Chapter Text
Harry was pissed. Hagrid didn't tell him how to get on to the platform, honestly that seemed like a massive fuck up. He had to ask the woman talking very loudly about muggles. It stunk of a set up. Harry Potter wasn't an idiot. All those people in Diagon Alley knew who he was right away and this woman with her five hundred kids had no idea? Sure. The woman all but shoved her youngest son at him. No thanks. When it came to friends Harry was particular. He liked them no nonsense, straight forward, no hidden agendas and he was smart, street smart, not book smart. He preferred to be around those that were similar. He managed to lose the red haired, eager beaver by claiming the need to use the loo.
The last few weeks has been a bit of a whirlwind. He was crashing on his mate Steve-o's sofa for a few nights when his uncle Vernon had turned up hammering at the door red faced and furious. He demanded Harry come home in order to stop the damn-bastard letters. Who the hell would be writing to him? Well it turned out the strange stuff he could do, like getting food to fly out of the windows of the local caf, that was magic. An absolute beast of a man had turned up on the Dursley's doorstep to take Harry to get his school things. Bit fuckin' presumptuous, he hadn't even agreed to go yet. The man's name was Rubeus Hagrid but apparently everyone just called him Hagrid. Weird. Rubeus was a sound name, he thought. Bit weird, but then apparently the headmaster's name was Albus. Probably a wizard thing. Harry wondered if his name was weird to wizards, on his first trip to Diagon Alley, he met Garrick Ollivander, Quirinus Quirrel, Florean Fortesque. But the landlord of the pub was called Tom. That was a fairly normal name. He played up the woe is me, poor orphan Harry angle and managed to get Hagrid to tell him a little bit of what led to this absolutely insane turn of events. The main take away from that conversation was that Albus Dumbledore was responsible for landing him with the Dursley's and Lord Voldemort (what kind of stupid fucking name was that?) killed his parents. So Harry figured so far he had two enemies in the wizarding world. He had been pleasantly surprised however to find he was filthy fucking rich. Like he could buy the Dursleys house and all its contents fifty times over. Sadly, apparently eleven year olds weren't allowed to own property in their own right. The properties he did have in the Potter name were held by proxy by his magical guardian. His magical guardian, Albus Dumbledore. He'd asked the goblins if he could change that and they'd told him they happily would, when he had a suitable of-age witch or wizard who had agreed to take him on. Bugger. He took more gold than was strictly necessary and vowed to learn as much as he could about wizarding law as soon as possible so he could shake off the apparent coat-tail riding headmaster.
He set off down the train at a leisurely pace, he looked left and right as he moved past the carriages keeping an eye out for somewhere he could sit and not be bothered by arse kissing idiots. He momentarily considered a compartment that looked quiet enough, four girls, four boys but they looked like fucking toffs. No ta. He ruled them out the moment the blond one that looked a bit like a rooster got a greedy gleam in his little eyes. Yeah... definitely not. He carried on down the train away from the eager masses until he found what he was looking for. A carriage with two girls and two boys sitting, looking relaxed. Lounging about. There was a fancy looking boy tossing a ball up in the air and catching it. He was laying along the bench with his head in the lap of a red haired girl. He hoped she wasn't one of those Weasleys. She had red hair but didn't much look like the others on the platform otherwise, her hair was more of a deep red. She stroked the boys hair with one hand and was twirling her wand between the fingers of the other hand. They sat opposite another boy, he had dark hair and dark eyes. Normally he would be the kind of kid Harry would avoid, he looked strong, but not like he worked out. He looked a bit like that lads that worked on the road or on building sites. The useful kind of strong. The last occupant was a tiny girl. She had riotously curly hair, dark skin, but not as dark as the lounging boy. She was the only one not wearing wizard clothes. She had on low rider jeans and a pink hoody. She had big earrings in her ears and a stud in her nose. She laughed at something the lounging boy said and popped her bubble gum. These were his sort of people. Harry slid open the carriage door.
"Mind if I sit?" He asked. The red haired girl looked him up and down. The lounging boy paused his throwing and looked at him. The strong boy didn't look round but the girl with the gum said.
"Sure grab a pew, I'm Mia," she didn't offer her hand. Points to Mia.
"I won't pretend I don't know who you are," the red haired girl told him, "I'm Suzie, this is Blaise," she indicated the lounging boy "and Nev," she waved her hand at the last boy, who turned to look at him. The kid might look strong but he had a kind face, that made him dangerous, people would definitely underestimate him.
"M' Harry," he offered,
"Welcome to our band of misfits," Blaise drawled. Harry grabbed a seat and kicked his feet up on the bench opposite. He sat facing Nev and Mia.
