Along with the two Howlers, the Daily Prophet, and the last three non-Howler hate letters, a stately black owl with star-like white speckles dropped a glossy purple envelope in front of Harry’s plate on Wednesday morning. He broke the seal with some trepidation as he carried the Howlers into an empty stone floored hallway and left them, tossing the three hate letters down on top of them to catch fire when the Howlers did. They began shouting and wailing at him before he had even turned down the hall to go back to the Great Hall. Shaking out the letter, he squinted at the ornate gold script glittering against the lurid violet parchment.
Mr. Harry Potter:
We of the Wizengamot wish to tender you an invitation to join our number. As you surely are aware, we are the most powerful governing body in Wizarding Britain. The bravery and ingenuity you displayed during the second half of the war with He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named has caused us to see you as worthy of a place amongst us as one among equals. As a member of the Wizengamot, you will be expected to participate as a juror in the important trials of the Wizarding World, to represent the Wizengamot with dignity, to appoint Ministry of Magic officials, including the Minister of Magic, to vote on vital matters of Wizarding governance, and to debate such matters on the Wizengamot floor. The workings of the Wizengamot are to be kept secret at all times, and members who reveal them to non-members are subject to expulsion and full trial. Please send your decision before the next conference of the Wizengamot, to take place on 30 April.
Yours cordially,
Thaddeus Brookhurst, Chief Warlock,
On behalf of the Wizengamot, assembled 20 April, 1999.
He shivered. The paper, slick with gloss and Harry’s sweat, slipped from his fingers and drifted downward, spinning in the small flurries of air that bounced off the stone walls. He caught it absentmindedly, and glanced at it again. Determinedly, he folded it and tucked it into his pocket.
Harry remembered Snape’s supposition that he would be invited to become a Wizengamot member soon after he left school with only a trace of bitterness. He could almost hear Snape telling them that they hadn’t waited to invite the hero of the Wizarding World to bolster their reputation. Leaning back against the stone wall, Harry resolved to thwart them and do nothing. It was his mostly good name, and he wasn’t going to let them use it.
~*~
Over the course of the day, Harry did his best to forget about the letter. It wasn’t that difficult. Snape assigned them all to one of two teams and set those teams to fight against each other with non-verbal spells. Padma Patil got a detention for whispering a hex, and Neville got one for muttering profanities at Snape under his breath. By the end of the class, more than half of the students had to troop down to the hospital wing for minor wounds. Hermione, who had managed to blast Zacharias Smith into the wall and knock him unconscious, levitated him through the halls, and Harry nursed a burnt hand from a stray scalding jinx. As he shoved his books into his bag, his hand smarted, and a fierce rush of dislike rose in his chest. He shot Snape a sour look when he rose, his eyes meeting the professor’s own pleased expression. Harry gritted his teeth and left the room.
Madam Pomfrey hefted a canary yellow bucket full of Murtlap essence onto the table next to Harry, muttering darkly, “Melee duels in school, I should make him brew the potions. Sit back down and put your hand back in that bucket, Mr. Potter!” Harry slumped back onto the stool and sank his hand back into the slimy fluid.
“When you sent Smith actually spinning through the air into that wall, and his head went thud,” Ron punched his palm enthusiastically, “I mean, Hermione!” He perched on the table next to Harry’s essence of Murtlap, smiling. Hermione, who was fussing over Smith’s split forehead, barely spared him a glance.
“Leave off, Ron,” Harry said quietly.
Ron peered at one of the beds and the tentacle covered figure within. “That spell you hit Nott with was fantastic, and did you see that Leporidae jinx I hit Parkinson with? Do you think Madam Pomfrey will remember to get rid of the tail?”
Harry gave in, his eyes flicking over to the curtains that Parkinson had insisted be drawn shut to hide her new rabbit ears, cotton ball tail, and soft white fur all over her face. “I’m sure Pansy will remind her if she forgets,” or even if she didn’t.
“Huh, I bet.” For a brief moment, Harry found himself uncomfortably reminded of DA, but he dismissed the comparison. DA had always been much better organized.
“Anyone who isn’t injured, please exit the hospital wing,” Madam Pomfrey bellowed, “or I’ll see to it that you’ll be washing bed pans until the end of the week!”
“Sorry mate,” Ron said ruefully, grinning and hopping off the table.
“Coward,” Hermione jibed, following him out of the room.
