THE ROAD NOT TAKEN
Chapter 3: You're too young to get a heart attack.
Disclaimer: All recognizable characters belong to J. K. Rowling.
September 4th 2001
Hogwarts
Harry suddenly jerked awake and sat up on his bed. He heard a yelp and then a thud and when he looked, he saw the pudgy boy who had a frog for a pet looking up at him from the floor. He blushed when he caught Harry's gaze and looked away.
"Are you okay?" He asked nervously. "You looked like you were having a nightmare."
Harry had been having a very vivid dream, one he hadn't had for some time. The woman who Harry now assumed was his mother begging for his life, a cold voice laughing and then a blinding flash of green light. After what he had learned about the death of his parents so far, Harry was now aware that he seemed to relieve the final moments of his mother and the apparent defeat of the wizard known as Voldemort.
"I have them too, from time to time." The boy was saying. "Gran says that it takes a lot of courage to conquer our nightmares, I don't think I have much of that though."
Harry got up and let out a long drawn out yawn. He looked the boy who had finally stood up.
"What's your name?"
"Oh_uhm... Neville." He said hesitantly, as if surprised that Harry could ever ask for his name. "Neville Longbottom."
"The hat put you in Gryffindor, Neville." Harry said. "Clearly it determined that your bravery and courage far outweigh your other attributes."
He looked at the boy, his piercing green eyes staring at the other boy deeply. "Whatever is the cause for your nightmares, I doubt it has anything to do with your courage."
Neville blinked at the famous boy with a small smile. "That's probably the most words you've spoken to anyone since we came."
"Don't get used to it." Harry smiled as he checked on his wrist watch. "You should head down if you don't want to miss breakfast."
"Oh, Merlin." The boy's eyes widened and he rushed to the door before he stopped. "What about you?"
"Well, I have to prepare for the lessons first." Harry answered as he gestured at his sleep wear. "You shouldn't worry about me, I'm not used to eating breakfast at this time anyway."
Neville hesitated for a moment before he left. Harry picked his clothes and went for a shower. He had told Neville the truth, when he didn't have to go to school, he usually woke up much later than normal breakfast hours. He hoped that he would however make good time for transfiguration, as he didn't want to be late and earn McGonagall's ire than he already did when they arrived three days ago. That won't be much of a problem though.
Over the weekend, while others were sleeping off the train ride and trying to settle in, Harry was exploring and watching. One of the biggest advantages of being a 'ghost' was having the freedom of watching and studying other people's behavior without them being the wiser. Through this, he learned to see what others didn't, to learn behaviors of people faster than normal because after years of using it, it he had become a skill he was quite adept at.
And thanks to this skill, the twins had easily caught Harry's eye in Gryffindor. He had observed them for no more than two hours before he concluded that if he was to really understand Hogwarts, he just had to keep close them. And that was exactly what he had been doing for the whole of Saturday. Through this, he had managed to find a treasure grove of information as those two didn't seem capable of walking without talking to themselves.
There were a hundred and forty-two staircases at Hogwarts: wide, sweeping ones; narrow, rickety ones; some that apparently led somewhere different on a Friday; some with a vanishing step halfway up that you had to remember to jump. Then there were doors that wouldn't open unless you asked politely, or tickled them in exactly the right place, and doors that weren't really doors at all, but solid walls just pretending. He had even managed to locate the Hogwarts kitchens.
Tailing the twins had led him to discovering that they had some kind of map that was able to identify people's positions in the castle. The only way he was able to tail them on Saturday was because they didn't use the map. On Sunday afternoon, he had left the great hall to gi after them but in the hallway on the third floor, they had pulled out the map and had somehow seen his name near. Harry had immediately dropped his misdirection magic and continued walking past them as if he had been taking a stroll and had just stumbled unto them.
He didn't look back, though he could feel their suspicious eyes boring into his back. He knew they were going to watch him closely after that, and so he decided to keep his distance from them for the time being knowing that they will have forgotten about him. Harry was a master of misdirection and anonymity and even with his unwanted fame, he was sure disappearing into the shadows will not be much of a problem.
Once he was finished with his shower and the rest of the preparations, he grabbed his backpack that contained his books and headed down. There were a few students lingering in the common room but no one spared him a glance as he walked out through the entrance. With five minutes left before the lesson was set to start, Harry had to use some of the passageways he had recently learned to not be late.
When he arrived, McGonagall was ripping a new one into Weasley and another boy who also slept in Harry's dormitory. Harry walked in and easily found an empty spot next to Tracey. The small girl didn't even hear him arrive as she was watching the scene at the front of the class like it was the most entertaining spectacle she had ever witnessed.
