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Hogwarts
–Damian Hawthorne–
Roaming around an ancient magical castle, with the magical equivalent of Big Brother watching over, was something that one could never get used to. Even after weeks of doing this exact same thing, he could not completely ignore the constant sense of being watched by an entity far stronger, atleast magically at the moment.
It was the day of the Troll attack and the day Harry's parents died. He wondered how the poor fellow felt about today being the day when most of Magical Britain celebrated with gusto. He was sure some insensitive bastard will try to include Harry in the celebrations, not realising that for some, it could be the worst day of their lives.
Though, he hoped that the small part he played in making sure that Harry was not treated like dirt by the Dursleys helped a bit, even though that did lead to that whole vampiric saga, something he had yet to address. He was intensely curious about the whole Vampire boss who could take in 50 thralls all at once, someone who could also employ a Sorcerer of Kamar Taj.
A truly interesting phenomenon because that meant that Kamar Taj's philosophy couldn't just be black and white regarding magical creatures. He wondered just why that apprentice manning the London Sanctum was so disgusted by the mere thought of helping Vampires. It should be truly interesting to meet Karl Mordo and see what his rigid mindset made of Kamar Taj's apparent policy to help even dark creatures as long as they had a stabilising influence on the overall magical world.
Shaking his head, he mentally noted that for the list of interesting stuff he had to do when he reached Kamar Taj, before focusing on the area in front of him. It was evening, with the Feast happening in the Great Hall, as the entire student body of Hogwarts celebrated the fall of the most dangerous Dark Lord in their recent memory.
Unfortunately, a certain someone was hiding in one of the bathrooms on this floor, not crying, but he supposed that after a certain period of time, one could even get tired of crying. According to what he could remember from Canon, she heard something from Ron that upset her, and that was during lunch, leading her to this bathroom that should be abandoned and give off Horror movie vibes, but was immaculately cleaned without any odor whatsoever, all thanks to the invisible labour of Hogwarts.
There were tons of places in Hogwarts that were abandoned. Hell, if he had to hazard a guess, the majority of the castle that was available to the students was abandoned, with no foreseen use of the space. This included classrooms, labs, potion brewing areas, long hallways, dorms, bathrooms, offices, and more.
It was as if the entire castle was built with an extremely optimistic view of the future population numbers. Frankly, it was unrealistic to expect the castle to reach even half of its total capacity in terms of students. And all of this was before he took into account Hogwarts and her agility to just willy nilly manipulate matter inside the castle, giving her the ability to spontaneously create rooms, staircases, and just straight up holes in the middle of nowhere, on will.
Normally, having such a large space and no people to occupy it would have led to either certain sections of the castle cordoned off for long term, or falling into disrepair as there was no need to do regular maintenance of those areas.
That would have been the truth in a normal, non magical scenario. In this specific one, the existence of House Elves meant the entire castle remained spic and span. The used and unused areas were equally clean.
He also had a hunch that Hogwarts had hidden away some part of the castle as well, away from everyone else, but he couldn't prove that, not without getting a direct link to the main ward matrix of the castle, and that was a privilege that was afforded only to the Headmaster of the school.
All of this culminated in students, atleast the ones that were willing to anyway, roam around the castle, in a manner that they would be hard pressed to run into someone else. Which is why no one bothered Hermione in her hiding place for hours, right up until he stumbled upon the place, but in a far stealthier manner than the Troll that was supposedly headed here.
He supposed that it could be possible that he was in the wrong place or at the wrong time, and Tommy boy had changed his plans or altered the time of the execution, or he was not just not going to do anything today, but the fact of the matter was that today was not about saving anyone.
No, he would much rather prefer not to even show his face, but since he had very little in the way of remote surveillance capabilities in Hogwarts, he had to be here in person, but not to save the Golden Trio. No, he was here to see what Harry would do. To check on his level of magical competence, based on which he will have to redraw his strategy about dealing with the magical world.
In the few years that he had been active here, he had come to the realisation that the wizarding world was far more dangerous than anyone really knows, even him. So much can go wrong and lead to such devastating consequences that he sometimes wondered why Agomotto or the Ancient One did not just let the wizards die off, or just corral all of them into a Pocket Dimension forever, and just punt all the kids who show signs of wizard magic automatically, using that Planetary shield of theirs. He knows that it can be done.
The only hiccup in that could be this Mother Magic entity, but as far as he could tell, that entity would be more than pleased to see the biggest destroyers of the magical flora and fauna get punted off the planet.
And then it hit him. He paused mid step, sighed, and turned around, resuming his walking from a distance, while keeping an ear close just in case something happened. She must have seen something, something from the Time Stone, otherwise, being the pragmatic demon that she was, she would not hesitate sacrificing a couple of million wizards if it meant saving the rest of the world at large.
