Work Text:
5 times the Slytherins kick Harry out + when they let him stay.
1
The day starts out very normal for the Slytherins. Theo, Zabini, Davis, and Bulstrode have claimed the couch they are often so inclined to. Each student is doing their own thing. As there is no reason to, no one in the snake pit even looks up when the common room wall opens up to let someone in.
That is, until the person says, “Nott, can you help me with the Ancient Runes homework? I don’t really get what I’m supposed to do here.” Harry Potter, the Golden Boy of Gryffindor’s voice is easily distinguished against the Slytherin students in the room. He seems to not notice the attention he has grabbed from every Slytherin there just by speaking.
“Huh?” Theo asks. Very dignified.
“I asked if you could help me with the Ancient Runes homework. Usually, I’d ask Hermione, but you’re actually the top of the class, so…” Harry gives a shrug as if he doesn’t know that at least half of the Slytherin students are staring at him. Or he doesn’t care , Theo amends as he watches the boy’s eyes flick around the room.
“How… did you get in here, Potter?” Terrence Higgs asks.
“Oh!” Harry exclaims as though he hadn’t thought that he may need to answer the question of how he got into the common room of the enemy house. “Well, I remembered where the common room was, so I was just going to wait outside until I could ask someone to go get Nott for me, but when I reached the door it just… opened for me?” What. “So I just assumed I was welcome and came in.”
“You– shouldn’t be in here,” Higgs stumbles. Theo shakes his head.
“Go. Go wait for me in the library. I’ll bring my notes,” He says. Harry nods happily and turns on his heel. Everyone watches as he strolls out of the room. Once he’s out and the wall closes again, everyone turns to Theo.
“What the hell was that?”
“How does he know where the common room is?”
“Did you tell him?”
“Are you friends with Potter?”
“I don’t know, I don’t know, no I did not, and kind of? We’re more like aquaintences at best,” Theo answers. He then gets up to go get his Ancient Runes notes from his dorm room.
“Let’s just hope he doesn’t show up again.”
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2
Cassius Warrington and Miles Bletchly are conversing lightly as they unofficially lead most of their house from the Great Hall after dinner. When the wall opens with a careful whisper of the password, they think they’re safe.
Until they go in and see Harry Potter standing by one of the windows that show the inside of the lake.
“What,,, are you doing, Potter?” Miles asks simply.
The small boy turns around, startled. He seems to have a bracelet on that’s made of…stone? Okay. Whatever boats your float or whatever the muggles say. He looks at the crowd sheepishly.
“You guys are back earlier than I expected. You’re usually gone for another ten minutes at least,” He says.
“Weird that you know that, but okay,” Gemma Farley says. “But that doesn’t answer why you’re here.” By now, most of the third years have made it to the front and are staring at Harry. Draco Malfoy and his posse are conveniently missing, it seems.
“Oh. Well I noticed something last time I was in here and wanted to test it out. But I figured it would be safer if I did this than show up in the middle of the night or something stupid.” Oh sure. Like that’s perfectly reasonable.
Apparently it is since the third years barely bat an eye at it. “What did you find?” Tracy asks, moving closer. Just as she does, the stone bracelet raises it’s snake head and hisses at everyone. The brat just stroke the back of its neck and hisses back. To be honest, most people forgot about the whole parseltongue thing.
“Ganon says that he doesn’t want me to leave,” The brat announces.
“Ganon?” Zabini inquires, observing the snake from a few feet away.
“Yeah,” Potter shrugs, “That’s his name.” Farley pinches at the bridge of her nose.
“You can take the snake. Just get out. Malfoy will be here any second and I do not want the headache.” The young boy winces and nods his head. He hesitates for a second before hugging Nott and Zabini and patting Bulstrode and Davis on the backs before he makes a hasty retreat out the wall again.
The four kids just stand there a bit stunned for a second and then move on with their lives.
The rest of the house is mostly silent the rest of the night, even when Malfoy comes in raving about how ‘Potter did this,’ and ‘Weasley did that.’
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3
Terence Higgs is lucky, he supposes. Sure, he feels sick, but not sick enough to go to the hospital wing. And, since it’s a weekend meaning his entire house is out studying or enjoying the nice weather, he gets the entire common room to himself. He uses his quiet time to read the book he just checked out from the Library.
Terence looks up from his book when he hears the sound of the wall opening over the silence of the room. There stands the Boy Who Lived staring at him very surprised. Terence raises his eyebrow.
“I wanted to talk to the mermaids,” Harry says as he walks towards a window.
“Mermaids? I haven’t seen any mermaids in the lake,” Says Terence, thoroughly confused.
“Yeah. They’re shy. But they love conversation! All you have to do is knock!” he punctuates his sentence by getting to the window and knocking on the glass. Terence watches with bated breath as nothing seems to happen. Just as he’s about to get the honor of crushing the kid’s dreams, a greyish face surrounded by purple hair with yellow eyes peeks into the window. The kids beams and immediately starts a conversation with the merperson.
