[Living For Tomorrow] Chapter 3 - A Favour (Patreon)

“Are you okay, mate? You look like you’re about to pass out,” Harry asked when he saw Florent’s pale white face and his forehead shining with sweat. 

“Just an adrenaline dump,” said the French boy. “We talked about so many things on the train but I can’t believe I forgot to ask you about the Sorting ceremony. I was so nervous on the way here. The man who guided us said we would ‘ave to wrestle Trolls or fight Dugbogs!”

Harry snickered at him as he helped himself to a sizeable serving of lasagna bolognese. 

Fleur stared at her plate for a brief moment, and then she looked at the rest of the food piled up all across the long Ravenclaw table. 

“Lasagna, crispy fried pork, some…greasy looking meat pies… Merlin, are all dinners at ‘Ogwarts as ‘eavy as this one?”

Harry glanced at him with the corner of his eyes.

“If that’s too heavy for your palate, just get some bangers and mash.”

Fleur scowled at the tone of his voice. It wasn’t lost on her that she was being made fun of. But she was too hungry and mentally drained to start anything. 

“What are bangers?”

“Um, it’s what we call sausages sometimes.”

“That’s so weird. Why would you call sausages bangers?” Fleur muttered while putting three sausages and some mashed potatoes on her plate. 

“Beats me,” Harry said, shrugging his shoulders. 

“It’s because some sausages used to explode when you cooked them,” a freckled girl with shoulder-length red hair sitting across them piped in. “I’m Elspeth MacGillony, but you can call me Lizzie.”

“But why would sausages explode? Ah, sorry, where are my manners? I’m Fle-Florent Delacour. Pleased to make your acquaintance,” Fleur said, standing up slightly so that she could reach the girl’s extended hand over the table and shake it.

Misinterpreting Fleur’s stammer as a sign of shyness, Lizzie smiled in delight. 

“It comes from muggles. Back during the First World War, they used to add water when making sausages due to a food shortage. So when you put them in the pan with boiling oil, the water in them exploded.”

“Oh!” Fleur said in wonder. 

“It’s not something many witches know, but I’m half-blood. And I also love cooking,” Lizzie said. 

“If only you were as good at Potions as you are at cooking,” the girl next to her said quietly, making Harry almost choke on his pumpkin juice as he burst into laughter. 

“Elora, that was so uncalled for!” Elspeth shouted, her cheeks burning with embarrassment, when she saw the French boy watching them with a grin on his ridiculously handsome face. “And why are you laughing, Mister “I-can’t-find-Mars-on-the-sky”?” Lizzie barked at Harry, who was still coughing.  

“Hey! I’ll have you know that the Weasley twins messed with the lenses of my telescope! It couldn’t see any colours other than white and yellow! I may be bad at Astronomy, but I’m not that bad!” Harry said defensively. 

“No, you’re really bad. I’m surprised you made it to your fifth year,” the quiet girl, Elora, piped in again, making this time several others at the table start snickering at Harry. 

“He may be bad at Astronomy, but at least he didn’t Vanish his cauldron instead of the potion in it,” a tall boy with blonde hair and black-rimmed glasses said. 

It was Elora’s turn to flush now, her cheeks getting a healthy pink colour.

“By the way, I’m Simon Dedworth. I’m a sixth year,” the blonde boy introduced himself to Fleur. “Welcome to Hogwarts.”

“I’m Florent Delacour. Thank you,” Fleur said, shaking his hand too. 

“Be careful with him. He’s a Prefect. And a stickler for the rules. Better not let him catch you on the corridors after the curfew,” Lizzie said, scrunching up her nose in distaste.

“You’ll never put your grudge to rest, will you? It happened at the beginning of last year!”

“Of course not! How could you dock points from your own housemates?! I can’t believe you!” Lizzie raised her voice at him. “If it wasn’t for you taking points off, we might’ve won the House Cup last year!”

“You can’t know that!” 

“Yes, I can! We lost by only 10 points! The 10 points that you booked off from Ravenclaw when you caught me after the curfew on the corridors!” Lizzie spoke heatedly. 

“Cut me some slack; it was in my first few weeks as a Prefect. I was trying to be a model student,” Simon mumbled. 