"Misfits?" He asked looking at the different faces.
"Yeah, we're the oddballs," Nev told him.
"How so?" Harry asked curiously.
"No parents," Suzie told him, "so you'll fit right in yeah?" Harry appreciated her honesty.
"What none of you?" Harry asked, was that a magic thing maybe?
"Well my parents are alive but they're in long term care, don't know who I am," Nev told him.
"Mine might be alive," Mia supplied, with a shrug of one shoulder, "they're junkies, I live with my mums best mate, she's alright, works a lot though,"
"Mine are dead," Suzie told him, "killed like yours were yeah? I live with my aunt,"
"One of mine is alive, but I haven't seen my mother in years besides the occasional passing hello," Blaise told him.
"Right," Harry relaxed back in his seat, "well mine are dead too,"
"Everyone knows that Potter," Blaise drawled.
"Harry Potter?" Mia asked
"Yeah," Harry said feeling nervous
"Right, well yeah I guess you'd fit right in then, sorry, I've got a photographic memory and I read about you,"
"A photographic memory? That's ace!" He sighed looking at the little girl. The girl rolled her eyes.
"Yeah my teachers used to think so too until I broke into the heads office and read their personnel files," she gave him a smirk. Harry barked a laugh.
"What you do that for?"
"Well my music teacher was being a complete creep right and I thought if I had something on him, something I could use, he'd stop with his wandering fucking hands yeah?" Mia responded. Blaise snorted.
"Babe, you're definitely going to be in Slytherin," he told her.
"Cunning and ambitious? Sounds about right," she laughed. Harry privately agreed with her. Years of neglect from the Dursleys led him to develop his own cunning ways. After he had accidentally set a python on his cousin at the zoo, he regularly managed to convince adders and grass snakes to slither into the house and hide in places to scare his abusive relatives. They could never link it back to him but he'd still gotten Vernon's belt for it.
"I can talk to snakes," Harry offered, he really wanted in with this this crowd, he knew that sharing a 'secret' would help to endear him to these kids so he would share.
"Really?" Asked Suzie, "that's awesome, not many people can do that!"
"Four confirmed parselmouths in the last century," Mia nodded popping her bubble gum again.
"Parselmouth?" Harry asked
"The language is parseltongue, speakers are called parselmouths," Nev told him.
"Right, yeah well I'm one," he shrugged with a grin.
"I'm a seer," Blaise told them, "sometimes I get glimpses of things that haven't happened yet, I can't really control it but," he turned to Suzie and told her solemnly "you should move your hand away from the door jam,"
BANG
The door to their compartment banged opened just as Suzie had moved her hand away. Every one of them ignored the intrusion to look at Blaise with a mixture of awe and impressed disbelief. He just shrugged and smirked.
"Told you," he muttered. Harry turned to look up at the people who had interrupted their peaceful camaraderie.
"It's true then?" The blond boy with the greedy eyes from earlier said. He had a boy with curly dark hair next to him and two boys who resembled boulders behind him. To the boys right was a raven haired girl with a nose like a pug.
"What's true?" Nev asked standing up, Harry was right he was a big lad.
"They're saying on the train that Harry Potter has come to Hogwarts," the blond's eyes glittered in Harry's direction.
"That's right," Mia said standing up, Jesus the girl was tiny. Harry might do away with her if she was about to sell him out. Then she stuck her hand out right at the blond. "Harriet Potter, and who the fuck are you?" She asked popping her gum. Harry watched with barely concealed laughter as the blond started gaping like a fish.
"You're not Harry Potter!" He spluttered, recoiling away from Mia.
"He's right," said Nev, throwing an arm around Mia's shoulders. "I am, I'm Harry Potter, did you want something?"
"This is preposterous!" The blond stuttered. The curly haired boy looked entertained. Harry filed that away for later. The girl with black hair looked furious and the boulder boys looked confused.
"It is preposterous," Suzie said standing to her full height, she was pretty tall as well, "stop covering for me guys, I'm Harry Potter, got a sex change didn't I?" She told the intruders. The curly haired boy was now biting his fist to keep from laughing.
"That!" The blond pointed at the bench where Harry and Blaise remained seated, "is Harry Potter!" He demanded.
"You caught me," drawled Blaise raising his hands in surrender, "I'm Harry Potter," all five of them were now holding back laughs.
"Why don't you piss off pointy?" Mia asked sweetly.
The blond went an ugly shade of red and stalked away with his posse following behind. Harry noted the curly haired boy gave the carriage a wistful gaze as he too followed the highly embarrassed boy.
When the carriage door was closed again they fell about laughing.
"That was ace!" Harry laughed as they all sat back down into their seats. "Cheers guys!"
