45After the one month of 'fixing what we can and limiting the splash damage of what we can't fix,' Harry and the head are finally going to magic school.
(In this one month, Harry's managed to figure out a way to build a laptop that runs on magic as an alternative to electricity, learn about the fact that even though wizards hated 'muggle' things (wizards also have no naming sense, did he mention that?), they were okay with using a bright red train to transport children, and read 'Hogwarts, A History', which was pleasant compared to the many other absolutely ridiculous books wizards have written (one claimed that the American Coca-Cola beverage turns children's hair white and can make you go 'boom'!), and finally, manage to sell several galleons on the black market and make a crap ton of money.)
The most important thing he's learned over the month was the fact that logic and wizards are mutually exclusive.
Right now though, he's managed to arrive at the platform early and get first picks of the compartments.
After some people watching and speculating, Harry then settled down with his laptop to check various accounts and hold conversations with the head from inside its package.
Even though those ended every single time with the head ranting about destruction, murder, sacrifices, and his god while Harry snarled at him to stay quiet or insult him and rant about money when he wasn't feeling that quiet either.
They could try, couldn't they?
"I'm just saying, heathen, Jashinism is the fucking bomb and-"
"No, you bloody wanker, money is the lifeblood of this society-"
"But if you accept Jashinism, you can rise above the damned fucking society-"
"And get myself labeled as a madman with nothing to fall back on-"
"Bastard, you'll have a fucking faith while the fucking money won't-"
There was suddenly loud knocking from the door of the compartment, which startled both Harry and the head into silence.
"You guys!" called a female voice from outside the compartment, likely the one who knocked. "Mind if I come in? Everywhere else is full." Harry thought about it for a moment. If he refused, it would seem rude, and he didn't want to get onto someone's blacklist before even arriving at school, even if the person wasn't that influential.
"Sure then, but would you mind being quiet?" Harry asked. The girl said a cheerful 'Sure!' before pushing open the door. The girl in question was an Asian looking girl with long straight black hair and medium height. She was wearing jeans and a t-shirt with a (Nintendo, was it?) video game character on it. As soon as she saw Harry's laptop though, she gasped.
"How in the world did you get that to work?" she asked incredulously.
"Textbooks and modified batteries." answered Harry, already getting kind of annoyed. The girl was still staring at him like he was the answer to all the problems.
"Do you think you could give me some? AAA type?" she asked, hopeful.
"No." Harry snapped. The girl seemed taken aback.
"Why not?" she growled. "I only need AAA ones. It's not like you have any use for AAA ones."
"I decide what to do with what I make." Harry growled back. "Plus, you promised to be quiet."
"I promise I'll be quiet after you give me the special batteries." the girl said, stubborn. Harry weighed the pros and cons. It's true that he had no use for AAA batteries, and only made them to test what he could make. Also, it would get the girl to quiet down. He narrowed his eyes at her.
"Fine." he ground out. "But actually hold your end of the deal and either quiet down or leave." The girl beamed. Harry grumbled and dug around in his duffel bag. He was pretty lucky, as for some reason, he put a few AAA type batteries in there on a whim. He gave them to the girl and she snatched them.
"Thank you so much, er…" she said, asking his name. Harry didn't feel like giving an accurate name as she might've heard of him. So he quickly came up with a random one.
"Kakashi Hatake." he said. The girl raised her eyebrows, but didn't question the name.
"Stephanie Wang." she offered a hand for shaking, but Harry denied it by just narrowing his eyes at her and going back to his laptop. Stephanie huffed in indignation, but sat down, pulled out a gaming device, and stayed quiet.
"Oh and who were you talking to-" she started.
"STAY QUIET!" Harry yelled back.
The rest of the train ride was fairly uninteresting after Stephanie entered the compartment. Fortunately for Harry, she upheld her promise and stayed quiet during the ride. That girl could probably spend hours on that gaming device, and she already has. It was 9 hours until they finally arrived at the school. In those 9 hours, Stephanie played video games and Harry continued selling galleons on the black market.
It was a very productive ride.
Right before they got out of the compartment, Stephanie stopped him.
"What?" he snarled. She sheepishly scratched the side of her head and handed a small jade statue.
"Thought I could repay you for the batteries with this. Don't worry, I have tons more" she said, before going outside of the compartment. Harry was about to angrily smash it on the ground before he remembered a small tidbit of information from a wizard book.
'Jade is one of the most magical minerals known to wizards, known for its immense healing power. The Chinese wizarding government limits the trade of jade, so they fetch a very high price outside of china.'
As far as he knows, magical batteries still ran out like normal ones, so maybe Stephanie wasn't a bad person to know, if she had 'tons more.'
Once they've arrived at Hogwarts, all the first years were then ordered to leave all of their things on the train, and subsequently herded onto boats (by a giant that knocked people out on a whim, he'll have to add) that could potentially dump 11 year olds into the cold unforgiving river and kill them.
(Seriously, wizards have magic. Why not dedicate the magic into a safer way to cross a river instead of a boat that doesn't need to be pushed?)
