𝐑𝐄𝐖𝐑𝐈𝐓𝐄 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐒𝐓𝐀𝐑𝐒-ℍ𝕒𝕣𝕣𝕪 ℙ𝕠𝕥𝕥𝕖𝕣❥

𝐎𝐎𝐓𝐏 𝟐𝟏

Was this why Dumbledore would no longer meet Harry's eyes? Did he expect to see Voldemort staring out of them, afraid, perhaps, that their vivid green might turn suddenly to scarlet, with catlike slits for pupils?

Harry remembered how the snakelike face of Voldemort had once forced itself out of the back of Professor Quirrell's head, and he ran his hand over the back of his own, wondering what it would feel like if Voldemort burst out of his skull. . . .

He felt dirty, contaminated, as though he were carrying some deadly germ, unworthy to sit on the underground train back from the hospital with innocent, clean people whose minds and bodies were free of the taint of Voldemort. . . .

He had not merely seen the snake, he had been the snake, he knew it now. . . .

And then a truly terrible thought occurred to him, a memory bobbing to the surface of his mind, one that made his insides writhe and squirm like serpents. . . .

"What's he after apart from followers?"
"Stuff he can only get by stealth . . . like a weapon. Something he didn't have last time."

I'm the weapon, Harry thought, and it was as though poison were pumping through his veins, chilling him, bringing him out in a sweat as he swayed with the train through the dark tunnel. I'm the one Voldemort's trying to use, that's why they've got guards around me everywhere I go, it's not for my protection, it's for other people's, only it's not working, they can't have someone on me all the time at Hogwarts. . . .

I did attack Mr. Weasley last night, it was me, Voldemort made me do it and he could be inside me, listening to my thoughts right now. . . .

"Are you all right, Harry, dear?" whispered Mrs. Weasley, leaning across Ginny to speak to him as the train rattled along through its dark tunnel. "You don't look very well. Are you feeling sick?"

They were all watching him. He shook his head violently and stared up at an advertisement for home insurance.

"Harry, dear, are you sure you're all right?" said Mrs. Weasley in a worried voice, as they walked around the unkempt patch of grass in the middle of Grimmauld Place. "You look ever so pale. . . . Are you sure you slept this morning? You go upstairs to bed right now, and you can have a couple of hours' sleep before dinner, all right?"

He nodded; here was a readymade excuse not to talk to any of the others, which was precisely what he wanted, so when she opened the front door he proceeded straight past the troll's leg umbrella stand and up the stairs and hurried into his and Ron's bedroom.

Emily watched him storm off as Ron walked beside him "He's just stressed, don't worry about it."

Harry began to pace up and down, past the two beds and Phineas Nigellus's empty portrait, his brain teeming and seething with questions and ever more dreadful ideas. . . .

How had he become a snake? Perhaps he was an Animagus. . . . No, he couldn't be, he would know. . . . perhaps Voldemort was an Animagus. . . . Yes, thought Harry, that would fit, he would turn into a snake of course . . . and when he's possessing me, then we both transform. . . .