I do not, in any way, shape, or form, own Harry Potter.

Harry hadn't been wrong: when he got back to Hogwarts, Aderyn was furious with him. It took the rest of the day, as well as pointing out repeatedly that she had never been in a fight for her life before and wasn't emotionally prepared to be in one before she finally calmed down somewhat.

"How can you stand it?" Aderyn demanded when they were back in the Gryffindor common room. "How can you just run into danger like that without even thinking about it?"

Harry looked out the window and sighed. "It's not about how I can do it. It's about how I can keep myself from doing it."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"For one thing, people are always telling me that I have a 'saving people thing.'"

"You mean like a savior complex?"

"I guess that's a good word for it," Harry agreed. "But there's more than that. I like fighting. And I'm damn good at it. I don't mean to sound full of myself or anything, but I can work curses that most adults have never heard of."

"So if that happened again . . ."

"I'd do the same thing again, and I wouldn't regret it. Most people here, they just can't defend themselves. You saw what they were like: a few snatchers and they all ran instead of working together to take them out. As much as I hate it, they need me."

"But I thought you said-"

"I like fighting, yeah, and I prefer to fight alone, but I hate that they depend on me like this. There's no reason they can't stick up for themselves, is there? But no, instead, they all wait for me to step in and save their asses. The Boy Who Lived." By the end of his speech, Harry's voice was dripping derision.

Aderyn turned and faced the fire. "Yesterday, I never would have thought . . . It's like you have two different personalities to you. There's the normal teenager I had fun with yesterday and today, and the bitter cynic ranting at me now."

Harry slumped in his chair. "I'm sorry, Aderyn. I really am. I hate being like this; I wish more than anything that I could be normal. But as long as they put me on this pedestal, I can't be."

"Don't apologise to me. You haven't really done anything wrong, I guess. It's just weird, is all."

"Well, if you want to be friends with me, that's just something you'll have to get used to. If you can't-"

"Please shut up, Harry." Harry flinched slightly, but he didn't interrupt. "I like being with you, and I want to be your friend, but I need to know something. The way you were yesterday and earlier today . . . was it a facade, or is that really a part of you?"

"That was genuine," Harry said slowly. "But so's this. Like I said, I just want to be normal, but I can't help but be bitter about everything."

Aderyn seemed to consider this for a moment before she next spoke. "Well, I guess I'll just have to fix that. Goodnight, Harry." She walked over to his armchair and kissed him on the cheek before walking up to the girls' dormitory. Harry just sat there in shock, not having any idea how to respond. An offer of friendship, he could deal with, but her telling him that she would work through all the things that he was bitter over, then kiss him on the cheek? He hadn't been expecting that at all.

While Aderyn lay awake upstairs, thinking about what she and Harry had talked about, Harry sat in the common room, trying to convince himself that his feelings towards Aderyn were entirely platonic. They had, after all, just met. Harry wasn't really sure that he was ready to enter into a new relationship so soon after everything that happened with Ginny. Harry would be too busy this year to pursue one anyways, even without being quidditch captain.

The facts that Aderyn was nice, funny, smart, beautiful, and more understanding with him than people who had known him for seven years were of no consequence. Granted, when the other boys got to school, they were likely to pick up on these qualities as well, and Harry, as a concerned friend, would have to help keep them at bay. Not out of jealousy, but because it was simply the right thing to do. Or at least, that was what he told himself as he drifted off to sleep in his armchair.

For the rest of the week, Harry was too busy to see much of Aderyn, which he was beginning to seriously regret. Between helping to pick out a new Defense professor (they eventually settled on Hawkes Hawlish, one of the aurors who had attacked McGonagall and Hagrid under Umbridge's command in Harry's fifth year), planning the curriculum for defense class, going on two more raids of snatcher hideouts, and learning about what his duties as head boy would entail, Harry was busier than he had been since his OWL year.

"I might have to give up quidditch at this rate," Harry muttered, slumped over the desk in his office. "I can't do all this at once without exploding."

Aderyn, who was lounging on the couch, laughed. "You can't give up quidditch, Ron would kill you. And once term starts, you won't have to go on raids or help hire new professors."

"Yeah," Harry replied half-heartedly. "Just have to teach classes, play quidditch, run the war, do head boy stuff, and deal with fangirls. Can't wait."

