Survivor

Days passed. Those days turned into weeks, and those weeks eventually turned into months. Iris made it clear at the beginning of their arrangement that Harry could leave whenever he wanted if he didn't want to stay, but he never brought it up again, and she seemed completely content with both of them acting as if Harry had just been there the whole time. The stranger kept showing up in his dreams every night, but he eventually got bored of talking and started to leave immediately after arriving.

It was to one such dream that he awoke early on September 1st. He'd long since stopped waking up with chills and a cold sweat. He let off a small sigh to release the tension and looked to his left where he saw Jason coiled up on top of his pillow. For once, he was the first one awake. Deciding to let his 'familiar' get some sleep, he stood up quietly and went to the kitchen. 

He pulled a few pans out and began to prepare breakfast on autopilot. It became a tradition over the summer break. He would get up early from a nightmare, cook breakfast, and Iris would come out of her own room when the smell inevitably managed to creep under her door. Iris really liked his cooking, especially once she saw what he could do with ingredients that were actually half decent. Honestly, though, there was no way she wouldn't like what he made; he was simply too good. What actually ended up surprising him was how much he enjoyed making food on a regular basis in much the same fashion as he used to with his relatives. 

No, that wasn't completely true. He understood why he liked it more with Iris. It had everything to do with the reaction and expectations. Iris saw his cooking as a gift that he gave her and as a privilege instead of a right. It was hard to not feel good about his abilities when she was always so overjoyed and appreciative when he made her something. 

"Good morning!"

Harry flinched unconsciously at the sudden noise, but his ever-useful wand made sure to calm him. That thing was a fucking godsend. It was like it was made for him. 

"Good morning," he said back absentmindedly while he began to plate the steaming food. 

Giving him a healthy amount of space, she walked up to the plates and started setting the table. The woman was a godsend too. He had literally no idea how she could possibly be so empathetic and aware. It took her half of a week while living in the same house for her to learn the majority of Harry's preferences, habits, and tics without even once getting the information from him verbally. She just somehow knew that he didn't like people hovering around outside of his field of view, and she was kind enough to comply with his unspoken desire by making sure to always remain louder than necessary with her movements and giving him space while his back was turned. That was one of the many things she did to make him feel secure, and it gave him a sense of comfort that he was agonizingly incapable of properly expressing to her.

He placed the last of the food on a plate and went to take a seat at the small round table that served as their usual eating location. She sat down to the left of him before slowly and deliberately reaching across the table to ruffle his already disastrously messy hair. 

"Thanks, kiddo, I'm not sure how I'll survive while you're away at Hogwarts after getting this kind of treatment every day."

Despite Harry's aversion to unwarranted contact, he found that particular action of Iris's to be something that didn't bother him so long as he saw it coming. The first time she did it, he almost blew a hole through the living room wall in a bout of accidental magic.

"Oh, how tragic!" Harry sarcastically exclaimed. "Don't tell me I'm going to have to put Hedwig on a delivery schedule."

Iris chuckled at the thought of it, but she kept the lighthearted banter up despite her slight melancholy. Today was going to be a good day; she was determined to see it through to the end without the added drama of unwanted sadness.

"Be careful what kind of ideas you give me, Harry. I might just be inclined to take you up on it, and we both know Hedwig would go on strike within the week."

Said snowy owl hooted a threatening affirmative at her statement, and she ruffled her feathers haughtily when Harry gave her a playful glare. 

"That owl is too damn cheeky for her own good," he mumbled. 

Iris laughed fondly at the interaction. The two were so sweet sometimes. Even without words, the two communicated like they’d known each other forever. Iris personally thought it was due to Harry’s particular lack of companions that he got along so well with the ones he had.

"It's because you spoil her, Harry," she told him with a faux accusatory jab of her fork. 

Iris smirked when she saw that Hedwig was matching Harry’s glare seamlessly, and her smirk grew wider when both of them directed their looks at her. 

"I don’t know what you’re talking about," Harry said with angrily squinting eyes. "I can't be blamed for treating such a pretty owl like the proper lady she is."

Hedwig hooted before flapping over to Harry's shoulder and giving him a light nip on the ear. Iris watched with humorous exasperation as he gave her a piece of bacon. That boy spoiled his bird, and every single living thing in their household knew it.

That was when Jason made his presence known by slithering up Iris's leg and perching his head on her shoulder. What first started out as a less than amicable relationship due to her horrid reaction to Harry's parseltongue grew into something quite stable mostly because of their shared worry over Harry's wellbeing. As it turned out, the snake and the woman didn't need to communicate to work well together. It also helped that Iris liked to wear warmer clothes than Harry. Jason needed the extra heat sometimes when the two humans occupying the house liked the temperature to be somewhere between "arctic" and "absolute zero". If both of them weren't willing to share their body heat so regularly, Jason would've thrown a fit worthy of Hedwig by now. 

"We have about two hours before the train leaves. Are you packed?"

Harry nodded silently while staring down at his plate. It felt odd to finally have a bag to pack, and he had something he desperately wanted to say, but he had no idea how to say it.

"Good! We can lounge around for a bit before taking off. We can floo or apparate, whichever you prefer."

She smirked at Harry's scowl and immediately knew that they would be flooing despite his general dislike for traveling through fireplaces. The kid's newest mortal enemy was floo travel, but he had no choice unless he wanted to apparate. He was hilariously incapable of fireplace transportation though. 

Not once during their time together did he manage to both get to the right location and remain on his feet at the same time. The number of heart attacks she had while watching him disappear to Merlin knew where was bound to take a few years off of her life. It was because of Harry's floo troubles that she had to ask Harry if he was willing to accept a temporary tracking charm every time they wanted to travel. They'd be doomed in the magical transportation department if they spent an hour trying to find each other every time they used a fireplace, and she'd rather wither away at home than ever step foot on that infernal bus Harry loved so much. 

Once the two magic-users levitated the dishes to the sink, they collapsed on the couch. Iris grabbed the remote and turned on a TV that she got from some muggle-born inventors who thought it was about time to experiment with electricity in a magical environment. She got a lot of interesting and awesome shit from other people who worked with creative applications of magic due to the circles she ran in. Harry was shocked to find out that Iris was a big fat liar when it came to her popularity as an artist. 

“Oh, I suppose my name gets around,” she told him one day.

