“And then he just said slimy gits. Like all Slytherins are slimy gits. Which is stupid, snakes aren’t even slimy!” Harry throws a pinecone at the lake and watches it plop into the water with a deep scowl.
Bear nudges his head into Harry’s side with a whine. He’s been listening to Harry rant about his day for the last five minutes so Harry gives him an extra vigorous ear scratch. “I know, this probably gets old… it does for me, too! I mean, loads of the Slytherins are kind of awful—but there’s a bunch of Ravenclaws I can’t stand, and Ernie Macmillan is as pompous as Malfoy for all he’s in Hufflepuff. It’s starting to annoy me that Ron and Hermione are so… just, they won’t even think about it! And it’s weird, ‘cause it wouldn’t have used to annoy me. Last year I probably would’ve agreed with them. I thought Malfoy was the Heir of Slytherin too, except looking back, there’s no way. He’s way too fond of drama and attention to be that sneaky and anonymous.”
At that, Bear lets out a huffing doggy laugh, tongue spilling out of his mouth.
Harry grins at him. “Right? So… I dunno. I just wish there was a way I could see everyone without it being this big issue for me to have friends in other Houses. No one even sits at the other House’s tables at meals, and I can’t find any rule book that would say if it’s okay or not, which is weird ‘cause they gave everyone a copy of the student handbook at the start of every year in primary.” He pauses. “Wait. Shouldn’t a Hogwarts rulebook be the first thing they give out to Muggleborns in first year?’
Bear makes an uncertain sort of whine.
“I’ll ask Professor McGonagall,” Harry decides. “And… maybe we could find someplace to study together. Not the library. An old classroom no one’s using. I’ll bet I could find enough old furniture… God knows I spend enough time wandering around to find weird stuff.”
If the way Bear licks Harry’s arm is any indication, he approves of this plan.
The study group idea is met with enthusiastic agreement, much to Harry’s delight and minor surprise. Most of the following Saturday is spent hunting around the middle floors of the castle— “We’ll be halfway between the towers and the dungeons,” Susan insists, “so it’s fair—” and by the time they’ve found a room that works it’s nearly time for dinner.
Harry surveys the space. It’s not far from the clock tower and the layout is a bit weird–long and narrow, with an alcove the size of a professor’s office at the far end, so it sort of forms a stretched-out L. No one has any idea what it used to be but it works pretty well for their purposes and it’s out of the way enough that he seriously doubts anyone will stumble across them by accident.
“Tomorrow let’s get some furniture in here,” Harry says, setting off a conversation about what kinds of furniture everyone thinks would be best that lasts all the way to the Great Hall.
Getting furniture through the door and into the room takes some creative charm work. With someone levitating and others casting softening charms, everything can be squeezed through, including an enormous old table they found in what looks like some kind of old workroom on the second floor and a very mismatched collection of chairs. Some of them are squashy armchairs. Some are the standard wooden classroom chairs. Two of them fold up, and one of them has built-in cushions and clawed feet and a tendency to skitter around the room when no one’s paying attention.
It’s Padma’s idea to turn the alcove at the back of the room into a potionery, and Harry immediately agrees with her. No one argues so the two of them set to it with a vengeance. Cabinets scrounged from around the castle line the wall below the windows, and Harry enlists Terry and Zach to help him transfigure the tops of the cabinets into one seamless chunk of granite. Four small tables take up the rest of the space and Harry determinedly uses the hardening charm on each of them so none of them breaks under the weight of a full cauldron.
Pansy contributes four of the flat round stones engraved with runes that are used to control the flame for brewing. She doesn’t say where they came from and no one asks, but with one installed on each tabletop, and open-fronted wood shelves going up on the walls with sticking charms, it looks like a real, if improvised, laboratory.
“Ventilation charms,” Padma announces, after poking around the ceiling. “There’s no vents here.”
“Aren’t the windows enough?” Terry asks, wiping his forehead. He’s been doing most of the transfiguration work to make the cabinets fit together better.
Padma shoots him a haughty look. “No, they are not. Professor Snape has the ceiling of his classroom practically blanketed in ventilation spells. Otherwise you’d all die of the fumes every time Neville blows something up.”
Harry snorts, and then feels sort of bad. But it’s a good point. He’d never thought about that before. “Do you know how to do a ventilation charm?” he asks slowly.
“No,” Padma admits. “But we can look it up.”
