“Potter.”
Harry glanced up, welcomed Bole to his table with a nod. “Bole.” She still paused for permission in every class even though they’d been in Transfiguration together all year.
He’d be lying if he said he didn’t enjoy it.
Something seemed a little different today, though. She sat down with him and Theo and they took notes and moved on to the practical—Harry got the spell on the second attempt and swallowed a smug grin as McGonagall grudgingly awarded Slytherin points—and there was definitely something on Bole’s mind the whole time. Harry helped both of them with the spell while wondering whether he should wait her out and force her to bring it up, or just end the tension and ask himself.
In the end Bole caved. As they were packing up, she said quietly, “Potter… there’s a pretty odd girl in my House. First year. Luna Lovegood. Brilliant as they come but completely loopy, and she needs—friends. People. Can I bring her on Saturday?”
Brilliant outsiders. How perfect. “Go right ahead.” He paused. “How do she and Kershaw get along?”
Bole grimaced. “He tends to leave her out like the others.”
Harry shrugged. “Well, maybe they’ll both get a friend out of it.”
“Like you care about that,” Theo muttered behind him.
“Outcome still the same,” Bole pointed out.
Both boys stared at her.
Bole grinned. “Just because I want no part of the Slytherin games doesn’t mean I don’t know how to play.”
“I like her,” Theo said to Harry. Bole laughed and they finished packing up and going to their next class.
-----
Potter slid into a seat across from her in the common room. “Miss Davis,” he said with a smile.
Tracy looked up at him from her book, tried to disguise her wariness as flirtation. She’d done her share of practicing like the other second-year girls but unlike them she’d never aim it at Potter, not for real. “Potter.”
“Vihaan’s essay?” he said.
“Yes,” Tracy said, frowning at her parchment and textbook. “It’s frustrating.”
“Try page two hundred twelve,” he suggested. “There’s a footnote that helped me.”
Tracy flipped to the page in question, scanned the footnotes, and sure enough there was a reference to a fifth use of the aguamenti charm. “Thanks,” she said.
“Of course.”
Potter sat in silence for a few minutes. Tracy worked on her essay and tried to figure out what he wanted.
“Your aunt works in runes, I think?” he said finally.
“Yeah,” Tracy said even though she knew he already knew the answer. “She’s one of the leading researchers in Britain.”
“Perfect.” Potter leaned back and crossed one leg over the other. She could never figure out how an undersized twelve-year-old boy had the confidence and body language of someone way older. “I have an opportunity she might be interested in. Would you mind writing her, just to let her know I’ll be in touch?”
“Not at all,” Tracy said with a slight smile. “I’m sure she’d be delighted.”
“It’s somewhat… confidential,” Potter said delicately. “I’m sure you know how slow it can be to go through the Experimental Charms and Magical Research Committee.”
The picture got a little clearer. “Believe me, Aunt Niamh has had her disagreements with the Committee, she’s not a fan.”
He nodded, and smiled a bit. “Perhaps you might mention that, when you write her?”
“I’ll do it tonight,” Tracy said.
“Thanks ever so much, Miss Davis.”
Tracy smiled back at him. “Aren’t we on a first name basis by now?”
Potter sat up a little straighter and looked at her with more interest. She was still figuring out the rules of their unspoken arrangement, testing if and how much she could push back against him. Nott did, all the time, but it was one thing for Nott to treat Potter almost as an equal and another thing entirely for Tracy to do it.
“I suppose we are, then, Tracy,” he said slowly. “Call me Harry.”
So she could show some spine without messing this up too badly, thank Circe. Tracy’s smile widened and she returned to her essay.
Aunt Niamh,
I heard from Mum in her last letter that you’ve achieved another Mastery, in Sanskrit runes this time. Congratulations! I was going to ask you if you think signing up for Runes next year is a good choice. Obviously it’s a really useful branch of magic but is it useful to people who don’t get to Mastery level? I don’t think academia is quite my thing.
Remember I told you I’m sort of friends with Harry Potter? He and I have gotten a bit closer this year. (Not like that, though, and if Mum mentions anything to you about tacit betrothals, PLEASE shut her down. I am so not interested I can’t even begin to tell you. He’s not my type. At all.) Anyway, Harry mentioned something to me about a runes project he thinks you’d be interested in taking on. He was a little cagey on the details, but I got the sense it’s a really interesting opportunity. It’s also confidential. My guess would be someone’s doing rune work without ECMRC approval and they need off-the-books help sorting it out. I told him you’re not a fan of the Committee and you’d probably be happy to help out. He’s going to write you himself, I think, but I just wanted to give you a warning.
