Survivor

Harry had never faced a dilemma quite like this. He’d been faced with many drastic decisions during his short life. None, however, could be properly compared to the one he was pondering at that very moment. There were so many things to consider, so many variables that were either murky or unknown. What kind of consequences could a mistake at this point invoke? 

A bead of sweat threatened to form on his head, but he forced it to stay within him through the sheer force of his will.

“Come on, child, just pick one already,” the stranger commanded impatiently. 

Yes, that was good advice, but which one to choose? One was his path to salvation, the other to doom. This was a very delicate situation. He couldn’t afford to rush and ruin everything. 

“What’s the holdup?” Iris asked from beside him.

…

“I'm currently stuck between these two books.”

He watched Iris glance between the two with an amused grin on her face. The two of them were currently gallivanting through Diagon Alley, and Harry was faced with an enemy he had never prepared for: Christmas shopping. There were many wondrous things to experience while living through the first true Christmas of his entire life. He got to decorate a Christmas tree, paint some truly horrendous dogs on Iris's wall, which she animated despite the fact that they looked massively out of place on her professional-level masterpiece, and he got to hang lights literally everywhere on the house and the trees around it. 

Things were going positively swimmingly until he remembered that having a real Christmas meant getting gifts for the people dear to him. That brought up a question he didn’t have an answer to: What the hell was he supposed to get them? There had never been a person for him to shop for in the past; in the same thread though, he had never had a person to let down if he made a mess of things either.

The pressure was surprisingly intense.

What was an acceptable gift? What was too much? Was he even expected to get one?

His experience was severely lacking, so he had to turn to Iris. He cared for that woman very much, but there couldn’t have been a more unreliable source for the questions he had. Iris was the type of person to buy something for everyone on a whim just because she found the act of gift giving terribly exciting. She'd actually bought him a Comet 320 out of nowhere and without prompting just because he'd made the Slytherin team. If that wasn’t enough proof to substantiate his claim, then he didn’t know what was.

Unfortunately, he had nowhere else to turn unless he wanted to ask one of his two friends, and asking for their advice on gift-giving would destroy the whole point of it when they were literally the only two recipients. Well, he could've technically asked the stranger, but the problem with that solution was that he wasn't an idiot.

That was why he was forced to ask Iris, and, as he expected, Iris practically hopped, skipped, and jumped to Diagon Alley with him in tow the second he'd brought up the idea of buying presents. He was glancing between two books on various human-oriented dark magic, debating which one would be the better gift for Ginevra. One was firmly within the same category as the first one he'd gotten her. They were spells meant to annoy friends and inconvenience childish enemies. The other was decidedly… less so. It wasn’t on the level of curses or something so inappropriate, but it was certainly on the malicious side.

See? This was what he was talking about.

If he got her the same thing as last time but with different spells, then she very well might end up finding it boring. On the other hand, getting her the more dangerous one had the possibility of being outside of her interest range entirely or, perhaps, even offending her. He would've gotten them both, but was it overkill for a Christmas gift? He thought so, but he also never got presents, and Dudley got everything he wanted anyway, so he had no way to tell. 

“Why not just go with both?” Iris asked.

God damn it! So he could do that!

She chuckled at the annoyance swimming behind his eyes, and Harry decided to give little more than a nod as he swept both of them from the shelf. 

“You know,” she said. “You don’t have to take this so seriously. It’s meant to be fun.”

“It’ll be fun, Iris,” he shot back. “When I don’t fuck it up.”

“Fair enough…” she said, trailing off for a moment as she thought about what she wanted to say. “But I think you think this is more serious than it really is. It’s more about the thought than the actual thing. If they like you, your gift will be appreciated because you put the effort into it.”

“Really?” he asked, confused. He really wasn't getting the point of this particular feature of Christmas. He'd always viewed gifts as things that were given when the opportunity happened to arise or the recipient did something worthy of the gift, not because the date demanded it, and the stranger seemed to agree. “What’s the point in getting it if they don’t like it?”

