Shinso Hitoshi wanted to be a hero.

How he want to be a hero.

However, life was flawed. First with U.A.'s bias toward physical abilities that made it impossible for him to pass the Hero Course's exam, and second with the image that followed him and his Quirk. The false inevitable that he was more suited to become a villain by nature.

With everyone telling him that he would be a villain, he started to believe it too, so he started to despise those with dazzling Quirks.

But, he'll show them.

He'll become a better hero than all of them.

His head was filled with fog.

Harry didn't know what was left and what was right, what time of day it was, or what was happening around him. All he knew was that his body was moving, but he didn't will it to. But he couldn't stop either. It felt like he was moving in a dream, listlessly, endlessly.

He found that it was a dream he couldn't wake up from.

None of his limbs would move when he wanted them to, and Harry's inner turmoil churned with this useless struggle.

He was a prisoner of his own mind.

Then, he wasn't.

There was a violent snapping sound in his brain, and it was like he had bungee jumped off the Astronomy Tower. It jolted him back to reality as fast as a lighting strike.

Harry collapsed instantly, falling forward on the dust-covered ground and catching himself on his knees and palms. His chest rose and fell with every greedy gulp of air he took and his numb muscles on his arms and legs pulsed from being strained for so long.

He looked up, scanning the arena that they were in. The ground was made of tartan track and still smelled strongly of rubber, burning his nostrils with the scent. Spikes of ice were sticking out of the ground, and patches of blackened rubber littered the floor. The wizard looked around in confusion, watching as teams separated from each other. Confetti was falling from the sky again.

What in bloody hell happened…? he asked himself. Harry stood up straighter, and saw the back of the man with the purple, spiked hair. His irritation immediately replaced all feelings of confusion. He was the only person that Harry remembered seeing before all had gone black. The Gryffindor stepped forward with all intents of confronting the teen, but his sleeve was suddenly pulled on.

"Huh?" Harry turned around and saw that it was one of his classmates, the blond one with the large tail.

"A-Ah, Potter-kun, wait! He's not worth it!" Ojiro said just as the purple-haired managed to slip away silently and the rest of the competitors scattered the moment Present Mic announced a one hour lunch break. Harry spun his head around caught only a trail of tears, wrinkling his brow in confusion until he realized that Midoriya was gone.

He turned back to the blond and the boy sheepishly dropped his hand from Harry.

"Oh," he said, putting a hand to the back of his neck, "sorry about that, but it looked like you were about to run after him…"

"I was," Harry bluntly said, slowly heading toward the exit so Ojiro could follow if he wanted to. He had to catch up to Midoriya somehow.

"Ah...Is that so…" Ojiro said. "You're probably upset about what happened, but it's best if we're not confrontational. But before you woke up, I saw the screen—don't worry, we passed." The tailed-teen spoke in an attempted comforting manner, and he thought that the stress that was building up in Harry was the stress of the sports festival.

"Really?" Harry blinked, almost letting a small amount off the weight on him drop, but then he furrowed his eyebrows and turned back to the blond. "Wait a minute, if you were in a team with me, how do you know?"

"He talked to me and I answered back, and before I knew it everything blacked out—" Harry connected the dots then: talking to the purple-haired boy, or replying to him would activate his mind-control Quirk. "During the cavalry battle, someone bumped into me and I just woke up, I guess," Ojiro said when the two settled in a hallway. "It's probably one of the factors of Shinso's Quirk, so you shouldn't beat yourself up over it," he finished awkwardly.

Harry gave a strained smile, embarrassed about how his rage was caught by the blond. "Was I that obvious?"

The blond returned a sheepish smile of his own. "You look pretty upset over it, but his Quirk can probably only be broken by outside intervention, and not a will." That smile of his grew a little wider. "And even if it was...we're just students."

At that, Harry looked down at his sneakers.

