Eyes Tell No Lies

Hunter Bird's prompt: There was a boy at Artemis Fowl's school, who looked at him with knowing eyes when he returned after The Opal Deception. The boy was Harry.

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People lie to themselves all the time. The thing, the main thing – the important thing, that is different between Artemis Fowl and those people is that he doesn't lie to himself, ever. He knows he is difficult, he knows he's been raising himself most of his life and, well, he hasn't done a good job of it.

Artemis tries though, and that's what matters. He wants what's best in life, and he knows how far he has to go, what lines he has to cross to do what he needs to do and meet his goals. He can't afford to be nice, to make friends – what use would they be? – everything and everyone has to have a use, or there is no point.

There has to be a point to it all.

Artemis Fowl is brilliantly intelligent, insightful and sly, and cunning. That doesn't make him a nice person; it makes him rather the opposite, in fact. He can't afford the cost of friends. That would make him the used, and not the user. They would only make him weak.

Yet he wants them, wants more friends than only the three he has.

So he goes to Saint Bartleby's School for Young Gentlemen not because it makes his mother happy, but because he wants it too. He wants to be…happy. There is nothing they can teach him that he can not teach himself better – except that, except how to make friends. He can have this hope, childish as it is.

Artemis sits down for his first class, his eyes skimming over the other students – it's then that it happens.

It is a boy with messy black hair.

It is green eyes with a tight, strained expression.

It knows him.

Artemis Fowl feels as if he can't breathe while those eyes look into him, see him, in ways that no one else has every dared or been allowed. Artemis has always tried to guard his eyes, his mind and thoughts, his very soul.

He can't guard against those green eyes that have caught him.

'Who are you?' Is all he can think, can plead.

The boy with black hair and knowing green eyes smiles and sits down beside him. Artemis can't think past his own clever thoughts to say anything, but that isn't a problem for the other boy, who smiles, despite seeing him, seeing into him.

"Hi, I'm Harry Potter." He offers his hand, Harry does – and Artemis takes it before he can think too much about it. Harry Potter is too common a name, he knows, but doesn't dwell on for once in his life.

"Artemis Fowl, a pleasure – are you new here?" Harry is certainly younger than Artemis's own years, but that – for once - matters nothing to Artemis.

"You could say that, I was supposed to go to St. Brutus's Secure Centre for Incurably Criminal Boys. There was a …mix up with the paperwork, to which I didn't see fit to inform my guardians of." Artemis finds himself smiling before he can stop it. Harry sees it and rolls his eyes.

"I can't imagine why." Artemis muses, teasing and testing.

Harry learns into Artemis's personal space, far more than what Artemis is honestly comfortable with.

"I know all about the People." He whispers, and Artemis Fowl doesn't doubt a word of it. The last two words he spoke were in Gnommish – Artemis has only heard it a few times, but there is no mistaking them now.

Harry's smile reaches his eyes, and Artemis likes it, likes him.

"However did you learn such a word, Harry?" Artemis smiles back, and doesn't bother to hide it. He thinks he's found a friend.

"Goblins taught me." Harry winks, as if it's a joke. It isn't, and Artemis thinks that if this fascination and interest isn't friendship, he won't ever know what is.

"Why?" Artemis asks huskily, he had to struggle for years for even a glimpse, he would have known if someone else had been looking like he had. No, how Harry knew Gnommish and Goblins and had eyes like those – it was magic if Artemis ever saw it.

"There are more beings with magic than fairies; you're looking at a wizard." Artemis grins, he can't help it – he likes Harry, likes his secrets, because Artemis Fowl knows he can find them out, can puzzle upon them – and there will always be more to Harry than them.

"I think we'll make great friends." Artemis Fowl admits, and Harry's green eyes don't disagree.

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(So I haven't read Artemis Fowl for ten years. I have never written anything with him in it, or read much fic where he is featured; but I think that if Harry had kept in contact with the goblins, and hadn't been allowed by his aunt and uncle to go to Hogwarts (or any other magical school), he would have found a way into a magical world somehow.)