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Harry Potter and the Hermetic Arts by HaikenEdge
 Books » Harry Potter Rated: M, English, Humor & Adventure, Harry P., Hermione G., Neville L., Fay D., Words: 121k+, Favs: 3k+, Follows: 3k+, Published: Mar 10, 2019 Updated: Dec 25, 2019 1,218Chapter 14: Potions & Post
Harry Potter and the Hermetic Arts
Chapter 14: Potions & Post
"You're Harry Potter!"
Harry looked up from the book in his hands, a leather-bound volume entitled One Thousand Magical Herbs and Fungi, to see a red-headed boy with a simple look on his face. It was the first lesson on his schedule, double Herbology, apparently with the Gryffindors, and this was an indication of his future, it was going to be a tedious one. He had specifically chosen a spot in the back of the greenhouse to be away from the attention, little good that did him.
"You're a ginger," said Harry, closing the book in his hands.
"Wot?" asked the redhead dumbly.
"I'm sorry, I thought we were playing 'State the Obvious'," said Harry, dropping the book into the haversack slung across his shoulder. "What do you want?"
"Can I see your scar?" asked the ginger, completely oblivious to how rude his request was.
"Not unless you want me to give you one of your own," the noirette said, smoothly drawing and flipping open his switchblade. "Who are you?"
"I'm Ron Weasley," said the redhead, introducing himself with a nervous swallow. "That's a switchblade! You can't have that!"
"Well, 'Ron Weasley', what're you gonna do about it?" Harry asked lowly, letting his voice drop into the range of barely-veiled danger. "Snitches get stitches and wind up in ditches."
"Wot?" asked Ron dumbly once again.
"What do you think I mean?"
"It's just so cool," said Ron, oblivious to the threat, staring longingly at the knife. "Can I hold it?"
"No," said Harry, starting to understand just what kind of person he was dealing with. "You'd probably just slit your own wrists by accident."
"You're The-Boy-Who-Lived," protested the redhead, reaching for the knife, as if that was an adequate enough explanation. "You're supposed to share! Why won't you let me hold it?"
At this point, Harry had already realized the dangerous situation he was in and had used one hand to fold close the blade, using the side of the table next to him in place of his other hand, which was busy holding off Ron Weasley with a palm to the redhead's face even as he flailed his hands wildly trying to reach the knife.
The redhead looked lost for a moment after Harry pocketed his knife, then asked, rather lightly, "What's your Quidditch team? Mine's the Chudley Cannons."
"The fuck's 'Quidditch'?"
"Ooh, you said a bad word," said the redhead, eyes going wide for a moment in awe.
Then, "Quidditch is the best game in the world!" the redhead ejaculated gaily; already, he was spewing out information about the game, speaking a mile a minute as he went from the rule to the positions to the four balls to the broomstick he would buy if he just had the money.
"Take a fucking breath," said Harry, just as the obvious Quidditch fan finished the information dump in record time. "You need some Ritalin?"
"What's Ritalin?"
"You know what, forget I asked," said Harry, knowing full well it would be more effort than it was worth to explain anything to the ginger. "Hey, I think somebody over there is calling you."
The redhead turned towards the direction Harry had nodded his chin, his eyes unfocused for a moment as he seemed to search the other students with his eyes. Then, his face broke into a wide grin as he bounded away from where Harry sat, only to return a moment later dragging a chubby brown-haired boy, one who Harry felt like he could vaguely recall.
"Nevile, this is my friend Harry Potter," blurted the ginger, seemingly pleased with himself. "Harry, this is my friend Neville Longbottom."
"We've met," said the brunette. "You gave me advice about Trevor."
"Show Neville your scar," said Ron, once again back on the subject of the scar.
"What?" said chubby brunette, appalled.
Harry decided to use the opportunity to get rid of the ginger. Checking his watch, he said, "Listen, if you can run a lap around the entire castle before Herbology starts, I'll show you my scar."
The brown-haired boy started to protest, but the ginger was already off like a shot, but with only three minutes before the lesson was scheduled to begin, there was no way he was going to complete the task on time unless he could run an six minute mile, something no eleven-year-old could sensibly be expected to do. Still, he had gotten rid of the mouthy redhead.
"That was mean," said the boy, looking out the door the ginger had sprinted through. "There's no way he would be able to do that."
Harry shrugged. "At least it got rid of him," he said.
"Thanks again for the help with Trevor," said the boy. "Since then, I haven't worry as much when he disappears." He then fidgeted nervously, like he had something to ask.
The noirette sighed. "You have question? Just ask ready."
The brown-haired boy swallowed hard, taking a deep breath, and Harry realized it must have been what he had looked like to Karen when he had confessed to her on the floor at Platform Nine-and-Three-Quarters. He made a mental note to never do act like that again.
