Oh yes,' Harry grinned, 'he always swears when he plays, so if I use the word bloody as the activation phrase I can make them all change colour at least twenty times a game.'
'Can't they just ignore it?' Neville asked.
'Not if I do different words for different pieces,' Harry smirked, starting down the stairs to the dungeons. 'Then they'll all change at different points.'
'I think I can see where Katie learnt it all from,' Neville laughed, disappearing up the stairs towards the common room.
Harry continued on down towards Snape's office and its collection of interesting jars. He had a spell to learn by whatever means it took.
'Potter,' the teacher drawled, hovering in the shadows across from the door to his office. 'You are early.'
'Better early earnestly.
than
late,
sir,'
Harry
replied
'Come in.' Snape swept from the shadows of the alcove he was lurking in into his office. Why was he even out here?
'We will start where we left off,' the potions teacher told him, waving his wand to clear space from the centre of the room. 'Are you ready?'
Snape didn't wait for him to answer, his wand snapped up to point out menacingly from under his black eyes.
'Legilimens,' he uttered silkily, with a small, satisfied sneer.
Harry was ready. The moment the connection was made he pushed the memory to the surface, forcing it into Snape's view.
Not Harry, please no, take me instead-
His mother was screaming, Voldemort's cruel, high laughter echoing in their minds, before the words of the Killing Curse ended the memory in a flash of green. Harry could feel his pain, his guilt, far stronger than he'd hoped, then he could have dreamt. It would make this almost easy.
Harry reversed the connection, tearing back along Snape's thoughts, sending him images on the robes and masks and men he'd met in the graveyard. The potions teacher struggled to control his thoughts, but it was too late, among the myriad of memories of murder and worse Harry glimpsed Severus Snape thrust his wand into the sky, felt his magic surge, and heard him cry out the incantation.
Morsmordre.
Harry shattered the connection, ripping their minds apart, his wand tip already protruding from his sleeve, even as the former Death Eater looked up furiously.
'Obliviate,' he commanded, erasing the last few seconds. The last thing Snape would remember would be the screams of his mother before she died.
'Professor?" Harry asked, feigning some slight concern for the man.
'What was that, Potter?' The man asked, with none of his usual loathing. The words seemed empty without it. Hollow.
'My earliest memory, sir,' Harry answered honestly. 'I used to only be able to remember the words. I've always known them,' he remarked offhandedly, 'I used to murmur them to myself as a child, wondering what they meant.'
Snape was staring at him, horrified, and something cruel stirred in Harry's chest. This man had been a Death Eater, had tormented him, insulted his father and far far worse. 'The dementors in my third year, they let me remember the rest,' he continued, 'it's the only memory of my mother that I have.'
The sallow face of the potions teacher paled, twisting, despite his best efforts to conceal it, in self-loathing and agony. The cold creature of malice in Harry's chest laughed in triumph, exalting in their revenge for a thousand petty slights and insults.
'I'm sorry,' the former Death Eater whispered, all the soft strength had left his voice. 'Please leave.' The wizard was all but begging.
Harry turned on his heel and strode out, pausing only when he heard the scream from within the office and the shattering of glass. In one instant he'd caused the man more pain than Severus Snape had ever managed to inflict on him or anyone else. It was still less than he deserved from what Harry had seen in his head, but he permitted himself a small, cold smile at his achievement regardless.
He all but ran back to the chamber under his Disillusionment Charm, curfew was close, and he couldn't afford to attract any suspicion on himself while he was balancing so many things.
'I have the incantation,' he called out to Salazar, 'I stole it from Snape's mind and modified his memory.'
'He is an accomplished occlumens,' Slytherin snapped, 'he will notice the memory loss almost immediately.'
'He was far too emotionally distraught to notice the loss of a couple of a seconds. He was more fond of my mother than I knew,' Harry smirked cruelly, 'I showed him the memory of her death and followed through his memories.' 'What will you do with it?' The founder seemed slightly saddened by what Harry had done, but he supposed it was because he had not seen Snape's memories and did not know just how much the wizard deserved it.
'I will cast it somewhere it cannot be ignored,' Harry decided after a moment's thought. 'I'm going home for the first time in fourteen years.'
'You can apparate there?' The painting was skeptical, as it often was of Harry's plans.
'I know what it looks like, I've seen enough pictures to create a portkey to the memorial, it won't take too long to learn the spell.' Harry ran his finger across the back of the books until he found the one he needed.
'It is a simple one,' Salazar agreed. 'Don't get caught.' 'I have no intention to,' Harry grinned.
Flicking through the pages he skimmed the technical description of the spell, he only needed a one-use portkey that he would then destroy, it didn't need to be perfect.
'Portus,' he tried, tapping his wand against one of the empty inkpots on Slytherin's desk. Nothing happened.
Harry tried again, concentrating harder to envision what he wanted the portkey to do. This time a slight blue glow flickered around the edges of the object, and the moment he touched it he was jerked violently forwards to roll painfully across the wet grass of another graveyard.
His surroundings were enough to make his heart beat faster, and he snatched his wand up from the floor from where it had once again escaped his sleeve. Fortunately this time there was no Bertha Jorkins to pick it up before he could. It was clearly Godric's Hollow, he recognised the church, and the ruin of his parents' house was visible just down the street. His portkey had simply missed by a small margin. He picked up the inkpot from where he had dropped it and placed it on the ground away from any graves before destroying it with a small flare of fiendfyre to ensure there was no trace of his magic here.
Moving through the graveyard he spared a moment to pause before the graves of his parents, gazing down at the black lettered inscription on the white marble.
The last enemy to be destroyed is death, he mused. Voldemort might agree.
Tracing a finger over their names, he wondered how different things might have been if they had not died, if he'd grown up in this small quiet town as just Harry Potter.
It is a futile wish, he realised, walking along the row towards the gate past a dozen ancient graves whose names were worn away.
They all bore the same sigil at the top of the tombstone, an odd triangular shape, with some unrecognisable design inside. Only the most recent of those graves had a legible name.
Ignotus Peverell.
The triangle was likely the symbol of the family who must have lived here for generations until their last family member, Ignotus, had died and been buried alongside his ancestors.
The memorial was covered in flowers, the walls of the house with graffiti, messages of good will mostly, though Harry noticed a few declarations of the Dark Lord will return. The cold marble likenesses of his parents reminded him of the Mirror of Erised, and suddenly Harry wanted to leave, to get away from this terribly sad place where the sorrow seemed to hang over the stone like fog, thick, grey and suffocating.
'Morsmordre,' he whispered, slipping his wand from his sleeve and pointing it into the sky.
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