Muggle-Raised Champion

Crowds and First Classes

Disclaimer – I solemnly swear that JKR owns everything Harry Potter. Whether or not I am up to no good with her characters is for you to decide.

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2:45pm

Saturday, 5 November 1994

Harry's Quarters, Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry

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Harry knew that he was hiding. That didn't mean that he had to admit it, except, perhaps to himself in the deepest, darkest part of his consciousness.

It was easy to fool himself that he was doing necessary work. After all, it simply wouldn't do to leave the massive pile of lumber lying in the middle of his workroom. And then there were the buckets and the wheelbarrow of wood off-cuts that needed to be stored; tools to be hung in place ready for use; tins of lacquer and boxes of nails and screws to put away; and a special place to find for his whittling materials.

And once all of that had been sorted, Harry could then move on to provisioning his rowan-wood desk ready for study and after that he could work on setting up an art station.

So, it was quite easy to fool himself into believing that what he was doing was vitally important before he became swamped with learning all of these strange new subjects.

Not that he believed it, of course.

He knew.

How could he not? Especially after the way that he'd raced into his quarters, his heart pounding, his breathing ragged the way that it was.

He'd now been in the castle, at Hogwarts, for two days. And in that time, he'd been swarmed by nearly everyone. Everyone, from the students to the teachers to the ghosts of all things, had wanted to meet him and talk his ear off.

And if there was one thing that Harry truly hated, it was attention. Attention meant that eyes were focused on him. And if eyes were focused on him, inevitably, bad things would happen.

Of course, it all traced back to the Dursleys.

Whenever his aunt or uncle's eyes were on him, it meant extra chores or failing that, beatings or other punishments for failing to complete said punishments in a timely or correct enough fashion or else for doing something freakish. Dudley, too, was someone who Harry had never wanted attention from. Dudley's form of attention was to play Harry-Hunting with his friends and beat Harry to a pulp.

With Dudley's blessing had seen others, firstly around Little Whinging and then around his primary school, picking on him, bullying him and beating him. It'd even bled into Stonewall High for the first couple of years before Dudley's influence finally wore off those who no longer hung around him due to Dudley being at Smeltings.

Safety was something Harry had always felt was achieved when he was alone, somewhere hidden or somewhere he could be anonymous. Thus why art and woodworking and even home economics the one year that he'd taken it had been good subjects for him: they were subjects that he could be left alone in.

Here at Hogwarts, though, was different. Here, he was constantly in the spotlight. Here he was sought out, not an uncommon occurrence in Harry's life, just the reasoning was different. Instead of wanting to beat him up, everyone here wanted to be seen in the company of The-Boy-Who-Lived and the TriWizard Champion.

He'd tried sticking close to his four tutors. Hermione, Neville, Susan and Daphne had all seemed very nice the day he'd spent with them when he'd first arrived and he'd even gone to bed that night dreaming about the possibility of perhaps even making friends here. Every meal he'd sat a different House table with one of them, attempting to get to know them better while also meeting others.