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lomonaaerenTitle: Creatures of Pride
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Pairing: None, gen
Content Notes: AU (Ravenclaw Harry, self-interested Harry), angst, brief violence, Dark Arts
Rating: PG-13
Wordcount: This part 4100
Summary: AU, sequel to “Creatures of Worth.” Harry goes into his second year anticipating more time studying with his friends and more possible times he has to call on his guardian, Madam Marchbanks, for help. He doesn’t actually anticipate everything that will happen, however.
Author’s Notes: This is one of my “Songs of the Stormy Season” short fics being posted between Halloween and the winter solstice. It’s the sequel to “Creatures of Worth,” so reading that first would be helpful to understand this story. It will have three parts.
Creatures of Pride
“You have to understand that the world is different now than when the Statute of Secrecy was first established.”
“I’d think that would be difficult to miss.”
Jessica Greengrass, the History of Magic tutor Madam Marchbanks had hired for Harry, laughed lightly. “Yes, but many magically-raised children do miss the point. They think we’re hiding for the benefit of Muggles as much as we do our own. They think we would terrify them if the magical world was revealed.”
Harry frowned, thinking of his relatives. “We probably would.”
Greengrass tilted her head at him. They were sitting in Madam Marchbanks’s large, sunlit library, with Harry’s notes and the tutor’s notes spread around them, as well as A Concise History of the Magical World, the textbook Greengrass had chosen for Harry to read. Greengrass was blonde and short and forceful.
“Do you honestly think we would cow them into submission? I ask mostly because we have more ground to cover than I believed if that’s the case.”
“No. Do—people think that?”
“Wizard-raised children, yes, who don’t have any of the benefits of a Muggle education or regular exposure to the Muggle world.” Greengrass leaned forwards with her hands clasped on the table. “So you were speaking in terms of fright that would lead to rage, rather than thinking that wizards and witches would be superior to Muggles in that case.”
“Of course! There are way too many of them, and they communicate with each other in a way that I don’t think the magical nations do.”
“There are more interconnections between magical nations than you might think,” Greengrass murmurs. “But it’s true that they aren’t as noticeable to a child as communications in the Muggle world. Too many of our people think that they would survive just fine if magic was revealed, and they would be able to charm Muggles into doing whatever they want.”
“So they don’t think about those kinds of charms being illegal?”
“They don’t think about anything, Harry.”
Harry had to nod after a moment. Yes, he could imagine some of those people, because he had met them at Hogwarts.
“Are we going to keep talking about the Statute of Secrecy today?”
“I would like you to summarize what you read for me in the second chapter of your textbook and explain why the author felt the need to separate those facts out into their own chapter.”
Harry nodded again. He didn’t enjoy tasks like summarizing a chapter—it struck him as too simple—but at least Greengrass was giving him a question to answer at the same time. He bent over the parchment in front of him.
*
“What other curses could you use on this target?”
Harry studied the target against the wall in Madam Marchbanks’s dueling room. It was a large stone chamber with magic in the walls that would shield someone against a truly fatal curse, but also conjure targets that could take the curse. Right now, the one in front of Harry was just a round stone shield, because he was learning large-area-of-effect spells rather than anything more complicated.
“You could blast it in half?” he suggested. “Is there a curse that does that?”
“That might be the effect that the Entrail-Expelling Curse would have on an inanimate object, although I have not seen it tested. Explain to me why you might not want to cast it on this shield.”
Harry turned to face his tutor, who apparently taught dueling classes at Durmstrang to the younger years. He was a tall, skinny man with dark skin and long black hair he kept braided. His name was Erik Anderssen, and he was probably the most interesting person Harry had ever met.
“I could get too used to using it?” Harry offered. “And I shouldn’t use it in front of people at Hogwarts, because it’s illegal?”
Erik raised his eyebrows. “Well-reasoned. There are a few other reasons I would like to hear you speak of, however.”
Harry had to think about it, work his mind into some of the practicalities other than just making things as violent as possible so someone else would leave him alone. There were laws and rules and things like that that he would have to know, too. His lesson with Greengrass the other day had touched on that.
“Because it might be too violent a solution for the situation?”
“You sound almost as if you think nothing is too violent for the situation. Why is that?”
Harry looked back and forth between Erik and the shield for a moment. Then he reminded himself that just about everyone in the British magical world knew about his “family” situation, and the reasons he was a ward of Madam Marchbanks now. It wouldn’t surprise him if a wizard from another country had heard of it, and he didn’t have to worry about hiding it.
“I grew up being bullied by Muggles. I couldn’t do anything about it because my teachers and other people like them believed my relatives when they lied about it. If I can be violent enough to make someone leave me alone, then that’s what I want to do.”
Erik’s eyebrows slowly rose until they looked as if they might fly off his head. Harry just looked at him.
“I see,” Erik said at last. “Well, you should know that there are curses I can teach you that would get you out of a situation without needing to resort to expelling someone else’s entrails.”
“I should probably learn them.”
“Well-reasoned,” Erik repeated dryly.
*
“Welcome to my home, Mr. Potter.”
“Thank you, Mr. Nott.”
