Not Mine.

Harry Potter


Perfect Symphony


She'll never forget the day that she received a letter that claimed that she was a witch.

Never in a million years will she ever forget just how much it felt like she had found the right place, finally – after all those years when something felt incredibly wrong, sitting in her primary school but never really there. Hogwarts was breathtaking. For the first time, that place in the back of her mind that, like clockwork, was ticking wrongwrongwrong had quieted, gears grinding to a halt and she revelled in her peace.

The teasing didn't bother her against that, not really. She simply found friends amongst the older students, giving oneself a goal to strive towards in the process, finding her true niche in life.

Hogwarts was peace, salvation, the place where she fit.

She felt that it was because she had experienced that feeling, that irrational knowing that one had been displaced before, the one jarring note in a symphony of order and detailed intricacy, that she was highly aware of the odd one out in her year. Quite apart from the spot light fixed to him, his slumped and timid posture, his avoidance of everybody and the unexplained absences that were never commented on by the staff, Harry Potter was an outcast.

Hermione had seen the stares that followed him in the first year change. They used to watch him, revere him. One look at his eyes changed that.

Hermione knew of the overused saying, that the 'eyes were the window to the soul', and she also knew that this was far more literally applicable in the magical world. Green, too green, and lit behind from some form of flame, sparking in the background and barely restrained, aggressively attacking any who met his eyes directly, repelling them faster than any words or actions were capable of.

It wasn't that Harry Potter had ever said so much as a rude word, or acted out aggressively against his class mates. He was just there. His presence was impossible to ignore, a pressure on the back of your neck or the silent spider that you knew was in the corner of your room, crouched above your level in wait. For what purpose, you never could quite tell.

It was really only in the second year that anyone of mention heard anything from the Potter himself, and that was the infamous outburst at Headmaster Dumbledore, in front of the whole school in the middle of dinner. Never was the fact that he was misplaced so clearly seen, even by those who had deliberately ignored this unsettling detail – after all, the Boy-Who-Lived was to be the leader of their generation, the greatest wizard of their age with the most magical and politically powerful person since Albus Dumbledore.

No one had known what they were talking about, although the increasingly wild rumours circulating in the days, weeks and even months afterwards made quite a lot of attempts at guessing.

Two things about that argument stood out starkly for Hermione Granger, the muggleborn girl that was sitting among her fifth year friends at the red and gold table. Potter's hand held an object in what she could only describe as a death grip, his knuckles bleaching as white as the strangely shaped object they were clenched around. It was thin, in a cone shape with blunt ends, one large and the other as small as a penny, and about the length of his elbow to the tips of his fingers. To this day, she had no idea what it could have been, or why Potter had raised it in front of him, so that the length could clearly be seen, the sides spilling out so that even those seated directly behind him could see the tips of it.

The other thing that she clearly remembered, the one that stood out among the incomprehensible statements that were obviously a continuation of a conversation they had previously began (and since when had the Headmaster been talking to her classmate in private, anyway?) were the words "You can't keep me!" screamed; an accusation, challenge and condemnation all wrapped up in the one. This one incident was what had aroused Hermione Granger's interest in the strange outcast, the off-note in their otherwise perfectly tuned musical composition.

Headmaster Dumbledore had responded quite sternly that "Mr Potter, you will attend detentions just like every other student must", and that had the effect of Potter stiffening in his spot before shouting curses at the man that made the seventh year students blush and stutter, although Hermione did not quite understand why – at the time, that is. She remembers the loud crashing of thunder above them, and the scarring of lightning splitting the sky above them through the transparent ceiling, the way the light reflected off the boy's wild black hair in an eerie green eye colour, dark and menacing.

She thinks, years later and with the perfect vision granted by hindsight, that Harry Potter and Albus Dumbledore had not been quibbling over a skipped detention and the disciplinary requirements of an Institution such as Hogwarts, although this had been an easy – yes, she thinks, too easy – an explanation for such a stand off. After all, it is not uncommon for teenage rebellion to cause such outbursts, and the gossiping later had affirmed that Potter had, indeed, received a detention that day from Professor Snape in the lunch period.

Hermione both wishes that she had been able to see the boy's face and is at the same time thankful that she didn't. After that day, she notices a tension in her classes between the educators that had flinched back from his expression that day as he stared down the most prominent wizard of Great Britain. She wonders what had been seen in that moment of completely unguarded emotion, mostly because she never sees it again.

Potter had changed. That flame that had sparked and spit, lighting his darkly green eyes from within and frightened away both well-wishers and enemies had disappeared, dried up, leaving behind only blank, flat green eyes that dully stared and evaluated. His once stiff posture and odd flighty periods ceased as he settled into a lazy stance and his personality, which had even before been rigid, calculating but always quick, alert and aware, changed to mirror it.

A year passed and she realised that the bored eyes, the lazy posture and completely unsurprised and composed mindset was there to stay.

The last time she saw the boy called Harry Potter, she had not really thought that it would be the last. Even so, she remembers. Potter was just that kind of person – memorable, even though he was mostly ignored by the school and in turn ignored them back, she felt there was always something else, something behind the visage of the regular, albeit strange and in truth not very regular at all, student.

It was the end of Third year, and she knew that one of Potter's regular disappearances had been taking place for the previous two weeks. She spotted him at a distance; able to pick the odd one out as astutely as when the experience had still been so raw to her at the beginning of her first year. He strolled along, hands in his pockets and parting the students milling about without a thought or care. Hermione could not recall when that small, tiny boy that had clenched his hands around the thin white pointed object and snarled at the Headmaster with such rage and venom had developed the ability to stroll anywhere, or appear to be so relaxed when she knew (or, at least, she reasonably strongly suspected) that this was no where near the case.

But this new thought was not the one that grabbed hold of her thoughts, twisting them harshly and refusing her the bliss of ignorance, of being able to continue on and not comprehend that which her vision was insistently telling her thoughts to stand up and pay attention. She wished she could believe that he was simply walking around with one eye closed because he wanted to.

She flitted over the vivid red, orange and purple hues with her horrified eyes and zeroed in on the closed right eye. The stitches, black threading through human flesh, eyelids, sewing it closed. Never to open again. She would never observe both eyes from a distance, looking for the spark that had played in them in first year, when the boy was full of grit and anger for his harassed, tormented life situation.

She has a feeling that Potter is not dead, because she recognises the undeniable spirit in his bruised, maimed body. Though he has experienced things that Hermione knows she, who has two loving parents and friends, could never imagine in her worst nightmares, she also knows that he first needs to find the song to which he belongs.

Hermione Granger had discovered the best place in the world for her, the place that made sense, at the tender age of eleven through her acceptance into the wizarding world of Great Britain. She knew, and she had a feeling that Harry Potter knew as well, that out there was somewhere he would find exactly the same, the place where he was not a jarring note, an aberration to the greater whole but rather fit in seamlessly, where he was born to be, where he would discover his own family and friends.

She heard nothing more about Harry Potter from that day, apart from the odd journal article slipped in the back pages of the Daily Prophet on a slow news day, wondering what had happened to the boy that had once been famous.

x.X.x.X.x.X.x.X.x.X.x.X.x.X.x

A/N. So, not a crossover. I did this a while ago, then promptly lost it in my laptop. I found this idea strangely compelling – having a look at an A.U Harry – possibly one that had time travelled and was now playing things differently – from a point of view that isn't in on the butt of the joke. I'd like to see what you guys thought of this, so please review. Oh, and I'm totally not JK Rowling. Duh.