On Punching Gods and Absentee Dads
Enigmaris
Chapter 35: The Oblivious Demi-God
Summary:
Harry thought he was prepared for the fallout of his plan but the students are having a really weird reaction to him that he can't explain.
Notes:
Ya'll. Please enjoy this chapter. Thank you so much for the support I believe we've passed 5000 kudos on this work and I am in awe by the response this story has gained! You all are so amazing! 3
Chapter Text
Harry was prepared for the staring.
How could he not be? For the past five years of his life people had been staring at him. Staring at his scar. Whispering about him throughout the halls. Staring at articles in the Daily Prophet about him. In truth people had been staring at him before Hogwarts as well but that was mostly the pitying kinds of stares that people got when they thought you were a dirty no good troublemaker who ought to wear nicer clothing.
Still.
Harry had planned on people staring at him.
Ron had even brought it up in the planning phases. As they worked out how they were going to differentiate themselves from Dumbledore and present to the school, and to the world at large, that Harry Potter was now his own wizard who wasn't Dumbledore's pawn, Ron had mentioned it. Unlike every other time in the past where Harry had done something and then been blasted by the public fallout of it, the point of this was to be public. Kids were going to stare. There were going to be rumors and whispers. That was the whole idea.
Harry had promised his friends that he was ready. Asgard had helped in some ways. Because the people there stared at him too. Partially because of the fact that he was technically a prince, partially because Tyr had taken him on as an apprentice, but mostly because of quidditch. Harry had learnt from, strangely enough, Odin how to deal with staring. His grandfather had seen him feeling awkward and had pulled him aside and given him his first 'prince' lesson.
So yeah.
Harry had planned on the staring.
What he hadn't seen coming though was the blushing.
Yes. Blushing.
His classmates were blushing when he talked to them. Almost every girl Harry now knew (Hermione, Ginny and Luna being the thankful exceptions) turned as red as a tomato when Harry spoke to them. At one point, in Charms, Harry had offered Lavender Brown one of his quills and she had stammered so much, with her cheeks fire truck red, that she'd spilled her ink jar all over her desk.
Which was just so weird.
Girls from every house were doing it too. A fourth year Hufflepuff Harry had never met before had accidentally bumped into him in the hallway and when Harry had offered a hand to help her up she had started mumbling her words together so badly that he had no idea what she was saying, all while staring hard at the ground. The tips of her ears had been the color of Ginny's hair.
It was bewildering.
Even more so because some of the boys were doing it too. Dean and Seamus both had acted so strangely that first night when Harry had changed out of his school uniform and into his pajamas. Both boys had been staring at him and then when he'd caught them, they'd blushed and looked away. Harry knew it wasn't his scars because he hadn't gotten any new ones over the summer and his friends had already seen all of the ones he'd had. And not much else had changed for Harry since then.
Well obviously, he was taller now thanks to the spell.
But why would being taller make so many people blush?
Ron was tall. He and Harry were near the same height now and Ron didn't make every girl in the entire school blush.
Harry had of course considered that perhaps the girls had crushes on him, but he'd thrown that idea out of the window immediately. After all none of the girls had been crushing on him as a 4th year when he'd needed to get a date to the Yule Ball. In fact, no one had wanted to go with him at all and he'd ended up having a horrible time with Parvarti. Who had had an equally terrible time and hadn't talked to him for three months because of it. Of course, now she and her sister were staring at him with slight blushes on their cheeks just like everyone else, so Harry wasn't even sure what to make of the situation at all.
The only time Harry had thought perhaps a girl had liked him it had been with Cho last year and well…every time he thought about his first kiss in Madam Puddifoots he shuddered.
It had been so wet.
So no. The entire school couldn't be crushing on him. That was madness. Harry had gotten taller when the spell had ended, and he'd finally stopped slouching all the time. His clothing also fit a bit better, but he looked the same as he always did, minus the glasses.
Okay. So maybe he'd gotten a bit of an unintentional make-over.
But! It wasn't enough to explain the blushes. Really it wasn't.
Harry had gotten used to going to his dad when he faced problems like this. It almost scared him when he realized how normal that had become. In just one summer his entire…world view had been put upside down. Never before in his life would he have considered going to an adult with a problem like this but it had felt so natural to seek out his dad and ask him why everyone was blushing when he looked at them or spoke to them or touched them in anyway.
