FicWad

Harry James Potter, late of the cupboard under the stairs at number four Privet Drive and recently informed of the fact that he was a wizard – not to mention more recently told a version of the events surrounding the killing of his (witch and wizard) parents (which would eventually prove to be slightly biased as well as abbreviated to the point of being utterly lacking in certain facts, though that was at least mostly due to the ignorance of the teller and not prompted out of any sense of malice or willingness to limit Harry’s knowledge for any reason) and even more recently acquainted, at least somewhat, with the reality of his hitherto wholly unsuspected fame within the magical community (which, he’d been told, was due to the fact that he had survived a certain Dark Lord Voldemort’s deadly attack on his parents’ household, though his parents had died and the Dark Lord himself had apparently had his body destroyed) – stood on a stool at the back of a clothing shop on Diagon Alley called Madam Malkin’s Robes for All Occasions and struggled fiercely to keep the sense of mingled disappointment and disgust so sharp that it felt almost like betrayal from showing on his face.

Harry was finding himself having second thoughts about the wizarding world he had so recently been (re)introduced to and fallen in love with, and his heart felt like it was breaking.

There was a boy (around Harry’s age, given some earlier comments about first years and Hogwarts) standing on a stool next to Harry, and this boy was the source of Harry’s unhappiness. The boy – a little taller than Harry and pale in an entirely different way than him, with a kind of aristocratic pallor that went well with his white-blond hair, extremely hard, cold, almost colorless (light enough to look disturbingly like polished silver beads) gray eyes, and sharply refined facial features (unlike Harry, who was simply pale due to lack of sun and looked sickly because of it instead of refined) – was speaking, whilst sneering, on a wide variety of topics with exactly the same kind of casual cruelty that Harry had learned to associate with his cousin Dudley and the most dangerous of Dudley’s “friends,” Piers Polkiss (a scrawny boy with light brown hair that always looked dirty, a face like a rat, and a vicious disposition who enjoyed thinking up ever more creative ways for Dudley and the rest of their gang of bullies to terrorize others – either Harry and the other kids at school or Harry, the pets, and the very young and very old of the neighborhood ), especially when they were talking about something that they thought made them better than everybody else. He made Harry think of Dudley and Piers rolled up together and then magnified by a factor of at least ten, because this boy’s cruelty existed side by side with the kind of unshakeable arrogance that Harry knew came only from a truly wealthy or powerful (or both) background. That made him worse than Dudley and Piers (though his blatant prejudice against non-wizarding or Muggle folk and non-wizarding born witches and wizards struck Harry as being the same kind as the prejudice the Dursleys had against all kinds of wizarding folk, if directed in a different direction), since Dudley and Piers were at least limited in their arrogance and cruelty by their middle-class social standing and they didn’t feel that their blood and their standing within their families should automatically yield them everything that they might ever want, like this boy obviously believed.

Before this pale, aristocratic, snobbish boy had begun speaking to him, Harry hadn’t even known that there was such a thing as prejudice and intolerance in the wizarding world. And now he knew, and his foolishly trusting heart wanted to break for disappointment. He’d thought that the wizarding world was, well, /magical/, for lack of a better word, that it was a place of wonder and freedom where people would know better than to fall prey to all the ills of the Muggle world. He’d thought that the wizarding world was better, that, with power like they had, wizards and witches would have to be clever enough to know better than the Muggles, when it came to such ugly things as discrimination. The longer the strange wizarding boy spoke, though, the more he knew he’d been mistaken, and the more pieces Harry felt his heart being shattered into, the more painfully sharp slivers of that broken heart he felt being ground into his soul, and the more he wanted to either burst into tears or start yelling at the boy, as he’d never quite dared to do with the Dursleys for fear of being physically hurt. He was so close to breaking that, when Madam Malkin (a squat, smiling witch dressed all in mauve – her surprisingly plain dress draped with a sleeveless robe with so many pockets that Harry had a hard time imagining how she could ever find anything – with tired hazel eyes and gray-streaked hair the color of strong tea before milk is added twisted up into a loose bun held into place with so many pencils that it looked rather like a pin cushion for writing utensils) declared herself done pinning up the boy’s robe and the boy left with one last laconic drawl about seeing Harry at Hogwarts, Harry instinctively relaxed and shut his eyes tight in relief over the strange boy’s leaving. A new voice murmured something behind him, but it wasn’t directed towards him, so Harry just kept his eyes shut. When Madam Malkin sighed and asked if he could excuse her for a few moments, Harry just nodded blindly, wanting to be alone for a few moments, so he could try to pull himself together without anyone seeing how upset he’d been. He was so busy concentrating on calming down that he was nearly shocked into leaping off his stool when a new voice suddenly spoke to him.