How was your holiday in Marrakesh? I’ve heard the markets there are incredible, even the Muggle ones. Mum said we might get to go this summer!
Love,
Tracy
-----
Rune Master Davis,
Please forgive my forwardness in writing you, but I’m a school friend of your niece Tracy and she’s mentioned several times that her aunt is an accomplished Master of Runes. I’m a second year, so I haven’t been able to take Runes in Hogwarts yet, but the subject seems really interesting, especially since I witnessed some of the uses it can be put to this summer.
I also saw the effects of the Experimental Charms and Magical Research Committee’s restrictions on runes work. The people I spoke to have what seems to be a really complicated rune-based enchantment, but they can’t legitimize it or expand their business because a lot of it was done without ECMRC approval. Tracy hinted that you might be interested in studying the enchantment they created in exchange for helping to streamline it and make the whole thing official. Would you be willing to agree to a confidential appraisal of their work? I can arrange things from their end. I’m sure you understand why I’m not offering any details just yet—if you’re at all uncomfortable with the situation, of course you can decline. I would really appreciate it if you at least consider the situation.
Sincerely Yours,
Heir Harry of House Potter
“Clever,” Theo said. “Cleverly worded, at least. Why are we doing this for some random optometrist? Just ‘cause she was nice to you?”
Harry folded the letter and slipped it into an envelope. “I prefer to pay my debts, and the optometrist was good to me,” he said. “But no, that’s not the whole picture. I’m a celebrity with a name and no public image at all. My situation means I can’t do anything to openly create one.”
“So you’re starting with the normal people,” Theo said, nodding.
“Exactly.” Harry addressed the envelope to Runes Master Niamh Davis and handed it to Aoife. The snowy owl vanished from the owlery in a flurry of wings. “I’d rather they not talk about Harry Potter, who thinks he’s too good for the normal people and stays secluded all the time. Harry Potter needs to be genuinely liked.”
Theo smirks. “It’ll also help when you get older and the paparazzi goes to work.”
“You think they will?” Harry said. The Muggle paparazzi were pretty bad, he’d heard enough popular culture at Muggle school to get the idea that celebrity figures were relentlessly hounded, but wizarding media was different. For one thing, there was literally only one major newspaper in all of magical Britain.
“Oh, absolutely,” Theo said. “They’re limited by you being a kid and never going out in public, not to mention approval of your guardian which we all know is about as likely to happen as Snape singing an aria, but trust me, when you start doing things other than going to class, people will notice. There’s been something like three dozen books published about you in the last decade?”
“Seriously?” Harry stared at him.
“All useless dragon dung,” Theo said dismissively. “But people buy it.”
“Huh.”
“What are you writing now?”
“Letter to the optometrist. Can I borrow your owl?”
Theo whistled Dunlaith down from the rafters while Harry dug his second letter out of his bag.
Dear Malinra,
I hope you and Dake are doing well, and that your business is, too. You no doubt guessed that I don’t spend much time in public, disguised or otherwise, so I’m extremely grateful that replacing my glasses was such a great experience. I was worried for a while that having to reveal who I really am would be a mess, and it wasn’t, so I’d like to thank you for that.
Since I spoke to you and Dake, I’ve been thinking about the ECMRE and the problems it causes people, and while I can’t do anything about the ECMRE just yet, I think I might have a solution in your case. A school friend of mine has an aunt who’s an accomplished Runes Master. She’s reportedly quite opposed to the ECMRE after some bad experiences with it and I could reach out to her to see if she’d be willing to drop by and perform a confidential appraisal of the runic enchantments on your shop. In exchange for studying your work, and adding her name to the ECMRE report, she could help you streamline and legitimize what you’ve done so you can expand your business and not get charged for breaking experimental magic regulations. I would be very vague, and I’m quite certain that if she said no that she wouldn’t be able to figure out who I was talking about. Would you be willing to look into making this arrangement?
Sincerely,
Harry Potter
“You’re taking a risk,” Theo said. “What if they say no?”
“Then I’ll tell Runes Master Davis they backed out,” Harry said. “It wouldn’t be that big a problem. But I’m pretty sure they’ll say yes.”
***
They did.
Harry couldn’t be there, but after a few letters back and forth, he arranged for Malinra and Dake to get in touch with Niamh Davis.
A week later, in the middle of October, Aoife and Malinra’s barn owl descended on him during breakfast. The other Slytherin second-years unsubtly eyed him while he read them both. No one had missed last year that Harry Potter never got any mail, and now suddenly two owls in one day.
“Fan letters, Potter?” Malfoy sneered.
“What, you jealous?” Tracy said.
“I prefer not fearing for my life in public,” Malfoy said.
“What, you don’t?” Harry said in feigned surprise. “I mean, with your family’s popularity and all.”