“I don’t see you staying to clean bed pans, now do I?” he shot back, leaving the room with her.
After Madam Pomfrey checked his hand and released him from the hospital wing, he had to scramble to Charms, missing lunch entirely. Ron and Hermione saved him a seat somewhere in the middle of the class only a few minutes late, and he sank into it gingerly. Empty desks dotted the classroom, and Harry glanced over at Pansy Parkinson’s desk with a smirk. His stomach rumbled loudly while Flitwick lectured about the Fidelius Charm.
“The Fidelius Charm of course has limited use,” Filitwick squeaked, “as it is an immensely complicated charm to perform. It also requires enormous trust in the chosen Secret-Keeper, who by definition usually holds the spell’s object or objects’ continued existence in their hands.” The color fled from Harry’s face, leaving it a pasty grey. “Likewise, if the Secret-Keeper should die, anyone who had been previously told the secret would become a Secret Keeper in their own right.” By the end of the lesson, Harry didn’t care about missing breakfast and lunch. In fact, he didn’t mind not eating dinner either. His stomach churned, and while Hermione and Ron bickered, he slipped off to the common room to sit on the end of his bed and stare out the window.
When Ron and Hermione made their way with the rest of their housemates to Gryffindor Tower, Ron had a plate of food, piled high with boiled chicken, mashed potatoes, and stewed carrots. Setting it on the side table next to Harry, who spared it a pained look, he threw himself onto the bed next to him with a sigh. “Did you start that Potions essay yet?” asked Ron, falsely nonchalant, “the one about combining crushed moonstone and wormwood roots?”
“Erm, well, I wrote my name on the parchment.” Harry toyed with the sleeve of his shirt.
“Yeah, that’s as far as I got too,” Ron heaved an obvious sigh of relief, but Harry ignored it politely. Ron pushed the plate closer to him, and Harry picked it up. The chicken was lukewarm and the potatoes and carrots were cold and dry, but as soon as he too a bite, his stomach remembered that he hadn’t eaten yet that day, and he ate it all. “Actually I put a title on it too.”
Harry laughed, “Yeah, I did the reading though. That counts for something, I guess.” He put his hands in his pockets and his thumbnail caught on the Wizengamot’s invitation. He pulled it out, remembered what it was, and stuffed it back into his pocket.
“What’s that?” Ron queried, catching sight of the shocking purple paper.
“Oh,” Harry took it out again. “A letter from the Wizengamot. They’re inviting me to become a member.”
Ron’s eyes went wide and his curved up in an openmouthed smile. “Wicked!”
“Well, I wasn’t going to say yes,” he mumbled.
“Yeah, well…” Ron began. “What! Why not?” Harry shrugged his shoulders. “You should! Hey, you could make laws, make sure none of the other Death Eaters get off like the Malfoys,” he favored Harry with a sidelong glance, “nominate Dad for a pay raise…”
Harry let his friend trail off. “Yeah, but I don’t like the Wizengamot,” he said quiely. “I don’t want to support them.”
“But if you’re one of them, you can change how they do things!” Ron lept off the bed and paced excitedly, his arms swinging. “You don’t just have to go along with everything they say like most of us!”
Harry lay back against the wall, thinking. “It isn’t that simple,” he said at last, “I’d probably be on the losing side of every vote anyway.”
Ron stopped at the foot of Harry’s bed, energy unabated. “Yeah, but you can speak to them, and nominate what do you call them, dark horses to the Wizengamot who would vote like you!”
Harry made a noncommittal noise as Neville padded into the dormitory in his striped pajamas and greying bunny slippers. Ron smiled seeing them, his eyes misting over.
~*~
The next morning, Hermione met the boys at the bottom of the dormitory stairs. “Guess what Harry got yesterday,” Ron crowed, shoving the letter that he had filched out of Harry’s trouser pocket sometime during the night. Harry groaned softly and kneaded his forehead with his knuckles.
Hermione’s eyes flicked over the words, her mouth drawing into a small “O”. “Oooooh, Harry! This is really really exciting!” Her hands clenched on the letter eagerly, but noticing, she folded the letter again and handed it back to Harry. “Do you know what this means?” Harry was pretty sure he knew what it meant to him, but he had a feeling that Hermione had a very different idea about meaning than he did. He shook his head slowly, blinking behind his glasses. “It means that they’re afraid of you.”
