When he finally woke up, the windows were rattling.
It didn't take a genius to figure out that he was in the nurse's room—head pounding and concussion or not, but he was in the hospital wing enough times to recognize white sheets and the smell of antiseptic. A quiet groan left his lips and pushed his aching skull further into the pillows.
His irises grew and shrank with the bright white light that streamed out of the drapeless glass. His eyelids scrunched up when the pain in his head increased tenfold.
In the back of his mind he could hear tiny pops of explosions go off outside—and that set off a trigger of building blocks in his head.
The sports festival.
He forced his green eyes open, ignoring how his lids felt like they were glued together.
Immediately he set his blurry sights on the small nurse's back, and his owl, who sat above the work desk. He and Hedwig made eye contact and his owl wasted no time screeching before swooping in close.
"Hedwig!" Harry cried at the hysterical mass of white feathers and talons. He paused and winced for a second at the sound of his hoarse voice and the feel of sandpaper down his throat. She didn't rest though, and probably looked like she wanted to bat him rightfully over the head with a wing. His attention had to leap over his owl for a second, and it landed on his glasses at the bedside table. An arm left the thin covers and reached for his cool, metal frames.
"Potter-kun," Recovery Girl said. "How are you feeling?"
"Sports…" He inwardly flinched once more at the horrible sound of his voice. "The sports festival," he repeated himself. He turned his eyes to the small senior as she slowly shuffled to his side with a stethoscope around her neck. He attempted to sit up, and immediately realized his mistake. Every muscle in his body protested and his head throbbed twice as hard with the action.
"Boys," she muttered almost tiredly. "You can focus on your own health and not the sports festival for just one second, Potter-kun."
"But…" He turned his eyes from side to side, trying to spot that familiar split shade that was nowhere to be found. "Todoroki—"
"Woke up just five minutes before you did," she gently said, sticking the cool metal of the stethoscope on his chest. "He didn't come out of it as bad as you did."
"Who...Who won the round?" The words in Harry's mouth was dry and his tongue felt like sandpaper. A chill entered his body: if Todoroki woke up not long before Harry that meant Harry had done a number on the poor boy.
"...Todoroki did," she eventually answered, almost hesitantly, as if she was expecting an extreme reaction from him, maybe one that would come from an extreme teen who wanted no win no matter what. When he showed no signs of one, she took the notes that she jotted down and walked away to grab a glass of water.
She handed him the cool glass and he greedily gulped it up in one large sip almost mindlessly. He turned to Hedwig again and tilted the glass as if ask her if she was thirsty, but she only nudged the top of her head against his chin and cheek.
"Is Todoroki okay...?"
It had been a while before he spoke, his tone low and soft like the wind on a summer evening. The guilt of what he did earlier to Todoroki crept up on him slowly. He didn't even know what he was thinking at the time and mindlessly pulled some nasty tricks on the split-haired boy that he wouldn't even hope to befall on another wizard. The news of the other teen's victory was a bitter pill, but Harry took it better than he thought he would. Harry knew how competitive he could get, but it was true that he came into the school festival not expecting to win in the first place. He didn't come here to lose, but he didn't come here to win either.
"He's perfectly fine," Recovery Girl said, keeping the doctor-patient confidentiality, and his chest felt lighter that Todoroki wasn't seriously hurt, "but you should be more worried about yourself!" The little old lady made it to a side of the bed and started to check his vitals. "Your leg and concussion were fixed first—but it would've been a lot better if you didn't put so much pressure on it…!" She even asked him how he managed to do all that running on that leg, but Harry could only shrug helplessly, and she went on to mutter about how his pain tolerance, "must be as high as that Yagi's…"
"Your hand was a little tricky," she continued next. "It was an extremely deep cut and Todoroki-kun's ice was very jagged, so it wasn't neat either…I fixed up what I could, but I still had to give you stitches, so I suggest you take it easy on that hand from now on. You fainted due to blood loss, but you didn't need a blood transfusion, so this is all good news."
He lifted up his bandaged-swathed hand and lightly pressed the soft part of his palm underneath his thumb and forefinger for the braided feeling of his skin. He stared blankly, his mind running so fast that he couldn't latch on a single coherent thought before realizing to himself:
They thought I had cut my hand on one of Todoroki's ice? It was certainly a better explanation that he could've come up with, one where he had to explain where one of his body parts suddenly decided not to be with the rest of him anymore.
