Chapter 4
Harry was sitting at the bank of St. Otter’s River while a Quidditch pre-game rang with noise over his head. He desisted to play for the first time in days, especially because the game was about reversed positions and he sucked at any other position that wasn’t seeker. He wasn’t ready to make a fool of himself in front of the guests.
The twins were playing Chasers for both teams. Ginny was playing keeper, Ron was playing seeker, Luna was playing Beater alongside Percy, Cedric Diggory was playing Chaser and…
“Why do I have to be a seeker?” the voice whined and Harry had to smother a laugh. “I suck at that.”
“That’s what the game is about,” Ginny said seriously, her red hair blowing in the wind. “Suck it Lovegood. All of us are going to suck at this.”
“And it is the position that has to move the least,” Draco said, hovering in the air, hands crossed over his chest. "Such boredom."
Harry wondered how he did that. The control he must have over his thigh muscles might be insane.
“I think that’s good for you,” Luna said softly. “You are still in recovery.” Luna said. “Dad said you should be still on bedrest.”
Draco pulled a face at her words and glared at his own sister.
“I am sick, not invalid,” he said with scorn.
“Anonyms,” twins said at the same time, mirth dancing inside their eyes.
“Synonyms, you wanted to say,” Percy shot back with a huff.
"No," Fred or George started.
"We did not," the other continued and then, they were laughing at Percy.
Percy rolled his eyes but let them have it. He probably would do something during supper to get at them. Harry was counting on that.
"Ungrateful brats," Percy huffed under his breath and Harry stifled a laugh.
“Yeah, you should be grateful no one here is going to tell Mr. Lovegood that we let you fly and didn’t bind you to the bed from your wrists and ankles.” Ginny said to the blond boy and swept toward the improvised hooped post. “Now, suck it up and be grateful.”
Harry blushed at the comment.
“Not thanking you, Weasley,” Draco said, and swept to the side, nonetheless.
“You don’t have to,” she said. “But you will.” She smirked at him from her side.
"In your dreams," he shot back.
"Wouldn't you like to star in those, Lovegood," she shot back.
Funny thing, Draco and Ginny were on the same team.
"Got the wrong blond, then," Draco narrowed his eyes at her and they glared at each other.
Harry smiled at the bickering.
“Have they started yet?” Hermione asked, a book under her arm and a blanket on the other.
“Nope,” Harry said, popping the P and looking up.
“More bickering than actual play?” she asked him and he smiled softly at her.
“Yep,” he replied to her. “What’s that?” He asked her.
Someone shouted for the game to start and Harry heard the zing of the brooms in the air.
“Oh, you know, Standard Spell Book 5.” Hermione said and opened the heavy book. “You should read it.”
“I don’t think Flitwick will let me skip it,” he mumbled.
“I mean, before school,” she said seriously. “Here are very interesting things that you should know.”
Harry smiled softly at the grass.
“And I will,” he said cheekily, smiling at her and seeing the shine in her eyes. “Once Flitwick assigns me the read.”
He leaned in and kissed her cheek.
“Oi, Harry,” she pouted, but let him go. "You are going to be insufferable with school work this year." Her head rested on his shoulder, nonetheless, eyes roaming over words and lost in a world that was fascinating to her, while he saw his friends play a very dumb game of quidditch.
"It starts tomorrow, Mione," he said. "I need to enjoy my last bit of free-of-homework."
“What did the medi-healer said?” she asked him after a heartbeat of silence.
Harry rolled his eyes at her words.
“That magical exchange and the alteration of my magical core, due to said exchange, altered the way my body perceives my magic or something like that.” Harry parroted back, his eyes glued to the hovering figures in the air.
“I will research once we are in Hogwarts,” she states softly, her eyes glued to her book. “That was all?” Harry made a face and Hermione arched an eyebrow. “You are hopeless, Harry.”
She hummed and let it go. She was an angel like that. He was dreading potions this year as well. But the picture in front of him dissipated those fears.
No one was good at anything really and he had to suppress his laughter to avoid jostling Hermione and her reading when Ron nearly face planted against a tree, when Luna kept rambling about the resemblance about the golden snitch and the bird that were used for the game, extinct at the date or when Draco swatted the Snitch to get the thing away from his face, or when Ginny nearly decked herself in the head with the posts while scolding Draco for his, or when the twins decided to hug the quaffle against their chest while wailing like different animals, or when Cedric nearly fell from his broom because of the force of his laugh.