With a small nod, he shoved the letter back into his pocket. “Yeah, I know.
Hermione though, had the bit between her teeth. “They’ll have to listen to you and even sometimes do what you say, because you’re you.”
“Snape says that they invite anyone who becomes too popular,” Harry said quietly.
“It’s what they did for Dumbledore, you know.” Hermione touched her lip thoughtfully, “They even made him Chief Warlock because his criticism of them rang a bit hallow when he was supposedly leading them.”
I never understood,” Ron interrupted, “Why didn’t Dumbledore change more?”
“Well, the Chief warlock can’t do much, can he?” Hermione scathed. “The Wizengamot is ruled by the majority of members, and he was usually in the minority.” Harry nudged Ron with his elbow and Hermione fiddled with a strand of hair, trying to get it unhooked from around her cloak button, “He did a lot though, much more than he could have done outside the Wizengamot.”
From everything Harry heard and was still hearing, that didn’t seem like it would be hard. It was almost impossible to do any good at all outside the Wizengamot. “I wasn’t planning on saying yes to them,” he said definitively, trying to get them to both stop talking about it. “I don’t exactly want them using my name.”
“But you have to, Harry!” Hermione exclaimed, her voice getting higher with each word. “You don’t understand, you could be our spy! You could leak the contents of their secret meetings!” Her cheeks flushed with pleasure, and Harry suddenly found himself remembering with a bit of horror fourth year and S.P.E.W. She had that sort of look in her eye, and Harry was terrified that she had found another cause.
Unfortunately, it seemed Ron had found the same cause. “Hey, you could tell Luna, and she could print them up, and then we’d actually know what’s going on!” He dug around in Harry’s pocket and pulled out the letter again and smoothed it out. Harry pushed him away and tried to snatch the letter back. “You’d have to keep from getting caught, though. Can you be sent to Azkaban for saying what their doing?”
Harry grabbed the letter and it slipped out of Ron’s hands. “I guess so,” he muttered. “They wouldn’t have a big trial if the punishment weren’t awful”
“You’d just have to keep yourself from getting caught, now don’t you?” Hermione told him briskly, and Harry dearly wished to know if she had any idea how to do that.
“It’s not going to help much, just knowing what’s going on,” Harry whispered, eyes on the floor. “I mean, no one can do anything.”
When he raised his eyes, they met Hermione’s. Fury, faint disgust, and shock flashed through them before they settled on confusion. “If people know what’s going on, they can fight it. If the Wizengamot members knew that what they were saying would show up in the papers, they might be a bit more circumspect in what they do! They hide behind their secrecy and their trial and their Azkaban threats, because they know that if Wizarding Britain knew what they do in their-” she coughed significantly- “hallowed chambers, it would rise up against them and displace them!”
Ron nodded. “I want to see their names splashed across the front page for a change.”
Harry flushed scarlet. “They’ve calmed down for the moment.”
Hermione forced a smile. “Look, you have eight days still to decide. It can wait.” Harry sighed with relief.
~*~
Throughout the day, his housemates and students from each of the houses except for Slytherin congratulated him on the invitation. Harry just stammered and wished they’d go away. Ginny smiled wickedly at him and thanked everyone for him, teasing him at every turn. He let her do it, because it was easier to let her take care of it. Her teasing was easier to stomach than everyone’s praise and encouragement. “I suppose you think I should accept too,” he grumbled, swallowing a mouthful of pumpkin juice.
Ginny leaned back, grabbing onto the bottom of the table. “Well, I, er,” she bit her lip, “actually, no, I don’t. I think you should tell them what they can do with their invitation, actually.”
Harry raised his eyebrows until they started to blend with his hair. “Why?”
Ginny shrugged, pulling herself back up on the bench. “I just don’t think it’s a good idea; they just want you there to make you think you’ll have some say, but none of the other members are really going to listen to you unless you convince them that you’re just the same as they are, and to do that, you’d really become like they are.” She shuddered, shaking her head, talking very quickly. “They’d change you, and ruin you, and you wouldn’t be you anymore, and nothing about them would change at all. It’s better just to speak out against them.”
“But that doesn’t do any good either.”
“It does something, of they wouldn’t care enough to invite you to join!” Ginny’s mouth twisted in a fierce grin. “They’re scared of you saying they’re wrong, so give them what they’re scared of.”
