Harry Potter and the Badgers of Hogwarts

Chapter One: Fateful First Meetings on Diagon Alley

Harry James Potter, late of the cupboard under the stairs at number four Privet Drive and recently informed of the fact that he was a wizard – not to mention more recently told a version of the events surrounding the killing of his (witch and wizard) parents (which would eventually prove to be slightly biased as well as abbreviated to the point of being utterly lacking in certain facts, though that was at least mostly due to the ignorance of the teller and not prompted out of any sense of malice or willingness to limit Harry’s knowledge for any reason) and even more recently acquainted, at least somewhat, with the reality of his hitherto wholly unsuspected fame within the magical community (which, he’d been told, was due to the fact that he had survived a certain Dark Lord Voldemort’s deadly attack on his parents’ household, though his parents had died and the Dark Lord himself had apparently had his body destroyed) – stood on a stool at the back of a clothing shop on Diagon Alley called Madam Malkin’s Robes for All Occasions and struggled fiercely to keep the sense of mingled disappointment and disgust so sharp that it felt almost like betrayal from showing on his face.

Harry was finding himself having some serious second thoughts about the wizarding world he had so recently been (re)introduced to and fallen in love with, and the fragile hope that had (despite all of his attempts not to get his hopes up) blossomed within him, on the discovery of this whole new, vastly different world, felt so thoroughly trammeled upon that his heart felt as if it were breaking in his chest.

There was a boy (close Harry’s age, given some earlier comments about first years and Hogwarts) standing on a stool next to Harry, and this boy was the source of Harry’s unhappiness. This boy – a little taller than Harry and pale in an entirely different way than him (as Harry was simply pale due to lack of sun and looked sickly because of it rather than refined), with a kind of aristocratic pallor that went well with his white-blond hair, extremely hard, cold, almost colorless gray eyes (which were light enough to look disturbingly like polished silver beads), and sharply refined facial features – was speaking, whilst sneering, on a wide variety of topics with exactly the same kind of casual cruelty that Harry had learned to associate with his cousin Dudley and the most dangerous of Dudley’s “friends,” Piers Polkiss (a scrawny boy with light brown hair that always looked dirty, a face like a rat, and a vicious disposition who enjoyed thinking up ever more creative ways for Dudley and the rest of their gang of bullies to terrorize others – either Harry and the other kids at school, or else Harry, the pets, and the very young and very old of the neighborhood ), especially when they were talking about something that they thought made them better than everybody else.

This palely refined boy made Harry think of Dudley and Piers rolled up together and then magnified by a factor of at least ten, because this boy’s cruelty existed side by side with the kind of unshakeable arrogance that Harry knew came only from a truly wealthy or powerful (or both) background. That made him even worse than Dudley and Piers (though his blatant prejudice against non-wizarding or Muggle folk and non-wizarding born witches and wizards struck Harry as being the same kind as the prejudice that the Dursleys had against all kinds of wizarding folk, only turned about so that the bias lay in the opposite direction), since Dudley and Piers were at least limited in their arrogance and cruelty by their solidly middle-class social standing and they didn’t feel that their blood and their standing within their families should automatically yield them everything that they might ever want, like this boy obviously believed.

Before this pale, aristocratic, snobbish boy had begun speaking to him, Harry hadn’t even known that there was such a thing as prejudice and intolerance in the wizarding world. He knew better now, though, and so his naively trusting and foolishly hopeful heart wanted to break for disappointment. He’d thought that the wizarding world was, well, magical, for lack of a better word, that it was a place of wonder and freedom where people would know better than to fall prey to all the ills of the Muggle world. He’d thought that the wizarding world was better, that, with power like they had, wizards and witches would have to be clever enough to know better than the Muggles, when it came to such ugly things as discrimination. The longer the strange wizarding boy spoke, though, the more he knew he’d been mistaken, and the more pieces Harry felt his heart being shattered into, the more painfully sharp slivers of that broken heart he felt being ground into his soul, and the more he wanted to either burst into tears or start yelling at the boy, as he’d never quite dared to do with the Dursleys for fear of being physically hurt.

He was so close to breaking that, when Madam Malkin (a squat, smiling witch dressed all in mauve – her surprisingly plain dress draped with a sleeveless robe with so many pockets that Harry had a hard time imagining how she could ever find anything – with tired, distracted looking hazel eyes and gray-streaked hair the color of strong tea before milk has been added twisted up into a loose bun held into place with so many pencils that it looked rather like a pin cushion for writing utensils) declared herself done pinning up the boy’s robe and the boy left with one last laconic drawl about seeing Harry at Hogwarts, Harry instinctively relaxed and shut his eyes tight in relief over the strange boy’s leaving. A new voice murmured something behind him, but it wasn’t directed towards him, so Harry just kept his eyes shut. When Madam Malkin sighed and asked if he could excuse her for a few moments, Harry just nodded blindly, wanting to be alone for a few moments, so he could try to pull himself together without anyone seeing how upset he’d been. He was so busy concentrating on calming down that he was nearly shocked into leaping off his stool when a new voice suddenly spoke to him.

“We’re not all like that, you know. Please don’t take a spoiled little git like Draco Malfoy as representative of all of wizarding kind. Most of us would be perfectly happy to get rid of the Malfoys of the world, if we could.” The voice wasn’t deep enough to be a man’s, but deeper than Harry’s or the strange boy’s – whose name was Draco Malfoy, according to the new voice – and the sound of it was so unexpected and came out so close to Harry’s left ear that he startled and teetered sickeningly for a moment on the stool before a hand grasped his elbow (strong enough to steady him but not hard enough to hurt him, though Harry could tell, from the size of the hand, that the owner of that hand could have hurt him almost as easily as Dudley could, even if it felt like the hand was close to the same size as Dudley’s mostly because the fingers were all so much longer than Harry’s) and managed to steady him. “Careful, there! Sorry! I didn’t mean to startle you. I thought you heard me coming in. My parents are always telling me I galumph around like a raging hippogriff. Erhm. Not that you’d know what a hippogriff is, probably. Sorry, here I am, trying to tell you not to let Malfoy get to you because he’s too stupid to even be able to tell when he’s looking at somebody who was probably either raised in or at least in close contact with the Muggle world, and I start babbling about something you probably don’t know about. I just – I’m awful sorry, I honestly didn’t mean to startle you, but you really shouldn’t take anything Malfoy says to heart. I’ve met him before, at Ministry functions and such, and he’s an awful piece of work, just like his dad, and he’s so snooty and used to being nasty that he wouldn’t know how to recognize a friendly person or a proper Hogwarts House if one walked right up to him and bit him on the nose. He only said that bit about Hufflepuff because he saw me coming into the shop, you know. I’m in Hufflepuff, and I think it’s the best House of them all. We’re the only House that accepts everybody and makes everybody feel at home, you know? Hufflepuff is all about loyalty and friendship and sticking together like a real family. The Gryffindors and the Ravenclaws are nice, of course, but they’re always just so busy competing against each other – to see who’s the bravest and can attract the most attention or to see who’s the smartest and can get the highest marks or read the most books the quickest, or whatever – that I don’t know how they can stand it, being so isolated all the time. And the Slytherins, well . . . I don’t like to speak ill of anyone, but they really aren’t very nice. They’re all really ambitious and kind of sly, I suppose you could say. And even more alone than the members of the other two Houses, because you can tell that none of them really trusts anyone else. It would be sad, if they weren’t so prone to being nasty, like Draco Malfoy. He’ll doubtlessly be a Slytherin. The Sorting Hat would be insane, to try to put him anywhere else. And you’ve no idea what I’m talking about, do you?”

