lomonaaeren (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
lomonaaeren) wrote2023-07-16 10:39 pm
lomonaaeren) wrote2023-07-16 10:39 pm
Entry tags:
[Songs of Summer]: Creatures of Worth, gen, 1/2
Title: Creatures of Worth
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Pairing: Gen
Content Notes: AU (Harry is more strongly affected by his upbringing with the Dursleys), minor character death, canonical child abuse, violence, angst, Ravenclaw Harry, bullying
Rating: PG-13
Wordcount: This part 4900
Summary: AU. Harry became more motivated to consider his own happiness when being raised by the Dursleys rather than the well-being of others. Once he finds out about Hogwarts and magic, he will do whatever he must to secure that happiness.
Author’s Notes: This is one of my “Songs of Summer” fics being posted between the summer solstice and the first of August. It’s based on a request from Seiran5X5: I would also be interested in a real dark Harry fic, not dark with self-sacrificial tendencies but a genuine Harry first mentality. I can take or leave Harry pairings, my real OTP is Harry/happiness and that includes mental and physical health, and self-worth. That is basically the plot of this fic. The second part should be posted tomorrow.
Creatures of Worth
“I just—I can’t believe I almost fell for it.”
Harry stood silently around the corner from the classroom where Miss Perry was talking to Mrs. Handlin. He could see their shadows, nothing else, and he watched Mrs. Handlin shaking her head slowly from side to side. He could hear her tongue clucking, too.
“It’s natural, Mindy. The child looks so natural telling you how he sleeps in a cupboard and wears those clothes because his relatives make him do so and not because he likes them—”
“Why does he lie like that?”
“He’s a troublemaker, just like Mrs. Dursley said. He doesn’t need any other reason. Come on, you need to go make sure the Dursleys realize you made a mistake and you won’t let up on the discipline Mr. Potter needs.”
The two teachers walked towards the doorway of the classroom they were in. Harry turned and was gone like a third shadow.
*
“What did you do, freak?”
Uncle Vernon said the words in a low voice, grabbing at Harry’s shoulder. Harry stiffened against the pain, but it never made that pain any less. Nothing ever did.
And every time Harry tried to tell someone about the pain and they ignored him or thought he was lying, or just walked past with their eyes averted the way they were doing now, something small and fragile in the center of Harry’s soul died.
“I don’t know,” Harry gasped, tugging against Uncle Vernon’s hand. That only made the pain worse, but he couldn’t help doing it anyway. “I don’t know who that man was or why he came up and hugged me—”
“Liar. Come with me, boy. The cupboard for you.”
As Uncle Vernon tugged him up the pavement towards the car, Harry glanced over his shoulder, but the strange little man in the velvet purple robes who had bowed to him and hugged him had vanished. Just like everyone else who might have helped him, who acted like they might, but ultimately made it worse for him.
*
“No, he must have cheated!”
Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia were having an argument about Harry’s marks for some reason. Harry frowned, curled up in a way that looked normal but would allow him to keep an ear closer to the cupboard door. Aunt Petunia had said he’d cheated when he came home and thrown him in the cupboard. It seemed weird that she would be saying he didn’t cheat mow.
“Vernon, I’m not saying he didn’t… I’m saying…look at this!”
Harry knew they were looking at one of his essays that he’d brought home from Mrs. Terrencia’s class. It had got a good mark, and Harry had tried to hide and keep it, but Dudley had seen Harry holding the paper and promptly told his mum. Aunt Petunia had snatched it away.
“What about it? All I see is a cheating little—”
“Look at how neat the writing is! He couldn’t have done it like this without his freakishness!”
Harry’s eyes narrowed. What were they talking about? Harry was a freak, all right, but they used that to talk about things like him somehow ending up on the roof of the school and having people bow to him in the streets, not writing an essay.
“You’re right, Pet.” Uncle Vernon’s voice was hushed. “We’ll have to step it up.”
Harry swallowed and slid down against the inside of the cupboard door. He didn’t know what that comment meant, but he knew that he didn’t like it.
*
“And my parents didn’t die in a car crash?”
“No, o’ course not! Like a car crash could kill Lily and James Potter…”
Harry listened as the giant man spoke of his parents, his eyes flickering back now and then to Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia. They looked half-enraged, half-terrified. Harry’s hand traced down his arm to the wrist that Dudley had broken after Uncle Vernon had decided Harry had used his freakishness to write that essay.
Not his freakishness. His magic.
Harry would remember that. He knew now there was a world of people like him out there. He understood why strange people in robes had appeared and bowed to him or hugged him now and then.
He also knew that none of them had come to help him. His parents were dead, and beyond helping him. The way Hagrid was talking, Harry had no other family left besides the Dursleys, either. If his parents had friends, none of them had thought to check in on Harry, or they were dead, or they hadn’t cared.
Harry decided that although some things had greatly changed, the most important thing hadn’t, not at all. He needed to watch out for himself and make his own decisions.
*
Harry made his first decision when Hagrid said he would take Harry back to Privet Drive. He widened his eyes and gave a wistful little sigh.
“What is it, Harry?”
Harry let his lip wobble and said, “I just…do you think I could have one night in the Leaky Cauldron? Just one? I’ve never stayed in a genuine magical place before! Or I was too young to remember it when my parents were killed.”
Hagrid looked uncertain. “Well, I dunno, Harry. Dumbledore said to bring you right back to your relatives—”
“But he didn’t know they would be on an island in the sea, right? He didn’t even know they would keep my letter from me. Please, can I stay here? The Dursleys will probably be back by tomorrow, and I can change some Galleons into Muggle pounds and take the train home that way…”
Hagrid wavered, and grumbled, and finally gave in.
*
The next morning, Harry slipped down the stairs of the Leaky Cauldron to meet Tom the barman near the fireplace. Tom winked at him. “Ready to go home, then, young Mr. Potter?”
“I—I—” Harry pressed his hands against his stomach.
“What is it, Mr. Potter?” Tom took a step towards him, concern etching itself across his face.
“Is it normal to feel your magic trembling inside you?” Harry blurted. “And to feel like it’s going to break out of every single part of your skin?”
