Whispers.

They were constantly whispering. All of them.

He had hoped it would die down eventually, that the world, or at least the students at Hogwarts, would eventually get used to his new title.

Destroyer of Voldemort.

Not particularly creative, but that had been the Daily Prophet headline, and it had stuck. For months, he had been hounded by the press, and he once again had been the favorite topic of gossip at Hogwarts. He was a seventh year now, for Merlin’s sake, you’d have thought they’d all have gotten used to it!

And it had seemed like they might have been, like it might have been dying down, finally, after the winter holidays. But lately, it just seemed to have picked back up again.

There were constantly whispers following him, no matter where he went. He could not understand most of them, and he could never find the source, but it was always there. A buzzing just at the edge of his hearing, at the back of his mind, behind him where he could not see.

Harry hunched his shoulders and tried to ignore it, focusing on the shepherd’s pie on his plate. He took slow, methodical bites, desperately trying to block out the swelling tide of murmurs.

“…Harry.”

“Harry! Are you ok?”

“Are you listening, mate?”

He looked up, realizing his friends were calling his name. He turned to his right to see Ron and Hermione staring at him from their seats beside him. Ginny, on his left, was talking to one of her friends and not paying attention. He shook his head slightly, trying to clear it.

“Sorry guys, what’d you say?”

“You were spacing out there, mate,” Ron supplied.

“Yeah, sorry, just distracted.” Harry shrugged.

Hermione still looked concerned, but Ron just nodded and asked, “You up for a game of chess tonight?”

Harry nodded eagerly, and Hermione rolled her eyes. “Honestly. Will you two ever take your studies seriously? NEWTs are just around the corner and you’ve hardly begun revising!”

“Hermione, those are ages away! Give us a break!” Ron protested.

Harry only grinned, enjoying the familiar argument. Everything had changed too much; it was good to know his best friends never would.

xxXxx

The whispering was definitely getting worse, not better. Would people never lay it to rest? He was glad that his friends did not say anything about it, evidently preferring to ignore it and pretend that everything was normal. He wished things were normal, whatever that meant, so he appreciated the effort.

Currently, he was sitting out by the lake with Ron, Hermione, and Ginny, enjoying the particularly nice weather since the temperature had thawed out a bit that week. Harry had hoped that venturing outside for their afternoon break period might have given him a welcome respite from the gossip of all of the students, but he had no such luck. It appeared that many of the students were outside enjoying the sunshine and above-freezing temperatures while they lasted. One group of Ravenclaw fourth-years were sitting within hearing distance of them. They were speaking just barely low enough that Harry could not make out their words, but he knew they were talking about him, just as everyone else always seemed to be. Every time he would glance up at them, the whispering would pause and they would all pretend to be engrossed in their schoolwork, but the hushed tones would resume almost as soon as he looked back down.

Harry sighed, feeling restless. An hour of trying to ignore the mutters and feeling their stares prickling the back of his neck had left him on edge and with very little of his homework done, even with Ginny resting her hand lightly on his leg and rubbing it slightly to try and relax him. He stretched a bit, cracking his neck, then looked up to see Hermione watching him with a thoughtful look on her face.

“What?” he asked, the word coming out more abruptly than he had intended.

“I’m a bit cold, how about you guys? Ready to head inside?” she answered, ignoring his tone.

Harry nodded gratefully, eager to accept whatever excuse she would give him to escape the unwelcome attention. Ron sat up from his position lying on the ground, upsetting the potions book that was lying on his chest. He rubbed at his eyes, evidently trying to rid them of the grit from his impromptu nap.

“Yeah, sure,” he said a bit blearily. “Ground’s a bit hard still.” He stood up and the other three followed suit, Hermione rolling her eyes at the redhead’s back. Ginny chuckled and Harry grinned at her, then the four of them trooped back to the castle together, ignoring the Ravenclaws as they passed.

After lounging in the nearly-empty common room for the little while until the bell rang, they switched out their study materials for their Defense Against the Dark Arts supplies and walked together to the classroom, taking their usual seats together.

