Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

Most of the train to Hogwarts was empty since people who arrived this early were still mostly out on the platform waiting for friends. The carriage where the prefects’ meeting was held was at the front of the train, just behind the engine and a carriage with an ‘employees only’ sign. Figuring that was where the snack trolley started, Harry Potter wanted to try a compartment closer to the front than he normally had. Gryffindors tended to be near the end of the train while Ravenclaws were nearer the front, but he was sure his friends would find him eventually no matter where he sat. He wanted people to assume he was a transfer Snape picked up from France at least until he got to the school where he could better evade the libel-influenced public opinion attached to his name.

With long red hair tipped in black like a fox’s tail, high-quality thin lens glasses that emphasized his mother’s features instead of obscuring his eyes and cheekbones, and a coming of age that had him growing to look more like his mum in general rather than sprouting up tall, he wasn’t very recognizable. Most of a month in hospital getting his head shrunk and the curse scar healed properly meant the usually red and irritated scar on his forehead was now a hair-thin line that was nearly impossible to see without bright light and an invasion of his personal space. In robes bought in Paris that were wonderfully androgynous he was easily mistaken for a girl; the traditional cut high-quality robe and waistcoat he wore was something The Boy Who Lived with his baggy mismatched muggle rags would never be seen in. The idea that he had set a trend and caused a lot of people who read Witch Weekly to wear outfits that weren’t fit to use as dust rags was something the stuffy tailor said that Harry ignored to process later, and it still sat poorly in his head that he’d had that kind of influence at eleven or twelve years old. Thankfully, he had his emancipation as a ready excuse for why he changed his look now. He could just say he’d never been allowed to pick his clothes before and leave people to speculate from that.

The second carriage open to students had at least one upperclassman or trunk in each compartment already, but there was one near the lav in the third that he claimed by leaving his trunk on the seat. There was a remote possibility that someone would recognize the trunk, especially if it wasn’t in the hands of a long-haired redhead in traditional wizard clothing, but with Hedwig’s cage shrunken inside he hoped only Ron or Hermione would recognize it, if anyone did. He double-checked the security spell Sirius showed him, which would cover anyone who broke through it in bright red paint and feathers, and headed back up the train.

The first open carriage of the train had no compartments, just rows of bench seats with fold-down tray tables on the back of each row. MacMillan was there already, and a few older students Harry didn’t know well. The stout blond boy had the Defense book laid out in front of him on the tray table close to the window. He’d been decent back in second year about the whole Heir of Slytherin thing, and not too rabid about supporting Cedric, so Harry cautiously took a seat on the bench across the center aisle from him and hoped to make some kind of conversation. Ron and Hermione did a lot of the talking even when he was with other people, and the mind healers had gone through a whole thing about him hiding behind them too much that hurt his Gryffindor pride.

“That book’s thick as treacle,” Harry said. “I hope the professor makes up for it in class, but I wouldn’t bet on it.”

“Eh? Yeah, it’s a thick one. Better than Lockheart’s nonsense, at least,” the Hufflepuff said. “Sorry, I don’t recognize you.”

“Bonjour, I’m Master Snape’s new apprentice, fresh back in England from Paris,” Harry babbled, a bit nervous despite himself, and the older prefects all turned around to look. “He’ll be right hacked off if we ruin his big announcement, so we should probably keep the finer details contained if we can. I got cornered by Lord Malfoy on the platform when Master Snape dropped me off, though, so I’m sure some people saw that. Best I can do now is keep the rumor mill starved for identifying details, so I’ll just sit on my family name if you don’t mind.”

“I’m all for keeping him in a good mood,” MacMillan agreed. The older students nodded.

“What year are you in?” The tall brunette asking the question had pinned the Head Girl badge to her lavender casual robes. The charm attached to the bottom of the badge was blue and bronze for Ravenclaw.

“Fifth, and I’ll be playing a bit of catch-up so Master Snape doesn’t plan for me to help with prefect duties until the second term, but the Headmaster might overrule that at the meeting he’s in right now,” Harry said. Other prefects were tricking in, and Malfoy looked at Harry’s seat choice with open irritation. Pansy Parkinson was just behind him, so Harry figured they wanted to sit together, and Harry was blocking a bench that could seat two or three across. He hopped across the aisle to sit next to MacMillan instead. Parkinson giggled a bit and pulled Malfoy down onto the now free bench with her.

“Are you behind?” a seventh year Slytherin boy asked. Harry decided to tell as much of the truth as he could now, when people wouldn’t be judging him as The Boy Who Lived and deciding not to listen to any of it because it didn’t fit their expectations of how he should be.

“Last year was awful for me for a dozen reasons, and I had a curse put on me that has been making it hard for me to concentrate and giving me insomnia since I was little. They made me wait until I was fifteen to get it removed, which Master Snape thinks was very stupid and unnecessary. The specialists we were working with this summer all agreed with him, too. Master Snape may not be the nicest person, but he really does hate it when kids get hurt, especially when it’s any kind of on purpose. We got to know each other after he helped me out with all that, he thinks he can get me up to standard enough to take the arithmancy O.W.L. this year despite never taking the class before, and then we had the bonding ritual just a few days ago.”

“You’re doing three years of Arithmancy in one?” MacMillan asked, aghast.

“That sounds like Professor Snape’s work ethic,” the Slytherin seventh-year boy said sagely.

“I went to muggle primary school, long story don’t ask, and he says that I remember the maths I learned there well enough that I should pass as long as I put the work in. It’s the N.E.W.T. score that really matters, anyway, so I just have to do well enough to get into sixth year Arithmancy,” Harry said with a shrug. “He doesn’t expect straight ‘O’s on my O.W.L.s because I’m starting on the back foot, just passing marks, but he wants passing marks in at least ten and I have to take them all - including at least one that isn’t normally offered at Hogwarts - and no excuses. I’m just glad he didn’t ground me from playing Quidditch if I want to.”

“You any good?” Malfoy asked.

“I love flying,” Harry replied vaguely.

“Do you know why Professor Snape’s plan for you to start prefect duties late wouldn’t be approved by the Headmaster?” the Head Girl asked, her manner all business. A school owl flew in with a scroll with a wax Hogwarts seal, and she turned to take it while she talked. “Masters tend to have total control over their apprentices, and Slytherin has six prefects already as far as I’m aware. It’s always nice to have another person available in case somebody needs to switch up the schedule, but we should be fully covered.”

“There’s some kind of silly thing going on with the Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher he warned me about, not that I know why one thing would affect the other short of him having to teach some of their classes,” Harry said. “That’s a total guess, by the way. I just can’t think of anything else that would throw things off, and he couldn’t rather than wouldn’t give me details, which irritated him on its own so there wasn’t much I could read into it beyond that he doesn’t like it. He had been hacked off about the whole thing since whoever it was got the post, so I assume the new Defense Professor either isn’t qualified or has upset him personally some way.”

“Who was upset by the new Defense professor?” Anthony Goldstein asked as he walked in. The Ravenclaw took a seat ahead of Harry.

“Professor Snape,” MacMillan said.

“Is he on the train?” Hanna Abbott asked as she chose the bench behind Malfoy and Parkinson.

“This is Professor Snape’s new apprentice,” Malfoy cut in. “We haven’t had proper introductions, yet.”

“And you won’t be having any. Professor Snape wants to have his big announcement at the feast tonight,” the Head Girl called out over the gathering group. “Snape’s Apprentice stays nameless and as unknown as possible unless you want to step on his cloak about it, so we’re not. End of.”

“It isn’t just Master Snape the new Professor rubbed the wrong way. From what he said even Professor Sprout is upset, though that might be a bit of cause and effect,” Harry said.

“Why would Professor Snape being upset make Professor Sprout upset?” Abbott asked. The older students weren’t even trying to pretend they weren’t listening.

“No, no, the other way around. She was at the bonding ritual for my apprenticeship, and they act…” Harry trailed off, waving a hand vaguely as he tried to come up with something without saying anything too personal.

“What’s this hot gossip?” asked a sixth-year girl that asked Harry to the Yule Ball, getting up to take a seat closer to Harry. All he could remember about her was that she was a Hufflepuff and wore about three times as much perfume as necessary.

“No!” Harry shouted, raising both hands defensively. “Not like that. She’s happily married to one of her old apprentices for Merlin’s sake. I was trying to figure another way to say they act a bit like she’s his mum. I… He told me he lost his mum before he graduated, and Professor Sprout was his Herbology teacher too; I think she sort of scooped him up like an especially grumpy stray cat. If not immediately, then when he started as a professor. He’s only thirty-something now, you know? Anyway, I think if someone was mean to her, he’d start looming menacingly around the place until they backed off or earned a hex.” With his expressive gestures, his sleeve fell all the way down and exposed the flapping bluejay.

“Oh, that’s so pretty!” A seventh-year Gryffindor girl said. He really should know her name, but she’d never so much as given him the time of day and very deliberately ‘wasn’t taken in by famous Harry Potter’ as she made clear whenever he approached a prefect for anything. “Is that the bond mark or just a tattoo?”