“We’re not all like that, you know. Please don’t take a spoiled little git like Draco Malfoy as representative of all of wizarding kind. Most of us would be perfectly happy to get rid of the Malfoys of the world, if we could.” The voice wasn’t deep enough to be a man’s, but deeper than Harry’s or the strange boy – whose name was Draco Malfoy, according to the new voice – and the sound of it was so unexpected and came out so close to Harry’s left ear that he startled and teetered sickeningly for a moment on the stool before a hand grasped his elbow (strong enough to steady him but not hard enough to hurt him, though Harry could tell, from the size of the hand, that the owner of that hand could have hurt him almost as easily as Dudley could, even if it felt like the hand was close to the same size as Dudley’s mostly because the fingers were all so much longer than Harry’s) and managed to steady him. “Careful, there! Sorry! I didn’t mean to startle you. I thought you heard me coming in. My parents are always telling me I galumph around like a raging hippogriff. Erhm. Not that you’d know what a hippogriff is, probably. Sorry, here I am, trying to tell you not to let Malfoy get to you because he’s too stupid to even be able to tell when he’s looking at somebody who was probably either raised in or at least in close contact with the Muggle world, and I start babbling about something you probably don’t know about. I just – I’m awful sorry, I honestly didn’t mean to startle you, but you really shouldn’t take anything Malfoy says to heart. I’ve met him before, at Ministry functions and such, and he’s an awful piece of work, just like his dad, and he’s so snooty and used to being nasty that he wouldn’t know how to recognize a friendly person or a proper Hogwarts house if one walked right up to him and bit him on the nose. He only said that bit about Hufflepuff because he saw me coming into the shop, you know. I’m in Hufflepuff, and I think it’s the best house of them all. We’re the only house that accepts everybody and makes everybody feel at home, you know? Hufflepuff is all about loyalty and friendship and sticking together like a real family. The Gryffindors and the Ravenclaws are nice, of course, but they’re always just so busy competing against each other – to see who’s the bravest and can attract the most attention or to see who’s the smartest and can get the highest marks or read the most books the quickest, or whatever – that I don’t know how they can stand it, being so isolated all the time. And the Slytherins, well . . . I don’t like to speak ill of anyone, but they really aren’t very nice. They’re all really ambitious and kind of sly, I suppose you could say. And even more alone than the members of the other two houses, because you can tell that none of them really trusts anyone else. It would be sad, if they weren’t so prone to being nasty, like Draco Malfoy. He’ll doubtlessly be a Slytherin. The Sorting Hat would be insane, to try to put him anywhere else. And you’ve no idea what I’m talking about, do you?”

Harry stared at the other boy warily. Even though the stool was about a foot high, the boy was still a couple inches taller than Harry – not so surprising, really, considering Harry was so small (barely four feet, in shoes with thick soles) – but Harry would guess that he was probably only two or three years older than him, despite that, because he knew he was undersized enough to still be mistaken for a slight nine-year-old, and this new boy looked very healthy and athletic, like the boys on the sports teams at school. The boy looked like he was probably very popular – he was tall, and fit, and what Harry could tell others would call handsome, with a thick head of slightly wavy light chestnut brown hair bleached out to a very light golden brown on top and eyes that Harry at first thought were hazel and then greenish-blue only to realize, with a start, that they were actually a clear dark gray with small bits of color scattered around inside the gray like flecks of different kinds of mineral deposits in two dark gray stones, only these gray eyes were warm and expressive and much, much friendlier than that other boy’s unsettling cold, hard, silverish eyes had been. The boy looked so concerned that Harry couldn’t gather up enough of his thoughts to reply for a few moments even after he’d gotten over the first nasty shock of almost falling off the stool, stunned that someone like this would be talking to him, much less care about whether or not he was okay, before he finally remembered where he was enough to understand that this wasn’t one of the boys from the secondary school and he wasn’t very likely to be mean to him just because he could, like one of Dudley’s cronies. Pushing away that lingering sense of betrayal, Harry finally replied, “Uhm. I’m fine, thanks. And I wouldn’t’ve taken anything that other boy said to heart. He was – erhm, well, he was saying nasty things about Hagrid, you see, and I’ve met Hagrid, and he’s been really great to me, showing me around and helping me get my things and all.” He was shocked to find himself about to admit to a complete stranger that the other boy had reminded Harry of his cousin, only worse, and had to make himself switch tracks halfway through the explanation, so that he stressed the face that he’d known the Malfoy’s boy was saying nasty, untrue things about Hagrid, instead. The other boy regarded him so steadily that Harry felt an awful urge to fidget, but the boy still was also holding onto his elbow, so he made himself hold very still, instead, and waited to see what would happen next.

The older boy smiled at him – an expression that looked like it was formed of equal parts relief and amusement – nodded his head swiftly, and let go of Harry’s arm only to offer the hand for shaking, declaring, “Well, that’s good to know, then – proves you’ve got a good head on your shoulders. I’m Cedric, by the way, Cedric Diggory, and even though I’m in Hufflepuff house, I promise that doesn’t mean I automatically don’t think the other houses are horrible. I just don’t see how the others get by, in such isolating houses, is all, especially people who aren’t used to the wizarding world. Hufflepuff’s the only house at Hogwarts that has a mentor program set up for the younger students and a kind of orientation program for the Muggle-born, you know,” he declared cheerfully, shrugging slightly and grinning widely as Harry just stood there and blinked at him for a few moments before hesitantly offering his own right hand.