His left arse cheek, “her name gets around”. The woman was fucking famous in the right circles, and she knew a lot of very famous people just as creative as her. She might not be part of an ancient house or whatever his strange people decided to call them, but he got his answer as to why she was unimpressed with Neville Longbottom in the shop. She made a name for herself, and she was used to interacting with important people. It made him feel even more embarrassed about the fact that she spent an entire week helping him out of nowhere. He wasn’t sure why, but the fact that she was something of a celebrity made what she did even more special. He lived in her house; he painted his fucking room with her. How many aspiring artists with skills he couldn’t even imagine would kill to take a place that he got on less than a whim? 

The answer was a lot.

A random cartoon that Iris found entertaining and impressive on an artistic level played on the television. Harry found it rather mundane compared to all of the literally world-breaking magic going on around him all of the time, but Iris thought it was possibly the most entertaining thing in her entire house besides her paintings. The TV worked in a magical environment for some reason that he couldn’t wrap his brain around. Iris told him not to worry about it; she didn’t get it either. That, though, didn’t stop him from worrying about it in the slightest. 

While the cartoon played in the background, Harry was waving his wand around and messing with the various bits of magic he’d learned so far. He was pretty damn good at charms, but it took all of an hour for Iris to discover where his true talents resided. He could transfigure like it was nobody's business. Iris told him, much to his embarrassment at the time, that she couldn't think of anyone who took to it quite like he did. 

Iris, of course, was all about charms. Transfiguration was an art within itself, though, and she knew quite a bit about it. Neither of them cared for the school curriculum, really. Iris was far too creative to be bound willingly by something as trivial as the first-year syllabus, and Harry just wanted to learn whatever magic he could get his hands on. Therefore, Harry had no clue exactly where he stood in terms of academic skill, but Iris assured him that he wasn't going to struggle with the aptitude he showed.

So entranced he was with performing the spells he’d learned over summer break that he didn't notice Iris watching him with a proud smile out of the corner of her eye. She never really fancied herself to be a teacher, but she could more than understand the appeal if this was how it felt. As always, time marched on with the relentless pace of a freight train, and she was shocked to find that it was time to leave far before she was ready for it. 

"It's time to go, Harry. Go get your trunk. I’ll shrink it for you. Make sure Jason is with you too! I would hate to have to embarrass you by showing up with your familiar on your first day,” she teased.

Harry gave nothing more than a nod before getting up to retrieve his things. He was originally going to wear some muggle clothes that Iris bought for him about halfway through their summer together, but Iris said it would be easier to conceal Jason in his robes than the tighter muggle clothing he preferred at home. She told him that most people would probably react to his powers in a similar manner as she did, but she also made sure to thoroughly explain to him that his classmate’s opinions of him would never affect her own views. He was touched by how openly she supported him, and he respected her all the more for being straightforward despite how uncomfortable the knowledge made him feel.

Walking out of his room, he began to choke up just a little. He left nothing of his own property in there, fully expecting his temporary stay to find its end today. He would never forget Iris's hospitality no matter how much she claimed it was her pleasure to have such a wonderful child in her house. 

Once in the living room, Harry stopped to let Jason wind up his body and gave a nod to Iris. Reaching over to him, she put a shrinking charm on the trunk, placed a hand on his shoulder, and led him over to her fireplace.

They reappeared in a crowded room somewhere just off of the main loading area for the Hogwarts Express. Well, Iris appeared. Harry, however, would've landed flat on his face had Iris not caught him with a teasing smirk. The floo area was inside the platform, but it was far enough away to not have families appearing into the middle of the general chaos that was the Hogwarts Express boarding process.

Harry felt extremely uncomfortable with so many people around him, but with Iris and his wand, it was hard for him to be truly anxious like he used to be. It was unfortunate for him that the only bit of magic he was truly pants at was DADA. Jinxes, curses, hexes, any kind of offensive spell, really, just didn’t work for him. It was truly unfortunate that someone as paranoid as him had little to no options when it came to self-defense. The beast within him resented his feeling of helplessness, and the stranger hated it even more. 

"Come on. Let's go to the train."

The two of them walked together all the way out of the apparition room to the place where students were entering the train en masse. They had a little bit of time but not much. Harry was usually not one to stumble on words, but his throat was well and truly clogged. Nevertheless, he absolutely refused to move from his position until he had to. Looking to his right, he was shocked to find Iris's eyes misting up. Panic started rising in his chest both because of how little he wanted her to cry and how sure he was that they were about to part ways.

"You behave at school, okay?" she barely got out of her constricted throat. 

"I will," Harry replied with a voice that was held neutral only through years of careful training. 

"You write to me every week. Do you hear me?"

She wanted him to write? He wasn't sure if that question should make him feel silly or not, but he was honestly expecting for her to try and make this separation as easy as it could be. Maintaining contact through letters seemed like an unnecessary action that would only draw out the pain.

"Of course," he said without hesitation. 

His thoughts didn't matter. Harry was literally incapable of refusing her at the moment. 

"And when you get off of the train in December, we're going to have a hell of a time shopping for Yule. You aren't going to be able to go back when you see what the winter holidays are like with a magical artist," she declared firmly. 

Her words hard-rebooted his entire system. Did she just say what he thought she did?

"You...You want me to come back?" He asked before he could stop himself. 

The way she whipped around to look at him with a half-distraught glare removed every doubt from his mind that she was anything but serious. "You listen to me, Harry Potter! You're coming to my house for the winter holidays, or I'm dragging you there my-damn-self!"

Harry was frozen to the spot. He didn't know what to say. He'd been acting on the assumption that his stay with her was a one-time summer thing to keep him from living on his own with barely any knowledge of their world. Did it really turn into a permanent thing during his stay there? It seemed too good to be true.

Seeing the conflict and confusion in his eyes drew out a single sob from Iris before she could stop it. Damn her Hufflepuff tendencies. She could never control her tear ducts. Harry was not good at handling crying from anyone. Deciding to banish all of his doubts physically if she couldn't do it rhetorically, she drew the small child into a bone-crushing hug.

He was paralyzed at first. Harry never did like physical contact. Much like the hair ruffling, though, this particular contact with only this particular person was something he could deal with. Upon feeling a few tears fall on the top of his head, Harry slowly reached around Iris and returned the hug with a small squeeze. 

"You're coming back for Yule, right?" Iris whispered.

He said nothing, but the nod against her stomach gave her all of the confirmation she needed. Harry was a boy of few words when it came to emotional conversations. She expected nothing less from him, and the predictability of his reaction brought a small smile to her face.

"The train is leaving soon, Harry. If you don't leave now, we are going to have to take the bus."

Harry laughed despite himself. Iris hated the knight bus with a passion ever since he rode it for the first time. It became a game of his to try and trap her into riding it with him whenever they went out by strategically placing them somewhere with loads of muggles and no fireplaces right before they wanted to go home. 