It felt like everyone reeled back except Theo and Tracy. Vane actually choked on her pumpkin juice. Harry noticed two of the orphanage kids suddenly watching him from among the first years and sneaked a subtle wink their direction while everyone was staring at Malfoy.
The blonde prat sputtered for a second. “I—my father has nothing to do with Mother and me anymore,” he said stiffly.
“Only because he’s not allowed visitors,” Parkinson murmured sweetly.
Harry barely hid his surprise at that. She was really breaking from Malfoy’s clique, if she was publicly sabotaging him like this.
“My father was a murderer,” Malfoy said like the words tasted foul. “I’m hardly the celebrity target that you make, Potter.”
“Mm, no, but at least the people that want to kill me are all either dead or in prison,” Harry said.
Theo grinned. On the other side of him from Harry, Crabbe leaned away a little. “History is written by the victors and all.”
“So not you, then,” Bulstrode butted in.
“Not my father,” Theo said. No one missed the wording or the way his fingers played over the knife next to his plate.
Greengrass cut the tension with a comment about McGonagall’s expression being more pinched than usual and did anyone know why the Hufflepuff hourglass had dropped thirty points since yesterday?
Harry tried not to smile into his breakfast.
-----
Deirdre was careful in the Great Hall. The Slytherin table, during mealtimes, was a microcosm of House politics if you knew what to look for, although they had to be more subtle than usual since they were in public. This morning had been uneventful, other than Warrington making a brief and unsuccessful play against Pascal, who occupied a decent place in the House hierarchy.
Then her peripheral vision caught a small but visible motion as every single second-year recoiled from the table and from Potter in unison.
Deirdre tuned out her companions and eyed the younger kids. It was hard to tell, from down here, what exactly was going on—first and second years sat at the end of the table nearest the staff, and then the middle of it was occupied by hierarchical chaff, while the third of the table by the doors was where real political maneuvering happened. She was pretty well situated in the hierarchy and preparing to move higher so there were quite a lot of people between her and Potter, but she could see it was some kind of spat between him and Malfoy. Nott was enjoying every second of whatever was going on.
“My sister told me some interesting things about him,” Pascal murmured at her elbow, quietly enough that no one else could hear.
“That so,” Deirdre said. The Haighs were Nott vassals, a potential conflict of interest she’d ignored up until now because the Notts were too outcast to have any political influence at all. With their Heir joining up with Potter, that could change, but it hadn’t yet, and in the meantime Pascal might have some useful information.
He nodded very slightly. “Good on a broom. Clever. Creepy. He impressed Viscount Nott.”
“Did he now.” Deirdre eyed Potter; someone had defused the situation and the second years looked more normal. “Surprising.”
“I didn’t think anyone could,” Pascal said. “I mean, it’s kind of moot; he’s too young to have any bearing on us in-House.”
“Maybe,” Deirdre said slowly, “but it’s Potter. The rules are a bit different for him whether he likes it or not. And even if he does stay apolitical, and doesn’t challenge above his age, we should pay attention to what he does after.”
Pascal nodded slightly. “Fair point. I’ll keep an eye on him.”
Deirdre agreed, thinking, we all will. Or at least, anyone with half a brain.
-----
When Harry first slid into a seat near the orphanage Slytherins, they didn’t notice him.
In fairness, he’d applied a Notice-Me-Not charm, his new favorite spell, but he didn’t think it was a very strong one because he’d only just learned it. “Draco Malfoy is an absolute wanker,” Annabeth Fawley was complaining as he perched on the edge of the couch.
“Shh,” Samantha Carran hissed. “Voice down, we’re in the bloody common room.”
“Like anyone bothers to pay attention to us,” Thaddeus Rowle mumbled.
Harry leaned over and dropped his Notice-Me-Not charm. “Work on your handwriting,” he advised Rowle, pointing at the boy’s half-finished History essay and ignoring how they all jumped. “Vance can be a little uptight about it.”
All three kids stared at him.
Harry slid off the edge of the couch and onto the seat like normal, forcing Rowle to shift over and let him join them. “What did Malfoy do that’s got you in a snit?” he asked Fawley.
“What’s it to you?” she said.
“I’m not much of a fan of him either,” Harry said lazily, leaning back and grinning at her. Carran blushed a little bit. Interesting. “And everyone loves gossip.”
“Let’s just say he thinks not being able to afford imported, tailored robes is a character flaw,” Rowle sneered. He and Fawley were glaring at Harry with enough heat to boil water.
Harry smirked. Tracy had overheard that conversation and mentioned it to him, and he’d jumped at the opportunity. “And what did you say?”
Their scowls were answer enough.
