It was almost a relief to collapse down onto the benches that ran up the side of the long, Gryffindor table when Harry, Hermione and Neville finished their walk in from the Thestral carriages. The Express ride was always long, but Harry had never needed to do patrols before, and was also dealing with this new and obsessive curiosity regarding himself. From the awkward beginnings of his first prefect patrol, he'd now come up with three polite ways to say 'no autographs', and had also managed to turn away a bunch of gifts that people tried to force on him – mostly first years, which were hard to say no to. He was tired, but at least he'd made it to the castle.
Unfortunately for Harry, not even the enchanted night sky above or the familiar thrum of Hogwarts' magic around him could make up for the fact that it wasn't the end of the day yet.
Now he was out of a private train compartment or carriage, the whole school was looking at him and gossiping, countless eyes brilliant under the glimmers of the floating candles and voices buzzing with curiosity fuelled by too much sugar.
Harry swore as his effort to push the attention from his mind also had him drop Guijjarro, the small rock plummeting from shoulder height to thud onto his thigh, before rolling off it and onto the stone floor with a thunk.
"Bugger."
Hermione hissed at him. "Harry! You're a prefect now!"
"Crap. Dam—I mean, bollo—ther. Yeah, bother," he tried to parse through while trying to accio the rock back up into his hand without his wand.
Neville was saying something about how the first years weren't even here yet – Hermione had opinions about prefects that insisted they should still set positive examples to the kids who were – and there was a sudden scrabble as half a dozen Gryffindors who should know better and a handle of other students all ducked their heads under the table to see what Harry had dropped.
"I'll get it!"
"What is it?"
"Can you see it?"
"Can you grab it?"
"Mine!"
"No, you'll have to give it back, you dork!"
"What even is it though?"
The surge of irritation that had Harry clenching his fists in his sleeves didn't help his wandless spellcasting, so he fumbled for his holly wand from its holster and flicked it to bring the rock back into his possession with a wand twitch.
Neville thumped his shoulder sympathetically. "Just a little longer, Harry."
Until the end of the day, yes, but that wouldn't solve the issue itself.
Harry could only sigh. "They're going to start trying to steal my stuff now, aren't they." The way he ended the phrase, the leaden certainly of it all keeping his tone even, stole away the possibility that he might have made that a question.
Hermione's hazel eyes flickered between Harry and Neville on his other side. "Oh, it's not going to that bad, is it?"
A raised eyebrow at the handful of students still searching under the Gryffindor table had Hermione frown, and Harry used the time to respell Guijarro before he got distracted again.
His control was getting better, but it had been a long day, and he was tired, dammit.
Neville, the dear lad, was willing to take Harry at his word. "We're going to have to spell your stuff in the dorms, aren't we?"
"At least for a bit," Harry agreed. "And I'm going to have to get up to snuff on checking for enchantments and potions and all again too. Remind me to talk to Flitwick later?"
The mention of the Charms teacher had Harry and his friends staring at the teacher's table, where a bunch of unfamiliar faces were located.
"I…don't see Professor Flitwick," Hemione announced after a pause. "He hasn't been replaced, has he?"
Neville worried, "McGonagall's not up there either. D'you think something's happened?"
The hall was warming up as returning students kept filing in the doors, more slowly now, but a couple of people up at the teacher's table were also still sidling into place.
"Nah," Harry decided. "There's still seats saved for them up there, y'see? Maybe Flitwick's gone to help McGonagall with the first-year students? They did tell us in the prefect meeting that this year was going to be 'busy', whatever that means."
He'd eliminated Umbridge's threat already and Fudge was going down; Harry couldn't think of any other reason why the year might be different to usual.
Nev's voice hummed low in his throat. "Who are all the new people, then?"
"Maybe it's an effect from the Tournament inquest?" Hermione offered.
"Plus," Harry continued, "a bunch of them look pretty young, so maybe a couple of apprentices or master's students are up there? I guess it could just be a bigger year for them?"
Not that he could figure out why that had changed from last timeline.
After a pause for consideration, Hermione distracted herself by hissing instructions at the second and third years – what was Colin Creevey doing down there under the tablecloth?
Harry spent a couple of minutes trying to deflect questions – "What was it you dropped Harry?" "I can grab it for you next time, if you want" – and shortly thereafter he became aware that they were all back in their seats again, the better to gossip about him.
The little hairs on the back of his neck prickled and Harry tried to ignore the hot feeling of eyes on him.
"I don't – just a thing, it wasn't important – don't know how this year is going to turn out for me," he turned to Neville.
"I can see why they made you a prefect," Nev shrugged, "although I don't know if it will actually help you control all this. Are you going to be in any clubs this year?"
"Not with things like this, I'm not!" Harry's eyes widened. "Merlin, I think I might ruin them!"
Hermione leaned over to bump her shoulder against Harry's. "Things won't be so bad in a few days," she told him. "Gryffindor, at least, will be better behaved. Won't they, Tregonning."
The titchy brunette girl she was eyeing up twitched and went pink, but at least she stepped trying to lean over and peer onto Harry's lap.
"Better," Hermione told the third year. "Now try to keep it like that. Ooh, look, Harry. Professor McGonagall's bringing the new students in."
So she was, and there were a lot.
The Great Hall quieted down as the last of the teachers squeezed into their places at the head table, and heads turned to the front for the Sorting Hat's song which – Harry cast his mind back as well as his prodigious memory would go – seemed more or less a repeat of last timeline.
Then, as the Hall settled down into a more expectant silence, the first new student was sent to Ravenclaw and the Sorting proper began.
The whole Hall was rustling with hundreds of low whispers and the flutter of many teenagers fidgeting. Harry checked on Guijarro for the third time, needing to strengthen the thread of magic that connected them the slightest bit but nothing else, and shifted in his now-warm seat to find a more comfortable position.
Near the front of the room, a large huddle of unfamiliar faces were staring nervously towards Professor McGonagall and her current victim, whose hands were clenched tightly into the edges of the stool beneath him.
"HUFFLEPUFF!" the Hat finally roared out, and an overwhelmed Rhys Jones stumbled his way towards the cheering table in yellow and gold.
The applause lasted a few seconds before settling down again into bored mutterings, and Harry flicked his eyes away from the next kid who stepped towards the Sorting Hat when the distinct gurgle of a nearby hungry stomach set a bunch of Gryffindors to giggling.
