AN: Thank you for all the lovely reviews!
Chapter three
The loss of the game and Harry's broom demolition when it flew into the whomping willow were sore topics for a while, but not as sore as Harry's desire to never be so susceptive to the dementor's thrall. The knowledge that they made him hear his mother's murder was not comfortable at all. To help Harry with that, Professor Lupin had agreed to teach him a method to defence after Christmas. Harry had been very happy to have Lupin back instead of the charming presence of Snape in one of Harry's new favourite classes.
With Quirrell and the headache he gave Harry, which later turned out to be because of Riddle and later the mess that was Lockhart, Harry had never been fond of Defence Against the Dark Arts lessons. For the first time the class now lived up to the expectations Harry had had for the subject before his first lesson in the first year. Lupin mixed practical and theory and always managed to make it interesting. He also tried to make sure that everyone understood.
Professor Lupin however had much to do after his illness, so Harry would need to wait until after Christmas. In the meantime Harry studied dementors and their weaknesses as he was also doing homework, helping Hagrid on the issue of Buckbeak's trial, mediating between Ron and Hermione on the scabber's issue, learned languages and had a lot of trying trainings on a very bad broom. Needless to say Harry had too much to do to ponder on Hermione's schedule, Lupin's reaction to Harry's mention of hearing his mother's murder or the mystery of Sirius Black.
Apart from all this Harry had also something more exciting to look forward to. He had asked Madame Pomfrey about lenses and to his delight was to be fitted for a pair that apparently fixed his eyesight over time, in a week. For the first time in his life he wouldn't be defenceless if his glasses broke, fell off or all of the other things they often decided to do when he was in dangerous situations.
About a week after the match, but before Harry's fitting for his lenses, just before an arithmancy lesson began Terry tapped Harry's shoulder as he tried to ignore Hermione's rant about Harry's desire to stay out of the Scabber's conflict. Terry smirked and waved a piece of parchment.
"I almost forgot about it with everything during Halloween, but here's the list of introductory books. Anthony also let me borrow two of them for you. The rest should be in the library." Terry smirked and floated the list to land neatly in Harry's bag that he had been in the process to put some charms homework back into. Susan laughed at Terry's showing off.
"It'd been more impressive if you'd made it into a paper airplane." Harry said with a smirk. Terry snorted haughtily while Susan laughed beside Harry. The trio spent the rest of the time before the lesson started making each other parchment into paper airplanes and avoiding its owner. Susan won.
The books on the list Terry had given him had been really helpful. Now he understood why the measuring tape at Ollivander's had measured so many things, why people fear giants, magical transportation, how OWLs are conducted etc. It annoyed him that no one had informed him of these books. He even recognised some of them from Hermione's collection and she had never said anything when it was obvious that Harry didn't know. Ron also had learned this from many of these books, he had seen them at their home and several of them stated that they were for children and to introduce people to the magical world. Why hadn't they pointed Harry to these books when he showed his lack of knowledge? Why hadn't some of the teachers? Had they just assumed that he was lazy or stupid?
Confused and slightly embarrassed that he didn't know all these things Harry had somehow found time to read the books. Thankfully most of them were relatively light since they only gave an overview and not an in depth description about everything.
Another thing that made Harry glad to have met more people was that Harry could talk with Cedric after the match.
"You know I wanted to do a rematch…" Harry shrugged at Cedric and shook his head.
"You won fairly. It's fine, it's not like you invited the dementors." Harry joked. Cedric still looked a bit worried.
"Still it's not the way I want to win a game."
"It's not the way I want to lose a game either, but it's a fair game." They shook hands and proceeded to go into the classroom to start the French lesson. Malfoy had found it funny however and had been disturbing Harry by imitating his fall. Luna helped him by wondering if Malfoy's imitations of Harry falling of his broom were Malfoy having seizures due to prolonged exposure to the Blibbering Humdinger. Susan and Terry just talked loudly in ancient runes, which Malfoy took but always sat quite far from Harry.
"It's a pity that Malfoy isn't as good as a seeker as an actor, really." Most of the class had snorted at that and Malfoy had continued with his habit of leaving Harry alone during ancient runes.
Oliver had soon rebounded from the defeat. Harry and the rest of the teem pretended to not notice that it was Katie who had managed to drag out Oliver from the shower (apparently she had threatened to quit the team if he didn't come out of there, the rest of their shouting match was unknown) or that he seemed to be spending time looking at her with a thoughtful and surprised look. Katie seemed to blush a bit round Oliver, but after very threatening glares from Alicia and Angelina the twins and Harry decided that the matter was best left alone. Despite his sometimes preoccupation with Katie, Oliver still cringed at the broom Harry was using. The sedate and tired broom was still secure, but definitely not suitable for playing quidditch. Even if Harry could get it to move much faster than Oliver, they had tested it, it still was far to slow for a broom to be chasing a snitch.
Harry was further pulled out of his glum mood, when he received back his first large essay in ancient runes. They had had several smaller assignments before, but now that they had had some practice and covered two runic system's basic alphabet and composition, they could start to actually use the runes instead of just translate them rune for rune, which took forever. So far they had used Norse as well as Gaelic runes. The essay had notes in the margins as well as a longer note after the end of the essay. Harry's note and grade made him feel like he was floating. He and Susan as well as Terry high fived each other as they had all done really well. Harry kept the comment on the end for himself though.
Mr Potter you should be very proud of this essay. I can clearly see that you've worked very hard with it. The structure is the only problem so I recommend that you check out academic writing by William Pondering. Otherwise this essay was the best of them all. I particularly liked that you managed to bring up the different forms of significance of runes in Nordic mythology. The research was very good and you managed to present it with brevity and within the maximum length I requested.
