Harry potter and the Time of retirement
Everything related to Harry Potter belongs to JKR
Chapter 4
Just as the welcoming banquet had been lively and full of chatter, their walk toward the common room was silent and somber. It was hard to say if it was because the kids in the group were just too exhausted to care for all the quirks and magical items visible on the way or if they were starting to realize they were about to have their first night away from their parents – a change that would have been permanent for a long, long time. Harry, a former parent himself, was ready to bet on both: a tiring day, an overfilled belly and no family in sight were sure to demoralize them. Oh, well.
Remaining behind the group he could see how, even while quiet, the kids had already formed small groups and couples, mostly of all boys and all girls. Suddenly one that was walking alone, Zacharias Smith, turned to watch him and spoke:
"What's the problem, Potter? Missing home already?" he said with an unconcerned tone.
"Not really, no... I am just tired"
"Even if you did, it would be normal; when I was still preparing for Eton, my mother said again and again that I would miss her and dad. Not that I do, of course" added another, that Harry recognized as Justin Finch-Fletchley.
"Really? Not even a little bit?" asked Harry with a small smile.
"Well, I don't know... it is weird that they are not here, but they went away on business trips quite often. She always called me on the phone before sleeping, though".
"Eh, so you do miss your mommy in the end" sniggered Zacharias, while Justin watched him with hostility, but without saying anything.
"Phone? Is that a muggle thing?" asked Ernie Macmillan.
"What is a muggle?" counter asked Justin.
"It's the word wizards use for non magicians, Justin" said Harry distractedly.
"Oh. I don't like it, it makes them sound stupid" said Justin.
"Muggles are stupid, everyone knows that" said Zacharias, almost casually.
"Hey, you know you really are..." started Justin, irritated, but was interrupted by the Hufflepuff Prefect, a 5th year female student, who had just lead them to what looked like a dusty corner of a room filled with big barrels.
"Ok, come all here and pay attention. This is the entrance to our house common room, and you must never reveal its entrance to anyone from other houses, even if they are your friends" she started. "To open the way, you must tap this barrel's lid at the rhythm of 'Helga Huffle Puff'. Be precise, or you will be covered in vinegar – no joke" and, while saying this, she tapped one barrel three times in a certain pattern. The lid of the barrel opened, revealing a passageway into a wider, warmer room.
Everyone entered and started looking around; even Harry, who had never been here before, was mildly interested in this place. Just as what he had been told once, Hufflepuff's common room was not particularly luxurious but was 'cozy', a quality earned by the unassuming and yet sturdy-looking wooden furnitures, the plants hanging everywhere and the brownish-yellow color of the walls.
After maybe half a minute, the Prefect addressed them again:
"So, this is it – our common room. Welcome to Hufflepuff. I am sure you are tired, so I'll be brief: this hall is for relaxing, studying and socializing with your house mates. The dormitories are, for girls, through that door and for boys that other one" she said, pointing at two different hallways that opened on the main hall "The first door is for your year, the second for second years and so on. As for tomorrow, I will leave on this table your class schedule: make sure to pick up a copy. This castle is huge, so try to go to meals and classes in advance because you will get lost, it's a promise. Any last minute question?"
No one said anything, so the Prefect wished them a good night and left the hall. Other, older, students were stepping in but the kids apparently had no interest in them. Muttering "byes" and "good night" the group split in two, and Harry followed the other boys to their room.
Here too, like in Gryffindor, there were poster beds, only in a different color. No meaningful chat happened: just some random comments on each other's pajamas and some good nights: soon, all of them were under the blankets and the lights were out. Harry though could not fall asleep – like some of the others too, he was sure, and he found some degree of irony in thinking that like the kids he felt nervous due to being in a new, uncontrollable situation. Sure, his problems were different than just having a new bedroom away from his family but still, the similarities with his year mates were there.
