Of course, it's not that easy.
"Harry, my boy, I really think you're better off living with the Dursleys."
"They don't like me and I don't like them. Well, my cousin and I get on okay now, but Aunt Petunia calls me a freak and she'd probably kick me out for contaminating him if she knew we were friends."
Dumbledore blinks. "Be that as it may, your aunt took you in willingly, and in so doing she anchored a very powerful set of blood wards. As long as you call that place home, you are shielded from Dark wizards like Lord Voldemort."
"Reeeeally. As long as I call it home, you say?"
"Harry—!"
"Simple! Number four Privet Drive, the residence of Petunia and Vernon Dursley and their son Dudley, is not and never has been my home. I hate it there, they hate me, and there's not an ounce of familial affection between us." Something twinges in his chest.
Dumbledore's face takes on an ashen pallor and he rises from his chair to loom over Harry. Suddenly afraid, Harry shrinks back.
"You foolish, selfish boy! Do you have any idea what you've done!"
Snape is between them in a sinuous movement so fast Harry doesn't see it until it's over. I'm going to convince him to teach me how to do that, he thinks dazedly.
Breathing heavily, Dumbledore backs down.
"Potter, you'd best go now." Snape’s voice is eerily flat. Which, Harry remembers, often precedes extreme violence, when heard from a competent Slytherin.
He goes.
Snape corners him after dinner. "Potter. I know something of Petunia Dursley née Evans, so I am unsurprised that her house was not a home for you. However, I do question your wisdom in so thoughtlessly throwing away the protections granted by your residency there in favor of living with a reckless, careless mutt."
Harry readies the knife. "He's sorry about bullying you, by the way."
A direct hit. Harry studies the arterial flow as Snape staggers back into the wall. "What."
"Yeah, he told me all about it," Harry says glibly, each word another twist of the blade. "The Marauders and their "pranks" and the incident in sixth year. He's had a lot of time to think, and he feels bad. When I told him you're teaching potions he did his growly dog routine but then he admitted he owed you an apology and said could I pass it on."
"You are a poor Slytherin to give so much away," Snape says in a dangerous voice.
Harry smiles and it's not glib anymore or even the contemptuous self-satisfied cruelty of the goblins. The part of him smiling right now is the little boy who named the spiders in his cupboard because he was so lonely. It is his most natural smile and it is a cold one. "No, Professor. See, someone told me once that a good Slytherin knows when it's time for deceit and when it's time to lay your cards on the table. I've got a winning hand." Snape’s face goes dead blank. Bingo, thinks Harry, got you, Mr. Maybe-Ex Death Eater.
"Where did you hear that," Snape breathes.
"I dunno. A mentor of sorts," Harry says, cheerful again. Really, this couldn't have gone much better. "Oh, I nearly forgot. I did another round of trials with the iron cauldron and Wideye Potion. When do you want it written up by?"
Snape stares at him. "Yule."
"Yes, sir!"
ooOoo
People go home for the holidays. Sirius is still in hospital and the custody situation hasn't been resolved yet, so Harry is not among them, but he's not worried. He's going to go see Sirius on Yule in St. Mungos and until then he has Things To Do.
Step one: a letter from Lord Gaunt about a certain secret room sends him on a treasure hunt. Harry pesters Myrtle for details of her death (she gives them up easily, as she doesn't know Harry is the culprit in the Great Toilet Heist) and eventually finds the sink with the snake carved on it.
The basilisk is named Sevilla, for the city where Salazar Slytherin's family came from, and full of really cool stories. She lets Harry take her shed skin and scales and even some of her venom, which will make an excellent patching-things-up Yule gift for Professor Snape and just generally sends Harry into raptures. Seriously, who else in the world can claim to have met and talked to a thousand-year-old basilisk hatched in Spain and fluent in a dozen dead languages? Literally one other person.
Maybe someday he'll introduce her to Hagrid, if she promises to keep her membranous second eyelid closed so she doesn't kill or petrify him.
When she asks to be taken along on the adventures Harry plans to have in adulthood, of course he says yes, even though building a habitat in his trunk suitable for such a magnificent creature is a task much scarier than meeting her had been.
