Chapter Thirty-Four: Return to Normal
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter.
Harry was just leaving class when he was quiet unexpectedly held up.
"Harry Potter!"
Harry groaned.
Draco patted him on the back semi-sympathetically and smirked at him before promptly hurrying away.
"I hate you," Harry called after him.
"If you wanted loyalty, you should have gone to Hufflepuff," Draco said over his shoulder unrepentantly.
Well, that was true enough. But if he had been in Hufflepuff then not only would he have never been able to live it down but he'd have to deal with this little nuisance on a far more regular basis so it really wasn't even worth considering. Although that didn't mean he couldn't try to freak Draco out by threatening to defect or something.
"Yes, Zacharias?" Harry asked, annoyed.
"Oh, so you do remember my name, do you?" Zacharias asked rhetorically.
"Was I supposed to have forgotten?" Harry asked, frowning. He honestly hadn't been paying enough attention to Zacharias to know whether or not he was supposed to have forgotten him or whatever else was going on in the Hufflepuff's imagined rivalry with him.
Zacharias actually stomped his foot. "No you were not supposed to have forgotten!"
"Okay…" Harry said slowly. "So I wasn't supposed to forget about you and I did not actually forget about you. What seems to be the problem here?"
"When was the last time you even spoke to me?" Zacharias demanded.
Harry thought back. Zacharias' visits had been annoyingly frequent (well…any at all would have been annoying but it was reasonably frequent) at the beginning of the year but slowly it had tapered off as he had adjusted.
"Maybe October?" he guessed.
"Maybe October?" Zacharias repeated, looking to the sky. "Do you see what I have to put up with?"
"Who are you talking to?" Harry wondered. "Is it me? Because I don't really-"
"Oh, never mind," Zacharias huffed. "Why are you ignoring me?"
"It's been awhile so I'm not sure," Harry began. "But didn't we already have the talk about how I can't possibly be ignoring you while I'm talking to you?"
"Yes, we did," Zacharias said, not looking at all appeased. "But you haven't sought me out in ages!"
"I have never sought you out," Harry pointed out.
"And that's another thing!" Zacharias ranted. "As your rival, I shouldn't always be the one who has to do the seeking out. That doesn't really put us on equal footing, does it? It makes it seem like you have better things to do while I don't."
"Well, when you put it that way-" Harry started to say.
"And it's really not fair!" Zacharias interrupted. "Why do you never seek me out? Do you enjoy making me do all the work?"
"I really don't," Harry replied. "Why would I seek you out? All you ever do is yell at me that I'm not paying enough attention to you!"
"Well you're not," Zacharias said flatly.
Harry rolled his eyes. "I talk to you whenever you're around."
"It's not enough," Zacharias insisted.
Harry sighed. "Fine, I'll play along. Just what do you want from me that I'm not giving you?"
"I want…" Zacharias trailed off, looking a little dreamy. "I want someone who glares at me when he happens to meet my eyes. I want someone who calls me by my last name. I want someone who might hex me in the hallway just because or who I could hex with people thinking I'm an ass. I want someone to laugh at all of my failures and try to downplay my victories so that I might do the same to them. I want someone whose friends I can hate and who will hate all of my friends. I want someone that no one but Snape would think of partnering me with for a project because it will just cause problems. I was a rival. Is that really so much to ask?"
Harry felt awkward. It was clear that this meant a great deal to Zacharias but personally he couldn't understand why and that list sounded like hell to him. That was the last thing he wanted in his life, a silly antagonistic distraction like that.
"I-I guess not," Harry said slowly. "But only if the other party wants that, too, and I'd really hoped you would have understood by now, Zacharias, that that's not what I want."
"Of course not," Zacharias scoffed. "You'd rather be having a rivalry with effing Voldemort."
Harry started for multiple reasons. The idea that he had or sought out a 'rivalry' with Voldemort was beyond ridiculous. Voldemort killed people. A lot. And most of them didn't seem to be for much of a reason at all. Most people, he felt, would (or at least should) see him as more Voldemort's target than anything else even if he had survived and Voldemort had clearly not done well after that encounter. It wasn't like Harry had any reason to think that Voldemort was really interested in him, either, from the word or so that he had managed to get out before they'd Obliviated him.
And even if he and Voldemort did have some sort of relationship, the fact that it was, well, Voldemort meant that it should probably be called 'arch enemies' or something instead of school rivals.
And did he really saying 'effing'? What did that even mean?
"Being his rival would certainly be more convenient," Harry agreed. "Seeing as how he's dead. But before he died, no way."
Zacharias just gave him a disgusted look.
