AN: Enjoy!

Chapter 13 - Friends

The welcoming feast had yet to end when Harry stood up from his seat and with an excuse of needing to use the loo, he left the Great Hall.

Once he had seen Bellatrix Black taking her place at the professors' table and the thought that Voldemort's Jinx could quite possibly put her in mortal peril had truly sunk in, he could no longer stay still. He had not even heard Headmistress McGonigal talk about a particular old wizard coming out of retirement to once again teach Potions at Hogwarts, nor had he heard her talking about the forbidden items on Argus Filch's list or her express warning towards students to not enter the Forbidden Forest under any circumstances...

'I have to take care of the Basilisk too. Hermione and the rest in my past life had been so goddamned lucky to escape alive, just petrified. I can't leave it up to luck again.'

His worry for Hermione was understandable even if she was a different person from the one he used to know. After all, in his past life, she had been his best friend. However, his worry for Bellatrix was not any less.

'To think there would ever be a day when I'd be that worried about the wellbeing of Bellatrix of all people...' he thought in mild amusement as he walked towards Moaning Myrtle's bathroom.

After living for more than half a year with Bellatrix and seeing how supportive and dedicated she was to taking care of him, any reticence he might have had related to accepting her in his life had vanished. Nowadays, he could not even think of his Bellatrix as the same person as the mad and murderous woman that had killed his godfather and Dobby and had tortured his best friend. His sweet, beautiful, and caring 'aunt Bella' was simply too different.

'I just wish I didn't have to play the part of a little boy anymore... it's tiring.'

Soon, he reached that rather familiar defective girls' toilet. Ignoring the water pooling on the dirty floor, he checked all the stalls to make sure that the resident ghost was not there. Fortunately, it looked like she was celebrating the start of a new school year too with the rest of the ghosts.

Taking out his fir and dragon heartstring wand, he cast a nonverbal summoning charm.

'Serpensortia!'

The words that came out of his mouth next were not in Parseltongue. It was a swearing, in English.

"Fuck!"

⁂

"We didn't even talk, I was reading!" Terry imitated Harry in a high pitched voice. "I don't know what you're talking about, get your mind out of the gutter!"

Michael sniggered at the bad impersonation and Terry laughed at his own joke too. The reason for their shenanigans was that only a few seconds after Harry sat up and left the Great Hall, a particular fifth-year girl with long white-blonde hair at their table also stood up and left. It was a bit too coincidental considering the scene that they had witnessed last year between Harry and Fleur and the fact that they had spent the entire trip by the train together, alone, in a compartment.

"He's going to pay for it," Michael said enviously. "You in?"

"Oh definitely!" Terry also said with conviction. "The nerd getting a fit French babe as a girlfriend before the two of us is one thing, I can work with that. But him lying to his best and only friends about it, well, this is unforgivable."

The two boys grinned evilly as they looked at each other.

⁂

'What am I even doing...?' Fleur could not help asking herself after exiting the Great Hall.

There she was, a person mentally in her thirties stalking a 12-year-old boy on their first day at school while wearing an Invisibility Cloak. When she thought about things from that perspective, her cheeks flushed a little in embarrassment because it did look rather scandalous.

'He's no ordinary 12 year old,' she told herself as an excuse. Over the past year, the green-eyed boy had often occupied her thoughts. 'He wasn't scared of what I am, he wasn't afraid of me. He wasn't disgusted by my deeds.'

But the more she thought about him, the more she became aware of how uncanny had been his behaviour. It had not matched his age in the least. 'I wouldn't be surprised if he told me he's a time traveller too.'

Being a time traveller herself, Fleur was keeping an open mind to the idea if it had happened to her, it could have happened to someone else too - as astronomically small that that chance may have been. However, the one major issue with that theory was that she could not recall anyone of importance named Harry Potter in the future of her past. The Wizarding World was a rather small world. At the very least, in Great Britain and France alike, everyone knew pretty much everyone in the case of purebloods and half-bloods. For example, there were less than 30,000 wizards in the UK; France had a similar population of Muggle and Wizards as well.

'If someone like him had existed, he would have definitely made splashes...Maybe he didn't go to Hogwarts the first time around?'

She had told herself that she could not afford to care about needs like friendship or love or fun... but she was not a machine, she was a living being. Deep down, she craved being close to someone, having friends, being loved. It did not even have to be a romantic love. She just wanted someone she could confide in, someone to support and encourage her. Loneliness was cruel.

