Chapter Text
The Power of a Well-Organized Mind
Chapter 1
Know Thyself
1 July 1996 - Monday
Harry eased himself into his bed on his side, mindful of the terribly tender skin stretched taut across his back. He’d been sunburned a week ago. Now, he was covered in blisters. It was painful enough that he’d have been weeping in agony if he hadn’t been too numb to care. He accepted the pain as his penance. Sirius had died because he’d been a stupid, impetuous, spoiled little brat. He’d spent an entire year sulking because Dumbledore ignored him. Because no one would tell him what was happening. Because he was being taught Occlumency by his worst enemy.
Ha! He mentally sneered at his own melodrama. It had all seemed so awful at the time. So tragic. It had been so easy to feel sorry for himself. So easy to conclude that he was beyond reach of any adult who actually cared about him – namely Sirius. Umbridge and her insanity hadn’t helped, but that wasn’t any kind of excuse either. He’d wrapped himself in his Gryffindor pride and tried to face her down head-on when she’d held every advantage.
He sighed heavily and tried to organize his drifting thoughts. Dumbledore had been unwilling to speak with him, but he should have gone to McGonagall. If she had resisted, he should have made her listen. He should have explained his problems with Snape. At the very least, he could have gotten someone to chaperone his lessons. Someone from the Order.
He should have worked harder at the lessons. He should have actually tried instead of thinking himself smarter than Dumbledore. He should have sucked up his forsaken pride and kissed Snape’s boots if that had been what it took to get a decent lesson out of the man. His professor regularly looked Voldemort in the eye and lied, for Merlin’s sake. He should have at least tried to learn from him.
Even if Snape was a completely unmitigated arse, that did not excuse Harry’s own weakness in stooping to that same level.
“Well, it won’t happen again,” he vowed into the darkness, as he’d done at least once every single night since Sirius had died. This next year was going to be different. He wasn’t a little kid anymore. He was almost sixteen years old. And he was Harry Potter. By all rights, he should have grown up a long time ago. Too many people depended on him. Sirius was dead because of him. Five of his best friends had almost been killed because of him.
Not this year. This year, Harry Potter was going to Hogwarts as an adult. He would hold his ruddy temper. He would turn the other cheek to Snape’s worst insults, even if he started laying into Harry’s parents…
He chuckled humorlessly. Snape had every right to hate James Potter. Harry would never again attempt to defend the man. Not to Professor Snape. That was a man who had earned the right to every deplorable comment he could think up. As painful as it was to make the comparison, expecting Snape to think kindly of James Potter would be like asking Harry to think kindly of Dudley. Not in this lifetime.
With a small sigh, Harry pushed those thoughts from his mind, and sent all others after them. He cleared his mind, as Snape had always pressed him to do. As he never had when it might have saved Sirius’ life.
It took a long time, but Harry finally felt himself pull free from the grief, guilt, and self-flagellation that occupied his waking hours. Drifting in a haze of blessed silence, his weary body soon surrendered to exhaustion.
Harry opened his eyes and blinked against the bright light. He squinted as he sat up, alarmed to realize that he wasn’t at the Dursleys’. He also realized that he wasn’t in pain.
And then he recognized his surroundings. He was at Hogwarts, on the grounds near the lake where he and Ron and Hermione usually sat and studied when the weather was nice.
He slowly got to his feet, and tried to figure out how he’d gotten here.
After a long minute of remembering nothing except going to sleep in pain at the Dursleys, he cautiously started walking toward the castle. There had to be someone in there who could tell him how he’d gotten here.
He barely stepped through the main doors of the castle when a flash of movement had him drawing his wand and pointing it at…
Himself.
For a moment, he thought it was a mirror, but… no. This boy looked almost identical to him, but there were small differences. For one thing, he was wearing a Hufflepuff uniform. The other boy smiled warmly at him. “Hello, Harry.”
“Who are you?” Harry demanded.
“I’m you,” the other boy chuckled slightly. “Or rather, I am an Aspect of you. Specifically, I am your capacity for Loyalty.”
Harry blinked, stared, realized his jaw was hanging open, and closed it. Then stared some more. “What the hell?”
The boy smiled a little wider, but it was a commiserating smile, not a mocking one. “You’re a little confused right now. That’s to be expected. It might help if I told you that you’re not at Hogwarts. You’re still at the Dursleys’. Asleep.”
“This is a dream…?” Harry ventured.
“Sort of,” the boy shrugged. “This place is a metaphysical representation of your mind. The good and the bad. The light and the dark. Happiness and sadness. Hopes. Fears. Memories. And, of course, the aspects of your personality. We all exist here.”
Harry stared for a long time, trying to process the odds on whether he’d gone insane, was having a really weird dream, or if this was some kind of trick by Voldemort.
“Don’t believe me?” the boy offered. “I can prove it. Or rather, you can. This is your mind. Here, you are God. Try doing something impossible and see if it works.”
After staring for a little longer, Harry decided to give it a try. If this was his mind, then he should be able to do anything. Like… fly without a broom.
He’d barely had the thought before he found himself floating a meter above the floor, staring wide-eyed down into the smiling eyes of… part of himself?
He quickly thought about being on the ground again and he was.
“Satisfied?”
Harry nodded uneasily.
“Great! Do you have any more questions?”
