Chapter 3: Ferreting Out His Place

Chapter 3: Ferreting Out His Place

Hari woke to the sound of someone approaching his door. Then it opened and someone was doing something to his bed. Without more experience with magic, he would only be guessing what it was, but it probably wasn't someone wishing him well. People rarely did that without warning to a sleeping person.

He dropped down once the door was closed. To be fair to the person trying to harm him, it wasn't as though he slept in his bed. Not for years. Specifically, not since his father had him start staying on the ceiling in his sleep as a form of chakra control.

Hari made note of the boy's chakra signature. He would be having "words" with that one. That's what his father always called it when he threw Uncle Hidan off of the tower. It took him a moment to decide that it was still the middle of the night. That meant he had time; good.

He padded from his room and along the ceiling to the room of the boy who had decided to make his life interesting. It was probably wrong to deal with someone who was so obviously a civilian like this, but the rules said that any civilian stupid enough to attack a shinobi might as well be removed before spawning could happen.

It was the work of a moment to open the door and slip inside. He considered a lethal response, but decided that it might be a little extreme for a first offense. Instead, his fingers glowed blue and he swiped them along the idiot's legs, shredding the muscle. A finger slammed into the throat stopped any annoying screams before they could wake people.

Hari slipped from the room, the darkness covering his identity. He returned to his quarters to lie up on the ceiling and catch a few more hours' sleep.

X

X

The morning was annoying for Hari. All he wanted was to go find the kitchens and have some words with whomever it was down there that sent up the stuff that they laughably called food. Instead, he had to spend several minutes dodging Professors Snape and Dumbledore to get out and explore while they did some "investigating" or something about some "attack". And then he couldn't figure out where the kitchens were. The magic of the castle meant that his eyes only sometimes worked properly. It was frustrating to be as blind as normal people.

Thankfully, there was bread on the table. It wasn't his first choice, but it was just wheat and water and so on. It was something. Still, what happened to rice? It was a staple grain, wasn't it? He'd managed to avoid English cooking during his time in London, so this was his first discovery of the unhappy subject. He missed London, with the communities from China and India and their rice.

And that was to say nothing of the filth they drank. Sugary juice wasn't bad, that was a source of energy, but the juice of a squash? Really? And their idea of tea was just disgusting. Heavy milk in overbrewed waste.

X

X

"Where were you, Potter?" snapped the greasy one.

Hari looked up. He'd seen the Professor approaching and had chosen to ignore the man in the hopes that he wouldn't want to talk. There was something decidedly unpleasant about his attitude. "Could you be more specific, sir?" he asked. "I have been alive for eleven years and consequently in quite a lot of space."

"This morning, Potter. When the House was being questioned." The greasy one's face was reddening.

"I didn't want to be bothered, so I went looking for the kitchens." Hari replied mildly. "Could you tell me where I can find them, sir? I looked around and I was unable to work it out. I'd like to talk to them about seeing if some proper food can be arranged."

"Detention!" growled Snape. "This must be a record. Even your arrogant father didn't manage it on his first morning!"

"I don't think my father ever served a detention in his life. It's bad form to attend them, sir. It shows lack of skill." Hari cocked his head. "And you are wrong; he was assigned detention his first morning—so was everyone else. Every day, too. 'Good practice avoiding patrols', I think he said."

Snape snarled in inarticulate rage and stormed off, muttering. Hari was amused at some of the inventive phrases. Though he wished the man would stop saying things about his father. He was still sure his father had never even been to England and so it was surprising that people managed to hate him here. At least he knew why people were scared of him back home. Here, it was just strange.

X

X

"Good morning, students!" Beard-man was decidedly cheerful for early morning. Hari was not a morning person so much as he was a person who liked not being cooked. Since his father's idea of dealing with someone sleeping in was to set the bed on fire, he'd learned to be awake in the mornings.

"Welcome to your first day at Hogwarts. Welcome to the first day of the new school year to our returning students. I'm sure all of you are eager to be going to classes so you can get your homework, so I won't delay too long with announcements." He was apparently unaware of the general poor response to his statement. "Your head of house will soon come by with schedules. Make sure to be on time to your classes, especially those of you who are first years—first impressions make a huge difference in how your time at Hogwarts will go. Those of you who make a poor showing, for example, will no doubt be hated by your Professors and punished with subtle dislike and a myriad of special ways a teacher can make a student's life an utter misery. I'm looking at Miss Raide over there in Hufflepuff.