Harry stared at the other boy warily. Even though the stool was about a foot high, the boy was still a couple inches taller than Harry – not so surprising, really, considering Harry was so small (barely four feet, in shoes with thick soles) – but Harry would guess that he was probably only two or three years older than him, despite that, because he knew he was undersized enough to still be mistaken for a slight nine-year-old, and this new boy looked very healthy and athletic, like the boys on the sports teams at school. The boy looked like he was probably very popular – he was tall, and fit, and what Harry could tell others would call handsome, with a thick head of slightly wavy light chestnut brown hair bleached out to a very light golden brown on top and eyes that Harry at first thought were hazel and then greenish-blue only to realize, with a start, that they were actually a clear dark gray with small bits of color scattered around inside the gray like flecks of different kinds of mineral deposits in two dark gray stones, only these gray eyes were warm and expressive and much, much friendlier than that other boy’s unsettlingly cold, hard, silverish eyes had been. The boy looked so concerned that Harry couldn’t gather up enough of his thoughts to reply for a few moments even after he’d gotten over the first nasty shock of almost falling off the stool, stunned that someone like this would be talking to him, much less care about whether or not he was okay, before he finally remembered where he was enough to understand that this wasn’t one of the boys from the secondary school and he wasn’t very likely to be mean to him just because he could, like one of Dudley’s cronies.

Pushing away his lingering sense of hurt and betrayal, Harry finally managed to gather up enough of his wits to reply, “Uhm. I’m fine, thanks. And I wouldn’t’ve taken anything that other boy said to heart. He was – erhm, well, he was saying nasty things about Hagrid, you see, and I’ve met Hagrid, and he’s been really great to me, showing me around and helping me get my things and all.” He was shocked to find himself about to admit to a complete stranger that the other boy had reminded Harry of his cousin, only worse, and had to make himself switch tracks halfway through the explanation, so that he stressed the fact that he’d known the Malfoy boy was saying nasty, untrue things about Hagrid, instead. The other boy regarded him so steadily that Harry felt an awful urge to fidget, but the boy still was also holding on to his elbow, so he made himself hold very still, instead, and waited to see what would happen next.

The older boy smiled at him – an expression that looked like it was formed of equal parts relief and amusement – nodded his head swiftly, and let go of Harry’s arm only to offer the hand for shaking, cheerfully (if perhaps a little bit bluntly) opining, “Well, that’s good to know, then – proves you’ve got a good head on your shoulders. I’m Cedric, by the way, Cedric Diggory, and, even though I’m in Hufflepuff House, I promise that doesn’t mean I automatically don’t think the other Houses are horrible. Our House may have a reputation for getting along with everybody and not making waves, but that’s not the reason I don’t think the other three Houses are horrible. I try to judge people based on who they are, not what House they’re in, so I actually don’t think about the other Houses, as such, much at all – aside from not really understanding how the others really get by, in such isolating Houses, especially people who aren’t used to the wizarding world, that is. Hufflepuff’s the only House at Hogwarts that has a mentor program set up for the younger students and a kind of orientation program for the Muggle-born, you know,” he explained, shrugging slightly and grinning widely as Harry just stood there and blinked at him for a few moments before hesitantly offering his own right hand.

“Erhm, Harry, and no, I didn’t know that. They really don’t? How are the Muggle-born or Muggle-raised supposed to figure things out, then?” Harry asked as he let the boy take his hand and pump it heartily a couple of times, anxious in spite of himself as he imagined all the strange things that he wouldn’t know anything about because he’d grown up thinking magic wasn’t real.

“You know, I’ve asked Professor Sprout about that, and she said that the Ravenclaws insist they can learn it all out of books and the Gryffindors say they figure it out on their own, with some help from their friends if they need it, and don’t need any help from anyone else. I think that’s silly, personally, but there you have it. The Gryffindors want to do it themselves, the Ravenclaws trust their books before they’ll trust anyone else, and of course the Slytherins won’t ever admit to actually having any members who’re anything less than perfectly pure-blooded, so Merlin only knows how any of them ever get by. I’m just glad we have a system in Hufflepuff. I volunteered to be a mentor this year, and I’m looking forward to it. I could probably get you copies of some of the orientation material, if you’d like,” Cedric offered, tilting his head questioningly, earnestly, to one side.

“Oh. Uhm . . . ” Harry started at the older boy, stunned all over again at the spontaneous and, as far as he could tell, entirely genuine offer of help. Part of him desperately wanted to ask why this Cedric person would want to help him, since Cedric didn’t even know who Harry really was, but Harry was used to blending in and not drawing attention to himself, and he knew that a question like that would probably sound suspicious, so he ignored the tentative sense of hope that wanted to rise back up and replace his lingering sadness over the discovery that the wizarding world had bad people and cruel, thoughtless, stuck-up bullies, too, and made himself ask, “But what if I’m not sorted into Hufflepuff? Wouldn’t you get in trouble for, I don’t know, fraternizing and sharing House secrets, or something?”

Cedric shocked him again by throwing his head back and giving voice to a such long, loud, and hearty laugh that Harry had to force himself to hold very still to keep from flinching away. “Sharing House secrets! Good one there, Harry!” Cedric snickered, clapping Harry jovially on the shoulder, at once staggering him slightly on the stool and steadying him on his perch as he curled his fingers carefully but securely around Harry’s thin (and, thankfully, currently whole, or else he probably wouldn’t have been able to keep from flinching) shoulder. “Honestly, though, I don’t think Professor Sprout would mind. It’s not like they’re Ministry secrets or anything – just basic introductory material on the wizarding world with suggested readings and such. Besides,” Cedric added, leaning in a little closer, grinning and whispering conspiratorially, “Professor Sprout likes me so I could probably talk her around, no matter which House you end up in.”