"But Recovery Girl…" Harry said, snapping his head up to meet the eyes of the short senior, "I thought your Quirk—"
"Heals people, yes," she said gently, "but my Quirk speeds up the process of one's healing. You were too worn out for your body to be able to heal you any further."
"Oh…" He thought that she was just as magical as Madam Pomfrey, but this just brought him back to reality. Quirks were a human condition, and because of that they were imperfect too.
He'd be sure to remind himself of that often.
After checking his health and making sure that he could walk on his own two feet, he was dismissed and allowed to go watch the rest of the matches. From the explosion sounds that went on outside, he betted that it was Iida vs. Bakugou then, but the noses had since quieted, meaning that they had moved on to Tokoyami vs. Ashido.
He made it down the hallways at an easy pace, almost as if to test to see if he could still put one foot in front of the other. Hedwig usually sat on his shoulder when they walked, but either she was really upset with him, or really worried that he was going to fall over in the next two seconds that she took the extra time and energy gliding down the hall and kept a careful, critical eye on him. He circled around the arena languidly, for he was in no rush, a feeling that had become strange. Between Mr. Midoriya's death, training, school, and being in the actual sports festival, he couldn't remember the last time he took time to himself.
Maybe he could go to the park after this like he did in England, but he had no friends to bring, and he doubted that Hedwig would appreciate playing fetch with him.
However, before another depressing thought could stroll into his mind, the faintest sound of sniffling reached his ears. He paused, startled, and realized:
Someone was crying.
He could just pretend that he didn't hear it and continue walking, but it had never been a part of him to just ignore what was in front of him, no matter how exasperated it made the teachers. It made no sense to stop now.
He looked up at the flying, white owl above him and she inclined a head to say that she heard it too. Harry held a finger to his lips and turned his eyes back to the hallway. It was completely empty, and it would've been completely silent if it weren't for the noise that penetrated the glass windows from the battle below.
His footsteps became silent, and he glided like a ghost around corners and down turns until the sound became louder and louder.
It wasn't until he reached an unoccupied, open room that he found it. Gently, he pushed the door open and the crying hitched.
He stepped in sheepishly, turning his head to the small figure in the fetal position in the corner of the room, but that short guilt was replaced with surprise for a quick second when he realized who it was.
Black hair in a large ponytail, fair skin, and red-rimmed eyes. It was Yaoyorozu, his class representative.
The two stared at each other for a while, both like deers in the headlights, but then Hedwig's feathers fluttered in the back of his mind and Harry snapped out of it.
He lowered himself to as squat as gently as he could, and kept his green eyes locked with black ones.
"I'm sorry for intruding…!" He held his hands up in an innocent, surrender pose. "But I heard crying from the hall and…" He pressed his lips together and furrowed his brows. "Are you alright?" he eventually asked.
Her breath hitched and she quickly straightened up. It startled Harry when she replied with a loud, "Yes!" before she rubbed her tears off with the back of her arm.
He probably knew Yaoyorozu as well as he knew the rest of his classmates. As in, not at all. But Yaoyorozu took her responsibility as class president wholeheartedly, and reached out to Harry more often than once to get him to join the class group chat or to create a copy of one of the worksheets he had missed.
He'd kick himself if he just left everything as it was.
Harry was never an expert on emotions, and he was incredibly rash and almost ignorant himself. His fifth year was spent with nothing but outbursts and conflicts, so many that he was willing to bet that he drove Hermione and Ron up walls trying to keep up with his constantly shifting moods. But he couldn't leave Hermione alone when she was sad, and he didn't leave Ginny alone when she was taken in her first year, so he couldn't just leave Yaoyorozu alone now.
"Are you sure?" he asked again. "I mean...you don't have to tell me if you don't want to, but you look like you...needed some company right now." His lips fell into a thin line, but he mustered up a non threatening smile anyway.
"I—" She stopped suddenly and her chest raised with a large inhale. Her eyes were becoming shinier as a new wave of tears started to come. Her face colored into a rosy pink with a shame. Yaoyorozu let out a small hiccup and she raised a fist up to her face again to catch the salt water.
"My performance out there was pathetic…!" she finally gasped out in a voice that shook with the tremors of her body. Green eyes widened and Harry's jaw dropped as he was taken back. "Everyone seems to do so well…! I'm a recommended student, yet somehow...I'm falling behind!" She lowered her head again and sniffled as her bangs curtained her face from Harry's view.
