A/N
The Houses Competition
Round Six
House: Hufflepuff
Student: Year 6
Category: Drabble (200-950 Words)
Prompt(s): [Object] School Desk
Word count: 873 (Per Google Docs)

Beta(s): Aya

Notes: First Year Picked on Harry and Neville

A Glimpse of the Past

Harry shuffled into one of the lesser used study rooms as he avoided a group of older students that had harassed him the day before.

He stood by the door and listened as the group moved past the room and down the hall. He let out an irritated huff as he whispered harshly "Why do they keep calling me 'Boy-Who-Lived' and all that rot. I'm just Harry."

He slumped on the nearest bench and ran his hands through his hair with his arms on the student desk. His small frame shook when a draft flowed through the room. He shifted to pull his cloak tighter.

Harry sighed heavily before sitting up straight and throwing his bag on the desk. He proceeded to remove his first year potions book, a stack of parchment cut to twelve-inch lengths, as well as a bottle of ink and a quill. He opened his book to chapter three and set it up against his bag on the left side of the desk. He opened his ink bottle and cut the nib on his quill like the fifth year prefect taught him, then set to writing out his homework assignment.

The prefect had also taught Harry that a bit of drying sand or a simple spell would keep his work from being ruined when he rolled it up once he was finished.

Harry had been working his way steadily through his homework, every once in a while tossing a small bit of drying sand on his parchment to prevent smears, when his quill snagged on an imperfection in the desktop. His quill snagged so harshly that he actually tore a small hole in the parchment. His eyes went wide with dismay and his mouth started to tremble. "I was almost done!" Harry half-wailed as he shoved everything to the side to see what had caused him to ruin his nearly completed assignment.

He stared at the marking etched into the surface of the desk. He blinked rapidly, trying to calm his emotions, but they got the best of him with the scare he'd had earlier with the upper years and with the now ruined essay. Tears streamed silently down his face as he took in the words forever carved into the desk:

Lily Evans + James Potter

Together 1977 - Forever

Harry wiped futilely at the tears, trying to stem their flow. "Mum...Dad…"

Harry looked up in shock as the door to his haven flew open and another boy from his house bolted in and closed the door. Before he could ask what Neville was doing, he heard the pounding steps in the hall and Draco Malfoy's drawl, "Where'd he go? Did anyone see where Longbottom went?"

Neville leaned against the door and tried to keep his panicked breaths quiet.

Harry wiped the evidence of his crying away and went to brace the door with Neville. They stood against the door until the echoes of footsteps and voices finally vanished.

"Come on then, Neville," Harry said, tugging the boy over to his desk. "You may as well get your homework done with while the manhunt goes on." Harry grabbed his ruined sheet of parchment and a fresh sheet and got back to work, carefully avoiding the carving in the desk.

Neville sat at the next desk and set up similarly to Harry, only he got out transfiguration instead of potions. The two worked in silence for nearly 45 minutes, Harry changing out his books once he finished his potions essay.

Harry finished his last bit of homework and sat running his fingers over his mother's name. He rummaged in his bag and growled lowly when he came up empty-handed. "Neville, you wouldn't happen to have a bit of charcoal, would you?"

Neville looked up, bewildered. "Er, yeah. You need it?"

"Please."

Neville slid his book to the side and pulled a battered tin out of his bag. He popped the lid and shifted through the odds and ends. He finally selected a good quality charcoal pencil and handed it to Harry.

"Thanks." Harry set a scrap sheet of normal lined paper over the carving and made a rubbing of the little piece of his family history. He smiled softly when he finished and slid the paper carefully into the back cover of his history text before handing the pencil back.

Neville put the final touches on his last bit of homework and sat back with a sigh. "I didn't think first year work would be so…" he trailed off with a shrug.

"Time-consuming?" Harry offered as he gathered up his things.

"Yeah, that sounds about right." Neville shoved everything haphazardly into his bag.

Harry ran his hand over the words carved into the student desk before taking a deep breath. "The coast should be clear. We should run our things up to the dorm before dinner."

"Okay. Thanks for not throwing me out when I burst in here earlier."

"I know what it's like, Neville. We can use this as our regular homework room from now on. The common room is too loud, the dorms are for sleeping, and Madam Pince is too scary to be doing homework in the library."

Neville gave a shy smile. "I would like that."