Harry wasn't ordinary; he managed to break the Imperious Curse before, and it frustrated him to his bones that he wasn't able to break this one. If he wasn't able to have his free will this time around, against a student from the General Department, what did that mean next time around? He was lucky enough that no one had called him out on waving a wand; Harry didn't even know if he used his wand at all.

"I'm going to drop out of the next event," Ojiro suddenly said. Harry's head snapped up and he stared at the blond as if he had grown two heads.

"What?"

"The sports festival is a great opportunity," he started out, but then his face twisted with a deep frown and tight-knit eyebrows, "but I feel like everyone worked so hard to advance to the next round, while I didn't do anything. I'd feel ashamed if I just moved on."

Harry's eyes widened in surprise, and his cheeks started to color too as he compared himself to Ojiro and a pit of shame almost set itself ablaze in his chest.

He's really honorable...Harry thought, He'd make a great Gryffindor. He looked at Ojiro as if he was looking at his classmate for the first time, and he wondered if all of his other classmates were just like this. If Harry was undermining them as well, as if Harry only saw them as characters on pages or shadows in the foreground as he just sat in his classroom counting the days away.

"Is it…" Harry swallowed his saliva. "Is it alright if I continue?"

Ojiro looked at Harry with slightly glassy eyes and gave him a strained smile. "That's not up to me to answer. The sports festival is a big event." Ojiro started to walk past Harry and gave him one last smile. "I won't think of you any less, Potter-kun, if you do. I wish you good luck."

Harry watched as he left the hallway and looked down at the tiles beneath him. Harry had his pride too, but this was something he couldn't just give up; not for Hermione and Ron, and definitely not for himself.

For the remainder of the hour, Harry asked around for Midoriya, but Uraraka, the girl in the short brown hair, and Iida, the class president, said that the nervous teen was asked to talk privately with Todoroki and hasn't been seen since.

Grudgingly, Harry forced himself to get a small lunch of an onigiri, and the next thing he knew, the one-on-one battles started.

It was just his luck that Midoriya's fight was first and that Harry's fight was fourth, meaning that the two would never have an opportunity to see each other between the actual matches, visits to Recovery Girl, and staying in the waiting rooms.

Inwardly, he wondered if Merlin above hated him or something as life seemed to treat Midoriya and him like two magnets that constantly repelled each other. Harry came to Japan to do just one thing; can't he just do it?

It was almost enough to make him want to pull his hair. To think that he passed by Midoriya Izuku almost everyday, and sat just a handful of seats away from him this entire time.

Instead he was sitting in the stands of the arena with Hedwig on his lap, watching Midoriya and Shinso face off. The second Present Mic shouted, "Start!" Harry was immediately on the edge of his seat.

The two stood apart from each other in the middle of the stadium, and while Harry couldn't hear him from here, he saw Shinso's mouth move, provoking Deku into talking.

It was obvious when the General Education student did strike a nerve; Midoriya wore his heart on his sleeve and instantly spat at the purple-haired student, only to snap his jaw shut instantly and straighten up with a blank stare.

"Midoriya's frozen in place?!" Present Mic shreaked. "Looking confounded, he's not even twitching! Is this Shinso's Quirk?!"

A choked gasp left Harry's lips and the teen instantly leaned forward.

"I warned him!" Ojiro cried beside Harry, running a hand through his blond hair in worry.

A tense five minutes passed, as everyone watched with every agonizing second as Midoriya Izuku willingly walked toward the end of the rink. Harry had half a mind to stand up out of his seat and cry folly. The green-haired boy was under the Imperius Curse's look-a-like, and didn't anyone want to stop that?

But just as Midoriya lifted a foot just above the boundaries, a large gale suddenly pushed out of the arena. The classmates around him cried out and Harry had to shield his eyes to keep from drying out and kept an arm tight around the screeching snowy white owl to keep her from flying away.

"Midoriya…" Present Mic rolled off his tongue. "He stopped!"

