Harry Potter, wizard extraordinaire, savior of a secret society, and recipient of way too many awards, including the Order of Merlin First Class, came skidding around the hallway, his bright red converse scrambling for purchase on the school's cheap linoleum tiles. But Harry hadn't been the top athlete at Hogwarts for nothing, even if his chosen sport didn't require one to be the most physical of people. His sneakers screeched on the floor as he hurried to right his body before continuing his headlong hurtle down the halls of McKinley High, a stampede of angry jocks hot on his trail.
All in all, Harry thought that his first day of High school was going fairly well.
He turned another corner (Dear Wizard God, how many frickin' corners did this school even have?), hoping beyond hope that he could find some sort of door or exit to hide through. And yet, here he was, stuck on another endless stretch of metal lockers and bland walls. Harry ignored his sinking stomach and just kept running.
"Hey! We're coming for you, you little...you...you BUTTFACE!"
Harry almost laughed at Karofsky's rather weak insult, but he needed to save his breath. He could hear the relentless pounding of the charging herd that was chasing his every footstep. For just this once, Harry wished that he had his voice, if only to scream something back at them. Oh well, I'll just have to settle for the typical American greeting, he smirked, hoisting his middle finger above his head and aiming the foul gesture at the rampaging herd of neanderthals at his back. He allowed himself a genuine smile at the answering bellow that bounced off of the lockers whizzing by him.
Oh damn, here comes another one.
He threw his weight forward as he turned yet another corner, wincing as he slid and spun on his heel, flailing his arms out in a desperate bid for balance. He hopped a bit to recover from his momentum before sprinting down the new, strangely deserted hallway.
And then, he saw it.
His savior.
His salvation.
Harry's current corridor passed right by a gigantic set of black double doors. He smiled, the grin splitting his face almost in half. He had an escape route.
If the war had taught Harry anything in terms of strategy, it was that a.) plans are worth absolute shit (especially when Harry was involved with them) and b.) any sort of cover could save your life. An alcove, a hidden corner, an upturned table, a curiously animated gargoyle–if it was solid and offered you some sort of protection, then you were just that much closer to making it out alive. If any sort of shelter, no matter how broken or how close to breaking it might have been, could offer you anything resembling a reprieve, then you took it. You gathered yourself, gave yourself ten seconds to regain your bearings, and then leapt back into the fray without letting yourself think.
Every second was measured in lives. A lost moment could cost hundreds of souls.
That was how Harry had operated, at least. Miniscule breaks mixed with maximum action. That was how he ran, how he had survived, how he had outlasted every single Death Eater bastard that had ever tried to kill him. It was how he had escaped his childhood without any life-threatening injuries from Dudley and Vernon, and now, it was how he outran an angry crowd of slushy-soaked jocks.
Eh, Voldemort one day, beefy high-schoolers with more muscles than brains the next, Harry thought. God, I just love my life.
The rumbling red crowd was still scrambling to turn the corner Harry had just come from. He was almost to the doors–those safe, big, beautiful, moving doors.
Harry dug in his heels as hard as he could, cursing the dust-slicked tiles beneath his feet. He skidded for a few more feet just as the doors fully opened, revealing a portly ginger man lugging a stuffed cardboard box under his arm. The dude was muttering under his breath, angrily swiping his hair back from his forehead and adjusting his glasses. Harry, wildly trying to maintain his precarious balance, caught some curses, something that sounded oddly like the phrase 'Damn Glee kids,' and an assortment of vague threats and accusations against a "Mr. Shoe." Harry would be slightly more worried for the man's mental health if he hadn't been about to careen headfirst into the guy. Harry, still skidding towards the doors and the man, was starting to panic. Ginger was totally old enough to be a teacher, and while Harry had no qualms about teaching arrogant bullies a lesson, he still didn't want to get sent back to Figgins' office on his very first day.
God, Luna would be sooooo pissed at him if that happened.
Making a split-second decision, mainly based on the mere fact that Luna's ire could potentially be fatal (it was an untested theory of his, but still, there was no way in hell he was gonna be the guinea pig for that one), Harry bent backwards and lowered his knees the the floor, diving underneath and through the unamused man's spread legs. He had made it, just as the floor rumbled with the footsteps of the passing herd of jocks still after Harry. Harry allowed himself a brief grin, revelling in his victory, until–
"What the HELL was that?!"