“I find a good retort in that situation is that you’d rather have well-looked-after secondhand robes than get lazy about looking after your things,” Harry said. “Or just point out that if he hasn’t earned the money that paid for those robes it hardly makes him any more interesting, it just means his father is, and he’s done fuck all to live up to that.”
“What would you know about secondhand robes,” Rowle snarled. Fawley elbowed him in the ribs but not quickly enough to stop the words.
Harry swallowed a predatory smile. This was going just how he’d wanted. “Pay more attention,” he sneered, plucking at his own robes. “Secondhand, with growth charms so they’ll wear out in three years but fit that whole time. Malfoy’s been giving me grief for it since our Sorting.”
“You’re Harry Potter, why the hell do you have secondhand robes?” Rowle demanded.
“Shut up,” Carran hissed.
“You might want to think about learning not to blurt things out,” Harry told him with a raised eyebrow. “People will call you a Gryffindor. And as to why, well. It’s a long story but let’s just say you’re not the only war orphans this world forgot about as soon as Riddle died.”
They stared at him, masks all forgotten in their shock.
Fawley recovered quickest. “No one forgot about you,” she sneered.
He shrugged. “They didn’t care enough to look for me, either. I find myself not very fond of a system that lets children slip through the cracks to the point that coming to Hogwarts was the first time I’d been allowed to eat decent food and as much as I wanted.” That would get the point across about his childhood without giving away too much. “What I’m trying to say here is that people will be stupid and go for your obvious weaknesses, but you can anticipate that, and prepare yourself. As long as you actually take decent care of your robes,” he added, with a pointed look at the wrinkles in Carran’s sleeves, and slipped a thin book onto the table with a wink.
-----
Annabeth watched Harry Potter walk away, mind spinning.
“D’you think…” Thaddeus trailed off but both girls knew what he meant.
“His robes are secondhand,” Samantha said. “You can see it in the stitching and hems, they’ve been reenchanted at least once already.”
“How did they let Harry Potter end up in the kind of childhood that he didn’t always get enough food?” Annabeth said. “This makes no sense.”
Thaddeus frowned. “Well… he said hidden away. Makes it seem like it was supposed to be a safety thing and they miscalculated?”
“Might he be… Muggle-raised?” Samantha whispered. “I mean… if they wanted to hide him…”
“No way,” Thaddeus said reflexively. “Like they’d give Harry Potter to filthy Muggles.”
“Shh,” Annabeth hissed. Thaddeus was like a brother and she’d suspected they’d be in Slytherin together for ages, but he really needed to think before he spoke sometimes. “Not so loudly.”
“We’re in the Slytherin common room, we can say filthy Muggles if we like,” Thaddeus said, but his voice was a little lower.
Samantha rubbed her nose. “No, not really, ‘cause then someone might overhear and then it’d be known that we said filthy Muggles. Just because it’s safer to say that stuff here doesn’t make it safe.”
“If Potter wasn’t in our orphanage…” Annabeth said, cutting off their argument, “then he had to have been somewhere that… I mean, it fits. He’s… not like the other second-years. Not… right.”
They looked across the common room, at Potter sitting in an armchair. Nott and Davis sat in other chairs on either side of him. He was shorter than Nott, wasn’t wearing tailored robes like Malfoy two tables over, and the edges of the textbook open in front of him were ragged and worn. But there was also something about his bearing, something… wary, like he thought he might get attacked any second.
“Okay, good point,” Samantha said.
“There’s still no way he was with Muggles,” Thaddeus said.
Annabeth shook her head. “It seems crazy but… it’s a pretty good way to hide a magical baby you don’t want anyone to find, and it’s the Muggle-lovers in charge.”
Samantha and Thaddeus stared at her, then at Potter some more.
“Don’t say anything,” Annabeth said quietly. “To him or… anyone. If we’re wrong we’d look stupid and if we’re right he wouldn’t be happy we spread it around.”
Thaddeus looked around uneasily. “I heard he did something to Greg Goyle last year… strung him up by the armpits in the common room for trying to get into Potter’s things.”
“There was that thing with the Gryffindors and the midnight duel, too,” Samantha added. “Emma Vane told me about it. She didn’t know details but he tricked them somehow, cost them like a hundred fifty House points…”
“And then that duel with Bulstrode,” Annabeth finished. They’d all heard the rumors about that. Wandless magic, and he’d won even though Bulstrode broke the rules and used Dark magic in a first-year duel. Annabeth had fought five unofficial duels so far—the other Slytherins were especially testing toward her and Thaddeus and Samantha because, like Potter pointed out, they went for easy weaknesses.
