Chapter Text
Hermione’s forgiveness did not come easily. She gave Harry the cold shoulder during the whole summer and, when he tried to apologise again on board the Hogwarts Express, she laid her conditions:
“You have to stop obsessing about Professor Riddle’s personal life. And you must apologise to him for what you did.”
“He might not want to talk to me anymore.”
“That’s precisely the point! You’ve betrayed his trust, so you need to earn it back, not hide what you did.”
Harry looked at Ron and Neville beseechingly but neither disagreed with Hermione. “Fine, I will.”
As it turned out, he should not have worried. “Nice little trick there, Harry. I'll have to improve my wards so they are not fooled by temporally displaced guests anymore. Maybe you should try breaking in again, that’ll be very instructive for the both of us.”
“So you’re not upset I saw the rest of that memory?”
“Harry, if you were a meek little boy who always did as he was told, you wouldn’t be my personal student. As for the memory, I actually thought about showing it to you in its entirety, but I decided against it.”
“Why?”
“Why? Because you can’t be trusted with it, of course.”
Harry suddenly saw red. “That’s not true! I would never…”
“Tell anyone about it? But that’s the first thing you did, didn’t you? You told everything to your friends.”
Harry floundered for a moment. “That’s different! Hermione, Ron and Neville are completely trustworthy.”
“They might betray you, even without meaning to. Decent people are so easy to manipulate.”
“I would have kept it a secret, if you’d actually told me.” Harry had come to apologise but he was the one who was yelling at Tom. It was utterly ridiculous, but he just couldn’t deny the pain in his chest.
“Listen, Harry, this knowledge is dangerous. What I’ve wrought can no longer be stopped, but I know several people who would still go for pointless revenge if they knew I was behind it. Nothing I couldn’t handle myself, but they might target my family. Or even you, if they ever learnt about your mark. So it’s safer if you just forget about this and tell your friends to do the same.”
That was easier said than done. Every day, more people became wizards because of Tom, and Harry had no idea how that was even possible. How could he simply let it lie? He had promised Hermione not to look into Tom’s personal life anymore, but surely that was more of a professional achievement of his? Not that Harry was eager to debate this fine nuance with his bookish friend. He would have to do his own research for once.
He wasn’t helped by Tom’s secretive nature. Unlike most famous wizards, Tom didn’t write books, and he didn’t contribute to papers such as Transfiguration Today either. When he invented spells, he would teach them to individuals, who were allowed to pass on this knowledge but not to write it down.
Harry had learnt many of Tom’s spells by now, and he was starting to study the terribly intricate ones that allowed him to stay permanently young. The gist of them was rapid cellular regeneration. Would Tom have adopted a similar, biological approach to turning Muggles into wizards? Harry thought it likely, but it didn’t explain how he was able to affect so many people.
In despair, Harry started to study the different parts of Tom’s career. He finally struck gold several months later, when he visited St Mungo’s to meet some of Tom’s former colleagues. His cover story was that he was thinking about a career as a Healer.
His uncle Remus, who was accompanying him, didn’t really buy it though.
“Are you sure you’re really interested in becoming a Healer? It might be a bit of a staid job for you. I always thought you would be like James and Sirius, chasing down Dark wizards.”
“It never hurts to consider something different,” said Harry lamely. He really didn’t like lying to Remus.
His uncle looked at him sceptically and said, “Is this about Tom Riddle?”
Harry almost tripped in surprise. Surely, his parents hadn’t told Remus about his soulmark… They had promised not to share it with anyone!
Remus continued, “He’s your mentor, right? It’s normal to look up to him. I mean, he inspired me to become a Healer and I only met him a couple of times when I was a child.”
“How was it, being cured of your lycanthropy?”
“Completely painless. At the time, I didn’t fully understand what was going on. It was only years after the fact that I realised exactly what Riddle had achieved in ending such an ancient curse.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“It’s a little known fact, but lycanthropy was a curse. It exploited a wizard’s own magic to propagate itself long after the death of the original caster. Much like a blood malediction really.”
Harry was left speechless. So that was how he had done it.
“Are you interested in this, Harry? Miriam, who works on the Janus Thickey Ward, is a great expert on blood malediction. I could introduce you if you’d like.”
“Actually, I would. Thanks, Remus.”
