4

Chapter Text

Magic was amazing. Harry was magic. He was going to a magic school to learn magic things. He was so, so lucky; his friends back home weren't magic, his mum wasn't magic… He got to do things they couldn't, and that wasn't even fair, it was just luck. He shouldn't be so annoyed by little things.

He wasn't annoyed by little things. The thing currently putting his back up and making him wish he had somehow locked his train compartment when he was the only one in it was not little.

"But your scar," the red-headed boy said, pointing at his forehead. "You've gotta be Harry Potter."

"Hebert," he stressed. "Harry Hebert." He didn't know who this Potter bloke was, and he didn't care for how they weren't taking his word for it.

"But he is right, you know," another boy said timidly as he stroked his toad's back. "You look like Harry Potter, and your name is Harry, and you have the scar."

"You're in books!" the bushy-hair girl who filled out the rest of the compartment insisted, digging through her bag for something. "I know I read about you."

"No, that's not me." Or if it was, he didn't care, but it couldn't be him, really. He had seen his birth certificate when his mum taught him about important papers earlier in the year, and he knew his mum wasn't a Potter.

But everyone kept talking about it! Harry Potter was some sort of celebrity. Harry Hebert had the misfortune of sharing a first name, general appearance and scar with the bloke. It was frustrating. Even Dumbledore, the headmaster, said he was Harry Potter while he was getting his wand. Ollivander, the creepy man who made wands, said it too. He was so disappointed when Harry said that one wand didn't really feel right…

So maybe he had lied. It was the wandmaker's fault for telling him it was connected to the bad guy who killed the Potters. Why would he want a wand connected to a murderer, who was in turn connected to someone he wasn't? His cherry wood and phoenix feather wand was just as good, and it didn't come with 'ill portents'.

Harry didn't care what they said, they being everyone from Dumbledore to the kids he was talking to now. He knew who he was, and even if he didn't, he didn't want to be famous anyway. He just wanted to learn to do cool things with magic. His mum always said fame was overrated and people were stupid about famous people, and now he knew she was right.

"Here!" The bushy-haired girl pulled out a fat book and opened it on her knees. "Look, see! James and Lily Potter."

He reluctantly craned his neck to look at the moving pictures. Two older teenagers in robes were standing on a big platform, wearing fancy robes and holding plaques along with a whole bunch of other people. It looked like a graduation to him. The man had messy black hair and wore glasses, and the woman had fiery red hair and green eyes. The woman shoved the man as he waved exuberantly at the crowd, and the man laughed soundlessly, looking at her with adoration as he made to pick her up and carry her off the stage… and then the magic picture reset and they did it all over again.

"So?" he asked, singularly unimpressed.

"Mate, don't you recognize your own parents?" the annoying redhead asked.

"My mum has black curly hair and is taller than her, so these aren't my parents." There was no way Lily Potter was his mum. They looked nothing alike. The book claimed he was the son of both of them, and that was at least half wrong, so he probably had no relation to the man either.

"But the scar," the timid boy objected.

"Car accident," Harry said, though he was pretty sure his scar didn't, in fact, come from the same accident that had taken his mum's arm. He had just always had it.

"Oh…" the bushy-haired girl closed the book. "Sorry, then. It must just be a really big coincidence." She really did sound sorry, so he tried not to be annoyed with her.

"Don't you want to be Harry Potter?" the redhead asked. "He's so cool! He beat You-Know-Who as a baby."

"I didn't do that. I just want to learn magic." Right now, he wanted to talk about something else. "What houses do you all think you'll be in?"

That did the trick, thankfully. "Gryffindor, whole family was in Gryffindor and it's the best house," the redhead proclaimed. "No way I go anywhere else."

"I'm hoping for Ravenclaw," Harry offered. "They have their own library and there might be cool secret books in there." More importantly, from what he had read Ravenclaw was the only house with something extra for its students. The other houses didn't have private libraries or anything else special. Unless living in the dungeons counted as special, but that sounded creepy to Harry.

"Oh, but Gryffindor has all of the most famous witches and wizards," the girl argued.

"But they don't have a private library," Harry argued back. "You can be famous no matter where you go, but you can only get into the Ravenclaw library if you're a Ravenclaw." He didn't really have strong opinions about the houses, and his mum said they couldn't matter too much or it would be unfair, so the library was the tipping point for him.

"That is a good point," the girl admitted, looking thoughtful. "I wouldn't want to be at a disadvantage…"

"My Gran says I'd better be in Gryffindor," the timid boy supplied.

"Better than the house of the swots," the redhead scoffed. "I'm going to go look for Harry Potter. He's our age, he must be here. Want to come?"

"No, but I hope you find him." Harry waved goodbye. He really did hope the redhead found Potter. That would make all of this stupid mistaken identity stuff go away.

The fact that the redhead got into a fight with a blond-haired boy before even getting out of earshot, over the subject of Potter and who he should be friends with, only reinforced Harry's hope.

Harry didn't spot his famous lookalike on the train, or in the boats, but after seeing the awesome castle for the first time he didn't care anymore. He ignored the whispering of all the other eleven-year-olds as it pertained to Harry Potter, though he did overhear the redhead telling the same snobby blond boy that Harry Hebert wasn't Harry Potter, and that Harry Potter must have come by Floo, whatever that was.

Then they were startled by ghosts – real ghosts! – and led into the Great Hall, with its starry ceiling and all the other, bigger students.

A hat sang a song, and by that point Harry was too surrounded by amazing, interesting things to really pay attention. They lined up in alphabetical order, and he ended up right behind the bushy-haired girl, whose last name was Granger, just before Hebert.

Granger – Hermoine, according to the older woman calling out the names – spent a few minutes under the hat, before it declared her a "Ravenclaw!" in its loud voice and sent her on her way. Harry had thought she was leaning toward Gryffindor, but maybe she had changed her mind, or maybe the hat didn't give her a choice.

He stepped forward, ready for his name to be called.

The older woman looked at him, then at her big piece of parchment. "Mr. Potter, please wait your turn."

"I'm Harry Hebert, shouldn't I be next?" Harry asked, doing his best to ignore how every eye in the hall was pointed his way, in addition to the spectral eyes of the ghosts.

"You…" She looked her list over, then looked over at Dumbledore, who was watching with interest. "I have no Harry Hebert here, and you are Harry Potter."

"I'm not, though," he objected, quite reasonably.

"Yes, well… Just go on ahead, we can sort it out later." She cleared her throat. "Harry!"

He took the offered compromise for what it was, though not without a small scowl. Why did everyone keep telling him he wasn't who he knew he was?

'Good question, young man,' the hat said in his mind. 'Why indeed?'

'Not you too,' Harry thought angrily. 'My mum is Taylor Hebert, I'm a Hebert, I've always been a Hebert, and I'm tired of people saying otherwise and not listening to me!'

'It's not up to me who you are,' the hat assured him. 'And between us, I believe you. I can see in your head, after all. Your mother is quite an interesting character. I rarely see Muggle parents so rapidly accepting magic with no prior warning. But we are not here to talk about her, much as I might have liked to have her under my brim.'

'We're here to talk about houses,' Harry thought, quite relieved that someone knew he was right. 'Does it really matter?'

'It is my job!' the hat exclaimed. 'Of course it matters! If it did not they might throw me out! Or the Headmaster might take to wearing me around all year, and then they would have to burn me because I would have been driven mad by him! They don't remember how to make more hats like me, so that would be the end!'

'Right, sorry, I guess it is important,' Harry thought.

