It was one hour after he'd started his search for a way to defend his mind that Harry left the Room of Requirement, or as he'd dubbed it the room of ordinary objects, behind. He'd decided that he might as well be early to his meeting with Dumbledore and get it out of the way. So he began walking towards the headmaster's office, getting an odd look here and there from whatever student, ghost, or painting crossed his way.
It made sense. It was evening so there wasn't much light out. It was the middle of March and here was Harry Evans, strutting through the halls of a magical institution in full wizarding ensemble, slaying a pair of diamond-encrusted rectangular reflective sunglasses.
Gucci, this time.
Apparently, there'd been a muggle-born Hogwarts student with expensive tastes and a habit of losing sunglasses in particular. The other options the room had offered him had been,
a: a knight's helmet,
b: a blindfold and
c: a knife with instructions on how to cut optical nerves.
Harry could only assume the last was meant for him to cut out his eyes with. No eyes, no eye-contact-based mind magic apparently. Oddly enough the last suggestion hadn't been the worst of the lot, as the room had also offered him a bona fide death-eater mask. The worrying implication being that somehow a student had at some point had one, and then lost it.
So yeah, Harry went with the sunglasses. Not before checking if the Room of Requirement could give him access to the restricted section, but it didn't seem to have such a function.
It was too soon that Harry arrived before the gargoyle that guarded the headmaster's office, he wasn't even sure if sunglasses would protect him from what was possibly to come. It would have been his assumption, but the room giving them to him didn't imply that it was the correct belief, just that it was perhaps somehow reading his thoughts and delivering not what he needed, but what he thought he did.
Harry stood there and stared at the gargoyle, before calming down and emptying out his mind as much as he could. Better safe than sorry, he told himself, before stepping forward and pausing mid-stride.
"Wait, what was the password again?" he asked himself. He'd been a bit too freaked out to really pay attention to what the prefect who had delivered the summons had said.
"Lemon?" he asked more than stated at the gothic gargoyle, which didn't budge.
"Lemon drop?" He queried again and this time the gargoyle almost imperceptibly shook its head.
"It's something with lemon, I swear. Lemon slop, lollipop, knickerdrop," he inadvertently rhymed and the eyes of the gargoyle seemed to narrow in reproach at the last one. "Well fuck you too, I didn't ask for this," he muttered and tried to remember. "Lemon pop?" he eventually said, causing the gargoyle to swing aside, revealing an upwards going circular staircase. He was pretty sure the damn thing had rolled its eyes at him.
Grumbling about sassy inanimate objects he made his way up the stairs until he came upon Dumbledore's office, which was just as wondrous as it had been described in the books. Magical objects whirled, peeped and whistled everywhere in all colours of the rainbow and Harry felt judged by the many magical portraits, many of which had turned their attention to him. But most intense was the gaze of the only living man in the room, that of Albus Dumbledore, who had been seated at a large and cluttered wooden desk and who was now standing up to greet Harry with a jovial smile and sparkling robes.
"Mr. Evans, my boy, do come in and take a seat, you're a bit early," the man said and before Harry could confusedly mutter that there was no seat for him to take the elderly wizard flicked a hand, causing a sinfully comfortable looking arm-chair to appear on Harry's side of the table.
It was purple and dotted with small green sun motifs. Harry sat down and leaned back, he thought that he might as well be comfortable while something potentially horrible happened.
"Tea?" the headmaster asked as he also sat back down.
"Ehh, no thank you, headmaster," Harry said, "but am I in trouble, maybe?"
Albus chuckled and poured himself a cup from a steaming kettle that Harry hadn't seen on the desk before, and that had seemingly just appeared out of thin air. "The opposite really, it's usually the heads of houses who deal with disciplinary actions."
"Well, hmm, that's good. It's usually a bad sign to be called into the headmaster's office in the muggle world, is all I meant," Harry explained.
"Do you have anything weighing on your mind?" the headmaster asked with a raised eyebrow.
Harry furrowed his brows. "No, not that I could remember at least," he said, thinking back to the Slytherins he'd assaulted on his way here. They'd deserved it so he wasn't lying that he didn't have a guilty conscience.
"Well, suspense aside, the reason you're here is rather the opposite of a punishment," Dumbledore explained, "I asked Marcus to bring you because you should be rewarded rather, for your contribution to the school."
Harry looked at the man nonplussed.
"The spell you created under Professor Flitwick's supervision," Albus gently reminded, causing Harry to perk up.
"Yes, that. Slipped my mind. I've been mostly focusing on Potions lately."
"Shoring up one's weaknesses is often just as important as playing on one's strengths, a wise decision," Dumbledore commented and took a sip of his tea. "As for the spell, getting back on topic, I was wondering perhaps, before we talk about anything else, what made you create it? If it was to prove yourself, you have succeeded."
