Y'all I had to take a hiatus because of college, and I got sick of writing one fandom, until my hyperfixation is gone. Also, this is a brand new chapter completely with a lot more details, character interactions and honestly- I love it so much.

Edited: 2/28/22

Chapter 17: Establish Footing

Light snowflakes fell from the darkened sky with dark clouds covering the moon. It was obvious, it's been snowing recently with the fresh, white powder leaving only a small dusting on the tracks, trees and the pavement. In the distance, Hogsmeade was noticeable under the orange casting lamps with the snow falling downwards. His classmates huddled together in their black Hogwarts robes, with several teeth chattering, a few murmurings, and the breaths forming small mists in front of them, waiting anxiously for the carriages to bring them back to the castle.

Harrison watched as his classmates got into the carriage, the carriage being pulled by thestrals, headed towards the castle. Draco stood next to Harrison, his pale skin face starting to turn a light pink shade from the cold with his nose already a pink shade. His hands were stuffed in his pockets, keeping them warm from the cold that enveloped them. Draco turned his head towards Harrison and asked in a low voice,

"Where did you disappear? Mother and Father were wondering where you disappeared off too."

"Like I said, I had some business to do…" Harrison replied towards the blonde, "Besides… I was safe in case you were wondering that I wasn't."

Draco rolled his eyes in response, "Right…"

Harrison and Draco managed to squeeze into a carriage filled with other students. His classmates stiffened up at the sight of him, with his piercing killer green eyes gazing at them, some looking away in response. He internally smirked at the response.

The carriage ride up to the castle was short, with no one daring to have a conversation with the only sound coming from the wheels of the carriage rolling up to the castle, and the occasionals sighs. Harrison and Draco entered the great hall, and headed towards to the far right where the Slytherin table was at, sitting next to Theo, Blaise, Pansy and Daphne, which Pansy instantly attached herself to Draco's arms, looking pleased with herself.

While they were chatting more about their breaks, Harrison glanced up at the staff table, seeing someone that made his blood run cold.

Right where Quirrell normally sat next to Professor Snape, was replaced with someone else. Someone much worse.

James Potter.

He looked about the same, the last time Harrison saw him. The round glasses with the chestnut brown eyes hidden behind the frames, the messy black hair that refused to stay down. The only thing that was different was the smile the man had, a smile that probably meant he was glad to be there, but also he would make everyone who wasn't on his good side, hate him.

"Harrison, what is wrong?" The blonde hissed, before looking to where Harrion's gaze was settled. He turned his gaze back to the table and so did Harrison. "Oh… That's strange… What happened to Quirrell?"

"Dunno," Blaise responded, "What do you think happened to Quirrell that he quit last semester?"

It didn't take long for everyone else in the Great Hall to notice. Whispers broke out in the great Hall, wondering why Lord Potter was here instead of Professor Quirrell, and of course, the Dark Lord.

By now, whispers broke out amongst the table, as they figured out that Quirrell was nowhere to be seen, and James Potter took his place.

The sound of a clunking noise coming from the staff table, with McGonagall clanging a metal spoon against the bronze goblet in front of here. Whispers died out quickly as they broke out, as Dumbledore stood up from his seat with his arms open wide as if he was about to give everyone a hug, his baby blue eyes twinkling, and a large smile took over his features,

"Welcome back… I hope you have a wonderful holiday break and are ready for classes tomorrow! As you may have noticed, Professor Quirrell decided to leave due to some personal reasons…" Dumbledore announced in a warm voice, "I have asked Lord Potter to fill in the position for the remainder of the year! Off you enjoy your food!"

Harrison glanced at Saeviour who was looking quite smug, and smirked in his direction. Granger looked quite confused at the ordeal before piling some food onto her plate.

…

"Can you believe that Quirrell decided to leave and give us Lord Potter as the new Dense teacher," Blaise commented, unpacking his things and pulling out several articles of clothing from his trunk. "Granted, his stutter got annoying as he couldn't speak a sentence without stuttering… I'd expected that he would at least last through this semester."