“Oh. Well, in that case, yeah, thanks, I’d really appreciate the help.”

“Good! That’s settled, then. So,” Cedric paused slightly, a faint wrinkle creasing his forehead, before asking, “do you have any idea what House you might end up in, by any chance, or has anybody bothered to explain about the Houses yet?”

“Uhm, not really . . . ”

“Oh, well, that’s no problem, then. Madam Malkin left with Draco because they wanted her up front to help with a group of fourth year girls – that’s the year ahead of me – wanting dress robes, so she won’t be back for ages. I can tell you about the Houses. There’s four of them, you see, Gryffindor, Hufflepuff, Ravenclaw, and Slytherin . . . ”

Ten minutes later, Hagrid gave up on trying to wait for him and came and knocked on the window, startling Harry (who’d been listening intently to Cedric describe the House system and how it worked and the personality traits that were used to sort people into their Houses, though Cedric admitted that there always seemed to be at least a couple of new students every year who, after the Sorting, would talk about convincing the Sorting Hat to put them into a House other than its first choice for them) badly enough that Cedric once again had to catch him by the elbow to keep him from tumbling off the stool. Hagrid couldn’t come in because his hands were full of ice cream cones, but Cedric figured out how to charm one of the windows open (explaining, as he did so, that normally underage students weren’t allowed to do magic outside of school unless their parents applied for permission from the Ministry for home tutoring lessons or paid for them to have a tutor, but that exceptions were made if their magical signatures matched locations in the wizarding world, since sometimes a person needed to be able to do a bit of magic while they were shopping and such and really the rules against underage magic were meant to protect the Muggles from seeing anything that would require an Obliviator to modify their memories, not to keep students from practicing magic), and so Hagrid was able to ask them what the holdup was. Cedric explained about the group of fourth year girls wanting dress robes and Madam Malkin going back up to the front of the store to help them, and Hagrid shook his head and groaned, exclaiming, “Blimey! That’ll take all day, that will! Here – Harry, ye got yer letter still?”

Between the three of them (and with a little creative juggling from Harry, to keep Cedric from seeing the parts of his letter that had his full name. He wasn’t entirely sure he wanted the older boy to know his last name, given the way those older witches and wizards at the Leaky Cauldron had responded to learning his full name, and he figured that it wasn’t quite the same as lying, if he just kept Cedric from seeing or hearing his last name), they finally managed to arrange things so that the boys ended up with the ice creams (it turned out that the place Hagrid had bought them from, Florean Fortescue’s Ice Cream Parlour, gave out charmed containers that could be shrunk and expanded with the tap of a wand, and which had spells on them to keep anything put in them nice and fresh and safe for later eating, sort of like a cooler only better. Hagrid said that Cedric could have his and that he’d go get another, so Cedric got his wand out and tapped the box to expand it for the cones, tapped it again to shrink it down, ice cream and all, and then Harry tucked the box away in a pocket, for later) and Hagrid ended up with a copy of Harry’s list of supplies (courtesy of Cedric and a quick copying charm) and what Cedric said should be plenty for Harry’s required equipment, minus a wand. Hagrid volunteered to fetch Harry’s school books, too, since finding the right wand usually took a little while, but Cedric wanted to show him around Flourish and Blotts, so they finally decided that Hagrid could get the required books and then wait for them in the shop while they browsed.

Harry passed over some money for the required books, in case the owners decided to make Hagrid go ahead and pay for his selections, and they agreed to meet up at Flourish and Blotts sometime between an hour and a half and two hours from then. Hagrid went off clutching Harry’s copied list and with a handful of coins from the pile Harry had swept into the bag he’d been given at Gringotts, and Cedric went back to telling Harry about the Houses and classes and Hogwarts in general while Harry listened attentively and asked more questions the longer Cedric talked and the more he got used to the idea of someone like Cedric actually being friendly enough to be nice to him for no real reason other than that he was there and Harry was there too and seemed to need somebody to tell him more about the wizarding world.

Harry started to get tired of standing on the stool after awhile, but Cedric reminded him of the pins in his robes before he could make the mistake of trying to sit down on the stool, which probably would’ve turned his legs into pincushions. Harry asked why Madam Malkin insisted on fitting him with robes that were obviously too big for him instead of just measuring him and then telling him what size he should look for among the already finished robes, and Cedric explained about the difference between good student robes and most other ready-made robes, starting with the spells that were fixed into the hems of the sleeves and the bottom of student robes and in the pleats across the back of the yoke and around the shoulders, which could be let out with a fairly simple adjusting spell as the students grew. It allowed the robes to be used for more than the fairly short period of time that they otherwise would have fit, giving their owners a chance to get their money’s worth out of the things by having actually a chance to wear the robes out instead of just growing out of them in a couple of months or a year.

Student robes were evidently also made out of extra strong, extra durable, wrinkle-resistant, stain-resistant, water-proof, protectively spelled fabric that was charmed to be able to hold several other useful charms and spells for protection and cleanliness, so they cost more than just any old robe might have. According to Cedric, they were specially designed to be adjustable enough to fit their buyer for at least two whole years, if not three, in order to offset some of the extra cost. Harry thought that was right clever and rather nice of whoever had decided to design the robes that way, but it was still a bother to have to wait for someone to pin up his much too large robe to a size that wouldn’t have him in danger of constantly tripping over the hem and dragging his sleeves through everything. Since there was nothing he could do about it, though (except maybe complain), until either Madam Malkin or one of her assistants came back to finish pinning his robe up for him, so that the spells on it could be set to his current size, he just sighed inwardly and settled in to wait for however long it might end up taking.

After a bit of hesitation, Harry finally got up the courage to ask (a little diffidently) if Cedric was in the shop because he’d grown out of his robes early, but Cedric smiled and shook his head and explained that Madam Malkin also sold the uniforms that they were supposed to wear to Hogwarts classes under the robes. Trousers and long-sleeved oxfords and whatnot couldn’t be adjusted quite as well as robes, since they were a lot more fitted (though the jumpers and vests generally could be charmed to fit longer simply by getting them from a proper witch or wizard tailor, like Madam Malkin, so they could be purchased in a larger size and then shrunk down to the proper size, with a charm added to adjust the size as necessary, as the buyer grew), so Cedric had come into the store to buy new uniforms.

