A Life More Ordinary

McGonagall's Office, October 1992

Harry stared at his knees while McGonagall's sharp voice drowned out all other sounds, though the words had begun to blend together--or maybe it was just because Harry's face was burning and his stomach was screwed so tightly into knots he couldn't make sense of them any longer. He could feel Ron shifting beside him and he had to pull his elbow close to his side so that he wouldn't ram it into his mate's ribs. The tiny movements were only adding to his anxiety, so high now that he was certain he would explode at any moment.

"I said, is that clear, Mr. Potter?"

Harry's head jerked up. McGonagall was glaring down at him; Harry's face burned anew. He had no idea what his Head of House had said, but he nodded fervently anyway. "Yes ma'am."

She nodded crisply and then shifted her anger left. "Mr. Malfoy?"

"Yes ma'am."

McGonagall pursed her lips, not looking at all satisfied by their agreement with whatever she'd said. "I am extremely disappointed in all three of you."

Draco didn't even flinch at that. Ron did, but since he'd been fidgeting the entire time, Harry didn't know if this movement now was because of the scolding. Harry, for his part, was having a very hard time keeping McGonagall's gaze. And it was even worse as she seemed to be glaring at him the longest... it wasn't just his imagination. He swallowed and pressed his elbows into his ribs until it hurt.

"I think it goes without saying," she went on, pinning Harry with her dark eyes, "that neither of your fellow brawlers will be accompanying you home this weekend."

"But that isn't fair!"

"Fair, Weasley?" McGonagall said cooly. "Perhaps you'd like to explain the concept to the Hufflepuffs you sent to the Infirmary?"

"They started it!"

Harry wondered where Ron got his nerve, but McGonagall didn't look at all phased by his outburst.

"I do not care who started it, Mr. Weasley. You should not have allowed it to continue."

"We couldn't let them keeping saying those awful things about Harry," Ron protested and once again the professor's narrow-eyed gaze was directed at him.

"I do understand that you were trying to defend Harry," she said, her voice not quite as sharp as it had been a moment ago. "But it does not change the fact that you cannot use brute force to solve your problems--whatever those problems might be."

Ron scowled but argued no further. McGonagall crossed to her desk and pulled two crisp sheets of parchment from a neat stack, set them at opposite corners and laid a quill diagonally across each. She turned around to face them. "Weasley and Malfoy, you will write to your parents and explain to them why you won't be visiting Grimmauld Place this weekend."

The tips of Ron's ears went immediately pink and though Draco still hadn't moved, he was pale now. With a terse spell from McGonagall, his and Ron's chair scooted forward until their knees bumped the desk. Harry was afraid to ask why he hadn't been given a parchment.

She rapped her knuckles on the wood. "Now, if you please." She waited until both of them had put quill to parchment before turning back to Harry. "You, Mr. Potter, may explain in person why you are coming home alone."

Harry's lips parted, but he was too muddled to voice his protest. She didn't even seem to notice. She opened a connection to Grimmauld Place and stuck her head into the green flames.

"Bloody hell, Harry..."

Harry hunched down in his chair and tried to convince himself it wouldn't be very nice to tell Ron to shut up. After all, Ron had stood up for him today. Which of course, had ended up getting all of them into trouble...

"I'm sorry you're in trouble too," he said anyway. Ron shrugged.

"Mum'll probably send a howler." Which, to Ron, was much better than a visit home to detail his misdeeds. Draco's parents wouldn't send a howler, since they wouldn't want to make Draco's sins public. His father would probably send a private rebuke though.

"Sorry, Draco..."

Draco shook his head the tiniest bit. "You didn't make me hit Justin."

"We weren't going to just let them get away with saying those awful things to you, mate," Ron said and Draco nodded in solemn agreement.

Harry's gratitude was immediately squelched as McGonagall pulled back from the fire, a severe frown on her face now. "Step through, Potter. Your parents are waiting for you."

But Harry's backside was stuck to the chair, his mouth completely dry.

McGonagall lifted an eyebrow. "Unless you'd like me to accompany you..."