Tom blinked and then turned pale. “No, Mr. Potter, it’s not. Is that happening to you? What does it feel like? Like something is sloshing in your stomach?” He knelt down next to Harry and cast a charm that made his wand shine with light, carefully tracing it over Harry’s face.
Harry didn’t think he had trouble looking pale and tired. After all, he had stayed awake until three in the morning looking through all the books he’d purchased yesterday for a suitable illness that would keep him away from the Dursleys. What he was describing was perfect; the symptoms of Child’s Unrest were magical ones that could only be felt by the child suffering from them, and it was considered particularly likely to cause violent outbursts of power they wouldn’t want Muggles to come in contact with.
“Yes,” Harry gasped. “Sloshing back and forth, a-and—and it feels like someone is walking up my back—”
“We need to get you to St. Mungo’s right away,” Tom said, and cast a combination of charms that made Harry float into the air and get lighter. Tom grabbed him and ran towards the fireplace.
“Will—I have an owl,” Harry said, struggling in Tom’s arms to stare up the steps. “Will she be all right here? Is my stuff going to be safe?”
“I’ll see to it, Mr. Potter,” Tom said in a grim, determined voice, and then threw what seemed to be green powder into the fire. “St. Mungo’s Hospital!”
Harry did faint on the whirling, dazzling trip through the fireplace, which only made his pretense more convincing to the Healers. When he woke up, he was in a bed in a solitary room with a Healer assigned especially to him to make sure he recovered. From what they whispered when they thought he was sleeping, they assumed Harry was so magically powerful that his outbursts could harm any other child in the room with him.
Perfect, Harry thought, and clutched the blankets as he forced his accidental magic forwards. The thought of going back to the Dursleys made it very easy to make large craters in the walls.
*
By the time that September first came, everyone knew Harry Potter had been sick in St. Mungo’s with a terrible case of Child’s Unrest. Harry had used his magic to make him as hard to ignore as possible, and everyone had nodded wisely when the Healers uncovered signs of badly broken bones.
They thought he’d broken them being flung around by his own magic when he was younger, though. When Harry confessed in a shaking voice that his Muggle cousin had broken them out of his fear of Harry’s magic, steps were taken.
So Harry walked to the Hogwarts Express on the first day of September with his head held high, clad in a set of robes that had been a gift from one of his well-wishers. Behind him, with the aid of a cane, walked Griselda Marchbanks, an elderly witch who was apparently Head of the Wizarding Examinations Authority and trusted to keep Harry safe because she was powerful despite her age.
The Ministry had told Harry it was only temporary, until they could find him a more suitable guardian. Harry planned to fight to stay with Madam Marchbanks if at all possible. She was kind and determined to help him and so short-sighted and deaf that he could run rings around her.
They halted near the train, and Madam Marchbanks coughed. “Now, Harry,” she said. “You’ll write to me if you have any questions at all.”
Harry nodded dutifully. It was better than speaking to her when she probably wouldn’t hear.
“And you’ll write to me to tell me of your Sorting this evening.”
Another nod.
“You’ll let me know right away if anyone is bothering you due to your fame and I need to duel them.” Madam Marchbanks drew her ebony wand, which had actual blood grooves carved in it. It was the most brilliant thing Harry knew about her.
Harry smiled at her, nodded again, endured a hug that smelled like old sweets, and climbed aboard the train with her waving him on.
He couldn’t cast the kind of complicated wards that defended every inch of Madam Marchbanks’s home yet, but she had given him a silver egg that she promised would keep his compartment private. Harry unwrapped it from the glittering lacquered box it had been in and placed it on the floor.
The egg jerked, split down the middle, and then hatched a shining silver spider. It scuttled over to the door and immediately began to weave a web across it. In just a few minutes, Harry heard the hum of powerful wards that he associated with Madam Marchbanks’ house.
Harry leaned back, beaming. This was more like it. He was Harry Potter, and he had the fame and power to change his circumstances. No one was ever going to take advantage of him again.
*
“Potter, Harry!”
Harry held his head high as he paraded towards the Sorting Hat. His stride was long and his gaze aimed straight at the Hat. He ignored the way people broke out in whispers around him and exclaimed his name.
He wanted to go somewhere he could get the very best for himself. And despite watching the tables of students and their reactions to how people were Sorted, it was hard to tell what House that would be. It was the only thing Harry regretted about spending the train ride in isolation from the other students.
When he sat beneath the Hat, he felt something like cobwebs brush across his mind, although even more delicate than the wards Madam Marchbanks’s spider had spun. Harry leaped in place and then clutched the stool tightly, determined not to make a fool of himself.
“What have we here?”
The Sorting Hat either murmured into Harry’s ears or spoke directly into his head. Harry wasn’t sure which. He made a startled grunting sound and then clung harder to the stool and thought back, “I want to go to the House that will benefit me the most.”
“What does that mean to you?”
“Where I can be safe and strong and well cared for and never weak or chased or stuffed in a cupboard again.”
The Sorting Hat was silent and thoughtful. Harry heard some murmurs from the other tables as the students apparently thought he should be Sorted already, or maybe they were impatient to be Sorted themselves. Harry ignored them. This was his moment. He wouldn’t rush it.
“Hufflepuff is not for you, then. The other students would expect loyalty in return and be offended when you didn’t offer it. I have to rule out Gryffindor for the same reason. You would be expected to be selfless and brave for no other reason than to be brave.”
Harry sneered. Bravery to be brave did nothing. He had been brave every time he hinted to his primary school teachers what was happening at the Dursleys’, and they had done nothing to help him. “Slytherin, then? I read it was the House of cunning and ambition.”
“Broader ambitions than merely remaining safe and happy. And while you can certainly use cunning when you wish, it is to defend yourself and not because you rejoice in the practice for its own sake.”
“Why should I?”
The Sorting Hat laughed a little. “So, the House of knowledge. Knowledge would help you keep yourself safe. I can see how you’ve already used it, when you read about and feigned an illness that would get you away from your relatives. And the students would back off and leave you alone if that is your wish, as long as they see you being dedicated to learning.”