The hat huffed, which was a strange experience given it did so mentally. 'Quite. Now, as to you… You are a very thoughtful young man, and you want to get into the Ravenclaw library. I must tell you, they do not have any books that the main library is missing… The advantage to their library is the extraordinary filing system and lack of a restricted section while still having some restricted subjects. That you wanted a specific house for the advantage you thought it would provide is ambitious and cunning of you, and you seem to be brave enough. To say nothing of your loyalty to your mother in the face of so many people thoughtlessly saying she is not, in fact, your mother at all.'

'So I could go into any house,' Harry thought. 'What good is that, then?'

'Most children could go into more than one house and do well, it is a matter of which I determine is most likely to benefit them,' the hat replied. 'For you, I think I know what that is. It would be a crying shame for the pressure of those around you to succeed in pushing you away from what you know to be true. Your loyalty is admirable, but not unbreakable. As such, you'll find the supportive environment and anonymity you may need in–'

"Hufflepuff!" the hat yelled aloud, breaking the hushed silence that had descended over the Great Hall.

'But do try to make friends outside of Hufflepuff, too,' it added before he could take it off. 'It would be a shame to focus too narrowly on one part of yourself. Do not forget that you could have gone into any house."

'I'll try,' he promised, and removed the hat.

The hat may have been right about Hufflepuff; he only had to explain the situation to the kids in his year once. After that, they never bothered him about his last name and who they thought his parents should be, though he thought a few of them still didn't believe him at all. They were good enough to not say it, at least.

The same could not be said for the other first year students in other houses. Or the older students. Or the teachers.

He tried not to let it get to him. It really didn't help that the actual Harry Potter had never shown up, and that for all intents and purposes he seemed to be filling the gap left behind. He was magic, no doubt, but 'Hebert' was not a name that showed up on anything magic filled out. Professor McGonagall was nice enough to scratch out 'Potter' on her roll sheet and replace it with the right last name, but other professors weren't so accommodating.

"You are Potter and you will not lie in my classroom, ten points from Hufflepuff," the ugly oily-haired bat in the dungeons said upon Harry not answering to 'Potter' on the initial roll call, immediately cementing him in Harry's small list of individuals that he definitely didn't care for. His behavior after that was just as bad, and Potions became something Harry studied more outside of class just so he could avoid the worst of the unfair criticism.

It was because of Snape's constant nitpicking that Harry found himself in the library one Friday afternoon, pulling books from the potions section that he was certain were well above his year level. He didn't mind that, though some of them were hard to make sense of, but Snape's smug questions that he could never answer being sourced from second year and above was unfair.

"Hi, Harry." Hermione came up beside him and reached for a book near the ones he was taking. It had a bright green cover with red and purple vines decorating the edges, and it looked a lot more interesting than the dull gray reference books he was taking. "Are you studying ahead? That's a great idea! I wish Professor Snape would just ask someone else, it isn't fair for you to have all the chances to earn points."

Harry side-eyed her. "Is it a chance to earn points?" he asked. "Seems like I'm only ever losing them." He did agree that Snape should ask other students, though.

"Well, I'm sure if you got one right he would give you points, otherwise it wouldn't be fair." She sat down at a nearby table, and after a moment of deliberation he joined her.

Harry doubted Snape had any intention of being fair to him, but he supposed he wouldn't know for sure until he managed to get something right. He flipped open the reference book and started to read. Hermione did the same, and for a while neither of them said anything.

Potions frustrated Harry. He wanted to like the subject, he really did. It was cool, and it was useful. There were healing potions and potions for detectives and truth serums and something called Polyjuice that let people shapeshift. The class wasn't that different from cooking, and he had helped his mum cook for years, once he was old enough to notice that her only having one arm slowed her down and made some things unreasonably difficult.

But the instructor hated him. Always deducting points, always hovering menacingly, making disparaging comments… Harry had never had a teacher who actively disliked him before – not for more than a few days, anyway – and it was all the Potter thing's fault. It had to be; Snape didn't like anyone in the Hufflepuff-Ravenclaw Potions class, but he didn't take dozens of points from any other individual student.

"Hermione," he asked, following up on a thought far more interesting than the properties of Mugwort, "do you have any idea why Snape hates Harry Potter?"

"What? Oh… I'm sure he doesn't hate you," she said. "Or Harry Potter. He just… wants to challenge you? And it's Professor Snape."

"You don't have to defend him," Harry huffed.

"He's a professor," Hermione objected.

"Yeah, well, he's not a very good one, is he?" Harry pushed the reference book away and slumped back in his chair. "I could be studying for the potion we're going to make next week, but instead I'm here, trying to guess what stupid obscure thing he's going to ask and then mock me for not knowing. Meanwhile, you probably already know everything about next week's potion, but he isn't challenging you to learn new things."

"He's a professor, he must have some plan that we can't see yet," Hermione insisted.

"You've never had any bad teachers?" Harry guessed. "My mum always told me not to let students or teachers push me around. I guess this is what she was talking about."

"I'm sure he will back off once you show you can answer his questions." Hermione looked down at her book, then closed it. "Pass me one of those."

"My books?"

"Yes. I can read it and then quiz you?" She smiled uncertainly.

"Sure." It couldn't hurt, and studying together was better than studying alone.

Snape did not back off. Not even when Harry started getting his questions right. Harry had yet to earn a single point in Potions class. Instead, Snape just kept posing questions until he found one Harry couldn't answer, then took points for that while ignoring any correct answers. Worse, when Hermione objected, he gave her a detention for 'talking out of turn.'

Hermione's reaction to that was almost funny... Once Harry got her to stop crying by telling her just how much of a miserable failure of a teacher Snape was. Harry supposed she really hadn't expected Snape to be unfair. Now she knew better, at least.

She stopped telling him he needed to study to prove himself to Snape, and started helping him with the actual potions assignments instead. When they had classes together, she sat near him. They met up outside of classes and potions study sessions, too, and Harry realized that he might have accidentally made his first friend at Hogwarts. She was bossy and opinionated, but he didn't mind so much.

Hermione made him a little homesick, actually. Not on purpose, but she was a Muggleborn like him and whenever she talked about things back home in the normal world, he was reminded of his house, and his bedroom, and his mum. He liked being at Hogwarts, but he missed his mum, too.

It didn't help that she wasn't responding to his letters.

He wrote one every week, and every week he took his letter up to the owls to send off. He addressed it properly, using notebook paper from the notebooks she had insisted he bring along in case he wanted to use them instead of parchment, and every week an owl took his letter.

He never got any letters back, though. Not a single one. Hermione got a big package from her parents a month after the term started, so it wasn't that Muggles couldn't send things to Hogwarts. Other kids got letters. Ronald Weasley even got a Howler, a big red envelope that screeched at him for getting into a duel in the corridor with the blond Malfoy boy in Slytherin.

Harry wouldn't have liked a Howler – his mum could be scary when she got angry, much more than Ronald's mum – but he would have liked something, and he knew his mum knew that. She had promised to reply to his letters.

He didn't want to make a big deal of it – people were finally starting to settle down about the Potter thing – but eventually he decided he cared more about getting her letters than drawing attention to himself, and started asking around. Especially after that whole incident with the Troll on Halloween, in which Neville, the timid boy from the train, had almost been smashed to a pulp and ended up being saved by Professor McGonagall. He wanted to tell his mum about that and everything else.

First there was Hermione, who helpfully wrote her parents asking that they write out how they were sending their letters back to her. As it turned out, Hermione's parents were just sending them in the mail; something about the word 'Hogwarts' on the envelope got it rerouted in transit, and owls picked them up at the Wizarding post office.

