Welcome back, dear readers, to "Infinity Keeps Me Alive"
Back To Basics.
First Day
Harry woke up in the middle of the night, kicking and screaming. Merlin, he'd almost missed those nightmares.
We have a problem.
He hadn't missed those little interventions from his Death though.
Rubbing his tired eyes, Harry grumbled something that may or may not have been a 'What's happening?'
Wake up already! urged the voice, even louder.
It seemed to do the trick. The wizard sighing deeply for half a second, before focusing. Grabbing his wand, he cast a soundproof charm on the bed and turned deadly serious.
"Okay, what do you want?"
You had a vision.
"Woke me up. What about it?"
You shouldn't have them yet. Riddle hasn't been restored to a body and his spectral form should be too weak to affect you.
"Good point." he conceded. "Any idea why it still happened then?"
She marked a pause and sighed.
Your scar… the horcrux in it…
"The leech I walked in front of an AK for, yes. What of it?"
It seems to have been affected by your reincarnation.
"Are you KIDDING ME?!" shouted Harry. "You sent the horcrux back?"
We most certainly didn't. denied the immortal Indian. Riddle's reliquary may be bound to your soul, but only your mind was thrust into the past, else your immortality would have followed you.
Which would have rendered the entire operation pointless.
Still, that meant that one third of him was older than the rest, a seventeen years old mind wrapping around a younger soul in an equally young body… weird.
"So, I still host the ten year old horcrux –"
Yes.
"– which doesn't behave like a ten year old horcrux –"
Yes. confirmed his Death again, though her voice seemed a bit more peeved.
"– because… reasons?"
YES! she snapped. And until we figure out what is affecting it, I would suggest working on your Occlumency.
"You know that I'm rubbish at it, right?"
Which is why you should work on it, as soon and as often as possible. You must contain that soul.
The time-traveling wizard dropped back unto his pillow and sighed.
Complicated feast, complicated night, complicated awakening… his first day in Hogwarts was too much already.
"I'll get to it."
"Tough night?" asked a concerned Nathaniel as Harry dragged his weary carcass out of bed, deep bags under his eyes.
"Nightmare… not a really good one. Lots of Death in it."
The emphasis was subtle, but extremely worrying by its implications. The Grim Reaper had dimmed necessary to drop by for a talk and it couldn't have been for tea and biscuits.
"Give me a moment to hit the showers and I'll show you."
Nathaniel simply nodded and watched the young wizard exit the room, barely registering his roommates.
"Is he going to be okay?" asked Theodore with concern, looking at the door where Harry had just disappeared.
Nathaniel eyed him critically, glanced at Blaise for a second, and answered.
"It's not his first nightmare… he's used to it."
"Doesn't sound healthy."
"It's not."
The first class, on the very first day and it had to be History of Magic.
Booooooring.
"Potter, Hatfield." called a familiar Slytherin, grabbing a chair to Harry's right.
Or maybe not.
"Hey, you two." smiled Tracey Davis, claiming the seat in between the time traveler and her childhood friend. "Why weren't you at breakfast?"
"Good morning, Greengrass. Tracey." both wizard and hat greeted, though the later stuck to their last name and added a polite 'misses'. "And I didn't feel like having hundreds of students gawk at me while I ate."
"It didn't bother you yesterday." remarked Daphne.
"Still doesn't, but I don't want to further feed the Hogwarts rumour mill."
"Bad move then." snorted the other witch. "Professor Snape complained quite loudly about your arrogance."
"Not surprising." commented Harry with a smile. "He hated my father and I'm a Potter, so I must be like him… lucky me."
Daphne registered the information and pushed a paper toward him.
"Your timetable." she stated.
"Thanks."
"So, where were you?" asked the brunette.
"Nat showed me the kitchen."
"There's a kitchen?" suddenly asked Theodore, who had eavesdropped from his seat on Harry's left.
"Food doesn't just appear out of thin air, mister Nott."
"Don't call me that!" spat the wizard, good mood all but evaporated. "Mister Nott's my father and I'm not my father."
The surrounding students froze, unsure of what to make of his statement.
Harry himself didn't know what to think. Was Theodore angry because he didn't like the man, or for not being recognized as his own person?
Just as quickly as it had left, warmth returned to the wizard's face and he smiled, as if nothing had happened.
"Theo's fine."
Nathaniel wearily returned the smile, perfectly aware of why the young boy was acting like this. Using his last name had been a mistake, he realised that now. He would have to be more careful in the future.
"I'd prefer to use your entire first name, Theodore. That is, if you don't mind." he said. "I'm the adult here, I have to show some manners. Using shortened names or nicknames wouldn't be proper."
"And calling me kid is?" asked Harry, equally amused and annoyed.
"You're thinking too much like an adult for your own good, Potter. I'll call you kid until you remember that you're one too."
Harry scowled for a moment, before a massive grin slowly filled half of his face.
"Fluffy's probably lonely, right? I'm sure he could use a stress ball."
