Chapter Text
Harry can't wait to finally return to Hogwarts. He is on the Hogwarts Express with Ron and Hermione, and the trio is talking lively about the weather.
The weather is great; there are no clouds in the sky and the temperature is still hot for the first of September.
The conversation about the weather naturally ends after thirty seconds, so Harry watches the landscape, very bored. He hopes Malfoy will come to their compartment like he did the previous year. There are no dementors around but he still hopes that the Slytherin will find something to say anyway, even if it's a mean comment about his hair. Harry's hair is terrible after all, everyone knows it, and it would be less boring than watching the trees outside.
The door opens and Harry thinks he has some telepathic capacities for a few seconds, until he realises that it isn't Malfoy but the usual old lady who walks down the train with food.
He gets up anyway because he is hungry. He is about to pay the old lady when a girl with long black hair approaches. Harry recognises her: she plays Quidditch for the Ravenclaw team. She smiles at him and after they have both the food lady, she talks to him, "Hi," she smiles and blushes.
"Hi." Harry answers, looking around, checking if Malfoy is near him. He is not pleased to see that the Slytherin is not in his field of view. So he goes back to his seat and closes the compartment's door.
He can see the girl looking at him from outside with a pout on her face.
"Who is she?" Ron asks. He doesn't have opened his chocolate frog yet but he already has chocolate on his face.
"I don't know. Why is she looking at me like that ?"
"Isn't it obvious?" Hermione rolls her eyes. "She likes you."
"I don't know her, I don't like her." Harry crosses his arms over his chest. He pouts too. "Have you seen Malfoy?"
"No." His friends answer in chorus.
Harry pouts even more. "I hope he is alright."
The trio is bored for another one hour. Then the door of the compartment opens. It's Malfoy. And his idiotic friends. Harry is pleased.
"Oh, look who's here," Malfoy smirks. "You lost your red haired girlfriend Potty?"
"She was never my girlfriend!" Harry says, definitely too loudly, "She is very annoying."
"Hey! She's my sister!"
"Sorry, Ron."
"It's ok."
"So, you don't have a girlfriend Potter?" Malfoy's grey eyes are twinkling like Dumbledore's.
"For now I don't, but there are a lot of girls who would like to date me." For some reason, Harry thinks it's a great idea to try to make Malfoy jealous.
"Oh." Malfoy's eyes narrow. "Of course, The Great Harry Potter has a whole fanclub."
"Yes." Harry tries to smirk.
"What's up with your face Harry?"
"I'm trying to look sexy Hermione damn!"
"Oh, sorry, go on."
"You do look sexy Potter."
"NOBODY ASKED YOU GOYLE."
"Sorry, Malfoy."
They all look at each other for three minutes and twelve seconds. Harry is still contorting his face; he feels his face's muscles aching but he thinks he looks cool.
"Ok we're going now."
They close the door. The Ravenclaw girl is still there, still looking straight at Harry, still pouting.
"She is really weird," Hermione states.
"Yeah she is."
Then nothing interesting happens until they're in the Great Hall, if you don't count the moment when Hagrid nearly stepped, and crushed, on a first year when they were at the Hogsmeade station. The poor bloke has been sorted into Hufflepuff and Harry can see him looking at Hagrid with frightened eyes.
Harry has found a very good seat at Gryffindor table, from which he can see Malfoy. Ron is piling up goblets beside him. His goblet tower is nearly two meters high already. The attention of most of the students and professors is directed to the redhead, people from Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff come to give him their goblets and even Snape seems mildly impressed. Dumbledore is giving a weird speech as he always does so no one listens except Professor McGonagall and Hagrid.
During the previous year, Harry had been very disappointed with the headmaster. Harry's godfather is on the run because the old coot didn't try anything to save him from going to prison, therefore Harry decided Dumbledore isn't his hero anymore; Sirius is.
Harry can't wait to receive a letter from him. Not only the fact that he has a godfather means he has a family now (because yes, sometimes your family is a man everyone thinks is a mad mass murderer who also can transform into dog as he pleases illegally), but Sirius is somewhere in the south right now, so Harry is really counting on him to send him a letter with a tropical bird to impress Malfoy.
He realises Dumbledore is done talking when food appears before him.
Ron and Harry eat a lot, and then they go to the Gryffondor common room. Hermione is already talking about their classes so the other two leave her on a couch and go up to their dormitory. Nobody else is in the room yet.
"I really don't want to have Potions tomorrow," Ron whines. "I'm not ready to hear Snape again."
"You know Ron, I was thinking, I'm going to like Snape now."
"What? Why?"
"Because Dumbledore isn't my hero anymore and Sirius is far away from here so I need another person to look up to. Snape is here, so that's perfect."
"Why not McGonagall?"
"She scares me."
"Yeah, me too."
A few hour later Harry lies on his bed as he waits for his fout dorm mates to fall asleep. When they do, he sits behind the window, petting his owl for a good hour, looking at the horizon dramatically, before going to sleep.