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AN: This is a chapter many of you have probably been waiting for, for a very long time. Yes, we have finally started canon. We are on the train with Hermione, Ron, Neville and Trevor the toad. I honestly think that if you've liked the story till now, it now has the potential to become even more exciting.
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Harry Evans shocks the world at the U17 dueling championship in Vienna
Britain's newest genius has not gotten much positive reception since the start of his legend last year's summer vacation, where he, at the time aged 12, tested one year forward in Charms and two years forward in Arithmancy. However, now it is becoming hard to ignore the young boy as he brings Hogwarts' international reputation from abroad.
Most recently, Harry Evans has participated in the international dealing championship for those under 17, when he was aged only 13. Such an audacious entry has rarely been attempted before, and Mr. Evans has displayed skills beyond his age and even beyond those of the Hogwarts education.
As if it wasn't already impressive enough that the young boy from London was able to win two rounds, and put on his back-foot the eventual semi-finalist Apollo Antrakosis, Mr. Evans also showcased a very special usage of magic when he deflected an incoming disarming jinx with only his hand.
Despite losing in the third round, Mr. Evans will still have four attempts at the championship starting next year. The question then becomes, if he can already advance to round three out of eight, how far can he get next year, the year after that, and the year after that?
England might just be looking at their first international dueling trophy since the one brought home by Antonin Dolohov, the disgraced Death Eater (for more information, turn to page 7)
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Harry put down the edition of the Daily Prophet, of which his arrogant grin took up half of the third page. He thought he looked quite fetching, but he'd already read most of the article and had revised it with Skeeter's help a week ago.
Their deal was on. He'd given her the exclusive interview with the most interesting person to come out of Britain this year, and she was going to look for information on his mother.
He'd only picked up the Daily Prophet to double-check that she had followed her end of the deal, and he had some positive coverage again. Which really shouldn't have been that difficult considering his achievements, but if wishes were horses… Something about beggars, but he couldn't quite remember.
He put away the newspaper and stretched in his seat on the Hogwarts Express, which he had entered quite early due to first having had a lesson with Draco. Also, to gather his nerves.
He might have competed in a dueling championship, defeated the magical prince of a long-lost empire against all odds as his allies tried to foil him, and braved a werewolf with a sword, but this was now something that merited being nervous much more than all of these achievements.
It was his third year at Hogwarts. In other words, it was the year in which the boy who lived, Neville Longbottom, along with his accomplices Hermione Granger and Ron Weasley, would be joining Hogwarts for their first year at the school for Wizardry and Witchcraft.
It was here where he would see how close they were to canon. Harry had informed Dumbledore of all his knowledge about the Horcruxes; he'd destroyed the diary himself already, and Severus Snape wasn't even a professor.
Who, then, exactly, would serve as the foil for the Voldemort-possessed Quirrell gracing the school this year?
Quirrel becoming the new DADA professor was almost a certainty.
After all, the reason that Harry and his accomplishments at the dueling tournament had not taken the front page of the Prophet had been the fact that, due to some unfortunate timing, his exposé had come out the day after Gringotts had been broken into. The second time this year.
Harry could only assume that the attempt had come from Voldemort trying to get to the philosopher's stone, which Hagrid had hopefully spirited away in time. The article had said that the theft had been unsuccessful, so that was probably the case.
Nevertheless, they would soon be entering some truly nail-biting times at Hogwarts. Dark Lords, sorcerers, alchemists and whatnot. Harry sincerely hoped not to get involved.
However, wasn't it the dream of everyone who read the Harry Potter books to interact more closely with the main trio? Sure, Harry Potter didn't exist anymore, and Ron Weasley had never had a particular draw for him, but Hermione Granger could be interesting. At least for the five minutes it would take to realise that she was just a completely insufferable nerd at this stage of her life.
Whatever musings Harry might have had about the upcoming year and the dangers involved in existing in the same castle as a Dark Lord and what kind of relationship, if any, he should have with the probably not fated anymore golden trio were interrupted by knocking on his door.
