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Part Seven

"It just feels like we're further than ever from that mirror."

Harry blinked and looked up at Ron. They'd met up in an obscure corner of the library to study for their exams and give Ron and Hermione some relief from the other Gryffindors who thought they were "traitors" for associating with a "slimy Slytherin." "What do you mean?"

Ron let his head dangle for a moment. Harry just waited. Ron really wasn't lazy or stupid, whatever he liked to imply sometimes. You only had to have patience with him and give him a chance to speak his mind.

It was a lesson that Hermione was learning more slowly, but that was all right. Harry was confident that she would eventually get there.

"The future I saw in the Mirror was me being respected and Head Boy and everything," Ron mumbled at last. "But to be Head Boy, you have to get good marks. And it has to be in all your years. I can't even do that well on first-year exams. How can I think that I'm going to be Head Boy?"

Harry leaned forwards and squeezed his hand. "I think you're comparing yourself too much to Hermione."

"Huh? I didn't say anything about her."

"I know, but she's looming over you in your mind, I think." Hermione had gone to get a book, or Harry never would have said this. "Keep in mind that she's great and she's really smart, but just because you won't get the same scores on the exams as she will doesn't mean you're stupid. You can study in a different way, one that makes more sense for you."

"What way is that?"

Harry floundered a bit. He had to admit he didn't know. But he reached back into his memory of some of the Muggle students he'd been in primary school with and took a deep breath. "Well, maybe you could start outlining your essays? Writing down some of the ideas that you come up with and putting them in order? Then trying to write the paragraphs."

"Huh." Ron looked intrigued. "That's an idea. I think Percy said something about it once, but, well, Percy."

Harry nodded, amused. From what Ron and Hermione both said about Ron's older brother, Percy sounded like he had a lot of good ideas but explained them incredibly boringly. "So you could try."

"That's an excellent idea," Hermione said, coming back to the table and dropping a huge pile of books on it. "And, Harry, you could stand to do some of the same thing."

Harry smiled at her. "I could do that!"

Hermione beamed back at him and started quizzing them on some of the Charms spells that would certainly be on the exam. Harry kept his head down as he answered, because his expression might have given away to Hermione that he had no intention of following her advice.

Or, well, he would follow it as far as was practical. But what did marks matter, next to survival? There were some classes that he would never get good marks in, anyway. Both Snape and Quirrell hated him too much.

So he would do a few things to try and make his essays better, but he would worry a lot more about learning magic, actual magic, spells that would let him survive the kinds of things like the Ravenclaw students who had attacked him and Nott and Zabini the other day.

Harry was kind of surprised that none of the Ravenclaws had gone to the professors, honestly. Yes, they'd attacked first, but the students they were bullying had been Slytherins, who were unpopular. And Harry's use of the Lightning Charm had been worse, the Ravenclaws could have said, than whatever spells they'd planned for the Slytherins.

Maybe I should ask Nott and Zabini for their thoughts on that.

"It's because of you, Potter."

"What do you mean? You think that I caused their attack somehow?"

Zabini paused and looked up at Harry. They had their dormitory to themselves at the moment, along with Nott, who had glanced up from his own book. Malfoy and Crabbe and Goyle were down in the common room where Malfoy was "tutoring" his shadows. "You really don't know?"

"No. How did I cause it?"

"That's not what we're saying, Potter. Merlin." Nott swung his legs over the side of his bed and sat up. "You're prickly.'

"I wonder why."

Nott inclined his head slowly. Zabini had also laid down his quill by now, and he was the one who spoke. "No. I meant that it wouldn't look good if it came out that they had attacked the Boy-Who-Lived."

"You know that's not the only reason, Blaise." Nott rolled his eyes. "You also frightened them badly, Potter. I mean, Harry."

That's right, we're supposed to call each other by our first names now. "I didn't think I did that much. I mean, the Lightning Charm is something they should have felt before, right?"

Nott and Zabini exchanged looks that Harry couldn't interpret. He concealed a sigh. Ron and Hermione did that too, sometimes, about things that had happened in the Gryffindor common room and which they didn't even bother trying to explain to Harry. Harry wondered, wistfully, if he would ever find someone to have silent communication with.

Probably not.

Harry shoved the self-pity away. He was alive, wasn't he?

"Maybe they've felt it," Nott said slowly, at last, "but maybe not. It's a spell taught in upper-level Defense classes, but students practice it on dummies, not each other. And I think it was more the way you did it."

"What do you mean?"

"The way you went after them. Jumping between staircases." Zabini leaned towards Harry, his eyes gleaming. "I know that you said you grew up with Muggles, but didn't you ever fight like that there?"

Harry shook his head. He would have been locked up in the cupboard for weeks if he'd ever attacked Dudley, and anyway, Dudley was too big to be rocked by Harry's weak punches.

"Why did you go after them like that?"

"I mean, they could have killed me? And you," Harry added, wondering if it was a bad thing that he was bringing them up second. But probably not. It seemed like the kind of thing "real" Slytherins would have said.

"So for you, it's different when you're fighting for your life," Nott summarized, a complex expression on his face.

"Of course it is!"

"But you also went after dearest Draco like that, and you can't have thought—"

"He already threatened my owl," Harry said tightly. Honestly, he'd thought he was understanding Nott and Zabini better, but it seemed there was always going to be a huge gap between them. "I knew I had to put him down, or he would do something even worse."

Nott and Zabini stared at him. Harry made a frustrated sound and turned back to his Transfiguration book. "Never mind, I can't explain it and you probably don't want to actually hear it."

"No," Zabini said softly. "I actually understand you better now, P—Harry. You went after Malfoy because he threatened your owl."

"I said that already—"

"And you went after the Ravenclaws because they said that they were going to attack me." Nott leaned forwards a little. "You could have walked away when they said they were there for me. You didn't."

"Like I would have trusted them to keep their word."

"But you did it because you were defending me," Nott said. "As well as yourself. As well as Blaise. You went after Malfoy so hard because he'd already threatened your owl. You'll do more for other people than just yourself."

"They could have killed you, knocking you off a staircase like that. I don't care what your dad did, you don't deserve that."

Nott lowered his eyes to the floor for a long moment. Then he looked at Zabini and they had another of those silent conversations.

And then they went back to their books.

Harry shook his head and did the same. Maybe he would try outlining his essay the way that he'd told Hermione he would.

And just accept that, no, he would never have anyone to have silent conversations with. He would have thought that Nott and Zabini would say thanks or that they understood him better or something like that, but no.

I'm really not a real Slytherin.

Stupid Hat.