Terence looks at his watch and winces. The conversation with the merperson had been going on for around ten minutes now and shows no sign of stopping soon. Terence decides, as the Adult ™ of the room, that he should warn the child about the nearing onslaught of snakes that is inevitably going to come in about five minutes.
“Hey, kid. Most of the house is going to be back in like five minutes.” He just gets a thumbs up and the kid carries on talking to the merperson for four minutes and then, to Terence’s surprise, just vanishes.
What the actual hell.
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4
By now, seeing Harry show up unannounced in their common room is quite normal. You know what’s decidedly not normal, though? Watching him crawl out of the portrait above the fireplace, that’s what.
The entire house watches on in unconcealed confusion and awe, while Blaise and his friends are amused. They’ve so far gotten used to the Gryffindor (don’t tell Draco) and the random things he does, often without rhyme or reason. Dare say, they’ve even grown fond of him (good heavens, please, don’t tell Draco that.)
Blaise carries on for a moment, watching as the small boy struggles to get a grip on the unreasonable thin and slick mantel. Eventually, Blaise takes pity on him pulls him down, and catches him, releasing him on the floor. The portrait snaps shut.
“Thanks, Blaise! I was wondering where that passage went.” Harry says. His eyes light up when he notices Theo. “Theo! Did you get that book I found? On reptilian creatures?” Theo nods with a small smile and holds up the book. Harry beams at him and goes to sit next to him, leaning against his side to look at the pages.
“So, where does the passage go ?” Millie asks, observing the portrait.
“The Chamber of Secrets.” He says it so nonchalantly that, for a moment, it hardly registers in everyone’s brain. When they do realize though there’s a sound of
“WHAT”
“Yeah,” Harry giggles as though he hasn’t just changed the lives of like 60 kids. “Oh, but don’t worry, though! I’m the only one able to get in or out! Sal said so!”
“Who is ‘Sal’?” Blaise asks. Merlin, this guy.
“Salazar Slytherin, of course! His portrait is on the other side of the passage. He says that only the heir and lord of his house is able to open the passage ways!” Harry says, opening up a whole other can of flobberworms while pointing to something in the book.
“So,” Flint starts, “When everyone was calling you the heir of Slytherin last year-”
“They were wrong!” Huh.
“Explain?” Millie requests.
“Oh! Well I got Slytherin from right of conquest when Tom Riddle, that’s Voldemort’s real name,” Harry skillfully ignores the flinches and a few glares, “announced that he was fighting me as the heir of Slytherin and then I killed his shadow again! Then, when I went to Gringotts this summer, the Goblins pulled me aside and said something about me needing to do something for them and so I claimed my Lordships.”
“Why Lordships? Why not heirships?” Tracy asks.
Harry, the little bugger, still not looking up from the book he and Theo are looking at says, “I’m the last of most of my lines, so I get to claim those ones along side my heirships.”
“Lines plural? How many? What are they?” Theo asks, finally looking up from the stupid book.
“I can’t say. Not yet. I need it to be a surprise for the next step of my plan!”
“Plan?” Harry does a zipping lips gesture.
“So, if the Dark Lord was the Heir to Slytherin, why did he never claim his Lordship?” Cassius Warrington asks.
“Oh! He didn’t do the magic step! You have to kill or tame a Basalisk to get the Lordship.” Everyone blinks at him.
“Alright. That’s enough fuckery today,” Farley announces. “Potter, I think it’s time for you to go.” Harry nods, hugs Blaise, Theo, Tracy and Millie, climbs the mantel, and, with a two fingered salute, rolls into the portrait hole and disappears.
“What the fuck is wrong with your friend?” Bletchley asks the four third-years. They all shrug.
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5
At this point, walking into the common room to find Harry Potter and Theodore Nott cuddled up together on the couch reading the outrageously long book is completely normal. At least it is to Terence Higgs.
“Oh, yeah! Turn to page 1,327!” Harry says. Nott just nods and presumably turns to the page right away. “This page has so many inaccuracies.”
“The Basalisk page?” Nott asks. Right. Back to the Basalisk thing.
“Yeah! First of all, they do not only live to be forty years old! The one from the Chamber was over a thousand! And then, it says that they can’t get bigger than fifty feet! The one from the chamber is sixty at least! And then- and then! It says that no spell can penetrate it’s skin, which is fine and dandy but it says it would be easy to kill with a knife or sword to the eyes! The only way to fully kill a basilisk is to blast it in the mouth with fiendfyre! They just play dead with all the other things becasue their healing factors are insane.” Everyone stares at the small boy.
“And don’t get me started on this last paragraph. ‘There’s no possible way for them to be tamed’??? Please , all you need to do is speak some parseltongue at the dead body and then, boom! New friend! Merry Christmas, Happy Yule, you now have a pet murder snake!” Harry finally notices other people in the room.