Mortified beyond speech, Harry scrambled to his feet and nearly leaped into the flames, hoping beyond all hope that his professor wouldn't follow him. He stepped out into his own kitchen a second later. Sirius and Remus were waiting for him. Both immediately frowned.

"For God's sake," Sirius muttered. "She could have told us he had a black eye..."

Harry had forgotten about that. He reached up to touch the tender skin and flinched.

"Oy, don't touch it," Sirius chided. He guided Harry by a shoulder to one of the chairs while Remus wrapped ice chips into a flannel. Sirius took Harry's glasses and Remus placed the ice gently against the raw skin; Harry hissed as the cold burned his skin. "Give it a moment," Sirius said, wincing along with him as Harry held it in place.

Remus sighed and Sirius planted a hip against the edge of the table. He folded his arms across his chest, his dark eyebrows arching and Harry's stomach shriveled. He brushed his clammy palm on his thigh and tried to think of an explanation that didn't incriminate him in every possible way. With considerable effort, he avoided what he was sure was Remus' equally stern gaze and mumbled, "I sort of got in a fight..."

"Sort of?"

Against his will, Harry's uncovered eye shifted to Remus, who actually looked quite a bit angrier than Sirius did. He quickly looked back down at the table.

Sirius nudged his chin up. "What happened?" The quiet question made Harry wish he was back in McGonagall's office.

"Some of the other kids were fighting... I tried not to," he had to add, hoping that might help a little. He had tried to leave in fact, but that just made him sound like a first year.

"Then why did you?" Remus asked. Harry clenched his free hand into a fist on the table top.

"Because," he said as an unwelcome sting erupted in his throat, "the Hufflepuffs were shouting and pushing everyone. And some Ravenclaws came over and they were even worse. Draco and Ron hit them because they wouldn't shut up and then Neville and Hermione came over and Justin shoved Hermione! She wasn't even doing anything!"

Sirius caught the swathed ice as Harry let it fall. Harry only realized how loudly that had come out when Remus and Sirius glanced at one another.

"You were defending Hermione?" Sirius said quietly. Harry nodded and Sirius brushed his fringe aside and put the ice gingerly back in place. He ducked his head a bit so that Harry had no choice but to look at him. "Of course we understand that; it's a reaction--an impulse to help a friend. But there had to be another way to defend her... What did you do to Justin anyway?"

"Come again?" Remus said, leaning forward when Harry muttered his answer to the table.

"Stinging Jinx..."

"Harry James!"

Harry cringed at Sirius' sharp rebuke.

"You hexed him?" Remus demanded and Harry nodded miserably. His eyes began to sting as Remus lifted his chin this time. "You're lucky you haven't been expelled, young man."

Harry pressed his teeth together and blinked several times. He hadn't been lucky; McGonagall simply hadn't known about that, or else, yeah she probably would have jumped at an excuse to expel him. "Justin didn't even know it was me," he muttered.

"That isn't the point."

Harry pressed his knuckles over his good eye and pulled his face from Remus' grasp. He knew it wasn't the point; Remus didn't need to tell him. He wished he could have just written a letter--like Draco and Ron. But of course his Head of House would want him in to be in as much trouble as possible after today...

"I didn't do it on purpose." Immediately guilty for the half-truth, he shifted against the hard chair; he had done it on purpose... sort of any way. "It just sort of flew out."

"And you just sort of said the right incantation?" Sirius asked, his voice half-way to exasperation.

"Didn't say it," Harry retorted before he could stop himself and then waited for Sirius to tell him not to be smart. But there was silence instead and once the curiosity outweighed his chagrin, he peeled his knuckles away from his face.

Sirius lowered his hand and the gathered ice went with it. "You performed a silent Stinging Jinx?" he asked very quietly.

"Erm..." Harry suddenly didn't want to answer that, but Sirius raised his eyebrows again, an unspoken warning now. "Yes," Harry mumbled as his shoulders slumped. He didn't even know why he was in even more trouble now.

