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It was a week later, when Harry had just about managed to repress the trauma of having been tarred, feathered and hung outside the astronomy tower by his feet, that he was cornered by the newly founded golden trio right before duelling practice.
"Who is Nicholas Flamel?" Neville asked seriously, flanked by Harley and Hermione, before even saying hello.
Harry looked at the three of them blankly with a far-away look in his eyes. "You come to me in your times of need when you refused to help me in mine?" he asked somewhat cryptically, as to his knowledge, the three of them hadn't looked up to even notice his pathetic form back then when they'd been walking around in the courtyard.
They shared a confused look at his words before giving him questioning stares.
Harry shook his head. "Whatever." He'd known that Neville had found the three-headed dog. Everything going to plan they'd gone to Hagrid to inquire, and the man had let it slip that this was a matter between Dumbledore and Nicholas Flamel.
The question was, should he interfere?
In the books, the kids had thought that it was Snape trying to steal the stone because they just didn't like the man, and because he'd shown up with ripped robes and limping after the aftermath of their troll defence exercise.
To Harry's limited knowledge, Snape wasn't currently teaching at Hogwarts, so that plotline was a bit moot.
"So you don't know," Neville determined with a sigh at Harry's silence.
They all looked quite disappointed.
Harry shook his head.
"I do know, actually," he admitted, causing their eyes to sparkle. "I'd just like to know why you want to know," he responded.
Neville's body language turned defensive.
"We're just curious. We heard his name recently and were surprised we couldn't find anything," Hermione piped up.
Harry threw her a doubtful look. "I hardly think this obscure topic is something you stumbled on accidentally unless you've been reading the sorts of books that you really shouldn't." And by shouldn't he meant outdated. However, by the widening of their eyes, he realised that an interpretation that could have been given to his words was that they'd successfully come upon a dark conspiracy.
To be fair, nobody knew how Flamel had created the stone. If it was anything like in Fullmetal Alchemist, where you had to trade in the lives and souls of other people, then it would be knowledge banished in the darkest of the dark arts tomes.
The trio shared a look, and for a moment, Harry was slightly triggered for being completely excluded. Who was the one who'd been teaching Neville duelling for weeks now? Without asking many questions at that…
"Is this room… safe?" Harley asked cautiously, looking around the large classroom that had been hosting Hogwarts's illegal duelling club since the beginning of this year.
Harry pulled out his wand and flicked it a few times, casting the privacy charms that he knew.
"It's as safe as I can make it," he assured the paranoid first years and one second year.
"Where to begin?" Neville suddenly asked, probably wondering how to breach the topic.
"There's a three-headed dog in the abandoned third-floor corridor protecting something that Nicholas Flamel entrusted to Dumbledore," Hermione blurted out.
Neville nodded. "I met Hagrid on the day my parents took me to Diagon Alley, where he was carrying a package for Dumbledore. Gringotts was broken into the day after."
"Whatever it is, Professor Quirrell, if that's even his real name, is trying to steal it," Harley finished darkly.
Harry froze.
This was.
Was this real?
If he had been in Naruto, he would have tried to dispel the illusion.
The golden trio, as changed as they were, were trying to accuse the correct person for once.
A tear almost slid down his eye.
Ignoring what had happened to his mother, maybe this truly was the better timeline.
"Well, Quirrell was the muggle studies teacher in my first year at Hogwarts; he was on a sabbatical last year, so you wouldn't have known him," Harry muttered thoughtfully. "He came back this year to take the Defence Against the Dark Arts position. As for the object that is most closely linked to Nicholas Flamel…" he trailed off, wondering how to explain it.
"If it's really that, then it wouldn't be only Quirrell trying to steal it. It would be the entire Wizarding Britain," he concluded.
"What is the object?" Hermione asked, almost begging.
