(You can skip down to the chapter if you want. It's short though.)

Tagged by classyartist

Mention who tagged you, do it in three days, say 10 things about you, tag 28 people, put a title to the tag, tell a joke, write a spoiler for one of your stories, put the rules in your tag.

1. I own two dogs

2. I'm actually a playwright, and fanfics are the only non-scripts I literally ever write. These are honestly only good because I have two brilliant betas reading over my shoulder.

3. My boyfriend is actually a classics major, and knows way more about Greek Mythology than me.

4. In addition to my waitress job that I always complain about, I work for a charity that employs special needs adults.

5. I have bipolar disorder.

6. I'm a pretty religious Jew. I like the Chabad way of doing things but I mostly beat to my own drum.

7. I'm obsessed with Assassin's Creed. Right now I'm playing through Unity, but I've played every game they have avalible on the PS4. And am waiting eagerly for them to put I and III on the playstore.

8. I'm currently producing a musical I wrote called "A Deadly Game of Chess." It'll be on YouTube after it goes up July 30th so I'll put the link up for you guys to watch.

9. I'm a huge fan of the Beatles.

10. I am unnaturally obsessed with the second president of the United States John Adams. Just... don't ask (or do, I have a bajillion fun facts on him and they're all amazing.)

What do you call the waiter who asks the kids if they want dessert? A dumbwaiter.

For this one? You're all correct that Teddy isn't Teddy. Won't say more than that though.

I don't know 28 people to tag, so anyone who wants to do this can do it! Let me know in the comments if you do it and I'll put your username up here.

Harry struggles to come to terms with his treatment of Nico di Angelo.

Chapter Rating: General Audiences

Content Warning: Self-Harm (mentioned only)

Word Count: 3424

Ladies and gentlemen... the moment you've been waiting for... the pride of my fanfic... HARRY'S REPENTANCE!

aka he feels like absolute shit and whatnot.

And all the characters are owned by JK Rowling, or Rick Riordan.

Credits at the end.

Alone in the Gryffindor common room in the wee morning hours of December 22nd, one question consumed his every thought:

Who should I choose as my next role model? Dudley or Malfoy?

To say Harry felt like absolute shit would rival "Sirius and Snape somewhat annoy each other" as the largest understatement of the A.D. Sitting alone in his armchair, Harry recounted all the horrible things he caused by jumping to the stupidest conclusion of his life out of sheer prejudice:

1. Nico di Angelo was missing, likely brainwashed, and maybe dead because Harry blackmailed him with what Hermione informed him was a mental illness (when he off-handedly mentioned it to her as a hypothetical).

2. Tom Riddle was still alive and had the best chance of his life to both rule the Wizarding World and kill anyone who looked at him funny because Harry kept pushing his friends to distract the demigods from hunting horcruxes.

3. An innocent goddess whose biggest crime was an argument lay in a puddle of her own blood because Nico ran to escape Harry's unrelenting torture.

4. A grieving Greek god of the Underworld planned to unleash the dead on the Wizarding World--and commit genocide on every witch and wizard his army stumbled across--in a futile but relentless pursuit of his lost son. Who Harry drove away.

5. The apocalypse, when the other Olympians get involved in Hades' and Hecate's war and use any means necessary to stop them, without regard for any mortal life, muggle, wizard, or demigod.

Dudley. At least his parents aren't affiliated with the Dark Lord.

Neutrality. That was something Harry couldn't claim. With all the damage he caused, he might as well draw the Dark Mark on his arm and start using Crucio on muggles for kicks.

Words couldn't describe how he hated himself, abhorred every breath in his lungs, detested every beat of his heart, despised every thought in his brain that proved he still lived. Why should he think when Nico was brainwashed? Why should he have the freedom to do as he pleased when Nico was trapped in a cage? Why should he live when Nico di Angelo had already died?

Harry remembered watching the telly on those long ago days when his greatest joy was being home alone and let out of his cupboard. He knew the way things worked in programs: when the protagonist doubts himself, others interrupt his solitude to prove those doubts wrong. When the villain realizes the folly of his ways, those torturing thoughts persist into infinity.

