Outside the Lines

The students at the four tables were whispering excitedly as a young boy walked toward the Sorting Hat.

"Did she just say Harry Potter?"

"It's Potter... the Boy Who Lived..."

"Harry Potter! No way!"

"Wonder which house he'll be in?"

"Hope it's ours!"

Potter glanced nervously toward the staff table, then sat down and yanked the hat on. He stayed there for several moments.

"Wonder where he came from?" a befreckled young boy at the Gryffindor table whispered to the bushy-haired girl sitting beside him. "I didn't notice him on the train, and I'm absolutely sure I didn't see him when we were all standing in the entry hall."

"I'm sure I don't know," the girl replied in a slightly huffy tone. "He's famous; maybe they thought they should bring him in another way for his own safety. Now shush, you're being rude."

Harry Potter sat upon the stool, gripping the old Sorting Hat's brim as tightly as if his life depended on it.

*

'Not Gryffindor. Please, anywhere but Gryffindor.'

"Not Gryffindor, eh?" The Hat sounded amused. "Been a good long while since someone presumed to argue with me. You'd really make a good one, you know. Bravery, loyalty, impetuousness... it's all here in your head... You could be great, Harry, and Gryffindor could help you on your way to greatness, no doubt about that."

'Please!' The boy was begging. 'I'd never live it down! Not Gryffindor...!'

"You've positively made up your mind? Well, if you're sure... better be..."

"SLYTHERIN!"

Freckle boy harrumphed to himself. "Figures. Guess I didn't see him because he was too busy hanging out with those bunch of jerks."

"You really shouldn't judge people so quickly, you know," the girl hissed at him, trying to keep her voice respectfully low as Harry Potter walked over to the Slytherin table and the line of first years continued to move forward. "It's very bad manners. And besides, not every Slytherin witch or wizard is a bad person. I was reading about famous school alumni in Hogwarts, a History and--"

"Oh, just forget it," the boy said, eyes raised to the heavens in a long-suffering manner.

Outside the Lines
by Death Eater Apostate

One: Well, It'll Do For a Beginning

The first day had definitely been the hardest.

He really didn't fit in with these Slytherin folk, Harry was beginning to find. Oh, sure, they shared those basic traits of ambition and cunning--of which Harry admittedly had more of the latter than the former, which seemed to irk every other member of the House to no end--but they spent all their time gossiping, scheming, playing little power games among their little cliques that he had no desire to participate in. Consequently, Harry Potter found himself without many friends. Hogwarts was an improvement over primary school (no friends there either, plus nothing as interesting as magic to study), but not by much.

Anyway, that first day. After a dinner spent eating awkwardly smushed between two strangers at the Slytherin table and having nothing to say to either of them, Harry had retired to the first year boys' dorm, half-looking forward to and half-dreading his first experience with the people he would be stuck with for seven years.

There were four other boys in his dorm. Harry mentally checked off their names as he sat on his bed in long-sleeved cotton pajamas, swinging his bare feet and watching them unpack. "Malfoy, Draco!" -- that was the short blonde boy who was currently swaggering about in black satin boxers (which, Harry noted, looked ridiculous on someone of his age and tiny stature), trying to look important as he directed the efforts of two other boys: "Crabbe, Vincent!" and "Goyle, Gregory!", two burly kids each about thrice yon Malfoy's size, who were unpacking the snooty boy's trunk and placing clothes in the cabinet next to his bed. And that left "Zabini, Blaise!", a skinny fellow with chocolate-brown hair who, apparently, had had as little to unpack as Harry, and was lying on his bed in maroon sweatpants and a wrinkled white T-shirt reading a novel. Deciding he might as well try to make a good impression, Harry rose from his seat and ambled slowly over to Blaise's bed.

"Hello. What're you reading there?"

"K.J. Growling's newest installment," Blaise said without looking up from his book. "What's it to you?"

"Nothing, nothing at all." Harry frowned. "Sorry... I just thought I'd try and make conversation."

Chocolate hair and a pair of blue eyes peeked out over the book to watch him skeptically. "Oh, I guess I should be just thrilled to be given the honor of speaking with famous Harry Potter, huh?" Blaise's tone sounded dead serious, which made him sound exactly like Harry's godfather, which told Harry that Blaise was actually being highly derisive.