Getting out of bed, he cast a quick charm on his glasses to see in the dark, picked up the prescribed winter cloak and moved out of the room, with the intention of touring the school a little, or at least until he felt calmer.
Unfortunately, when he opened the door to the common room he found it still inhabited by a couple groups of older students, probably updating each other on what happened during the summer. 'Of course', he simply thought; in any case, there was no chance he could go out of the hall without attracting attention, and he didn't feel like it was a good idea. He considered for a second if he could just disillusion himself and get out anyway, but in the end decided against it. No sense in challenging his luck, at least not on the very first night. With a sigh he turned around and went back to his room and bed, as silently as he left before. Acting on a hunch, he charmed his pillow with a combination of tempus and a vibrating spell, so that he would be awakened by 7, before lying down. It took a while, and some forced calm, but eventually he fell asleep.
The morning after, at 7, he woke up while the rest of his room mates were still sleeping. Postponing a shower, he got out of the dormitories and of the still deserted common room, walking through the castle. Without hunger, without any specific objective to follow, he was uncertain for a couple minutes of what to do and in the end he decided to pay a visit to the owlery and see Hedwig.
The walk up to the west tower was nostalgic, in a way: moving stairways, talking paintings, a couple of ghosts in the distance, the noise of Peeves breaking something... was this even a school, or just an amusement fair? Maybe he was unfairly comparing it to his own offices, back at the ministry, but still this confusion was not up to his definition of a working place. 'And the basilisk, and the acromantuals', he mused, considering how Hogwarts was much more deadly than it appeared to fresh eyes.
Up in the tower, he noticed he was getting close to the owlery by the smell – and later by the owl feathers and dried droppings that Hedwig raised when she flied on his extended arm. Disgusting. He almost took his wand out to solve this problem himself, but a combined fear of being spotted while doing so and irritation towards the fact that it was not his duty stopped him. It irked him enough to do something, anyway. Sending Hedwig would have been too obvious so, after petting her for a while, he let her go and called for a school owl. Conjuring a piece of parchment and a pen, he wrote on a nearby table:
'To deputy headmistress McGonagall;
I have just been to the owlery, and I stomped on a pool of bird droppings – again. And even then, I was still cleaner than my own owl, who I hope it is not about to get sick. How hard can it be to instruct Filch, or Hagrid, or a student in detention to clean this place up at least once in a while? Take care.'
That would work. Maybe. If he tried to contact Dumbledore there would have been no chance of actions being taken, but McGonagall should have been more receptive to a jab to her competence. Or maybe not.
After sending the letter, he left and went back to his rooms. On the way he picked up his class schedule, giving it a fast glance while still walking. As for his room mates, they were finally up.
"'morning, guys" "Good morning" "I am sleepyyyy... " "Hey, Harry, were you out already?"
"No, I was just checking today's classes. Here, take a look" he answered, while handing over the schedule. Three of his room mates grouped over to look, while the fourth one – Wayne Hopkins – remained sitting on his bed, complaining of sleepiness.
"One hour of charms with Slytherin, two hours of herbology with Gryffindor, lunch, two hours of potions with Ravenclaws. Meh, I wonder how they are." said Zacharias.
"The classes or the other houses?" asked another boy, Ernie MacMillan.
"I wonder how we will reach the classes. Does any of you know where to go?" added Wayne.
"For Herbology there will be a greenhouse somewhere outside, but for the others..." said Justin.
"Whatever. I am going to take a shower, so I'll see you later. Leave my schedule on my bed, when you are done." said Harry with an even tone, moving to the attached bathroom. In the bedroom, the chatter continued.
Under the hot water, Harry wondered what to do about the coming lessons. On one side, he was not that unhappy to re-examine the whole curriculum without time constraints or pressure; sure, the first lessons or maybe the whole first years would not cover anything noteworthy, but he had some idea on how to spice up the course work.