No one interrupted his thoughts this time. If there were Fates--and Annabeth confirmed there was--they'd already passed judgment.

"Hey."

Harry looked up in utter shock. What were the odds someone would find him the same moment he asked for an interruption?

"Sirius? What are you doing out of Grimmauld Place?"

Sirius chuckled, standing beside the fireplace. "After the number of times your father, Lupin, and I snuck out of Hogwarts, do you think anyone could keep me in that house if I knew you needed me?"

"But... how...?"

"Ron. He used one of those Irish Message things to ask me to talk to you. I think he meant by owl, but I figured that was a little too slow. He said you took Dumbledore's message a little harder than everyone else; wouldn't tell me more than that, though."

"Dumbledore's...?" Harry realized Sirius meant Percy and Annabeth's meeting earlier that evening. "Snape didn't tell you about Percy and Annabeth?"

Sirius's eyes narrowed in concern and anger. "Snivellus made us send you into the hands of Death Eaters?"

"Sirius..." Harry didn't even try to keep his voice from cracking. "There's only one servant of Lord Voldemort in the castle, and you're looking right at him."

Sirius glanced around the common room, to reaffirm no one was coming. It still being Christmas break, almost no one was in the castle, but "almost" didn't mean they had zero chance of him getting caught. Sirius nodded back towards the Floo Powder; Harry knew what he meant: this would be a long conversation, and they couldn't have it at Hogwarts while it still served Umbridge. Dumbledore's aura kept her under control, kept her from finding out about Sirius's floo powder adventures to talk to Harry, but that wouldn't keep her out of the common room if she suspected an illegal visitor. Harry nodded, then let his godfather help him to stand. Sirius went first in the fire, then Harry, to Number Twelve Grimmauld Place.

The living room, filled with voices a few hours before, was dark and silent. Of course it was, everyone in the house was asleep. Sirius led Harry to a place he assumed his godfather knew no one would enter: a corner of the kitchen Harry had never spent time in and found hard to even recognize. Sirius opened up a dingy door opposite the pantry, to reveal a sleeping Kreacher in a small den filled with Black family heirlooms and a large, old-fashioned boiler. He woke the house elf with the usual coldness, disregarding the mumbled insults pouring from the sleeping creature.

"Kreacher! Go somewhere in the house where no one will find you, don't draw any attention to yourself, and stay put until I tell you to come back. You're forbidden to listen to this conversation, do anything that might give you information on this conversation, tell anyone about this conversation, or acknowledge this conversation is taking or ever took place. Harry was never here, and I've been in my room the entire night. You were sleeping right here without interruption unless anyone sees you tonight, in which case you were looking for artifacts to add to your pile of junk. Understood?"

Kreacher mumbled a response as he stalked away; Harry didn't care enough to listen, and Sirius seemed satisfied with whatever he'd said. When the pitter-patter of feet dissolved into the nooks and crannies of the manor and the house elf's voice no longer reached their ears, Sirius closed the door of Kreacher's den, then the door leading out of the kitchen for good measure. Harry collapsed on the floor with his back against the pantry door; after Sirius had finished casting an imperturbable charm on the entryway, he sat next to his godson and looked at him with concern.

"All right, now we've got that out of the way, tell me everything."

"Even what you already know?"

"I want to hear it all again. From the beginning, and don't leave anything out."

"Erm... define beginning."

Sirius made an exasperated face, attempting to kid. "When did your--service to the Dark Lord we'll say--begin?"

"First of September, I think."

"Fine, then start there. Don't skimp on details; we've got all night, and the morning if need be."

And so Harry began. He started with the first moment he laid eyes on Nico di Angelo, back in King's Cross, when Nico had attempted to eavesdrop on Mad-Eye's instructions. He went through everything, every thought or suspicion he could ever remember having about di Angelo, the hours in the library searching for Lares, the wandless magic fight in the hallway, planning the boggart attack with Malfoy and overhearing Percy talk about Nico's father in the hospital wing, discovering and fighting against the horcruxes, the D.A. meeting with Percy, seeing Nico's self-harm problem and blackmailing him with it, and, finally, the run-in with Malfoy that seemed to make it all make sense.

