Chapter 23: The hostage

It had taken a while, mostly because they'd revised the entire transfiguration curriculum while they were at it, but after three hours of work, both Cedric and Harry had managed to turn metal into something organic.

Cedric had, on Harry's advice, gone for something not so difficult. The simple fact he could do the transfiguration at all would very likely get him an O+ unless he'd made any other mistakes on the exam. A needle turned into a worm. Completely uninspired, but with the addition of a successful animation charm, an impressive feat for a first year.

The redhead of the duo, not feeling like getting overshadowed by someone twenty years younger than him, no matter how little he'd focused on transfiguration this year, had changed his needle into a snake.

A small snake, to be sure, but even a small snake had several times the mass of a worm, which had several times the mass of a needle, thus making the change exponentially more difficult.

"It's impressive how good you are at magic," Cedric commented, looking at Harry's work with a bit of jealousy, before glancing back at his pitiful worm.

"It's impressive, how good you are with people, Cedric," Harry responded, causing the boy to blush and look away. "It's because I'm worse at making friends that I have more time to practise."

"You're cool, though. You play Quidditch with us every now and then and you're good at teaching," Cedric said. "I think you just don't want that many friends."

"That's true, you and Penny are more than enough for me, I don't have as big a heart as you."

"I think your heart is just too filled up with wanting to learn magic to have the space for more," Cedric said, and they both laughed, before sobering up. "I hope she'll be okay."

"Me too, I bet she'll be bummed out that she missed the crucial time just before the exams. She could have been just as fine in Ravenclaw as in Hufflepuff," Harry remarked, making Cedric huff.

"No way, Penny likes to study because she wants to know, not to hold it over someone's head," he said in defence of the girl.

Apparently, Ravenclaw hadn't left the best impression on the boy.

"That's very astute. Well, wherever either of you would have fit, I'm glad you're here with me in Hufflepuff," Harry said, before casting a quick tempus. "But you should start heading back, it's getting late."

Cedric tilted his head at him. "You're not coming?"

"I have unfinished business. This room is close enough to the Hufflepuff common room that you shouldn't have trouble getting back."

"I thought you were done with that charm you were working on with Flitwick," Cedric complained.

"It's done, I just have a new project now, it needs all my attention as I have limited time to complete it," Harry said and shooed the boy away.

Cedric pouted, but left, leaving Harry alone to stand in the middle of the room, looking at the failed worms and snakes covering the floor. They slowly started changing back to needles, a ringing sound resounding through the otherwise still room every time a once-again needle dropped to the floor. He didn't know how long he'd been standing there, thinking, but when he refocused on his surroundings the only thing left was the last snake he'd made, wiggling about weakly as its animation charms slowly began failing.

Harry stared curiously at his creation and raised his hands while focusing his mind. He clenched and grasped each end of the snake with his magic, made easier by the fact that the snake belonged to him, completely and utterly.

He slowly started forcing the tip of its tail inwards through its body, as if it were a droplet of water traveling up a straw. Just that in this case, since the straw was eating itself, it disappeared at the same rate as it grew thicker. He didn't stop until the insides of the snake were its outsides and he could count its malformed organs and white vertebrae and skull. A finger snap caused the whole thing to explode with a small bang.

He was still angry. Incredibly so. But this anger gave him inspiration. He knew exactly how to keep the sorting hat out of his mind, he thought and left the room after one final 'cling' as the last needle fell to the ground, the brutalization of the transfiguration dissolving it. Harry didn't apply any invisibility or sound blocking until the seventh floor. He didn't meet anyone of significance and so at 21:09, he entered the room of requirement, anger on his mind, ready to throw all his free hours into the hat while he still had it. He'd been hesitating in letting any emotions seep into his mind arts practice or practice of magic of any kind. But perhaps emotions were what he needed to make a breakthrough, especially considering how the subject matter was his mind.

-/-

"Again," Harry said coldly after he'd successfully pushed the immaterial presence of the sorting hat out of his mind. A horrible migraine was building at the back of his head, but he was making incredible progress and he didn't feel like stopping. Once one had a moment of inspiration one needed to grip that thought more strongly than a male teenager grabbed his… mouse while making a clutch CoD play.

A wash of ephemeral presence assaulted his mind, clearly distinct in its artificial calm against the anger that clouded his thinking. He pushed a blazing inferno of rage, grief and anger against the assault and began the exhausting task of pushing it ever so slightly back and back as he threw his mental energy and his magic against the cloud of consciousness that was the hat.

"Hah!" Harry shouted as he put everything that he had against the cloud and finally managed to expel it from his mind. His headache worsened and he felt the room spin when he blinked. He took the hat off and gently laid it on the ground, before stomping on the floor angrily. "Those fucking, fucks, I'll fuck 'em dead!" he screamed shrilly in a voice that was too boyish to be intimidating before simply screaming out his frustration wordlessly and dropping to the stone floor in an exhausted and harshly breathing heap.