"What was the reason for leaving?" Draco asked. "I don't buy the whole 'the vampire that he angered back in Albania came back for him' that some of our classmates are saying…"

"Yeah…" Blaise answered, "It's kinda strange, but we'll never know. All I know is, I'm not looking forward to our first Defense meeting considering the fact that Potter is prejudiced towards us."

Blaise added, "What's the chance, he's going to say- we're all evil, we're dark, and give the lions points for simply breathing?"

Harrison laughed, "No, no, no… It's going to be, why are the Slytherins in this classroom, and dock us points for simply breathing in the wrong direction or just simply being in the classroom, in general."

"Do you think he'll really do that?" Draco inquired, "I wonder why father hasn't mentioned anything about that."

"I wouldn't doubt it," Harrison said darkly, "Besides, it's going to be an interesting term."

After that, the three returned to what they were doing, ending the conversation. Harrison finished unpacking his things, grabbed the diary from the pile of books that he took from the Malfoy Manor. He summoned a quill and a thing of black ink, and was about to press it onto the diary- writing something, before an idea popped in his head.

"Hey Draco?" Harrison asked, getting the blonde's attention who was shifting through his hair care products.

"Yeah?" Draco answered.

"Is your father running for minister of magic?"

"I don't think so… Why?"

"No reason."

Gray eyes looked at him with curiosity, but Harrison ignored it, merely summoning a parchment in front of him and wrote a letter directed towards Lord Malfoy.

…

Harrison ate breakfast quietly, eagerly awaiting for an owl from Lord Malfoy. He hoped he played his cards right. It was almost perfect and would make it a lot easier for their coup against the ministry if need be. Quietly and swifty.

It didn't take long for owls to start swooping in through the window of the Great hall, flocking towards their masters with various parcels and letters from parents and guardians. Owls swooped down to the Slytherin table, with a couple of owls soaring towards him and Draco, with a barn owl dropping a couple of letters right in front of them.

His spindly, pale fingers grabbed the one addressed to him, white Draco grabbed the one addressed to him- probably his mother, missing him dearly. Harrison ripped open the Malfoy insignia on the back, and read the letter:

Harrison,

I was not considering running for Minister of Magic. As you've brought up valid points that would certainly aid the Dark Lord in the future, if he was brought to life once more. I decided to run for Ministry of Magic, and hope more of our agenda will aid the future of the wizarding world.

Best regards,

Lord Lucius Malfoy

Harrison grinned, and pocketed the letter inside his pocket.

…

Hermione looked over various books and newspapers articles, she could get her hands on. Pale fingers flicking through the pages, trying to find the information that she was looking for. Ever since Harrison had mentioned that there was another child just rotting in that awful prison, she knew she had to do more research.

At first, she thought that all the wizards and witches locked up in Azkaban were horrible- people who deserved to be locked up for their crimes. Even if most of them were, but there was a select few that was sitting there, wasting away for something they didn't do or didn't have trials to prove their innocence.

Innocence before proven guilty was the muggle saying- although, that was proven entirely false. She never expected to see the same problems as the muggle world has with the incarceration rates, some countries like the United States. She'd assumed that the problems that were prominent in the muggle world were erased in the wizarding world.

There were problems in the wizarding world that had a lot of importance, issues that needed to be fixed, yet everyone in power was assuming the systems worked perfectly.

She found that there were multiple people in Azkaban without a trial, which was interesting. Her fingers grabbed a newspaper that was right above her, all dated within the year of 1986 and 1987, hoping to find the imprisonment of Elladora Lestrange, and the crimes that she was charged with.

It didn't take long for Hermione to find a small article, within the stack of newspapers, noting how Dumbledore and the aurors dragged her off to Azkaban after the killing of mugges.

No mention of trials or anything, despite killing muggles.

If there was one thing Hermione knew was that children were prone to accidental magic. Accidental magic that children couldn't control. From her experience of being bullied in primary school, stuff just happened without any reasonable explanation. Why should a child, much younger than her, be charged for a burst of accidental magic that killed muggles?