"You're one of us now Harry," Suzie told him, "welcome to our band of misfits,"
The rest of the journey was spent with Harry and Mia learning from Suzie, Blaise and Nev all about life in the wizarding world. Some things seemed better, Mia was particularly pleased to hear that racism wasn't an issue here but both Harry and Mia were disappointed to find out that they'd both likely be targets for blood prejudice.
"Ah well, there's bigots everywhere right?" Mia said falling backwards in her seat. Harry thought it was stupid. Mia seemed smart as all hell and what? People thought she was less than because her parents weren't wizards? That was bollocks. Harry wondered if his mum got the same flack when she was a kid but then, she married a wizard so maybe things used to be better? He didn't know but he wanted to find out. He knew barely anything about his family, only the scraps that Hagrid had told him. Harry harboured a deep distrust of the headmaster of the school. The old codger was the one that dropped him off with his abusive relatives and he basically had Harry by the purse strings. He didn't know a thing about magic until Hagrid turned up. He seemed sweet. A bit dim but he didn't get the sense that the man was deliberately malicious. He's already passed judgement on the headmaster and he had a suspicion that the old man wasn't going to be the sort of bloke he got on with.
When they eventually got to the station the giant man waved the first years over to him.
"Alright there 'arry?" He asked
"Fine thanks," Harry smiled politely, his arm linked with Mia, followed by Suzie and Blaise. Nev told them his grandma had asked him to look after her friend's granddaughter so he had disappeared to find a girl called Hannah. The four of them climbed into a small row boat which took them magically across a massive lake towards a giant twinkling castle. Harry was excited. For the first time ever, he felt he was around friends, he was away from the Dursleys and he was going to be able to learn all kinds of ace stuff, like how to vanish into thin air and blow stuff up. Yeah, this magic business might be quite cool.
When they traipsed into the hall it was filled with kids, there were all kinds of whispers. Harry had a horrible feeling that a lot of it was due to his presence. So he maybe saved the world or something but he didn't bloody well mean to, he didn't remember it either so it was a load of bollocks really.
The sorting was underway and Harry was hoping against hope that he ended up in the same house as some of his friends.
"Bones, Susan" the Scottish professor called.
Suzie walked up and became a Hufflepuff, sounded like a stupid name but she smiled and walked to the second table from the right.
"Granger, Hermione" that was Mia, he heard her grumbling about that not being her name.
"Sorry, Professor McGonagall was it?" She asked as she approached the stool, "I just wanted to let you know I go by Mia Black, I've legally taken my guardian's name, I'd have thought what with all the magic, it would have been known," she told the woman with a sweet smile.
"Black?" The curly haired boy from the train hissed towards the blond boy.
"Coincidence," the blond snapped back
The professor glanced at the headmaster before nodding at Mia and gesturing to the stool. Mia sat down, she looked like a tiny pixie under the hat. There was a long silence, it stretched onwards, to the point that some people began to mutter. Mia had a determined set to her jaw, she looked ready for a fight.
"SLYTHERIN" announced the hat. Ace. Snakes were cool. Harry clapped along with the rest as Mia joined the table on the far left. She was joined (unfortunately) by the blond and the curly haired boy. The blond sniffed and walked down the table to sit with the boulder twins but curly sat down next to Mia and gave her a shy smile. She popped her gum at him. She was ace.
Nev had already joined Suzie with the Hufflepuffs, Harry wanted to join Mia, if Suzie and Nev were together that was fine. He didn't want Mia on her own, he felt a weird sort of protectiveness over her. Especially as the fucking hat sang its song about Slytherin being the house for those whose ancestry was purest. What a load of shite. When it was his turn the silence was deafening. Harry clocked the headmaster leaning forwards in his chair. Creepy old bastard. The Scottish woman smiled at him kindly and Harry returned it. She didn't seem all that awful, bit stern but a lot of teachers were.
Hmm said a voice in his ear, You're a tricky one aren't you child?
My name is Harry, Harry thought back, not entirely sure if that's how this sorting stuff worked. Cunning, intelligent, loyal and brave, you could go anywhere.
Just put me with Mia he thought desperately.
Slytherin hmm? A good fit, you would do well in...
"SLYTHERIN!" The hat called out. Harry grinned. He jumped up and handed the hat back to Professor McGonagall who had a slightly shocked face. He ignored it. He dashed to the table on the left who were on their feet cheering for him. Mia had her fingers between her lips and was whistling shrilly. Curly was leaning away from her slightly watching her with an awed expression. Harry slumped down opposite her and grinned.
"Snakes are cool," he smiled at her, she grinned back and popped her bubble gum once more.