"And hey," Harry said as a thought occurred to him. "You actually said You-Know-Who's name!" Harry, unlike most people, wasn't actually afraid of the name but it just seemed rude to upset people so casually for no real reason. Not that Zacharias evidently had any problem with that.
Zacharias's face was a strange mixture of pride and trepidation. "I didn't use to," he admitted. "But since I want to be your rival and you'd rather be Voldemort's rival, I figured that it was my obligation to try and belittle him where I could. Besides, he is dead."
Or close enough anyway.
"And the Quibbler said his name was 'Tom Riddle' and he was only a half-blood or something, anyway, and so I'm honor-bound to believe this," Zacharias declared.
The Quibbler was right about a whole lot more than most people gave them credit for. It comforted him sometimes to think that if they ever did figure out and decide to print the truth about Gilderoy (chances were they'd be the first to figure it out) then it would practically guarantee that no one would ever believe them.
Harry surprised Zacharias by stepping closer to him and patting him on the shoulder.
"So," he said, "good talk. Let's do this again in three months."
Or not, hopefully, but this was Zacharias he was talking about so he should probably be realistic.
After two days of non-stop interviews, Dumbledore had settled on Charity Burbage as the new Muggle Studies professor.
Remembering the class of Quirrell's he had sat in on (and wondering if perhaps he shouldn't have suspected that something was up even if he would have had no intention of acting on it), Gilderoy decided to attend one of hers a few weeks into the term after he felt she would have had time to adjust to teaching.
Burbage opened up the lesson by asking the class why it was important to learn about muggles. She got a variety of answers (didn't want to look stupid mispronouncing 'electricity' like some, didn't want to look stupid not understanding muggle money when in muggle Britain, didn't want to look stupid while in muggle Britain, it was thought to be an easy O, didn't want to take another class, wanted to laugh at how backwards muggles were, ect).
Next, she set a vase on her desk and cast a shield charm on it. She stood to the side of the desk so everyone could see as she cast several spells on it and the shield withstood them all. Then she took out what, from the reactions, apparently only Gilderoy himself recognized as a gun and shot six rounds into the vase in quick succession, utterly demolishing it.
It seemed like it should be illegal to bring a gun to class and shoot something with it but considering that guns were muggle contraptions it was entirely possible – maybe even probable – that it wasn't.
There was a stunned silence, broken only when Gilderoy murmured, "Nice shot."
Burbage had smiled and thanked him. She told the class that muggles did not have magic but that was no reason to assume that they were helpless. She did not have to explain what a gun was as Quirrell's scare tactics ensured that he had already covered that but she did go into a little detail about different kinds of guns (machine guns especially seemed to disturb the class). She explained that guns could be difficult to obtain through legal means but reminded them of how often the wizarding world had illegal contraband popping up.
"That's not to say that you should live in fear of muggles," Burbage insisted. "Just recognize that just because you have a wand and they do not doesn't mean that you can act with impunity. But of course, it shouldn't be the threat of getting shot that stops you from muggle baiting and treating these people with basic human dignity."
Andrew Kirke raised his hand. "It's just so hard to take them seriously and to really believe that, under the right circumstances, they could kill you when they're so backwards."
Burbage laughed. "Muggles? Backwards? Really?"
The class nodded uncertainly.
"Life in the wizarding world is pretty convenient, yes?" Burbage asked rhetorically. "If you want to go somewhere, you can generally be there in a matter of moments. If you want to cook a meal or do chores it's just a wave of a wand. If you want to change the world around you then it takes little more than a thought and the right words and it's done. Muggles can't do any of that."
"And that doesn't make them backwards?" Kirke asked, confused.
"You may not have noticed this as much before you came to Hogwarts but every summer you must notice the difference," Burbage realized. "While you're here at school you can do magic and, assuming you know the spells and have the desire to, pretty much anything you want. When you go home for the summer, you're reduced to doing things without magic. How much more complicated does that make your lives?"
The class started talking over each other telling Burbage about the woes of being underage.
Eventually, Burbage held up her hands for silence. "How many of you live in a non-magical household?"
No hand went up.
"Try and imagine that for a moment," Burbage instructed. "Even if you cannot do magic personally then you can ask someone else to help you or you can still use self-cleaning dishes or whatever other magical artifacts are around the house. In fact, because of the nature of the Trace – not that you heard this from me – as long as you do magic in the residence of an adult wizard no one has any way of being able to tell that you're underage."
Burbage looked remarkably unconcerned about the way the Weasley twins looked like they had just received a second Christmas. But then, it was hardly her problem so why should she care? Gilderoy certainly wouldn't have.