Dash and Gabby love her. Harry even brings out all the rest of his snakes—Jade and Peridot, the emerald tree boas; Emeric, Uric, and Perdoric, the pit vipers; Myrddin, Morgana, and Gawain, the rainbow boas; and Amos the anaconda. In fact, Amos loves Sevilla so much Harry is concerned he's about to have some half-basilisk half-anaconda snake babies on his hands.
ooOoo
For Yule, Theo sends him a bunch of silver shells that make Harry wheeze.
Father planned to experiment on them, reads Theo’s note. Figured you might object.
Harry tucks the occamy eggs away and resolves to build them a habitat first thing.
From Susan, he gets a ruby cloak pin spelled to protect against fire. Padma sends him a ring that heats up if he somehow gets any kind of naturally created venom in his body. Millicent went with a pair of earrings that help you hear threats.
Harry is sensing a theme.
Justin, somehow, sends him dragon teeth, reminding Harry that a) his Muggle family is loaded and b) Hufflepuffs are scary. The teeth put him in mind of Thebes. Hmm. Harry packs them away in the work area of his trunk.
Neville, ever predictable, sends him an assortment of juvenile plants just ready to be planted. Harry takes them in their little pots down to his trunk. Planting them in the growing garden corner will be a fun afternoon's work.
Probably the coolest gifts are from Sirius, though. Harry turns up at the hospital with something he's been poring over day and night ever since Sirius got out: a quartz crystal carved all over with runes so tiny cutting them gave him a migraine. It was necessary, though. The runes anchor and maintain the essence of a Patronus charm that Harry spent several nights packing into the crystal. He still can't do a corporal Patronus, but the essence of the spell, its aura of protection and love and happiness, is enough for this kind of magic. The crystal is small enough to be worn around the neck on a cord.
Sirius cries when he sees it and holds Harry for five minutes.
Then he has to go and top Harry's gift by giving him a Firebolt and two tiny cocoons that will, in a few months, morph into a breeding pair of honest-to-Merlin Swooping Evils.
Harry squeezes Sirius so hard he hears ribs creak.
ooOoo
After the Yule break, Professor Babbling assigns them each to pick a runic language and learn it. This is how Harry learns wixen can pick up new languages in the span of a few months if they pursue aggressive self-study and also take daily doses of a potion that stimulates the language-learning part of the brain. Professor Babbling provides each student in third and sixth years with a single course of the potion.
Harry picks Old English. It works with the futhorc and Latin alphabets, and from there he can transition laterally into Gutnish and the dansk tunga, which can be written in futhorc and Elder Futhark runes.
“It’s so different from anything we use,” says Theo, when asked why he went with Syriac. “Plus, it was the basis for some of the most brilliant arithmancers in history, Muggle and magical.”
“I just want to be able to keep my trunk going,” says Harry.
Theo scoffs. “Boring.”
Harry thinks. “Maybe also put runes on my clothes.”
“Now that’s intriguing,” says Theo.
Susan rolls her eyes at both of them. “I just want to be able to cast runes. What better skill can one have than to read the future as a government official?”
“Why aren’t you taking Divination, then?” Harry says.
“Please, that hogwash? The professor might have some drop of Seer blood, but you can’t teach genuine prophecy. I’m going to be an augur. Astronomy, Arithmancy, Runes. Astronomy for broad-stroke long-term influences, Arithmancy for calculating probability, and Runes for more personal or subjective questions. A good augur can balance the three disciplines and, how does that poem go, ‘step lightly through the maze of life’.”
Harry mentally adds this to his List Of Reasons Why Susan Is Terrifying.
ooOoo
Granger plunks down across from him. “You’re cheating.”
“I’m sorry, what?” Harry says.
“You. Are. Cheating.”
Harry stares at her, then turns and looks at Theo. “Did I miss something?”
“No. She’s just like this.”
“Granger, please leave,” sighs Justin. “We’re trying to get through our arithmancy project proposals.”
Granger’s eyes narrow. “Oh, are you now?”
“Hey!” Harry can’t quite stop her from snatching his mostly-finished proposal. “Give me that!”
He grabs for it, but she’s on the other side of the large table, and as Padma, who’s sitting on that side, turns and makes a grab for it, Granger jumps back. Her eyes are already flick-flicking over Harry’s work.
“Give it back,” Harry seethes, scrambling up. He’s halfway around the table in seconds.
“You have to be cheating! Where did you learn matrices? This is an older person’s work!” Granger says hotly. “No! I’m taking this to Professor Vector!”
She runs away. “I’ll get your bag,” Theo calls, as Harry dashes after her.