Once the class of upper-year students had taken their seats, Professor Weasley entered the room, the light glinting off his fang earring and a crooked grin helping his scarred face seem less menacing. When he had everyone’s attention, he addressed the class with his hands clasped before him.

“Today, I thought I’d give you all a bit of a break.” He hurried on before the class could break out in cheers, “Nothing too easy. But we’ve been going at it hard lately, so it’s only fair to mix it up with something slightly easier, or at least a bit more familiar. Now I know you all covered boggarts already in your third year,” Harry glanced over at his friends at this, “but they do still often come up on the Defense NEWT. They’re theoretically simple to dispel, but it’s easy to get caught up in your fears in the moment, so more practice is certainly warranted. And,” Bill added, glancing around the room and meeting the students’ eyes, “you’d be surprised how much your fears may have changed over the last four years, particularly with recent events.” At this, his eyes rested briefly on Harry’s and Harry shifted in his seat. “It is wise to consider how you might counteract your current fears.”

He nodded curtly at the more sober look on the faces in the class. “I’ll give you a few minutes to think over what your fear might be, and remember it may or may not have changed, and then I’ll open the trunk I’ve brought,” he nodded towards a case that rested in the corner opposite him at the front of the room, “and give you each a turn.”

The class grew quiet as all the students grew introspective, taking this task much more seriously than they had as third-years, with only a few brief and quiet comments made on occasion. Harry glanced quickly at Ginny to see her brow furrowed in an adorable look of concentration, then smiled and turned his thoughts inward.

What was his greatest fear now? He thought of dementors first, but he no longer thought that likely. He had faced and beaten dementors too many times. And the memories that were once so horrible, while still definitely not happy, did not have quite the same sting now that they were tinged with the knowledge that Voldemort was gone for good. Perhaps his friends dying? But he had gone through that and survived. It was not pleasant, but was not unbeatable. And besides, the Wizarding World was at peace. So what, then, was his greatest fear?

Harry ended up towards the end of the long line again, reminding him strongly and with nostalgia of Remus’ class four years ago. He watched his classmates face their fears, succeeding on the whole but with an occasional stumble or sob. It was astounding to see the dichotomy, from the old and new boggarts, but also amongst the current class. Most of them had been touched by the war, but in different ways. Some had remained mostly sheltered, touched indirectly. Some had been on the run, or lost close family members. Still others had been in the thick of it.

A couple of students did fear the loss of family members, a number feared Death Eaters returning (while Voldemort’s followers had been mostly rounded up, some pockets did remain), and one student even feared the Dark Mark itself. A few students still had fears of Dark creatures, and one (though it was not Neville anymore) feared the Deputy Headmaster Snape.

Harry watched Hermione face down her fear that had morphed from a fear of failure to a fear of not making a difference in the world, and almost cringed when Ron overcame his fear that Hermione would leave him for a better man, who was now fortunately faceless and not Harry himself. He wondered at the strangeness of doing such a private act out in front of the class as he saw Ginny determinedly cry out “Riddikulus!” at the idea of her brothers splitting up and drifting apart in the wreckage of the war, with her helpless to draw them back together.

And then it was rather suddenly his turn, and he realized he still had no idea of what his greatest fear was. He looked up at the shape before him, and then frowned as it morphed into the huge, purple-faced, lumbering form of his Uncle Vernon.

Well that was rather anticlimactic, he thought as he raised his wand, ready to banish the specter. But then it opened its mouth.

“Freak,” it spat at him venomously. “How could you think you could ever be more than that? That the world could have a use for you once Voldemort was gone? That you could ever be normal, ever be left alone? Foolish boy. You know it’s all your fault. You could have ended it sooner, spared more lives…“

Harry stood frozen under the tirade, until he caught sight of Ginny’s pale face out of the corner of his eye. His desire to comfort her after having faced her own boggart, and a bit of embarrassment for his current inaction in front of her, rose up in him and brought him back to the present reality. He lifted his wand higher and shouted “Riddikulus!” over the sound of his uncle’s ranting, and watched with satisfaction when Uncle Vernon deflated with a sound like a fart into a skinny man, and his mouth disappeared with a pop. He almost giggled but held it back, allowing the student behind him to rush forward to confront the boggart.

