The familiarity of the Hogwarts Express was like a balm. Everything still felt heavier than normal, the magical cheer not enough to hold him aloft, but it did keep him from drowning.
A whirlwind of Weasleys arrived onto the platform just as the carriage doors were beginning to close. Neville, with characteristic good manners, invited Ronald to join their compartment.
It had been just the three of them sitting in peace and quiet before. Now, with Ronald, the silence was awkward and the boy kept trying to fill it.
"Did you see our defence textbooks?" he said, wiping at a smudge on his nose. "We're getting a new teacher this year, it's great."
Then, "Fred and George say there's a curse on the position."
And, "We saw him in the bookshop, he's a bit of a fairy, but anything is better than Quirrell's stuttering," Ron said.
"Quirrell didn't leave, he died," Harry felt the urge to point out. They'd been right there in the room as it had happened.
The man had wrapped his fingers around Harry's throat and pressed—until Harry had nearly died, too. He lifted his hand to his neck and unbuttoned his collar, suddenly finding it unusually difficult to breathe.
"I liked Quirrell," Neville said. At his friends' expression, he amended, "Before, you know. He was a great teacher. Patient."
Harry had liked Quirrell too, all the way up to when he'd revealed the Dark Lord was stuck to the back of his head.
"I like that he stut-t-tered," Hermione added.
At this point, Ronald appeared to catch on to his chronic case of foot-in-mouth, and began talking quieter by half. "I don't mean there's a problem with stuttering in general, just not for a teacher."
"I like that he stuttered and was a teacher," Neville said. "It was inspiring."
Poor Ronald had turned beet-red, all the way to his ears.
"It doesn't matter what he was like as a professor," Harry determined. "He was in league with the Dark Lord."
"Yeah, that's unforgivable," Neville said.
Harry swallowed. "Is that so?" he said, but Neville was continuing over him.
"Whoever the new professor is, he can't do any worse than that."
xoxox
In their first Défense Against the Dark Arts class, Lockhart handed out quizzes that began with, 'What is Gilderoy Lockhart's favourite colour?'
"I think I preferred You-Know-Who," Neville whispered loudly.
Harry had to stifle his snort of laughter with his sleeve.
xoxox
School was unremarkable. Harry's Special Arrangement of being allowed to do mostly self-study for his classes continued. Pomfrey's Cheering Charms kept him balanced, and the library kept him sane despite the bustling, busy, bumbling children that were everywhere.
In comparison to the year before, it wasn't as overwhelming—not that the world had gotten any quieter, but most days he felt like the rushing waters had dug themselves a riverbed inside him that was deep enough to contain the flood.
When Hermione's parents had found out about Harry's non-curricular education, they had decided to push for Hermione to be granted the privilege also. Privately, Harry thought they'd gotten rather the wrong idea of things, but he enjoyed her quiet company nonetheless.
She was beautiful, sitting in the dull autumn sunshine at a table littered with books, parchment, and biros. Her hair surrounded her head like a nest for her mind to brood ideas in.
Watching her, Harry felt an odd urge well up in him. He wanted to keep her safe from their ugly politics and hateful whispers. He wanted to take her love for learning and knit it into a blanket to wrap her in. She was still so innocent, for all that she liked to remind him of her pending thirteenth birthday.
Some days, Malfoy would stop by to throw about his childish pettiness, calling them 'Scarhead one and Scarhead two.'
Every time, Harry saw Hermione burrowing deeper into her chair, he wished that his own mother had taught him to knit.
The next Thursday's meeting with Flitwick, he decided to ask for knitting charms.
"I'd rather we talked about something that mattered, Harry," the professor had tried to argue.
"This is important," he'd countered.
He ended up enchanting the needles to knit by themselves instead of struggling with the finicky charms. On the morning of the nineteenth, Harry proudly presented his friend with a scarf in midnight blue. One end had Virgo on it, for innocence. The other he adorned with a silver rendition of the Ram, that he might protect her from the cold.