"In keeping with Hogwarts tradition, no Prefect or Professor will answer questions regarding locations of various key points of the castle including, but not limited to: classrooms, common rooms, the Great Hall, the entrance hall, Hogsmeade, the Hospital Wing, the owlrey, the kitchens, or the places out of the way of patrols where students can get themselves pregnant. I have so far managed to keep pregnancies to an unheard-of low during my time here and I wish to continue this trend. To that end, I ask that any young witch willing to put out please see the mediwitch about contraceptives. Furthermore, I ask any wizard intending to partake in such activities to please see same about same. The wards are configured to alert nearby patrols to any such actions without protection and I will remind those of you old enough to enjoy it that prefects patrol with cameras so that we can publish pictures of anyone who fails to maintain contraceptive safety.

"On the subject of clubs, we will be preparing a list of them starting next week. Classes start in ten minutes and Professors will be handing out schedules in fifteen. Good morning." He turned and walked out of the room, dressing gown flapping around his knees as he sipped from a cup of tea, a cheerfully bemused expression on his face.

Hari snickered to himself as the first years looked around to find that no one seemed the least bit concerned about these statements. He glanced through the schedules in front of Snape for his, read it and rose. He gave his peers in the house a cheery wave that they returned with glares, silence, rude gestures, and death threats. He felt like he was back home in god's tower—Uncle Hidan liked to show affection.

X

X

Hari was sitting with his feet on a desk when the rest of the first year Slytherins trooped into the Charms classroom.

"How did you get here?" hissed Malfoy.

"I walked," replied Hari. "The human foot is eminently capable of enabling transportation. Didn't you use them?"

"Perhaps," murmured a girl he was pretty sure was named Greenass. "What Malfoy meant was that you didn't wait for the Professor to give us schedules and so you shouldn't have known what class we have or where it is."

"I read my schedule, same as you, though," said Hari. "It said where the classroom is and everything."

"But not with any point of reference," she replied. "And besides, you left before the schedules were handed out."

"So?"

"So you shouldn't have known!"

"But I read it."

She threw her hands up and sat down next to him—all the other seats on the side of the room that seemed to have been taken by Slytherin were occupied. Hufflepuffs began to enter the room.

"For the sake of curiosity," he began.

"Don't talk to me."

"Fine, fine. Just, so I don't get it wrong: what's your name?"

She was silent. He was about to try meditating when she responded, "Daphne Greengrass."

He was glad he'd asked. It might have led to . . . difficulties as Uncle Kakuzu called it, if he'd gotten her name wrong. Only Uncle Hidan thought that offending women was a good idea—well Uncle Kisame did when he was bored.

The tiny man came into the room, clambered up a stepladder and onto his desk. The man had a good deal of chakra for someone so small. Definitely not a child, despite his size. He climbed a stack of books which finally put him at normal height for a standing adult male and took out a scroll of parchment.

Hari tuned out the man reading names until he heard, "Potter, Harry," thump. His eyes had been watching and so he saw the man read his name and proceed to slip from the book, slam his head into the edge of his desk and pitch forwards onto the flagstone floor.

"Well," said Hari. He stood up and walked over to the collapsed man and poked him with a toe. "It appears class is dismissed. I do hope this won't be a trend." He tucked his hands in his pockets and walked out of the room, whistling.

X

X

The Slytherins stumbled into the Transfiguration classroom to find Hari was once again sitting at a desk. This time he was leaning back with his feet propped up on the book they'd been assigned to purchase for the class. Also, why was there a cat sitting on the desk at the front of the room?

"Hello again," Hari said politely. His eyes were closed and he appeared to be napping. "What kept you?" The bushy haired girl was glaring daggers at the ones who were apparently delaying her class. The rest of her housemates seemed much less concerned.

Daphne sat beside Hari. "We had to find our way here. Some people didn't believe the announcement and tried to ask for directions. Instead of saying they didn't know or wouldn't tell us, they sent us to the dungeons."

"Ah. Sounds reasonable." Hari nodded, smiling sagely. "A good test to see if you can understand false information. A little civilian, but probably good for you late bloomers."

"What." Daphne's response didn't have the inflection to it that made a question—it was too flatly confused.

"At least we got here before the teacher," muttered Malfoy. He ignored Hari's snicker.

A red-haired boy covered in grime stumbled into the room and collapsed into a seat. "That bloody Peeves," he grumbled. "Good luck the Professor's lazy."

Hari almost fell out of his seat, clutching his stomach, his snorts muffled. The cat jumped down from the desk, turning into a woman as it did. "I think you will find, Mister Weasley," the woman said in a voice as icily cold as Uncle Pein's could be. "That I am not, in fact, lazy. I would ask if you woke up in time to get to your classes today, but I already know that you missed your first period to stuff your face in the Great Hall. Your mother will, no doubt, have something to say about it in front of everyone come dinner time. She will surely be glad that she is not shouting at her older sons for once, though I suspect they will manage that soon enough."