He’s fast from quidditch practice, but Granger has a head start, and Harry gets hung up trying to evade a furious Madam Pince by the library doors. Granger is long out of sight by the time he gets to the hallway. Cursing, Harry bolts for Vector’s office.
Granger’s already there when he skids to a halt at the door, waving the parchments in the air. “—matrices! We don’t even cover those until next year!”
Harry almost yells at her, but checks himself at the last second. Be a Slytherin. He settles himself and walks in calmly. “Hello, Professor Vector. Miss Granger, please give me my work back.”
“You’re cheating,” Granger hisses at him. “It’s not right!”
“Mr. Potter, would you care to explain?” says Professor Vector.
“Sure, Professor. I was in the library, working on the project proposals with some of my friends, and Granger just showed up and accused me of cheating. Then she snatched my proposal, looked it over, and said she was going to bring it here to you. I ran after her.”
“Hmm.” Vector looks them over with her characteristic peeved expression. “Give it here, Miss Granger.”
Granger hands it over.
Vector scans the proposal, and her eyebrows rise. “Well, this is rather advanced—”
“Ha!” says Granger.
“But it is certainly not beyond the limits of Mr. Potter’s understanding, based on his classwork. Miss Granger, what grounds have you for an accusation of academic misconduct?”
Granger huffs. “He’s working ahead of the curriculum! If he can even be doing maths at this level, which I doubt, then it’s cheating to be using outside sources, and he’s probably gotten an older student to help!”
“But you accused me of cheating before you saw the proposal,” Harry says. “I’d quite like to know where that came from. As far as I know, we’ve never even spoken.”
“Of course not, you’re just a blood purist like all the rest of the Slytherins.”
“Miss Granger! Five points from Gryffindor,” Vector says sharply, and Granger’s eyes fill with angry tears. “Casting such baseless aspersions against your fellows is unacceptable. If a particular student or group of students has been harassing you based on your heritage, you may report them.”
“I’m also not at all a blood purist,” Harry says drily, “if that matters.”
Professor Vector sighs and pinches the bridge of her nose. “Miss Granger, you have made two accusations against Mr. Potter here. The first—academic misconduct. The second—bullying you on the grounds of your blood status. Do you have any experience with Mr. Potter to bear up either accusation?”
“I said I thought he was cheating because he always does too well! He has to be! And I know he’s a blood purist, he only ever hangs around with purebloods—”
“Miss Granger, it is not actually against the rules for students to believe that purebloods are superior to Muggleborns, only for students to bully, belittle, or discriminate against other students on the basis of such. If Mr. Potter has not mistreated you or used slurs against you, then there’s nothing to punish. Do you understand me?”
“But that’s not fair!”
“I’m not a blood purist!” Harry snaps. “My mum was a Muggleborn, Granger, and I’m not only friends with purebloods, but my friends’ blood status is their private business that I don’t have to air to you as some kind of—of proof that I’m not what you think I am!”
“Precisely so. And, Miss Granger, if your only reason to believe Mr. Potter is cheating is that he scores well, that is even less convincing. I specifically told the class that you are free to be as creative as you wish with your project and I would advise if I believed someone chose something beyond their ability. This is not beyond Mr. Potter’s. What is it, Mr. Potter, some sort of cleaning enchantment?”
“Yes, kind of,” Harry says. “I was planning to put runes in place for the variables so the matrix serves as the basis of a spell to clean out an animal’s cage. When either the smell or the chemical toxicity or the absolute volume of waste or any combination of the above gets above a certain threshold, the spell activates and changes the bedding out for fresh. I still have to figure out how to anchor this spell to a separate container of fresh bedding but I was going to ask Professor Babbling about sympathetic magic for that part.”
“Very clever. If you can get it to work, or even show promising advancement in that direction, you’ll receive full marks,” Professor Vector assures him. “I can’t help but notice this is eminently practical. Fond of animals?”
“Yes! I’m going to work with creatures when I’m older.”
“Commendable. If you have no other questions for me, you’d both best be on your way. Lunch is in ten minutes.”
Harry leaves at speed.
ooOoo
The rainbow boa Morgana lays a clutch of six eggs. Harry sends Hedwig off with an owl order for an incubator and carefully removes them so the other snakes don’t eat the eggs.
