You're a protagonist Harry
Chapter 12 – Club swing
…
"So, why didn't you tell him?"
"I don't know. It was just a second. Figured I was imagining it," said Harry as he and Ron left Gryffindor. "Is that normal, I mean, having two elements?"
Ron mulled his answer as they meandered down the shifting stairs. "Well, technically we all have four elements in us," he explained, "It's just that one is usually dominant over the others."
"But what about two?" that was his quandary.
"It's not 'common' but it's not exactly un-common," he said ever so helpfully.
"You ever know someone with two?"
Ron scratched his chin anxiously, "Not personally, but I did hear about this one great uncle. He was fire and water."
"What!" Harry exclaimed. "You can't be serious."
"No, it's true. Swear!"
Harry shook his head, "He must have been interesting."
"Crazy. He was crazy. At least, that's what they say. Like I said, never met him."
Harry chortled as they waited for the stairs to stop, "Whatever happened to him?"
"No one's sure. They say he used to talk all the time about turning into a cloud and floating away. One day they went to look for him and he was gone."
"Just like that?"
"Not a trace," said Ron, stepping onto the main floor and turning down the hall. "They never found him either."
"Think he really did turn into a cloud?"
Ron shrugged, "Maybe. I've heard dual elements sometimes mix into powerful sub-elements, like wind and water becoming ice. Bill said there was a girl in his year in Ravenclaw that was like that."
"What do you get if you mix fire and wind?" Harry asked.
"Uh… beats me."
Oh well, worth a shot. "Still not sure it wasn't my imagination. I only nudged the crystal and it barely did anything."
"If you say so," said Ron, clearly unconvinced. "If it were me, I'd check."
"Speaking of you," because it was a good excuse to change the subject, "what element did you get."
"Earth," he said flatly.
"You don't sound too happy about that."
"It's not fair. I was supposed to be fire. My whole family's fire," he moped.
"What's wrong with earth?"
"Earth's Hufflepuff. I'm not a Hufflepuff."
"What is it you have against Hufflepuff?" said Harry, remembering his earlier remarks on the subject.
"I don't have anything against Hufflepuff!" he protested overloud
"If you say so," doesn't mean I believe you.
"Ah, whatever. Let's talk about something else."
"Like what?"
*Cue segue*
"COME AND JOIN THE GOBSTONES CLUB!"
"Hone your charms with the CHARMS CLUB!"
"Future chess masters, SIGN UP HERE!"
"What the scary hell!" Ron exclaimed, tensed up like a startled cat.
It took Harry a moment to get past his own shock before he remembered, "The club fair."
"Huh? Oh yeah," Ron remembered, unclenching his buttocks. "That's why we came down here."
The last of their house to do so because Ron couldn't decide if he should bring Scabbers along and Harry wanting to be sure Billy was asleep, so she didn't follow him again. His pet was proving a cunning little escape artist, and he still had no idea how she kept getting out of the tower.
"Didn't think there'd be so many," said Ron, and no mistake.
Stalls and outposts lined the entire hall, right up to the turn and stretching all the way to the Great hall where they'd seen the early birds setting up before breakfast was even done.
"There you two are!" a scraggly bush with a girl beneath it proclaimed.
"Oh look, it's Hermione," Ron grumbled under his breath.
"Hello Hermione," Harry said at normal volume, "how's the club hunting?"
"It's really quite frustrating actually," she said. "There's so many interesting clubs but only so many hours in the day. Narrowing it down to one or two is going to be obscenely difficult."
The idea seemed to excite her.
"So, what clubs are you two considering?"
"Join the baking club," a 'sweet' looking Hufflepuff girl called. "Hot, fluffy and delicious," we assume she means the baked goods.
"I'm really feeling the baking club," said Ron, looking like he was really feeling something.
"Oh honestly!"
"Come on Ron."
"But, but," he protested as they led him away, "She's got, uh, muffins."
"Admire her muffins some other time," said Harry, restraining himself from a bit of admiring in the presence of the angry girl giving the two of them 'the look'. "We're here to find a club to join. Ideas?"
"Nope," he said without an ounce of shame. "Fred and George aren't in a club, never have been. Percy's on the student council which is about as close to a club as he ever got. Charlie was in the crafting club, but you can't join that until you're in the crafting class. And Bill was in the junior tomb raiders club, but they were dissolved when Bill graduated because they didn't have any members, he was the last one."
"Well that doesn't help us," though the bit about junior tomb raiders was certainly interesting.
"There's always the charms club, that was Professor McGonagall's club you know," said Hermione.
"We've barely started charms class," said Ron. "What would we do with a charms club?"
"Gotta go with Ron on this one," Harry added before Hermione could protest. "If I join a magic club, I want it to be something I'm not already taking."
"Well you ought to choose something that will supplement your education," the bush girl predictably pronounced.
"You're making much too big a deal over this," said Harry. "You remember Cassidy said your club choice didn't have to be permanent. You can quit at any time to try something else."
"I'm surprised you remember that Harry," the girl said with a spiteful eye, "considering you spent the whole time she was talking coming on to her."
"Why would you think I couldn't do two things at the same time?" he replied, grinning in absolute unrepentance. "I am master of the multitask."