“Erhm, Harry, and no, I didn’t know that. They really don’t? How are the Muggle-born or Muggle-raised supposed to figure things out, then?” Harry asked as he let the boy take his hand and pump it heartily a couple of times, anxious in spite of himself as he imagined all the strange things that he wouldn’t know anything about because he’d grown up thinking magic wasn’t real.

“You know, I’ve asked Professor Sprout about that, and she said that the Ravenclaws insist they can learn it all out of books and the Gryffindors say they figure it out on their own, with some help from their friends if they need it, and don’t need any help from anyone else. I think that’s silly, personally, but there you have it. The Gryffindors want to do it themselves, the Ravenclaws trust their books before they’ll trust anyone else, and of course the Slytherins won’t ever admit to having anyone less than pureblooded, so Merlin only knows how any of them ever get by. I’m just glad we have a system in Hufflepuff. I volunteered to be a mentor this year, and I’m looking forward to it. I could probably get you copies of some of the orientation material, if you’d like,” Cedric offered, tilting his head questioningly, earnestly, to one side.

“Oh. Uhm . . . ” Harry started at the older boy, stunned all over again at the spontaneous and, as far as he could tell, entirely genuine offer of help. Part of him desperately wanted to ask why this Cedric person would want to help him, since Cedric didn’t even know who Harry really was, but Harry was used to blending in and not drawing attention to himself, and he knew that a question like that would probably sound suspicious, so he ignored the tentative sense of hope that wanted to rise back up and replace his lingering sadness over the discovery that wizarding world had bad people and cruel, thoughtless, stuck-up bullies, too, and made himself ask, “But what if I’m not sorted into Hufflepuff? Wouldn’t you get in trouble for, I don’t know, fraternizing and sharing house secrets, or something?”

Cedric shocked him again by throwing his head back and giving voice to a long, hearty laugh. “Sharing house secrets! Good one there, Harry!” Cedric snickered, clapping Harry jovially on the shoulder, at once staggering him slightly on the stool and steadying him on his perch as he curled his fingers carefully but securely around Harry’s thin shoulder. “Honestly, though, I don’t think Professor Sprout would mind. It’s not like they’re Ministry secrets or anything – just basic introductory material on the wizarding world and some suggested readings and such. Besides,” Cedric added, leaning in a little closer, grinning and whispering conspiratorially, “Professor Sprout likes me so I could probably talk her around, no matter which house you end up in.”

“Oh. Well, in that case, yeah, thanks, I’d really appreciate the help.”

“Good! That’s settled, then. So,” Cedric paused slightly, a faint wrinkle creasing his forehead, before asking, “do you have any idea what house you might end up in, by any chance, or has anybody bothered to explain about the houses yet?”

“Uhm, not really . . . ”

“Oh, well, that’s no problem, then. Madam Malkin left with Draco because they wanted her help up front to help a group of fourth year girls – that’s the year ahead of me – wanting dress robes, so she won’t be back for ages. I can tell you about the houses. There’s four of them, you see, Gryffindor, Hufflepuff, Ravenclaw, and Slytherin . . . ”

Ten minutes later, Hagrid gave up on trying to wait for him and came and knocked on the window, startling Harry (who’d been listening intently to Cedric describe the house system and how it worked and the personality traits that were used to sort people into their houses, though Cedric admitted that there always seemed to be at least a couple of new students every year who, after the Sorting, would talk about convincing the Sorting Hat to put them into a house other than its first choice for them) badly enough that Cedric once again had to catch him by the elbow to keep him from tumbling off the stool. Hagrid couldn’t come in because his hands were full of ice cream cones, but Cedric figured out how to charm one of the windows opening (explaining, as he did so, that normally underage students weren’t allowed to do magic outside of school unless their parents applied for permission from the Ministry for home tutoring lessons or paid for them to have a tutor, but that exceptions were made if their magical signatures matched locations in the wizarding world, since sometimes a person needed to be able to do a bit of magic while they were shopping and such and really the rules against underage magic were to protect the Muggles from seeing anything that would require an Obliviator to modify their memories), and so Hagrid was able to ask them what the holdup was. Cedric explained about the group of fourth year girls wanting dress robes and Madam Malkin going back up to the front of the store to help them, and Hagrid shook his head and groaned, exclaiming, “Blimey! That’ll take all day, that will! Here – Harry, ye got yer letter still?”