She was still grinning in amusement when the professor finally finished with Weasley and his friend. Her grin however vanished when she turned to her left and saw Harry seated next to her. She let out a loud shriek and fell off her seat and landed rather painfully on her bum.
"Miss Davis!" The professor barked. "I'll not have you disrupting my class!"
"Sorry, professor." The girl said meekly.
McGonagall gave her a hard stare that had her sinking into herself the longer it lasted. But the time McGonagall looked away, she had almost disappeared behind the desk, only to emerge back when the professor looked away.
She hit harry with her tiny fist on the shoulder. "Are you trying to give me a heart attack."
"You're too young to get a heart attack." Harry told her flatly. "And I was here the entire time, you just didn't notice me."
"No you weren't!" She hissed back. "Besides this is the Slytherin side, your housemates are over there."
Harry had noticed that the members 9f either house had all seated on separate sides of the classroom and only he was on the left side with the rest of the Gryffindors.
"Me I wanted to sit with you." Harry replied with a shrug and the girl beamed at him. Part of misdirection was knowing what to say at what time and it worked flawlessly.
"Awww, did you really?" She raised her arms and wrapped them around Harry's neck. "Here let me give you a_"
"Ms. Davis!"
"Bugger." She leaped away from Harry and sat at the very end of her seat, as far away from him as it was physically possible. "Sorry, professor."
"That was your last warning." McGonagall pinned her with another glare before turning to the rest of the class. "Transfiguration is some of the most complex and dangerous magic you will learn at Hogwarts," she said. "Anyone messing around in my class will leave and not come back. You have been warned. "
It was obvious to everyone
Then she changed her desk into a pig and back again. They were all very impressed and couldn't wait to get started, but soon realized they weren't going to be changing the furniture into animals for a long time. Atleast not in class, as once he understood the theory behind it, Harry planned on practicing whenever he could get the chance. After taking a lot of complicated notes, they were each given a match and started trying to turn it into a needle.
Harry looked around the class, people kept tracing the wand movements and saying the spell to no effect. Hermione...and he was sure he only remembered her name because of Shakespeare...atleast had turned hers into looking silver and she was the only one who had made any progress so far. Looking at his neighborhood, Harry found his lips twitching into a smile, something he was doing quite often around her.
She had closed her eyes, and her face was scrunched in concentration. As of feeling his gaze on her, she opened her right eye to look at him. "What?"
"What are you doing?" Harry asked.
"Trying to get a clear image and feel of a needle in my mind." She slumped. "And I was close before you started staring at me."
"You don't have to necessarily picture everything perfectly. A human brains normally ignores things that it considers unimportant and I believe a needle would fall under that category." Harry said. "Remembering a perfect image would be very hard unless you have an eidetic memory."
Tracey frowned. "What's that?"
"An ability that enables certain people to recall an image from memory with high precision for a period of time after seeing it only once."
"I think I understand, even though you seem to like using big words." She pouted at the end before looking at him. "But what do I do now, that's what the professor told us."
"She told us to keep practicing because the more you practice you pull the memory of the needle from wherever your brain had discarded it and after some time, you'll be able to remember it perfectly without any trouble." Harry explained. "I very much doubt many people will be able to create perfect needles before the class ends today."
"You didn't answer me." She pouted. "What do I do?"
"The image you're looking for is in your mind even if you can't access it." Harry said. "Think of what you have managed to get and let your magic through the wand without trying to shape it. Your brain should work with your magic to create what you want or something very close."
Tracey didn't even close her eyes but her face was set in determination. She clearly said the incarnation and traced the wand movements and right before her eyes, the match transformed into a needle. The girl let out a shriek of happiness but swiftly covered her mouth just as she started. The professor arrived at their desk in no time.
"Ms. Davis, I already warned you and you leave me with_"
"She succeeded professor." Harry interrupted McGonagall's rant. She blinked like she couldn't believe that anyone was brave enough to stop her mid-rant before turning back to look at the needle. It was almost perfect, only missing a hole on one end, but otherwise it looked just like a needle.
McGonagall tapped it and it reverted back into a match. "Why don't you give it another try and we see?"
Tracey glanced at Harry nervously who nodded encouragingly before she set her face and did the spell again. This time she got it perfectly, hole included. McGonagall examined it once again.
"Well, congratulations Ms. Davis it has been a while since a student managed to successfully do the spell in the first lesson." She glanced at Harry as she said this and he knew she was talking about his father. "Take twenty points for Slytherin."