“Why is it,” Harry stopped, wondering how he should say what he wanted to say without sounding like an idiot, or insulting her, which would have been worse. “Well, you and Ron aren’t really…” he trailed off, deciding there wasn’t any way to say it.
“The most political?” She provided diplomatically.
“I just mean that you’re both normal. If you know all of this and think this way, then don’t most people already?”
“Dad’s in the Ministry so Ron and I heard stories, and Hermione’s Hermione.”
Harry decided that probably described Hermione perfectly, because she was miserable unless she was fixing something. She realized too much of what was wrong with the world to be happy with leaving it as it was. “Oh.”
Ginny had a strange small smile on her face that vanished before Harry could comment on it. “The summer before fourth year, well, my fourth year anyway, when we all moved into Grimmauld place, Ron and Hermione were always together trying to figure out what was going on, and Fred and George were busy working on joke stuff, so I spent a lot of time with Sirius, over the Christmas holidays too.” She took a bite of her shepherd’s pie and then another. “He told me about not getting a trial and Crouch almost becoming Minister of Magic. I’m not blind.”
Harry did his best to take what she said calmly, but he flinched anyway. “I know,” he murmured, taking another sip of juice. He swallowed it harshly and grimaced. “Hermione and Ron want me to accept and then leak the goings on to the press, have Luna print the minutes.”
“I know, I heard the three of you talking about it in the common room this morning.” Shaking her head sharply, Ginny shoved a forkful of sliced pear into her mouth. “The Wizengamot would figure out pretty soon it was you spilling their secrets and throw you in Azkaban.”
“I wouldn’t start passing things along right away,” stammered Harry, stung that she thought he’d make it that obvious, and stunned to realize he was arguing for accepting the inviation. “I’d wait a bit first.”
Her fork chimed loudly as she set it down. “It doesn’t matter,” she retorted solemnly. “You could wait years if you wanted to, but you can’t act inconspicuous at all.” She grinned at him, “It’s not a bad thing that you’re so honest. There are people who can deceive people for years, and spy on them and manipulate them, but you’re just not one of them, Harry. It’s a good thing, most of the time, really it is.”
“I would lie,” he muttered.
She laughed and pulled a face. “I know how you lie Harry, no one would believe you.”
“Are you saying I can’t keep secrets?” he demanded indignantly.
“You can keep secrets if no one looks at you to closely.”
“If no one spies on me you mean?” he gasped furiously, leaning away from her.
“That wasn’t what I meant,” Ginny snapped, recovering quickly, “and you know it.”
“Then what exactly did you mean?” he hissed, stabbing into his broccoli viciously.
When you have a secret, everyone knows it!” she shouted. “Your face screams it, and when you bother to deny it, it only makes it more obvious.” Unspoken, Ginny remembered somewhat wistfully, somewhat jealously, all of the times Harry, Ron, and Hermione had skulked around uncovering their mysteries, their eagerness, fear, and naked curiosity plain on their faces and in the way they carried themselves throughout the school. Harry wasn’t afraid or eager to have secrets anymore, she thought sadly. They just made him unhappy.
Harry rolled his shoulders inward and hunched over his plate and didn’t answer when Ginny shot to her feet and told him that she had to go to detention with Snape again. His silence drew from her an odd look, and he realized uncomfortably that the one person best suited for spying on and manipulating the Wizengamot as the one she had to serve detention with five evenings a week. Suddenly less insulted, he smiled wryly and wished her luck.
“Huh,” she shot back with a grin, “I need more than that with Snape.”
~*~
When Ginny returned to the common room, it was with a scowl and a smudge on her face, which turned out to be dried pig’s blood. “He had me feeding Red Caps,” she hissed by way of explanation. “I almost lost my fingers.” She sank down into an armchair beside Harry, “He gave me another week’s detention, too.”
“What did you do?” asked Harry nervously, with the sinking feeling that she would be stuck in detention with Snape for the rest of the year, and possibly the next as well.
Hermione stumbled into the common room after her own detention with Filch, her hands red and chapped, eyes bleary. As Ginny answered, she slumped into the chair on the other side of Ron from Harry. “I swore at it when it bit me,” she shrugged, showing him a lived gash on her index finger. “He’s lucky I didn’t hex the thing.”
“And he gave you a week’s detention just for that? I’d like to see him not swear when a great ugly Red Cap latches onto his finger!” Ron raged from Harry’s other side.