“Yeah, let’s not piss him off,” Thaddeus agreed. “Oh, Annabeth, I was going to tell you—Mercer told me Potter runs some kind of Potions study group since we didn’t get to practice brewing outside of school like our classmates.”
“Really,” Samantha said. She loved potions and it was a sore point with all of them that they couldn’t practice outside of school. They had it near as bad as the muggleborns—the caretakers at the orphanage were indifferent to the kids at best but at least they were magical themselves.
Thaddeus nodded. “Potter’s got a couple of Hufflepuffs and a Ravenclaw that do it with him, and Nott sometimes. The Ravenclaw—she’s got a brother in Slytherin—she brought Mercer along.”
“And you think we should go,” Annabeth said.
“It can’t hurt to ask Mercer,” Samantha said. “I’d love to go.”
Annabeth shrugged. “I might not, my Potions grade is fine and I’m not that interested, but… we can ask Mercer to bring it up sometime.”
Samantha grinned. “Try and tell me I can’t practice, huh? Idiots.”
“And it’ll be good to have an in with Potter,” Thaddeus said quietly.
“What’s this, then?” Samantha said, poking the book on the table with her wand. It didn’t immediately do anything, which was probably a good sign, but also not a guarantee of safety.
Annabeth and Thaddeus both cast a few diagnostic charms on it, the only ones they knew, which they’d had to learn pretty much as soon as coming here. Thaddeus’ last name and Annabeth’s weren’t very well liked and they’d already gotten cursed mail. The book came up clean, and they opened it cautiously. Samantha, always the loudest of them, started laughing.
Reading over her shoulder, Annabeth saw it was a book on basic household charms.
“What the bloody—” Thaddeus hissed.
Annabeth cut him off with an elbow to the ribs and pointed at a section of the table of contents someone had underlined in green ink. Clothing Charms—Neatening, Ironing, Freshening, Etc.
Samantha tucked the book into her bag with the kind of covetous glance that said she’d have the thing memorized inside of a week.
Annabeth went back to her Charms reading, after she noted that Thaddeus did start minding his handwriting on the History essay like Potter said. The fact that he offered advice might mean he wanted to… ally with them. Or something. And he seemed to get the secondhand robes thing.
She glanced up at Potter again and caught him eyeing her calculatingly. Annabeth raised an eyebrow, caught an edge of a fleeting cold grin before he went back to his own homework.
Honestly, Potter unnerved her, but she’d never be able to ally with anyone like Malfoy anyway. He was an elitist snob. And Annabeth might be poor and live in an orphanage but she’d be damned if she let that hold her back all her life.
-----
Mercer Kershaw asked, hesitantly, if his friends Samantha Carran, Annabeth Fawley, and Thaddeus Rowle might come to Potions tutoring. Harry said yes, of course they can and pretended not to notice Theo’s evil little smile in the corner.
Portia—he’d gotten onto first names with her now, decided that the caustic, observant Ravenclaw was worth keeping around—just muttered something about Slytherin politics that only he heard.
-----
“Potter is such a wanker,” Draco snarled.
Pansy didn’t even look up at him, which was annoying. Vince and Greg and Millicent agree with him, and even though Millicent’s got no political clout at all right now, she’s valuable support or will be in the future. Draco was actually glad Potter took her down so thoroughly last year because now she’s beholden to him instead of them being equals. He can play it so she’ll be stuck there by the time he gets to the top of the Slytherin hierarchy, but honestly he wanted Pansy, not Millicent. Pansy was more subtle.
Also, there was the thing between their families that no one knew the status of.
“A wanker,” Greg agreed when no one else said anything.
Draco huffed and sits back on his couch. His, because he was a Malfoy and a Black and Father might have been on the losing side of a war but that didn’t make their family legacy any less impressive, and that meant once he claimed a spot in the Slytherin common room people left it alone. He was a second year so the older set didn’t care about impacting him at all but still. No one in the first or second years would challenge him, least of all the kids from the orphanage, whose families hadn’t managed to survive at all. Draco looked disgustedly over at them. Fawley and Rowle were Sacred Twenty-Eight names, and the last of each family was huddled in a corner with their schoolbooks spread around them being ignored by the entire House.
“You know, it might be smarter to ally with them,” Pansy murmured, following his gaze.
“No way,” Draco sneered. “They’ve got no families, nothing to their names.”
“Their Sacred Twenty-Eight names.”
He nodded. “It’s a disgrace, those children being in an orphanage.”
“Yeah,” Pansy said, “and they’d probably appreciate a Malfoy reaching out to them.”