"Thank you, professor." Tracey was beaming from ear to ear.
"You're welcome." She replied. "Now I want you to try and return it to a match again before the lesson ends.
Tracey's smile immediately disappeared. Before she could voice any protests, the professor had already turned to Harry.
"Well, Mr. Potter, why don't you also give it a try?"
Rather than answer, Harry silently waved his holly wand over the match and it transformed into a perfect needle. The professor smiled in what can only be satisfaction and said quietly. "I expected nothing less. Ten points to Gryffindor!"
While Tracey gaped at him, Harry looked around the classroom. He had brought up his magic the moment the professor came to their desk and no one was paying them any mind. Well, no except for Daphne who kept looking around the class in confusion as she looked for her friend. With his magic up, she should have completely forgotten about Tracey for the moment and yet that was not the case.
Most curious indeed.
The rest of the classes were no different, Charms was interesting, just like the teacher who taught it. Professor Flitwick, apparently a half goblin was very excitable and seemed to enjoy teaching his students quite alot. He engaged his students throughout the lesson even though all they learned that week was theory, which suited Harry just fine as his goal was to understand magic. The practical part was a nonissue. He had been using magic without even knowing how it works and now that he was beginning to understand it, then any magic he did was certainly bound to be easier.
And then there were other classes. There was Astronomy where they had to study the night skies through their telescopes every Wednesday at midnight and learn the names of different stars and the movements of the planets. Three times a week, they went out to the greenhouses behind the castle to study Herbology, with a dumpy little witch called Professor Sprout, where they learned how to take care of all the strange plants and fungi, and found out what they were used for.
While neither of these classes required direct magic, atleast not on their level, they were interesting in their own way. Waking up in the middle of the night for Astronomy was going to be an issue for Harry though and with his muggle knowledge, he was already ahead of the class. There wasn't anything they were learning that he didn't already know or couldn't learn from a book. And for that reason, Harry decided that he won't be attending this lesson for the foreseeable future.
The other class that didn't involve magic was History of Magic, which was the only one taught by a ghost. Apparently, Binns had been very old indeed when he had fallen asleep in front of the staff room fire and got up next morning to teach, leaving his body behind him. Binns droned on and on while they scribbled down names and dates, and got Emetic the Evil and Uric the Oddball mixed up. He had later found out from the Weasley prefect that Binns narrated from the text book word for word.
On Thursday, they had their first Defense Against the Dark Arts class. The class everyone had really been looking forward to, but Quirrell's lessons turned out to be a bit of a joke. His classroom smelled strongly of garlic, which everyone said was to ward off a vampire he'd met in Romania and was afraid would be coming back to get him one of these days. His turban, he told them, had been given to him by an African prince as a thank-you for getting rid of a troublesome zombie, but they weren't sure they believed this story. For one thing, when Seamus Finnigan asked eagerly to hear how Quirrell had fought off the zombie, Quirrell went pink and started talking about the weather; for another, they had noticed that a funny smell hung around the turban, and the Weasley twins insisted that it was stuffed full of garlic as well, so that Quirrell was protected wherever he went.
Harry for his part had observed the man throughout the lesson and even with his misdirection down, Quirrell didn't make eye contact with him even once and yet he had been watching Harry. Whenever he thought Harry wasn't aware, the man's eyes kept turning to him, like he was assessing him, to see how dangerous he was, which didn't make sense since they had never met and Harry couldn't think of any reason a stranger might be assessing him.
He knew there were things about the man that were ringing alarm bells throughout his head. His stutter was fake, Harry had noticed that right away and wondered why the man was trying so hard to make people think that it was real. And then there was no fear at all in the man's eyes, Harry knew fear. He had experienced it, he had seen it in his relatives' eyes for years and so knew when someone was truly afraid. Quirrell may pretend to be afraid but deep down, he wasn't and his eyes showed it.
Whatever the man was hiding, Harry didn't care and normally wouldn't have given him a second thought except for one thing, whenever Quirrell came near him, his scar hurt. It had been a while since Harry felt physical pain and was therefore startled when he felt a sharp pain in his scar when the professor passed the first time. He flinched quite violently but thankfully no one noticed. But then the professor passed by again and he felt his scar hurt and he knew that either the man was doing something to him or something else, something bigger was going on and it involved Harry somehow.
Throughout the lesson, there was a dull throbbing pain from his scar which intensified every time the professor came near and the moment the bell rang to end the lesson, Harry was the first to leave the classroom. It was Thursday and they were free in the afternoon. Harry didn't feel like socializing and so he went straight to the Hogwarts kitchens where he took his lunch before going to the dormitory to sleep, hopefully the scar would be gone once he woke up.