Hedwig comes back from Specialty Creature Supplies with a note that the incubator is ready but can’t be shipped into Hogwarts. Harry replies that he would be pleased to receive it in Hogsmeade.
He takes the same path he did before, after checking and double checking that there’s no full moon. Lupin had looked really pale and just… generally bad at the Christmas feast. Harry’s pretty sure now he is an actual werewolf.
After flying into the village, Harry quaffs a dose of Banality Brew and goes into the Three Broomsticks. Hmm, maybe he should just sit down for some toad-in-the-hole and a butterbeer, no need for all this skulking…
No! Harry mentally kicks himself. Banality Brew makes you utterly uninteresting and forgettable to most people but the downside is you start to act uninteresting and forgettable. “Gabby, remind me every minute or so what I’m here to do.”
“Okay. Get the key to the fire room, then call the store with the egg-home through the fire.”
Right. Okay. Harry requests the key from Madam Rosmerta (and has to stop himself from ordering a butterbeer while he’s at it). She seems not to notice that Harry Potter is in her store and forks the key over as easily as she did last time he was here.
In the Floo room, Harry considers just taking a quick nap, but Gabby hisses irritably at him and he remembers to toss the powder in and call out for Specialty Creature Supplies. He can’t keep from ordering the typical pack of owl treats but a poke of Gabby’s tail brings him back to himself and he tugs the egg incubator through as well.
Somehow, the Banality Brew holds even when Harry goes back through the pub holding a large metal bowl set in a wood frame containing a complicated and exposed metal device. He passes the key back to Madam Rosmerta and sucks down a vial of Attraction Potion as soon as he’s outside. If he did the doses right, it should exactly counter the Banality Brew’s effect without actually making him more appealing to other people than usual.
His mind clears. Harry shakes his head. That was weird.
At least now he has an incubator.
ooOoo
Sirius sends him a letter via parrot from the resort he’s visiting in Morocco.
Harry’s return letter consists mostly of him expressing his desire for a parrot of his own.
ooOoo
“Hey, Harry, would you like to go to Hogsmeade with me this weekend?”
“Well, yeah,” Harry says absently. “Weren’t we all planning to go to Scribbled Tomes? There’s the new Brigit Melleflower novel out.”
“No.” Susan sighs. “I mean, with me. On a date.”
“OH.” Harry stares at her.
Susan stares back.
“Why me?”
“I like you, I know you won’t be weird about it, and it’ll get me some nice attention if I go with the Boy-Who-Lived.”
“Who knew Hufflepuffs were this mercenary?” says Theo, who has been watching this play out from his nearby library carrel with the manner of someone observing a vehicular accident.
Susan smiles sweetly at him. “You lot haven’t got a monopoly on calculating, you know. We just care more about collateral damage.”
“And what if my peace of mind is collateral damage?” Harry complains.
“Well, you’re free to say no. I won’t be offended and I’d certainly understand. But, if you’re known to be going with me, then other people won’t ask you, and I definitely heard Romilda Vane and Sally-Anne Perks talking about how to get your attention. It involved the hemming of skirts.”
“That’s… alarming.”
“Don’t forget love potions,” Theo says, unhelpfully. “You should start checking for those.”
Harry groans. “Yeah, okay, I’ll go with you.”
“Excellent! Wear your blue closed robes, they bring out your eyes. Cheerio!”
ooOoo
Going to Hogsmeade with Susan is not bad, actually. She doesn’t drag him off to Madame Puddifoot’s or anything like he hears other blokes moaning about. They wander around a bit and he gallantly buys everything she looks at more than once in the sweet shop. Luckily for him, Susan likes books quite a lot, and doesn’t mind dropping by the bookstore while Harry snags a copy of the latest book in The Adventures of Owain Emrys series and browses the creature shelves a bit.
Over a late lunch at the Three Broomsticks, she even tries casting the runes for Harry. “Let’s see… you have an interpersonal conflict with a mentor figure. Huh, I’d have thought an absence of father figures, but this is showing strong paternal influences… from multiple sources? I can’t tell if it’s people who want to be a father figure, or who you see as a potential father figure, or what. You have good friends who will support you but your secretive nature puts strain on that network.” Susan shoots him a baleful look. “Secrets. Yeah. No kidding.”
“Have there been any attacks?” Harry demands. “Any weird disappearances, or assassinations, or laws against Muggleborns, or people dying?”
