That evening Harry found himself making his first trip of the year to the library. He could admit with only a little shame that he hadn't spent as much time there as he should. Of course, no one spent as much time in the library as Hermione; Harry and Ron had had to stop her attempting to sleep there on more than one occasion. But it was even more unappealing somehow when he was on his own. Perhaps, he thought, it's just the association he has with libraries: when he was younger, before he could escape to Hogwarts for most of the year, Harry would sometimes find refuge in the local Library. It was an old and draughty building, but Harry had liked to hide in the children's section amid all the colourful books and bright displays. One of the Librarians was particularly kind to him and would sometimes sneak him a biscuit or two from under the desk. The other lady who worked there, though, reminded him of Aunt Petunia; she looked at his baggy clothes and his sellotaped glasses and made it very clear that Harry wasn't welcome in their nice, clean library. Harry tried to only hide there when the nice Librarian was working.
This evening, the Library was quiet. Being only the second week of term, it seemed only the most dedicated students were hard at work. Harry spied a good few Ravenclaws as he checked his list once again. Surely eight was a little excessive, he thought. Hermione hadn't been quite this crazy about studying last year, and she only had two extra classes now. But, he supposed, if it helped her deal with being bedridden, he figured it was the least he could do. Because of the silly rule that boys weren't allowed in the girls' dorms, Harry hadn't been able to see his other best friend since she had retired on Saturday night complaining of a sore head. Harry was missing her. He had other friends, of course, but there was nothing better than just spending time with Ron and Hermione together, doing anything.
He dragged himself out of his morose thoughts as he spotted the first section from his list. He was looking for an Arithmancy book named Necessary Numbers: volume 2. He grumbled a little at Hermione already being on the second book; knowing her, she had probably read the first volume over the summer holiday. After spending ten minutes attempting to navigate the bizarrely dusty shelves towards the end of the Arithmancy section – and hiding from the glares of Madam Pince who was doing what seemed to be a sweep of the library for troublemakers – Harry finally managed to find the book. He made his way out of the shelves to find a table for depositing the soon-to-be pile and immediately crashed headlong into a surprised looking Millicent Bullstrode.
"Oh!" he said, from where he had fallen ungracefully across the floor. Bullstrode had retained her feet (she was a lot bigger than him, his pride reasoned) and was now glaring down at him with her arms crossed menacingly. Once he got his bearings back, he saw with more than a little embarrassment that Nott, Davis, and Zabini were sitting behind her at their table watching the scene unfold with varyingly amused expressions.
"Are you spying on us, Potter?" Bullstrode demanded.
"No, of course not!" Harry floundered, picking up the fallen textbook and getting to his feet. "I didn't see you there, sorry. Are you alright?"
Bullstrode gave him a vaguely disbelieving look and scoffed. "This is the second time today you've bothered us. What are you playing at?"
Harry raised his hands placatingly; the effect was somewhat dampened by the large, dusty book he was now foisting at her.
"It's a coincidence, I promise. Well, not this morning, I mean. Er, then I was just, y'know, near you. In class. But I'm just here now looking for some books, I swear," he said, trying to look honest.
Bullstrode studied him. Her glare did not waver. Harry shifted nervously from foot to foot. "Are you all here, er, studying together?" he asked eventually.
Bullstrode's only reply was a raised eyebrow. "Right," he said, "of course."
The silence stretched again. Neither moved.
"What're you all studying?"
Bullstrode sighed. "Why are you looking for books? I've never seen you study here before." The suspicion on her face was insulting but, he had to admit, probably fair.
Harry brightened at being able to answer something honestly. "Oh, they're not for me. Hermione is sick at the moment so she's going spare. Got me picking up some books for her so she doesn't fall behind," he said with a nervous laugh, waving the book in his hands a little.
Bullstrode squinted at the title for a moment before she turned an appraising eye on Harry. The silence dragged on for a moment longer, before she let her breath out in another sigh and nodded to his book.
"That volume's pointless on its own. Get it with Volume 3; they're linked, it just doesn't say," she told him, before turning smartly around and heading back to her table. She took a seat next to the others and began studying as if nothing had happened.
"Er," Harry said. He blinked after her a few times. "Thanks, Bullstrode!" he called weakly across to her table.
"SHH!" Madam Pince hissed from where she was hovering over a table of nervous-looking Hufflepuffs. Bullstrode did not look up.