It was easy to see the roots of self-esteem withering before his eyes. Even to someone like Harry, who could barely be counted as a member of Class 1-A, could see that Yaoyorozu usually carried herself high and had confidence in herself. But that just made it easier for her to fall. Harry never was a self-assured person, but he had never been placed in a high pedestal to have such a crash before. Someone as nervous as Neville had always been at the very bottom of confidence, so he grappled to get to the top.
"I-I'm sorry," she eventually said, laughing without humor even though her features were still warped with sadness. The exposed skin of her forearm sparkled for a second before a crisp, new handkerchief popped out. She snatched it out of the air without a second glance and quickly used it to wipe the tears from her face. "I'm rambling, aren't I? You only came here to ask me how I was, and I'm just piling all of this on you…"
He pushed aside her worries with a gentle look.
"Losing isn't very fun, is it?" he could only say with a shy smile, a bit lamely, as he lowered himself to the ground to sit. "It's kind of infuriating…" He raised a hand to flatten his bangs over his pale forehead out of nervousness. "But what should matter is the fight after this one—and the one after that. You'll have more chances to win," he reasoned.
The class representative looked at him with a strange expression on her face, and Harry felt a bit silly after a long pause.
"I kind of just lost too—to Todoroki, so maybe I'm not the best person to talk to you right now." He stopped to chuckle at himself. "But...I still think you can be a good Hero, even after this loss, Yaoyorozu-chan."
Harry had a gift of speaking earnestly and sincerely. He may have not been dastardly charming like Cedric, or smooth and likeable, but Harry always spoke from the heart. That was not a lie. It was difficult for people to listen and not feel a closeness with the Boy-Who-Lived, who pulled people toward him with a genuine attraction. Dumbledore's Army had bloomed because of this.
"You're a recommended student too, Potter-san," the brunette girl said, voice still uneasy with the shaking of sobs. "And you have a nice Quirk…" She paused for a while and lowered her eyes to the tiled floor. The volume dipped and in the pitch of the sun's glare through the open windows the faintest of pink can still be seen on her face. "If you're anything like you are right now…. You're destined to be a great Hero."
"But I don't think that matters," Harry said, shaking his head slightly. There was a pause before he talked again; his thoughts drifting in and out of the reality he was in now. "Not really... People give me more credit than I deserve for being recommended, but I didn't do anything special. You can have a good Quirk—or none at all...and I still think you can do great things." His voice drifted off as a while, and his green eyes started to stare off at something unknown. "Even in a world like this...one with Quirks…" —and magic— "where people can create miracles every day…. We're still human." He finally turned those intense eyes back on Yaoyorozu and her breath hitched from the eye contact. "So we make mistakes, but we can also improve every day.
"You're a genius, Yaoyorozu-chan, so you probably study and work hard every day—but the smartest girl I know, my best friend, said that there are more important things than books and studying: believing in yourself."
Harry's voice reached Yaoyorozu's ears like a wind, and the seconds pulled away before she finally reacted. Her breath hitched, and the color on her cheeks darkened into a rose. She pressed her lips together into a firm line as the clenching in her chest and her throat became tighter like an iron grasp. She was sitting with her legs pulled up to her chest and had her arms bound tightly over her knees. Her soft hands were gripping onto her bare elbows in a secure hold.
"Believing in myself…" she replied almost bitterly in a voice that was nothing more than a whisper. "Everyone around me is striving to commit themselves wholeheartedly to become the best Hero...but I try my best...and I try and try...and I'm still at this level…!" She clapped a hand over her mouth when she choked out another sob. She turned away from Harry so he couldn't see the fresh tears.
The pained look in her face almost made Harry look away, but instead the boy silently reached behind his back and conjured up a new handkerchief.
"That's true, but people advance and grow at different speeds. You can't constantly compare yourself to someone else. You have to look at what's in front of you. You can think of it this way…" Harry held out the new cloth to the brunette girl with a large smile and a shrug of his shoulders. "All great Heroes had to be at your level at one point in time. If they can do it...why can't you?"
With the look on Yaoyorozu's face, one would've thought that Harry made a miracle.
When Harry woke up tired and disoriented—more than normal. Recovery Girl was quick to say that it was just a side effect of using her Quirk and they thought that Harry to sleep until noon. If Harry's Quirk worked the way that they suspected it to, then being sleepy was more than expected. Even as he knew this, it still frustrated him to no end that he missed the rest of round two and he had to get another crash course from Ojiro.