If Harry thought that Draco looked beautiful with his hair swept by the wind and his cheeks rosy from the exertion, well… that was between himself and his brain. And if his brain short circuited when Draco started to talk to him while they traced back to The Burrow, no one needed to know.
If his heart stuttered when Draco smiled at him, well... no one needed to know.
“Do you have all your books in your trunk?” Mrs. Weasley asked them again.
Harry saw Ron rolling his eyes, the twins laughing and running away from the stack of questions that were routine at this point with Mrs. Weasley. Arthur smiled behind her and Sirius changed his weight from one foot to the other, maybe feeling like a kid again and maybe, feeling hungry. Because they missed breakfast that morning and… Who knows with Sirius?
That, and breakfast… They skipped breakfast this morning. Instead, Harry had two sandwiches in his extended pocket of his jeans and by the feeling of it all, they were still warm. His stomach cramped at the reminder that Mrs. Weasley would never withdraw food from him and that she would never ground him by retaining food or water or human contact.
Her hands hovered over him when his magic flared and she grunted.
“Oh, Harry,” she made that face and he knew it was killing her. His new disability, because needing glasses was the first. “It’s going to be okay, my boy,” she started softly and he nodded dutifully, fighting his own tears from falling from his eyes. “Take all your potions, eat plenty and you will be good in no time. My brother, Bilious, went through the same when he was nearly your age. You will pull through, just like him.”
“Owl me if you need anything, okay?” She cupped his cheek again and struggled to let him go.
He knew that already, the healer said.
But it made him feel as if he was… Damaged.
“Thank you, Mrs. Weasley,” he said, softly, scuffing the floor with the point of his trainers.
Harry wasn’t sure what was wrong with him. He wasn’t sure why his head was hurting so much when every medi wizard Sirius, under threat of Mrs. Weasley had dragged him to have said that there was nothing wrong with Harry, aside from the usual growing pains from his body and his magic. The first was usual in every single human being and the second was very common in wizards and witches alike.
Artur limited himself to waving to Harry and giving him a big smile.
He smiled and the pain made itself known. He hadn’t taken his meds that morning. He was on Muggle Medicine for nights and with Potions for mornings, when everyone could monitor his magic, and both types of remedies had something in common: not allowed to have an empty stomach.
His wand hand was hurting and he felt it was stiff already. It was like… A cramp induced by cold, but there was still good weather.
He sighed heavily.
“Before you know it, you will be as fit as a violin,” Mr. Weasly said.
Hermione giggled at his left.
“What? Did I say it wrong?” The red-head man said.
“As fit as a fiddle, Mr. Weasley,” Hermione said, ever so polite.
Harry was sure she was smiling. He smiled too, until a sharp pain on his hip made him aware of his reality.
Again. His hand wasn’t supposed to hurt.
His back was supposed to hurt because it was direct contact with his magical core. His bones were supposed to hurt because he was put in a nutritional regime when Sirius took him in at age 12, after the mistreatment of the Dursley and after it was leaked to the press somehow, Dumbledore stood no leg to stand up on. Especially when Andromeda Tonks was the witness that gained him his release from Azkaban.
Not that his godfather was completely sane. But, well… Beggars can’t be choosers and all that.
So, yeah! His bones hurt, his head hurt and the muscles in his back were hurting too and the combination of so much pain all at the same time was making him very volatile and explosive. He wasn’t sure how much he could survive to stand on the inside part of Platform 9 ¾ without exploding or making his magic flare up and attack some passenger that was unaware of his situation.
And knowing Ritta Skeeter as he does, she would print it in record time to make him seem like a monster.
“Harry,” Sirius's voice makes him look up. “Remember to take your potions in time. And to apply the balm over the hurting area,” and then his hand was hovering over his shoulder and uncertainty was fighting with care inside his eyes and Harry launched himself against the body of his Godfather. “I’m sorry I’m being a dick right now.”
Harry snorted against the chest of the man he saw as a second father figure.
“You are not. You are just worried that your magic is going to unsettle mine,” Harry whispered against the warm body of his Godfather. “But that’s okay. I understand.”
And then, he was putting distance between the two of them in time to hear the honk of the Hogsmeade Train. Nonetheless, Sirius brought him back against his chest and squeezed him tightly. Harry engulfed his godfather back with the same intensity that he knew was now welcomed, a stark contrast against what Petunia did when he tried to give her a flower for Mother’s Day.