Oh yeah. That's right. Harry turned around to face the spitting man. He was still holding the enormous box by his side, with the other hand on his waist. His face was turning multiple shades of reds and his eyes were fit to pop out of his skull.
Harry flinched. The guy looked scarily similar to Uncle Vernon when enraged.
"I HAVE HAD ENOUGH OF THIS BULLSHIT!"
Wow, okay, I'm in trouble, Harry mentally kissed England goodbye. Luna would never let him back in now. Turns out, she had a scary amount of control over the British government, due to some distant relative of hers named Mike or something (Michael? Or Mycroft, maybe? Harry couldn't really remember all that well–the only thing he knew for certain was that the man had had a peculiar penchant for indimidating black umbrellas). Harry had met him once, after his very awkward ceremony with the Queen of England. He had fallen flat on his face while bowing to her, and Luna had never let him live it down. "Lizzie", though, had been absolutely thrilled, and had laughed so hard Harry had thought she was choking and that he had basically just killed the Goddamned Queen of England. She had finally recovered and thanked him for making her smile, despite his many fumbled apologies and absolutely burning face.
"You know what?"
Oh, right, Harry was about to be expelled. Damn sidetracks.
"I'm DONE. I've frickin' had it with all of you kids at this school. I don't know who you are, or what the hell you think you're doing sliding into rooms and UNDER PEOPLE like that, but I don't care. Not anymore. Say goodbye to Brad, McKinley. And I hope you," he spat the word out while glaring at Harry, jabbing him in the chest with one finger, "All rot in musical hell. Next person who tells me to just 'hit it', well, I am going to hit them back, and see how the hell they like it. God, you Gleeks are all the same, running wild and assuming that your entire life is one hugely popular TV show. But no more. I. Am. DONE." The man yelled out the last sentence and added a good foot stomp in there, just for kicks, before whirling around and kicking the doors back open. He strode out of the room, screaming in a medley of frustration and rage.
Harry stood stock still until the doors slammed shut again.
What the HELL was that? Swear to God, everyone in this entire school is frickin' insane.
Harry let out a breath that he didn't know he was holding and surveyed his surroundings. He seemed to be in some kind of theater, with a black-painted stage towards the front and rows and rows of fold-up chairs spreading out from it. Harry grinned.
The place was beautiful, if not a bit run down. Harry, still basking in the sheer relief of not getting in trouble or beaten up by the duped mob, ran down the stairs lining the theater walls and launched himself up onto the stage, making a beeline for the gleaming piano in the center of the floor. He relished the the light warmth of the stage lights on his skin, and lay down on the piano bench, just letting himself relax on the cushioned seat. This was his ten seconds.
Harry closed his eyes, stretching up a hand to run his fingers over the piano's glistening keys.
He was so tired.
Not sleepy, but the type of tired that ached down in your bones, the type of tired that was just a few steps past exhausted and on its way to not-okay. Everything in the last week, especially with Hermione, had just happened so fast. He remembered the legions of hands grabbing him, Seamus frantically unbuckling his straps until Harry had fallen onto the dungeon's dank floors, the 'research team' frantically recovering from the burst of light, blinking back stars even as Hermione screeched at them. Harry remembered reaching for her, arm outstretched, eyes begging, asking, screaming WhyWhyWhy over and over again until Seamus had dragged him through the marked door and out into the real, authentic Luna's private office.
He remembered sitting there, stunned with Hermione's thirst for knowledge, which was apparently greater than her initial hunger for friendship, shocked at the real Luna's poisonous anger and the slow realization that Harry was just never enough for anyone.
Harry blinked up at the spotlights, lazily tracking the flights of dust particles as they scattered through the air above him. He sat up.
After his voice had gone out, Harry had been desperate to make noise. He was fading, he had known that ever since the war had ended. Harry Potter was disappearing, but the Savior kept on growing. Harry wasn't himself any longer. He couldn't be heard. He didn't want to be seen. He felt hollow and empty and like absolute nothing. In short, Harry was terrified of the silence he had become.
So he learned to make noise. He learned to make himself heard, learned how to give himself a weight and substance that his own silence couldn't take. Harry fought through the oppressive nothing, clawing his way to the surface, until he could finally escape the suffocating quiet that was constantly threatening to strangle him.