“Um… You’re… my loyalty?”
“Yep,” the boy grinned.
“That’s why you’re in Hufflepuff robes?”
He shrugged. “This is your mind, Harry. I am as you view me, even if you hadn’t ever actually imagined what the loyalty aspect of your personality would look like if given form. You see yourself as a loyal person, which is why I look like you. Clearly, you also recognize that it’s a Hufflepuff trait. Hence my wardrobe.”
Harry nodded slowly and gradually lowered his wand. That did kind of make sense. “You said there were others?”
“Of course,” Loyalty grinned. “You’re far from a one-dimensional person, Harry. There are many Aspects here. Would you like to meet some of them?”
Harry nodded warily.
“Follow me,” Loyalty offered warmly.
Harry slowly took up with the other boy as they left the Entrance Hall and moved further into the castle. “Why can’t I just bring them all to me instead of going to them?” Harry wondered. “I should be able to do that right? Since this is my mind?”
Loyalty shrugged. “Yes and no. Of your impression of yourself,” he gestured to Harry’s person, “you can do almost anything. As for the rest of this place… There are some limits. Self-imposed limits, of course. First of all, you can’t do anything that you don’t believe you can do. Secondly, you can’t do anything that you don’t know how to do. Third, you can’t control anything that you don’t understand.
“Me, for instance, you both understand and embrace. You’re a loyal person and proud of it. That’s not true for every aspect of your personality. Until you’ve come to understand and accept every aspect, you will have very little control over them. In this place, there are suppressed urges, forgotten memories, repressed fears, lost hopes, nightmares and fantasies… everything that is who you are. With practice, you can lock it away, bring it to light, heal what’s hurt, fix what’s broken…” he shrugged. “It’s all you. With time and dedication, you could gain absolute control of this place. You don’t have that yet.”
Harry nodded slowly, and asked hesitantly. “Where are we? This… doesn’t look like Hogwarts. I mean, it does, but… It doesn’t.”
“It’s not,” Loyalty smiled gently. “Hogwarts is the only home you’ve ever had. That’s where the similarities come from. But your life doesn’t revolve around Hogwarts, no matter how much you may wish that it did. This place reflects all of you. Ah, here we are. The library.”
Harry blinked as he realized that they were standing in front of the doors to the Hogwarts library, though he was certain that they’d not left the ground floor. Then Loyalty pushed open the doors and Harry blinked again when he found himself looking into a room that was not the Hogwarts library. In fact… It was the library from Harry’s primary school. But more of what his primary school library would have looked like if Dudley and his chronies were loosed on it without supervision for a solid week.
The place was an awful mess. Books were scattered over most of the floor with just a clear path between a back table and the door. Some of the books looked to have been shredded. Haphazard piles of books and torn pages lay everywhere.
“What…?” he asked in bewilderment.
“This is where Knowledge lives,” Loyalty offered. “Come on.”
Harry hesitantly followed the other boy into the little library. “Why would the Knowledge aspect of my personality be in a primary school library?” Harry asked uneasily.
“When was the last time you embraced your thirst for knowledge, Harry?” Loyalty asked conversationally as he stopped in the back corner of the little library.
Harry’s eyes widened. “Um…”
A small whimper drew his attention to the table in front of him and he swallowed hard before cautiously crouching next to it. His breath caught when his eyes met those of a small, frightened boy in tattered, oversized clothes. He was about seven years old, huddled under the table like he was trying to hide and looking quite frightened at being found.
“Hello,” Loyalty smiled at the small, green-eyed boy as he knelt at Harry’s side. “How are you today, Knowledge?”
“F-fine,” the boy said, barely loud enough to be heard.
“Why does he look like that?” Harry breathed in horror.
Loyalty turned compassionate eyes on him. “You’ve been repressing him since you were seven, Harry. You taught yourself to ignore him. It was then that he stopped developing. What you see is the state at which this Aspect was when you locked him away in here. Of course, you do still touch on him occasionally, but you’ve never embraced him enough for him to mature or evolve.”
Harry felt vaguely sick. He felt like he’d been neglecting this Aspect the way the Dursleys had neglected him. And that wasn’t even taking into account what this must mean for the state of his mind. How many more Aspects were in a state like this? “It’s okay,” Harry said cautiously. “You can… you can come out of there.”
The boy just whimpered and crouched back further when Harry offered him a hand. Harry looked at Loyalty in helpless appeal.
Loyalty gave him a small, sad smile. “You have to mean it, Harry. You can’t just want to help him. You have to be willing to accept him.”
Harry swallowed hard and his stomach turned despite the fact that he shouldn’t really have a stomach, being in his mind and all. He closed his eyes and tried to remember the moment at which he’d started shunning any desire to learn. He had been seven. He’d gotten into the spelling bee at school, and he’d been so proud. He’d thought for sure that the Dursleys would see that he wasn’t worthless. Only, when he’d gotten home and told them… He winced as he remembered the weight of Vernon’s belt slamming against his back, over and over again while his uncle told him how stupid and worthless he was, accused him of cheating to make Dudley look bad, and only hit harder when Harry tried to argue his innocence. It was that night, weeping in his cupboard, that he’d decided he was never going to learn anything again. And however absurd that idea was, he’d meant it with complete conviction at the time.