Ancient curses like lycanthropy or blood maledictions were always gruesome, deadly or both, while becoming a wizard boosted one’s health and longevity. No wonder nobody had made the connection with Tom’s spell, even though it was the exact same mechanism. The Darkest of magic, repurposed.
From his chat with Miriam Strout, Harry found out that such curses were very hard to cure. It had taken a decade to find every single werewolf and individually apply Tom’s counter-curse to them. Blood maledictions were treatable nowadays, but they had an unfortunate tendency to reappear several generations down the line, if you had one upon your bloodline, regular health checks in St Mungo’s were a requirement.
As far as Harry understood, Tom was right when he said what he had wrought could no longer be stopped. Even if someone found a way to turn new wizards back into Muggles, they would need to apply the counter-spell to hundreds of thousands of people. Werewolves had been far less numerous, because lycanthropy required infected bites to spread.
Tom’s spell, however, was probably able to spread through mere touch. That would explain why the Ministry of Magic was pushing its no contact law so hard: it was a last-ditch attempt to slow it down.
It wouldn’t work, of course. Tom’s spell would continue his relentless march throughout the world until there were no Muggles left.
Tom had to have predicted this. Hell, that must have been his goal from the beginning. Hadn’t he said in Harry’s very first class that there were no such things as the magical and non-magical worlds, only one world? He hadn’t meant it metaphorically. He was bringing about the fusion of the magical and non-magical worlds, had been since before Harry was born.
Hell, Harry’s grandparents and aunt were some of the first new wizards. His childhood had been shaped by Tom’s master plan, without him ever being aware of it.
And now his adulthood would be defined by it too. As more and more Muggles turned into wizards, the collapse of the Statute of Secrecy was inevitable. Harry could hardly imagine the chaos that would bring. He could probably spend a lifetime cleaning up the resulting mess, smoothing things over between wizards old and new. That would be the responsible thing to do. Taking the cards Tom had dealt him, trying to build a better world out of it.
But that meant he would never be Tom’s equal, merely his helper.
The only way to be Tom’s equal was to oppose him. Stop the number of new wizards from growing, stop the Statute of Secrecy from collapsing.
Could Harry do that? Should he do that? His own family had massively benefited from Tom’s spell; could he deprive others of the same advantages because he didn’t want to live his life in Tom’s ever lengthening shadow?
Harry had to stop and think. He had to choose the path that would benefit the wizarding world the most. His final decision came after a visit from the Minister for Magic himself to Hogwarts, just before the beginning of the summer holidays.
The sixth and seventh year students were summoned to the Great Hall, where Bartemius Crouch addressed them directly. He was alone except for Dumbledore, who looked as grim as him.
“I’ve gathered you here because you are the future of wizardkind. Our world is under threat. It’s only a matter of time before the Status of Secrecy is broken. When it does, our laws and customs will come under attack. I can tell you for a fact that several Muggle governments are already planning to strip us of our right to bear a wand! Because they fear us, they would deny us the right to defend ourselves when angry mobs come calling, as they will, if every Muggle learns of our existence.
To preserve everything we have built, I’m founding the Statute of Secrecy Task Force. Its members will be tasked with arresting those wizards foolish enough to endanger the Statute of Secrecy and modifying the memories of Muggles who came in contact with them. I know many of you still have a year before graduation, but the situation is urgent enough that we cannot afford to wait even for that. I need the wand of every witch and wizard willing to defend our world. If you have the courage to join us, be next Monday at eight in the Atrium of the Ministry of Magic. That is all.”
He strode out of the room, leaving a trail of anxious and angry whispers in his wake. Dumbledore then cleared his throat, calling the crowd to attention.
“What the Minister shared with us is no doubt very distressing, but I would urge you all to think about this calmly and rationally. Whatever challenges lay ahead of us, we are stronger if we face them in unity and friendship, rather than descend into aggression and acrimony. I was very much against Minister Crouch addressing sixth year students tonight. Hogwarts still has much to teach you, I beseech you not to leave it before you are ready. For those of you who are about to graduate, the path you pursue after school is of course entirely your own. There are no right, or easy, choices in the situation we are facing. Just remember that help will always be given at Hogwarts to those who ask for it.”
After his speech, all hell broke loose as every student started to discuss what Crouch had said. “I’ll meet you in the common room,” Harry yelled to his friends over the din and ducked out of the Great Hall. He went straight to Tom’s office.
“Is it true? Are they going to strip us of our wands?”
“I see Crouch’s melodramatic little speech is over,” said Tom dismissively.