“That’s what I want. That’s what I can do.”
“Good luck, Harry Potter. Better be RAVENCLAW!”
Harry took off the Hat with a long sigh of relief and handed it back to the stern witch who had led the first-year students in. She was looking at him with a faint expression of surprise. Harry didn’t let it bother him, matter to him. He began to walk towards the Ravenclaw students, acknowledging their wild applause as his due.
He was already composing the modest, polite letter to Madam Marchbanks in his head.
*
“Can I study with you?”
Harry glanced up. The girl was one he had seen in the line waiting to be Sorted. He thought she had gone to Gryffindor. He couldn’t remember her name, though. He shrugged. “If you like. But you should know that most of my research is for my own interests and not about our homework.”
“What? Why not?”
“Because that’s the way I want it,” Harry said, a little startled. He hadn’t once thought he would hear of someone studious disapproving of studying beyond the standard homework limits.
“But shouldn’t you be concentrating first on Potions?” The girl tossed her Potions book on the table, where it landed with an odd, hollow boom. Harry blinked. It seemed the girl had stuffed it full of notes and pieces of parchment sticking out every which way. “I heard Professor Snape is hard on every House except Slytherin. And you’re not Slytherin.”
“I’ve already studied for Potions.”
“How do you know it’s enough?”
“How do you know it’s not?”
The girl continued to stare at him. Harry stared back evenly, one hand covering the page on which he’d written down the incantations of every jinx and hex and curse he thought might be useful. A Gryffindor would probably disapprove of that, thinking he was about to hex other students.
Harry thought he might need to. The Ravenclaw boys he roomed with were mostly respectful of his space and the way that Harry always had his nose tucked in a book, but the Slytherins had given him lots of unpleasant glares, probably because of Voldemort.
He wouldn’t let them. He was never going to give in to bullies again.
“I still think we should study for Potions,” the girl said, folding her arms and flinging herself into the chair.
“You can. I’ll go on studying what I like.”
“That’s not very friendly.”
“I don’t even know your name. Why should I be friendly?”
The girl’s face turned so bright a red that Harry thought she might have given Dudley when he wanted sweets competition. “You should know it! We were Sorted together, and we had Herbology together. It’s Hermione, Hermione Granger.”
“Would you even know my name if not for this?” Harry asked, and lifted his fringe with one hand to show off his scar.
“If you don’t want to study together, you could just say so!”
“Okay. I don’t want to study together.”
It took Granger a minute or so to get over her gaping and gather her Potions book and storm away. Harry shook his head and went back to reading his list of hexes, adding a few new ones with every page of the book.
*
“Sit down.”
Professor Snape’s voice was hissing and vengeful. Harry hadn’t missed the way that Snape’s eyes locked on him and narrowed with loathing as the Ravenclaw-Hufflepuff students filed into the dungeon classroom. Harry hid a sigh. It seemed that Professor Snape hated Harry for the same reason that a lot of the Slytherins did, probably something to do with Voldemort.
It didn’t matter. Harry wouldn’t allow anyone to bully him again.
Snape said nothing when he read Harry’s name off the roster, but when he had made an opening speech that sounded rehearsed to Harry, he spun around and snapped, “Potter! What would I get if I brewed a potion with boomslang skin that takes a month?”
Harry only knew this because he had let himself get a little distracted with reading about snake ingredients. He liked snakes. He blinked but said only, “I believe it would be the Polyjuice Potion, sir.”
“You believe.”
“Yes, sir.” Harry kept his voice as even as possible.
“I need firm answers, Potter. What is the difference between wolfsbane and aconite?”
“Nothing, sir. They’re the same plant.”
Snape jerked back and stared at him. Harry let his eyebrows creep up. That had actually been part of the opening speech that Professor Sprout gave in Herbology, since she’d said she liked to start each class with an interesting fact. Did Snape not know that? Or had most people not paid attention? Or maybe Sprout used different interesting facts each year.
“Let us try another challenge for the master of knowledge,” Snape hissed, walking a few steps closer, his eyes narrowed and raking Harry up and down. “Where would you look if I asked you to find me a bezoar?”
“In the stomach of a goat, sir.” That had actually been a footnote in the first two chapters of the Potions book.
Snape spun away from him without a word and walked back to the front of the classroom. Harry watched his back and plotted.
*
“It’s unfair that he didn’t give you any points for Ravenclaw, Potter.”
Harry just smiled and shook his head a little at Michael Corner. “I know, but what can you do? He seems to hate me for the same reason the other Slytherins do.”
“What do you mean?”
“Oh, the way he glared at me is the same way they glare at me. Because I defeated their Dark Lord, I’m sure. Of course, if they were really smart, then they would know it must be something my mum or dad did. Because I couldn’t have done anything! I was one.”
“If they were smart, they would be in Ravenclaw.”
Harry laughed at the joke, the most common one in their House, and leaned back in his blue-sheet bed. Corner half-smiled at him and pulled out a wax tablet that he practiced carving runes on.
Today was tolerable. If Snape ever becomes worse, then I’m going to the Headmaster.
*
Harry rubbed his forehead as he came out of Defense. The headache that always hit him in the classroom always dwindled away the moment he left. He supposed he was more allergic to garlic than he’d thought.
“Potter! That was fantastic.”
Harry glanced over his shoulder, alert, his hand resting on his wand. One of the Slytherins who shared the class with them had approached him and was standing a short distance away. Harry studied him. Pale skin, deep-hooded dark eyes, dark hair. He was pretty sure this one’s name was Nott.
It was unlike a Slytherin to give a free compliment, especially to someone they all seemed to hate. Harry contented himself with a thin smile. “Thanks.”
“Do you want to study together?”
“Why would you want to?” Harry asked, cocking his head. “It seems like it would probably make you unpopular in your House.”
The boy shrugged and walked a little closer to him. Harry shifted his balance, ready to cast the Tripping Jinx that he’d already demonstrated in class, and the boy stopped and raised his hands. “I’m already unpopular. I study too much for them and insult the people I don’t like instead of playing word or dueling games. But sooner or later, I’ll run into someone I can’t win a duel with easily. I’d like to study with you to get better.”