There was no way his mum hadn't tried that, so he went to ask the groundskeeper, who everyone agreed knew all about animals.

Hagrid was kind of nice, but he kept insisting that Harry was Harry Potter, which was exactly what Harry had wanted to avoid. He even claimed he had seen Harry Potter the baby the night his parents died, which was just strange and uncomfortable. Harry eventually got Hagrid to answer his questions about the post and post owls, but Hagrid didn't know of anything that would be waylaying his letters in particular. Nothing that made sense, anyway. And his mum would have sent letters asking why he wasn't writing, if nothing else, so that was a dead end.

From there he went to the professor in charge of his house, Professor Sprout. She was nice, but she didn't know anything about the mail. She did send him up to speak to the Headmaster, which was better than nothing.

Several months into his first term he went up the spiral staircase, told the gargoyles about Chocolate Frogs, and saw the Headmaster.

"Harry, my boy," Dumbledore said. He had to say it again to get Harry's attention, because his office was a wonderful mess of mysterious devices and oddities. "Harry."

"Yes, Headmaster?" Harry made an effort to not stare at the fiery bird sitting on a perch behind the Headmaster's left shoulder. Or the lava lamp with what he thought was real lava inside. Or the clockwork clock that sent out little jets of smoke every third tick. Or the wall of portraits all staring down at him and occasionally blinking. Or the perpetually smoking book tucked away under a pile of crazy diagrams on the corner of the Headmaster's big desk. To say nothing of the little circular marble track with three multicolored marbles running around it of their own volition, or the–

"Lemon drop?" Dumbledore offered, casually moving the smoking book off his desk and into a drawer.

"Uh… no thank you." Harry forced himself to look the Headmaster in the eye so he wouldn't be drawn back into marveling at the many inexplicable devices. "Do you know why my mum hasn't gotten any of my mail?" he asked.

"Has she not?" Dumbledore asked. "Has she written you saying so? I have never known the Hogwarts owls to fail a delivery."

"I send letters every week, but I haven't gotten anything from her all term," Harry admitted. "I checked and there's nothing confusing about how she's supposed to mail me back, and Hagrid says only a mail redirection ward would keep them away from her, which makes no sense since she doesn't have magic and wouldn't set up a ward like that. And it wouldn't stop her from replying, anyway, and I'm worried something happened to her." The words left him in a rush, leaving him feeling peculiarly hollow.

"This is a serious matter," Dumbledore agreed. "I will look into it. It might be best if you stay here over the winter holiday, though."

Harry didn't see how that followed at all. "But I want to know she's okay," he objected. "Why would I not go home for Christmas?" He hadn't even considered staying at Hogwarts over break.

"It would be wise," Dumbledore insisted. "I may not be able to determine what is going on before then, and if so it might be dangerous to send you back."

"Nobody wants to hurt me." He had no enemies. His mum always said to watch out for people who might want to do him harm for reasons that had nothing to do with him specifically, but that wasn't what Dumbledore was talking about.

"My boy, you must admit–" Dumbledore began.

"No, I mustn't," he said, crossing his arms.

Dumbledore frowned at him. "I will look into it," he said again. "Do not worry too much. She may just be giving you your space."

That made no sense at all, but Harry shrugged his shoulders and left. He didn't have anyone more important to go to and ask, and Dumbledore said he would investigate, so something at least was being done. He would keep sending letters. Maybe his mum was getting them, and it was her responses that were being lost. He didn't want her to think he'd forgotten her.

Christmas at Hogwarts was disappointing.

Harry hadn't wanted to be at Hogwarts at all, come the winter holiday. He liked Hogwarts, and it was even nicer with most of the students gone home, but it wasn't his home, and he could admit to himself that he was homesick and worried.

Dumbledore had called him to the Headmaster's office on the morning before the train departed, early enough that Harry knew what was coming. Sure enough, he was told in no uncertain terms that Dumbledore was still investigating and that he would be staying at Hogwarts, and that was that.

Hermione had gone home. All of Hufflepuff except one sixth-year had gone home. There were a dozen students in the castle, and he didn't know any of them well at all, so it was really just him and a few strangers.

His Christmas gifts were… not a disappointment, but the one he had hoped for wasn't there. Anything from his mum would have been welcome. He tried not to dwell on it, but it was hard.

Hermione gave him a book. A very nice book about obscure Potions trivia, which was funny, because he had been thinking along the same lines when he got her a book on teaching magical subjects from a mail-order catalog an older student had left lying around. Neville, the timid boy from the train, had gotten him a Chocolate frog, which was unexpected because they hadn't spoken more than once or twice since then.

Someone anonymous gave him his only other present, and it was a double-edged sword.

On the one hand, it was a real invisibility cloak and it was awesome.

On the other hand, it had belonged to James Potter and the anonymous sender said it was his because of that.

Harry spent some time attempting to read about Wizarding inheritance in the library, trying to figure out whether he could get in legal trouble for having a family heirloom that wasn't his, but as far as he could tell – which wasn't very far, most of the law books went way over his head – the worst that could happen was the real Harry Potter could sue him, in which case he could just give it back with the excuse that he had no idea how to get it to Harry Potter until that moment as everybody kept insisting he was Harry Potter and that there was no other.

Really, that would be a good thing if it happened, because it would prove he wasn't Harry Potter once and for all. So he kept the cloak, though he made sure to take good care of it. It was on loan to him, that was all.

He wrote his mum an extra-long letter on Christmas day, wishing her well and saying that he hoped she got the things he'd ordered her from the catalog, and spent the rest of the break trying and mostly failing to shake off the sober, worried cloud that hung over him.

The spring term rushed by in a never-ending sequence of classes, studying, and relaxing. Part of that was Hermione's influence; she of the color-coded schedules and boundless enthusiasm. Part of it was that the more he threw himself into his schoolwork, the less time he had for worrying.

Whatever the cause, the end of the term was upon them almost before he could believe it, with nothing of particular note happening in the interval. There were tests, and Harry's hand cramped badly enough he had to go to the school nurse for the first time since coming to Hogwarts. Hermione got so agitated her hair frizzed up like a brown thundercloud, leading to Harry collapsing with laughter and Hermione vindictively dragging him through the library to research spontaneous personal magic whether he wanted to or not, though he did want to once he finally got his breath back.

There was something going on with their Defense teacher – stuttering and headachy, that was another class Harry learned more about in the library than the classroom – but whatever it was never came to anything. Quirrel disappeared during exam week, Snape showed up to the end of term feast with a limp and a pinched look, and Dumbledore announced that their Defense teacher had left on another expedition to Egypt.

Harry was sure it probably all added up to something, and he might have looked into the whole affair – anything that injured Snape was probably worth knowing about – but he had a bigger concern.

Namely that he had heard absolutely nothing from his mother all year, and now the summer break was upon him. He wanted nothing more than to take the train, catch a cab from the station if need be, and go home to find out what was wrong.

But Dumbledore summoned him up to his office the day before the train was set to leave, and Harry knew in his gut that the news wasn't going to be good.

"I dislike being the bearer of bad news," Dumbledore began, looking truly sorry. Even his beard was drooping. "That said, I think you would rather know than continue to worry. Taylor Hebert is perfectly safe, and her mail is not being tampered with in any way. As I understand it, she has… not reacted well to the existence of magic, not after you left. She has not sent anything, or read any of your letters, and told me when I spoke to her that she wanted nothing more to do with the Wizarding world."

