Harry Potter: Pandora's Box

Chapter 7: Halloween Cometh

Summary: Well...there's still a troll. So, canon hasn't been COMPLETELY derailed. Yet.

Chapter 7: Halloween Cometh

Harry wasn't in a foul mood, so much as he was a melancholy one. He was surrounded by bluebell flames, covered in a warming charm, and hidden away in a little rocky alcove near the Black Lake. He had a photo album, recovered from Godric's Hollow before the Ministry seized it and stored away in his parents vault. There were a few pictures of James and Lily at Hogwarts...but far more of them from Harry's first three years of life.

Every Halloween, he was immensely thankful that Pandora had begun sorting and storing his memories for him at such a young age. She'd managed to save a fair few of his stronger memories of his parents, carefully tucked away in a secure portion of his mind palace. He didn't go looking for them often. The memories were always sure to put him into the same mood he was in now. A melancholic fugue state where his mind couldn't help but consider 'might have beens.'

Halloween was one of the exceptions.

It was the one day where he didn't just dig up the memory of their faces, or a single memory of a hug when he really needed a pick-me-up. Instead, it was the one day of the year that he allowed all of the memories to flow freely. The good memories, the bad memories...and even the final memory, the night of their death. He'd done so every year, conquering his fear of their final moments, sitting in remembrance of them, solidifying who they were in his memory once more. He didn't know if it was healthy, and honestly didn't care. This much, at least, he would always do for them. Remembering them not as the poorly-appreciated heroes they were, but as the loving family he'd lost.

He scowled, again, at that last thought. Several people had made the mistake of 'thanking' him or 'congratulating' him today. For his 'defeat' of the Dark Lord. He'd ended up thirty points down and three detentions owed by the end of the day, for the number of people he'd cursed. Two of them even ending up in the hospital wing when his temper had truly begun to fray. Eventually, the rest of Gryffindor, at least, had cottoned on to why he was pissed and started acting as a shield to keep people away from him. Though he wasn't entirely sure if that was to help him, or to simply stem the bleeding of house points...

Fred and George, at least, really had been looking out for him when they'd quietly shown him the entrance to the kitchens. He would have to do something nice for them, since it meant that he had been able to completely avoid the feast without going hungry. Closing the photo album and checking the time, he sighed as he realized the feast would still be ongoing. Perhaps he should just slip upstairs while it...

Harry froze as he felt an odd sort of pull on his magic, a frown forming on his face a moment later as he heard the sound of a rather large limb cracking, followed by grunts and groans. Flicking his fingers, he wandlessly disrupted the magic of the flames, causing their blue glow to flicker out even as he eyed the nearby edge of the forbidden forest. Long moments passed before he spotted the faint outline of a large creature moving away from the forest and toward the castle, the smaller shadow of a man following in its wake, wand in hand. His frown deepening, Harry released his own wand from its wrist holster and brought it up to his glasses, activating the 'night vision' and 'magic vision' modes. He growled and deactivated the second almost as soon as it activated, having forgotten that the insanely powerful magics all over Hogwarts made that aspect near-useless. He cursed himself for forgetting that he needed to spend some time with that vision mode on, letting Pandora adjust their enchantments to filter out the wards and ambient magic. It simply hadn't been a high-priority until now. With the blinding light of the magic-sight gone, Harry did slowly get a better look at the figures, though they'd moved far enough that he was only half sure what he was seeing.