Assuming that it was only Penny or Cedric who had glimpsed him through the window or one of his many adoring fans who had come to know him as a world-renowned duelist, he simply shouted, "Come in!" without thinking too much about it.
That was why he was extremely surprised by the fact that it was Harley Black who entered the compartment, followed closely behind by a little duckling of a blonde boy who could only be Neville Longbottom.
Harry stared at the girl uncomprehendingly as she greeted him and introduced her little brother figure.
"This is Neville," she said and pointed to the boy who was looking excitedly at Harry.
She turned to Neville. "And this is Harry Evans. He's in his third year in Hufflepuff. You can come to him if you ever have issues with someone in the house."
The boy stepped forward, red in the face, blonde hair mussed up in a way that covered the whole forehead. He awkwardly extended a hand. "Hullo, I'm Neville- Pleased to meet you," he said.
Harry looked at the hand as if it were a poisonous snake before extending his own to give it a firm handshake. The boy's fingers were sweaty.
"Nice to meet you, Neville. You think you're going to be in Hufflepuff then?" he asked wondering if the world truly was already fucked anyway.
The voice trembled. "I mean you're there, as is Harley-. I mean, Harley is there," the boy stammered, as his older friend shot him a glare.
"Can we share this compartment with you?" Harley asked. "Uncle James wanted us to simply floo to Hogsmeade, but Neville wanted to do the traditional journey. We just have to find a place where we will remain undisturbed. Considering what you did to…"
"You think you're going to not get swarmed as long as I'm in the compartment?" Harry asked. This reminded him somehow of all the times that he had to pretend to be one of his female friends' boyfriends so that other men would leave them alone. Just more insulting somehow? Did his reputation seriously just consist of being a violent maniac?
Well, the dueling probably didn't help. In a way, it was just the more cultured version of boxing in the end. Talking of dueling. Neville was still staring at him as if he had just met his personal hero.
"How'd you get so good at dueling?" the boy blurted out.
Harry blinked slowly and shot a disbelieving glance at Harley, who simply smirked at him.
How was it that the boy who lived was the one who apparently had a celebrity crush on Harry, without either of them having ever met? Wasn't this way too much of a role reversal? But, well, having some influence on the legendary figure wasn't necessarily a bad thing. He could see now from the small distance that divided them the thunderbolt scar on the boy's forehead.
It was red and protruding. Considering that the original Harry's scar had faded after Voldemort's Horcrux had been excised from it, this likely meant that the soul fragment was still there in this universe. Which was not necessarily a good thing, considering that one of the things Harry had told Dumbledore had been the fact that the boy was likely a walking abomination.
Whatever, with this influence, he could perhaps direct the boy in some way towards being more competent for the horrible times ahead if things went off kilter.
"How did I get so good at dueling? It's a weird question to ask someone who didn't even win, but I have an answer nonetheless," Harry thus said. He had to see if he could somehow motivate Neville to work hard at magic, in case the boy didn't already have his own inner drive to do so.
"The answer is not that complicated, really. Dueling might not be permitted at Hogwarts, but that doesn't mean that you can't sneak away into an abandoned classroom and duke it out with a friend of yours. I'm sure Harley would be happy to help you," he said with a smirk.
The girl scowled at him from behind Neville. But that was her own fault in this case. She could have just left him well enough alone.
"Practice is always important," Harry continued. "So you need someone to practise with. But you also need to take the most basic spells and practise them hard enough that they become second nature. In dueling, speed is everything, and the better you know a spell, the faster you can cast it and the faster you can make it travel. The disarming jinx is one of the most useful spells; that's how I got so far in the tournament, by practising it a lot. I must have cast it around a thousand times," Harry lied. "So I'm sure if you can do it a hundred times, you're going to be well ahead of anyone your age. A thousand, and you might just follow in my footsteps. Any more, and you might just beat me," he put forward.
The boy beamed at him and seemed to be imagining an entire career as a professional duelist in his mind at those words. Harry decided to add on one last little thing before leaving this situation for Harley to deal with, and to see if he could find either one of his friends to come in here and protect him from Neville.