"So long as one of those tasks is flirting," she shot back.
"And your point is?"
She probably had one when she started, but several word bubbles later had lost the train of thought, "Oh… you!"
"Yep, me."
"Why does she hang out with us," Ron whispered as Hermione stuck up her nose and pouted.
Harry shrugged, didn't make much sense to him either. She didn't really seem to like them, and yet, at every opportunity when all three of them were in the same vicinity she would inevitably gravitate toward them. Weird.
"Better find your club fast or she'll suck you into the literature club," he whispered back, though not quietly enough because Hermione's eyes lit up.
"There's a literature club?"
"Uh… isn't there?" he wasn't sure but with everything arrayed before them, it seemed unlikely there wasn't something along that vain somewhere.
"I've got to find it!" she said and dashed off, leaving the two boys shaking their heads after her.
"That girl is crazy," said Ron.
"She knows what she likes, you can't say she doesn't," though she really did make it hard to defend that. Really hard. "Soooooo, club?"
Left alone the pair meandered slowly, taking in the sights and the possibilities for their own future clubbing. More than all his classes since arrival, the club fair proved an absolute education in magical life and interests and it took all his considerable teenage cynicism, bolstered by his not inconsiderable willpower, to keep from gawping like an idiot… but it was close.
Every class had its own club, just for a start. There wasn't a magical animals club, there were dozens of clubs, each for a specific type or class of animal. There was even one for slime breeding.
"A hundred and one uses," the boy at the stall declared, as a small green slime unnoticed on his shoulder dissolved his robe.
There was a magical photography club, magical painting club, magical paintings club (which was different from the magical painting club in that it focused on magical paintings, not painting with the assistance of magic) magical pottery club, which Ron joked would be perfect for him since he was a Potter.
There were even a few famous person fan clubs, though not one for him the girl assured him. That sign had totally not said Harry Potter fan club, what are you talking about? Hey, what's that over there?
"I should have known. I really should have but I just didn't want to believe it," he grumbled as he and Ron walked away from the nervously laughing girl who was totally not advertising the club that totally did not exist.
"This might be a bad time to mention but, my sister, Ginny, she's uh, she's been a member of the Harry Potter Fan club since she was six," Ron mumbled, flinching at the sour faced glare that was made no less potent by the way Harry was slouching.
"This… abomination, goes beyond Hogwarts," he growled.
"Uh… yes?"
"FANTASTIC!"
"Aw come on Harry, it's not that bad."
Oh yes it was, in fact, "It's worse. I've seen the way these desperate fangirls act. To think, they're under the same roof. Just you watch. One of these mornings I'm going to wake up handcuffed to a bed in some hidden away room in the castle, captured by one of these delusional nutjobs for some obscene purpose."
"… when you say obscene, could you expand on that a little?"
He didn't flinch under the glare this time, and Harry couldn't feel the motivation to sock him one, no matter how much he deserved it, "Head out of the gutter Ron."
"I'm just saying, a little obscene never hurt anybody."
"No, but I'm gonna hurt you in a second," he was finding the motivation.
Moving swiftly in the direction of pain, Ron Weasley was saved, in the biblical sense, by a sight he never thought he'd see. "No way!"
"Come one come all," the man at the stand declared. "Can your deck stand up to the best Hogwarts can offer. Join the card masters club and see if you have what it takes!"
"This is the greatest day of my life!" Ron squealed totally not like a little girl who's just seen her first pony.
"And then there was one," Harry muttered as Ron floated, like on the wings of tiny fat angels, to the card club.
In a round about way he was happy for him. In a more direct way, he wished the stupid git would have stuck around because without his tour guide, Harry was swimming in the deep end. And as everyone knows, that's where the sharks live.
What fewer people know, that's also where Luna's live. Harry discovered this by not watching where he was going and running into her, knocking the poor girl to the ground.
"I am so sorry I didn't see… Luna! Hey!"
The girl looked up at him quizzically, a light bulb going on before her eyes returned to the fully open setting she'd been using when they first met. "Hullo Harry Potter."
Glad to see a someone he, sort of knew, he smiled when he offered his hand, "You know you can just call me Harry," he said.
Taking the hand, the big eyed blonde ascended to a standing position, "I did not know that," she said, dusting herself off, "good to know."
Harry chuckled at her atypical response, "Sorry I knocked you over."
"Oh, that's alright," she said. "I know you didn't mean it."
There was something unspoken in the way she stated that, but before he could wrap his head around it, she had already jumped to a new topic.
"Still looking for club?"
"Uh, yeah, yeah I am."
"And Ronald has no doubt abandoned you for the card masters club."
"Yeah! But, how'd you know that?"
The blonde gave a flippant wave, "Oh, Ronald's fascination with cards is well documented. I'm fairly certain he's played everyone in Otter St. Catchpole at least once. Granted that's not a terribly large number of people, but still."
Harry boggled at the girl's knowledge, only then remembering, "You live next to Ron. I forgot about that."
"You probably shouldn't say it so loud though. I don't think he wants anyone to know."
Yeah, well, he could just get over it, Harry thought. "So how are you doing? Find any clubs you want to try."
