In the wind's singing

"Hmm," said a small voice in his ear. "Difficult. Very difficult."

Harry waited, trying very hard not to tremble. He could feel a thousand eyes looking at him.

"Plenty of cunning," the hat murmured.

Not Slytherin, Harry thought back, before the hat could go anywhere with that. He focused on how he loved the library, about all the studying he'd done, of how well he'd fit in with the Ravenclaws and their intense-quiet-bookishness.

"You like learning, but it's not what you value most," the hat disagreed. "You could be great, you know."

Frantically, Harry changed tack. He thought of how he always told the truth, how he'd been loyal to the Dursleys.

The hat laughed into his mind. "Loyalty isn't your strong suit. But I don't sort by what you are, lad, I sort by what you most want to be."

It came up unbidden, the cutting disappointment that had been thrown at him all his life. I thought you were a Gryffindor.

Not Gryffindor, Harry hastened. He didn't want to spend seven years sleeping in the same bed as last time. The very thought filled him with dread.

"Now that's interesting...but you can't have it both ways. I can see it now, it's all here in your head. Better be GRYFFINDOR!"

The great hall burst into tumultuous applause. Harry could hear only the sound of his own breaking heart.

He tucked his chin down and stumbled into the closest empty seat at the long table. He wondered if Petunia would let him go to another school after all.

The boy sitting beside him handed over his napkin. Harry noticed the tears on his own face just in time to wipe them away. "Thanks," he mumbled.

"I'm Neville," the boy replied. There was dirt under his fingernails and a grass stain on his trousers. He wasn't very tall, or handsome, nor was he brimming with light.

In short, he was the exact opposite of Sirius.

Harry smiled back, albeit still a bit watery. Perhaps he should give Gryffindor another chance.

xoxox

Dear Aunt Petunia, Harry lettered in his neatest hand,

You didn't tell me to write, but I suppose you just forgot. Or maybe you told me and I wasn't listening.

I'm in Gryffindor house, the same as Lily and James were. It's alright. The common room is very loud but I've spelled my four-poster in the dorm nice and quiet.

There's a third-year boy with a tarantula named Lee. (The boy is called Lee, not the tarantula.) I remember you said No Arachnids As Pets when I asked for a scorpion but his family is making it work just fine. Also there's a girl with a kneazle and another one with a terrapin. Someone else has a crup, which runs around the common room knocking things over with its tails.

I share the dorm with a boy who seems to be the only one to have read the Owl OR Cat OR Toad part of the Hogwarts letter. His name is Neville and his toad Trevor has a knack for getting lost. You'd like Neville, he looks a bit like Dudley but with more dirt. His favourite class is Herbology but he's scared of Potions (magical Chemistry). I have decided to teach him about Chemistry. We're going to be friends.

Yours sincerely,

Harry

xoxox

On Thursday, McGonagall summoned him to her office before dinner.

She sat behind her desk, bearing down on him with the full intensity of her stern grey bun and her steely green eyes. There was an untouched plate of digestives between them. "How are you feeling today Harry?" she asked. "Can you tell me what you learnt this week?"

It was uncanny. Harry stared at his hands, unsure of what to say.

Everyone keeps trying to talk to me because I'm 'Harry Potter' but I don't think they see me at all.

I had been anxious about sleeping somewhere new but my four-poster is so familiar it hurts.

I wish I could have been in Ravenclaw.

"Classes are alright." Harry said.

The Professor was staring at him, he didn't need to look at her to be able to tell that.

"I read all my textbooks last month," Harry added. And I've been in these classes before.

"Hmmm," said McGonagall. It was like she was judging him. She didn't make him feel safe the way not-McGonagall and not-not-McGonagall had done.

The sensation was exactly one of being a rat crouched before a looming cat. Harry hadn't liked McGonagall from the beginning because she made him feel stupid, and becoming an animagus had only made it worse. He tried not to shake with his nerves.

Rats were simple creatures with simple emotions. Cats were more complex, and it was clear that McGonagall was finding him lacking.

"I'm sure you're very busy," Harry whispered. "Please may I go?"

"Your Aunt insisted on these sessions. Look at me when I'm speaking, Harry."

He made himself glance up. If Petunia's face was an open book, then McGonagall's was a Gringotts vault. Harry wished he could tell what she was thinking. Was it more disappointment? She certainly made him feel very small. "Perhaps there's another teacher that I could talk with?" he hedged, speaking to her chin. "Maybe Professor Sinistra?"