Even now, it was so hard to convince himself that he didn’t have to believe that anymore. Even knowing how pathetic it was to be determined to do the impossible in ceasing to learn anything, he still felt fear, bitterness, and he could almost feel the leather striking his back.
“I’m not helpless,” he whispered fiercely, summoning the courage he’d used to face Voldemort four out of the last five years. If he could face that, he could bloody well face this!
When he opened his eyes again, he had to wipe tears off his face, but the little boy under the table was giving him a hesitant smile. Harry returned it tremulously and offered his hand again. The boy took it this time, and allowed himself to be drawn out from under the table.
“Why is he still so small?” Harry asked quietly.
“I won’t grow up overnight.” To his surprise, it was Knowledge who answered. He sounded shy, but at least he was talking now. “This is a start, but you have to keep believing if I’m going to grow.”
“You called, boss?”
Harry spun around at the new voice and found himself gaping at the figure that had entered the library behind him. It was a man of about thirty or thirty-five wearing auror robes. He had a wand in his right hand and the sword of Gryffindor in the other. His black hair was trimmed short and neat. He had a close-cut goatee and did not wear glasses over his bright green eyes.
“Who…?” Harry breathed.
“Courage, at your service,” the man saluted quickly.
Harry’s eyes widened as he looked the man over again. He looked like him, but grown up, filled out, and somehow dangerous in a way that had nothing to do with the wand, the sword, or the robes.
“If you don’t need anything else, I’ll head back to the perimeter.”
“O…okay,” Harry huffed incredulously.
With one more hasty salute, the man vanished.
“Okay… So. If Knowledge stopped developing at seven, how did Courage end up… like that?” Harry wondered.
“Well, he’s had plenty of chance to develop, hasn’t he?” Loyalty smiled. “He’s healthy and nurtured, and your personal interpretation of Courage Personified. He can also be a little suicidal, so I wouldn’t suggest taking his advice at face value.”
Harry huffed a small, breathless laugh and nodded. After the Department of Mysteries, Harry strongly agreed with that sentiment. He’d been surviving on courage alone for too long, and Sirius hadn’t been as lucky this time.
“Well, shall we move on?” Loyalty suggested.
Harry nodded uneasily, glancing at Knowledge again as he wondered what else he’d find here.
“Don’t worry about me,” Knowledge smiled shyly. “I think I’ll just stay here and do some organizing.”
“Do you… do you need some help?” Harry asked uncertainly, looking over the mess again. It seemed terribly rude to make Knowledge clean this place up when it was Harry’s neglect that had let it get like this.
Knowledge smiled a little and looked around. “Nah. Just keep wanting to know, and I’ll be all right.”
Harry nodded hesitantly and slowly followed Loyalty’s urging back out of the library.
“How’re you doing?” Loyalty asked sympathetically.
“I’m starting to think that I really might be insane,” Harry admitted. “Even if all of this is really my mind… that might just confirm it.”
Loyalty sighed and slung an arm around Harry’s shoulder. “Well, I’m not really qualified to judge – a bit biased, you know? I will say, however, that this is all a work in progress. You’ve already made a ton of progress with Knowledge. Try not to think of this as a testament to your sanity, but an opportunity to improve. That was your goal for this coming year, right? To be better? To grow up and stop being childish?”
Harry nodded slowly.
“Well, this is your chance,” Loyalty pointed out. “From here, if you are willing to face the truth, and stop hiding from who you are and what you’ve been through, you can heal a lot of wounds you probably don’t even realize that you have.”
Harry smiled a little and looked at the boy who looked so much like him. “Huh. I’m a pretty good friend, huh?”
Loyalty grinned at that. “You see? There are positives to see here as well.”
They walked for a little while in silence before they were stopped by a stunner zinging across their path right in front of Harry’s nose.
“Who goes there?” a nervous, slightly hysterical voice called from a doorway that led up a flight of stairs.
“It’s me, Loyalty. Don’t shoot!” Loyalty grinned.
“What… Who is that?” Harry asked uneasily.
“Paranoia,” Loyalty said sheepishly.
“How do I know that you’re you and not someone else made to look like you?!” Paranoia shouted down the stairs.
“We should probably… come back later,” Loyalty suggested, ushering them carefully past the stairway.
Harry shuddered slightly. His paranoid aspect sounded barmy. Then again, he supposed that he had reason to have a pretty strong streak of paranoia.
A few corridors later, Harry paused at the sound of bright, happy laughter. Relieved at something in this place that seemed so cheerful, Harry hurried over to the nearest window and blinked when he found himself looking out at the Quidditch pitch. Not over the grounds at the pitch, but as though the pitch was built into a courtyard right there.
A flash of movement drew his eyes up to where a small boy was zipping around on a racing broom, laughing at the top of his lungs, and doing crazy stunts.
“Who’s that?” Harry breathed.
“Playfulness,” Loyalty smiled as he joined him at the window.
Harry sighed as the boy zoomed down to the window and stopped to greet them. He looked like Harry had at the beginning of his first year. Had it really been that long since he’d truly embraced playfulness?
“Pull my finger.”
Harry blinked and looked at the boy who was trying hard not to smirk.
“Go ahead,” he said with overdone innocence. “Nothing’s going to happen. Just pull on it.”
