you raise me up || harry potter

chapter 18

»»————-　song:　————-««

fear

★ by sleeping at last ★

♢ ♢ ♢

It was silly of Harry to think that Hogwarts would be a safe haven for him. A second home. First year was alright, with the obvious exception of his face-off with Voldemort. But so far, second year was something out of a nightmare.

There were whispers everywhere. Behind tapestries, around corners, inside empty classrooms. 

Helena Potter is a Slytherin, they whispered. Helena Potter can talk to snakes.

Harry longed to snap at them. His name wasn't Helena, for Merlin's sake, it was Harry. Get it right.

But even that was overshadowed by what everyone was saying in the shadows.

Helena Potter is the Heir of Slytherin.

Stupid Draco, Harry thought. Stupid, stupid Draco for casting that stupid spell with the stupid snake. He had only been trying to call it off so the stupid thing wouldn't eat Justin Finch-Fletchley. And the more he tried to defend his innocence, the more people got suspicious. 

And Snape. Harry struggled to not feel betrayed. He had cautioned Harry, hadn't he? 

"Don't tell people that you talk to snakes," he had said. "It's... a very rare ability. And not a very welcome one, at that."

And then the git had turned right around and whispered Serpensortia into Draco's ear. Sick bastard. Snape probably warned Harry just hold it against him later. Just to see the look on Harry's face when he realized that Snape announced to the whole school the very secret he had told Harry to keep.

Absolute evil, that man was. Of course, his behavior toward Harry was the same as always: vicious, nasty and unfair. Sometimes Harry shuddered to think what would have happened if he had been sorted into Gryffindor; Snape hated them so much, and it seemed to Harry that the only thing holding Snape back from taking off more points from him was the fact that Harry was in his own house. The torment would only have been greater as a Gryffindor. Like poor Neville.

And Harry was sick of Draco at the moment. He swaggered around the Slytherin common room, loudly announcing his support for whoever the Heir was, wishing that he could help them somehow. This wasn't the Draco Harry knew. Draco who helped him with his Potions homework, Draco who laughed at Harry's jokes, Draco who whispered to him at night when Harry woke up from a nightmare... was the same Draco who fantasized about Muggleborns dying and worshiped the ground Snape walked on. And thus Harry found himself spending more and more time with Hermione—as fussy and a know-it-all as she could be, she was still far better company than Draco. At least she didn't talk non-stop about how she wished people would die. 

She did, however, talk non-stop about the Heir of Slytherin. She grilled Harry constantly about Draco and his role in the Petrification of the victims so far. Harry insisted that it wasn't Draco.

"Listen, Hermione, he literally walks around all day talking about how he wishes he knew who the Heir was so he could help them," Harry told her in a low voice in the library. "It's not him."

"Well, he is a Slytherin, isn't he?" Hermione tossed her hair. "For all you know, he's just saying that to fool everyone into thinking he's not the Heir."

Harry sighed. "No, Hermione. I know Draco. He can't lie for his life. Seriously," he added when he saw Hermione's disbelief. "He's one of the worst liars I've ever seen. It's honestly sad. Anyway, I'd know if it was him. He's in all of my classes and he's my dorm mate. Do you think I wouldn't notice if he was going around cursing Muggleborns?"