Chapter 9: Friends

"Where have you been Harry?" Penny asked when Harry entered the Hufflepuff common room through its barrel-like entrance.

"Practising some spells?" Harry asked, more than stated. He had been trying to figure out the disillusionment charm in an abandoned classroom. He wanted to visit the Room of Requirement at some point but didn't want to be followed and reveal its existence. The room was a precious resource only as long as it was unknown, considering that once the room was set on a purpose by the user, nobody else could enter.

Unfortunately, the disillusionment charm hadn't been going well. He'd found the spell in the library section dedicated to spell work beyond the Hogwarts curriculum. However, Harry felt that while the spell was difficult, he was going to manage eventually. The reason the spell wasn't taught was probably because no professor would want their students to have the ability to turn invisible. While he'd had luck finding the disillusionment spell though, the mind arts remained elusive.

"Spells?" Penny frowned, "shouldn't you be working on Potions," she said, which made Harry blush uncharacteristically and look away from the blonde girl.

"Spells are just more fun…" he mumbled, fixating his eyes on a spot somewhere above Penny's head, a portrait of a drunk monk trying to catch a dog that had stolen his chicken leg.

Penny sighed. "You also have to work on stuff you're not good at…" she chided, "I'm giving my best in Transfiguration," she said, then huffed and went silent.

"What's up?" Harry asked, noticing the slightly awkward atmosphere, "Penny for your thoughts?" he offered, making the girl laugh, before once again stilling.

"It's just," she began, this time avoiding his eyes, "you're always running off alone to practise whatnot or find this and that. Me and Cedric are the only Puffs you even talk to. Is everything alright?"

Harry sighed and walked over to the girl, sitting down next to her on the bright yellow couch in the corner of the common room. This required him to clear away some potion texts and a green sweater. He slung an arm over Penny's shoulder, causing her to instinctively lean her head into him. He rubbed up and down on her arm, her blonde hair tickling his nose. "You know, you and Cedric are like a fire," he began stiltedly, "suffusing everything around you with warm light. You shine on so many things you probably can't even keep track of them all. Me? I'm more of a match, sometimes not even a lit one. The light I cast can only interact with the brightest fires because all others just don't reach me," he said.

"You mean you're an introvert? Why'd you have to phrase it like that?" Penny queried, curious blue eyes looking up painfully at his green ones.

"I guess." Harry chuckled, "I'm just an idiot," he said, before squeezing the girl's shoulder and standing up. This caused Penny to notice the position they'd previously been in and blush. "You and Cedric are just the two friends I've made until now. Not all Hufflepuffs are extremely social, that's not even a core tenant, we're supposed to be loyal, and I am loyal. So why don't we find Cedric and go throw bread at the giant squid instead of doing homework for once," he suggested.

A suggestion that Penny followed like any student for whom studying was the last priority on a weekend and who only did it for want of any interesting activities to waste their time on.

After a few minutes of walking, he watched the girl hop cheerfully in front of him towards the quidditch pitch, where Cedric was probably watching the Hufflepuff house team practice. He'd lied to her about being introverted, of course. He was more of an extrovert, to be honest. But ever since being reborn into the body of a child, he'd adapted. Spending a lot of time with others just wasn't possible when there was such a large and invisible maturity gap between them. Magic might have been friendship, but so was magic, and if Harry couldn't have the former he would have the latter. He would probably hang out with his house-mates more after they were on the tail-end of puberty because by then they'd actually start having things in common. The biggest reason why he mostly hung out with Penny and Cedric was because they were quite frankly the most mature out of all his year-mates. A maturity that showed itself in their talent for magic.

Even then though, they were still children, which left Harry with almost a dozen hours every day in which he could only practise magic or busy himself with other hobbies such as… He laughed, causing Penny to look back at him curiously.

"What're you laughing at?" she asked suspiciously with the thought shared by all children, that if someone was laughing, they were laughing at them.

"Just at the fact that magic is so much more fun than the other hobbies I had before coming here, that I've basically stopped doing everything non-magic related," he said. At this point, if he was conversing with an adult, they probably would have said something about keeping one's life balanced, but Penny just nodded sagely.

"Magic is great," she said.