Iris gave a small sigh, once again feeling anger bubble within her. Harry told her precious little about his time with his relatives after his first explanation. It was really moments like these that gave her the information she needed about exactly how bad his situation used to be. She saw it in the way he hesitated before asking for something when he needed it from her or when he was somehow so disconnected from traditions that most kids just accepted by default. 

“The point,” she said, tapping him on the forehead with her pointer finger. “Is so the people you care about know you’re thinking of them. As long as your gift proves you thought about what they might like, they'll feel appreciated. If I gave you a broom that wasn’t really great for your position, would you have been upset?”

“Of course, not,” he said rather snappily, affronted by the very thought of it. “You didn’t have to get me one in the first place.”

“And is someone forcing you to get your friends a present?” she asked, smirking when she saw him falter. 

“Fine, fine,” he said, admitting defeat. “You win. I’ll stop worrying and just buy them something I think they’ll like,” Harry then stopped for a moment to squint at Iris. “You better like whatever the hell I end up getting you though, since it's just the thought that counts.”

She laughed as she reached over to ruffle his hair, and the two of them left the bookstore to go look for something that Daphne might enjoy. After that, all he had to do was get through his trip to the Weasley’s house with the same lack of trouble.

“Are you ready to go, Harry!?” Iris asked loudly, not knowing exactly where he was. 

Harry came out of his room with the wrapped books he got for Ginevra and walked over to the kitchen. “Yeah, I’m ready. Just let me get the cake.”

Iris told him that it wasn’t customary to get everyone a gift at a party but that it would probably be appreciated if they brought something over for everyone to eat during the gathering. What was the difference between that and a gift? Harry had no fucking idea.

That didn't matter though because it was right down his alley. Ginevra told him all about how much her mother loved to cook, but he was also notified that she was the kind of person who preferred to make substantial foods. She would have the dinner down pat. There would probably be lots of supremely cooked meats and sides to choose from, so he found a spot that he could insert himself by making desert. 

It wasn’t anything too complicated, just some chocolate fudge cake, but Iris assured him that it would be more than good enough for a family gathering. Handing his cake to Iris, he walked over to the fireplace with his gift in his hands. He glanced over to his guardian, and she gave him a teasing smile.

“Now, I am going to apparate to keep the cake from getting contaminated with floo powder. You are going to floo over there, and we will meet in the living room. I swear to God, Harry, if you get lost somewhere, I'm leaving you there until I eat my dinner.”

Harry chuckled as Iris spun and disappeared with a loud snap. He was, of course, using the floo because of the way apparition triggered his claustrophobia. He grasped a bit of floo powder and threw it at the base of the fireplace, speaking the address of the Weasley’s house out loud. The green fire swallowed him, spun him around, and spat him out on the other side.

What he was thrown into could’ve only been described as absolute chaos. Redheads were everywhere. Red and green glitter was flying around the room, and two twins with tubes, which probably shot the glitter, were running away from their mother, who was chasing them across the house with a dish towel raised to be used as a flimsy weapon, the two of them giggling like school-girls the entire way. Two young men were animatedly chatting on the couch just a bit away from the fireplace, and a middle-aged man was at a wooden table while he tinkered with a…

Was that a fucking rubber duck?

Longbottom and his usual hanger-on were across the room, laughing with each other as they sent tripping jinxes at the twins, slowing them down with the hopes of getting them caught by Mrs. Weasley, who was steadily gaining on them as they raced around the living room and into the kitchen. At the same time, an old woman was pretending to reprimand the two first-years despite the fact that she didn’t seem to be genuinely disappointed at all, and Harry was about to fall flat on his face thanks to that stupid fireplace before Ginevra caught him with a mocking smirk.

“You told me you were bad with the floo, but I didn’t think you were that bad.”