Harry crossed his arms. "Nicholas Flamel is an alchemist, who I think recently celebrated his 666th birthday. He is foremost famous for being the only alchemist alive to have ever successfully created the Philosopher's Stone, an alchemical product which can grant the user eternal life and transmute all substance into pure gold." He shook his head. "If you're telling me that thing is at Hogwarts, then I'm sorry, but you've probably been tricked, or you're thinking about the wrong thing. An all-powerful artefact the entire world lusts over hardly has a reason to appear at a school, of all places."
"But what if it needed to be protected? Only Dumbledore could do it," Neville argued.
Harry waved him off. This had always bugged him in the books. "Nicholas Flamel has protected the stone for hundreds of years before Dumbledore was even born. Why suddenly require his assistance now? Do you think Grindelwald and hundreds of other dark lords throughout the ages haven't tried to steal it? They didn't succeed, so why would that suddenly change? No, if you really think the stone is at Hogwarts, then I would urge you to think who benefits from this rumour being spread."
In Harry's opinion, this was a lie created to lure in Voldemort and try to trap him until the original Harry Potter matured. Or maybe it was a way to force a confrontation between the two. Regardless, in either case, there was no reason to bring the real stone to Hogwarts. Simply the illusion of it would suffice. Voldemort would bite, not because he necessarily believed it was real, but because he was desperate. Spending a decade as a shade, none of your former followers coming to help you would do that to someone. Desperation alongside the general need to underestimate your opponents… A powerful concoction.
Or maybe Voldemort knew something that Harry didn't, which was very possible.
But regardless, this was a matter best left to Dumbledore.
Going by the looks the trio was exchanging, however, they didn't necessarily agree with him.
"Git you fucking schizos," Harry muttered quietly. "Anyway, are we here to duel or what?" he asked.
Hermione suddenly gasped, affronted. "Don't you know that's against the rules?" she asked with a very scared tone of voice.
Harry rolled his eyes at her. "Says the girl who ran off to hunt a troll. Anyway, if you want, you can stay and match up with Harley. Then we'd have a number divisible by two."
Seeing as the trio, only ⅓ of the original as it was, still insisted on getting involved in all sorts of trouble, maybe it was better to train all of them a bit.
Who knew? Maybe Neville would banish the Dark Lord this year with the additional training he received.
One could only hope.
-/-
Now responsible for training five students: Neville, Penny, Cedric, Hermione, and Harley - Harry's weeks passed quickly.
Additionally, being responsible for Tonks' occlumency and her patronus, he really felt like a proper teacher now.
Or rather, an unpaid intern.
The only thing that was keeping him away from feeling like an assistant professor was the fact that he still received tutelage from Quirrell and Flitwick and that he sometimes struggled with arithmancy and Potions.
It was with this busy schedule and not much of import happening that November came to an end, December passed, and Christmas holidays approached.
Harry would go back to his family for this time to give the self-cleaning broom he'd been working on.
But first, of course, he would attend Slughorn's Halloween party, which had turned into a Christmas party due to the troll incident.
It was on the morning of Slughorn's Christmas party, which was to occur a week before Christmas, as students were going to go home for the period, that Harry expectantly entered the Great Hall.
It was possible that this evening he would see Snape again and manage to corner the man into giving him some answers.
Also, the party was probably going to be fun. Tonks was going, and they were proper friends now instead of acquaintances like they'd had been last year.
Harry was pretty sure that if Penny could get her Potions O.W.L. sorted the summer after fourth year, she would also be invited.
He paused.
Neville, of course, would likely also get an invite, although whether the taciturn boy would accept it and actually go was up in the air.
The golden trio, as they'd started being referred to in the halls of Hogwarts due to their sheer inseparability, had been hyper-focused on the issue of the third-floor corridor ever since they'd gotten an explanation of the Philosopher's Stone from Harry.
A light bulb suddenly lit up in Harry's head. In the original books, the trio had gotten suspicious of Snape because they'd thought that the man had been cursing Harry Potter's broom during the Quidditch match.