Nearly all of Class 1-A trained their eyes on Midoriya's fingers. Harry had to hold back a shout when he saw that his middle and index fingers was completely purple and blue from being battered. Izuku's fingers looked liked Dobby's when the house elf shamefully said that he slammed them against multiple doors as self-punishment.

"His fingers...To think that he would go that far," the blond beside Harry shakily said.

"What's wrong with his fingers?" Harry asked Ojiro.

"Huh?" The tailed-teen looked over at Harry and a look of confusion passed as quickly as it came. "That's right, you weren't here to see Midoriya-kun fight."

"When he uses his Quirk, Midoriya's drawback is injuring his body," the girl beside Ojiro spoke up. Her dark hair was closely cropped, but her earlobes dropped down into what looked like the plug for Dudley's phones.

"What?" Harry gasped out. He'd never heard of that one before. He's heard of a lot of weird drawbacks in the past, such as a bad craving for sugar, a jittery body, but never one that would legitimately beat up the body from the inside out.

"Midoriya-chan always has to visit Recovery Girl after using his Quirk," Tsuyu added from the row behind them. "It was especially bad when he fought Bakugou-chan."

"Are you talking shit about me?!" The loud voice rang from the other side of the seats, but the people around Harry chose to ignore it.

"Merlin's beard!" Harry quietly cursed, suddenly up in arms in worry. He was quick to turn his head back to the fight, but internally he wondered if there was a spell for the drawback. Maybe a potion or two that wouldn't fix the problem, but would heal the injury.

Harry breathed out in anticipation and turned his head to Shinso. The taller teen was visibly nervous, and that made the greedy part of Harry satisfied. He wasn't going to lie if someone asked him if he was supporting Izuku all the way.

The smaller boy dashed forward, and reached out to grab Shinso's shoulders. The General student landed a hard punch on Izuku's cheek, but the green-haired teen just leaned into the punch and the two grappled.

A vibrating shout left Izuku's throat, and the boy snatched Shinso's arm and threw him over his shoulder—and out of bounds.

"Shinso is out of the ring!" Midnight called, brandishing her whip. "Midoriya moves on to the second round!"

Almost all of Class 1-A jumped out of their seats and shouted in victory. Harry stood up out of his seat, and the large smile on his face couldn't be mistaken.

Next up was Todoroki Shoto versus Kaminari—a horrible one-sided defeat from what Harry heard. The half-and-half teen froze the blond into oblivion with a large ice wall before the blond could even short-circuited himself out. Even the words managed to get a chill up Harry's spine; from the rumors, they even said that the ice wall manage to rise above the entire arena. He even saw it from the confines of his waiting room as he counted away the seconds before he entered the rink. The ice wall was enough to completely cover his window from all the sunlight.

He felt that he should be nervous, maybe just a hint of that creeping nervousness that he felt before a Quidditch match, or before the Triwizard Tournament, but other than a slightly uneasy stomach, he couldn't push himself to feel a budding excitement.

Maybe it was because he was going up against Sero, and the easy-going brunet seemed a lot more tame in comparison to the Hungarian Horntail that he had to go up against. Or at least—he hoped the lanky teen wasn't going to chase him around the school or throw him against rocks while attempting to barbeque him.

Yet, even as Harry told himself all of this, he couldn't get over the tick of shaking his leg or tapping his fingers on the table. His room was incredibly quiet, and the unbearably loud clock above the wall seemed to be put there just to get on students' nerves.

He wondered if he should call Ron or Hermione, but reminded himself that it was at least eleven or twelve o'clock at night for them. The next few minutes was spent trying to plan out just exactly what he was going to say to Izuku.

Maybe Harry looked just a bit too eager when he was called in to the ring. The downtime was getting to him, even if his wait was cut short.

The wizard was led to the ring by lackluster cheers and him and Sero shared a sheepish smile together.

"The cream of the crop!" Present Mic introduced. "Yet he's still as plain as they come! Sero Hanta of the Hero Course! Versus…! The mysterious European transfer student! Potter Harry, also from the Hero Course!"