"Do you have any other advice you can give me?" the brunette asked, his voice small.
"Listen, chummer," said Harry, putting on as kind of a smile as he could manage, all while just hoping the boy would go away as soon as he got the answer he needed. "There are a lot of things in this life that are out of your control; it's best not to worry about them, because even if you do, there's nothing you can do about it besides make yourself worry, and worrying about it will do nothing besides making you feel sick. And feeling sick does not feel good, right?"
The brunette nodded.
"So, instead of worrying, go do something you enjoy doing," said Harry sagely. "Read a book. Play Quidditch. Eat cake. Crack one off. Fly a broom."
"What?" asked the chubby boy, blinking in shock at the second-to-last suggestion.
"What?" Harry asked back innocently.
"You said..."
"You should relax, stop worrying about things you can't control and enjoy the things that you like doing instead," the noirette interrupted with a grin, clapping the chubby boy on the shoulder.
Thoughtfully, the brunette mulled over what the noirette said, but quickly hurried back to join his housemates as the rotund Herbology professor waddled into the classroom. After introducing herself, she began taking attendance, only to be interrupted half-way through by a red-haired boy slamming the greenhouse door open, thoroughly out of breath.
"Mister Weasley, you're late," said the professor. "A point from Gryffindor."
~ooOoo~
By the end of double Herbology with the first-year Gryffindors, Harry had knew the ginger would be a problem going forward; during the lecture, he could see the boy fidgeting and looking about from the back of the room, and a few times he caught the ginger staring at him, only to quickly look way when he realized he had been caught. If he didn't know better, Harry would have thought himself the ginger's secret crush.
Quickly packing his belongings as class ended, Harry found the redhead once again at his desk.
"Can I see your scar now?" asked the ginger brightly.
"You didn't finish before the lesson began," Harry said as he hurried out of the greenhouse. "Now if you'll excuse me, I need to get to Potions."
"Snape is the worst," said the ginger, nodding sagely to himself as he walked matched the noirette's stride. A few steps behind them, the chubby brunette boy followed, his face an expression of worry.
"Wouldn't know," said Harry noncommittally, pushing hurriedly into a crowd of students in a bid to lose the persistent redhead; three steps into the crowd, he ducked his head and sped up his stride, taking four quick steps before cutting quickly the left and doing an about-face to let the himself be pushed along in the opposite direction by the crowd, hiding in the sea of bodies as the two Gryffindors continued on in the same direction without him. It was one of his favorite tricks to lose a tail in Shadowrun, and he was glad it worked just as well in real life.
The passing period was fifteen minutes long, more than three times the time necessarily to go from the greenhouse to the Potions classroom in the dungeons, and he arrived with nearly ten minutes to spare. To no great surprise, Hermione was already in the classroom and had taken a seat at the front; as he walked past, Harry gave her a slight nod, and her expression became confused as her eyes followed him to the back of room, taking seat at the very center of the desk there before unpacking a book, a pen, a pencil and a copy Magical Drafts and Potions onto the desk besides the equipment already set up there
Exactly at the time Potions was scheduled to begin, the professor teaching the lesson skulked into the classroom, his black cloak billowing behind him, and immediately began taking roll. When Harry's name came up, the professor paused.
"Ah, yes," he said softly, and Harry could just make out the barely-concealed derision in the man's tone. "Harry Potter, our new… celebrity."
Once the professor finished calling the names of the students in his class, he launched into a self-important monologue that reminded Harry of a Bond villain's, albeit one with none of the subtly or wit.
"Potter!" the professor suddenly snapped. "What would I get if I added powdered root of asphodel to an infusion of wormwood?"
Harry quickly recalled his reading. "Sleeping potion, sir," he said.
"Where would you look if I told you to find a bezoar?"
"The books say in a goat, sir," said Harry, noting Hermione's hand had shot up. "But technically, any living thing with any number of a gastro-intestinal disorders might develop one, and the Chinese traditionally use ox bezoars to remove toxins from the body."
"A point from Hufflepuff for cheek," snarled the professor, and Harry got the distinct feeling this would end badly. "What's the difference, Potter, between monkshood and wolfsbane?"
Harry mentally thanked Jack for having gardening as a hobby along with tabletop gaming and for drilling poisonous plants into his head. "None, sir," he said. "They're both also known as aconite, blue rocket, devil's helmet, and queen of poisons; a twenty to forty milliliter dose can be fatal to adult humans in two to six hours." That very last fact had been something Jason had chimed in with when Jack had been telling him about her garden.
The professor recoiled as if struck, visibly snarling. Seeing the stunned silence around the room, he growled, "Well? Why aren't you all copying that down?"
Wordlessy, Harry flipped open his notebook and began to take down notes by pen when the professor interrupted. "Potter, where are your parchment and quill?"