It was like a punch to the gut. Harry said nothing.

"I understand this is an unpleasant shock, and I have taken the liberty of arranging for you to stay with the Longbottoms over the summer. You know their son, Neville."

Harry nodded, his lips firmly pressed together.

"Do not take it too harshly," Dumbledore said kindly. "Some Muggles simply cannot cope. This is not the first time such a thing has happened, and it means nothing, less than nothing, about the unfortunate children affected."

Harry nodded again, not trusting himself to speak.

"Madam Longbottom is going to pick both you and Neville up by Floo, to make things simpler, so I am sure you will wish to say goodbye to your friends today as you will not be on the train tomorrow." Dumbledore smiled comfortingly.

"Yes, sir." Harry turned and left his office. He was ambushed right at the bottom of the spiral staircase by Hermione, who wasted no time.

"What did he say?" she demanded. "Is your mum okay? Was someone tampering with your mail?"

Harry considered his answer. "I…" He hesitated, looking back at the staircase.

Something didn't feel right.

But it wouldn't feel right if his mum abandoned him, would it?

"I don't know." He sounded as confused as he felt.

Summer at Neville's home was okay. Just okay, not especially fun or exciting or boring. Neville spent a lot of time in the greenhouse, and after a few days of listening to his grandmother talk ceaselessly about politics with intermittent asides about her late son and how Neville needed to be like him, Harry entirely understood. Whenever Neville's grandmother started talking about the Potters, he too felt the need to be anywhere else.

So, he spent the summer grubby in the greenhouse and gardens, working alongside a boy who was only confident when it came to plants. He learned a lot about growing magical plants, and how to use magic to better grow useful mundane plants, and which plants were illegal to grow and why.

Not that the Longbottoms had any illegal plants; that discussion was entirely theoretical. But based on how Neville looked so longingly at a brochure of man-eating magical Tiger Lilies he showed Harry, Harry suspected that Neville might have been willing to make a few exceptions if it was up to him.

By the time the summer sun started to set earlier and earlier, and they went to Diagon Alley to pick up new books – a few weeks before the rush – Harry was willing to count Neville as a friend. It helped that Neville didn't talk about parents, his own or the Potters, and was easy to be around.

Harry and Neville returned to Hogwarts via Floo just before the sorting feast, and just like that another year at Hogwarts had begun.

Harry just wished it didn't feel so hollow.

Hermione was the same as ever; she greeted him in the library after their first day of classes with a hug, which he returned, and then a whole stack of books, which she slammed down onto the table without her usual veneration for the written word.

"Lockhart!" she exclaimed.

"Lockhart," he agreed, looking at the smarmy face gracing the topmost book. "What about him?"

"I didn't make the same mistake again," Hermione declared. "One class. That's all it took for me to know he's a terrible teacher."

"Yes, that's about right." He was pleasantly surprised. Hermione had been giving the idiot as many smitten looks as the other girls during breakfast in the Great Hall. He had been prepared to smile and nod as she praised the professor.

It seemed he might have underestimated his friend's desire to learn from everything, including her own mistakes.

"His books are worthless for teaching with," she continued. "They're very entertaining stories, but did you know not a single one of the incantations he lists in his stories actually work? There are similar spells out there, I found a few in the Ravenclaw library last night, but they don't work if you say them his way. The teaching book you got me says you should never give your students inaccurate reference materials, or reference materials that aren't useful beyond the scope of the lesson plan."

"The scope of his lesson plan was himself, Hermione." Harry cracked a grin. "And pixie evasion."

"Exactly!" She shook her head. "Him and Snape and Binns, this year. We'll have a lot of work to do to keep up with where we should be."

"Hang on, Binns?" History of Magic was naptime for him and ninety percent of the other Hufflepuffs, but Hermione had never complained about the ghost before. "What's he done wrong?"

"Harry, were you paying attention in class?" Hermione rolled her eyes and turned away. Harry followed her to the history section. "Never mind. His lesson plan for this year. Did you notice anything about it?"

"No?"

"It's… ergh," Hermione growled. "Fifth Goblin Rebellion, Sixth Goblin Rebellion, Seventh Goblin Rebellion… Last year he listed the names, but…" She pulled down a history book. "Goblin rebellions. Here. Look!"

He dutifully looked. And read aloud, for good measure. "The Rebellion of 1941, aka the Fifth Goblin Rebellion… Hang on." He racked his brain for the few bits of Binn droning that made it into his dreams and thus into his memories. "Didn't we cover the 1941 Goblin Rebellion last year?"

"Yes!" Hermione hissed, little sparks popping over her ears as her hair began to puff up menacingly. "We did! His lesson plan this year gives them different names, but they're the same exact events! It's like that all the way through to the end of the year! And I checked with the third-years, you know what their lesson plan for the year says?"

"First year but in different words?" Harry guessed. He gestured to his head, miming patting down his own unruly hair, and Hermione quickly brushed her fingers through it in an unsuccessful attempt to stop the intermittent crackling.

"Yes." She shook her fingers out and then after a moment tapped them on a metal sconce on the wall, letting out a little yelp when a visible spark discharged. "We learned everything Binns has to teach last year," she continued, shoving her hands into her sleeves, "and the rest of our time here he's just going to keep going over it. I decided we'll bring other history books to class, so we don't have to spend any more time on it outside of class. Two weeks of Goblin Rebellion review before the exams will take care of that, so for the rest of the year it's up to us. Is there any time period and country you really want to study this year?"

"Me?" He shrugged. "Uh… Japan? Eighteen-hundreds?" He knew absolutely nothing about magic outside of Britain, so any time and place was as interesting as any other. His mum always kept up with any news about Japan specifically, so he knew a little about the Muggle side of things there.

"We'll do that this week," Hermione decided. "Next week I'll pick, and we'll alternate. There are plenty of history books and my parents told me I can order one book for myself every month from Flourish and Blotts if I keep my grades up…"

Harry smiled and listened to his best friend as she planned. This, at least, had not changed a bit.

Harry sat on his bed, the dorm room empty save for him. He had his notebook paper and ballpoint pen out, but the words just wouldn't come. He wanted to write about Japanese wizards and the cool things he had read about them, and how that had led him to researching ghosts and all the different kinds of spirits one could find around the world, and the charms for dealing with them. He could even cast a couple that he didn't think were taught at Hogwarts, though he never had because the Hogwarts ghosts were all friendly and not the right kind, besides. That would all make good letter material…

If he could write it. Which he couldn't. Something held his hand.

He didn't understand why his mum would do something like this. Turn her back on him.

It wasn't like her. If she really didn't approve of magic, which just seemed laughable given how she had behaved before he came to Hogwarts, she would be up in arms trying to get him back, not washing her hands of him. She would storm Hogwarts with her unnervingly intense glare and slightly creepy walk that she did whenever she was tense, and she would tell Dumbledore in no uncertain terms that her son would be coming home with her that very day, because…

Because for some reason she had decided magic was bad, in that scenario. It didn't matter why, she would want to take him out. Not leave him.

But that wasn't what had happened, was it?

Instead, he got a year of silence and not going home and being told by Dumbledore that she didn't want him.

It didn't make any sense.

Dumbledore wouldn't lie, though. If he was lying, Taylor would be storming Hogwarts for an entirely different reason. Harry's last few letters certainly hadn't hidden his hurt over what Dumbledore had told him, if she was reading them she would know. If she wasn't reading them, that meant she wasn't getting them, and him not coming home for the summer would make her think he'd been kidnapped.

