Begin back in classes the next week was odd.
It was embarrassing to have to admit, but Harry found himself wishing he had a bigger, better reputation as he waded through the Hogwarts corridors between classes. His body seemed to rattle about like a pinball as hordes of second years pushed past to make it to Potions without being late, or the seventh years paced down the corridor, zombie-like, towards their next N.E.W.T intensive not noticing his presence.
Unable to see them coming and mostly helpless, Harry found himself bouncing off walls, people and the occasional suit of armour a little more frequently than he'd like. His shoulders grew tender where the pale bruises formed; his feet had been stood on a few too many times to count.
Hermione and Neville did their best, of course, to keep him protected and safe. Crow and Crookshanks also took turns riding his shoulders and acting as another pair of eyes when Harry found himself alone, but the task was doomed to difficulty.
"Ouch!"
"Sorry, Potter," someone who might have been Dunbar apologised, already drifting further and further away down the crowded corridor on her way to dinner.
Wrapped around his shoulder like a grumpy scarf, Crookshanks hissed his displeasure.
"Sorry, buddy. I'll keep my balance better next time." Harry's right hand reached up and stroked at the kneazle's right foreleg, before following the muscles up and finally finding Crookshanks' head.
You only poke a kneazle once in the eye before you quickly learn not to do that again, Harry had learnt.
He petted Crookshanks absently, hearing the low reassuring rumble of the great cat purr at the action, and then straightened himself in what he hoped was the right direction.
Between the classes they shared, Neville shouldered against the crowds to keep one hand on Harry's elbow and reliably point him in the least-obstructed direction. Ahead of them, Hermione did her best to force her way through the onslaught of oncoming students whenever she could, creating the break in the crowd so that Harry wasn't bounced: his feet weren't stood on, his arms jostled, or – very oddly – his hands and face stroked by his unseen admirers.
Fortunately, his best mates were with him.
"I don't think they mean any harm, Harry," Hermione's baffled voice was forced to explain just before Monday's dinner bell. She, Harry and Neville huddled together in what Harry assumed was a private alcove on the main West Wing corridor. Their recently released classmates had forged on without the trio, leaving Harry to catch his breath and his friends rallied around him.
Crookshanks lay on his shoulders, his seeing-eye-kneazle of the day, but it was the fangirls that they were currently discussing.
Harry's face was flustered and warm, and – he had the most horrible feeling – it now smelt of a chaotic combination of talc, lavender and sandalwood, plus more perfumes he couldn't name.
"Well, it's weird anyway, isn't it?" Neville's voice demanded from Harry's left.
She huffed. "Yes, of cour—obviously, Harry! I'm not condoning this. I just…this is just bizarre. They've never been like this before, have they?"
"…No."
"At least they don't seem to be trying to sexually harass you or, or steal hair for potions or anything."
Harry raised an eyebrow that neither of his friends could see under the blindfold, and thought of the irony, but Hermione continued.
"I mean…I don't think they have?" She grabbed his hands with her small, warm ones and turned them over. "I don't see any scratches. No hair missing? Nothing's pinched you so far, have they Harry?"
He shook his head before remembering that he couldn't see that and spoke out: "No." Then Harry realised that he was the only one currently blind and his friends could see just fine, which brought a fresh blush to his already flustered face.
"I…no hair's been 'plucked' yet, if that's what you're asking. A lot of fingers just up my sleeve cuff, mainly. Pats on the face. Some of them – were they girls, did you see? I assume they were fangirls – just reach up to grab my upper arm and squeeze me like a piece of meat. It's weird, Hermione. I don't like it."
Neville sounded horrified. "But those were Hufflepuffs!"
"Even Hufflepuffs can be crazy, Neville." Hermione probably rolled her eyes, judging from the suppressed huff that Harry felt rather than heard.
Neville subsided into spluttering silence.
Then, with a pause in the patter of Hermione's footsteps that had Harry knowing inspiration had just hit the girl, Hermione spoke darkly. "That's proven there's an unusually high percentage of illogical people though, wouldn't you say, Harry?"
Harry had never been comfortable with them, but he didn't know how that stacked up against muggle behaviours. He gnawed his lip a little and said nothing.
"I've never seen muggles acting like this. Have you, Harry?"