"Fluffy?" repeated Theodore and Tracey, while Daphne elegantly raised a questioning eyebrow.
Harry cursed under his breath and hurried to create a plausible story.
"Just my aunt's dog. Large hairy thing, drools a lot and has a mean temper… the dog too."
It got a laugh out of Theodore and Harry relaxed, releasing his breath.
Daphne memorized that too.
"Okay, that was childish enough I suppose." said the hat out loud, before switching to mental communication. "Mind what you say, Harry."
"Sorry." replied the wizard in a similar fashion.
"So, when is the class starting again?" asked Theodore completely out of the blue.
"It already has, Theodore."
The boy looked around and confirmed that, yes, the teacher was in fact in the room, talking about some kind of war.
"Shouldn't we be taking notes?" inquired Tracey.
"Don't bother, Binns' class is even more dead than he is." explained Harry, pointing at the few students who had already fallen asleep to prove his point. "You'll find more about the course in the history books at the library than you'll do in here anyway."
"So… what do we do?"
Harry rummaged through his bag and retrieved his Charm book. There were a few spells he needed to work on.
Daphne eyed him for a moment, before taking out a school book of her own. She would study History of Magic in History of Magic… audacious.
"I'm surrounded by bookworms." sighed Tracey, dropping her head on her school bag. "Wake me up when class' over."
Theodore shrugged in a whatever-floats-your-boat kind of way and returned to his own notebook, where he began to doodle.
What a day.
The first theoretical Charm class had been… weird. Flitwick's attention had been focused almost solely on Nathaniel and him, so much in fact that he had probably asked them three times more questions than to all the other students put together.
Transfiguration had been equally strange, when McGonagall had regarded him at first with wary, before slowly relaxing. She seemed to remember that he wasn't simply a snake, but Lily and James' son, as well as a perfect Gryffindor candidate according to Nathaniel. By the end of the lesson, she was pretty much treating him like an honorary lion.
And as if the teachers' behaviour wasn't unusual enough, Daphne had also watched him like a hawk. He didn't know why she was doing so, but it unnerved him quite nicely.
But the day was over soon enough, no more classes. It didn't mean that he would be inactive though, he had a few seeds to sow.
"Professor Flitwick?"
The diminutive teacher closed his book and turned toward his rather unexpected visitor.
"Can I help you, mister Potter?"
What was he doing here? He'd thought that he had scared the boy earlier, with all those questions…
"I… I hope so, sir." replied the young wizard uneasily. "I don't know that much about my parents, but Mister Ollivander told me that my mother's wand was suited for Charms and I think that you were already teaching at the time."
Ha, that certainly explained his presence.
"I was hoping that you would tell me about her."
Harry ticked a first box on his mental checklist when the half-goblin smiled.
"I taught both of your parents." began Flitwick. "Your father was a good student, but your mother truly excelled. You see…"
"Professor McGonagall?"
"May I help you, mister Potter?"
"Professor Flitwick thinks so, yes." replied the wizard. "I asked him about my parents and he told me a few things about them that I'd never heard before. He suggested I come to you next."
The witch took off her reading glasses and smiled at the boy.
"Well, I wouldn't want to disappoint Professor Flitwick. Please, take a seat."
That made two.
"Who is it?"
"Hagrid? It's me, Harry. Can I come in?"
"Of course, of course. Wait just a… Fang, back! Back I said!"
That one was going to be a bit more difficult.
"How did it go?" asked Nathaniel from his attributed bedpost when Harry returned to his room, an hour before dinner.
"I tried to orient my questions so that Flitwick would tell me about Snape being friend with mom, but it didn't work. He just told me a bit of trivia about my parents, same with McGonagall." explained the time traveler. "Hagrid mentioned the Marauders though, so if I keep this up for a few days, someone will probably drop either Sirius' or Remus' name."
"Pretty good for a first day… your grand scheme might just work at this rate."
"Our scheme, Nat." corrected Harry, putting the hat on.
"Where are we going?"
He received his answer in the form of a memory.
"You sure? What if the twins are checking the map? If your memory's accurate, a certain cat will be quite speedy tomorrow."
Another though came, a bit more hesitant.
"Thanks, I wasn't worried enough… but you don't really have a choice, I suppose."
The image of a certain Death passed through their minds.
"No, I don't."
Argus Filch was the school's caretaker, a grumpy man who seemed to hate the world itself and every living thing on it, with the exception of his cat, Ms. Norris. Generations of students had fuelled that hatred before and that duty now fell to Fred and George Weasley, friendly pranksters with enough craftiness in them to annoy the man for decades.
Coincidently, they'd decided to use that craftiness to turn Ms. Norris bright pink and put her on a sugar high.
The identical twins had already gathered their pranking material, now they just had to locate and isolate the furry menace. Finding a lone cat in a giant castle would have been impossible for most people, but the twins had a unique tool, something they'd snatched from Filch's office during a detention and were now about to use against him… poetic justice.
Fred – or was it George? – grabbed what appeared to be a blank piece of parchment and taped it with his wand.