Her smile was all the more lovely for that she had worn it all day. Even though she didn't understand the metaphor, it was enough.
xoxox
On Halloween, the school whipped itself into a frenzy like half-made meringues.
Harry was entirely convinced that, should they stand little Colin Creevey on his head, he'd just stay that way. Actually, Flitwick probably did have an appropriate charm for sticking firsties to the ceilings.
It was loud, even in the sanctuary of the library. Madam Pince had to do twice the usual amount of aggressive shushing.
Harry found it impossible to concentrate, even the smells taunting him with the constant reminder of the occasion. All day long, Harry felt his quiet upset simmering into a whistling fury.
"I hate this," he said to Hermione, giving up entirely on his attempts to prepare for potions class the next day.
"Me too."
There was a drop of comfort in that. The whole mad world was celebrating the anniversary of the greatest tragedy in both Harry's lives. He knew it was shallow and bitter and ungenerous, but he was glad Hermione's greatest tragedy fell on this most awful of days, too.
Rain drummed against the windows, the grumbling Scottish weather mirroring Harry's thoughts.
Two tables over, some Ravenclaw giggled.
"SHUT UP!" Harry heard himself yell.
The entire library, including the ghost with the wonky neck that haunted the laddered shelves, turned to stare at Harry.
They weren't even quiet about it, breaking promptly into murmurs. If Harry'd still had accidental magic, he'd surely have done something embarrassing. Instead, he turned to Hermione, tugging carefully at her sleeve. "Come on."
He led her outside, where the grey sky held no solace. The Forbidden Forest was forbidden, not to mention a stupid place for two children to go. Hagrid's was a compromise, since they'd already gotten their boots wet stomping along the muddied path.
Hermione cast cleaning and drying charms on them both as soon as the half-giant let them in.
Fang began to double his saliva-production, as usual, while Hagrid put the kettle on.
"I was there yeh know, on tha' night," Hagrid said, once the silence had become entirely too heavy between them. "Sirius lent me 'is motorbike, he did. Put y' right in me arms."
If there was one thing Harry didn't want to think about, it was Sirius Black.
"Serious has a motorbike?" Hermione said, wearing her confusion like a hat.
Groaning, Harry laid his head on the table. There were grooves and stains in the wood from decades of use. He wondered if Hagrid had crafted it himself.
"Sirius Black, a bad egg if ever there was one. He did a terrible thing, betraying 'is friends like that. O'course, if I had known back then, I'd 'ave..."
What was it that made people think they had the right to judge anyone for anything? "What would you have done, Hagrid?" Harry said, the words coming out jagged and sharp.
"Well I'm not goin'ta say it now, it's not fer children's ears," he muttered in response. "Black was truly terrible, mark my words. No wonder, with how he grew up. It's in the blood, through an' through."
Harry felt his world darkening, his vision tunnelling. Breathe, he tried to remind himself, but his body wasn't listening to him very well.
"That's rich—talk of breeding—coming from you." Fuck, he should not have said that, he should not have said that. Harry took another few deep breaths, trying to calm himself.
Merlin, but he was so angry. He felt like he might explode with it, covering everyone around him in shrapnel.
Slowly, Hagrid set down his mug and stood up.
Harry realised how big the man was.
"Get out." A dustpan lid-sized hand pointed at the door.
Swallowing, Harry got to his feet. "Sorry," he whispered, and then he ran.
Hermione couldn't catch up to him on the main stairs, and he felt so wretched, so awful, so tired. She was having a bad day, and then he had to go and make it worse, but still his stomach was churning with bile and Hagrid's over-strong tea. He could feel the spit pooling in his mouth.
Turning another corner, Harry burst into a bathroom and made it to the toilet just in time.
He washed his hands and face afterwards. His reflection stared back at him, eyes too green and hair too dark. His skin looked sickly and pale, like he'd just seen a ghost.