When Harry woke up, it was morning and Neville had been shaking him. He blinked at the pudgy boy, he hadn't woken since Monday having gotten to him sleeping way past breakfast time.
"Harry, you need to wake up." The boy said in concern. He was already in his uniform. "Today's Friday and you don't want to be late for Snape's class."
Right, today they had double Potions with the Slytherins and very few if any people were looking forward to it. Apparently Snape favored his house and hated all Gryffindors. The others had said that he took points for reasons like breathing loudly and looking at him badly. Harry wasn't sure what to believe but he was going to have to make his own opinions about the man. Besides, he needed to have a conversation with the Slytherin head and he didn't want to go in it with opinions.
"You go on ahead, Neville." He told the boy. "And if I'm late, do save me a seat, will you?"
"Sure." Neville nodded and left. Other than Trasfiguration where he sat with Tracey, Harry had been sitting with Neville in the rest of their classes.
He took his shower and dressed up. Before going down, he got a piece of parchment and wrote down a letter, requesting for a meeting with her in the afternoon knowing she was going to be free. He had barely finished signing off when he heard a tap on the dormitory window. He opened it to reveal his snowy white owl, a birthday from from the professor on question.
He silently took the letter she had brought to him while he tied his and asked her to take it to the Professor. He opened the one Hedwig had brought him and frowned in confusion as he read its contents. It said, in a very untidy scrawl:
Dear Harry,
I know you get Friday afternoons off, so would you like to come and have a cup of tea with me around three?
I want to hear all about your first week. Send us an answer back with Hedwig.
Hagrid
Harry frowned as he tried to place the name. And then he remembered that it was the giant groundskeeper. Why on earth would the giant man want to have tea with Harry, he hadn't directly interacted with him before, having only seen him from a distance when they were going to the greenhouse for Herbology. Harry had heard that the man had been at Hogwarts for a very long time, maybe he had known his parents and could give him some information.
Unfortunately, he was hoping for the meeting with McGonagall, he would just have to wait until tomorrow to visit the giant man. Scribbling a reply, he asked the man if Saturday was fine and left the parchment on his bed for Hedwig to pick up later. He took his time going down the stairs as he still had fifteen minutes before the lesson was supposed to start.
He arrived just in time and had barely sat down next to Neville when the professor emerged from his office. Snape, like Flitwick, started the class by taking the roll call, and like Flitwick, he paused at Harry's name.
"Ah, Yes," he said softly, "Harry Potter. Our new - celebrity. "
Draco Malfoy and his friends Crabbe and Goyle sniggered behind their hands. He looked at Tracey who was seated next to her blonde friend. The tiny girl was pouting at him for not sitting with her. Snape finished calling the names and looked up at the class. His eyes were black like nothing Harry had seen were cold and empty, like the man hadn't seen or felt happiness in a long long time.
"You are here to learn the subtle science and exact art of potionmaking," he began. He spoke in barely more than a whisper, but they caught every word - like Professor McGonagall, his voice was just as soft as Harry's. "As there is little foolish wand-waving here, many of you will hardly believe this is magic. I don't expect you will really understand the beauty of the softly simmering cauldron with its shimmering fumes, the delicate power of liquids that creep through human veins, bewitching the mind, ensnaring the senses...I can teach you how to bottle fame, brew glory, even stopper death - if you aren't as big a bunch of dunderheads as I usually have to teach."
Harry shared a look with Neville, the timid boy hadn't felt amused by the speech like Harry. Infact he was practically shaking in his seat. Harry put his hand on the boy's shoulder. "Relax, Neville. I'm sure we shall be just fine."
"Thanks, Harry." The boy visibly relaxed. "I'm glad you're here."
"Potter!" said Snape suddenly, startling Neville. Harry just turned and stared at the man. "What would I get if I added powdered root of asphodel to an infusion of wormwood?"
Harry racked his brain as he tried to remember where he had read about it. "I believe it's the Draught of the living death, professor."
"Speak up, Potter!" Snape barked. "You're not trying to wow your fans here."
"I'm sorry but this is how I speak, professor." Harry replied, just as softly though he knew everybody could hear him just fine.
"That will be twenty points from Gryffindor for your cheek, Potter." The Gryffindors gasped in outrage but were silenced by the teacher's glare. "Let's try again and see if you'll guess your way out of this one. Where would you look if I told you to find me a bezoar?"