"It's not like that at all. I just wanted to talk to somebody, and I figured I had better prospects with you than with the prancing satin poof--" --Harry gestured with a faint smile toward Malfoy, who was now taking out everything his cronies had put in his drawers and replacing it all himself, complaining that they hadn't folded the clothing right-- "--or those two lumps following him around."

"Well, you're probably right." For a moment Harry felt some hope. Which was quickly shattered, as Blaise's eyes disappeared back behind the novel. "But I'm busy here, so shove off. We can get acquainted or whatever later."

"Okay. Um, sure. I'll take you up on that." Walking back over to his own bed, Harry had a feeling Blaise would not let him. But there would be other people, he told himself. Not everybody in Slytherin necessarily had to be a jerk, he told himself. There were people like him somewhere around here, he told himself.

He was still trying to tell himself that, sitting in the library a few days after the start of term, but he was beginning to lose hope. It seemed as though any nice kids sorted into Slytherin House quickly learned to be not-nice in order to survive. But where did that leave him?

Oh, but the Sorting Hat told you you'd've made a wonderful Gryffindor, now didn't it?

Harry shoved that thought quickly out of his mind. What was done was done; he'd made the only possible choice, and now he just had to live with it.

*

"Look, there he is!"

Freckle boy paused in the library's doorway to give bushy girl a withering look. "I suppose you're gonna want to go sit with him now."

"Well, of course! What other chance are we going to get to meet him?"

Freckleface muttered something under his breath about 'shameless fangirls' and 'stinking Slytherins', and then sighed. "All right, just this once, if it'll make you shut up once you see what a jerk he really is."

*

"Um... excuse me?"

Harry looked up from his essay-in-progress to find a bushy brown-haired girl and a gratuitously freckled boy standing at the opposite side of his table. The boy scowled in silence as the girl gave Harry a smile and a weak wave.

"Er, hi, Harry, isn't it? Mind if we sit here?"

No pretense given--they just wanted to sit and bask in the glow of The Boy Who Lived, eh? Harry sighed inwardly. He guessed them for a pair of Gryffindors by the straightforward tactics...subtlety, after all, was more of a Slytherin trait. "I guess so, sure." Even though all they wanted was to see a celebrity up close, he could do for some companionship. Maybe even pretend for a few minutes that these two awkward Gryffindors were his friends.

Freckles looked surprised, and bushy-hair guardedly pleased as each took a seat at the table, fishing books and writing supplies from their bags and starting on some assignment or other. After a few minutes, the girl cleared her throat pointedly.

Harry smiled slightly, looking up from his own work. "Sorry. I'm not much of a talker."

"Oh!" The girl blinked. "No, I didn't mean you. My friend said he'd introduce himself first."

Harry glanced toward the other boy. Freckles now looked as though someone had just handed him a rattlesnake and told him to eat it. After a few more moments of awkward silence, Harry decided to save him the trouble, and reached out a hand in greeting.

"Harry Potter. But I guess you already knew that." He colored the words with a slightly abashed tone, so they wouldn't sound egotistical. (One had to be careful about that sort of thing.) "It's nice to meet you."

Freckles hesitated a second, then took Harry's hand and shook it vigorously. "Ron Weasley. Nice to meet you too."

Bushy hair smiled at her companion. "There, that wasn't so hard, was it?" Turning back toward Harry, she offered her own hand, which he shook once and firmly. "I'm Hermione Granger. It's a real pleasure."

The trio spent a couple hours more writing and studying quietly. When Ron forgot how many kneazle claws went into a Shrinking Solution, Harry loaned him the whole recipe; and when Harry couldn't find the twelfth amendment to the Goblish-Mermish Treaty of 1284, Hermione was able to look it up for him. All in all, they had a very productive afternoon.

Hermione and Ron got up to leave first, since they had to go back up to their common room and meet their friends. As Harry was putting away some books near the front doors, he heard Hermione murmur to her friend: "See, that wasn't so bad at all, now was it?"

"Not a bit," said Ron. "Guess you were right... he seems really nice. Wonder if we'll see him in the library a lot?"

Harry returned to his seat, unable to wipe the silly smile off his face, no matter how hard he tried.