The Many Musings of Albus Potter

i. owls

i. owls 

The night before he is due to leave for his first year at Hogwarts, Albus Potter decides he hates owls. 

In fact, he hates owls so much he makes it a point to tell his father just that from across the dinner table. Albus feels his mother stiffen beside him, and steels his expression so the sudden burst of spiteful delight he feels cannot be made evident. His sister Lily looks at him, obviously perplexed, while his older brother James, unlike him, cannot muster the patience to hide his arrogant contempt for the statement. 

It doesn't matter what they all think. It is Harry Potter, his father, that Albus is staring at. 

Harry, much to his discontent, seems to be the only one out of the lot of them that stares back at his son with a good-natured, kind smile. 

"You hate owls?" His smile seems to be almost amused, as though Albus is four years old and has said something to be laughed at. "Why's that?" 

"Their feathers get everywhere," Albus mumbles, feeling very put out that he did not get the intended reaction from his father - in fact, he's not entirely sure what he expected at all, only he'd rather hoped it would end with Harry pointing at the door, flushed with anger, telling Albus to go straight to bed. "And Agnes kept biting us when we had her," he carries on, all of a sudden self-conscious that the table is quiet and that all eyes are, unusually, on him. 

"I liked Agnes," Lily quips innocently. "She looked like dad's old owl, Hedwig, didn't she?" 

A silence descends upon the table, the tense sort; the sort Albus thought that only he could bring to family dinners whenever he says something entirely inappropriate (usually about Harry and the War). Albus feels that wicked pleasure stirring in him again as he eyes his father looking thoroughly uncomfortable, his own focus directed down at his hands under the dinner table. 

"She did indeed." It is Ginny that intervenes finally, and just like that, she is getting up and clapping her hands together, ever the captain of the house. "Now it's past your bedtime, Lily. And James, you've still got a bit of packing left to do, haven't you? Why you leave it till last minute - just like Ron - and Albus, it's best if you go to bed a little early too tonight. Big day tomorrow, yes?" She smiles radiantly at her son but he does not return it. 

"Big day," he mutters dully, ignoring the concerned look on his mother's face as he scrapes his chair back and pushes past James, who quietly mutters an insult to him as he does so, to go up to his bedroom. 

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Hogwarts isn't as bad as Albus thought it would be. 

Yes, it is certainly as annoyingly grand as James showed it off to be for all these years. And anything James approves of, Albus holds in contempt. But after three weeks of wandering aimlessly down the ancient corridors, slipping between the cracks of secret passageways that even beady-eyed Filch overlooked, and, of course, the school dinners, Albus begrudgingly has to accept that Hogwarts, for all its cold drafts and vastness, very much feels like a home. 

Home - even his house doesn't feel like a home. In fact, he rather hates it, now that Albus has had a taste of the comforts of Hogwarts castle. What possessed his father to take up such a hideous and gloomy residence is beyond Albus. Of course, Harry Potter is hardly known for his rationale. 

Even being in Slytherin isn't that bad, now that he's gotten used to the stares and the stupid, incessant whispering. James was totally horrified, of course. After all that teasing about him ending up in Slytherin house - Albus is sure James hadn't actually expected it to happen.  The thought would've flattered Albus another time, perhaps years ago, when James was the very sun that his admiration revolved around; James was so totally sure Albus would end up in Gryffindor, like him - not because he is Albus, he bitterly thinks, but because he is a Potter and the brother of James Potter and it was supposed to be a given, a no-brainer, that Albus belonged in - no, to - Gryffindor house.