As he laid it all out for Sirius, he recalled more and more leaps, more and more assumptions, more and more prejudices that led him off-track. Worse, he started to realize Nico's cries for help near the end. How many times had he revealed his vulnerability to Harry, knowing full-well he'd never catch on?

"I'm dangerous; I'm my own agent, I always have been. Sometimes... sometimes that makes me do stuff no hero would do."

"Like what?"

"Like kill my own sister."

"Who are you?"

"A monster."

"Do I look like a stranger to death, Potter?"

"It was all there," Harry whispered to Sirius, his cheeks wet with hot tears, throat scratchy from talking for so long, and lip bloody from biting it so often. "It was all there, and I knew something was up, I knew it was wrong to blackmail him, even before Hermione told me it was an illness... but I kept telling myself it was for the greater good..."

"A lot of powerful wizards have gotten themselves in trouble by repeating that phrase in their heads," Sirius told him. "Look... I'm not going to sit here and say it's not your fault, or that you shouldn't blame yourself, or that your actions were anything but the result of prejudice and a justification of emotions. You were wrong, and you deserve to feel like this, you know that. I love you like I know James would've--did--but that's a long way from excusing emotional abuse, even if you didn't realize at the time that's what you were doing."

"I know..." Harry convulsed forward in a heaving sob; he felt Sirius's hand on his back, not trying to soothe him, but just reminding him he was there. It helped a little, knowing his godfather didn't hate him for what he did... but it didn't soothe him much.

"Harry." Sirius's voice was stern but kind... fatherly, in a way. "You need to pull yourself together and look at me."

Harry forced himself to look up, but he couldn't stop shaking. "I-- I thought you--"

"I'm here to help you. I listened, you had your time to cry, and now you need to stop feeling sorry for yourself and look at the facts."

"The facts?"

"You fucked up, to use your mother's favorite muggle phrase. I get that. And you feel horrible, I get that too. But you're not a servant of Voldemort; you can't blame your actions on some circumstances you didn't even know about. You can't use Riddle as a scapegoat."

"That's not what I'm doing!"

"Yes, it is. Look at me, Harry. Do you think I didn't feel like this when I found out Wormtail sold out your parents? When I saw myself put away for a murder I never committed? You think I didn't want to convince myself it was all part of some big plot that Wormtail manipulated me into, that if I had just been a little smarter, none of it would've happened? It's easy to assign blame for tragedies, even to assign it to yourself. But life isn't that simple. There's not one cause for every effect. Pretending otherwise doesn't help things."

Harry shook his head and stared back down at the floor. Sirius sighed, then continued. "Yes, you did some bad things, a lot of which played right into Voldemort's and Hecate's hands. I'm not denying nor excusing that. But, you didn't single-handedly cause any of this. Look at the facts, Harry, without trying to assign blame to yourself.

"Yes, you interfered with the horcrux hunt. You were horrible at actually stopping the demigods--so was Tonks, and the Order itself. I don't think we did anything worse than annoy them; it's the difficulty of their mission that's keeping Riddle alive, not you. As for Hecate, she's a goddess who could manipulate a god. From what you heard from Annabeth, she's been planning this a while, long before you met a single demigod. If she wanted Persephone dead, if she wanted Hades on the warpath, if she wanted the apocalypse, she'd've done it with or without your help.

"And Nico? Harry... I don't have much experience with self-harm or anything comparable, but I know enough to know that it's not something that happens in a matter of days or weeks. Even if he'd never cut himself until he met you, the issues were already there, and he didn't know how to cope. Your blackmail might've made it more probable that he'd leave, or made him do so sooner, but I doubt he'd be able to handle this pressure long enough to resist running away. He might've used you as an excuse, but he would've found another. And, with Hecate needing him to be her prisoner, there's no way he would've gotten through this quest without somehow disappearing."

