Hoping For a Better Future

BOOK ONE

II – The Vanishing Glass

"You have such a way with words," Sirius commented sarcastically, while Harry gave a sheepish grin.

There was another pause in the reading while the people in the room turned their glares on one, at the moment very uncomfortable, Headmaster.

"Actually, that's a memory," teased Sirius. Harry glared at him mockingly.

"Thank you, Sirius, I had no idea," he replied in kind.

"But it is amazing that you would remember such an early memory," said Hermione quietly. Harry stared at her for a moment, then around the room. Almost everyone looked quite impressed with him. He blushed and ducked his head, making Snape raise his eyebrows. He had expected the boy to become arrogant under such praise, but the boy had – once again – crushed those expectations. The more they read, the more he found himself wondering just who the boy was. Because, obviously he wasn't the carbon copy of his father, like he thought he was. It was quite a bitter potion to swallow, but Snape was good at swallowing bitter potions – literally or not.

Ron shuddered and both Hermione and Harry couldn't stop the bout of chuckles that attacked them at that performance.

"Could you read that part again?" Sirius asked slowly. "I think I didn't hear that correctly."

Tonks repeated what she read, without any teasing remarks.

Harry was staring at his hands which were squeezing his school trousers, red-faced with shame. He never wanted them to find out about his cupboard, but knew that it would come up sometime.

There was a poisonous silence in the room as everyone tried to calm down before they murdered the Headmaster. Dumbledore himself was sitting in his armchair and looked quite gloomy at the book in Tonks' hands. He knew that the boy wasn't happy with his family, but he didn't expect them to treat him quite so bad.

Severus on the other hand was experiencing a paradigm shift. Everything that he thought of the boy – being a spoiled prince, being arrogant like his father – everything slipped away at the sentence that was just read. He did the only thing that he could think of at the moment – he put his elbows on his knees and leaned his head on his palms with a deep sigh. Harry (when did he become Harry and not Potter, anyway?) was more like him than Snape thought possible. While his father did not stick him into a cupboard, he did have to live in a small attic room where it was cold most of the time. He wouldn't be surprised if in the books to come there would be some mention of physical abuse as well.

However, it was the mental abuse that Harry had to suffer from for all these years. It was no wonder he had so little self-preservation and such a big hero complex. And yes, now that he thought about it – the boy never stood up for himself when Draco had a go at him, but he always stood up for his friends. Snape realized that Harry probably never had friends before coming to Hogwarts. It was a bitter realization that Snape's own childhood was better than Harry's in him having a friend, his Lily.

While this monologue was going on in his head, the others were shouting at the Headmaster.

"Could we please continue reading the book?" Harry finally said with a quiet voice – that was heard nonetheless.

"We'll talk about this later, you old fool," Sirius said to the Headmaster before Tonks continued reading.

"Why would he want a racing bike?" asked Sirius in confusion. Everyone turned to stare at him.

"What?" he asked them when they didn't say anything.

"We just had no idea that you knew what a racing bike is," explained Tonks with a grin.

"I'll have you know I took Muggle Studies when I was in school," replied Sirius indignantly.

"Sorry, Bambi, that's all your father's genes - he was a scrawny little git when he was eleven too," said Sirius with a small smile on his face. Harry smiled back at him. It was nice to hear more about his father than the fact that he looked just like him.

"You actually liked your scar?" said Ron in shock. Everyone who knew Harry knew that he hated his scar with a passion.

Harry shrugged, feeling a little uncomfortable with everyone staring at him. Again.

"I didn't know what the scar represented then. I had no reason to hate it."

"They told you your parents died in a car crash?" asked a dangerously calm Remus. Harry looked a bit weary as he turned his head to look at his favourite professor.

"They didn't want me to know about magic," he explained, hoping to calm the professor down. "And they probably couldn't come up with a better explanation."

"What I don't get is why you're defending them," Sirius ground out with a glare. "They locked you in a boot cupboard and treated you like you were trash."

Harry once again went red with shame and embarrassment and looked down at his fingers.

Sirius immediately looked contrite and pulled Harry into a one-armed hug.

"I'm sorry, Harry," he whispered. "I don't want to make you uncomfortable – but we will talk about it... later."

Sirius' eyes held promise and Harry knew he wasn't going to get out of this one. He nodded, still a bit embarrassed. He did feel quite warm though – no one has ever treated him like this before – it felt nice.

"Not gonna work," Ron singsonged, trying to lift the mood in the room. Harry and Hermione snorted and the faces of the adults in the room cleared up a bit.

"Just like your dad," Sirius grinned and tussled Harry's hair.