Even the most optimistic reports suggested wizards not exceeding the ten million mark, a number that was so minuscule in comparison to the deaths that the Sorcerer Supreme must have witnessed, in real time as well, not to mention all the simulated timelines she saw and experienced, making her probably the most desensitized to death human alive.
___xx__
Great Hall, Hogwarts
–Harry Potter–
He sighed, seeing Ron absolutely stuff his face like his life depended on it. It was amusing at first, to see the sheer contrast in eating between Ron, a supposed noble, and students just on the other side of the table, but it had quickly turned from amusing to annoying to downright disturbing to him.
More than once, he had been tempted to suggest to Ron the possibility of either an eating disorder or something else that could be causing him to eat so much, and in such a manner as well. Even if they were growing and needed a lot of food, Ron ate just way too much, all the time.
But he stopped himself, knowing that Ron will just take it in the wrong way. An observation that was shared by the other members of the House as well, since no one bothered to correct him or advise him, but that also resulted in most of the people distancing themselves from Ron. Ron did not see it, but he certainly did.
Hermione was not a social bee either, which made their group work, but she saw how anyone who approached their group did so with the intention of meeting the Boy Who Lived, a figure that only existed in their minds, for he was certainly not the person who could defeat dragons as a toddler, banish werewolves and cast the Patronus without a wand, neither could he defeat adult wizards wandlessly or learnt all the spells of Hogwarts.
No, that figure was fictional, and more than once, he had suggested to Hermione to learn all she could about the laws of Magical Britain, so that he could weaponise them to bankrupt the people behind all these rumours.
It might seem harmless, but those stories had genuinely destroyed his chances at a normal school life. A chance at a steady, calm, and fulfilling student life, with all the expected events that came with it, was stolen from him because of the stories
Due to the sheer reach of those absurd stories, everyone who looked at him did so with a filter, and as soon as they interacted with him, that magic wore off, and all that was left was a sense of disappointment. Sure, he expected that from kids his age, but even his seniors were like that. At the back of their minds, they must have known that it was all patently false, that a toddler could never beat dragons and whatnot, but the legends of the Boy Who Lived were so embedded into the society at this point that subscionally, even they expected something impossible from him.
Maybe not to the point of defeating dragons by his lonesome, but some wandless magic? Some advanced spells learned from Dumbledore? Some unknown spells that made him stronger than everyone his age and compete with the seniors?
He could absolutely tell that the seniors had some of these expectations, and when he either failed or refused to meet these expectations, he could see their interest falling.
It was the main reason why he did not have any other friends, aside from Hermione and Ron. He met them during the Train Ride, and since then, they had been the ones he stuck to. It was easy, since they were all in the same house, but somewhere along the way, he felt like he was limiting himself.
Alas, that same filter was still present in many people's minds, and it would take either time or some event where he was absolutely humiliated for people to start seeing him like a normal person, instead of the savior of Magical Britain.
"Oi! Harry," he was snapped out of his thoughts by Ron who waved a fork in front of his face, "What's gotten into you?"
He leaned away from the fork, before replying, "Nothing, Ron. Where do you think Hermione is? She never missed a Feast before," He remarked, intent on getting the topic changed.
As expected, Ron's nostrils flared at her reminder, "Don't know. Don't care, mate. Probably somewhere correcting someone's pronunciation."
He rolled his eyes at Ron's pettiness. Just because she cared enough to help Ron, did not mean she deserved all the bad mouthing from Ron. At least no one really listened to Ron anyway, so the damage was contained that way.
Still, if Ron did not improve, soon enough, he was going to be left behind by both him and Hermione, something that would only serve to increase the pettiness on display by Ron. Hopefully, Ron will mature by then, a thought he never thought would pass his mind since all of them were of the same age.
He supposed that the Headmaster teaching him for some time did help him a lot, besides the obvious information about the basic workings of Magical Britain, which really should have been included in the dossier that every wizard who was not raised in a magical environment should get.
Looking all around him, he nodded at the people who nodded at him, and sighed, seeing everyone smile and enjoy, eating food, and overall having the time of their lives, and sighed, questioning himself.
What was I even doing here?
It might be a cause for celebration for them, but for him? It was the single most devastating day of his life, something he did not even know a year ago. The day he lost his parents, the day his life's trajectory went from being raised in a loving, magical household to a bitter, magicless, selfish family that only did what they did out of obligation and most probably, fear. Nothing more and nothing less.
If you would like to read ahead 12 chapters ahead, you can head to my P*treon.