"The only thing that doesn't have anything to do with it, that I still do, is…" he mused, before trailing off, at which the girl shrugged from where she was ambling in front of him with her body turned in his direction. She was walking backwards, something that caused her to promptly trip down a small set of stairs that led into the castle courtyard, covered in the iconic Scottish fields of grass. As trampled as it was by the horde of students hanging around outside on one of the few non-rainy weekends they had here in the Highlands.

A group of nearby Ravenclaw students laughed at his friend's fall, one of them miming the event like some sort of human-shaped parrot. Harry helped an embarrassed Penny up and made sure she didn't look in the direction of the Ravenclaws by starting to walk on the opposite side of her and involving her in a conversation.

Thankfully Penny was a young girl and thus easily distractible. It wasn't long before they'd laughingly traversed the courtyard to find the wayward Cedric wistfully watching the Hufflepuff quidditch team.

"You can try out next year, I'm sure you'll make it," Harry told the boy, startling him from his daydream, one that probably involved flying for the team.

"You think so?" Cedric asked. "You haven't seen me fly before. The first lesson is next week."

Harry shrugged, "I'm sure you'll do fine. If you want to make it into the house team, you can. The competition isn't that tough yet. It's not hard to be the best out of five applicants when there are two open spots and three of your competitors didn't even prepare for the event."

Cedric cringed at his words. "No expectations," The boy muttered, looking at the Hufflepuff seeker doing a daring dive in an attempt to catch a glimmer of gold.

"You want to be a seeker?" Penny asked, causing Cedric to flush. Harry had to admit that even at the age of eleven, it was clear that the boy was going to end up with a build more suited for a beater, or a keeper. Being a seeker would just stunt his potential. Well, unless he was just that good. But from what Harry remembered from the books, that wasn't really the case. Talented, probably, but on a larger stage one needed something more than talent. Something like Harry Potter had had. Harry Evans wondered if he'd be good on a broom. He doubted it. His aunt didn't seem particularly graceful and neither did Dudley.

"Well, seeker is the only position that will be opening up next year," Cedric said in an attempt to justify his apparent decision.

"Aren't both beaters leaving as well?" Penny asked, "I think Michael told me."

"Well, yes," Cedric admitted, "but being a beater isn't…"

"Looks fun to me. Aim for the joints and smack the bludger with a bat," Harry said, causing Cedric to whine that he hadn't even played Quidditch yet and therefore couldn't possibly know what was fun or not.

"You'll see in a month when we play Gryffindor," Cedric huffed. "Seeker is the best."

Penny rolled her eyes from where she was standing behind him on the wooden stands.

"I guess I'll have to see if I can open up a time slot in my schedule," Harry mused, wondering that if he got the disillusionment charm to work, he could finally go seek out the room of requirement during the match.

"Harry, you can't ditch the match! Hufflepuff is playing. Everyone is going to be there, even the Slytherins and Ravenclaws," Penny whined this time, angrily pulling at his overly long black sleeve. Harry didn't mind, as long as she left his fabulous hat alone.

"Everyone, you say," he muttered, before grinning. Shaking his head he then did what he'd come here to do. He pulled out a loaf of old bread wrapped in paper from his leather satchel and turned to his friends, "I got this from the kitchen. You guys want to practise the levitation charm by throwing pieces of it at the lake? See if we can get the giant squid to come out," he suggested. Cedric's face lit up and Penny's eyes twinkled.

"Yeah! Flitwick is going to lose it when we come in already having mastered the spell completely," Cedric said and stood up abruptly, turning towards the lake. He looked back, "Coming, you two?" he asked, at which point Penny ran past him and swept down the stands like a Puffskein on crack.

"The last one at the lake is a Slytherin!" she shouted, causing both Harry and Cedric to break out into a run to avoid the horrible fate.

-/-

It was an hour or so later that Harry was lying down on the soft grass with his two friends, their magic spent and their bread supplies depleted. In the end, it was Penny who had won the competition of who could throw a piece of bread the furthest via the application of the levitation charm. Sure, Harry hadn't really been trying, rather matching his classmates, but it was still impressive. The girl had somehow managed to fail at casting her spell intentionally, to the purpose of cannoning the piece of bread almost twenty metres out.