They certainly weren't an interesting bunch; not first place like Midoriya, and didn't throw themselves into the scuffle and spotlight like Bakugou or Todoroki. But there was an interested murmur about him that flowed through the audience. The Gryffindor guessed that being a foreigner and late transfer did that, but he was an expert at ignoring unnecessary gossip about himself, and turned to Sero.

The sellotape-hero dropped his hand from his neck and gave Harry a grin before outstretching a hand.

"Hey, man," Sero said good-naturedly. "No matter what happens, no hard feelings between us, yeah?"

A meger smile reached Harry's own lips, and he returned the firm handshake with a heavy nod.

"Yeah," Harry said. That lifted some of the anxiety from his shoulders. It laid in the back of his mind of a while, the thought that if he had to go up against his classmates that it would ostracize him further, but he was happy to know that they wouldn't hold it against him. This really was a hero school.

"What sportsmanship!" Present Mic cooed, a wave of rising cheers following right after.

"To be honest…" Sero said, stretching almost languidly, "I don't feel like winning…" Not even a millisecond later, that easy-going personality was thrown aside and two strips of Sero's tape was heading right for Harry. They wrapped around the wizard's body and Harry felt his feet rising above the ground. "But I don't feel like losing either!" Sero waved his arms, and brought the tape with him.

Harry's body was flying with the momentum as Sero yanked the cellophane.

"He's trying to push him out with a surprise attack! Probably the best strategy for him! Sero's giving it his all!" A wave of cheers followed Present Mic's announcement. Harry's body flew through the air and wind brushed through his wild hair.

The wizard forced himself to snap out of it, and instantly racked his brain for a spell. Just centimeters away from his shoes meeting the white line of the ring's boundaries, the spells that raced through his head and the fighter's instinct finally was forced to a stop in his brain.

"Relashio!" Harry cast, his wand hand on the bindings that wrapped around him. In a flash of muted purple light, the tape around him expelled into limp strands.

Sero gasped and reeled his tape back before jumping back to a safer distance. Glancing up, surprise colored Sero's pale face.

"Potter managed to break free from Sero's tape! How did he do that?!" the blond Pro announced, shouting and on the edge of every development.

Sorry, Harry internally winced and apologized for the spells he was about to cast. He dashed forward on a speed that startled Sero, and the teen quickly shot out a stream of tape as fast as his reflexes could allow. Harry's eyes widened before he instinctively reached a hand out. A cheer left Sero's lips when the tape successfully wrapped around Harry's wrist.

The tape on his bare skin felt uncomfortable and tight, and he struggled to free himself. Harry's eyes caught on and realized that it was his left hand. His wand arm was still open. The wizard grit his teeth and sent a Temporary Sticking Charm down at his feet just as Sero attempted to yank him forward again. Harry's body leaned forward with the pull, but his feet remained on the hard ground.

"H-Huh?" the tape-hero cried out from the resistance, especially not one that he would expect from a teen that looked like he weighed no more than fifty-six kilograms. Taking advantage of the second's opening that Sero left, Harry gripped the tape with both hands and pulled forward with all of his strength. Before Sero could even notice what was happening before his eyes, Harry slammed a hand on his chest and pushed forward.

"Stupefy!"

The brunet cried out and flew back several meters, right out of the rink. The tape from Harry's wrist unraveled and was retracted by Sero. He landed on the ground and rolled over, unconscious. That flash of red that blanketed his green eyes was replaced with a cloud of brown dust.

Midnight instantly dashed forward and checked the teen's vitals. Harry waited awkwardly in these seconds that felt like minutes, and instinctively straightened the moment Midnight stood up.

"Sero Hanta is out of bounds and unable to go forward." She cracked her whip in the dumbfounded wizard's direction. "Potter Harry advances to the next round!"

For some reason, the cheers in the arena were deaf to him.