“How do you know all of this?” Terence asks.
“Oh! Sal told me! He knows everything about them! He can tell you every different type of Basilisk there is!”
“There’s more than one?!” Marcus exclaims.
“Oh yeah! There’s like-” He pauses, looking like he just got a weird feeling.
The small boy sits up fully and pulls a tattered piece of parchment out of his pocket. He touches his wand to it and whispers something. When he opens the parchment, Terence can see that there is words on the parchment when there wasn’t before.
Before anyone can ask what happened, Harry’s face goes pale. He bolts upright, shouts a quick “bye, everyone!” and runs straight at a wall that doesn’t go anywhere. Just as Terence is about to yell at him to warn him, the kid disappears into the wall.
Marcus cautiously taps on the wall. “There’s nothing on the other side,” He announces. “He literally just went through the wall.”
“Oh, yeah. He does that,” Nott says, finally sitting up fully. “He says it’s exhausting though so I assume something bad has happened or is coming.”
Just as he says that, the wall (the one they actually walk through) opens up to reveal professor greasy hair himself. “The Bloody Baron has informed me that there is an intruder in the common room. Have you seen anything?” He demands.
Without any preamble, everyone shakes their heads and/or says “no sir.”
They will protect the strange child that shows up in their house.
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+1
So far, Theo’s day has been pretty normal. Which obviously means that something has to come in and change that. Or, more accurately, someone. As Theo is on the couch again, reading that ridiculously long book that Harry gave him, the boy in question falls out of the wall and faceplants on the floor.
Half the people in the common room look at the little intruder that has taken over their lives, Half of them looks at the shocked Malfoy who has yet to see the young Lord in their common room. With no hesitation, Theo sets down his book and he and Blaise stand up to get Harry off the ground.
They sit where they were before but with Harry laying across them, head in Theo’s lap, legs hanging off of Blaise’s. “Had to get out,” Harry slurs. Theo just pets his head.
“WHAT IS POTTER DOING IN HERE!?” Malfoy yells. Theo and Blaise shush him. “NO! WHY IS HE HERE?? THIS IS THE SLYTHERIN COMMON ROOM! NO LIONS ALLOWED.”
“Shut up, Malfoy,” Multiple people hiss at him.
“Safer here. Had to come,” Harry mumbles, settling himself further into Theo’s lap. Multiple people exclaim as Malfoy sends a stinging hex towards the young Lord, but the guy just… bats it away with his hand. Theo chooses not to be surprised anymore and continues to pet the boys hair.
Everyone who has been in the common room while Harry has been glares at the Malfoy heir. He quickly backs out of the common room and runs through the hallway.
“What happened, caro?” Blaise asks, the little pet name slipping out like it does when he’s worried.
“D’mentors.” Harry mumbles right before he finally completely falls asleep.
“Is he okay?” Higgs asks, looking at the boys worriedly.
“He’ll be fine,” Theo says, not ceasing in his calming motions. In all actuality, he’s rather worried about the boy, but he knows he’s just exhausted.
“Dementors and Wall walking?” That’s what the people who know about Harry’s ability to walk through the castle walls have been calling it. “He’s probably just exhausted. He’ll wake up eventually,” Blaise explains.
For the next five minutes, everyone in the common just chats quietly, not willing to wake the little Lord. That is, until the wall opens, and in walks the Dungeon Bat and the Blonde Menace. When Snape sees Harry sprawled on Theo and Blaise’s laps his face grows thunderous.
“What is Going on here!? Potter!” He yells, only to get shushed by everyone in the common room. He looks a bit stunned.
“Let the Little Lord sleep. He just popped out of the wall,” Bletchly says quietly.
“Poor kid’s exhausted,” Pucey adds.
“I don’t care how tired he is. He can’t be in here.” Snape growls.
“Get him out, sir! He’s invading the sanctity of the common room!” Malfoy yells. Everyone ignores his hippogryphshit like usual except Snape. Playing bloody favorites.
“Quite, Mr. Malfoy.” Snape raises his wand.
“He isn’t invading shit ,” Warrington says. “It’s his right to be in the house that he is Lord to.”
“I don’t care what lies the infernal boy has told you, but a Lord he is not,” Snape sneers. He shoots a levicorpus at the boy still lying on Theo and Blaise’s laps. When the spell is just a couple of feet away, a green shield pops up and encircles the boys on the couch, successfully absorbing the spell. Everyone looks on, but Snape and Malfoy are the only ones blindsided by this development.
“Drop the shield, tesoro. Go back to sleep,” Blaise soothes the boy.
“He didn’t wake up to do that,” Theo says, which actually surprises everyone for once.
Snape tries to get the boy out of the room for another 20 minutes until he just stops and sighs. “Just get him out when he wakes up,” He says. Everyone nods their heads as Snape and Malfoy walk out of the common room.
They don’t kick Harry out when he wakes up an hour later.