"What about your classes? Don't forget homework from them."

Harry gave a weak chuckle. "I'm not getting homework for any of them. Special permission from McGonagall, since I'm teaching my own class. And we already learned most of the seventh year curriculum last year when we were on the run. Classes'll be easy, it's teaching that I'm worried about."

"Even though you've done it before?"

"Yeah, well, everyone thought I was a nutter back then, didn't they? Less pressure. Now that everyone knows I'm not mad, and now that they all think I'm the second coming of Merlin, it'll be murder. I'd take a fight to the death with a dark wizard over that any day."

"Well, you can have the head girl do most of the work, so really it's just teaching, quidditch, and the war, right?"

Harry groaned and sat up. "And the fangirls. They may not be able to use love potions on me anymore, but that doesn't stop them from following me around or fawning over me." He dropped back onto the desk in defeat, sighing heavily. "Wish they'd bother someone else."

Aderyn just laughed. "Do you have any idea how few boys would be complaining about a bunch of pretty girls following them around, hanging on their every word, and trying to get them in bed?"

Harry paled slightly. "I hadn't thought of that last one. Ballocks. Besides, it's not like they really care about me, they're just interested in the hero the Prophet's made me out to be." He sighed again. "S'always me, innit? They could just as easily follow Ron around. Or hell, even Neville."

"So you're really not interested in taking advantage of the situation at all?" Aderyn asked carefully. Something in her tone made Harry slightly nervous, but he didn't quite know what to do, other than just running away.

"'Course not. I'm not after a shallow relationship. If I start dating again, it'll be with someone who cares about me, someone I can have a good time with without worrying about whether all she cares about is my money or social standing." Someone like you, Harry was hardly able to stop himself from adding.

Harry couldn't see it since he was still lying on the desk, but Aderyn couldn't quite help the satisfied grin that spread across her face when Harry answered.

"What time is it?" Harry asked, hoping to move on from the dangerous subjects they had been discussing.

"6:15," Aderyn replied, looking at her watch.

"Carriages'll be here in 45 minutes," Harry muttered. "Better head down to the great hall soon. Might fall asleep if I stay here any longer."

"Why not take a nap?" Aderyn yawned.

"We'd never wake up in time for the feast. Fine way to introduce you to the Hogwarts rumor mill."

"What, you mean having the most famous student and some random transfer missing at the same time?"

"Hmm," Harry agreed. He tried to sit up again, but couldn't bring himself to. "Maybe a short nap," he conceded.

Neither of them made it to the welcoming feast that night.

AN: There we are, chapter five. Fluffy, short, and not very good. But kind of necessary, since I needed to develop Harry and Aderyn's relationship to the point where them continuing to be friends would actually make sense. I kind of jumped into this without thinking, figuring that I could work out the plot as I go. While I still intend to do that, I kind of realised at the end of the last chapter that Harry being as bitter as he needs to be for this story to work makes it difficult for any girl to actually want to be in a real relationship with him (hero warship of the kind he gets in HBP doesn't count), so I figured I kind of needed this to act as a buffer between the summer and the school year. Think of it as an interquel between the prologue and the main story, if that makes any sense. Not that I consider chapters one through four to be an extended prologue, but they kind of are if you think about it.

I'd love to say that updates will be more frequent, but I can't really promise that. Now that I've moved on to the point that I was most interested in writing, I really want to devote more energy to this story. Unfortunately for me, I'm currently actively writing four other series, two with seven stories, one with five stories, and one with three, so yeah. Kinda busy. I'm actually kind of considering putting my crackfic, Intoxicated Decision Makers, up for adoption, since I'm finding it a lot harder and much less rewarding to write than I thought it would be. And, as much as I hate to even consider it, I have to wonder about having somebody ghost write this story for me, since it would cut down on my (self-imposed) workload considerably. Ah well, whatever happens, I don't intend to outright abandon any of my stories (even if I have to put one on hiatus for a year or two, which I'm considering). As always, thanks for reading. Duke out!

PS: I keep forgetting to mention this because it's a really minor detail that isn't particularly important, but in this, Harry started wearing contact lenses after the battle at the Department of Mysteries, which is the earliest point where my story diverges from cannon.