Harry looked warily at Loyalty, who was smiling warmly at the boy.
“Pull it, pull it, pull it, pull it!” the boy chanted.
Harry grimaced but pulled the finger. And stumbled back when it came off in his hand.
The boy laughed uproariously as he wiggled his real finger out from the sleeve of his robe. “If you could see your face!” he laughed breathlessly.
“Let’s move on,” Loyalty suggested with an amused smile. “I don’t think there’s much you can do here right now.”
They continued walking down the corridors that could have come right out of Hogwarts and yet didn’t line up the way they should.
Harry didn’t know how long they walked before they came around a corner and Harry froze at the sight of another adult version of himself. This one was wearing plain black battle robes. His hair was long, tied back at his neck, and his face was grave. He was holding a wand and facing a black door that looked to have been blasted to pieces, then put back together. It was held in one piece with everything from chewing gum and spell-o-tape to randomly sized planks and nails that looked to have been repurposed based on the unusual shapes and colors. Some of the cracks and holes were stuffed with nothing more than a dirty sock or a ratty towel. His threadbare baby blanket was stuffed in the crack under the door.
“Hello, Will,” Loyalty greeted.
“Loyalty,” Will nodding without looking away from the door.
“What is that door?” Harry asked uneasily.
“Evil,” Will replied flatly.
Harry gulped. “There’s… evil i-in my mind? That’s my evil side in there?” he asked with growing panic.
Loyalty put a soothing hand on his shoulder. “Relax, Harry. That’s not an Aspect. That is a demon.”
Harry hardly felt any better. “There’s a demon in my mind?”
“Yes,” Will answered quietly.
“How… What… Why… What the hell is a demon doing in my mind? Is it a real demon? Or like, a collection of bad dreams, or…”
“It is there,” Will turned away from the door for the first time, lifting a hand to point at Harry’s head.
…no. Not his head. His scar.
Harry’s hand flew to his mouth as he fought the urge to be sick. “Voldemort left that in me, didn’t he?”
Will’s head snapped back toward the door and Harry realized that there was an inky blackness seeping through some small cracks in the door. It looked disturbingly like that blackness that had come out of the diary when he’d stabbed it with the basilisk fang.
Will’s wand was up in an instant and a brilliant green beam of light shot out of it. It hit the blackness and there was a faint scream from behind the door as the tendril was destroyed under the green light.
“What… What just happened?” Harry gasped.
“The demon tries to get in. Always. I have been fighting it since it arrived, but it has grown stronger. Sometimes, it got out,” Will said gravely without looking away from the door. “He caused a lot of damage when he got in here completely. When he possessed you. When Loyalty and I forced him out that time, he was badly weakened. I was able to make repairs to the door at last, but he’s getting stronger again.”
Breathing unevenly, Harry sat down on a chair that was behind him as soon as it occurred to him to sit, and he buried his face in his hands.
“That’s my connection to Voldemort,” he groaned into his palms.
“It is,” Loyalty said quietly. “But Harry…”
Harry looked up when Loyalty paused.
The Aspect gave him an encouraging smile. “Remember, you can fix things here.”
Harry blinked, then looked at the door again. “I can fix that?”
Loyalty nodded.
“There’s no way to… get rid of… the demon, is there?”
“Perhaps,” Loyalty shrugged. “We don’t know.”
“Okay. How do I fix the door then?”
“Will is guarding it, and keeping the demon at bay,” Loyalty explained. “But he would need help to seal it. You, Harry, are all of us combined. Like Knowledge, however, some Aspects do not have the strength they could. Strengthen them, free them from where they are bound, and you will have the power to make that door impregnable.”
Harry nodded determinedly, and looked at Will again. Just by looking at him, it was obvious that he was one of Harry’s strongest Aspects. That wasn’t really surprising. He’d not have survived without a powerful will. No wonder he could resist the Imperius Curse.
“Who else will I need for this?” Harry asked.
Loyalty shrugged, “Well, you’ll be strongest when you’ve accepted and empowered every Aspect, but the most important for this would be…” He looked thoughtful for a minute. “Cunning, Ambition, Logic, Knowledge, Protectiveness, Pride, and probably Paranoia, too.”
Harry blinked. That was more than he’d expected, but he supposed it made sense. Ambition to do it and do it right, Cunning, Knowledge, and Logic together to figure out the best way, Protectiveness because it was all about protecting him from that thing, Pride to believe that he could do it, and Paranoia to anticipate every possible weakness. “Okay. Who’s closest?”
Harry’s day – night? – just got more bizarre and traumatizing from that point on.
Cunning and Ambition turned out to be the closest. To Harry’s horror, he found them both in his mental recreation of the Slytherin common room that he’d seen briefly in his second year. Both were bound wrist and ankle in irons that were driven into the floor in the center of the common room, the length clearly not enough for them to leave. Ever. When he and Loyalty entered, they found the pair – both appearing about eleven and dressed in Slytherin robes – sitting on one of the sofas having what seemed to be a philosophical debate.
Harry groaned at the sight of more apparently repressed Aspects. “How long have you two been locked up in here?” he asked uneasily.
Cunning quirked an eyebrow – disturbingly reminiscent of Snape – and lazily drawled, “Since you found out that we were both ‘Slytherin traits’.”
