Possessiveness and Other Such Oddities

Lacuna

a/n: T/W- reference to the past sexual assault of a minor and the minister's usual creepiness. thank you so much for all the likes and views! it really means a lot<3

As Harry expected, he slept through dinner and, to the next morning. He was woken up by Michael casting several screeching alarm clock charms and, feeling remarkably refreshed, he headed to the bathroom and got ready for the day.

Harry sent up a prayer to Mother Magic that the Minister stayed away for today (and the rest of his life) and left for breakfast with Hermione and Draco. He had Potions first thing in the morning (not double, thank Merlin, that was on Draco's A days) with Hermione, Maisy, Anthony, and Terry. After breakfast, he walked to the dungeon classroom with them.

He shouldn't have been surprised, he thought, resigned, by the unnatural shadows in the far left corner of the classroom, but he was, and Harry was very, very angry. Harry didn't get angry often, but there was something about the Minister's single-minded obsession with him that made icy cold rage fill his veins. This was the man responsible for his fucked up home life and James' depression (Harry knew that James was an adult, yes, but the Minister shouldered some modicum of blame), and this was the man who slaughtered his mother.

At that moment, making eye contact with the Minister's dark red eyes, Harry vowed to do whatever it took to take down that man in front of him. Whatever it took. (If a green orb in the Hall of Prophecies glowed even brighter at that thought, well, Unspeakable Larkspur wasn't going to tell anyone).

Harry did not react outwardly other than a narrowing of his eyes as he shoved all his (icy, frigid, so cold it burned) anger behind his Occlumency shields. Hermione led him to their assigned table and waited for Professor Black to start class.

Hermione was worried. She had only ever seen Harry get angry (not annoyed, irritated, or mad) two times. The first was in their 1st Year, and Draco had called Hermione mudblood scum. Harry had gotten all stony, icy, wrong, and Draco had woken up drenched in mud, pigs' blood, and pond scum from the Black Lake (all of his clothes and bed sheets were too).

The other time was much, much more terrifying. In 3rd Year, there had been a student in their 7th Year--a creep named Vivian Penmark--who had drugged Draco with Amortentia. Harry and Hermione had discovered them in a very, very compromising and very, very illegal position. Draco told Hermione once, late at night, that while she was vomiting, Harry had looked at Vivian dead in the eyes and cocked his head.

Nobody knew what happened to her other than that her family, three months later, received her jarred uterus and a note that read retributum est peccatum. Her family left the country and did their best to forget that they had a daughter. This was especially prudent given that people were coming forward on exactly what sins needed retribution (and there were many, many, many she had to atone for). Draco and Hermione wisely ignored the blood under Harry's fingernails and the wild look in his eyes the three months before her family received that gift.

Hermione and Draco both knew that there would only be one victor in this deadly dance between Harry and the Minister and that Harry was not the one dangerously underestimating his opponent. While they were initially worried, given that the Minister was a very powerful, very violent man, they weren't as much anymore; Harry was not a being to be trifled with. He may have been complacent to let the Minister walk all over him for a few days in hopes he'd move on and find another obsession, but his power plays? His blatant perversion and disruption of his learning? The Minister's general disregard and the false sense of ownership? Harry was not going to roll over and show his belly.

If a Horcrux underneath Harry's pillow became increasingly anxious as he mulled over the information he had been given, it was obviously due to his annoyance over how far his main soul piece had fallen. It was obviously not because Tom was the only other being who knew exactly what happened to Vivian Penmark or his fondness for Harry.