"Oh my god!" someone gasped out, and the ripple of laughter and flustered apologies were far more interesting than yet another silent kid sitting under the Sorting Hat.
Not even Hermione, on Harry's left, bothered to tell the third years to quiet down this time.
"'S going on a bit, yeah?" Neville muttered.
Harry scratched the back of his head. "That's one way to put it, sure."
"How long d'you reckon it'll be till we eat?"
Harry frowned and went to the pocketwatch Kreacher had helped him pocket earlier that morning.
"No bloody idea. How long's it been so far?"
Neville shrugged.
"Boys," Hermione warned. "Don't ruin the moment. The Sorting is very important for new students…"
"Alright, alright. I haven't actually rushed them, have I?"
"You could keep your voice down a bit more, Harry!"
"It's not li—" Oh, but people were still staring at him, trying to catch his smallest comment, weren't they? "Fine, okay. You're right."
They missed whatever the Hat shouted this time, and Harry slow-clapped four times for whoever had been Sorted to wherever they were going.
Neville's pattering applause was equally disinterested. "At least Harry's not maki—Hah! Look at Ron!"
Harry's neck swivelled left, unable to stop himself staring down towards the back of the Hall, where Neville's own delighted grin was pointing.
"What? Where?"
"I think he's asleep." Neville chortled.
Twitching irritably, Hermione straightened her spine and opened her mouth, then paused to stare down the table at their classmate. After a long moment of thought, she snapped her lips closed and let her spine curve back into rest with a quiet huff. "I don't think he's actually the only one."
She was right. All the way down the Gryffindor table and – Harry turned his head – scattered through the other Houses too, heads were down and resting on hands or forearms and more occasionally, a borrowed shoulder.
Harry spared another glance for the Sorting Hat, which Professor McGonagall was waiting to place yet another nervous kid's head. The Hat was slid over his forehead, wriggling a bit to get comfortable and said, "Hrm," and went silent.
"Merlin!" Harry grumbled as quietly as he could, but he wasn't the only one complaining at the moment anyway. "What's going on with all the Hatstalls this year? This is ridiculous!"
Hermione hummed to herself and gave Harry an odd kind of look. "Perhaps the Hatstalls and so many new students this year have similar origins?"
He frowned. "What does that mean?"
"About that, I've been counting," Neville leaned closer to explain. "Our year-group seventeen students: two dorms of girls and one and a bit of boys. This year, Gryffindor's already got twenty new Sorts, and the Hat's only reached K. There's going to be more than twice as many in their year as we have in ours."
"A post-war baby boom?" Harry hazarded.
"Maybe?" Hermione's smile looked a bit crooked. "Probably partly, at least. But that doesn't explain the transfer students."
"Huh?
"There," she nodded towards the front of the hall, behind the huddled group of waiting first years."
She was correct: gathered together in a tight group, a few steps behind the little shorties still waiting to be Sorted, a bunch of taller teenagers in undecorated black uniforms stood further back.
Neville's forehead furrowed. "We take in transfer students?"
His time, Hermione's hum sounded like she knew something they didn't. "Normally it's just one or two, and they're Sorted quietly before the first years are even off the boats. But this year, there's a bit more interest in attending Hogwarts than normal so I guess they're making a production of it."
"But why?" Harry blinked, his head heavy and full of fog.
For some reason, Hermione rolled her eyes. "Give it a few minutes and see if it will come to you."
Which didn't help at all, but it had been such a long day already. The beginnings of a thoughtful frown transformed into an automatic smile as Harry jerked up at the sound of applause, eyes startling back to the front of the room where a grinning Silvie Haddock was standing up to join Gryffindor.
"Clap!" Harry hissed at Neville, and his train of thought disappeared with the distraction of exhaustion.
What had he been thinking about anyway?
Maybe they could eat in half an hour or so. They must be halfway through the alphabet now. There were barely any surnames starting with Y and Z or anything, right?
By the time dinner was served, Auggie Yarrow going to Slytherin with a scowl and Dumbledore postponing all his announcements due to "more pressing concerns", Harry was working himself into a proper mood.
He and every other Gryffindor in proximity had finished all of the drinks on the table well before the Sorting Hat had finished the job and now Harry really needed to pee.
Then, when the food – finally, the food – popped up in colourful mounds and generous piles on the table, Harry's stomach wasn't the only one to gurgle at the rich, warm scent of roast veggies, crisp pastry, sweet glazes and a whole bunch of sauces that teased and tantalised the students' senses.
As always, no one held back politely, hands reaching and grabbing with abandon, and Harry didn't wait to serve himself either, palm closing around the cool silver of the closest serving spoon. The first spoonful of steak and kidney pie was just hovering over his empty plate when he heard a strident voice exclaim, "I told you he likes meat the best! As if the Wandless Wonder could be a vegetarian!"
Hand pausing over his plate, meat and gravy spilling out of the pastry in chunks, Harry tried to spot the rude kid in question. But everyone around him seemed focused on their own dinners. On his right, Nev was busy going after the mashed potato with generous abandon, so Harry shrugged, switched spoons and leaned over for the garlic-buttered roast mushrooms instead.
"Mushrooms!" A similar – but different – announced to the table, quieter than the first voice but with an edge to it that meant it still carried. "Mushrooms are a vegetable though, right? Or…close enough. Ooh! Maybe they're from the Forbidden Forest…like, extra magical mushrooms might explain how he could do all those things!"
Trying to spot the speakers, Harry finished tapping the serving spoon on his plate, the final mushroom sliding off with reluctance, and absently handed the spoon Hermione's way.
"Are you hearing that?"
"What was that?" she asked, as if the minted peas she'd just finished with had somehow deafened her to other voices.
A thrum of frustration worked its way into Harry's temples when someone commentated his choice of bread, and veg, and then Harry overheard muttering about the butter he put on his potatoes and then Neville caught sight of his scowl.
"It's gonna be over soon enough," the taller boy tried to assure him, but even as Harry began shovelling food into his mouth, that thrill of tension began building its way up throughout his body.
"What? The famous Hogwarts' gossip mill?"
"…Nevermind."
Harry tried to chew loudly, a vain attempt to avoid the surrounding chatter.
"Eat slower, Harry!" Hermione told him with a quirk of her eyebrow. "We can't leave till the end of the Feast no matter how fast you go."
Harry tugged a mushroom off his fork with a click of his teeth and tried to let the rich garlic explosion on his tastebuds distract him from a sulk.