“Not for lack of trying to escape,” Ambition added stonily, lifting his wrists, both of which were worn bloody from where the cuffs had rubbed as he’d apparently strained against them.
Well, they weren’t in as bad a shape as Knowledge, Harry recognized. These two were bound, but their spirits had evidently survived fairly intact. It wasn’t as though he never used his cunning or felt ambition. He just ignored them most of the time except in circumstances that he felt warranted them.
Harry ran a hand heavily through his hair as he felt nauseous again. Truly, there was no more blatant way to have his own stupidity shoved in his face than with visual evidence like this. Ever since starting Hogwarts, Harry had been prejudiced against the aspects of himself that were Slytherin. And he knew exactly why he’d been so harsh with himself. The Sorting Hat had wanted him in Slytherin. Deep down, he had been a Slytherin, but he’d refused to admit it. He’d forced himself to be a Gryffindor, even if it meant training himself to ignore parts of himself.
Not only did it feel profoundly wrong now that he was looking at Ambition’s chafed wrists and the scars on Cunning’s cuffs and chains that suggested he’d tried many, many times to find ways to remove them.
Maybe it was Harry’s right to decide which parts of himself to embrace, but he realized now that he’d been doing it for really pathetic reasons. It was childish and he could not afford to be childish any longer. If he was going to survive, much less have any chance of defeating Voldemort, he absolutely had to embrace his every advantage.
And really, if he didn’t let himself think about how it made him a Slytherin, he could hardly think that ambition or cunning were “bad” or in any way “evil” traits to have. If he’d had any ambition, maybe he’d have tried to actually learn something at Hogwarts instead of treating it like his primary school and just drifting through it. And there was a slight chance – wince for the understatement – that facing some of his considerable difficulties with cunning rather than slamming headfirst into all of them with nothing but courage and will might have been a good idea here and there.
The sound of iron hitting the floor drew his attention to the fact that Ambition and Cunning had just been freed of their bonds. They were now exchanging somewhat malign grins of satisfaction. Those looks made Harry a bit uneasy, but he refused to ever stymie himself by suppressing useful Aspects again. He wouldn’t. He could avoid completely giving himself over to those Aspects without pretending they didn’t exist – mentally chaining them in the dungeons where he’d apparently felt they belonged.
“Um… Look,” Harry said uneasily, uncertain if they wouldn’t be holding a grudge against him for locking them up for so long, “Do you two think you could go hang out with Will for a little while. I need your help to repair the door keeping Voldemort out, but I have a few other Aspects to pick up first.”
They both looked very pleased by that as they started away.
Harry looked after them uneasily before looking at Loyalty again. “I really wish the two of them were stronger. Do you think they’ll really be able to help?”
Loyalty shrugged. “Well, they’re not really eleven, remember. That’s how old you were when you started repressing them, but they have been around since then, just like Knowledge has. You’ve utilized them from time to time. They’re not as strong as they could be, but they’ll do what they can. And they’ll grow quickly as long as you’re able to hold onto the conviction that you found tonight in order to release them.”
Harry took a deep breath and nodded. He almost didn’t want to find any more tonight, but he didn’t want to waste any time in strengthening that door as much as possible. The memory of being possessed by that psycho was more than enough inspiration to continue.
The next stop was Pride. They found him in a courtyard that just happened to look exactly like the backyard at the Dursleys where Harry had been spending most of his days on one task or another that kept him under the blazing sun but out of sight from the neighbors.
Pride wasn’t working though. He was just standing in the yard, staring defiantly at the wall across the way that looked exactly like the back of the Dursleys’ house. And maybe it actually was. Pride was dressed in the tattered clothes given to him by the Dursleys, oversized and filthy from working. They were also bloody, the source of the blood very obviously being Pride himself as he looked like he’d endured one of the worst beatings that Harry had ever gotten from them just minutes ago.
At least this one, Harry was pretty sure, wasn’t his fault. It was his so-called family that had put his pride in such a state, but still, it held strong. The Aspect looked a little older than Harry was, maybe as much as twenty, and he didn’t look at all weak despite the humiliation anyone would have felt to wear such clothes and the beating he’d obviously taken.
Harry hadn’t received any beatings this year, thanks to the Order’s threats. He was pretty sure that’s why they kept finding reasons to send him out in the sun. It just wouldn’t do if Harry wasn’t in as much pain as they could cause.
After sending Pride off to join the others, Harry and Loyalty returned to Paranoia. After ten minutes of trying to convince the Aspect that they were who they claimed to be, Harry got fed up and just willed himself to be next to the Aspect, and then hastily willed himself to be impervious to anything Paranoia could do when he started trying to curse him.
Harry finally had to slap him before the man would calm down. Even then, his eyes darted around constantly, searching for threats. Harry could see the benefit of having a developed streak of paranoia, but he seriously needed to get a handle on this. The Aspect was based out of the Astronomy tower – for the full range of vision and few access points. He was holding a wand in each hand with four more stuffed into available pockets and two into the waistband of his trousers. The room also looked a lot like Fake Mad-Eye’s office had. It was filled with foe glasses, sneak-o-scopes, dark detectors, and every other manner of spying or detection device that Harry had ever heard of.