He swallowed a sob. She always was so protective, so suspicious of other people. He hadn't thought he'd be going to a boarding school at all, and he had maybe expected to need to fight a little bit for more independence, like the other kids in the neighborhood got from their parents.

Going more than a year without hearing a word for her had never crossed his mind as a possibility. He missed her. So much.

Slytherin's heir and accompanying monster were almost a relief. The school was focused on one thing, and though it was inarguably a bad thing, it wasn't a Potter thing. Nobody thought he was Slytherin's heir. Between being a Hufflepuff, being Hermione's best – only? – friend, and him constantly insisting he was a Muggleborn, not the Halfblood they kept saying he was, the school as a whole considered him to be the last possible option. The anti-heir.

As to who was suspect number one? That caught Harry off-guard.

"Wait, who is saying Ronald Weasley is the heir of Slytherin?" he interjected as he walked in on his roommates having a lively discussion. They often did that when he wasn't around; they seemed to like him just fine, but he didn't like talking for hours about their fellow students, so they never included him when they did so.

"Everybody," Wayne Hopkins responded.

"I heard he taught his little sister to speak Parseltongue, and we all know that's a dark talent," Ernest Macmillan added. "Did you hear about the Dueling Club? Malfoy summoned a snake on Ron, but it slithered right off the platform towards his sister, and his sister just picked it up."

"I heard his little sister commanded the snake to attack Malfoy," Wayne objected.

"No, I was there," Ernest retorted. "Ginevra picked it up, and she might have hissed to it a bit, but it was Ron who claimed he spoke to it. The heir of Slytherin would never let someone else take credit for his work, so it has to be him."

Harry kept an eye out for both Ronald and Ginevra Weasley after that, but the truth of the matter was that he didn't have many classes with Gryffindor, and he rarely saw either of them outside of class. Neville told him a little bit about the both of them, but Neville was firmly in the 'Weasleys can't be heirs of Slytherin' minority camp and didn't think it was either of them. Hermione was more interested in the monster than the heir.

There weren't any more petrifactions for a while after the first one, so Harry mostly just watched from afar when the chance arose. He was busy, between his classes, extracurricular studies, and matching Hermione's frantic pace at Potions, History, and Defense against Dark Arts.

That winter he was once again required to stay at Hogwarts. Hermione offered to ask for him to come home with her for the holidays, but he waved her off. Truthfully, he wanted to spend some time alone, and being with Hermione's happy family seemed like it might hurt more than help.

There were no anonymous, amazing, Potter-related gifts this year, for which he was thankful. There was nothing from his mum either.

From Hermione, he got a pen that was enchanted to look and write like a quill, 'for taking notes and revising but not the exams because they'll catch it with anti-cheating charms even though it isn't cheating', as well as a book on obscure magical practices in Asia. He had ordered her a book on lightning magic – 'for your hair' – and another on teaching techniques, since she seemed to like the first one so much.

From Neville, he received a little mundane Venus Flytrap and the instructions on how to care for it, as well as the description of a charm that 'you should never, ever use on this plant, not even if you're alone and there are some spare birds around and you want to give it a special treat'.

Harry memorized the modified Engorgio charm and resolved that, if he ever acquired enemies more vicious than Draco the moderately racist snob, he would bring them to Neville's greenhouse to get rid of them. His gift of magical fertilizer and a whole selection of mundane fruits and vegetables that Neville's greenhouse didn't have seemed far too tame, in retrospect.

But Christmas morning was the highlight of an otherwise morose holiday. He was glad neither Hermione nor Neville was around to see him as he moped about; he wouldn't have wanted to bring their holidays down too.

Soon after the start of the spring term, the petrifactions resumed with a vengeance. Two Muggleborn Ravenclaws were petrified outside a bathroom, and then the Ravenclaw ghost, leading many to think that the 'Weasley heir' had a grudge against the house of the wise.

Harry didn't feel good about the way the school continued to ostracize both of the youngest Weasleys, but thankfully they at least had their older siblings on their side. He learned to avoid the Great Hall during peak times, as that was the favored pranking ground of the older twin Weasleys. Ronald continued to clash with Draco, maybe to prove himself not the heir by showing everyone that if he was, Draco would be the first to be petrified.

Ginevra, though… Harry often saw her in the library, but she never stayed for long. It was her he worried about. Ron was meeting the accusations with his usual red-faced defiance, but Ginevra seemed to shrink away from everyone, and her brothers hamming it up wasn't cheering her up any.

His mum always told him not to be a bystander to bullying. It was a thing with her, the same way self defense and not automatically trusting authority was. He didn't know how he felt about her now, but her advice, her demand that he be a good person and step in… That he could, and would, heed.

He started with Hufflepuff, in the common room one evening. "Don't you think it's terrible to blame a little first year girl for attacking people in the dark of night? She doesn't even know how to levitate a chair yet, how could she be petrifying older students and doing it without getting caught? How is that fair? Even if she can speak to snakes, which I haven't seen any evidence of, who says that means it's her? We don't even know what's doing the petrifying!"

That he was only a year older than Ginevra, and younger than most of the Hufflepuffs listening, didn't matter. He was Harry Hebert, the person everybody agreed couldn't possibly be the heir, and him finally speaking up on the subject carried weight. The fifth and sixth years who heard him looked thoughtful, and in Hufflepuff once an idea was planted it would spread. Rapidly.

Ginevra suddenly, without understanding why, acquired Hufflepuff bodyguards in between classes and in the library. Older students offered to help her study. The whispers about her quieted, if not all the way then at least far enough that Harry no longer felt like he was watching a whole school persecute someone for something he was sure they hadn't done.

His feeling of success was somewhat dampened a few months later, near the end of the term. But in his defense, how could he have possibly known it actually was Ginevra, after a fashion?

He woke to a blinding headache, a painful bump on the back of his head, and the sinking feeling that he was not safe in his bed in the Hufflepuff dorms.

"Finally," a boy hissed. "He wakes. Harry Potter."

"Not Potter," Harry groaned as he tried to roll over. He was tied to something, sitting up…

He opened his eyes to find that he was in a massive, dark and damp chamber of intricately carved stone, like an underground cathedral. There was an immensely ugly face made of stone taking up one whole wall, and there was a pool of dark water off in one corner, but more important was the one speaking, and what he stood over.

It was a wraith of some kind, that was for certain. Harry had read about a lot of different spirits, ghosts, geists, and other ethereal beings when he read about magical Japan, but he couldn't put a name to this one. It looked like a schoolboy, only slightly transparent, and was growing less so with every passing moment.

"You are an immense irritant and I will enjoy killing you personally the moment I finish draining the life out of this girl," the wraith spat. "You set the Hufflepuffs on me! For months, those blithering idiots stifled my every move with their oblivious stupidity!"

"I thought Ginevra was innocent…" Harry said, thinking faster than he ever had in his life. This was maybe the first time he had ever been in real, life-threatening danger, and he didn't like the feeling. But his wasn't the first life that would be taken if the wraith was serious, and he had to think.

"Poor little Ginevra is innocent," the wraith said smugly. "Innocent of everything except talking to a diary when nobody else would bother talking to her. You know, she was so disappointed that Harry Potter wasn't at Hogwarts, even though you are blatantly, obviously Harry Potter!"

"Am not," Harry objected.

"Idiot. No matter. You've annoyed me entirely on your own merits, so I will enjoy killing you regardless. Ginevra poured her heart out to me, and I took every little bit she gave. Now I'm taking the rest."