"You know," said Hari conversationally. "Now I get why Uncle Kisame always looked a little wary near you."

"What?"

"You're a cat-woman. He's a shark. I guess that's why you kept looking at him like he was dinner."

The Professor sniffed haughtily and drew her wand. "I will be teaching the second most dangerous class in the castle. Excepting Potions, where idiocy can not only kill you, but your whole class and endanger the rest of the student body, this is the class in which you risk death most often." Her wand swept down and the desk behind her turned into a rhinoceros and back.

"For the moment, I doubt most of you can be trusted with sticks, let alone the wands you have. Unfortunately, I'm not allowed to take them away from you to prevent the likely set of injuries that we will have by the end of the class. We will, today, not be learning how to turn desks into animals. I am hoping to minimize my first-day casualties by having you turn matchsticks into needles. I expect only two visits to the hospital wing. I will be most displeased if you lot manage to get more than that."

Hari watched as she demonstrated how to do the spell with the detached air belonging to someone who had already practiced this a week ago. When she let them try, he still hadn't taken his feet off his desk. On the other hand, there was no matchstick on his desk. There was, however, a shiny, new needle. It had little engravings on it. They read, "Hari did it first." And then, "Bitches." In millimeter high lettering.

"Mister Potter, you will take your feet off of your . . ." The Professor stared at the needle. ". . .finished needle? Did you finish?"

"Yes, Professor." He still didn't have his eyes open.

"I see." She placed another matchstick on his desk. "Can you . . ." before she finished, it had become a silver needle with a gold-plated point and little green scrollwork along the sides. She blinked. "Alright. What are you doing now?"

"I'm reading my textbook, Professor."

"You have it under your feet, Mister Potter."

"Yes?"

"Do you have eyes on your feet?"

"No, Professor. Besides, the book is closed anyway."

"So how are you reading it?"

"Very well, thank you."

"Detention, Mister Potter."

"I'll bite," Hari's eyes were still closed. "Why?"

"Disrespect, Mister Potter."

"I said 'thank you', Professor. Besides, you can't give me detention tonight. I'm already going to be not attending detention with Professor Snape." He paused. "I suppose I could work you in also, though. I guess it's not much harder to fail to attend two detentions than one."

McGonagall was beginning to twitch. "Fifty points from Slytherin!"

"As you like, Professor."

As the woman walked away, Hari calmly dodged a ball of rolled up parchment. Automatically, he picked up the needle from his desk and flicked it behind him. The scream as it punched into Malfoy's eye surprised him—his Uncles weren't such whiny pussies.

The Professor rushed over to examine the screaming boy. Daphne leaned over. "What the heck, Potter?"

"He flung something on his desk at me, so I did the same to him?" Hari replied.

"But his eye?"

"It's soft."

"Wait, wait. How did you do that? Your eyes are closed!"

"And?"

"Gah!" She turned and went back to glaring at her matchstick for all of fifteen seconds. Then her head snapped around. "Wait. How did you finish the transfiguration? You haven't had your wand out."

"Is that necessary?" Hari sounded genuinely perplexed.

"Yes!"

The matchstick on her desk turned into a golden needle and back to matchstick, this time made of hickory. "I think you might be wrong." She began to twitch.

"Mister Potter," came the Professor's voice from behind them.

"Yes, Professor?"

"Mister Malfoy has been sent to the Hospital Wing."

"I'm not sure why you feel you need to tell me, Professor, but okay."

"He claimed it was your fault."

"Odd. What happened to him?"

"He said that—open your eyes when you're talking to me." He did so. "What the bloody fucking hell?"

"I'm sorry, Professor?"

"Your eyes, boy!"

"What about them?"

"You're blind!"

"I am?" Hari blinked rapidly. "If you say so, Professor. That's a worryingly pale shade you've turned, though. Perhaps you should have a seat?"

McGonagall sputtered for several moments and then stormed off.

"She never did get to figure out what happened with Malfoy," muttered Daphne.

"Didn't she? Huh."

X

X

Hari's classmates tried to follow him when he left for lunch, but since he proceeded to walk along the banister of a staircase and jump to another one a floor below, they lost track of him. They didn't find him during lunch, although Malfoy turned up, ranting about Potter. There was a divide between the majority of the house, who were angry with Potter for one reason or another (losing points, killing the Dark Lord, etc) and those who mostly didn't really care. That was made up mostly of Daphne Greengrass, who was finding that Hari was just too weird to be properly angry at.

The next time they saw him was in History of Magic. He was already in the classroom with the Ravenclaws when they got there, but cheerfully waved to them and left when the ghost began to talk without taking roll.

He did turn up at dinner. In front of him (and only him) was a plate of rice with some steamed fish and unsauced vegetables.

