Plot Bunnies and (rarely) One Shots

Harry was a freak.

He made it work. 

He could make things move without touching things, and make lights that weren’t there to shine. He could run from his cousin without moving a step, and warm the water in the cold bath Aunt Petunia let him have once a week, and if he really really got dirty working in the garden, so he wouldn’t track mud about. 

His freak-ness was a wild thing. It fit, because he was wild. 

He preferred outside tending to the lilies (it’d won the Garden Award for the block three years running, even if the collection of lilies in the beds made Aunt Petunia’s face pinch) than inside, though maybe that was because inside held much less Harry-acceptable tasks. Endless dishes to clean, messes that appeared whenever he turned his back, getting his Uncle beer and his Aunt tea, being yelled at for Dudley’s tragic lack of toys, or something breaking, and being shut in the cupboard to wait amongst the dusty darkness. 

He prefers the outside, where he feels like he can breathe. 

Harry is a freak. 

He’d thought he’d been normal, when he was smaller. When his uncle would beat him for things he hadn’t done, when Aunt Petunia looked at him with anything but love in her eyes. And yes, it was unfair. There were things he took the fall for he hadn’t done, and that was nonsense. But also there was a stormcloud under his skin and sometimes they lightning strikes did more than grow out his shaved hair or heal his aching back. 

Sometimes he teleported to the top of the school roof to escape Dudley in another round of Harry Hunting. 

Sometimes Uncle Vernon’s belt disappeared out of his hands, just as he swung. 

Sometimes food disappeared from the fridge, only reappearing again within a certain cupboard under the stairs.

Only two of those were accidental. 

Harry was a freak. 

Harry was a survivor. 

Harry’s freak abilities were strange, and powerful, but they gave him ground he wouldn’t have had otherwise. And maybe it was wrong, maybe it was Bad, but he was Bad, a Freak, and it was his ability. So he’d use it. 

He uses it to get food, and to close the rips in the clothes Aunt Petunia throws at him when Dudley outgrow them like the tears hadn’t happened at all, to summon light to do his homework by, energy to run from Dudley with, understanding to speak to the snakes with.

The last one was an accident too, but it’d turned out alright. Accidents happened to him, he thought. Just part of being a Freak. 

Besides, the snakes are nice. They speak to him as he tends to the lilies and roses in the backgarden, and bring him nice things they found around, once he explains he can’t eat the mice and birds they bring him because you are hungry, hatchling, eat, hatchling. Candles, crumpled dollar bills and old coins, shiny stones and soda tabs they found glittering among the gutter. It ranges, but he treasures it all, tucked away carefully on the rickety shelf above his lumpy pillow. 

What he holds dear the most, though, is that sense of relief. Somewhere to put the ever-swirling well of energy in his blood because don’t be a freak be normal that’s not what normal people do be GOOD- but without anywhere to go the energy wells up and up and then it-

Explodes.

It’d been a thunderstorm night. Uncle Vernon had been unhappy with him, and after dinner, he’d made a mistake. He’d been dusting the mantle, trying to desperately duck out of the way of the telly’s light and in his haste to get out of sight and to safety, his hand bumped against one of the pictures of Dudley on the shelf.

It fell.

It cracked. 

There’d been screaming.

And he’d been outside, not allowed back in until after school the next day. 

Red had dripped onto the grass, tears joining the raindrops in soaking him through. The anxiety and fear and anger (righteous but Wrong, he was Bad, he deserved this-) swelled up in him like the radio turning up as Uncle Vernon turned the dial in the car and-

Red turned to black. 

He became one with the thunderstorm. 

It’d been Bad, and very easily could have gone Wrong. The worst kind of Freakish. He’d walked the knife edge that night, swooping among storm clouds and dancing with the lightning and thunder. 

But he’d been careful. He stayed up up up, where his rage couldn’t touch even the highest of rooftops, and that one tree that met his sadness and lost it’s upper half scared him into carefulness just fine. 

He did not sleep that night. He’d never felt more alive. 

He’d used up all the energy, all his Freakishness, and he thrummed with it. It returned, a constant in his life, because he was a Freak but the Freakishness was his. 

There were no more lightning-struck tree tops. 

He gave little pieces of the Freakishness here and there, bits and pieces so he wouldn’t overflow, but it would remain just there by his heart, a constant comfort even in it’s Wrongness. He made the mop do the washing for him, and the dish rags work in the sink all on their own. He gave promises to the snakes when they Journeyed, for mate or food or freedom, little glows under their scales of you’ll be safe you’ll be fed you’ll make it. He gathered up the webs of the spiders he shared his cupboard with, when they started weaving anew (Ambitious things, spiders. Never content with what they had done before, forever reaching forward) to slowly form a blanket to keep him warm and safe he was fairly certain would survive a plane crash.

He wraps it around his shoulders, whenever Uncle Vernon throws him out the backdoor on bad nights. It floats through the air to reach him, under the cupboard door and past the kitchen with Petunia’s turned back and the living room with Uncle Vernon’s distracted gaze on the telly, careful, careful. 

They are his favorite nights. 

He is a Freak, and he is Bad, but he uses it. It’s much better than sitting in his cupboard, scared of his own self. Where he’d felt like the shadows were going to tear him apart with their strength. Because he couldn’t give in, it was Bad, Freakish-

He’d given in.

He knew it was Bad. He was Bad.

He didn’t care much nowadays.

He held it next to his heart too, though. Just to remind himself, every once in a while. When he felt Good outside of Privet Drive, when he walked with a scone and hot tea in a styrofoam cup bought with handfuls of pilfered change, or flew back, forth, back, forth on a swingset far from the one he’d long since abandoned near Number Four for it’s rather unfortunate proximity to one Dudley Dursley.  

Harry Potter (not Boy, but Harry, like how his kindergarten teacher told him that first day, eyes pinched. Harry. Harry Potter. Not Boy, not Freak. Harry) is nine years old. He is Bad, and he isn’t free, but this is close enough. Among the stars, with aching muscles and stinging eyes, tucked under an oak tree or huddled under a creaking shop awning, he is at peace. 

Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia never question him when he turns up at the back door at four in the afternoon after school, clothes un-rumpled from sleeping rough or dirty from scrounging for dinner. His homework is turned in, his grades just below Dudley’s and the neighbors suspicions never rise. So the peace remains, and he is-

Something. 

Bad, yes. Free, no. 

Whatever it is, he thinks, it is enough. 

He is eleven, and the peace is shattered. It is broken by a large man with a pink umbrella with the same Freakishness untamed Harry holds in his chest, and Harry panics. Behind his soft gratitude at the smooshed birthday cake, and the fear at his uncle’s roaring, and the wonder at everything that comes out of the giant’s (for he must be one, really) mouth, he scrabbles for something, anything to stabilize what’s around him. Because he is Bad, but things could be Worse, and Uncle Vernon will get mad, the purple-faced kind of mad that meant pain pain pain, dust, stale water, old bread, let me out let me out I’M OUT that left him locked in his cupboard for three weeks as his body struggled to knit itself together, trapped by dusty wood until he very suddenly wasn’t, and then he was among a storm, and then a tree (or at least half of it) stopped existing. 

He didn’t want Hagrid to turn to splinters in the wind like that pine. Hagrid, even though he was Bad, a Freak just like Harry (and wasn’t that something) was good. His smiles were soft, and his pockets held bells and ribbon and dog treats, and he gave Harry a cake. Just for him. He is Bad, and he is Good, and he is confusing, and Harry doesn’t want him to go. 