Mixing together spells, or trying to improve his finesse over them could keep him interested – at least during classes themselves, as he had no doubt he could complete any assignment in record time and then be free to do something else. No, what worried him were the faculty members: principally Quirrell, Snape and Dumbledore. The former tried to kill him during his original first year, with no provocations... which meant he would try again, if Harry remained at the school. 'If' he thought, still unsure.
Anyway, an anonymous note to Dumbledore would probably be enough to kick Quirrell out of the castle, alive or dead, but it would also ensure that Riddle's wraith would survive. Harry itself never fully understood what Dumbledore's plans were at the time of his original school years, but he was pretty sure the headmaster still had no certainty or even an hint about the existence of horcruxes yet, something necessary if the wanted outcome was to capture or exorcise the wraith and not just have it escape.
'This is not my damn problem' he thought. Under the warm water, Harry felt disgusted at the idea that he was somehow bound to act. He never expected kids to help with his job as an auror, only to study and play. Was future foresight truly enough to blackmail him into action?
He could just some of it with the right person, true... there was nothing easier than just send some anonymous letter filled with information and call it a day. 'But...' he thought worriedly: he was not eager to do that, not while Dumbledore could think he, too, had an horcrux in his head. Which was something else to check for eventually, he thought, as the idea of having again a fragment of Riddle's soul inside his head was most definitely unpleasant.
How to do it was a problem on itself, unfortunately. Spells dealing with souls were obscure and ill-reputed, and not something he dealt with regularly during his years as auror so Harry had no idea what to do – nor was he reckless enough to just blindly try.
Another issue was Snape, even if it was a more of a personal one. In the years following Riddle's uprising he had made peace with his memories of the man, something greatly helped by him being dead. His second son's name was proof enough of that. Only...
'That man...' thought Harry, irritated. With age, he had greater and greater doubts about his re-evaluation of Snape's personality: learning how good people can do bad actions and vice versa made Harry question if opposing Voldemort could actually be enough to justify everything else. Snape behaved as a miserable, lonely man whose main pleasure was making the lives of his students as ugly as he could just because he could.
Sure, he had been useful as a spy spy against Riddle... 'maybe' he thought. In truth, he had no idea on what results Snape ever managed to produce. Only the dubious evaluation of Dumbledore spoke in the professor's favour. Nor Harry could simply ignore how he became a spy due to his unrequited and very much unwanted interest in his mom.
'And he had no problem with me and dad being killed', thought Harry bitterly. No, nothing suggested he was a good person; on the contrary, the longer he thought about him, Snape's utter lack of morals and his complete dedication only to his own goals became apparent. No, his talents and determination were much easier to appreciate with him dead, Harry concluded.
He would most certainly not put himself above the rules and "remove him" just because he could, for that was the way of the criminals that he fought against all his life, but he would not allow the man to be anything but his potions professor either. If they could act like adults... no matter what he looked like at the moment... good: he had no interest in starting feuds. That, or else. Time would tell.
Turning off the warm water, Harry cast a couple spells to dry himself and started to get ready for the day. His last thoughts were for Dumbledore himself, but he had no great feelings for the man anymore. For what he could understand of the man in hindsight, he was simply someone terrorized by his own actions and powers due to the renowned tryst with Grindelwald when they were teens.
Dumbledore had been passive in the extreme, reacting only when forced by circumstances and hoping for the best in every other situations. From the way he dealt to an obviously unstable Tom Riddle, to Harry's care, to Sirius, to Snape, to his death on that Hogwarts tower, Dumbledore just let things happen only to intervene when the damage was done already.
'The poor sap', thought Harry with some understanding.
Forced in a position of power he did not want, at least not consciously, only because people surrounding him were even more incompetent than he was. That and the fact that beside his personality flaws he was still a well intentioned and overpowering wizard, too much to take on frontally even for his old self (let alone with his current weaker body), made him wary of interacting with him when not needed. Again, it was another person better kept distant. Shaking his head, he left the now empty room and walked towards the great hall, to catch up with his year mates.