You're a protagonist Harry
Chapter 10 – Meet the opposition
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"Gosh Ron, think you could have stuffed anything else in those pockets?"
"I tried, but you dragged me away from the table."
Harry rolled his eyes at his friend and his friend's propensity for food. It seemed all well and good to Harry that Ron liked to eat, but there had to be limits. And apparently that limit was the amount of space available in his pockets which bulged with fruits and other things that wouldn't squash easily.
Those that would, had been relegated to the sandwich he'd carried out with them when the whole of Gryffindor first year headed for Defense against the dark arts. With that gone, and an hour wasted with Professor Mumbles, he was fishing in his pockets as they headed for Herbology.
"He's just lucky we're going to be around plants," Dean suggested. "If it were animals, they might smell what he's carrying and demand he share."
"Lazy bastards can get their own!" Ron growled, earning a laugh from the group he didn't really want.
"Good morning Gryffindor!"
"Well look who it is," Harry remarked slyly, elbowing Ron meaningfully. "Ready to slum it with Hufflepuff?"
"Aw shut up Harry," he mumbled, a mix of embarrassment and…other embarrassment.
"Good morning," the bouncy girl greeted again when their group came to a halt.
"Good morning," was the general reply from all, Ron's being buried in there somewhere, hiding.
"We waiting for something?" Harry asked, as their group sized up the Hufflepuff group, all of them standing outside the greenhouse.
"There was a note on the door that said wait outside," the girl explained. "So, we're waiting outside."
"Flawless logic," Harry agreed which made the red headed girl blush as though he'd just paid her a compliment. It only got worse when he said, "You're, uh, Bones, right? Susan Bones?"
"You remember me?" she seemed genuinely surprised.
"Well, you were right near the beginning, that helps," he said, wisely leaving out what really made her memorable. "Never known anyone called Bones before."
"Oh, we're a fairly old family," she said, "even if there aren't very many of us left," she added a touch melancholic but rallied back to cheerful quickly, "You can just call me Susan. Uh, all of you I mean, can call me Susan."
Harry smiled at the blushing Susan which only made her blush harder. "We can call her Susan, Ron," he whispered over his shoulder.
"Yeah, I heard that. Thanks Harry."
"Are your ears normally red like that?"
He suspected they weren't. Nor was he normally so fidgety.
Ron was spared any further entertaining humiliation by the arrival of their Herbology teacher kicking open the door like a drunken sailor and toddling out into the morning air.
"Well, everyone's here," she shouted boisterously, "and you read my note. That's promisin. Last year's firsties weren't such good readers. Don't wanna tell ya what happened ta them," she cackled maniacally.
"You know what, I like her," Harry said, earning him a very questioning look from Ron.
"Well, come on then. I got a half ton a fertilizer that needs shiftin!" she bellowed and toddled back into the greenhouse.
"I thought she was kidding. I honestly thought she was kidding," Lavender Brown whined at lunch.
"The smell… UGH! I'll never get it out!" Parvati Patil joined in.
"I understand the principal of the dung for the plants," said the tall willowy Zuli, "but this seemed a bit excessive to me. Am I wrong?"
"Different plants, different needs, different fertilizer," said Neville, who was, despite his awkward and clumsy demeanor, the least put out by the mornings work. Save perhaps for Harry.
"Wasn't so bad. Like tending the rose bushes back home," he said, "just without my aunt glaring out the window at me the whole time."
"I can't believe you boys," said Madysonne, the American witch that had moved to Britain only the year prior, just in time to be registered for Hogwarts. "My brother wouldn't have enjoyed that, and he's the dirtiest person I know."
"Clearly you need to adjust your standards," said Harry with a cheeky grin.
"Clearly I need a shower," she fired back. "You think there's enough time before class to run back to the tower?"
"Depends how fast you run," Serena chirped, though less chirpily than she might have. Even the persistently optimistic can be weighed down, and a half ton is nothing to sneeze at.
"I think an effort should be made," Hermione interjected. "Our next class is Potions and since you all seem to think it will go so poorly, I can't imagine it would go better if we arrived smelling of dung."
No one disagreed, and the scent of offal hanging over them made lunch a less than appetizing proposition anyway. Dragging Ron away from the table the first year Gryffindor's made for the tower and a quick but thorough shower.
Smelling significantly better, and by extension feeling significantly better, they were then reminded they had to go to potions and suddenly felt like fertilizer again.
"Oh honestly, you're all being ridiculous. Come on, we're going to be late."
No one was sure they'd mind, but in the vein of suffering together they all followed Hermione out the portrait hole, through the halls and down, down, down into the dungeons.
"Ain't that just typical for a bunch of snakes, hiding down in the dungeon," Ron opined as they descended further into the bowels of the castle.
"In my experience they usually hide under the rose bushes," said Harry, earning an inquisitive look he chose to ignore.
"There it is," said Hermione.
"And there they are," said Ron.
The first year Slytherin class was just reaching the classroom as the Gryffindor's appeared. They stopped and waited, blocking the door. A familiar face stood at the front.
"Oh bollocks," Harry groaned in a whisper.
"Well, well. Look who it is," the blonde crowed, swaggering with far too much hip. "Hey! I'm talking to you."
And Harry was doing his best to ignore him, but the elbow in his side told him that wasn't going to be an option. "Hmm, oh, hey, you… how you doin?"
The blonde waited, as if expecting him to say more. He seemed to take it as a personal insult when no more appeared forthcoming. "That's it! How you doin? I think you owe me more than that."
"Pushy girl," Harry let slip before he could stop himself.
"I am not a girl!" the blonde screamed in a suspiciously feminine register.
"Well, yeah, I know that now," said Harry. "But be fair. Standing next to them two," he gestured at the beefy bookends, "now if you'd been standing next to her, I might not have made that mistake."
The 'her' in question, a dark haired one with a turned-up nose, blushed under the sudden attention, but Draco was still stuck on the insinuation he could be, in any form or fashion, mistaken for a girl. The insinuation was not appreciated. Nor were the snickers from his own side.
"You've got a lot of nerve Potter."
"What," said Harry, casually budging his way to the front, "pointing out that you look like a girl. That doesn't take nerve. That just takes two functioning eyes and a mouth that works."
He could tell he wasn't making friends, but the glove had been thrown down. The sarcasm was purely automatic at this point.
"I should have known you were a lost cause. Getting sorted into Gryffindor."
"You know I asked the hat not to put me in Slytherin just because I wanted to avoid you."
"What a gyp!" someone in the back exclaimed. Luckily for them, the staring match between the Slytherin and Gryffindor was more interesting.
Unluckily for all of them, it was so interesting they never saw him appear till he was right on top of them.
"And what do we have here?"
The tone was so oily it could grease a frying pan. The very sound of it made his lip want to curl but he fought the urge, turning to look at the dark, foreboding figure staring at him with a frightening intensity.
"Why are you all standing out here?" he said. "Class is about to begin."
The Slytherin leapt to obey their head of house, even the blonde Malfoy abandoned his position and fled into the classroom. The potions professor waited till they were all seated before entering himself, coming in with a dramatic bang of the door and billow of his robe.
"There will be no silly wand waving in this class," the first words out of his mouth.
The ones that came after were not prognosticated, but they did set the tone for rest of the term, and the events that followed them, the tone for the rest of their time in Hogwarts.
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