He devoured any new instrument that he could get his hands on. He had mastered the piano, the violin, and the guitar during two-month sentence of self-imposed house arrest. When he was younger, the Dursleys had actually gotten him lessons, in a vain effort to make himself, in their words, 'less of a freak, and more of a civilized human.' He was given up as a lost cause two weeks into practice, when Harry had managed to fumble through a piece that Dudley couldn't. An enraged Petunia had declared that he was 'sabotaging her poor Duddlykins' and had banned him from any further lessons. A weeks later, Dudley, in the throes of a tantrum, leapt onto the piano's top and shattered the entire instrument into miniscule splinters.
Harry rested his fingers on the well-worn keys, running his hand up and down the silent piano, caressing the smooth bars. He found middle C and pressed down as the note reverberated around the empty auditorium. He sighed. He flexed his fingers and tested another note with trepidation, and then another, until the entire room was filled with the chipper opening notes of A Great Big World's "Land of Opportunity," singing along in his head.
I'm sailing away, to a Land of Opportunity.
The sun will shine, and birds will sing there everyday
I'm sailing away, and I hope that you remember me.
It was fun, we had our run. Hip hip hooray…
A smile crept onto Harry's face as he really got into the song. It was true, in a way. He was running away. From Hermione, from his fame, from the political tension brewing over in England as his entire world struggled to rebuild itself. They didn't need him. And he could never give them enough. But here, here he was just supposed to be a nobody, an average, everyday, normal teenage kid. He was going to build himself from the ground up. He could be new, he would be cool, he could (theoretically) do whatever the hell he wanted, for the first time in his wretched life. He had no major, history-altering choices to make. He wasn't holding an entire world in his palm anymore. He could walk forward on his own terms, instead of being mindlessly prompted by fear and desperation. Wizarding Society didn't have a leash on him anymore, he wasn't shackled to a destiny of murder. As of right now, no one's life was hanging in the balance, no one was begging him for anything. For once in his life, he had the choice to be nothing. He had the chance to be normal.
Harry almost snorted as his fingers played on autopilot. I haven't been normal for a single day in my life.
God, he loved this song.
I just gotta believe there's something better.
I just gotta believe there's something more than you and me.
I've just gotta believe, I've just gotta believe.
I'm sailing away...to a Land of Opportunity.
Harry finished the last notes to the song and leaned back as they echoed around the theater. This was what calmed him. This was what had saved him from himself a few months ago, and this was what he kept going for. Music. Even if he couldn't sing, he could still play. And, on occasion, dance. Agility training, yet another one of the endless byproducts of the war, had been good for something after all.
Another door slammed open, and Harry practically fell out of his chair in outright shock, before leaping onto his feet and assuming a general defense position. Harry Potter, you are literally in the middle of Nowhere, Ohio, and that is most definitely not a dark wizard. Calm. Down. Harry berated himself before shaking his head and relaxing. Harry looked towards the opposite side of the theater, directly across from where he had come in, and stopped, frozen in the spotlight.
A man, around maybe forty or so years old and sporting a spectacularly hideous vest, had just barged into the room. The light glanced off of his oiled and curly hair, and he was staring down at what looked like a packet of sheet music, although Harry couldn't quite tell for sure from this distance or angle. The man just stood there for a few seconds, seemingly absorbed in his documents. Harry took the chance to scramble down off of the stage while the man wasn't looking.
"Yo, Brad," Sweater Vest called out, still not looking up from his pile of paper, "Glee starts in like five minutes, buddy, we need you in the choir room. Let's go."
Harry cocked his head in a question that no one seemed too keen on answering. Who the Hell was Brad?
Oh, wait. There was like a 90% chance that the mysterious "Brad" was the same man that had just stormed out of the auditorium around ten minutes or go, cursing Gleeks and threatening shoes. And now, it seemed that Harry had driven out the very guy that Sweater Vest apparently needed for the 'Glee' thing that Harry had heard about all day.
Whoops.
Harry, never one to sit back when someone needed help, figured that he could at least offer his services for this mysterious 'Glee,' seeing as he was the reason that Brad had quit earlier that day. Although Sweater Vest didn't seem to know that yet.
