AN: I'm a bit jealous of you guys tbh, no fic that I like ever updates daily for a whole week… Unless I hit myself on the head and read my own story? Anyway, my original is sitting on 641/600 followers so here's another quick update. Probably this will for real be the last one though, unless…? Check out my new story on RoyalRoad Time Looping for Dummies by Bor902
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The day after his session with Flitwick, where he'd seen the golden trio on their way to Hagrid's hut, he awoke to pandemonium.
"You won't believe this," Cedric muttered as he came down to a chaotic common room full of harsh and dissatisfied whispers.
"Believe what?" Harry asked confusedly as he looked around. Why was it that, for once, everyone else was up before him? He was usually amongst the first.
"100 points mate!" Cedric exclaimed with a horrified voice.
"Someone got 100 points in an exam, was it me?" Harry asked, causing his friend to facepalm.
"No, you numbskull, two morons cost us 100 house points," Cedric explained and pointed towards the large yellow and black hourglass affixed over the ever-burning fireplace. There was a scroll appended next to the hourglass, noting down who had done what.
Taking a few steps towards it, Harry just about made out that sometime yesterday at midnight, Hufflepuff had lost 50 points each due to the actions of Harley Black and Neville Longbottom, who had been caught out past curfew with a crate that had previously, allegedly, contained a dragon.
"Wow, that's hardcore," Harry muttered with faux surprise. "Second and first years are smuggling dragons now, where can they even escalate to later? Genocide?"
"This is serious," Cedric chided. "We'll lose the house cup at this rate."
"It happens," Harry responded as he started getting ready for breakfast.
"We've won both times since we've come to the school, mostly because of you. I thought you'd be angrier," Cedric muttered as he hurried alongside him.
"Going by the fact Penny's not here, presumably in her Potions Room, she doesn't care much either."
Cedric awkwardly scratched the back of his head as they exited the Hufflepuff common room and started making their way towards breakfast. As they approached the Great Hall they were slowly joined by Ravenclaws coming from above and Slytherins from below, both of the groups were surprisingly self-involved instead of sniping at each other.
The reason as to why became clear as the entrance to the Great Hall came into view, alongside all four hourglasses affixed to the wall next to it.
Hogwarts houses usually ended their year with 400 points averages which accumulated slowly over the year. Currently however, Hufflepuff was at the bottom with 192, Slytherin was third with 220, Ravenclaw was second with 224 and Gryffindor was at first with 266.
"Damn, they got butchered," Harry commented idly.
"Granger," a Ravenclaw he was vaguely familiar with spat next to him. "Ridiculous," the boy muttered before walking off.
Harry walked closer to check the causes for the deductions and discovered that Hermione had also been implicated in the dragon smuggling, while Draco had been written up for being out of bounds after curfew, losing Slytherin house 30 points.
"Seems a bit unfair, getting more than half the same deduction for being out of bounds as the others got for dragon smuggling out of all things," Harry commented to Cedric, causing a group of older Slytherins walking past to snort.
"Hear, hear, biased points taken from McGonagall, shall we ever see the likes of it again?" One of them said sarcastically.
"They take it very seriously, I see," Harry commented as the two of them went into the Great Hall to sit down for breakfast next to Penny, who was already there.
Loading some bacon and eggs onto his plate he looked around to see Hermione listlessly stabbing at a plate of food at the Ravenclaw table, a large circle of harsh isolation spread around her. A similar thing was happening to Neville and Harley who were stubbornly holding their heads high and returning the glare of anyone who threw them one.
Draco for his part, had wisely chosen to not be present this morning and was missing from the Slytherin table.
Not caring as much about the drama, Harry began eating, noting idly how in the background an older Ravenclaw said something with a sneer to Hermione, at which point the girl simply stood up and stormed off. Neville and Harley, seemingly tuned in on their trio energy, immediately stood up and followed her. All of them left their plates unfinished.
"So much drama," Harry said idly, before he realised with a scowl that if he had to court the boy who lived into trusting him to more easily resolve future conflicts, this was a great time to continue with the task.
He sighed, stacked his bacon and eggs between two slices of toast and stood up, gripping his makeshift sandwich.
"Where are you going?" Cedric asked, looking up from her newspaper, which was showing the picture of a victorious Fudge who had, according to the headline, "made Potter fudge his chances at the elections in the most recent debate."
"It's just points," Harry answered with a roll of his eyes, taking a bite out of his sandwich and left the Great Hall to pursue the golden trio.
