Hogwarts: From Little Wizard to White Lord

Harry was beginning to suspect he'd been tricked…

This thought had been growing for several days now ever since he'd started practicing Occlumency with Peter, only to have all his memories, dreams included, stripped bare while making absolutely no progress himself.

Ron was certain of it. "Listen to me, Harry based on my eleven years of being bullied, Peter's definitely using you as target practice for his magic. He'd go out of his way to help someone? Ha! That's rich!"

Then he laughed so hard that one of his large front teeth popped right out.

Peter, who had been strolling past, calmly tucked away his wand as if nothing had happened.

Ron had to rush to the hospital wing and drink a massive goblet of Skele-Gro to regrow it.

Hermione, however, had a different view. She said seriously, "How can you be sure that thought is really yours?"

It sounded absurd but it also made perfect sense…

Harry clutched his head, spiraling into both a fear of the Dark Arts and a bout of philosophical crisis.

After thinking on it all day, he returned to the Room of Requirement that night and practically offered his mind to Peter's Legilimency with an eager expression.

Compared to Harry's near-zero progress in Occlumency, Peter's Legilimency seemed to be improving at an astonishing pace something that left Harry more than a little depressed.

In the second week of November, Harry arrived at the Room of Requirement again, his mood low. "Am I stupid?" he asked.

Peter, absorbed in the thrill of learning, replied absently, "Why do you think that?"

Harry sighed heavily. His lips twitched as if he wanted to say more, but in the end, he simply flopped onto the carpet like a dead fish. "Come on let's just get it over with."

Peter: "…"

Only then did he realize something was wrong. He'd pushed the Chosen One too far his target had completely given up resisting.

And of course, the stronger the target's resistance, the more effective Legilimency training would be.

Peter flipped through his book in frustration until he finally found an idea.

"Harry, if you work with me properly, I'll cast a dream spell on you after we finish today. How's that sound?"

Dead-Fish Harry looked blank. "What's the point?"

Peter smiled in a way that could only be described as tempting. "It'll give you a beautiful dream one where you can have anything you want. For example… holding hands with a girl."

Harry sat bolt upright, face crimson. "I told you, that wasn't something I meant! It was just a dream! Maybe…"

Catching Peter's half-smile, Harry's voice dropped to a mumble. After a moment, he whispered almost inaudibly, "It really would be a beautiful dream?"

Peter nodded.

Harry hesitated. "Well… I suppose it couldn't hurt. At least I'd get a good night's sleep, right?"

The next day, Peter was delighted to find a new dream in Harry's mind. This one was still soft and hazy, tinged with pink, showing a young boy walking side by side with a girl half a head taller than him.

It was… lovely.

Harry's consciousness fought desperately in the dream-memory, but as Peter's Legilimency skill grew sharper, it was becoming harder and harder for Harry to push him out the way he had at the start.

When the session ended, Harry, still glaring in futile protest, said once again, "You promised me you wouldn't tell anyone about my dream."

The rest of his mind didn't matter much his years with the Dursleys had left the cupboard under the stairs as his most vivid memory. Hogwarts made up the rest.

"Don't worry," Peter said with an easy smile. "My lips are sealed."

Only after Peter gave his word did Harry finally feel at ease enough to head back and rest.

Peter, still in the Room of Requirement, pressed the tip of his wand to his temple and slowly drew out a fine, silvery thread.

It was a memory everything he had seen while inside Harry's mind.

Humming a light, tuneless melody, Peter placed the strand into a small empty vial, sealed it, and carried it up to the Headmaster's office on the eighth floor.

"Hey, Albus, Harry's freshly baked romance care to take a look?"

"Don't make it sound like we're spying… Oh so the boy has already fallen in love, has he?"

Within the shifting world of the Pensieve, Dumbledore dabbed at his eyes, smiling with a sentimental air.

But beautiful dreams are always fleeting. The pink-tinted scene skipped away, replaced by fragmented, dark, heavy memories snapshots of the boy's ten years at Number 4 Privet Drive flashing past like the landscape outside a backward-moving train.

After a long while, Dumbledore sighed. "He has far too little happiness…"

"Yes. Other than Hogwarts, there are only a handful of moments. These are the key points I've sorted out over the past few days," Peter replied.

With an almost practiced ease, he flicked his wand. Smoke-like strands, each threaded with a memory, rose up and swirled before them before drifting skyward.

From this vantage, the grim reality was clear: the dark, negative images in Harry's mind vastly outweighed the bright ones. The very first moment of light in his life had been the day Hagrid handed him his Hogwarts letter.

In the original story Peter remembered from his past life, Harry's childhood had been brushed over quickly, the fairy-tale style never quite capturing what it truly meant for a child to grow up in a home where he was rejected and despised.

Now he saw it Harry forced into worn, undersized clothes, shut away in a cupboard for years.

"You should be grateful, Albus," Peter said with a faint edge of sarcasm. "It's a miracle Harry hasn't turned into another Tom."

"Please forgive an old man's anxiety over gains and losses," Dumbledore murmured. "Lily Harry's mother left him a protective charm with her life. It needs a blood connection to remain in force. And I feared that if he grew up in the wizarding world, listening to flattery and praise day after day, he would become drunk on false glory…"

Peter made no comment. No one could know how things might have turned out otherwise.

He wasn't here to argue justice for Harry. His eyes scanned the memories he'd marked. "So far, there's no sign his memories have been tampered with. Seems like Tom really hasn't noticed the link between them yet."

"Don't be too quick to conclude that, Peter. Tom is a master of memory magic. His greatest talent was to slip into someone's mind and bury his malice deep in their memories disguised as resentment, bitterness toward life or others feeding it, weaving it through until it drowned out reason. Those poor souls never even realized they had been twisted and reshaped by him."

Peter listened closely.

He was never so arrogant as to think he had nothing to learn. He knew Dumbledore's experience far outweighed his own and that his own Legilimency was still crude in comparison.

"All right," he said. "I'll keep watching."

Harry could continue serving as his Legilimency practice target.

That, at least, was very good news.

...

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