But Harry couldn't ask his dad anything. His dad wasn't his dad anymore. His dad was Professor Loki, suspected villain. Harry was supposed to treat the man like he'd treated Snape in the past few years. Which meant that Harry definitely couldn't linger after class and wait for the room to empty and ask his dad if he had noticed anything weird happening with the students. Maybe there was some sort of spell on him? Or someone had put something in the food.
No. That wasn't an option.
Harry had spent the very first class of his school year with his dad as the professor. And he had spent the entire time glaring at the man with all his might. Every time his dad said something that could hint that he was maybe evil, Harry had twisted his face into a scowl or had scoffed under his breath. His 'insolence' had cost his house 15 points in the first day but Hermione had earned those back and more in her other classes so no one noticed.
His dad was a good teacher Harry knew. He explained things in a way that made even Crabbe and Goyle understand and he didn't assign insane essays like Snape did. Not that Harry knew what Snape assigned in his NEWT level course. Harry hadn't gotten an 'O' on that and so he hadn't qualified to get into the class. Not that Harry was all that upset about not being in potions.
Of course, he'd been told that in order to become an Auror he'd need to get a NEWT in potions but that was a dream that no longer interested Harry. After all, if he became an Auror he'd have to work for somebody like Fudge. Sirius had been the one to point out that if he still wanted to be an auror then the Ministry would be daft to turn him away anyway, he was after all 'The Chosen One'. His godfather had said it as a joke, but Harry had known there was a nugget of truth there.
If working with the American Government had taught him anything it was that fame mattered. Harry had only gotten as far as he did because of his fame. Was that a little upsetting? Yes. But Harry had dealt with it. (Tony had actually been the most help with that ironically enough. The man had dragged Harry down to his lab one evening and given him some very helpful 'how not to piss off the paparazzi unless you really want to' tips.)
All of this meant that there was really very little reason for Harry to be upset about his lack of Potions Class. Harry had also dropped Divination. His grandmother was a seer and his dad had been very clear that if he wanted to learn more about that stuff then Frigga would be highly offended if he went elsewhere. Harry had spent very little time with his over-doting grandmother and he didn't want to know what she'd be like if he offended her.
So, no potions. No divination.
It had left him with an oddly empty schedule. There was DADA, transfigurations, charms, and herbology. But those classes only met once a week and two of them met on the same day. The classes weren't long either, just an hour and a half. Which meant that Harry had six hours of class a week. Compared to Hermione's gargantuan schedule it felt like Harry didn't have much work to do at all.
Even Ron was taking more classes than him, his parents had pushed him to take more classes because it was important for his future.
Harry's empty schedule of course worked to his benefit. It allowed him to have time once a week to sneak away to Asgard for training for a few hours in the afternoon. It also gave him time to practice his own magic in relative privacy. Harry couldn't just stop practicing wandless and aesir magic just because the school year had started, so when Ron and Hermione went off to class together, Harry planned to go up to the Room of Requirement and practice whatever he pleased. Be it magic or sword work.
Still with all of that, Harry had hours of each day that he could fill with whatever he wanted. Of course, a more responsible soul would spend that time writing up their homework assignments. But Harry was never going to be an academic, no matter how much Hermione despaired about it. Harry preferred to leave his work to the last minute and turn in hurriedly rushed essays that he'd done the night before.
It had worked for him the last five years and he didn't see why he should change it now.
This of course led Harry to spending far more time than he should thinking about why girls blushed when he talked to them and why Dean still wouldn't look him in the eyes most mornings. It also led him to interacting with the first years a lot more than originally planned.
It had started simply enough with him helping to pass out maps on the first day of classes. Harry had gone around with rolls of parchment in his arms and given out maps to every newly minted student while the school watched, and most girls blushed. Harry had liked talking to the first years, even if some of them had been a bit over eager. He'd told them the things on the train that he would have wanted to be told.
Things like 'I promise you're going to do just fine' and 'No one does their spells right the first time, you're supposed to make mistakes'.
But Harry had apparently had more of an influence than expected. Because on Tuesday he was waylaid by three Hufflepuff first years.
"Uhm! Harry!"
"Oh Hey Sarah, Cassidy, Drew." Harry said turning to look at the three kids.
"Are you busy?" Drew asked.
Harry had already had his two classes for the day, he'd planned on going up to the 7th floor to practice some of the new moves Tyr had taught him with the dummies the room could provide but that could wait till after lunch.