"Again, such a way with words," Sirius commented with a roll of his eyes.

"Do they really get him so much presents for his birthday," asked Hermione, appalled.

Harry nodded quietly, looking at her warily. When Hermione got mad, he was always scared – although it seemed as if Ron thrived on getting her mad. He almost snorted at that thought.

"Merlin, he can't even count!" exclaimed Tonks. Harry grimaced at her, then blushed when he caught professor Lupin staring at him from the corner of his eye.

"Did he make you write his homework for him?" asked Lupin with a peculiar expression on his face. Harry flushed again and nodded, staring at his trousers again. Then, trying to lighten the tense atmosphere, he quipped, "But I quite liked Maths, so it was no problem."

This time it was Hermione who was looking at him with a peculiar expression.

"Then why didn't you sign up for Arithmancy classes? They're similar to Math," she asked.

Harry shrugged. He wasn't about to tell her what he really thought, after all. They would be angry with him if he did. He was confused by the expression on Snape's face when he turned his black eyes to look at him. It was like he was trying to figure him out. Like he was a Potions experiment. Snape's lips quirked a bit, before his eyes turned away.

Now, that was confusing.

"No, that just means that he's a spoiled brat," said Sirius into the silent room. Harry rolled his eyes. Sirius seemed to comment on almost everything they read – but Harry wasn't angry with him – it was nice to see Sirius become livelier with every comment he made. His eyes still held the dark shadows that Azkaban left, but his face was becoming more and more animated.

"Harry, how could you..." Ron mocked and everyone let out a chuckle. Harry rolled his eyes at his best friend and ignored him.

"I don't think that's gonna work, Bambi," Sirius said with a mocking grin.

"I know that," Harry replied. "I can always hope."

"Yeah, hope is good," replied Sirius.

Harry rolled his eyes again.

"She always looks like that though," Harry felt the need to explain.

Sirius got angry at that.

"He's treating you like a dog!" he exclaimed.

"You would know," Remus quipped. Harry snorted into his hand. He had no idea his Defence Against the Dark Arts professor could be so funny.

"Hey!" complained Sirius, but everyone ignored him as Tonks continued to read, not letting him get another complaint in.

"Dinky Duddydums?" said Ron with a funny expression on his face. "She calls him Dinky Duddydums? She's even worse than mum!"

"Yeah, at least she doesn't call you Won Won," Harry teased back.

"Eww, Harry... just eww!" Ron retorted with a grimace.

"That's just your accidental magic, Harry," Sirius teased again, then groaned when Harry drove his elbow in his ribs to shut him up.

"Hmm, that could be a latent Metamorphmagus ability," Tonks mused when she read the paragraph.

"What's a Metamorphmagus?" Harry asked curiously.

"A Metamorphmagus is a witch or a wizard that can change their appearance at will," Hermione explained.

"That's correct, Hermione," Tonks praised the girl. "I'm a Metamorphmagus myself."

She proved it by changing her bubble-gum pink hair to an exact replica of Harry's hairdo.

"Wicked!" was Ron's only comment as he watched her with an impressed expression.

"We'll talk about it later," Tonks promised when she caught the impatience on Moody's face.

"You apparated?" Lupin asked with wide eyes. Harry looked at his face then at the face of the others. Everyone was looking at him with wide eyes.

"What's wrong?" he asked, becoming worried.

"Nothing is wrong really," Sirius explained slowly. "It's just that you're more powerful than I thought."

"Even I couldn't apparate when I was your age," Dumbledore added quietly. "Even accidentally."

Everything grew quiet again, each trying to come to terms with how powerful of a wizard Harry really was.

"But then, why do you suck at magic so much," Ron asked the most pertinent question. Hermione couldn't agree more.

Harry remained quiet. He didn't want everyone to know...

"It's because of the expectations that everyone's putting on him, combined with how the Dursleys treated him," Snape said quietly, trying not to look like he swallowed an extremely sour lemon. It was another thing that he had to swallow – he thought that Harry was stupid. Another thing he was wrong about. The boy was probably more intelligent than anyone gave him credit for. If he was able to hold his power back so much to barely scrape by in his classes, then how powerful was he really?

That thought gave him a scare.

Sirius started to glare at him, but stopped when he realized that he was probably telling the truth. He turned, instead, to Harry and watched as he tried to grow as small as possible.

"Harry-" he tried to say, but Harry interrupted him. He knew that they would nag him until he caved, so he caved earlier.