“I love you, pup,” Sirius whispered against his ear, a sentence just for his ears and his battered heart.
5 years with the Dursleys was enough to leave marks in his body, his mind and his soul. Marks that Sirius was fighting, alongside with all the Weasleys, to erase from his psyche. Because Mrs. Weasley did wonders to make all the scars disappear from his blemished skin, just like if Harry was any of her own kids.
“Love you too, Sirius,” he squeezed him back one last time.
And then, Sirius was letting him go and he was going up to the Train. His core settled inside his spine and he wondered if he was the only one amongst his peers who could feel his core as any other of his attached limbs. If he was the only who felt like everything around him, every single magical artifact and every single magical being was about to change forever.
“Harry?” Hermione’s voice was so soft that he nearly missed the sound.
“Yeah?” He replied, still trying to understand every single thing around him.
“Are you okay?” she asked, hand falling over his shoulder and calming his nerves.
That was the other weird thing. He didn’t mind Hermione’s touch or rather, his magic didn’t care about being in direct contact with Hermione. It was all the same to his magical core when it comes down to Hermione and her affections. The healer had said that in this type of maladies, the magic cared more about the affiliations.
And he wondered if he deep down thought of Hermione as a sister that could relate to him and the shock that came with discovering one day that you are a wizard. Because he knew that Hermione always felt like an outcast, he knew that was the reason behind her being besties with a bunch of books before being friends with Ron and him.
The wizarding world was new for the both of them. They never saw a wand before the letter of Hogwarts. They never saw a talking portrait before Hogwarts. They never saw mandrakes, or house elves or goblins or dragons with a penchant for chasing teeneagers before Hogwarts. It was so soon and so magical….
And they belonged there.
Here they weren’t freaks.
“Fine, Mione,” he stated after a bit. “Just hungry.”
“There are two of us now, mate,” Ron said, cheeks splotching red and making his freckles stand in contrast.
“Okay, let's find somewhere so you can have breakfast,” and then, she stirred him in the direction she thought they could find an empty carriage.
“Do you think I will make it to the Quidditch team this year?” Ron asked.
“Yeah,” he was ready to assure his best friend.
“You could,” Hermione said, nearly dragging the both of them by the sleeves of their sweaters. “But if you keep up just training your right side of your vision, you might not. I analyzed all the seekers this season and according to the commenters, the best keepers have both of their peripheral eyes sides trained to the top notch, so you…”
“Hermione, I’m not playing professional Quidditch, I just wanna be part of my house team…” Ron started and Harry turned them out, because he knew they were going to start bickering and even if he loved the both of them, he wasn’t ready to be part of their weird foreplay, not now and not ever.
Finding an empty space seemed like a task of months, if not years and he was giving up and ready to commit to sit wherever if it means he could swallow a sandwich with an Aguamenti to make it go down to his stomach and then, chuck down the potion that will kill the pain for 16 hours straight.
The perks of being a wizard, actually.
Hermioned slid open the door of another compartment and Harry saw Luna, Ginny and oddly enough, Blaise Zabini and… the object of Harry’s crush since summer: Draco Lovegood, the older brother of Luna. His head was resting on Luna’s shoulder, chest falling and raising with every breath, and his blue eyes were closed.
Damn it, he has pretty eyes.
Wait, where was that coming from?
“Hello, Harry,” Luna said in that soft and airy voice of hers. “Come in before the nargles swamp the compartment.”
What were the nargles again?
Harry closed the door behind him and slumped against the edge of one of the seats.
“Here are my two missing brothers,” Ginny said. “Aren’t they handsome, Zabini?” She glared at the Slytherin boy.
What was a Slytherin sitting with them? Especially Blaise Zabini? He was friends with Knott and Harry and the other bully was never on good terms. Not after he had to see the other nose’s turned up in the air and glaring at Hagrid as if his friend was solely to blame for all the dirty things in the world.
“You are a traitor,” Ron said. “We are supposed to stay together to fend off mom’s hugging and kissing,” he crossed his arms.
“You and Harry need to serve your purpose to save me from that embarrassment,” she said. “You two being the troublemakers, she sure would want to hug you before you go landing yourselves in the infirmary… again.”
“I think it is nice to have a mother to hug you off every year before entering the train,” Luna said absentmindedly, carding her fingers through the short tresses of her brother’s hair.
“I’m sorry, Luna…” Hermione was the first to apologize. “Boys…” she hissed at them.