Protecting yourself was at least a motivation that made sense to Harry. He nodded. “What’s your name?”
“Theodore Nott. Theo Nott, if you’re ever going to call me by my first name.”
“I don’t know if I will right now,” Harry said. “But I don’t need to introduce myself to you, since you know perfectly well who I am.”
Nott smiled with more teeth than Harry was used to seeing, but also more friendliness. “Fair enough. Let’s go.”
*
“You know, we could practice these jinxes and hexes on each other as long as we do it in some out-of-the-way space in the dungeons.”
Harry leaned back to stretch the kinks out of his spine. The library didn’t have the most comfortable chairs. “Mmmm.”
“Potter? What do you think?”
“I think I don’t want to get hurt.”
Nott paused. Then he said carefully, “Is this about what the Prophet reported in August? The things you suffered at the hands of Muggles?”
Harry looked at Nott unflinchingly. The other boy was smart and had managed to suggest lots of spells that Harry had resolved to look up and practice, and when they were practicing hexes on targets like rocks, he had shown he was a strong caster, as well. But Harry would leave him behind without a qualm if he tried to bully Harry.
“Yes,” he said. “My cousin broke my bones and threw me into walls and chased me away from other kids. Muggle adults didn’t believe me. Who’s to say that you wouldn’t hex me with something that couldn’t be cured and then lie to other people about how it happened?”
Nott blinked. Blinked again. Then said, “I wouldn’t do that.”
“But how do I know that?”
“There are—there are promises you can make to other people that hold you and bind you and don’t let you act against the people you made the promise to. But most kids our age don’t require them.”
“I’m not most kids our age.”
“No.” Nott was quiet for a moment, staring up the aisle of books with Defensive spells in them as though he didn’t know what to do next. Harry wrote down the incantation and wand movement for the Boils Curse.
“I would be willing to make such a promise,” Nott said at last, “if you made one to me in return.”
“What would hold and bind us?”
“Our wands. The promise could be broken if our wands are, but obviously few people want to break them.”
Harry nodded, smiling a little. “Let’s look up the right wording for the promise and see what we can do.”
*
Harry reclaimed his wand from Nott with relief. He’d had to let the other boy hold it, the way he’d held Nott’s, while they exchanged the promises, and now an odd tingle seemed to run from the holly and phoenix feather up Harry’s arm.
Nott fell back a step, moving his hawthorn wand in circles until he nodded. “Do you want to cast the first jinx on me?”
Harry nodded back, running over the words of the promise in his mind. They had to name the spells to each other and not choose any that would cause more than minor pain. “What about the Disarming Charm?”
“That’s a charm, not a jinx.”
“It could work well enough to end a fight, though. And I’m concerned about ending a fight, not being a great duelist.”
Nott cocked his head to the side, nodding slowly. “All right. Try to get my wand, then.” He tightened his grip on it, because they’d put nothing in the promises about making it easy for the other person.
Harry smiled and whipped his wand in the pattern Quirrell had shown them during Defense one day but not let them practice. “Expelliarmus!”
Nott’s wand twitched in his grip, but didn’t fly out. The Slytherin boy narrowed his eyes a little. “I could feel the tug in it. Impressive. Two more tries, and then I get one?”
Harry nodded, and went on practicing. The third try did yank the wand from Nott’s grip, but it didn’t fly into Harry’s. It just clattered weakly on the floor.
“Impressive,” Nott repeated. “Now let me try.” He reclaimed his wand and fell back a step. Harry’s interest quickened a little. He hadn’t noticed it before when they were practicing spells on stationary targets, but Nott moved like he did, like someone who had been bullied and was determined not to be bullied anymore.
Nott managed to get Harry’s wand to drop at his feet. Harry picked it up, and they went back to practicing.
*
“Where do you go all the time?”
Harry glanced up from his book at Michael Corner. “What do you mean? The library, the Great Hall—”
“No, I mean, you disappear towards the dungeons in the evenings, and you come back barely before curfew sometimes.” Corner leaned forwards so that his arms were dangling off his bed as he stared at Harry. “Where do you go?”
Harry grimaced. He’d thought he was hiding his practices with Nott better than that. He considered a moment, and then decided that there was probably no reason not to give the bare information to Corner. He wasn’t doing anything illegal, and Corner didn’t seem like a bully. “Practicing hexes and jinxes.”
“Wow! Really? I want in. Quirrell’s class is bloody useless.”
Harry blinked. He couldn’t remember hearing Corner swear before. “I don’t know if the other student I’m practicing with would allow that. He’s pretty private.”
“So you just do what he says, is that it?”
“Nice try, but you can’t manipulate me that way.”
Corner blinked at him, and then laughed a little. “It was worth a try.”
“If you never want to come with me to these practices, maybe.”
Corner sighed and slung himself sideways so that he was lying on his back and watching Harry upside-down. “You’re really a lot different than people were expecting. Than I was expecting. Quiet and self-protective and not paying attention to so many things people expect you to do.”
“I know you read the Prophet articles about me because I heard you discussing them with Boot.” Corner flushed. “Do you really think it’s so unusual that I would turn out the way I did, with the family that raised me?”
Corner breathed out. “No. Not really.”
Harry nodded. “So do you want to come with me to these practices, or not?”
“I do.” Corner sat up, his face solemn. “Sorry. I shouldn’t have assumed I could manipulate my way into attending them. What do I have to do? Who’s the other student?”
Harry studied Corner quietly. He did find the other boy the most tolerable of his roommates; Stephen Cornfoot was a braggart who didn’t even get the best marks in their classes, and Boot talked too much, and Kevin Entwhistle was so obsessed with Quidditch that you couldn’t have a conversation with him about anything else. Corner might be useful as an ally, if nothing else.
“Theo Nott,” Harry said, and laughed a little at Corner’s expression.
But a second later, Corner’s face hardened with determination. “If you got a Slytherin to go along with you in this Defense study group, or whatever it is, then you really are a bloody genius. I want in.”