It took him a while to figure out how to tone down his paranoia to improve this Aspect. He had lots of very good reasons to be paranoid, after all. Finally, he thought about Mad-Eye, about how much he didn’t want to be “that guy”, and spent a good half hour convincing himself of ways to make his paranoia healthier. He hadn’t even realized that he was that bad, but he wasn’t too surprised. He hadn’t had many opportunities lately to get worried, being that he’d been between Hogwarts, Privet Drive, and Grimmauld Place fairly exclusively, generally only around people that he already knew. Thinking about it, he could see how he’d gotten a bit paranoid lately when he’d stepped out of those comfort zones.
Finally, he looked at Paranoia again, and was pleased to see that the Aspect looked considerably less crazy. Though he still had all the extra wands, at least he’d started using the mirrors to watch his back instead of constantly looking over his shoulder, and the feverish light in his eyes had diminished.
“Just Protectiveness and Logic left, right?” Harry sighed tiredly when he’d sent Paranoia off and rejoined Loyalty.
The Aspect nodded. “Nice work with Paranoia, by the way. That’s the first time he’s left that tower since the Third Task.”
Harry chuckled ruefully at the truth of that statement and what it said about him.
“Well, come on,” Loyalty smiled. “Let’s go get Logic.”
Harry was surprised when he was led to the headmaster’s office. He was still struggling to understand why this Aspect would be hanging out there when they neared the door, and an angry roar came along with a crash and the sound of things breaking.
Alarmed, Harry hurried to open to door, only to be forced to make himself impervious once again as an object flew at him. Harry was stunned at an image of himself – looking almost exactly like him right down to the Gryffindor robes – except that his face was contorted in fury as he destroyed Dumbledore’s office. He almost expected to find the old man sitting calmly behind the desk, but was very glad to find the chair empty. Even a representation of the old man in his head would have severely disturbed him. Not that he was particularly comforted by seeing how he must have looked when he’d thrown that fit.
“Rage,” Loyalty spoke as he stopped next to Harry.
That explained it. It was somewhat disturbing to find that this aspect of himself was so much more powerful than some of the others that seemed much healthier and much more useful.
For some time, Harry just watched in disturbed awe as Rage went on without pause, throwing things around the office, only to have them return to their original position in pristine condition a few moments later until he put hands on them again.
He wasn’t drawn from the astonished staring until he realized that there was another Aspect in the room when the last one had to dodge a flying object. This latest Aspect was dressed in Ravenclaw robes, impassively watching the destruction.
“Now was there any point in that?” the Ravenclaw said emotionlessly. “Do you really feel any better?”
Logic, Harry realized. No wonder he had such a hard time being logical if that Aspect was constantly trying to talk sense into Rage.
“Um… Can we talk to you outside?” Harry managed to ask the unaffected Aspect between violent crashes and howls of fury.
“Of course,” Logic nodded, still with that disturbing lack of emotion.
Harry winced as something collided with the door just as it closed behind them, and they rode the staircase back down to the relieving silence of the corridor. “He’s always like that?” he uneasily asked of the one they’d left behind.
“Since you let him loose in Dumbledore’s office,” Logic nodded, looking slightly disapproving, but still scarily blank-faced.
Harry rubbed the back of his neck uncomfortably. “That was a rough night, and Dumbledore was a prick for the way he handled it.”
Logic just nodded silent agreement.
“Come on,” Loyalty suggested. “Protectiveness will meet us back at the door.”
Harry raised a curious eyebrow at that.
Loyalty just shrugged, “Protectiveness, Harry. You need protecting. He’ll be there.”
“Oh.” That made sense. “Why wasn’t he there with Will already?”
“Well, it’s usually not you that you’re worried about protecting, is it? He spends most of his time guarding your memories of Innocence, and some of the more recent happy ones.”
“Innocence?” Harry asked interestedly. He didn’t even want to imagine what shape that Aspect must be in.
Loyalty grimaced slightly. “Innocence died when you were four, I’m afraid,” he said quietly.
Harry gulped, but he wasn’t greatly surprised. Just went to show how stupid Dumbledore had been to try to give him a “childhood” though. It was now confirmed that he hadn’t been a “child” since he was four. In fact, if Aspects had human rights, he was pretty sure the Dursleys would be going to prison for murder.
When they got back to the door, Harry had the interesting experience of seeing so many of his Aspects together.
Will was still watching the door. Ambition and Cunning were having a whispered conversation that was slightly unnerving for the way they kept sending speculative looks at the others. Knowledge was sitting in a corner, hugging his knees, though his face was up, and he seemed to be evaluating everyone. Protectiveness – a well-developed adult Aspect – stood in the back with his hand on his wand like he was standing guard over the group. Paranoia was huddled back in a second corner, trying to watch everyone at once, but he still looked markedly saner than when Harry had first met him. Pride seemed to be trying to look down his nose at everyone despite his ragged appearance. He was an important Aspect, Harry thought, but it was probably just as important to keep him from becoming too powerful. Pride in moderation was as much a virtue as it was a vice in excess.
“Okay…” Harry said somewhat uneasily as every eye turned to him on his entrance. He did realize that it was somewhat ridiculous to be nervous addressing a crowd of various Aspects of himself, but… He really had no idea what to do now. He automatically looked to Loyalty for advice. That Aspect had been the one giving it all night.
