Harry wandered into King's Cross Station as his Uncle's car peeled off behind him. After the shopping trip, the rest of the summer had passed in a blur, but that was not to say it wasn't productive—in the interval between his excursion to Diagon Alley and his current departure for Hogwarts, on top of keeping up with Judo, he had actually managed to read through every book he had bought in the bookstore, and his findings had been less than pleasant, to say the least.

While he'd gotten through all of his first year textbooks, as well as most of his biographies, defense texts, and histories without learning a single new bit of information, the same did not hold true for the rest of his haul.

In terms of the books about him, while The Boy Who Lived, Harry Potter: National Hero, and The British Wizarding War: 1970-1981 just contained the rehashed facts and lies he'd already known about, the same did not hold true for the rest. First, there were the three fictional books he'd picked up: The Boy Who Lived and his Unicorn Adventure, The Boy Who Lived and the Thunderbird Attack, and The Boy Who Lived and the Threatening Dragon; which described him befriending a unicorn herd at five, stopping a Thunderbird flying in from France (apparently the author didn't know they were South American) at seven, and rescuing a pureblood lady (yes, she was actually described as that, without being given a name) at eight. And those were just the three he'd picked up! No wonder Ginny had been head over heels with him before they'd even met! According to them, he may as well have actually been an all-powerful knight in shining armor who had already rescued her at least once, and then promptly (in the last two pages of the book) swore to marry her after Hogwarts!

Even more disturbing, however, was the last 'non-fiction' book on himself he'd picked up—"October 31st, 1981: An Account of the End of the War," which claimed to be the most accurate representation of what had happened that night. The problem was that it completely conflicted with everything Harry himself knew! First, within the first couple of pages it had already insinuated that his mother had simply dropped her wand and abandoned him in her flight from "He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named", never mind that she'd been found directly beside his bed, before immediately turning around and arguing that his father had fought a valiant battle to the death, the pureblood way, in defense of his infant son, before succumbing to the 'better blood' of "You-Know-Who." Furthermore, Harry had apparently just floated out of his crib after "The Dark Lord" killed his mother, raised his arms, and destroyed Voldemort in a single rush of accidental magic—"his Potter blood ringing through his veins" as he did. The author veered wildly between emphasizing the power magical heritage had given both "He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named" and Harry, and stating that "You-Know-Who" was always going to be defeated—after all, look at his horrible crimes against magic!

Simply put, the book had sickened him.

Desperate to move away from the topic entirely, Harry had then flown through The Magical Housekeeping Primer, How to Cast, With or Without a Wand: Defending Yourself in All Cases, Ancient Runes: A Beginner's Text, Spells of Potioneering, The Art of Stirring, The Ideal Cauldron, Magical Inventions: 1200-1985, Nontraditional Spell Use, and Hogwarts: A History; all of which had been chock full of new information with very little bias or prejudice. While Light vs. Dark: A Theoretical Text had broken that streak (mostly because it had managed to expound for 300 pages on what basically amounted to 'there is a difference between the two but I don't know what it is'), by the end of that particular reading session successfully, if temporarily, rid his mind of his own various biographies.

Unfortunately, then Harry had managed to ruin his good mood by reading the law texts he'd picked up. Magical Law and You, while geared towards adult wizards, was actually quite helpful in outlining a number of the more commonly relevant laws (you could not, for instance, pull out your wand in any hallway in the Ministry without risking a fine, but you could have it out in any room.) Magical Laws for Underaged Witches and Wizards was even more helpful—Harry was sure that the author, Polly Brown, would have gotten along fabulously with both the Marauders and the Weasley Twins, as she had gone out of her way to explain that, despite the trace being applied to a wand, the ministry could not detect wandless magic at all and weak enough wanded "spells", like calling the knight bus, also went unnoticed.

It was the third law book which had broken the happy-streak. The Magical Judiciary: An Overview was not meant to act as a description of magical law for the prosecution or defense, but rather a guide for someone listening to a trial either in the visitor's stands or the Wizarding Wireless. Given that, rather than explaining the laws surrounding trials, it mostly just emphasized what an observer could expect to see. That did not keep its few references to actual laws from being any less disturbing. For instance, the administration of Veritaserum was not, as Harry had hoped, something that anyone could use or be forced to use. First, the truth serum would never be used in anything less than capital crimes. Harry thought that was a bit too limited, but it wasn't the worst thing in the world—Veritaserum was, after all, both expensive and difficult to make, so the restriction made sense.