Between the three of them (and with a little creative juggling from Harry, to keep Cedric from seeing the parts of his letter that had his full name. He wasn’t entirely sure he wanted the older boy to know his last name, given the way those older witches and wizards at the Leaky Cauldron had responded to learning his name), they finally managed to juggle things so that the boys ended up with the ice creams (it turned out that the place Hagrid had bought them from, Florean Fortescue’s Ice Cream Parlour, gave out charmed containers that could be shrunk and expanded with the tap of a wand, and which had spells on them to keep anything put in them nice and fresh and safe for later eating, sort of like a cooler only better. Hagrid said that Cedric could have his and that he’d go get another, so Cedric got his wand out and tapped the box to expand it for the cones, tapped it again to shrink it down ice cream and all, and then Harry tucked the box away in a pocket, for later) and Hagrid ended up with a copy of Harry’s list of supplies (courtesy of Cedric and a quick copying charm) and what Cedric said should be plenty for Harry’s required equipment, minus a wand. Hagrid volunteered to fetch Harry’s school books, too, since finding the right wand usually took a little while, but Cedric wanted to show him around Flourish and Blotts, so they finally decided that Hagrid could get the required books and then wait for them in the shop while they browsed. Harry passed over some money for the required books, in case the owners decided to make Hagrid go ahead and pay for his selections, and they agreed to meet up at Flourish and Blotts sometime between an hour and a half and two hours from then. Hagrid went off clutching Harry’s copied list and with a handful of coins from the pile Harry had swept into the bag he’d been given at Gringotts, and Cedric went back to telling Harry about the houses and classes and Hogwarts in general while Harry listened attentively and asked more questions the longer Cedric talked and the more he got used to the idea of someone like Cedric actually being friendly enough to be nice to him for no real reason other than that he was there and Harry was there too and seemed to need somebody to tell him more about the wizarding world.

Harry started to get tired of standing on the stool after awhile, but Cedric reminded him of the pins in his robes before he could make the mistake of trying to sit down on the stool, which probably would’ve turned his legs into pincushions. Harry asked why Madam Malkin insisted on fitting him with robes that were obviously too big for him instead of just measuring him and then telling him what size he should look for among the already finished robes, and Cedric explained about the difference between good student robes and most other ready-made robes, starting with the spells that were fixed into the hems of the sleeves and the bottom of student robes and in the pleats across the back of the yoke and around the shoulders, which could be let out with a fairly simple adjusting spell as the students grew. It allowed the robes to be used for more than the fairly short period of time that they otherwise would have fit, giving their owners a chance to get their money’s worth out of the things by having actually a chance to wear the robes out instead of just growing out of them in a couple of months or a year. Student robes were made out of extra strong, extra durable, wrinkle-resistant, stain-resistant, water-proof, protectively spelled fabric that was charmed to be able to hold several other useful charms and spells for protection and cleanliness, so they cost more than just any old robe might have. According to Cedric, they were specially designed to be adjustable enough to fit their buyer for at least two whole years, if not three, in order to offset some of the extra cost. Harry thought that was right clever and rather nice of whoever had decided to design the robes that way, but it was still a bother to have to wait for someone to pin up his much too large robe to a size that wouldn’t have him in danger of constantly tripping over the hem and dragging his sleeves through everything.

After a bit of hesitation, Harry finally got up the courage to ask (a little diffidently) if Cedric was in the shop because he’d grown out of his robes early, but Cedric smiled and shook his head and explained that Madam Malkin also sold the class uniforms that they were supposed to wear to classes under the robes. Trousers and long-sleeved oxfords and whatnot couldn’t be adjusted quite as well as robes, since they were a lot more fitted (though the jumpers and vests generally could be charmed to fit longer simply by getting them from a proper witch or wizard tailor, like Madam Malkin, so they could be purchased in a larger size and then shrunk down to the proper size, with a charm added to adjust the size as necessary, as the buyer grew), so Cedric had come into the store to buy new uniforms. He’d only come back to the back, where Harry was, because the harried looking assistant (who’d already trying to find Madam Malkin when the group of fourth years had come into the store just behind Cedric) had always been very nice to Cedric, and he’d figured it would be easy enough to fetch Madam Malkin out of the back while the assistant tried to see if the fourth years had any idea whatsoever what kind of dress robes they might want. Dress robes were a big deal for girls, according to Cedric, and he told Harry that they would probably be stuck in the back for another ten or fifteen minutes before the assistant would find enough time to come back and finish Madam Malkin’s job of fitting Harry’s robes. Harry asked him if they’d have to fit all of the robes he was supposed to buy – after all, the list that had come with his acceptance letter had mandated three sets of plain black work robes, and Harry wanted to get at least one extra set, if he could, just in case (better to be prepared, after all) – but apparently there was a spell for getting the alterations to copy themselves from one set of robes to the next, so that meant things would probably go fairly quickly, once somebody actually finished fitting his first set of robes for him.

