Harry Potter & The Hand God

Harry is eight years old the second time he encounters Trelawney, the first time he punches someone, and the second time Madame Pomfrey acts like she knows more than she lets on.

Harry had first belonged to the castle the same way gum belonged to the floor; something to be scraped at and pressured futilely. He is stuck in the infirmary, at first because Pomfrey fusses at him so, something about a clinical environment, trauma, constant supervision, but then because he has grown used to it. After the first year, Pomfrey tries to usher him out of the Medical Wing. He refuses.

He knows this place, the white walls, the smell of disinfectant, attempted to be covered up with freshers of fruit and trees but still ever present -- it is familiar, always. He has mapped the place out in his mind. He could recite the layout to anyone who asks in an instant.

He knows this place and, above that, he remembers it. The same cannot be said for most other aspects of his life. (It had changed, this, for the first few months at Hogwarts. He learned the word "dissociative" and thinks strongly that he is anything but. His trauma gave him further clarity of his life as is. I am living life as it is meant to be lived for the very first time. It is the calm before the storm. It doesn't last and Madame Pomfrey can't tell him why.)

The Medical Wing is, for all the other students trying to avoid it, safe.

He edges on seven, then eight, and then decides he doesn't want the infirmary to be the only safe place in his life. He is tired of hearing about the wonders of Hogwarts from bedridden students, all giving equally as unbelievable tales about flying broomsticks and creatures will teeth too big and too many -- he wants to experience it. 

He knows that he being given an opportunity that no one else shares. His residency of the castle will last five years more than anyone else's and there will be no gaps in between. Hogwarts is not his second home, but his first. Who else can say the same?

So Harry decides this is an opportunity he should not squander and steps out of the Medical Wing, head held high and journal held taunt against his chest. 

Hogwarts is, he learns, magical in its healing just as much as it is in its hurting. Hagrid, the groundskeeper, invites him into his hut. It looks like it should tumble over with even the smallest blast of wind, but, as Harry observes from the castle one harsh night, it does not fall even in the face of tornado-strength winds. Harry takes a piece of fudge he will not eat and asks why.

"Embedded with sage, I 'eard. Or somethin' like it."

"You heard?" 

His face goes red. "Trelawney made it 'or me. You'd, uh, 'ave to ask 'er for the details."

"Who's she?"

"Divination Professor."

That brings Harry no closer to understanding who she is, but Harry writes both the profession and the name down to ask about later. Madame Pomfrey tells him that "divination" is the study of future telling, giving Harry chills. Pomfrey purses her lips at Trelawney's name, glancing at his journal to Harry. "I worry that you are considering this class to take."

"Why worry?"

"It isn't sensible."

Merlin. Sensible. Is that what she is worried about? Sensibility in the very birthplace of insensibility? (Supernatural is a world of supernatural?) That, to him, is what "isn't sensible." 

But Pomfrey knows that. She must. So Harry sets out the next day, determined to not only take the class when he grows older, but visit it then. (Later, he will be filling out the paperwork for his electives. For some reason he does not understand then and understands less later, his hand skips right over the Divination bubble, selecting Arthimacy instead. He will drop out of the class a week later, the mix of magic and math, neither of the two concepts he understood very well on their own, too overwhelming to comprehend. Hermione rolled her eyes, sighing. "Why did you take the class if you knew you wouldn't like it?"

"I don't know."

"Yeah, mate," Ron piped in. "I thought you wanted to take Divination with me!" He had also chosen his electives that year, choosing Divination for the easy grade.

"I did," Harry said. "I do."

He writes a thought log that evening, disappointed and on the verge of tears, I wish my body was mine -- or, given that it is, act like it, at the very least. Pomfrey pins it all on trauma. "Trauma." The hell do I get off acting "traumatized" for? 

I didn't see anybody die.

My father hated me. I didn't care. I don't care. 

I didn't even see him die. Pomfrey says that it's "still trauma. You do not need to see death to experience its effects."

But I wish I had. Seen death, that is. Then I'd have reason to be fucked up. 

He crosses it out in disgusted and violent strokes. He is ashamed. Wishing to be further traumatized? He cannot believe he said that. Cannot believe he said that and it wasn't a lie.

He thinks some thoughts are better left forgotten but he will look at his thought log category, days later, and still make out the imprint of those words, the quill etching their impression forever in to the page, shame returning to him again.

From then on, if he wants something forgotten, he rips out the piece of paper completely.)