“No. And believe me, that’s the only reason I’m choosing to let this play out.” Susan hesitates. “Well, not the only… I pay attention in Astronomy, and… there was a perturbation to Mars’ ascent, two years ago. Its influence weakened by a conjunction with Mercury.”
Harry thinks over his Astronomy classes. “So… the planet of war and bloodshed, tempered by… intellect and cunning?”
“Exactly.” Susan sips her tea. “Astronomy influences broad stroke issues. Things that cause widespread change. War. Famine. Most individual people don’t really… matter, in terms of the stars. Sure, they’ll affect you, your life, but more as a side effect than anything else. But a very few people are… turning points in history. Through luck or fate they wind up being the vehicle of the very changes the planets and stars connect to. I reckon You-Know-Who is one of them. You’re another.”
“Me?” Harry stares at her. “That makes no sense. I’m just… well, okay, I’m some kind of weird child Messiah to most people, but I don’t want to be. I’m thirteen! And in school! What can I even do, right now?”
“Clearly you did something. You told me he’s sane again.” Susan drops her voice. “The lack of violence or anything warlike seems to bear out your claim. So, logically, your interference and subsequent neutrality had enough of an impact to alter his path. I checked. Three years ago Mars was strong and rising. Some kind of violence was inevitable, and given arithmantic calculations I tried this week, it wasn’t likely to be famine or plague or more Muggle tension spilling over into us. It was our war, the blood war, and the fact that we never really fixed it. But then Mercury did its thing. Now, factoring the new no-violence approach into arithmancy, I bet it’ll show much lower odds of civil war breaking out again. Mind you, I’m not nearly good enough with the arithmancy to get specifics or have done this alone; I had to get Vector’s help to set it all up. Got extra credit too.”
Harry is getting a headache. “So—wait, though. You said the stars and planets connect to these kinds of really big societal changes, but then you said what I did actually impacted Mercury. How could I have an impact on the planet? Do the planets control us or the other way around?”
“Yes and no.” Susan frowns. “Think of it this way. Mars influences towards extremism, hostility, and conflict. Not necessarily war. Like, there was a strong influence of Mars in the early seventies, when the blood war was ramping up, and another one in the early forties, when the Muggle war and our war with Grindelwald were going and both the Muggles and the Dark Lord were escalating things. Mars pushes society towards something, so when you see Mars on the ascent, you can guess there’ll be some outbreak of hostility somewhere in the wider fabric of society. Mercury’s interference… if it hadn’t been you, it might’ve been someone else who reacted to its influence. Or maybe no one. Venus was strong that year as well and passion overrides logic sometimes. Who knows? Maybe in another world things were a little bit different and Mars was triumphant.”
“Why can’t Sinestra talk about Astronomy like this?” Harry complains.
Susan laughs. “She’s just a bit dry in her teaching style.”
“So you could predict wars and stuff like, hundreds of years into the future.”
“You can predict that there’ll likely be some sort of rising hostility or ideological extremism in response to ascendant Mars, but the further in the future you go, the harder it is to work out what exactly. Like, a good arithmancer could probably compute the odds of some major events for Mars’ next rise. A Muggle assassinating the minister, for example, would be less likely than an outbreak of dragon pox, but both would result in suspicion and fear and anger—in the first case, towards Muggles, and in the second, towards other people generally who might be carrying the disease. If you’re trying to work out the odds for something a hundred years in the future, it’s harder by a factor of like… Merlin, a thousand, maybe? More?”
“This is a lot harder than it sounds.” Harry chews his lip. “I think I’ll stick to using arithmancy for my creature cages.”
“Speaking of which, I want to see this trunk of yours.”
“Sure, c’mon, it’s in my dorm.”
ooOoo
Professor Lupin starts giving him weird looks. Harry ignores the (probable) werewolf until Lupin approaches him in March.
“Harry, would you mind stopping by my office sometime this afternoon?”
“Of course, sir. Is there a problem with the essay from Wednesday?”
“No, I’d just like to speak with you.”
Well, that isn’t ominous at all.
Harry shows up at the office and immediately walks over to the corner, where a grindylow in a tank is making faces at him. “Cool! Where’d you get a grindylow, sir?”
“In the Black Lake, naturally.”
“Oh, I didn’t know there were grindylows in it.” Which was kind of stupid of him, actually.
“Quite. As well as at least one kelpie and a colony of Mer. It’s really quite fascinating.”