Harry had never mentioned that his aunt and uncle didn't take him out, so he didn't have much to add. He kept his silence, letting Neville tug him around corners and patter along just behind the sound of Hermione's voice.
"It can't all be personal trauma. What are the effects of generational trauma, would you say?"
Harry shook his head again, even if Hermione wasn't looking back to see him. "I really couldn't comment, Hermione."
They pattered along the corridor for a little bit more until the approaching sound of more voices travelling in a crowd burst out of a side corridor and surround the trio.
Harry felt someone grab at his chest and squeeze once. Someone rubbed shoulders with him, and Neville grunted a little as he tried to lead Harry left, away from the crowd. Neville, the brave lad, interposed his body between Harry and the other students who rushed past like a wave.
The three stuttered to a stop, leaving them all baffled and a little dizzy when the giggling, chattering crowd finally surged past.
Hermione huffed. "Harry, I just don't know what to do. Your fans are ridiculous."
Neville seemed flustered, and Harry suddenly hoped wildly that it hadn't been Hannah who'd come up behind him to sniff him and then run away giggling.
"I-I don't know how to stop them, Harry. I'm sorry. I…do you want me to…maybe I could hold your arms on both sides and cover you up?"
Harry dismissed the mental image of Neville and himself walking down the school corridors in some kind of all-encompassing embrace.
"Er. No, thanks."
From the sound of her footsteps and the rustling of her robes, Hermione began moving forward again. "Should I talk to Professor McGonagall?"
This time it was Harry who snorted. "I brought it up yesterday, actually. She said she'd talk to the prefects next meeting, but I don't think that will do anything, actually. I mean…If they don't do it when I'm with you guys, they'll do it when I'm alone and functionally blind, you know?"
Hermione spoke darkly. "Trauma. It must be trauma. Something's driven them mad, and now they're helplessly obsessive."
Harry felt rather hot around the neck and stretch up a hand to stroke gently along Crookshanks' neck again, letting some cool air slip down his collar as he did so.
"Sure. Let's go with that."
He felt Neville reach out to grasp his elbow again, and Harry was shuffled about until he faced the right way.
Hermione stepped ahead, her clear voice entertaining the trio while helping Harry to envision what was coming ahead. "Would you say that this kind of behaviour is normal for wizards, Neville, while we're on the topic?"
"I…no? Why?"
Hermione continued. "This kind of behaviour seems terrible anti-social to me. In muggle schools, students who are vision-impaired have all sorts of help to get them through classes and around the school. They certainly don't get mobbed by rabid fans. Do you think this is indicative of some greater…cultural damage, perhaps?"
"…You went to a fancy school," Harry protested.
"Yes, but it's the behaviour of the…it's the cultural expectations that I'm talking about here, Harry."
"Whoa, whoa, whoa!" Harry held up his free hand and hoped Hermione saw his protest. "Careful where you say that, Hermione. I don't think the wizards have a monopoly on mobbing. Even I've heard about …like people were like with the Beatles, for example."
She hissed. "Yes, but they were celebrities!"
Harry stumbled as Neville's grip on his other elbow jerked backwards, and the taller boy – and when had Neville grown that tall anyway? – paused in his footsteps to laugh.
"Hermione, I love you as a friend dearly, but your muggle-raised background means you have no idea what Harry Potter means to the Wizarding World, do you?"
Harry could feel the girl inflating in fury.
"It's not a criticism," Neville hurried to point out. "Just a…just a cultural thing you haven't grown up with. Harry's…he's huge, Hermione. People have been naming their children after him for over a decade now. On top of all the research and history you've read, he has whole serieses named after him and inspired by him and dedicated to him. Lines of dedicated products."
"Then why haven't I—"
"You don't read much wizarding fiction, so you never noticed. But he's…" Neville began walking again even as he seemed to search for words. "He's bigger than Celestina Warbeck. He's bigger than the National English Quidditch Team. Let's see…He's as big as Dumbledore, Hermione!"
"Surely not! I mean – no disrespect Harry, but you're only a school kid…"
"Dumbledore might have defeated a Dark Lord," Neville argued compellingly, "but he didn't break the known rules of magic to do it!"