So Harry goes instead. 

Hagrid says there were supposed to be letters, to go with the owls that blanketed Number Four earlier in the week, but there must have been a mix-up. Mail-wards, the giant had muttered. This means nothing to Harry, but snags a book called Wards for the Wayward Individual from a display stand because of the phrase. Little squiggles on the wooden shelf it’d sat on flared gold and yellow, and Harry had bit his tongue. A store clerk inside looked up sharply, a paperweight on their desk glowing orange, and shadow had surged under Harry’s skin.

The carved symbols winked out. The paperweight went dark. The book stayed under his under-sized shirt as he and the giant walked on. 

A bank. A blood test Hagrid doesn’t want him to take, but he does anyways because the Goblins are scary. He learns, when they pry him away from Hagrid with their offered glows under their skin to contrast his shadows promising return if he would just be patient, give them time, (He gives them an hour, and only because of a trade of tendrils of color between him the goblin at the front desk, who walked away wide-eyed and muttering of the old ways. It is a very confusing hour.) of Lords and Ladies and Houses and Knuts, Sickles, Galleons. Wizarding Politics is meaningless to him, but Griphook brings him an ‘owl order catalogue’ and suddenly he’s promised many more books to join the one in the velvet bag he bought with shiny gold that’s his, on Potions and Alchemy and History and Charms and Transfiguration. He buys every title on the now slightly less confounding school list, and many more besides. He is given more bags, with insides that will never fill. He had money, in a seemingly empty satin bag on his hip, and space, in a satchel over one shoulder. His his his. 

He’s never had much that was his. 

Owl, cauldron, herbs, gloves. Mr. Ollivander’s colors (magic?) isn’t shadowy like Harry’s, but it is deep, and dark, and they understand each other as soon as they lock eyes, and the wand-buying goes off without a hitch. It is only after he leaves with a stick of Black Walnut and Dragon Heart that sings to him and Hagrid all spooked wide-eyed that he realises not one word had been spoken within the store. There’d been no need to, because they had Understood. Harry looked, Ollivander saw, and then there was a box in his hand, and in that box was a wand that was right yes good and then he’d handed the gold in exchange because that was expected and they’d left and that’d been that. 

Robes. He doesn’t mind the clothes he wears, because they are his even if they were once Dudley’s, and he is a Freak, so he doesn’t deserve Vernon’s pressed suits or Petunia’s flared dresses or Dudley’s endless new pairs of trainers to join his collection in his room. But Hagrid had a patchworked coat that looks gloriously warm, so maybe he can have something in between. 

He holds the shadow by his heart tight as measurements are taken, partially to center himself, and partially so it doesn’t seep out and hurt Madam Malkin, because she doesn’t know, and seems nice, if a bit distracted, entirely focused on her craft. 

He breaths, for a moment, on that pedestal, as she steps away to search for cloth and thread.

There is a boy.

His magic isn’t shadow energy thrash hum swoop deep dark either, but it is shadow depths heights fall fly complicated like Harry’s is, so they talk. 

“Hullo.” Says the boy, with hair like the bleached bone of a deer’s ribs Harry found once deep in the forest on a not-free night and eyes that see. Not how Harry was seen, of blood and pain and struggle, but of complexity, of sticky webs to catch you and black threads to trip you. They do not see the same way, but they see, and that is enough. 

“Hello.” Harry replies carefully. Quietly. 

He is not used to talking. It’s dangerous, and strange. It’s… Good. Even though it’s Bad. Maybe just good instead of Good. He can live with good. 

“Hogwarts, right?” Harry nodded, so far keeping up. He didn’t like it when he was talking to someone, and was standing right beside them, and yet felt so lost. 

“What house are you hoping for? I’ll be Syltherin, of course. All my family has been centuries.”

Harry blinked. “Why would you be like your family? You’re you, not them.” It’s quiet, but maybe all the more powerful for it. 

Harry is an expert on not being like his family. He is like him, and no one else. This boy, from the look on his face, had never been introduced to such a concept. 

They stand there for a breath, because Harry had ruined it by putting him off and now they won’t talk because he’s broken some rule you follow when talking but he never talks so how was he supposed to know?

“Well, um, then. What’s your name? I’m Draco, Draco Malfoy.” He looks around as he says it, as if the man with the same blonde hair looking over green cloth with Madam Malkin will box him for saying it. Harry knows that feeling. 

“It’s nice to meet you,” he says softly, quietly, so the man really doesn’t look up, doesn’t notice, doesn't hit. “I don’t know where I’ll go.” He doesn’t say his name, because the goblins had sneered at Hagrid’s reverant the boy who lived, grumbles of newspapers and frenzy and fame and incompetent, fool-hardy wix. 

He was famous. Because he should have died, but he didn’t. He thought that just about fits.

He probably should have died in his cupboard a handful of times, lifeblood seeping into his ratty mattress. Or heat bubbling through his veins in the back garden, or head too rattled from a push down the stairs, or a thousand other things his shadow force Freakness magic had softened the edges of. 

He can’t remember when he was a baby, because no one does, not even Freaks, but he figures he would have been Freakish all the way back to the crib. He is a Freak, he has accepted. It is part of him, just by his heart. He holds it with acceptance, and reaches out with it when he has to. It’s gotten him dollar store sweets and gas station sandwiches and charity bin shoes, so he holds it, and maybe always will. 

“I don’t think I do either,” The boy, Draco, says even quieter. He says it like it’s a terrible thing.

Harry has never been anywhere but where he was now. Even as he wandered neon-lit streets and patches of pollution and trash-riddled woods, he was at Privet Drive. His cupboard, the back garden, the route to school. He’d been stuck, forever to be dragged back by dawn. 

He reaches out between the gap of the two pedestals, and takes Draco’s hand. 

“Ok. But we’ll go there together.”

Sometimes words don’t need to be spoken to understand. 

The robes were strange and weren’t all at once. They were flowy, so it wasn’t too different from the oversized T-shirts and stretched out basketball shorts, but the cloth was warm and strong. It would survive cold winters and washes in sinks and tears and stains and mud. It would serve him well.

It was odd to know this, and hold them as his own. 

He folds them into his goblin-bought satchel carefully, along with shoes (Hagrid was of the opinion that muggle shoes were rubbish, and was not at all reassured by Harry’s hand-me-down mud-stained trainers) from a ‘cobbler’ and ties and scarves and gloves without pulling stitching and socks free of holes. 

A brilliant white owl. She was bright, in the same way his darkness glowed. A thunderstorm has light among it, even as it was so very dark. 

He holds her close. Not her cage, her. Because she deserved room to spread her wings, if he was to have the not-freedom to wander moonlit streets. Just as surely as he would wander, she would fly.

She stays on his shoulder, even after the hug. 

He trails after Draco Malfoy, because he keeps his promises. Hagrid disappears for a pick-me-up, and he is satisfied for now with the books on owl-order, so he is content to walk, and watch, and understand. He stays to the shadows, because his instincts have been rubbed raw from hours of standing beside the giant, and attracting stares with his ‘muggle’ clothes. He is very good at staying out of sight, with his years of practice. 

When it is too obvious for him to walk behind, when the crowd thins or people squint, when they duck into that strange alley of danger so familiar and desperation made palpable, his new feathery companion soars above. He gets snippets, through their newborn connection, the thread between their colors. Magic. 