Harry resolves to learn how to swim and how to speak Mer as soon as possible.
“Please, have a seat, Harry.”
“Do I know you?” Harry says as he sits. This man’s a Gryffindor. Might as well go the direct route and get it over with.
Lupin blinks. “Ah, why do you ask?”
“You have consistently used a familiar address with me. I was just curious.”
“I… no, we don’t know each other, but… I was a good friend of your parents.”
“Yeah, Sirius mentioned you, but I guessed you must not have known them that well, since I’ve never heard of you before.”
Not true, Harry knows Lupin was one of his dad’s best friends, but Sirius was beyond mad that Lupin never once tried to contact Harry and also managed to coexist with him in the same castle for months without saying a word.
And sure enough, Lupin looks gutted. “I… we were very close friends. Myself, James, Sirius, and… Peter.”
“Oh.” Harry does his best uninterested face and waits.
Lupin caves after half a minute. “Harry… it’s… do you have any questions about them?”
“Sirius told me you lot were bullies.”
“He—he said that?”
“Yeah.”
“We weren’t bullies.”
“Sure sounded like you were.”
Lupin coughs. “That’s… pranksters, Harry. We were pranksters.”
“Oh. Okay. So, if four Slytherins corner a single Gryffindor and dangle him upside down in the courtyard so his pants show, it’s a prank, right?”
“That’s—who told you about that incident?”
“Sirius. Who did you think?”
Harry knows the Slytherin in question was Snape. However, he hasn’t breathed a word of it to anyone, and doesn’t plan to. If he’s going to be Sirius’ confessor, okay, that’s a fair trade for an adult that has his back, but it’s Sirius and Snape’s secret to tell. Not Harry’s.
“Oh.” Lupin looks away.
“I did have one question, I guess. If you were such good friends, how come I’ve never heard of you before?”
“Some people thought it would be best for you to have no contact with the magical world. For your safety.”
“I wasn’t very safe in my aunt’s house, you know. From my aunt and uncle.”
“Harry, they’re your family.”
Now, where has Harry heard that refrain before? “Family doesn’t mean they have to like me, much less love me. I get on okay with my cousin now, but that’s it. And anyway, couldn’t you have gone Muggle for a week and come said hi? Or written me in the Muggle post?”
Lupin looks like a deer in the headlights. “Your aunt didn’t want—”
“You talked to her?”
“No, but the Headmaster—”
Lupin clams up and gets weird after that.
ooOoo
The Swooping Evils crawl out of their cocoons later than expected. Harry names the green and blue female Artemis and the red male with orange and yellow accents Apollo. He’s wanted a Swooping Evil ever since he read about how Newt Scamander had one that he trained to help him in combat situations. A MACUSA auror nearly got his brain eaten by one in the forties.
Hopefully the snakes won’t be too mad if they’re fed mammal corpses sans brain. Harry figures he can start buying pigs for Amos; pig brain is probably not that different-tasting from human, if pig meat tastes like human meat, and it might be a nice treat for the Swooping Evils. They like brains of all stripes but the more wrinkly the cortex the better.
Maybe he’ll do a study of whether they’re smarter if fed more advanced animal brain matter. How can he get, say, dolphin or chimpanzee brain in a humane way?
A problem for later. Pigs should be okay for now, they’re plenty smart. And at the moment, the Swooping Evils are so small they’ll just be eating rat and rabbit brains before Harry’s normal-sized snakes eat the rest of the bodies.
ooOoo
Harry gets really good prices on the rainbow boa hatchlings from some of the upper years. Of course, Harry doesn’t hand the little snakes over without some extensive and graphic warnings on what will happen if he hears about them being mistreated—and considering he can actually talk to them, his threats aren’t idle.
It helps that everyone’s been cautious around him and Theo ever since Rodrick Burke made some public comments about Mudblood-lovers and wound up sick for a week.
(Theo’s little mechanical snake was a really great attack vector for liquid potions like the one that compromises one’s immune system. Harry wishes he could tell Lord Gaunt about it, but their letters are mostly bland affairs discussing history and politics, neither of them willing to commit much more.)
ooOoo
“So you and Susan broke up?”
“God, you’re such a prat, Justin. We were never together.”
“Good to know. So you’ll go with me to the next Hogsmeade weekend?”
Harry flinches so hard he sprays ink all over his half-completed paper on the conjunction of iron cauldrons and Mars. “What?”