But by the time class had ended, the reality of what had happened had sunk in. His entire class, filled with those many like him, Ron, and Hermione who had not originally returned for their seventh year at Hogwarts or had been prevented from finishing, along with the entire class of students that used to be the year below them, had just seen him freeze in terror at his muggle uncle. And heard all that the man had spewed at him. He shrunk in on himself slightly as he left the class with a subdued Ron, Hermione, and Ginny. His only comfort was that he was not the only one whose secrets had been exposed, nor was he the only one to have frozen at first. But he was the Destroyer of Voldemort! How could he be so terrified of his uncle, a man he had not even seen in a year and a half (having returned to the Weasleys after the Battle of Hogwarts)?

Harry glanced over at his friends and girlfriend, noting that Ron and Ginny looked lost in their own thoughts but that Hermione was looking at him thoughtfully, again. He broke eye contact quickly and looked away from her, trying to ignore the whispers that had, as always, started up as soon as he stepped into the hallway. Among his friends, Hermione knew the least about his life at the Dursleys, and he tried to keep his face from reddening at how much she could put together from what she had seen. Ron had been with the twins when they rescued him back in second year, and Ginny had of course heard from her brothers, but Hermione knew little more than that he had disliked it there.

He tried to clear his head as they entered the Great Hall for dinner, and as he looked around in search of a distraction, his eyes met Snape’s dark ones. Snape gave him a funny look that he could not identify, and then Harry severed the eye contact and hurried to their normal spot at the Gryffindor table. A cold feeling had settled into his stomach, though. Snape knew. He didn’t know how, but he had already heard about everything.

Just then, Ron’s voice gave him a welcome break from his own thoughts. "Snape’s looking even more like a sourpuss than usual today. Wonder what’s eating him?”

“Ron!” Hermione interjected in a long-suffering tone. “He’s still our professor, you can’t call him names.”

“So? I still don’t get how he got off scot-free. Sure, maybe he was a spy all along, but he still committed plenty of unnecessary crimes!”

Harry and Ginny shared a look as the old argument started back up. Usually these days, Harry took Hermione’s side, at least in his head if only occasionally out loud. Snape had done quite a lot for the Order; Harry had helped to prove it. But today, he couldn’t prevent a trickle of doubt from seeping into his thoughts. Ron was right, Snape was very clever and quite slippery. It couldn’t be too much of a stretch for him to have doctored the memories, could it? It would be just the sort of back-up plan a man like him would come up with.

“…at least consider the vampire angle. I mean, look at his robes! All black, and he wears those high-collared necks.”

“You know why he wears high collars, Ron. Honestly!”

At this, Ginny chuckled a bit at her brother’s expense and then rolled her eyes at him, and the argument ended, with a grumpy ‘hmph’ from Ron. Harry followed his friends’ examples and tucked into his food, inwardly laughing at his own foolishness.. He knew that Snape was innocent. Even Ron knew it, he just enjoyed bringing up the childish arguments for old times’ sake.

xxXxx

By the next day, the boggart incident seemed to have spread all over the school. The whispering that seemed to always follow Harry was growing louder, and he could sometimes make out the word ‘freak’ from the garbled susurrations. His friends were still ignoring the gossip, and Harry followed their example, but some part of him wished that they might stand up for him a bit more obviously. He had to deliberately refrain from doing it himself, knowing that such a reaction on his part would not help things. But surely his friends could help? Why were they not doing so?

His question was answered a few days later when he returned from a trip to the loo to find Ron and Hermione whispering about him. Ginny was ignoring them, and they of course stopped as soon as he approached, but his heart sank at their betrayal. Surely they did not believe he had no use now that Voldemort was gone, as so much of the school seemed to? But no, perhaps they merely blamed him for not destroying Voldemort faster? A good chunk of the other Gryffindors did, he knew. And Ron had lost his brother, after all. But surely they knew that he had done all he could in the war? They had been there!

