Harry Potter :Diamond Heart

'You're going to have to redesign half of your respiratory system,' Salazar informed bluntly. 'If you replace the alveoli and bronchi within your lungs with the filaments of gills you will simply have to inhale water to breathe. As long as you keep oxygenated water flowing over the filaments you will be fine.'

'That sounds frowned.

deceptively

simple,'

Harry

'You'll have to breathe very quickly to keep the water flowing in and out fast enough, not to mention it will feel extremely unnatural to inhale water in such a manner.'

'I knew there would be a catch,' Harry sighed.

'If you're careful you'll be fine. I'll teach you the spells used to reverse faulty transfigurations before you start practicing, just in case.' Slytherin clearly did not appreciate the idea of his heir dying in such a mundane fashion.

'It's

probably

unfair

that

I

have

your assistance,' Harry remarked.

'Unfair on who? Your rivals? Tom Riddle? Albus Dumbledore?' The portrait fixed him with the look Harry had dubbed the your-acting-like-Godric expression.

'I suppose that is true,' Harry conceded.

'You aren't going to defend Dumbledore?' Salazar seemed quite surprised.

'The prat has been doing his best to get me killed every year,' Harry answered coldly. 'I won't be defending him unless I really need him.'

'There's my heir,' Slytherin crooned. Harry suddenly felt a stab of pity for his children, that was not a voice he wanted in his childhood memories. 'Don't let him use you, you aren't his sacrifice to make.' 'I'm not anyone's sacrifice but my own,' Harry told him firmly.

'I suppose that is better than being everyone's enduring, noble hero,' Salazar sighed. 'Any chance you'd consider not dying to destroy that horcrux.'

'It has to be destroyed,' Harry told him quietly. There were hundreds of people who would never have to lose anyone, thousands, and all it would take was a single death. He could understand Dumbledore's decision, even if the nature by which he had carried out was highly offensive and manipulative. 'I want to live, but I don't think I have it in me to condemn someone to death just for my own survival.' Oddly the statement felt perilously close to a lie, perhaps it was because when he considered the idea he could only ever really imagine sacrificing someone who didn't deserve it. The ones who did never seemed to be an option when there was a choice over who was to pay the price.

'Normally you spit vitriol at the mere suggestion,' Salazar remarked, ever curious and observant. 'What is distracting you?'

'The aftermath of the Yule Ball,' Harry admitted. He had never told Salazar about Fleur, the topic had never come up.

'The Katie girl again?' Slytherin asked.

'No, I went with Fleur Delacour, my rival,' Harry explained.

'I suspect there is some context to explain that,' the painting probed. The founder sounded surprisingly understanding and sympathetic. Perhaps his children weren't so unlucky.

'She is like me,' Harry began, trying to structure his thoughts. 'I did not realise at first, like many who look at me and see only the Boy-Who-Lived I saw only Fleur Delacour the proud, arrogant french witch. I realised, eventually, that we were more similar than I suspected and remembered what you told me about finding equals. She… demanded, that I take her to the Ball and I agreed.'

'She left you for another during the evening?'

'No,' Harry snapped. Fleur would not have done that, not after how she had reacted to Katie's offer. 'We spent the day before together, getting to know one another a bit beforehand. We talked about a few things, the egg, the second task, veela…' He trailed off at Salazar's darkening expression. 'What?' 'Veela?' he asked, trying to mask his previous displeasure.

'She is veela,' Harry explained.

'That makes sense,' Slytherin responded, for all his best attempts his frown remained about his brows and the corners of his mouth still curved down. 'Did she use her allure on you?'

'Yes,' Harry admitted, 'but not how you think. I am resistant.'

'Of course you are,' Salazar announced proudly, 'my family have always been gifted with the mind arts, the longer you study occlumency the less effect you will feel from such magic.'

'She turned the full force of it upon me to test my resistance and, once I gave in, she kissed me and left.'

Salazar's frown had turned to confusion. If the situation had not been so close to Harry's heart he would have laughed at the unusual expression. His ancestor was rarely so perplexed.

'I do not understand,' the painting confessed. 'There seems to be no dilemma except why she might have kissed you, I had feared-'

'She's avoiding me,' Harry admitted, his stomach clenching at the memory of Fleur turning away from him in the hall. 'I thought,' his fists balled, 'I knew, that it would be too good to be true. I'm fourteen she is seventeen. I don't know why she kissed me, but it has cost me my hope of having found an equal, a real friend.' 'Ah,' the portrait said delicately.'

'Ah?' Harry repeated.

'I was about to say that my fears seemed unfounded, but-'

'But they weren't?' Harry interrupted.

'You said she asked about the second task and the egg,' Salazar reminded him very carefully. 'And she began avoiding you shortly after realising you were not entirely resistant to her allure.'

Several little pieces began to fall into place in Harry's head; the small stones that start the avalanche.

Fleur Delacour had understood him. She had been like him enough to empathise. Fleur had used her understanding against him. Probed to see if she could find any weaknesses in the one rival she had not already completely categorised, tested to see if her allure might be useful against him, and now she no longer needed to act kindly to him.

'I could be wrong,' the founder suggested tentatively, 'she did not have to kiss you.'

'No,' Harry laughed bitterly, 'she did not have to kiss me. Fleur could have walked away and I would have been left in blissful ignorance.'

The side of the mountain on which he had built his hopes of having found an equal crumbled and collapsed as the avalanche fell with an angry roar.

'She used me,' he hissed, furious. A small patch of ice had formed in his chest. 'She did not need to ask you to the Yule Ball,' Salazar ventured, concern clear in his eyes.

'Fleur was plagued by wizards wanting to be her date. I was her platonic shield,' he rebutted. The ice was spreading across his chest, egged on by the little voice in the back of his head. It was whispering names, the names of everyone who had ever chosen themselves over him and left Harry to endure.

Albus Dumbledore, it repeated four times hatefully, once for every year of danger.

The voice was right. Salazar had been right. He had been wrong.

'You were correct,' he laughed, high and cold. 'I let them take advantage, let them walk over me as if my goals and dreams did not matter as much as theirs.' The portrait wisely stayed silent. The snake had fled inside the neck of Salazar's robes to escape Harry's wrath.

'I will not be used again, not by anyone,' he swore fervently. 'I'll seize my dreams and if I find anyone worthy of my trust and friendship along the way then so be it.'

I will not become nothing, not for a world that has been nothing to me.

The slender piece of parchment was snatched from his pocket, unfolded and activated under the worried eyes of his ancestor. The name he was searching for hovered in black ink upon one folded side. Harry took one look and dropped it on the table. He had what he wanted, what he needed to escape. 'Where are you going?' Salazar asked, as Harry made to leave. There was paternal panic in his voice.

'I'm the Heir of Slytherin,' he echoed icily as he swept out, 'not a sacrifice for lesser wizards.'

On the table behind him the Marauders' Map fluttered in his wake, Peter Pettigrew's name clearly visible upon its upturned face

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