Draco Malfoy is a lie. He smiles, and sneers, and simpers to please his father, just how Boy had ducked his head and spoke in whispers if at all to appease his uncle. 

Draco is something he is less sure in. He has spent more time as a mask than as a boy, Hary regonizes. But he was learning to bridge the gap. He whined in ways that gave Harry flashbacks to his cousin until he got the snake that slithered up to the glass to wind up against his handprint, as well as the biggest, best cage in the store. He gets an owl, with short ears and a mess of a coat in shades of black, and names them Hermes. 

Narcissa Malfoy is like Aunt Petunia, but not. She is cloaked in satin and dressed in frills, yes, and careful and measured and graceful. But where Petunia would have shriveled up and away, would have smiled and apologized and ran as much as you can while standing still, Narcissa holds firm. She smiles with the gaze of a predator and just as many teeth. She holds her son’s hand, and stands her ground. She is a ring sharpened to cut, among silk and jewels.

Lucius Malfoy, on the other hand, is simply a magical version of Vernon Dursley, which pleases Harry in how much both men would hate that thought. He hides it better, with intelligent words and good connections and enough money to make the world just around him dance to the tune he plays. But he is mean, and anything but understanding. He is someone who has known nothing but power, and cannot fathom that it should be any other way.

Harry despises him immediately. 

The shadows writhe. He grips them tightly once again, because he does not understand Lords and Ladies just yet, and he would hate to hurt his first friend, even if it was unintentional and via eviscerating their harmful father. 

(Lucius Malfoy turns slightly, halfway through his shopping trip down Diagon. He sees a figure, cloaked in shadow with piercing eyes, a being of the deep Darke that sees him, judges him. It blinks, and he knows it is displeased. He shivers, and for the first time in a long while, feels fear again.) 

Draco held his little snake tight and did not speak to him as Harry would but did pet her head gently, and though he could not introduce himself and she could not either, they knew each other and realized to have each other was the best either would get at the moment, and thus the snake, newly named Artemis after a god Harry has never known, according to the tales Narcissa Black entertains her son with while his father haggles away over objects that should not exist, winds her way around Draco’s wrist, and Harry hears the promise of kinship and protection in a quiet hiss. 

Artemis understands a hurt you cannot escape, clearly. 

Harry names his own owl Nyx, after the stories Narcissa Black tells, and the woman within them, goddess of darkness. 

No else will understand, with the moon-white feathers, but well, he will. 

No one else will understand how every snake in that Magical Menagerie was now following dutifully behind him either, and that suits him just fine. 

He remembers the name Black, from the family tree the Goblins had shown him. He paws at it from where’d he’d folded it up and shoved it into the shorts pockets earlier- it was slightly less crumpled now, with the larger pockets of the robes, but still creased. 

He looked at it as the graceful ink was again revealed itself, flowing across the page in curling lines. Then up, at the meandering trio of blondes.

He cocks one head to the side. 

Cousin.

That’s the word for parent’s sibling’s child to you. What’s the word for grandparent’s sibling child to you? Grandcousin?

Well, it doesn’t matter much. Family’s family.

He hopes this one is better than the Dursleys. 

A discovery for another day. Hagrid reappears, and takes him out to ice cream at a parlor which’s name he cannot pronounce. Hewhostrikesquick and shewithglossyscales uses this time to snatch various bits and bobs from a dozen different food stands, ranging from produce to small loaves of bread to magical candy he’d seen in a shop window. So he is well-fed when he is shut back in his cupboard.

The peace is not so peaceful now, more uncertain, but he does not care. He does not care, as long as he does not need to risk his uncle’s wrath for food, and his newfound scaly friends continue to successfully make the trek to his dusty little alcove, and word from Artemis keeps coming through the long game of pass-the-gossip he’s accidentally set up. He’s doing well- Lucius Malfoy has been busy at work lately, (wizarding government has seasons to it) so he and Narcissa have been able to spend time together in a genuine, caring way. Not studying or debating anything. Just… being. 

It sounds nice. 

(Hogwarts is extraordinarily lucky a thunderstorm rules over the Surrey area days before the Hogwarts Express pulls out of the station. A presence darts among the volatile clouds, happy and free, and the castle is spared from grand destruction and a ruder awakening than the British Magical World was capable of surviving, even if it is in dire need of a wake-up call.)

The train station makes him dizzy. 

Harry ignores this, and steadfastly pushes the trolley he loaded up in the entrance after a painful walk of hauling his luggage all the way from Number Four to those double doors. It rolls, and he walks, and the shadows do not jump, or lash out, or shatter any unknowing passerby or innocent brick walls to itty bitty pieces. 

He’d made it. It was ten thirty AM, September first, and he was at King’s Cross station, between platform 3 and 4. A wall glows with a thousand colors just as in Diagon Alley, so he makes to tap at it how Hagrid had tapped the wall to Diagon. 

His hand meets nothing. 

He stares. Four separate snakes on his person hiss subtly.

Harry steps through, into an even more chaotic crowd. 

He freezes, the cacophony of color sound emotion hitting him like one of the trains that had whizzed by the platforms, and it takes him half a minute to re-engage, and even then it is only because of hewhostrikesquick hissing in his ear to move or be hit by someone else coming through the wall-door behind him. 

He makes it to the train, and stubbornly keeps his trunk with him. It was his, and even if the funny little being that tried to take it meant well, he wouldn’t let them take it from him. Plus, shewhowasthesunwithin (and snake who indeed glows stronger than the others, and can make sparks join her hissing when angered) and her nest with eggs were in there, among his new scarf, and he couldn’t leave her on her own! 

With further difficulty, and much personal battle with the shadows he holds by his heart, he settles into a compartment. It is a small room, with only two plush benches and a window, but the velvet seats are soft and plush, and there is plenty of room for him and his trunk and all his new snake friends, even if he can’t reach the overhead rack where his luggage is supposed to go. 

He locks the door. 

Shewhohasthesunwithin is set into a patch of sun with his scarf wrapped around her on-the-go nest, and he sits next to her. He would have given her space, but she insisted that he is speaker protector blessing-giver to kin hatchling stay close so I may guard you too and so he stays. And he reads. 

He’s long since finished Wards for the Wayward Individual, a thick but useful book of all sorts of useful rune combinations and spells. Most he didn’t have to bother with, since he could simply wrap his shadows around his trunk and know no one could possible get in it with the darkness clinging to the wood in puffy strands, but the protection carvings had been welcome in the cupboard door to keep his space safe while he was gone, the warmth ones stitched into the spider-silk blanket was already doing wondrous things for his nights. 

No, instead he reads through his course material, since he very quickly got sick of feeling slow at primary school, even if he had to keep his grades behind Dudley’s it felt Good to have teachers praise what they knew was a real effort, and he didn’t want much to repeat the feeling of neurologically stunted behind slow stupid first grade had brought, when he hadn’t yet learned to balance keeping those letter grades relatively low with his acting skills. 

Potions were interesting, as was Transfiguration, even if it was endlessly confusing to him, and Charms seemed a class he’d find easy, which was a comfort. Defense against the Dark Arts seemed mean, (people had Dark magic naturally, didn’t they? Like him. He supposed it was alright to learn to defend against it, since he didn’t want to turn anyone to shattered-pine-tree anymore than they probably did, but the course book was rather biased) and Astronomy he paid extra attention to because he knew it’d make his eyes hurt with the effort otherwise. History of Magic would be fascinating, and probably cut down on the number of old books he needed to track down and slog through, and Herbology was comforting in its familiarity. Plants he could do. Plants he knew.