"Furthermore, you have to listen well in your classes. The thing about dueling is that general knowledge about magic can help you win just as much as actually knowing how to sling spells. After all, if I hadn't known that casting a spell enough times would allow me to cast it without a wand, I never would have pulled off that deflection that won me the second match," Harry said.
"Wow, I'll really have to pay attention then!"
Harry couldn't help but laugh as the two of them sat down on the seat opposite him.
"Anyway, if you guys don't want to be bothered, I can cast a Notice-Me-Not charm on the door while I go look for my friends and bring them here. They're all relatively relaxed as well," he turned to Harley. "You know Penny and Cedric, right?" he asked.
The girl nodded. "Yeah, Tonks said they're the ones you usually hang out with."
Harry filed away the fact that Tonks was blabbing about him and exited the compartment, turning around just long enough to cast a powerful Notice-Me-Not on the door. Perhaps this would get the boy who lived some peace. The last peaceful day he had until he actually arrived at the castle and got sorted.
He went down the corridor, shaking his head. It seemed his resolution to distance himself from the plot or whatever other shenanigans might happen this year had lasted just about an hour. It seemed that every year, the choice to get involved or not was taken quite regularly out of his hands. He would have to see if he could do something about that.
"You wanker," a combination of two voices suddenly said behind Harry, causing the boy to turn around from where he'd been standing. What greeted him when he did so was a wildly gesticulating Cedric and Penny, both waving around their own edition of the Daily Prophet. He really did live in a crazy world now, a world where young teens regularly read the newspaper.
"Excuse me?" Harry asked. "That's duelist master supreme to you two beggars," he joked.
Penny simply rolled her eyes. "Merlin Harry, can you just stop with the overachieving? You have no idea what you're doing to the other kids. The expectations are mounting. Also, it's getting a bit braggadocios."
"I didn't even say anything, why am I bragging now? I just went there and beat the shit out of people, that's it."
"Mate, you literally gave an interview saying how great you were. I'm pretty sure that's some form of bragging," Cedric teased.
Harry shook his head. "In what world? It's all facts. I beat two people and I'm good for my age, that's it." He left out the fact that probably no one in Hogwarts would have beaten Habsburg while an adult presumably assaulted their mind.
His two friends exchange a sad look. "I think he's too far gone," they both agreed. "He's lost it."
"Bugger off you two," he said and pointed towards Penny. "I'll do the same thing to you when you skip one year in Potions."
The girl crossed her arms and gave him a disparaging look. "I don't know if I want to," she said with a sniff and her nose pointed in the air.
"Wouldn't want to be too much like a certain nerd. It's a bad look," she explained at his quizzical look.
"All right," Harry said and turned to Cedric. "I'll do the same thing to you when you become a famous Quidditch player."
In response to that, the boy inspected his fingernails, pretending that there was something particularly interesting about them.
"I don't know. I might just quit. It's just too easy."
"You lost the cup last year," Harry said. "Slytherin won. How about you actually win one before you start saying how it's too easy."
The boy sighed. "I don't know. It's like beating on a bunch of babies. There's just not that much of a point," he muttered. "It's hard to bring up the motivation."
"Yeah, you should get all about beating on babies, Harry," Penny teased.
"What's the boy's name again, Kent?"
"Oh, shove it, I apologised," Harry warned.
His friends shared another look and shrugged.
"Well, it's good to see you're in top form," Cedric said. "Hope you're looking forward to giving us some dueling instructions when you get to Hogwarts. Keeping this under the lid for so long, huh?"
"I literally told you I was practising with Flitwick and was signed up for the tournament."
"Yeah, but you didn't tell us you'd actually get anywhere. Penny said you should learn to trust your friends more and not keep everything under the hat until the last second."
The redhead groaned, looked up at the ceiling of the moving train, turned around and stormed off. "You two are impossible to deal with!" he shouted behind himself as his two friends started laughing at their successful prank.