“It’s my bond mark,” Harry confirmed, and then was swamped as all the prefects wanted a closer look at it. He ended up scrambling onto the back of the bench Goldstein was sitting on, pressing against the window, and grabbing onto the curtain rod for stability to escape the sudden lack of personal space. It was a bit dramatic, but he’d been mobbed enough times in the past that he would rather over-react than get squashed.

“SIT DOWN!” The Head Boy shouted as the train lurched into motion, causing most people to stumble. The brunette Hufflepuff glared in disappointment at everyone from the front of the carriage. Harry wondered if he practiced mimicking Professor Sprout to get that look just right. “Have you all lost your minds? Let her alone.”

“Not a her,” Harry said, pointing to himself from his perch as the rest of them slid back into their seats. Outside, parents were waving goodbye to the departing train.

“It’s not just the hair, it’s the way that waistcoat lays over the robe,” Malfoy said. “It’s pulling your waist in, flaring out the fabric at your hips, and giving the illusion there’s something hiding under the top to give you a girlish shape.”

“I know what I look like, and like I said on the platform I don’t mind it,” Harry said, walking on the back of the bench a couple steps so he didn’t drop down on any of MacMillan’s books. He gathered his courage as he stepped down onto the seat where he’d been sitting before. “I’m queer, and it’s a bit like a compliment in my book if people think I’m pretty.”

“Wouldn’t poufs want someone that looks like a guy?” MacMillan wondered aloud.

“Queer doesn't just mean gay,” Hermione said from the back of the carriage. Ron looked like he wanted to push up closer, but with everyone sitting in twos there weren’t any empty seats left except in the very back.

“And with that, we should get started before we go off on an inappropriately wild tangent,” the Head Girl said. “We’re all going to pretend we know very little about Professor Snape’s new apprentice when we leave this meeting, so we don’t ruin his big announcement at the feast tonight. If you’ve made it this far without realizing that getting on his bad side is a terrible idea, not even Merlin could help you. If you aren’t a prefect or a quidditch captain, or an apprentice to a professor, get out. Let’s get this done and dusted.” Nobody left, everyone settled down into silence, and she started to read off the scroll the owl brought. “All of last year’s fifth- and sixth-year prefects are returning as sixth- and seventh- years... Except, well, the obvious. New fifth-year prefects are: Hannah Abbott, Anthony Goldstein, Hermione Granger, Ernie MacMillan, Draco Malfoy, Pansy Parkinson, Padma Patil, and Ron Weasley.”

“Weasley?” several people said, looking back at the tall redhead incredulously. There was general muttering over how most people expected the headmaster to pick Harry Potter.

“George isn’t still mad he didn’t get the apprenticeship, is he?” Harry asked to cover the rather unflattering comments. Ron looked at him weird then smirked as he caught on to the subject change.

“The twins are a law unto themselves, mate. If anyone thinks I’m going to do what Percy couldn’t to keep them in line, they’ve lost the plot,” Ron said. “That goes in general, not just for you. Best I can do is give McGonagall a bit of advanced warning for the big things. I think it should be alright, though, since Snape helped them with their patent, and they want a third star from the potions’ guild like nothing else. They’ll be focused on that and their plans for after graduation. Just don’t eat anything they offer you without asking them what it does, first, though anyone in here should be smart enough to know that much already.”

Harry gave Ron a thumbs-up, and the meeting continued from there. The upper years introduced themselves in a flurry of names Harry mostly absorbed. After that, it was basically a rehash of all the school rules with emphasis on the ones prefects were expected to enforce and listing out the usual point deductions for each infraction. Prefects could take a few more or less based on circumstances, but they couldn’t take points from other prefects and were expected to focus on policing their own house. More than twenty points from any one student in a day would need a written explanation, even if taken at multiple times rather than all at once. Prefects could report infractions worthy of detention to a member of staff, but couldn’t assign detention themselves. They could also report actions of distinction if someone was helpful in a way that should earn points or privilege, but couldn’t give any out. It was in the official scroll the head boy and girl had that Snape’s apprentice wasn’t starting as a teaching assistant immediately and might not be part of the patrol schedule until second term, confirming what Harry had told them.

“The name’s been burned off this paper, I can only assume by Professor Snape himself, so he’s serious about not spoiling his announcement,” the head boy said with a nervous laugh. “I’m tempted to just keep you safe in here wrapped in cotton batting.”

“I really wouldn’t try locking me in anywhere,” Harry said, his smile showing too many teeth to be friendly. “It wouldn’t end well for anyone.”

“Well, I was thinking he’s too nice to be bonded to Professor Snape, but there it is,” one of the older Hufflepuffs said.

“Fred and George came back right terrified of the pair of them, when Snape picked him over George,” Ron added helpfully from the back.

“I’m nice,” Harry grumbled. “Just, not indiscriminately, and I’ve been locked up just to make other people feel safer before and that’s not on.”

“You what?” MacMillan said, leaning away from Harry before checking himself and very carefully trying to look neutrally pleasant.

“Part of that long story,” Harry said, realizing he’d said more than he should. “Master Snape got me out of it for good, and you can ask me to explain after you know my name if you want to, not that I’m likely to say much more than I just did.”

“Oh, shit,” said one of the four older Slytherin prefects. They shoved their heads together to have a muffled conversation. Malfoy and Parkinson weren’t sitting close enough to join in, and looked very put out by it.

“You need anything related to getting pulled out of where you were, you can come to us directly,” the Slytherin seventh-year boy, Arturous Stems, stood up and waved at the other Slytherin prefects. “Professor Snape did the same for me. Nobody is welcome to ask me about that, and if you badger anyone about what we might be talking about expect me to take it personally.”

“Thanks, Stems, I’d rather not get into it for reasons I think you can guess, so… Can we drop it for now?” Harry said. Stems nodded and sat down, clearly getting the message.

“I think we’re about done,” the head girl, Conifer, said. “Just the funs stuff left.” They went over a few perks, like the prefect’s bath and meeting room. Sealed envelopes with the house common room passwords were given out to the prefects, which burned to ash once read. Then, they declared the meeting closed and most people started moving out of the carriage to find their friends. MacMillan didn’t move, clearly intending to use the tray table as desk space to study for a while. This was probably meant as a dining car but primarily used for studying since everyone ate in their compartments when the trolley came by, explaining why the upper-years and Ravenclaws liked to claim compartments close to the front of the train. Once the prefect meeting was over, anyone could come use the space and there was a schedule for one of the seventh-year prefects to always be here in case someone needed them in addition to the patrol schedule that was now written across a board at the front of the car. Ron and Hermione were scheduled for the back end of the train first thing and then again just before arriving at Hogwarts. Harry hung back to avoid the initial crush of traffic and found himself surrounded by all six Slytherin prefects crowding in the seats in front and behind him. The air got fuzzy, a muffling spell wrapping around them.

“Are you living with the professor now, or do you have to go back for inheritance reasons?” Stems asked quietly.

“I’m emancipated, I’ve already inherited my father’s estate, and there’s a friend of the family willing to put me up in exchange for helping him out with the house. It was a moldy pile when he moved in, but it gets better every day. By winter holidays it should be nice and cozy, at least enough for a proper holiday.” That should be sufficiently vague. They would likely assume he means Lupin once they realize who he is. Stems whistled lowly.

“Emancipated at fifteen? That’s lucky, and it must have been a real mess he pulled you out of if he got that done for you. I got yanked out in third year, after a bad spring break. My family isn’t fancy enough to bother worrying about being disowned, so I just left. I was living in the Professor’s spare room for part of the following summer, and then the professor found a second cousin of mine that wanted me around,” Stems said. Malfoy’s pointy face was scrunched up in total confusion.

“Yanked out of what?” Malfoy asked.

“My mum’s protective magic flared up when I took your mum’s hand at the station. There is no way you’ll understand without detailed diagrams and several hours to think it over,” Harry said with a shake of his head. Malfoy puffed up in indignation. “I mean that as a compliment to your parents,” Harry added, and then Malfoy was confused again.

“Yeah, Malfoy’s got a winning hand in that game,” Stems laughed. “Don’t dismiss him too fast, though. He’s good at understanding people, and you’ll be sharing a dorm room for the next few years.”

“That assumes a lot,” Harry said with a bright smile.

“You seem like a Slytherin to me, and you said you aren’t a girl anymore, or that you aren’t one yet,” Stems said, leaning back with a casual shrug. “Some reason you don’t think you’d be in your master’s house?” Harry held up his left arm, and all of them got a good look at the image of a bluejay in flight.

“I assume you’ve seen the papers recently. We should run. It would be smart to run, to save our skin and never look back, but we’re too brave and loyal to do that. Maybe a bit of that stubbornness that borders on stupidity people with those traits have, too, but mostly bravery. Not that he isn’t a Slytherin, but most people are complex enough to have traits from multiple houses. Master Severus should never have left France, or if he did, he shouldn’t have come back to England. Not with a bluejay on his left arm instead of a snake and skull. He wouldn’t do it, though. He’s the Head of Slytherin House, and he’ll hold the line until the castle falls around him.”

“Professor Snape was really a Death Eater in the war?” the sixth-year girl asked.