"I'll write to you when I get there to tell you where I'm sorted."

Now, it was her turn to chuckle. "Harry, if you're sorted anywhere but Slytherin, I'll spend my next check on that new racing broom you were ogling a few days ago."

Harry let out a short whistle and backed off from the hug with a smirk. "Those are strong words. How can you be sure that I won't convince the hat to put me somewhere else just to get the broom?"

"The very fact that you’d even consider doing such a thing tells me that you aren’t going anywhere else," she said, and her smile couldn't have been more radiant.

"We'll see…" Harry hesitated just for a second. "I'll see you on Christmas break."

She gave him a small nod, and he left for the train in much higher spirits than he’d been in for the last week. It felt damn good to have a place he actually wanted to go back to.

Harry sat in a compartment alone while the train started to slowly move forward. Their journey was beginning, and it was going to last the entire fucking day. Knowing this was what led him to transfigure those god-awful seats into something a bit more comfortable. A cushioning charm would work too, but his transfigurations lasted much longer than the charmwork. Hopefully, he'd only need to recast the transfiguration once during the trip. That was when a small knock came from the compartment door. A few seconds of silence passed before it slid open. 

"Do you mind if I sit here?" asked a young girl with a clear and steady voice. 

He looked up and saw a girl with platinum blonde hair and startlingly violet eyes. He analyzed her thoroughly as she stood in the doorway awaiting an answer. 

"Not a threat," his wand whispered.

Well, if he had to be stuck with someone, at least it wasn't the git he met at Malkin's. He gave her a small nod, and she entered the compartment with her trunk. Once she was in and the door was closed, she swished and flicked her wand with a whispered incantation, and her entire trunk levitated up onto the rack. That was some serious magical power. Those trunks were damn heavy unless you put a featherlight on it, and he wasn't sure if someone already had, but she would hardly have to levitate the damn thing if it was under a pound. 

Sitting down, the girl crossed her legs and started reading a book that was previously shrunken in her pocket. Harry felt much more comfortable now that he understood how the train ride was going to go, and he brought out a book to do the same. It was the book for first-year transfiguration. He was disappointed, to say the least, about how simple it seemed to be. 

Eventually, Harry lost track of time and zoned out with a boring book far beneath his skills sitting in his hands. His blessed state of limbo was interrupted by a knocking at the door. Harry stared at the door with barely contained annoyance before getting up and opening it.

"Hello, dears," said a small, old lady. "Do you two want anything from the trolley?"

Looking at the girl in his compartment with a raised eyebrow and receiving a shrug in return, he answered her question.

"Sure," he said while handing over two sickles. "Give me enough for fifteen, and you can keep the change. Just make sure none of those horrid beans get in the pile."

Three minutes later and two sickles poorer, both of them were eating from a collection of magical candies tossed randomly around the compartment. With the absence of books and the presence of junk food, conversation eventually began. 

"You know, I can split the sickles with you if you want," the girl offered.

Ignoring the way Jason shifted against his torso to get more comfortable, he shook his head. "No need. It's only twenty knuts. It isn't a big deal."

She nodded at his response and took a small bite of a pumpkin snack cake. It really wasn't a problem. Griphook got back to him halfway through summer. He turned out to be really fucking rich, like tens of millions of pounds rich. He couldn't have been more pissed when he found out, but he had to admit that it was pretty nice. The ones who tried to keep him ignorant of it would get theirs when he found out who the hell did it. 

“What’s your name?” she asked absentmindedly.

Harry popped a small piece of rock candy in his mouth and strove to ignore the compartment’s rattling as the train passed over a bit of a rough spot. “Harry Potter.” 

He saw her eyes widen with recognition, and his expression became immediately guarded. It was one thing when he thought it was just some random stranger sitting in a compartment. If she somehow knew of him, though, then the situation changed.

Not a threat, his wand still whispered.

Damn that stupid stick. It never ceased to try and do away with his paranoia. The fact that his famously paranoid wand core was somehow less paranoid than him was left unacknowledged. Apparently seeing his negative reaction for what it was, she quickly wiped the surprise from her face and stuck out her hand. Things changed when she figured out she was somehow in a room with a Potter.

“Daphne Greengrass,” she said cordially while taking his hand and giving it a shake.

Harry was still mightily suspicious of her. He had yet to meet a single person who recognized him by name alone. Considering how much money he had and Iris’s comments to him about the kind of status that should give him in a world as small as Magical Britain, he sort of formed his own assumptions that people in the know about his family were probably a contributory factor to his previously ignorant situation. He very desperately wanted to reach out with his mind, but he absolutely refused to use the stranger at a time like this. It wasn’t desperate enough, his emotions weren’t intense enough to bridge the gap between them either way, and he wasn’t going to be able to glean anything substantial on his own. Emotions, generally, were all he could get without aid.

Regarding her with a critical eye for a moment, he decided to simply cast a line out into the open and see if something bit. He knew far too little about the upper-echelons of wizard society, and Iris, rich though she was, did not have knowledge about the true upper class either. In other words, he was stuck in the mud and had absolutely zilch to carry him in these situations.

“Do you know me?”

If she was surprised, she didn’t show it this time. “No, but there aren’t lots of purebloods who don’t know of you. The Potters were pretty rich. They did a lot of business with us.”

“Really?” he asked, a bit more than interested.

Things like business deals and stocks were far beyond him. He was a child with dead parents and no one to handle the accounts aside from himself; that did not mean he was qualified to start making monetary decisions beyond spending two sickles on a cart full of snack foods. His account manager, now known as Griphook, handled all of that mess. Still, knowledge about what his parents did would always be something he treasured if only to discover exactly how he ended up where he did.

“Yes,” she said with a nod. “Were you not aware?”

The question was innocent enough. Did it really matter if he wasn’t? It wasn’t like it would change the fact that he was rich or that his family apparently liked to make deals.

“No.”

She looked slightly surprised by such an answer. “You should talk to a guardian about it. A lot of people your family did business with have kids in school with us. It will be them you have to get along with later in life.”

Harry nodded but secretly thought that he couldn’t give less of a shit. He had never been big on business. Griphook was more than eager to handle things for him, and Harry cared little for the small percentage of profits the goblin took. He cared much more about learning magic than conducting magical business. Power and magic appealed to him deep within his soul. Freedom was all that mattered, and he got that by being the best, not by being rich.