Harry could only nod as his eyes ran across the room for a second time before settling on the door that just opened to reveal an equally horrified Iris. They lived a chaotic, spontaneous life, but this was something else entirely. Their eyes met from across the room, and both of them were wondering what the hell they'd just walked into.

Mrs. Weasley immediately stopped her angry rush to catch the two troublemakers and threw her hands up excitedly to meet the newcomer at her door, greeting the stunned Iris as if they were old friends instead of strangers just meeting for the first time. At the same time, his friend rebalanced him and backed off to give him space, and he realized that people had caught onto his sloppy arrival. He expertly cleared his face and put on a smile despite just how much was going on around him.

“Well, it’s a good thing I got you a present, or I’d owe you for catching me," he told the girl who'd saved him from an embarrassing fall.

He handed it to her, and she grew a massive smile while tearing it open. She was greeted with the sight of a pair of gloves, and her eyebrows scrunched in confusion. She looked back up to him, and he subtly pulled his wand a little out of his pocket and glanced upstairs to her room with a wink. He was amused by the conspiratorial smirk she gave him as she rushed up to put the transfigured gloves in her room. In a few hours, they would change back  to the books he'd bought her, and her mother would be none the wiser. 

“Oh, Harry!” came the voice of Mrs. Weasley. “I saw her open the present you got her from across the room. It was very well picked, young man!”

Iris was standing behind her, and Harry gave her but a moment of attention before looking up to meet Mrs. Weasley’s eyes with the best innocent, charming smile he could muster. “Thank you, Mrs. Weasley. I was agonizing over it for days.”

She bought it hook, line, and sinker, practically melting at his earnest expression. She held back a squeal as she pulled him into a short hug before bustling off. Iris was looking at him with amusement shining through her serious expression. He looked over to see Longbottom giving him a well-concealed glare. Both of them knew that Longbottom caught his lie, and Harry made sure to shoot a smirk at him before turning back to Ginevra, who'd just bolted down the stairs to meet him again with a box of her own in hand.

She gave it to him with a giddy expression on her face, and Harry took it with expertly concealed reverence. There were lots of firsts for him this Christmas, and the present he held was no different. Friends weren't a part of his life before, so presents from them were equally absent. Gently, as though it might disintegrate should he touch it too hard, he peeled the paper away from it. He smiled at what he saw.

'Jinxing for Dummies,'

It was a book meant to teach the individuals who were hopeless at DADA how to properly cast basic dark magic. He stared at the book for a few moments, inexplicably touched by the obviously teasing gift he was given. Some might've wanted a touching gift for their first Christmas present. Harry thought it was perfect.

Ginevra glanced quickly between the book and his face with a smirk. "You know, 'cause you suck so bad at defence," she prodded.

It was so very Ginevra. Of course, she wasn't going to pass up an opportunity to rib on him for his one deficiency in school. He expected nothing less, and he shrunk the book with his wand not a moment later, giving her a nod and a smile in return for her present. 

"Thank you," he said with only the utmost sincerity.

“Well, come on!” she responded excitedly, bouncing on the balls of her feet due to the mood their exchange of presents must’ve put her in. “You’ve got to meet everyone!”

That was how Harry found himself pulled into the maelstrom that was the Weasley family. He was initially uncomfortable. He much preferred the way he felt in Iris’s house. It was chaotic there, but it was chaos by design. The Weasley’s house was so hectic that it felt like a vicious riptide just pulling him along. Iris’s house was freedom. Too much chaos was just as absent of individual will as suffocating strictness. 

The more people Ginevra introduced him to, though, the more comfortable he became. He met the two oldest siblings, a laid-back cursebreaker and an earnest dragon-keeper. He was introduced to her eccentric father who looked upon the muggle world with eyes that matched the way he felt about the one he'd just joined. He met the uptight prefect, Percy, who was just as flummoxed by his household as Harry.