“He was a spy in the inner circle feeding information to those working against you-know-who. To those who were loyal he talked his way around it as if he’d been a double-agent so neither side questioned his loyalty in the aftermath, so believe what you want. He was prepared to do it all again if he had to after last June, but then when our bond overwrote the dark mark, well, there’s no explaining that except the obvious. His bond to me was more important to him, and that says enough about his loyalties right there. It’ll be on sight, if you-know-who comes around. For either of us.” Beside Harry, MacMillan swore. “You’re inside the privacy spell?”

“I won’t say a word, I’m not that suicidal,” he replied.

“Olive,” Stems said, shooting the other seventh year an irritated look.

“Sorry, the seats aren’t very big,” Olive Olmo said.

“So, it’s true then?” MacMillan asked. “You-Know-Who is back?” Malfoy, Parkinson, and the sixth-year boy looked down to avoid eye contact, while the rest shared MacMillan’s expectant expression.

“Do any of you think Harry Potter capable of killing Cedric Diggory in cold blood to win a thousand galleons? Because that’s the best explanation if he’s not back,” Harry said. “I’m not sure exactly what the English press was saying, but in France the British Ministry was torn to bits about that whole thing in the papers.”

“You mean Potter’s trial? I heard he got off on a technicality,” Parkinson said.

“Which one?” Harry asked, turning to her with as much sarcasm as he could muster, which was at least a double portion. “The technicality that defending a muggle family member from a six-X creature when they already know about magic neither breaks the statute of secrecy nor is an unexcused breech of the underage sorcery laws, or did you mean the technicality that participating in the tournament to his best ability emancipated him so the trace shouldn’t have still been on his wand to register the spell being cast in the first place?”

“Wait, the muggle was a member of his family?” Stems asked.

“His cousin, who he’s lived with since, well, the day he became famous,” Harry said, trailing off with a shrug. It was weird talking about himself in the third person like this. Beyond the huddle of Slytherin prefects (and one unwilling Hufflepuff) the carriage was nearly empty. A few people had come in with books or a late breakfast, but they stayed in the back well away from Stems’ group, and the head boy and girl were at the far front. “The officials involved didn’t seem to know who was involved in the incident before it was explained during the trial, so the prosecution hadn’t bothered to do even the most basic fact-finding to get a list of witnesses prepared for that farce of a court case. Not that there could have been any work done, since they decided to snap his wand over it inside of five minutes late in the evening after-hours and had to be talked down to treating it like he’d been shooting off fireworks in front of Buckingham Palace. If they investigated after that, they would have to admit they hadn’t had all the facts before issuing that snap judgment. There was an interview in the French papers when it first happened, a translation of the transcript highlights was read off on the wireless, and his solicitor put out a statement explaining it all when the case was dismissed as well as another once the libel suit was put in for those children’s books that use his name and likeness. Wasn’t all that published in the Prophet?” Harry knew it hadn’t been, but he had to play the part.

“It certainly wasn’t,” Parkinson said. “So, you know all about it? How?”

“Only one magical hospital in Paris,” Harry said with a shrug. He was blushing a bit, more because he was flustered trying not to give himself away than from embarrassment. He hoped he sounded natural enough. “Master Snape came to check up on what the interview implied at the beginning of August, we got to know each other, and it really was all over the French press the last month. Madam Maxine came, and the French Minister, and lots of other people were coming and going all the time. The Weasley twins are impossible to miss, and George really did ask to be Master Snape’s apprentice while I was still bedridden. I was too sick to notice much in the middle of the month when they were pulling the curse off me, and Master Snape was with me every other day through the worst of it, but the broad strokes were known to everyone on that floor of the hospital no matter how off their head they were. There are privacy spells so I can’t tell you anything about the health of other patients, but I can talk about the stuff that was released to the public and it was completely impossible for me to miss.” Considering it was happening to him, that was all perfectly true.

“Snape. At your sickbed. For more than a week.” MacMillan’s mind was blown.

“He absolutely does not have a soft gooey center, it’s spikes all the way down, but it’s like a rabbit warren under a bramble. If you’re brave or lucky enough to make it inside, the spikes will protect you too,” Harry said.

“He would have been at Potter’s sickbed too, if he could manage it,” Malfoy said. “Professor Snape would know first-hand what went on, so we might be able to ask him. My Father told me what he knows about it all, of course, but Professor Snape wasn’t around for tea this summer. Mother has him over once a month, usually, so she was quite worried. We get the French papers, of course, though I didn’t believe half of what I read. Potter’s always being so dramatic.”

“Pot meet kettle, Malfoy,” MacMillan said. Harry bit his lip to stay silent. He wasn’t supposed to know anyone.

“Where’s your trunk? Professor Snape packed it for you when he got you out, right?” Stems asked.

“Back on the fifth of August, yeah. Didn’t miss a thing, and I’d pay good money for a picture of my aunt’s face when he laid into her about the whole business,” Harry said. “The trunk has some really nice anti-theft spells, but it’s still, you know, everything, so I’d like to get back to it.”

“Let’s get it. You can stay in one of our compartments,” Stems said, standing up. “Assuming you are sorted Slytherin, is there anything we’ll need to know? Things that might set you off that we should try and avoid?”

“Master Snape reconfigured the class schedule to be less explosive. Beyond that, I think I’m good,” Harry said.

“No more Longbottom in our class?” Parkinson said. “Thank Merlin for that.”

“It’ll be Gryffindors with Ravenclaws and Slytherin with Hufflepuffs,” Harry said, nodding.

“Sounds like I dodged a hex,” MacMillan said.

“Longbottom really is that bad,” Malfoy said. “It was always a bit fun watching him implode, though it ruined my shoes more than once when he was sitting near me.” Harry felt the privacy spell pop around them.

“Master Snape says the Ravenclaws who want to experiment too confidently should be humbled by class with the Gryffindors, Gryffindors need someone to match Granger’s energy to make some slackers more obviously behind, and the Slytherins could do with seeing what consistent hard work looks like when it’s at home,” Harry said.

“Ha!” MacMillan laughed. “Sounds like Professor Snape’s favorite fifth- years aren’t his own.”

“I was just taking a breath. Fifth year Hufflepuff needs to see Slytherin creativity and not plod along in mediocrity by doing everything by the book,” Harry finished. “It should be a better mix all the way around, so both fifth year potion labs should be less likely to go bang or fizzle.”

They left MacMillan gathering his shattered house pride. The sixth- years went on ahead for their scheduled patrol, which they were late starting due to their little meeting. Malfoy reminded him that he’d promised to help Goyle with the book-reading spell, though Harry was sure he’d done no such thing. Stems pointed out what compartment he’d be in as the group walked past it, and then the one full of sixth-year Slytherin boys. In the compartment with Harry’s trunk, they found Neville and an odd girl reading a magazine upside-down. Malfoy started to be an arse to Neville and called the girl Loony, but a glare from Harry and an elbow from Parkinson shut him up.

“Master Snape wasn’t the only one talking about you at the bonding ritual, Longbottom. All the house heads were there standing for Master Severus,” Harry said, setting his trunk on the seat a moment so he could dig down into it. He missed the eyebrows going up at the more intimate form of address he used while distracted. He pulled out what he was looking for just as Malfoy reached for a French quidditch magazine. Harry swatted his hand before slamming the lid down, the locks engaging on their own from the momentum and will he put behind it. He held out The Master’s Apprentice: What to Expect and Why to Neville. “You should read this, talk to Professor Sprout, and get the hell out of Master Snape’s classroom before you give him an aneurysm. I give you my word he’s actually losing sleep over having to let you near a cauldron with the more volatile recipes we have on the curriculum this year. You’re so good at picking the most potent bits out of the available ingredients and infuse so much extra magic into your brews it drives him up a wall. He’s given up trying to get you to stop overpowering your potions and prays you’ll at least start following the recipe more carefully. Fifth year Gryffindor has potions with Ravenclaw this year, so see if one of the eagles is willing to pair with you in the meantime. S- Finnegan, Thomas, and Weasley won’t help you; Granger just takes over; and Potter hasn’t been allowed to partner with you for a couple years now.”

“Not allowed?” Parkinson echoed

“You’ll figure it out if you think about it,” Harry said, waving her off.

“Potter’s almost as dangerous in the lab as Longbottom,” Malfoy added, because he’s a dick and Harry should have asked him to stay outside for this. “It’s like he forgets where he is or what he’s doing until things start bubbling over. He’d just sit there and let you kill us all if Professor Snape let the two of you pair up.” Harry turned, seized his shoulders, and pushed him out of the compartment and up against the wall outside.

“What are you doing?” Malfoy asked, his pointy face turning red as his gray-blue eyes widened.

“Giving you a hint you’ll bloody well notice, now stay out of it,” Harry said, then shut the door on him and closed the blinds for good measure. Thank goodness for all that time in the gym, he might even be stronger now than he was during the tournament. Parkinson was still inside, trying not to laugh. Outside, the seventh-year prefects were laughing, and Olmo winked at him through the thin strip of window the blinds didn’t cover.

“Professor Sprout and Professor Snape were talking about me?” Nevile asked, sounding small.