Trelawney's classroom smells of something sweet burning and rot. Half of the children do not seem excited to be there and the other half are excited enough for the lot of them.

Harry is not the only one interested in the future, after all.

He spends evening after evening in her classroom, surprised but not upset when she doesn't comment on his presence (unlike the other teachers, who had taken to Harry with varying degrees of courtesy, though they never flat out ignored him) and lets him wander around the classroom from first period to lat, lingering like (a ghost) the curious spectator he very much was.

He met a lot of kids there. Rather, a lot of kids met him and he forgot their name the second it came out of their mouth. He was always polite, though, and most were kind enough not to comment if it seemed a little lacking in confidence. 

Professor Trelawney was, he learned early on, not the best teacher. She relied more on "natural talent," declaring Divination an art "borne of magic, not skill." Harry had rolled his eyes and got some of the upper classmates explain the concepts to him, writing down their every word furiously, intent on proving her wrong.

Try as he might, his effort is wasted. He puts his hands around a crystal ball, forcing his magic into it, trying to make out a picture, but ends up destroying the glass instead. 

Trelawney tuts at him, repairing the ball with a wave of her wand, then healing the sluggishly bleeding cuts on his face. She takes the now repaired crystal ball and sets it aside, out of reach. She puts a hand on his shoulder. "Your parents were not very skilled at Divination, either. Though it is not to do with lack of trying."

Harry is not gifted. His fourth eye, or whatever the fuck she calls it, is not open. (Harry Potter is unremarkable.)

But.

But she knows -- knew, he reminds himself, cursing -- his parents. And Pomfrey, bless her heart, bless her for taking him in, bless her for fighting for him to stay at Hogwarts, Pomfrey does not talk about them. She speaks about them in the present tense in the few times that she does mention them, acting like Harry has no questions to ask about the lives of dead parents because they aren't dead at all, and Harry cannot help but wonder if it is her who is traumatized.

Harry wants more tidbits. Wants comments made in earnest, wants them made in past tense and not present. Pomfrey tries hard to be his guardian, and he loves her for it, he does, he always has, but in this category (and he will later discover, many more), she is not enough for him. 

Harry stays in her class somehow even more often than before. Before long, he knows this place, too, with all its nooks and crannies and exactly thirty-two ladder rungs upward. The smell becomes endearing as opposed to nauseating. He puts names to faces and concept to practice. Sally Grace, fifth year, Muggleborn, sits in the front. Katie Malcolm beside her. Then Laxton. Then...

Then everyone. He knows all of Trelawney's students, likes some and hates others. Some talk trash about his mother or his blood -- occasionally both -- or his occupation in the castle -- "Hogwarts' living ghost" is said both fondly and insultingly -- and Harry insults them right back. Trelawney says nothing about either behavior. Harry threatens them, brandishing the wand that used to belong to his mother -- I'll show you Mudblood -- and sometimes, those who insult him back off.

Sometimes. But not always.

There is, for instance, the half-blood Ethan Smith -- third row, seventh seat to the right -- who introduced Harry to the idea that hating Muggles (which Ethan did not do) and being a bitch (which Ethan very much was) were not correlated directly.

He's a fourth year. Tall. He asks a lot of questions about Harry's journal. "So you have information on everyone? And every class?"

Harry held it tighter. "Mhm."

"Are you a very detailed writer?"

"I try to be," he replies honestly.

"So, no?"

"Erm," Harry says intelligently. "Why do you care?"

"Oh," Ethan says, innocently,  "We agreed you'd be giving it to me, didn't we?"

Harry's brows furry and he flips open his book, Category: People, Subject: Ethan -- but Ethan puts a hand on his wrist, his laughter light but his grip harsh. "Don't you remember?" Ethan says and Harry doesn't, isn't sure Ethan's telling the truth because why would Harry say that? That can't be right.

It isn't, Harry assures himself again and he thinks bitterly he talks to himself the way a mother talks to a disgruntled child. It isn't right.

"I'm sorry," Harry says and Harry isn't and Ethan knows it, narrowing his eyes in response. "But I don't think that's such a good idea. I'm keeping it."

"You lied to me, then." 

Harry frowns. I am not positive that I did. "Maybe. But, still. It's mine. I'm keeping it," he repeats.

Ethan, Harry muses, had thought this would be easy. Like taking candy from a baby. Ethan's rolling his eyes, handing going toward Harry's journal, his most prized possession, his mother's gift, and Ethan plans to take it.