They emerge from the potionery project to find that Hannah’s turned up with an enormous basket of food, and someone went and found Lavender and Parvati, who’ve already somehow set up a little cluster of small tables and poufy seats that looks suspiciously like a bit of Professor Trelawney’s classroom has come to their sanctuary. Everyone else has been busy, too. The big table is pushed up near the end of the room farthest from the door, with the short end against the wall below a wide bay window. Harry wonders if it opens. A bunch of smaller tables have been scattered between the big table and the door, each with two to four chairs around each. “This is great,” he says, pleased.
“Isn’t it?” Susan surveys the room with the expression of a general making preparations for war. “Oh, I told Neville he could put plants in the windowsill as long as none of them bite.”
“Fine with me,” Harry says. He’s actually looking forward to doing homework here. And the potionery! Somewhere between Ron’s griping about classwork and Snape’s bullying, he’d forgotten just how excited he’d been about Potions once upon a time. Maybe if he can brew alone, it’ll be more fun.
Or—he glances aside—with Padma. And whoever else. All the Slytherins tend to do well in Potions, but he vaguely remembers that Theo Nott gets actual positive feedback from Snape rather than empty praise or indifference.
Everyone gathers at the big table to share the snacks Hannah’s brought upstairs.
“We could start studying now,” Terry suggests. “I’m already drowning a bit.”
“Let’s,” Faye says briskly. “Where shall we start?”
“Transfiguration?” Lavender says.
Harry doesn’t miss how most of them glance his way, then. “Sounds good,” he says with a shrug. “McGonagall’s already leaning heavy on the theory this year.”
“That essay about evolution.” Zach shakes his head. “They didn’t always teach it. My grandfather told me Dippet and the Headmaster before him discouraged it, and McGonagall was the first Transfiguration professor to put it back in the curriculum.”
“Well, I’m glad she did, it’s fascinating. Muggles have figured this out, too?” Padma asks.
Terry nods enthusiastically. “Oh, yeah, there was this book published in the eighteen hundreds—Origin of Species, by Charles Darwin—I haven’t read it, but I might now. Anyway, it caused this huge blow-up, because one of the biggest Muggle religions in the world was built around the idea that God created humans in his image. So the idea of evolution was like, literally heresy, ‘cause it said their religious text was wrong.”
“There’s still people who don’t believe it’s true,” Harry says.
“Huh.” Padma tilts her head. “Well, good on that Darwin fellow, publishing something he had to have known wouldn’t be popular.”
“Brave man,” Terry says, grinning.
They talk about McGonagall’s essay for a while, long enough that Harry has more than enough notes, questions, and ideas written in his notebook to turn into an essay. Then they move on to charms review, and after that Neville really comes into his own leading everyone through the assigned Herbology reading questions.
Before he knows it, it’s time for dinner again. Harry’s stomach is grumbling. He used a lot of magic earlier and the snacks Hannah brought up weren’t a proper lunch. He’s not the only one who’s hungry, either; Terry’s been nibbling on almonds for the last hour.
Harry with Faye, Neville, Lavender, and Parvati at the Gryffindor table in the Great Hall. They’ve beaten Ron and Hermione there and he feels a bit guilty about how relieved he is.
After dinner, he neatly avoids everyone, slipping down to the lake to tell Bear all about their new study room and the potionery he’s set up. Bear listens intently, and by the time Harry’s gotten back to the common room minutes before curfew, he’s forgotten about his earlier unease.
It comes back to his mind when Ron corners him in their dorm. “Harry, mate! Where’ve you been all day?”
“Studying,” Harry says, which is true. Something in his stomach twists. He doesn’t like lying.
“You never want to do anything fun anymore,” Ron says with a scowl. “You’re turning into Hermione, mate.”
Harry swallows around a lump in his throat. Because this is exactly what he was afraid of, isn’t it? He started putting effort into his classes and look where it’s gotten him. Ron hates it. Ron’s upset at him for trying.
Maybe he should just give in? Harry stares at his first friend’s face and desperately tries to get control of the chaotic storm of thoughts in his head. He wants to please Ron. He wants to have Ron as a friend. He wants—
He wants to be like his parents, top of his class. He wants to be someone. Not a freak, not a burden, not an unwanted nephew and not a Savior, either. Just someone who matters. Who’s liked, who has friends, who does good things, who is who he wants to be. And, okay, yeah, maybe he can see why the Hat wanted him in Slytherin, because that’s ambition, he thinks—the point is, he wants to be someone and he can’t do that if his grades are bad.
What is he thinking? Harry staggers back until his knees hit his bed, barely registering the way Ron’s irritation morphs into concern. A headache pounds at his temples and Harry clamps his hands over them, squeezing. What is he—
James and Lily Potter were near the top of their class. His parents. Harry wants to make them proud. Harry wants to be someone. He knows that. Remembers it from long nights in the cupboard, talking to himself, promising himself he’d get out someday, he’d make it so Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon could never hurt him again and no one else would ever be hurt like that either. How had he forgotten?