He made lists, on the back of a piece of paper rescued from a gutter by theywhoexplore, of what he would like to know. How to clean with the darkness/magic in him, (he’s fairly good at it already, but the wix seems so efficient about things he can’t help but wonder) to summon things (like beer and tea) to him, how to make plants bloom and weeds die. He thinks they’ll be under charms and more advanced ward textbooks. 

The doorknob rattles. Shewhohasthesunwithin hisses, arching protectively over her nest. He winces, and extends his magic out in a tendril. It’s not Draco’s deep depths that greet him, but something equally ambitious. Search says the mauve that he sees in his mind’s eye, find discover new old all learn. 

Respectable. 

“She seems nice,” he tells shewhohasthesunwithin quietly. “Can I put you back in the case for safety if I use a warming charm?”

He has to practice them anyhow, and shewhohasthesunwithin is rarely bothered with heat, so it stands to reason that if he gets the charm a little too hot, the eggs won’t be harmed. 

She hisses with grumpiness, but allows him. He hoists her gently, scarf, eggs and all, into his trunk, and shuts it carefully. Theywhoexplore hisses in greeting, as does hethathissesfeircly. They should be alright. 

He takes a breath, and opens the door.

And is immediately shocked by the frizz that is this girl’s hair.

Her skin looks like mine, he thinks, floored. 

She looks at him with more kindness and consideration than anyone has in his entire life, and asks, “Hello, can I sit with you? Sorry to bother, but the other carriages are full up.”

Theywhoexplores take this opportunity to further earn their name and slips to the floor and right out the door, hissing that they’ll be back after investigating this whole ‘train’ situation maybe twice. Just to make sure.

Harry checks he hasn’t swallowed his tongue, clears his throat, and tries to answer. “Yeah, uh, you can, uh-” he opens the door a bit, and scooches back. 

There is no Dudley here to chase away friends. 

This is novel. 

He just has to not mess up.

She smiles. “Thanks,” and slips into the compartment with him. He perches between his trunk and the window-wall, and she plops down onto the seat across from him. A similar trunk blinks into existence on the rack above her head, and he blinks. Ah, that’s what the little being earlier meant about getting it back, he thinks. 

She smiles like the beavers down at the river when they first had young ones, and his mind basks in it, remembering little bodies when he had gotten distracted from the swings months before, and later learning to swim when the thunder ceased and so did he, for a time. He thinks saying it wouldn’t be appreciated, though. 

She spots his book. He flushes; Dudley never would have read a textbook of his own will, let alone for fun-

“Oh, I’m not the only one!” she exclaims, and his heart skips a beat in gratitude to the universe. 

“I think I’ve just about got Transfiguration Volume I memorized by now, really. Are you muggle-born as well, then? Oh, I’m Hermione. Hermione Granger.” 

Harry has not done much talking before, and is a little overwhelmed. 

“I’m Harry,” he manages. Just Harry, when he’s not hewhomustebeprotected or thetreasuredone or hewhospeaks or hewhowanders or hatchlingprotector. But those are snake names, not human names. And he doesn’t think he can lay claim to the last names he’s vaguely related to according to a piece of blood paper and some goblins-they seem rather important, and he doesn’t want to overstep. He’s certainly not Harry Dursley, in any case. 

She beams, though, and Harry feels relief in a wave crashing over him. “Nice to meet you! I’m just so excited is all, really. And anxious. The Muggleborn Guide was good but well, I feel like it only scratched the surface, you know? There’s so much that’s just so different!”

Yeah, no kidding. Also, there’s a guide? Why didn’t he get one? Did he miss it in the bookstore? Surely not, the snakes helped search the shelves, not all of them could have missed something so obviously useful! 

“Yeah,” He croaks instead. She prattles on, unbothered by his lack of words to offer her. 

“Like, even fashion! These robes are really swooshy, though. I bet they’d flare out like a ball gown if I spun. But that’s not the point! Like, politics. I’m eleven, I know, but it just seems so dumb. And this blood purity thing is just nazism all over again.” 

So maybe he reads too little instead of too much. 

Determined to add an intelligent thought to the conversation, he manages, “It’s interesting the culture split off so long ago.”

Good job, him. 

She perks up, though. “Right! Ms. Sprout told me it wasn’t too different, and that we’re all people and all, but it has to be, right? The witch hunts were forever ago! And there’s differences before that even. ‘Cause like, religion was a big thing in their lives back then, right? A different religion, even! If all the Christains hated witches, it’d make sense, right?” 

He nods, because he feels this is a good place to. 

“And I wonder if they still practice paganism. And what’s the difference between modern day pagans and witches? Can modern-day pagans do a different sort of magic, or are they just religious and not magical? If not, why exclude them from the magical world-unless that’s a Statute of Secrecy violation, but that seems too flagrant for them to ignore, the Ministry, that is.” 

He nods again, trying to get over the way someone is paying attention to him and sharing thoughts to boot. 

There’s a brush of magic, not too far away. Shadows, high, deep. Draco.

He perks up, and extends his own tendril to guide the way. Not a minute later, a familiar head of blonde hair pokes through the door.  

“Hullo. You didn’t tell me your name earlier, by the way- oh. Hello.” 

“This is Hermione,” Harry says, because he needs to contribute more words. 

“Hermione Granger,” she says warmly, and the correction is not unkind but it feels scathing. 

“Heir Draco Malfoy,” the other boy says. “Heir of the-” 

“Your spies are approaching,” Harry says, because it’s true- one Goyle and one Crabb that follow and tattle if Draco is not the perfect heir are looking for their unwilling leader. They are currently avoiding being tripped by theywhoexplore, who is hissing about them with various profanities. 

Draco closes the door so fast Harry’s shocked the hinges don’t squeak in protest. Harry reassures himself that theywhoexplore is a magic snake, and if they can get into his cupboard, they can certainly get past a simple bolted door. 

Draco flops down beside Hermione with a look like someone who is deeply tired, and shrugs, then sighs. “Just- Draco. I’m Draco.” He relents eventually. 

“His father is quite mean,” Harry summarises. “I like your mother, though.”

Draco’s eyebrows furrow. “My mother wasn’t in the tailor’s with us?”

“I know,” Harry says. “I talk to snakes. And snakes talk to me.”

This was apparently not the thing to say. Draco suddenly looks rather alarmed. Hethathissesfiercly is uncaring and pops out of his shirt collar. 

“Don’t worry,” Harry reassures. “Artmeis likes you! It’s kind of cool that you set up an understanding like that without being able to talk. And she’s very proud of having a human name.” b

“You’re a parselmouth?” Draco asks, dumbfounded. 

“That’s so cool!” Hermione chimes in. “My copy of Hybrids-Biology and Politics says it’s a leftover trait from Draconi interbreeding with humans, and it’s really rare nowadays! Do you think you can talk to dragons, too? Certainly Draconi, right?” 