Harry nodded, and noted to himself that it was pleasant to have people be impressed with him and feel indebted to him. He ought to arrange for it more often.
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Pairing: Gen
Content Notes: AU (Harry is more strongly affected by his upbringing with the Dursleys), minor character death, canonical child abuse, violence, angst, Ravenclaw Harry, bullying
Rating: PG-13
Wordcount: This part 4900
Summary: AU. Harry became more motivated to consider his own happiness when being raised by the Dursleys rather than the well-being of others. Once he finds out about Hogwarts and magic, he will do whatever he must to secure that happiness.
Author’s Notes: This is one of my “Songs of Summer” fics being posted between the summer solstice and the first of August. It’s based on a request from Seiran5X5: I would also be interested in a real dark Harry fic, not dark with self-sacrificial tendencies but a genuine Harry first mentality. I can take or leave Harry pairings, my real OTP is Harry/happiness and that includes mental and physical health, and self-worth. That is basically the plot of this fic. The second part should be posted tomorrow.
Creatures of Worth
“I just—I can’t believe I almost fell for it.”
Harry stood silently around the corner from the classroom where Miss Perry was talking to Mrs. Handlin. He could see their shadows, nothing else, and he watched Mrs. Handlin shaking her head slowly from side to side. He could hear her tongue clucking, too.
“It’s natural, Mindy. The child looks so natural telling you how he sleeps in a cupboard and wears those clothes because his relatives make him do so and not because he likes them—”
“Why does he lie like that?”
“He’s a troublemaker, just like Mrs. Dursley said. He doesn’t need any other reason. Come on, you need to go make sure the Dursleys realize you made a mistake and you won’t let up on the discipline Mr. Potter needs.”
The two teachers walked towards the doorway of the classroom they were in. Harry turned and was gone like a third shadow.
*
“What did you do, freak?”
Uncle Vernon said the words in a low voice, grabbing at Harry’s shoulder. Harry stiffened against the pain, but it never made that pain any less. Nothing ever did.
And every time Harry tried to tell someone about the pain and they ignored him or thought he was lying, or just walked past with their eyes averted the way they were doing now, something small and fragile in the center of Harry’s soul died.
“I don’t know,” Harry gasped, tugging against Uncle Vernon’s hand. That only made the pain worse, but he couldn’t help doing it anyway. “I don’t know who that man was or why he came up and hugged me—”
“Liar. Come with me, boy. The cupboard for you.”
As Uncle Vernon tugged him up the pavement towards the car, Harry glanced over his shoulder, but the strange little man in the velvet purple robes who had bowed to him and hugged him had vanished. Just like everyone else who might have helped him, who acted like they might, but ultimately made it worse for him.
*
“No, he must have cheated!”
Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia were having an argument about Harry’s marks for some reason. Harry frowned, curled up in a way that looked normal but would allow him to keep an ear closer to the cupboard door. Aunt Petunia had said he’d cheated when he came home and thrown him in the cupboard. It seemed weird that she would be saying he didn’t cheat mow.
“Vernon, I’m not saying he didn’t… I’m saying…look at this!”
Harry knew they were looking at one of his essays that he’d brought home from Mrs. Terrencia’s class. It had got a good mark, and Harry had tried to hide and keep it, but Dudley had seen Harry holding the paper and promptly told his mum. Aunt Petunia had snatched it away.
“What about it? All I see is a cheating little—”
“Look at how neat the writing is! He couldn’t have done it like this without his freakishness!”
Harry’s eyes narrowed. What were they talking about? Harry was a freak, all right, but they used that to talk about things like him somehow ending up on the roof of the school and having people bow to him in the streets, not writing an essay.
“You’re right, Pet.” Uncle Vernon’s voice was hushed. “We’ll have to step it up.”
Harry swallowed and slid down against the inside of the cupboard door. He didn’t know what that comment meant, but he knew that he didn’t like it.
*
“And my parents didn’t die in a car crash?”
“No, o’ course not! Like a car crash could kill Lily and James Potter…”
Harry listened as the giant man spoke of his parents, his eyes flickering back now and then to Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia. They looked half-enraged, half-terrified. Harry’s hand traced down his arm to the wrist that Dudley had broken after Uncle Vernon had decided Harry had used his freakishness to write that essay.
Not his freakishness. His magic.
Harry would remember that. He knew now there was a world of people like him out there. He understood why strange people in robes had appeared and bowed to him or hugged him now and then.
He also knew that none of them had come to help him. His parents were dead, and beyond helping him. The way Hagrid was talking, Harry had no other family left besides the Dursleys, either. If his parents had friends, none of them had thought to check in on Harry, or they were dead, or they hadn’t cared.
Harry decided that although some things had greatly changed, the most important thing hadn’t, not at all. He needed to watch out for himself and make his own decisions.
*
Harry made his first decision when Hagrid said he would take Harry back to Privet Drive. He widened his eyes and gave a wistful little sigh.
“What is it, Harry?”
Harry let his lip wobble and said, “I just…do you think I could have one night in the Leaky Cauldron? Just one? I’ve never stayed in a genuine magical place before! Or I was too young to remember it when my parents were killed.”
Hagrid looked uncertain. “Well, I dunno, Harry. Dumbledore said to bring you right back to your relatives—”
“But he didn’t know they would be on an island in the sea, right? He didn’t even know they would keep my letter from me. Please, can I stay here? The Dursleys will probably be back by tomorrow, and I can change some Galleons into Muggle pounds and take the train home that way…”
Hagrid wavered, and grumbled, and finally gave in.
*
The next morning, Harry slipped down the stairs of the Leaky Cauldron to meet Tom the barman near the fireplace. Tom winked at him. “Ready to go home, then, young Mr. Potter?”
“I—I—” Harry pressed his hands against his stomach.
“What is it, Mr. Potter?” Tom took a step towards him, concern etching itself across his face.
“Is it normal to feel your magic trembling inside you?” Harry blurted. “And to feel like it’s going to break out of every single part of your skin?”
