Silver and Gold

Silver is for Slytherin, and gold is for Gryffindor.

Everybody loves gold; they prize it, treasure it, bleed and die for it. It rests demurely on their wrists or breasts and shines in a tawdry, breathtaking fashion. They never need to clean it, to polish it - nothing other than wear it and glow in its luster.

Silver, though...

Silver is the lifeblood of the earth. Only the aristocratically venerable wear it. All the Ancient Houses of the wizarding community - the Blacks, the Malfoys, the Lestranges, even the Longbottoms - fashioned their jewelry from silver. It dripped like ice from their fingers and crowns, emeralds and sapphires embedded and sparkling like trapped insects.

Gold is soft. Malleable. You can take a gold trinket and squeeze it in your hand, watch it bend out of shape. It's gaudy. It's overrated and overdone. There are streets and rooftops done in gold; the sun is gold; even the sky is gold, when the sun declines.

People covet and treasure gold in their blindness, placing such great import on such a weak metal. They don't realize that they're destroying it, that their greedy, grasping hands wrench it until it's nothing more than twisted metal, battered, a mockery of the beautiful thing it used to be.

Silver is hard and cold, cutting. Silver is pure. Silver does not break.

Everybody loves Harry Potter. He is in Gryffindor, and rarely has anyone fit into that house so well as he. I see him everyday, and he sees me, his Slytherin green eyes passing over me with just a hint of contemptuous amusement. He doesn't realize that I watch him, that sometimes I forget where I am and where I'm going when I get lost in looking at him.

Harry is a lot like the Gryffindor gold. He is beautiful and he shines, so brilliantly.

If anyone would have the right to be sullen and resentful, it's him. Growing up with those Muggles... No one would be surprised if he was angry and cold, if he hated everyone who's had a better life than his, if he wound up just like Voldemort. But he doesn't do any of those things, of course. He is like gold, and no one needs to polish him. He radiates a mellow light without anyone's help, warming those brave enough to approach his fire.

Gold isn't as strong as it could be, as it should be. The world prizes it, but gold isn't made to withstand the world's challenges.

Harry isn't, either.

Maybe that's why I've always been there, hovering in the background, taking center stage whenever humiliation needs to be doled out, whenever contempt and censure needs to flow like wine. Harry's made of gold, but I'm not; I'm pure silver. Dumbledore recognized it, Snape realized it, the Sorting Hat whispered it into my ear. Not as beloved, no, not as precious, but with a core of steel that Harry did not have.

Maybe that's why I was there.

The night that Voldemort died, he was with Harry.

Voldemort was a genius when it came to unsettling his captives, and one way he did that was by handing out luxurious rooms, and then crowding them with prisoners. It didn't make any sense, after all - Malfoy Manor was full of rooms; surely each of the prisoners could have their own. And he had more than enough guards to keep their eyes on us.

Harry was crowded into Lucius's old bedroom with the members of his D.A. They had watched in horror as Harry was tortured. I watched in horror as he was tortured. The both of us watched in horror as most of them were killed, one by one, begging Harry to save them. Those who were spared were the Purebloods, those kept purely for breeding stock. After all, once Harry was dead, there would be nothing stopping Voldemort, nothing at all.

That was Slytherin power; that cruelty, that thoroughness. Harry never could have done such a thing to Voldemort, killing off those who had been stupid enough to follow him, those that he had loved. That was pure silver, shaped into a dagger, slicing into someone's chest and parting ribs, leaving their heart exposed.

When the moment presented itself, Harry was too tired, too weak, to take advantage of it. Too spent with the force of his grief.

I did it for him. Voldemort fell, with his blood on my hands.

***

Afterwards, we went to Dumbledore's office. It was funny; every time something significant happened, we always went to Dumbledore's office. And to think; he wasn't from some 'royal family,' he wasn't terrible and powerful. He was the simple headmaster of a simple school.

We went to his office.

Harry was sitting in a chair, hunched over, crying, as he told Dumbledore what had happened. The other survivors were in the hospital wing, except for Ron, who refused to leave Harry's side. I sat in a chair beside him, staring down at my knees, feeling as if my core was riddled with cracks. It was terrible to watch him suffer.

Finally, Dumbledore escorted them to the infirmary, promising that he would return and speak with me in a few minutes. I waited impatiently, standing on shaky legs and pacing nervously.

I couldn't believe I had done it; me, all me. What would my father have said, if he had known? What emotions would have crossed his face?

I couldn't imagine.

I passed it by four times before I really saw it. And then, its presence didn't really surprise me. Of course it was in here. Where else would it be kept? The Sorting Hat.

I stood and stared at it pensively for a short while that felt like an eternity. And then, hands shaking, I picked it up and put it on - after all, if I didn't know what my father would think, then I could ask the most astute judge of character that Hogwarts had ever known.

"Ah," it said, an old man's sigh, speaking directly into my skull. I'd forgotten how disconcerting it was. "You again. Hmm... yes, I see what's happened. Most impressive, most impressive."

I tried to think thanks, but it was hard.

"You haven't changed much, have you, young man?" I could almost feel it prodding about inside of my brain, searching my memories. "Still so ambitious, and with a righteous fury to back you, now. You'll always yearn to outdo them all, won't you?"

I nodded.

"Pure silver, you are. Pure silver." It sighed. "You're the truest Slytherin I ever did meet. There was never a question in my mind as to which house you belonged in."

I remembered. The Hat's decision had been almost instant.

"But I have one question for you," the hat said...

And I closed my eyes, wondering if we would argue again, the way we had when I was just a boy, and certain I knew what House I wanted to be in.

"...why did you ask to go to Gryffindor, Neville Longbottom?"

I opened my eyes and stared at the spot where Harry had been sitting only hours earlier. I had known, the moment I saw him, what house he would be in. He was like gold, pure gold.

I thought to the hat, Do you even have to ask?