Lord Harry Potter

Year One

The train chugged along and the red-haired boy bragged about his chocolate frog cards. "I have about five hundred..." He grinned.

"Amazing," Harry said. And it was.

Why? Ron knew far more than Harry did about this new world he'd entered. Each of those cards contained some hints about this world. For Harry, who knew little of this new place he was going to, each card seemed like something he should know, must know.

He was trying to soak it in as quickly as he could. He was rather desperate to fit in, not that he would admit it.

So, five hundred of anything valuable seemed like a huge number to Harry, enough to be memorable and exotic. Five hundred things, witches or wizards or accomplishments, he had never known before today.

The boys moved on to other topics, including why one shouldn't eat Bertie Bott's Every Flavored Beans if they were brown, green, black, or really any color, but Harry continued to think about a collection of cards. Not as a collection of facts this time, but as cards purchased with bronze or silver.

Five hundred of them. How much would that cost?

Harry wasn't sure. He'd bought a number of different treats a few minutes earlier, but he hadn't asked the individual prices of things.

They weren't free, Harry supposed.

So, five hundred items which cost something. How had Ron gotten them? Ron had made several remarks, very unsubtle ones, about how poor his family was. His clothes he was ashamed of, the packed sandwiches he didn't want to eat, the handed-down pet he seemed to loathe, the wand that looked like it had been sold from Ollivander's shop some time in the distant past...

So Harry wasn't sure of what he was seeing and hearing. A poor family, there was nothing wrong with poor... Harry had thought he was poor, too. But buying five hundred chocolate frogs to eat so someone could collect the cards? Five hundred frogs rather than, well, anything else?

No. Maybe Ron found some of the cards. Maybe he'd received gifts. Or paid a little at a jumble sale (did wizards have jumble sales?) for a large already formed collection...

Fewer frog cards might have meant new robes or a wand that didn't appear in need of replacement. It might have meant a slightly more comfortable life for all of the brothers, and the sister, Ron had.

Five hundred cards... Ron had to be exaggerating. Right?

Harry kept turning that question over until the train deposited them in Hogsmeade. It was a puzzle.

Harry's curiosity and his sense of mischief, which had withered in close proximity to his extremely, ferociously normal aunt, uncle, and cousin, returned as a faint ember. All it took was one observation and one rather insignificant question, which he didn't yet dare to speak aloud. It was something he found some pleasure in batting around.

Great things often began inconspicuously.

.....

Several days after classes commenced, Harry discovered the misery of Defense with Professor Quirrel. Harry had had trouble staying awake, couldn't recall one thing he'd learned from the professor's stuttered explanations, and found he could still smell garlic – maybe rotten garlic – every time he took a breath. The smell had seeped into his lungs and pores of his skin.

He returned with Ron and Dean to the common room. Seamus and Neville had lagged behind with some of the girls.

"I'll be in the shower," Dean said. "I'm going to scrub that garlic out. Maybe I'll drown my robes, too. It's on everything."

Harry flopped onto a couch. He thought about a shower, too, but his head was still aching.

"Why's he teaching, making us miserable? Quirrel's afraid of his own shadow," Ron said, echoing something others had said before.

"I guess we're learning from the book for Defense and History," Harry said.

It was unfortunate, but nothing new. He'd had a poor teacher for maths in primary and had had to keep up by relying on his workbooks rather than the teacher's explanations. He could do it again.

"Huh?" Ron asked.

"Well, isn't he following along with the text he assigned?" Harry asked.

"I don't know what he said. I don't think he knows what he said. How do you compare the book to an hour of mumbles and stutters?"

Harry shrugged. He didn't know, either. Hadn't there been something about iguanas in the lecture? No. Maybe the man just liked holding an iguana. Harry's head was really misty, billowy like how he imagined a packet of candy floss might taste, if he were ever allowed some.

Harry pulled out his defense book and started paging through it. He had looked at it before, but he'd been so excited then and had had so many books. Now that he was focused on one for a desperate reason, he could take the time to be impressed by the book. This he could learn from far better than sitting in Professor Quirrel's torture room/garlic storage area.

"Did you know you can bewitch a person?" Harry asked.

"Well, yes," Ron said. "Dad told some stories about it in the last war."

"I didn't know one wizard could control what another one does. Horrible. But something happens to the eyes. They go cloudy or dull. I'd never have guessed. At least there's a way to tell..."

"It was horrible," Ron agreed, half asleep. He really could sleep anywhere, anytime, for any reason.

Harry dipped back into the book. It was fascinating. He wasn't much of a reader, never had the time or the quiet for it. But today he thought he might just read the whole book. The writing was rather dry, but the topics were so interesting. Hags! Dragons! Descriptions of spells that made your teeth fall out or your skin feel on fire. Potions that could change the appearance of anyone. You might have an enemy sneak up on you while looking like your father or your best mate and not even know.

It was terrifying, but Harry didn't stop. He needed to know soon. He felt so out of place right now, so ignorant.

He turned the page and turned another and lost track of the time.

Seamus had to wake Ron and rouse Harry from his reading so they wouldn't be late for supper. The light had changed in the common room and Harry hadn't even noticed.

"Thanks, Seamus." Harry was unhappy to put the book down. He doubted that his stuttering professor would even cover a tenth of this material. Harry knew it was here, though, and he vowed to himself he wasn't going to ignore it.

The curiosity in him strengthened that day in September.

After supper, Harry tried a few spells referenced in the chapters he'd read. They worked for him. They worked for him, better than anything he'd tried yet in Transfiguration. Or his first attempts at making sense of the Charms text.

He could do this. He wanted to do it. He found a little well of confidence inside him and began to chip away at its hardened borders, enlarging the sections that were free and lively and mischievous.

Harry liked magic.

He found he was good at magic.

The teachers might be so-so, but he could learn it anyway. Because he wanted to.

He had learned something very important that day because of those events and that book. It would be some time before someone helped him put this learning into words he could use to explain what had happened. Still, this nameless lesson performed its magic inside Harry's mind.

He would eventually come to call it hope.