Sirius straightened, the ice limp in his hand. "Did you do it on purpose? Did you mean to hex him?"

Harry glared down at his hands as he jerked his head in a quick nod, rubbing a palm over the scratches across his other knuckles and wished Hannah Abbot didn't have such long nails. And that one of them would just start lecturing him already.

"Harry," Sirius said on a sigh, "you shouldn't have used magic like that. Not unless there was some sort of danger-"

Harry's head shot up. "He pushed Hermione!"

"Yes, I heard you before," Sirius said evenly. "And I would understand if you had pushed him back, but raising your wand to someone in a situation like this is simply not acceptable, Harry, and you know it."

Heat crawled up Harry's neck, leaving a tingling trail across his cheeks. And for the second time that day, he felt like his insides were going to explode.

Sirius sighed and raked a hand through his hair. "We need to put salve on that eye..." He got up and went over to the cupboard where they kept their healing potions.

"And then," Remus added pointedly, "you may spend the remainder of the evening in your room." Sirius turned swiftly toward Remus, but Remus wasn't looking at him. He was gazing down at Harry, one eyebrow high as he went on, "Since I expect Professor McGonagall would have at least assigned a detention had she known the extent of your misbehavior."

The tips of Harry's ears burned, but he couldn't even nod. He didn't want to stay in his room. He'd rather face McGonagall and her detention. Except that he didn't want to go back to school either. Back to all those stares... the taunts that had made Ron and Draco angry enough to start the fight in the first place. And Sirius and Remus didn't even care about any of that!

Sirius came back with the salve. Very gently, he smoothed it over the bruised skin around Harry's eyes, but Harry flinched even so. "Sorry... almost done. Close your eye for me," he murmured and brushed salve over the eyelid as well. "There... How does that feel? It will take awhile to heal completely."

He handed Harry's glasses over and Harry shrugged; it didn't sting nearly as much as it had before. Sirius' hand settled on top of his head and for some reason, it made his throat ache more fiercely than before. He sat very still and hoped that maybe they'd forget to send him upstairs.

Sirius' fingers combed lightly through his hair, and he said quietly, "Go on up... we'll be up in a few minutes, all right?"

Harry stood so quickly he nearly toppled the chair. And even though Sirius reached out to steady him, Harry ducked away and took the stairs two at a time as soon as he'd cleared the kitchen.

--

Sirius stared after Harry, frowning to himself. "That was a bit dramatic..."

"Harry doesn't do anything by halves," Remus said as he plucked the jar of salve from his hand. "You realize," he added before Sirius could comment on that, "that you practically gave him permission to start a fistfight?"

Sirius pulled his gaze from the doorway. "Oh, I did not. We can't tell the kid not to defend himself."

"He wasn't defending himself," Remus reminded him as he recapped the jar, and despite the chiding tone, Sirius smiled.

"He was defending Hermione, which is more important anyway."

Remus closed the cupboard door and shook his head, not quite disagreeing.

"How many times did one of us get into trouble defending another of us?" Sirius asked. "James punched Steven Sprocket in the jaw when he started that rumor about Lily and Snape shagging in the Quidditch stands seventh year."

"Lily was in tears."

"Well, I hardly think Hermione enjoyed being shoved."

Remus sighed. "I still don't think you should be encouraging him to get into a fight--even if he has good reason."

"I didn't encourage him, Remus. I said I would have understood; there's a difference. And I wanted him to understand that hexing Justin was a much more severe offense." He watched while Remus dumped the melting ice into the sink and dried the flannel with a quick spell. "We can't leave Harry up in his room all evening," he finally said quietly when Remus was facing him again.

Remus folded the flannel into a neat square. "Yes, I know."

Having not expected agreement of any sort, Sirius couldn't help the look of surprise.

Remus smiled faintly. "I could tell you wanted to argue with me."

Sirius let his gaze wander toward the stairs, his amusement overshadowed for the moment. "I don't want home to be a place he doesn't want to come." He nodded at Remus' small frown as he turned round again. "And yes, I know he broke several school rules, but he's already been punished by Minerva."