"Kid," the hat said, the soft voice unable at first to penetrate the boy's clouded mind. "Kid!" it repeated more loudly, before finally screaming. "Harry!" That gained the first-years attention and the boy righted himself up to glare mulishly at the hat. "Using emotions, specifically dark ones to fuel magic is a bad idea," it said, causing Harry to chuckle.

"You think I don't know that?" Harry asked calmly, holding up his hand to slowly, with a wince, create a small ball of water, which he splashed into his own face. "But it is important to let them out, humans know how to frustratedly scream for a reason, it has a purpose, just like crying."

"If you know, then why try to centre your Occlumency defences in rage," the hat scolded.

"Rage was just the emotion I was feeling at the time, better to use it for something. I won't be nearly as angry in future sessions, I hope at least. But the intimate feel I got for detecting your probe and the practice I got in throwing it back were invaluable," Harry retorted.

"It's a slippery slope," the hat said after a beat of silence.

"I am in control of my mind, perhaps not completely in moments of emotional affect, but in all other situations I am the absolute master."

"Show me then, or have you harmed yourself too much for another round," the hat taunted.

Harry smirked and wondered who had instilled paternalistic qualities into their enchanted hat. He frowned. It was stupid that he kept referring to it as a hat, wasn't it? "Do you have a name?" he asked instead of addressing the hat's challenge.

The hat paused and stared at him, "Haven't been asked that in a long time," it seemed to contemplate for a moment, before continuing. "I'll tell you, if you can keep me out of your mind without all this anger, I'm not gonna give my name to a…"

"A burgeoning dark wizard?" Harry provided the missing words. The hat simply nodded. Harry snorted. "I am more aware of the dangers of emotional magic than any wizard." And that was the truth, he'd researched the topic after he'd started considering learning Snape's dark-cutting spell, but had stopped in disgust at the conclusion he'd come to. "Did you know that muggle psychology has an explanation for how bad dark magic is for you?"

"Simply being aware of the way in which one becomes a monster does not mean one is immune to becoming one," the hat retorted.

Harry nodded. "You speak the truth, even the greatest heroes can be corrupted by fear, greed, anger… revenge." Anakin Skywalker came to mind. A good example as any, especially considering the fact that Harry was speaking to a talking hat. "But I assure you, I remain uninterested in tying my use of magic together with negative emotions to fuel it. A bitter, angry or fearful man a happy life does not make. Give me a minute to meditate and clear my mind, then I will show you the extent of my genius," he boasted and closed his eyes. He didn't see the hat raise an eyebrow at that.

"Genius," it muttered, "if you can manage to successfully defend yourself against even my weakest attack after only two days of practice… Then I guess there's no other way to describe you." The hat watched the red-headed boy sit in what he referred to as a lotus position and close his eyes, a general impression of calm spread over the boy and the hat was impressed once again by the first-year's deep grasp on the meditative principles. It was one of the reasons the boy was progressing so fast, the other one being something that the hat couldn't quite grasp and didn't feel like digging deep enough to reveal.

After a minute or so Harry opened his eyes and looked at the sorting hat. He put it on and prompted it to attack. It did so without any particular fanfare and Harry quickly felt the pressure building up inside his mind. He likened the event to a cloud casting itself over a vast field, trying to purvey all that was within it.

Where before he simply threw all his anger and rage at the cloud, which had, to little, but still to some effect, made it disperse, now Harry simply rejected its existence. It was his mind, and with the angry practice of earlier he'd managed to get a clear enough picture of how the attack looked like for him to set a mental boundary of simply not wanting the form that the attack took to be present. He thus rejected the cloud and entered a direct battle of will against the hat and the influence it was trying to exert over him. But no matter the artefact's power, age or experience, it was his home turf they were fighting on and he had the advantage. Eventually, the attack was forced to disperse upon the rejection of its properties as existing within Harry's consciousness.

"Straightforward, the most straightforward way, actually," the hat commented and Harry shrugged. The hat nodded. "Good, you'll first have to master the basics anyway. But be warned, rejection only works to a certain extent, at some point the imposition of will mixed with magic will be too much to simply be denied its base qualities of affectation."

"I'm alright with learning the basics first, I have you for another two weeks minimum, then we can see if I can smuggle you out," Harry mused.

"Glad to hear you're not as much of a hot-head as I feared. Maybe you'll even get into hiding instead of just rejection before the break."

"Hiding?"

"Instead of rejecting the probe, hiding is the first step of simply evading it. Cloaking your mind from "sight", so to say, making the Legilimens put in more effort than they already committed to even uncover where your mind is. After comes falsification, of which hiding is a necessary precursory step. Sometimes it's more useful to feed someone false information than to reveal to them that you have mental defences."