"Look at those arms though!" a voice reached his ears. "I do like me a wizard with good forearms."
"I've never seen him work out before," someone exclaimed far too loudly.
These were Gryffindor voices, dammit it, Harry realised with a scowl. With a clink of his fork, he sat up to spot the rude idiots, but then a surge of noise came from the Hufflepuffs on the table next over and Harry couldn't help but overhear…
"What do you think he inherited?"
Hermione and Neville stopped moving for a moment before staring at Harry with wide eyes, and Harry snapped his mouth shut with a click of teeth.
"Distract me."
"Circe, but it's been a long day," Neville said desperately into the bubble of silence that surrounded Harry and his mates.
"Do you remember everything we agreed we'd do for the first years?" Hermione asked at the same time.
"I'm not an idiot," Harry rolled his eyes. "Yes, and yes. Obviously. Come on, give me more to work with than that." Beneath the tablecloth, his right leg began bouncing up and down with frustrated energy.
He speared an asparagus with unnecessary force.
"Can't believe we're still eating dinner at quarter past eight," was Neville's next attempt.
Hermione stuttered out an awkward, "What class are you most looking forward to this week, Harry?" and Harry couldn't help but snort impatiently at his friends' best attempts.
"I know. The usual. At least I—"
He broke off at the sound of some other student making some kind of insinuation about Harry's wealth, or it could have been health, and then he couldn't help but feel the hairs on the back of his neck rise up in a prickling response to the countless stares at his back coming from the Great Hall behind him. He hoped desperately that the sound of chatter picking up from the Hall in general didn't have much to do with him.
"You'd think people could at least try to be subtle!" Hermione told no one in particular loudly, which didn't help the problem at all, though at least she was trying.
"I've never wondered once about whether you have chest hair or not," Neville offered loyally.
"I – Merlin, Neville! Thanks, but you share a dorm with me! If you did, I wouldn't expect it to come up in conversation, you know!?"
From the response to that, a bunch of strangers hadn't considered yet what it was like to room with Harry, and he didn't like the way their sudden interest in the topic made him feel.
Now both of Harry's legs were doing that jittery bounce, and he could feel the rapid beat of his pulse throb, hard and insistent, beneath his jaw.
Hermione, bless her, finally managed a comment that might do him some good. "You'd think people would have better things to talk about than…whatever this rubbish is. What announcements do you think Headmaster Dumbledore will give us tomorrow? I do hope he explains what's going on with everyone at the teacher's table."
"I know, right?" Harry agreed. He tried to relax his shoulders back down again, and stopped chewing to stare thoughtfully at the head table in question. "Who do you think they all are?"
"One of them's got to be the new Defence teacher," Nev offered, managing a decent comment now that Hermione had gotten them started. "You reckon it's that wizard in red? He looks competent, I think."
"By Professor Babbling?" Hermione shrugged a shoulder. "Surely he's too young for Defence. Maybe Charms or something?"
"There's a whole bunch younger than him though. Has Hogwarts ramped up its Masters' programme, do you reckon?"
Harry reached up and plucked Guijarro out of the air, ignoring the odd looks the action got from the students around him, and moved the rock six inches backwards so that the glowing magelight of its charmwork wasn't blocking his view of the head table.
"Vector's doing—"
"Professor Vector, Harry."
"Yes, her. She's doing her master's though, and she's a proper teacher with her own classes. So maybe some of them are just new teachers for the extra classes in first year?"
"Not all of them, surely!"
In their thoughtful pause, someone was speculating just a tad too loudly whether Harry was a good kisser, stimulating Neville into panicked conversation again.
"S-so, maybe, I was thinking, uh… maybe they're all apprentices then?"
"Perhaps the majority are," Hermione gnawed her lip. "But they're not all school leavers."
"Still leaves a ton of people unexplained," Harry mused.
Neville frowned. "D'you reckon we've got more option lines opening up? I've heard that Hogwarts hasn't taught Enchanting since, sometime in the 70s, I think?"
Hermione sat up straighter. "I've heard Japan is beginning to see some actual progress in the development of technomancy. I'd love to take that course, if it were available."
Harry scoffed. "Would you drop Divination for it, after all this time?"
"I could absolutely persuade Professor Trelawney to let me self-study until our O.W.L exams," Hermione assured him. "She's…she's not looking too happy about things though, so what does that mean?"
Harry and Neville swivelled their heads towards the teacher's table once more.
The head table was arranged quite differently from how Harry'd ever seen it before in any timeline, the Heads of Houses and Departments – McGonagall, Sprout, Babbling, et cetera – were happily chatting between themselves and wetting their throats with some decent wizarding alcohol, if Harry was recognising those flagons correctly. Behind them though, raised a foot or so on a secondary dais perhaps, a second row of adults were also sitting, eating and chatting as if the Great Hall hadn't somehow expanded to include them, as if Hogwarts Castle had always seated forty teachers up the front and this was standard fare for a Great Feast.
The dozen or score of witches and wizards he now ran his gaze over were dressed, to a tee, in their best and boldest of wizarding fashion. There were your usual range of pointed hats in black, two people wearing scarves wrapped around their heads and a couple more in brightly coloured turbans.
As Harry stared up at the strangers, he also noticed one wizard eating very neatly with his right hand's fingers, and another witch on the second high table had...Perhaps she'd brought her own chopsticks?
To a tee, all of them seemed perfectly comfortable with the students occasionally staring at them and chatted companionably amongst themselves as if they'd known each other for a while.
Harry gave up his own observation of them to swipe a roast carrot through leftover gravy and returned to scowling back at the glances towards him while he chewed.
After a moment of awkwardness, Neville broke his usual habit by squeaking his knife over his almost-empty plate, and filled the silence.
"Well," he set his cutlery down and clapped his hands quietly, "go back to telling us more about this, this French Underhill place you like so much. You've told us all about what you did there, but I can't quite picture what it looks like, like a…cave?"
Hermione was happy to change the topic. "You didn't mention anything about space-saving enchantments which, I assume they'd be necessary? But you also haven't said a thing about tunnels underground so I'm also a bit stuck. I've never read anything about Veela conclaves or the more secluded areas of Magical France. I can't believe I only researched places in Paris! I was there just a few years ago!"
He didn't deserve his friends; here he was, hiding more than half of his life from them and they were doing their very best to support him in everything. "I was going to wait till we got the photos out of my trunk," Harry told them.