“Of course,” Harry said, hoping to encourage his friend. “She turned someone down because she was waiting for you to turn fifteen. Not that you have to ask her, I’m sure your grandmother could help you find someone if you aren’t interested in apprenticing Professor Sprout specifically, but they both think you’d do better if you asked someone sooner rather than later. I know Professor Flitwick is looking. He doesn’t like to take anyone underage, but he has made exceptions, and Professor McGonagall… Honestly there is some kind of story there. She needs an assistant, but she doesn’t want to bond with anyone for personal reasons that I don’t know a thing about, but made Master Snape give her the soft voice, so it must be serious. She’ll probably talk with one of the seventh- years in the short term, and if you’d rather wait you can always talk to any or all of them if you just want advice or a recommendation for someone outside of Hogwarts.”

“If you’re just having a laugh,” Nevil said, a warning in his tone.

“That’s Master Snape’s book. You can return it to me or to him directly, but please give it a read first. It’s got a rather long section about how it can all go wrong, to make sure brave idiots don’t jump into things without knowing what they are asking for. His words, not mine,” Harry said. “I spent a long time with mind healers over the summer getting a curse removed, and Master Snape wouldn’t even entertain the suggestion until he was sure I was well and in my right mind.” Nevile looked Harry in the eye, then looked at the trunk, then back at Harry. “If you’ve just remembered me, know that if you spoil Professor Snape’s surprise he’s going to be very, very cross.”

“You look well,” Nevile said carefully.

“Thanks. Professor Flitwick had to ask for what pronouns I wanted, and people keep thinking I’m a girl, but I feel great and I’m not changing anything.” Harry smiled brightly. “Malfoy’s going to kick himself when he figures it out. Did you know he was the first wizard my own age I met? I think he’s forgotten it or is just really bad at recognizing me out of context. He’s certainly never acted like one of the first things he ever said was to insult me and my mum.”

“Lots of people are infested with wrackspurts, and his case is quite advanced,” the girl, Lovegood, interjected in her airy voice. “Congratulations on getting your shrieking nematoda removed, it looked quite painful.” Harry blinked, that was all quite odd, but also made a bit of sense if she was just making up words for the curse he’d been under. It wasn’t like there was an official name for the thing they pulled out of him as far as Harry knew. He hadn’t the faintest idea what a wrackspurt was supposed to be, but the context gave him enough of an idea to work with.

“I couldn’t see the foghorn, and it had been going off so long I sort-of became deaf to it except in the most extreme moments,” he answered in kind. “I tend to hear and feel magic, rather than see it, but I did get a look at it as it was being removed and my mage sight has been improving since. It was very painful and very distracting to carry, and none too pleasant to be around besides.”

“I wonder if we could make a variant of spetrespecs that would let you see things like shreiking nemotoda? This pair helps me spot certain elusive magical creatures, you know, they came in the latest edition of the Quibbler if you want a pair for yourself. I don’t think it would work as well to make spetrephones to hear them, it would be quite cacophonous,” she said with a decisive nod that made her radish earrings bob on their springy wires.

“Oh, it’s always an awful racket in a crowd, and I’m very glad to have some better control over if I have to hear it all or not. Tell me if you figure it out. Some people’s mage sight is so much better than what I’ve had to deal with, and it would be nice if more people could see things properly in general. The way mine works is just inconveniently distracting most of the time,” Harry said. Nevile and Parkinson were both looking at him like he was nuts. “I’d better go, before Malfoy implodes. I’m under orders to try and make nice with him.”

“Better you than me,” Nevile said, sitting down and opening the book. Harry collected his trunk and opened the door to see a silently fuming Malfoy and two bored-looking upperclassmen.

“Sorted?” Stems asked.

“Yes. Sorry to make you wait.”

“Better to get your deliveries done if they need doing,” Stems said. Parkinson slipped around them and put her mouth up to Malfoy’s ear.

“I know something you don’t know,” she sang.

“Oh, shove off,” Malfoy grumbled, swatting at her without any real strength behind it.

“Anything else you need to hand off?” Olmo asked.

“No, that’s all,” Harry confirmed. The compartment Malfoy led them to had Crabbe, Goyle, Nott, and Zabini. There really wasn’t room for more than six in a compartment after the first round of growth spurts in third year, but Parkinson sat down on the side with slightly more room and Harry wanted to give the Slytherins he didn’t know so well a fair shake. They all told him their names as if they were meeting him for the first time, which was good because he wasn’t sure he would have remembered them properly, and he was introduced simply as ‘Snape’s Apprentice, so be respectful’ by Stems.

“Any trouble, from anyone, I want to hear about it,” Stems said, and seemed to eye Nott more than the others.

“Worst case scenario, I start screaming and Snape materializes out of the tracker he put on me,” Harry said. “Not that I’m keen on finding out what comes after that.”

“Yeah, don’t do that short of the train derailing,” Zabini said urgently.

“Mystery here practically picked Draco up and put him in his place earlier for being rude. I think he can take care of himself well enough,” Parkinson said, seeming pleased Harry had stood in front of the seat next to her.

“It was just Longbottom. Did you use a silent featherlight charm to move me like that?” Malfoy asked, a bit of a blush on his cheeks. Harry looked him up and down, then held out his trunk in one hand.

“Hold this a second, please.”

“Alright, wha- ahh, fffff-ferrets,” Malfoy exclaimed, glancing at Parkinson like she was the reason he hadn’t cussed. Malfoy wasn’t ready for the weight when he took the trunk in one hand, as Harry suspected, and it smacked into his leg as he nearly overbalanced before he could grab it with his other hand and steady himself. Crabbe was fast enough to catch the end before it clobbered him. “What do you have in here?”

“Everything I own in the world,” Harry said. Harry took the trunk back and put it up on the rack without any problem. “Yes, it does have charms on it to make it lighter than it should be. No, they aren’t only active when I touch it.”

“You picked that up like it was nothing,” Malfoy was stuck between wounded pride and begrudgingly impressed. Stems was still lingering in the doorway, thoroughly enjoying the show.

“To get strong arms, you must pick up heavy things. Then put down. Then pick up. Do it until your arms hurt, then run laps until your legs hurt. Drink more water than you think you want to, never forget to stretch, and sleep it off,” Harry said simply. “Repeat daily until you are strong enough to deal with your problems.”

“That’s about what my father said about building physical strength,” Crabbe agreed sagely. “Have you been training with weights for long?”

“No, and I don’t normally use dumbbells or anything to exercise with, mostly just endurance runs and push-ups. I’m really not that impressive, the lifting I’ve done was because I had to do a lot of chores where I used to live,” Harry demurred. “I just figured Malfoy looks like he’s never lifted anything without a levitation charm, and I’ve been working hard to get back to my normal strength after being ill in bed so long.”

“I really, really want to know what was said that’s caused this grudge,” Parkinson said. Harry looked at her and cocked his head to the side. “You jumped to sit next to bookworm MacMillan instead of letting him sit next to you. You shoved him out of Longbottom’s compartment at the slightest irritation. You told Longbottom, after he recognized you, that you’d met Draco before too, but he mortally offended you and then he did it again by not remembering when you met a second time, though you don’t seem upset that he doesn’t recognize you today. You tricked him into grabbing that trunk of yours.” She gestured to where Malfoy had sat down and started rubbing his leg. “You don’t have any problem talking to anyone else, but you have it out for him.”

“We’ve never met, I’d have remembered,” Malfoy said.

“My eleventh birthday, the day I found out I wasn’t crazy and magic was real after all and went shopping for my school things,” Harry said. “You told me that my mother and I didn’t deserve to have magic since we hadn’t grown up around it. I don’t tolerate people talking about my mum like that, not even when I thought she died in a car crash.” Zabini said something in what Harry thought was Italian.

“You’re a muggle, then,” Nott said, glaring at Harry.

“Both my parents had magic, and I come from some old family lines, I just grew up without it,” Harry said, not liking the usually quiet boy’s tone.

“How do you have a proper family, but grow up without magic?” Crabbe asked.

“Get orphaned and shipped off to the muggle world because there isn’t anyone else left alive who could claim you,” Harry said plainly. “I really don’t want to talk about my remaining family. They’d have preferred I died in the war, I’m emancipated so I never have to see them again unless I want to, and I’d prefer never to think about them again for the rest of my life.”

“Sounds about right,” Stems said. “If that’s going to be a problem, I’ll take Snape’s apprentice with me.”

“It isn’t,” Malfoy said quickly, then turned to give Nott a significant look. “Is it?”

“Snape sorted out your family?” Nott asked.

“He do that for you, too?” Harry asked.

“Couldn’t,” Nott said, shaking his head. “Tried, though. I can’t risk getting disowned or there won’t be an heir to take the Wizengamot seat, and if the empty seat was put up for nomination back then Dumbledore would have gotten his pick for what lowborn family to elevate. You’re well shut of them, though?”

“I should be. I’m lucky enough I don’t have to worry about the money going to someone else if I tell my mum’s remaining family to fuck off in the strongest terms,” Harry said. “I’ll check back in ten years or so and see if my cousin has magical kids, just in case I need to do something about that.”