'Maybe I shouldn't have Obliviated him.'

She stopped thinking about that and made a surprised face because she saw the young boy look around himself briefly before entering the girls' bathroom. A defective bathroom. Unfortunately, he had closed the door after him so she could not enter it without tipping him off of her presence. Fortunately, she didn't need to stick her ear to the door to eavesdrop because his following shouts could be heard even from the end of the corridor.

⁂

Instead of the small three-foot-long snake that he had imagined while casting the Snake Summoning Charm, he had summoned a creature almost 30 feet long and weighing several hundred pounds. It was one of the most massive species of non-magical snakes, a green anaconda.

"Are you freaking kidding me? The hell do I use you for anymore when you fuck up every damn combat spell?" Harry raised his wand vertically in front of his face and yelled at it angrily. "I wanted a tiny snake not a huge python for god's sake!"

"I am an Anaconda, Master, seriously!" the snake raised its head two feet higher in the air and hissed indignantly at his summoner for not having even the tiniest bit of respect to at least know its species.

Seeing as he had understood the words of the snake, Harry confirmed whether he was still a Parselmouth or not; that had been his aim in the first place. However, currently, he was too pissed at his wand.

"You shut your face!" he hissed back at the snake who quickly gave up on its aggressive posture and lowered its head back meekly on the floor. It was acting almost like a kicked puppy.

Though weirded out by the vibes he was getting from the snake - since when did Snakes have enough personality to act sassy? - he turned his attention back to his feisty wand. He put it standing on the shelf under a mirror and said:

"Now you tell me, how do we solve this problem?"

He started pacing back and forth with his hands behind his back.

"You see, I don't need you to cast spells. I can do it just fine wandlessly too. Look!"

He pointed his finger at a spot on the floor and a small grass snake appeared out of thin air. Bound by the magic of his spells, the two snakes did not show any reaction to being next to each other. Instead, they were both watching silently how the weird wizard yelled at a very much incapable of speech wand.

"So besides helping me pretend I'm just like my peers...tell me, what good are you for? No answer, eh? Then, should I just throw you in the fireplace? Or maybe snap you in two and be done with it? You useless piece of shit!"

Red sparks suddenly came from the tip of his wand and the mirror above the shelf and the sink below it were smashed into pieces. Conveniently enough, the shelf on which the wand was standing was left untouched.

Harry pinched the bridge of his nose.

'Since when can wands cast spells by themselves?! What the hell?!'

He had not actually expected the wand to understand him, much less give him an answer. Harry admitted to being a bit off his rockers but he was definitely not that far gone. The fact that his wand was really throwing a tantrum just like Ollivander had said was nothing if not shocking. He had never heard in either of his lifetimes about an unintelligent object showing that degree of sentience. Wands were not supposed to be that smart. No, wands were not supposed to be smart, period. They only had a form of semi-sentience and operated on instinct.

"Nothing's ever normal in my life, is it?" he said and snorted in mockery at himself.

⁂

'Who is he talking to? ...his wand?' Fleur said to herself bewildered. As strange as it sounded, that was the most plausible explanation she could think of given what she had managed to piece together from his yells. 'This boy is definitely not normal...'

The doorknob suddenly moved and she quickly stepped out of the way. And it had been just in time because Harry Potter quickly walked out of the bathroom with his wand seemingly pointing in front of him. However, he was not just aiming with his wand at something. He was using it to levitate an object...Fleur had not had the time to notice the distortion of space in front of her before the Disillusioned several hundred pounds heavy Anaconda crashed into her. She fell on the floor as if a person of Hagrid's stature had bumped into her.

If by some miracle Harry had not heard Fleur's startled shriek of surprise at something heavy suddenly bumping into her, when she fell down, her Invisibility Cloak also slipped a bit and revealed her ankle. He could not pretend that he had not seen her.

"Who are you?" he shouted (as if he did not already know who she was).

There not being any point in staying hidden anymore, Fleur took off her invisibility cloak. But instead of answering her question, her eyes fell on the transparent thing coiled up on the floor. Her breath hitched in her throat.

"What are you doing with such a 'uge snake?!" she almost shouted. She was startled and rightfully so. It was not an everyday occurrence for one to see such an enormous snake up close, even if it was Disillusioned. She stepped back warily, her wand ready in her hand.

"Why are you here?" he countered with another question of his own. "Are you stalking me?"

"I am not!" she retorted.