He’d only come back to the back of the store, where Harry was, because the harried looking assistant (who’d already been trying to find Madam Malkin when the group of fourth years had come into the store just behind Cedric) had always been very nice to Cedric, and he’d figured it would be easy enough to fetch Madam Malkin out of the back while the assistant tried to see if the fourth years had any idea whatsoever what kind of dress robes they might want. Dress robes were an extremely big deal for girls, according to Cedric, and he told Harry that they would probably be stuck in the back for at least another ten or fifteen minutes before the assistant would find enough time to come back and finish Madam Malkin’s job of fitting Harry’s robes. Harry asked him if they’d have to fit all of the robes he was supposed to buy – after all, the list that had come with his acceptance letter had mandated three sets of plain black work robes, and Harry wanted to get at least one extra set, if he could, just in case (better to be prepared, after all) – but apparently there was a spell for getting the alterations to copy themselves from one set of robes to the next, so that meant things would probably go fairly quickly, once somebody actually finished fitting his first set of robes for him.

Harry’s list said he was also supposed to be getting a plain pointed black hat for day wear, a pair of protective gloves, and a black winter cloak with silver fastenings, but he hadn’t known they were supposed to get uniforms for under the robes as well (though it made a certain amount of sense when he stopped to think about it, given what he knew about school uniforms. The robes were just kind of like the Muggle equivalent of a coat or a jacket, not the whole uniform). With an easy smile, Cedric offered to help him go hunt for everything else while they were waiting, since it made sense to get as much of their shopping as they could get done over with, so they could get out of the store that much more quickly when someone was finally free to finish fitting Harry’s robes. Cedric offered to levitate him, so he wouldn’t have to worry about moving about too much and accidentally stabbing himself with the pins stuck in his robes. He insisted it was a very easy charm – one of the first real charms he’d learnt in his first year at Hogwarts – so, even though he wasn’t too sure about the idea of floating, Harry didn’t want to seem rude by refusing, when Cedric had been so nice to him so far, he agreed quickly and made himself hold very still, so as to avoid flinching, when Cedric swung his wand at him and performed the charm.

It was a completely new feeling to have someone – and not just anyone, but someone both close to his own age and older than him – who was willing to treat him like a human being and to really talk to him (not just at him or around him or through him, as if he wasn’t really there) who had no obvious ulterior motives for doing so, and Harry found himself liking the experience a great deal. Hagrid had been very nice to him, true, and Harry knew he would never forget how Hagrid had rescued him from the Dursleys and given him his Hogwarts acceptance letter, but Harry was also smart enough to realize that Hargrid felt indebted to Harry because of Harry’s parents and because of the wizard Dumbledore’s apparent interest in Harry. This older boy, this Cedric Diggory, didn’t know Harry from Adam, and yet here he was, treating Harry with the kind of open friendliness and easy affection that Harry had only ever dared to dream about receiving from anyone before, and for no other reason than the fact that fate had conspired to place Harry in Cedric’s path. Harry therefore resolved to prove his appreciation by behaving as much like a friend as he could (considering the fact that Dudley and his gang had never allowed him to have any friends before), in return.

He let Cedric float him back out into the store proper, over to where they kept the hats and cloaks and uniforms, and asked more questions about the clothes and the various ways that they were or could be spelled, listening happily as Cedric explained about how the cloaks had spells like the robes and another besides that, on the lining, so that the lining of the cloak would automatically take on whatever preferred combination of the colors of the House that its owner was Sorted into. Handkerchiefs, school ties, and the blank crests on the left pockets or upper left side of uniform shirts, jumpers, vests, cloaks, and robes were likewise spelled to take on the specific colors and crest of one’s House, after Sorting, as were a wide variety of scarves, muffs, earmuffs, gloves, mittens, pyjamas, bathrobes, and even several kinds (and different weights) of socks. Students were encouraged to stick to dark charcoal or black slacks (or skirts, for the girls), but it was permissible to buy slacks (or skirts) that were spelled to take on the tamer colors of one’s House, should one be sorted into Ravenclaw (House colors blue and bronze, though the dark, nearly brown bronze was generally replaced with a much lighter, almost silvery hue on formalwear), Slytherin (House colors green and silver, or green and gray), or Griffyndor (House colors scarlet and gold, or red and yellow). Hufflepuff, Cedric explained, had House colors of black and gold or yellow and black, depending on whom one asked, so Hufflepuffs had a slightly more limited color selection for their school uniforms, but he didn’t really mind, seeing as how it tended to cut down on the amount of time it took to get dressed every morning, thus leaving more free time for more important things. Besides, students were allowed to wear whatever they wanted to, as long as they weren’t in class or out and about the castle grounds dressed indecently, so it wasn’t like they couldn’t ever wear other colors at all. Harry thought that an extremely practical way of looking at things, and nodded agreement with the sentiment.

Cedric ended up gathering up most of his things first, to get his part of the shopping out of the way, since Harry had been forced to admit that he had no idea what size of anything he might need, having never really had any new clothes before. Cedric had seemed a bit concerned, when Harry stammered his way through that explanation, but he could apparently tell that Harry didn’t want to talk about the reasons why he’d never had any new clothes that were just his own, so all he did was to frown for awhile before suggesting that they gather up the cloak and hat and gloves and the things he’d need that wouldn’t require either a trip to the fitting room or someone to take Harry’s measurements. Harry quickly agreed, eager to avoid a lull in the conversation that might lead Cedric to ask another uncomfortable question, and, since he’d never had any clothes of his own before – and Cedric apparently took that as a sign that he should drag Harry all over the store, gathering up all kinds of casual clothes for him to wear on the weekends and holidays and whatnot, too, on top of the actual required uniforms – he soon found himself being floated hither, thither, and yon.

Madam Malkin’s was primarily a shop for students, and so (according to Cedric, at least) it didn’t have as wide a range of clothing as Twilfit and Tatting’s (or Gladrags Wizardswear, up in Hogsmeade) might carry, but Harry still felt more than a little overwhelmed by all of the different choices they did have, and he ended up letting Cedric make almost as many choices about what he should get as he actually did, when it came to things like sweatshirts and jumpers for the winter and lightweight, Muggle-inspired tee-shirts and henleys for the fall and spring. And they were lucky. The same assistant whose frazzled expression had earlier prompted Cedric to hunt up Madam Malkin from the back of the store came upon them by the jeans and corduroys and, on learning that Harry had no idea what his sizes were, instantly whipped out a magical measuring tape that slid itself underneath his half-pinned robes and automatically took his measurements, so that they’d be able to finish getting his clothes without Harry having to go to the trouble of trying things on. This same assistant – a young woman in her twenties with a long black braid that was starting to unravel and tired but kind dark eyes by the name of Melissa Mockridge – then floated their selections up to one of the counters and ushered them back to the back of the store, so she could finish fitting Harry’s robes.