Iida ran circles around Bakugou with his speed, but the boy wasn't just a tower of cards or a trail of dominos that someone could crash down. The boy was stubbornly able to withstand almost every hit that the speed-packed student representative was able to throw at him with nothing more than a couple of bruises and an angry shout to show. Iida eventually tired himself out from straining his engines and Bakugou was able to overpower him.
Tokoyami had a harder time with Ashido. He truly worked like the dark night he represented while Ashido was an inexhaustible ball of hot gas, always bursting with excitement. They were on an uneven ground for a while, as he had to stick with defense and she struck with a hardhanded offence. Dark Shadow didn't work so well against Ashido's acid, but Tokoyami was admittedly more strategic than the fun-loving girl. He eventually managed to outsmart her and got her to slip up on her own acid, giving him time to ram Dark Shadow into the pink girl and knocked her out of bounds.
Harry barely managed to make it to the stands by the start of the third round, and by then the people were already stomping their feet and cheering at the top of their lungs as two teenagers emerged from opposite sides.
"Midoriya!" Present Mic shouted, raising his right arm toward the green-haired boy in the ring below. "Versus…Todoroki!" The audience rose in volume.
"There you are!" Kaminari turned around in his seat and beamed at the black-haired wizard. "You seem to disappear every time you're not needed!"
Beside him, Kirishima turned around and sent out a small, "Hey!" with an cheeksplitting smile. "Potter!" he called out. "That was one hell of a fight down there! We were rooting for you!" He held out a fist that Harry hesitantly knocked with his own before sitting in the empty seat right next to Ojiro.
"Yeah!" Kaminari said, yellow eyes following the wizard's form as he sat down. "Shame you lost though!"
"I do always seem to be late, huh…" Harry mused, almost to himself when he realized how many battles he had missed. Hedwig swooped out of the open doors at that instance. She circled around Class 1-A's seats before diving down and fluttered gracefully onto Harry's shoulder. The boy paid her no mind, but for an absent minded pat along her feathers. The snowy white owl hooted along his ear as if to confirm what Harry said.
"Talk about extreme!" Sero spoke up. "We were freezing even up here! I can't even imagine how cold it was down there! Luckily you were smart enough to bring a thermal sleeve…" Many pairs of eyes landed on Harry's covered arms, which he yanked from their sight out of nervousness.
"Sero-kun," Harry tried to say, "sorry about the fight—"
The taped-teen easily waved away Harry's worries before he could even finish.
"Naw!" he said. "I told you don't worry about it—and you won fair and square!" Sero showed Harry a huge smile that revealed perfect rows of white teeth. "And no offense, but you look like you drew the short straw—"
"Start!" Present Mic shrieked. Sero was cut off in an instant. The boy couldn't physically get a word out the moment the familiar sound of creeping ice seemed to whisper in Harry's ear. Then the ice exploded.
The Gryffindor cried out in surprise, bringing one arm up to shield his face from flying chunks of ice as a shrieking Hedwig burrowed closer to his chest. Freezing wind nearly blew them away, sending a numbing feeling of needle pin pricks into nearly every pore. Class 1-A was off their seats and leaning against the railings in an instant to get a closer look at the two teens.
"Midoriya broke one of his fingers already!" someone cried out.
"What?" Harry gasped out, jumping up on his two feet. He leaned against the seat in front of him and squinted his eyes from beyond circle frames. "Where?!"
"Look!" Kaminari pointed out. "His fingers are still bandaged from his fight with Kirishima, but he's shaking!"
True enough, Midoriya stood his ground on the ring below, but even from where Harry sat he was able to see the remains of ripped bandages and fingers so bruised that they were swollen to two extra sizes and were purple and black.
"Man...Midoriya must be crazy…" someone above Harry commented.
"But Todoroki isn't looking so good either…" Ojiro slowly said. He turned to the startled wizard and gave him an expression he couldn't read. "Harry did quite a number of him too."
"I—" The words halted in Harry's throat when he felt more eyes fall on his form. Before Harry could think about explaining himself, another gale shot through the arena, dropping the temperature like flowers wilting in the winter.
"His arm!" Burst Harry out of his thoughts before another thought could enter his brain. A gasp left the Gryffindor's lips when he looked down at the arena.
The sleeve on Midoriya's shirt was completely destroyed, showing the world his bruised and broken arm that was purple from elbow to fingers.