“You were raised by a squib relative and their family, then?” Zabini said. “That sounds awful.”

“Not all muggles are terrible, but they are,” Harry said. “Not all witches and wizards are decent people either.”

“How could I know all that complicated mess?” Malfoy huffed.

“Well, there was a war, plenty of people lost family so you can’t just assume things. Lots of people our age or a little older don’t have both or either of their parents. Besides, you did ask me about my family, you just made the assumptions you wanted out of my answer and then immediately made it clear you think that anyone who wasn’t raised in the magical world doesn’t belong. It was the first and pretty much the only thing you wanted to talk about, how you are so much better than people with mixed backgrounds, and it still was when we met the second time, which to be clear wasn’t today. You didn’t even notice I was upset the first time, and when you saw me again you acted like I owed you something for the privilege of breathing the same air you did. I’ve met enough bullies in my life to spot one, magic or no magic it’s exactly the same entitled attitude,” Harry said.

“Did you just compare me to…?” Malfoy started.

“My magic-hating bigoted family who look at muggle-borns the way your lot look at squibs? Yes, I did,” Harry cut him off with a condescending tone. “Look, if Goyle wants to learn the audio-book spell and I’m not welcome here, we can go sit with Longbottom and Lovegood’s compartment since they probably won’t mind so long as we’re just working. It’s a bit crowded here anyway.”

“Yes!” Goyle said reflexively. “I want to know the spell.”

“You can stay,” Malfoy said. “Nott won’t do anything to you.”

“If the professor thinks you’re alright then you’re no enemy of mine,” Nott said. “I just thought it was weird he picked a muggle-born, but if you aren’t one that makes more sense.”

“And Malfoy can just shut up,” Goyle added. Harry had always thought Malfoy was the ringleader of their group, but Crabbe and Goyle had always been about twice his size. Maybe things were more balanced between them than Harry assumed.

“We’re both half-bloods. If you want to get technical and count back seven generations like that genealogical survey legislation that was proposed this summer, then I’m more wizard than he is by a hair, but I’ve never believed in all that. It doesn’t seem to match up with who does better or who picks up spells faster that I’ve seen. I just don’t see how it matters if your great-great gran was a squib, a muggle, or a goblin. My cousin doesn’t have magic, so he’s a muggle. We have magic, so we’re magical. Anything beyond that depends on the individual person and what they’ve learned,” Harry said.

“That’s an interesting way to see it,” Stems said, reminding them that he was still there. “You think muggle-borns just need to integrate better into our world?”

“The hardest thing about joining the magical world after living in the muggle one as a kid is that you don’t know what you don’t know,” Harry said, thinking both of his own struggles and of Hermione and how she could spiral off sometimes. “There are all sorts of things in the magical world that people don’t realize are learned because you learned it before you were six. We’ve never talked about the floo in any of my classes, or if the magical world has a health-care program similar to the NHS, and the only class that talks about how to count the money is an elective and even that is mostly word problems that assume you already know there’s seventeen sickles in a galleon. You can’t know everything immediately, either, no matter how hard you try to study up. Even with a friend who lived their whole life in the magical world to help you out, you’ll miss out on all sorts of little things. There is just too much stuff in the world to have a handle on more than your own little patch without a lot of effort or taking a class, and that goes for everybody not just muggle-raised kids. I was trying to compare runes to computers and programming to try and understand them better, but even if he is a half-blood Master Snape hadn’t the faintest idea what I was talking about. He thinks all video games are like arcade cabinets, and I’m the only one here that knows what an arcade or video game are, aren’t I?”

“Nope, no idea what you’re babbling about at all,” Parkinson said.

“I have heard the word arcade before, but I don’t think you mean a bit of architecture and short of snogging I don’t how you’d play a game in a cabinet,” Zabini said, his handsome face thoughtful with squinted eyes and pursed lips. “Is it a game played with symbols like putting runes together?”

“Honestly, I wasn’t allowed to touch the computer or Nintendo because they thought my magic would fry it, which might be slightly more reasonable than some of their other rules considering how you can’t use electronics in very magical places like Hogwarts. I have watched my cousin and his friends play them and… Do you know what a television is at least?” Harry asked. Zabini tiled his head, confused but interested. Nott just looked grumpy. Crabbe shrugged, while Malfoy and Goyle were completely lost.

“I think so,” Parkinson said, but didn’t look very sure. “It’s like a strange wireless with a portrait on it.” A light of recognition lit some of the boy’s faces.

“Well, no, not at all like a portrait, it’s all done with light instead of paint. It is like a radio. It makes an image of the person talking in the studio, so you can watch a play or see the person reading the news. The image is called a video, and for television you can’t interact with it any more than you can with a radio program. With video games you can interact with them, that’s the whole point really, but there are rules and limitations. They make up their own images or display text on the screen and you have different ways of controlling them to play the game using a computer or game system,” Harry said. “For some that means typing out commands on a… typewriter-like keyboard, for others there is a stick to move or pad of arrow and symbol buttons, which control things a bit like activating runes.”

“Like illusions that muggles can make?” Stems asked.

“Only on the screen, not in the whole room, but yes. They have racing games, strategy and war games, and the one I was thinking of for runes is a sort of adventure book where the player controls the main character and there are a lot of possible endings. In that one you have to figure out exactly the right words to put in to make the characters do what you want. If you misspell it or use the wrong word it doesn’t work. My cousin kept losing because he couldn’t think of the right way to phrase things, and his friend had to get him past some tricky parts.”

“I’m in muggle studies and I’ve never heard of any of that,” Stems said.

“Oh, yeah, muggle studies is a joke. Because of the way approving the textbooks works they are all written by pure-bloods who never spent more than a couple hours in the muggle world at a time and certainly never went to a muggle library to read up on anything. The English books don’t even spell half the words right, and the ones in France are actually worse since they attempt to translate the ‘muggle dialect’ as if it’s a foreign language and make up a bunch of nonsense words for no reason to talk about things that already have perfectly good proper names. How is that helping anyone know how to navigate the muggle world should they ever need to travel through it to make up words that muggles won’t know? They’d think you were mad. Even in English, no muggle would understand you if you started talking about let-tricky or explosive motors,” Harry said with disgust in his voice.

“Then what do they use if not let-tricky?” Stems asked.

“Electricity is a type of generated lightning, made mostly by boilers spinning power plants and transmitted on wires,” Harry said, pronouncing the words carefully so Stems could hear the difference. “It powers motors in kitchen appliances and other power tools, which are all rather easy to understand if you saw it being used once or twice and tend to be named by what they do, like a toaster or a mixer. The more complicated things it runs are called electronics, and those more delicate and intricate things are the ones that don’t work well around a lot of magic. They spark and fail.”

“They grow power on plants?” Goyle asked.

“Not a growing plant, a plant meaning a large factory or workshop,” Harry corrected.

“It is a bit like a different dialect,” Zabini said.

“Only because somebody misheard a muggle say electricity one time and wrote it down, then insisted they were saying it correctly and refused to double-check or admit they heard it wrong.” Harry rolled his eyes. “Most of it sounds really childish to anyone who knows the real words for muggle technology, like maybe the people researching for the books talked to kids who had just lost their front teeth. The explosive motors thing is a good example of that. Cars run on internal combustion engines, which is a special way of burning fuel in compressed chambers that makes the drive shaft spin,” Harry said, mostly parroting what Sirius had told him about his motorbike. “Then a bunch of other parts take the motion of the spinning shaft and connect it to the wheels so they spin and the driver can control those pieces to make the vehicle do what they want. The special way of burning the petrol is like a bunch of tiny continuous explosions, but only a really little kid who didn’t understand it would say it’s an explosive motor. What a muggle will think if an adult says they have an explosive motor is that something went very wrong and now there’s bits of engine all over.”

“Who cares?” Nott asked.

“Well, for muggle-born kids it’s the same in reverse isn’t it?” Harry said. “They say and do things that aren’t quite right or mispronounce something and people like Malfoy here get all offended or think they are stupid for not knowing the right way.”

“I didn’t say anything!” Malfoy huffed.

“He knows you pretty well, Draco,” Parkinson said. “Did you visit to watch the tournament last year? You must have, or you are a friend of one of the Beaubatons students who came.”

Harry stood up on the seat so he could open his trunk without getting it down. He dug out the get well card from the Delacour family. The card itself didn’t have his name in it, only the envelope had that and he hadn’t saved it, and the message inside was vague enough. He handed it down to Parkinson. He also pulled out this year’s Defense book.

“You are friends with the Delacours,” Parkinson squeaked. “No wonder you are so well dressed. Oh, sweetie, we need to talk properly. There are so many rumors you can put to bed.” She wasn’t wrong about who recommended the tailor he used.

“Potter was trying so hard to date her last year,” Malfoy added. “It was hilarious, since she clearly saw him as some lost little kid. People saw them talking a lot, mostly toward the end of the year after he wore her down enough to stop chasing him off, but she never flirted with him, not even a little bit.”

“Oh, dio,” Zabini said, covering his face with a hand.