Misgivings aside, no one fell off a boat this year, but it very well could happen any year.
The sight of the grand castle did, to the builders' credit, manage to impress Harry, even if he felt like he'd seen a lot more impressive.
Then, they were all unceremoniously shoved into some sort of waiting chamber for trouble to stew, young 11 year olds to start gossip, bullies to bully, so on and so forth. Harry found himself really liking the idea of stabbing the person who came up with this waiting chamber to death with a sewing needle.
He was getting creative these days.
But the head would always be better in that regard.
After a few more minutes of painful waiting, ghosts (GHOSTS! GHO-), and a cheesy song, the first years were about to have a hat shout to you and the rest of the school whether if you were a bookish nerd, a loudmouthed idiot, a bigoted brat, or a pushover who won't get anywhere in life.
Everything was bloody fine.
It was still bloody fine that everyone now knows what Harry Potter looked like, after his name was called.
(Was there nothing else for their 11 year old brains to focus on, instead of obsessing over a guy who killed a dark wizard when he was a baby? Seriously, that warrants caution, not awe!)
Harry sat on the little stool, slamming the hat onto his head due to all the pent up anger he was harboring.
It didn't relieve any of that anger, though.
The hat had never before seen a more peculiar case.
At the young age of 11, Harry Potter already had a fully developed mindscape, along with many defenses controlled by some sort of separate entity that he didn't even seem to know about.
Of course, that then made it very difficult to sort him.
The hat continued to gently probe the hostile mindscape, shaking off torrents of shrieking black threads, all seeking to drive him out their place. The hat then tried sending harmless messages to the core of the mindscape, trying to ward everything off via negotiating with this separate entity.
That seemed to have worked, because the threads seemed to stop trying to drown and tear the hat apart. They all folded upon themselves back into the ground. As soon as they all left, there was a sudden shift, and the hat found himself outside the jungle of black threads in a giant cavern without a ceiling. A giant black pulsing heart made of a mass of threads hung in the middle of the cavern, and like instinct, the hat probed it. The heart seemed to hesitate for a moment, but then it swallowed the hat in.
And the hat could only stare in horror at the two separate sets of memories, the two separate beings, because human couldn't describe that monstrosity, with the line in between them blurring by the second.
"SLYTHERIN!"
And off the stool Harry went, to the table covered in green and silver.
The hat hadn't even said anything to him. It just let him wallow in silence for about 10 seconds before gasping and sending him here, which just made him hate the hat a little bit more.
(But then, at least the girl he met on the train was sorted into Ravenclaw. That made him hate the hat some less.)
People all around him were already whispering about the Great Harry Potter being sorted into Slytherin, and rubbish like that. His fellow housemates were all glancing at him like he was an item. Even the crazy old headmaster was looking at him.
If they kept this up, he was going to snap and kill someone.
And with the worst timing ever, someone tapped him on the shoulder.
"I swear," Harry snarled. "If you ask anything about the scar, that night, or anything related to it, I will castrate you and sell them on the black market." The boy who tapped him on the shoulder held up his hands in a surrender gesture. He had brown hair tied in a ponytail that Harry vaguely remembered in the sorting.
"Hey, calm down, man!" said the boy in a cheerful American accent. "I'm not talkin' to you 'cause you're famous or anything. I just thought you looked too grumpy." Harry looked at him incredulously. Then he proceeded to ignore him. The boy looked affronted. He was just about to say something when a third person entered.
A certain Malfoy and his cronies.
"So you're Harry Potter." said Draco, with a snobbish and aristocratic air, Crabbe and Goyle sneering from behind him. Harry could legitimately sense the politician. He was about to let loose a tirade, but then, the ponytail boy spoke.
"That was rude," he said to Draco with a frown. Draco then eyed him and turned his nose up at him.
"And who might you be?" he asked haughtily. "I'll have you know, I'm Draco, Draco Malfoy, and my father-"
Suddenly, Draco Malfoy tripped forward in what had to be the greatest pratfall, knocking himself out on the table. Harry, out of the corner of his eye, saw the ponytail boy's foot shoot back under the table. The cronies were staring at them, shocked, not knowing what to do. The ponytail boy then looked back at Harry with a gleaming smile, like he hadn't just knocked a person out.
"He was too politician for me anyways." the boy said. Then, he held out a hand to Harry, for shaking."So. Name's Jay Keenan. Allies?"
Harry took the hand, and smirked.
"Allies."
1996 words.
Thank you to The Deck Master, AnimeLover7597, Dirtyreeds, Garnetio Solozari, Akashi (guest), I AM SPEED, stubs1101, E 3.0 (guest), and NazgulBelsurion for reviewing! It really means a lot!
I'm really nervous about what you'll all think of the OCs, Jay and Stephanie. We all hate Mary-Sues, so if you really don't like them, please say something! I'm willing go as far as deleting this chapter to make sure the OCs won't ruin the story...
Again, I have not prewritten anything, so thank you for your patience!
