21 Chapter 21: Valonquar

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6 September 1991, Hogwarts

Harry just rolled his eyes, muttered "I'm too tired for this," and turned to leave for his common room. He had his fill of childish petty professors and weird scarred boys that glared at him for no reason.

The rest of the week ended unremarkably. Most of the week was with minor professors, who were obviously inexperienced and slightly boring. They definitely didn't have a mastery over the fields as the Senior Professors do, which was proven by the fact that they didn't teach any OWL students or above. They were boring, wooden in their teaching, and didn't even attempt to engage the students during their classes. Honestly, they were disappointing, so much so, that Harry didn't even remember their names after lessons were done. All they did was practically read the books without really explaining anything. They probably seemed self-explanatory to them since they were adults, but their students were children, and Harry mourned the drop of competent wizards and witches because of them.

Although Harry was introduced to two other Senior professors. Professor Sinistra was the senior Astronomy professor, and was quite good at teaching, although Harry would have liked her classes more if they weren't in the middle of the night and had to climb all the way up to the Astronomy tower to get there. Although, the telescopes were very impressive. They were enchanted to just ignore the light pollution and were good enough that Harry was able to see one of the moons of Jupiter as if it was as close as Earth's moon. Still, as interesting as all of this was, the entire field was based on memorization, and was only useful for picking herbs and brewing certain potions that could depend on certain celestial bodies. Harry still had no idea why these magics depended on planets and moons that far away, but he wanted to find out. Now, that would be an interesting astronomy lesson.

As for Defense against the Dark Arts, well, it was a sham of a lesson. Well, not really, Quirrell was surprisingly competent as a professor, even if he was jittery and his room stank of garlic. The man taught them basic cast as a first lesson. It was basically a lesson on how to channel magic into a wand to create small blasts of energy. It wasn't even that hurtful, just a small projectile of magic. It didn't even have a melody. It had no intent, no complexity. From the looks of it, Defense was not really about fighting, but more about general theory and applications of magic. Oh, there will probably be lessons on jinxes and Hexes, but it seems like it's mostly used to bridge whatever is missing in the other core classes.

Funnily enough, the class wasn't even named Defense against the Dark arts at the beginning, just Battle Magic. A dark inclined Headmaster changed it to Dark Arts. He didn't last long at his post, and his successor a light aligned Headmaster changed it to Defense against the Dark Arts as an act of opposition to his predecessor.

That aside, Harry's week was thankfully uneventful outside of Malfoy and Longbottom becoming eternal rivals or whatever because Malfoy insulted Weasley's mother by calling her a cow. The redhead was defended by Longbottom calling his father a filthy Death Eater, which ended up in a small brawl of first years that barely knew how to use the simple cast, thus cementing the Gryffindor Slytherin rivalry for their year. Honestly, Harry didn't care as long as they kept him out of it.

Malfoy seemed to have rallied the entire Slytherin first years to his cause to humiliate Longbottom, except for Blaise, Daphne, Tracy, and himself. He seemed to think that this was some kind of political rivalry between him and Harry for some reason and that they were my 'allies'. Harry didn't know what the hell that kid was learning when he was growing up, but Lucius Malfoy must be a horrible parent to teach his son that this was how the world worked.

Honestly, it might not even be Malfoy senior's fault. The Gryffindors seemed to have rallied behind Longbottom, who became their de facto leader. It was seriously messed up. It was a small mercy that the Ravenclaws and Hufflepuffs just didn't end up making 'factions' on their own. What the hell was wrong with these children?

Harry tried to get away from all of this madness. Gryffindors attacked Slytherins who took it back on other Gryffindors, and the cycle continued. Harry, himself, ended up needing to learn the Contego charm, a small shielding spell that stopped minor jinxes and spells. It was very easy to learn, but it became a necessity to have a tranquil life as a first year in the castle.

The young Potter just wanted to learn magic, not whatever this was. Still, Harry ended up sitting by the Black Lake, in the shade of a large yew tree and continued reading his books.

He had finished the potions one, which was far more interesting than whatever the hell Snape was doing. He didn't try brewing anything; he wasn't an idiot, but it was a lot easier to visualize how brewing a potion could work and possibly fix a few mistakes during brewing classes – something that Snape utterly ignored.

As for the Transfiguration book, it was utterly fascinating. The spell that Harry 'created' was what was known as a general transfiguration spell, which happened to be very inefficient. This was why students were taught specialized spells that were far more efficient and learnt in their fourth year to combine a few transfiguration spells to get the exact result they wished for. Transfiguring multiple materials was also possible, the general spell was very magically intensive and so it wasn't really taught to students before their third year.

Harry was lost in his charms book when he felt the malicious song of a spell going his way. He instinctively grabbed his wand, turned towards the spell coming his way, and cast, 'Contego' blocking it.

The Slytherin had no idea who was attacking him or why. When he looked back, he groaned as he saw Longbottom and Weasley glaring at him. Harry just raised an unimpressed eyebrow, "Why have you attacked me?"