"Well, for a lack of anything more scintillating to talk about over dinner…"
Harry leaned forward to describe the huge, enchanted caverns he'd seen with Fleur and Sirius. How he'd walked down those old stone steps and slowly surrounded himself with the deep darkness of the underground. How, blind in the dark after the sunny summer's day, he'd thought he was imagining things when the barest of magelight was hinted at in the walls. How the twinkle of magic in the walls…it didn't shimmer or thrum like charms or transfigurations, nor did it have that solid feeling of goblin-enchanted metal, but…somehow the stone walls seemed awash with magic, like a tide of force - fluid, somehow - had shaped the corridor he climbed down.
Sung that way by songs, he'd later learned, although how had been lost to history.
And then he had to explain how the corridor had opened up into a huge cavern, the vast, curved roof embedded with star-stones and glow gems to give light. How stone houses protruded from the rock floor like they'd grown there, all with flat roofs set up for entertaining because they were indoors. How the high ceiling was supported by huge columns that, on second look, resolved themselves into rocky eyries that housed the Veela.
He'd tried to describe the sight of flaming bird-women in a variety of shapes and sizes occasionally winging their ways in or out of cave-like openings lit by smokeless fires in magical colours.
Harry tried to explain how it had felt to make it to the street level and see small goblins and squat dwarfs passing in the street next to willowy women and witches and wizards. How Gobbledegook and Dwarrowspeak were just as common to hear in the shops as French. How the history of the place claimed that Veela in need of sanctuary had dug down around a mountain spring to escape the muggles and had eventually intruded their way into a dwarven outpost around the small, underground lake that the spring had fed.
"I brought books back," Harry told Hermione loudly, trying to ignore the Great Hall. "I'll loan them to you once I'm done with them."
He tried to find words that described the culture of beauty, of appreciating fine metal work, so polished that it glowed in the darkness, and soft fabrics that glimmered when they caught the little lights, and how the fine gemwork and smooth stone-shaping somehow came together to form an inhuman beauty. How witches and wizards had joined the community later, as outsiders, and how the cavern was shaped without the influence of prideful humans.
It didn't quite fix his mood, but it was a decent distraction from it nonetheless.
After dinner, Harry found himself needing to manage his temper again, because - after a nice break where everyone who needed it was shown the closest toilets, thank Merlin - a whole horde of new Gryffindors was now following him up the Grand Staircase to the Fat Lady and they were intimidated by his presence, overtired from the train, and hyperactive from a whole day of unsupervised snacking.
It was a bad combination.
While Hermione had run ahead with the older students to get Gryffindor Tower settled and ready for their newest members, Harry was responsible for leading the midg—kids, the kids – up to the Fat Lady's portrait without losing any to trick stairs or interesting corridors. Despite the irritation trying to shake its way out of his fingertips, he did remember how overwhelmed he had been that very first night here all those years ago, and he tried to make it easy on them.
"So," he managed, turning to the bravest student, if one was judging by how close they dared to walk to the Great Harry Potter himself. "You're a transfer student, right? What year are you joining?"
She promptly tripped over her own left foot, squawked out an embarrassed exclamation, and stopped walking. The crowd of advancing students surrounded and overtook her until she vanished into their midst and Harry had to turn his eyes to another transfer student instead.
"Er, and you?"
This boy, a fourth year as far as Harry could tell, went bright red and stammered something under his breath that Harry couldn't catch.
"Oh," Harry finally responded when it became clear the kid couldn't say more. "Well then, that's…fair enough."
He couldn't go wrong with that, could he? He tried again, this time to a tall girl with a high ponytail who looked a bit older. "And you? How come you transferred out of your previous school? I only know Hogwarts, so what can you tell me about it?"
She immediately became physically incapable of looking in his direction. However, after a few steps of silence while they climbed up to the third floor, she managed to tell Harry, "Oh, I ne'erllyfor'bouti. 'Tsagoosscoo'aigiss. Meena'he'riv."
Or something like that.
Harry nodded. "Riiight. I see."
It was with the greatest of self-control that he swallowed something sarcastic.
This fame thing was going to get really old, really fast, unless people started regaining their ability to talk within three feet of him.
He might have thought that none of the new students wanted to talk to him, if he hadn't caught all of the sideways glances and half-lidded stares every time he turned to check he hadn't lost anyone. The strangely intense press of students made Harry feel weird too, with the way his followers shuffled up to bump against his shoulder and huddle right up against his back; he could hear the impact of elbows against ribs and the repressed umphs as the fans angled for prime position – but only when he wasn't looking, because it seemed the rule was. When Harry looked back, the whole crowd hung back a step or two, pretending that nothing was going on.
Harry's headache throbbed harder.
Percy must have had it easier, Harry told himself somewhere around the fourth floor. He'd only had a handful of students to welcome, and none of them were rabid fans, or crushing intensely on the older redhead boy. Not that Harry remembered of the time, at any rate.
Harry led his followers up to the fifth floor and, with another awkward look over his shoulder at the shorties falling back a step, led them deeper into the landing to wait for the strung-out line to catch up with the front runners.
It was cute enough, he figured, as the new students with smaller legs panted up the staircase to catch up, occasionally looking over the bannisters to wonder at the huge drop below.
Harry had forgotten what it was like, to come to Hogwarts unfamiliar with it. He'd forgotten how grand the scale of it all was, how mysterious the corners were, leading to unexpected places on Tuesdays, or alternate weeks. How the sturdy stones beneath his feet seemed so ancient and consistent, completely unlike the flighty personalities of the paintings hanging above, and the trick stairs and secret passages that practically screamed 'whimsy' when he'd first tripped over or into them.
Harry estimated a quick headcount as the final first-year students puffed up the staircase and staggered to a breathless halt behind the older transfer students. Give or take a bit, this crowd following along behind Harry had a full fifty-odd members. He had no idea what Hogwarts would do for their dorm arrangements, but that kind of thing was why Hermione had gone up ahead.
Once the last of the stragglers were hunched over and catching their breath at the back of the gathered group, Harry cast a quick sonorous with a single flick of his wand and told the group, "This isn't the quickest way to Gryffindor Tower, and it's not the fastest way either. However, since you've all had a long day and have a bunch of stuff to remember, climbing up the Grand Staircase is the simplest way to remember how to get back to our House. We'll start showing you the more frequently used routes from tomorrow, after you've all had a proper sleep."