“You’re joking, right?” He shuddered. “Aren’t there Muggles working in the orphanage? A few? They’ve probably given those kids lice or something. I mean, two of them are well bred at least, but Carran’s halfblood, and they don’t even know who her wizarding parent was. For Rowle and Fawley—breeding only does so much. They’ve got to prove themselves before I’d lower myself to that.”
“Outside Slytherin, you’ve barely got more influence than they do,” Greengrass murmured.
“But I will. I’m still a Malfoy,” Draco said. Mother said it was crass to remind people that the Malfoys were technically Earls, on par with the Blacks and a step above even the rest of the Sacred Twenty-Eight, so he didn’t say it now even though he wanted to. They’d be thinking it, though. Of course they were. The Malfoys’ fortunes had fallen but they were still superior.
Greengrass shrugged like it didn’t matter to her at all.
Draco concluded that the others were more interested in doing their homework than complaining about Potter, so he yanked out his Charms textbook with a scowl. It was hard to concentrate, though. He glared over at the back of Potter’s head, a few tables away in the section he and Nott and Davis had claimed for themselves.
Wanker.
-----
Luna looked around the classroom. This was quite interesting, more so than people usually were. For one thing, her fellow students generally were too silly to put together a session like this, with people from several Houses. For another, she could tell by smell that several cauldrons were bubbling with potions they hadn’t done in class. And for a third, it was Harry of Potter leading the group. He was particularly interesting, insofar as any person could be.
At the moment, he was studying her and pretending not to while she unpacked her potions things next to Portia of Bole. Granted, he was quite a bit more subtle about it than most, but she liked pretending her situational awareness was nonexistent and he probably thought she wasn’t paying attention. That was slightly disappointing. She’d hoped he would catch on.
Well. He was only a year older, after all, and they hadn’t even properly introduced themselves. Maybe he would catch on after he spent more time with her.
“Second-years, we’re brewing this past Friday’s potion again, to correct any mistakes we made,” Harry of Potter said, laying out his potions tools very precisely. She noted that they were secondhand and in good condition, while his cauldron was mostly new. Also that the other children followed his lead instinctively, even the other first-years, who hadn’t been working with him very long. “Make sure the preservation jars for your salamander blood were sealed right—if it’s not fresh, the Strengthening Solution will be about as powerful as a cup of coffee. First years, what potion did you do this week?”
“Sleeping Draught,” Mercer Kershaw said. Luna had not paid him any attention until Portia hesitantly asked if she’d like to join their Potions study group, because he had in no way involved himself with her life. She studied him now because the people collecting around Harry of Potter were quite an odd group.
Harry of Potter nodded. “If you have questions, feel free to ask. I’ll keep an eye on you.”
He seemed perfectly polite, she supposed. A bit cold, a bit rigidly controlled.
Portia of Bole, Zacharias of Smith, and Neville of Longbottom were working on their Strengthening Solutions. Luna watched them for a few minutes while her water slowly came to a boil. Theodore of Nott was lurking in the corner reading a book and unsettling everyone, though she couldn’t tell if he was doing it on purpose. He seemed like a generally unsettling person. Luna liked being able to predict people, and he was unpredictable.
“Lovegood.”
She looked up at Harry of Potter. “Yes, that’s my name.”
He raised one eyebrow.
“Were you asking a question?” Luna said, very innocently, because she suspected he did not generally use question marks and might be irritated by someone calling him on it.
Harry of Potter only raised his second eyebrow and said, “I wanted to get your attention.”
“You have it,” Luna said, and then considered. “Most of it. There are Nargles in the room.”
“…Nargles,” he said.
Neville of Longbottom’s potion gurgled ominously. Portia of Bole and Zacharias of Smith rushed to help him. The other first years, orphanage children and already friends, had forgotten her already, like her classmates tended to do. Luna nodded very seriously.
“What are Nargles?”
“Mischievous spirits,” she said happily. No one ever asked, which made a nice change. Perhaps he was more interesting than she’d thought. “Impulsive spirits. They infect mistletoe, you know, that’s why people kiss under it when normally they wouldn’t.”
Harry of Potter leaned back and studied her. Luna realized, rather abruptly, that she was doing the thing again that made people think she was crazy. It was difficult to tell, because as much as she liked watching people she couldn’t seem to understand them, and certainly not how to interact with them. He wasn’t giving her the crazy look, though. Two months into term and she was already familiar with that one. It was probably why Daddy never allowed her to play much with other children. “Have you ever seen one?”
“Yes,” she said. “There’s one now, look.” Luna pointed at Zacharias of Smith, who had gotten impatient with his salamander blood and poured far too much into his cauldron because he didn’t tip the vial slowly.
“Impulsive,” Harry of Potter said, “and mischievous. Like sprites?”