"Deku!" Uraraka cried out in worry.
Todoroki skid across the rink, but a wall out ice shot of behind him and blocked him from leaving the rink.
"Damn, things are not looking good for Midoriya right now!" Kirishima shook his head.
"But…" Harry muttered under his breath, eyes glued on the fight below.
Todoroki is desperate too.
The ice he had used against Harry were like flowers in bloom. Controlled, quick, reined. Todoroki had full mastery over the ice that Harry had faced, but it was clear that the ice right now was as untamable as a dragon. The ice transitioned from wide and thin, jagged and flat like an ice rink. It was clear that even Recovery Girl couldn't fix the effects of Harry's magic.
Midoriya said something to Todoroki that they couldn't hear from up above, and that set something off in the duel-colored boy. Heterochromatic eyes widened before Todoroki charged like a tiger.
The green-haired boy's arm glowed with gold and scarlet before he dived once more, and landed a solid punch right into the bi-colored boy's stomach.
A chorus of, "Ooh!" rang across the crowd as they sympathetically winced in pain, followed right by muttering.
That doesn't look very pleasant, Harry couldn't help but think, remembering all of the broken ice that still lingered on the stands.
"A direct hit!" Present Mic called out. "Now we're getting action!"
Todoroki flew across the rink, but skidded along the ground and stopped before he could exit the boundaries. Cries from mixed reactions left everyone's lips the second Todoroki got back up on his two feet.
Harry watched as the two maneuvered around each other, circling like injured wolves, both worn out and beaten down, but too prideful and stubborn to quit.
The audience watched with a bated breath as they charged.
When eight-year-old Harry Potter learned about the existence of Mr. Midoriya's son he was jealous.
He couldn't help but feel envious of the mystery boy who was lucky enough to be born from Mr. Midoriya, the only man who he looked up to as family. With no face and only a name to go by, his imagination wandered.
This Izuku Midoriya probably had two loving parents, clothes that weren't hand-me-downs, features that he could truly call Mr. Midoryia's, and much more that Harry didn't have.
Maybe Izuku was even well-liked in school, had lots of friends, was encouraged to do as best as he could.
Maybe...the boy was even blessed to have a Quirk.
Yet as Harry watched the unmatched battle that went on below, he couldn't help but think about how silly he was being as a child. Those features might have all been true: the parents, the clothes, the popularity, and even the Quirk, but Izuku couldn't help being born to Mr. Midoriya, nor could he help having a Quirk; just like Harry couldn't help being born to James and Lily Potter, and he couldn't help but be a wizard.
There was also something else that Harry couldn't deny: Mr. Midoriya might have been Izuku's biological father, but he was in Harry's life. Mr. Midoriya never made any visits back to Japan in all the years that he had known him, and from what he told Harry, he never made much contact with Izuku as the boy grew up either. That was something that Izuku didn't have, and one that Harry couldn't give back no matter how much he wanted to or how much he tried: Mr. Midoriya had been more of a father to Harry than he was to Izuku.
Yeah, a thirteen-year-old Harry seemed to repeat back to him, sitting on a hill overlooking the Great Lake, Mr. Midoriya is right here. His tone was soft back then, not exactly morose, but not heavy either. The worst hadn't come yet.
Harry thought a lot about Mr. Midoriya during his third year, as he balanced between the escape of Sirius Black, and the man's apparent betrayal against his parents. But he never made it a point to visit the man, not when he had blown up Aunt Marge and ran off, and not when Sirius—now innocent in Harry's eyes and brighter than what the preteen had ever expected, jumped with enthusiasm at the thought of being Harry's godfather.
If someone told Harry then that he was going to chase this alluded Izuku across seas after the death of Mr. Midoriya, he'd say it was impossible. Mr. Midoriya was just a muggle, and muggles didn't get wrapped up in Harry's other life, nor in wizards' schemes. The man was perfectly safe. No—if someone told him that he'd be admitted to U.A. along the way, one of the best hero schools in the world, and on track to be a Pro, he'd tell them that they were crazy—completely out of their mind.
Eight-year-old Harry would get upset with them for trying to fill a poor, Quirkless boy's head with false hopes of being a Pro Hero. He was young, but he wasn't stupid.
Thirteen-year-old Harry wouldn't even bother paying attention to that. He was too deep into the Wizarding World to even have the thought of being a Pro drift into his mind. To the him back then the two were like night and day.