"Hello," a voice said.
Harry whirled. There were two figures before him.
He wiped his eyes. They were still there. The Ravenclaw girls stepped out of a cubicle together, one of them with dirty blonde hair. The other was decidedly ethereal.
"I'm Luna Lovegood. This is Myrtle Warren."
Harry stared at them. Did Myrtle not remember him?
"...I'm Harry?"
"This is a girls' toilet," said the ghost.
"If you widen your mind there are more than two ways to be," said Luna Lovegood, tucking a quill behind her ear.
Huh? After another moment of confused internal flailing, Harry found fitting words. "What are you doing here?"
"This is a girls' toilet," Myrtle repeated. Harry pictured her head growing out of the greenhouse beds next to the rosemary and thyme.
"We're conducting an experiment," Luna explained. "I am examining the nature of metaphysical change in ghosts."
Harry wasn't sure what metaphysical meant, but he wasn't about to admit that to two Ravenclaw girls while accidentally invading their toilet. "I was vomiting," he said instead.
Retrospectively, asking for a definition might have been the better choice.
"I guess I'll just...leave, then." He began sidling towards the door.
"I don't mind if you stay," Luna said. Her voice had a lilting cadence.
"This is a girls' toilet," said Myrtle, again. Her voice was tinny, like her nose had been blocked for half a century.
"Isn't it queer?" Luna said, "Myrtle's mind wanders off to visit the pixies sometimes. I'm figuring out if she's better when closer to her usual bathroom. It's for an article I'm writing."
When he'd been brewing the Animagus potion in the second floor girls' bathroom, Myrtle hadn't done more than stop by and wave occasionally. Harry hadn't realised there was a connection between ghosts and toilets. Then again, he'd never asked Nick or the Friar about their...habits. It was an interesting idea. "Do ghosts pee?" he asked.
Myrtle seemed upset by the question, denotated by a loud wail and a dramatic exit into the nearest U-bend. Harry suddenly found himself liking the ghost a lot more—her feelings weren't just written on her face, they were evidently acted out in small skits when possible. It made interpreting her mood—and therewith the correct response—delightfully simple.
"I'm sorry, Myrtle, that was a misunderstanding," Harry said.
The ghost popped back out of the toilet and returned to Luna's side. Forgive and forget, apparently.
With the day he'd been having so far—all upset and incompetent and impotent—she was perfect.
Luna finally tucked her pencil behind her ear as she stopped writing. "Isn't it wonderful?"
Harry smiled. "Tell me about your experiment, Luna and Myrtle. You're exactly what I need right now."
Luna sat down on a toilet seat, but Harry chose to transfigure a chair for himself—and another for Myrtle, just to be polite.
"I'm a published journalist," Luna explained. "The Quibbler printed my first article about the habits of Nargles. Now I'm researching the nature of memories and ghosts. My father says good research makes for a good article, and if you don't find anything good you should just make it up." She nodded solemnly.
Harry nodded back. "That's very sensible."
"He says the Wiggle-ums told him, but that's what he always says when he means he read it somewhere. One thing can mean one thing, but it can also mean another thing."
If it walks like a duck and it quacks like a duck… Harry groaned. He still didn't like metaphors.
"What are you and Myrtle experimenting on, then?" Hopefully it was something simpler to grasp.
"She's infested by Humdingers," Luna said unhelpfully. "The farther we get from her bathroom the worse it is, although being in another bathroom instead of the hall improves things. Myrtle's travelling through the pipes."
Harry knew nothing of hum, nor of dingers. He wished he'd asked for a definition back when they'd been talking about metaphysics, at least he knew meta and physics separately. "I don't understand. Can you tell me about it?"
"No," Luna said, but she was smiling. "But I can show you. We should go to the second floor bathroom. You'll meet us there, won't you Myrtle?"
Day 20 of an update every day this December. Thank you for reading, my friends.