"And what about the jinx she doesn't even know about?"

Sirius massaged his forehead. "This was a hell of a lot easier when he was five."

"Was it?"

Sirius' lips lifted at the sardonic question. "No, not really." He grimaced. "He's already lost the weekend with his friends."

Remus nodded and sent the square of fabric to the laundry. With a deep sigh he said, "Shall we go upstairs?"

Sirius stood and together, they went up. Harry's light wasn't even on. Sirius knocked lightly on the frame. "Harry?"

There was no response.

With a glance at Remus, Sirius pushed the door open and went with soft steps to the bed; Remus spelled the lamps a bit brighter. Harry was lying on his side, his face to the wall; though Sirius could see he wasn't asleep. He gave Harry's rump a backhanded pat. "Budge up."

Harry scooted over and instead of turning round to face Sirius, he flipped over so that his face was denting the pillow. Remus raised his eyebrows, frowning at the show of defiance but Sirius didn't think that's what this was. Not completely anyway.

"Harry, turn around please," Remus said quietly and Sirius immediately wished he had anticipated that, but it was too late. Harry did as he was told, blinking up at them with bloodshot eyes.

Sirius' throat tightened and he tried to convince himself that Harry had only been crying because he'd just been scolded, but the kid looked absolutely miserable. And they'd barely even started with the lecture downstairs. "No one's going to expel you," he said, helpless to think of what else could have made Harry look like this. Harry swiped a sleeve across his nose, sniffling briefly.

"She probably wishes she could," he said, his voice thick with recently shed tears.

"McGonagall?" Sirius said in surprise. "Harry, you made some big mistakes today, and she was understandably upset with you, but she's very fond of you. And since you aren't going to be causing even a speck of trouble again-"

"It doesn't matter how much trouble I cause now," Harry mumbled as his spectacles began to fog.

Sirius pulled them gently from Harry's face and handed him a handkerchief; the bruising was starting to fade. "Why not?" he asked as Harry twisted the fabric.

"Because..." Without any other warning, Harry balled the handkerchief into a tight fist and exploded, "Because she thinks I'm mental now! Just like everyone else!"

"Harry, of course she doesn't think that," Remus said, both reproving and attempting to comfort in the same breath.

"She does too!" Harry said hotly as he pushed himself up. "As soon as Justin told her I was talking to a snake, she looked at me and I could tell she did!"

Sirius' brows knit together as he stared at his godson.

"You talked to a snake?" Remus echoed.

Everything suddenly making a lot more sense, Sirius' gut twisted. "That's what the fight was about..." Taking a shaking breath, he asked softly, "Why didn't you tell us that?"

Harry blinked a few times, looking suddenly flustered. "I... thought McGonagall told you."

Sirius shook his head. "She only said you'd gotten in the middle of a fight and that you would explain." He put his hand on Harry's neck, squeezing gently as his chest constricted. "What happened?"

Harry drew his knees up; he looked away. "It was in the greenhouse; the snake. I didn't even realize I was talking to her until Sprout sort of screeched at me-"

"She screeched at you?"

Harry nodded sharply. "Draco said it was like I was in some sort of trance while I was speaking. She dismissed the class then, even though we'd only just begun. And the Hufflepuffs were all sort of staring at me--they were frightened, just like you said they might be, Sirius. And even the other Gryffindors looked scared. Except Draco and Hermione and Ron; since they knew I was a Parselmouth..."

Remus sat heavily in the chair beside the bed, his face pinched. "Is that when they started fighting?"

Harry scrubbed at his eyes, bringing in a loud sniffle. But he shook his head. "It was before dinner; in the corridor. But all day, people kept staring at me and whispering... they do that sometimes anyway but they kept pointing at me and even the teachers were doing it."

Sirius could feel his neck flushing with anger, but Harry wasn't finished.

"They said awful things," he whispered. "Hannah said I was repulsive and someone else said I wasn't meant to be a Gryffindor and-" Harry's breath hitched, "-then they said that was probably why Voldemort couldn't kill me that night, because I was just like him."

