Chapter 2
~2~
There was a lot of excitement that year. It was Harry Potter's return to their world, see? Curiosity and excitement bubbling and boiling away. Even the staff of Hogwarts hadn't been untouched by it all.
The reply Harry Potter had sent to the Hogwarts letter had been formal, respectful and beautifully worded as to assure them he would need no help despite being muggle raised and Dumbledore beamed at McGonagall. She had doubted him and his decision, certain the Dursleys wouldn't have done right by the boy but clearly Petunia had seen the error of her way, which was most excellent. The boy deserved some happiness in life because considering the information Albus had gathered on Voldemort, he was fairly certain the boy's childhood would be cut short with responsibilities. Albus had defeated Grindelwald once, he knew how the reputation of doing such a thing turned quickly to responsibility. Voldemort was Harry's responsibility and Albus was glad that Harry could depend upon his family, at least. And now at Hogwarts he would finally experience the wonder that was magic.
McGonagall was unphased and annoyed at Dumbledore. The Dursleys may well have known of magic but that didn't mean that Harry Potter didn't merit the usual muggleborn tour. Still, James and Lily's son would be back in Hogwarts. A part of her was preparing for the maelstrom he was sure to be, between James' mischief and Lily's magnetism. In the privacy of her quarters she allowed herself to soften. The prodigal son was returning.
Severus Snape was the staff member least looking forward to it. A boy with Potter's face and Lily's damning eyes, running around causing chaos. Combined with the twinge his Dark Mark gave him when Quirrell was around, he expected it to be an eventful year. Between the vow he'd made to Dumbledore and the life debt he owed Potter, he was going to be run ragged, he was sure.
Yes, they had many expectations.
And they all came to naught.
Harry Potter looked around Hogwarts with interest but without the gaping awe of the other first years. He went up to the sorting hat with a few careful and disdainful looks at those who whispered the loudest and had them quiet down without a word. He put the Sorting hat on his head and was announced a Ravenclaw to moderate applause as Gryffindor and Hufflepuff wondered why not them. He sat at the table, made his introductions and then ate his meal neatly if without the flourish the purebloods at the Slytherin table used.
In short, he was unremarkable in every way. It was almost remarkable how unremarkable he was.
The staff all had opinions about students, good, bad, hard working, smart etc. Harry Potter was the only one they could only describe as above average and little more.
When asked questions in class he articulated his answers better than the rambling facts of Ms Granger but didn't quite have her breadth of knowledge. His essays were sound and written in a way that showed an academic skill but not the interest. His interactions with fellow students were benign if a bit superficial.
And that was all.
His head of house, Professor Flitwick was ultimately goaded into asking the young boy about it by the headmaster and repeated the boy's answer at the next staff meeting verbatim.
"I am enjoying school very much. I like studying, and the library is a great resource."
And it stunned them all. Because it was Hogwarts for crying out loud, a second home away from home. That a student could look at it and see it as just any other school...it was shocking.
But it wasn't anything that was cause for worry after all. So Professor Flitwick let it be and Ravenclaw continued as they always had, as did the others.
There was still work to do, after all. The Mirror of Erised would be used to hide the Stone but it was taking time, being rather uncooperative. Until then it sat at the bottom of Dumbledore's bowl of Lemon sherbets. For some reason no one ever looked there. It made him wonder if he should leave it there perhaps, but the Flamels insisted it be kept in a place where no one might be tempted to use it, and for all that Albus was unafraid of death he could not claim to be untempted by this pinnacle of alchemy.
And then, right when he managed to find the Potter Invisibility cloak from the mess that was his quarters, he found out that young Harry hadn't intended to stay at Hogwarts for Christmas. Instead the boy would be going back home.
It had Dumbledore feeling rather twisted up about it. On the one hand, it was so good to see the boy getting along with his family but he had thought that the young man would want to see what a Magical Christmas in the Wizarding world was like.
Pity, he could only hope one of the school owls would be up for the journey to Surrey.
Harry Potter was having an absolute ball, then again, he always had fun on Christmas. That had been the case since he'd begun to spend them with the Orlick family. The Dursleys always just gave him some money, a few quid, ever since Mrs Orlick found out that he'd never had a present before and made noises about it in the neighbourhood, but the Orlick's bought him actual presents.
