The Darkening of Your Soul

Chapter 37

Chapter 37

Harry fumed as he stormed through Hogwarts’ halls. It was Thursday just after dinner, so he couldn’t go to the Slytherin common room or dormitories, since they’d be crowded around this time. He briefly considered the Club House, but that wasn’t a good idea either, since some of the Culture Club members had taken to using it to socialize in the early evenings, which was fine, Harry didn’t mind. He’d only asked that they keep the password to themselves and not share it with anyone not a part of the Culture Club, which so far everyone had done.

So Room of Requirement it was.

When pacing in front of the blank wall Harry asked for the room full of junk, so that he could work off some steam by going through all the many piles of stuff to see what he could use or sell.

But first things first. Harry slammed the door shut behind himself and asked the room to gather all the chairs in one nearby corner. The room did so and at once chairs piled up out of nowhere, only to tumble down again with much clattering. Harry selected a reasonably clean and whole armchair with soft, blue fabric and levitated it to the side where he promptly threw himself in it while he flipped open his mirror.

“Harry, what’s wrong?” Tom asked the moment he answered his mirror. The background betrayed that he was still in his hotel room in Rome and Harry recalled Tom had his final two NEWTs the next day before being able to go home just in time for the start of Harry’s holidays.

“Fucking Dumbledore,” Harry said with feeling while he gritted his teeth, brow furrowed in his deepest frown. “Snape just told me the headmaster has decided that I’m to stay at Hogwarts for the upcoming holidays.”

Tom gave Harry a severely unimpressed look, eyes glinting with defiance. “That is not up to the headmaster to decide.”

“I know!” Harry turned in the chair, throwing both legs over one armrest while leaning his head back and holding the mirror up over his face. “Snape said I should write him an official letter and send it to the board and ministry and prophet and stuff.”

“Hm.” Tom briefly pursed his lips while glancing down, which Harry had come to recognize as Tom’s plotting and planning face. “I think it would be better to do nothing. You don’t owe him an explanation since he’s only the headmaster of your school. It’s not up to him to decide where you spend time away from school since he’s not your legal guardian.”

Harry considered that for a second, briefly shutting his eyes. “Okay, but Dumbledore might be able to pull something since Petunia didn’t exactly give me official permission to do what I want for the holidays. I just tell everyone she did.”

“So we get her permission.” Tom held up a hand to ward off Harry’s obvious question of how they were going to accomplish that. “I’ll write her a short letter and have Dobby deliver it to her with a permission form for her to sign. You’ll be spending your holidays with the Notts, so you’ll be under the constant supervision of an adult, and Theodore is a good friend of yours so it makes sense to spend your holidays with his family.”

“So I’m not going to go back to the Dursleys and spend the nights there and just go where ever I want during the day, like we had planned earlier,” Harry concluded. He wasn’t sure how he felt about that, because he had hoped to spend most of his free time with Tom and how would he be able to do that while stuck at the Notts.