Harry has absolutely nothing for this. What’s a Draconi- no, wait, hewhohissesfiercely knows, they’re kind of like dragon-people, like the fish-people who apparently exist also. He should move the textbook for Care of Magical Creatures up his priority list. Parselmouths, theywhoexplore informs him, because they’re apparently back from tripping young jerks and indeed made it past the locked door in no time at all, is just human-speak for speaker. Others can apparently also speak to all animals, or to other sorts, like birds, but snakes are the most common, although none are common abilities. Some can simply talk with their magic to other magical creatures, which is something some are predisposed to but all can learn-he says none can learn to speak to snakes but those born to it can expand vocabulary as with any young one. Parrott certain phrases and such is the most anyone not born to it can do. 

“So cool,” Hermione breathes, and Harry realises he’s been speaking to the two snakes exclusively for the last half-minute. 

“Um, sorry,” he volunteers, but manages to not flinch away from either of them, because that’s not normal either. 

“That’s perfectly alright,” says Draco, which seems like a trained reaction. He remembers theywhoexplore being upset over etiquette classes Draco takes, ‘like a young one should be learning to behest themselves to others, and really-’. 

There’s no sneer behind it, though, so Harry knows it’s true. 

“He can talk to snakes,” Draco mutters. “I can never tell Father.”

“I’m Harry,” Harry says, because he realized he forgot, and he doesn’t need to duck from attention- not on Diagon anymore. He does not add a last name again, because he’s not sure what it is, really. 

Draco nods, slowly. “A pleasure to meet you, Harry.”

“Like Harry Potter?” asks Hermione. “My history book says he’d be about our age, and I’ve only met a few Harrys before.”

“It’s a fairly common name, nowadays.” Draco shrugs. “Some people name their baby after the Minister, so of course some of the nuttier ones would do the same for the savior of the wizarding world. Rubbish, really. He was a baby, wasn’t he?” 

That seems like a rather tall title. What could a Harry their age have done to be the savior of the wizarding world? He’s just an orphan, really, and has barely had time to read some books, let along save the world, or even a portion of it. 

Hermione is nodding, though. “That makes sense. People name their kids after celebrities all the time.”

“I don’t know my last name, I think,” Harry says, because Draco would know if the names on the goblin’s blood paper count. He pulls it out. “Can I be a part of one of the Houses, do you think?” he asks, pushing the paper towards Draco. 

“...You don’t know your name?” he aks, then gently takes the paper. He scans it for a second before his eyebrows raise dramatically. 

“My Aunt and Uncle raised me,” He admits quietly. “They… don’t like me much.” 

Hermione appears to have calculations running behind her eyes. Draco’s brain, on the other hand, has temporarily gone offline. He hands the paper back to Harry, clearly thinking very hard. 

“We could get married,” he says like it’s a thing to be considering. 

Hermione makes a strangled noise as Harry balks. “What?”

Because, well, aren’t they related through Dorea Black, whoever she was? 

“It would grant me political sanctuary and you the power of the Malfoy name,” Draco says thoughtfully. “And we wouldn’t have to do anything more than some paperwork.”

Theywhoexplore tells Harry of the plans Malfoy Senior makes in his dark bad danger office, of marrying Draco to a Pansy Parkinson and political power and blah blah blah, and also his son joining a dark cult and committing several murders. 

(Theywhoexplore has apparently done more exploring than Harry gave them credit for.) 

Said Pansy Parkingson was further down on the train, just entering, and putting her trunk with a ‘house elf’ since the train was due to depart anytime now. 

He reaches out with his magic, albeit slightly more aggressively than with Draco or Hermione, and tugs her in their direction. 

“Hi,” he says when she suspiciously squints through the cracked door. “We’re planning how to snub Draco’s dad by me marrying him. Wanna help?” 

She stops short. “What?”

Then,

“I leave you for two months-” Draco immediately starts sniggering. 

Draco puts his hands up defensively, but it seems much less desperate than when Harry does it. “I think I don’t really like girls anyways, and no offense, Pan, but-”

“You can’t just go about getting betrothed!” 

Harry doesn’t see why not. Unless he could convince Draco to let one of his scaled friends bite his dad. Then the normal inheritance stuff would come into play. But until then… 

“Sure I can,” Draco said, lifting Harry’s family tree carefully. “We just have to plan it right is all. If we get betrothed when we’re sixteen, and show we’re really serious in the courtship-”

Pansy groans, and Hermione has recovered some from her shock. 

“You’re eleven!” she manages. 

“Now we are!” Draco protests. “But when we are sixteen it’s good to be prepared. That’s an OWL year, I probably won’t have the brain power to spare.”  

Pansy has her head in her hands, and her trunk appears in the overhead rack. 

“What’s an OWL?” asks Harry, who feels he needs to locate the Muggleborn’s Guide very quickly. 

“I’ll explain later,” Draco says. Then he starts waving at the bloodlines again. “See, we’re second cousins, that’s far enough for it to count, but not far enough for the inheritance to go through to Harry, so really we’ll just be a fantastic power couple.”

“It’s a reverse lavender marriage,” Hermione says, deadpan, before going back to discouraging. “Shouldn’t you be marrying for love? And at sixteen?”

“We just need to be betrothed by sixteen, not married-”

“That sounds good,” Harry says. “You know a lot about this kind of stuff, I know a lot about muggle stuff, it’ll benefit us both. Sounds okay.”

The snakes are talking about strong, smart hatchlings in the future, and Harry really needs to find that human biology book to nip that in the bud. 

Draco nods. “A year is plenty of time for feelings, whatever they may be, to appear and be dealt with. It’ll be brilliant. We’ll be married by seventeen, legal adults, and won’t be expected to produce heirs until eighteen at least, and we can say we’re pushing it off for jobs-”

“I can’t believe you,” Pansy groans, and he pats her on the back. 

“Sorry, Pans, but you being my wife sounds weird anyway. You could marry Greengrass, though?”

Pansy goes bright red. Gottem. 

Hermione snorts. “Well, I… suppose. Oh! Can you look at this then, Draco. There’s this something or another about Dagworth-Grangers, but I’m just Granger, and my parents are dentists for heaven’s sake. But the goblins were rather insistent.” 

“What’s a dentist?” Pansy asks curiously. 

“The Dagwooth-Grangers?” Draco prods, brain whirring. 

“Genetics,” Harry says, and then once his brain formats a better response, “Recessive genes. The books said the Twenty Eight Houses kick out squibs, or non-magical children born to magic, and it’d make sense if magic was a recessive gene or the kind to skip a generation sometimes. So if a squib from, um, Dagwooth-Granger, got kicked out-”

“They would start fresh in muggle society, and a few generations later, a baby is born that is both of and not of pure-blood lines.” Hermione fills in the blanks. 

Draco and Pansy, of course, are lost. 

“Genetics? Recessive genes?”

Hermione gets out some paper. The rest of the train ride is spent explaining, plotting, explaining from the other side, and then with a snack interlude, (bless the trolley woman) and then back to it. Hermione has to badger them into getting their robes on before they arrive, since Harry was back in Dudley’s cast-offs, and while Draco and Pansy were in wizarding robes, they weren’t the uniform ones. This leads to a short spinning-in-circles-to-see-how-the-fabric-billows-out break, because well, cloaks. Also, something about woman’s pockets on muggle versus magical clothing. Pansy is incensed when Hermione shows her the pockets on her jeans. 

They discuss sexism and Hermione tells Pansy of feminism for the rest of the trip. Harry and Draco make uneasy eye contact as their geniuses meet each other properly. 

Then, of course, he brings out Artemis, and Harry reassures him that yes, she truly does like him, and yes, she understands, all is well. (or will be) He’s rather pleased with this, Harry can tell, and a touch proud besides. 