"What are you eating, Potter?" sneered Malfoy, his eye covered in a bandage.

"Food?"

Daphne shook her head. She was already beginning to get a feeling for how this was going to go. It was depressing how predictable her house was. At least this time when Malfoy threw a roll at Hari, all that flew back at him was a leg of chicken that . . . hit his other eye. She sighed.

"Potter!" roared Professor Snape.

"Yes, Professor?"

"I'll see you expelled for two attacks on Mister Malfoy!" The greasy man was bearing down on the table, wand drawn.

"Two attacks, Professor?"

"You threw a needle into his eye earlier today!"

"No I didn't, Professor."

"He said you did!"

"And I say I didn't." Hari looked confused again. "So that means the vote is even and it needs to go to a third party? Perhaps Professor McGonagall can help?"

"You did it!"

"If you say so, Professor. But in that case, I must report that Malfoy attempted to disembowel me six times during the class."

"NO HE DIDN'T!"

"I say he did. That's proof, right?"

"No!"

"Well then, I hardly think that him saying I did something qualifies, does it."

There was silence in the Great Hall as this went on. Dumbledore appeared to be mildly amused. Certainly, his eyes were twinkling away.

"You did and that's final!"

"No, Professor."

Snape was turning a dark purple. "I say you did it!"

"And I say Malfoy just tried to stab me with a broadsword."

"HE DIDN'T! We're all right here, Potter! He didn't do it!"

"So now you want other witnesses?" Hari scratched his cheek. "But I thought all we needed was an absurd accusation? Besides, you said two attacks."

"We all saw you throw a piece of chicken into Mister Malfoy's eye!"

"Wasn't that part of the food fight?"

"What?" Snape's voice was a strangled gasp.

"He threw a roll, so I thought we were having a food fight and I threw something back."

There was a cheer from the Gryffindor table. "Alright!" cheered Gred. "Malfoy's started a food fight!" Suddenly, the air was thick with mashed potatoes banished towards other tables. Tureens of gravy emptied themselves as Lee Jordan helped his friends.

Within seconds, the other tables had responded, half at the twins for the attack and half at Malfoy for starting it. Professor Dumbledore animated a roast chicken, which picked up a knife and saucer and proceeded to defend him, wearing a helmet made of a hollowed out roll. He then went back to eating as the pseudo-knight warded off flying food with its little china shield.

Snape was almost instantly covered from head to foot in mash and gravy and he was being barraged by animated drumsticks that kept trying to beat out the school song on his head. The four tables were all buried under food from other tables. Malfoy himself was currently buried under a roast pig, sixteen loaves of bread, four sticks of butter, and a selection of sherbet the providence of which was uncertain, as dessert had yet to appear.

In the midst of it all, Hari was eating from his small bowl of rice and fish, unsullied by comestible projectiles. He was currently sitting on the pile of things covering Malfoy, apparently unaware of the war taking place. Sometimes, without apparent realization, he dodged a ballistic victual. Several of his housemates had taken refuge under the table and were using their wands to launch a concerted barrage of peas at the Twins, who were already coated in food, but apparently enjoying themselves immensely.

It took several minutes before McGonagall managed to return the hall to order, primarily by transfiguring all flying objects into water. Once everyone but Hari was soaking wet and covered in sodden food, she cleared her throat. "There will be a school-wide detention courtesy of Mister Malfoy for starting this fight." Professor Snape's mouth opened. "No, Severus, Mister Malfoy clearly, and in front of all of us, flung the first piece of food. Now Poppy, if you would please make sure that the students are uninjured. You can leave Mister Malfoy for last, since he was so enthusiastic about this fight."

Hari finished his food and proceeded to give his head of house a cheery wave before leaving the room.

X

X

Hari made a short stop before going to bed early to see how many housemates tried to kill him.

(A/N John)

This story was expected to be short. Really short. Like I figured I'd clear all the way to fourth year (when things inevitably go off the rails if Harry is more competent) in about ten thousand words. Instead, I'm at about that much and I've finished the first week of first year. Somehow I should have known that my plans wouldn't survive contact with Spoon.

On the other hand, this is a lot of fun to write, which is the other reason it's going to keep going like this. I'm enjoying seeing how often I can make Spoon snicker.

(A/N John)

There's also the somewhat bash-happy effect on Malfoy and Snape. This was not planned, I promise. I honestly don't enjoy much bashing. But the problem is that those two are the slowest learners. Even Snape is going to catch on sooner or later. And, to be fair to Snape, he's right pretty much all the time and even has valid reasons for his position. It's just unfortunate for him that there's not much evidence and that Dumbledore is slightly senile and enjoying pushing things further out of line.