Second, and much less understandably, ONLY purebloods could ask for its use—its expense considered too much to waste on anyone without the lineage to cause 'reasonable doubts' as to whether the accused was even capable of committing the crime. Even then, they could always refuse without any backlash—the author, Ben Cordon, explaining that refusal was a perfectly reasonable thing to do—after all, who could trust those pesky prosecutors to keep on topic?

His utter disgust had even caused a new goal—Tell the Truth (1000 XP)—to appear, giving him a new target of having veritaserum used more frequently in courts.

Upset at the judiciary, Harry had turned to the economy, only to learn that it was little better. According to the (muggleborn) author of The History of Magical Currency, Galleons, Sickles, and Knuts were, effectively, useless. Once a price was set that was where it would stay, come hell or high water. School robes, for instance, should be notably cheaper—after all, fabric is cheep and standard robes have no enchantments. But producing fabric, when the robes had initially been created, had been more expensive than the modern day, and the original robes had been much larger and more detailed, so the first clothier had taken that into account when setting price, and even one hundred years later, despite a much simpler design and much cheaper fabric, the price had stayed.

The Goblins, the author explained, tried their best to keep the economy that they too relied on in check—constantly comparing the costs of various goods against their muggle equivalents to determine the exchange rate the yearly influx of muggleborns would be given—but there was little else they could do.

Harry had half-expected another goal after learning that, but as he had not a clue of how to fix it his game remained silent—it generally only seemed to offer a new objective when he had some idea of the direction already.

Finally he had been left with only two books to read, Arithmancy: The Basics and Classifying Creatures. He chose the former.

At that time only a day had passed since the shopping trip, because with liberal use of his maxed out attention and memory, even learning about runes, teeth-cleaning spells, and better potion-making techniques had barely slowed him down from the pace he'd maintained rereading his textbooks.

Arithmancy changed that.

It took three weeks of daily post-Judo library visits before Harry gave up. He'd managed to figure out that he needed to know the precise definition of the limit, Reimann sums, and matrices by comparing where symbols were used in the text against various calculus problems, but after managing to figure that much out he was stumped. Not only did the magical text use symbols that simply didn't have analogs in the muggle texts, which resulted in incredibly different answers for otherwise nearly identical problems, but on top of that, after he'd finally managed to slog through enough calculus books to understand about a quarter of what was written on a single page, he realized arithmancy also included fractals, and specifically the Mandelbrot set, as well as imaginary numbers. At that point he'd given up. Even with his memory and attention he wasn't going to get anywhere anytime soon without a teacher, so Arithmancy was on hold until at least third year.

Unfortunately that left him two weeks to read Classifying Creatures.

Harry looked around as he stepped through the illusionary wall. Platform 9 ¾ was more crowded than he expected, especially considering how early he'd arrived compared to when he used to.

It was mostly families of younger students at the moment—Harry supposed they wanted as much time as possible to say goodbye, just like the parents of the other students had when he'd started at St. Grogory's. There was still about thirty minutes until the train left, though, and it had yet to even arrive, so Harry moved out of the way of the muggle entrance and leaned against a wall, watching the passers-by with interest.

It was a sad truth that due to some combination of Harry's shyness, Hermione's abrasiveness, and Ron's laziness, the "Golden Trio" had never really made friends outside of the trio. Oh, they were friendly, sure, but on a day to day basis the three had just kept to themselves, too wrapped up in their own personalities, problems, and preconceptions (however valid) to spend much effort with anyone else.

That the entire school had a habit of turning against Harry also didn't help.

This time, though, there would be no Golden Trio: he knew he'd never really be able to share the same bonds with this lifetime's Ron and Hermione as he had with the last, and honestly he didn't even want to try.

That said, as loathe as he was to admit it, it also gave him an opportunity. With their jealousies and insecurities a non-factor, and his own left behind with a killing curse, he could make more alliances this time then he ever could last time. And of course the Hogwarts Express was the place to start with that. But who should he meet first?

Harry gazed around the room, considering, before his eyes snapped to a familiar face.