Harry’s list said he was also supposed to be getting a plain pointed black hat for day wear, a pair of protective gloves, and a black winter cloak with silver fastenings, but he hadn’t known they were supposed to get uniforms for under the robes as well (though it made a certain amount of sense when he stopped to think about it, given what he knew about school uniforms. The robes were just kind of like the Muggle equivalent of a coat or a jacket, not the whole uniform). With an easy smile, Cedric offered to help him go hunt for everything else while they were waiting, since it made sense to get as much of their shopping as they could get done over with, so they could get out of the store that much more quickly when someone was finally free to finish fitting Harry’s robes. Cedric offered to levitate him, so he wouldn’t have to worry about moving about too much and accidentally stabbing himself with the pins stuck in his robes. He insisted it was a very easy charm – one of the first real charms he’d learnt in his first year at Hogwarts – so, even though he wasn’t too sure about the idea of floating, Harry didn’t want to seem rude by refusing, when Cedric had been so nice to him so far, he agreed quickly and made himself hold very still, so as to avoid flinching, when Cedric swung his wand at him and performed the charm. It was a completely new feeling to have someone – and not just anyone, but someone both close to his own age and older than him – who was willing to treat him like a human being and to really talk to him (not just at him or around him or through him, as if he wasn’t really there) who had no ulterior motives for doing so, and Harry found himself liking the experience a great deal. Hagrid had been very nice to him, true, and Harry knew he would never forget how Hagrid had rescued him from the Dursleys and given him his Hogwarts acceptance letter, but Harry was also smart enough to realize that Hargrid felt indebted to Harry because of Harry’s parents and because of the wizard Dumbledore’s apparent interest in Harry. This older boy, this Cedric Diggory, didn’t know Harry from Adam, and yet here he was, treating Harry with the kind of open friendliness and easy affection that Harry had only ever dared to dream about receiving from anyone before, and for no other reason than the fact that fate had conspired to place Harry in Cedric’s path.

Harry resolved to prove his appreciation by behaving as much like a friend as he could (considering the fact that Dudley and his gang had never allowed him to have any friends before), in return. He let Cedric float him back out into the store proper, over to where they kept the hats and cloaks and uniforms, and asked more questions about the clothes and way they were spelled, listening happily as Cedric explained about how the cloaks had spells like the robes and another besides that, on the lining, so that the lining of the cloak would automatically take on whatever preferred combination of the colors of the house that its owner was Sorted into. Handkerchiefs, school ties, and the blank crests on the pocket of uniform shirts, jumpers, vests, cloaks, and robes were likewise spelled to take on the colors and crest of one’s house, after Sorting, as were a wide variety of earmuffs, scarves, muffs, gloves, mittens, pyjamas, bathrobes, and even several kinds (and different weights) of socks. Students were encouraged to stick to dark charcoal or black slacks (or skirts, for the girls), but it was permissible to buy slacks (or skirts) that were spelled to take on the tamer colors of one house, should one be sorted into Ravenclaw (house colors blue and bronze, though the dark, nearly brown bronze was generally replaced with a much lighter, almost silvery hue on formalwear), Slytherin (house colors green and silver, or green and gray), or Griffyndor (house colors scarlet and gold, or red and yellow). Hufflepuff, Cedric explained, had house colors of black and gold or yellow and black, depending on whom one asked, so Hufflepuffs had a slightly more limited color selection for their school uniforms, but he didn’t really mind, seeing as how it tended to cut down on the amount of time it took to get dressed every morning, thus leaving more free time for more important things. Besides, students were allowed to wear whatever they wanted to, as long as they weren’t in class or out and about dressed indecently, so it wasn’t like they couldn’t ever wear other colors at all. Harry thought that an extremely practical way of looking at things, and nodded agreement with the sentiment.

Cedric gathered up most of his things first, to get his part of the shopping out of the way, since Harry had been forced to admit that he had no idea what size of anything he might need, having never really had any new clothes before. Cedric had seemed a bit concerned, when Harry stammered his way through that explanation, but he could apparently tell that Harry didn’t want to talk about the reasons why he’d never had any clothes that were just his own, so all he did was to frown for awhile before suggesting that they gather up the cloak and hat and gloves and the things he’d need that wouldn’t require either a trip to the fitting room or someone to take Harry’s measurements. Since Harry had never had any clothes of his own before, Cedric took that as a sign that he should drag Harry all over the store, gathering up all kinds of casual clothes for him to wear on the weekends and holidays and whatnot. Madam Malkin’s was primarily a shop for students, so it didn’t have as wide a range of clothing as, say, Twilfit and Tatting’s (or Gladrags Wizardswear, up in Hogsmeade) might carry, but Harry still felt more than a little overwhelmed by all of the different choices they did have, and he ended up letting Cedric make almost as many choices about what he should get as he actually did, when it came to things like sweatshirts and jumpers for the winter and lightweight, Muggle-inspired tee-shirts and henleys for the fall and spring. And they were lucky. The same assistant whose frazzled expression had earlier prompted Cedric to hunt up Madam Malkin from the back of the store came upon them by the jeans and corduroys and, on learning that Harry had no idea what his sizes were, instantly whipped out a magical measuring tape that slid itself underneath his half-pinned robes and automatically took his measurements, so that they’d be able to finish getting his clothes without Harry having to go to the trouble of trying things on. This same assistant – a young woman in her twenties with a long black braid that was starting to unravel and tired by kind dark eyes by the name of Melissa Mockridge – then floated their selections up to one of the counters and ushered them back to the back, so she could finish fitting Harry’s robes.

