"Now, Mister Riddle," said Poppy Pomfrey solicitously, "don't overexert yourself, and try as hard as you can to avoid stubbing your toes."
Harry eyed his bare feet with distaste. "I thought you'd healed it."
"I did, but frostbite is a fairly severe thing, even though you didn't get the worst of it. It was just superficial, not deep. But, even then, those remaining little ice crystals in your skin will damage the tissue surrounding it if they're jarred. And we wouldn't want that, would we?"
Harry made a noise of repulsion deep in his throat. "Can I wiggle them?"
"I don't see any reason why you couldn't, but just slightly." Pomfrey flitted around the room, collecting potions to give to him and frowning at the abundance of candy on the bedside tables. "You should keep it warm-you know how chilly it is in this castle, even in the summer-but don't wrap it too tight. We want the blood circulating, don't we?"
"You're the mediwitch."
"Yes, I am. And you'd do well to listen to me when I say that you shouldn't eat all of this candy, but I doubt you will. You're too much like your parents-stubborn, the both of them."
Harry's eyes widened, and his shoulders stiffened. "Excuse me?"
Pomfrey held up a vial of purple liquid. "Take this tonight before you get into bed. It will help-"
"What did you say about my-my parents?"
"I said that you are like them in many respects, stubbornness, disobedience and impertinence being just three of them. Now, this red one you should take with your next meal-"
"But how could you possibly know-?"
"I remember Tom Riddle quite well, young man. I was new here then, but he broke his leg one day during quidditch and was laid up for awhile. Quite a charming boy, if I recall correctly." She sighed and pursed her lips. "A wolf in sheep's clothing, if I may borrow the muggle expression."
Harry stared at her, too shocked to blink. "So, you know that he's . . .?"
"You-Know-Who? Of course I do. I saw him briefly during the First War, though hopefully I'll never be in that position again. Quite terrifying. This should be taken tomorrow morning-"
"But my mother?" he cut in anxiously. "No one-"
"You have Lily Evans's eyes, without a doubt. I can't believe Minerva or Filius haven't noticed, but I suppose that what one doesn't want to see will not be seen."
"Wouldn't you not want to see?" he asked, oddly awkward. Harry was usually smooth in most situations, or as smooth as an eleven year old could be. Still, the past days had left him more than a little off balance, and discussing his parents was the last thing he wanted to do.
"Why shouldn't I? I can't change what happened so many years ago. Lily is dead, and I'm sorry to say that its her own fault. She was a nice girl, but not particularly outstanding.
"On the other hand, your father-if I may be so blunt, Mister Riddle-is a monster. He's killed so many, in the name of what? Blood purity? When he himself could be labeled a "mudblood", excuse the term? When the mother of his heir is of muggle parents? It is possibly the most hypocritical crusade I have ever heard of."
"Oi, why don't you just sod-" began Harry angrily, but Pomfrey interrupted him.
"Still, though, I suppose a Dark Lord, or any sort of 'politician', has to have a platform. Slytherin to the core, he is, don't you think?"
Harry sniffed. "Proudly."
Pomfrey smiled slightly and continued. "However, I can hardly say that You-Know-Who is any less moral than, shall we say, Grindelwald. His campaign has simply been more successful."
"And me?"
"I'm rather neutral when it comes to you. I can't say I like you-"
"Thanks," he muttered.
"-but I don't hate you, either. All I want is for you to take this potion with breakfast, and then this other one as soon as you-"
By the time Madam Pomfrey had finished explaining the proper application and doses of each and every vial of potion she prescribed him, it was nine o'clock in the evening and the rest of the students had retreated to their respective common rooms.
Harry hurried through the halls, his limping gate and socked feet combing to make swishy padded noises against the stone floor. It was so unlike the usual, slightly imposing click-click of his boot soles that he felt oddly out of place, and quickened his pace.
All he wanted was to get back to his dorm, choke down the potions Pomfrey had forced on him, and sleep. Yes, crawling in between the covers of his own bed (which was infinitely more comfortable than those in the hospital wing) and resting his head on his fluffy feather pillow was possibly more appealing than anything to him at the moment.
He'd never been overweight, but he'd never been one to actually exercise, and supposed he was slightly soft around the edges as a result. That was perfectly fine, usually, but facing down a villain and contracting mild frostbite had drained his energy. It may have been more emotional than physical, even, but he didn't care to wander down that train of thought.
All he wanted was to rest, and forget about Grindelwald and his ugly, deformed face.
Though, upon turning a corner and stopping only several centimeters short of Ronald Weasley, he knew that it was going to be awhile before he reached his dorm.
Forcing his mouth to contort into an arrogant, holier-than-thou smirk, he tilted his head up slightly, straightened his back, and leaned slightly into Weasley's personal space, just enough to make him uncomfortable, and effect the feeling of a noble looking down at a peasant.
Which, he supposed, given the Weasleys' unfortunate financial state, wasn't that bad of a metaphor.
"Weasley," he said, drawing out the syllables of the name as best he could. Draco was better at projecting arrogance and superior breeding through his voice, because while the Riddles had plenty of the former, they were more than lacking in the latter, as Pomfrey had so kindly pointed out. "Fancy meeting you here."
Weasley's eyes slowly took in Harry's unusually ruffled appearance, stopping to linger at his shoeless feet.
Harry pressed on. "Where's Finnigan? I thought you couldn't even breathe without him telling you to."