“Did he lie?” insisted Harry.
“He did not need to. British wizards are so emotional about their wands, the mere prospect of losing them is enough to whip up a crowd.”
“Of course people are taking it seriously,” said Harry angrily. “We’ll be defenceless without our wands.”
“Who is “ we” exactly? Not me. Not you, I taught you better than that. Not most wizards either, as wands are only prevalent in Europe and North America. Even there, wand owners are now the minority, because production simply cannot keep up with demand.”
“That doesn’t mean it’s right for Muggles to take them from us!”
“Wands are weapons of mass destruction more dangerous than any guns, and we give them to eleven-year-olds and idiots. It’s not surprising that Muggles don’t want us to carry them around in public. Yet, a wand ban is far from a fait accompli. Wizards have significant leverage to stop it.”
“Leverage?”
“The wizarding world institutions are essential in teaching new wizards how to use magic safely, and non-magical governments are fully aware of this. They know they cannot afford to upset the Ministry of Magic too much. Some compromise over wands will be reached in time.”
“You’re assuming everyone will act rationally, but people behave in stupid, cruel and petty ways all the time. Also, we don’t really have the time to reach a compromise. The number of new wizards needs to stop growing so fast, or the Statute of Secrecy will end before we’re ready.”
“On the contrary, it needs to grow even faster: the more wizards there are when the Statute of Secrecy breaks down, the less likely we are to become an oppressed minority. As for time to prepare, the Ministry had over twenty years already, and they wasted them in increasingly futile attempts at cover-ups. You could give them twenty more and it wouldn’t change anything.”
“I disagree. I’ll be around this time to make sure things are different.”
“Thinking about joining the Ministry, Harry?”
“Yeah. I’ll be going next week.”
Tom blinked, then something like disgust passed over his face. “You’re going to waste your talents in this ‘Statute of Secrecy Task Force’?”
“Of course not, I know it is ultimately futile. But I still need to join the Ministry, because they will give me the time and resources I need to find a way to radically slow down your spell.”
Tom’s face was perfectly blank. “I see. How convenient for you, now that all your family members are wizards. What is this really about, Harry? Has your desire to surpass me overcome your reason?”
“Is it so hard to believe that I disagree with you about what is best for the world?” Harry shot back.
“You always seemed to understand me before,” said Tom with a hint of wistfulness. It disappeared back into blankness as quickly as it had come. “You’re making a mistake. You shouldn’t leave Hogwarts yet, it still has much to teach you.”
Tom wasn’t wrong. There was a big part of Harry that didn’t want to leave Hogwarts, that didn’t want to leave him. But, if he stayed, he would never forgive himself for letting things happen around him, for not trying to stop something he knew was wrong.
“Goodbye, Tom.”
Harry didn’t look back. He didn’t know what he would have done if he had.
He walked back to the common room like an automaton. As he went through the portrait, he was hit by a wall of noise. It felt like every Gryffindor student was up and about, discussing the Statute of Secrecy Task Force.
“Over here, Harry!” His friends had saved him a seat in their favourite alcove.
“Are you alright?” Neville asked as soon as he sat down.
Harry did not directly answer, instead briefly explaining his decision to leave Hogwarts. “Would any of you like to come with me?”
“I understand, Harry, I really do, but I don’t want to leave Hogwarts before graduation. Maybe afterwards?” said Hermione.
“I’m leaving too, except I’m really joining the Task Force” said Neville with a determined look on his face. “This is what my mother has always been doing, I should help her.”
Hermione started tearing up. “I can’t believe you’ll both be gone next year.”
They all turned to Ron, who cringed a little under their combined stare. “I don’t know. I mean, I see Crouch’s point and I don’t want us to lose our wands, but something about his speech didn’t feel right. Dumbledore was trying to warn us not to jump into things, so I think I’ll stay until graduation. Besides, if I left, who would be there for Hermione to boss around?”
She squeezed his hand and they shared a little smile that felt like a knife buried into Harry’s stomach. He ruthlessly pushed down his jealousy and said, “Even if we’re not together next year, we’ll always have each other’s backs, right?”
His friends all agreed. There were many promises, laughter and tears that night and, though it technically wasn’t Harry’s final one at Hogwarts, it certainly felt like it. When he finally went to bed in the early hours of the morning, he thought of Tom’s words again.
He could only hope he wasn’t making a mistake.