"So let me get this straight: you just happened to leave the Great Hall right after I left and due to a stroke of luck you also followed me to a defective bathroom while coincidentally hiding under an Invisibility Cloak... you think I'm stupid?"

A tinge of pink appeared in her white cheeks but she managed to reign in her blush and stop it from spreading on her entire face. There he was, making a fool out of her again!

"But what are you doing with such a big snake?" she insisted. "You will get in serious trouble if the professors see you with it after what happened to Severus Snape and Draco Malfoy last year."

He was impressed at how she was talking about their deaths as if she was completely unrelated to them when she had been the one that had thrown the two of them to get killed by the magical beasts. Nonetheless, realizing that they were getting nowhere at that rate, he said:

"I'm going to release it outside."

Then, he swiftly turned around and started to levitate the enormous snake again and walked briskly towards the gates of the castle. The blonde girl followed him, much to his chagrin.

"Why are you still following me? If a professor catches us, you'll get in trouble too," he attempted to shoo her away.

"I'm a prefect," she said snobbily and pointed with a slender white finger at the badge shining on her chest. "I'll just say I caught you summoning dangerous snakes and made you take them outside to dispose of them."

"Why would you take it outside when you could vanish it right here? And who's gonna believe that ickle baby Potter summoned this big bad Anaconda?" he asked with a smirk, involuntarily using Bellatrix's way of speaking mockingly.

"After the way you blew up the corridor with a Windy Spell last year..." she trailed off with a smile of her own.

He turned his head towards her sharply.

"How would you know that?" he asked warily, playing his part as someone who had been Obliviated of her encounter with her. After all, the rest of the students did not know any details about what had happened over there, only that he had managed to 'survive' the attack.

Fleur felt like kicking herself for that slip of the tongue.

"Oh look, we reached the gates!" she exclaimed.

"Oh my, such smooth change of subject, I totally didn't notice it," he said and rolled his eyes.

Despite that she was on the losing end of it, she found herself involuntarily smiling at their banter.

Harry did not insist on getting an answer to his questions and decided to just get it over with it. The sooner he left Fleur's company, the better. He was very suspicious as to what was the reason behind her stalking him (both now and earlier that day on the train).

"Speaking of, why are you not just vanishing the snake rather than carrying it all the way 'ere?" she asked.

"That..." he said and made a small pause on purpose, enjoying how she hanged on his word, "...is for me to know and for you to find out."

The exasperated huff she let out made him chuckle.

"Let's see. You tell me why you've been stalking me-"

"I'm not stalking you!" she said hotly.

"-and I'll tell you why I took the snake outside instead of Vanishing it. It's a pretty big secret actually," he said the last part in a conspiratory voice.

Fleur looked like she considered his words seriously.

"I-" she briefly hesitated, "I want to be your friend."

Harry almost let out a groan.

'Didn't she Obliviate me last year? What's with the sudden interest now?'

"Why?" he asked bluntly. "I mean, let's be serious: you're 15, and damn good looking. Why are you interested in someone like me? I'm 12."

She pretended to ignore his compliment in favour of justifying herself:

"I'm not interested in you that way! I just wanted to be friends... you 'ave no idea 'ow 'ard is for someone like me to make friends."

"Someone like you, you mean a Veela?" he asked.

In fact, Fleur was referring to her identity as a serial killer not that of a Veela but she was more than happy to play her inability of making friends as a consequence of her racial traits. Furthermore, there was no point in denying that she was a Veela seeing how the entire school had become aware of it from the moment her classmates had seen her on the train earlier that day. The strength of her Veela Charm had increased too much over the past half a year for her to hide it like before.

"Yes. Believe it or not, this is the longest conversation I've 'ad with anyone at 'ogwarts in the past four years. Girls don't like me and boys...they like me a little too much."

He snorted in amusement at the last part. However, inwardly, he felt like pulling at his hair. He had resigned himself with the idea that he would do whatever was necessary to protect the ones he cared about but he was not quite sold on the idea of also becoming deeply involved with the war again.

'And Fleur...she's in the thick of it before the war even started...' But when he looked at her hopeful countenance he frowned. 'It's only the first day and things are already going south. My wand suddenly developed a personality and throws bloody tantrums and now Fleur, who's killing Death Eaters, wants to be friends.' he thought in annoyance.

"You don't want to?" she asked quietly. "Is it because I'm a Veela?"