Harry's own calves found the climb easier than ever, his Quidditch Camp drills having brought him to a new peak of fitness. His footsteps were quiet enough when he turned to climb the last few floors to the tower, but the stumbling clatter of steps behind him suggested that this lot of newbies weren't Hogwarts fit yet.
"The seventh floor is home," he'd announced to the group kiddies a few short minutes later. "Don't spread that around; the common room locations for each House are technically supposed to be private. Also, a couple of portraits on this floor are happy to guide you around the castle if you ever need to go places you're uncertain about. Follow me this way. Almost there.
"Now, look around and get familiar with this corridor. You'll need to know this well. Here we are."
Aside from the gasping inhalations and quiet oooohs from when the Fat Lady had responded to Harry and clicked off the wall to reveal the large, circle entrance into the Gryffindor Common Room, the first years trooped past Harry and into the House in silence.
Harry felt obliged to count them in.
"Twenty-three, twenty-four…you alright there? Twenty-five," he counted.
Goodness but there was a huge variety of heights among first-years. Some were tiny; others – mostly girls, oddly enough – were almost as tall as him.
"One at a time, no pushing…You look tired, but no worries; you'll be able to grab a seat once you're inside. Keep it up! You're doing great. Ah, where was…thirty-six, thirty-seven…Reckon you can find your way back here if you have too? Good job…forty-two, forty-three…Did you guys manage to hear me on the way up alright? Yeah? Good to know. Now, in you go…forty-nine, fifty. Fifty-one and…we're missing a few. Damn it, just my luck."
Just when Harry had taken his first three steps away from the Fat Lady and towards the Grand Staircase again, the last group of four first-year Gryffindors thundered into view.
Gasping heavily, feet thudding on the floor in their rush to catch up to the rest, the sweating, red-faced kids looked a little worse for wear when they caught sight of Harry and stumbled messily to a halt, sighing in relief.
"Where did yo—?" Harry began, before remembering this was their very first night and he'd somehow become an intimidating figure. "I mean, welcome, welcome! Glad you caught up! This is the entrance to our common room and Tower, located behind the portrait of our fabulous guardian, Gryffindor's Fat Lady. Head on inside and we'll tell you the password and everything else you need to know. Take a seat."
The four first-years, two boys and two girls, picked up their feet again and approached the entrance hole with more determination than energy.
"You guys alright?" Harry felt compelled to check, a familiar frown of concern pulling his eyebrows down. "Do I need to take someone to the medi-witch?"
And finally he got his first multi-syllablic responses from strangers.
"… be fine," the chubby girl in the lead managed with a small flick of her wrist, dismissing.
"…stairs from hell…" the next girl gasped out, trying and failing to straighten up from her half-crouch, hand pressing her side as if she'd somehow given herself a stitch.
The third child, a huffing boy with inches-thick glasses, shuffled past Harry with one hand on the wall to hold him up. Next to him wobbled the final first-year, a short and slender boy, whose face looked pale and bloodless.
"Woah!" Harry found himself darting forward as if to catch the poor kid. "Your lips are blue. Take your time, no rush. In fact," it took him a moment to snag his holly wand and conjure up a short wooden stool, "grab a seat. Hermione – ah, she's the other fifth-year prefect – she's inside and was planning to start the introduction. It won't matter if I'm not there at the beginning, and we can catch you up on the details you'll need later. Er," he continued, as the boy flopped gracelessly down on the seat with a worrying tilt sideways. "Can I get you anything? Um…a drink? Water? Pepper Up?"
He conjured up a glass and filled it with silent aguamenti but stopped himself from dashing off to the Hospital Wing when the short-haired boy shook his head for the potion.
"What else is there?" Harry couldn't help but scratch the back of his neck. "Ah…blood sugar's a thing, right? But you've just eaten, so no. Unless…You did eat dinner, yes?"
The short boy, still huffing heavily even as he leaned forward to rest his elbows on his knees and hang his head forward, nodded silently.
A prickling of his neck had Harry spinning around to see the other three late-comers huddled around the common room entrance, hovering nearby as if to help rather than going inside to grab a seat and let Hermione get started.
"Oh, go on in!" Harry shooed them on with his wandhand. "I'll hang out with your friend for a bit. Tell Hermione she should get started without me, okay?"
An upside to his fame meant small children assumed that Harry's authority was certain, so they turned to leave without sound. That freed Harry up to turn back and hover uselessly over the child in front of him, one hand still holding the glass of water that he still hadn't reached out to take.
After a moment of further worry, Harry stepped forward to squat a few feet before him.
"Ready for water yet? No? Okay, I'll just pop this glass by your foot so you can grab it when you're ready for it."
He wasn't sure Madam Pomfrey wasn't needed after all, so he raked his eyes carefully over the kid's face. The blue on his lips was fading, although his skin was still worrying bloodless and his forehead and fringe were dotted with large beads of sweat.
"Try to breathe slowly, in your diaphragm. Does that mak—?" He squinted in thought. "Okay, I'll try again. Rather than those quick huffs you're doing, work slowly on breathing the air in deeply, down by your stomach. Relax your shoulders when you can. When you're able, breathe in through your nose; out through your mouth…but don't force it if you're not ready yet. Can you tell me your name, kiddo?"
It took a long few moments, the kid's heaving shoulders proving that his breathing still took almost all of her concentration, but finally the boy huffed out, "—gus Aitk—"
"Angus?" Harry checked. "Hey, Angus. You're doing great. There's no rush, and you don't need to worry about anything, okay? If you get any worse, I can get Madam Pomfrey to you in less than ten seconds if I need to."
The time-turner he'd collected from McGonagall before the feast began again hung neatly beneath his robe collar, and he resisted patting it.
"Madam Pomfrey is an angel; she's put me back together more times than I can count. And you won't be missing out on anything in the meeting just now."
He paused to let the kid focus on his breathing again. He was trying to follow instructions, spine straightening somewhat as he heaved air into his diaphragm. His lips hung open, saliva beginning to gather on the bottom lip as he gasped air in, slightly less desperately than before.
"If you can," Harry began, "can you cup your hands over your mouth and nose? Fingers together, fingertips touching the bridge of your nose. It'll warm the air up a bit," he added, "and create a bit of pressure as you breathe out so your tiny airways stay a bit more open when you exhale. You'll also breathe in a bit more of your last breath, which will help your body too.
Angus' pale eyes stared almost through him, but he tried, hands shaking as he raised them to his face, shoulders surging up and down as he fought to relax her muscles.