"What?" Remus and Sirius breathed together.

"And Terry Boot... he said it was a good thing my parents were dead, because they'd be humiliated to have a Parselmouth for a son-" A little sob broke through the scratchy words. Harry pressed his face into his knees, his shoulders shaking and Sirius was unable to be still any longer.

"Come here, love," he murmured as he pulled Harry close and Harry turned his face into Sirius' shoulder, bringing in a few shallow breaths and tickling Sirius' chin with his hair.

Sirius ignored his impulse to Floo to Hogwarts and tell off this Terry Boot and waited until the ache in his own throat subsided before he said very quietly, "Your mum and dad would be very proud of you, Harry. They wouldn't have cared that you can speak to snakes." When Harry didn't respond, Sirius pulled back a little so that he could see Harry's face; he tilted Harry's chin up until his godson was looking up at him with eyes, red and swollen. "You know that Remus and I don't care," he said softly. "And we certainly aren't humiliated to have you as our son."

"Nothing could be further from the truth, Harry," Remus added with a gentle smile; he had taken a seat on the bed as well and Harry glanced at him, sniffling loudly as he leaned into Sirius again. "It doesn't make any difference to us if you can speak to snakes."

"Nor will it to everyone else who loves you," Sirius added as he smoothed Harry's hair. "Professor McGonagall already knew you were a Parselmouth. The headmaster told her after last Christmas. She doesn't think you're mental, I promise."

Harry took that in. "But everyone else does," he finally said. "Even Neville."

"They'll see that you aren't any different," Remus assured him as he reached out and put a hand on Harry's knee. "And until they do, keep Ron and Draco close by."

Sirius' and Harry's eyebrows shot up. Remus shrugged, his smile sheepish. "I don't want to hear that you've hexed someone again, but if you do need to defend yourself, I'd rather you had those two by your side."

The corners of Harry's lips tugged themselves into a tiny smile, but it didn't last.

"Most of them will forget about this in a few days," Sirius reassured. "And if they don't, I'm certain that Professor McGonagall will be happy to help them along... even if you did get into trouble with her today."

Harry nodded a little. Sirius was confused when he flushed, until Harry slid his eyes toward the wall and mumbled, "I'm sorry about the jinx."

Sirius suspected the apology had little to do with actual regret for his defense of Hermione. But even so, Sirius squeezed his shoulder; they could discuss it later. "A silent Stinging Jinx is rather advanced magic, you know."

Harry shrugged. "Someone was sitting on me and I couldn't breathe... or talk-"

Sirius gaped at him. "Sitting on you?"

"Hannah Abbott--she was knocked over; fell on me."

Sirius was distracted from his indignant huff as Harry rubbed his fingers over the back of his hand. The skin was decorated with deep scratches. Sirius plucked the hand away from Harry's thigh. "What's this?"

Harry stretched his fingers out against Sirius' palm, examining the nicks along with him. "She scratched me."

"Oy... Anything else?" Sirius asked as he sat back to get a good look at his godson. "Cracked ribs? Broken bones?"

Another small smile snuck onto Harry's lips; he shook his head. "Don't think so."

"You don't think?" Remus demanded with a frown. "Didn't any of you go to the infirmary?"

"Nah, just a couple of the Hufflepuffs... and Terry; I think Draco broke his nose."

Sirius and Remus exchanged a glance, both of them forcing themselves not to feel satisfaction at that.

"Well," Remus said and Sirius nearly smirked at his smug tone, "let's gather up more salve, shall we?"

"And you said this happened before dinner?" Sirius said as he gave Harry a hand up. "You haven't eaten, then?" Harry shook his head and Sirius eyed him. "You might have said so, kid, before we sent you off to bed without supper."

Harry glanced up at him, a bit of mischievous back in the green eyes. "I could have snuck down later for a snack."

"I see," Sirius said with a smirk. "Well, as long as you had a plan." He rumpled Harry's hair fondly and the three of them went downstairs for a bit of salve and some dinner.