Pottering along, secure in the guidance of two of his best friends, Harry found himself only mildly surprised to hear Neville's take on his fame. Then, from the sudden change in the echo of their voices and a clatter of footsteps and moving stone, he realised that they must be nearing the Grand Staircase.
"Uh, Neville," Harry interrupted. "Thanks for that. I think it would be good for Hermione to have a chat with you about this next time, don't you think? She's currently on a research binge to investigate the mental health of witches and wiz—don't hit me! It's true!"
Hermione snorted, hopefully in amusement.
"But you go ahead to dinner for a bit, won't you? Hemione and I do have one more thing to get to…save us seats at the table, yeah?"
And as soon as Hermione confirmed Neville was gone, she threw her golden necklet over Harry's head and turned time back to lunch.
"Thank Merlin that Divination is over for the day," Hermione muttered as she took over steering Harry towards their next class together.
It was a new routine. They were travelling back along the wide and commonly used Hogwarts corridors, because Harry didn't trust himself in the magic passageways alone – even with Crookshanks or Crow to help. He had a prodigious memory these days but even he struggled to remember if this secret passage took him to the fifth floor on Wednesdays or Fridays, and whether that hidden door was an actual door or just a wall pretending when it came to Tuesday afternoons. Being blind, of course, he couldn't check.
He was avoiding using the Room of Requirement's secret passages, because something felt off with them now.
It felt a bit odd following Hermione round like he hadn't done since the last timeline.
But Hermione was oblivious to his musings.
"I know you think it has potential, but as far as I'm concerned, Trelawny is just proving herself to be the worst thi—"
There was the approaching stampede of student feet on stone floors. Harry lost her voice under the onslaught of students rushing their direction, and he gritted his teeth against what was quickly becoming the expected ritual of grabby hands and sniggers as students forged past him anonymously in a whirlwind of movement.
Crookshanks hissed, his claws once again reaching through Harry's robes to prick his skin. At least it was grounding, in the chaos of students.
They passed. He paused, dizzy, just before they reached the Arithmancy room.
"…are you okay, Harry?"
Crookshanks grumbled where he lay over Harry's shoulders and Harry grabbed towards the wall, his fingers grasping and holding at the cold stone to regain his equanimity. "I—Godric but that was worse than usual – I…that giggle. Was that Vane we just passed, Hermione?"
"Who?"
"Somethingorrather Vane. I know her touch, I think. Um…Rosmany, maybe? Ah, Romilda Vane, a fangirl. I swear, I have nightmares about her giggle." And her potioned chocolates, but Harry didn't add that. "I'm not comfortable with how she touches me. Do you think you could watch out for her next time and, maybe, intervene for me?"
"She's just a third-year student, Harry."
"She's exactly the type of girl who would add my hair to a potion if she thought she could get it."
"Right," his best friend spat darkly. "I'm on it." Then Harry strained his ears to hear, "Witches and their obsessions, indeed."
They stepped into the Arithmancy room shortly after that, for a safe and quiet lesson even if it meant Harry had to use his memory on a scale as yet unprecedented.
He slid his way into his regular seat and leaned back. From his shoulders, Crookshanks stretched and coiled and padded down into a more comfortable position on Harry's lap. Harry felt the long ginger hair tickled around his neckline and ruffle up again his school robes as the great kneazle did so.
"Anything up on the board, 'Mione?"
Hermione was still busy setting up her own desk: he heard the rustling of parchment settling, the clicking of quills and ink bottles being set onto the flat desk, and Hermione's voice murmuring lowly from where it was muffled by her satchel.
"Nothing yet. Professor Vector said we'd be revising all of this week though, going over what was on our exams at the end of last year. How are you on percentages? You remember my notes from last week? And what I summarised for you last night?"
Harry scoured his silver-webbed mind: the occlumency was really a worthy investment. "I think so. Not too bad, I guess? It'll all be harder when I have to visualise the new stuff blind though. If we could talk through the lesson again later tonight I think that would help."
Thank Merlin that Hermione was the kind of friend who bonded over study. "Of course."
Harry heard the quick, clipped tone of Professor Vector stepping into class from her little side room, and found himself sitting up straight, the better to listen with.