“I’m sure he just likes having the free labor you provide,” Hermione commented, amused. Ginny just snorted.
Ron poked Harry’s arm. “Did you think anymore about the Wizengamot?”
Harry shrugged his shoulders and wondered if Ron would count the tense half debate half fight he had with Ginny as thinking about it. “Yeah, a bit.”
“And?” he urged impatiently.
“I’m not going to accept.”
“Oh but you have to, Harry!” Hermione gasped, leaning forward in her chair to face him around Ron’s body. Harry shrugged again, not wanting to talk to her about it.
Ginny glanced at him before rising to her feet and marching over to face her brother and Hermione. Lowering herself down to perch on the armrest of Ron’s chair, she favored both of them with a nasty look. “He doesn’t have to if he doesn’t want to.”
He sprang to his feet as soon as they started to yell about things that could get him sent to Azkaban, and grabbed Ginny’s arm. “If you’re going to shout,” he pleaded, trying to sound sensible, “could you wait until you’re no in the common room anymore?”
Hermione cleared her throat, chagrinned, but Ginny flushed to the roots of her orange hair, remembering another row in the common room. The three bolted up the stairs to the seventh year boy’s dormitory, by mutual agreement choosing to have an argument. Harry followed close behind them, shutting the door safely once they were all inside. Ginny cast a silencing charm on the door for good measure before she repeated, “He doesn’t have to if he doesn’t want to.”
Deciding he was adequately defended, Harry scooped up his nightclothes and slipped into the boy’s showers, but he didn’t turn on the water. Instead, he pressed his ear to the doorway and listened. “Ginny,” Hermione began, “It’s not your fight, It’s Harry’s.” Harry found he had to agree, but he didn’t mind Ginny fighting it for him instead.
“Yeah, but he doesn’t want to have it, and I don’t think you should keep pushing it on him!” Harry peered though the keyhole to see Ginny sitting cross legged on his bed. “He doesn’t want to join, and I agree with him!”
Hermione widened her eyes and stared at her, trying to convey the gravity of the situation as she spoke. “Don’t you see why this is so important, why he has to join? If their meetings aren’t secret anymore, they might actually care about what ordinary witches and wizards think!” Ginny folded her arms with a scowl, but Hermione continued on, undeterred. “Besides, we lost Dumbledore, and if we don’t have someone in the Wizengamot who cares about people, we risk losing what he worked for just through stagnation!”
Ginny laughed scornfully. “Harry’s no Dumbledore, and no one in the Wizengaomot is going to listen to a word he says about keeping Dumbledore’s laws unless they were going to keep them anyway. Besides, the moment he stars talking to the press, they’ll send him straight to Azkaban, and then where will the cause for transparency and justice be?”
Resting against the canopy post, Ron blinked. “They can’t send him to Azkaban, the only reason they’re inviting him to join in the first place is that he’s too popular.”
Before she answered, Ginny let herself fall back against Harry’s bed. “Don’t you remember when the whole school thought he was Slytherin’s heir, or when most of the Wizarding World thought he was a self-obsessed maniac? It’s easier to invite him in than to make him look like a nutter again, but if he makes problems again, they’ll be happy to before they ship him off to Azkaban.”
“He can lie,” Hermione shot back, “He managed to keep Snape a secret at Hogwarts of all places for months!”
Ginny mulled that over. Truthfully, she hadn’t thought that anyone, much less Harry could have kept a secret for that long at Hogwarts. “He’ll need more than months, won’t he?” Hermione arched an eyebrow smugly, seeing the argument for the week thing that it was, but Ginny drove onwards. “That’s not the point anyway. Harry’s not good at fighting in secret and smiling at people he doesn’t trust or think are good people. He needs to fight in the open, call people out, be direct. If he did manage to politely manipulate the Wizengamot, it would destroy him.” She pushed herself up into a sitting position, glaring sullenly at both of them before marching stiffly out of the room. Hermione followed awkwardly a few moments later. Harry shucked his clothes and twisted the shower knob.