Luna smiled wider. He was interesting. “I suppose… sprites live in doorknobs, though. And tree-knots. Small places. Nargles float about, and they’re invisible. I’m trying to discover how to keep them away.”
Harry of Potter nodded very slowly. “Do let me know what you learn.”
“Oh, I will,” she said. “Knowledge should be shared. I’m going to write a book someday.”
“I look forward to it,” he said.
Luna remembered to look closely for a bit of mockery. She’d been training herself into the habit, since Ginny of Weasley told her condescendingly that the other children were making fun of her with their questions, not actually curious. Harry of Potter didn’t seem like he was mocking her, though.
Sleeping Draughts were boring, so she deliberately skipped an ingredient and then stirred the wrong way. It spat sparks and turned green instead of the blue it should be. Luna hummed and traced a rune she’d seen on a book cover over the potion with her wand. Its surface began to shimmer.
“That’s not a Sleeping Draught,” Mercer Kershaw said, eyeing her cauldron. The other three, whose names Luna had forgotten to remember, looked between her and her cauldron curiously.
“No,” Luna agreed. “Not anymore, at least.”
“Are you experimenting?”
She examined her potion for a few seconds and then dropped in one of her hairs. The shimmer went away. “Sort of.”
“Why sort of?” one of the other first-year girls said suspiciously.
“Experimenting implies a plan,” Luna said, only paying partial attention. The longer she stirred the greener the potion got. “I don’t have one.”
“…don’t blow us up, please,” the other girl said. This one was the leader of their little group, Luna could see, even though she’d been pretty quiet up until now. Her family name started with F, she thought.
If she was going to keep coming to these things, she should probably know who they were. “What are your names?” Luna asked, fixing her eyes on them. If her attention wandered she might not remember.
They exchanged startled glances. “Annabeth Fawley, Heir of Fawley,” the leader said slowly.
“Thaddeus Rowle, Heir of Rowle,” drawled the Slytherin boy. He was looking at her like she was something stuck to the bottom of his shoe, and therefore not worth his time.
“Samantha Carran,” the last girl said. Luna wondered if she was aware of the way her chin lifted in preemptive defense, or how Thaddeus of Rowle and Annabeth of Fawley angled themselves unconsciously a little closer.
Mercer Kershaw opened his mouth. “Er, d’you…”
“I remember you,” Luna said. “You were there last week when Marley and Katya took my trunk.”
He flushed a dull red.
Samantha Carran and Annabeth of Fawley watched this curiously, but Thaddeus of Rowle just went back to his potion and ignored them. He was, Luna decided, rather unpleasant, but she forgave him some of his unpleasantness after seeing how he angled to protect Samantha Carran against people who were rude because she wasn’t noble. They had grown up in an orphanage and she didn’t think it was a very nice place. Thaddeus of Rowle perhaps had a right to be unpleasant toward unfamiliar people.
“Lovegood,” Annabeth of Fawley began.
“Oh, Luna’s fine,” Luna said.
“Luna, then.” Annabeth of Fawley did not invite Luna to use her first name in return, but that was okay, Daddy said Slytherins were always more suspicious than they had to be at first. “Would you like to join our study group? We meet on Sunday nights, to finish our weekend homework.”
It would probably be good for her to have a study group. Luna often needed a reminder to finish her homework; there was so much time on the weekends it was easy to get distracted by more interesting things than essays. “I would like that,” she said.
Thaddeus of Rowle rolled his eyes. Luna frowned in his general direction for a moment.
“We meet in the library after lunch,” Samantha Carran said. “Usually around one.”
“Okay.” Luna murmured a spell Mummy taught her when she was very little, to make ink, and wrote a reminder on the inside of her arm with her wand tip. Otherwise she might forget.
Samantha Carran watched, and then sidled a little closer. “What are you doing with your potion?” she asked hesitantly. “I like potions.”
Luna looked at her for a few seconds, while feeling the potion bubble. Not with her hands but with her mind, the part of her that was tuned to the world and the ideas that made it up. Not many people knew anymore that runes were the basis of all magic, including potions. Luna did and she listened to them. She didn’t know if she could explain to someone else what she was doing with her potion, if they couldn’t hear the runes themselves, but she might as well try. She shifted to the side and let Samantha Carran come closer and started writing down what she was feeling.
-----
Harry watched Luna Lovegood integrate with the other first-years. He hadn’t been sure about her, for all he kind of lit into Theo for dismissing her out of hand. The orphanage children he understood much better than this girl with the owl-like grey eyes, and he wasn’t entirely surprised other people thought she was crazy, but there was something else going on in her head that interested him. Harry didn’t think she was crazy. Just that she looked at the world differently from other people.