Harry glanced back up, but he still couldn't get himself to speak. Sirius held his gaze a long time, but couldn't convince him to talk.

"Fine, I'll talk at you some more," Sirius tried to joke again, but his voice weighed heavy. "My point is, sitting here and crying about how you were some pawn won't solve anything. You messed up, so you need to get up and fix things. I never got that chance, and I can tell you from experience that the only thing worse than messing up is watching all the consequences of the damage you played a role in creating and realizing now you can do nothing."

"But..." Harry took a deep breath and forced his brain to work. "But, Sirius, I tried to help things this fall and look what happened. The only heroic thing I ever did was as a baby--even last June, all I did was shout one spell and run to a portkey."

"You make it sound much easier than it actually was," Sirius remarked. "Not too many would've been able to get out of there alive."

"That's my point!" Harry cried. "I'm just lucky; I've always been lucky. But that's far from being a hero able to stop the apocalypse!"

"You know what every hero has in common?" Sirius questioned him. "They did something. No one remembers Dumbledore for the years he sat back, hoping Grindelwald would decline in power on his own; they remember him for convincing himself to act after all that nothing and saving a lot of lives. If you want to make things right, you're not going to get another opportunity, regardless of what happens in the next nine days."

Harry knew Sirius was right, but the thought of risking playing into Hecate's hands again scared him too much. "What if I'm wrong again?" He asked, "What if I lose? What if I fail?"

"I wish you wouldn't do that."

"Do what?"

"Tell yourself the world rests on your shoulders."

"Doesn't it, though? At the end of the day... hasn't it always been me against Voldemort?"

Sirius let out a harsh laugh. "No, Harry. And it never was."

When Sirius saw the shock on Harry's face, he laughed again, this time, more bitter. "I told him this would happen, you know. I might've gotten my way too... if it weren't for that sniveling coward I once considered my friend."

Harry knit his eyebrows in confusion. "What does Wormtail have to do with any of this?"

Another bitter laugh. "Everything, because he wrecks every life he sets his squinty little eyes on. I was there... when Hagrid found you and took you to your Aunt and Uncle's."

"You wanted to take me," Harry said, remembering the conversation he'd overheard in the Three Broomsticks back in his third year. "I remember Hagrid talking; he said you argued with him, you wanted to take me with you instead of following Dumbledore's orders."

"Yeah," Sirius muttered, more to himself than to Harry. "I knew Wormtail was the Secret Keeper, and I was so obsessed with finding him that I let Hagrid take you. Wasn't right--I still regret it--but, I told myself I'd get Wormtail quick and come back for you, Dumbledore's orders or not. I should've realized Wormtail wouldn't let me expose him. Horrible dueler, but an excellent actor. Won an award for it, you know."

"But, what he have to do with Voldemort and me? I mean... besides the obvious."

"Not him, not really... my issue's always been with Dumbledore. With what he put you through. I knew Lily, I heard stories about Petunia, I knew what those muggles would do to you, and I daresay Dumbledore did too. He just didn't care."

On any other day, a blow like that would cripple Harry, even if Dumbledore hadn't talked to him since his trial at the Ministry that summer. But with everything else, it faded into the background. All Harry saw was the bitter guilt in his godfather's eyes, for "letting" the Dursleys torment him in his youth. For choosing Pettigrew over him.

"I'm fine, Sirius," Harry assured him. "I've got bigger problems than a painful childhood."

"I wish..." Sirius sighed. "But that's where you're wrong. I know you well enough to know how you look at the world: you look at everything through the lens of that scar. You spent eleven years thinking you were dirt, then in an afternoon, the world worships you for what you can't even remember? You've spent the last five years doing everything in your power to prove you're Harry Potter when you should've just been a kid. You shouldn't have to be 'the boy who lived', you should be Harry. If I'd gotten it my way, no one would've ever found out who Voldemort killed that Halloween, or how--or who--defeated him. You would've had as much of a chance as anyone in your generation to get that brand name."

Harry was so taken aback he couldn't process half of what Sirius said. "I... but... you would've lied to me? About my parents?"