Tom blinked and then turned pale. “No, Mr. Potter, it’s not. Is that happening to you? What does it feel like? Like something is sloshing in your stomach?” He knelt down next to Harry and cast a charm that made his wand shine with light, carefully tracing it over Harry’s face.
Harry didn’t think he had trouble looking pale and tired. After all, he had stayed awake until three in the morning looking through all the books he’d purchased yesterday for a suitable illness that would keep him away from the Dursleys. What he was describing was perfect; the symptoms of Child’s Unrest were magical ones that could only be felt by the child suffering from them, and it was considered particularly likely to cause violent outbursts of power they wouldn’t want Muggles to come in contact with.
“Yes,” Harry gasped. “Sloshing back and forth, a-and—and it feels like someone is walking up my back—”
“We need to get you to St. Mungo’s right away,” Tom said, and cast a combination of charms that made Harry float into the air and get lighter. Tom grabbed him and ran towards the fireplace.
“Will—I have an owl,” Harry said, struggling in Tom’s arms to stare up the steps. “Will she be all right here? Is my stuff going to be safe?”
“I’ll see to it, Mr. Potter,” Tom said in a grim, determined voice, and then threw what seemed to be green powder into the fire. “St. Mungo’s Hospital!”
Harry did faint on the whirling, dazzling trip through the fireplace, which only made his pretense more convincing to the Healers. When he woke up, he was in a bed in a solitary room with a Healer assigned especially to him to make sure he recovered. From what they whispered when they thought he was sleeping, they assumed Harry was so magically powerful that his outbursts could harm any other child in the room with him.
Perfect, Harry thought, and clutched the blankets as he forced his accidental magic forwards. The thought of going back to the Dursleys made it very easy to make large craters in the walls.
*
By the time that September first came, everyone knew Harry Potter had been sick in St. Mungo’s with a terrible case of Child’s Unrest. Harry had used his magic to make him as hard to ignore as possible, and everyone had nodded wisely when the Healers uncovered signs of badly broken bones.
They thought he’d broken them being flung around by his own magic when he was younger, though. When Harry confessed in a shaking voice that his Muggle cousin had broken them out of his fear of Harry’s magic, steps were taken.
So Harry walked to the Hogwarts Express on the first day of September with his head held high, clad in a set of robes that had been a gift from one of his well-wishers. Behind him, with the aid of a cane, walked Griselda Marchbanks, an elderly witch who was apparently Head of the Wizarding Examinations Authority and trusted to keep Harry safe because she was powerful despite her age.
The Ministry had told Harry it was only temporary, until they could find him a more suitable guardian. Harry planned to fight to stay with Madam Marchbanks if at all possible. She was kind and determined to help him and so short-sighted and deaf that he could run rings around her.
They halted near the train, and Madam Marchbanks coughed. “Now, Harry,” she said. “You’ll write to me if you have any questions at all.”
Harry nodded dutifully. It was better than speaking to her when she probably wouldn’t hear.
“And you’ll write to me to tell me of your Sorting this evening.”
Another nod.
“You’ll let me know right away if anyone is bothering you due to your fame and I need to duel them.” Madam Marchbanks drew her ebony wand, which had actual blood grooves carved in it. It was the most brilliant thing Harry knew about her.
Harry smiled at her, nodded again, endured a hug that smelled like old sweets, and climbed aboard the train with her waving him on.
He couldn’t cast the kind of complicated wards that defended every inch of Madam Marchbanks’s home yet, but she had given him a silver egg that she promised would keep his compartment private. Harry unwrapped it from the glittering lacquered box it had been in and placed it on the floor.
The egg jerked, split down the middle, and then hatched a shining silver spider. It scuttled over to the door and immediately began to weave a web across it. In just a few minutes, Harry heard the hum of powerful wards that he associated with Madam Marchbanks’ house.
Harry leaned back, beaming. This was more like it. He was Harry Potter, and he had the fame and power to change his circumstances. No one was ever going to take advantage of him again.
*
“Potter, Harry!”
Harry held his head high as he paraded towards the Sorting Hat. His stride was long and his gaze aimed straight at the Hat. He ignored the way people broke out in whispers around him and exclaimed his name.
He wanted to go somewhere he could get the very best for himself. And despite watching the tables of students and their reactions to how people were Sorted, it was hard to tell what House that would be. It was the only thing Harry regretted about spending the train ride in isolation from the other students.
When he sat beneath the Hat, he felt something like cobwebs brush across his mind, although even more delicate than the wards Madam Marchbanks’s spider had spun. Harry leaped in place and then clutched the stool tightly, determined not to make a fool of himself.
“What have we here?”
The Sorting Hat either murmured into Harry’s ears or spoke directly into his head. Harry wasn’t sure which. He made a startled grunting sound and then clung harder to the stool and thought back, “I want to go to the House that will benefit me the most.”
“What does that mean to you?”
“Where I can be safe and strong and well cared for and never weak or chased or stuffed in a cupboard again.”
The Sorting Hat was silent and thoughtful. Harry heard some murmurs from the other tables as the students apparently thought he should be Sorted already, or maybe they were impatient to be Sorted themselves. Harry ignored them. This was his moment. He wouldn’t rush it.
“Hufflepuff is not for you, then. The other students would expect loyalty in return and be offended when you didn’t offer it. I have to rule out Gryffindor for the same reason. You would be expected to be selfless and brave for no other reason than to be brave.”
Harry sneered. Bravery to be brave did nothing. He had been brave every time he hinted to his primary school teachers what was happening at the Dursleys’, and they had done nothing to help him. “Slytherin, then? I read it was the House of cunning and ambition.”
“Broader ambitions than merely remaining safe and happy. And while you can certainly use cunning when you wish, it is to defend yourself and not because you rejoice in the practice for its own sake.”
“Why should I?”
The Sorting Hat laughed a little. “So, the House of knowledge. Knowledge would help you keep yourself safe. I can see how you’ve already used it, when you read about and feigned an illness that would get you away from your relatives. And the students would back off and leave you alone if that is your wish, as long as they see you being dedicated to learning.”
“That’s what I want. That’s what I can do.”
“Good luck, Harry Potter. Better be RAVENCLAW!”