"I don't have any, sir," Harry said, without looking up from his writing. "They were not on the list of required equipment, sir, so I did not purchase any."
"Two points from Hufflepuff," snapped the professor. "I expect you to have parchment and quill by the next lesson."
"That would be impossible, sir," said Harry.
"Three points from Hufflepuff for talking back!"
Harry sighed and resigned himself to losing a lot of points in Potions, though he had no idea why he should care about those points, and things did not improve as the lesson continued. Assigned to make a "simple" Potion to cure boils alongside the rest of the class with nothing more than the professor's scrawled directions on the chalkboard, Harry found himself referencing the Potions textbook for more thorough instructions; following those, which were far more detailed than the ones the professor had written on the board, he finished the Potion just as the period ended, bottling the results and turning it in along with his classmates.
With two and a quarter hours until his next lesson, double History of Magic, Harry quickly packed his belongings back into his bag and headed for the door, only to be intercepted by Hermione.
"If you need parchment and quill, you can use some of mine," offered the bushy-haired girl, as she followed him out of the Potions classroom.
"I think I'll be all right," said Harry. "The Herbology professor didn't seem to care I was using notepad and pen."
"What's your next lesson?" Hermione asked.
"Double History of Magic at fourteen hundred," said Harry. "You?"
It took the girl a moment to digest the time as Harry had given it to her, her brow furrowing momentarily as her mind did the math. Then, "Double Herbology, at the same time."
"I had Herbology right before Potions," said Harry.
"And I had History of Magic," said Hermione.
"That's good, we can help each other prepare for the afternoon class," said Harry.
"Let's go to the library," Hermione suggested.
"We can't talk in there," Harry reminded her. "There're a lot of abandoned classrooms; let's use one of those instead."
The bushy-haired brunette nodded, and off they went.
~ooOoo~
"So, you figure out what's your team yet?"
Harry looked up from reading A History of Magic to find the familiar, guileless face of the ginger in front of him. Across the room, the chubby brunette fidgeted anxiously, eyes darting to and fro, almost like he was trying to work up the courage to approach.
Harry quickly racked his mind; though he was fit enough, sports was not something he was particularly interest in, unlike Shaun, and he tried to remember the name of the football club the construction foreman was an ardent supporter of. It took him a few moments, but it eventually came to him as the red-haired boy watched him expectantly, and he said, "The Abbey Rangers."
"I've never of them," the redhead said, brow furrowed in a frown. Then, his expression brightened as he asked, "Where did you go after Herbology?"
"Potions," Harry said opaquely, knowing full well what the boy meant and having no interest in giving him the answer he was wanted.
There was a moment of silence. Then, the ginger asked, "Do you play chess?"
Having an inkling of where the question was leading, Harry lied. "I've never played."
"Oh," said the redhead. Then, his face brightened and he started talking a mile of minute, trying and failing miserably in his haste to explain the rules and intricacies of the board game to a listener who would rather be somewhere else.
After several minutes, Harry finally cut in, "Well, if you learn xiangqi, I'll play you."
"Shankey?"
"Chinese chess," said Harry, deciding it would be in his best interest to not correct the ginger's butchery of the Chinese phrase.
"Will you teach me?" asked the redhead.
"No, because that would defeat the point, but maybe somebody else in school knows," said the noirette, before nodding his head in the direction of the redhead's housemates. "Why not start by asking the Gryffindor first years?"
With a sense of wistfulness, the ginger wandered off to talk to his other classmates, and Harry nodded at the chubby boy, who quickly looked around to make sure he was being nodded at. Realizing he was still hesitant, Harry pointed at him, then beckoned him to come, and the chubby boy reluctantly approached.
"You need something?" Harry asked.
The boy swallowed, then averted his eyes. "I tried to take your advice and not worry about things I couldn't control, but I can't," he said. "Please, do you have anything that could help?"
Harry's brow furrowed; this was turning into more of a chore than he had wanted it to be, but at this point, he was already committed, so he decided he might as well see it through. "I'll write a friend and ask," he said. "I'll let you know was soon as I hear back."
"Thank you," said the boy, almost too grateful.
It was at this point, a ghost floated into the room, and Harry would had been surprised had Hermione not already told him the professor for the class was an incorporeal undead. Without pausing to take a roll call, or even see if the students were properly situated in seats, the ghost began his lecture, his voice a monotone drone.
~ooOoo~
Harry was glad Hermione had warned him about the ghost professor and his bland lecture; while he certainly did not have Hermione's near-perfect memory for books, Harry did have the book in hand, and he had taken the opportunity to confirm that lesson the ghost was teaching was in fact word for word from the text. Nonetheless, Harry had made notes as he half-listened to the lecture, instead focusing on the words in the volume; he already knew he learned better by reading, so rather than listen too heavily to the droning lesson, he instead read the copy the ghost was plagiarizing from and made detailed notes for his own use.