"No. Why? You guys need something?"
"We were wondering. We just had our first class with Professor McGonagall and well…"
"How do you turn a needle into a matchstick? I've tried a hundred times and it just won't do it!"
"None of us can get it. We've tried on our own for the past hour."
"Why don't you ask your prefects for help?" Harry asked.
"They're busy." Cassidy said. "Please can't you give us some tips or something?"
If Harry had known what saying yes would do he probably would have hesitated more. As it was, he merely shrugged and motioned for them to follow him. He led them to a nearby empty classroom and then explained the theory behind transfiguration. His dad had given him so many lectures over the summer about magic, relating it to things Harry understood. His dad had been able to untangle the complicated theorems and put them together into something that made sense.
Harry passed that knowledge on, at least enough of it that the first years were able to reorient themselves and try the spells again. Within 30 minutes all three first years had gleaming needles instead of match sticks and Harry felt rather satisfied.
"There you go." Harry said. "Just remember what I told you about transfiguration and you should be able to do anything McGonagall asks you to do this year."
Harry didn't think to ask them not to tell anyone else. Why would he? Instead he had accepted the grateful hugs the three students had given him and then gone on to get his lunch. It happened again on Thursday. He didn't have any classes at all that day and Ron and Hermione did. He'd found himself quite disoriented at first. This was the first time he and Ron hadn't had the same exact schedule.
But before he could get too waylaid, every first year Gryffindor had confronted him in the common room and begged for help with their charms assignments. Since Harry was painfully aware of how important a Windgardium Leviosa could be (and wasn't Flitwick teaching them that one early this year? Harry could have sworn they didn't have that lesson until Halloween) he'd agreed to help them out.
Harry had told them about how Ron had saved their lives by using this spell on a troll's club which had made them suitably impressed with how amazing the spell could be and then Harry had explained more magical theory. Just like his dad had taught him. He left out the stuff about godly magic though, for obvious reasons.
As it turned out, Harry was actually a good teacher. He'd gotten a taste for it with the DA. But unlike the DA Harry didn't have a monstrous headache and Voldemort threatening to possess him every other minute. So, Harry had spent the next hour helping the first years with their first charm. By the end of it the entire common room was filled with colorful feathers floating around and dancing in the air.
One of the first years suggested having a competition to see who could do the spell the best.
Harry, being a fool, thought that sounded fun.
"Alright." Harry said. "I'll be the judge. Let's see who can lift the heaviest thing."
Three broken chairs, a shattered window, and a lecture from their head of house later, Harry found himself cleaning up the common room by hand and thinking to himself that he wouldn't be helping anymore first years.
Of course, by Saturday things got totally out of hand. A Ravenclaw came to him asking for help finding her pet snake, a corn snake named Reginald that Harry found napping in the courtyard on a sun warmed stone. Then a few Slytherins came to him and asked for advice with defense magic. Harry saw in the corner of his eye Malfoy and the others spying on them and knew he couldn't say no, or he'd be a hypocrite. He'd helped students from every other house after all. So, Harry had taught the first years a few good spells and even let them practice them on him, which resulted in him being flung around on a grassy hill far more times than Tyr normally threw him during one of their lessons.
It had been great to see Malfoy looking thunderstruck that Harry was willing to treat the Slytherins like everyone else.
Anything that stumped Malfoy was worth a few bruises.
Things began to spiral from there and by the middle of the second week of classes Harry had a gaggle of first and second years that followed him around like ducklings asking for advice and laughing at everything he said. This of course only exacerbated the problem with the blushing since when girls saw him helping and laughing with the kids, they blushed even more than they had the week before.
Harry knew he was in trouble when the students asked for help in potions.
The very idea that Harry could help anyone with that class was frankly laughable.
So, Harry had done what he always did when he ran into a school problem.
He'd gone to Hermione.
"Hermione?" He asked.
"Harry? Where have you been! Ron and I have been in the library for thirty minutes waiting for you to show up so we could work on our charms essays together. Besides, this is the only place we can talk about you know what."
"Yeah. About that." Harry said. "What do you guys think about restarting the DA?"
"What?" Ron asked. "I thought we decided that the DA wasn't good anymore since it didn't have any snakes in it and it was basically a Dumbledore thing?"
"Right well obviously we'd need a different name." Harry agreed. "But I dunno, it was good being able to practice Defense stuff with everybody wasn't it?"