The next night Harry wandered the castle, lost in thought. He'd now had all of his classes and couldn't help feeling a little morose that Ron and Hermione had missed out on most of them. Divination had been far more disappointing than Care of Magical Creatures, and Harry was beginning to regret copying Ron's approach of picking whatever class sounded easiest. Although, to hear Dean complain about the difficulty of Arithmancy, he supposed Divination wasn't too bad. The sick students were mostly beginning to feel a bit better; Madam Pomfrey had announced at dinner that they all ought to be able to return to class by the start of next week. That just left four more days until things could get back to normal.
Harry shivered as he passed a window and saw the outline of a Dementor on the dark grounds below. That also wasn't helping his mood, he reflected. Fudge's decision to have Dementors guard Hogwarts to look for Sirius Black had cast a bleak shadow over the school that reminded Harry almost of last year and the fear surrounding the chamber. There was something vile about the creatures. Not to mention, the memory of his collapse on the train was still fresh. As were the sounds of screaming he had heard as he collapsed. He hadn't been able to shake the feeling that there was something dreadfully familiar about it…
Shaking his head, Harry carried on down the corridor. He'd had quidditch practice earlier, and the memory brought a small smile to his lips. He was excited for Gryffindor's chances this year, and the memory of flying always lifted his spirits.
Slowly, Harry became aware of the sound of muffled crying coming from down the corridor. He stopped in his tracks. It was late – close to curfew – and this part of the castle was usually deserted by now. Quietly, Harry drew his wand and walked further along the hall. The crying seemed to be coming from an unused classroom Harry had never entered. He hesitated – what if they wanted to be left in peace? – and what good would Harry do, anyway? But a sudden sob, louder than the rest, made up his mind. With a very embarrassed feeling in his stomach, Harry stepped forward and awkwardly knocked on the door. The crying stopped immediately.
"Hello?" Harry called after a moment. "Are you alright?" He sounded uncomfortable to his own ears. After a long pause full of silence, a tiny sniff came from the other side of the door. Harry bit his lip and debated with himself for a moment. Well, he'd interrupted whoever it was now. Might as well carry on. And that voice, he couldn't help but notice, sounded young.
He cleared his throat. "Look, uh, I can leave you alone if you want, but you probably shouldn't be crying on your own down here." Silence. "Uh, it might help to talk about it?" Harry tried after a long moment. Merlin, he had no idea what he was doing. He could handle Hermione's hugs and occasional tearing-up, but he didn't have much experience when it came to comforting people – and he had certainly never comforted a stranger before. He hoped suddenly with a swoop of guilt that he wasn't making things worse.
The silence stretched taut again. Just as he was becoming certain that whoever it was wanted only to be left alone, he heard a quiet shuffling from inside the room, and the door swung open with a slow creak.
A tiny girl stood inside – a first year, surely – with a mess of blond hair and red-rimmed eyes. She looked like she was fighting tears even as she gazed at him. "Er," Harry said, at a sudden loss, "are you okay?"
She blinked at him, and her face began to screw up. With a surge of panic, he immediately cursed himself for the stupidity of the question. Taking a moment of inspiration, Harry slowly crouched down to her level. He'd seen an adult do this on telly once when talking to a child, and it seemed to work for him. Harry resolutely ignored the fact that he was probably only two years older than this girl.
They stared at each other for a long moment as the girl's face became increasingly red. "S-sorry," the girl mumbled at last, in a small voice thick with tears. Her arms had come round her stomach and she was staring miserably at the ground. The sight was enough to make even Snape pause, Harry thought with a jolt of compassion.
"Hey," he tried again after a moment, "there's no need to be sorry. My name's Harry. Can I come in?" He gestured seriously towards the door. The girl finally looked up, glancing quickly from his face to his hand. Her lips twitched in a small smile that vanished almost immediately as she gave a shy shrug and stepped back softly into the room, giving him space to enter.
After a moment of uncertainty, Harry stood and followed her into the room. They looked at each other in silence for a long moment as Harry desperately tried to think of something else to say.
"Er… lovely place you have here," he told her with a weak smile, eyeing the bare, dusty room. She let out a sudden watery laugh, and Harry smiled back at her encouragingly.