His fellow students, however, were not as lucky; by the end of the first half of the double lesson, soft, if audible, snores could be heard from around the room, including one from the ginger, and Harry found himself yawning, though he managed to keep his focus on the lesson, or rather, on teaching himself.
The end of the class had seen the students slowly rousing from their naps, and Harry had hurried in getting his things packed away, not wanting to be made to listen to the ginger again. However, he had no such luck; even though he had managed to leave the History of Magic classroom well before the redhead, it turned out he also shared his next class, an astronomy lecture, with him, and he found himself once again being harassed by the ginger until he reminded him of the possibility of playing xiangqi, which set him back on asking his classmates and bothering them in general, leaving Harry to his own devices.
The astronomy lecture had been uneventful; unlike the History of Magic professor, the astronomy professor did not recite the textbook word for word, which made the lecture somewhat more useful; however, the lesson was only forty-five minutes long because it was not a double lesson, and before long, the professor was dismissing the class and reminding them to not forget the night-time practicum on Friday.
As quickly as Harry tried to get out of the Astronomy class, he could not prevent the ginger from following him closely even as he subtly made his displeasure known, confirming to Harry that the redhead would only understand the most blatant gestures. Not wanting to use the same technique for losing a tail twice in one day, Harry instead returned to the Hufflepuff dormitories, where the Gryffindor could not followed, and went to his room to revise Herbology and Potions before cooking himself a dinner with food from his reserves.
Afterwards, he had found an abandoned classroom to continue experimenting with the spells found in the Player's Handbook, before doing his daily evening exercise regimen and taking a cold shower to wash himself clean.
Now, he sat at his desk, waiting to properly dry out before crawling into bed, and he began to write the letter he had told the chubby Gryffindor he would.
My friend, how are you doing? I wants to let you know I'm doing well. There's something strange about my lessons, but those lessons are about magic, so maybe there's nothing strange at all. However, to question such a prestigious educational institution seems foolish. Can't help but think maybe what's wrong isn't them, but me instead. I'll relax when I finally figure it out.
There's some people approaching me about my fame, but I've been handling them the way I usually do. A skunk got into the common room, and stunk it up completely. There might be a way to get rid of the smell, but we're in the basement, so air doesn't flow nearly as well as if it were somewhere else. How do you think this will work out? Can the students of Hufflepuff survive the smell? The trick would be to wear a face mask, right?
There maybe a future for me here. But some of the times, all of this seems so damn strange. There's seeds of what I knew from before, but most of it is new to me. Roommate and I get along, though, since he's from a normal family too. There's a sense of camaraderie there because of that. I'm growing to think he might be a top bloke. Will guide me through some of the stuff I didn't quite understand, he said. He's as clever as a fox. All's well that ends well, right?
Hȧrry
He read over the letter once after he finished it; at first glance, it could pass for the inane natterings of a child trying to figure out his surroundings, particularly with the childish hand he had written it in, but Harry had buried a message in it with in a basic code, like Jason had taught him at Romy's insistence. Anything more complex would likely bring suspicion to the message.
Quickly, he folded the letter and sealed it inside an envelope from a box he had bought from John Lewis. Sticking two fingers into his mouth, Harry whistled loudly; a moment later, Leia flew in through the open door of the dorm room, and Harry patted her on the top of the head, feeding her a treat before slipping the letter into backpack he had fitted the owl with.
"You know where to take it?" asked Harry, and Leia hooted sagely before taking off.
Author's Notes: I've never liked the common characterization of Ron Weasley as being less intelligent than his peers; if anything, his behavior has always kind of struck me as being ADD, where he can't concentrate on things that don't interest him but hyperfocuses on things he loves, like Quidditch. In a way, he's as socially awkward as Hermione, because he doesn't have a filter between his brain and his mouth.
As Karen noted in chapter 5, Harry has a bad habit of not learning names of people he considers unimportant, which is why names come up so rarely even after people have introduced themselves; it's when he starts knowing their names that it's clear he thinks of them of worthy of his notice.
Before it gets comments, Ritalin was invented in 1944 and was in use as a treatment for ADHD by 1962. That said, Harry doesn't know the difference of treatments for ADD & ADHD; after all, none of his friends are medical doctors or psychiatrists. A glaring gap in his knowledge, but hey, he's 11, so I'm sure he'll find a way to fill it by the time he's grown.
For anybody who is interested what the hidden message in the post is, take the second word in every sentence within a paragraph, and it forms a sentence. Yes, the dot above the A in his signature is deliberate and not just a mark on your monitor.
Review, don't review, mind-control, etc. It's like having a conversation, except it's the readers yelling at me in public and me having no way to respond in kind.
These author's notes are starting to get long.
Thanks to Shinshikaizer for the original story treatment, and goalie12345 for copy-editing.
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