A new life for Harry Potter
Harry slept remarkably well. The curtains seemed to block noises. His own screams at three am, for example. He kept dreaming about the conversation with Neville on the train.
Harry looked at himself in the mirror as he cleaned his face. He looked like his only friend at school had just been murdered. Harry thought for a second about trying to get one of his last few vials of cheering draught out of his trunk, but the Slytherin boys seemed quite observant.
He made sure to wear only black.
Zabini was much more elegantly dressed.
Breakfast, with Slytherins all around him was interrupted by the mail, and The Daily Prophet.
Evidently a surprise to the high table.
"Longbottom died?" asked an older teenager; he looked like a seventh year.
Zabini nodded "Potter told us. Protected Potter, got kissed."
The table went very quiet.
"Neville Longbottom was my friend, and he died protecting me." said Harry fighting back tears "I hope the Prophet is making something of it."
Someone handed over a Daily Prophet 'Heir Longbottom murdered by Ministry of Magic'
That was, Harry thought, a fitting eulogy and a hell of headline.
"He's not… dead yet" said some older girl closer to the high table.
"He's going next to his Mum and Dad at St Mungos" said Harry. "But it could have been any one of us on the train."
Not that much later, a round faced man in a ridiculous green bowler hat entered the great hall accompanied by a couple of Red-robed wizards.
"Fudge" said an older Slytherin boy wearing a prefects badge.
Then the boy stamped his feet and banged on the table with the butts of his cutlery. The stamping was taken up by more and more Slytherins, then the Ravenclaws, and soon the whole hall, the older years was stamping in time.
"We're stamping him out" said an older student "Usually it's students who've done something wrong; this time it's the Minster for Magic."
Harry started to stamp in time and bang his cutlery, and pretty soon the whole student body was stamping in time and banging the butts of their knives and forks on the tables. It was very loud.
The Minster seemed incensed by this, and said something to the Headmaster, who shrugged and walked quite quickly out of the hall, the Minister for Magic following. As soon as the Minster had his back turned, the Staff started stamping too, all in time, stopping after he had left the hall.
"Did we just kick the Minister out" asked a little first year.
"Yes" said an older girl. "We stamped him out."
"Someone should write that up. The Prophet will want to know that too" said Harry.
Every eye at the Slytherin table turned on Harry.
"Write up that the Minster for magic was stamped out of the Great Hall of Hogwarts?" asked a Blonde girl in around the third year part of the table, in a very posh voice.
"And that it started at Slytherin table" said Harry "Credit where it's due."
Everyone suddenly ignored Harry and went back to their breakfast, studiously pretending they were having a normal breakfast.
Harry choked down a bit more dry toast, and couldn't take it any more.
He got up from the bench seat, and walked to the high table, and wasn't stopped when he stood at the golden lectern; in the shape of a phoenix, Harry realised. Harry turned to face the school.
"Neville Longbottom was on the train with me." said Harry awkwardly "Then the Dementor came in, and he protected me. Neville Longbottom was my friend, and he's well, his soul's gone. I'm going to miss Neville, and I'll say this, he was all right, for a Gryffindor."
There was scattered laughter at that from the Gryffindor table.
"To Neville!" said Harry "He was a good mate."
"A good mate!" echoed the Gryffindor table.
"That will do, Mister Potter" said Professor McGonagall sternly.
Harry went back to the Slytherin table and sat down.
"That was a very sentimental act, for someone that hardly knew him" said one of the Slytherin girls. Pansy, he thought.
"Well, he died saving my life, so I think the least I can do is give him a good eulogy" said Harry, feeling inspired.
Some of his… fellow Sytherins? nodded.
"Well said Potter. Now shut up" said a male Seventh year with stubble.
Professor Snape handed Harry his timetable "I look forward to seeing you fail out of some courses, Potter" he said.
Harry smiled at that. Like hell he would. The voice in his head at night sometimes suggested Professor Snape just needed some torturing.
First up was Transfiguration, with Ravenclaw, it turned out.
Professor McGonagall was business-like, and they all got stuck into the theory of switching spells.
Then a free period, which Harry used to cram some more Latin, then nip over to the Potions dungeon.
"What were you doing?" asked the other dark haired Slytherin.
"Latin." said Harry "I'll need it later"
That got Harry some looks, and a Ravenclaw got out a notebook and wrote something down.
"Are you a Slytherin or a Ravenclaw?" asked Pansy? Almost certainly Pansy.
"I was sorted into Slytherin" replied Harry blandly.
Professor Snape seemed keen to try to get Harry to stuff up his Shrinking solution. Harry felt… less irritated; compared to a Dementor, Snape was nothing. And there now was only one vial left of calming draught in his school trunk.
He got an Acceptable for his potion, which had come out almost perfect, in Harry's opinion.
Then a free period after lunch; which Harry spent trying to read Greek.
"That isn't Latin" interrupted some girl. Harry looked up "Greek" he said. It was the blonde one in his year.
"You said you were doing Latin" she said primly.
"That was Latin, this is Greek" said Harry "I also have Sumerian, French and Chinese to learn. As I only started all of them this year, I will be learning very slowly, hopefully by sixth or seventh year I'll know enough to get by in foreign spell-books."
"That's… actually ambitious' she said, sounding surprised. "On top of how many electives?"
"All of them" admitted Harry. "And no, I have no friends, they've all died or fled the country after nearly dying, and my hobbies are… learning magic. Your name is?"