Harry could feel the ropes binding him to what felt like an ornamental stone pillar. It had sharp edges, so he began subtly rubbing his bonds against them. After he got free, well… He hadn't planned that far ahead yet.

"Why bother?" he asked. Time was not on his side, but he wasn't ready to try anything yet.

"I want to live again, and my former self has made a right mess of it, if your existence is anything to go by," the wraith hissed, twirling Ginevra's wand about between its solidifying fingers. "Right now, my memories are seeping into her, my life is infusing her, and then when it's all in, when she and I are one, I'll yank it all out, hers and mine combined, leaving nothing for her but an empty husk of a body."

The last rope snapped. Harry pretended he was still tied to the pillar. His wand was on the ground behind the megalomaniacal wraith, the only thing between him and the wraith was a ratty old book with a blank cover…

Hang on. The wraith had said Ginny 'poured her heart out to a diary'. There was a book on the floor here. That had to be the connection. If he could destroy it…

Books didn't do well in water, did they?

He lunged forward, scraping his knees through his robes, and got his hands on the book before the wraith could react.

"Stupefy!" the wraith yelled, but Harry had already rolled out of the way. He leaped to his feet, accidentally kicked Ginevra's prone body – maybe it would wake her up, but he doubted it – and hefted his arm back.

"Idiot! Put that down!" the wraith shrieked, aiming Ginevra's wand at him.

"How do you feel about being waterlogged?" he asked.

The wraith's aghast expression was all the encouragement he needed to fling the book as far as he could towards the pool of water on the far side of the chamber.

The wraith turned and raised Ginevra's wand, and Harry realized two things. First, that his throw wasn't strong enough to get the book all the way to the pool. Second, that the wraith could just levitate it back.

Then again, it wasn't like throwing the book was his only idea. He stepped forward and snatched the wand right out of the wraith's hand while it was distracted. The book landed shy of the pool without its interference.

"You–!" the wraith screamed, sending a bitterly cold but thankfully insubstantial limb through him. That seemed to hurt the wraith just as much as it did him, as they both recoiled, and Harry had the presence of mind to snatch up his own wand, too, holding one in each hand like a cowboy from a Western with dual pistols. It was too bad he couldn't cast with two wands at once.

"It's too late, you bumbling, incompetent irritation," the wraith seethed. "You're a second-year and none of your spells can touch me. In mere moments I will be done, I'll come back and kill you with my bare hands if I must, and then I'll feed you to my basilisk!"

Basilisk? The name rang a bell. A Hermione-sounding bell. Snake. Big, big snake. Fatal eyes. Parseltongue. Snake language. Which rumor said Ginevra spoke. Not Slytherin's monster because nobody had died yet and because it was ridiculous to think the school harbored such a dangerous creature without anyone knowing. Or so Hermione had said.

Harry went from feeling triumphant to truly desperate in an instant. He couldn't let the wraith say anything else, one hiss might be enough to summon the Basilisk from wherever it was hiding to kill him, he couldn't fight a basilisk!

He could fight a wraith. Even if he didn't know what kind it was. The spells he'd learned while reading about Japanese spirits didn't work on all spirits, he had no reason to believe they would work here, but they were better than nothing!

He pointed his own wand at the wraith, rapidly going through the complicated motions of the one spell he knew that might help here. "Possessionem Skurge!"

The white spell passed right through the wraith, but the incensed expression on its almost-opaque face told him he was on the right track. He turned his wand on Ginevra's body and quickly cast again, "Possessionem Skurge!"

Ginevra jerked, and the wraith vanished.

Harry was not convinced that was enough. "Possessionem Skurge, Possessionem Skurge," he repeated, casting it again and again. It was a Latin equivalent to an obscure Japanese cleansing spell, designed to reassert control of the human mind over a possessed body and evict the spirit, but it was meant for spirits from other realms, whatever that actually meant. Multiple castings were sometimes required, but it didn't hurt the victim even if cast wrong and was thus one of the few he had felt safe practicing.

"Possessionem Skurge!" he cast for a fourth time, feeling like his arm was going to drop off. It wasn't an easy spell, by any means, and it took more out of him than any singular spell he had ever cast before. And he didn't even know if it was working!

"Possessionem Skurge," he managed one final time, before slumping down next to Ginevra. That was all he could do. He maybe had enough in him for a single low-effort spell if she woke up and started talking in the wraith's voice, but he had no idea where he was or how to get out.

Ginevra stirred. Her left leg kicked, and then her eyes opened.

Harry pointed his wand at her chest. "Are you–"

She burst out crying.

He did the first thing he could think of and hit her with a petrifying jinx.

"You petrified her?" Hermione demanded later, as she sat on the side of the bed he was stuck in until the school nurse gave him the all clear. "For crying?!"

"If it was the wraith, crying would have been a perfect way to pretend to be her!" Harry defended himself. "And that gave me time to explore the chamber and find the exit. When it wore off I let her talk." After hitting her with a few more anti-possession spells as he recovered from the strain of casting so many at once. He was pretty sure she was just a scared first-year now.

"You are such a boy," Hermione huffed, but she was smiling so Harry assumed she approved. "How did you get out?"

"I took her to the exit, but it was a big vertical pipe, so I asked how to get out." He shrugged his shoulders. "Turns out, she just had to say the word stairs and stairs came out of the walls."

Two people chose that moment to emerge from the curtain Pomphrey had erected around Ginevra's bed. "Mister Potter–"

"Hebert," both he and Hermione interjected, Hermione much more energetically than him.

"Hebert," Pomphrey corrected herself, "you did exactly the right thing. Ginevra is most definitely not possessed as of now, but from what I can gather it took more than one casting of that particular spell to drive out all of the wraith's will. She may well have still been partially possessed when you petrified her. The wraith, if it still exists as an entity, is now confined to its object, which the Headmaster has assured me he will dispose of as soon as possible."

Harry let out a sigh of relief. Taking the book with him and giving it to the Headmaster as soon as possible had been the right thing to do, after all. He hadn't been sure.

"That aside, miss Ginevra would–"

A second figure burst out from the curtained area, and Harry was grabbed around the shoulders by a red-haired missile. "Thank you, thank you, thank you," Ginevra said ceaselessly as she hugged him.

"You are both totally healthy, so you may leave when you feel ready." Pomphrey made to walk away.

"Hey, wait!" Hermione called out. "That's it? Ginevra was possessed for most of the school year!"

"Possession does not linger once the spirit is evicted," Pomphrey said. "Your point?"

"You can't just leave her after all of that and say 'well, she's fine now!'" Hermione was in full swing, wielding her now fully solidified mistrust of authority like a blade. Harry was so proud. "Shouldn't she get therapy? Occasional checkups to make sure she's okay? Some sort of dreamless sleep potion for tonight, at least? What if being possessed makes her afraid of ghosts, or makes her more vulnerable to other spirits in the future? Do you even know? And we still don't know what kind of spirit this one was, it might be a kind that has side effects. I know some classes of Yokai can leave spiritual imprints that require prompt treatment or they can become life-threatening!"

Ginevra clung even more tightly to Harry, burying her face in his robe.

Madam Pomphrey, for her part, looked as if she was genuinely disturbed. "Spirits and possession are not my area of expertise, you may be right," she admitted. "I had intended to set up a consultation with Saint Mungo's, but the Headmaster said he was certain it would be fine. I think I will schedule that appointment regardless. Yokai, you say?"

"Harry and I were reading about Japanese history earlier this year," Hermione explained. "I can give you my books on their spirits, but there's probably a medical book somewhere that will tell you more."