But fifteen-year-old Harry, bitter and angry under the Voldemort's influence on his emotions and dreams, would say differently.
He'd tell them that heroes didn't exist.
Not after his parents' death, not after Cedric's death, not when people ridiculed a child for being born without a Quirk—not in his world.
If they couldn't save Harry's precious people, stop him from slipping under the cracks, then who can they save? Who were they going to save?
They were people to regulated the peace and stopped crime, yes, but they were no heroes.
There were no such thing as heroes.
But even if there were, the fifteen-year-old turned around with cold green eyes, I wouldn't be one.
But as he sat here now, listening to Izuku's hoarse shouts toward the duel-haired boy, yelling with such enthusiasm and passion about being Number One and fighting with such desperation—he couldn't help but believe him. As Izuku landed a charged punch right into the taller teen, sending him sailing across the rink, Harry managed to catch a glimpse of the green-haired boy's face.
Loving parents or not.
Bullied or not.
Quirk or not.
Izuku Midoriya, in that moment in time, looked like he was suffering the most of all.
Harry might not know what a Hero is, but—
"It's...your power, isn't it?!"
Izuku does, doesn't he?
The two boys charged and met in the middle.
The Boy Who Lived watched as the world exploded.
"He's in no state for visitors," Recovery Girl immediately said in a no-nonsense tone the second Midoriya's friends, a small group of Iida, Uraraka, Mineta, and Tsuyu, burst through the door.
"Hey guys…" His voice rolls into the conversation, stopping everyone in their tracks as they focus on that gravelly, weak voice. He's propped up in the bed, shirtless with bandages wrapped so tightly around his arms and torso it was like Recovery Girl was attempting to straitjacket him to prevent Midoriya from injuring himself further. His left pant leg was trimmed and cut to reveal purple and black skin, completely beaten and battered under the confines of a temporary leg brace. Despite him bad he looked, his green eyes rolled to the side and he pushed himself to talk to his friends. "Shouldn't you be watching the matches?"
"The stage was far too damaged; they're taking a quick break to repair it now," Iida said, gesturing to the arena.
"That was the scariest thing I've ever seen in my life, Midoriya," Mineta said in a shaky voice and wobbly knees, pointing a finger. "The Pros are never going to want a sidekick that just injures themsel—" The loud sound of smacking skin slaps the rest of the words right out of his mouth.
Tsuyu retracted her tongue without flinching. "Now you're just rubbing salt into his wounds," the honest girl said. "Now's not a good time."
"Hey, I'm just speaking the truth!" the short boy tried to defend.
"You're much too noisy!" Recovery Girl cut in holding her arms out as she tried to usher the kids out of the room. "I know you're worried, but—" She's cut off by the sound of loud footsteps slamming down on tiles and the sound of double doors opening from down the hallway.
The doors of the makeshift nurse's office finally slam open and that nest of messy, black hair couldn't be mistaken for anyone else's but Harry's. He was out of breath, chest rising and falling, but his eyes were wide. He whipped his head around until those green irises landed on the bedridden figure. "Midoriya, I—!"
"Potter!" the senior was quick to chastise. Everyone missed the way Midoriya's eyes widened from being called out by a student that he barely interacted with. "There is no running in the halls, and just because I just healed you, does not mean that you're fit to doing strenuous activity!"
"Sorry…!" Harry quickly blurted out, eyes falling on the short female. "I just—It's just that…" Green eyes scan the room before they fall on Izuku again, still struck like a deer in the headlights. "I wanted to talk to Izuku Midoriya."
"I'm sorry, Potter, but it will have to wait," Recovery Girl said, ignoring the looks on everyone. "You're all going to have to wait." Her eyes land on all of the teens huddling together. "I ought to focus on his surgery now—"
"Surgery?!" everyone shouted in an outcry.
"Come on now," the senior citizen blocked out the rest of their cries of worry and continued to usher everyone out. "Get out of here."
"But—!"
"Surgery is a big deal, isn't it!?"
Harry was backed out of the room without a peep leaving his lips, but the knit of his eyebrows and the frown on his face showed everyone what he was feeling. Before the door shut in his face, two green eyes met; one worried, and the other surprised.