All of this listening and memorising for class would be great exercise for his occlumency to develop further, at any rate. If he managed to follow the lesson at all, if sheer attention could increase memory. He tried to pulse his inner well of magic and maybe 'encourage' it into his mind a little. Would that help, Harry wondered? He'd try almost anything at the moment…
"Welcome class," the witch's attractive voice stifled any shuffling in the class, and Harry aborted his twitch to pick up a quill he couldn't use now. "We will begin by revising some basic strategies for quick-fire percentage calculation before moving on to the real learning of the lesson. As I'm hoping most of you have worked out for yourself, percentages are reversible. See on the board: eight percent of twenty-five, for Mister Potter, and consider…"
Harry did his best to imagine the calculation: 8% of 25 shimmered feebly in the centre of his mind's eye, and he ran gentle fingers along Crookshanks' bony spine and tried to follow her voice.
The focus was bound to be good practice for something eventually, at any rate…
Other classes were a challenge in their own different ways. Setting up his dicta-quill for History was a bit of a hassle, but easy enough once he'd remembered to square the quill to the parchment so that each line remained on the page.
Muggle studies used the same method, and besides Harry wasn't 'learning' stuff so much as 'aligning' his perspective with wizarding outlooks.
Runes was harder, but Babbling had somehow come up with the idea of inscription, and Harry was rapidly learning to carve his rune-notes into soft stone while the woman talked, and tried to feel his way around the runes and his notes during exercises.
Harry's fingertips tingled. He'd gotten better at that, actually, because he could now count stitches and purls on his knitting needles with his fingertips, never mind how fuzzy or misshapen each stitch was.
Inscribed runes, Harry hoped, were just the next stage of his learning, and as long as he made sure not to accidentally bleed magic into them or anything, it might be a very helpful trick to know.
The stone was cool against his fingertips when his hands reached out to pat softly around his desktop. Even as Hermione's quill scratches were rapid and hurried, Harry found his fingers drifting over the smooth stone.
He imagined it was dark. Surprisingly un-grainy, less like sandstone or cement than Harry had somehow figured. But the little knife thing he'd been given with the sharp and charmed end scooped the stone out with very little pressure.
The line was wobbled, Harry realised with a scowl. Less 'kaunan', more 'wriggly earthworm'.
He scowled, felt around for a blank space on the stone, and lifted the inscribing knife again.
Thank Merlin that he'd already done his homework for the term; using his memory of last timeline and Percy's notes, now he had one less thing to worry about.
Harry pushed 'reading' and 'writing' out of his mind.
It felt like betrayal though, that it was his wand classes that were the most unpredictable. Except for Potions, which Harry skipped guiltlessly, Harry faced unforeseen challenges just by waving his wand about, but there was a sudden issue with his will, apparently.
Willing his spells to work blindly, specifically.
With wandwork in Charms, Transfiguration and Defence, Harry was flailing, not quite a danger to himself and others, but certainly a wild card.
His body seemed constantly off balance while he waved his wand in for Professors McGonagall and Flitwick, or pointed and stabbed it at things for Not-Moody. He didn't know how much of his was his eyes, and how much of it was the absence of his wings as a human.
While the space around him was as black as his blindfold could make it, Harry could still feel his magic bloom and blossom within him and then…disappear oddly into thin air as he cast his spells out into space he couldn't see.
Like his ears popping when his broom flew too high too fast, or that odd twisting of the world you felt from side-along apparition, Harry's spells were off-balance.
"Blimey, Harry!" Ron exclaimed when they were working on switching spells on Thursday morning. "You've set my desktop on fire again!"
Ron's desk, which was one aisle over and a row back from Harry's, was indeed on fire according to the rustles and snickers of the room.
"Sorry!" Harry mumbled, and tried to send a quick extinguishing charm to where he knew the eruption would be. He knew the placement of these desks so well he could navigate them in his sleep.
But, "Oi, watch it!" Seamus promptly yelped from the row ahead of Ron. "You've half vanished my feather, Harry!"
By his left side, Neville stiffened. "Are you sure it was Harry?" His voice was low enough in the clatter of the room not to draw too much attention, but from the snickers and giggles that responded Harry realised that his failures weren't subtle.