Loyalty smiled a little in response, but it was Logic who spoke in his emotionless tone. “We will all be necessary to accomplish our goal. Perhaps we should compare thoughts,” he suggested.
Harry nodded, glad that some part of him knew what was going on. “Right. So, does anyone have any ideas on how we should go about fixing that to keep Voldemort from getting in here again?”
Knowledge spoke first. “The original door was formed by Mother’s sacrifice and secured by Will,” he said quietly, staring at his knees. “It was damaged in first year when we killed Quirrell because we used a lot of the sacrifice’s remaining power. In fourth year, when our blood was used in his resurrection ritual, most of the power that was left was drained and he was able to break it down.”
“I held him back as much as I was able,” Will said with quiet intensity – not looking away from the door. “Without the door, there was little that I could do. We made what repairs we could over time, but it wasn’t until after the possession that we were able to get it to fully close again. I fear, however, that it may not remain that way for long once his strength has recovered.”
Harry sighed and ran a hand through his hair. “Okay. So how do we fix it?”
“Memories,” Logic supplied.
Harry frowned uncertainly and Logic continued before he could ask a question.
He moved over to the door and pointed to the blanket beneath it. “A memory of comfort and a wish for family and identity.” He next directed attention to the old sock, “A memory of bitterness, embarrassment, and longing.”
Harry frowned at that until he realized that it was an old sock he’d received from the Dursleys for Christmas one year. It had been way too big, had a hole in the toe, had no mate, and had not even been washed after Vernon last wore it. Still, he’d kept it in his cupboard because it had been a gift, however pathetic. The memory was not a pleasant one.
Logic pointed to a piece of used chewing gum next. “A memory of playfulness and friendship.” In primary school, before Dudley taught everyone to avoid him, a boy named Josiah had shared a piece of gum. He then indicated one of the strangely shaped boards. “A memory of home and happiness.”
Harry blinked as he realized that the board looked like a piece of his bed at Hogwarts.
“A memory of loyalty and friendship,” Logic pointed to the spell-o-tape.
Harry wondered if it was from the memory of Ron attempting to fix his broken wand in second year. “So the door is patched up with memories,” he concluded. “How, exactly, can I even make memories into objects?” he posed to anyone, though his eyes stuck on Knowledge.
The Aspect didn’t disappoint. “Here, memories are objects. Everything that you see, hear, smell, touch, taste, and feel here is made of memory. Some, like the walls, floor, sky outside, and other things are a conglomeration of general knowledge gleaned through the context of many memories. Others are more specific to certain memories. The latter have more strength because there are emotions in them. The stronger the emotions, the stronger the memory.”
“Thank you,” Harry nodded to the apparently small boy. He got a little smile in return. “So how do I go about finding memories to use on this door?” he wondered.
“You’re asking the wrong question,” Cunning admonished. “Locating memories here is easy. What you need to be wondering is which memories to find.”
Ambition nodded his agreement. “When we were possessed, how did we get rid of the demon?”
Harry frowned, recalling that Dumbledore had asked him something similar. “I thought about Sirius.”
Cunning smirked, “Right. The biased old bastard concluded that you’d frightened away the demon with thoughts of love,” he sneered the last word with almost as much distaste as he’d put into “biased old bastard”.
“I didn’t?” Harry frowned uncertainly.
Cunning rolled his eyes.
“What is love, Harry?” Logic posed.
“It’s…” Harry frowned. He was sure that he knew this, but… He couldn’t bring a definition to mind. Maybe he should look it up the next time he found a dictionary.
“Exactly,” Logic nodded to the non-answer. “If you’re wondering, that Aspect is still alive, but he stopped developing the night our parents were killed.”
Harry’s eyes widened and he almost choked to hear that. “That’s my great weapon against Voldemort?! An Aspect of my personality that I haven’t known since my parents died?!” In retrospect, he should have realized that sooner, but he’d never really thought of it that way. Love was… Well… He loved Hedwig. Right? He cherished her, at least. He’d be heartbroken if she died. And surely he must love his friends. And the Weasleys. He liked them, at least. Thinking about it though, he really hadn’t the first idea how to tell if he felt love or if it was just “like” for anyone.
That was incredibly disturbing to think about.
“Dumbledore’s an idiot,” Cunning scowled.
Logic nodded his agreement. “He is intelligent, but not wise. Despite his age, he is capable of understanding only his own narrow spectrum of experience in many things. He knows that our life with the Dursleys was difficult but has truly never imagined how bad because he cannot comprehend a reality in which family would harm family on any real level. At least, not without the corrupting influence of Dark Magic at work. Since the Dursleys are muggles, he believes that they must truly love you, even if they do not often show it.”
“They hate me,” Harry said without the slimmest doubt. “They’ve gone out of their way to make sure that I understand that.”
Logic dipped his head in agreement again. “He left you with the Dursleys. He abandoned Sirius to Azkaban when he could have demanded a trial for him, being the head of the Wizengamot. He attempted to give you a childhood by sheltering you from the truth since you started Hogwarts, yet he has not protected you from the true dangers. Perhaps he has been carefully manipulating you throughout your entire life or perhaps he is merely a very foolish and misguided old man. Either way, his grievances against you, personally, are many. Trusting him would be folly.”