"Slowing down if you can. Breathing out a little longer through your mouth, keep taking that new air into the bottom of your lungs and down by your stomach. Good kid, you're doing great. Just like that, keep at it…"
Hermione was probably well into her welcome speech by the time Angus was sitting up properly, his back resting against the corridor wall and his colour back to something like normal. Harry supported the glass of water into his hands, either exhaustion or the condensation causing it to slip before he held it properly and took his first sip.
When Angus' pale eyelids fluttered open and he finally looked straight at him, Harry figured the worst was over and he could get out of his crouch.
"Alright!" Harry tried, after he'd managed that ghost of a smile and a much deeper gulp of water. "How's your body? Any tingling anywhere? Can you feel your feet alright?'
And he got another multi-syllabic response! Things could be looking up for him at last!
"I'll be okay," Angus told him. "M'sorry for the fuss. I didn't mean to—I should'v—"
"Hey, not your fault. Seven floors up is hard work even for the healthiest people at first." Harry took the empty glass back when the kid held it out and Vanished it with a tap of his wand. "Do you think you could tell me what that was about? I'll be really worried if it happens again."
When Angus rolled his eyes, Harry caught a little bit of the Gryffindor spunk that would have had the kid Sorted into his House. "Oh, it will. It's a whole thing."
"Do you have…medication or something on you that we can search for next time?"
He shook her head wearily. "Nah. Any magic – potions and everything – make it worse. Just have to ride it out. There's nothing anyone can do."
Harry blinked, before reholstering his wand and reaching out a hand to help the boy stand.
"Then we'll have to work on avoiding setting you off. Is this a, what's the word, asthma thing? Do wizards get asthma?"
Hauled to his feet and wobbling only slightly as he leaned against the cold corridor stone, Angus stared at him curiously. "What's asthma? A muggle thing? I have—well, it's not…It's my heart. Da says this is a seventh-generation family curse. Something about pride or heartbreak, he reckons, back in the day. Which means my many-great Grandda was stuck up to the wrong person," he nodded gravely, deigning to clarify the point with all the wisdom of an eleven-year-old. "The Healers reckon that if it doesn't kill me, I might be able to end this in my generation."
Harry had never seen a family curse before, although there had been rumours of someone in Slytherin...
"Does the school know?"
Angus shrugged.
Harry didn't know what that meant, which meant he needed to talk to Hermione. But she would be working on the usual prefect things and making up for his absence, and that meant Harry had to postpone.
"Okay then, just leave it with me and I'll make sure that Madam Pomfrey knows about it and I guess your other teachers too, at least. In the meantime, do you reckon you can climb in the portrait hole on your own, should I lift you in, or would you rather I just charmed your body a bit lighter so you can do it yourself and not work too hard? Let's get you into this meeting."
"That's all from me for now," Harry heard Hermione announcing to the crowd of new students in front of her as he finished getting Angus settled into a spot near the back. The common room was packed with people, just by the stairs where she'd chosen to seat them all, but Harry was somewhat bemused by...well, that was the problem. Something had changed, and now he was off-balance, and Harry couldn't tell what it was or why.
But that was a question for another time.
He made sure to keep track of Hermione's words even as he squeezed past people to make his way around the crowd to the front of them.
"Please remember the three main points," she raised her index finger and started a count. "This week's password is 'Facta, non Verba' and can be found on the noticeboard over there if you forget the password, where the next week's password will also be put up the Friday before the new week.
"If you've brought a pet with you to school, they will be in your allocated dorm room with your luggage, and you can check on them in a minute – although if you let your owl fly to Hogwarts, they may already be in the Owlery. Don't forget to get your terrariums or food bowls set up before you sleep tonight. You're not at home any more; if you forget to look after your own pet, no other student is going to do it for you and I take animal abuse very seriously."
Hermione added a third finger to complete the set.
"Breakfast tomorrow starts at seven, and if you'd like to be taken down to breakfast, meet me in the common room at seven-thirty. If you would like to post off a letter to your parents before lessons begin, you'll have to meet Harry in the common room at seven. If you don't get to the owlery before breakfast tomorrow, you'll have to wait until after classes finish. Set your alarms and be on time; we won't wait for you if you're late."
Harry finally made it through the crowd and joined Hermione in front of them all as she finished her warning. "So I've been volunteered for the earlier duty, have I? Thanks a lot, Granger."
"And here's our last prefect – although most of you have already met him by now: my fellow fifth-year, Harry Potter!" Hermione rolled her eyes. "As if you don't already wake up earlier than basically everyone."
"I suppose there is that," he agreed. "What did I miss?"
"Well," Hermione told him in a voice not meant for the crowd. "Most of it, honestly. I've gone over common room rules, meal times, preparation for tomorrow, introduced the prefects, the password system, pets…and post. Everything alright with you?"
"Tell you about it later. Have you told them about getting to classes tomorrow?"
"Oh! Not yet!"
"Okay." Harry turned to face the room. From the front of the crowd, he could see the forty-odd first-years much better than before, and in the middle of the huddle sat their new bunch of unfamiliar transfer students too.
"Just a couple more things," Harry announced, "before I let you all go and find your dorm rooms. You're the largest year-group we've had for a few years, so there may be a few niggles with our systems that we prefects will need to work through; please be patient about them.
"Your dorm rooms are on the first floor up, and every year you're here you just climb an extra set of stairs. Your rooms will be labelled with your last names on the doors and will seem random to you; unfortunately, that means you'll need to check every door until you find your last name. Your beds will be the ones that have your stuff at their ends, although you're allowed to swap – beds, not rooms – if all parties agree.
"Because there are so many of you, Hogwarts definitely hired more teachers just for your numbers this year, and because classes generally have fifteen-ish Gryffindors and are shared with another House, your year-group will have the most variety in your timetable. Those will be handed out at breakfast tomorrow, so all the prefects will help out and walk you to your classes for the first week or so. Please wait at the breakfast table for us to collect you for first period tomorrow.
"Please, please do ask for help if you're lost, struggling with classwork or homework, coming down with something or getting homesick, you're worried about your pet's health…" Harry paused, brain working hard, "or if you need help finding a club you're interested in. I highly recommend you take some time each afternoon for the first few weeks to explore the castle yourself and get to know some of its secrets. Ideally after you've finished your homework.