“To be fair, we couldn’t have known Dumbledore would give the Gryffindors 170 points on the last day of school… like, who does that?? We had it in the bag. That was so unfair!” an Asian girl said in chagrin. 

Fleur watched their interaction with envy. They appeared to be arguing, but she could tell that they were not truly angry with each other. It was just banter among friends. 

‘Friends…’ she sighed wistfully. 

Soon, the welcoming feast came to an end, and the Prefects started rounding up the first-year students in order to lead the way for them to the dorms. 

Right as Harry was about to stand up from the table as well, a small white parchment crane flew from the professors’ table to him. 

Once the parchment crane landed on the table, it unfurled, revealing itself to be a note that read:

Dear Mr Potter, 

I would like to talk to you in my office, 30 minutes from now. 

Filius Flitwick. 

⁂

“Starting a fight with two of your fellow students on the very first day of the year? A Prefect hasn’t done something this outrageous in over 300 years, Mr Brunt!”

Maybe due to his tiny size, even when he was upset, Professor Flitwick’s anger did not seem intimidating. Nevertheless, despite being twice as tall as him, Felix Brunt did not dare meet his eyes. The boy was staring at his shoes, unable to utter a word. 

“I am not blind to your rivalry with Mr Potter but your behaviour was out of line. You are a Prefect. You are supposed to be an example for the rest of the students, not behave even worse than them. You’ve brought great shame not only to me but to the Ravenclaw house too."

“I’m sorry, professor.”

“I hope your apology is sincere. I managed to convince Professor McGonagall not to strip you of your Prefect badge, but there won’t be a third chance for you. The next moment you are involved in a similar incident, I will personally see to it that you are demoted.”

At that moment, someone knocked on the door, and Flitwick answered:

“Come in.”

Felix clenched his fist when his eyes fell on the newcomer’s face. It was Harry Potter. 

“Mr Brunt, you may go. Don’t forget our conversation. You are on thin ice now.”

“Thank you for giving me a second chance, professor. Good night,” Brunt said respectfully before leaving the office. 

“Professor Flitwick, you wanted to see me?” Harry asked after Brunt left. 

“Yes. Please, have a seat,” the Charms Master said, interlocking his fingers and leaning on his elbows as he looked at him. 

“Is there anything you wish to tell me?” 

“I’d like to ask you that question myself,” the professor said. 

“If it’s about what happened with Brunt on the train, he started it. There were at least 20 people who witnessed the whole thing; you can ask them,” Harry said calmly. 

“Mr Brunt did start it, indeed, but you certainly finished it.”

Harry’s facial expression didn’t change a bit. “Finished it, how? I just picked up my trunk and left.”

“I do not appreciate the way you’re trying to play the fool, Mr Potter,” the tiny professor said. “From the words of the other students, Mr Brunt inexplicably turned his ire on someone entirely unrelated. There are only two possibilities: the Imperius Curse and the Confundus Charm. I abhor the idea that you or anyone else in this school would ever cast one of the three Unforgivables on their fellow students. Furthermore, the Imperius Curse cannot be cast nonverbally. That leaves only the Confundus Charm.”

“It’s an interesting hypothesis, but there is one big problem with it, professor,” Harry said. “How would I cast a nonverbal charm? I’m just a 5th year. No, practically, I’m still a 4th year since I haven’t even started my first day this year.”

Flitwick and Harry looked each other in the eyes for a few seconds without saying a word. 

“You’ve got most people fooled, but I know you’re a much more gifted student than you’re letting on in classes, Mr Potter. What if I were to check your wand? Would you agree to it?”

Normally, checking a student’s wand was considered an invasion of privacy. As for checking grown-up people’s wands against their will, one would need a warrant from the Department of Magical Law Enforcement. Those rules could be ignored in case of an emergency or with the approval of a student’s magical guardian but it was not something that could be done lightly. 

But Harry wordlessly took out his wand from the holster at his waist and handed it to the professor, handle first. There was no hesitation in his movements. 

However, Flitwick didn’t take it. Instead, he let out a sigh. 

“I’ll take your word for it this time. I won’t pursue this matter any longer but I would like you to do me a favour instead.”

