Harry Potter and the Heir of Slytherin

Dark Tidings

Harry Potter sat down in the compartment he had grabbed for himself and his friends with a heavy sigh. While he was disappointed to be leaving Lisa behind again, a part of him was very glad the winter holidays had finally come to an end. So much had happened during the two week break this time, and not all of it good, that he really just wanted to put it all behind him, which was very hard for someone with his unique talent to do.

Sometimes, having eidetic memory was such a pain.

As he carefully floated his trunk into the storage compartment overhead, Harry reached into the magically expanded pocket in his pants and pulled out a rolled up newspaper. He unrolled it and stared at the front page headline, which contained a large image of a beautiful ballroom with himself, Daphne, the Malfoy's, and the Celestina Zabini standing in the center. The title read "The making of strong new alliances? Or a political scandal?"

The article was a very skewed and biased opinion piece detailing the events that had taken place during the New Year Gala. A good deal of the facts within it were not only way off base, but completely contradictory to each other. It almost felt like six or seven different people had a hand in writing it, couldn't agree on what to write, and just decided to combine all their thoughts into one large jumbled mess of biased opinions.

Harry suspected this was due to both Lucius and Celestina using their wealth to try and turn the article in their favor so they came out of this no-win situation in the best light possible, both for their own reasons, of course.

Harry had already read through it and memorized the entire thing, naturally, but he still kept the newspaper as a memento of his own inexperience.

There were many people throughout history who had been like him; confident people who believed they could change the world. These people, many of them starting out with wisdom and benevolence, often grew arrogant and became egoistical. This egotism caused them to make mistakes, their arrogance made them reckless, and in the end they ended up losing everything when they could have had it all if they had just acted with more prudence.

Harry had vowed long ago to never make those mistakes, but it appeared that putting these lessons into practice was much harder than it looked. That was why he was truly grateful to Celestina Zabini for her interference that night. His fame combined with his intelligence and ambition had made him arrogant, and that arrogance had cost him dearly. Even with Celestina's timely interventions, his reputation had taken a serious blow and people were now questioning his competence and ability as the Head of the Ancient and Most Noble House of Potter.

He had believed that he was ready to face the big leagues, to stand on equal footing with people like Lucius Malfoy, who had decades more experience in the political arena than he did. He had stepped into a field where his only advantages had been his fame, his anonymity, and Andromeda's coaching. It had served him well during his first New Year Gala last year, and he had believed it would be enough for this one as well.

Sometimes life liked to slap people in the face. It had certainly dealt him a heavy blow.

One of the many things that Harry had not thought over thoroughly enough was that the moment he entered the political arena, the advantage of being a psudo-legendary figure that everyone knew of but no one truly knew was lost. People now knew him, not just of him, but knew him, the individual behind the myth of The-Boy-Who-Lived. He was no longer anonymous, and for someone like Lucius Malfoy, just knowing him was enough to dig up plenty of dirt with which he could use to slander slander Harry's name and cause his support to drop.

Really, what had he been thinking? Going up against Lucius Malfoy without an experienced politician backing him up. How reckless was that?

After that night, Harry had vowed not to let his arrogance get the better of him ever again. If he wanted his ambitions to become a reality, then he needed to be at the top of his game.