Theo was hovering off to the side in a way that he probably thought wasn’t obvious. Harry didn’t point it out to him. He bowed to Keldar Nott instead, Theo’s father, who had been a Death Eater “under Imperius.” It had got him out of going to Azkaban when some other people, the loyalists, apparently had.
Keldar was a tall man with a squint. He didn’t look a lot like Theo, other than being skinny and pale; his hair was light brown, his eyes bright blue, and he looked as if he were challenging the world and forcing it to submit to him. Harry couldn’t imagine Theo doing the same thing.
Granted, if Theo ever had, he and Harry probably wouldn’t have become friends.
(Friends. Still a strange thing to think about).
“What do you and Theo have planned for today?”
Harry sneaked a glance at Theo, but Theo had decided to imitate a statue instead of a hummingbird suddenly, so Harry was the one who had to speak. “I hoped that Theo could show me some of the house, and we could practice some spells.”
A smile so nasty crossed Nott’s face that Harry was startled. Suddenly he could see how this man could have been a Death Eater. “Ah, yes. Theo told me that you often engaged in spell practice last year?”
“Yes, sir.”
“You don’t have to call me ‘sir,’ Mr. Potter. I hope that you’ll fancy yourself at home here.”
“Of course, Mr. Nott.”
To Harry’s private relief, Nott didn’t ask Harry to call him by his first name. He just nodded as if he was the most generous host in the world and waved Harry out of the Floo room, where he had been standing so far. He and Theo escaped to the grounds outside.
There were brooms there, and Theo motioned for Harry to pick up one of the Cleansweeps and fly after him. Harry did, with a will. He enjoyed flying, although he didn’t want to be on the Ravenclaw Quidditch team. Too much attention.
“Are we up here because this is the only place that he doesn’t have eavesdropping spells?” Harry asked Theo when they were hovering above what seemed to be a sea of white flowers.
Theo blinked at him, and then smiled, his own version. “Yes. Very clever.”
“I’ve had to be.” Harry settled back on his broom a little. “What did you want to discuss with me?”
“Don’t give him anything to hold over you,” Theo said softly. “He can at one and the same time approve of me having a friend and also think that trying to fuck you over is the best way to help me.”
Harry blinked at the swear word. Theo hadn’t seemed the type, at Hogwarts.
But they weren’t at Hogwarts.
“All right. Thanks for the advice.”
Theo nodded, his shoulders relaxing, and then turned and did lead Harry over a great deal of the house he called Nott’s Den. It had huge fields of flowers of all colors, and blocky stone towers that looked a lot like the ones at Hogwarts, and a dark forest to the north that Theo said housed a group of wereleopards.
When they got tired of flying, they landed and flung spells at each other until they were tired of that, too. Harry kept what Erik had said in mind, and didn’t use the Entrail-Expelling Curse.
Not that he would have needed to. Theo was his friend.
Although if Theo ever turned against him…
Well. Harry would do what he had to, to survive.
*
“I do hope my grandson has been treating you well, Mr. Potter.”
The first impression Harry had of Deborah Smith, Zacharias’s grandmother, was of a smiling woman, with a softness at the center of her that Madam Marchbanks didn’t have. He’d thought of her as stately at the train station, but maybe she really wasn’t.
Then Madam Smith turned to look fully at him for the first time since she’d Apparated him to Smith Hall, and Harry rapidly revised that impression.
“He has, madam,” he said. “I hope that Zacharias has given you a good report of me, in return.”
Madam Smith didn’t laugh at the hope or at the title, which told Harry he had chosen correctly. She settled back into a chair in the room they had entered, which was all done in bright, clear yellows, without a hint of mustard or gold in sight. “Indeed. I understand that you will be studying to complete one of your summer assignments together?”
“Yes, madam. Binns really isn’t a good History professor, so Madam Marchbanks hired one for me. I’ve got permission to share one of my tutor’s books with Zacharias, if you don’t mind.”
Madam Smith seemed to give that due consideration, and then inclined her head. “Zacharias may study with you. I do hope that you will bear in mind that I intend to look over his History essay before he takes it back to Hogwarts.”
“Of course, madam.”
After a few more meaningless words—except as they would keep him safe from a terrifying woman like Madam Smith—Harry and Zacharias were able to leave for Zacharias’s room. Zacharias turned around before they were out of range of eavesdropping spells, which at least told Harry something about his relationship with his grandmother, and grinned. “You handled her perfectly. Well done.”
“I thought at first, when she smiled—”
“Yeah, that’s one reason she has the reputation she does in the Wizengamot.” Zacharias gave his own version of Madam Smith’s smile. “So, tell me about this History tutor. How biased is she?”
*
“Welcome, welcome, Mr. Potter.”
Harry blinked a little as he stepped out of the Floo into Michael’s house. The Floo was in the kitchen, and it looked like kitchen magic was helping with everything. Pots and pans were flying through the air by themselves, knives were chopping vegetables on their own, one huge simmering pot was being stirred by nothing…
“Hi, Harry!”
Michael scrambled down the stairs to one side of the kitchen and skidded to a halt in front of Harry, grinning. He didn’t seem to see anything out of the normal about the chaotic kitchen, so Harry decided he would ignore it, too. He gave Michael a little smile and raised his voice. “We can—”
“Do forgive me for not greeting you in the first place, Mr. Potter.”