"Do you have reason to believe it was a Japanese spirit?" Pomphrey asked, before shaking her head. "No, that is the wrong question. We have not ruled it out, so you are entirely correct. Ginevra?"

"Yes?" Ginevra looked up.

"You will be staying here until I can get you to Saint Mungo's, and if you feel you would like a Dreamless Sleep potion, I will provide you with one."

"Thank you." She continued to hug Harry tightly.

He hugged her back.

He would never again doubt his mum's advice about not being a bystander. It had saved at least one life. If he hadn't stepped in… He was wrong about Ginevra, but entirely right at the same time, and if he hadn't made a nuisance of himself the wraith wouldn't have kidnapped him to kill first after killing Ginevra, and he wouldn't have been in the position to save her.

If only he could tell his mum about this.

Magic or not, surely she would be proud of him.

"You have had a truly interesting school year, have you not Harry?"

Harry eyed a swirling snowglobe mounted on a pole that bobbed it up and down like one of those desk duck toys. "Yes, sir. Very interesting." The Headmaster's office was no less a distraction for having seen it before, and he could have sworn most of the devices were new contraptions, not the same ones from the last time he had visited, with only a few exceptions. The smoking book was still there, now on a shelf with several other ominous books, one of which had a picture of a six-eyed black unicorn on the cover. The lava lamp now had a clump of dirt on top of it, in which a solitary red flower was growing. Other than that? Everything was new.

Dumbledore chuckled and waved a hand in front of his face. Harry reluctantly redirected his gaze to the man, not the many mysteries around him.

"But the year is over, and we come once again to the summer," Dumbledore said grandly.

"I want to go home," he said firmly.

Dumbledore frowned. "There hasn't been any change in your situation, Harry."

"I don't care." Even if his mum hated him now, he had to see it for himself. At least once. He would never be able to be rid of the nagging doubt, otherwise.

"I cannot allow you to put yourself in harm's way," Dumbledore said sadly. "You will go with Neville once again."

"I'd like to go with Hermione this summer, if her parents allow it," Harry countered.

"Harry, I am not a fool," Dumbledore said kindly. "I know what you and Hermione would get up to if you spent the summer together in the Muggle world, and I just said that I cannot allow you to put yourself in harm's way."

"My mother would not harm me. No matter how much she hates magic now." He had to believe that.

Dumbledore paused. "I meant less specific shenanigans that come when two highly intelligent children grow bored together with the temptation of magic only a wand wave away," he said slowly, "but thank you for telling me exactly what you intended. You will go with Neville."

Harry slumped forward, embarrassed and frustrated in equal measure. "Yes, sir."

It wasn't like he really had a choice.

The summer started out nice, aside from the obvious. Harry had Neville's companionship and the greenhouse, and he wrote using Neville's family owl to Hermione, and Ginevra too. Keeping in touch with the formerly possessed Weasley seemed like the right thing to do, especially as she hadn't returned from the hospital before the end of the school year.

Ginevra didn't explain what held her in the hospital, but she was happy to write back about other things. She mentioned Harry Potter a little too often in her letters for Harry Hebert's liking, but she never implied she thought they were the same person. Rather, it seemed she had grown up listening to stories about him, and that there was a whole book collection based on his life since defeating Voldemort.

Harry was thankful he wasn't Harry Potter. That sounded awful.

But what if he was, somehow, Harry Potter? People kept saying he was, even spirits who really shouldn't have known who anybody was…

He would rather stay Harry Hebert. Even if him being Harry Potter was in some way actually true. Better to keep denying it and cling to his Muggleborn anonymity in either case. It wasn't like he wanted the fame of having somehow killed a Dark Lord as a baby, or dead parents that people kept talking about, or a whole – necessarily fraudulent – book series in his honor.

Besides, his friends weren't friends with Harry Potter, and he wanted to keep it that way. Harry Hebert didn't have to worry about fame and hanger-ons.

Harry Hebert did, it turned out, have to worry about maniacal Death Eater prison escapees.

Madam Longbottom told him all about the escaped convict the moment she could corner him with the newspaper announcing his escape. He needed to be careful, she'd said, because Black had a family history of madness and more than a decade in Azkaban had surely drawn it out if being a Death Eater hadn't already. Black had betrayed the Potters, and Potter or not he would surely take a shot at Harry if Harry gave him the slightest chance, as any homicidal maniac might.

The rest of Harry's summer was even more subdued. Potter trouble had never been this potentially deadly before.

The school year began with an unpleasant surprise. Ginevra was back, but she was in the infirmary again.

Harry found Hermione already there, sitting by Ginevra's bedside looking more than a little pale herself.

"Dementors," she explained. "On the train. They drag up bad memories. For those with worse memories than normal…"

Harry nodded. "Is she okay?"

"She should wake up soon, but I think we should be here when she does…" Hermione grimaced. "Ronald was in and out in five minutes, and the twins said to let them know when she wakes up. None of them seem very concerned."

"It's not like they noticed she was possessed, we can't expect them to be any more empathetic now," Harry remarked. That might have been a little harsh, but he wasn't happy with the Weasley boys right now. Not only had they left their little sister alone, they could have stayed to cheer Hermione up, too. Instead, here she was, and here Ginny was. Alone.

He resolved to make sure Ginevra was included in his little circle of friends this year. With Dementors about, she was going to need people to look out for her, and he suspected the wraith had driven away anyone who tried to be friends with her last year.

They missed the sorting that night, but Harry didn't care. Ginevra's timid smile when she woke up was worth not hearing the hat sing.

A Boggart. Harry did know what those were, he didn't need Hermione's enthusiastic explanation.

He also knew he didn't want to face one.

Not just because he knew what it would be. His mum, of course, acting exactly as Dumbledore implied she would, were she ever to see him again. Rejecting him, wanting nothing to do with him. Maybe attacking him, though he didn't fear that because it was just absurd.

Alone, he thought he could face it. He probably should, given it might very well be reality and he had demanded Dumbledore let him face the real thing at the end of the last school year.

The problem was, he didn't want anyone else to see the mockery of his mum that this boggart was likely to come up with to scare him. They didn't know her, and he knew the value of first impressions. Hermione especially, he wanted nowhere near a Taylor boggart.

As such, he quickly made his way to the ever-shifting back of the line when the new Defense teacher told them to line up to face it. Other students jostled and elbowed their way back or forward as their shifting whims took them, but he did not budge from his place dead last, not even when Susan Bones looked like she was going to wet herself from nerves if she couldn't be last.

Then it began, and with every fear revealed to the combined class Harry was more and more certain he didn't want to air his own fear. Some of them were scared of practical things; wolves, vampires, drowning. Others, like Hermione, had more abstract fears, to the point of being hard to interpret. What did an empty bookshelf, empty chair, and bare patch of dirt outside a grimy window represent? Something that scared her enough she struggled to cast the countercharm.

Riddikulus might have been intended to turn scary things into funny things, but Harry was finding there wasn't much to laugh about as the line dwindled. Thankfully, Professor Lupin put a stop to the class before the line got to him, something that provisionally earned him the 'Professor' title Harry had refused to give to either of his previous Defense teachers. He did, on the other hand, ask Harry to stay after class, so the jury was still out depending on what he wanted to talk about.

"Harry," Professor Lupin began once the two of them were alone in the room with the trapped boggart. "What do you think you will see if you face a boggart?"

"I don't think, I know. And I would like to face it, but not with anyone else present. What do you think I'm going to see, that you didn't try to make me face it in class with everyone else?" He knew what he would see, but some random new Professor wouldn't–

"You-Know-Who," Professor Lupin said quietly.