Harry felt his annoyance rising but didn’t let it show on his face. ‘Why do I have to do him a favour? He has no proof it was me.’

Flitwick continued speaking, not knowing what was going through Harry’s mind at that moment. 

“I’d like you to watch over Mr Delacour, the new fifth-year student that we got this year.”

Harry’s expression changed.

“Professor, we have the OWLs this year. I simply don’t have time to babysit some French guy. Why ask me in the first place? Ravenclaws has 6 Prefects. Isn’t that something that they are supposed to do?”

“Normally, that would be the case. However, with the increased measures of security this year, the Prefects will have longer and more complex patrol tasks alongside their duty to coordinate students. I cannot put an additional burden on their shoulders,” said Flitwick.

“I have been told you struck up a friendship with Mr Delacour so I thought you would be the best person to guide him and support him.”

Flitwick let out a sigh. Initially, his plan was to make Harry feel guilty for getting into a fight and ask for a favour for the sake of letting him off the hook. But that didn’t work out too well because he had no proof that the boy had cast the Confudus Charm on Felix Brunt. 

“Professor, I really can’t spare the time looking out for someone else. It’s not just the OWLs… You saw what happened last year. The killer of my parents is back. He snuck into the school and spent an entire year right under Professor Dumbledore’s nose. I can’t afford to waste time on meaningless things.”

Momentarily, the tiny professor was caught off guard. He had not expected Harry Potter to bring up the incident from the previous year. 

“Your concerns are not unfounded, but I assure you, Mr Potter, something like that won’t happen again. Professor Dumbledore, Professor McGonagall, and myself have increased the strength and number of protective spells around the castle sevenfold.”

But Harry was undaunted. 

“Hogwarts is the safest place in Great Britain - that's what everyone says. It’s what my grandparents always told me too. Yet, last year, my brother would have died if I hadn’t been there to save him! It wasn’t the Headmaster who protected him. It wasn’t the professors. It wasn’t Hogwarts’ protective spells either. I did.”

Something in the tone of his voice sent shivers down Flitwick’s spine. For a split second, there was a burning intensity and an almost mad look in the boy’s green eyes. But it was gone right away, making Flitwick think that he was just imagining things. 

The tiny professor drummed his fingers on the desk for a few moments, seemingly pondering something in his mind. 

“I won’t ask you to take care of her-” Realizing his mistake, Flitwick quickly coughed, “-of Mr Delacour for nothing. Your aim is to improve your skills with a wand to better protect your brother… How about I help you in that endeavour and you help me in mine?”

By now, Harry was starting to become bewildered.

“Professor, I don’t mean to pry, but why are you paying so much attention to this new student?”

“It is… ...not something that can I talk about with a student,” Flitwick said slowly.

He couldn’t possibly tell Harry that Florent Delacour, who was going to sleep in the same dorm as him, was, in fact, a girl in disguise and that she was a Veela. 

“But it is imperative that Mr Delcaour does not encounter any significant problems during his stay at Hogwarts.”

Flitwick felt the beginning of a migraine just thinking of all the things that could go wrong. If not for Dumbledore’s unshakable position due to his countless achievements and many years of service, neither Flitwick nor McGonagall would have ever accepted going along with something like that.

Any other headmaster would have been sacked right away. After all, all that it would take was for one of the professors in the know (either Flitwick or McGonagall) to inform Hogwarts’ Board of Governors of his deeds for the Headmaster to be fired. 

Harry did not reject Flitwick’s offer right away. It was a well-known fact among the students that, in spite of his harmless appearance, the tiny Charms professor was one of the best duellists in the world. He became a master duellist fresh out of Hogwarts, eventually earning the title of a Duelling Champion. Even after he was done with his duelling career, Professor Flitwick continued his studies in Charms, becoming a Doctor. Frankly put, someone like him was overqualified for teaching children. A wizard or witch of his talent could be earning good money by taking apprentices who wished to earn a Master’s degree in Charms. 

“How would you help me get better? How would I get stronger?” Harry asked. 

