Broadcast #1: Friend

My parents put me in classes for it when I was young, at my request. They bought me the bow and a whole quiver of arrows, then paid two galleons a week on classes. The trainer was alright. A muggle, you know, but he was nice enough, and he did try teaching me the basics. He advised my parents to get me a target at home, something to put out in the backyard so I would have space to practice.

But I didn't practice. I only ever touched my bow once a week, in classes. I'm sure my trainer knew, but he didn't say anything. He was happy enough to be getting paid. And hey, it wasn't his job to be on my case. So this went on for a while, me only ever practicing in classes, not caring much for it, never getting any better, until one day my dad sat me down in the lounge and asked me if I even really wanted to be doing archery. It was okay if I didn't, but he'd rather not be wasting all that money if I wasn't serious. I told him I wasn't, and just like that, I stopped taking classes.

Years later, I picked up the bow again. I took my old quiver and started shooting out in the backyard. It wasn't for any particular reason, I just felt like it. And I got hooked ever since.

I guess the lesson is, you have to want to do it. It can't be forced on ya. And it can't feel like a job. If you can do it every day and it doesn't feel like a job, then you found it. That's what you're made for.

—Rowland Macmillan, in Archery Club B. 12

Harry pointed his wand at a sheet of parchment. He was supposed to be using it to write a paper—a hundred lines due by the next week—but he'd gotten caught up in something else entirely.

"Wingardium Leviosa," he said, and the sheet of parchment rose off the table it sat on and into the air. It floated there, and Harry looked at it with the same awed light he'd had ever since that morning when he'd taken his first class in magic. Professor Flitwick had given them the whole hour to play around with the spell, letting them cast the levitation charm as much as they wanted, all along speaking at length about its history.

Who created it, when, how it had entered the wizarding mainstream… Flitwick had told them all this, but Harry hadn't paid any attention to it. He'd been too focused on the white feather he'd been given to practice with. Just a swish and flick, a couple of words, and viola. Harry had used magic. He could hardly believe it even as he stared at the levitating feather, the thing looking as if it were drifting in the air on its own, except it didn't come down until he wanted it to. Even now, Harry couldn't really believe.

Someone thumped him on the shoulder. Harry turned, wand coming down and the feather with it. Justin was standing behind him in pajamas, the dim light of the fireplace at the other end of the room lighting his sardonic face.

"Oi, Harry. Still at it?"

Harry blushed a bit. He'd taken it upon himself to get his homework out of the way the moment he'd come back to the Hufflepuff commons. His new friends—a definition he'd only given to them hesitantly and for lack of a better term—had looked at him rather questioningly. Ernie and Justin had shrugged and left for the dormitories, still needing to unpack. Hannah had stayed back with him, and they'd talked awhile, but eventually she'd needed to unpack as well. Harry was the only one who owned so little that unpacking wasn't anything to worry about. They'd surely been curious about that.

Harry also knew that doing homework on the first day of classes might've been considered strange, so that could explain their looks just as well. But Hogwarts wasn't like any other school he'd ever been in. It wasn't long math equations or English vocabulary he'd be learning here. And Dudley wasn't there to feel jealous of him, or to feel challenged by any example of superior work ethic. Why wouldn't he want to do his homework? The transfiguration paper he had to write was about turning a match into a needle, for goodness sake. If that wasn't interesting, Harry would have to give up on ever being interested by anything.

But the moment he'd sat down on one of the many comfortable couches in the Hufflepuff commons and placed his parchment on the table in front of him, Harry had started doing charmswork instead. There had been no real reason for it. If anything, he'd just wanted to make sure that he could still do it after a whole day of other kinds of magic. And he could. So he'd kept going, time passing along beneath his notice, until it was bedtime.

"Yeah, I suppose I'm still at it," Harry said, setting the parchment down.

Justin looked at it, leaning forward against the couch's back. "So much for getting a head start," he said.

"We still have a whole week," Harry said.

"Save it for tomorrow, eh? Classic."

Harry threw him a look over his shoulder. "And you? Done packing?"

Justin smiled. "Saved it for tomorrow."

They both laughed, then quieted down when some upperclassmen looked at them from across the room. It wasn't that they felt cowed, but it was getting late, so silence was probably preferred. They'd certainly been told as much by the prefect during their tour the night before.

"Come on," Justin said, patting his shoulder and starting for the dormitories. "Your hard work is inspiring, really, but there's no point staying up all night on it. Us first years have to enjoy our free time."