"Oh, I'm not planning to join any clubs," the girl said, tracking a stray dust mote moving through a beam of light. "I just came down to see how the other half live, so to speak."
"That so," said Harry, trying to follow her line of sight, and when that failed, "anything interesting?"
"Interesting to who?"
"Well, just as an example, how bout… me." Subtlety, thy name is Harry Potter.
The blonde hmm'd a bit, observing him from every angle her neck could turn, twirling her hair then sticking it into her mouth for analysis. Conclusion? "I don't think I know you well enough to make that judgement."
"I guess that's fair," Harry chuckled. "How bout you then. See anything you found interesting."
"Well…" she hedged, giving him the shy look of a girl not used to boys asking about her interests. "I did look at the school paper."
"We have a school paper?" Why had he not seen this?
"They haven't put out an issue this year. The graduating class brought them down to just two members. Their current editor is hoping to fill the ranks today."
That's why.
"I should go," she said.
"Huh, did I say something wrong?"
She shook her head, "It's not that. You just have some other people to run into," and with that cryptic hint, she was gone.
"Now what did she mean by that?" He wasn't planning to meet anyone at the club fair. Unless Hermione or Ron came back, who could he possibly be running into.
The answer was, nobody. They were running into him.
"Look out! Coming through!" was all the warning he got before the foot slammed into his back and he was plastered to the floor.
"Rhiannon! Slow down! Oh, that girl uh, terribly sorry. She really didn't mean it." This assurance from the nice voice hardly made him feel better as he sniffed the floor, taking in the fragrant aroma of shoe, dirt, and whatever stone the floor was made of. Granite?
And just to prove the universe does have a sense of humor, "Well look what I found?" insult came along to join injury.
"Draco."
The effeminate blonde stared down at him with a superior smirk. Never had Harry despised his poor positioning more.
"This is a good look for you Potter! At my feet, where you belong."
It wasn't a bad line, given the circumstance, but Harry was not easily impressed. He'd been bullied for as long as he could remember, and while Dudley had never been particularly clever with words, he wasn't the only one Harry'd had to deal with.
Picking himself off of the floor and dusting off the remains of the centuries even Argus Filch couldn't chase off, "What an unexpected 'pleasure' to see you Draco," he said, selecting his tone with the utmost care. "And look, you brought the girl along this time too, so people won't mistake you for one."
Draco, as he'd surmised from their previous interactions, had little self-control, and no sense of humor. If he was trying to prove he wasn't a girl, the way he pouted at Harry was not helping his case. He'd expected this reaction. He was a little surprised that the girl was also giving him a look.
"I have a name you know," she said when she noticed him noticing her.
"I didn't know. I assumed, but that's not really the same thing," he observed. "Care to share."
"It's Pansy, thank you very much!" she declared, turning up her nose very pointedly.
"Well that's silly," said Harry. "They should have just stopped at Pansy. Pansythankyouverymuch? That just sounds silly. I'd stick with Pansy if I were you. Pansy is pretty, it fits."
The sour look she'd been giving him as he appeared to make fun of her turned confused and a bit blushy at the end as she tried to decide if she should still be insulted, or flattered he'd called her pretty.
Having been ignored for more than ten seconds, Draco drew the attention back to him, leaving Pansy to ponder this conundrum.
"God's Potter, do you ever shut up?"
Unable to keep the cheeky grin from his face, "Bound to happen eventually," he supposed.
This was not the answer the blonde had been looking for and his petulant scowl took on a constipated tone like he was trying to squeeze something so hard he might pop any second. The flush of color to his pale face only accentuated this idea, making Harry wonder if he was about to shat himself or go Super Saiyan.
"You got a big mouth Potter," he snarled, "but can you back it up, or are you just all talk?"
His cheeky grin darkened as the proverbial gauntlet was cast, "You looking for a fight Malfoy?"
"Scared Potter?"
"You wish."
The tension was high, hands itching to cause violence as those around fled in fear. It was going to happen. Nothing could stop it.
"Gentlemen!"
Except that.
The cultured English with a Spanish accent came from the professor neither knew personally, but all had heard of. One Carlos Santiago DeFrancesco Ramirez, or the Spaniard as most called him.
Under his steely eye the two boys drew back, reluctantly.
"You got lucky Potter."
"Somebody sure did, sissy boy."
It didn't take much to goad him, but rather than try to calm the tension, the Spaniard had other ideas.
"I can see you gentleman have come to an impasse of sorts. If I may suggest, perhaps what you need is, the DUEL CLUB!"
Lights and fireworks exploded from the small booth behind him, decorated in swords, daggers, and other implements of stabby pain.
"How did I not see that?" Harry wondered.
"There is no fighting allowed in the halls," the Spaniard went on, giving them both a look they chose to interpret as 'or else'. "If you wish to settle your differences, do it in the ring."
It was an interesting proposition. They'd done fencing a couple times when he was at school and for the opportunity to put the obnoxious ponce in his place. One look at said obnoxious ponce told him he was having similar ideas.
"Think your man enough Potter?"
"No, please. Ladies first."
And that, is how Harry found his club.