“We’ll be duelling. Theory and studying can only get you so far, and you can do that on your own, just fine. What you need is practice. Many wizards and witches think themselves skilled with a wand, but, due to a lack of practice, they may not be able to showcase even 50% of their true skills in a duel. As long as the Unforgivables aren’t being used, a competent duellist could easily hold his own against five regular people and win. There is a very large skill gap between wizards and witches.”

⁂

The distance between Professor Flitwick’s office and the Ravenclaw common room was not that long, but it did take a good five or six minutes of walking at a brisk pace to cover it. 

By the time his meeting with the Charms professor ended and he finally arrived at the dorms, most of the students had long since gone to their common rooms. The corridors were empty and quiet, save for the random chatter of the portraits hanging on the walls. 

Therefore, he was surprised to find out that someone was still out in front of the door leading to the common room. Unexpectedly, it was the transfer student, the French boy. 

“Having trouble with the riddle?” asked Harry when he saw him pacing back and forth. 

“Ah, non. I finished unpacking a while ago, and I was a little bored. I find this eagle knocker very interesting. I love the riddles! We didn’t ‘ave something like that at Beauxbatons!”

Harry threw him a weird look. 

“Um, I’m heading in. It’s almost the curfew, though, so be careful not to be caught outside by a prefect.”

“You think Simon will take a point off from me too?” Fleur said, giggling softly. 

Harry chuckled awkwardly in response. Now that they were alone again, hearing the French boy’s feminine laughter reminded him once again of the sense of incongruity he was letting off. 

Not wanting to spend a second longer in the awkward atmosphere, he walked to the door and touched the eagle knocker. 

“One night, a hag, and a goblin are on a boat. The boat crashes. The goblin jumps off first, the hag jumps off second; who jumps off third?” the eagle knocker asked.

Fleur and Harry glanced at each other for a second. Fleur, in particular, looked positively confused. 

“It does not make sense?” she stated in a questioning tone. “There are only a goblin and a ‘ag. Who is the third?” 

Harry smiled. “The answer isn’t that difficult, but it might be a little hard for you because you’re not a native English speaker. One night could also be one Knight, as in, a man wearing plate armour. They are written differently, but they are pronounced the same.”

Eyes wide, Fleur let out an exclamation of surprise. 

Turning his attention to the eagle knocker, Harry spoke:

“The knight jumped the third.”

“Correct.” the eagle confirmed and folded its large, silvery wings, allowing the door to be opened. 

“Are you coming in too?” Harry asked the French boy while holding the automatically closing door for him.

Fleur would have liked to spend more time playing with the eagle knocker but decided against it. She did not want to risk being asked a difficult riddle and getting locked out of the dorm the entire night. 

“Yes, I’m coming too.”

⁂

“Oh wow. They changed the rooms this year,” Fleur heard Harry say in surprise when the two of them entered their room. 

“Changed? In what way?” asked Fleur. 

“I thought there would be four beds since we are four 5th-year boys together with you.”

Going to the door, Harry peeked his head out of the room and looked towards the other side of the small corridor. 

“It seems like they split us, the fifth-year boys, into two rooms this year,” Harry answered when he noticed the light coming from underneath the door of a room that had been locked in the previous years.

“Could it be because of the altercation you ‘ad with that bully on the train?” Fleur asked. 

“I don’t think so. It’s not the first time two guys from the same dorm fought each other,” Harry said. ‘It’s probably because of you,’ he thought but didn’t say it. He deduced it had to have something to do with the special treatment that Flitwick was giving the French boy for some reason. 

“Well, it’s not something to complain about. I’d rather have just one roommate instead of three.”

Saying that, Harry went to his bed and opened his trunk. 

“I’ll take the left side of the wardrobe. You cool with that?”

“Sure, I don’t mind,” Fleur replied. 

With only two beds in the entire room, it looked rather spacious. Furthermore, the wardrobe was spacious enough to accommodate up to six people, let alone two. 

Fleur was rather intrigued as she watched Harry nonverbally cast several spells to unpack his clothes from the trunk, fold them, and then place them into the wardrobe. Lastly, he took out three framed wizarding photos and put them on the nightstand next to his bed. 

Done packing, Harry grabbed a towel and a change of clothes before asking:

“I’ll go have a shower. What about you, mate?”