Michael’s mother looked as harried as she had when Harry had seen her at the train station. She grabbed Harry’s hand and pumped it several times, then turned around with a loud groan as a crash sounded from somewhere further inside the house. “Excuse me,” she said hopelessly, and skidded off in that direction.
Michael rolled his eyes and motioned Harry to follow him outside. Harry relaxed a little in the pretty apple orchard in the back of the house.
“Sorry about that,” Michael said. “I’ve got triplet toddler sisters, and they all have accidental magic, and it feeds off each other’s.”
“Your dad can’t help?” Harry asked.
Michael’s face shut down. “Dad’s a Muggle,” he said shortly. “And he decided the day after I got back from Hogwarts the magic was too much for him, and, well. He left.”
Harry blinked. Then he hesitated. He knew that the thing friends did was reach out and pat someone’s shoulder or something like that. But he honestly didn’t think that he could do that.
The moment had gone past, and although Michael was watching him with bright defiant eyes, Harry just leaned back against the roots of an apple tree behind him. “What were you saying we could do?”
Michael waited a bit longer, and then he seemed to realize Harry wasn’t going to say anything about his dad being an arsehole one way or the other. He was stiff as he Summoned his Gobstones set—he said the Ministry would never notice with all the magical chaos in the house—but by the time they were playing, he’d relaxed.
Harry was glad. There were certain things he thought he would never be comfortable with, although maybe with more practice he would get good at pretending.
He did think Michael’s dad was an arsehole, though. And he did wonder if wizards and witches having kids with Muggles, as opposed to a Muggleborn magical person, ever worked out.
But that wasn’t something he could ask Michael.
*
“Yes, of course having children with Muggles sometimes works out, Harry. Why do you ask?”
Harry felt his face heat up. Madam Marchbanks had put on her hearing charms so he could ask her the question, and now she sounded so surprised that he didn’t think it had been worth it to make her do that. “I—just—it doesn’t seem like it would.”
“It depends on the Muggle and the wizard or witch in question.”
“That’s not a satisfying answer, Madam Marchbanks.”
“Some things are like that.”
Harry sighed, because they were, and he should have known that before he asked the question. “All right.”
Madam Marchbanks nodded at him. “How are your dueling spells coming along?”
*
“Oh, you must be here for Padma.”
Harry blinked at the woman whose Floo he’d just exited. She was pretty in a firm sort of way and had a headscarf on. “No,” he said slowly. “I’m Parvati’s friend.”
“You are?”
Harry tilted his head. He knew, or rather had read, that some girls’ parents got very weird about boys visiting, even if the girls and boys weren’t dating. “Yes. Harry Potter? She told me that it was all right for me to come over.”
“Oh, yes. Of course.” Mrs. Patil blinked and stepped back with a shake of her head. “Do forgive me. It’s just that—Padma’s friends visit more often.”
Harry looked up with a smile that he hoped he was making just bright and wide enough, instead of too bright or too wide. “I see. But I promise I’m here to visit Parvati instead.”
Mrs. Patil raised an eyebrow, and made Harry think the smile was probably too bright as she went to call Parvati down the stairs. Harry shrugged a little. He didn’t want to make things hard for Parvati with her parents, but he also thought it was silly that they would believe only one daughter could have friends.
Parvati was back down the stairs before her mother, smile bright and wide in the same way as Harry’s. “Hi, Harry. Thanks for coming.”
“You said you had something you wanted to talk to me about.”
That was the right thing to say, because it made Parvati relax and smile at him in a real way. “Yes. I heard the strangest thing about Seamus Finnigan, one of the Gryffindor boys in our year…”
She led Harry out to a small pool in the back garden with stone benches around it, and she and Harry sat and discussed the things she’d heard about Hogwarts students. Well, mostly Parvati discussed and Harry listened.
But he was glad he did. Parvati saw so many things and heard so many others that she could weave them together into an incredibly complicated tapestry of guesses and truths and half-truths that Harry doubted he could have managed.
And that told him more things about the children in his year, and others he didn’t have as much access to. Things that he might need to know if they acted against him, or became his enemies later.
When he stood up leave two hours later, he said softly, “Thanks, Parvati. Why did your mother think I was here to visit Padma instead? I’m pretty sure the letter I sent your mum said that I was coming to visit you.”
Parvati froze, eyes on the pool. Harry looked down and saw goldfish swimming there.
“Padma is the pretty one,” Parvati whispered. “Padma is the smart one. Mum would understand if it was Lavender, she’s my best friend, but anyone else—”
She broke off, shaking her head.
“You’re plenty smart enough all by yourself.”
Parvati blinked at him and then smiled. Harry smiled back and told himself this was a good way to cheer her up as well as bind her even closer to him.
And if she ever turned her too-sharp observation on him and gossiped about him, he knew what to say to make her stop.
*
“Damn nuisance!”
Harry smiled as he watched Madam Marchbanks lay about her with her cane to get the people in Flourish and Blotts out of their way. There was some sort of book signing. Harry hadn’t bothered to pay attention to the author’s name. As far as he was concerned, he could stay out of public view forever and be happy.