In this world, however, Neville had never joined the Quidditch team, and indeed seemed to have no interest in the sport beyond occasionally flying with other Hufflepuffs on the weekend to relieve some stress.
Also, for some reason, after having spent a bit more time with Quirrell in their lessons, Harry got the impression that the man was a bit more sane than his original counterpart. Trying to curse Harry's broom while sitting next to a bunch of professors and in the presence of Dumbledore was completely asinine. Even if Harry had fallen, someone would have caught him.
But, without that event, the suspicion wouldn't have fallen so harshly on Snape.
Similarly, without the man even being present at Hogwarts, Quirrell was indeed the most suspicious figure.
If nothing else, he was new.
Also, Harley, being a year older, was aware that every new Defence against the Dark Arts professor represented some sort of issue.
It wasn't too much of a stretch to assume that if there was something valuable at Hogwarts, the person trying to steal it would be the person currently teaching DADA.
"Even if they hyperfocus, what they think they're going to do about it with those non-existent skills of theirs, I don't know," Harry muttered as he sat down at the breakfast table and idly picked up a newspaper that someone had left behind.
"With me having taken down the troll, the most impressive thing about the trio is how they manage to spend that much time together despite Hermione being in a different house," he said as he stacked up his plate with all the things a growing boy needed.
Protein.
It was mostly protein.
He cut off a piece of bacon and started eating it while also starting to read the first page.
"Ackh!" he almost choked and did a spit-take.
On the first page was Minister candidate Fudge giving the camera an imperial look. He wasn't as fat as the movies had let Harry believe. Just a bit pudgy, if anything.
"A rhetoric without compare: Cornelius Fudge stuns the House of Lords with a blazing speech full of passion?" Harry read out confusedly after he'd managed not to die.
He remembered the bumbling figure, which in the books had been depicted as barely more than a puppet with Lucius Malfoy's hand up its ass..
"I guess he had to have done something to get elected back then, right?" Harry asked doubtfully.
"He's brilliant, is what he is," a voice suddenly spoke up next to Harry, causing him to look up and see that one of the older years had sat down somewhat close to him and had overheard his thinking aloud.
"Who's brilliant?" Harry asked, confused.
The older boy rolled his eyes at him, "Just read the paper, and you'll see."
Harry did just that.
When talking about the most dangerous pitfalls that magical Britain faces in the near future, candidate Fudge surprisingly avoided the all-too-familiar issues perpetuated by the Statute of Secrecy and the identity politics which often pits pure-bloods against Muggleborns.
The largest problem, according to Fudge, is the falling behind of the country's institutions in comparison to its mainland counterparts.
As we all know, the mainland suffered more from Grindelwald, while Britain suffered more under the yoke of He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named. Considering that the latter's terrorism was more recent, Britain's institutions are still recovering; the issue, in Fudge's words, however, is:
"If Britain's institutions are to recover, what they need most is modernisation. However, how will this modernisation be achieved anytime soon when we write down the lowest attendance rates that Hogwarts has ever seen? Who exactly, if not our bright next generation, can lead the future and restore British Hegemony?"
A sad truth about these attendance rates is, unfortunately, that most wizards and witches were not too keen on having children during times of conflict. However, it is the first time that someone has so clearly analysed the long-term political ramifications of this so-called trench generation. It is also in the context of this that Fudge rejects the dogmatic divide between tradition and progress that has so long plagued our political debates.
"We have been separated into two camps: those who want to preserve our wonderful culture and those who want to move beyond it. But the divide, if nothing else, seems artificial to me. Is there nothing about our wonderful history that a progressive might wish to keep for future generations? Similarly, is there no progressive policy that would enhance our bargaining power abroad and push our economy out of the post-war drought it has experienced?"
The most impressive words spoken by Fudge at his address were the following, where he spoke about our divided nation.
