Julian was very good at manipulating his own facial expressions. He had learned the hard way in his previous life that walking around with a permanent stone face just made people avoid you.
In public, you had to look calm, relaxed, or cheerful if you wanted to blend in. That lesson had stuck even though large chunks of his old world's factual knowledge were gone.
His habits, though, his temperament, the way he reacted to things, those had barely changed at all.
He assumed that was some mystical side effect of whatever had dragged him across worlds. Personality stayed, data did not. He did not have the tools to understand the how of it yet, so he simply accepted it.
He soon caught up with his friends and quickly spotted the awkwardness in the air. Ron was very obviously trying to avoid speaking to Daphne and Tracey, staring at anything but them.
"Stop being such a git and try getting to know them before you judge them. They do not bite," Julian said, grinning.
"Well, Tracey might, but she is the exception," he added lightly.
Tracey gasped in offended outrage, but Harry and Daphne both laughed.
Ron relaxed a little when he saw that they were, in fact, ordinary people and not serpents in human form. When he finally tried starting a conversation, he defaulted to the only topic he was truly confident about: Quidditch.
Daphne sighed quietly in resignation when it turned out Tracey was also a massive Quidditch fan. The two of them were off and running in seconds, happily debating teams and tactics.
"So what was that whole bit with McGonagall about?" Harry asked, drawing everyone's attention back to Julian.
Damn it, Harry, I almost had them forgetting about that, Julian thought.
"It was just about how I am too far ahead to learn alongside the rest of our year," he said casually, as if it were nothing special.
"What?" they all blurted at once, staring at him in disbelief.
Julian flinched slightly at the volume.
"What, did you think I kept up with her in that game by sheer luck?" he asked with a scoff.
"But how?" Tracey demanded, sounding halfway between jealous and awed.
"Mostly talent," Julian said, shrugging. "The subject just comes easily to me."
"That is so not fair," Tracey groaned, pouting hard.
Julian chuckled at her expression.
"I did not choose to be like this, you know," he said honestly.
"Could you, I do not know, slack off so the rest of us do not look so bad?" she asked, clearly exasperated.
Julian snorted.
"Absolutely not. That would be wasting my potential for someone else's comfort," he said firmly. "That is like asking Harry to stop flying because he is too talented at it. Kind of unfair to him, is it not?"
Harry blinked, then nodded slowly at the comparison.
"Yeah, I know, but still," Tracey muttered, looking a bit deflated.
"Cheer up," Julian said, nudging her lightly. "I am not going anywhere. I am just going to be learning in a slightly different way from you, that is all."
"You know she is only trying to squeeze a unique spell out of you again, right?" Daphne said dryly.
Tracey turned on her with a betrayed look, while Harry snorted and tried to hide his laughter.
"Oh, I know," Julian said, grinning. "But it is about a thousand years too early for her to think she can put one over on me."
"Drat! I was sure this plan would work," Tracey complained, dramatically cursing her failure.
Everyone, including Ron, burst out laughing.
"You do realize you could modify a spell yourself, right?" Julian asked, one eyebrow raised.
"What? Why in Merlin's name would I bother doing that when you already walk around as a human treasure vault of them?" Tracey shot back.
Julian shrugged.
"No idea," he said lightly. "But then again, no man truly understands why women do what they do. And if any do, they are not sharing that knowledge."
The other boys nodded with solemn agreement, as if ancient wisdom had just been spoken.
Both girls tried to argue against that, but the boys came armed with far too many examples and steamrolled the counterarguments in short order.
...
They worked through McGonagall's "homework" together, practicing the flaw game. Julian guided them as best he could, pointing out weaknesses, suggesting better target forms, pushing them to be more precise.
He noticed something interesting while they played.
When normal students like his friends tried the game, they improved at a noticeable pace. Not as absurdly fast as he did, of course, but the structure of the exercise worked. It drilled transfiguration fundamentals into them much more deeply than simple repetition.
By the end, they were already noticeably better at changing the match into a needle than when they had started.
Two hours later, dinner rolled around, and the group split along house lines.
Harry, Julian, and Ron continued their conversation at the Gryffindor table about Hagrid's upcoming invitation. Harry had received it at breakfast, a simple note asking him to stop by during their free period tomorrow.
It might just be a friendly check in to see how Harry's first week had gone, or it might be more.
Julian remembered that in the books, this was roughly when the golden trio found out what was hidden on the third floor.
Strangely, though, one of the key precursor events had not happened here.
Malfoy had never challenged Harry to a wizarding duel.
Without that confrontation, the urgency and direction that had driven them to discover the truth in the original story simply was not there.
Which, for now, made whatever Hagrid had to say a lot less critical in their minds than it once had been.