“Here we are,” Madam Marchbanks grumbled, stumping into the bookshop and heading for a large display of books that said HOGWARTS SECOND-YEAR. “What they want with all this nonsense, never would have happened when I was a student, we knew our place and we waited in line—”
Harry bit his lip. Some of those people had been waiting in line, of course, for whoever the author was.
But Harry didn’t really feel like correcting Madam Marchbanks. He went about getting his required texts in peace, as well as several more, and he and Madam Marchbanks (with some cane-whackings of toes and bums) managed to get past the people who wanted their books signed and to the front of the shop.
“My word! Harry Potter!”
Harry turned around swiftly, his hand clenched on his wand. Some idiot was making his way towards Harry with his arms spread and a grin so bright plastered on his face that it must have had charms applied to it.
He tried to grab Harry’s arm and drag him back towards where the signing was taking place. At least, he made the beginning of a try. Instead, he bent double a second later as Madam Marchbanks planted her cane in his gut.
“TRYING TO KIDNAP MY WARD, WERE YOU?” Madam Marchbanks barked at him. “WELL, I’VE DEALT WITH WORSE!” She lifted her wand and moved it in a specific wave that made Harry gasp a little. He’d learned that spell from Erik, and he wouldn’t have thought it was “appropriate for the context.”
The idiot, whoever he was, finished wheezing and straightened up. He opened his mouth, probably to demand apologies.
A huge belch of incredibly foul-smelling gas came out of his mouth. A second later, the same thing came from his rear end. The idiot staggered backwards, looking as though he didn’t know whether to clap his hand to his mouth or his arse first.
Harry laughed.
People who had been watching the scene and had probably been primed to start shouting indignantly paused. Harry could see them darting uneasy glances at each other. If Harry Potter had laughed, was it all right? Maybe they should laugh, too?
Madam Marchbanks settled the matter by rapping her cane on the floor and giving the kind of roaring bark of laughter that sounded like she’d had five bottles of Firewhisky. Then the laughter spread around the shop, and the idiot practically wilted in front of their eyes.
“Job well done,” Madam Marchbanks declared, and marched Harry over to pay for his books.
*
Later, Harry discovered that the idiot who had tried to grab hold of him in the shop was actually Gilderoy Lockhart, the author of their Defense books for that term. He’d found this out from the wildly waving and winking picture of the author on the back of Travels With Trolls.
Then Theo owled Harry that Lockhart was their Defense professor for the year.
“Can I stay home?” Harry asked Madam Marchbanks.
“Do you want to?”
Harry sighed. Madam Marchbanks had said that she would let Harry go to Beauxbatons or study at home with tutors if he wanted to. But now that he had made friends at Hogwarts, it wouldn’t be easy for Harry to see them if he did that. “No.”
“Let me know what the nuisance gets up to.” Madam Marchbanks hit the wall with her cane. “I’ll come deal with him.”
Harry relaxed. Madam Marchbanks had been incredibly effective with Dumbledore last year. Maybe if the Defense position was cursed, she would even manage to incarnate that curse and drive Lockhart out all the sooner.
“All right, Madam Marchbanks. I will.”
*
“Who’s she?”
Theo glanced up from the book of Runes he was arguing with Michael about. “Who’s who?”
Harry hid a smile. Theo hated sounding silly. “That little girl who’s peering into our compartment,” he said, and looked in that direction just as the first-year—surely a first-year—peered in again. She promptly flushed as red as her hair, squeaked, and scuttled away.
“Ron Weasley’s little sister,” Parvati said. “Ginevra, goes by Ginny. And by the look on her face, she has a crush on you, Harry.” She grinned at Harry and went back to writing down what looked like an organized study schedule. Harry suspected that she was trying to rival her sister in more than one way.
“Why?”
“You’re the Boy-Who-Lived, Harry! Can you ask?”
“But—that’s stupid.”
Zacharias, of all of them, gave a short laugh. “Not all of us organize our lives by pure disinterested logic, Mr. Ravenclaw.”
“It wouldn’t be stupid if she knew more about me than that. But we’ve never met.” Harry would have remembered her ducking out of sight like a feral cat if they had.
Parvati laughed a little herself, not looking up from her study schedule. “You should get used to it. You’re not as skinny as you were during the first part of last year, and she won’t be the only girl with a crush.”
Harry blinked at her. Parvati looked up at him and snorted. “Not me, don’t look like that. What you ought to know is that it’s going to happen, and you should be prepared for how to handle it. You can’t owl your guardian every time it does.”
Harry sat back a little in his seat. So Parvati was letting him know she had teeth, too. Well, that was fine.
As long as Harry’s were bigger.
*
The Sorting had barely finished when an enormous black owl stooped towards Lockhart, carrying a Howler in its talons. It exploded over Lockhart’s head, and Madam Marchbanks’s voice boomed through the Great Hall.
“TRY TO TOUCH MY WARD AGAIN AND YOU’LL BE FARTING FOR YEARS, NOT A MONTH!”
Harry sat back and grinned, just shrugging a little when Dumbledore and some people at the other tables turned to stare at him. Madam Marchbanks was only taking care of him.
This way, maybe she won’t even have to come to Hogwarts to shout at him, if he’s already pre-shouted at, Harry thought, and sipped his pumpkin juice while Lockhart very carefully didn’t look in the direction of the Ravenclaw table.