They were already out of sight, but a quick twirl of his wand manifested his patronus, which promptly started bounding off towards one of the stairs going up.
Harry followed at a leisurely face and found himself going up and up until he eventually found himself in the one place to which nobody would go during the day, the astronomy tower.
There, next to the large telescope pointing towards the cloudy sky, he found Neville and Harley consoling a crying Hermione.
Harry was just about to say something when his raccoon, upon catching sight of Neville, jumped in the boy's face and screamed. Harry had found a way not to need to speak to the Patronus to communicate the message. Now he just had to think about it. Unfortunately, he'd chosen to use this power for evil, making the raccoon say…
"Awuga!" Harry's patronus shouted, scaring the boy who lived into almost jumping off the astronomy tower, before he calmed down and glared at Harry.
"You came here to shout at us as well?" the boy asked stubbornly, causing Hermione to sob louder and hide her face in her robes.
Harry, for his part, simply walked past the trio to lean against the railing. The winds buffeted his face, throwing his hair into chaos and making his robes whip into the air behind him.
"Nah, I just came to tell you not to worry about it too much," he replied, receiving a stunned silence in response.
"But you won Hufflepuff the house cup two years in a row!" Hermione exclaimed. "All the Ravenclaws say you not being sorted in our house was the biggest loss since Dumbledore!"
Harry turned his head to stare at the girl, who ran red in the face at his attention. Well, more red than she'd already been from crying.
"Hermione, I've literally been running an unsanctioned duelling club for most of this year. My academic performance has nothing to do with my delinquency record." He shuddered as he thought back to last year and his battle against Grayback. "In fact, if I were to ever be held accountable for all the little, eh, indiscretions I've committed in this school, Hufflepuff wouldn't just lose a 100 points." He shook his head and extended a fist, presenting a thumb which pointed downwards. "We'd be the first house to ever go into minus, in fact," he said with a chuckle, receiving a disbelieving look from the girl.
"I'll be honest with you three," Harry said with a shrug. "The only mistake you made was getting caught, that's it. You think the same older years mad at you haven't also smuggled in some firewhisky or other questionable material? They have, they just weren't caught."
"That's a horrible lesson to teach," Harley snarked. "It's fine as long as you don't get caught?"
Harry stared at her blankly. "Of course, it's not like the house points actually matter. Hufflepuff has had the house cup in the common room both years since you joined. Have you ever cared, beyond simply noting that it was there?"
"Ehh, maybe you're right," the girl admitted.
"In a way, the house points are necessary to disincentivize bad behaviour, it's not like the teachers have that much control. By having the hourglass in every common room and shaming or rewarding every student depending on the behaviour exhibited, they outsource parts of the authority they have to wield to the collective," he explained, receiving three blank looks, only one of which switched to understanding after a few seconds of digestion.
"You mean it's intentional?" Hermione asked. "That our houses punish us for our mistakes?"
"Of course," Harry replied. "House points are a completely imaginary currency backed by the winner owning some fancy silverware for a year. It only has power because people believe the house cup matters."
"But that doesn't change anything," Hermione muttered. "As long as others believe, we'll still get excluded." Tears started welling up in her eyes.
"Look, you guys were caught smuggling a dragon," Harry said. "I know for a fact that while Hagrid is Merlin's gift to man and we certainly don't deserve him, he isn't the brightest, erm, lumos in class, let's say."
Harley snorted while Neville looked somewhat affronted.
"Fact is, you did something dumb and brave to help a friend, I respect you more for it. God knows I've done much dumber stuff to help my friends each time they've encountered trouble," he admitted. He thought back to Grayback again, and how he'd sabotaged the Slytherins who'd blown up Penny's Potions room back in the first year.
"Hagrid is smart," Neville said stubbornly, receiving a dubious look from Harley and a cringe from Hermione.
Harry looked at the boy with a blank face. "Is that the hill you want to die on, really?"
Neville kept his stubborn mien before sighing and giving up, hanging his head. "It was sort of dumb, dragon, wooden hut," he mumbled.
"My question is how the three of you even got caught, by Malfoy of all people too," Harry asked, voicing a concern that had been niggling at him.
The duel in the trophy room incident hadn't happened this time around, so it didn't make sense for Malfoy to sneak after the trio to try and get them into trouble.
In fact, he hadn't seen any real animosity between the boy who lived and the Malfoy scion at all.
The trio exchanged glances. "I don't know why Malfoy had it out for us either," Harley eventually said. "Never talked to the kid."