He was subdued the rest of the day, torn between pretending he had not heard Ron and Hermione, as was clearly their strategy, and confronting them on it. He could hardly believe what he had overheard, but was not even sure what to say in his own defense. Because it was true, wasn’t it? He knew it, they knew it, and surely Ginny knew it too. He would just go along with the ruse until he had the strength to sever ties with them, as they clearly wanted. It was for the best, after all.

xxXxx

Ron, Hermione, and Ginny kept trying to ask him what was wrong, but he was never sure how to answer them. He had overheard the three of them calling him a ‘freak’ the other day, just as the rest of the school now constantly did. He knew they were just trying to push him to admit it, to admit everything, but he couldn’t. Not yet. He wasn’t strong enough. But he would be soon. He owed it to them.

McGonagall and Snape gave him odd looks frequently now, and it made him uneasy. He had given more thought to Ron’s arguments about Snape, and the more he considered it, the more it made sense. Snape was clearly still up to something. Many a time as he wandered the corridors after curfew in his invisibility cloak (his sleep had grown quite restless so he had taken to avoiding going to bed), he had seen Snape stalking the halls and searching for more than just wayward students. And it was too strange that he had relinquished the title of Headmaster to McGonagall so easily, stepping down to be Deputy. Perhaps he had done so to allow for more time for whatever he was plotting? Then again, McGonagall might be in on it. Both of them were giving him odd looks, and he felt increasingly tense under their close scrutiny.

But that was ridiculous, he knew McGonagall, she could no more be involved in something nefarious than Hagrid could keep a secret. Snape was someone to watch out for, though. And watch out he would.

xxXxx

Snape was definitely up to something. He was sure of it. But he could not figure out what. The signs were all there, but he had no evidence. He considered speaking to McGonagall about it, but it felt like his first year all over again. He knew that McGonagall trusted Snape, and without proof his suspicions would just be shot down.

He began keeping an eye on the Potions Master whenever he could. He watched him carefully during meals and during class in the dungeons, always looking for something to give credence to what he knew to be true. He even occasionally attempted to find him and follow him during free times, slipping quietly in and out of the shadows behind the dour man. And at night, since he so rarely could sleep well anyway with all that was on his mind, he took to pulling out the Marauder’s Map to locate Snape, then donning his invisibility cloak and taking off in silent pursuit.

Ron tried to ask him several times where he kept going in the night, but Harry could not tell him, not yet. He knew that it was his duty to protect the school, to protect the Wizarding World, but he could not drag innocents into his battles. And he did not have enough evidence, not yet, to warrant telling anyone at all. But he would soon.

xxXxx

He was in Potions class one day in mid-February, sitting next to Ginny as usual with Ron and Hermione at the bench to his right. He was working quietly and speaking to Ginny or his other friends only when necessary. They had made it clear that they were only still with him to keep up appearances, and he was trying to maintain as much distance as possible in deference to their choices.

He caught Snape sneaking odd glances at him throughout the class and began to grow suspicious. True, Snape liked to watch him carefully during class to spot his mistakes and sneer at him, but he was watching him much more carefully than usual. Was something about to happen, was his plot about to unfold?

Suddenly, Harry became aware of a swell of whispers that was rising slowly around him. It had begun gradually, without him realizing, until now he discovered that the entire class was talking about him. He could hear them calling him a freak under their breath. He was confused. Was this part of Snape’s plan? He looked up at Snape to see if he had noticed, and gasped when he saw that Snape was dressed in his long Death Eater’s robes, the silver mask on his face.

Harry stood up, then looked around to see the whole class staring at him from where they remained in their seats. Why were they looking at him, couldn’t they see Snape? He noticed that Snape was slowly approaching from the corner of his eye and glanced back at him, then back towards the class, and gasped again when he saw that half of the students had donned silver masks as well. He looked at his friends, checking quickly to see whether they were still safe, and saw with some relief mingled with shame that they were as yet unharmed but were frowning at him with accusation in their eyes. And he understood. It was his fault; he had suspected something was amiss but said nothing, too caught up in his personal issues with his friends and the never-ceasing gossip around the school. Well, it was time to begin trying to fix his mistakes, even if it was hopeless.