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Pairing: None, gen
Content Notes: AU (Ravenclaw Harry, self-interested Harry), angst, brief violence, Dark Arts
Rating: PG-13
Wordcount: This part 4100
Summary: AU, sequel to “Creatures of Worth.” Harry goes into his second year anticipating more time studying with his friends and more possible times he has to call on his guardian, Madam Marchbanks, for help. He doesn’t actually anticipate everything that will happen, however.
Author’s Notes: This is one of my “Songs of the Stormy Season” short fics being posted between Halloween and the winter solstice. It’s the sequel to “Creatures of Worth,” so reading that first would be helpful to understand this story. It will have three parts.
Creatures of Pride
“You have to understand that the world is different now than when the Statute of Secrecy was first established.”
“I’d think that would be difficult to miss.”
Jessica Greengrass, the History of Magic tutor Madam Marchbanks had hired for Harry, laughed lightly. “Yes, but many magically-raised children do miss the point. They think we’re hiding for the benefit of Muggles as much as we do our own. They think we would terrify them if the magical world was revealed.”
Harry frowned, thinking of his relatives. “We probably would.”
Greengrass tilted her head at him. They were sitting in Madam Marchbanks’s large, sunlit library, with Harry’s notes and the tutor’s notes spread around them, as well as A Concise History of the Magical World, the textbook Greengrass had chosen for Harry to read. Greengrass was blonde and short and forceful.
“Do you honestly think we would cow them into submission? I ask mostly because we have more ground to cover than I believed if that’s the case.”
“No. Do—people think that?”
“Wizard-raised children, yes, who don’t have any of the benefits of a Muggle education or regular exposure to the Muggle world.” Greengrass leaned forwards with her hands clasped on the table. “So you were speaking in terms of fright that would lead to rage, rather than thinking that wizards and witches would be superior to Muggles in that case.”
“Of course! There are way too many of them, and they communicate with each other in a way that I don’t think the magical nations do.”
“There are more interconnections between magical nations than you might think,” Greengrass murmurs. “But it’s true that they aren’t as noticeable to a child as communications in the Muggle world. Too many of our people think that they would survive just fine if magic was revealed, and they would be able to charm Muggles into doing whatever they want.”
“So they don’t think about those kinds of charms being illegal?”
“They don’t think about anything, Harry.”
Harry had to nod after a moment. Yes, he could imagine some of those people, because he had met them at Hogwarts.
“Are we going to keep talking about the Statute of Secrecy today?”
“I would like you to summarize what you read for me in the second chapter of your textbook and explain why the author felt the need to separate those facts out into their own chapter.”
Harry nodded again. He didn’t enjoy tasks like summarizing a chapter—it struck him as too simple—but at least Greengrass was giving him a question to answer at the same time. He bent over the parchment in front of him.
*
“What other curses could you use on this target?”
Harry studied the target against the wall in Madam Marchbanks’s dueling room. It was a large stone chamber with magic in the walls that would shield someone against a truly fatal curse, but also conjure targets that could take the curse. Right now, the one in front of Harry was just a round stone shield, because he was learning large-area-of-effect spells rather than anything more complicated.
“You could blast it in half?” he suggested. “Is there a curse that does that?”
“That might be the effect that the Entrail-Expelling Curse would have on an inanimate object, although I have not seen it tested. Explain to me why you might not want to cast it on this shield.”
Harry turned to face his tutor, who apparently taught dueling classes at Durmstrang to the younger years. He was a tall, skinny man with dark skin and long black hair he kept braided. His name was Erik Anderssen, and he was probably the most interesting person Harry had ever met.
“I could get too used to using it?” Harry offered. “And I shouldn’t use it in front of people at Hogwarts, because it’s illegal?”
Erik raised his eyebrows. “Well-reasoned. There are a few other reasons I would like to hear you speak of, however.”
Harry had to think about it, work his mind into some of the practicalities other than just making things as violent as possible so someone else would leave him alone. There were laws and rules and things like that that he would have to know, too. His lesson with Greengrass the other day had touched on that.
“Because it might be too violent a solution for the situation?”
“You sound almost as if you think nothing is too violent for the situation. Why is that?”
Harry looked back and forth between Erik and the shield for a moment. Then he reminded himself that just about everyone in the British magical world knew about his “family” situation, and the reasons he was a ward of Madam Marchbanks now. It wouldn’t surprise him if a wizard from another country had heard of it, and he didn’t have to worry about hiding it.
“I grew up being bullied by Muggles. I couldn’t do anything about it because my teachers and other people like them believed my relatives when they lied about it. If I can be violent enough to make someone leave me alone, then that’s what I want to do.”
Erik’s eyebrows slowly rose until they looked as if they might fly off his head. Harry just looked at him.
“I see,” Erik said at last. “Well, you should know that there are curses I can teach you that would get you out of a situation without needing to resort to expelling someone else’s entrails.”
“I should probably learn them.”
“Well-reasoned,” Erik repeated dryly.
*
“Welcome to my home, Mr. Potter.”
“Thank you, Mr. Nott.”