"Come on, Brad, the kids are waiting, and you won't believe it but I found another 90's song that I can rap with. Dang, I'm the coolest." Harry shot a questioning look at the guy, whose eyes were still glued to his paperwork. Because no, that did not sound at all cool to him. But whatever. Harry walked towards him.
At the sound of approaching footsteps, Sweater Vest smiled, apparently assuming that he had found his absent 'Brad.' Harry followed along, rolling his eyes and ignoring his following "Geez, Brad, it's about time, normally even you aren't this sullen." Harry shook his head. Americans.
They left the auditorium, with Harry grabbing the door for the absent-minded man on the way out. Harry had no clue where he was, but Sweater Vest seemed to know the way well enough as he walked through the halls, still not looking up from his vast stack of what was indeed sheet music. Harry still couldn't catch a glimpse at the top of the paper, though, so he had no idea as to what the music was actually for. Eventually, the two had travelled far enough through the empty hallways that Harry was somehow even more lost than he had been before. Sweater Vest finally turned to a classroom, opened the door, and walked in without another word, having seemingly forgotten Harry, or 'Brad.'
Harry blinked.
The hallways were eerily quiet. He had apparently missed the final bell when he was playing, which was good news for him, as he probably wouldn't have to deal with any leftover jocks from this afternoon's crowd in the parking lot on his way out, although he could easily take on a few of them. War instincts were still good for something, it seemed.
Harry turned back to the imposing door in front of him, inexplicably nervous of what lay on the other side. I mean, this IS High School, he thought. There could be anything–piranhas, cannibals, a TEST…..Anything! Goddamnit, you're a Gryffindor, and you've faced down Lord Voldemort AND Needles! You. Can. DO. This. Harry tried his best to build up his courage again, but nothing was working. He was good with action, with moving. He was decidedly "not good," however, with anything close to a social situation. Harry sighed, and with this final thought, prepared to meet his teenage doom.
He stepped forward and opened the door.
Hello All! Knickity here, with an update in hand! This guy's around 3,100 words long, so I hope you all enjoy :). Anyways, I realized that I've never really done this before, and I just kinda-sorta don't wanna get sued, but anyways, here goes: I do not own Harry Potter or Glee, or any of the songs mentioned/used in this piece of fanfiction. If I did own any of the above, I would be a genius and/or too fantastic for words. So nope, no ownership going on here. I'm doing this for fun and because I love these two works, and not for any sort of monetary gain on my part.
Anyways.
Thank you all SO MUCH for your reviews! Again, I know it's cliche, but I ADORE hearing from you! You should see me, that little 'Knickity, a new Review has been posted to your story," makes me go all bright red and excited. It's a tad embarrassing, to be honest, so please, feel free to embarrass me ;). Seriously, please review or PM me. But really, I'd like to give a Donald Trump-sized HUUUGE "Thank-You" to everyone who's reviewed so far, especially everyone who commented on the last chapter. I'm hard-pressed not to give all you all wonderful creatures shout-outs, but my author's notes are already ghastly long as it is. But seriously, I love you all to death. A billion thanks for all the pairing suggestions, and honestly, some of your incredibly-kind comments made me cry. In a good way, though, so thank you all SO MUCH for that. :)
Anyways, for all of those who were wondering, I took the liberty of Sue understanding sign language because of her history with her sister. Speaking from personal experience, a lot of kids with Down Syndrome tend to find communicating with ASL to be easier than talking. I assumed that Jean, and Sue by extension, would be able to use this language. :)
In all honesty, I'm not 100% satisfied with this chapter, which reminds me: any HamilFans out there? Please feel free to stop by my little corner of Fanfiction and rant with me about it. If you haven't listened to the soundtrack already, please do so. Lelsie Odom Jr. will give you eargasms, and I hail Lin-Manuel Miranda as my god and savior. It's absolute brilliance, and I never knew that I could love dead old white guys so much before.
Anyways. :)
Please review! Love it? Despise it? Wish to see more of a certain character or pairing? Have some comments? Questions? A couple of suggestions? I live to hear from y'all! Hope you're having a fantastic sometime, wherever you are! And, as always,
*"Your Cocoa today has been served by Knickity."*
Thanks and good night. :)
(Also, tune in next time, when Harry finally witnesses the Gleeks in all of their glory. Or, alternatively titled, 'Harry, Like The Majority of America, Just Doesn't Understand Justin Bieber and Probably Never Will At This Point.)
