Chapter 46: Forehead
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Now it was Harry's turn to stare. "You know, I'm starting to think that you don't actually know much about how scars work mate. And to answer your question, yes, a little."
"What do you remember?" Ron asked eagerly.
Harry paused, before frowning.
What did he remember? He'd seen bits and pieces from his nightmare, but he had never really tried to put it all together before.
Putting aside the fact that he should be offended that Ron was actually asking questions about what he remembered about the first time someone attempted to kill him, now seemed to be as good a time as any, considering he had a few hours to kill.
"Well," Harry said, closing his eyes and trying to piece together all the flashes he'd seen over the years. The visions effortlessly floated to the front of his mind, "I remember someone… my father… telling my mother to take me and leave.
Then there's laughing… and someone else… my mother… begging the Dark Lord to spare my life. He told her to stand aside and let him kill me… but she didn't… she said no and asked him to kill her instead.
He-he did, and then there was a lot of green light and my forehead felt like it was on fire…"
Harry's chest coiled more and more, and by the time he had finished and opened his eyes, there were tears flowing down his face.
Ron looked horrified. "I'm sorry, mate, I didn't think-"
"No. No, you didn't," Harry cut him off flatly, wiping off his tears as he got to his feet. "Well, it was… a pleasure meeting you Ron. I suppose I'll see you around at Hogwarts," He said in the same flat tone, and opening the compartment door, walked out.
Feeling confused, frustrated, and rather unbearably sad for some reason, Harry did the only thing some his age would have done when faced with such turbulent emotions.
He blamed it on someone else. More specifically, Ron.
'Well, now I know what house I don't want to be in. The one into which he goes,' Harry thought angrily as he went up the train looking for another compartment to sit one with only a boy and a bushy haired girl, he slid open the door.
"Excuse me. Can I sit in here?"
Getting a nod from the girl and the rather timid boy, Harry sat himself down beside the boy and joined in on the conversation.
"But how does that make sense!"
"It's just the way it is," Neville replied to Hermione's indignation with a shrug.
"So what're you talking about?" Harry asked.
Fifteen minutes later, with an innumerable number of facts about Quidditch stuck into his brain, Harry stood firmly on Hermione's side of the argument while Neville looked devastated at having lost another one to the anti-Quidditch campaign.
"She's right Neville. One hundred and fifty points for someone to catch a golden ball! That makes absolutely no sense!" Harry said with a shrug. He could definitely get the appeal of flying really fast, but the rules of this game were abhorrent. It was as if they took football and then went ham with it.
"You-you haven't ever seen a professional match! The chasers score fast-really fast really early and catching a snitch before an hour is extremely hard.
It just adds that much more unpredictability to the game, you never really know who's going to win." Neville apparently personally abhorred flying, but much like other children of his age born into wizarding families, was incredibly passionate about Quidditch and willing do anything to defend his favorite sport.
"They won't change the game just 'cause you say so!" Neville exclaimed.
"I am the Boy-Who-Lived, you know, People will listen to me. And maybe if I can persuade them to change the game at Hogwarts, the innovation will spread." The compartment grew silent at the statement. Harry suddenly remembered that he hadn't really given them his last name.
'Oh dear.'
"Are you really?" said Hermione, her voice transforming, "I know all about you, of course I got a few extra books for background reading, and you're in Modern Magical History and The Rise and Fall of the Dark Arts and Great Wizarding Events of the Twentieth Century."
"Did you?" said Harry, immediately putting a stop to her tirade. He had messed up his friendship with the first person his age he'd met because he let this kind of conversation go on for too long. He'd be damned if he made the same mistake again.
"If you did you'd also know that the only person to survive that night was me and I have never been interviewed by anybody, nor have I even tested for anything as far as I know.
So, most likely, most of what you read, especially about me killing a dragon and discovering Atlantis, is a lie."
"But they're books! They wouldn't lie in them!" Hermione raised her voice indignantly.
"Wouldn't they? It was the time right after a war, Hermione," Harry said grimly, "Families were dead and children were orphaned. So these stories and so-called facts would have been printed to give hope to a broken and bleeding society.
That was the truth then, and that is the truth today. It is also the only reason I've allowed them to stay on shelves and not taken their publishers to court for breaking the law. Even a lie spoken with best intentions doesn't make it the truth."
Due to reaching a logical conclusion and spreading it around, you've gained 1 Wis!
WIS-13
Hermione was staggered to a standstill. Harry reminded himself that even if they were both the same age, they had very separate upbringings and she had no Gamer's Mind to help her be objective and assess situations like Harry did.
Her worldview was based on books and elders always being right. Harry had just broken one of the legs of the stool that her entire worldview stood on.
After a few silent moments, Hermione finally spoke again. "You two had better change, I expect we'll be there soon," she stood, still in shock and off balance, and walked out of the compartment, presumably to the bathroom to change.
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