McGonagall's lips curled into a brief smile. "Professor Flitwick mentioned you enjoyed Astronomy. She does not reside at Hogwarts, however. I will ask her on your behalf."

They spent the next minutes in uncomfortable silence.

"You look just like your father," McGonagall finally said. "But you have your mother's eyes."

Harry started. He'd always thought his mother's eyes had been pigeon blue. He made a mental note to acquire a picture of Lily somehow. "Can you tell me the story of how they died?" Harry remembered what had happened, but he still didn't understand how Sirius of all people had ended up with the blame.

"Very well."

The story McGonagall told began with four friends sharing a dorm—it ended with one of them betraying another to the Dark Lord.

Harry marveled at how spectacularly wrong they'd gotten all the details in between.

"What happened to Peter's Order of Merlin?" he wondered.

"They had wanted to give it to his mother, but she had died just the year before," McGonagall said. "I suppose it is on display in some trophy room at the Ministry."

It was overwhelming, all the emotions that were making his face feel too hot and his feet feel too cold. He clenched his hands into fists, relieved at the sensation of his nails digging into his palms. That, at least, he could understand.

Had it been Dumbledore's doing, the Ministry's work, or was it the Daily Prophet which had twisted the facts so far? Harry Potter, heralded as some kind of saviour for vanquishing the Dark Lord. Sirius, in Azkaban for the Bombarda that killed twelve muggles and Peter Pettigrew, who himself was honoured as some kind of pointless loyal martyr.

But Harry knew that Peter hadn't died from Sirius' curse. He hadn't even died when he'd jumped in front of the car that had killed them both. Instead, like a red sock washed with whites, or like a phoenix, or a metaphor, they'd blended to become something different. Something new: a boy who could remember to get up and go to the loo even when he was in the middle of something, and a man who was able to find comfort in being alone.

"Please may I go?" he asked again, and this time McGonagall let him.

xoxox

That night, instead of sleeping, Harry took his father's cloak and climbed all the way up the astronomy tower. He sat and watched the stars spin around him until he woke with a sore back, already late for his first Potions class.

xoxox

The next Thursday, Flitwick was the one to summon him before dinner. Harry liked Professor Flitwick, he'd been very kind so far.

During their first Charms class Flitwick had even toppled off his books while calling attendance. Harry knew the master dueler wasn't clumsy, so it had to have been an act for Harry's sake. And it had worked—instead of twisting in their seats to stare at him the entire class had kept their eyes facing the front.

"I'm supposed to ask you how you're feeling and what you've been learning," Flitwick said, peering at Harry over his spectacles.

Now that he was so close, Harry could see how the bristles of Flitwick's moustache moved as he spoke.

"If you want, we could talk about something else," the moustache said.

Vernon had a moustache too, but the man was so large that Harry never really had to see his face. Flitwick was the opposite. He seemed to consist mostly of silver-dusted strands, accented by wrinkles.

Harry was as delighted as he was confused. "Did you look different when you came to Surrey?"

The pink lips under the neat moustache smiled. "I'm part-goblin, Harry. I wear a glamour when I'm among muggles."

A very logical choice. Harry decided he liked Flitwick even more than before. He answered the obligatory question. "My classes are alright, but Professor Snape hates me."

"Professor Snape doesn't hate his students," Flitwick said with a kind of tiredness, like he'd said the words many times before. "You must remember it's a dangerous subject, and just like Professor McGonagall he's very strict so that people don't get hurt."

"Seamus got covered in boils," Harry argued. "That's a terrible precedent if he's trying to avoid accidents. And I didn't say he hates everyone, just me."

Professor Flitwick sighed. "He told us you were late to his class and didn't follow his instructions."

"The instructions were stupid." Harry remembered the recipe for boil cure, and it was meant to have a sprig of peppermint added, with holly berries instead of red peppercorns. "My potion would have worked if Snape hadn't vanished it."

"Professor Snape," Flitwick corrected gently, "doesn't hate you. It's his right to take points for tardiness, and to stop you if you're not doing what you're told. This is a school, Harry. We have to prepare everyone to take the same exams at the end of the year by following the same curriculum. I know I told your aunt we could arrange some special circumstances for you but there are limits, you have to see that. You can't just do what you want."

Not-McGonagall had always proclaimed things like If there's a will, there's a way, or There's no such thing as 'can't'. Harry had never really been listening, the words pearling off him like water off a duck's back as he'd watched rain dribble down the windowpanes.