"Don't panic about remembering all of this. I'll pop up a bullet point list of what Hermione and I have just covered on the noticeboard before you're in bed, and there'll be a stack of copies you can take with you when you come to the common room tomorrow. I also have a current map of Hogwarts that I was going to hand out to you tonight, but I wasn't expecting so many of you, so I'll make more copies overnight and have them waiting by the noticeboard for you to take tomorrow also. Any more questions can wait until you're awake enough to remember your answers.
"Now!" Harry forced out an energetic clap, startling several students before him who were overtired after a long day and falling asleep where they sat. His eyes lingered on one poor kid who was actually asleep and too far gone to even twitch at the noise, but Harry would catch him up later. "Last thing before I let you find your dorm rooms: if you have a health condition or learning condition that we need to know about, or a family situation that will cause you stress over the year, please come up to Hermione and me now so we know who you are. Otherwise, off to bed, folks! Try to fall asleep as soon as you can because tomorrow will be a big day. Off you go now!"
And, after a moment of frozen indecision, the edges of the crowd began to stand and shuffle off towards the stairs – boys on the left and girls heading to the right. The middle of the crowd took their time standing and stretching until there was space for them to move too, and fortunately for the sleeping boy, one of his mates was kind enough to poke him awake so they could leave together.
Hermione, who was the kind of girl who always kept spare parchment and a quill on her person, had made herself ready for the seven students who nervously approached her to mention the situations they had that might need more oversight, and by the time Harry had waved the confused Angus away and pushed a couple of couches back to where they usually were, only he and Hermione were left standing in the suddenly quiet space.
With the common room fires suddenly crackling and popping more obviously than ever, it took Harry a moment to realise Hermione was waiting on him, one eyebrow raised in that slightly officious way of hers.
She waved the parchment at him curious. "So? What's all this about names and…allergies? Or particularly naughty pets? We didn't plan for that, did we? And where did you find a map of Hogwarts? They're supposed to be impossible to make!"
"No, just quite difficult and time-consuming." Harry had to pause and bite back a yawn before continuing. "That's what I was doing with Luna at the Art Club for most of the last, what, two years? Their copy won't be nearly as good as mine, but I can make a quick copy tonight that will have all the new changes to it, and I'm sure that will be up to date for at least a week.
"More importantly, there's a final name you need to add to that list – Angus Aitkens or Atkinson, maybe? I just found out he's suffering from a family curse that is made worse if anyone uses magic on his symptoms, I think is the gist. I want to take that list to Madam Pomfrey and I guess the next prefect meeting: see what we can do about his situation…and any similar ones that I might not know about."
"Ohhhh, so that's why you left me to run the welcome."
"Hmm," Harry sighed. "At least it's all been dealt with well enough from what I've seen. How did your end go? I could have used your help keeping the fifty new Gryffindors together on the stairs."
Harry found his eyebrows rise when Hermione huffed and rolled her eyes. "It turns out they really did need me up here. I always wondered why Percy Weasley was the only prefect who walked us up, back when it was our first year. But it seems that settling everyone in, finding their lost things – although how Dennis Creevey managed to misplace his satchel already I have no idea – and shuffling everyone out of the common room to make space for the welcome really does require all prefects on deck. I didn't realise that being a prefect would be so full-on from the get-go. I'm exhausted!"
"I'm really looking forward to getting into bed tonight," Harry admitted. "But can you give me the list for now? I'll deal with it tomorrow when I wake up – for an early trek to the Owlery, apparently."
"Sure," Hermione thrust the parchment into his hands and watched as he folded the thing up and tucked it into his mokeskin pouch. "You do know we can't go to bed quite yet, right? We'll need to check the first-year dorms at nine. Make sure that everyone has what they need to sleep and that alarms are set up for the right time tomorrow."
Harry bit back a groan. "We do?"
Hermione shot him a grin. "Sometimes you're so insightful, Harry, and then at moments like this…"
"Oi!"
Hermione continued. "I've told Vinny that we'll also do a quick check of the first-years at ten – mostly in case anyone's got early-onset homesickness and needs a hot chocolate or their hand held, but anything after that won't be our problem. He's arranged for the older prefects to look in on the other dorms."
"Thank Merlin for that," Harry told her, and then the conversation was interrupted by a trio of fourth-year boys in their pyjamas jumping into the common room from the third step up.
"I told you!" the Asian kid told Colin Creevey with a smug grin on his face. Harry thought he might have been a Junwoo, or possibly Woo-Jung? Woo-Jin? The kid hadn't been in the DA, and Harry didn't know the younger boys as well as he probably should, immediately promising himself that that would change this year.
"Come off it, Jay!" Colin answered him, which didn't help Harry's current quandry much. "It's not that obvious!"
"It totally is!"
"I'm just saying," the third boy, having moved ahead, interrupted them. "There's four more tables over there, and two extra couches. That's not exactly subtle."
This Colin was so different to the silent versions that Harry best remembered, still and stiff in the infirmary, or even worse, that horrible moment when Harry was walking out into the Forbidden Forest to die and he'd spied Oliver Wood carrying the tiny, the lightweight figure of…
But here, Colin was full of life and energy.
"Some of us don't walk into a room and count the couches!" he exclaimed, and then flopped himself longways onto a plush, well-padded couch. "Oh! Hi Harry! Congrats on making prefect."
"Thanks, Col—"
"Oh! And congrats on defeating the Dark Lord! Some of the photos of that: you stabbing him, the Dark Lord falling over… I took some of the photos that have been in the Daily Prophet, did you know? Would you like some? I've got extras." He continued without waiting for Harry to answer the question. "Man, you were awesome when you killed him; all prepared and ruthless and stuff, even before you did all that wandless thing. Ooh, could I take a photo of—? But I left my camera in my luggage. Would you wait a moment for me to run up and gra—?"
Harry fought back the minor urge to strangle someone.
"No photos tonight, sorry," Harry managed when he gave up on waiting for Colin to breathe and just spoke louder than the other boy. "I really don't want to be dodging cameras from everybody the whole time I'm in the castle and right now I'm really tired."
"But I'm—"
"I suppose I'll have to figure something out though," Harry continued, thankful that Colin had asked and realising with a sinking heart that most students wouldn't have bothered. "Give me a few days to think about it. Which does remind me, are you ok? Was your wand injured in the whole fuss? And are you going to introduce me properly to your friends?"