"C'mon," Seamus argued, although at least his voice was cheerful and amused. "Of the eight attempts that Harry's had at this spell, not a single one's failed subtly."
Ron chortled. "Not to mention the weird light that keeps flaring from his wand tip to whatever is going to go wrong next!"
Harry's neck flushed red-hot. "Really? I've got energy bleed?" He'd known switching spells for years, for Merlin's sake.
"From your wand tip to other people's desks indeed, Mister Potter," came McGonagall's smooth voice. "A most impressive purple, it seems today."
He put his wand down on the desktop with a click to rub his hands over his face. Nimble fingers found the tense spots in his temples and Harry spent a moment working out the muscle tightness.
"Sorry," he hunched. "I thought I was keeping my limits pretty tight, actually."
He could practically visualise one of McGonagall's eyebrows rising.
"A bit more work I should think, Mister Potter," his teacher suggested patiently enough. "No need to be frustrated; spellcasting blind is an advanced exercise for magical control, after all. Take a deep breath, ground yourself properly, and try again."
Harry shook his shoulders loose, felt sightlessly for his wand that had rolled a few inches from where he had placed it, and twirled the thin wood in his hands.
One more switching spell. It was simple. He'd been doing this for years. And when it worked, maybe twice more after that, so it stuck.
Friday afternoon, then, felt better than Harry could express. He found himself sitting outside the castle, his blindfold blessedly off, and gazing at the light and the forest and his companions for the first time in days.
"Blimey, Harry!" Fred teased as they hunkered down next to Harry, where he sat on a tree stump. "Look at you: brought to tears by the sheer poetry of nature."
Harry sniffed. "I thought it was the fact that I haven't seen light since September the first, actually, but sure, let's go with what you said."
It was indeed a bit too bright for comfort right now, and Harry found himself blinking madly just to keep his eyes open. But he was going to keep his eyes open, because Godric but how he had missed seeing the light, and knowing where people were, and where his body was in space…
It was a pleasantly breezy day, as was often the case on the top of Hogwarts hill. The clouds seemed lowish today. Perhaps there would be rain tomorrow if this cloud bank lasted, judging by colour, but the trees were luscious and green out over the hills and the valleys that Harry could see from where he sat. The sky showed patches of blue, and his own hands moved neatly and knowingly across the parchment as he checked his answers for the Arithmancy exercises for the week.
The pale sunshine was mild, and magnificent. The world was beautiful, Harry found himself appreciating it. He loved his eyes. What a wonderful world.
Beyond that, the magic of the weave of the world was amazing: a cadenza of light and sparkles and shine. The grass near his feet shimmered with green glimmers; trees in the encroaching forest rustled in rhythm as slow, waxy beads of like pulsed up bark, and leaves twinkled gold. There were red and silver splashes of movement that Harry knew would be birds or insects darting in the Forbidden Forest, their true bodies out of his sight but their magic sparking through…
Twinkles of light and gossamer sparkled over everything; the world was ablaze in colour and shine.
Harry's eyes burned bright, and he tried desperately to control that somehow. It was all a matter of practice, wasn't it? Stubborn control, he could do, Harry knew.
He didn't dare turn his head around to look at the enchanted castle behind him. He was probably only imagining the burn on his back from the heat of its glare, but there was no reason to risk it.
"So," exclaimed Lee, flopping down on a patch of dryish ground – mostly dirt and sparse grassy cover. "What's the plan for today, lads?"
"Practice shifting," George grinned. "Harry here is going to watch us for a bit, see if the magic looks too intense. If it doesn't really flare up on us three, he'll give his own form a shot. If it's bad, he's going to just work on his limbs to keep the memory fresh and do his homework while he waits, the poor lad."
"Sorry sod."
"Cheers, mates," Harry grinned nervously.
Harry found his knees jiggling. It was very pleasant to watch them like that, just bouncing along visibly, in the excitement of finally shifting.
On his left shoulder, Crow was dislodged by the movement and complained loudly about it even as he fluttered haphazardly to the ground.
"Sorry, buddy," Harry grinned. He admired the way that light shot through Crow's body – wrapping his skeletal structure, threading his muscles, dusting his feathers – even as he longed to make the same transformation himself.
"Ohhh, you couldn't even practice in the dorms this week, could you Harry?"
