33 The-Boy-Who-Ditched

Harry's bloodshot eyes gazed at the runic array murderously as he took a sip from the coffee brought to him by one of the house elves serving at Hogwarts.

After the debacle with Hermione and her apparent betrayal to him, he had thrown himself into his studies so that he would be able to ignore the feeling of something stabbing his heart whenever his thoughts veered toward Hermione and their broken relationship.

He had no idea who he was in his previous life so for all intents and purposes, she was the first human friend he ever made.

He was also aware of the fact that her choices were her own and that he had no right to ask her to transfer school if she didn't want to to but as he had recently realized, logic and emotions were two completely different things and it was hard for him to remain logical when his emotions were under such turmoil.

So instead of giving him any time to think, he spent all his time working on studying Ancient runes.

He had to admit that despite his current emotional state, he found the subject to be quite interesting. Thus he found himself to be even more irritated when he made very little advancement in this subject.

Most of the runes he'd created so far had resulted in explosions, which although were suppressed by his wards, still made him feel like he'd wasted all his time for nothing and the few that worked showed fluctuating results which was not something he could accept.

So after all this time, he'd finally come to realize that if he wanted to learn more about this then he would have to ask someone to teach him this subject.

The problem was that he was not sure that the Ancient Runes teacher would be willing to teach him the subject after their last conversation.

Especially when he was so rude to her when she was just telling him something that she would have told anyone else.

After that last conversation with the Runes teachers, he had found something about himself. Something that he was fool to not realize till now.

He was prideful for his own good and some of his morals were rather twisted.

He wondered if he was some kind of mafia goon in his last life.

With that realization, he also realized that despite his huge pride, deep down he was still just a child who was enamored with magic.

Except that where a child's tantrum is annoying, his temper tantrums are just plain rude.

He also knew that he would do anything to learn more about magic.

So perhaps stowing away his pride for a single conversation would not be that hard right.

Right?

A large explosion brought him out of his thoughts as he realized that his runic array had once again failed spectacularly.

Well fuck. Now he was not even able to concentrate on one thing.

Thankfully he was at least able to complete the runes this time before it blew up.

Not that it was much of a consolation.

Still. He needed to understand at least the basic about this subject otherwise he would just keep blowing shit up instead of making any progress.

—————

Flitwick looked over at the newspaper and sighed once again before gesturing at Minerva who filled his glass with Fire Whiskey once again.

They had been doing this a lot recently and he would have been glad to have found a drinking buddy if not for the circumstances.

He looked at the newspaper once again with a frown before taking another sip of the Fire Whiskey.

In the front page of the Daily Prophet was the picture of an empty chair with a title of 'The Boy-Who-Ditched' written by Rita Skeeter.

That woman had somehow found that Harry had not been to any of his classes for the past few weeks.

Well, it was more of an open secret by this point than anything else but none of the students really minded his absence until this article came along.

And now the whole student body was up and at arms. As according to the article, the teachers were favoring Harry Potter simply because he was famous and were allowing him to get away with anything and everything.

This situation would not have become so bad had it not been fueled by both Slytherins and Gryffindors who had been taught a lesson by Harry at point or another for bullying Hermione.

He had no idea what they were supposed to do now. If the students knew about Harry's actual childhood then they would probably understand the reason why Harry doesn't like to associate with other people.

Especially now that he had lost his first friend in the school due to some unknown reason.

But he knew that Headmaster Dumbledore wouldn't allow him or Minerva to tell everyone about Harry's childhood. Nor would he allow them to leak out the fact that Harry doesn't even want to be in this castle and is only living here because he's being forced to do so by Albus Dumbledore.

Seriously, what was Headmaster Dumbledore even thinking when he decided to retain the kid here like some common prisoner.

And he even had to gall to say that he's doing everything for the greater good.

Greater good my ass.

But the problem still remained the same. The students were asking, no, practically demanding Harry to attend all the classes or they'll stop attending their classes as well.

If only the Slytherins were no so vocal about this.

The fact that their head of house, Snape, hated the child for his father's sins and was rather vocal about it in the staff room only made this situation even worse.

It seemed like they'll just have to wait out this storm and hope that the repercussions won't be too bad.

Because he knew that if he the choice between supporting Headmaster and Harry, then he would choose the Prodigy without much thought.