Harry awkwardly scratched the back of his head. "Well, I'll admit headmaster, I made the spell mostly out of annoyance. The Hogwarts library, well, it's hard to find anything in it and it caused me no small amounts of frustration to spend as much time looking for a book as I did actually reading it," he said. "I'm actually really fascinated by magic's ability to save time, the one thing we have a limited amount of. I've been focusing on Charms a lot because of it, hygiene charms to shorten the morning rituals, cleaning charms to get chores done faster," he said before trailing off and giving an awkward laugh. "Well, it must sound a bit mundane, that this is what I like most about magic right now."
"Not at all, my boy, not at all. Personally, I find there is joy in the process, but even I will admit that menial tasks get frustrating sometimes. It's especially good to see that your passion manifested in such an extra-curricular way, students seldom realise after al-" Dumbledore began, before Harry cut him off.
"That the curriculum is the bare minimum, something onto which one should attach one's own interests."
Dumbledore chuckled. "Indeed, my passion back in the day was transfiguration, I was years ahead of everyone else in my class. I'm afraid it got to my head a bit."
Harry shrugged. "I guess it could, but it helps to remember that if most others simply worked as hard, they would be achieving similar results. Doesn't it make perfect sense that I can make a spell on the side if I invested several hundred hours of extra-curricular effort into it?" he posited, knowing that the only thing really separating him from his classmates was his maturity and adult work ethic. They'd all started at the same place, if one ignored his forays into wandless magic and his canon-knowledge on some obscure topics.
"An astute answer. I can imagine that you are thus fascinated by magic, Harry, if I may call you that?" Dumbledore asked.
Harry nodded enthusiastically, his guard dropping throughout the conversation with the genial old wizard, who hadn't yet commented on his sunglasses. "Of course, magic is awesome!" he exclaimed. "It's literal magic, I can summon fireballs and fly and change a rat into a stag… Well, I can't do any of that yet. But a life without magic just feels so constricting now, birth, physics, societal pressures. It's like I've attained some sort of ultimate freedom. The best thing that ever happened to me," he said, leaving out that the circumstances through which he'd gained magic had been the worst thing that had ever happened to him.
"Honestly," Harry said suddenly in a low voice, noticing something for the first time. "What bothers me most about my classmates is how irreverent they are to the fact that they're doing literal magic. I can even see the muggleborns losing the sense of wonder they arrived with. I don't understand their attitude, but neither can I explain mine. It's… It's literally magic, professor, magic actually exists and it's wonderful and horrible and everything in between. Whenever I explore it feels like I'm sloughing off chains I never even knew I was bound in," he finished, a bit out of breath. Knowing however, that he'd likely said too much, he shut up and leaned back in his chair, observing the old wizard sitting across from himself and wondering why he'd opened up like this.
He narrowed his eyes behind his sunglasses and wondered if there was some sort of spell over the room that made him more open, or if Dumbledore in his age was just too socially competent for people to stay closed off with him.
"Magic is indeed, wonderful. I find myself amazed every day by what it can accomplish and what it can be strengthened by," Dumbledore murmured, "Do you resent your muggle upbringing, Harry?" the man asked suddenly. "You speak of it as if it were a burden."
Harry snorted, paused, tried not to say what he was about to say, but then said it anyway. "A wise man once said that you must always be willing, at any given moment, to abandon who you are, for who you can become," he said and concluded that there must be some sort of charm working its magic in the office that made it more likely for him to speak his mind. What he'd just said was what he believed in, but it wasn't something he'd ever say to Dumbledore due to the parallels it might urge the most likely paranoid old man to draw.
"If that is true, then why haven't you asked for your reward to be something along the lines of staying at Hogwarts over the summer, continuing to perfect your craft," Dumbledore suggested innocently and Harry realised what all this was about.
Dumbledore thought that Harry was similar to Tom Riddle, orphaned at birth, extremely talented at magic and having all the reason in the world to be angry at the world. Thankfully there was one thing that separated Harry and Tom, a perfect answer that was also true. A simple answer.
"As tempting as it sounds to continue working on magic, even over the summer, I miss my family. We had plans on going to France and I wouldn't miss it for anything short of an apprenticeship with Merlin himself," Harry said, all of it the truth. He loved his family, how couldn't he, for how they'd accepted him into their home after Lily's death. And there was no real rush on him learning magic. Perhaps there would be if he sought to get involved in the war. But he was graduating in Neville's fifth year, which meant that if it all went as it should, Harry would leave Britain behind with his family before the war openly started. And if it started earlier… After his O.W.Ls there wasn't a reason to continue his schooling if it meant doing it in an institution perpetually in danger of becoming another Napola. If he distinguished himself enough there was no reason to think that no other magical school in the world wouldn't take him gladly. Perhaps this was why it was even important to do so. America should be safe, and this way Dudley wouldn't have to learn a new language. Maybe he'd even get a few plus points for his British accent.