He didn’t think he’d ever be able to live in a place like this, but, after getting to meet everyone, he eventually relaxed enough to enjoy what he now knew to be the true antithesis to his relative’s household. He got so caught up in the eventfulness of the Weasley family, in fact, that he didn’t even notice how much time had passed until an old woman with shoulder-length, gray hair gestured for him to approach when she caught his eye. His eyebrow rose, and he glanced at Ginny, who didn’t introduce him to her for, he hoped, a valid reason.

“I was hoping to save you from listening to her never-ending bragging about Neville,” she whispered to him, leaning over to his ear so he could hear over the noise. 

He nodded, making a face at the assumptions he’d already made about the conversation he was about to have. Still, he approached the woman, not wanting to make problems during an evening that had been nothing but pleasant so far. The last thing he wanted to hear, though, was how amazing Neville was and how great of a life he had, especially after what he'd witnessed in the library a bit before Christmas break. 

The woman led them outside, away from the commotion and toward a very long table. She took a seat and gestured for him to take a seat across from her. Ginevra, having invited him in the first place, decided to follow and sit next to him. It was technically her duty to introduce him to everyone else as her guest. Nevertheless, the woman seemed to care less than nothing about formalities.

“Harry Potter,” she said, looking at him as though measuring his worth to the third decimal place. “You’ve been raising almost as many eyebrows as my boy. It was an impressive thing to watch, your match against Hufflepuff.”

Somehow, she said the compliment in such a way that Harry interpreted it as an insult. Still, he accepted it easily and with the same smile he used on Mrs. Weasley. He felt as though she didn’t buy it quite as much as Ginevra’s mother, but precious few people could see past him if he didn’t want them to. 

“Thank you, ma’am. I’m excited to watch Neville play after break.”

Well, he was… but only so he could learn how to smack the bastard around in their game.

“I don’t think I’ve seen someone fly quite like you in an organized game since I watched your father play with my son.”

Harry was momentarily struck dumb. Professor McGonagall had told him about his father’s position on the team, but it was still strange to realize that his parents were people who'd interacted with others and were parts of other people’s lives, sometimes intimately so. It was even more strange to realize that his father interacted with someone as famous as Frank Longbottom. If their team was anything like Harry’s, they were probably pretty well acquainted too.

"Enough of quidditch though," she said, physically waving the subject away. "I've heard much about your skills at certain school subjects. If I'm not mistaken, you share many skills with your parents beyond flying."

Harry smiled at the compliment, accepting it without resistance. He was pretty damn high on the rankings for his year despite the fact that DADA continued to drag him down just as much as transfiguration pulled him up. 

"Professor McGonagall said I'm even better than my father was," he told her.

"Even better, you say?" she asked, surprised. "Your father was very talented from what Frank told me. Your mother, though, was even better at charms and runes. You could very easily find some of the papers she published, both to get her masteries and to progress her field."

Now that was a surprise. He'd heard nothing of his mother being a researcher. Flitwick had told him that his mum was a joy to teach like no other, but he was unaware that she'd actually been considered a master. Mrs. Longbottom was more right than she knew about his shared skills because he had a makeshift rune collecting information on Snape at this exact moment. 

"Thank you," he said. "No one's told me that about my mum."

It was about this time that the rest of the people in the house came out to begin dinner. Longbottom came out too, and Harry could see the way he squinted when he saw who his grandmother was talking to. The boy approached and took a seat next to Mrs. Longbottom, his friend plopping down into the one beside him. 

“What’re you doing out here, Gram?” the boy asked her.

“I was just telling Harry, here, about how his father and your own used to play on the same quidditch team.”

“They did!?” Longbottom asked, clearly as shocked by Harry.

“Oh, yes!” Mrs. Longbottom exclaimed. “They made quite the team on the pitch, those two.”