If the conversation was going to continue, it was interrupted by the compartment door sliding open without a knock to reveal a short, bushy-haired girl. Harry looked at her with an unimpressed squint in his eyes. He didn’t like people just barging in on him, especially when he was concentrating on something else. It was only his wand’s warning of an intruder and a whisper guaranteeing his safety that stopped him from reacting physically to the intrusion. 

She stood tall and confident; he could tell that she was intelligent by the analytical gleam in her eyes. Her eyes were intense, straightforward, and aggressive. So much could be gleaned from the eyes, and she was particularly expressive. She cared little for hiding her thoughts, and that translated to the windows he knew would eventually allow him further entrance to her mind. 

“Have either of you two seen a rat? A boy in my compartment, Ron, lost his.”

Just like that, she lost his attention. He was interested at first due to the personality he predicted her to have, but he could not bring himself to care about her escapade to find some allegedly escaped rat. 

“No,” Greengrass answered for him. “We would’ve noticed if it tried to get into our compartment.”

“Thank you,” the girl said succinctly before leaving and closing the door behind her. 

Straightforward and intense indeed.

He looked up when he saw Greengrass smirking to herself and gave her a curious stare. She saw him looking and shrugged.

“I think the boy she was talking about is Ronald Weasley. If that's him, then she was most definitely sent to look for a rat that isn’t missing.”

Weasley? He perked up at the mention. Both him and Ginny had exchanged letters over the summer after she responded positively to his gift. She was just as interesting and fun over letters as she was in person, and they talked about quite a bit of stuff. Her numerous brothers never really came up in their conversations, but he knew she had a lot of them judging from the number of them in the bookstore. He was actually planning on saying hello to her before boarding the train, but he forgot all about it once Iris wrecked all of his plans with their emotional conversation. 

“Do you know him?” Harry asked with carefully concealed curiosity.

“Mhm. He is attached to the Boy-Who-Lived by the hip. It has actually made him rather famous. I’ve never met two bigger prats in my life. Both of them used to go around to parties together with Augusta Longbottom. If she was in their compartment, Weasley probably lied and sent her on a useless trip around the train for a laugh.”

Now, that was interesting. He found himself immediately disliking Neville Longbottom from the moment he met the boy in the bookstore. He was pleased to see that someone shared his opinion of the spoiled kid. 

“I think I met Weasley in the bookstore when I went shopping for my stuff. He seemed like a tool.”

The girl snorted, apparently agreeing with his assessment. The redhead pretty much did nothing except stand menacingly behind Longbottom and provide physical support throughout his friend’s confrontation. It reminded him of the way Dudley would keep one or two friends with him while taunting other kids. If Longbottom was actually as simple as he portrayed himself to be, the pair of wizards would be a mirror image of his muggle cousin’s gang. 

Harry’s eyes almost reflexively flashed yellow at the reminder of his time with the Dursleys, but he managed to force it back with an extreme amount of willpower. He read the book he got on zouwu, and it was more informative than he would’ve thought. Jason confirmed that he was a picture-perfect imitation of the mythical creature upon looking at the pictures in his book, and Harry spent an awful amount of time studying the animal resting within him. It was scarily revealing. He felt like he was reading some kind of horoscope description straight from the hands of God. 

Upon studying animagi, he realized that this would be the case for most people with his skill. One of his only problems with his studies on the subject was the fact that he was a magical creature. Everything he read talked as if animagi were exclusively mundane in nature. He also felt like the books understated how much his animagus form should be affecting his personality as a human. Apparently, animagi were only supposed to get some base instincts from their animal. He, however, felt like his form was integrated with himself on an intimate level. It was honestly a little scary that his animagus form had such a strong sway over him. How long had it been affecting him? Was he even his own individual at this point, or had the zouwu changed him to a degree that Harry Potter, as he once was, no longer existed?

His train of thought was a disturbing one, but they were important nonetheless. His musings were interrupted by Greengrass’s response.

“Yes, well, Weasley has been doomed to the position of 'tool' from the moment he hitched his wagon onto Longbottom. He has nothing going for him beyond his endearment to the boy-who-lived, so his options are to either follow Longbottom like a lost puppy or fade into the background.”

Oh, he liked the way she thought. How fucking lucky was he to get a compartment partner that meshed so well with him? Time flew by as the train continued its journey to the school he would be attending for seven years straight, and he was surprised to find that he didn’t feel uncomfortable in the least. Both he and Daphne boarded the train with their robes on, so they didn’t have to split up to change. Instead, they conversed about whatever small things came to mind until they reached the station.

That was fortunate because he really didn’t feel like changing in public anyway mostly because he didn’t want to deal with maneuvering Jason subtly enough to not draw attention. On that note, he was proven wrong about his previous assumption about his scars during his time with Iris. He used to think his scars were hidden from normal people because of the stranger, but they were also hidden from Iris. The woman didn’t even have a hint that they existed, so he was now extremely confused about exactly how the stranger hid his marks. Now, though, he was thankful for it. He didn’t have to worry about his own people asking him questions that he didn’t want to answer. 

It was dark by the time they landed at the station, and the two first-years walked out of the train and towards a gigantic man calling for them and their year mates. Harry was immediately put on guard around the man. His wand was a bit uncomfortable too, and that mixed with his own feeling of distrust that he habitually defaulted to without the added help. His wand didn’t think that he was in danger, per se; it did, however, seem to think that something about the man was potentially troublesome. 

“Half-giant,” Daphne whispered to him upon noticing his discomfort. “Besides being a little dull, they aren't much different than a normal person. I don’t think he is dangerous.”

It felt good to know that his new acquaintance was apparently attempting to make him feel comfortable, but she fundamentally misunderstood the motives for his current attitude. He didn’t think that the half-giant was going to hurt him physically. His wand would tell him if the man was going to give him that kind of trouble. Both of them simply felt like something was off. That was enough for him to avoid the man. 

Making sure to keep out of the eyesight of the huge man, he boarded a boat with Daphne. They were the only two in the ship, and they sat quietly until it took off to float after the lead boat. Harry sat as close to the center of the tiny rowboat as possible, looking over the edge of it and into the water as it rocked back and forth slowly. The lamps hanging off the top of every boat sent an eerie, orange gleam across the top of the water and stopped him from seeing deeper than the surface. 

He hated the water.

Not only was he incapable of swimming, but the thought of the insane depths beneath him sent chills down his spine. He was already terrified of water when he only knew about the mundane threats: sharks, alligators, crocodiles, and the like. Even in the water, though, humans were never the main target of apex predators. With some basic equipment, there was nothing to fear, really. In the magical world, though, wizards were actively hunted by multiple creatures, especially in the water. Kelpies, mermaids, nymphs, and sirens held absolute superiority, and they were fast, intelligent, and terrifying according to the books he read. 