~*~
When Harry stepped dripping back into the dormitory, Ron was sitting on his bed, his Transfiguration text book propped up on his knees, frantically scribbling an essay. He waved his quill lackadaisically at Harry as he padded out, barefooted, giving into the restlessness gathering in the pit of his stomach and the arteries of his legs. Outside the tower, he shivered from the chill that hung around the castle hall even in the middle of the summer. With his damp hair and bare feet, in the middle of the spring, the corridor was icy. For a moment, he thought about going back for a cloak, but the Fat Lady had disappeared. His feet carried him to a stairway, and as he neared the bottom, the staircase started to move. He sat on the bottom step, his feet singing gently in the empty air. Just before the staircase slid into its new place, he curled his legs up, out of the way.
It didn’t surprise Harry too much to realize he was standing in front of Snape’s office door. He swallowed convulsively and turned around to head back to the security of the tower. As he turned however, the door swung open, and Snape furrowed his brow, staring straight at him. “What are you doing here, Potter?”
“N-nothing” he stuttered, stepping backwards, ready to run.
Snape’s eyes moved up and down over his body, taking in his snitch covered vermilion pajamas with a smirk. “Really,” but he caught Harry’s wrist, twisting it cruelly.
Harry tried to yank it out of Snape’s grip, but it wouldn’t budge. Finally in desperation, Harry burst out, “I wanted your advice.”
“I’m flattered,” he sneered, “now get back to your dormitory.” Yet he still hadn’t let go of Harry’s wrist.
“Yeah, well, I figure whatever you tell me to do, I’ll know that I should do the opposite.” He jerked his arm again, but instead of letting him go, Snape dragged him into his office and shut the door behind him.
“Ask your advice,” he snarled, shoving Harry into a chair in front of his desk.
Harry rubbed his newly liberated wrist gingerly. So unprepared was Harry that the words tumbled from his mouth. “The Wizengamot invited me to join.”
“Of course they did,” Snape smirked again. “None of them are fools, no matter how much they act like it. Deny them.”
Harry ignored him. “Ron and Hermione want me to join and leak the goings on to the press, and well, try to talk people into doing the right thing.”
Snape’s lip curled. “You don’t have the remotest idea about what the right thing is, Potter. Anyone willing to trust the Wizarding World’s government to your good intentions is an idiot.”
Harry tried to stand up, but Snape was in the way. “I don’t think you’d trust the government to anyone but yourself,” he shot back. “You think everyone’s an idiot.”
Severus gritted his teeth and refrained from saying that nearly everyone was an idiot. “You have neither the intelligence nor the ruthlessness necessary to manipulate the Wizengamot into acting in the best interests of the Wizarding World even were you to have the faintest notion of what the best interests of the Wizarding World were!”
“I think I have some idea,” Harry hissed, affronted, “real trials, less corruption, elections, and big newspapers that aren’t Ministry puppets.”
“Did Granger give you a list?” he sneered. “I stand corrected.”
Harry shook his head sharply. If anyone had given him a list, it was Snape, right after the Malfoys’ trial. “Hermione didn’t give me anything.”
“Precisely how would you go about attaining your worthy goals?” Snape spat, cutting Harry off as he opened his mouth. “Would you lie, and smile, and make friends with people you think are worse than dragon dung?” His lips twitched up into a frightening smile and Harry shuddered, leaning back in the chair. Snape stepped back, peering at him self-satisfied out of heavy lidded eyes. “I could be wrong, you did show commendable mercilessness by siring me.”
Harry found his feet with a start, gripping the armrests and pushing himself up. “I didn’t expect-“
Snape cut him off again, a peculiar ugly look on his face. “But once you had done so, you went out of your way to see that everything unfolded in my life the way it did.”
Harry strode toward him until he stood next to the door, baffled as to why he hadn’t bolted as soon as Snape had let him up. He turned the doorknob, and the door swung outwards. “You know why I left you there,” he hissed back. “You can’t have wanted to come with me.”
“I’m talking of something far worse than leaving me to my particular,” he paused with a sneer “childhood situation.” Harry slipped out the door, but stopped, still holding the door handle, mesmerized. “You left me to my fate knowing exactly what I would do, that I would spy on Dumbedore and Trelawney and pass the half of the prophesy that I heard on to the Dark Lord. You knew that he would hear that prophesy and assume the child it spoke of was you, and that he would kill the Potters because of it.” He smiled nastily and Harry cringed backwards, unable to leave. “Your direct actions led to your parents’ deaths, Potter; you had as much a hand in it as I or the Dark Lord had.”
Harry gasped and released the doorknob, and Snape pulled the door closed with a harsh click.