James’s lips thinned as his estranged son turned the corner and didn’t so much as slow his gait as their eyes locked. The cheerful boy he’d met before had vanished. In his place now walked a young wizard with eyes set in determination. A lot had changed since the time they’d spent together before Slytherin’s Winter Festival and if he had any doubts about the veracity of the prophecy, they’d been firmly put to rest.
It was clear his son was no ordinary wizard.
Neither was John, of course, but Harry had now gone above and beyond his twin. When the pair had simultaneously cleared out their respective opposing duelling teams the previous year, it’d been obvious to everyone it was one for the history books. Now, the story of his children was quickly morphing into something mythical.
And whether he liked it or not, Harry was fast occupying the ‘villain’ slot in that story. Something he and Lily had argued about more than once now.
Harry had lied about his intentions. He’d lied that he intended to stay at Potter Manor during the Winter Festival. He’d lied about his relationship with Lord Slytherin. And he’d taken advantage of his and Lily’s good faith to ransack the Potter library for family magic that he, as Harry’s head of house, had sole discretion to distribute. He’d also broken a Potter family secret, actively sought to humiliate him, and, most importantly of all, had subverted John’s role as Heir of the Noble House of Potter.
Despite the polite mask he wore, the common denominator in all this could only be Slytherin.
Harry couldn’t have done half of this without the backing of a powerful, already-established wizard. And Slytherin, who’d just appeared from nowhere five years ago, fit the bill well.
As Harry and the other Gray children slowed to halt by the door, with Slytherin’s Proxy, Sunny Greengrass, behind them, James asked the question that had been rattling around his brain the most since after the Winter Festival fiasco.
“Did you steal the invisibility cloak five years ago? As your lord and my heir I command you to tell the truth.” The gentlest of family magics settled into place around them.
James sent out a faint legilimency probe, but Harry simply swatted it away, confirming that every time he’d used soft legilimency on Harry in the past, Harry had been using occlumency defences to subvert his results — a quite sophisticated occlumency technique that a child of twelve absolutely should not know.
“No,” Harry replied simply. “We have an invisibility cloak?”
James ignored this and continued to his next question.
“Do you know Slytherin’s true identity?”
“Yes.”
“What is it?”
“I do not intend to tell you.”
“Harry, you are aware that as your lord, failing to answer a direct question when I call upon you to do so, gives me the right to punish you in the private Potter family court, and that neither the Albion Family Magics, nor the Ministry, will protect you from that punishment?”
“I am aware.”
“Is Lord Slytherin Remus Lupin?”
“I do not intend to tell you.”
“How did you subvert the Potter Heirship?”
“I did not subvert the Potter Heirship. It was a happy accident of circumstance.”
“What would it take to get you to willingly return to Potter Manor?”
Harry glanced sideways to where England’s possible best hope for quidditch glory, Ginny Weasley, was doing her best not to glare up at him and not doing a particularly good job of it.
YOU ARE READING
DPASW BOOK FOUR:The Gray's Secret
FanfictionHarry Potter has been banged up for ten years in the hellhole brig of Azkaban for a crime he didn't commit, and his traitorous brother, the not-really-boy-who-lived, has royally messed things up. After meeting Fate and Death, Harry is given a secon...