He resisted the urge to roll his eyes. Now she was just playing it dirty, making him look as if he was racist. It had absolutely nothing to do with that. It was the fact that she was a serial killer and that sooner or later he would be pulled in her muddy waters too.

"Of course not. It doesn't matter to me if you're human or half-human or Veela or whatever."

"Then why?" she asked.

Even if she had been an actress, she would not have been able to fake that look of loneliness in her eyes. An ordinary person, especially a boy his age would have not detected it, that's how brief it had been... but Harry had caught it. It was a side effect of being a master of the mind arts. Being observant and knowing how to interpret every little change in one's countenance were things that came naturally to him after so many years. Looking at each other's faces while standing so close in front of each other and talking made it impossible for him to miss it out.

"You don't care about the age gap? Or what would people say if-" he began but she cut him off midway.

"I don't!" Fleur said and she suddenly threw her arms around him, embracing him for all he was worth.

In general, French were more open and passionate people than English and she was a Veela too. Even so, it was not normal for French or Veela to hug strangers either. However, she had been starved for affection ever since she had travelled back in time. Now, it was like a dam that burst.

Now Harry could have broken away if he had wanted but he chose not to.

'I owe it to her. After that dumb prank last year, a hug is the least I could do for her. I never made it up to her for stressing her out like that.'

However, her hug was much longer than he had anticipated. She was acting like a person who had not hugged someone in years. When she finally let go, her smile was dazzling. If her spring floral scent and the warmth and softness of her embrace had not been enough to overwhelm the senses of his young body, that wide and happy beautiful smile on her pretty face had almost left him dizzy. Unbeknownst to him, he had become beet red. It was not even the fault of her magical allure. It was simply because of his hormonal teenage body.

She giggled at his flushed face. That was the first time Harry saw her act as a girl of her apparent age. He also chuckled with her.

"Master, can I go already? I've been watching you flirt with that female for 15 minutes already." the Disillusioned snake suddenly hissed impatiently and interrupted their wholesome moment.

Harry and Fleur were both startled by the snake's seemingly angry hiss coming out of the blue.

"Flirting? What would a snake like you know about humans' flirting?" Harry hissed back him incredulously.

The snake flicked its forked tongue out a few times, tasting the air, and said: "I can smell it... you want to mate with that female."

Harry had to really focus on his Occlumency to stop another atomic blush from rising on his face. He also had to focus hard not to kill that cheeky Anaconda right then and there.

'Stupid sassy snake. Stupid young body hormones. Stupid perfect Veela smile.' he thought in annoyance and involuntarily looked up at Fleur...only to realize that she was shocked speechless.

"You can talk to snakes!" she burst.

"Um, yeah," he said lamely. "That's why I brought the snake outside instead of Vanishing it. He told me he loves the magic here and doesn't want to go back home."

"You can talk to snakes!" she repeated in amazement.

"Err, yes, we've established that already, haven't we?" he said sarcastically but Fleur did not pay it any mind.

"What did it tell you just now?" she asked, her blue eyes sparkling with curiosity. She had been sorted in Ravenclaw for a reason.

He cleared his throat awkwardly.

"He said he was tired of waiting. ANYWAY, it's time I let him go before any professors really catch us," he said quickly when she looked like she was about to ask more questions.

⁂

"So, you go in first. I'll come two or three minutes later. We don't want everyone to start talking." he said when they arrived outside the Great Hall but she shot down his suggestion right away.

"Let them talk! I don't care about gossipers!" she said dismissively and grabbed his arm firmly for him to not run away before pushing the doors open and entering.

Harry wanted to facepalm himself. He could not care less about the rumours that will undoubtedly start among students either. It was someone else that he cared about...and that person's violet eyes fixated on him the exact moment he and Fleur came in. Bellatrix was watching him like a hawk, her face alight with interest. She glanced at Fleur for a few moments and then back at him. The corners of her mouth raised in a mischievous smirk.

That smirk of hers made him groan.

'I bet that by the end of the week she'll give me the Talk.'

He dreaded their next conversation.

AN: as you can see, Harry's thoughts and actions are still contradictory - like initially wanting to stay away from Fleur and trying to shoo her away but ending up becoming friends with her nonetheless - because he is still stubbornly refusing to accept that he would be unable to stay away completely from the incoming war despite inwardly knowing that his wish is nothing but a pipe dream. That being said, his degree of involvement in what is about to come still remains to be seen. Besides, it's only the second year, there is still time for many things to happen. I have many surprises in store for you. Until next time!