Things went fairly quickly, after that, and they soon found themselves walking out of the shop with what seemed to Harry to be a shockingly large number of boxes and bags of clothing, all of them carefully charmed down to much smaller sizes for easier carrying, just like the box with the ice cream cones. Cedric declared himself starving and Harry’s stomach was rumbling by then, too, so they found an empty table with a large, colorful umbrella to sit at, outside of Florean Fortescue’s Ice Cream Parlour and in between two different cafes, and Harry insisted on buying them both lunch to go with their ice cream. Cedric frowned, looking like he wanted to protest, but after a few moments he just shrugged and agreed to let Harry pay for their meal this time, if he’d let Cedric pick up the tab the next time around. Harry was so surprised that Cedric actually seemed to expect for there to be a next time that he found himself agreeing quite before he knew what he was doing, and then there was nothing for it but to sit down and enjoy the meal. And so he did – or at least he tried very hard to, anyway. He’d asked Cedric a question about his wand and why Cedric and Hagrid had seemed to think it would a while for him to buy one, and Cedric had launched into a story about Mr. Ollivander and how he always seemed to know the identity of everyone who came into his shop for a new wand, to the point where he could remember and recite the details of the wands he’d sold to their parents and grandparents, and always ended up telling such stories as new customers tried various wands out in an attempt to find one willing to claim them. It was the wand that chose the wizard or witch and so, unless a person was extremely lucky or was just looking for a replacement wand or a second, emergency wand, finding the right wand nearly always took awhile. Cedric had tried twenty-six different wands before he’d found the right one, and, as he explained it, he was pretty sure he’d been in the store for most of a hour that day. Cedric was therefore pretty sure they’d probably be in Ollivanders for at least half an hour, probably while Mr. Ollivander regaled them with stories.

Even though the food they’d gotten to eat was excellent and plentiful and Harry never got anything near like enough to eat with the Dursleys, it was extremely difficult for him to just relax and eat his lunch, after hearing that. Hagrid had told him that his parents had both been magical, even if his mother had been Muggle-born, which meant that this Mr. Ollivander would remember the wands he’d sold to them and that he’d probably tell stories about them. Harry wouldn’t mind knowing more about his parents, even if it was only what kind of wands they’d had, but what if Mr. Ollivander mentioned their last name or called Harry by his last name? So far he’d managed to avoid telling Cedric his full name – the way those witches and wizards at the Leaky Cauldron had responded to hearing his name made him think that there was a lot more to the story of the evil wizard Voldemort than Hagrid had told him, and that comment Hagrid had made about how Harry was so famous that everyone in the wizarding world knew of him made him more than a little uneasy, given that he didn’t really believe that he could deserve that kind of fame at all, even if Harry had been the only survivor that night when Voldemort attacked his family and at least the body of Voldemort had apparently been destroyed by his attempts to kill Harry – but if the older boy went into this wand shop with him, he would almost certainly find out that Harry’s last name was Potter. Unless Harry were willing to abandon Cedric now so he could go after a wand by himself – and as soon as the possibility occurred to him, he knew he didn’t want to do that – it wasn’t a question of whether or not Cedric would find out Harry’s last name, but rather when and how he would find out. Harry needed to decide if Cedric were trustworthy enough to simply tell him – and, if he were trustworthy enough, exactly how much to tell him about his life with the Dursleys and the reasons Harry had always known he was different from other people, even though he’d never in his wildest dreams ascribed that difference to magic.

Despite what the Dursleys thought, Harry wasn’t an unintelligent boy. He was simply very, very careful to keep just how intelligent he truly was deeply hidden from /everyone /as a basic safety precaution. Doubtlessly, it would have been nice to have had a greater challenge at school than the never-ending dodging of bullies and the perpetual hunt to make the most creative mistakes possible on even the simplest of problems, but he knew it wouldn’t have been worth the trouble it would have brought him to reveal his intelligence anywhere but Dudley’s homework. He’d seen what happened to the children who were skipped ahead grades at school and he vividly remembered the beating he’d gotten from his even then oversized cousin (following by a near-throttling from his aunt; a kicking from his uncle after his aunt had released him and he’d fallen down into the floor, which he was fairly certain had broken or at least badly bruised several of his ribs; and then an extra long stay in his cupboard that still had the power to make him whimper in remembrance of pain from his lack of treatment and in extreme thirst and hunger from lack of food and water while he was locked in) in his second year of primary school just for getting an A+ in a class that Dudley had failed. It was safer by far simply to pretend to not be very bright, not to mention easier to blend in with the crowd at school or into the background at the Dursleys and elsewhere on Privet Drive and thereabouts and so avoid drawing any attention to himself that might have resulted in more . . . unpleasantness. Harry knew it was neither normal nor right, the way the Dursleys treated him, but there wasn’t exactly a whole lot he could do about it, aside from using his ability to play dumb and blend in and be unobtrusive and obedient and quiet to encourage them to mostly just ignore him instead of actively seeking to torment him. After all, it was better that the Dursleys simply be neglectful of him than that they be obviously, outright abusive towards him, right?