In the beginning Harry hadn't understood her reference to the length of his essay, which was precisely the maximum allowed length. He understood more when he heard Hermione complain about her grade to the professor after the lesson. Most students were already at the far side of the corridor, but Harry, Terry and Susan was just outside the classroom.
"It isn't fair I did more than you asked for, I should receive extra credit not a barely passable grade!" Hermione sounded furious and near tears.
"Miss Granger I specifically gave you a minimum and maximum length on this essay, you wrote twice that length. I did not grade or take into account what you had written beyond the maximum length. A few extra lines I can understand, but you clearly disregarded my instructions. Not only did you include things that might be interesting, but definitely not relevant for this assignment, you also paraphrased all of the reference literature. You never copied, but you need to summarise and write with you own words. Only the relevant parts for an assignments should be included not an entire book on the matter. I don't know if this has been tolerated by your other professors so far, but they will not tolerate this in the future. I have hundreds of students Miss Granger and I demand that they follow my instructions when they write an assignments. I warned you of this during you prior assignments." Harry and the others quickly ducked out of sight as Hermione stormed off. He couldn't understand how Hermione who always was so respectful to teachers would act like that.
Harry knew that Hermione prided her self on her knowledge. She made sure to include everything she knew about something. He knew that she had complained about something similar with Snape. Professor Babbling had been very clear with the assignments length and that anything more than maximum would be ignored. Hermione had become snappish with him recently as well. It seemed like she was stressing her self out. She also seemed to have trouble with others being first with something, seemingly doing better or wanting to borrow the same book as Hermione wanted to read. It was almost as is it was a competition and she must be the winner. This wasn't quidditch this was people's future lives and careers. Shouldn't Hermione be focused on her self rather than comparing her self to others all the time? She just seemed to be unable to stand some one being as good or better than her, she even refused to speak to Neville one day after he had receive high praise from Sprout during herbology.
Susan and Terry who had also heard everything looked shocked at Hermione's exit. Shaking their heads they all headed of to the library to study and meet up with Luna. Harry had introduced them to Luna, when Susan, Terry and Luna all had visited Harry in the hospital wing during the weekend. Terry had been ashamed that he had never spent more time to get to know Luna and had ignored the Loony comments. He and Anthony had made sure to include Luna when they ate at the Ravenclaw table, something that was rewarded with smiles from Harry and Susan.
When Harry returned to the common room that night he was accosted by Ron.
"Where have you've been mate? Let play some chess, I'm bored out of my mind with this potions essay. I've got all weekend, but Hermione's been nagging." Harry dearly cared about Ron, his first friend, but he was seriously becoming annoyed at Ron's tendency to complain. About school work, his brothers, the weather, the loss against Hufflepuff, crookshanks, the dementors and Harry's new classes.
"I mean you're never here!" Harry sighed and played a few rounds with Ron, getting thrashed every time. He didn't know what to do to tell Ron and Hermione that he was more than a little annoyed with them. He never really had had any other friends, but he could see with Susan and Hannah, one of her friends that they were able to talk about things. Harry still cared about them. Ron was still funny and mostly supportive and liked Harry despite, not because, Harry's fame. Hermione also didn't care about Harry's fame and she did care a lot about people around her. Somehow however both of them seemed to be so focused on themselves and their fights that they sometimes forget to talk with Harry and talked to him instead. Now was a great example. It was a Friday night but Harry had an eye exam early tomorrow, something both Ron and Hermione knew. Still Ron insisted that he play chess and Hermione that he would study a bit more even if Harry was done with almost all of his homework since he knew that he would be spending most of his time this weekend in the hospital wing and with the team on the pitch.
In the end, Harry managed to get away from the common room and upstairs when Oliver and Katie came over.
"Harry, why are you still up. You scheduled the eye exam to be before practise right?" Katie elbowed Oliver at this frantic comment and rolled her eyes.
"What he means is that he hopes the examination goes well and that you need your sleep." Harry grinned at Katie looked at Ron and Hermione. Both Ron and Hermione looked startled and Harry guessed that both of them had forgotten about his appointment entirely. Trying to fall asleep Harry admitted to himself that he was very nervous about the next day.
His nerves were somewhat justified. He had stepped into the hospital wing eight o'clock to see professor McGonagall and Madame Pomfrey already there. Harry was quickly placed on one of the beds, with a potion dropped into his eyes. After a few minutes, which were spent with Madame Pomfrey informing him about the different options, Madame Pomfrey began to cast different diagnostic charms while a dictations quill documented her questions and Harry's answer.
"When was your last check up?" Harry looked at her uncertainly. He had never had a check up. He had just gone with aunt Petunia to a store and tried on the cheap pre made glasses that were to big for him. He thought they were meant for adults.
"Um, I've never really had an appointment." You could hear a pin drop. Madame Pomfrey blinked and managed to get the story out of him. She began to mutter under her breath and flicked the quill when it wrote down her mutterings. Harry stifled a snort.
"Well then your eyes are in a miraculous good condition. I will send Professor McGonagall to the optician with your prescription and then fix the lenses over you eyes. However young man I have some questions. Have you ever been to the doctor? Or a visit to a dentist?" Harry blushed and looked at the ceiling, or the blurry thing he was sure was the ceiling.
"No." Both Madame Pomfrey and Professor McGonagall muttered and scowled at his answer.
"You will need to stay for the rest of the day Harry. I will need to do a full check up and might need to give you treatment or vaccinations. I will notify Professor Snape that I might need his assistance. Really Minerva, we might need to do this a compulsory examination for all incoming students. I had a second year a few weeks ago that grew up in this world and had never had her dragon flu vaccine." Harry was left alone, hoping and praying that Snape would not be involved in this examination.