“You know. On a date.”
“But—but—” Harry’s mind reels. They’re boys. He knows that’s not okay—is Justin trying to trap him? No, that’s something the Hufflepuff would never do to a friend—but—
“Called it. Listen.” Justin looks around to make sure Padma and Theo aren’t back to their library table yet before leaning in. “Look, my parents are the progressive type, right? Free love and all that. I like boys. Never had a crush on a girl like the other blokes did in my primary sometimes, pulling pigtails and whatnot. Point is, I know some Muggles are, uh, not tolerant about that, and probably no one’s told you wizards don’t give a crap.”
Harry’s brain isn’t working. He just stares.
“So it’s okay for boys to date boys and girls to date boys,” Justin says, when it’s obvious Harry isn’t going to respond. “And get married. And if a bloke asks you to Hogsmeade, you can say yes if you like him and no one’s gonna care. All right?”
“Why, uh, why do you think I’d like a bloke?”
Justin gives him a very tired look. “Well, one, I have some suspicions, and the fact that you’re not outright denying this is sort of confirming them, and two, this isn’t so much about you as it is there’s a specific bloke I know wants to ask you. Not me. You’re a little too obsessed with creatures. No offense. I’m going to ask Malfoy.” He smiles, sharklike. “Mostly because I’m curious whether he’ll actually be reduced to speechless rage, or fall back on insults. Care to place a bet?”
“Er… I’ll pass.”
“Spoilsport. Fine.”
“Who’s… the bloke?”
Justin smirks. “Now that would be telling. I just wanted to make sure you didn’t have a panic attack on the spot.”
“I’m not sure I should thank you.”
“Don’t worry. I wasn’t expecting gratitude. Now, explain this bit about Snape’s essay, I don’t think I got it and Padma wouldn’t help me.”
ooOoo
Justin asks Malfoy to Hogsmeade and to everyone's shock Malfoy accepts.
"Pretty sure he was just too proud to say no," Justin says the evening after when everyone piles into one of the disused sixth floor guest suites. "Especially when I asked if he really thought the mud could rub off on him."
Padma shakes her head while the rest of them laugh. "Well, I turned down Ron Weasley and I’ll keep saying no. I will be peacefully alone in Slug & Jigger, thanks all the same."
ooOoo
Hedwig turns up with a gorgeous male Snowy and a letter from Eyelops dryly noting that Harry's owl is one of the pickiest they've ever seen and also they'll pay top galleon for Snowy chicks.
"That's my girl," Harry says proudly to Hedwig, ignoring how her new mate is getting feathers in Millicent's oatmeal. "Only the best for you. Now, how about a name? Hamlet?"
The male barks his approval.
Harry feeds him a strip of bacon and shoos them off. "Now I’ll need another owl for letters," he says with a sigh.
Millicent looks longingly at her bowl of ruined breakfast.
ooOoo
"Oi, Potter, wait up."
"Hi," Harry says, a little confused, as Tamsin Applebee draws alongside him in the corridor. He casts his mind back and finds no examples of them ever talking outside the occasional exchange of pleasantries in class.
"How's it going?"
"Er, good. You?"
"I'm alright. I wanted to ask you something." Oh god, he's blushing. Some neurons fire and Harry arrives at a terrifying conclusion just as Applebee opens his mouth again. "D'you want to go to Hogsmeade with me?"
"Like… on a date?"
The blush is creeping up Applebee’s ears now. "Yes, like a date."
"Um." Harry's never really given Tamsin Applebee a thought before. Inside he's screaming (inside Uncle Vernon's remembered voice bellows things about poufs) but—
But he's okay looking. If you noticed things like that about blokes. Which Harry does. Sometimes. He'd always thought it was normal and maybe he was just jealous on account of he's kind of skinny and short even if Hagrid lessons and quidditch have given him lots of lean muscles.
Maybe Harry is the type to notice.
Wait, bollocks, he needs to answer. "Sure," he blurts. "I mean, yes, that would be nice."
"Oh! Okay." Applebee seems surprised and Harry panics a bit. Was he supposed to say no?! "Uh, that's great, actually. I gotta say I thought you'd already have a date. Um. We can… we can go to the bookstore? And the pet shop?"
"Yes! I like the pet shop." Harry's probably blushing now too. Wait. Isn't Applebee on the Hufflepuff quidditch team? "Want to stop in at Booming Broomsticks too?"