The Dursleys might not be very bright, but they were sly and cunning in a self-deceptive, self-serving, self-protective sort of way. Their safety, comfort, ease, and entertainment were of paramount importance (pretty much in that order), and Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon had been very careful, from the very beginning, to isolate Harry and see to it that no one would ever be inclined to think of him as a person worthy of trust or care or concern. They’d put about that he was a troublemaker and an ungrateful brat who went out of his way to disrespect them and make their lives as difficult as possible. It was widely known in the neighborhood of Little Whinging that Harry Potter had a violent temper and delighted in breaking or otherwise ruining anything he could get his grubby little hands on – a story that was used to excuse the fact that the only new or even somewhat new (bought secondhand, in the case of his boots and shoes, since his feet were so much smaller than Dudley’s and Dudley tended to wear his boots and shoes to death, in any case) things he ever had were underwear, boots and shoes, and sometimes socks. His rumored sullenness and violent temper and his supposed slowness at school, in combination with his cousin’s very real nasty temper and incessant bullying towards Harry, made Harry as much a pariah at school as the fantastic rumors and nasty stories his aunt and uncle spread about him (often based off of their own son’s behavior) did around Privet Drive. He’d been condemned in the minds of most people long before he’d ever been old enough to even meet them, and there was nothing he could do about it but take advantage of the solitude that his shunning generally afforded him. So that’s what he generally did.

When he’d been very little, Harry had often been angry about the unfair treatment he received and the lies his family told about him and made others believe. He’d known it wasn’t right, the way the Dursleys treated him – he was, after all, treated like a combination slave and personal whipping boy for the entire family – and he’d tried to tell the truth about the Dursleys and himself, tried to get to someone with the authority to save him from the Dursleys by either taking him out of that house or seeing to it that he was removed from that house forever, but no one ever believed him about the way he was treated. The teachers whose help he’d tried to enlist thought he was making up stories to get attention or to get his cousin in trouble. Some of them knew that Dudley was a bully with a gang of followers who liked to pick on and torment Harry and other little kids at school, but no one had ever been able to quite catch him in the act of a truly violent attack, so none of them knew how awful Dudley and his gang truly were. Instead, they assumed that Harry exaggerating in order to get his cousin in trouble, and his aunt and uncle were so convincing, the few times they were ever actually called in to the school for a meeting, that all he’d ever gotten for his trouble had been an even worse reputation for lying at school and more beatings and missed meals and onerous chores at home for daring to tell what the Dursleys thought of as hateful, malicious falsehoods about them instead of just being properly grateful to them for letting him live in their house and etc. and sucking it up like a normal boy when he was punished. The Dursleys were very good at lying to themselves about Harry – not just about the way they treated him (which they’d convinced themselves was entirely proper and no worse than he deserved for being such an unnatural, ungrateful child), but the reasons why they treated him the way they did, including his apparent ungratefulness for all they’d supposedly sacrificed in order to take him in after his parents had been killed (in a car crash that Harry had supposedly somehow caused, as they always claimed, before Hagrid showed up and set that particular story straight), but mostly revolving around what they saw as their duty, as upstanding citizens of England and good Christians to boot, to beat the unnaturalness and the evil out of him.

Harry had been told he was a filthy freak like his parents, an unnatural and evil boy, for so long and so often that, before Hagrid had tracked him down, he’d more than half believed it. That particular belief was even a big part of the reason why he’d believed Hagrid’s story about magic so quickly, even if that particular explanation for his strangeness had never really occurred to him before. He’d gotten so used to being called a freak that he’d accepted the appellation. He knew he wasn’t normal: normal people didn’t heal so quickly that most relatively minor hurts – bumps and bruises, cuts and scrapes and burns, and, in general, any kind of injury short of a shattered bone, third degree burn, or a gash serious enough that it would’ve required several stitches on a more normal person – would be completely gone in a matter of minutes or hours after receiving them instead of the days or weeks or even months that they would have taken to heal on anybody else. Normal people couldn’t heal broken noses and blackened eyes and cracked cheekbones from being hit solidly in the face with a cast iron skillet quickly enough to be able to go on to school only a few hours later with nothing worse to show for it than a slightly sore and swollen face. Normal people couldn’t heal whelps and cuts from being whipped until the belt being used as a lash broke (prompting a beating with fists and feet as well) overnight, after being thrown into the darkness of a cupboard under the stairs, to the point where their skin was as smooth, unbruised, and (basically, but for that one previous mark) unscarred as if it had never been touched. Normal people occasionally got sick, even if it was just a head cold or a stomach ache or ear ache. Normal people usually couldn’t go for more than two days without anything to drink and then be none the worse for wear than a pair of slightly chapped lips and a somewhat dry mouth. Normal people couldn’t survive on a diet of crumbs, expiring or out of date food and drink otherwise destined to be thrown away, and an occasional heel of bread – less food than an average small to medium sized dog would consume – and only look a bit undersized and thin (though not thin enough for it to show very well, in outsized, layered clothing) because of it.