"Are you Neville?" He asked, having quickly rushed across the platform to where Neville's grandmother had been muttering something to the terrified looking boy. His eyes snapped to Harry's, surprised, and Harry began to explain himself. "I didn't mean to be rude—sorry for interrupting you, ma'am, but I've only just learned about the Wizarding World last month, and I haven't really been able to meet anyone, and according to a book I bought, um, our parents were friends. And, um, they had a picture of you, so…"

Neville still looked frozen, but his Grandmother was now squinting at Harry. "What did you say your name was, young man?"

"Oh, um, Harry Potter. Nice to meet you." Neville gasped. Madam Longbottom frowned.

"You have atrocious manners, Harold. Just like your father, that." Her lips twitched, just a bit, before she abruptly turned to her grandson. "Be a good lad and show Harold around, would you? His parents did quite a bit for both the country and our family in particular, and I won't have you making a mockery of that debt. I know Harry will do his family proud, so be sure to set him on his feet. Perhaps you two could become friends—your fathers were, you know, but then you are so very different from Frank."

She turned back to Harry, apparently oblivious, or uncaring, of the effect her words had on her grandson, and continued. "I am Madam Longbottom, the mother of Frank Longbottom and current Regent Longbottom. I tutored your father for a number of his formative years in the art of keeping a noble house, and when you feel you are ready to take up your duties, please feel free to write to me so that I may properly instruct you as I had him. I must be off, now, but I hope you have a pleasant trip." With a nod to Harry, and a much firmer one to Neville, she left with a wave of the wand and a pop.

"I'm, um, sorry about Gran. She's a bit… stern, but, um, she means well. Um, do you actually want me to show you around? I can fetch someone else if you like."

Harry had, honestly, not understood the full extent of Neville's self-confidence issues at eleven, but it looked like they were just as bad as they had been before, if not worse. "I came up to you, remember? Hey, did your Gran tell you anything about my parents? It's just, my aunt didn't go to Hogwarts, you know, so she doesn't know much about what my Mom was like after eleven, or what my Dad was like at all. But, according to the books I picked up at the bookstore, our parents were really good friends, so I figured that you might know something of what they were like."

Neville squirmed a bit, obviously uncomfortable under the attention, before his eyes lit up. "I know that your dad was the Head Boy after mine graduated! And, um, your mum was the Head Girl too! My Gran said that everyone knew your mum was going to be Head Girl, but that your dad was a bit of a surprise—he hadn't been prefect, apparently, so no one even knew he was in the running."

"Really?" Harry said, as a whistle blew from behind him. The two boys turned just in time to see the scarlet train, the one that Harry had, by seventeen, considered his yearly courier from one type of prison to another, roll into the station. It was just as shiny as Harry remembered, and gleamed under the fluorescent lights, well cared for despite its age relative to those on other platforms.

"Wow…I've never seen it before…" Neville said. He clutched the handle of his trunk—one of the charmed ones that was supposed to be carried on its side without wheels—and leaned backward a bit as the conductor blew his horn, notifying anyone who had somehow not yet noticed that the Hogwarts Express had arrived at the station.

"It's big." Harry said. He noticed for the first time that there were seven cars, and seven windows to a car. He wondered if that was on purpose. Honestly, it probably was—from what little he had managed to understand about the Arithmancy book, prime numbers were something that should always be strived for. His current guess as to why was that it was somehow more magically powerful, but he didn't know why, or why the windows of a train would have to be magically powerful.

As both boys stared, agog, the other students on the platform began to move forward. Not wanting to draw attention, Harry grabbed Neville's hand, pulling him towards the nearest open door. "Come on, let's find a compartment!" He knew he had to keep Neville moving—when he was flustered, he tended to talk more, and Harry could work with that to help build his admittedly faulty confidence.

"O-Okay."

It didn't take them long, in the end, to find a compartment—it was still nearly 25 minutes before the express was due to leave, and besides, there were 84 four-person compartments on the train, and Harry knew only 280 students were attending his first year (well below Hogwarts' capacity of 1000, given the results of both the First Wizarding War and Grindelwald's War)—but Harry was still oddly proud of himself for not having to search through five or six cars before one manifested itself.

The two boys had soon stowed their bags and taken seats at either side of the window (one not facing the platform, ostensibly because neither boy had someone to look out for, but more because Harry didn't want anyone looking for his face to find it, however unlikely that was given his now scar-less face—he still remembered finding Skeeter's article on his "bedraggled, uncaring" appearance the first time around), but before Harry could even get one word out—Neville looking far too flustered to reopen the conversation—the door opened once more.

"Who are you?" Draco asked.