The train stops, and Hermione holds his hand when he bites his lip anxiously. 

Outside the train is cold, and he immediately learns the value of wool cloaks. As discussed, Pansy and Hermione go on their ways, haughty acts back firmly in place, and Hermione and Harry stay together, heading for the man calling for first years. Hermione quietly tells Harry about giants and how rare their adjacent hybrids are, she’ll have to interview him sometime, she plans to write a paper, and then their boat (three to a boat, three to a boat) is added to with a redhead boy with a smudge of dirt on his nose. 

“‘M Ron Weasley,” he introduces, looking rather uneasy on the rocking boat. 

“I’m Hermione Granger!” she says, much happier and more at ease than when Harry first saw her. “Isn’t this place fantastic?”

Harry agrees; he’s never known a snake that swims. And magical snakes were rare back on Privet Drive, but all sorts of new friends with that warm glow within had introduced themselves by the time he crossed the lake. 

There is also a delightful and very large squid. Which isn’t a snake, and so can’t talk to him, but seems friendly anyway. Theywhoexplore tried to greet him ‘properly’ and had to be rescued from the deep, cold water, and spent the rest of the trip up the cliff and many flights of stairs pouting in the safe warmth of Harry’s cloak. Anyway, the squid waved to all of them as they left, so he thinks it was appreciated. 

Hogwarts was big. Harry’d never been in a place so big, not even the museums on school trips in primary. The rooms were smaller, sure, but they seemed to go on forever and ever into the hillside. Endless spaces of warm grey stone and speckled wood beams. 

Anyway, Ron and Draco briefly had some sort of spat, before Draco once again relented his family name, leaving Ron to confusedly flail along with the sudden lack of resistance. Pansy was pouting too, for some reason, but Hermione was halfway succeeding at comforting them, so. 

Then they’re in a hall. The Great Hall, if Miss McGonagall is to be believed, which he thinks she is, since she seems so serious. It’s pretty great, anyway; there’s candles floating overhead, a changing mural of the sky beyond that, and the tables are massive. Probably to fit all the people sitting at them, because there must be at least a couple hundred! They’re from his age to almost college aged, he’s pretty sure, and they’re all looking at him. 

Or, all the first years. But it still counts!

Harry grips the shadows inside into a tight ball like Mimi Rawkenshaw from math class back in primary did with that stress ball she had, just to get some of anxiety out. McGonnogall herded everyone inside, past the equally massive Great Hall doors.

Nothing leaks out. Nothing turns to a splinter-fied pine tree, not even a bench or a table. His robes don’t even stir as the electric current of his puffy, writhing magic (dark dark void depths bright flash star shine determination hope freedom get to get get get to-) does laps in his soul, swirling rapidly under his grip. Still, it stays where it is, and that’s enough for him. 

His freakishness wasn’t meant to stay put, but he’d manage. He always did. 

Names are called. Terry Boot, Susan Bones. His name seems plain beside theirs, and he can’t help but be glad for it. Hermione, with her extraordinarily poofy hair a similar texture to what he imagines his magic would look like if you pulled it apart a bit, goes up to the stool, and even seems to talk to the hat some, then sorts Ravenclaw. A boy with a flash of red hair and magic a brand of gold like the sparks that occasionally stirred within his freakish darkness goes to Gryffindor with a bright grin like sunshine, and he can’t help but be mesmerized for a moment by it.

Most of the Sorting ceremony, though, is spent in anxious worrying, holding onto his freakishness, his constant, with an iron, if metaphorical, grip. 

He is called. The hall goes silent. So does his mind. The shadows jump with his anxiety, spiking under his hold. 

He walks forward, because if he doesn’t move something Freakish is going to happen. 

There is a hat. The hat talks. It has a buzz of deep purple to it, in similar poofy strands to his own magic, but steadier. It’s threaded through the cloth, part of each stitch. Much more grounded than his free-flying thunderstorm of an aura. 

It is more of the fray than any other glow he’s seen so far, so he pushes aside a vague worry about the poor thing coming to pieces under his curious touch, and sets it gently on his head. 

For a split second, a reaction similar to the inside of a particle collider occurs. One thing meets another on a very special scale indeed, and for a breath, there is an explosion. 

Then the brim falls over his eyes, blocking his view, and he startles. His own glow reigns in, whipping back to check on him. The fuzzy purple settles on top, but it doesn’t go any further. Nothing spikes through his very being, his own swirl find move dark bright doesn’t change at all. Contact is made, peace is brokered, understanding is reached. 

Well well, says The Hat in a voice like an old storyteller’s. Aren’t you something special. I’ve never met an obscurial before, child. 

And Harry has no response for that. 

And minds like yours don’t come along often either. The Hat continues steadily. There’s a vague feeling of rustling, of found understanding. His magic coils round and round, ready to strike and swirling in on itself to hold the position. There’s a sound almost like a hissing snake, then the fizz in the air before a lightning strike. 

Now now, there. It is alright, child, just a moment longer. Let’s see, where to put you? Quite the head of course, but you see less value in learning for the knowledge than for its use. You hold what is your dear, but have had no one to hand onto as such. Hufflepuff would do you good, as would Syltherin. Tell me, child, where would you rather reach for- something bigger, or people to use your power for?

Harry’s never had anyone like that, not even a friend or even an imaginary one. He’s only just met Hermione and Pansy, (Draco doesn’t count, he’s family) and even if there’s friendly and nice and make something long quiet in him stir, he’s not quite sure if he’s ready to go into that direction with his life. It seems scary and unknown. 

But reaching up somewhere higher? That doesn’t sound so bad. 

And maybe you should do that House some good as well, reteach them some compassion. And a bit of humility, if I may. You’ll be just fine in-

“SLYTHERIN!” 

Draco nods to himself like this is a delightful new addition to his plan that fell unexpectedly into place. Harry just notices it over the ringing silence in the hall. Hewhohissesfiercely tells him to stand from the stool and walk to the Slytherin table. He gently lifts the hat from his head, the rustle of fabric cataclysmic in the silent room, and sets it down on the little stool. Then he goes down the stairs and sits in an empty section of the table. 

Draco and Pansy are sorted into Slytherin as well. They said on the train they could tell their parents they were making connections with the Potter Heir, and while it wouldn’t be popular it would be accepted, so they could sit with him, and they do, but they look much more pompous than before. 

Harry, who has never thought of such thing before in his life past how to keep his Aunt happy at her bi-weekly Gardening Club for lessened chore lists and punishments and maybe an extra meal or two, sat beside them only because of the comforting weight of his scaled allies against his skin. Otherwise, he might have very well have melted into shadow with the force of the stares, the quiet. 

“Hullo again,” He says towards the two, suddenly terribly anxious. His magic wiggles, restless, but without the energy to act on it with their flight the other day among the storm clouds. 

Pansy smiles gently, and Draco grins excitedly and shuffles slightly closer to him on the bench. Daphne Greengrass eventually joins them when she is also sorted into Slytherin-a few other kids go to Ravenclaw, Gryffindor, and Hufflepuff in that order. One Theodore Nott joins them at the unofficial First Years table, but promptly tucks himself into a book. His magic feels smooth and sharp at once, like a rounded marble edge before the cut of an obsidian blade. It’s different from Harry’s, but the closest he’s found yet. He makes a mental note to talk to the boy later, when he’s not busy with something else.