"And he's alright?" Harry unsurely asked again even as he backed out the door.

Recovery Girl was the one ushering him out gently, and in the background of her makeship nurse's office, he could see the sleeping figure of Sero in one of the beds behind her.

"Yes, dear," the wizened nurse said gently. "Unless, of course, there's something else about your Quirk that you would like to tell me?" The tiny Pro-Hero looked up at him expectantly.

Harry shook his head at that, wild strands of hair flowing with the movement. That's all she needed to know about the Stunning Spell.

"No," he said, "he should just be unconscious…" That's what Stupefy did, but Harry had never used the spell on another muggle before. At least not a muggle that he should be worried about, his own classmate, for Merlin's sake.

"I understand that you're worried about him, dear, but his vitals seem to be fine. You didn't give him any physical injuries—he's technically just in deep sleep. Looks like all we have to do is wait for him to wake up again." His chest eased at this information, and the some of the guilt was lifted as he looked at a sleeping Sero on the nurse's bed.

"Ah…" Harry said awkwardly. "Alright."

With one last nudge, the nurse finally managed to banish Harry from the small office, and the wizard shuffled off.

His Potter Luck didn't land him in the Hospital Wing after the first round, and he counted that as an accomplishment alone. His mind started to drift off toward all of the moments that he landed himself in a cot back in Hogwarts, and he thought that maybe things were actually looking up now. The fact of his win didn't even hit him until now, and he realized that he had to prepare for another battle, but as of right now he might even have enough time to make it back to Midoriya and ask to talk to him in private.

As he was lost in his own thoughts, his shoulder bumped into someone else's and Harry lifted his head up from the impact.

"Oh, sorry—" His voice was lost to him when he saw that it was the purple-haired student, Shinso. "Hey!" Harry shouted in English, before he caught himself and frowned. "It's you!"

"Hm?" The taller teen looked boredly at him, tilting his head and looking Harry in the eye. "Oh, it's you."

The blood in the Gryffindor's veins boiled and Harry grabbed Shinso's collar to prevent him from turning away.

"What was the big idea?" he demanded. Shinso pushed Harry's hand away from his shirt and he finally released, but didn't back down. The sleepy teen looked apathetic at what was happening around him, but the slightest twitch of his eyebrow revealed his true irritation.

"About what?" Shinso drawled, smoothing his wrinkled shirt.

The wizard grit his teeth together, growing more and more agitated by Shinso's nonchalant attitude. Harry wanted to shout, he wanted to scream. The teen's Quirk was just like the Imperius Curse, and nothing dug deeper into Harry's bones than that; the fact that it was an Unforgivable Curse was explanatory on its own. Maybe the other students could live with it, but the wizard knew just how vile it was. There was no doubt about it; the boy had a vile Quirk. But Shinso couldn't help what Quirk he was born with—and Harry's head was screwed on tight enough to acknowledge this.

"You used your Quirk on me!" was the only thing Harry could gasp out.

"So?" The teen's voice was low, but it contained enough sharpness to cut through Harry's next words. The next intake of breath was locked in his throat. "It's the sports festival." The teen finally exclaimed with his arms out. "We have the freedom to do anything we could to get to the top. You just happened to be someone from the crowd." Harry's head snapped up and his chest rose and fell with every heavy breath. An emotion twisted itself in his chest, but there wasn't anymore strain and stress on his shoulders. It was…

Relief? he thought.

Shinso didn't go after Harry because he was Harry, but because he was just there. He took a step back in surprise, but after the moment finally snapped in his brain like rubber band, Harry spun around on his teen and was about to walk off. That deep-paranoia was still settled in his head, but he wouldn't have to worry about any more attacks on his free will. As long as he kept the cries of, "Constant Vigilance!" in his head he would be fine. He didn't know what he was looking for by going after Shinso, but he didn't feel like he need to search anymore.