Izuku watched as All Might walked down the hallway, leaving words of encouragement and advice in his wake, but the green-haired boy could only stay silent as he tried to prevent tears from running down his face. Even though his eyes burned and his lips trembled, his heart couldn't feel any lighter from the memory of All Might telling him that he was going to do great things. His head churned with thoughts that moved at a mile a minute, tracing patterns and coming up with schemes for this "new way" to use One for All. He was about to fall into another one of his muttering spells when the sound of wings flapping urged him to tilt his head up.
A snowy white owl swooped down until she landed on his shoulder. She was large in size, but light in weight, barely putting any pressure on Izuku's bones. The boy couldn't help but let a gasp of awe escape his lips at the sight of the bird, one with pure white feathers that were well taken care of, and eyes that were one of the deepest colors of amber that he had ever seen.
Hedwig tilted her head at his staring, and hooted softly, ruffling up her feathers to break the intense eye contact he held on her.
But then that image of grace and beauty was broken when the owl snatched his gym shirt, the one slung over his shoulders, and flew off with it. A cry left Midoriya's voice, and he broke off into a slow run after her down the hallways. She flew at a languidly slow pace, just barely beating him and his limp, still fresh from his injuries.
She swooped under an overhang opening up to the sky, and Izuku skid his uneven steps to stop and squint the sudden bright light that blanketed his eyes. The whiteness settled, and Izuku widened his eyes when he realized that he wasn't alone. Potter Harry sat on the railing overlooking the fight happening below, with his right knee pulled up to his chest and his left leg left to dangle. His eyes were trained on the small phone he held in his hand, and didn't even notice Midoriya standing there. Potter only tilted his head up when Hedwig dangled the shirt in front of his face.
Emerald green eyes, a color much brighter than Izuku's own seaweed green, looked up and were immediately taken aback.
"A shirt…?" Harry lifted his hand up to gently take the shirt from the bird's beak. "Hedwig, did you steal this?"
"Um…" Izuku finally decided to make his presence known and hesitantly stepped up. "That's mine…" He lifted up a scarred hand.
A soft gasp left Potter's mouth and the taller teen instantly scrambled himself to a standing, upright position.
"Midoriya-kun!" the foreign boy exclaimed, almost in a breath that sounded like Potter couldn't believe what was in front of him. Like Midoriya was magic, and fairy tales, and wizards. The boy then turned to the owl fluttering down to sit on the railing. "Hedwig!" he chastised in English, with knit eyebrows, and in a serious voice. "That wasn't very nice!"
The snowy owl, Hedwig, tucked her head underneath her wing and preened her feathers in a feigned nonchalance at her owner's scolding. Only after Potter was done did she lift up her head and hooted at him, before turning those large, golden eyes to Midoriya.
Potter sighed, defeated, before turning to Izuku with a wobbly, forced smile. He held the shirt out to the All for One user in one stiff motion.
"I'm sorry about that," Potter eventually said, voice sincere. "She doesn't usually do that."
Midoriya gently took his shirt back and sent back his own wary, hesitant smile.
He was under surgery, and All Might whisked him away right after that, but he would be lying if he said that Potter's outburst didn't startle him. The two rarely interacted, so it was almost heart-stopping and mind-boggling when Potter burst into the room, almost hysterically, saying that he wanted to talk to him of all people.
"It's alright…" Izuku replied after a pregnant pause in a voice that just above a whisper. He took the shirt back in is free hand and stared down at the fabric between his fingers. He looked up and green eyes met green. "Your owl probably knew that you wanted to say something to me…?" The words slipped from his lips out of pure curiosity before he could even turn it into a murmur or a thought.
It would also be a lie if Midoriya said that he wasn't nervous now.
He didn't know how much more that he could take: from Kaa-chan's outburst, to Todoroki's talk. If Potter Harry had another declaration of war for him, Izuku would have to start sleeping with his eyes open.
"Ahh…" Potter Harry's eyes flashed with emotions that he couldn't understand, skipping fields of happiness, nervousness, and then grief, sadness. Potter shook his head so hard that waves of black hair shook with him. "I can talk to you later, if you want. What I did earlier was kinda selfish of me…" When Izuku only offered a confused look, he continued. "You just got out of surgery…" He shook his head again. "I shouldn't have said that earlier."
It was Izuku's turn to shake his head, his own messy curls bouncing with the movement. Some of the stress on his shoulders eased up a bit. If Potter was here for a declaration of war, at least he was being considerate. "I'm fine! Thank you for worrying though…! I would've just gone down to watch the rest of the matches anyway, so...I can talk." A gasped slipped through his lips in the next second and his eyes widened. "Ah!" He shook his head wildly and waved his free hand. "Only if you want to talk! You might've changed your mind!"