His right hand sat in his pocket and clenched around his wand while his heart pounded quickly in his chest. He had to fight down the urge to give the beast more control. Greengrass primly sat at the head of the boat, and none of the other children seemed worried. They would be scared if there was a chance of attack, right? Biographies written by old adventurers were sold in many bookstores, and some of them spoke about the horrifying might of water creatures. He still shuddered at an account by a man named James Cook.

He was a British explorer, and he was a master at magical combat to boot. Three ships, he took with him to the Australian shores, and his crew wandered ignorantly into a colony of mermaids. By the time they actually reached the shore, his men were halved, and one of his ships was no longer up for operation. 

Knowing what Harry knew about how very dangerous mermaids were to fully trained and heavily experienced magical adventurers and the best ships that the British Kingdom could buy at the height of its power, how could he possibly feel safe in the open water again? What chance did this puny boat have against a swarm of mermaids? He would fucking die; he would die, and that was nothing more than a fact of reality.

He almost cried in relief when he reached the shore, and he didn’t care for a single second that Daphne was looking at him oddly. She had to be a pureblood, right? How the hell did she not know enough about magical creatures to respect the very real danger they were in on the open water like that? Most of the students were marveling at the castle view or worrying about their house placement. Was he the only one with a brain working hard enough to recognize dangerous situations when he saw them!?

“What’s got your knickers in a twist, Potter?” Daphne whispered to him. “You were freaking out the whole trip here.”

“How were you not worried!? Do you have any idea what could be in that water!?”

Daphne looked contemplative for a moment. “Well, there's a colony of mermaids in there and a giant squid.”

Harry’s face lost all color. “There's a mermaid colony here!? What were we doing on a dinghy with them underneath us!?”

“Well, yeah, why wouldn’t mermaids live here? What’s the problem with that?”

The castle doors opened, and they all walked inside while Harry was busy almost having a breakdown. “What do you mean!? Do you have any idea how fucking dangerous those things are!?”

She looked taken aback by his language and just a bit offended by the slight condescension in his voice. “I hardly think we were in any danger from them. Dumbledore is in the castle with us. Do you really think they'd survive long enough to regret their decision if they attacked us?”

"As if!" Harry exclaimed. "Mermaids have downed hundreds of boats from every nation, and not a single one of them cared about how powerful the human leaders of the time were! Do you honestly think that they fear Dumbledore? He would have to enter their territory to attack them. wizards in their prime can't keep up with them in the water, and Dumbledore is already halfway on his deathbed. If they wanted us dead, we would all be drowned and gone by now."

Daphne was once again looking at him oddly. Now, though, it was starting to annoy him. He felt like he made a few damn good points, and it was aggravating that he was actually the only person here who cared. Mages nowadays must be far too arrogant in their own abilities to think that magical creatures weren't capable of contending with the best of them, especially when the humans were out of their element and within the territory of the creatures specialized to hunt there. 

"You really know a lot about them, Potter." She sounded surprised and more than a little exasperated.

"How do you not know more!? You grew up here, right? Don't you know about the creatures around you?"

"Of course, I do," she said with a haughty sniff. "But the ministry keeps most of them under wraps. They know not to mess with us by now."

Harry chose not to respond to such stupidity. Arrogance was what that was. If she truly believed that magical creatures cared about the human ministry, she was vastly mistaken. HE didn’t care about the ministry’s rules, and he was one of them! He used parseltongue and his animagus transformation with impudence in spite of their stupid rules on underage magic. The world powers of old were much stronger than the current ministry, and magical creatures attacked without a single care in the world back then. They weren't stopping now just because of a rather weak ministry and a singular wizard powerful enough to be considered a "sorcerer". 

“I’ll give you a book that I read over the summer by an adventurer named James Cook. When you’ve read chapter four, you tell me if you think mermaids would give a damn about Albus Dumbledore.”

Harry’s simmering annoyance was abated by a short nod from his new acquaintance. At least she wasn’t so sure of herself that she was unwilling to consider other viewpoints. He was so engrossed with his own thinking that he didn't realize they were standing in front of a large door. An old lady with quite a bit of height was standing in front of them with a scroll. Thin glasses sat on the tip of her nose as she looked down at the new students. 

"Hello, children, you will be entering the hall in a few moments. When you enter, you will walk up to the head table and wait at the bottom of the stairs. I will then call you up one by one. When I call you, you will walk up the steps and take a seat on the chair. It is then that you will be sorted. For the rest of your time here, your house will be your family. Your triumphs will earn points, and your mistakes will lose them. At the end of the year, the students in the house with the most points will win the house cup and twenty extra credit points each to spread across your final exams as you see fit. As I am sure you can tell, your peers will be taking this very seriously, especially the upper years who are looking to study for their standardized exams while still receiving acceptable grades. I suggest you take it as seriously as them."

Harry looked around and saw the gleeful expressions of the children around him. It was such a brilliant tactic to ensure behavior. Who wouldn't take things seriously with twenty final exam points going to the students of the winning house? He personally cared little for the points. He wasn't necessarily there to get good grades. If they happened to come along with the knowledge he gained, then nobody would catch him complaining. His only real priority was to master all of the magic in the castle that he could. 

With a satisfied smile, the woman walked forward and motioned the students to follow. As Harry entered the hall, he finally let go of his ire caused by the possibility of death and lost himself in the magic around him. The ceiling of the hall was a reflection of the night sky. It looked beautiful, and the amount of magical skill put into it was beyond anything he could possibly imagine. The castle made sure to show its students that the possibilities were limitless from the very beginning. Harry promised himself that he wouldn’t forget the message. 

Looking away from the ceiling, he analyzed the students already sitting at four rows of tables that went from the entrance to the end of the hall. They were obviously meant to be for the different houses, and all of their eyes were on the firsties. Well, they weren't looking at the firsties as a group; Harry knew very well who they were measuring up: Neville Longbottom. 

The boy was at the head of the group as if he was the obvious leader of the new generation. Nobody even attempted to take that role for themselves. The boy stood as tall as an 11-year-old could, and he oozed confidence to such a degree that it filled the entire room stock full. 

Harry was fine with the situation; he didn't want to be the center of attention anyway. Longbottom was welcome to it. The position of "head" mattered little in the end. Harry was determined to be the best. He cared not whether the rest of the world saw it or believed it. As long as he knew that he was the best, there was nothing else of importance. 