It had been the only piece that a large tentacle had pulled at from beneath the depths.

"The boy who lived," Harry began, "what's that all about?" he asked.

"Don't tell me you're even reading history books instead of practising Potions," Penny said, aghast, from where she sat up to his right. Harry shrugged unapologetically.

"It sounded interesting," he justified, although to be fair he hadn't needed to crack open a history book to know about the story. He'd overheard it in Diagon Alley easily enough. None of the history books in the Hogwarts library were actually modern enough to cover the most recent war, unfortunately. He'd checked. Which meant that this was something he would have to try to figure out elsewhere. Unless his classmates were able to give a valid rendition of what he was interested in. Which was doubtful, seeing as they'd been two years old when the war had happened.

"Well, it's Neville Longbottom. The thing is that You-Know-Who tried to kill him as a baby. Went to his house on Samhain and all. But somehow it was he who got killed. It must have been Neville doing whatever killed You-Know-Who since his parents and granny were dead by then." Cedric explained, not really considering that Harry might not have known who You-Know-Who actually was, "no one really knows what happened that night though."

"Why target the Longbottoms?"

"No clue. I mean the parents were fighting against You-Know-Who, I guess," Cedric said.

"So they must have been expecting some retaliation, maybe they even went into hiding," Harry suggested. "How did You-know-Who find them then?"

"Were they in hiding?" Penny asked doubtfully and Cedric shook his head.

"No, the Longbottoms are an old family. They stayed in their residence. The family wards of places like that are supposed to be really strong. I haven't a clue how you can break something so old," he explained.

"Well, there are curse-breakers in Egypt breaking wards that are older than 4000 years," Penny interjected, at which both the children nodded.

"So where is he now? If his family died that day?" Harry asked.

"With his godfather, James Potter. He's a senior auror at the ministry," Penny said, before blushing apparently being a bit over-informed, "They're in the papers all the time," she tried to explain.

"He's also a Lord," Cedric said. "Him and Sirius Black are doing some stuff at the ministry, my dad talks about it sometimes."

So those two were alive and not imprisoned, Harry thought and wondered if they knew he existed.

"It's good that a strong Wizard like Lord Potter was the godfather. Only a day after the defeat of You-Know-Who, death eaters, his followers tried to attack Neville at the Potter residence. But Lord Black was there and they managed to defeat them," Cedric said. "I'm really glad the war ended right after."

"Apparently one of their close friends was actually a death eater in secret and led them into the Potter grounds. Peter, or something," Penny mentioned

"Well they're all in Azkaban now," Cedric muttered.

"Sounds like a "Good riddance to bad rubbish situation,"" Harry said absentmindedly as his mind reeled with all this new information. Potter and Black were alive and well, probably raising Neville Longbottom together and Pettigrew, the filthy traitor, was rotting in Azkaban under Animagus wards because his friends had been able to notify the ministry that he was one. He was a bit worried, once again, that his foreknowledge was essentially non-existent, but considering that he recognized a bunch of people at Hogwarts, stores in Diagon Alley and names of spells and magical disciplines… The divergence point. It must have been recent, perhaps even the death of his mother. Harry Potter not existing and thus not being the boy who lived was the thing that he could attribute most of the differences he'd heard to.

God only knew though. Perhaps this was an alternative time-line that had diverged millions of years ago. Maybe Voldemort hadn't even made Horcruxes. Maybe Severus Snape wasn't at Hogwarts because he was pursuing a lucrative career as a male stripper somewhere in rural Australia.

'You'll have to throw bills worth more than that to gain my attention, Potter,' Harry drawled in his mind while imagining the sallow face of the actor who'd played the dungeon bat in the movies working a pole. He grimaced.

"Why did we start talking about this?" Penny complained and pointed at Harry and the look of abject discomfort on his face, "You're all sad now."

"Yes, but it is important to know. This is recent history, hasn't even been a decade. I don't really imagine I'll learn much from Binns at least," Harry said.

"Hear hear. Not learning much from Binns," Cedric said, as if he'd been listening to the droning ghost for a lifetime, instead of three lectures at this point. Harry instinctively gripped the bezoar necklace at his neck, wondering if it would have the same effect as a crucifix if he hurled it at the deceased man sabotaging his education.