Things went fairly quickly, after that, and they soon found themselves walking out of the shop with what seemed to Harry to be a shockingly large number of boxes and bags of clothing, all of them carefully charmed down to much smaller sizes for easier carrying, just like the box with the ice cream cones. Cedric declared himself starving and Harry’s stomach was rumbling by then, too, so they found an empty table with a large, colorful umbrella to sit at, outside of Florean Fortescue’s Ice Cream Parlour and in between two different cafes, and Harry insisted on buying them both lunch to go with their ice cream. Cedric frowned, looking like he wanted to protest, but after a few moments he just shrugged and agreed to let Harry pay for their meal this time, if he’d let Cedric pick up the tab the next time around. Harry was so surprised that Cedric actually seemed to expect for there to be a next time that he found himself agreeing quite before he knew what he was doing, and then there was nothing for it but to sit down and enjoy the meal. And so he did – or at least he tried very hard to, anyway.

He made the mistake, though, of asking Cedric a question about his wand and why Cedric and Hagrid had both seemed to think it would take a while for Harry to buy one, at which point Cedric had launched into a story about Mr. Ollivander and how he always seemed to know the identity of everyone who came into his shop for a new wand, to the point where he could remember and recite the details of the wands he’d sold to their parents and grandparents, and always ended up telling such stories as new customers tried various wands out in an attempt to find one willing to claim them. It was the wand that chose the wizard or witch, and so finding the right wand nearly always took awhile, unless a person was extremely lucky or was just looking for a replacement wand or a second, emergency wand. Cedric had tried twenty-six different wands before he’d found the right one, and, as he explained it, he was pretty sure he’d been in the store for most of a hour that day. Cedric was therefore pretty sure they’d probably be in Ollivanders for at least half an hour, probably while Mr. Ollivander regaled them with stories.

Even though the food they’d gotten to eat was excellent and plentiful and Harry never got anything near like enough to eat with the Dursleys, it was extremely difficult for him to just relax and eat his lunch, after hearing that. Hagrid had told him that his parents had both been magical, even if his mother had been Muggle-born, which meant that this Mr. Ollivander would remember the wands he’d sold to them and that he’d probably tell stories about them. Harry wouldn’t mind knowing more about his parents, even if it was only what kind of wands they’d had, but what if Mr. Ollivander mentioned their last name or called Harry by his last name? So far he’d managed to avoid telling Cedric his full name – the way those witches and wizards at the Leaky Cauldron had responded to hearing his name made him think that there was a lot more to the story of the evil wizard Voldemort than Hagrid had told him, and that comment Hagrid had made about how Harry was so famous that everyone in the wizarding world knew of him made him more than a little uneasy, given that he didn’t really believe that he could deserve that kind of fame at all, even if Harry had been the only survivor that night when Voldemort attacked his family and at least the body of Voldemort had apparently been destroyed by his attempts to kill Harry – but if the older boy went into this wand shop with him, he would almost certainly find out that Harry’s last name was Potter.

Unless Harry were willing to abandon Cedric now so he could go after a wand by himself – and as soon as the possibility occurred to him, he knew he didn’t want to do that – it wasn’t a question of whether or not Cedric would find out Harry’s last name, but rather when and how he would find out. Harry needed to decide if Cedric were trustworthy enough to simply tell him – and, if he were trustworthy enough, exactly how much to tell him about his life with the Dursleys and the reasons Harry had always known he was different from other people, even though he’d never in his wildest dreams ascribed that difference to magic.

Despite what the Dursleys thought, Harry wasn’t an unintelligent boy. He was simply very, very careful to keep just how intelligent he truly was deeply hidden from everyone as a basic safety precaution. Doubtlessly, it would have been nice to have had a greater challenge at school than the never-ending dodging of bullies and the perpetual hunt to make the most creative mistakes possible on even the simplest of problems, but he knew it wouldn’t have been worth the trouble it would have brought him to reveal his intelligence anywhere but Dudley’s homework. He’d seen what happened to the children who were skipped ahead grades at school and he vividly remembered the beating he’d gotten from his even then oversized cousin (following by a near-throttling from his aunt; a kicking from his uncle after his aunt had released him and he’d fallen down into the floor, which he was fairly certain had broken or at least badly bruised several of his ribs; and then an extra long stay in his cupboard that still had the power to make him whimper in remembrance of pain from his lack of treatment and in extreme thirst and hunger from lack of food and water while he was locked in) in his second year of primary school just for getting an A+ in a class that Dudley had failed.

It was safer by far simply to pretend to not be very bright, not to mention easier to blend in with the crowd at school or into the background at the Dursleys and elsewhere on Privet Drive and thereabouts and so avoid drawing any attention to himself that might have resulted in more . . . unpleasantness. Harry knew it was neither normal nor right, the way the Dursleys treated him, but there wasn’t exactly a whole lot he could do about it, aside from using his ability to play dumb and blend in and be unobtrusive and obedient and quiet to encourage them to mostly just ignore him instead of actively seeking to torment him. After all, it was better that the Dursleys simply be neglectful of him than that they be obviously, outright abusive towards him, right?

The Dursleys might not be very bright, but they were sly and cunning in a self-deceptive, self-serving, self-protective sort of way. Their safety, comfort, ease, and entertainment were of paramount importance (pretty much in that order), and Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon had been very careful, from the very beginning, to isolate Harry and see to it that no one would ever be inclined to think of him as a person worthy of trust or care or concern. They’d put about that he was a troublemaker and an ungrateful brat who went out of his way to disrespect them and make their lives as difficult as possible. It was widely known in the neighborhood of Little Whinging that Harry Potter had a violent temper and delighted in breaking or otherwise ruining anything he could get his grubby little hands on – a story that was used to excuse the fact that the only new or even somewhat new things (bought secondhand, in the case of his boots and shoes, since his feet were so much smaller than Dudley’s and Dudley tended to wear his boots and shoes to death, in any case) he ever had were underwear, boots and shoes, and sometimes socks.