Harry picked up his things—the parchment and a couple of textbooks—and followed Justin to the stairs. "Sleep isn't free time," he said.

"That's where you're wrong, oh chosen one. Sleep is the best free time there is."

Harry frowned, following the other boy down the wooden steps and into their dorm. When Justin opened the door, Harry saw that the other three they shared their room with were already asleep, their curtains closed. It was dark, the enchanted window gave them just enough light to tiptoe their way to their beds.

Harry changed into his own pajamas and slipped under the covers. He heard Justin do the same in his own bed, and the two lay in a silence broken only by Ernie's soft snoring.

Justin had been calling him 'chosen one' since they first met during the entrance ceremony. Harry hadn't appreciated it at first, since the idea of being suddenly famous was still uncomfortable to him. Ever since the Leaky Cauldron, all through his train-ride with Ron, through the sorting, through his classes, it felt to Harry like he'd been cast as a character in a show he'd only just found out about, one which everyone else had happily enjoyed for years. Like someone straight out of his aunt Petunia's soap operas, or even Dudley's Saturday morning cartoons. Like he was somehow special.

But Harry didn't feel special. He'd been living what seemed to him a relatively normal life, if not a little tragic. The Dursleys were an unpleasant bunch, and living with them wasn't his idea of the good life, but Harry wasn't one to complain. All in all, he'd gone to school just like anyone else, lived in a normal neighborhood, and even when he got bullied by Dudley's gang of punks, he'd never felt like it was anything out of the ordinary. Many other people got bullied.

And sure, he'd had his moments. Bits of accidental magic, as Hagrid had called it, like teleporting up to the school's roof, or trapping Dudley in the snake pit. He'd been unable to explain it until now, but no one had ever made a fuss about it either. No investigations. No top-secret government scientists wanting to get a look at his insides. Now he knew that the wizarding world was kept secret on purpose, but then? He'd figured it just wasn't that big of a deal, even if the Dursleys got angry over it every now and then.

So he didn't feel like a chosen one. It just didn't make sense to him. Harry felt like a normal enough kid, and he didn't particularly want to be anything other than that either. Getting constantly reminded about his fame—not to mention the origin of that fame, in relation to his parents' deaths—should've rubbed him the wrong way. But Justin was a muggleborn, as unfamiliar to all that wizarding strangeness as Harry was, so he was only left confused whenever it was brought up by the other boy.

"Why do you keep calling me chosen one?" Harry said, softly.

Justin surprised him by still being awake. "You shouldn't keep people up," he said, a voice in the darkness.

"You were up anyway."

"Yeah, but maybe I wasn't. What then?"

"You sleep next to Ernie. If that doesn't wake you up, there's no way I will."

Just then, Ernie made an especially throaty rasp in his sleep. The two boys lay quietly, letting the moment pass, then burst out laughing. They both muffled themselves with their hands, the risk of waking someone up only making them laugh all the louder.

Eventually, Justin's giggling dried up enough for him to speak. "It's a joke," he whispered.

"Huh?"

"The chosen one thing. I just think it's funny."

"Why's that?"

"It's just so… random, don't you think? I can't even imagine. I mean, one day you get a letter. It says it's from some place called Hogwarts, of all stupid things." Justin let out another muffled bark of laughter. "And then, some giant knocks on your door and tells you, all serious, that you're a wizard. A bloody wizard. And then, after all that, you find out that you're not just a wizard. You're also the one who, for no apparent reason, happened to defeat the greatest evil known to these people you just found out about. You're the chosen one. Where's the sense in any of that?"

Harry felt himself smiling, without even meaning to. "I guess it sounds a bit ridiculous when you put it like that," he said.

"Of course it sounds ridiculous! It is ridiculous!" Justin's voice took on a tone of pretend reverence, his words stretching in song like a priest in mass. "Ooooh chosen oneee. Saaaave us chosen oneee. But first you muuuust graduate from schoool."

That did it. Harry laughed again, and Justin joined him. They were unable to cover their outburst in time, but neither minded. It was then that Harry decided. Justin would be his friend after all, and it wasn't for lack of a better term.

Then, Ernie's snoring stopped. "Would'ya ladies pipe down?" they heard him say, his words slurring in half-sleep. "This isn't a slumber party. Some of us're tryin' to get some sleep here!"

Harry and Justin quieted. A moment later, they heard Ernie's breathing even out again, and in another moment, he was back to snoring. They sniggered, heard each other's laughter, but didn't say anything more, not even a good night. But they were both smiling, and sleep came to both soon after.

Follow, favorite, and review.