The entire group came to a stop in front of the stairs, and Harry analyzed the teachers sitting at the head table behind the old woman that apparently led the sorting. Every teacher had their eyes on the same boy… every teacher but one. Albus Dumbledore, in all of his glory, was the only one at the table looking directly at him. 

Harry felt the stranger buck within his soul and force a wall around his mind that Harry was incapable of even understanding at this point. 

"What the hell are you doing!?" Harry mentally shouted to the stranger with a large heap of indignation to go along with his words.

"I am trying to keep the old fuck out of your head, boy. I don't know why, but he is interested in you."

Harry was shocked that he actually got a straight answer. The stranger was never one to mince words, but he refused to ever give Harry a definitive response to his questions. Instead, the stranger preferred to give him a basic level of information that would allow Harry to research the subject on his own. A fine example of such an occurrence was when the stranger told him about the Zouwu but left him to find the information about the Zouwu himself. 

"Won't he notice that you're keeping him out?"

"Yes," the stranger said with a sneer. "It matters little compared to the alternative. You are allowed to have barriers. He may be suspicious of how you acquired them, but it would be much worse for him to see all of your secrets."

Harry was well aware that the stranger was absolutely not doing this for his benefit. That did not, however, mean that he didn’t happen to want the same thing. Still, he found it exceedingly odd that the headmaster cared more about poking through his head than the head of the boy-who-lived.

"Why would I care about him, and why does he care about me?"

"I am unsure why he cares about you, Harry, but you would be a fool to not care about him. He is a very powerful mage, and he has a lot of connections. The very fact that he is looking at you right now is reason enough to be wary."

Harry gave a mental nod. He had to admit that the advice made sense. Dumbledore was a headmaster by choice; that much, he knew. If the stranger was actually worried about the man's attention, then Harry should probably be terrified. The stranger was truly careful around almost no one. He was supremely confident in his own superiority, and Harry had not yet met a mage before now that the stranger did not treat rather flippantly. Apparently, something about Dumbledore demanded the stranger's respect. It would be intelligent of Harry to follow suit.

"Neville Longbottom," The woman said. 

Apparently, they decided to do away with alphabetical order. Of course, why would anyone else go before him? The hat touched his head for a second before putting the boy in Gryffindor. Longbottom basked in the cheers and the applause as he walked to the lion's table with a smile on his face. 

They followed the proper order after that. He paid the proceedings no heed. Harry did not know about even a single person's placement until Daphne was called and given a spot in Slytherin. Eventually, his name was called. He was surprised to see many of the teachers eyeing him curiously as he approached the chair. Apparently, they knew of him as well. Daphne said that most people in the loop would recognize his last name, but these were merely professors. Why would they be so interested by a child with the Potter family name?

The stranger's walls around his mind didn't budge until the hat was placed on his head. 

"Hello, Mr. Potter, it's a pleasure to meet you."

So the hat was a mind reader. He didn't know how to feel about that. 

"Not to worry, Mr. Potter. Your secrets are safe with me. Confidentiality agreements and all. I'm just here to put 'ya in a house."

He still didn't like it much, but it wasn't like he could change it if he wanted to. It would be more prudent of him to just let it be and get it over with as fast as possible.

"Indeed, and what an easy session it will be. You're pragmatic to a fault, Mr. Potter, and I can tell that you love knowledge."

That was true enough; he did love learning. He wasn't kidding when he said that knowledge was power. He would be a fool to pass it up when it was offered.

"Knowledge is power… interesting. You care for intelligence, but you do not care about it for intelligence's sake. Ravenclaw would be most disappointed."

Fuck! He was really hoping that Ravenclaw would be an option. He wanted that racing broom so bad. 

"Ha!" The hat exclaimed. "I'm sorry, kid, but your guardian is right. There is only one house meant for someone like you."

"SLYTHERIN!" 

Damn it! Iris was going to have so much fun with this in her next letter. The hat really couldn't do him a favor?

Come on! it was a hat. Harry sincerely doubted that it had any ethical limitations preventing it from placing kids in the wrong house. He didn't care where he went, but he could not be more disappointed about his lack of a racing broom. 

He stood up and left his dreams at the sorting chair. Slytherin, it was, he supposed. The professors did not look pleased. Every single one of them looked like a lemon hopped into their mouths against their wills. Dumbledore simply looked resigned. Why did they care where he went anyway? It wasn't as if he knew any of them. Fuck those guys. 

Walking over to the table, he noticed a seat open next to Daphne and found himself somewhat glad that she thought to save a seat for him despite the short amount of time they’d spent together so far. If he had to be here, he might as well sit next to someone he didn't despise. Plopping down next to her, he zoned out for the rest of the ceremony. When it came to an end, the students burst into furious applause until Dumbledore stood up with placatingly risen hands and a kind smile. 

"Yes, yes," he said as the clapping went quiet. "Welcome to a new year at Hogwarts! I hope that every one of our first-year students will find a home in their new house. With that being said, I am sure that all of us are famished. We will talk after the feast."

With a wave of his hand, food appeared on every single table in the hall. The room exploded into noise as the man took his seat, and everyone dug into the buffet with vigor. Harry was slightly slower to the uptake, but he finally got to the point a few weeks ago that his appetite could be considered healthy. He may not be able to stuff his face without throwing up, but he was perfectly capable of eating a decent meal three times a day. It was doing wonders for his frail body. He could still see his bones through his skin, but Iris promised him he would get there eventually. As it turned out, fixing a lifetime of starvation was an arduous task. Thank god that Iris decided to take it up for him. 

Grabbing some slices of glazed ham and a few scoops of mashed potatoes, he started to eat. The food was good, and that was not a compliment he gave lightly. He considered himself to be an insanely good cook, but he thought that whoever cooked this feast would give him a serious run for his money. Could he cook everything he saw here with such proficiency? He really doubted it. Perhaps once he mastered some more magic, he could increase his abilities to handle such a vast range and variety of different foods. It actually kind of irked him that there were apparently people in the castle more proficient than him at a task that he truly thought he excelled at.

That was when a jolt of electricity shot up his body from his front pocket. His wand was going fucking crazy. The thing was having a seizure in his robes, and the heat emanating from its core was burning him through his clothing. Normally, it was him freaking out while his wand attempted to calm his fraying nerves. It was ironic that the one time he truly felt unthreatened was the only time his wand acted out, and it did so with a vengeance.

‘Threat!’ It whispered to him urgently.