Harry stared at Logic and tried not to let himself get too angry. He remembered what Rage had looked like, throwing a tantrum up there in his mental reproduction of Dumbledore’s office. He didn’t want to be that. He was better than that. Rage might be able to do a lot of damage, but that Aspect alone was not going to keep him alive.
After a long moment, he managed a fairly calm nod and tried to return to the topic at hand. “So we don’t think that love is the power the prophecy was talking about?”
“Quite likely,” Logic noted, “this is the power. Us, together, here. If you can master your mind, you can maximize your power, intellect, and memory.”
Harry’s eyes widened as he realized that Logic was right. This probably was his great secret weapon. He kind of wished that it was something more like being invincible or shooting lasers out of his eyes, but he could work with this. And now that he knew, he was going to work that much harder to use it.
“All right. So, if it wasn’t my love for Sirius that got Voldemort out of my mind when I was possessed, what was it?”
“Grief,” Will said in his quiet, intense voice. “Whether or not you loved Sirius, you saw him as your last chance at a family. Losing him was like losing your parents all over again. There was an entire future that you watched die with him. A future that you had only begun to imagine. The pain of that was incredibly intense. It weakened him drastically and Loyalty and I were able to shove him out.”
Harry sighed. That made more sense than Voldemort being unable to be in the presence of something so “pure” as love. As though there was anything about Harry that was pure or innocent anymore. The Dursleys had literally killed his Innocence, and he was far too scarred and bitter to ever be pure in anything. Besides, it seemed to him that Voldemort would be more likely to sneer at evidence of love than flee from it. It’s not like he hadn’t murdered enough families in his life, and their love of each other had never slowed him down.
“Was it really my mum’s love for me that saved me from the Killing Curse?” he wondered. He really had no idea if any of them knew, but he was curious.
“It was a ritual,” Knowledge supplied. “Black magic. The kind that you will get the Kiss for being found to use.”
Harry’s jaw dropped as he stared at the small boy. “How do you know?” he breathed.
“You have very old memories of it. At the time, they meant nothing to you. Cross-referenced with more recent knowledge, however, they take on meaning. Blood was taken and offered as sacrifice on a full moon night. The ritual was put into motion months before Voldemort’s attack. When he came, our mother enacted the power of the ritual by verbally offering her life in your place. By killing her then, Voldemort accepted her offer and the magic of the ritual then empowered you with protection from him. That is why his curse backfired. When the demon latched onto you, that magic continued to protect you, though it has waned slightly each Samhain since. Now that Voldemort bears our blood, the protection is almost useless,” he nodded toward the desiccated door.
Harry felt the need to sit again. Happily, a chair appeared for him as it had before. It hadn’t been a desperate choice in the last moments of her life. His mother had made the choice to give her life for his months before. She definitely deserved to be in Gryffindor.
“Okay…” he struggled to calm down. “Okay. So… All right, so memories of pain are the ones I should be using to keep Voldemort out? How come all of those are happy memories? Or happy-ish,” he gestured toward the patched-up door.
“They’re what we had,” Loyalty smiled sadly. “We’ve had only limited power. Some of us have more than others.”
Harry sighed. That’s right. Cunning and Ambition were chained up in the basement. Knowledge was hiding under the table in the library. Paranoia refused to leave his tower. Logic was stuck trying to talk sense into Rage. Loyalty, Courage, Will, and Playfulness were probably the only ones with relatively free reign in here. Well, and Protectiveness, though he apparently spent most of his time looking after Harry’s sadly few happy memories.
“We need to construct a new door entirely,” Ambition spoke up.
Cunning nodded, “The power of that sacrificial ritual is almost completely gone. Patching isn’t enough anymore.”
“How do we do that?” Harry asked, standing again as he tried to force his mind onto the most urgent matters at hand. He’d worry about the sad state of the rest of his mind later.
“The demon remains weak,” Logic offered. “This is the ideal time to do it.”
Cunning nodded his agreement. “If we put a powerful memory in place, it should hold until the new door can be secured. I would suggest emotional pain, since the demon is not unfamiliar with physical pain, though the latter might also be incorporated.”
And so they set to work. The Aspects led Harry around his mental castle, locating memories to use. It was… not pleasant to be handling those memories, but Harry had endured them all before. It was the pain after Cedric’s death that was used to hold the demon at bay while they worked on piecing together a door crafted of Harry’s very worst memories.
With the help of the Aspects, Harry figured out how to fashion a memory into the object that he desired. It was really just a matter of taking the memory in hand, and enduring the pain within it while he concentrated on what he wanted it to be. It took form then, fairly quickly, though it always seemed longer than it was. The door was made of heavy wooden planks, then plated in iron, and bound with steel, including four heavy, steel locking bars. Then, over that, he made heavy granite blocks and bricked it all over. All of the Aspects lent their strength to each construction, infusing it with Will, Courage, Protectiveness, Logic, Ambition, Cunning, etc. Through this construction, they would all work toward keeping the block strong without having to actually have their attention on it all the time, which he could only imagine would improve his willpower significantly.
The last block slid into the wall, supported by Harry’s trembling arms, and a flash of verdant light sealed the edges together.
Harry immediately collapsed, more exhausted than he’d ever been in his life, including right after escaping Voldemort in fourth year.
“You did well, Harry,” he heard whispered in his ear, and then everything went dark.