Harry took off the Hat with a long sigh of relief and handed it back to the stern witch who had led the first-year students in. She was looking at him with a faint expression of surprise. Harry didn’t let it bother him, matter to him. He began to walk towards the Ravenclaw students, acknowledging their wild applause as his due.
He was already composing the modest, polite letter to Madam Marchbanks in his head.
*
“Can I study with you?”
Harry glanced up. The girl was one he had seen in the line waiting to be Sorted. He thought she had gone to Gryffindor. He couldn’t remember her name, though. He shrugged. “If you like. But you should know that most of my research is for my own interests and not about our homework.”
“What? Why not?”
“Because that’s the way I want it,” Harry said, a little startled. He hadn’t once thought he would hear of someone studious disapproving of studying beyond the standard homework limits.
“But shouldn’t you be concentrating first on Potions?” The girl tossed her Potions book on the table, where it landed with an odd, hollow boom. Harry blinked. It seemed the girl had stuffed it full of notes and pieces of parchment sticking out every which way. “I heard Professor Snape is hard on every House except Slytherin. And you’re not Slytherin.”
“I’ve already studied for Potions.”
“How do you know it’s enough?”
“How do you know it’s not?”
The girl continued to stare at him. Harry stared back evenly, one hand covering the page on which he’d written down the incantations of every jinx and hex and curse he thought might be useful. A Gryffindor would probably disapprove of that, thinking he was about to hex other students.
Harry thought he might need to. The Ravenclaw boys he roomed with were mostly respectful of his space and the way that Harry always had his nose tucked in a book, but the Slytherins had given him lots of unpleasant glares, probably because of Voldemort.
He wouldn’t let them. He was never going to give in to bullies again.
“I still think we should study for Potions,” the girl said, folding her arms and flinging herself into the chair.
“You can. I’ll go on studying what I like.”
“That’s not very friendly.”
“I don’t even know your name. Why should I be friendly?”
The girl’s face turned so bright a red that Harry thought she might have given Dudley when he wanted sweets competition. “You should know it! We were Sorted together, and we had Herbology together. It’s Hermione, Hermione Granger.”
“Would you even know my name if not for this?” Harry asked, and lifted his fringe with one hand to show off his scar.
“If you don’t want to study together, you could just say so!”
“Okay. I don’t want to study together.”
It took Granger a minute or so to get over her gaping and gather her Potions book and storm away. Harry shook his head and went back to reading his list of hexes, adding a few new ones with every page of the book.
*
“Sit down.”
Professor Snape’s voice was hissing and vengeful. Harry hadn’t missed the way that Snape’s eyes locked on him and narrowed with loathing as the Ravenclaw-Hufflepuff students filed into the dungeon classroom. Harry hid a sigh. It seemed that Professor Snape hated Harry for the same reason that a lot of the Slytherins did, probably something to do with Voldemort.
It didn’t matter. Harry wouldn’t allow anyone to bully him again.
Snape said nothing when he read Harry’s name off the roster, but when he had made an opening speech that sounded rehearsed to Harry, he spun around and snapped, “Potter! What would I get if I brewed a potion with boomslang skin that takes a month?”
Harry only knew this because he had let himself get a little distracted with reading about snake ingredients. He liked snakes. He blinked but said only, “I believe it would be the Polyjuice Potion, sir.”
“You believe.”
“Yes, sir.” Harry kept his voice as even as possible.
“I need firm answers, Potter. What is the difference between wolfsbane and aconite?”
“Nothing, sir. They’re the same plant.”
Snape jerked back and stared at him. Harry let his eyebrows creep up. That had actually been part of the opening speech that Professor Sprout gave in Herbology, since she’d said she liked to start each class with an interesting fact. Did Snape not know that? Or had most people not paid attention? Or maybe Sprout used different interesting facts each year.
“Let us try another challenge for the master of knowledge,” Snape hissed, walking a few steps closer, his eyes narrowed and raking Harry up and down. “Where would you look if I asked you to find me a bezoar?”
“In the stomach of a goat, sir.” That had actually been a footnote in the first two chapters of the Potions book.
Snape spun away from him without a word and walked back to the front of the classroom. Harry watched his back and plotted.
*
“It’s unfair that he didn’t give you any points for Ravenclaw, Potter.”
Harry just smiled and shook his head a little at Michael Corner. “I know, but what can you do? He seems to hate me for the same reason the other Slytherins do.”
“What do you mean?”
“Oh, the way he glared at me is the same way they glare at me. Because I defeated their Dark Lord, I’m sure. Of course, if they were really smart, then they would know it must be something my mum or dad did. Because I couldn’t have done anything! I was one.”
“If they were smart, they would be in Ravenclaw.”
Harry laughed at the joke, the most common one in their House, and leaned back in his blue-sheet bed. Corner half-smiled at him and pulled out a wax tablet that he practiced carving runes on.
Today was tolerable. If Snape ever becomes worse, then I’m going to the Headmaster.
*
Harry rubbed his forehead as he came out of Defense. The headache that always hit him in the classroom always dwindled away the moment he left. He supposed he was more allergic to garlic than he’d thought.
“Potter! That was fantastic.”
Harry glanced over his shoulder, alert, his hand resting on his wand. One of the Slytherins who shared the class with them had approached him and was standing a short distance away. Harry studied him. Pale skin, deep-hooded dark eyes, dark hair. He was pretty sure this one’s name was Nott.
It was unlike a Slytherin to give a free compliment, especially to someone they all seemed to hate. Harry contented himself with a thin smile. “Thanks.”
“Do you want to study together?”
“Why would you want to?” Harry asked, cocking his head. “It seems like it would probably make you unpopular in your House.”
The boy shrugged and walked a little closer to him. Harry shifted his balance, ready to cast the Tripping Jinx that he’d already demonstrated in class, and the boy stopped and raised his hands. “I’m already unpopular. I study too much for them and insult the people I don’t like instead of playing word or dueling games. But sooner or later, I’ll run into someone I can’t win a duel with easily. I’d like to study with you to get better.”
