Chapter Text
On the first full day of Harry Potter’s stay at the Leaky Cauldron, his feral textbook made a daring escape from his room. It got three doors down before attempting to run over someone’s feet and getting scooped up.
“Well, what do we have here?” The speaker was a young man with a dark ponytail, holding the struggling book between two gloved hands. His voice was familiar. “Is this yours?”
Green eyes met purple, and Harry instantly knew where he knew this person from. This was one of his classmates. Ling Yao, voted their year’s most tolerable Slytherin for two years running, possibly because, unlike the rest of them, he hadn’t been a preteen at the time. They’d never really had a conversation before- the only class they shared was Potions, and Yao spent that time either entirely focused on his cauldron or visibly dissociating- but his friend Ron’s sister had been known to follow him around, much to Ron’s eternal confusion.
He had also, according to popular rumor, discovered Salazar Slytherin’s Chamber of Secrets and rendered its monster harmless. Harry wouldn’t have believed that part if he hadn’t seen the Ministry clean-up squad on their way out, or had a life-threatening adventure of his own the year before.
But he had, so he was willing to extend some amount of faith on the matter. “Yes, that’s mine. Sorry, Yao.”
“It’s an interesting little thing.” Yao stroked the spine of the book and it flopped open in his hand, purring. Was… was that all it took? Seriously? “Whoever wrote it was some kind of mad genius, clearly. Emphasis on the mad. I don’t think most people could safely open this. But that’s what makes it cool.”
Harry took the book back. It squirmed a little, but running his finger down its spine the same way Yao did got the same result. It.. really was that easy. “You like this sort of thing?”
“Why not? It’s amazing, the kind of things you can do with magic. Even more amazing, the sort of things people think will be a good idea just because they can.”
This first conversation was bringing him to a first real conclusion about the sort of person the Slytherin was: His voice was odd. There was something about it that he just couldn’t seem to get a grasp of. Every time he thought he was getting a hold of it, it shifted to something slightly different.
It wasn’t the only strange thing about him. “What are you doing here?” He didn’t know much about what people outside his immediate friend group did with their summers, but he vaguely recalled hearing something about France.
“Had to have somewhere to hang out the last bit of summer. Have to get the shopping done as soon as the supply lists go out, and all that. What about you? Didn’t think you’d be old enough for the cheap motel life.”
Harry shrugged. He didn’t want to tell Yao about everything that had happened with Aunt Marge. Unusually nice or not, he was still a Slytherin.
And, perhaps more pressingly, he was business partners with Fred and George Weasley. Not a good sign for his chances of getting discretion. “I, uh, needed to get away from home for a bit.”
There was a long silence. Yao breathed a heavy sigh. “...Yeah. I get that. Guess we’ll be seeing each other around, then. If you’ve still got some summer homework you haven’t done, maybe we could work on it together? Some of it might not happen otherwise.”
“I’ll think about it.” He wouldn’t.
Harry’s first full opinion of Ling Yao was that he was a bit odd, even by wizard standards.
It was perhaps a bit overly simplified, but no one would ever be able to claim it was inaccurate.
Especially not them.
Ling watched Harry go before turning back into the rented room. “It’s probably for the best he doesn’t act like a celebrity,” he mused aloud. “Can you imagine a class with two Draco Malfoys?”
“I’d rather not,” Greed replied, following his lead and using their actual mouth. One of the nice things about having the room to themselves was being able to talk to each other like this. In the dorms at school, they always had to whisper, or keep it within their shared mind. “When there’s just one, it’s like an overexcited puppy. Add more and you have to actually do something about it.”
They probably should have been doing more about Draco Malfoy. But there was only so much they could do about someone who went out of his way to make trouble without looking like they were picking on a thirteen-year-old. It was a bad look even when people didn’t know one of them was over two hundred.
Either way, not their problem until term started.
Just like a lot of things. “I’m surprised people thought he could be the Heir of Slytherin.” Even more that a lot of them still did. With the monster gone, it probably didn’t matter all that much, but… Ling had expected better of the Hufflepuffs.
“Name recognition.” Greed picked up their shopping list from where they’d left it by their pillow. “He’s the one person whose name everyone knows, so of course he has to be in the middle of everything. I bet people are going to start doing the same thing about us, after the Basilisk thing.” He sounded far too excited about that.
But then, it would certainly make their school life a lot more lively. “I think I prefer our usual levels of notoriety, at least at the moment.” Back to the door, and from there, back to having to talk privately so people didn’t look at them funny. We might get attention on our business otherwise, and plausible deniability only goes so far.
Greed hurried down the stairs, Ling stuffed the list into their pocket, and they both turned to go explore London. Muggle side today. After all, they could cause mayhem in magical locations whenever they liked, but experiencing the wonders of technology would only ever be a summer thing.
They didn’t spare the newspapers a second glance.