Dumbledore says some words- they don’t make much sense, even the bits that were supposed to. He figures he’ll figure out that third floor whatever through a mixture of getting glimpses of it’s feeling (surely the dangerous thing in a highly magical castle would have magic behind it, right?) and what he can glean from his little flights with each thunderstorm. 

Then the Feast happens, and is also far too much. There is food everywhere, and people chattering, and hands grabbing, silverware flashing, and for a moment he has to just grip the bench beneath him and steady himself among the waves of motion. 

He ends up eating about a slice of ham, two rolls, a few green beans because a snake managed to overhear a talk on nutrition once, a bit of mashed potatoes and something sweet he doesn’t have the words to describe from the deserts section. About a regular meal for him, really. At least since the snakes have been helping him. They learned early on he liked the discarded foods from both the gas station’s sweet supply and the grocery store. He’s gotten a lot of rustled up pizza crusts and the ends of sandwiches. Better than that, when they don’t sell the ‘stale’ stuff in the grocery store’s bakery section or things go over a date on the shelves, they throw them out into the back alley, which has quickly become their favorite get-food-for-big-hatchling spot. He’s gotten everything from bagged salad mixes to entire bags of slightly bruised fruit, and lots of lots of cans. All sorts of cans. 

He gets odd looks, but he figures. Draco and Pansy don’t seem like the type to have met a Freak before. They don’t know The Rules. 

They walk to the common room. The Prefects are a bit scary- Marcus Flint has a stormy feeling about him, not in Harry’s way of his magic curling and whirling into mad twists of power and emotion, but like he’s got a short temper, kinda like Uncle Vernon. He knows how to handle tempers, though. He keeps four other people between the older boy and him at all times, and watches for the slightest expression that any one of them are about to get hurt.

The dungeons have a lot of snakes. Of the stone variety, which apparently also talk. Probably because of all the magic around. They can’t slither around much, being carvings, but they’re perfectly caught up on the gossip anyway. Harry hears of all sorts of things by the time their groups finally stops walking- games played on flying branches, a ghosts with water balloons a muggleborn must have told him about, the underground candy market, secret Ravenclaw study rooms, a room that will give you anything you need if you walk by it’s hallway three times and think real hard about you want. 

The common room has a password, but can apparently be bypassed by ‘parseltongue.’ Marcus Flint says it as a joke, and says to always check the password on the board before leaving the common room, but Harry doesn’t mind. He could probably just ask the door to open in snake and it would work, in that case. 

Inside there are carpets and fireplaces and weirdly shaped couches, and the ‘dorm rooms’ have beds shaped like a bird’s nest and so many pillows and hot showers. 

Harry does the appropriate thing: first burrowing under the covers, marvling that this has been given to him, (which does make sense actually, because wizards so far seem fabulously wealthy and can waste things like feather-filled emerald pillows on even Freaks new to the place) then spends approximately ten minutes with a hand under the spray of hot water, staring in wonder at the steam rising up around him. The snakes like sitting in the steam, and gossip about his new nest-mates, which, scandalous, are not his actual hatch mates because he is a lone hatch, how sad, and so on. He’s in the same room as Theodore, Draco, and one boy he hasn’t gotten the name of yet. 

Hogwarts is magical in more ways than one. 

He goes and hides under the blankets again, because everything is new and big and powerful, then emerges, because Draco is family, and family is to be around and loved and watched over. His father sure wouldn’t, and his mother wasn’t here, so he had to be!

He’s still not quite sure about marrying a second-cousin twice removed or whatever Draco said earlier, but the snakes all say their hatches will be strong and intelligent, so it can’t be all that bad. Besides, he wouldn’t mind spending the rest of forever with his family, or at least the part of it that isn’t as strict about him being a Freak. Everyone’s kind of a freak where it's magical, he’s just worse. So it’s comparatively better. It’s selfish, but he likes it. 

How does he even go about courting? Flowers are romantic. Should he get Draco flowers? But he also said the courting would start at sixteen. Hm. 

What does he do in the meantime then?

Wizards are confusing. 

He looks around-there are four beds, each with a fuzzy carpet, a wardrobe, closet, and dresser (which seemed like a lot of clothes storage but Draco is midway through watching his clothes sort themselves out, and it seems like a pretty narrow fit), a desk and chair, with a few shelves overtop, and then a separate bookcase. It’s all made of elegant wood, shiny and smooth, or shining silver metal, or else soft plush green. It feels like quite a lot for a Freak. Maybe they want their Freaks to useful for more than back with his Aunt and Uncle- magic would mean they’d be able to do certain things without being the one doing them, so maybe they want even their Freaks to know things to do good enough? 

Draco is letting Artemis into their new bed (nest?) with a heating charm, which he used words to put in. It seems to work fine, though, and she snuggles into a fold of wool and yarn with a content hiss. 

Theywhoexplore is coiled by the windows that interspace each bed, which are carved from stone and wrought in glass and black metal, past which is a dark green lake and shadows of fish and plants. There are warming runes carved into the frame, and the seat below has cushioning. He’s apparently quite appreciative, and it seems like a decent place for shewhohasthesunwithin’s nest.

He goes to her trunk, and opens it up carefully. Safe and sound, still wrapped up in his scarf from Diagon, is indeed shewhohasthesunwithin, tucked in with all five eggs and nice and toasty. Hewhostrikesquick drowsily lifts his head as the light comes in suddenly, and dips his head in recognition as Harry waves. 

He picks the nesting mother up carefully, hands careful to get every one of them safely and bringing the whole scarf bundle with her, and moves to set her by the window. He thinks she’ll enjoy the view- she can’t just sleep all the time in watching over her eggs, and even singing the sacred songs to them would get old after a while. He tells her so, and she stretches happily before curling back up around her eggs protectively. 

“Potter?” asks the boy he doesn’t know yet a distinctly confused way. 

“Shut up, Rosier,” Draco says immediately.  

“No, it’s okay,” Harry says. 

“You just spoke parseltounge!” Rosier says, stunned. He’s pointing at Harry, for some reason. 

Harry sighs. He’s heard Speaking is rare from his snake friends, of course, but the proof for their passing theory of hate for it…

Classes were… strange. 

It wasn’t anything like back on Privet Drive. No worksheets, snubs from other students, certainly no Dudley, though he definitely should have registered that one sooner. 

Classes at Hogwarts was so far more of a constant stream of lectures. They shuffled in, usually someone was picked out of the crowd for being late, but he hadn’t been yet because he’d just reached out his his puffy strands of thunderstorm and asked the castle directly on where to go, mostly because he was too much of a coward to approach anyone else about it and that no one at Hogwarts seemed to know how to treat a Freak. 

He could make sense of wanting to treat one better, sure, for better results, but no one had even yelled at him yet! He’d eaten more food in three days than he usually did in a week, and his scaly friends had yet to have to visit him from somewhere in a punishment. 

It wasn’t Right. Harry was a Freak.

But a smart Freak, so he kept slipping through shadows and ducking through crowds with his small stature. It was bad, but not Bad if he didn’t get caught!

So, classes are strange. Different from before, but somehow… good?

Well. Not good. But easier. Much less squinting at blurring lines on a page, anyway.

‘Lift the feather.’ He looked down at the fluffy white thing on his desk, then the others around him in Charms, who were frowning at their wands. And while he did appreciate the matching thrum thrum thrum of the wands to his own kind-of-matching energy, he didn’t need it for this.