Harry can almost see it. He'd cry to Pomfrey about his stolen book and Ethan would get in trouble but, by that time, Ethan would have conveniently "forgotten" or "misplaced it." He get scolded, get House points taken from him, maybe even detention, if Harry is lucky, and he usually isn't. But Harry, his memories (is that not what that book is? He is sure that book is more valuable than his mind as is) would be lost. He would start a new journal. It would be enough. Later Ethan would show up with a journal of his own, a different cover but familiar insides. Harry would have his suspicions, would try and get teachers to get it back to him, would, when that inevitability failed, try to get it back himself, face red and nails barred. He would lose, of course. Ethan is older than him. Stronger. 

Ethan Smith would pass Divination with flying colors. 

Harry could almost see it. He could almost let it happen. 

But Harry vows, right then are there, to never let anyone take advantage of him because of his aliment. He will not be gaslit. 

He shoves his fist into Ethan's face. He hears a crunch and is not sure if its from Ethan's nose or his knuckles breaking. He finds out later it's of both. Trelawney is not unaware of the situation, but when confronted she will say she was. "I'm so flooded with the realm beyond this one that whatever happens here is secondary." (Secondary. Harry Potter will always be secondary.) Harry feels rage, then, toward her. She has left him to fend for himself. How dare she? Inaction is an action and this is one directly taken against him. She knows the story enough to not let it get tangled and yet, by the end of it, no one can who provoked who and Harry is left more so scolded than Ethan.

Harry had previously enjoyed being in her class. He was not gifted in the subject but just for trying, just for looking at wet tea leaves and blurting something out, or helping the first years analyze their dreams, Trelawney makes off-hand comments about his mother or father, the latter of which he writes down but does not care for. 

She ignored him eighty percent of the time. Perhaps more. But, for those comments, Harry had thought she was on his side more than not.

But Harry gets it, now, he really does. Trelawney is on no one's side. She is an entirely neutral party.

And Harry hates her for it. He does not cease stopping by her classroom -- because Divination is safe, known, memorized, and, all things considered, she still does love the idea of future telling, of looking into a crystal ball and seeing more than shattered glass -- and he does plan to attend her class officially when he turns eleven, but he visits less often. When he starts Hogwarts formally, he has less time to visit and less leeway to. He can hardly miss it.

At age twelve, a hand that is his and his mother's signs the paper saying he will not be taking, he is heartbroken at the prospect. There are so many things he cannot understand -- least of all himself.

Madame Pomfrey, that evening with Ethan, who Harry did not take to the infirmary and who had to walk himself there, leaving a trail of blood all the way, joins that list.

Madame Pomfrey sits with an arm around his shoulders. She kisses him on the forehead and Harry can tell the gesture is reluctant. Out of obligation.

"Are you mad?" he asks.

She doesn't answer. "You fractured bone, Harry," she whispers instead.

She doesn't answer, but (inaction is an action) that is an answer in it of itself. "He was going to steal my journal," Harry says, not defensive, just angryangryangry.

"You don't know that," she says, softly, disappoint alight in those eyes.

I do. Harry decides to ignore that -- two can play at that game -- and says, "What would you have done? He was going to steal my mind. My memories. The only valid version of such that exist of my mother. What should I have done, if not fight back?"

"Violence is not the answer." Of course she says this. She is a Healer. "Diplomatic solutions do exist. Have you heard of the saying 'an enemy is just a friend you haven't made yet'?"

No. It doesn't matter. It's stupid either way. "Have you heard of the saying 'an eye for an eye'?" He equates an attempted theft to physical violence. And why not? The effect is similar. It was self defense, surely, either way. 

Pomfrey sighs. Harry has let her down. 

That's on her, Harry decides. That one is on her.

She is a dedicated pacifist. Harry wants to know just how deep the devotion goes.

"Would you heal anyone that came in here?" Harry prompts.

"Yes." Of course she says this. She is a Healer. It is in her code.

"What if it was the person who killed mom? Would you heal them, if not doing so could save her?"

"Go to bed, Harry."

It's not an answer. It doesn't have to be.

Pacifism, he writes in his journal that night, is weakness. Where is your will? You will stoop yourself to death.

He had, of course, assumed at the time that Pomfrey's answer-non-answer was a reflection of her stance on morality and not a sign that she knew something about his parents' death that Harry didn't.