The laugh faded almost as quickly as it came, and her face slowly fell back to misery as the silence dragged on. Harry could see a tear slip silently down her cheek and felt his stomach squirm in discomfort as the girl continued silently standing before him, arms crossed defensively across her chest, now. At least they were both equally uncertain, he thought.
"What's your name?" he asked her at last, trying to sound gentle and not like he was desperately wishing to be anywhere else.
She sniffed again, but finally spoke. "Astoria," she mumbled, staring at the ground. Harry couldn't tell how long she'd been down here. The classroom was cold and eerie with only a dim torch on the wall to light it. Judging from the red under her eyes, she'd been crying for quite awhile.
Shit, Harry thought. What now? "Do… you want to talk about it?" he asked. "Sometimes that helps me when I'm upset." That wasn't strictly true, he thought with a sliver of guilt, but it seemed to do the trick. With another sniff, the girl took a few steps over to a desk sitting by the side of the room and sat, bringing her knees up to her chest.
"It's silly," she said at last. Her voice was almost as tiny as she was, and she watched the desk as she spoke. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to cry. I just got so sad and everyone was around me having fun and I just…" she sniffed. "I just wanted to be on my own." She looked miserably over to Harry. God, he thought. Why couldn't Hermione have been here instead of him? He racked his brain for something to say. He was aware that he had little experience with comforting others, but he had even less experience being the one receiving comfort. He tried to think back to being upset when he was little. Sometimes, when he was much younger, he used to cry when Dudley would hit him, or had said something particularly hurtful. He had ran tearfully to his Aunt Petunia when he had been very young, but he learned quickly that that would only make things worse. She wasn't completely cold, he thought reasonably. There just seemed to be an emotional block within her when it came to Harry. She would scowl at him and tell him to dry his eyes, and look around uncomfortably as if hoping for someone to come and take him away. Sure enough, Dudley would often appear at that point, crying himself, only to tell tales about Harry being the cruel one. His Aunt's discomfort would melt away in an instant to be replaced by the far more familiar anger and she'd tell him what a naughty, ungrateful little boy he was, and more often than not he'd be sent to his cupboard. Was this how his Aunt felt, dealing with him on those occasions? A strange child crying, and her feeling utterly out of her depth? The idea was highly unpleasant. Harry wasn't an expert, but he felt anger was the wrong approach here.
When Dudley was upset, however… His Aunt would become completely unfamiliar to him. Harry remembered once when they were around seven, when Dudley had fallen off a swing and sprained his wrist (this was a particularly happy period for Harry, as Dudley was unable to pummel him for six blissful weeks): His Aunt had doted on Dudley – even more so than usual – and had given him whatever he wanted until he was better. What stuck out in Harry's memory, however, were the moments immediately after the accident. Aunt Petunia was at her son's side in an instant, and the look of fear on her pale face was terrifying to the young Harry, who had never thought she could be scared. He remembered the way she had stroked Dudley's forehead, the tone of her voice as she mumbled soothing words to him and wiped away his tears. His heart had lurched as he stood there, watching a mother's love from the outside, too young to understand why it made his eyes sting.
Harry called up this memory as he looked at Astoria's miserable face. Moving closer, he perched on a desk several feet away, unbothered by the way the way the dust clung to his robes. "It's okay to want to be alone for a bit," he told her, gentling his voice and praying this was the right approach. "What made you sad?"
The girl sniffled again, but seemed to be trying to gather herself to answer. He was relieved to notice her face was slowly losing its redness. "It's just… I miss home so much. I was so excited to go to Hogwarts that I kinda forgot that it would mean being away from my mum and dad for so long." Her eyes welled up again as she turned to look at him. "I want to go home. It's scary here and the people are mean sometimes and I don't have any friends and my sister is busy, and, and-" She was beginning to hyperventilate.
Harry quickly raised his hands. "Hey, shh, shh. Just, uh, try to breathe." He told her. God, homesickness? He had no idea how to relate to that. He had never once missed the Dursleys at Hogwarts. Quite the opposite - escaping them was the best thing to ever happen to him. But then a thought struck him: he never missed the Dursleys while away at school, but he missed Hogwarts with a fierceness that was bone-deep while at his relatives'. Harry tried to call up how it had felt, during the last two long summers, spending day after day waiting to be able to go home again, desperately rereading letters from his friends and trying not to miss them too much. That was a kind of homesickness, wasn't it?.