"I solemnly swear I'm up to no good."
At that simple command, ink flooded the paper, an object that may appear simple enough in its design, but was in fact unique in its making and complexity.
The map had been crafted years ago by four students, the Marauder. It showed the school grounds in their entirety, revealed every secret passage along with their passwords and tracked every single individual around the building in real time. It wouldn't be able to locate the cat, but the demon was never far from her master and he showed up on the map.
"I look up from the dungeons" began one of the twins.
"and I look down from the upper floors." concluded the other.
They got on each side of the map and slowly made their way to the middle, looking for the caretaker and his hellbeast.
The redhead looking over the upper floors was, much like his brother, trying to isolate solitary sets of footprints. Surely enough, he succeeded, though he didn't quite find what he'd been searching for.
George – or was it Fred? – looked up from his own researches when his brother hiccuped in surprise.
"Found him yet?"
"No… but I found Potter."
"Harry Potter?"
"You know another?"
"Guess not." George – Fred? – shrugged. "What about him?"
"He's running up the Way-to-go."
The wizard almost chocked to death.
"What?" he asked, disbelief clear in his voice.
"Look for yourself."
The Weasley joined his brother and, sure enough, discovered Harry on the map.
The first year was using the Way-to-go, a hidden staircase that linked every single uneven-numbered floor together. Weirdly enough, it was located right next to a hidden slide that only opened on the even-numbered floors, just as appropriately named the Hard-way.
"What is he doing in there?" asked the redhead, astonished.
"I have no idea." replied his brother.
"Think he found it himself?"
"On the first day?" snorted the boy. "Must have been the Sorting Hat."
"Makes sense." recognized the other. "We'll have to talk with them."
Fred – or maybe George – hesitated for an instant, before nodding slowly.
"What is it?" asked George – but again, it could have been Fred.
"Can you look for Filtch alone? I want to see what Potter's up to."
"Think it's worth the time?"
"… won't hurt to check."
Harry exited the secret staircase and glanced around the empty hallway. His uncommon arrival hadn't been noticed by the paintings.
Walking away from the secret entrance, he slowed his pace down and tried to act as normally as possible. It wouldn't do to alert them by running like a nutjob or sneaking around suspiciously. It worked perfectly and he reached his destination a few minutes later. There, he began to pace… one, two, three times.
A door appeared and the wizard entered.
In the Gryffindor tower, a certain Weasley gasped twice. Once when a name vanished from his map, and once when it returned, two minutes later.
"Is this one sufficient?" asked Nathaniel, eyeing the book they'd just retrieved in the Room of Requirement.
"It'll have to do." answered Harry, putting it in one of his robe's inner pocket. "The subject's pretty obscure and I can't really explain finding twelve of them lying around empty classrooms. Imagine Snape's face."
"I am… it's extremely funny. He just turned blue… now he's drooling… oh my, I think he needs a tranquilliser."
The wizard smiled and started to run down the nearby stairs.
"You can picture it later, I'm starving."
"And I'm sure your haste doesn't have anything to do with two certain snakes that would be upset if you didn't show up for another meal."
"Shut up."
"You're late, Potter."
An out-of-breath Harry looked at Daphne, his eyes wide and mouth opened.
Was she serious? He'd just run up and down seven floors plus one dungeon, only to run back up to the Great Hall when he'd discovered that his friends had already left the common room, and the first thing she had to say was 'You're late, Potter'?
"I like that girl." grinned Nathaniel. "And close your mouth, you look ridiculous."
"Man, you look beaten." said Theodore, taking a second serving of chicken wings. "What happened?"
The wizard had taken to hang out with them, though Harry couldn't for the love of Merlin understand why. Being cordial to each other was one thing, but being friendly was another entirely.
"I visited a couple of professors to discuss something and lost track of time." answer the time traveler, drinking his exhaustion away with pumpkin juice.
"Talking tired you out?" asked Tracey with a hint of a smile.
Harry glared.
"No, running to the common room and back looking for you did."
The witch scratched her head awkwardly and began to apologize.
"Well, we waited for you at first but..."
"Your stomach fought your patience and won."
She nodded, embarrassed.
"I can relate to that." laughed Harry, grabbing a nearby bowl of salad. "I'm starving."
"Who were you talking to?" asked Daphne after a moment of silence.
"Professors Flitwick, McGonagall and Hagrid, the Keeper of Keys and Ground."
"What for?" she pressed.
"What is this, the Spanish inquisition?"
"The what?"
"Nevermind." said Harry, remembering that purebloods weren't much more concerned about the muggle world during the 15th century than they were nowadays. "I just asked them about my parents' days in school."
"Oh… learned anything?" asked Tracey.
"That Lily Evans was brilliant and James Potter a bit of a dunderhead." replied Nathaniel, before smirking wickedly. "Kid took after his father."
Theodore and Tracey chuckled, while Daphne smirked softly. Harry tried to frown at first, but couldn't stopped himself from smiling.
Maybe the year wouldn't be that bad after all.