"It is a part of human nature that differences divide us, and those of us who had the privilege of growing up in a magical society from our birth onwards, and those who were privileged only to join later, at the age of eleven, are indeed irreparably different. The most recent conflict only exacerbated these differences, but I must ask, is it not time to put these things behind us? Has there ever been any society that has not consisted of people with different upbringings and beliefs? I certainly haven't heard of one. The only way that societies differ is in how they treat these differences. We in Britain are haunted by a ghost, a spectre of a not-all-too-far-away, violent and horrible past. However, for all that, we should not forget the lessons we have been taught; we should not insist on living in a bygone time. In our society, different people contribute different things. A Potions Master is not an Enchanter, and an Enchanter is not an Auror. Why should the divide between those of us with a heritage that can be traced back generations and those who can create their identity as the first be treated any differently? As long as we all contribute to our country in our own ways, we can synthesise a greater tomorrow. This is the message I want to give to the wonderful people of this island. For too long have we been haunted by the spectre of war. It is now time to not only look towards a brighter future but to create it with an iron fist and an open heart."
It was with these words that Cornelius ended his address and left behind a stunned House of Lords, who, almost unilaterally, ignoring only the extremist sections on both sides, gave him a standing ovation.
Harry put down the newspaper and rapidly blinked a few times to reassert a new reality.
The speech had actually been… good?
Since when did Fudge have a brain?
Had Lucius lobotomised the man in the novels?
He certainly would never have agreed with the suggestion of synthesising a greater future hand-in-hand with muggleborns.
Although, to be fair, that wasn't what Fudge had been hinting at.
He was a politician in the end, and people would see what they wanted.
The purebloods would read the message as: working together with muggleborns can benefit us in the future, as long as everyone knows their place. We, being the Lords of this world, and they are the newly introduced peasants from abroad.
Meanwhile, the progressives would hear: Our differences aren't irreconcilable, and even if the path is arduous, cooperation is the way forward.
The message that likely spoke to both sides, however, was the one of forgetting the spectre of the war that still hung heavily over Britain.
Minister Crouch had certainly brought it up often enough to underscore his qualifications.
But people wanted to forget, and they had long grown weary of Crouch's past glories.
The brilliance in Fudge's speech was that he framed himself as someone who hadn't been too involved in the war, as a proponent of working on the future.
James Potter, whose very fatherhood itself was the biggest reminder of the last war, inevitably became a relic in comparison.
Still, Fudge had stolen Harry's street cred for killing Greyback, so for all the redhead cared, the man could go suck on a lemon.
"Great, isn't it?" the older Hufflepuff preened when he saw that Harry had finished the paper.
"It's a newspaper article," Harry said, rolling his eyes. "What are his actual policies?" Of that, of course, of that, there had been no mention.
The older boy turned away with a frown.
"People like you are why democracies don't work," Harry muttered to himself as he finished his breakfast before standing up and leaving for class.
He wasn't going to get too invested in the politics of magical Britain. He had other worries.
If Fudge had gotten a different backer this time around and had thus received some better, less polarising speeches, then so be it. At least him being elected would keep the timeline more intact.
Just as he stood up to leave, a letter suddenly popped up in front of him at the table. His magic senses didn't pick up anything, so it could have only been Dobby.
Considering that Dobby was responsible for the upkeep of exactly one line of correspondence for Harry, or rather, Charon, it became very obvious who the letter was from.
Harry picked it up and flicked it open as he started walking.
It was basically a reminder that he'd agreed to teach Draco Malfoy occlumency during the winter break, which, now that Dobby could teleport him around, wouldn't be a very big problem.
He could spend time with his family, work on his projects, and still pop away for an hour or two every few days to teach the little brat.
Other than challenging Neville to a duel and actually showing up to lose, Draco had been behaving a bit better than he had been in the original books. Crabbe and Goyle weren't available as henchmen in this world, and Harry basically hadn't heard of anyone being bullied… too much.
It was interesting to see what else could change through Charon's interaction with the boy.
The only interesting thing about the letter was the fact that Narcissa asked to meet him in person for the first time that they met.