“Er, what?” Harry said, confused because he was one of the few guys who wasn’t a drooling mess around Fleur, and he’d certainly never tried to ask her on a date.

“Harry Potter,” Malfoy clarified unnecessarily. “It got worse as the year went on, and he was trying to get close to her little sister for some reason. He could barely string two words of French together, but even when she was trying to get rid of him by speaking in her own language he’d just be trailing after her trying to eavesdrop.”

“Or he was trying to learn French, and they became friends because of the whole second task thing,” Harry said slowly. Malfoy scoffed.

“No, Potter’s so self-absorbed he doesn’t even notice anyone else. Him and his two bookends go around acting so high and mighty they barely talk to anyone else.”

“He’s Draco’s favorite subject,” Zabini said in a stage whisper.

“Can we have one day without a Potter rant?” Nott said, rolling his eyes.

“He’ll need to know,” Malfoy said, pointing at Harry. “Potter hardly acknowledges anyone outside of Gryffindor house even exists, and you have to practically block the hallway to get his attention.”

“This card is really sweet,” Parkinson said, talking over Malfoy. “What does Gabrielle mean by ‘the problem with your ears’ if you don’t mind saying.”

“Oh, um, that’s the curse I was talking about before, the one Lovegood could see. It made it hard to focus while reading, but that part was mild compared to the rest of what it did. The healers explained it to Master Snape and I as a sort of sensory processing problem, where I’d get overwhelmed or distracted really easily in certain situations because I was already experiencing a lot just as a baseline. Not so much that I couldn’t function, but… well… Just because I’d been in pain so long that I became numb to it consciously doesn’t mean my mind wasn’t constantly working to process and discard all the alarms my body and magic was sending in the background. It was hard to get or keep my attention unless I fixated on something, and talking to a lot of people at once got confusing. I have a good memory, they said my pensive memories were eidetic quality, but I was so overwhelmed all the time with noise it was hard to sort through the garbage to find the important things, like people’s names. Or like this, I don’t think I could keep track of a conversation with six people in it before no matter how hard I tried. There’s no way I could do that before, and not because I didn’t care or wasn’t trying either. It wouldn’t have been so bad, but I have a bloodline skill that makes that sort of curse a lot worse.”

“Oh, what is it?” Crabbe asked eagerly. Harry hesitated.

“If it’s something sensitive we won’t make fun of you like a mud-muggle-born would,” Nott said, the weedy boy catching his word choice with a glance at Stems. “Bloodline blessings are the gifts our ancestors pass down to us, even if they are also burdens to carry.”

“Only if you want to say,” Stems added, his soft features encouraging. Harry licked his lips, took a deep breath, and gave it his best shot.

“A magical inheritance test confirmed that from my mother’s side I inherited a gift that is a bit, er. Most people think it’s creepy, I guess, and freak out when I use it. When it got out, it was terrible, even from the pure-bloods I got all kinds of comments. It was probably through a squib since her parents weren’t magical and she was treated as a muggle-born, but I know through my aunt that they were both extremely excited she had magic. I don’t know for certain if they weren’t squibs themselves or much of anything else about them, I think we’ve established my aunt is a terrible person already, and I don’t know how many generations back you’d have to go to find the connection. I just know they were very happy she was a witch, and the gift is all tangled up in her magic. Because of that gift, I have better than human hearing. A loud and crowded hallway used to be very disorienting, and a lot of things can compound the problem. Especially before I came into my magic and the gift stabilized, it was hard to do anything better than block everything out because it ties into my mage sight as enhanced perception,” Harry said awkwardly. “There’s only so much you can pay attention to, you know, and if your mage sight is going all out of control all the time that… I think that’s what that looks like, from the outside. How you described Potter and Lovegood: Someone who is just off in their own head space and can’t let a lot of people in unless they are assertive enough to make themselves heard over the noise.”

“No shit,” Nott said, eyes wide.

“It affects my eyes, too, which isn’t true of all par-people like me, but isn’t unheard of either,” Harry said. “When you are seeing and hearing things other people very obviously aren’t you learn pretty fast to keep to yourself a much as you can.”

“Is that what that conversation with Lovegood was about?” Parkinson asked. “The things you were seeing through your mage sight?”

“Pretty much, yeah. She said it the way she sees things, I said it the way I experience things, but in the middle somewhere we partially understood each other. Not completely, I don’t know what wrackspurt means to her, but then she doesn’t know exactly what the things I said mean to me,” Harry said with a shrug. “It’s all very personal. As for how it affects daily life, it is also a bit like how you go nose blind to certain smells if you are around them all the time. Some of it fades into the background. It’s still there and you would notice right away that something is wrong if it was gone, but you don’t think about it at all unless somebody mentions it or it changes.”

“You think Potter just… just blocked me out like a scented candle?” Malfoy sputtered.

“Maybe? I mean, how often did you try to get his attention without talking directly to him?” Harry asked, feeling very uncomfortable. This was just too surreal.

“Constantly,” Crabbe said, sounding very put out about it.

“Draco can talk about Harry Potter for hours,” Golye added, looking just as irritated.

“He’s obsessed,” Zabini added. Harry’s eyes grew wide.

“Screw Potter, he’s not important,” Parkinson said. “We’ve got some kind of aura-reading empath here that knew a bunch of stuff about Lady Malfoy after touching her hand and he’s our Head-of-House’s apprentice.”

“Not a bunch of stuff, just that she loves her son enough to do anything to help him, including die for him. There really aren’t a lot of people who would sacrifice everything they are and have ever been to make someone else happy, even if most people would protect their kid from a deadly attack as a snap decision. Not just anyone would be willing to trade their lives for their child’s happiness in any premeditated way the way she would,” Harry said. The compartment went quiet.

“My mum would, what?” Malfoy’s face was completely blank.

“Well, I… She’d do anything for you,” Harry said with a little shrug. “Die for you, even.”

“Isn’t that just what parents do?” Malfoy asked. Harry glanced at Nott, who rolled his eyes.

“You don’t get it,” Harry said.

“And you just knew that, from reading her,” Parkinson said. “You hadn’t met her before.”

“No, I’d never met her before. It’s just obvious to me, that she’d be able to do that kind of magic,” Harry said.

“What do you get from me?” Parkinson asked. “Can you see futures or just the past and present?”

“Oh, you…” Harry floundered a bit. “I don’t know. I don’t think you’d want me to.”

“Go on and try. I can take it,” she said, straightening up and sticking her chest out proudly. Even in her modest robes she stuck out quite a bit. Harry tried to focus on his magesight. He winched and shook his head to try and turn it off as fast as possible.

“Loud. Really loud!” Stems caught him before he could fall off the seat. “The train is way too noisy, sorry,” Harry said.

“No need to shout,” she said.

“That was stupid, of course the train is going to drown everything else out,” Harry said, slumping back into his seat. “Thanks for the catch.”

“No problem. Well, you seem settled in, and I should get back up front for my shift. Don’t do that again, and try not to spill any more juicy secrets while I’m gone,” Stems said, then waved a hand over the compartment. “Go easy on him, all of you.” He walked off and Malfoy pulled the door shut.

“I’m not going to try that again unless I’ve got a quiet, still place,” Harry said to himself.

“Can you show me that spell, now?” Goyle asked.

“I’d like to learn it, too,” Crabbe added on.

“Yeah, that’s why I got this out,” Harry said, holding up the defense book. “It’s awful by all accounts. I’ve only read the introduction and that was bad enough, so I plan to have it read itself when I’m doing something else to keep from falling asleep in it.” Goyle got out his own copy and swapped seats, so he and Crabbe were by the door across from Harry and Malfoy was by the window next to them.

Crabbe and Goyle were pretty slow picking up the spell, and didn’t seem to be able to will any spell into working without saying it aloud, not even just sparks. It was rather surprising since Harry hadn’t had any trouble with the nonverbal version of the audio-book spell, but then he did have a thing for languages and Snape pushing him to focus on the details and refine his intent for nonverbal magic. Zabini and Nott didn’t have any trouble reading, but were still interested in learning the spell as well as the dictation charm that used the reverse wand movement, and it seemed like Malfoy just didn’t want to be left out. Parkinson was happy to be left out, and after the first round of explanations she went to go find where her dorm mates were, leaving Harry sitting next to Zabini and Nott on a much less crowded bench.

“You’ve almost got it,” Harry encouraged when Goyle failed again and snapped his completely silent book shut.

“Give it up, this is boring,” Nott complained. “We’ve been at it nearly an hour.” Nott hadn’t gotten the spell to work yet either, though Malfoy and Zabini had gotten the harder dictation spell to work already.

“It’s just confidence, at this point,” Harry said, ignoring him, “because you’ve done the wand movement perfectly.”

“What do you mean?” Golye asked.

“Magic is willpower. If you are sure you can, then you probably will have an easier time of it. If you are sure you can’t, nothing will ever work,” Harry explained. “You’ve got the wand movement right, and you know the incantation, and you know exactly what you want it to do, so just put it all together.”

“I never get it the first day,” Golye said.

