Albus paced in his office. He had all sorts of backups just in case something went wrong. And this was wrong. Severus was not meant to care for the boy. He’d been confident in the potions master’s hatred for the elder Potter and how it would prevent him from thinking it was anything other than Potter genes causing him to act out.

Albus was not an idiot. He never had been. This was merely an oversight on his part. He hadn’t thought the boy would react so violently so quickly or that Snape would do anything about it even after he insisted that the boy was fine. But this could work very well in his favour. Harry had built up stamina; he could use his magic for a lot longer than others his age without getting tired. If someone helped him, turned him back to the light, and if it was someone with a very high opinion of Albus then the boy would never be a threat.

Turning Harry Dark had been his first intention, making him face his anger about his parents’ death so he would want to kill the Dark Lord without a second thought. He had hoped Harry would have come to him before now, confessing to what he was doing and asked for Albus’s help. He could have kept the boy using dark magic but kept his loyalties to the light. It would have been hard, sure, but Albus was confident that he could have done it. It was for the greater good.

He looked down at a piece of parchment in his desk drawer. It was supposed to show him which new spells Harry had been practicing but lately it had been showing him nothing. Albus had assumed that maybe Harry hadn’t practiced anything new recently, but having seen the boy in Severus’s office, he knew that wasn’t true. It wasn’t possible for the boy to have been that badly affected by not casting if he hadn’t moved on to something stronger. This meant that Harry had either found somewhere he could cast without Albus being able to trace his wand, or Harry had found a way to cloak his wand. Neither of which were a comforting thought to the Headmaster. He didn’t know of a spell that could do either, and if Harry had found one, it meant that there was something he didn’t know about inside the castle and that did not sit well with the Headmaster.

Harry left his room for only the minimum amount of time necessary. He no longer went to meals with the rest of the school, turned up for classes at the very last second, and left as soon as they were dismissed- he even sat at the back just to make sure that he could be the first out of the room. He ignored any teacher who asked him to stay after class to the point that they had just stopped asking.

He stepped into the study, his study, a few minutes after his potions lesson at the end of the day. He still wasn’t talking to anyone. It had been nearly two weeks since his name was pulled from the Goblet of Fire, and not one person had tried to show him any kind of support. He had chosen to ignore the appearance of badges proudly proclaiming that ‘Potter stinks’. Let them be that way. He didn’t care. He didn’t need support or friendship or love. He had the power, and that was all Harry held dear to his heart.

He picked up the second volume of Salazar’s journal. He was just getting into the spells Salazar created, most of them not even known to the magical world anymore. And with his spells came his magical theory. Harry liked this one, and he knew he’d read similar before, but this one justified his actions perfectly. And gave him a reason to keep practicing. As long as he never used his magic to harm a good person, Salazar theorised that it couldn’t be dark. And that the only reason it was considered dark was because weaker wizards feared the power he wielded with his wand.

Fear. Such a useless emotion. You can only fear something if you fear death, and since death is inevitable, a part of life that you can’t stop so why fear it? Why fear anything? It’s pointless. That was why Harry thought he was above the other students. Because he had removed his fear. He wasn’t scared of competing in the tournament, he wasn’t scared, even, of Voldemort, unlike the rest of the student body.

Harry hissed the password, checked both ways down the corridor, and stepped inside the study. He was home.

Today had not been the worst day of his life, no, he could count them and they were all away from Hogwarts, but it had also not been great. He slung his bag to the authorised of the room and flopped into the arm chair. The book he had been reading the morning was waiting for his on the table ext the the chair. He smiled and picked it up. Lazily, he waved his hand towards the fire and chuckled when the flames grew from no where. His magic had advanced far beyond the capabilities of even Hermione, even some of the seventh years, probably beyond he would wager. 

He had been reading books upon books upon books ever since his name was drawn. He had enough free time now that he wasn’t going to eat with the rest of the school and he didn’t have friendship commitments to do whatever he waned, whenever he wanted. The freedom was intoxicating. Harry vaguely admitted to himself that it was freedom that had led him down this path. And vaguely acknowledged that he shouldn’t have to reply on the dark magic like a crutch. But it just felt so good that he didn’t care. He wouldn't let it bother him.

He lost track of the number of spells that he practiced that night. Some of them were old, some of them were new But none of them brought the same amount of destruction he caused that day at Privet Drive. In the end, he gave up for the night and went to bed. He never thought he would be comfortable in such a green room, as opposed the the red of the Gryffindor dorms, he thought the connotations of Slytherin would be too much. And maybe it would have been, at one point, but people change.