Harry might've found his resolution, but the bitterness of Shinso's loss was still fresh on the Mindcontroller's wounds. Harry's confrontation only served to anger Shinso.

"You were useless anyway," Shinso called out when Harry was three meters away, and his head perked up the second the voice carried through. The wizard's footsteps slowed to a stop and he turned around with a questionable look. "You didn't even pull any weight during the Chivalry Battle," the teen continued, walking up until he was eye-to-eye with Harry again.

"What?" Harry asked, his tone sincerely confused. He didn't know if he should be offended or defend his honor out of nowhere.

Shinso's expressions remained schooled in the face of confrontation.

"No matter how many times I said, 'Use your Quirk,' you didn't do anything at all." Green eyes widened to the size of saucers. "And you still managed to make it to the second round. The other one was foolish for quitting, but at least he did something. Just another reason why you people in the Hero Course are so lucky."

Harry blinked, and relief washed over him like a sudden shower. He thanked Merlin that Shinso used that exact wording: "Use your Quirk." If he had used the word, "Power" or "Ability," then Harry wouldn't know what would happen. He could've whipped his wand out in front of millions of people, and exposed them all. He may be a wizard, but he was still Quirkless.

But then another thought caught on. Him, lucky? Harry was called many things and went by many names in both muggle and magic schools, but lucky was never one of them.

"Lucky?" he finally voiced.

"People like you who are born with nice, heroic Quirks—you can reach your goal while everyone else has to struggle to get to your spot!" Shinso finally shouted at him, making the wizard jump slightly. Shinso was so close now that his reflection could be seen on Harry's glasses.

"But you have a powerful Quirk!" Harry tried to say, stepping several feet behind him so he wasn't on the verge of a backflip anymore, but he continued to lean forward. The Boy-Who-Lived couldn't understand why the purple-haired teen was suddenly hostile toward him. He suddenly felt like he was a child again, listening to the taunts and jeers of the kids around him for not having a Quirk.

"Tch! A person like you would never understand! Me, who wants to be a hero, but with a Quirk like this, you can only get people saying that you would make a better villain than a hero!" The teen finally huffed and looked away. "It's not a strong Quirk, because I wasn't able to pass the physical exam, and it's not an accepted Quirk, so I'm barely seen as one!"

All of the resentment finally built up inside him until this moment, and even though his classmates in the General Course cheered him on, his loss was still as raw as ever.

The hallway that they stood in was silent for a while, save for their soft breaths. Shinso turned away with his hands in his pockets and looked out the large windows, staring up at the sky that was littered with colors.

"You…" Harry finally breathed out, unsure of where to start.

You don't know your worth, was what he wanted to say, but he couldn't bring himself to continue. With a Quirk like that, Shinso would be able to walk circles around even wizards.

"What?" the General teen spat out when it was obvious that Harry wasn't going to finish his sentence.

Harry swallowed his saliva before he finally spoke again.

"You let their words get to you?" he asked. Shinso's head snapped back and he started at Harry with a fire in his eyes that he had never seen before on the normally passive teen. Harry stared back, but a nervous habit made him flatten his bangs.

"Like you know—!"

"I do!" the wizard shouted, silencing the other teen instantly.

Heir of Slytherin. Cheat. Killer. Parseltongue.

"I know," Harry repeated firmly. "And you should know—um, I mean, at first I thought the same...That your Quirk can be used for evil—that's true," he admitted, and Shinso narrowed his eyes, but Harry continued. "But you of all people should know...that as your own person, you can do good things. They can say you're a villain all they want, but if you want to be a hero, you go out and be a hero," he finished, looking at the silent Shinso. "At least...that's what I believe."

"They'll only continue to see you as a villain if you act like one," he continued when Shinso remained quiet. "So if you just go around the way you do, you're not doing yourself a favor by putting all that anger out on the Hero Course and proving them right!" Those tired eyes was unnerving him. "Just—just ask next time you want to use your Quirk or...or something."

