He glanced up at the Slytherin table, giving Draco the barest of nods, trying not to outwardly smile.
"Morning, Harry!" The cheerful greeting came from Susan Bones, sat on the Hufflepuff bench nearby, absently braiding her wavy copper hair over her shoulder.
"Hi, Susan. Good summer?"
"Wasn't bad until the Cup happened. Aunt Amelia's barely been home since, it's all madness." Harry remembered that her aunt was the head of the DMLE, and grimaced; no doubt she'd been even busier than Mr Weasley was. "Did you end up listening to that lecture I told you about, by the way?" In one of Susan's last letters, she'd told him about a lecture that was being broadcast on the Wizarding Wireless, all about how the lack of information for muggleborns entering the wizarding world was leading to a slow muggle-fication of their society, and it was going to lead to them being discovered eventually. It was an incredibly controversial topic.
"Yeah, it was really interesting!" Harry enthused, straddling the bench so he could eat his porridge while keeping up the conversation. "He had a lot of good points, but I did think it was a bit extreme. The wizarding world can be dragged into the future without getting over-run with muggles. I mean, wouldn't it be so much easier to use pens and notebooks in class instead of quills and a million rolls of parchment? Or hell, computers! They're getting more popular with the muggles. If someone could figure out how to make muggle technology work with magic, it'd be a total game-changer."
"That would just increase the likelihood of the wizarding world being discovered, though," Hannah Abbott pointed out, jumping into the conversation. Her dad was muggleborn, having taken her mother's pureblood surname when they married, so she was fairly familiar with muggle technology. "Imagine, even if someone managed to figure it out and we had a whole separate internet for the wizarding world. All it would take is one particularly tech-savvy muggle to crack it and we'd be out in the open for everyone to see."
She made a fair point, and Harry hummed thoughtfully. "Okay, maybe not that much of a cultural exchange, then. But you can't argue against pens."
"Oh, Merlin, no! Dad's been saying the wizarding world should switch for years. One of these days I swear I'm gonna do my homework in biro just to see what the teachers say," Hannah said with a laugh.
"The fact of the matter is, if we keep pushing away everything muggle and refusing to learn about them, we'll only stand out more," Susan continued, bringing them back on track. "Harry, you were at the World Cup, weren't you? You saw what half the older folks thought was a good example of muggle clothing! How do they expect to stay incognito if they've got no idea about muggle life?"
Harry remembered some of the more… interesting outfits he'd seen at the Cup. Susan was right. How could wizards blend in with muggles if they didn't know the first thing about them?
They were interrupted by the arrival of Ron and Hermione, who looked bewildered by the company Harry was keeping. "There you are!" Hermione said by way of greeting, dropping a stack of books on the table beside her. How she could have so many when they didn't even have their timetables yet, Harry didn't know. She and Ron both seemed set on ignoring Harry's Hufflepuff companions, talking to him as if he was alone. The two girls shared an annoyed look, getting to their feet. "See you later, Harry," Susan said.
Once they were gone, Ron turned to him. "What you talking to Hufflepuffs for?" he asked suspiciously. Harry raised an eyebrow.
"I didn't realise it was such a big deal," he retorted a little sharply. "We were talking about the World Cup." Sort of. Eventually. Tangentially.
Ron seemed a little wrong-footed that Harry didn't immediately see the problem in speaking to those outside his own house. "Really, Ron, it's not like they're Slytherins," Hermione pointed out diplomatically, buttering a slice of toast.
Harry wondered what they would've done if he had been talking to Slytherins, and scowled into his orange juice.
McGonagall came around to hand out timetables, and Harry eyed his over. Herbology with the Hufflepuffs first thing. Maybe Harry would sit with Hannah and Susan instead of Ron and Hermione, just to show them.
He couldn't, though. He couldn't risk Dumbledore getting suspicious of him, and it would be an obvious sign that the Compulsion charm was gone if Harry started socialising with people outside his own house. He was supposed to be the perfect little Gryffindor — and evidently that involved only valuing the opinions of other Gryffindors.
Was it normal, he wondered? Kids spending their whole Hogwarts career only talking to people inside their own house? He glanced around the hall; no, there were plenty of groups with mixed colours on their robes. It wasn't common, but it wasn't unusual either. Finishing his breakfast, Harry slowly began to plot. If he could get all the houses mixing together more without it being just him, maybe Dumbledore wouldn't realise Harry knew the truth. He could pass it off as school unity in the face of international competition; they would all have to rally behind the Hogwarts champion, whoever it ended up being. That would be a good start.
He ignored Ron and Hermione bickering about house elves and stood up, making a vague excuse about needing to get his Herbology book. As soon as he could, he'd have to get the heirs gathered and start tossing ideas around; between them they could surely think of something.
Baby steps, but they'd get there eventually. He was playing a dangerous game, going against Dumbledore right under the man's nose. But as much as Harry had promised Sirius he wouldn't go looking for trouble, he wouldn't just sit and do nothing. Whatever Dumbledore's plan for Harry was, it was clearly supposed to come to a head before he turned seventeen; the goblins had assured him that with the block on his core, Harry wouldn't have survived his coming of age. That meant he was running out of time to get the upper hand.
He'd spent most of last year keeping his head down. It was time to get the pieces moving.
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