His rumored sullenness and violent temper and his supposed slowness at school, in combination with his cousin’s very real nasty temper and incessant bullying towards Harry, made Harry as much a pariah at school as the fantastic rumors and nasty stories his aunt and uncle spread about him (often based off of their own son’s behavior) did around Privet Drive. He’d been condemned in the minds of most people long before he’d ever been old enough to even meet them, and there was nothing he could do about it but take advantage of the solitude that his shunning generally afforded him. So that’s what he generally did, even though he’d often been angry (especially when he’d been younger and still thought that there should be someone who cared enough to notice what was happening to him and to do something to stop it) about the unfair treatment he received and the lies his family told about him and made others believe.

He’d known that it wasn’t right, the way the Dursleys treated him – he was, after all, treated like a combination slave and personal whipping boy for the entire family – and he’d tried to tell the truth about the Dursleys and himself, tried to get to someone with the authority to save him from the Dursleys by either taking him out of that house or seeing to it that he was removed from that house forever, but no one ever believed him about the way he was treated. The teachers whose help he’d tried to enlist thought he was making up stories to get attention or to get his cousin in trouble. Some of them knew that Dudley was a bully with a gang of followers who liked to pick on and torment Harry and other little kids at school, but no one had ever been able to quite catch him in the act of a truly violent attack, so none of them knew how awful Dudley and his gang truly were. Instead, they assumed that Harry was exaggerating in order to get his cousin in trouble, and his aunt and uncle were so convincing, the few times they were ever actually called in to the school for a meeting, that all he’d ever gotten for his trouble had been an even worse reputation for lying at school and more beatings and missed meals and onerous chores at home for daring to tell what the Dursleys thought of as hateful, malicious falsehoods about them instead of just being properly grateful to them for letting him live in their house and etc. and sucking it up like a normal boy when he was punished.

The Dursleys were very good at lying to themselves about Harry – not just about the way they treated him (which they’d convinced themselves was entirely proper and no worse than he deserved for being such an unnatural, ungrateful child), but the reasons why they treated him the way they did, including his apparent ungratefulness for all they’d supposedly sacrificed in order to take him in after his parents had been killed (in a drunken car crash that Harry had supposedly somehow caused, as they always claimed, before Hagrid showed up and set that particular story straight), but mostly revolving around what they saw as their duty, as upstanding citizens of England and good Christians to boot, to beat the unnaturalness and the evil out of him. Harry had been told he was a filthy freak like his parents, an unnatural and evil boy, for so long and so often that, before Hagrid had tracked him down, he’d more than half believed it. That particular belief was even a big part of the reason why he’d believed Hagrid’s story about magic so quickly, even if that particular explanation for his strangeness had never really occurred to him before. He’d gotten so used to being called a freak that he’d accepted the appellation.

Harry knew he wasn’t normal: normal people didn’t heal so quickly that most relatively minor hurts – bumps and bruises, cuts and scrapes and burns, and, in general, any kind of injury short of a shattered bone, third degree burn, or a gash serious enough that it would’ve required several stitches on a more normal person – would be completely gone in a matter of minutes or hours after receiving them instead of the days or weeks or even months that they would have taken to heal on anybody else. Normal people couldn’t heal broken noses and blackened eyes and cracked cheekbones from being hit solidly in the face with a cast iron skillet quickly enough to be able to go on to school only a few hours later with nothing worse to show for it than a slightly sore and swollen face. Normal people couldn’t heal whelps and cuts from being whipped until the belt being used as a lash broke (prompting a beating with fists and feet as well) overnight, after being thrown into the darkness of a cupboard under the stairs, to the point where their skin was as smooth, unbruised, and (basically, but for that one previous mark) unscarred as if it had never been touched.

Moreover, normal people occasionally got sick, even if it was just a head cold or a stomach ache or ear ache. Normal people usually couldn’t go for more than two days without anything to drink and then be none the worse for wear than a pair of slightly chapped lips and a somewhat dry mouth. Normal people couldn’t survive on a diet of crumbs, expiring or out of date food and drink otherwise destined to be thrown away, and an occasional heel of bread – less food than an average small to medium sized dog would consume – and only look a bit undersized and thin (though not thin enough for it to show very well, in outsized, layered clothing) because of it. Normal people couldn’t teach themselves to have virtually photographic memories that let them look at something for only a moment and be able to remember it all well enough to be able to go back and mentally visualize and understand or read it, to the point where it became possible to literally flip through a book and then go back, hours or even days later, and mentally read and understand it all. Normal people couldn’t teach themselves to sit down and actually read about ten thousand words a minute, when concentrating, and not only understand what they were reading but have perfect recall of all of it days, weeks, months, even years later.

Perhaps more importantly, though, normal people couldn’t make themselves forget about bad things for a set amount of time just by telling themselves that they would. Normal people also couldn’t make things break or move about, spontaneously and often independent of anyone actually touching them, just by being angry or upset. Normal people couldn’t make some things happen just by wanting them to happen very badly. Normal people couldn’t learn to do real cooking and cleaning as preschoolers, to the point where they ended up doing the work of a well-paid and skillful caterer and maid and laundress by the age of six. Normal people weren’t as skilled at yardwork as professional landscapers and gardeners by the age of ten, without any kind of practical study or real instruction whatsoever. And normal people most assuredly couldn’t do all of the work of a full-time maid, laundress, caterer, and combination landscaper and gardener plus attend school and make sure to creatively bollix up the majority of their own work whilst also consistently, quickly completing all of their cousin’s homework perfectly, all the while constantly having to spontaneously and rapidly heal all sorts of numerous, variously inflicted wounds that would have otherwise been obvious proof of abuse, all on a diet that eventually would’ve quickly ended up starving (if not first simply dehydrating to the point of death) a small to mid-sized dog. Harry, quite simply, wasn’t normal. And he knew it.

Harry had always known he wasn’t like the Dursleys or anyone else he knew. But he’d also grown up in household that didn’t tolerate the fantastical or obviously impossible, on stories of his parents being drunken, unemployed, irresponsible degenerates, being told he was a freak of nature and an evil, unnatural child. He’d known he wasn’t normal – after all, his freakish ability to heal and to stay alive on rations that would’ve killed anyone else was a big part of what kept him from being able to ever convince anyone just how abusive and neglectful the Dursleys could be towards him – so he’d taken the lesser of two evils to heart as the actual explanation for his strangeness. The Dursleys were quite obviously only as religious as it was necessary for them to be considered proper, upright, and respected by the neighbors, and their blatant hypocrisy kept Harry from ever taking any allegations that he was evil and a child of the devil at all seriously. The Dursleys were too practical and unimaginative and Anglican to really subscribe to the idea of possession or devil children, and Harry was too sure of his own basic goodness (especially in comparison to the Dursleys) to buy into the notion of some kind of demonic taint or possession.