The hallway was silent again, and Harry's skin prickled with nervousness and anxiety. He didn't know what came over him with that small lackluster speech. Shinso wasn't a member of Dumbledore's Army who would follow his word, but he was a student like him. He was just about to leave again, until Shinso spoke up.

"Idiot," Shinso eventually replied, voice soft. "I already know that I'm going to be a hero, so I'm already ignoring the voices that are calling me a villain!" He spun around completely and him and Harry were locking eyes again. "I'm going to be a better hero than you and all of the Hero Course!"

A hand fell to the back of Harry's neck and the wizard laughed softly.

"I guess I was just rambling for myself then." He laughed and dropped the hand. "I look forward to that day then."

What a weird guy, Shinso thought, watching the back of the transfer student become smaller and smaller with every step. Without another word, he turned on his heel and started to walk away too.

"Just—just ask next time you want to use your Quirk or...or something."

No resentment, no crying wolf at the "villain" in front of him, only a small scolding.

It...wasn't a bad feeling.

He'd definitely keep an eye on Potter Harry and Midoriya Izuku.

On his way out of the hallway, Harry managed to catch Tokoyami Fumikage, the dark, strange, birdlike classmate of his, and politely asked what happened while he was gone.

Harry missed the entirety of the first round, and the second round was just making its way around.

Kirishima was stuck fighting a guy with a hardening Quirk just like this, a boy named Tetsutetsu Tetsutetsu (why his parents just repeated the name twice, Harry didn't know) and they were so alike that they knocked each other out and got a tie. When both came to, they had an arm wrestle and Kirishima came out victorious.

Iida had to fight a girl named Shiozaki Ibara from Class 1-B with a Vine Quirk. He managed to defeat her by quickly using an ability of his called Recipro Burst and got her out of bounds.

Tokoyami was up against Yaoyorozu, his vice president from what Harry could remember, and the male stated that he struck first. Yaoyorozu panicked and quickly created a shield, but with Dark Shadow, Tokoyami managed to run her out of bounds before she could realize what was happening.

Ashido from their class was up against Hatsume Mei, an eccentric girl from the Support Course. Apparently their match was on a weird advertising spiral, until the last minute when Ashido melted though one of the equipment with her acid. Worried for her "Babies!" Hatsume quickly surrendered.

Yet the most interesting match was against Uraraka and Bakugou.

"Uraraka?" Harry asked Tokoyami, who was leaning against one of the walls. "From our class?"

"Yes," he said, unfolding his arms and straightening up. "She put up a good fight, and used many clever tactics, but Katsuki was such a powerhouse that…" Tokoyami trailed off, landing his eyes on the ground beside them, but Harry got the hint. Bakugou was just too strong.

"Oh…" Harry asked, the blond's face fresh in his mind. "He didn't go easy on her...did he?" Uraraka was hurt from the battle, there was no doubt about it, but Harry couldn't help but wonder if Bakugou went all out, or played with her like a harp. In his mind he tried to map out how it could've have possibly gone down. He wondered if it had gone smoothly, but then he remembered that the word "smooth" probably wasn't in Bakugou's vocabulary.

Tokoyami shook his bird-like head. "No, quite the opposite. I guess...Katsuki saw even her as an admirable opponent and fought her seriously until the end." His tone was soft, but distant as he thought back to the explosive battle.

Other people might have saw it as ruthless, but with the way Tokoyami worded it, it might have made Harry respect Bakugou better. Uraraka was one of the kids that was in Izuku's circle of friends, from what he saw from basic observation, but she was a cute-looking, seemingly sweet girl. Definitely not one that people would take seriously as a hero at first glance, but Harry knew of a Hermione Granger, and the bright witch would never want anyone to undermine her just because she was a girl. Hermione was a witch and a girl yes, but she was also strong willed and smarter and more powerful than people would like to give her credit for.