"Couldn't do bloody anything," Harry admitted bleakly. No Pensieve, no written work…he'd been stuck meditating, recalling his lessons through sheer obstinacy, and flexing the muscles of his mind, the better to dim the lights with.
"It's just one thing on top of the others with you, isn't it?"
"Ain't that the truth."
Lee rolled over to loll in the grass, "Your timing sucks, Harry."
Harry shrugged.
"Blimey but you must have been going spare! Imagine all of this is ready but you're under observation."
"And don't forget the threat of terminal brain blowout."
"Oh yeah, that too."
Harry tried to focus his eyes. There was a little squeeze that he could kind of do with his brain that made the lights shine dimmer for him: the beginnings of mage sight control, he assumed. He flexed it. The lights faded minutely.
"Well," he said impatiently, tapping fingers on his knees with nervous energy. "Go on then, won't you? I need to see if I can do this, and I'm desperate to try."
Even with his eyes open, vision and mage sight shining in, Harry could still visualise himself winging into the sky. His wings would be strong and steady, his eyes sharp, beak wicked.
His tiny black body would have the explosive power of flight, and he'd have Crow to guide him through the forest.
Picking berries, or whatever it was the crows ate.
He turned to see the absurd image of Lee half-crup, his head and back legs stuck awkwardly on the body of a tan and dark-brown Jack Russell.
"Eh?!" Harry exclaimed. He forgot to control the magic colours in his eyes, and the dim-ish colours flared back bright. Fortunately, the nature of the animagus spell seemed to mean the magic didn't blaze like Hogwarts'.
Lee ignored him, forehead creased in focus, eyes scrunched up tight.
Then, as Harry watched the older boy in astonishment, Lee's head and legs seemed to slowly readjust their size. Still human – in one of the weirdest images Harry thought he'd ever seen – but becoming more and more proportionate, the other boy shrank slowly.
Harry startled and dropped the parchment and quill onto the floor when George came up behind him and snorted in amusement. Crow pecked at them, bored.
"I suppose you wouldn't know then, how awkward the changes are for the first wee while," the taller red-head boy said. "As Lee mentioned, we've been practising every night in our dormitory for an hour or two: the change is awfully slow mate. The ritual must have done all the fancy bits for us that first time, because the practice is slow going, Harry m'lad. Slow going indeed."
Flicking his gaze up at the freckled boy who didn't seem too disappointed despite his words, Harry pondered for a moment. "Is it dangerous, at this stage? Like, if someone walks in on Lee like that, for example, and loses focus or something?" He waved his left hand towards where Lee was now trying to sit as a dog did, but his knees hadn't turned the right way yet and the position seemed rather uncomfortable.
"No, no. The body's got the map down by this stage," George assured him. "Worst case scenario, he'll snap right back into his own body with a bit of a sting."
He sent a stinging hex Lee's way, which splashed against his haunches with a flare of white light. Harry blinked: the spell-light wasn't as painful as it could have been; he remembered to try to frown the brightness down again.
Instead of some great commotion, Lee's body was suddenly popped back into its usual size and proportions, his robes back to how they should look, and the only awkwardness was his sudden manly squeal as his centre of gravity changed so that Lee toppled back onto his rump.
He swore vilely, which set George off chortling and snapped Fred's focus so that he, too, popped back out of his early transformation stance and into an ungainly crouch.
Unlike Lee's fall backwards, Fred fell forward, jamming his nose into a pile of dirt.
George snorted.
Harry once again lost control of his mage sight beginnings as he forgot all his problems for just a few moments, and laughed at the look on Lee's face and the mayhem of the twins.
Mischief managed indeed.
He stood up, ignoring the parchment and quill that lay on the damp ground and Crow fluttering loudly by his ankles, to hold out a hand to Lee and pull the heaver boy to his feet.
He'd watch for a bit more, Harry thought happily. Maybe half an hour, if anyone could finish a full wizard-to-animal transformation by then, and if no sudden shocks of blazing light surprised him, he'd give it a go himself then.
His pulse thudded in his throat, suddenly reminding Harry of Sirius' lust for life. This was fun and exciting; this was harmless adventure.
How delightful it was to indulge in the magic of magic and see where it could take him.