Protecting yourself was at least a motivation that made sense to Harry. He nodded. “What’s your name?”
“Theodore Nott. Theo Nott, if you’re ever going to call me by my first name.”
“I don’t know if I will right now,” Harry said. “But I don’t need to introduce myself to you, since you know perfectly well who I am.”
Nott smiled with more teeth than Harry was used to seeing, but also more friendliness. “Fair enough. Let’s go.”
*
“You know, we could practice these jinxes and hexes on each other as long as we do it in some out-of-the-way space in the dungeons.”
Harry leaned back to stretch the kinks out of his spine. The library didn’t have the most comfortable chairs. “Mmmm.”
“Potter? What do you think?”
“I think I don’t want to get hurt.”
Nott paused. Then he said carefully, “Is this about what the Prophet reported in August? The things you suffered at the hands of Muggles?”
Harry looked at Nott unflinchingly. The other boy was smart and had managed to suggest lots of spells that Harry had resolved to look up and practice, and when they were practicing hexes on targets like rocks, he had shown he was a strong caster, as well. But Harry would leave him behind without a qualm if he tried to bully Harry.
“Yes,” he said. “My cousin broke my bones and threw me into walls and chased me away from other kids. Muggle adults didn’t believe me. Who’s to say that you wouldn’t hex me with something that couldn’t be cured and then lie to other people about how it happened?”
Nott blinked. Blinked again. Then said, “I wouldn’t do that.”
“But how do I know that?”
“There are—there are promises you can make to other people that hold you and bind you and don’t let you act against the people you made the promise to. But most kids our age don’t require them.”
“I’m not most kids our age.”
“No.” Nott was quiet for a moment, staring up the aisle of books with Defensive spells in them as though he didn’t know what to do next. Harry wrote down the incantation and wand movement for the Boils Curse.
“I would be willing to make such a promise,” Nott said at last, “if you made one to me in return.”
“What would hold and bind us?”
“Our wands. The promise could be broken if our wands are, but obviously few people want to break them.”
Harry nodded, smiling a little. “Let’s look up the right wording for the promise and see what we can do.”
*
Harry reclaimed his wand from Nott with relief. He’d had to let the other boy hold it, the way he’d held Nott’s, while they exchanged the promises, and now an odd tingle seemed to run from the holly and phoenix feather up Harry’s arm.
Nott fell back a step, moving his hawthorn wand in circles until he nodded. “Do you want to cast the first jinx on me?”
Harry nodded back, running over the words of the promise in his mind. They had to name the spells to each other and not choose any that would cause more than minor pain. “What about the Disarming Charm?”
“That’s a charm, not a jinx.”
“It could work well enough to end a fight, though. And I’m concerned about ending a fight, not being a great duelist.”
Nott cocked his head to the side, nodding slowly. “All right. Try to get my wand, then.” He tightened his grip on it, because they’d put nothing in the promises about making it easy for the other person.
Harry smiled and whipped his wand in the pattern Quirrell had shown them during Defense one day but not let them practice. “Expelliarmus!”
Nott’s wand twitched in his grip, but didn’t fly out. The Slytherin boy narrowed his eyes a little. “I could feel the tug in it. Impressive. Two more tries, and then I get one?”
Harry nodded, and went on practicing. The third try did yank the wand from Nott’s grip, but it didn’t fly into Harry’s. It just clattered weakly on the floor.
“Impressive,” Nott repeated. “Now let me try.” He reclaimed his wand and fell back a step. Harry’s interest quickened a little. He hadn’t noticed it before when they were practicing spells on stationary targets, but Nott moved like he did, like someone who had been bullied and was determined not to be bullied anymore.
Nott managed to get Harry’s wand to drop at his feet. Harry picked it up, and they went back to practicing.
*
“Where do you go all the time?”
Harry glanced up from his book at Michael Corner. “What do you mean? The library, the Great Hall—”
“No, I mean, you disappear towards the dungeons in the evenings, and you come back barely before curfew sometimes.” Corner leaned forwards so that his arms were dangling off his bed as he stared at Harry. “Where do you go?”
Harry grimaced. He’d thought he was hiding his practices with Nott better than that. He considered a moment, and then decided that there was probably no reason not to give the bare information to Corner. He wasn’t doing anything illegal, and Corner didn’t seem like a bully. “Practicing hexes and jinxes.”
“Wow! Really? I want in. Quirrell’s class is bloody useless.”
Harry blinked. He couldn’t remember hearing Corner swear before. “I don’t know if the other student I’m practicing with would allow that. He’s pretty private.”
“So you just do what he says, is that it?”
“Nice try, but you can’t manipulate me that way.”
Corner blinked at him, and then laughed a little. “It was worth a try.”
“If you never want to come with me to these practices, maybe.”
Corner sighed and slung himself sideways so that he was lying on his back and watching Harry upside-down. “You’re really a lot different than people were expecting. Than I was expecting. Quiet and self-protective and not paying attention to so many things people expect you to do.”
“I know you read the Prophet articles about me because I heard you discussing them with Boot.” Corner flushed. “Do you really think it’s so unusual that I would turn out the way I did, with the family that raised me?”
Corner breathed out. “No. Not really.”
Harry nodded. “So do you want to come with me to these practices, or not?”
“I do.” Corner sat up, his face solemn. “Sorry. I shouldn’t have assumed I could manipulate my way into attending them. What do I have to do? Who’s the other student?”
Harry studied Corner quietly. He did find the other boy the most tolerable of his roommates; Stephen Cornfoot was a braggart who didn’t even get the best marks in their classes, and Boot talked too much, and Kevin Entwhistle was so obsessed with Quidditch that you couldn’t have a conversation with him about anything else. Corner might be useful as an ally, if nothing else.
“Theo Nott,” Harry said, and laughed a little at Corner’s expression.
But a second later, Corner’s face hardened with determination. “If you got a Slytherin to go along with you in this Defense study group, or whatever it is, then you really are a bloody genius. I want in.”
Harry nodded, and noted to himself that it was pleasant to have people be impressed with him and feel indebted to him. He ought to arrange for it more often.