"It's because everyone's expecting this Golden Boy that defeated Voldemort. The only thing he's good for is for defeating the Dark. They don't expect anything else from me. And if I try to be something else, they condemn me – like in second year when they thought I was the heir of Slytherin. Everyone turned on me like I was the next Dark Lord or something..." the words rushed out of Harry.

Everyone was quiet. Dumbledore looked a bit guilty – Snape thought that what Harry was feeling probably came to bite the Headmaster in the arse – for he was as much to blame for the boy feeling like that as everyone in this room.

"And if I did as well as I know I could, then Ron and Hermione would be angry with me," Harry kept going. It was all out of the bag now anyway.

"Why would you think that?" Hermione asked stupefied.

"Oh, come on!" Harry raised his voice. "You were put out by me outperforming you in the Defence Against the Dark Arts exam not two weeks ago. You don't expect me to believe that if I did better than you in other subjects that you wouldn't be even more put out!"

Hermione was quiet.

"And Ron would feel left out – why do you think I signed up for the same classes he did! I didn't want to create an even bigger rift between us than it already is! You know how put out he is by me having all this fame and money!" Harry continued to rant, not caring if he hurt his friends or not. He couldn't stop the words gushing out of his mouth any more.

"As if I need any of that! He's already struggling with seeing me as Harry and not as Harry Potter, the Boy-Who-Lived! And no one else sees me as just Harry! They all expect me to be something – and I provide!"

"I don't see you as Harry Potter," said Neville quietly. It was the first time he said something and Harry realized that he forgot he was in the room. He immediately felt guilty about that. What kind of a friend was he?

"Neither do I," said Remus. Sirius just hugged the small boy to his side and whispered, "You're my godson, I don't care about anything else!"

Harry tried to swallow the lump in his throat, but to no avail. Instead he turned his head and hid his face in Sirius' chest as he did his best not to cry. Sirius gently patted his back and just held him closer.

Everyone was quiet, letting the boy calm down. Hermione and Ron had a sour pill to swallow themselves, because everything Harry said was true to an extent.

When Harry was calm, he turned around and quickly glanced at everyone in the room. Hermione was crying silently, Ron was watching her gloomily, Neville was watching him, Remus and Sirius were in a quiet conversation between themselves, Dumbledore had his head in his hands, while McGonagall was trying to comfort him; Moody was expressionless as always, but he did have a strange look in his eye as he gazed at the wall, while his other eye was firmly on his face; Snape was also looking at Harry with an indescribable expression.

Tonks cleared her throat and continued reading after making sure that Harry was okay. Harry knew that everyone would talk to him about it once the books were finished. He sighed, resigned.

"I guess he likes to complain about you a lot," Sirius tried to joke, but fell silent when everyone glared at him.

Sirius started to say something, but Remus shook his head – motioning for Sirius to take a look at Harry's face. Sirius did so and was shocked to see the miserable look on his godson's face. Instead of saying something, he hugged his godson to himself again, trying to comfort him.

"Wow, Harry," said Tonks smiling. "Another amazing feat of magic!"

Harry looked at her cautiously, trying to discern if she meant it, but could see no deceit.

"Thanks," he mumbled.

The only ones in the room that were surprised by the revelation that Harry was a parselmouth were Moody and Tonks – Remus and Sirius already knew (or at least they suspected from what Harry was yelling a few minutes ago). Sirius quickly kissed Harry on his forehead and grinned at him when Harry looked up at him in surprise.

"What? You expect me to be all shocked and angry and go saying 'Merlin, you're a parselmouth'? Well, if so – you're going to be disappointed. I think it's cool!" he said stubbornly. Harry just shook his head in disbelief. Looking around the room, he saw that no one looked like they were disgusted. Everyone looked at him with understanding on their faces. Well, not Snape. He only looked like he always did. But Harry somehow knew that he understood him too.

Suddenly he realized that Snape knew exactly how Harry felt. He was discriminated against as well and Harry was guilty of doing the same to him as he didn't want people doing to him. It was a hard pill to swallow, but Harry was nothing but good at swallowing hard pills.

"I'm sorry," he whispered as he looked at Snape with an apologetic expression.

Snape did nothing but blink. In fact, behind the mask, Severus was nothing but shocked at the apology he received. He did not expect that. But then again, Harry did nothing but what was expected of him – and he was expected to hate him, not counting that Snape wanted Harry to hate him so that he could hate him too. That of course, fizzled out of his brain as soon as he thought it.

It shocked him.

He didn't hate Potter any more. He couldn't. Not after what he learned about him in the short span of time that they spent reading the books.

Everyone paled again. Harry could remember the night his parents were killed? Sirius swallowed and pulled Harry even closer.