“You don’t have to be,” Luna said. “You have gone through the same as well.” Luna smiled at her.
Harry saw Hermione twitching in her seat. He has never thought about that. For all that his mother was dead and gone, he still felt loved and cared for by Sirius and Mrs. Weasley. He has never gone to school without a hug from the woman. He has never gone hungry in her house. There’s always a Weasley Christmast’s jumper with a H in the center for him.
Hermione’s parents couldn’t enter the platform even if they wanted to. How was Hermione’s first time trespassing the barrier? He was lost until Mrs. Weasley helped him to enter, with clear directions and a motherly tone to her words. The twins showed him how to do it, with a smile on their faces and wild screams.
He never stopped to think that maybe, those were to ease his nerves, because that was supposed to be the job of the mothers and the fathers, never thought it was the job of a big brother too. Sure those weren’t for Ron, he sure has been coming with Mrs. Weasley since he was little and Bill was in school. Maybe Ron had done that countless times.
Here are my two missing brothers. Ginny’s words.
Owl me if you need anything, okay?
But not Harry, and before all these years, he wouldn’t know how sibling’s love felt like if it slapped him across the face. Because he never had a brother or a friend before. Dudley was an only child and he and his friends were always causing chaos and chasing little Harry, so Harry avoided them like the black pest.
But the twins…
Ron…
Hermione…
Ginny… He has never run away from them. Never. They were his siblings by everything but blood. If he looked around they only strays were him, Mione and Zabini. Ron and Ginny shared the same ginger hue in their heads and their eyes were as blue as the ocean, warm and alive; their faces dotted in freckles.
Luna and Draco shared the same platinum blond hair, curling at the ends and the same aristocratic facial structure. Their fair skin was something he thought only existed in fairy tales, until he met Luna. If they both were to open their eyes, he would be able to see serene blue that looked more like light blue with silver dancing inside those pools.
Maybe, for their first year, Hermione wouldn’t know what siblings’ love felt like. Because she was an only child, like him. There was another reason to bond with Hermione over things Ron couldn’t understand at the beginning. He didn’t understand either why his windows had bars when they were in second year.
But Hermione did. She understood the level of abuse he went through. But it was really not an option inside Ron’s head. Because, how could people abuse their own child? Ron told him that abuse of children was frowned upon in the wizarding world. There weren’t enough children being born, now or before.
“Eat, Harry,” Hermione’s bossy words took him out of his reverie and he looked ahead of himself again. “You still need your potions.”
Harry pulled his sandwich from his pockets and started to eat the stuff that Mrs. Weasley made it for him. He wondered if she had left Sirius to starve and prepare something for himself after being late for their meeting that morning. Harry was sure if Sirius would have been left for long at the kitchen unsupervised some kind of monster would emerge from the stove.
Or maybe, she left him for Mooney to feed him. After all, they both were fucking.
He choked on his food when the images flooded his mind.
“Are you okay, mate?” Ron thumped his back with the force of every Weasley and dislodged the food that went the wrong way.
Harry swallowed.
“Fine,” he whizzed. “Went down the wrong pipe.”
He coughed a few more times and tried to squelch the need to do it again, instead, he took deep breaths.
“Here, Harry,” Luna said. “It is cranberry juice, from the Muggle world,” she said softly.
He downed down a juice box and felt better instantly.
“So, is your brother dropping you at the station?” Hermine asked, trying to give him space to recover from his embarrassing moment.
“Draco?” Luna asked and Hermione nodded. “He is attending Hogwarts this year.”
Harry choked on the last bit of his juice.
Fuck. His crush was attending Hogwarts too?
Harry was aching. His mind was wandering to other places that could relax him while they awaited for the feast to start. His body was starting to ache and he was ready to call it a night. It was always like this during the first day at Hogwarts. He was so done with everyone looking at him because of the lies that would either bathe him in glory or make him look as a complete dunderhead. Especially because tonight, he was lacking self control, because all that control was being channeled into not screaming bloody murder.
His back was aching and his core was starting to unsettle again.
“Harry Potter looks better this year,” someone from a nearby table said.
And the first years weren't even there yet.
He was getting tired of the way the Wizarding World seemed to function under, what with their bizarre view on anything, where people were classified as just one of the two: good or bad. In Harry’s opinion, which was well backed-up by Hermione’s intellectual research, people were neither good nor bad. People acted according to the circumstances based on a primary emotion.