Nargles, for Merlin’s sake. He’d thought she was messing with him until he made the connection to Smith’s rash mistake. Now he thought it was either a metaphor, or maybe she really did believe it was a mischievous spritelike creature that made people get careless and impulsive, and honestly it didn’t matter. Not when he could tell she was also intelligent, in her own weird way. And lonely, isolated, cast-off by others, unaware yet that it bothered her. He suspected it would as she got older. He suspected Luna Lovegood could be very useful.
-----
Annabeth was surprised when Luna Lovegood actually showed up the next day, looking more like she was a bit of pollen blown into the library on accident than a girl who’d walked there on purpose. She blinked owlish eyes at Annabeth as she sat down. “Am I early?”
“No, the others are just late,” Annabeth said. Best not to clarify they’d seen a pair of Ravenclaw second-years wandering off alone and gone to take revenge for some teasing the orphanage crew got earlier that week. The orphanage kids didn’t always get along when they were younger, but faced with mockery from all sides in Hogwarts, she’d found it much easier to befriend those like Mercer and Oriana who Annabeth’s crew hadn’t been close with before.
“Are we doing any subject in particular?” Lovegood asked.
“What do you need to work on?” Annabeth said.
“Transfiguration,” said Lovegood dreamily. “Professor McGonagall said if I don’t start turning in more of my homework assignments she’ll have to start giving me detention.”
Annabeth blinked. “You just… skip assignments? And don’t get detention?”
“Points lost, but most of the Ravenclaws don’t care, it happens to all of us. Apparently we don’t win the House Cup very often,” Lovegood said. “Have you gotten detention?”
“For turning in an essay that was too long,” Annabeth said. “It was six inches longer than it had to be, because I like Transfiguration.”
The words snapped out with more acid than she expected. Annabeth narrowed her eyes at Lovegood. The girl made it too easy to talk to her, simply because she didn’t seem like she actually cared all that much.
“That’s odd,” Lovegood said, and yeah, she definitely looked like she didn’t care other than how odd it was.
“Yes.” Annabeth shuffled one essay under the other more angrily than she meant to. “And that Mud—gleborn Ritchie Coote turned one in that was eight inches too long and McGonagall gave him points for effort.”
Thinking about it made her as boilingly angry as she had been that day. Annabeth shut her ice and reined herself in.
“How irritating,” Lovegood mused. “Have you kept doing it? To see how long she keeps it up.”
Annabeth snorted. “I don’t have a death wish.”
Lovegood didn’t question this, either because she’d lost interest or figured out what Annabeth meant. If she made a habit of costing Slytherin reputation and points like that, she’d face worse in-House than petty impromptu first-year duels and the absolute indifference of the older kids.
Thaddeus and Oriana showed up in five minutes, both sporting mussed hair and mean grins. Lovegood looked at them. “I don’t know you,” she said, before either of them could speak.
“Oriana Grader,” Oriana said without missing a beat. “You’re Loony Lovegood.”
“We met her at Harry Potter’s study group,” Thaddeus said unhappily. He flopped into a seat and scowled at Lovegood. Annabeth kicked him under the table and mouthed, be more subtle.
“Huh.” Oriana sat down and frowned at Luna. “So are you crazy? Everyone says you’re crazy.”
“Everyone?” Lovegood said. Oriana didn’t look unsettled even though having Lovegood’s full attention like that was really unsettling. Gryffindor nerve. “I hadn’t realized everyone knew me.”
“It’s an exaggeration,” Oriana snapped.
“Oh. I don’t think I’m crazy. Other people do. The definition of crazy is ‘mentally deranged, especially in a wild or aggressive way.’ I don’t think I’m wild or aggressive.”
Oriana stared at her for a few seconds. “Okay. You know what, who cares, as long as you can help me with my homework. What’s the difference between Transfiguration and Alchemy? McGonagall gave us a bonus question on the homework and I need extra credit points.”
“Transfiguration changes things that are already there, rearranging matter on the most fundamental levels,” Lovegood said. “Alchemy creates new things from pure magic, new matter from energy.”
“In English,” Oriana said, already digging out a quill.
Samantha and Mercer seemed a little surprised when they came back and found Thaddeus, Oriana, and Lovegood engaged in a heated argument about something from McGonagall’s last lecture and the differences between what she told the Slytherins and Gryffindors versus the Ravenclaws. Lovegood’s spotty memory didn’t help.
“What did she say distracted her in class?” Samantha hissed, sitting down next to Annabeth like she thought something might explode.
“A Nargle?” Mercer said.
“Imaginary creatures,” Annabeth said. “Or maybe we just can’t see them, who knows, and who cares, she’s bloody smart when she stays on topic. C’mon, let’s do our Potions work.”
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