"Yeah," he said slowly, once she seemed to be breathing normally again. "It's horrible, isn't it? But I promise you'll feel better soon. You'll, uh, see your parents at Christmas, won't you?" She nodded, her lip wobbling. "That'll go by so fast, just wait and see. And in the meantime – do they write to you?"
"Yes," she said, her voice small and her eyes looking up at him beseechingly. "They've written every day so far."
"See," he said. "That's great. Clearly they miss you, too. But I bet they wouldn't want you to be upset, would they?" he asked. Now he was definitely out of his depth. But she shook her head, and he carried on, emboldened. "Right, they'd want you to try and think about other things." She nodded, still looking up at him like he was Albus Dumbledore imparting wisdom. "Hogwarts is a great place. You're going to love it here. And as for friends, it's only the first week." He looked down at her, and shuffled a little on his seat. "Want to know a secret?" he said after a moment. She frowned slightly and nodded, a spark of curiosity in her eyes. "I bet every first year is worried about making friends, too," he told her, smiling conspiratorially.
The look of sheer disbelief she shot him was so grown-up on her face that it startled a laugh out of him. Her lips twitched in response. He noticed that it had been a few minutes since her last tear, and felt himself relax a little.
"I promise! I was so scared I wouldn't make any friends, but I did. And I didn't really meet one of my closest friends until Halloween, even. You'll find people, I promise. What about the kids in your house?"
She looked gloomy at this, but Harry noted with a flash of relief that she didn't seem on the verge of crying.
"They're okay," she said. "Some of them are a little mean, but there's one girl who seems nice. She has other friends already, though." Her mouth twisted as she spoke, and Harry felt a surge of sympathy. He remembered what it was like not having friends – the long, lonely years of primary school, watching the other children from the outside.
"Well, you can never have too many friends," Harry said, reasonably. "I'm sure she'd still like to be yours. Why don't you try talking to her?" he asked. "Or, like, maybe you could offer to do your homework together?" He had to stop himself from pulling a face at his last suggestion, but really, what did he know about friend-making? He'd sort of fallen into friendship with Ron and Hermione, and judging by his recent attempts with the Slytherins, it wasn't a natural gift of his. Astoria considered his suggestion for a second with a shrewd expression and nodded slowly.
"She said she thinks transfiguration is hard, and that's my best subject," she said, looking up at Harry with a hint of pride. He couldn't help smiling in response, relieved that they seemed to be out of the woods.
"There you go, then. Once you start studying together, I'm sure you'll become friends in no time," he told her, sounding a bit more confident than he felt. He worried for a moment that this girl might take advantage of Astoria's eagerness, but put that out of his mind. Astoria seemed smart enough to suss that sort of thing out on her own.
"Astoria," a cool voice suddenly called from the doorway. Harry jumped and swung his head towards the sound. Standing in the entrance to the classroom was Daphne Greengrass, a Slytherin girl from his year. She was currently watching the scene with an unreadable expression. Harry looked between the two girls, confused.
Astoria, however, looked less surprised. She seemed both embarrassed and pleased to see the older girl. She smiled up at her and then glanced over at him, her smile becoming shy. "Thanks, Harry. It was really nice of you to stop and help. I promise to think about what you said." She gave him an earnest smile, which he returned, still rather confused. Jumping up, she grabbed her discarded bag and ran over to Greengrass, practically barrelling into her stomach as she threw her arms around the taller girl's middle.
Standing next to each other, Harry was able to connect the dots. The resemblance was clear between the sisters. Daphne had a hand in her sister's messy hair and was mumbling something to her softly, but her eyes were fixed steadily on Harry, who shifted uncomfortably. Although he and Greengrass had never particularly interacted, she was often found standing behind Malfoy or Parkinson, smirking at whatever cruel thing they had just said. Harry's instinct was to be suspicious, but then he remembered uncomfortably that Nott had pretty much done the same thing to him and he had been able to put that aside during his bizarre quest to befriend the boy. It was only fair that he do the same for Greengrass. With this thought, he rose and gave her a tentative smile. It was likely more uncomfortable-looking than he'd have wanted, but he felt it was the best he could do.
Greengrass watched him for a moment longer, unsmiling, before giving him a slow, considering nod. She mumbled something to her sister and began turning away. Astoria whirled round to give him a quick smile and wave goodbye before darting after her sister, and then he was alone.