"Yeah, I'm good!" Colin chirped. "This is Jin Woo Park, and Allan Fletcher, two of my dormmates. We were all together at the Third Task and all got disarmed at the same time. You fixed my wand and Jin Woo's, but Allan had to buy a new wand because you got tired before you fixed the walnut wands. But he did manage to find the pieces! Do you think you could fix up his old wand when you find the time? He loved his first wand, and I'd really like to take a photo of that! Say hi, Allan, and ask Harry to fix your wand!"
Colin's enthusiasm had tricked Harry into forgetting about his notoriety, and reality reasserted itself when Jin Woo nodded his head in a kind of spasm, and Allan attempted what ended up as an aborted grunt.
There was a pause.
"So," blessed Hermione broke the silence. "You were talking about the resizing of the common room?"
Ah! Harry snapped a finger. That was what was bothering him. He was too tired and grumpy for this.
"Yeah!" Colin bounced himself up into a seated position again, letting Jin Woo slide onto the seat next to him. "These guys were saying it was a really obvious change, but I've spent so much time in here that I didn't really feel the need to have a proper look at it again, you know? But I bet you two noticed the difference first thing!"
"It was pretty obvious," Hermione nodded, although Harry bit his lip silently. "It was interesting to see what the Tower has done for the first-year dormitories too. Did you notice there's a whole new landing now, to let all the new doors fit in the stairwell?"
Colin grinned. "I did notice that, because I tripped over the spot where the stairs used to be! Do you reckon there's a new dorm for the sixth-years too?"
Perhaps the transfer students he'd seen were sixth-years? Harry pondered.
Hermione hummed. "I haven't been up that way yet. The older prefects saw to that when I was busy with other things. There probably isn't a need for a whole new dorm though, so I'm guessing that they just ended up with a couple of extra beds in the room."
Harry pursed his lips and thought back to last timeline, when Ron was the poor sucker running around and managing all the littlies. But neither his fifth-year nor his sixth-year last timeline seemed to have needed the kind of Tower changes that Colin was describing now.
"I don't remember seeing any changes like this before though?" he interjected.
Hermione had that strange smile on again when she looked at him. "Well," she looked at him with eyes that said she'd noticed something he hadn't. "You hadn't killed the Dark Lord publicly and decisively last year or the year before that, had you?"
Harry had to think. "Well, in first-year I think the only people who—Wait."
For a few seconds there, he thought his heart had stopped beating. "You think...You think that all these extra students came to Hogwarts for me? Where did they all pop up from then?"
There was another throb of pain that shot through his temples, and Harry remembered that he had already had a long, loong day.
She shrugged. "Enrolment at the day schools is a little lower than usual this year, I suppose. I'm sure it's not all about you; your presence at Hogwarts is probably just the deciding factor for most of the extras this year, I'd assume. Speaking of which," she continued. "It has been a long day and people will be keeping an eye on you tomorrow, which is the downside of being a celebrity figure, I assume. Are you going to put up the list and maps tonight, or pop them up tomorrow morning when you come down?"
Harry buried his fingers deep in his hair and raked long scratches ruthlessly into his scalp. "I'll write the full list up in my dorm room tonight and put up the notice and handouts tomorrow. So I do need to head up now, I guess. Catch you later, Colin. Yeah? And Hermione, can you send me a reminder at nine and ten to make the checks, just in case I'm too focused to notice? If you don't hear back from me, assume there's nothing I can't handle."
Hermione was agreeable, and Colin was still calling out goodbyes and ideas for a photoshoot when Harry turned the first corner of the stairwell and began making his way towards his own room. He'd keep an eye open for changes to the first-floor dormitories as he did so, too.
He wasn't quite at the end of the day, but at least the end was in sight, when Harry crossed the threshold of the door to his own room and stopped immediately. The four pairs of eyes that looked up at him when he entered were a little too interested for them to have good news.
"I'm back," Harry tried hopefully, wondering if whatever-this-was could be postponed to another day. "How were your evenings?"
"Not great, honestly," Ron told him, and Harry's heart sank when Dean laughed and Seamus snorted. Even Nev was nodding his head solemnly from where he sat, wand in hand, in his place at the foot of his bed.
"Oh." Harry licked his lips. "Are you about to tell me why?"
"Well!" Ron began. The way he sat up so decisively and raised his arms to the ceiling gave Harry a really bad feeling.
"It's your fans," Neville interrupted. "The Gryffindors who kind-of know you, as far as I can tell. We've had, what, twenty or thirty people come through wanting to get a look at where you sleep, wondering if you have any stuff lying out that they can look at…"
"I threatened them with point loss," Ron tried. "But most of them figured I wasn't the prefect so it wouldn't stick."
At least Dean's smile was apologetic. "At least a couple of the girls asked me if I could find something that they could take away with them."
"Couple o' seventh-years asked me," Seamus raised a hand.
A hand rose up from Neville's bed. "I cursed three people," he offered loyally.
Harry swore.
"We've decided you need to put up wards," Ron told Harry sympathetically. "Do you know any? We've been talking, and Nev said you were going to ward everything that you own, just as a default. But we were thinking you probably need something on the door too…Make it so that only we five can come in the room, maybe? I know you're really smart and all, so you probably know everything you'll need to use, but I can talk to Fred and George if you need more ideas? Or I could owl Bill, my oldest brother, and see if he has any suggestions? I might have told you years ago, but he's a Curse Breaker, so he'll know some good ones."
"Or Professor McGonagall," Dean added. "And Headmaster Dumbledore will definitely have some ideas he can share."
With a sigh too big for his body, Harry made his way to his own bed for the year and sat down on it with more force than was strictly necessary. "Thanks for the intervention, guys. I had thought of that but, I thought I had a bit more time before people, fans would find their way… I guess, I'll have to…I suppose I'll add that to my To-Do list? I guess I need to talk to Flitwick tomorrow morning. Don't let me forget, will you? I'll charm the door locked for tonight though, if that's okay? Tomorrow won't be too late to sort that out, will it?"
If there was anything else he needed to do, Harry hoped it wasn't urgent. He fell back against his pillow and threw and arm over his eyes.
"Remind of everything tomorrow, will you Neville? I need to catch up with Hermione tonight too. Oh, and I'll be doing dorm checks soon. Nine and ten pm. Don't let me sleep through them."
Seamus' bed creaked as if he was leaning forward. Hey Harry, are you still going to be running the Patronus Club this year?"
"Ask me tomorrow," Harry mumbled. "Or something. Sometime when I'm functional, anyway. Not now."
And he ignored the rest of the conversation for now.