Harry could tell that Longbottom was just as unsure about how to feel about that as himself. Both of them had never known their parents, and it was weird to hear about how their two unknown fathers used to be friends with each other. It was a connection that seemed both valuable and fraudulent at the same time, but Harry was more than happy to ignore Longbottom’s thoughts on the matter when he got to watch in amusement as Ginevra seemed to just put together that there were two orphans currently sitting across from one another at the table of another family because their own was either incomplete or completely missing. 

Harry was just happy that Longbottom was keeping to himself today.

The food was placed out for them, and Ronald Weasley was called along with the twins to go get the plates and silverware. Harry was momentarily confused, and he looked over to Ginevra with a raised eyebrow. Her answer was to smirk and lean over to get close to his ear.

“The twins were apparently caught pulling a dungbomb prank on some Slytherins at the end of the year, and Ron was given detention for pulling his wand on a group of Slytherins on Halloween. Mum has been giving them all menial chores all break as punishment. The twins swear they didn’t do it, but everyone knows those two; pranking is in their blood.”

“Well, I don’t know anything about the twins,” Harry lied as easily as he breathed. “I was the one Ron pulled his wand on though. It was me and one of my friends.”

“Really!?” she asked in an intense whisper. “The school doesn’t tell parents about the names of the other people involved in their kids' troublemaking. He really pulled his wand on you?”

“Yeah, I can’t really blame him after the verbal thrashing we gave him beforehand.”

“Still, I’ll be sure to pay him back for it later.”

“Oh, don’t worry,” he said with a satisfied sigh as Ronald found himself in a position where he was forced to place Harry’s plate on the table for him. “This is more than good enough.”

A childish punishment for a childish mistake. It was fitting. 

… That was, at least, until he started piling food onto his plate and heard the stranger huff out a small chuckle. The man was usually sitting around with nothing better to do than watch, but it was rare that he actually found humor in everyday things. There was the enjoyment of a scheme fulfilling itself or the elation that came with beating an opponent, but sheer amusement wasn’t quite as common.

“What’s up with you?” Harry asked.

“Oh, nothing…” the stranger drawled, obviously still finding something quite funny. “I would check my plate before eating anything though.”

Was something wrong with it? It didn’t look like anything was wrong with it.

“You remember what I taught you. This is the perfect time to practice your detection against something a bit more on your level,” the stranger suggested with a smirk.

So there was something magically wrong with his plate. He knew what the stranger wanted him to do. Once he'd almost walked into Dumbledore’s trap for Quirrell, it was decided that Harry needed to learn some self-sufficiency when it came to detecting threats. Relying on his wand and the stranger to keep him aware and out of trouble was simply too risky. 

Not many children could do what he was being taught, but he had a natural ability for legilimency. It was simply something he was good at. The stranger thought that it was something of a skill built out of necessity due to Harry’s intense desire to read the emotions and intentions of the people around him while living in such a volatile situation.

Having no knowledge of how magical skills generally developed, Harry simply accepted it.

Legilimency, according to the stranger, wasn't actually the art of mind reading. It was a very broad and extremely versatile field that dealt with the wizard or witch reaching beyond themselves with their magic and learning to understand what it was their magic encountered. In the art of  “mind reading”, that amounted to reaching out toward the mind of another and understanding the interactions between that mind and one’s own magic. That also extended to the physical realm, where a wizard could reach out with their magic and read the environment around them by feeling out the landscape or, as the stranger wanted him to do now, reaching out toward other magic and discerning its intent and scope.

Unfortunately, all he had to practice on was Dumbledore’s own wards, and those were so subtle and simultaneously complex that it was difficult for Harry to grasp what was being shown to him. The stranger likened it to a toddler attempting to read a dissertation. He had to learn to comprehend the stuff that was obvious and easily understood before attempting to discern the magic used by Albus Dumbledore. 