Theo was hovering off to the side in a way that he probably thought wasn’t obvious. Harry didn’t point it out to him. He bowed to Keldar Nott instead, Theo’s father, who had been a Death Eater “under Imperius.” It had got him out of going to Azkaban when some other people, the loyalists, apparently had.
Keldar was a tall man with a squint. He didn’t look a lot like Theo, other than being skinny and pale; his hair was light brown, his eyes bright blue, and he looked as if he were challenging the world and forcing it to submit to him. Harry couldn’t imagine Theo doing the same thing.
Granted, if Theo ever had, he and Harry probably wouldn’t have become friends.
(Friends. Still a strange thing to think about).
“What do you and Theo have planned for today?”
Harry sneaked a glance at Theo, but Theo had decided to imitate a statue instead of a hummingbird suddenly, so Harry was the one who had to speak. “I hoped that Theo could show me some of the house, and we could practice some spells.”
A smile so nasty crossed Nott’s face that Harry was startled. Suddenly he could see how this man could have been a Death Eater. “Ah, yes. Theo told me that you often engaged in spell practice last year?”
“Yes, sir.”
“You don’t have to call me ‘sir,’ Mr. Potter. I hope that you’ll fancy yourself at home here.”
“Of course, Mr. Nott.”
To Harry’s private relief, Nott didn’t ask Harry to call him by his first name. He just nodded as if he was the most generous host in the world and waved Harry out of the Floo room, where he had been standing so far. He and Theo escaped to the grounds outside.
There were brooms there, and Theo motioned for Harry to pick up one of the Cleansweeps and fly after him. Harry did, with a will. He enjoyed flying, although he didn’t want to be on the Ravenclaw Quidditch team. Too much attention.
“Are we up here because this is the only place that he doesn’t have eavesdropping spells?” Harry asked Theo when they were hovering above what seemed to be a sea of white flowers.
Theo blinked at him, and then smiled, his own version. “Yes. Very clever.”
“I’ve had to be.” Harry settled back on his broom a little. “What did you want to discuss with me?”
“Don’t give him anything to hold over you,” Theo said softly. “He can at one and the same time approve of me having a friend and also think that trying to fuck you over is the best way to help me.”
Harry blinked at the swear word. Theo hadn’t seemed the type, at Hogwarts.
But they weren’t at Hogwarts.
“All right. Thanks for the advice.”
Theo nodded, his shoulders relaxing, and then turned and did lead Harry over a great deal of the house he called Nott’s Den. It had huge fields of flowers of all colors, and blocky stone towers that looked a lot like the ones at Hogwarts, and a dark forest to the north that Theo said housed a group of wereleopards.
When they got tired of flying, they landed and flung spells at each other until they were tired of that, too. Harry kept what Erik had said in mind, and didn’t use the Entrail-Expelling Curse.
Not that he would have needed to. Theo was his friend.
Although if Theo ever turned against him…
Well. Harry would do what he had to, to survive.
*
“I do hope my grandson has been treating you well, Mr. Potter.”
The first impression Harry had of Deborah Smith, Zacharias’s grandmother, was of a smiling woman, with a softness at the center of her that Madam Marchbanks didn’t have. He’d thought of her as stately at the train station, but maybe she really wasn’t.
Then Madam Smith turned to look fully at him for the first time since she’d Apparated him to Smith Hall, and Harry rapidly revised that impression.
“He has, madam,” he said. “I hope that Zacharias has given you a good report of me, in return.”
Madam Smith didn’t laugh at the hope or at the title, which told Harry he had chosen correctly. She settled back into a chair in the room they had entered, which was all done in bright, clear yellows, without a hint of mustard or gold in sight. “Indeed. I understand that you will be studying to complete one of your summer assignments together?”
“Yes, madam. Binns really isn’t a good History professor, so Madam Marchbanks hired one for me. I’ve got permission to share one of my tutor’s books with Zacharias, if you don’t mind.”
Madam Smith seemed to give that due consideration, and then inclined her head. “Zacharias may study with you. I do hope that you will bear in mind that I intend to look over his History essay before he takes it back to Hogwarts.”
“Of course, madam.”
After a few more meaningless words—except as they would keep him safe from a terrifying woman like Madam Smith—Harry and Zacharias were able to leave for Zacharias’s room. Zacharias turned around before they were out of range of eavesdropping spells, which at least told Harry something about his relationship with his grandmother, and grinned. “You handled her perfectly. Well done.”
“I thought at first, when she smiled—”
“Yeah, that’s one reason she has the reputation she does in the Wizengamot.” Zacharias gave his own version of Madam Smith’s smile. “So, tell me about this History tutor. How biased is she?”
*
“Welcome, welcome, Mr. Potter.”
Harry blinked a little as he stepped out of the Floo into Michael’s house. The Floo was in the kitchen, and it looked like kitchen magic was helping with everything. Pots and pans were flying through the air by themselves, knives were chopping vegetables on their own, one huge simmering pot was being stirred by nothing…
“Hi, Harry!”
Michael scrambled down the stairs to one side of the kitchen and skidded to a halt in front of Harry, grinning. He didn’t seem to see anything out of the normal about the chaotic kitchen, so Harry decided he would ignore it, too. He gave Michael a little smile and raised his voice. “We can—”
“Do forgive me for not greeting you in the first place, Mr. Potter.”