"Harry." Hermione said looking at him from over her tower of books. "What's going on?"
"You know how all the first years have been following me around?"
"Yeah." Ron laughed. "I told you your little opening feast stunt would backfire."
"Ron you're a regular seer." Harry deadpanned. "One of them asked me for homework help."
"Oh well that's not so bad." Hermione consoled. "You're actually very good at magic Harry, even if you don't do your homework like you should."
"No Hermione." Harry whined. "You don't understand. He asked me for potions help."
There was a beat of silence and then Harry looked up to see that Hermione had a hand to her mouth and was clearly trying very hard not to laugh.
"Oh go on."
Hermione and Ron both burst into gales of laughter, loud enough that Madam Pince shushed them from across the way. When his friends managed to stop laughing at him, Hermione spoke.
"So, you want to what? Set up the DA as some sort of study group?"
"And why not? We could have meetings in an empty classroom. I bet McGonagall wouldn't mind signing off on us using a space. Then any student could come and ask for help and there'd be someone who could help them. That way the first years never have to rely on me for help with potions."
He shivered at the very idea.
"The prefects are supposed to help the new students." Ron pointed out.
"Yeah but they're not." Harry said. "No offense guys but you're super busy. Hermione's taking like ten classes and she doesn't have time to do all that and help a first year figure out how to make a pineapple tap dance. Most of the other prefects are in the same spot. Honestly Ron do you think you have time to set up a tutoring session for any firstie who needs it?"
"No." He admitted.
"The whole point of this year is to help unify the school." Harry added. "What better way to do that then to use the DA. We get a few students from each house who's good at a certain class, ask them to give up a couple of hours each week to come and offer help. Spread out the work a bit."
"You're only suggesting this cause, you don't want to be drowned by a bunch of over eager 11 year olds." Ron accused.
"It's a good idea." Hermione cut in before Harry could defend himself from Ron's entirely true accusation. "Neville certainly could help us with herbology. No one is better at that class than him, not even me."
And Hermione didn't sound pleased by her last sentence. Harry and Ron both grinned at her frustration.
"Okay great." Harry said. "I'll start asking around, see who's open to helping."
"But Harry?" Ron asked. "Who could you possibly ask to help with potions? Hermione's the only one who's any good at 'em and she can't tutor every first year."
"Yes, I can."
"Not without a time turner." Ron muttered.
"She's not the only one who's good at them." Harry sighed. "There's a couple others who could do it."
"Who?" Ron asked while Hermione gave Harry a very pitying look.
"They'd never agree to it." She warned.
"I'll make them." Harry decided. "Phase One of our plan was a complete success. Even the Slytherins are using the maps we made. Phase Two can be getting this new study group together."
"Harry, who are you two talking about?" Ron demanded.
"Isn't is obvious?" Hermione demanded. "Draco Malfoy and Blaise Zabini are in the top three in our potions class and that's not just Snape's favoritism."
"Harry no." Ron begged. "Not the ferret. Anyone but the ferret."
"There isn't anyone else." Harry said. "Snape chases any other student who could be good out of the class before they learn anything decent and you know it."
"So what? We just invite a Death Eater in Training to teach the first years?"
"No. We invite another student to help us." Harry said. "Malfoy might be working for Voldemort but even he won't hurt kids. Probably."
Neither of his friends looked very convinced. Harry sighed.
"I'll watch him like a hawk. We can even make him sign something like what Hermione had the DA sign."
"Well that's something at least." Ron grumbled. "Fine. Go see if they'll agree."
"Great!" Harry said standing up.
"Harry. Not now." Hermione said. "You have to write your charms essay! It's due on Friday!"
"Can't stop now Hermione!" Harry sang as he got up from the table. "I've got some Slytherins to find!"
Harry held back a laugh as Hermione glared at him and Ron grinned. He felt much lighter in spirits now that there was a plan in place to keep the first years off his back. He pulled his invisibility cloak and the marauder's map from his bag and exited the library unseen. The first years had been so distracting that Harry had almost forgotten about the mystery of the blushing students. Harry was very forcibly reminded of it when he found Draco and his cronies hanging out near the lake.
"Oi! Malfoy!" Harry called.
Draco stiffened and turned to look at Harry.
There was a faint but clearly discernable blush on his cheeks.
Now wasn't that interesting?