"Totally! They have these new flight stabilizer attachments out for racing brooms—"
It's pathetic how relieved Harry is to hear that a real date isn't that different from going with Susan.
ooOoo
Sirius sends a letter via toucan telling Harry to keep the bird and that he's turning into a regular Lothario and Sirius couldn't be prouder.
The toucan gets the name Tomahawk. Harry confesses to Theo, deep in the bowels of his trunk, that he was afraid Sirius (and everyone else) would hate him for going with a boy.
"D'you like boys then?" says Theo in careful tones.
Harry shifts around in his (pilfered) armchair. "I… I guess? I dunno. I thought about kissing a bloke and… it sounds about like kissing a witch, anyway. I'm sort of curious but… I don't know if I want to kiss him specifically. Or anyone else specifically. I didn't really want to kiss Susan even though I think she's really pretty."
"That's all right," Theo says, and Harry's throat closes up a bit. "Not sure myself, either. There's a guy… but I don't think it's the right time."
"Oh. I'm sorry," Harry says. "I hope it works out with him."
Theo mutters something under his breath. "Yeah, anyway, I'm just going with Padma and Nev and Milly. Padma's afraid Weasley will stalk her the whole time."
Harry grins. "I learned this hex that makes someone's food always fall out of their hands so they have to eat face first. Wanna learn?"
"Oh, that's absolutely poetic."
ooOoo
The Hogsmeade weekend is an overall disaster.
Well, okay, it's not that bad, it's just that Harry's first kiss is seriously underwhelming. Tamsin is nice enough about it and says they should be friends because Harry seems cool. Harry takes him up on it. Having someone else to play pickup quidditch with is a great thing.
Harry's friends are depressingly indifferent to quidditch, on the whole.
Justin and Malfoy's meal at the Jugged Hare, Hogsmeade's nicest restaurant, turns into a contest to see who can be most passive aggressive about their money, at least according to Justin. The Hufflepuff cheerfully reports that it resulted in a draw. "I've been doing the passive aggressive "I'm richer than you" routine since I could talk, guys. Besides, compared to my family, the Malfoys are new money." He smiles a smile that Harry is almost sure Justin learned from a goblin. "Which he did not appreciate me pointing out."
Probably the worst off is Padma. Weasley had cornered her in Honeydukes when she went to order another round of chips and butterbeer, and he'd proceeded to insult her family, ethnicity, and Hogwarts house in the span of two minutes and without even trying.
She'd slapped him.
At least watching Weasley fail to eat at dinner is a nice note on which to end the day.
ooOoo
Harry gets his automagic cage-cleaning project going just in time to submit it as his year-end project in Ancient Runes and Arithmancy. It's great—now instead of buying a generalized system, he can just buy the power rune circles and hook them up to cleaning enchantments he's custom made for his own habitats. Just in time, too, because Hedwig's made it clear she's ready to nest and Harry knows baby birds are messy.
Professors Vector and Babbling are impressed.
The Runes written exam, testing his mastery of his new language, isn't too bad. Arithmancy is stressful but manageable, same for Charms, and Harry breezes right through Potions, Care, and Astronomy, the latter thanks to Susan's tutoring. Transfiguration and History seem a little… dubious… but he's confident he managed an A in both at least.
DADA is unorthodox. Harry successfully gets past a hinkypunk, a bog infested with redcaps, a pond containing three grindylows, another pond with a kelpie, and climbs into a temporary hut containing, Professor Lupin warns, something in a box.
Obviously that's got to be a boggart.
Harry climbs in and opens the box. A grey, scabby, greasy hand emerges. He thinks of the night before, curled up in his trunk with Achilles and Gabby draped over him and his creatures' noises in the background and Theo studying in the second chair.
"Expecto patronum!"
A white shape bursts from his wand. Harry whoops as it charges the boggart and chases it back into the box.
His patronus turns and looks at him. "Wow," Harry breathes.
It's a panther. Huge and deadly and beautiful.
"Excellent, Harry," says Professor Lupin with a pained smile. "Full marks.”
"Thanks, sir."
ooOoo
On the second to last day of term, some older Ravenclaw works out that Lupin is a werewolf, and within hours it's spread over the school. Harry goes and nicks the grindylow from his office while Lupin is in Dumbledore's office.
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