"That's very strategic," Harry grunted. "I didn't know that sorting eleven-year-olds gave one soooo much experience in mental warfare."

"I'm as old as this school, you pick up some tricks, sitting on the head of a headmaster or two," the hat said humbly.

Harry hummed and looked at the seemingly sentient clothing article. He suddenly realized that he didn't know where the thing kept its head, which in certain terms meant that he couldn't really trust it. It knew a bit too much to be a simple tool to sort children, but of course, most tools were multi-functional, so who knew what the founders and various headmasters had used the hat for. After all, wasn't he himself using it for a purpose that it was not originally created for?

"I think you owe me a name, hat," he said instead of voicing anything of what he'd just thought about.

"Chanithachuah."

Harry let the name run through his head, before asking, "Can you repeat that?"

"Chanithachuah."

"Khanitacuah," Harry said, trying to pronounce it.

"Chanithachuah," the hat said, annoyance starting to rise in its voice.

"Can you maybe write that down?" Harry asked awkwardly, the hat glared at him.

"With what hands, you numbskull."

"Ah, sorry," Harry mumbled and averted his gaze. "Is it Arabic?" he asked.

"Just go," Chanithachuah grunted. "You look like you're about to faint or puke, or both, and I wouldn't be surprised if you did after nearly four hours of practising Occlumency," Harry nodded and slowly stood up, noticing that he didn't feel too cash money. He closed his eyes and sighed before turning around and making to leave.

"I'll see you tomorrow then, Chanitahuah," he said and stumbled his way out of the room.

"Chanithachuah!" the hat called after him.

The door closed and Harry lazily applied the invisibility and muffling charm, with incantation and wand motion this time, he was much too exhausted to do it wordlessly and otherwise.

"What the fuck am I gonna do?" he cursed and asked himself as he started making his way to the Hufflepuff common room. Looking forlornly at the windows leading to a warm summer night outside. How easy it would be to just leave and run around for a bit. But he was tired and had a splitting headache. Furthermore, he couldn't leave while Penny was still in the hospital wing.

Harry wondered what he was going to do about those Slytherin first-years: Just thinking about them made his stomach churn with rage. He hated wastrels with nothing better to do than pull others down. But they were children, not just adults he could beat up and leave gibbering in an alleyway to repent for their stupidity. He wasn't even talking about it morally. The Hogwarts staff, and the Aurors, would all stop him from getting his due, while also obviously not doing anything to curb their behavior. What was a slap on the wrist, if they would get even this, in comparison to paralyzing someone and leaving them in a room with a dangerous potion reaction? Did that mean Harry could just kill somebody, and sit off the detention for that year? Wouldn't that be a worthy trade if he killed someone he really didn't like?

It was stupid, and stupidity was safer in groups. All those Slytherins probably had the same arrogant, pretentious and prideful parents that would bitch and moan to the school board until everyone's ears were bleeding if their precious little pieces of shit ever even heard the word 'expel'. Harry paused to look out of a window and saw a stag prancing around the edge of the forbidden forest. He sighed and closed his eyes, looked away and continued walking towards the common room.

Any action taken would just escalate the situation, but them having hit Penny, instead of him, would likely mean that they'd just keep targeting him. To think that his second biggest problem this year would be bullies, how ridiculous. He thought he was above that. But apparently, it wasn't up to him. They didn't seem like the type that would give up any time soon, especially considering how they'd bothered trying to stalk him for what, literally half a year? Like what the fuck, did these kids not have a life? What was the appropriate response to making them back off, or keeping them too busy to bother him, that wouldn't get HIM expelled?

As a sort of worthy trade-off, he could slip them a heavy dose of forgetfulness potion on the morning of the first exam and hope it lasted a week. Maybe they'd all fail and have to repeat the year or something, maybe go to Durmstrang. Unless they'd just get the opportunity to retake the exam at a later date. Still, it would be a good revanche. It wouldn't even be too hard to slip them the thing, he was capable of becoming invisible, just give them some at breakfast. Maybe it would make them fuck off.

"You know what," he said to himself. "That's as good of an idea as any," he said to himself, turned on his heel and started heading for the classroom they'd found Penny in. Maybe there were still enough ingredients in there to brew a new batch.

That's when rounding a corner, Harry bumped into a stick-like adult figure. Sprawling onto his back the fall dispersed his invisibility and he was just about to curse when he beheld the face of Not-a-Professor-anymore Twix glaring down at him. Her hair was out of order, her skin was a splotchy red and she was audibly grinding her teeth. She looked like the very image of a deranged crazy person.

"Evans," she hissed angrily, "just who I needed." She said as she lazily waved her wand at him, a red beam knocking him out before he could finish his feeble dodge to the side.