Moreover, normal people couldn’t teach themselves to have virtually photographic memories that let them look at something for only a moment and be able to remember it all well enough to be able to go back and mentally visualize and understand or read it, to the point where it became possible to literally flip through a book and then go back, hours or even days later, and mentally read and understand it all. Normal people couldn’t teach themselves to sit down and actually read about ten thousand words a minute, when concentrating, and not only understand what they were reading but have perfect recall of all of it days, weeks, months, even years later. Normal people couldn’t make themselves forget about bad things for a set amount of time just by telling themselves that they would. Normal people couldn’t make things break or move about, spontaneously and often independent of anyone actually touching them, just by being angry or upset. Normal people couldn’t make some things happen just by wanting them to happen very badly. Normal people couldn’t learn to do real cooking and cleaning as preschoolers, to the point where they ended up doing the work of a well-paid and skillful caterer and maid and laundress by the age of six. Normal people weren’t as skilled at yardwork as professional landscapers and gardeners by the age of ten, without any kind of practical study or real instruction whatsoever. And normal people most assuredly couldn’t do all of the work of a full-time maid, laundress, caterer, and combination landscaper and gardener plus attend school and make sure to creatively bollix up the majority of their own work whilst also perfectly completing all of their cousin’s homework perfectly, all the while constantly having to spontaneously and rapidly heal all sorts of numerous, variously inflicted wounds that would have otherwise been obvious proof of abuse, all on a diet that eventually would’ve ended up starving (if not dehydrating to the point of death) a mid-sized dog. Harry, quite simply, /wasn’t normal/. And he knew it.

Harry had always known he wasn’t like the Dursleys or anyone else he knew. But he’d also grown up in household that didn’t tolerate the fantastical or obviously impossible, on stories of his parents being drunken, unemployed, irresponsible degenerates, being told he was a freak of nature and an evil, unnatural child. He’d known he wasn’t normal – after all, his freakish ability to heal and to stay alive on rations that would’ve killed anyone else was a big part of what kept him from being able to ever convince anyone just how abusive and neglectful the Dursleys could be towards him – so he’d taken the lesser of two evils to heart as the actual explanation for his strangeness. The Dursleys were quite obviously only as religious as it was necessary for them to be considered proper, upright, and respected by the neighbors, and their blatant hypocrisy kept Harry from ever taking any allegations that he was evil and a child of the devil at all seriously. The Dursleys were too practical and unimaginative and Anglican to really subscribe to the idea, and Harry was too sure of his own basic goodness (especially in comparison to the Dursleys) to buy into the notion of some kind of demonic taint or possession. It was all too easy, though, to imagine that he really was a freak of nature – perhaps even not quite human – given his rather abnormal abilities and all those stories about his parents being drunks. Alcohol and other drugs were known to lead to diseases and even cause mutations in fetuses and children, after all. So it only seemed logical for him to assume that he wasn’t normal because of some king of actual physical damage his parents had managed to do to themselves that had then been passed on to him as some kind of mutation or genetic anomaly. The more he’d (eventually) read about how human bodies were supposed to work, the more sense the idea had made.

Before Hagrid had shown up and turned his world upside down, Harry had been pretty darn sure that he’d just had some kind of defect (or many a series of individually small but all together major abnormalities that added up to some fairly serious defects) in the gene sequences of his DNA – that his genes, his chromosomes, were, for lack of a better word, messed up – and that this was what made him such a freak. If not for Hagrid, it never would have occurred to him to even consider magic as a possible explanation for all of the strangeness surrounding him. The fact that magic apparently ran in families had made it easier for him to accept the notion, even though it was so fantastical, because it hinted at the idea that magical ability was something one was born with – something written into one’s genes, something like a specific series of somewhat atypical sequences in one’s very DNA – and therefore something that could be logically and even scientifically explained (though he rather imagined that blood bigots like Draco Malfoy wouldn’t be too pleased to hear about it, since it would doubtlessly destroy their ridiculous preconceptions about blood purity). Personal curiosity about the genetic makeup of witches and wizards (and any other such magical beings) vs. Muggles (and any other such nonmagical folk) aside, though, knowing that he was a wizard now could only change so many of Harry’s ideas about himself and the basic nature of the world. It didn’t, for example, change the fact that he considered himself intelligent and basically good but not very brave (since he had, after all, gone to great lengths to hide his intelligence, in order to make his life with the Dursleys a bit easier and safer), or that he craved the attention and love of others because he life with the Dursleys was so utterly bereft of love and comfort. It also didn’t change the fact that, even though he knew the way the Dursleys treated him was criminally wrong, Harry had basically given up hope that anyone else would ever realize that particular truth or care enough about the injustice of it to try to help him actually get away from the Dursleys.




To Be Continued in the next posting . . .