Ron’s there. Hands on Harry’s shoulders, heavy, gripping, unwanted. Harry pulls back but he’s already against his bed and there’s nowhere to go. Ron. His first friend. Ron, saying something, looking worried.
Ron’s just worried, whispers a little voice that Harry thinks sounds like someone else. God, is he hearing voices now?
Ron’s not just worried. Ron’s jealous. Harry latches onto another thing he knows for sure: the Mirror of Erised, Ron seeing himself alone with everything his brothers had and then some. Ron, alone. His heart’s desire was to be alone with his acclaim and his victories, nothing left to anyone else.
I wanted to do better at my classes because I want to make my parents proud. Harry mouths the words, imagines writing them, makes himself feel the graceful swoop of his parrot feather quill across parchment. I picked up Runes because I thought it looked interesting, and it is. I want to try at Divination, not skive off and scrape by with an A. I want to help people. I like classes. I have other friends than Ron.
If Ron wants to hold me back, then maybe he’s not that good a friend.
The storm subsides but the pain lingers. Harry realizes he’s panting. “Mate,” Ron says, looking scared. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah.” Harry heaves in a deep breath, then another. “Yeah, sorry, just… headache.”
“Maybe you should study less,” Ron says. “Mum always told Gin and me if we spent too much time staring at books we’d get headaches. Percy used to.”
“It’s fine,” Harry says a bit sharply. Ron steps back, looking hurt. “No, seriously, Ron, just—I think I’m dehydrated. I’ll drink something in the bathroom. It’s fine.”
“Okay.” Ron shrugs and sits down on his bed, the one right next to Harry’s. “You are studying too much, though. Turning into a bloody swot. I never see you.”
“You could study with me,” Harry says suddenly, impulsively. If Ron wants to hold me back, then maybe he’s not that good a friend, he chants in his head, but maybe, maybe if he just gives Ron a push—
“Pssh,” Ron says, laughing. “For what? Divination? C’mon, everyone knows Trelawney gives Os to whoever comes up with the gloomiest future. And ‘Mione helps with all my essays.”
“Lets you copy them, you mean,” Harry says.
Ron shrugs. “Same difference, yeah?”
It really isn’t. Harry rubs at his eyes when his temples begin to pound again. “Look, I’ll—let’s go flying this week sometime. After practice on Wednesday. You can have a go on my Nimbus.”
“Great, thanks, mate!” Ron’s eyes light up.
Later, lying in bed with the curtains spelled shut, Harry tries to ignore his lingering headache.
There’s something wrong with him. When Ron confronted him, Harry felt—odd. Torn, not like how he feels when he can’t make up his mind—worse. Stronger than that kind of indecision. He doesn’t want to give up on classes and go back to how things were. He likes being at Hogwarts more, which he hadn’t thought was possible, now that he has more friends and he’s paying attention in class. The course material is more interesting. Waking up is easier. And if he still can’t meditate worth a knut, well, at least he’s doing a bit better at getting through the assigned reading. It still feels like pushing through an overgrown field word by word but the material is interesting and that helps. So does talking about it with his friends. It gets a bit easier every day.
So he shouldn’t have felt so—so tempted to let it go, slide back into how he was last year. It would’ve been so easy. Like putting on an old sweater that’s so familiar you barely notice yourself wearing it anymore even though it itches.
The worst part is, whenever Harry thinks too hard about his vague dreams for the future, he feels it again. There’s uncertainty, some anxiety, some excitement—all normal stuff, feelings he’s used to and can name, but there’s something else, something like guilt but not quite the same, something that wants him to not do that. Some part of him that resists when questions come to mind about Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon, and the bank transfers, and Dumbledore’s role in it all, or about the magical world, or… well. Questions generally. Some part of him that wants to be lazy with a determination that’s hard to resist.
He doesn’t remember feeling this way over the summer. Sure, it wasn’t always that easy to sit down and slog through a textbook with the magical display of Quality Quidditch Supplies winking in the corner of his eye, but he’d done it, and he’d actually sort of enjoyed himself, enjoyed learning new things. Lately it has gotten hard again and it’s not until right now that he realizes it.
There are no answers, only more questions. Harry’s quite sure he should learn occlumency, it’s supposed to help order your mind, whatever that means, but he still has no idea how since he can’t meditate to save his life. So he lies in bed, staring at the canopy, wide awake.
And deeply afraid.
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