The Untouchable

C5: Trial & Error

The following week passed by very slowly at first, then sped up as Harry fell into a routine. Harry had finally questioned his unrelenting popularity and Mollie regaled the tale of his childhood, bringing down a Dark Lord and his parents dying in his defence. The girl made him borrow many books about himself from the library and Harry's eyes widened to saucers as he read the fantastical tales theorising his disappearance from public eye. Harry wished he had spent the years learning martial arts in China, or sword fighting in Russia, or even curse-breaking in Egypt. That sounded much more fun than playing domestic servant for the Dursleys.

Harry decided that he wouldn't sleep in the dorms anymore, feeling a little wary of his dormmates and too open in the large space. The day after his kitten was murdered, Harry found a dusty broom closet that didn't appear to have been used in years; it was even a little larger than his cupboard under the stairs. He wished Very Hard that no one would be able to find it and promptly moved his stuff into the cramped storage space. As he lay there on his second night at Hogwarts, Harry realised how much he missed tight, dark havens and spiders spinning webs in the ceiling spaces.

Harry kept his bed curtains wished closed and didn't bother cleaning up the blood. Harry used the shower in his dorm room still, as he didn't feel like imposing on the strange Quirrell anymore, and Harry smiled to himself at the coppery, tangy stench building in the room.

Quirrell was indeed a very different person than he met the first night. He would have hardly recognised the professor, if it weren't for the turban. The stuttering, fidgety man barely making his way through the lessons was nothing like Harry recalled and he would have thought that he had imagined their first meeting if the man didn't look at him ever so often with a flash of red in his eye.

Harry was pushed towards his housemates by an exasperated Mollie, who seemed to become bored with his existence as the days went on and his presence didn't increase her social standing. She, of course, kept tabs on the first year but for the most part left Harry to his own devices. Harry didn't mind. The tumultuous rumour mill swirling around him slowly evaporated as the days passed when the students began to realise that Harry was Very Boring. The students seemed disappointed at first, but as the days continued to fly by, his peers seemed to forget he even existed. Sure, they talked about Harry Potter. But the odd, small, unnoticeable boy in Slytherin didn't fit their mould of the hero, so they ignored him in favour of imagining the strong, brash Gryffindor that he should have been.

Harry, again, didn't mind. It was nice to slowly fade into the background once more, to become less interesting than the drab wallpaper glued to the walls of No. Four Privet Drive.

Draco Malfoy seemed to rule the roost of Slytherin firsties and apparently inspired fear in the hearts of the eleven-year-old children in the other houses. Harry didn't understand why; Malfoy appeared to be more bark than bite. Perhaps these children had never been bullied before. When the blond cornered him after potions with a wand in his face, Professor Snape walking out of the room as if not noticing, Harry stared blankly at him, a bubble of disparaging laughter filling his chest. Malfoy demanded to know if he was sleeping in the dorms, if he was sleeping alongside his pet's rotting corpse. Demanded that he remove the stench in the room.

Harry did his best impression of Quirrell's dark smirk and didn't answer, turning on his heels and walking out of the classroom. That seemed to upset Malfoy. The blond didn't bother him after.

Harry wasn't sleeping well, as his dreams were often filled with memories of blood and glassy eyes, and it showed. As the first week melted into the second, and the second into the third, Harry spent most of his time in the library pouring over his studies. Harry felt like he had been dropped into the deep end of witchcraft and wizardry, without the exposure and tutorage that his non-muggleborn peers had received in preparation for Hogwarts. The only other muggleborn who seemed as desperate as him to catch up was a bossy Gryffindor girl named Hermione. They would sit at a desk between the shelves in the library, not speaking except to swap notes, hands cramping as they slowly adjusted to using quills instead of pencils, filling out page after page of parchment.