“But this isn’t the first time you’ve tried this kind of spell, you said so on the platform,” Harry argued. “Go on, you’ve got this all figured out. Stop worrying about it and just do it.”

“Just the once more, then,” Goyle said. “Since you’re so sure I’ve got it.” He waved his wand while saying the spell and ended the swirling pattern by tapping the book. Goyle’s wand was shorter than Harry’s, around nine inches or so altogether, but the handle part was quite a bit bigger to fit his big hands and it curved around the back of his palm, so it seemed even smaller than it was while he was using it. Goyle opened the book, clearly expecting nothing to happen, then nearly jumped off the seat when a voice much like his nan started reading from the top of the random page he’d selected.

“You are a miracle worker,” Zabini said, and while Harry thought that was quite rude none of the other boys seemed upset by the implications.

“Might actually get something better than a ‘P’ on the written tests this year,” Goyle said, looking well pleased.

“You don’t normally?” Harry wasn’t sure you could advance to the next year of classes without getting better than a P on the theory tests. “I thought an Acceptable was the lowest passing grade.”

“It is, but I normally get to do oral tests before the written one, since I have such a hard time with letters,” Goyle said. “I do better with those, and the practical tests aren’t so bad, but I’ve always had to sit the regular theory exams as well because the O.W.L.s don’t let you take them any other way. They average my written and oral scores for the big exams, but for the rest only the oral tests count so I get by.”

“I used to have the worst time writing, but that was more because of the bones in my hand and nobody helping me learn to use a quill properly when I first started,” Harry said.

“Why would your bones make it hard to write?” Crabbe asked.

“They were broken by a car door when I was little and healed wrong. They were vanished and regrown, and then I didn’t have nearly as much trouble with a quill anymore.” Harry wiggled his fingers.

“Wouldn’t that hurt?” Malfoy asked.

“Writing probably hurt, but everything hurt at the time so it just sort of faded into the background misery,” Harry said thoughtfully. “I’d only notice at the end of a long essay. By the time my bones were regrown I’d gotten used to a quill, though I still prefer pencils for drawing. I know there are reasons we still use quills beyond tradition, but updating to a fountain pen can’t be that much of a problem. The barrel doesn’t have to be made of metal, some potion-infused inks would do better with a glass internal vial than natural feather in the first place, and the goblins use them almost exclusively already.”

“Writing isn’t that hard,” Nott said. Crabbe and Goyle looked like they wanted to disagree but wouldn’t.

“I actually meant regrowing the bones must have hurt, rather than writing itself, but if your bones were wrong it makes sense that your hands hurt you if you used them too much,” Malfoy said, looking a bit grossed out. “I guess if everything hurt all the time then it didn’t matter so much.”

“Oh, no, no you’re right, and I could still feel things as bad as having to regrow bones, it’s just that the minimum amount of pain it took for me to feel it was higher than it should have been. Lots of people with chronic problems have that side effect. It was awful when they were being regrown, but then it was noticeably better after. Like when you’re sick and feel like puking. Once it’s out, it’s over.”

“What a lovely mental image,” Zabini said sarcastically.

“Do you think those goblin fountain-things would make it easier for me to write?” Crabbe asked.

“Is your problem the quill, or the grammar?” Harry asked.

“Grammar, I suppose, but if it is easier to use then maybe it’s like your pain thing. One less thing to think about, and so I could do it better.” Crabbe looked at his hands in consternation. “I do try hard, but I’m not good with my hands. They’re stupider than the rest of me.”

“You’d use muggle stuff, really?” Not muttered.

“They’re Goblin, not muggle, he said so,” Crabbe defended, pointing at Harry.

“Muggle invention, adapted by Goblins and some wizards but never got popular among human magicals for some reason nobody can explain to me beyond ‘feather pretty.’ Muggles don’t use them anymore, they use ball-point pens instead of pens with nibs, but for magical documents and runes the chaotic motion of the rollerball interferes with the flow of magical energy and petroleum-based products like the plastics most biros are made with can sometimes…” Harry started. Zabini cut him off.

“You are absolutely enough of a swot to become an apprentice at fifteen,” the dark-skinned boy rolled his eyes dramatically as he spoke. “I can see why Snape took you on.”

“Professor Snape has him doing all three years of O.W.L. level arithmancy in one,” Malfoy told the others.

“Wow, so when your brain melts out of your ears from that, what’s he going to do with what’s left of you?” Zabini joked.

“Probably ask me to prep ingredients for first year classes,” Harry answered semi-seriously. Malfoy and Zabini laughed. It was weird how normal this was. They chatted a bit about the quidditch league and Malfoy remembered his manners enough to ask politely to see the French quidditch magazine. Nott wanted to read the French papers about Potter, but couldn’t read French well so they had to spell the paper to read itself. Harry insisted Crabbe give it a go, but the spell failed and Nott didn’t give him a second shot at it, demanding Malfoy do it.

“You aren’t nutty about Potter, I hope,” Zabini said to Harry after that was sorted. Harry wasn’t sure if the Italian boy didn’t know French or just didn’t care about what was in the newspaper. Malfoy and Nott were the only ones paying attention to it, leaning off the edge of their seats to share it under the window. “You’ve got a decent reason for still having that copy of the paper, right?”

“Self-interest and self-preservation are healthy in moderation,” Harry said mysteriously.

“You mean you knew people would ask you a thousand questions about Potter,” Nott said, folding the paper to pause it and annoying Malfoy, “and brought the paper so you could hand it over instead of reciting all the details yourself a thousand times.”

“I can neither confirm nor deny that I know a large amount about Harry Potter,” he said, and he knew the grin that split his face irritated the weedy boy.

“Oh, hell, there’s going to be two of them obsessing over Potter late into the evening when we should all be asleep,” Zabini moaned.

“No, no, that absolutely won’t happen. I’ve certainly never read any of those children’s books about Harry Potter, and I think that I think about Harry Potter a perfectly normal amount considering,” Harry said honestly, but just knew the other boys would take it the wrong way. Malfoy seemed oddly put out, Zabini feigned devastation, and Nott huffed in disappointment before re-opening the paper. Crabbe and Goyle looked at each other with furrowed brows and sighed.

“Considering what?” Crabbe asked.

“Can’t say, sorry,” Harry said.

“That’s just like him,” Malfoy grumbled. “Perfect Potter ruining everything.”

“Oh, here we go again,” Zabini said. Nott increased the volume of the paper’s voice.

“Falsely humble, self-sacrificing asshole. I bet the precious boy-who-lived insisted on a regular room, and so you had to share with him. That’s why you know so much, and how Snape got to know you. You saw everyone coming and going and can’t talk about it due to the hospital confidentiality wards, and you probably can’t talk too much about your own health either because of that. You have to be all mysterious because Potter couldn’t act like a proper person and get a private room to contain his celebrity. Honestly, the way he casually disregards other people and…”

“I had my own room,” Harry snapped. “Everyone on that floor had their own room, because that’s what the hospital does for those who need intense care. Perhaps talking about my hospital stay is uncomfortable, even when I do want to explain certain parts of it. Maybe, if you had decent manners, you’d realize that you don’t have a right to know anything about my private affairs and shouldn’t assume it’s someone else’s fault I don’t immediately spill all my private thoughts and feelings to you. Perhaps it’s a sore subject, and I’d rather be flippant about it because fuck you. I’ve told you plenty, and what I have or haven’t said was my choice. Master Severus might like me to keep my name and history to myself until the last possible moment, but that was a mutual decision. The political situation with the Dark Lord responsible for ending so many family lines in the 60’s and 70’s coming back and the British ministry shoving their head in the sand about it is everyone’s problem. As a half-blood, it affects me directly. As the last of my name, it affects me directly. Potter this, boy-who-lived that, but it doesn’t matter because my head would be on the chopping block either way just because my mother was a muggle-born witch. I don’t have the privilege of not paying attention, and I don’t have living parents or even a competent guardian who can handle it for me. It doesn’t matter if I can pass for pure-blood or not, or that I love magic and never want to live in the muggle world again. Not if he’s back. Not if I’m in Brittan. Not if I’m Snape’s apprentice.”

“Snape… is loyal to the Dark Lord, isn’t he?” Crabbe asked slowly.

“He was found by the court system to be a spy for the light in early ‘82,” Harry said.

“But, that was just what he said,” Goyle said. “He believes in the dark.”

“He doesn’t agree with all the light side politics, and neither do I when it comes down to it, but Tom’s a radical who wants to enslave every magical being and kill all muggle humans, and that’s not our idea of a better option,” Harry shrugged.

“Tom?” Nott asked.

“Well, he doesn’t like people to use the French name he made up for himself without permission, he put a taboo on it and that’s not subtle. He made up that name because he hates his surname, and he’s not my lord, so his given name is the most polite name I can use to talk about him. He’s Tom from London,” Harry said. “Makes him sound pretty ordinary.”

“You just called the Dark Lord by his given name?” Nott said, his eyes bugged out. Harry took a deep breath.

“Calling him you-know-who sounds stupid, and fear of the name increases fear of the thing. It would be disrespectful to use a surname someone has renounced, and his legal first name is Tom,” Harry explained slower.