That was not what Harry thought, but he was happy to accept it if it got him what he wanted. He would give Professor Lupin the benefit of the doubt on why he thought Harry Hebert was especially scared of Voldemort, too. For now.

"I cannot let any of my students face a boggart without backup," Lupin continued.

"Guess I'll have to find one somewhere else," Harry suggested, spinning on his heel to leave the classroom.

"No." Lupin sighed. "I can conjure an opaque barrier. Yell and I will cast."

"Make it silent except for my yell?" Harry requested.

"If I must," Lupin said. He placed the tip of his wand on one of the desks and transfigured it into a dividing wall like one might find in a store changing room, then muttered an overlong incantation while waving his wand at it. "There you go. Whenever you're ready."

Harry went behind the dividing wall, took a deep breath, and used a muttered 'Wingardium Leviosa' to lift the latch off the boggart's prison.

What emerged was not his mum, but it was exactly the twisted parody he had envisioned. Tall, regal, utterly disdainful. Her lips twisted into an uncharacteristic sneer as she looked down at him. Even seeing her like this made him wish she was real, if only because she was here.

"You're an abomination," she hissed, "an abomination."

"Why?" he asked, though he wanted nothing more than to cast and drive it away.

"You are," his boggart insisted, reaching our for him with long, grasping fingers. "I'll–"

"Riddikulus," he cast, his heart thundering in his ears. A burst of confetti puffed out of somewhere suspiciously close to the boggart's backside, and it disappeared.

Not exactly funny, but he hadn't exactly been scared, either.

However it was boggarts worked, he had learned something from this.

He didn't believe that ridiculous caricature was real in any way, shape, or form. It just didn't make sense. He couldn't even be properly afraid when faced with it, the sense of confusion was so strong. She would never turn on him like that. The Boggart couldn't even give a reason for why it would happen, not even an irrational one plucked from his head. It wasn't right. He did not truly fear that which could never be real.

Which meant something else was going on. In real life, not with the Boggart. It wasn't real.

He emerged from behind the screen feeling as if a weight had been lifted off his chest. "I think I learned something about boggarts," he told the Professor.

From the look on the Professor's face, Harry knew instantly that he had been lied to. Lupin had watched.

"And something about you," he added bitterly as he stomped out of the classroom.

That weekend, he gathered his friends together. Neville, he borrowed from the greenhouse and his own head of house. Hermione was in the library already. Ginevra, he asked an older Gryffindor to fetch for him, as she was in the Gryffindor common room.

He gathered them together at a table with four chairs in the library during the lunch hour, when the library was at its most empty. Ms. Pince watched them from afar, but she liked Harry marginally more than she did most of the other students. He knew how to behave in a library.

Ms. Pince would leave him and his friends alone, and he had a way to ensure nobody else eavesdropped, either. He cast a very basic silencing charm over the table, dampening any sounds that left its confines. They all had to lean forward to get their heads within the small area of effect, but it worked.

"I have something I need to tell you all," he said. "Hermione, Neville, Ginevra–"

"Ginny, please," Ginevra requested. "I kept meaning to tell you, nobody but my mum calls me that."

"Okay, Ginny. You all know I'm Harry Hebert, right?"

His three friends nodded.

"Don't tell me you're not," Neville said with a small grin. "Not after all this time spent making sure people knew you were…"

"Oh, I am." Even if he was really Harry Potter, he would rather be Harry Hebert, so he was never going to admit it. "I share my last name with my mum. She's a Muggle. No dad, she doesn't even know who he was, I think."

"That's becoming more and more common as society destigmatizes premarital sex," Hermione said sagely. Ginny and Neville both stared at her until she blushed. "What? It is."

"Okay…" Harry shook his head. "Anyway. None of you have met her, but trust me, she's great. Smart, and patient, and always willing to help me with my schoolwork. I help her cook because of her arm, it's great fun–"

"Her arm?" Ginny interjected. Hermione and Neville also looked interested.

"She's missing one from here down," Harry explained, holding his hand to halfway down his right bicep. "Car accident. It doesn't really slow her down much, but cooking can be hard with all the hot surfaces and knives and stuff, so I help. Point is, when she learned about magic she was so amazed and interested. We spent all night before I came here going through my new schoolbooks together, just looking for cool stuff."

"She sounds great," Neville said doubtfully.

"Why do you sound like you think that's weird?" Ginny asked him.

"Because Harry keeps spending the summer break at my house and winter break here," Neville explained. "Harry, when was the last time you saw her?"

Hermione cringed sympathetically, but Harry forged ahead without letting himself feel anything more than determination. "I haven't seen her, or heard from her, since I came to Hogwarts my first year."

Ginny's jaw dropped. "But… how?" she asked. "Not a single letter? No vacation? Nothing?"

"Nothing!" Harry agreed, his voice hard. "She made me promise to write every week, and I did, I do, but I've never gotten anything back. When I went to the Headmaster he told me he would look into it, made me stay here over the winter break, and then came back right before summer break and lied to me!"

Hermione's eyes narrowed with surprise and consternation; this was where her knowledge of the situation ran out. "He did?" she asked. "How do you know?"

"Because it doesn't make sense." He knew that didn't seem like enough, but it was. "My mum was so interested when we found out I was a wizard. She's never said anything about magic being bad, we don't go to church and I know it isn't a religious thing, she doesn't reject anyone, it just doesn't fit with who I know she is. The only people she hates are people who hate others and maybe people in positions of power. Even if she did suddenly hate magic, she would be trying to get me out of here, not abandoning me. But Dumbledore says she told him she wants nothing to do with magic or me, and that means he's lying."

He looked around, and he knew they were all with him. Mostly.

"If your mum, or grandmother," he nodded to Neville, "suddenly did something completely out of character but you only heard about it from someone else who doesn't know them like you do, which would you think is more likely? That they actually did that thing, or that the person telling you is lying but doesn't know that their lie makes no sense?"

"It's Dumbledore, though," Neville objected. "He's the greatest wizard of…" He looked around, perhaps noticing that nobody else was leaping to Dumbledore's defense. "Guys?"

"I learned not to assume teachers know best as a first year," Hermione said seriously.

"Dumbledore didn't know I was possessed!" Ginny growled. "And he didn't want me to go to Saint Mungos! They said…" She shook her head. "I had to go, but he told Pomphrey not to schedule an appointment."

"I don't trust him," Harry said bluntly. "Because he won't let me see her. Not even to just see for myself that she's somehow as hateful as he claims. He's a powerful wizard and she's a Muggle. There is absolutely no reason for him to say it's not safe and that I can't go. Unless he's hiding something, because he lied and he knows it."

"Wow…" Neville held up his hands. "I'm not saying I don't believe you! It's just… he's really important. My gran trusts him. Maybe not to do exactly the right thing every time, but to have his heart in the right place."

"I love my mum and I can't think of a single good reason to tell me she hates me and never wants to see me again if it isn't true." Harry looked Neville in the eye. "Can you?"

"No," Neville mumbled.

"So… That's the deal." He wanted them to know, and now they did. "I need your help. Your ideas, at the very least. I have to get to my house, somehow, and check on her. I don't know any way out of Hogwarts, I don't know how to get to anywhere Muggle even if I could sneak out, and Dumbledore specifically makes sure I'm here for the winter break and with Neville for the summer break. Worst of all, there are Dementors patrolling around the school and Sirius Black is still out there, probably crazy enough to attack anyone who looks at all like Harry Potter. What do I do?"