"And summer is just for a couple of weeks," Burbage continued. "Can you try and imagine that you live in a house with no magical artifacts and no one to help you with any magic you need to do not just for a few months but forever?"
The class looked uneasily at each other.
"That is what muggles are faced with every day of their lives and that inconvenience is something that they just refuse to accept," Burbage told them. "It's hard for witches and wizards to appreciate muggle technology when there are spells that make things work about as well and when the presence of a lot of magic makes their technology stop working. Still, they were tired of having to walk and ride horses everywhere and so they invented cars. They were sick of having to mail a letter – and not even using owls! – and so they invented phones for instant communication. And because of how convenient our own lives already are, we haven't seen much of a need for technological improvements of our own. The wizarding wireless? Adapted from the muggle wireless. Magical indoor plumbing? The Muggles had it first. They are so much a part of our lives and so much stronger than I think any of us would ever want to have to be and that is why we need to learn all about them." She smiled. "And, of course, to avoid looking stupid."
The class looked a lot more interested in the subject matter than they had when Gilderoy had first walked in.
Harry probably wouldn't have even noticed that it was approaching Valentine's Day if the upperclassmen weren't all freaking out about it.
Well, he did remember Gilderoy mentioning something about organizing a Valentine's Day delivery system where they could send messages (written or delivered by dwarves), flowers, or chocolate for a small fee. Of course things had to be affordable for the students and so the fee was mostly just to cover the expenses and increase his reputation. Still, he had only heard about that in passing.
"I really don't get it," Harry complained one day to one of the upperclassmen, Terrence Higgs.
Terrence shuddered. "Trust me, you don't want to. Although by the time you get to third or fourth year – and definitely fifth – you won't have a choice."
Harry narrowed his eyes. "Is this one of those things where you insist that since I can't understand, you're not going to explain it to me?"
"I could," Terrence said thoughtfully, considering it, "but I'd rather spread the joy."
Harry threw open his arms. "Spread away then."
"None of the guys I've talked to really care about Valentine's Day," Terrence explained. He frowned. "Or, well, at least they don't admit it. Because, seriously, what kind of guy likes Valentine's Day?"
"Then why is everyone getting so stressed out about it?" Harry wondered.
"Because the girls like Valentine's Day," Terrence explained. "Although 'like' is probably too mild of a word."
"All of them?" Harry asked doubtfully.
"Well, not all of them," Terrence conceded. "But how are you supposed to know if they like it or not until your first Valentine's Day together? Asking her ex? That would go over well."
"You could ask her," Harry pointed out.
Terrence laughed. "Right. Most girls say that they don't want to make a big deal about Valentine's Day."
"And you can't listen to them because…?" Harry inquired, growing more confused about this conversation by the minute.
"It's like when people insist that they don't want anything for their birthday and then if you listen you're the only gift-less person," Terrence explained. "The girls who don't care are fine with nothing big but the girls that do are furious."
"That doesn't seem very fair," Harry protested.
Terrence barked out another laugh. "And that is why everyone is freaking out. You have to think about the consequences of guessing wrong, you know. If you think that the girl will care and don't then you put a lot of effort into something that won't really matter to her but she should at least appreciate that effort. If you don't do something and she thinks that you should have…well the consequences for that tend to be a lot worse."
"What do the girls have to do on Valentine's Day?" Harry wondered.
"Be dazzled," Terrence said, shrugging.
"Why?" Harry wondered.
"Because boys don't really care about Valentine's Day," Terrence reminded him. "And some of the girls who aren't with anyone expect heartfelt declarations of love – or at least to be asked out – by guys that they think might like them on Valentine's Day. It's just a lot of pressure no matter what you do. And you can't just do anything. It has to be spectacular."
"Apparently," Harry murmured, shaking his head.
"Some girls are embarrassed by public gestures but others demand them. And if it's public and too mushy then your friends might make fun of you and if it doesn't go over well then that's embarrassing," Terrence continued. "Plus then it turns into a competition. The girl will compare what her boyfriend did to what her friends' boyfriends' did. If yours was the best then you look even better by comparison but there can really only be one best so everyone else has to deal with the subtle undercurrent of 'X's boyfriend got her this. If you really loved me then…'"
"You realize that you're pretty much convincing me to never get a girlfriend ever, right?" Harry asked, horrified.
Terrence smirked knowingly at him. "Oh, wait a few years. You'll feel differently then, I guarantee it. And if not…Well, I'm actually not sure how two boys would handle Valentine's Day but if you should find out then make sure to owl me."
February 14th was a Friday this year. Maybe he could just be 'sick' and spend the whole day in bed.
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