Stilling himself for a moment, he reached out with his magic. That part wasn’t hard. The act of expanding his magic around him was the easiest and most basic skill of legilimency. Everyone who could practice the art, even beginners, could do it. That was the skill he'd developed on his own with the Dursleys. The skill curve with legilimency came from using that very basic action and learning how it allowed one to experience the world around them. It was as if he were given an entirely new sense, and, just like tasting or smelling, he had to figure out what the new sensations meant.

What he felt was… strange.

He could detect a flicker of something beyond the realm of the physical, but what it actually was remained completely out of his reach. The feeling made him slightly uncomfortable, as though he were catching a whiff of a kid who'd forgot the definition of hygiene for about a day or two. It wasn’t so repulsive that he had to move away from it, but it was certainly unpleasant enough to make him scrunch his nose if he wasn’t keeping a firm grip on his expressions. 

“Very astute, Harry,” the stranger complimented. “It’s a potion meant to affect you in a negative way. Can you dig any deeper?”

He tried to analyze it further and caught a bit more of it. In order to do so, though, he had to get closer. He immediately realized a bit of why this was such a difficult skill when the unpleasantness increased further with his closer analysis. To get a deeper reading of something, one had to extend themselves further and encounter the magic more intimately. If this was merely a childish prank pulled with a potion, he had no idea what it would feel like to examine a spell imbued with true malice. 

“Yes,” the stranger granted him. “It can be horrid to the point of debilitation to truly feel the most deadly of spells. To use legilimency like this is to understand the thing you're looking at on a level beyond what anything else could replicate. Your magic is tied to your very soul. Remember, Harry, that no magic comes without a price. You will gain more than you could ever dream by developing this skill, but the things you'll experience will be equally beyond your current level of comprehension.”

Acknowledging the stranger’s words but accepting the price nonetheless, he got closer to the magic and attempted to encapsulate it with his entire being. As he gazed deeper into the magic before him, he got the feeling that it was almost pushing against him. It wasn’t like it was attempting to rebuff his analysis; it seemed more like it was actively attempting to expand, even as it sat firmly attached to his plate. He could honestly say it was the queerest thing he’d ever felt in his life, and it only got weirder when his magic felt almost sluggish, like he’d just put on a really heavy backpack.

“Perfect!” the stranger exclaimed. “Now, bring it together and make an assumption about what this might tell you of its effects.”

Well, he assumed that the weight of his magic was communicating to him that the potion was meant to increase the weight of something. When combined with the expansion, maybe he was looking at some sort of growth potion? It was possible that it might've been a potion that simply made someone gain weight, though, considering that would increase size at the same time. Now that he thought about it, that could also be indicative of an aging potion.

“Don’t overthink it,” the stranger advised. “This is meant to be another sense for you to use. It's as personal and subjective as your other senses, so going with your gut is usually a decent bet. If it might mean something but seems to point toward another, don’t pull yourself astray due to your own doubt.”

“Well, I don’t want to be wrong, do I?” Harry asked.

“Of course not! That's why you need to test it and find out what those feelings actually mean.”

“Well, I’m not going to be the one taking it,” Harry told the stranger.

“Why, Harry, I think we both know the perfect test subject.”

Harry glanced up to see Ronald leaning over to scoop as much food onto his plate as possible, but he could tell the boy was waiting for something. He remembered how the boy promised him that he’d get what was coming to him eventually, and the redhead had been rather withdrawn since Halloween. Harry hadn’t experienced another ounce of conflict with him since. This was, apparently, the comeuppance he was due. He could appreciate the mostly harmless way of exacting revenge, even if he didn’t appreciate the idea of getting humiliated at a dinner with people he’d just met. 

Still, it was poor form to dish out what one couldn’t take, right?

Back when he'd learned the switching spell for transfiguration, he'd wondered if there was an equivalent spell for charms. Of course, the transfiguration spell was merely overlaying an object with another. It amounted to trickery. The items were still the same, and they would eventually return to their original form. What he'd wanted to know, though, was if there was a charm meant to literally switch the positions of two objects. The answer was clear - of course, there was!