Michael’s mother looked as harried as she had when Harry had seen her at the train station. She grabbed Harry’s hand and pumped it several times, then turned around with a loud groan as a crash sounded from somewhere further inside the house. “Excuse me,” she said hopelessly, and skidded off in that direction.
Michael rolled his eyes and motioned Harry to follow him outside. Harry relaxed a little in the pretty apple orchard in the back of the house.
“Sorry about that,” Michael said. “I’ve got triplet toddler sisters, and they all have accidental magic, and it feeds off each other’s.”
“Your dad can’t help?” Harry asked.
Michael’s face shut down. “Dad’s a Muggle,” he said shortly. “And he decided the day after I got back from Hogwarts the magic was too much for him, and, well. He left.”
Harry blinked. Then he hesitated. He knew that the thing friends did was reach out and pat someone’s shoulder or something like that. But he honestly didn’t think that he could do that.
The moment had gone past, and although Michael was watching him with bright defiant eyes, Harry just leaned back against the roots of an apple tree behind him. “What were you saying we could do?”
Michael waited a bit longer, and then he seemed to realize Harry wasn’t going to say anything about his dad being an arsehole one way or the other. He was stiff as he Summoned his Gobstones set—he said the Ministry would never notice with all the magical chaos in the house—but by the time they were playing, he’d relaxed.
Harry was glad. There were certain things he thought he would never be comfortable with, although maybe with more practice he would get good at pretending.
He did think Michael’s dad was an arsehole, though. And he did wonder if wizards and witches having kids with Muggles, as opposed to a Muggleborn magical person, ever worked out.
But that wasn’t something he could ask Michael.
*
“Yes, of course having children with Muggles sometimes works out, Harry. Why do you ask?”
Harry felt his face heat up. Madam Marchbanks had put on her hearing charms so he could ask her the question, and now she sounded so surprised that he didn’t think it had been worth it to make her do that. “I—just—it doesn’t seem like it would.”
“It depends on the Muggle and the wizard or witch in question.”
“That’s not a satisfying answer, Madam Marchbanks.”
“Some things are like that.”
Harry sighed, because they were, and he should have known that before he asked the question. “All right.”
Madam Marchbanks nodded at him. “How are your dueling spells coming along?”
*
“Oh, you must be here for Padma.”
Harry blinked at the woman whose Floo he’d just exited. She was pretty in a firm sort of way and had a headscarf on. “No,” he said slowly. “I’m Parvati’s friend.”
“You are?”
Harry tilted his head. He knew, or rather had read, that some girls’ parents got very weird about boys visiting, even if the girls and boys weren’t dating. “Yes. Harry Potter? She told me that it was all right for me to come over.”
“Oh, yes. Of course.” Mrs. Patil blinked and stepped back with a shake of her head. “Do forgive me. It’s just that—Padma’s friends visit more often.”
Harry looked up with a smile that he hoped he was making just bright and wide enough, instead of too bright or too wide. “I see. But I promise I’m here to visit Parvati instead.”
Mrs. Patil raised an eyebrow, and made Harry think the smile was probably too bright as she went to call Parvati down the stairs. Harry shrugged a little. He didn’t want to make things hard for Parvati with her parents, but he also thought it was silly that they would believe only one daughter could have friends.
Parvati was back down the stairs before her mother, smile bright and wide in the same way as Harry’s. “Hi, Harry. Thanks for coming.”
“You said you had something you wanted to talk to me about.”
That was the right thing to say, because it made Parvati relax and smile at him in a real way. “Yes. I heard the strangest thing about Seamus Finnigan, one of the Gryffindor boys in our year…”
She led Harry out to a small pool in the back garden with stone benches around it, and she and Harry sat and discussed the things she’d heard about Hogwarts students. Well, mostly Parvati discussed and Harry listened.
But he was glad he did. Parvati saw so many things and heard so many others that she could weave them together into an incredibly complicated tapestry of guesses and truths and half-truths that Harry doubted he could have managed.
And that told him more things about the children in his year, and others he didn’t have as much access to. Things that he might need to know if they acted against him, or became his enemies later.
When he stood up leave two hours later, he said softly, “Thanks, Parvati. Why did your mother think I was here to visit Padma instead? I’m pretty sure the letter I sent your mum said that I was coming to visit you.”
Parvati froze, eyes on the pool. Harry looked down and saw goldfish swimming there.
“Padma is the pretty one,” Parvati whispered. “Padma is the smart one. Mum would understand if it was Lavender, she’s my best friend, but anyone else—”
She broke off, shaking her head.
“You’re plenty smart enough all by yourself.”
Parvati blinked at him and then smiled. Harry smiled back and told himself this was a good way to cheer her up as well as bind her even closer to him.
And if she ever turned her too-sharp observation on him and gossiped about him, he knew what to say to make her stop.
*
“Damn nuisance!”
Harry smiled as he watched Madam Marchbanks lay about her with her cane to get the people in Flourish and Blotts out of their way. There was some sort of book signing. Harry hadn’t bothered to pay attention to the author’s name. As far as he was concerned, he could stay out of public view forever and be happy.