Rhys had gotten him a cookbook last year, with a note that said it was so he could 'Keep up the cookery', something that set them both off into peals of laughter, much to his parents' confusion. An inside joke they had explained. Meanwhile Harry had given Rhys a similar gift as well, having put together a vast repertoire of classical songs to play for their trespassing snake Greenscales, now almost a pet of theirs, and a diary to note down every single bit of her commentary in.
This year the Orlicks got him a skateboard.
Harry had looked for books about music in the Wizarding world for Rhys but a reminder from Cressida that it would be disguised to appear different to his best friend's muggle eyes dissuaded him. He didn't want to give Rhys something he could only read when Harry was in constant contact with him. Instead, he got an older Ravenclaw, one who was a muggleborn, to transcribe the Hogwarts song for him.
When in the middle of the night, a knocking sound on the window turned out to be an owl with a parcel for him, Harry half-heartedly grabbed it, handed the owl a treat he'd been keeping for Greenscales and then tossed the package on top of the pile of wrapping paper in the corner. In a scribbled chicken scratch he wrote a reminder to ask Cressida to see if the parcel had anything dangerous, chucking the note on top of the parcel and went back to sleep.
"It's safe, no harmful charms or spells on it," Cressida said, turning the silky material over in her hands, "What did the note say?"
"Only that it belonged to my father." Harry replied. He'd been more than a little curious about the cloak but couldn't help but wonder who had sent it to him. He pulled the note out of his pocket and handed it to Cressida who performed the same detection charms she'd performed on the cloak, on the note as well and felt stupid. He shouldn't have just taken the note at face value like that, he'd have to be more careful later on.
"Oh," Cressida said suddenly as she looked at what was written on the note. "It's Dumbledore's handwriting. He must have been given this by your father during the war and given that you live in the muggle world he couldn't return it. I wonder what it does." She said and absently draped it over Harry's shoulders. It became obvious that it was an invisibility cloak then and Cressida marvelled even more.
"What's so special about it?" Harry asked after a few minutes of hmm-ing from her. After all, he'd read about Invisibility cloaks before, they weren't anything special.
"Invisibility cloaks only work for a few years before the magic wears out, demiguise hair isn't meant for human magic and the clashes between the two cause significant wear and tear. If this was your father's and it's still working, it must be something quite special."
That was interesting. Harry resolved to go through the archives and try to find out more about his family, what if there were other magical heirlooms out there that Harry didn't know about?
"What would I use it for, though?"
"Sneaking around the castle after hours I expect. Your father was a prankster, or so I heard, I suppose he must have had some use for it. In the war it was probably used for stealth."
Harry wasn't fond of pranks, he'd been victim to a few too many of Dudley's pranks to inflict them on others. He didn't want to sneak out of the dorms either, he rather liked sleeping and Hogwarts was difficult enough to navigate during the day with all its moving staircases and what not, he couldn't fathom it being any safer during the night.
For a moment he thought about using it to access the Restricted Section but that thought fled his mind quickly enough, Ravenclaws had easy access to passes to the Restricted Section because Professor Flitwick encouraged using the library to its fullest.
For a magical artefact, an heirloom at that, Harry thought it was rather useless to him. But perhaps he'd find out a better use for it later, who knew. For now, he'd keep it in the back of Rhys' closet, it would take up too much space in the trunk for what it was and he needed that space for the skateboard. Harry wanted to see how well it worked on the stone floors in the foyer of the castle and there was this one spot where the walls of the castle curved up in a way that made him think of half pipes. Plus, if he broke a bone or something, Madame Pomfrey could fix it far quicker than a muggle hospital.
He couldn't think of a better place to learn some skills.
Quirrell was acting oddly. Dumbledore had his suspicions about the man, he'd come back so very different after all. But he still didn't know what it was that was wrong with him. The wards of Hogwarts could only do so much, especially since there was no way of discerning who the enemy was. During the war with Voldemort, Dumbledore had been able to make it so those with the Dark Mark could no longer enter the castle but times had changed. Severus being on staff was something he had to consider. Besides, given the many Death Eaters who had claimed to be 'Imperiused' the Ministry had considered enforcing such a ward to be discrimination against those 'respectable' purebloods who'd simply been in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Lucius' vast coffers were more of a hindrance than all of Tom's charm had been.