But now, suddenly confronted with someone drawing arbitrary lines between what he could and couldn't do, it all flooded him. How dare they tell him he was somehow less, just for being a bit different? Hot rage filled him like a whistling kettle.

"At my old school they mostly let me do my own learning so long as I managed certain tests and listened to their classes about Faces and Tonality and things." He said the words very fast, letting them fizz through him. "You told Aunt Petunia you wouldn't change my routines. It's not fair for you to break your promises."

Life wasn't fair, Harry knew. He could feel his anger collapse like a fresh-baked flan. Not-McGonagall would have said something along the lines of, You shouldn't let it bother you so much.

Harry took a deep breath. "You could let me study in the library and just take the exams you need me to." The words raced out of him far too quickly.

As his face burned and the silence stretched, Harry wished desperately that he could just talk normally for once.

"Alright," Professor Flitwick finally replied. "I'll see what I can do."

Really? "Wow."

"Some older years might be willing to supervise and tutor you for a fitting reward. I'll see if your other professors aren't willing to relinquish some old tests, essay questions, and exams. Chin up, Harry, I'm a halfling of my word."

That had Harry smiling, the emotion tingling all the way to his fingertips. "Do you know about hobbits, sir? They're called halflings too. And their ears are pointed."

"I see you've been reading beyond your age group," Flitwick replied, also smiling. "Now if that's all, you've given me a fair bit of work to do."

So Harry raced back to Gryffindor tower, only losing two points for running in the halls. He stumbled over an explanation to Neville during dinner, pleased when the boy never interrupted him once. And afterwards they snuck into Greenhouse Two, tiptoeing around the tentacula and goggling at the fanged tulips while grinning from ear to ear.

xoxox

Dear Aunt Petunia,

Professor Flitwick has made a new schedule for me so I don't have to do all my classes with everyone else. Most of the classes were boring anyway, luckily I only have to attend the practical lessons now. A group of sixth years have been assigned to me in case I have questions, so it's going very well.

Well, all classes except Herbology (because every lesson is a practical already), and Potions (because Professor Snape hates me). Neville works with me in both, though, so it's not that bad.

Overall I have settled in nicely. I miss your cooking. I miss the sound of Dudley's video games. I miss my room with the window and the view of Number Six's laundry.

May I please have a pet next year? It doesn't even have to be an arachnid. Magical pets are very self-sufficient and it would be nice to have a companion. Ron and Sean teased me for sleeping with Ratty so I hid him in my trunk.

Yours Sincerely,

Harry

xoxox

"Professor Flitwick," Harry began before he could ask the usual Thursday questions, "why doesn't my aunt write back?"

"She's writing to me," Flitwick admitted easily. "I can ask her for you, if you like."

The thought made Harry feel sick. As usual, people were speaking about him behind his back, as if he weren't clever enough to keep up. "It's okay," he said quietly. He didn't want Petunia to write because someone asked her to, but because she wanted to.

"Let's talk about how your classes have been going," Flitwick allowed, changing the topic.

Harry sighed in relief.

xoxox

Dear Harry,

Thank you for writing. I'm sorry I didn't reply, (I was having trouble with the owls— it's been awfully busy—)* I didn't know what to say.

Things have been very different here since you and Dudley left. I didn't realise it before but I miss the sound of Dudley's video games, too. Cooking for only myself and Vernon has been hard, I keep making too much. I'm talking to Professor Flitwick about the possibility of sending you a package with some biscuits.

It's good you're settling in alright. It's strange, on one level I'm glad the transition has been so easy for you and on the other I'm upset by it. You have always had such a hard time of things, no matter how much we tried. To think, all you needed was magical boarding school to sort yourself out.

Marge is visiting next week. It'll be interesting, at least.

Take care of yourself, Harry.

Your Aunt Petunia

xoxox

Dear Aunt Petunia,

I enjoyed the biscuits very much, thank you.

Did you know there was a troll here on Halloween? A girl almost died. Neville said nobody has been able to get word out to their families, so I enchanted this letter to be unreadable to anybody but you.

My new friend Nymphadora has been helping me with my runes projects. She's much older than me but she needs to pass potions for her job so she's staying at Hogwarts another year. You'd hate her because her hair is pink, but I really like her.

I don't think she's used a single metaphor while speaking to me. It's like she understands.

Did Ripper dig up the roses again?

Yours Sincerely,

Harry

xoxox

*if someone could help me make the strikethrough formatting work I'd be much obliged.

As always, there's more of the story on ao3 already.