Neville and Hermione similarly shook their heads.
"Other than crossing eyes with him a few times in the great hall, never talked to him," Neville offered.
"He sneered at me once," Hermione admitted.
"Don't worry about it, I'm pretty sure his face is just stuck that way," Harley reassured the muggleborn.
"So you didn't have any animosity with him, huh?" Harry muttered. "Then it was probably a crime of opportunity. After all, had Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw lost points without Malfoy losing some as well, it would have been a pretty good deal for Slytherin."
"He would have probably gotten respect from the house if he hadn't been caught," Harley eventually said. "That's how Slytherins think."
"He must have overheard us in the library, or somewhere," Neville said with a frown, trying to rationalise the situation. He pulled his face together as if trying to remember in which places they'd discussed their plan. The fact that he couldn't narrow it down likely meant that the trio had horrible operational security measures.
"Getting caught while having access to an invisibility cloak," Harry said idly, "it's a bit sad." He carefully watched the reaction of the trio, their flinch confirming what had previously only been a suspicion.
"How do you know about the cloak?" Harley asked curiously.
"It's a Potter family heirloom, an invisibility cloak that doesn't lose its power no matter the years. Your father," he jutted his head towards Neville, "used it to great effect when he was at Hogwarts. He doesn't strike me as someone who wouldn't give the same opportunity to his son."
"Our parents were in the same year," Harley suddenly remembered, before clamping up.
It was too late, however, Hermione had sniffed information, so she turned to Harry, tears forgotten. "Oh really? I never heard you talk about your family. The papers said you're a muggleborn, though?" she asked confusedly.
Harry threw her a cryptic look. "You'll notice as you grow older that Wizarding Britain is very similar to Nazi Germany. This is one of the examples. The child of a Muggleborn is still a Muggleborn. Anyway, I have to go to classes now, I'd suggest you three do the same," he finished before turning around and leaving.
His abrupt departure covered up one little hole in the dialogue. Namely, how exactly had he known that the invisibility cloak was a Potter heirloom and that it didn't lose its effectiveness with time?
-/-
Slowly, over time, the students forgot about the point loss, and everything returned to normal. Sure, every now and again, the golden trio got a good ribbing about the fact that they'd lost an accumulated 150 points for their houses, but let's be honest.
Dragon smuggling?
As an eleven-year-old?
That was wicked, as some would say. There was a grudging respect developing, especially considering that the trio had also, to the knowledge of the school, fought a mountain troll and won.
Still, perhaps it was because of this distance from the other students that on a cold night in May, Harry was awoken by someone shaking him awake.
He groggily opened his eyes and looked at the blonde boy shaking his shoulder as if the world was ending.
"Wake up," Neville hissed with wild eyes barely discernible in the dark of night.
"Bloody hell," Harry muttered as he looked at the panicked boy, noting that only his head was visible from underneath the invisibility cloak.
"Quirrell, he's after the stone," the boy hissed.
"Let Dumbledore deal with it," Harry muttered.
"Dumbledore's out, there's been an emergency at the ICW!" Neville exclaimed. "Sprout won't believe me, you're the best duellist in the house, we can't let him get the stone!"
"Why risk our lives so that one random wizard doesn't gain immortality and infinite gold, seems a relatively minor issue all in all, that is if the philosopher's stone is really at Hogwarts in the first place," Harry argued back.
"We can't let him get the stone," Neville whispered harshly before looking around suspiciously. "Please, you might not know, but Vol-Voldemort isn't as dead as people think. Quirrell is a death eater trying to help him regain a body!"
"Why Quirrell anyway?" Harry asked calmly, reeling from the revelation that Neville of all people knew that Voldemort was still alive.
"He's the only professor with a fake name!" Neville exclaimed, causing the other sleeping Hufflepuffs to grumble in their sleep. The boy quieted down and pulled out a large parchment from underneath the cloak. "This is a map that shows everyone in the castle, look," he said and pointed towards the third floor corridor, at the entrance of which were Hermione Granger and Harley Black.
Further ahead, already in the third chamber, was a name that Harry really hadn't wanted to see.
His suspicions were confirmed, and he wanted his willful ignorance back.
There, in the third chamber, was written, bold and clear in a font he couldn't ignore anymore, Tom Marvolo Riddle.
Harry, for some inexplicable reason, really wanted to punch Neville right then and there.
-/-
AN: Actually, this is a great point to end the chapter rush. Leave you guys on a cliffhanger. Very happy with that! Unless???
Anyway, have a great weekend!