Harry had read about this one, it may be almost impossible to harm him physically but someone could poison him and he had looked for magical ways to counter it the very first time he stepped in the Hogwarts library.
"In the hospital wing or an apothecary." He answered, his voice just as soft as before. "I understand it's a stone found in the stomach of a goat that can counter most poisons."
This time, Snape didn't seem to have any snide comments. Instead he asked. "What is the difference, Potter, between monkshood and wolfsbane?"
"They're the same plant, also known as aconite" Harry replied right away, having realized what kind of man Snape was. Harry despised bullies, and he was not going to stand for one even if he wanted information from him.
"And how could you possibly know that, having been raised by lowly muggles?" Snape asked with a sneer.
"The muggles have novels about werewolves, professor." Harry answered despite knowing the man had not been looking for an answer. "I read about aconite in one of them. You should try them, they're actually quite imfo_"
"Twenty points from Gryffindor for being a smart ass." Snape interrupted him, anger clear in his voice. He spun around and flicked his wand at the board and instructions appeared on it.
He barked at them to pair up and start working. Harry paired with Neville and told him to be studying the instructions while Harry picked the ingredients. Together, they prepared them and once they were ready, Harry lit the fire and started administering the ingredients while Neville read to him the instructions and as they worked together in silence, the potion was progressing nicely.
"We're almost done." Harry said as he stirred one last time. "What's the next step?"
"Add the porcupine quills."
"While the cauldron is on or off the fire?" Harry asked as he picked the quills.
Neville checked on the board to be sure. "Off, you first take it off."
"Well, what do we have here?"
A voice suddenly said from behind Neville and said boy jumped almost a foot into the air while at the same time knocking Harry's arm. Harry hadn't been prepared and when Neville knocked his arm, two of the porcupine quills fell in the cauldron. Immediately, the potion started hissing and clouds of acid green smoke rose out of the cauldron. Harry's wand appeared in his hand within a second and he vanished the potion before it could become too volatile.
He then turned around, green eyes smouldering with anger only to meet Snape's dark ones. The moment the two pairs of eyes made contact, Harry felt a sharp pain in his scar and then his vision shifted, it was the welcome feast allover again, only this time he wasn't going to let go of the connection.
It took Harry a few seconds to realize what was going on as images flashed before his eyes. Most of them featured the girl with red hair but when he did, he concentrated on one and the flashing stopped, instead the image played out like a video. He saw the girl and a dark haired boy hiding from the girl's sister. They seemed to be around thirteen and the girl had done something to make them unnoticeable, almost similar to Harry's misdirection, as they were standing right in front of her and yet she didn't seem to notice them.
Whatever she was doing seemed to be taxing her as she had her eyes closed and an intense look on her face. When the girl's sister finally turned around, the redhead opened her green eyes and gave the boy a smile before she passed out. The boy cradled the girl's head with a look of amazement frozen on his face.
And then it too disappeared and Harry saw other scenes involving the boy and the redhead. They had certainly been friends but then they started drifting apart as two other boys kept appearing in these scenes. One with messy hair and glasses while the other had aristocratic features and piercing gray eyes. Harry saw brief scenes as these three boys kept clashing while the girl watched them helplessly until one day her friend said something which pissed off the girl and they broke apart forever.
Harry watched the boy draw into himself as the memories became harder to watch, like they were slipping away. Harry saw the boy, now a grown man kneeling in front of a dark figure, the memory kept going in and out of focus as Snape no doubt tried to stop Harry from watching it.
"Why did you seek me out, Severus?" A cold voice that sounded strangely familiar to Harry asked.
"I have news, my Lord." The man replied. "There has been a prophecy...'
For a moment, all Harry saw was darkness and he focused with all his might to bring the memory back into focus. When he did, the young man was speaking.
"The one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord approaches." He was saying as if reciting from memory. "...born as the seventh month_
Harry suddenly felt like he was being hurled through the air. He felt his body crush into something, and his head hit something hard with such force that his vision flashed white. He didn't feel any pain and he was sure had he been someone else he would have been knocked out and having a cracked skull. He blinked as he tried to focus his vision and he heard someone shouting for people to get out. There was a scramble as the students rushed out of the classroom but all this Harry didn't see.
When he finally focused enough to see, he found a tip of a wand pointing between his eyes. There was a momentary pause as if the professor was deliberating what to do, but before Harry could think of anything else, he heard the man's voice. Soft but firm. "Obliviate!"
And then everything went dark.
AN: Another chapter for you. I don't mean to drag the story out like this but things should pick up once the first week of Hogwarts is finished.