The two boys seemed surprised that Longbottom's spell didn't work, "We don't have to explain anything to you, traitor."

Harry shrugged, "You don't have to. Your little pissing match with Draco's crew is the talk of the school. Did you really not even wait one week before starting this mess."

The boys just kept glaring at Harry who just let out a resigned sigh, "Look, why don't you just go back to the castle, and we can all pretend that this never happened? I can't tell you how much I don't care about your spat with Malfoy, so go hex him or something, I have better things to do with my time."

Harry's answer was, Longbottom sending a pimple hex his way, 'Furnunculus', which was blocked by another Contego shield.

"Stop doing that," the Longbottom scion complained.

Harry just shrugged, "I will not apologize for blocking an offensive spell. But what is the matter with you, anyway."

"What are you on about?" Weasley exclaimed.

"Well, your friend here has been glaring at me in class ever since, well, ever. We never spoke to each other, and I certainly didn't insult him or anything. So, what's the real reason you're so angry at me?"

"You know why I'm angry at you, traitor!" the brown-haired boy exclaimed.

"No, I really don't, and I don't particularly care as well. You're being troublesome with your angry looks and trying to curse me, and I don't really care for it. So, you either leave me alone, or I will start fighting back, and we all know that that's not something you really want."

Harry was slightly bluffing with that. Well, he didn't really practice any spells besides a couple of useful hexes and jinxes, that were not that harmful. He mostly just focused on transfiguration and learning the variations of the light charms. They certainly helped him to write his assignments.

However, the boys seemed intimidated enough and slowly stepped back. Although Longbottom seemed less apprehensive than Weasley and spoke up, "How could you be sorted in Slytherin?"

"By putting on the sorting hat like everyone else. Did you miss it or something?" Harry snarked back.

The boy blushed, "You know what I mean."

"I don't see the problem, Longbottom," Harry said.

The boy looked angry, "The parents of your housemates killed my parents, killed yours too. And you sitting next to them as if nothing happened."

Harry simply shrugged, "And why should I care, really?"

"Why should you care," Neville responded as if he was trying to process Harry's response, "these are the people that our parents fought against, together. They died to fight them, and you are mingling with them. You're spitting on our families' sacrifice."

"Our parents fought for their own reasons. They were ready to die for them, as a matter of fact, they did. They would not want their children to endanger themselves needlessly, and if my parents disagreed then they didn't love me. Stop living in the past that will never exist. Your parents are dead, as are mine, and curing anyone that is related to their deaths will not bring them back."

The boy was red in anger and yelled out, "How dare you!!"

Harry simply shielded against the spell, "See what I mean. You're so aggressive for no reason."

Neville's eyes were glistening, "You don't care about them, don't you?"

"The dead have no preferences, Neville. I have lived my entire life without them. Why should I care about what they would have wanted if I never knew them? I mourn their loss just as you mourn your parents' deaths, but I am consumed by it. It's best to forget about unrealistic dreams and enjoy life. The world will not be always peaceful, after all."

"I can't believe you. You're supposed to be my godbrother! My mother was your godmother and yours was mine! Does that not mean anything." the Longbottom scion yelled out.

Harry was surprised by that revelation. He didn't think that it was really a thing, "and yet, this was the first time we met each other. What did you expect? That I would be with you in Gryffindor, that we would have been as close as brothers the moment we meet one another."

The boy looked down, embarrassed, "We were supposed to be brothers."

"I didn't even know I had a godbrother when I was younger. You can't call us brothers if we have never met each other before. If the Longbottoms had adopted me, things would be different, but unfortunately, they didn't. However, I'm more than willing to try being friends with you."

Harry gave the boy a way out. He really didn't want to be friends with Longbottom considering his likely adventures with Voldemort. But if he really was family, Harry was willing to give it a shot.

The boy seemed to be enraged even further, "It's too late now, you're one of them."

"One of who, exactly?"

The Weasley boy seemed to have gathered his courage, "Slimy snakes!!"

Harry raised an unimpressed eyebrow, "So all this hostility isn't because I ignored you, but because I'm in Slytherin?"

"YES!" both boys yelled.

Harry really had no response to that. The issue wasn't even about Harry but what he represented. He was technically a part of Longbottom's back story, and the boy didn't want it to be tainted with the whole Slytherin thing.

Harry just shrugged, "I can't really do anything about that, and I'm done with the conversation."

The young Potter turned put his book in his bag and was starting to leave. Both Gryffindor didn't seem to want to see him leave, so, they tried casting at him. Harry just dodged the two stinging hexes by crouching down, and cast, 'Flipendo'.

A blue arc of magic hit both students at once and knock the two boys back into the grounds. The spell was slightly modified to act like an arc and not a beam. It was part of the second year curriculum about basic spell manipulation in defence of the dark arts.

Harry heard the two boys groaning in pain to make sure they were alright. Well, apparently Longbottom was now an enemy. The last Potter simply shrugged and walked back to the castle. He was getting hungry anyway.

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Thank you guys for your support in these hard times.