Tokoyami pushed off the wall completely. "Don't let me keep you," he said when Harry had no more questions. "You should make your way back to the waiting rooms."

"The waiting rooms?" Harry asked as the humanoid was walking away. He had just came from there. "Why?" He tilted his head in confusion.

The beaked teen looked back as if Harry had gone crazy. "You don't know?" he asked incredulously.

The wizard could only shake his head as he ignored the strange stare from the bird's eyes.

"Right now is Midoriya's battle with Kirishima, but your fight is right after his." Tokoyami spoke slowly, as if he was unsure of whether or not to feed Harry this information or if the wizard was just baiting him by acting like an oblivious idiot.

The words, "So soon?" almost slipped from Harry's lips, but then he remembered that he spent a while speaking with Shinso. Time must've slipped through his fingers.

When Harry's expression didn't smooth out, he asked again, "Do you...know who you are fighting?" That questioning tone never left, if anything it became stronger.

"No," Harry admitted sheepishly, patting his bangs down. "I don't…" He gave the cloaked teen a nervous look and a wondering glance. "Erm, can you—?"

"Todoroki Shoto," Tokoyami said gently, despite wondering why Harry didn't bother checking the tournament brackets. "You're fighting Todoroki."

"Oh," escaped from Harry's lips before he quickly thanked Tokoyami for all this information and made his way toward the waiting rooms again. The two parted ways with a nod and a wave.

He thought about Todoroki Shoto, and the teen's face popped into his head with his half-and-half hair and scarred face. He might not know a lot of his classmates, but he could recognize one of the stronger forces in the sports festival, and recognize that strange hair. Todoroki didn't introduce himself to Harry, definitely. Harry didn't know a lot about him either, other than the fact that many of the girls liked him for his pretty face, and he was the one with the ice Quirk.

The wizard settled into his seat in the waiting room and watched the fight between Midoriya and Kirishima on the screen in the room.

He admittedly didn't have a strong feeling about his upcoming fight, but he hoped that he can get it over with soon.

It was then he remembered the large ice wall that managed to blanket his window from the fourth floor.

Harry uttered what could possibly be his last words as he placed his face in his hands.

"Merlin, why is it always me?"

Extra:

A snowy white owl wildly squaked and flapped her wings beside a sickly, blond man during the Chivalry Battle.

Yagi Toshinori recognized her as Potter Harry's beautiful owl, the one that tried to get into the nurse's room when the boy was still unconscious, but now she was here watching his performance. The people in the seats behind them groaned and tried to look over the mess of white feathers and loud bird shrieks, but Hedwig was determined.

She flew over to the armrest beside Yagi and the skinny man blinked his dark eyes. She looked up at him with wide, waiting eyes.

She couldn't have possibly recognized him, right? His two forms were completely different! But he remembered the cunningness of Principal and wondered if it was an animal instinct thing.

Hedwig looked as if she was trying to speak to him in short hoots, and Yagi tilted his head.

"Ah… W-What is it?" the Pro-Hero asked, feeling slightly silly for talking to a regular animal that didn't have a Quirk.

Hedwig pointed with her wing and pulled on one of his long, blond bangs with her beak.

Down below, Harry walked with a blank expression and empty eyes as he carried along a purple-haired teen. Brainwashed, Yagi guessed.

"You're worried for your owner?" he asked, his head turned sideways when Hedwig wouldn't release her hold on his bang. She ruffled up her feathers as an affirmative. "A-Ah...but I can't help Young Potter…! I can't interfere with it."

Amber eyes only hardened.

"W-Wait! You can't fly down there either!" the man was a mess of blond hair and flailing arms as he grabbed the bird preparing for flight.

Chomp.

"Ow! Shit!"

. . .

All Might, Number One Hero, couldn't look Recovery Girl in the eye when she asked how he got all these scratches, bite marks, and scars.

A/N:

I've updated Chapter Five. It's nothing major, but it is a different plot point for how Harry managed to get into U.A..