Ron's face reddened in anger. "Where's Malfoy and Granger?" he demanded. "I thought you were too scared to go anywhere without your brawn and your brains!"
Harry's smirk didn't falter. "Ah, you've finally learned that I am not, in fact, a lackey, but the one in command of them. It only took, what? Ten months? Bravo, Weasley. Or, may I call you 'Ronald'?"
Weasley gritted his teeth. "No, you may not, Harold!"
Harry shook his head. "No, not 'Harold'. Or 'Harrison'. Or 'Henry' or 'Harlow'. Just plain Harry, Ronald. My mother was obviously an uncreative woman."
Weasley clenched his fists and gritted his teeth. "What have you done, Riddle? What's the school been talking about? Did you kill Quirrell?"
Harry couldn't summon a condescending laugh, and settled for an inelegant snort. "Quirrell . . ." He paused and tried to arrange a suitable sentence. "Quirrell was . . . already dead."
"Already dead?" demanded Weasley, his red eyebrows practically touching his equally red hair. "What are you on about, Riddle?"
"Let's just say . . . Quirrell wasn't Quirrell. He was someone else."
Weasley frowned. "He was using a-a fake name?"
"No, idiot. He was Quirrell but not himself."
Weasley's face reddened in confused anger, and Harry congratulated himself. For his first go at talking cryptically, he personally thought that he had done fairly well.
"It's almost curfew," said Harry, roughly pushing past Weasley. "And I'm hardly going to get a detention for loitering around answering your redundant, pointless, dunderheaded questions. Good evening."
With a parting glance over his shoulder, he disappeared down the long staircase into the dungeons.
His arrival in the Slytherin Common Room was met with a sudden, awkward silence, though it quickly dissolved into a plethora of voices spewing greetings. Pansy Parkinson, Millicent Bulstrode, Blaise Zabini, and a hundred other Death Eater children rushed him, simpering pathetically and exhibiting their usual sycophantism.
Harry smiled and nodded appropriately at the rather fake-sounding buckets of concern being poured over him and slipped through the middle of the rapidly enlarging crowd of students. He darted through the door leading to the dorm rooms and continued down the long, drafty corridor.
Upon reaching the portrait that led to his and Draco's room, he sighed in relief and pressed his shoulder against the wall for support.
"Aglaophotis."
The blond woman in the portrait smirked at him mischievously. "Had a little fun, did we, Riddle?"
"Yes," he said warily, eyeing the painting. The woman's name was 'Amelia' something-or-other, but he wasn't sure what she had done to warrant being a Hogwarts portrait. She seemed wealthy enough, as she was attired in a fine blue dress that would've been insensible to wear to anything short of a ballroom dance. Her hair was lank, a rudimentary blond in color. Her face was freckled, and her eyes brown. She might've been considered 'cute', in a way, but not truly beautiful.
Harry had never seen her in a book, though at the moment, he didn't particularly care to ask her any questions that might offer any explanations. He wanted to sleep.
"How nice. Life becomes so monotonous without having a little fun, don't you think? I never killed a professor, true, but I did pester Slytherin so much that he gave me detentions for the rest of the year-"
"Excuse me, but who are you again?" he cut in. Then he hastily added, "And I didn't kill Quirrell."
Her smirk deepened. "Of course you didn't." She was humoring him, and Harry bristled.
"But, I suppose we haven't been properly introduced, have we? I am Amelia Debrom. Amelia Maria Jane Beatrix Debrom, to include middle names, but I always deplored mine. What's your's?"
". . . Morfin . . ." he said bemusedly.
"Morfin? Harry Morfin." She made a face. "It has a ring to it, I suppose, but it's horrid."
". . . Thanks . . ."
"And if you only have one, which I hear is the style nowadays, it really should be something good, or if you have several they should all be names that are mediocre enough on their own to be very good together. I would never forgive my parents for burdening me with something like Morfin, though I suppose we're both luckier than my older sister-her first name was Agrippina, which made for some very off color jokes, and her middle-"
"What do you know about my parents?" Harry cut in, cringing back defensively.
Amelia blinked dumbly. "Just short of nothing, I'm afraid. Should I know about them? Were they Slytherins at one point? I'm afraid I'm rather new to the dungeons-I spent the 1960s in the-"
"No," he said quickly. "No, there's nothing to know. Could you just let me in?"
"What's the password?"
"I already said it!"
"I didn't hear you," she singsonged, her voice painfully out of tune.
Harry's breath hissed through his clenched teeth. "Aglaophotis!"
With an infuriating smirk, Amelia let the portrait open, and Harry wordlessly stomped inside. His continued limping slightly ruined the dramatic effect, but he didn't take notice.
Struggling over to the nearest of the two beds (Draco's, as it was), he let the potion vials fall from his hands. He was tempted to just go to bed, but the rather disgusting thoughts of tissue being damaged by icicles in his skin moved him into action.
Tediously sorting through the potions, he identified the ones he was supposed to take and poured them into his mouth one at a time. They burned down his throat and their taste vaguely resembled some sort of garbage or bile, but he was proud of the fact that he only gagged slightly.
The empty vials slid out of his hands and onto the comforter, and he staggered back towards his own bed.
Not bothering to change into pajamas, he slipped under the covers and, within a matter of minutes, fell into a deep sleep.
He dreamed of family.