“That’s logical, even if I think you’re insane for actually doing it,” Zabini cut in. “We all knew he wasn’t for that sort of politics when he sat down, right? That’s why Stems was hovering. So, let’s shut up about it.”

“Right, this is more important: you called Professor Snape by his given name,” Malfoy said, leaning forward to point at him accusingly. “More than once, you said it earlier when you got flustered too.”

“I… have an agreement about that, with him,” Harry said haltingly. “He uses my given name as well, most of the time. He won’t when we’re in class, of course.”

“Oh, it’s like that,” Zabini said, leaning back. “I didn’t think he was the type.”

“The type to what?” Harry asked, tilting his head curiously.

“It’s fine, the tradition goes back to the Greeks, you know,” Zabini said. Crabbe and Goyle looked confused, but the rest of the boys in the compartment blushed. “Men teaching boys private things about their bodies.”

“No!” Harry sputtered out, “He isn’t, I’m not, we talked about that, and it absolutely won’t be happening. He doesn’t want it, and I’m… not interested.”

“Thou doth protest too much,” Nott said, folding up his long limbs so he was tucked up on the seat. “It’s allowed, you know. You don’t have to hide it like you would around muggles.”

“I’m not hiding anything,” Harry hissed. “I don’t want to do that. With anyone. For the foreseeable future. It is not like that between Master Snape and me. We just, we’re… well most apprentices live in their master’s back pocket.”

“And sleep in their bed,” Zabini said, elbowing him suggestively.

“Not while I’m underage, he won’t,” Harry tried to defend Snape’s honor at least that much, if they weren’t going to listen to him. “He’s not a monster, and that’s how he says it, it isn’t just my muggle sensibilities or whatever you want to say to try and make it mean something else. Master Snape wouldn’t force me to do it later, either. It’s just we… get along shockingly well, and our bond is really strong. The bonding ritual was intense, and we must be very compatible if the mark is so detailed, but just… Please, don’t say anything like that about him. He’ll be very upset if it gets back to him. I don’t… It’s his business why; I don’t know and I’m not about to ask, but adults being creepy around kids sets him off like nothing else. He has and probably will blow his top if someone accuses him of touching anyone underage, even me, even if he’s perfectly within his rights to do it.”

“Alright, alright,” Zabini said, holding up his hands and speaking in a placating tone. “No sex jokes about Snape, we got it.”

“I’m assuming something happened over the summer that set him off on a tear about it,” Malfoy said.

“The person I moved in with doesn’t like him, and said a few things. He went absolutely mental, had to excuse himself for a few minutes to calm down. He’s seen some of his students hurt that way even when he did his best to try and stop it,” Harry said quietly, looking down at his lap. “I don’t want to say anything more than that.” The compartment went silent for a minute, then someone opened the French newspaper again and it started reading itself. A little while later the door opened.

“Anything from the trolley, dears?” Everyone latched onto the distraction of naming their favorite snacks and pulling out their coin purses to make their lunchtime purchases. Harry chose something more sensible than the hoard of candy he normally stocked up on, remembering what he’d learned about a balanced diet from the healing primers. The cart was mostly sweets, but there were buns with nutty filling and cheese danishes and such that were a step up from pure chocolate or boiled sugar. He’d discovered a love for hazelnut and raspberry creams in Paris. While he’d always love chocolate and treacle, he’d recently found himself thinking of a brioche bun piped full of thick cream filling and fruit jams when he wanted something sweet. He still bought quite a bit from the trolley including a few chocolate frogs, packing most of it away in his trunk while the other boys were making their final selections. The honey-covered bun with walnut filling he decided to eat first wasn’t awful, but the wax-paper wrapped ‘Forrest Delight Bread’ tasted more like ‘left in the woods for several days’ than the ‘crisp foraged flavor’ promised on the label.

“Why are you still eating that?” Malfoy asked.

“Pardon?” Harry answered.

“You obviously hate it, and those preserved breads are horrible. Nothing like proper French pastry,” he said.

“It isn’t that bad,” Harry said. “Won’t be getting another one, but I’m not going to waste it.”

“I’d trade you something if you want,” Crabbe said. “I like them; reminds me of my aunt’s baking.”

“Your aunt gives her whole family food poisoning anytime she cooks,” Malfoy said with a smirk.

“Well… but she makes it all pretty looking, and that is covered in honey to keep it fresh,” Crabbe said. “I wouldn’t eat her fry-ups, though. It’s half cold and half charcoal. Baking is different than cooking, and she can bake just fine.”

“No, it isn’t,” Malfoy said.

“Said like someone who’s never cooked anything,” Harry quipped. “Baking is more like potions than other kinds of cooking. You have to balance the acids and bases as well as the liquids and dry ingredients to get things to react just right if you want a fluffy pastry instead of flour soup or a paperweight. This one’s just a bit stale, and kinda wet.”

“You do a lot of cooking?” Goyle asked.

“I hadn’t seen a house elf until I was twelve,” Harry said with a shrug. “I used to cook breakfast a lot for my family, and sometimes I’d do the pudding or at least help with making it. I’m a bit out of practice, now, since I’ve been away at school and other things most of the year.”

“Middle class life,” Nott said, with a tone of voice that made it clear he hoped never to experience it.

“Dressed like that?” Malfoy questioned.

“It’s only my dad’s family that had money, and the other side never got a single knut of it for themselves. Not because they wouldn’t have gotten money to care for me through the trust, but because they refused to take any of it. It’s complicated. Anyway, I may have done a bit of spending after I was emancipated that I hadn’t been allowed to do when my trust was controlled by someone else. Not more than I could afford, so long as I’m not making a habit of it, but there were a lot of things I did without or that were bought without my input before. I’ve only been shopping for clothes… maybe three times since starting school, I think? It wasn’t like I got to pick anything out those times, either, someone took me to get the shopping done as fast as possible and never much more than just my school uniforms was bought new. The rest was hand me downs from my cousin.” Harry shrugged, thinking of Mrs. Weasley’s reaction to his clothes, but also how Snape and Sirius said he deserved to have nicer things. “I just picked a place that had a good reputation that was recommended to me and asked for a wardrobe, with a couple friends to help me get it done in one day without forgetting anything essential, and it was probably too much but it isn’t like I’ll need that many new things all at once again.”

“You got a full wardrobe done by Jaques Balland?” Malfoy looked giddy. “Please let me help you unpack it. Mother took me to Paris to see his Spring collection during fashion week last year and it was wonderful. Did you get dress robes or just casual looks? What was the color palate he chose for you?”

“I, er, I got formal clothes, because I had some legal things that needed done, and the rest is sort of versatile like what I’m in now. Green’s my favorite color - keep the magpie jokes about my eyes to yourselves - so a lot of it is kind of green,” Harry said. “Also, some blue and black.”

“Kind of green and some blue,” Malfoy said, his mouth turning down and his eyes widening. “You got a full wardrobe made for you from one of the most well-known fashion designers in Paris and all you can say is it’s kind of green and blue?”

“I don’t know what else you want me to say,” Harry said, lifting the end of the sentence like a question. “It’s clothes. Nice clothes, I couldn’t be happier with them, but it’s still just clothes. I just sort of told them I needed practically everything, answered some personal questions, and then I let the four of them dress me up like a doll and occasionally said no when things got out of hand.” Malfoy’s mouth hung open, Zabini looked scandalized, Nott was cackling, and Harry was starting to think he had more in common with Crabbe and Goyle than the rest of them. “Master Snape said he was glad it happened on a day he wasn’t visiting,” Harry added.

“Middle class,” Nott squeaked out between laughs.

“So, it’s not just the robe,” Malfoy said, starting slow but picking up speed, “the whole outfit was styled to go together, made to go together. He put that together for you to wear today.”

“It’s mix and match,” Harry said with a shrug. “I could pick my clothes out in the dark without looking and it will be alright no matter which bits I get.”

“That is amazing,” Malfoy said. “A custom designed wardrobe where everything is perfectly interchangeable.”

“Not sure how that’s all that impressive or unique,” Harry said. “Master Snape can fall through his closet blind and half asleep and be dressed the way he likes on the other side. You just don’t buy anything you don’t want.”

“Sounds convenient,” Nott said. “I’m not much for fashion, either. I just have to listen to a lot of people talk about it all the time, so some of that nonsense absorbs into me against my will.” He waved a hand around in Malfoy’s general direction when he said ‘a lot of people,’ but he ended the sentence pointing at Zabini before he slumped back against the window.

“Fashion is a perfectly respectable art form,” Malfoy said, crossing his arms in a huff.

“A wizard has to take pride in his appearance, as the first impression he makes is a reflection on his family,” Zabini said with a shrug. “Besides, being attractive makes life easier.”

“One shopping spree does not make me a clotheshorse,” Harry said. “Sorry to disappoint.”

“A clothes what?” Crabbe asked.

“It’s an expression for someone who brings so many clothes on a trip you need a second horse to carry the bags. Like Malfoy,” Nott said.

“I don’t think that’s where that expression comes from,” Zabini said, his forehead creasing.

“It makes sense, doesn’t it?” Nott said. “That’s good enough.”