10. Kindergarten
The kids are annoying. And noisy. And annoying.
Harry knew all of this before, of course, but, as it turns out, he isn't actually prepared to deal with them. They scream, and laugh, and fidget, and ask invasive questions, and have no notion of personal space whatsoever, and…
And Harry desperately wants to wring their scrawny necks. All of them.
There is a carrot-haired boy, who stares at him adoringly and keeps trying to touch him (and Harry keeps trying not to react with violence, because no matter what kind of different life he dreams of, in this life another person's touch has never meant anything good). There is a bushy-haired girl, hyperactive and condescending in a way Armin never was, and absolutely sure that she knows about him more that he does about himself. Then there is little Malfoy, all blond and sleek and dolled up, with depreciatory judgment about anything and everything clearly broadcasted through every word and gesture – he reminds Harry of Jean so much, it's painful. But while Jean may have been thoughtless and antagonizing, he was never this deliberately cruel.
There are children's faces at every corner of the train from the age of eleven to eighteen, peering at him unashamedly – curious, carefree. Aggravating.
Harry feels like he is drowning.
He sits still during the eight hours it takes for Hogwarts Express to reach its destination, hardly moving at all, and keeps taking deep calming breathes every five minutes. (Who would have thought that he of all people will reach anything even resembling proficiency in meditation techniques? Corporal Rivaille would have been so proud.) But his magic is rolling under his skin restlessly; a rumbling, seething mass of greedy fire, begging to be let out to wreck havoc on unsuspecting audience. It is the same and simultaneously very different from when he was learning how to control his titan form.
For one, he always perceived his inner titan as a foreign entity having a separate intelligence - it was a different being, caged tightly inside of him, all made up of endless rage and alien (not human, never human) instincts.
Magic is something else entirely.
There is nothing foreign about it. It is an extension of his self. It is comfortable and familiar in a way that his titan form never was.
(Wasn't it?)
It should bother him, that an extension of his self is so destructive by its very nature. Almost corrosive (like an angry, hungry beast). It should bother him.
It doesn't.