Fleur flailed her hands in a panic at the unexpected question. 

“Non, non, I will go later!” she said in a rather loud voice. 

Harry glanced at Florent with a strange look on his face but decided not to think too hard about it, chalking it up as just one of the many things strange about the French boy. 

“Suit yourself,” he said, shrugging his shoulders and leaving. 

Once he was out of the bedroom, Fleur covered her face with her hands. From the heat she could feel on her palms, she realized that her face must be beet red at that moment. 

<<Get a grip, Fleur!>> she admonished herself in French. 

Even she could tell that Harry was getting increasingly weirded out by her behaviour. She had to get her act together and start acting like a proper boy. To that end, she decided to study Harry's appearance and mannerisms from then on and imitate him as best as she could. 

Bearing that thought in mind, she started looking over at the still-opened wardrobe and the rest of the things that he had unpacked. 

‘He seems tidy and well-organised,’ she thought, noticing how nicely he had folded and arranged his clothes. ‘So not all boys are as messy as I heard.’

Moving her attention to the nightstand, her eyes fell on the three framed, moving photos on it. 

‘These must be his grandparents and his little brother,’ she thought as she looked at a photo showing the four Potters together, with Fleamont resting his hands on a ten- or eleven-year-old Harry’s shoulders and Euphemia holding a six- or seven-year-old Matthew in her arms. 

Moving on to the next framed photo, it was one of Matthew showing off his Cleansweep 9 broomstick model with a toothy grin on his face. 

As for the third photo, it was a photo of a couple that Fleur assumed to be Harry’s deceased parents. 

⁂

When Harry returned from the shower, he found the bedroom empty. 

‘Florent must’ve gone to mingle with the others in the common room, he thought.

Sitting on the bed, Harry grabbed the framed photo of his parents off the nightstand. He smiled when he saw his dad kissing his mother on the cheek and her laughing. They looked so happy. They seemed happy in his memory too. 

It was believed that people’s memories from before the age of three were not real. But Harry could still remember his parents. He remembered them vividly. 

He remembered his mother trying to coax him into eating tomatoes. 

He remembered the first time his father bought him a toy broomstick. 

‘Look at him go!’ Sirius said in amazement. 

‘James! Are you sure it’s safe??’ Lily said, her voice high-pitched with worry as she watched her son zooming around in the garden on his broom. 

‘Relax, honey. Can’t you tell? He’s a natural. It’s in his blood. It’s in our blood. Mark my words, he’s going to be a Pro Quidditch player when he grows up!’

He remembered the joy and excitement his parents felt when Lily found out that she was pregnant with Matthew. 

And he also remembered the night when they died... The night when Voldemort blasted open the door of their house and murdered his parents in front of his eyes. 

The tips of his fingers became white from how hard he was clenching them on the frame of the photo. 

‘I wish I could’ve been a Quidditch player like you wanted, Dad. But I can’t. Not while Voldemort is still alive,’’ he thought bitterly.

Harry put the photo back on the nightstand and let out a shuddering sigh. 

‘This isn’t good. I have to clear out my mind lest I’ll get another nightmare tonight.’

He got into a cross-legged position on the bed and started meditating. 

Due to his frequent nightmares in the past, his grandparents took him to a Mind Healer when he was young. The Healers offered them two choices: the first was for them to Obliviate Harry of his memories, to make him forget the night when his parents were killed. 

However, Fleamont and Euphemia immediately shot that offer down when they heard the side effects it could have on his psyche. While the pain would be gone, in the worst-case scenario, something like that could even deprive him of his emotions, turning him into a sociopath. 

The second option was for Fleamont and Euphemia to slowly teach the boy how to organise his mind and clear his thoughts. It would be a long and arduous process, and Harry would never forget the pain of watching his parents die. That memory would never go away, but Harry would learn to accept it and live with it. 

His grandparents chose the second option for him. Now, at the age of 15, Harry had gained a moderate level of proficiency in the art of Occlumency. 

⁂⁂⁂⁂⁂

AN: I used the appearance of the Ravenclaw dorms from the Hogwarts Legacy game (except that there are no bunk beds). I will, most likely, do the same for the rest of the places that will pop up from now on in the story.