It was more complicated than the spell McGonagall taught the first-years, at least for a person who was so gifted in the art of transfiguration. Space-manipulation was a doozy, but switching two items was infinitely easier than trying to displace one into a location based purely on the caster's intentions. He had to essentially warp two items, seamlessly placing one where the other used to be. The advantages, though, if he could do it, especially in this situation, were enormous. See, it was impossible to transfigure magic itself. One could affect the magic of another, but manipulating it or changing it was out of the question. He could, according to the stranger, bat a curse away with his wand. He could not turn a curse into a charm.

In much the same way, a switching spell in transfiguration wouldn't take the potion off of his plate or manifest it on Ronald’s. He could, however, displace the potion, physically moving it from one spot to another. If he literally switched the places of their plates, the potion would remain attached to the plate it was on despite its magical travel. The only thing Harry had to do was charm them without alerting his target. 

Reaching over with his elbow, he gave Ginevra a light tap. She looked over to him, and he gave a subtle glance at his plate. She was obviously confused, but she followed his gaze anyway while taking a drink of her pumpkin juice. He then discreetly showed her his wand and tapped it against the edge of his plate while whispering the incantation for the switching charm. His plate moved just a smidge as it flickered from its spot and was instantaneously replaced with Ron’s.

Ronald, of course, was too busy stuffing his face to notice, even if Harry hadn’t almost perfectly performed the charm to switch their plates. The potion that the plate was soaked in spread to the food it touched, and Weasley shoved it down his gullet without reprieve. A second later, his head expanded to twice its size and grew to about thrice its usual weight. The sudden explosion of mass was too much for Weasley to hold up while leaning over the table, and his head smacked against his full plate with a satisfying thump that was matched by Ginevra snorting her pumpkin juice all over her immediate vicinity. 

“Ginevra!” her brother, Percy, exclaimed from beside her as he pulled out his wand to clean himself of her expelled juice.

The twins were already laughing when Ronald pushed hard against the table to lift his head from his plate, unfortunately overcorrecting and falling over the back of his stool and onto the ground, causing their laughter to increase in intensity until tears started to accumulate in their eyes. William, the curse-breaker, was out of his seat a moment later to take a look at his flailing little brother while his mother jumped from her own seat with an exclamation of shock. 

Iris, however, caught his interaction with Ginny from her position on his other side and was looking at him with a mixture of faux disappointment and ill-concealed amusement. Longbottom also seemed to catch onto his involvement, and he was getting a glare from the boy that was expertly hidden under an air of apathy that would’ve been impressive had Harry not read through it immediately. He simply gave Iris a shrug, attempting to communicate to her that he would explain later. She was undoubtedly going to accept his actions as just when he told her that he merely turned around the prank that was originally meant to target him. 

William picked up the plate and seemed to zone out for a second before blinking in realization. “It’s a head-expansion potion. Someone decided it was a good time to pull a prank.”

The curse-breaker knew legilimency. 

Of course, he did, and he was both faster and more accurate with his readings than Harry had been. Ginny was laughing just as hard as the twins while he took a moment to both appreciate his work and note his findings. He was right about the expansion and the weight gain, but he didn’t manage to catch the fact that it specifically targeted the head. It was probably a rather nuanced feeling that he’d have to look at a few more times and experience with the knowledge of the potion’s effect beforehand. 

William helped Ron to his feet and decided to bring the boy inside. Harry almost would’ve felt bad if the redhead wasn’t about to do the same thing to him. It was only made sweeter because potions weren’t as easily cured as spells. If a jinx or a hex was performed to cause the same effect, it could’ve been ended by another person performing a counter-curse. A potion, however, was not an ambient effect caused by another person’s magic; it was a physical effect caused by the magical interaction within the body of the drinker. A simple finite wasn’t going to stop that potion. A cure would either have to be brewed to reverse the effect, or Ronald would have to wait the time out.