It seemed like she wanted to tell him something, something that couldn't be written down.
Interesting.
Harry's legilimency had been chugging along nicely since he occasionally practised with Tonks. Her occlumency was now at the stage where she could at least notice an intrusion and also weakly wave her fist at it instead of just watching helplessly.
He was curious which one of his pupils would develop faster. Draco got lessons more often when he did get them, and Tonks got it less often, but more consistently.
Would the two of them ever meet and fight it out to take their spot as his favoured disciple?
Find out in the next episode of Harry Balls Z.
Horrible name, scratch that.
-/-
The day passed at intermittent speed. Classes were classes. Vector was still trying to put the fear of God, or rather, the fear of O.W.L.s, into her students so they'd actually study the necessary amount to pass, which was a bit of a lost effort because everyone other than Harry had a bunch of other O.W.L. exams to contend with.
Ancient runes were still at the boring stage.
Care of Magical Creatures had progressed from Flobberworms to Bowtruckles.
Defence against the Dark Arts was still…
Well, you could say whatever you wanted about Quirrell's potential housing of a Dark Lord at the back of his turban-clad head, but at least he was a good teacher.
Harry thought that if people had been willing to put aside the hero worship that had elevated James Potter's lessons last year, then they would have realised that, from sheer content, Quirrell was on yet another level.
The day passed like that; lunch and dinner disappeared down Harry's gullet, and eventually, he found himself standing in front of the Hufflepuff common room with the other Hufflepuff invitees, of which he only ever truly interacted with Tonks.
They traversed the winding pathways of the castle together, chattering about inane things such as politics, Charms, and the necessity of history.
As they neared the room that Slughorn had booked for his soiree, lively music came to greet them as it echoed down the halls.
Some paintings were clearly enjoying it, moving to the rhythm of the concerto of classical music, which made Harry muse for a second about the Ethics of making a facsimile of a person and then sticking them on a wall with little to no entertainment for centuries on end.
They reached the door, which was, oddly enough, being guarded by Filch.
The housekeeper took their invitations, glared at them and opened the heavyset wooden door.
What greeted them was a well-decorated grand hall, which must have been expanded somehow to fit all the people and kitsch decorations that Slughorn had put in it.
The man obviously wasn't so crass as to put up actual Christmas decorations, as that was a muggle holiday, but even the more traditional ensemble was interesting, to say the least.
There were so many pine trees sprouting from every surface that it made the room smell like a forest. A burned forest, as each one of them, at the tip, was holding a small flicker of blue fire which burned away at nothing, but also burned some of the pine needles.
There was red mistletoe everywhere on the ceiling. And with everywhere, Harry meant everywhere. There was actually no ceiling to be seen. It was just a humongous carpet of tightly woven mistletoe.
House elves scurried about with plates of hors d'oeuvres and drinks, champagne for the adults, and butterbeer for the kids.
Harry, of course, didn't care about any of this. He scanned the room like a jealousy-prone girlfriend, trying to find evidence of her beau cheating. And just like that, girlfriend, he saw clues where there were none. A man in a black robe with long black hair turned around to reveal that he was actually of African descent. A hook-nosed individual turned out to be a woman. A group of potioneers discussing the newest and most interesting theories turned out to have only second-rate participants.
Harry found Snape eventually; however, he found him, like last year, right alongside James Potter, the two of them conspiratorially whispering to each other in a faraway corner of the room.
Luckily for Harry, they seemed just about finished with their conversation, patting each other on the shoulder before turning away to walk in different directions.
As luck would have it, Snape turned directly towards Harry and froze mid-stride.
"Hello," Harry said with a bright smile. "I've heard so much about you. You must be Severus Snape, right?"
-/-
The fateful meeting finally happens! Will they kiss now that they're under all that mistle-toe? Find out in the next episode… Or subscribe to Patreon for advance chapters. The next 11 chapters are actually insane in my opinion so I'd highly suggest.
I'll let you guess why.