"As happy as I am for your upcoming vacation in France," Dumbledore said with twinkling eyes, no doubt having liked the answer to his question. "I still need to award you something for so selflessly sharing the spell with the school and, as I hear with the world at large," the man pushed.
In the new context of this conversation being a way of determining similarities between Harry Evans and Tom Riddle, what he asked for, would likely say a great deal about Harry. His choices were constrained to what would paint him in a good light and something true since he had trouble lying in this room, Harry thus had to come up with a desire before he could leave. Preferably something that would make Dumbledore leave him alone. Harry didn't want much to do with the man currently.
"I'm not selfless. The more people know the spell, the more likely it is to be improved on and the more people will be inspired to create similar useful magic," he said, stalling for time.
His biggest desire was instruction in the Mind Arts, which he couldn't have because it would likely involve people discovering what he didn't want them to discover.
What did Harry want, then? A desire that was similarly strong to his need for occlumency, so that he may speak it aloud, but also something not resembling anything Voldemort would have asked for in his situation.
"As for what I would want… It's a difficult question to answer. As the Buddha once said, desire is the root of all suffering."
"I've also found that true contentment lies in enjoying what one has rather than lamenting what one doesn't, but surely there must be something," Dumbledore said, not letting go of the topic.
"I was talking to Professor Slughorn recently and he used an interesting spell," Harry said, instead of giving a straight answer, still needing time to think of something he would want. Access to the restricted section? No, that was something Tom would have asked for. "Effigo, a copying charm, I asked and he agreed to send me the instructions per owl."
"That was very kind of him," Dumbledore agreed.
"The issue with asking for something is that it would have to be something that I can't just get by asking a professor, and since I've created my spell and shared it with the school, it seems that the professors have become generous indeed. So whatever I wish for would be something that is not already given freely and thus it is something that either requires effort to give or that one would not want me to have in the first place," Harry said, finally managing to think of something.
"For example, the removal of the trace from my wand so I could keep up my practice during the summer," he said, despite having figured out by now that the trace could be circumvented by simply leaving populated areas behind and going into a forest, focusing on sorcery. Of course, if he could get the trace removed then he wouldn't have to waste all those hours biking to and from his little clearing, no matter how much he enjoyed it, he would still go there less if it was an option.
Dumbledore seemed to consider his words regarding the trace for an oddly long amount of time, considering it wasn't something he could most likely grant. As expected thus, after a minute he said, "A fine conundrum we have brought upon ourselves then with our offer of a boon. Perhaps in the future, we shall simply content ourselves with a trophy recognizing the student's contribution to the school," he said.
"There is one thing," Harry said, having perhaps finally thought of something that would be possible. "I've been doing a lot of arithmancy lately. It's been a strenuous subject to pick up and I don't think I'll use it much until I start taking it as an elective in my third year. Would it perhaps be possible to start taking the class next year already, so I don't get out of practice and then have to restart learning. It's also a subject that doesn't require magic, so I could learn ahead in the summer more easily to keep up with the older students. I was thinking of asking Professor Vector for some homework, but this would be an even more meaningful solution. Also, if I did my O.W.L in arithmancy one year earlier I would be less stressed in my fifth year," he suggested
"That's a good idea and fulfils the requirements you set for your reward. However, we will have to think of a justification for why we are allowing such, since your spell should remain anonymous in source. It will take some effort on the staff's part, but I'm sure we could manage. I will talk to Professor Vector and tell her to get in touch with you," Dumbledore said with a nod, seemingly happy to have finally gotten an answer. Hopefully, an answer that would distinguish Harry from Voldemort. He doubted that the future dark lord would have asked to advance his maths lessons if given such an opportunity. He most definitely would have asked to stay at Hogwarts over the summer or access to the restricted section. Magical maths in comparison to that, shouldn't create any links in even the old man's mind.
"Thank you for considering my idea professor," Harry said and glanced at a golden watch spinning on its own axis on the head-masters table.
"It is getting a bit late, isn't it," Dumbledore said, mirroring Harry's thoughts. "I think it's best you be off. Wouldn't want to keep you up after curfew after all. I think Hufflepuff has a Potions lesson tomorrow morning."
Harry took the dismissal for what it was and stood up, adjusting his sunglasses. "Thank you head-master, I look forward to hearing from Professor Vector. Good evening," he said and left as quickly as was socially acceptable. He wanted out. A movement from the corner of his eye caught his attention and he saw the sorting hat following his path out and down the stairs with its eyes.
He furrowed his brow. The hat… Had it told Dumbledore something? Who knew how deeply into one's mind it was capable of digging and what rules of discretion it truly followed.
"Good night, Mr Evans." Harry heard Dumbledore say as he left the man's office. Going down the spiral staircase he gave Quirrell, sans turban at this point, who had been waiting in front of the gargoyle a wide berth.
"Good evening professor," he muttered and left towards his common room. He felt eyes boring at the back of his head as he fled the scene.