Mrs. Weasley soon began drilling into a still breathless set of twins. Harry didn’t feel too bad about that one either. Ron was hopeless at potions, so he had to get the brew from somewhere. It also had to be prepared very cleverly to have successfully coated his plate without leaving any obvious signs of the plate having been drenched in something as foul as a potion. He assumed that the twins were probably rightfully upset about getting in trouble for the prank that was blamed on them and saw an opportunity to actually earn their punishment by pranking a Slytherin, so Harry had no hard feelings, but he certainly wasn’t going to stand up and accept blame for them after the part they played in his potential humiliation. 

“Oh, my god, Harry,” the girl said quietly while drying her eyes. “How did you do that?”

“It was just a switching charm,” he said for both her and Iris’s benefit. “The potion was already on my plate. I just returned it to the sender. By the way, don’t eat anything off of my plate. It’s still contaminated.”

Iris appeared satisfied by his explanation, and amusement once again struck his young friend due to the newfound sense of justice attributed to what was already a rather funny prank. It was always more satisfying when the victim deserved what they got. Despite the ire he'd gained from Longbottom, it was a very good day so far.

The fireplace flashed with green flame, and Harry stumbled out into Iris's house, almost falling flat on his face. This time, much to his surprise, he managed to catch himself instead of forcing someone else to come to his rescue. The rest of the party had gone well enough. It was really about eating food and exchanging pleasant small talk until it was time to leave.

His cake had been demolished, not that it surprised him. He knew it was going to be a favorite. Call him arrogant, but doubting his skill around the kitchen simply wasn't something he could do. 

Iris came through moments later, and she seemed almost as proud of his successful exit from the floo network as he was. In his pocket was the shrunken book he got from Ginny, and he decided that now was a good time to retire for the night. Bringing it with him, he removed the book and canceled the spell he had on it. The book appeared to be second-hand, not that it really mattered. Someone owning the book before him would not affect the knowledge he could gain from it.

In reality, this book was probably something he needed. For all of his skill elsewhere, DADA was well and truly beating his ass all the way across the castle and back. If there ever was a person who needed a book for dummies about casting jinxes, it was him. With that in mind, he opened it, and Ginevra surprised him once again when a small package of black powder fell out of the book alongside a folded piece of parchment.

Picking it up, he examined the pouch before deciding that the note was most likely going to explain it better than his own observations would. Unfolding it, he began to read.

Harry, 

The book was a joke, but I thought this might help if you really do have that much trouble with DADA. It’s a sealed, airtight package of the remains of a few ashwinders. There’s a rune on the back of it that keeps the ashes contained. You told me you know how to power runes. If you pump a bit of power into it, the bag will disappear, and the ash will spread wherever you toss it. 

Usually, Ashwinder remains blow up immediately, but they were put into stasis before getting sealed in this bag. As soon as it touches the air, it will explode. It’s meant to be placed into a potion before it gets opened, but I figured it might be useful for other things if you needed it.

Merry Christmas,

Ginny

The stranger was chuckling, and he obviously approved of the gift. Harry wasn’t surprised even a little. The way to the stranger’s heart was through the creation and enactment of intelligent and, most likely, dangerous plans. 

That being said, Harry was impressed by the gift as well. He wasn’t sure how or where it could be applied, but he was sure that a well-placed explosive would find a use eventually. He’d have to make sure to send his thanks, and he was also quite glad to find that his more nefarious book might be more welcomed by his young friend than he'd initially expected.

Anyone who gave a packaged explosive as a gift would enjoy the more serious spells that he read about in the second book he bought. 

That was more than fine by Harry. He doubted he'd get along well with someone who wasn't as comfortable with some necessary violence as he was. If she ended up enjoying his gift, then it was nothing more than extra proof that he got lucky with his first choice for a friend.