy, saying that if she could comprehend those books it would change the pattern of her thinking enough that she'd never fall into harmony with Parvati again...
Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality Page 82