He rolled his shoulders to ease the pain on his back.
He was getting tired of the people looking at him every single year. He was glad his mates from Gryffindor and other people in different houses but in the same year, has been growing used to his mere presence. For example, Pansy Parkinson was so used to him that she remembered to never stand too close to his cauldron of potions. Snape knew him so well that the wizard rolled his eyes and yelled at Neville whenever his friend thought it might be wise to be a partner to Harry.
“I am not going to stand for you two, dunderheads, to destroy my classroom in a disgusting explosion of whatever you can concoct together. Potter with Zabini, Longbottom with Granger. If I see any of the two of you sitting down at the same desk ever again during one of my lessons, I will be deducting points for every single breath you take. Do you understand?” The teacher explained in a menacing whisper.
Harry was starving, but the sorting ceremony was going to take place in a few minutes. He was happy about it and then, the feast will start. He still remembered the first time he saw Hogwarts; his heart was warm and his belly was fluttering with excitement. For him, coming to Hogwarts meant that he was closer to his parents than ever before. Hogwarts gave him his first two friends, and for Harry they were the best there was out there.
Even Neville, Dean and Seamus were somewhat like friends. Ron, Fred and George were like brothers to him. Even Percy during the year he was still attending Hogwarts was looking out for Harry. So, he was glad he was a Wizard at the end of the day, because even when he lost hope while still being ten years-old, magic gave him something back: hope.
Harry wasn’t sure when, but the ceremony started without his attention. The first years were always a bunch of over excited little human beings and even if Harry usually loved them, he couldn’t keep his attention on them, his mind very far away, wondering one simple thing.
Something he had never witnessed in his five years at school.
So, what was the protocol for…
It was Hermione’s elbow against his rib that startled him back into awareness. He looked at her with a lost expression and she rolled her eyes at him. He smiled sheepishly at the display of deep affection that she was showing toward him. Hermione was his anchor for a lot of things. She was his confidant back when everything was wrong… And his sister as well.
She meant so much to Harry.
“Pay attention, Harry,” she stated softly in a whisper. “This year is important; we are going to be taking our O.W.L.s tests. You need to start focusing. As boring as this is, Beans’ classes are gonna be worse.”
Ugh. Don’t remind me.
Harry looked at Ron, whose head was resting on the wooden table, munching on one of Mrs. Weasley’s delicious cookies. Hermione caught him in the act of disrespecting the feast and the House Elves by extension. She glared at him and Harry saw his friend turning the same shade of red that he was sporting on his head.
“You and Harry need to start maturing academically this year if you don’t want to repeat or worse…” she started.
“Be expelled,” they both finished for her and giggled.
“You both are so insufferable,” she huffed and crossed her arms under her chest.
Harry decided to pay attention to the last bit of the sorting ceremony. The first kid he paid attention to was sorted in Hufflepuff, then two rows of Slytherin that looked suspiciously like a few of their level peers, then a Ravenclaw, two Gryffindors for which his house applauded and goofed to, then the last kid that was sorted in Hufflepuff.
And then McGonagall was closing her scroll and looking at Dumbledore. The headmaster nodded his head and she cleared her throat. She looked down and whispered a few words to the sorting hat.
“Draco Black,” she announced clearly.
There was a row of whispers when the students heard the last name. Hogwarts sorted by surname in alphabetical order. So, letting a Black to the end was something unusual. He locked eyes with Hermione and then with Ron, who were as lost as himself.
Draco was Luna’s brother. But was he a Black as well?
“Gin?” Ron asked her and she shrugged.
She knew something they did not.
Harry saw his white-blond haired crush with the same attire Hogwarts Firsties uses before being sorted. The truth is, Harry has never seen him before in formal clothes and when McGonagall placed the hat on his head, Harry found himself grasping for his magic.
He looked beautiful decked in black.
His magic... It was flaring softly. A warning, maybe or maybe, he was going crazy. What with living with Sirius; and Tonks and Mad-Eye Moodie possing as regular guests, paired with the grumpy house elf that never faltered into talking to himself and the yelling old-portrait at his current home.
Yep, he was going crazy.
“There has never been a sorting of a student older than eleven years old,” Seamus whispered to them and Ron nodded.
“Yeah, tradition dictates that Hogwarts choses those who are going to attend since the year the Witch or Wizard is born.” Ron whispered back. “This is going down in history, probably, if not by letters, then by word.”
Harry panicked when his magic started to bubble under his skin.