Those emeralds...suddenly looked so sad. Potter stood there for a while, pressing his lips together into an uneasy frown and turning his eyes down to the ground. After what seemed like hours, Potter let out a deep sigh and turned those eyes back to Izuku again.
"Midoriya Izuku…" he eventually said, voice thick. "I came to Japan...to see you."
Out of all the possibilities, out of every option for conversation choices, any word that might've been shared between the the two of them, Izuku would've never expected for those to be any one of them.
Those words confused him more than they startled him, but he still had to swallow the saliva that built up in his throat.
"M-Me…?" Izuku finally croaked out in disbelief. "But I—How...Why now?" he eventually asked. His thoughts moved too fast in his brain for a reasonable line of thought. Those were the only words that he was able to hold onto and push out of his mouth.
Potter looked sheepish then, almost ashamed of himself.
"The teachers call everyone up by their student numbers...remember…? You're student #18…if I had known that your last name was Midoriya...I would've...I—" The words in his throat tripped over each other and he choked, coming to a halt. He gulped, and in that moment in time, Izuku could've sworn that he was looking at a different person.
Up close he could see the bags under Potter's eyes, the wariness in his face and lines. His hair was wilder than a bird's nest and his skin was almost an unhealthy pale shade.
"Sorry…" Potter finally rasped out, voice hoarse, almost as if tears were coming, "your dad...is dead."
If Izuku looked back on that moment now, he would've remembered how the weight of those words didn't reach him until much later.
As of right now, those words were like paper: weightless, only a vehicle for sketches and drafts. Not set in stone.
There was no doubt in Izuku's head at that moment that those words were nothing but a prank.
His dad, Midoriya Hisashi, was a faraway dream to him. He was present in Izuku's life back when his age could still be counted on one hand, but after that it was nothing but distant calls that grew sparser and sparser until he came home from school one day to his mother tearfully stating that they were moving to Musutafu.
Gone came the late calls, the timezoned video messages, and the belated birthday gifts. Though truthfully, Izuku had to admit that he hadn't thought of his father in a while. When he was younger, between balancing Kacchan's bullying at school, bemoaning his own Quirklessness, and watching All Might videos on the computer, he decided that his mom was all the sunshine he needed. With the arrival of One for All, his father was a distant memory tucked into the back of his mind.
"Wha...what?" Was the only thing that he managed to rasp out.
Potter looked conflicted then, before twisting his face into grimace.
"I..um...I'm an orphan," the teen explained, his voice coming out in uneven bursts.
Harry didn't even know why he was telling Midoriya this; why all these words came tumbling out of his mouth like a waterfall. His past was a sore spot, one that Hermione and Ron—his own best friends—were barely able to get out of him. Yet he was here, spilling everything to Midoriya like it was a story to be summarized.
"My...my parents died when I was a baby…" Harry had to lick his lips and swallow to keep his throat from becoming dry, or even closing up from the upcoming emotions. Flashes of red and green danced in his mind. "My aunt and uncle don't treat me very well...they've never had...really." He laughed pathetically, unhumorously, as he tore his eyes away from Midoriya's own stare. "Mr. Midoriya lived a couple blocks away from where I lived and…"
His voice grew deadly quiet.
"I guess that's where his downfall started."
His tale went on from there: how Mr. Midoriya became a father figure to him; taught him how to read, write, and speak Japanese, gave him a warm home to be in when the Dursleys kicked him out, and fed him when his aunt and uncle were withholding food for one reason for another.
Harry hated showing vulnerability. He couldn't—after years of being hardened with hate from his childhood, then to the hardship Voldemort made him go through, to the nasty gossip and rumors.
Then, finally, to what made Midoryia's ears bleed: the reason for Mr. Midoryia's death.
Izuku felt like he was dunked into an ice bath, and the shock was still taking over his body. Every word that left Potter's lips sounded like static, but he could still hear him clearly. The world was moving around him, but only he was the one who could feel the earth stop.
His dad was dead, he realized.
His dad, who was never around, but was still his dad, was dead.
"And so I'm the reason why he's dead!" Potter finally gasped out, body shaking, and after what seemed like decades, he was finally able to notice the shiny tears streaking Potter's cheeks.
The ground was suddenly pulled out from under Izuku.
"I'm sorry...I'm sorry…"