"Daphne Greengrass" she replied. "Did you completely ignore everyone in classes?"
"The Professor" said Harry "They were the one to pay attention to. Well, except Lockheart and Quirrell, and Binns."
Greengrass made an eye-roll and left Harry alone again.
But she was in Arithmancy, as was Nott and Zabini, and the Black haired girl, and the one Harry was almost sure was Pansy.
Arithmancy was not too hard, given primary school maths, it had lots of modulo of numbers raised to the power of other numbers. Harry busied himself with the exercises and looked up to see most of the class still busy. He referred to the textbook.
Having had double Arithmancy, he had the assignment nearly done by the end of class.
By dinner, he had it done. If he did his Transfiguration assignment tonight, he'd have all Friday in classes, though Muggle Studies should be a nap-fest.
Muggle studies was so out of date it was almost scary. Sigh. And a double period of it.
He had the assignment done in class. That was a win.
It was a long annoying trip to the divination classroom, which was apparently up a rope ladder.
Slytherin had Divination with the Hufflepuffs.
And boys went up first, because a ladder and skirts.
The classroom stank of incense, and cooking sherry.
The teacher was a goggle-eyed weirdo with lots of jewellery.
She did spiel about opening their inner eyes, and then made them drink bad tea and do tessomancy.
The grim, again. Which was just pointless. If it meant anything over summer, it was rubbish as it hadn't predicted Nevilles death at all.
"A Grim!" wailed the teacher, Professor Trelawny, looking at Harry's cup. "A dire omen of death. You will likely die before the solstice". Harry felt very irritated. His friend had just died and this arse was seeing death in his tea-leaves. He sighed. "Yeah, figures" was all he could say.
A number of the mostly female, students were staring at Harry. He shrugged.
The rest of the class got various dire predictions. Susan Bones, a thin, depressed looking red-head got imminent death too. Everyone still looked pretty depressed, Harry realised. Like they'd just been to a funeral this week. Of a sort.
Runes was hard. Harry was glad he had a head-start.
And it was double runes. Last thing Friday.
The assignment was straight out of the textbook, and Harry had already done it over summer.
That left Snapes's potions assignment. He got started before dinner.
After dinner, some Latin, then sleep.
After two weeks, Harry was adjusting to always being tired. He needed some more calming draught, and went to Madam Pomfrey, who fussed over him a bit, and gave him some to drink right away, and five vials "To help you get over it" she said.
Harry appreciated the gesture, it saved time and right now, Latin, Greek all the languages were all taking a back seat to assignments.
Harry finally remembered on the weekend to go ask the house-elves for somewhere to practice magic without it being a disused classroom, as they tended to be in-use by older students.
"The come and go room" was on the Seventh floor, opposite the tapestry of the trolls dancing. "Walk past the door three times thinking of what you need."
So Harry tried. And Ravenclaw's secret room was a bloody marvel.
A room to practice spells with training dummies, and spell-books.
Harry tried it out. It was perfect. The dummies had scoring charms.
When Harry left and came back in looking for a room to learn French, it was full of books and newspapers, all old and tatty, in French.
That had Harry thinking of all kinds of things. Anything too abstract failed. It made, Harry realised largely classrooms and training rooms.
'I need a room to learn to swim' got Harry a room with a heated pool and a changing room and an irate painting of a man in an old-fashioned swimming costume.
Well worth coming back to.
Harry tried 'I need the room all the rooms are made from' thinking he'd get some miracle of runes.
What the room was, was vast cathedral like space full of junk and dubious items. Stained knives, botched potions, damaged books. Things people had … hidden.
'The room of lost things' got the same room. And that was very interesting.
'The room where the room was designed' had a door that wouldn't open.
So Harry hissed at it.
The room was a small-ish tower room full of scrolls, with a gigantic hide stretched on a frame covered in ink. Nothing was in English, and the patterns of runes looked really complicated.
An interesting, but useless room, to Harry right now.
The summoning charm summoned things by name, apparently had been useful in the past for finding Trevor the Toad according to Hermione's letter. That in the room of lost things could be really helpful. Harry needed cash in the long run.
Well, and to defeat Voldemort.
'A room to learn how to defeat Voldemort' made a room with a few creepy old books.
'Secrets of the Darkest Art' did not sound like a very nice book. It was, Harry discovered, less nice than that book about flaying curses. Splitting your soul. Wow that was evil.
Still… he had a friend without a soul. Could that help? Not unless Harry wanted to be just using Nevilles' body as a second body… Oh that was probably Tom's game. Right book.
The next book was a family history of the Gaunts. A pure-blood family fond of marrying their own cousins, who could talk to snakes. And the last ones went to prison for murdering muggles. The second-to-last one was called Marvolo. And people used their parents names as middle names. Tom Marvolo Riddle. A Gaunt on his mother's side. There was a last girl Gaunt. She just disappeared.
The book seemed to be magically composed from newspaper articles. Clever magic.
The soul splitting thing 'Horcruxes'; they needed to be destroyed to destroy the person who split their soul. Fiendfyre (too hard) and Basilisk venom were options.
Harry figured that, was all he was learning. If Dumbledore had destroyed it; Tom would die, or at least be mortal; and he wasn't walking around, so he'd be dead. But… he was capable of coming back; that's the implication from that one Prophet article.