Maybe there was someone higher up in the ministry that she should try, that would listen to this concern? Granted, who would listen to a twelve-year-old, who had a good life, a good child, was only a first year at Hogwarts.

But she had to try.

Hermione grabbed a thing of parchment and a quill from another table and wrote a letter to Madame Bones, The Head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement.

…

On Thursday morning, Harrison and Draco headed down to the Great Hall for breakfast, before they returned to the dormitory to grab their books and headed to Herbology and after that, was Defense Against the Dark Arts with Professor Potter. Along the way, they noticed that the Slytherin hourglass had fewer green gems in it than the day prior where they gained several points from Charms and Potions, while Gryffindor was now in second place, when before they were in fourth place.

The Great Hall was loud with various conversations mainly from the Gryffindor table with Slytherins eating away at breakfast, in the perfect pureblood way, and kept their heads down with murderous looks being glanced over at the Gryffindor table. Draco slid down to sit next to Blaise Zambini who was busy eating porridge.

"What happened to all our points?' Draco whispered, while pouring some hot oatmeal into his bowl.

"Blame Potter," Flint replied, who was sitting only a few seats down from them. "The professor that is, not the brat."

Harrison smirked, "What did he do?"

"He docked points from us. Forget a textbook? Five points deducted. Asked a question, points deducted. Simply breathing in the wrong direction, more points detected… Someone should knock him down from his pedestal."

Draco grumbled, "Well that sounds fun."

After breakfast, they grabbed their bookbags and headed to the greenhouse, where the class was boring, and on the dull side, with Harrison struggling some parts of it, before they headed to Defense.

The Defense classroom no longer smelled like garlic, and any remnants of Quirrell's presence was gone. Potter stood in front of the classroom, his smile not quite meeting his eyes. Harrison could have sworn he saw a flash of anger flash through the Professor's eyes, but he brushed it off- it could have been his imagination, but he also knew Potter would have to be extremely careless to let his prejudice slip.

He sat next to Draco, pulling out his textbook from his book bag. His fellow Slytherins kept their heads down, talking in hushed voices while the Gryffindors talked loudly, laughing and throwing paper airplanes across the room.

"As I'm told, Quirrell began teaching you about vampires before he left… I'm going to talk about greensparks and the smokescreen spell since some of you will turn out evil and will need it in the future, just in case."

Harrison raised his hand, "Professor, we're a bunch of eleven-year-olds, first years, and you're already assuming some of us are already evil… You're not serious."

"Ten points from Slytherin," as all Professor Potter said, ignoring what Harrison just said.

"Besides some of us are… Especially coming from someone who went to Azkaban for murder," He heard Saeviour say snidely.

"Like I was saying before I got rudely interrupted… Smokescreen will particularly be useful if one of the Slytherins decides to get you in a duel in a corridor and you need a way to escape, or send green sparks when they decide to attack without any reasoning."

Harrison raised his hand up once more and Professor Potter ignored him, continuing on with his lecture.

He waited until the professor stopped speaking before he talked aloud, "Sir, can you stop saying that Slytherins will attack any house without any reasoning behind it… Besides, other houses would do it also."

"Slytherins are the ones who are always in opposition, hexing anyone without question… Twenty points from Slytherin for telling a teacher that they're wrong, speaking out of turn, and a detention tomorrow night."

Harrison's gaze turned murderous, his fingers itching to get to his wand and shout the one spell that he wanted to say- but he wouldn't. He wouldn't lose his control. He wouldn't go out and blow his cover and give Dumbledore a reason to toss him back into Azkaban, not when the teacher was just to provoke him into proving that he was dark.

Draco mouthed, "Who in the merlin's name does he think he is?" HIs hands grabbed tightly around Harrison's wrist, forcing Harrison to keep his cool.

Edit (2/28/22): Added more details, character interactions, grammar mistakes, and made it to where it makes sense.