“Here we are,” Madam Marchbanks grumbled, stumping into the bookshop and heading for a large display of books that said HOGWARTS SECOND-YEAR. “What they want with all this nonsense, never would have happened when I was a student, we knew our place and we waited in line—”
Harry bit his lip. Some of those people had been waiting in line, of course, for whoever the author was.
But Harry didn’t really feel like correcting Madam Marchbanks. He went about getting his required texts in peace, as well as several more, and he and Madam Marchbanks (with some cane-whackings of toes and bums) managed to get past the people who wanted their books signed and to the front of the shop.
“My word! Harry Potter!”
Harry turned around swiftly, his hand clenched on his wand. Some idiot was making his way towards Harry with his arms spread and a grin so bright plastered on his face that it must have had charms applied to it.
He tried to grab Harry’s arm and drag him back towards where the signing was taking place. At least, he made the beginning of a try. Instead, he bent double a second later as Madam Marchbanks planted her cane in his gut.
“TRYING TO KIDNAP MY WARD, WERE YOU?” Madam Marchbanks barked at him. “WELL, I’VE DEALT WITH WORSE!” She lifted her wand and moved it in a specific wave that made Harry gasp a little. He’d learned that spell from Erik, and he wouldn’t have thought it was “appropriate for the context.”
The idiot, whoever he was, finished wheezing and straightened up. He opened his mouth, probably to demand apologies.
A huge belch of incredibly foul-smelling gas came out of his mouth. A second later, the same thing came from his rear end. The idiot staggered backwards, looking as though he didn’t know whether to clap his hand to his mouth or his arse first.
Harry laughed.
People who had been watching the scene and had probably been primed to start shouting indignantly paused. Harry could see them darting uneasy glances at each other. If Harry Potter had laughed, was it all right? Maybe they should laugh, too?
Madam Marchbanks settled the matter by rapping her cane on the floor and giving the kind of roaring bark of laughter that sounded like she’d had five bottles of Firewhisky. Then the laughter spread around the shop, and the idiot practically wilted in front of their eyes.
“Job well done,” Madam Marchbanks declared, and marched Harry over to pay for his books.
*
Later, Harry discovered that the idiot who had tried to grab hold of him in the shop was actually Gilderoy Lockhart, the author of their Defense books for that term. He’d found this out from the wildly waving and winking picture of the author on the back of Travels With Trolls.
Then Theo owled Harry that Lockhart was their Defense professor for the year.
“Can I stay home?” Harry asked Madam Marchbanks.
“Do you want to?”
Harry sighed. Madam Marchbanks had said that she would let Harry go to Beauxbatons or study at home with tutors if he wanted to. But now that he had made friends at Hogwarts, it wouldn’t be easy for Harry to see them if he did that. “No.”
“Let me know what the nuisance gets up to.” Madam Marchbanks hit the wall with her cane. “I’ll come deal with him.”
Harry relaxed. Madam Marchbanks had been incredibly effective with Dumbledore last year. Maybe if the Defense position was cursed, she would even manage to incarnate that curse and drive Lockhart out all the sooner.
“All right, Madam Marchbanks. I will.”
*
“Who’s she?”
Theo glanced up from the book of Runes he was arguing with Michael about. “Who’s who?”
Harry hid a smile. Theo hated sounding silly. “That little girl who’s peering into our compartment,” he said, and looked in that direction just as the first-year—surely a first-year—peered in again. She promptly flushed as red as her hair, squeaked, and scuttled away.
“Ron Weasley’s little sister,” Parvati said. “Ginevra, goes by Ginny. And by the look on her face, she has a crush on you, Harry.” She grinned at Harry and went back to writing down what looked like an organized study schedule. Harry suspected that she was trying to rival her sister in more than one way.
“Why?”
“You’re the Boy-Who-Lived, Harry! Can you ask?”
“But—that’s stupid.”
Zacharias, of all of them, gave a short laugh. “Not all of us organize our lives by pure disinterested logic, Mr. Ravenclaw.”
“It wouldn’t be stupid if she knew more about me than that. But we’ve never met.” Harry would have remembered her ducking out of sight like a feral cat if they had.
Parvati laughed a little herself, not looking up from her study schedule. “You should get used to it. You’re not as skinny as you were during the first part of last year, and she won’t be the only girl with a crush.”
Harry blinked at her. Parvati looked up at him and snorted. “Not me, don’t look like that. What you ought to know is that it’s going to happen, and you should be prepared for how to handle it. You can’t owl your guardian every time it does.”
Harry sat back a little in his seat. So Parvati was letting him know she had teeth, too. Well, that was fine.
As long as Harry’s were bigger.
*
The Sorting had barely finished when an enormous black owl stooped towards Lockhart, carrying a Howler in its talons. It exploded over Lockhart’s head, and Madam Marchbanks’s voice boomed through the Great Hall.
“TRY TO TOUCH MY WARD AGAIN AND YOU’LL BE FARTING FOR YEARS, NOT A MONTH!”
Harry sat back and grinned, just shrugging a little when Dumbledore and some people at the other tables turned to stare at him. Madam Marchbanks was only taking care of him.
This way, maybe she won’t even have to come to Hogwarts to shout at him, if he’s already pre-shouted at, Harry thought, and sipped his pumpkin juice while Lockhart very carefully didn’t look in the direction of the Ravenclaw table.