Looking around to find the source of its panic, his eyes landed on the very left side of the head table where a man with shoulder-length, black hair was staring at him. Harry wasn’t sure what to think of the man, but he wasn’t sure that he looked particularly hostile. His wand screamed at him to look elsewhere, so he ignored the staring man despite his curiosity. Instead, his eyes locked onto a different professor wearing a turban. Harry realized that the man was staring at him too right before his head exploded with a pain so intense that it was indescribable to anyone who hadn’t experienced it before. 

“Well, that is not good at all,” said the stranger in a particularly troubled manner.

“What?” Harry asked back, just slightly annoyed at the random interjections coming from his usually passive companion.

“Look away from the turban-head, Potter!”

Startled by the panic in the stranger’s voice, Harry followed the command. Looking at his plate and refusing to do anything else, he wondered if the entire year was going to be like this. To be completely honest, Hogwarts was pretty shit so far. He rode a boat through mermaid-infested waters, lost the potential of a racing broom because of a stupid hat, met an old sorcerer who apparently saw something interesting in him, and discovered someone who actually scared the stranger. It was the first day; there was no possible way that Hogwarts was supposed to be like this for everyone.

“What's your problem today!?” Harry asked with a raised voice. 

“I am going to make myself very clear. Stay as far away from that man as possible.”

“Even if I have to run to Dumbledore?” Harry asked with a load of sass in his voice.

Not feeling particularly patient under the circumstances, the stranger responded with brutal honesty.

“If you are stuck between the two of them, you would be better off killing yourself before one of them gets to you.”

Well, that didn’t inspire him with much confidence. He decided to ignore the stranger’s presence for now. The man was obviously not going to give him anything valuable at the moment, so he was better off searching somewhere else. 

“Hey,” Harry said while tapping an older student on the shoulder. “Who's the guy with the turban?”

Harry noticed that Daphne perked up at his curiosity and listened in when the older student gave his answer. 

“That's Professor Quirrel. He used to teach muggle studies, but he's the Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher now. You won’t have trouble with him. First year DADA doesn’t have much to teach as far as spells go. Your hardest class will probably be transfiguration.”

So the turban wearer was a teacher of DADA. Iris said that the position was cursed. Even while she was in school, the DADA position could never be held by a person for longer than a year. That spelled trouble in Harry’s mind. Somehow or another, the DADA position was going to be emptied if tradition was upheld. Personally, he wasn’t about to take chances when this was also the boy-who-lived's first year in the castle.

When the food finally stopped coming, Dumbledore stood from his chair and gained everyone’s attention.

“I would like to thank the Hogwarts elves for a meal well cooked!”  

A sparse amount of applause came with his thanks, and Harry didn’t miss which table most of that applause came from. Hogwarts elves? Apparently, Harry wasn't completely educated on some of the things going on in the castle. If they cooked this, he would have to meet some of these elves one day.

“Now, there are a few things that I would like to mention before I let you go to your rooms. Firstly, I would like to say that the Forbidden Forest has been most aptly named. It is home to many unsavory things. You could find yourself with many more problems than detention if you run afoul of the wrong inhabitants. On the same note, the third floor corridor is strictly off limits. Unlike the forest, however, I can guarantee you that going there will only lead to a death of the most horrid kind. Our caretaker, Filch, has asked me to remind you that all of Zonko’s products are banned, and he would also like me to tell you that cleaning charms should be used whenever possible after coming in from the courtyard, the lake, or the quidditch pitch. Prefects, I leave the rest to you.”

Two students, presumably the prefects, stood up and called for the first-years. Harry obediently followed them as the two older students led them down from the Great Hall and into the Dungeons. The hallways got shadier, and Harry immediately started to feel uncomfortable. The corridors down here were the complete opposite of Iris’s home. The walls were suffocating, and the knowledge that he was underground made his breaths start to shorten. 

The beast growled slightly in his chest, and the stranger gave a disappointed sigh.

“...Harry, you're far too powerful to be afraid of a place like this.”

Powerful? He didn’t feel powerful. He felt like he couldn’t breathe. He felt trapped and confined. Years of his cupboard made situations like this extremely unsavory to him.

“You only think that because your childhood convinced you of your powerlessness. As pitiful as you are when it comes to the Dursleys, you should at least take pride in the fact that none of the other children in this school could survive like you did. Your magic is leagues above everyone around you. You are better. Your incapability of accepting that is the only thing holding you back.”

Harry heard the words, but his brain refused to process them. How could he be better? How could the stranger be right? The man told him time and time again in his recurring nightmares that any wizard could stop his torment with hardly an ounce of exertion. If he could not do that, then how was he supposed to be better than his peers?

The stranger’s response was nothing but a dull sigh.

Looking to his right, he saw Daphne looking at him with a raised eyebrow. He couldn’t handle it down here, and people were going to notice. He looked at books on occlumency, but he was hardly able to make progress without an actual teacher. 

“I could have taught you by now if you would let me.”

Yeah, that was exactly where the problem was. How could he trust someone like that to teach him? If the stranger wanted trust, he was doing a pretty damn awful job of gaining it.

“Harry, this isn’t about trust; this is about using each other to get what we want. Why would you need to trust me to gain knowledge from me? I’ve already seen your mind. I could hurt you no more than you are hurting yourself right now.”

… Harry had to concede that the stranger had a point. Either way, this was a problem he needed to get under control immediately. He still stood by what he said before. Apparition was the most horrible sense of constriction he had ever felt in his life. This was affecting him more than he thought it would, but it was still something he could handle. Occlumency be damned, he would do this the usual way... good old emotional suppression.

They eventually got to a portrait of an asp coiled lazily on top of a table that was lit by a lamp sitting off to the side. None of the students were paying attention to where it was looking, but Harry knew that it was staring at him specifically, just like every snake did in his presence. Its black-slit eyes embedded within golden irises held him in place as the prefects gave a password that Harry didn’t hear. The snake reluctantly looked away and swung into the room, allowing passage for the students. 

A gentle, green hue rested on the surface of everything in the room. It had high ceilings and large, open spaces that made Harry immediately thankful. Being underground was terrible for his nerves, but the feeling of being consumed by the castle walls was no longer so prominent. At the back of the common room was a huge wall of glass that looked into a lake he assumed was the one the first-years just crossed. This was a mixed bag for Harry.

While the view to the outside world made him feel less constricted, his crippling fear of the water and everything in it made him immensely wary of such a seemingly dangerous addition to their common room. The stranger scoffing in his head made Harry feel a little better. Of course, this was not the same as the boats. This castle was created by four sorcerers, and that glass had been there since the beginning of the castle. There were so many wards and runes around the common room that almost nothing could penetrate the glass without a massive amount of help from many skilled and powerful mages. 