He pulled at a strand of his poofy darkness pooling somewhere within him, glinting like the thunderstorm he’d joined just days ago,  and wrapped it carefully around the feather, so finely it was more a shadowy mist, not even there unless you squinted. It didn’t even squish the fluffy feather bits all that much!

Satisfied, he nodded, then pulled.

The feather rocketed upwards and pasted itself against the ceiling. Professor Flitwick stuttered in his suggestions, shocked, and Harry frowned.

Maybe a bit too hard, then. He pulled a bit down this time, and the feather bobbed briefly away from the dusty shadows of the unilluminated wooden ceiling, then stuck in place as his magic stubbornly stayed in place.

He wrinkled his nose, but Flitwick clapped. “Excellent, Mister Potter! Ten points to Syltherin for the exemplary performance! I see you inherited your mother’s talent in Charms as well.” He smiles with his eyes, which seems appropriate or the goblin he’s sure the professor is, with that build and glow to his power, and Harry blinks. Points, he could make sense of, flashing back briefly to those giant hourglasses by the Hall. But his mother?

What about his mother?

Transfiguration is more interesting than Charms, but also more difficult. He’s never changed a thing into another thing before, didn’t even know you could. 

He stares down at the matchstick in front of him, then the wand in his hand, ignoring the stares his way. For some reason after yesterday in Charms, people were expecting things of him. He tried not to think about it too hard.

Ok, so he needed his wand for this one. Which was actually nice, because he hadn’t had any reason to reach into it’s sparked depths yet, which was a shame. 

He felt at his own core, unwinding another tendril of deep, swirling black-but-so-much-more, and led it to the very tip of his wand, cautiously. It was his, after all, and even if he had lots and lots of things that were his now, he only just got it, and his wand felt… special, somehow. Different.

The feeling of it was… incredible. Vaguely like introducing a baby line of lightning just before it grew into something more, if it were to meet with the strong flame within his Aunt and Uncle’s fireplace, well fed on wood and gas. They were similar, but crucially different. For a blink, they melded. Something in him itched to jump free from the feeling, then fly free like the wind once again, but he held to it. McGonnogall felt stern, and he didn’t know yet if she didn’t know what to do with Freaks yet either. He continued resolutely staring at the wand, which showed no outward signs of anything at all. 

People were still looking at him. 

He kept staring. 

There was a sensation like the bubbles behind the soda he’d bought once (and never again) at a corner store, hurt-but-not-quite, a type of power he didn’t know, there and gone, and he choked at the feeling, but grasped desperately at needle needle make it a needle and tried to point things in the right direction.

He’d missed, he knew, when the entire desk warped silver. 

He breathed out frustratedly even as the class erupted briefly, the matchstick slowly rolling across the metal surface with its newfound slight sharp angle and sudden square edges, and he tried to stop it with his left hand.

The matchstick hit the floor, and he sighed as McGonnogall finally called his classmates to order.  

Professor Prince, though, knew how to handle a Freak. Harry was just starting to think he’d never done it before and was a bit nervous, because Uncle Vernon had never done this start-and-stop thing Prince was. He’d come onto Harry for a blink, all his attention bearing down and on him all at once, before pulling away again like it’d never happened. It made Harry’s head hurt, and his magic writhe with the want to move move fight yell scream spell defend, but he held on.

Still, Potions was hard. More so because they were stuck with the Gryffindors, which Prince seemed to have a half-feud with, like Aunt Petunia did with Mrs. Number Six because of something three years ago at the Gardening Award showing Harry had yet to uncover, in what it was or why it was so important. 

“Weasley, where would I find a bezoar?” Prince barked sharply at the redhead that kept trying to and failing to approach Harry at meals and in the halls, half because of Draco (who he was loving more and more fiercely by the day) and half because he kept thinking better of it a few steps away from succeeding. He gulped visibly.

“I, uh, dunno Professor.” 

Prince sniffed, and whipped around on a different Gryffindor. “Brown! What would be produced if I were to combine powdered root of asphodel to an infusion of Wormwood?” Brown squeaked, dropping her quill. 

“I- don’t know, Professor.” Another sneer.

Then he rounded on Harry, leer in full force. 

“Potter. What, pray tell, if the difference between monkshood and wolfsbane?” Harry blinked. He didn’t know- names didn’t tell him anything. If Prince had pulled out the plants (he assumes they’re plants) maybe he could tell them apart by their magic, but a bunch of letters in the air doesn’t tell him anything at all. Then again, that’s not why Prince is asking.

“I don’t know Professor.” He says softly, bowing his head meekly as he always did. Prince’s sneer stutters for just a moment, flickering into something between confusion and disgust of a kind Harry hasn’t seen before as the man even rears back a little. Then it’s gone, and he growls.

“A bezoar,” He announces as he whips around, black cloak nearly flicking to hit Harry in the face, who doesn’t move an inch. “-is a stone that can be found within the stomach of a goat and can save you from most poisons, powdered asphodel and essence of Wormwood can be combined to create a sleeping brew so powerful it best known as the Draught of Living Death, and monkshood and wolfbane are the same plant that goes by the name Aconite. Well?” He barks out at the class, so jumps. “Why aren’t any of you writing this down?”

Everyone dives for their parchment and quills, except for Harry, who stays appropriately still, without order and chastened to using them earlier when Prince was speaking earlier. 

“Well Potter, It seems fame and fortune isn’t everything. I expect you to perform in this class, just as your peers.” His eyes bore into Harry, who stays stalk still.

Then he shifts again, because Prince is clearly a very strange man indeed.

“Today,” his cloak snaps again as he turns dramatically, which must be a spell, posture like Uncle Vernon’s like he owns the space, the stone, the air they breathe, “we will be going through the brewing of a basic pain soother. I trust there won’t be any wayward wand waving or tomfoolery?” His eyes are sharp as they rake over the class. Harry’s magic squirms, and he holds onto it again, like he does at meals, until it stills with something like the echo of a snake’s warning hiss combined with the boom of faraway thunder. 

The classroom is silent. 

“Good,” Prince nods, and the class begins. 

Harry likes Herbology better. It’s familiar, out in the sun, with the green and the cool, wet brown. Even if he’s not used to the company.

“Line up, line up!” Professor Sprout herds, shooing his classmates into formation on either side of the tables. Harry was already in place, naturally, having seen the empty pots, waiting plants to one side too big for their current clay homes, and spare soil, and immediately gotten to work. “Just a moment there, Mr. Potter, wait for the others, two points to Syltherin for the enthusiasm!” Draco gives him an odd look as Sprout bustles by, and Harry shrugs as he slows only a little in his movements, patting down a layer of soil for the baby plant to rest on. 

“Now, put these on dears, firmly,” Sprout reaches into a dirt-smudged chest, and produces several dozen pairs of earmuffs. Harry dutifully puts them on, and waits for the others to do the same from her insistence. 

Then he pulls up the plant from it’s clay pot.

The plant screams. Harry’s magic jerks, and he breathes in sharply. 

Black meets brown, and everything is silent.

He tucks the toddler-like sprout into it’s new pot softly in apology, and pats it when he finishes pressing the top layer of dirt down. 

Everyone’s looking again. 

When he looks up, Professor Sprout has an odd, pinched look on her face, wrinkles all mushed up and scrunched together.

Harry shrugs and reaches for the next pot. More work to be done, after all.