It was all too easy, though, to imagine that he really was a freak of nature – perhaps even not quite human – given his rather abnormal abilities and all those stories about his parents being drunken degenerates. Alcohol and other drugs were known to lead to diseases and even cause mutations in fetuses and children, after all. So it only seemed logical for him to assume that he wasn’t normal because of some king of actual physical damage his parents had managed to do to themselves that had then been passed on to him as some kind of mutation or genetic anomaly. The more he’d (eventually) read about how human bodies were supposed to work, the more sense the idea had made.

Before Hagrid had shown up and turned his world upside down, Harry had been pretty darn sure that he’d just had some kind of defect (or many a series of individually small but all together major abnormalities that added up to some fairly serious defects) in the gene sequences of his DNA – that his genes, his chromosomes, were, for lack of a better word, messed up – and that this was what made him such a freak. If not for Hagrid, it never would have occurred to him to even consider magic as a possible explanation for all of the strangeness surrounding him. The fact that magic apparently ran in families had made it easier for him to accept the notion, even though it was so fantastical, because it hinted at the idea that magical ability was something one was born with – something written into one’s genes, something like a specific series of somewhat atypical sequences in one’s very DNA – and therefore something that could be logically and even scientifically explained (though he rather imagined that blood bigots like Draco Malfoy wouldn’t be too pleased to hear about it, since it would doubtlessly destroy their ridiculous preconceptions about blood purity).

Personal curiosity about the genetic makeup of witches and wizards (and any other such magical beings) vs. Muggles (and any other such nonmagical folk) aside, though, knowing that he was a wizard now could only change so many of Harry’s ideas about himself and the basic nature of the world. It didn’t, for example, change the fact that he considered himself intelligent and basically good but not very brave (since he had, after all, gone to great lengths to hide his intelligence, in order to make his life with the Dursleys a bit easier and safer), or that he craved the attention and love of others because his life with the Dursleys was so utterly bereft of love and comfort. It also didn’t change the fact that, even though he knew that the way the Dursleys treated him was criminally wrong, Harry had basically given up hope that anyone else would ever realize that particular truth or care enough about the injustice of it to try to help him actually get away from the Dursleys.

The people at Hogwarts had addressed his acceptance letters properly – to his cupboard under the stairs, until it made the Dursleys nervous enough that they made Harry move into Dudley’s second room, and then “to the smallest bedroom” – and so, logically, they must not think that there was anything wrong with making a child live for most of a decade in a space so small that a person would’ve been ticketed for or perhaps even arrested for trying to kennel a dog in it. Hagrid had heard how the Dursleys spoke of Harry and to him and he’d also seen the way that they generally treated Harry (when they weren’t abusing him outright, that is), and he’d been more angry about the insult the Dursley’s had given the headmaster of Hogwarts in their tirade about wizarding folk and magic in general than about their hatefulness towards and mistreatment of Harry. This boy, though, this Cedric Diggory, seemed genuinely concerned (and even upset) about the fact that Harry had never had any real new clothes just for himself before. In fact, the older boy had looked shocked and more than a little dismayed when Harry had finally gotten out of his half pinned up new robe and so given Cedric a good look at just how small and skinny Harry really was and how ragged and oversized his Muggle clothes were. The more Harry picked at his meal, the darker Cedric’s gaze got and the more obvious his concern became . . . and the more nervous Harry, in turn, got.

He didn’t know what to do or say to this boy – he knew the way the Dursleys treated him was wrong, but those people in the Leaky Cauldron had treated him like a hero or some kind of incarnation of everything good and strong and pure in the world, like a god given flesh, and Harry understood the need for hope and victory, how people could be made over into avatars of luck and safety and hope, in times of trouble (even though he personally thought it was ridiculous of all these people to be adulating him and assuming he was somehow so special that he couldn’t be killed by Voldemort when it was fairly obvious to Harry that he was still alive out of either sheer dumb luck alone, because of some kind of mistake on the evil wizard’s part, or else due to some protective spell or charm his parents had managed to cast on him before they were killed), but he really wanted to be liked or not liked on his own merit, not just because he’d somehow or another managed to survive Voldemort’s attack on his family.

Harry hadn’t told Cedric his last name because he’d wanted to know how the older boy would react to him, to just Harry, and not to this larger than life idea of Harry Potter, boy wonder, that the people in the Leaky Cauldron had all had. That didn’t change the fact, though, that, if he was going to really be friends with Cedric, he was going to have to share his full name, especially if he planned on letting Cedric help him get his new wand. And if he was going to be friends with Cedric, then he should tell him about the Dursleys, about how they treated Harry, and trust that, if it actually could be done, then he would help Harry figure out a way to safely get away from the Dursleys once and for all.

He should tell Cedric the truth about himself and his life, no matter how bad it might make the celebrated and iconic Harry Potter look, because it was the truth and friends were honest with each other, weren’t they? They couldn’t very well be very good or very true friends if they were lying to each other or keeping quiet about such important things, after all. Could they? And besides, it was the truth. It was the truth about Harry James Potter, former (and quite possibly future, once the Dursleys stopped worrying about whether other unnatural freaks knew about Harry’s living arrangements) resident of the cupboard under the stairs at number four Privet Drive, Little Whinging, Surrey. What was more, it was a truth that, in combination with the fact that Harry had (thanks to Hagrid’s personal delivery of a copy of his Hogwarts acceptance letter and his persuasive accounting of the wizarding world and the truth about Harry’s nonalcoholic parents) accepted his wizarding background and powers, might very well get him killed, if he should ever return to the Dursleys and the Dursleys should decide that killing him in order to wipe out his freakish unnaturalness was a better solution than continuing to try (and to fail) to beat the magic out of him.

Poking desultorily at his chips one last time, Harry finally sighed, put his fork down, and, taking a deep breath to help screw up his courage, asked, “Cedric, do you know if there are any laws in the wizarding world to help protect minors from unfit guardians?”

Looking at him with such grave seriousness that it might have easily been mistaken for grimness on the part of any curious passers-by, Cedric replied with questions of his own, his voice softly gentle and earnest. “Harry, do you need help out of a bad situation? Did the people you live with react badly to finding out you’re a wizard? My dad works in the Ministry of Magic, and there’s an office for crimes against underage witches and wizards. He doesn’t work there, but I’m sure he can get you an appointment to file a complaint. Just say the word, and I’ll go fetch him or send a house-elf to get him.”