“So he does have a brain,” the stranger drawled. 

In Front of the glass was a line of three separate desks with green, cushiony, high-back chairs surrounding them. Above those desks were three glass orbs that looked a little like those plasma balls Dudley was obsessed with for a while. The charged particles within them, however, were a strange hue of ethereal green, which, along with a few more placed around the common room, gave the area its greenish tint. 

The prefects led them further into the room, and Harry’s eyes were drawn to the fireplace, which sat on the left wall just about halfway between the portrait and the three desks. Around that fireplace was a slew of black couches that looked extremely comfortable, and a large wooden table sat in the middle of the couches and the fireplace. Heat from the orange flame flooded past the couches and warmed the group of first-years as they obediently listened to what the prefects had to say.

“My name is Gemma Farley, and this is Jeremiah Colt,” a girl with extremely curly black hair that reached just past her shoulders said to the first years in a no-nonsense voice. “We are your fifth-year prefects. There are sixth and seventh-year prefects in our house who will introduce themselves to you at a later time. As your fifth-year prefects, we are responsible for helping you settle in and handling any problems you might have with navigating life as a student. Help on a purely academic level will go to your sixth-year prefects because the fifth and seventh years have important exams and are unlikely to have the time to help you. Seventh years will deal with any disciplinary related problems you might have with each other or with other houses. If you need any help with things related to life in the castle, feel free to come to us.”

It was at this point that the boy, Jeremiah, spoke up.

“Slytherins get their own rooms by default though you can choose to room with anyone of the same gender if you wish. Just let Professor Snape, our Head of House, know. He will handle it for you. Girls, you will find your dormitories off to the right; boys, you will go to the left. Please do not test the castle’s ability to keep you away from the other gender’s dorms. It will not end well for anyone involved.”

The portrait door swung open so soon after Jeremiah finished speaking that Harry had to wonder whether or not this was pre-planned. The man who was staring at Harry during the feast was the one who entered. He looked stern and serious, but Harry was relieved to find that the man was no longer directing his attention solely at himself. 

“Good evening, I am Professor Snape,” said the man with a slow, intense voice. “I am the head of Slytherin house, and I will be the one directly responsible for you as students, children, competitors, and people. This is not just a school; you live here now. Your academic and personal lives will be intimately intertwined in every way, and I am here to support you through all of it. When class is not in session, I exist solely to aid you in any way you may need. I am also here to make sure you remain responsible during the times you aren’t in class.”

Harry was impressed with the way the man held the attention and respect of every single one of his peers. Snape was making sure to impart to all of them that he was acting as both their guardian and their supervisor. It was a hard balance of roles to play, and he was doing a very good job of it. All of them were made to feel as if Snape was on their side, and it felt comforting to have someone so staunchly for them in such a foreign environment. The stranger happened to agree with his assessment. 

“Professor Mcgonagall told you about house points, and this should only make you see my point further. Your personal life and out-of-school behavior will weigh into your academic success, and it is the same the other way around. I expect every single one of you to uphold the standards expected of you in all of the aspects of your life here. This is your home just as much as your school. Don’t ruin both of them by being imbeciles in either.”

The man gave all of them a hard stare to tell them exactly how serious he was being. “It's time for you to go to sleep. I expect all of you to be in the hall and eating breakfast by 7:30. I will not tolerate any of you skipping any of your meals for any reason. If any of you have a problem with attending one of your meals, speak to me, and we will arrange for your food to be elsewhere. I will know if you begin to neglect your health. If you wish to contact me about something, my door is open. My office is just across the hall from the common room entrance. Do you understand me?”

“Yes, sir!” was the enigmatic response of every student there.

Professor Snape then decided to spin on his heels and leave the room. Harry was shocked by the impact Snape’s words had on him. He’d never experienced anything like it before, and it was actually kind of endearing. Whereas Iris gave off the vibe of someone who was always ready to help, Professor Snape basically told him to either come to him for help or face the consequences. Such a blatant, straightforward, definite kind of support made him feel almost obligated to ask for help if he needed it. For someone who was not used to asking for support from anyone, that was a very helpful feeling to have.

Once they were dismissed, Harry gave a noncommittal nod to Daphne Greengrass and went down the corridor with the rest of the boys. It was more than disappointing to see that the later years who didn’t require a guide were apparently allowed to call dibs on rooms before the 1st years even arrived. Jeremiah explained that the Slytherin dorms, unlike the rest of them, often changed in-between years much like the staircases changed in between classes. It was because of this that rooms were first come first serve at the start of the year. Sometimes, the dorms had multiple floors; Sometimes, there were bigger and smaller rooms; and Jeremiah swore that the entire dorm hallway was one long corridor for the entire year one time. 

With not many options left, Harry chose a tiny room at the very back of the first-floor dorms. There were two floors this year, and Harry had no desire to utilize a staircase every time he wished to visit his room. The tradeoff was that he had to take the smallest room of the lot. Whatever, he didn’t care that his room was tiny. Harry found it quite ironic, really, that his home was a dungeon after he just escaped from the prison that was his relative's home. Perhaps, though, it was even more ironic that he felt freer here than he ever did in 4 Privet Drive.

Jason slithered down his robes, onto the floor, and then onto the bed without speaking a word. Once the boomslang was comfortably coiled on his soft blankets, he looked Harry in the eyes. “Do you dislike your new place of living?” 

Harry just shrugged and flopped down beside his friend. He still felt uncomfortable, but he eventually got a hold of his fear during his time in the much larger common room. “I don’t know. I like the castle, I guess. It will be nice to see their library, but I don’t like how much control they seem to have over my personal life,  and my year mates already look like a bunch of arses.”

Jason nodded along with Harry’s answer and flicked his tongue at the mention of his new Slytherin friends. “We are not unused to bullies, Harry, and we have never been restricted by the rules of others before.”

“Yeah,” Harry whispered back. “I know.”

The snake shook with breathy, hissing laughter. “I could bite them in their sleep if you want,” Jason suggested cheekily.

Harry chuckled at the reference to their conversation before Harry received his Hogwarts letter. It still seemed surreal sometimes, like none of this could've possibly happened. Fortunately for him, he was fairly certain that it did, and he wasn't planning on ever going back.

“I don’t think that will help our inevitable case of whether or not I can keep a dangerous snake in the castle, Jason.”

“You make it sound as if I'm going to be caught,” Was his snake's haughty, slightly arrogant response. 

Always confident, Jason never failed to make him feel like they could take on the world. Feeling a bit better with the help of his familiar, Harry went to sleep in his school robes.