"You should have warned me," Draco said. His voice rose. "You should have warned me!"
"I... I did... every time I told you about the power, I told you about the price. I said, you have to admit you're wrong. I said this would be the hardest path for you. That this was the sacrifice anyone had to make to become a scientist. I said, what if the experiment says one thing and your family and friends say another -"
"You call that a warning?" Draco was screaming now. "You call that a warning? When we're doing a ritual that calls for a permanent sacrifice?"
"I... I..." The boy on the floor swallowed. "I guess maybe it wasn't clear. I'm sorry. But that which can be destroyed by the truth should be."
Hitting him wasn't enough.
"You're wrong about one thing," Draco said, his voice deadly. "Granger isn't the strongest student in Hogwarts. She just gets the best grades in class. You're about to find out the difference."
Sudden shock showed in Harry's face, and he tried to roll quickly to his feet -
It was already too late for him.
"Expelliarmus!"
Harry's wand flew across the room.
"Gom jabbar!"
A pulse of inky blackness struck Harry's left hand.
"That's a torture spell," said Draco. "It's for getting information out of people. I'm just going to leave it on you and lock the door behind me when I go. Maybe I'll set the locking spell to wear off after a few hours. Maybe it won't wear off until you die in here. Have fun."
Draco moved smoothly backward, wand still on Harry. Draco's hand dipped down, picked up his bookbag, without his aim wavering.
The pain was already showing in Harry Potter's face as he spoke. "Malfoys are above the underage magic laws, I take it? It's not because your blood is stronger. It's because you already practiced. In the beginning you were as weak as any of us. Is my prediction wrong?"
Draco's hand whitened on his wand, but his aim stayed steady.
"Just so you know," Harry said through gritted teeth, "if you'd told me I was wrong I would have listened. I won't ever torture you when you show me that I'm wrong. And you will. Someday. You're awakened as a scientist now, and even if you never learn to use your power, you'll always," Harry gasped, "be looking, for ways, to test, your beliefs -"
Draco's backing away was less smooth, now, a little faster, and he had to work to keep his wand on Harry as he reached back to open the door and stepped back out of the classroom.
Then Draco shut the door again.
He cast the most powerful locking Charm he knew.
Draco waited until he heard Harry's first scream before casting the Quietus.
And then he walked away.
"Aaahhhhh! Finite Incantatem! Aaaahhh!"
Harry's left hand had been put into a pot of boiling cooking oil and left there. He'd put everything he had into the Finite Incantatem and it still wasn't working.
Some hexes required specific counters or you couldn't undo them, or maybe it was just that Draco was that much stronger.
"Aaaaahhhh!"
Harry's hand was really starting to hurt, now, and that was interfering with his attempts to think creatively.
But a few screams later, Harry realized what he had to do.
His pouch, unfortunately, was on the wrong side of his body, and it took some twisting to reach into it, especially with his other arm flailing around in a reflex, unstoppable attempt to fling off the source of pain. By the time he managed it his other arm had managed to throw away his wand again.
"Medical ahhhhh kit! Medical kit!"
On the floor, the green light was too dim to see by.
Harry couldn't stand. He couldn't crawl. He rolled across the floor to where he thought his wand was, and it wasn't there, and with one hand he managed to raise himself high enough to see his wand, and he rolled there, and got the wand, and rolled back to where the medical kit was opened. There was also a good deal of screaming, and a bit of throwing up.
It took eight tries before Harry could cast Lumos.
And then, well, the package wasn't designed to be opened one-handed, because all wizards were idiots, that was why. Harry had to use his teeth and so it took a while before Harry finally managed to wrap the Numbcloth over his left hand.
When all feeling in his left hand was finally gone, Harry let his mind come apart, and lay motionless on the floor, and cried for a while.
Well, Harry's mind said silently into itself, when it had recovered enough to think in words again. Was it worth it?
Slowly, Harry's functional hand reached up to a desk.
Harry pulled himself to his feet.
Took a deep breath.
Exhaled.
Smiled.
It wasn't much of a smile, but it was a smile nonetheless.
Thank you, Professor Quirrell, I couldn't have lost without you.
He hadn't redeemed Draco yet, not even close. Contrary to what Draco himself might now believe, Draco was still the child of a Death Eater, through and through. Still a boy who'd grown up thinking "rape" was something the cool older kids did. But it was one heck of a start.
Harry couldn't claim it had all gone just as planned. It had all gone just as completely made up on the spot. The plan hadn't called for this to happen until December or thereabouts, after Harry had taught Draco the techniques not to deny the evidence when he saw it.
But he'd seen the look of fear on Draco's face, realized that Draco was already taking an alternative hypothesis seriously, and seized the moment. One case of true curiosity had the same sort of redeeming power in rationality that one case of true love had in movies.
In retrospect, Harry had given himself hours to make the most important discovery in the history of magic, and months to break through the undeveloped mental barriers of an eleven-year-old boy. This could indicate that Harry had some sort of major cognitive deficit with respect to estimating task completion times.
Was Harry going to Science Hell for what he'd done? Harry wasn't sure. He'd contrived to keep Draco's mind on the possibility that magic was fading, made sure Draco would carry out the part of the experiment that would seem at first to point in that direction. He'd waited until after explaining genetics to prompt Draco into realizing about magical creatures (though Harry had thought in terms of ancient artifacts like the Sorting Hat, which no one could duplicate anymore, but which continued to function). But Harry hadn't actually exaggerated any evidence, hadn't distorted the meaning of any results. When the Interdict of Merlin had invalidated the test that should have been definitive, he'd told Draco up front.
And then there was the part after that...
But he hadn't actually lied to Draco. Draco had believed it, and that would make it true.
The end, admittedly, had not been fun.
Harry turned, and staggered toward the door.
Time to test Draco's locking spell.
The first step was simply trying to turn the doorknob. Draco could have been bluffing.
Draco hadn't been bluffing.
"Finite Incantatem." Harry's voice came out rather hoarse, and he could feel that the spell hadn't taken.
So Harry tried it again, and that time it felt true. But another twist at the doorknob showed it hadn't worked. No surprise there.
Time to bring out the big guns. Harry drew a deep breath. This spell was one of the most powerful he'd learned so far.
"Alohomora!"
Harry staggered a little after saying it.
And the classroom door still didn't open.
That shocked Harry. Harry hadn't been planning to go anywhere near Dumbledore's forbidden corridor, of course. But a spell to open magical locks had seemed like a useful sort of spell anyway, and so Harry had learned it. Was Dumbledore's forbidden corridor meant to lure people so stupid that they didn't notice the security was worse than what Draco Malfoy could put on it?