“It’s . . . not quite that simple, Cedric. I mean, yeah, my aunt and uncle and cousin all think that I’m a freak for being a wizard, but they haven’t really started treating me any worse, since I got my Hogwarts acceptance letter, than they already were. It’s that they kept all of this from me, deliberately, and they’ve treated me like – well. Not very well.” Harry flushed under Cedric’s steady, concerned regard, dropping his gaze to his unfinished meal, feeling embarrassed to the point of shame even though he knew, logically, that he had nothing to be ashamed of and that it was the Dursleys who’d been doing wrong, not him. “I’m sorry, I’m not explaining this well. It’s just – it’s hard. I’d pretty much given up on ever finding anyone who’d be willing to help me. The Dursleys did a bang up job of making me an isolated outcast. No one’s ever been willing to really hear me out, before. Or they heard me, but they didn’t really listen. With magic, though, there’s some kind of way to tell when someone’s telling the truth, right? I mean, there must be, or else no one would ever be able to find enough proof to convict a witch or wizard criminal of an actual crime, because they could just use spells to get rid of all of the incriminating evidence and erase or tamper with the memories of the witnesses so that no one could remember what they’d actually seen. With magic, though, there should be a way to make it so that a person can only tell the truth. There would have to be, if magical people have police and prisons and whatnot, right? So I could go to this Ministry office and they’d have to listen to me and know that I was telling the truth, no matter how fantastic or impossible it might seem, right?”

“Pensieves can’t lie – if they’re tampered with at all, then they either won’t work, or the altered memories are so obviously tampered with that they’d just be recollected or confirmed in some other way. Veritassium is a truth serum that can’t be overcome or gotten around once it’s been ingested. Recipients must speak the truth, the whole truth, no matter what they’re asked or what they might or might not have intended to say, before taking the potion. But Harry, it usually doesn’t get that far. It’s the accused who are investigated, not the ones who’ve been hurt. If your guardians have been mistreating you just because you’re a wizard, the Ministry will prosecute them for child abuse and you’ll be placed with a wizarding family,” Cedric earnestly replied, startling Harry by reaching out to place a hand on the hands Harry was twisting together violently on the table, behind his plate. “Harry, do you need me to call my dad here to help you?”

“I – I – It’s more complicated than that,” Harry finally managed to reply, not bothered to hide his rising misery or anxiety. “You see, I didn’t even know about magic before today, when Hagrid tracked me down to personally hand me a copy of my Hogwarts acceptance letter, since the Dursleys had intercepted and destroyed all the others and were so determined that I’d never find out the truth that they packed us up and tried to run away where they thought no one would be able to find me to deliver a copy of the letter. I always knew I was different, because I heal so much faster than normal people do and I’m never really sick and I can survive off so little food and water and, well, other things, too, but I’d been told my parents were drunken degenerates who died in a car crash I’d somehow caused, not that they died in a war against an evil wizard. I didn’t really know who or what I was, before today. But the wizarding world seems to have this really unrealistic idea of who and what I am, because of something that happened when I was a baby that no one really understands, and I’m afraid people will react badly if they know how the Dursleys have treated me not because the Dursleys are wrong and bad but because they won’t understand how their wonderful baby savior could grow up to be just another neglected, abused child, but Cedric, please! I really do need to get away from these people! They only reason I’m still alive is because my power has apparently been picking up the slack, helping me and healing me and making sure I didn’t die of starvation or dehydration some night when I was locked up in my cupboard under the stairs. I have to get away fro them before they manage to do something to me that’s too serious for my power to heal or find some way to help balance out. The Ministry can investigate me all it wants to, if it’ll help keep other people from reacting badly, I just – I just need to get away from these people. Please. They think they can beat the magic out of me, but I don’t think I could live without it. I just – I don’t – I – ”

“Harry – Harry ! It’s all right. It’ll be all right. I’ll get my dad and we’ll take care of everything. I promise. Okay? Just – look up here a moment, okay? Can I – ?” Cedric gestured slightly with his right hand – the left one still tucked securely under Harry’s chin, tilting it up so that Harry had to look at him – and then waited, calmly and patiently, until Harry finally gave a jerk to his head in acquiescence. Cedric then slowly but steadily reached out (that right hand trembling ever so slightly) and brushed Harry’s unruly black hair back away from his forehead. As the lightning bolt scar across the right half of Harry’s forehead came into view, he breathed out a sound like sounded half like a gasp and half like a sigh. “Ah, damn. Harry Potter? Bloody hell! Harry, I am so sorry. Will you – no, wait, it’s probably not a good idea to leave you sitting out here all by yourself. Even I wouldn’t be here by myself if Scott hadn’t gotten his days crossed and my mom hadn’t been called away on business. I have a house-elf trailing me, to make sure I’m alright until Dad gets off work and can come join me, but I don’t want to leave you out here by yourself. Come on, Harry. We’ll leave a note for Hagrid at Flourish and Blotts with our house-elf, and then I’ll take you to my dad, okay? Unless you’d rather do it another way?”

The quietly heartfelt cry, Ah, damn! nearly broke Harry’s resolve to remain calm. He found himself having to blink rapidly (especially as Cedric carefully smoothed the fringe of his hair back down over his forehead, hiding the telltale scar again) to keep back the moisture in his eyes that automatically wanted to spill over into tears. Suddenly much more hesitant and nervous, Harry found himself blushing and stammering as he tried to answer, his voice little louder than a whisper as he replied, “I – I think I might feel better if I had my wand, first. A – a wizard’s supposed to have a wand for proper magic, right?”

“Unless it’s accidental magic, wandless magic is supposed to be very hard to do, difficult to control, and extremely draining. If the wand will make you feel safer, we’ll go there first. I’m sure Mr. Ollivander will let us borrow his fireplace, if we ask,” Cedric immediately replied, his voice soothingly reassuring.

“Alright. Should we – ?” Harry trailed off, gesturing slightly towards the table.

“No, just leave the leftovers and such. There are charms on the utensils and cups to return them to the right café, and the rest will sort itself out into the proper bins, so that things that can be recycled will end up at the right places instead of just in the trash. Come on. Ollivanders is way down at the other end of Diagon Alley, away from the Leaky Cauldron entrance.”

“Alright. Lead on, and I’ll follow.”

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