It had been a good amount of verbal humour, but he didn't appreciate being the butt of the joke. He threw a middle finger over his shoulder for good measure and went into one of the corners of the linked room between carriages to sulk for a few seconds before deciding on what to do. He didn't really want to go back to the compartment with Neville and Penny, and Cedric had just lost Harry's privileges for the rest of the train ride.
The only other person he really felt a burning need to interact with was Tonks. He had to tell her that he was ready to give her Occlumency lessons starting this year.
For the next few minutes, he thus forced his way through throngs of students still looking for their friends to spend the train ride with. He bumped his way past Slytherins, Gryffindors, Hufflepuffs and Ravenclaws who all gave him alternatively scared, admiring, respectful or hateful looks. All of them, nevertheless, patted him on the back and praised him for defending Hogwarts' honour on the international stage. After a few more minutes of searching, he determined why the attitude was split into four.
The Slytherins were afraid of the fact that a half-blood was showing magical prowess not just in academia but also in dueling. The Gryffindors admired his audacity to participate as young as he had. The Ravenclaws thought that he was now truly showing his colours as a show-off and a brute, and that this year they would definitely surpass his academic rankings. The Hufflepuffs were generally just very happy that someone was representing them, but did put a particular focus on mentioning that his newfound combative prowess would make it even less acceptable if he punched fellow members of the house.
"Here you are," Harry said in an annoyed voice when he finally found the purple-haired girl he was looking for all the way in the back of the train, sitting in the last compartment. Considering her coloration, she was oddly difficult to find.
"Where are your friends?" he asked. "Aren't you always surrounded by a group of giggling girls and boys?"
Tonks turned to give him a queer look, before shrugging. The action revealed some of her midriff from underneath her AC/DC t-shirt. "I think we already discussed this. They've all been awkward since Charlie died. And, well, the work ethic that you managed to instill into me last year didn't particularly help with keeping friendships."
Harry paused, not knowing if he should apologise for that. "Let's hope that the work ethic will get you a spot in the Auror academy, then," he eventually decided to say diplomatically.
"I'm sure it will," the now red-haired girl said. Harry noted that she was much more confident about her goals now that she was doing tangible things to achieve them. Stress and anxiety have always been a disease of the inactive. "Don't take me wrong, I still have a lot of friends. We're just not as close as we used to be. It's all been chaotic lately."
"Tell me about it," Harry said and sighed. "Life's a wild ride the moment you try to get anywhere. It's only when you're sitting on your ass that it gets boring."
"How was Vienna?"
"It's a beautiful city. Very green. Very classical. I'm looking forward to going back there in a few years when I have more free time after graduating."
The girl shook her head with a laugh. "Already planning?"
"Years fly," Harry said. It was true. The older he got, the busier he got, the faster every day flew past him. Like sand slipping away between his fingers. The context of how long he'd already lived, the fact that everything else started feeling shorter and the comparison. "I'll graduate before you know it."
Tonks rolled her eyes. "I'm graduating before you know it."
"You will be missed. You will be missed," Harry said. It got him a small smirk, and a pair of emerald green eyes flashed across her face before turning red.
"I'm sure I will be, but about the thing we discussed," she suddenly said meaningfully, tapping a finger to her forehead.
Harry nodded. "The preparations have been made. We can start in a few days; one school year is definitely enough time to get to a reasonable skill level."
"Thanks for that. It is about time you started paying me back for the dueling last year," she said jokingly.
"Oh, Tonks. It's you who's going to be paying me. For a very, very long time," Harry said with a smirk.
Two of them fell into a comfortable silence as the train chugged along, leaving behind the city and entering the plains.
After a bit of looking out of the window, they started sharing what else they had managed to do during their summer vacation.
It seemed that Tonks had progressed nicely in her goal of getting decent at medical magic, and Harry's achievements in the dueling circuit were quite obvious. But beyond that, there were also other interesting things that they'd done.
Their lighthearted chatter was, however, interrupted at some point by a knock on the door.
The two of them shared a look, before Tonks, because her arms were longer, bent over to open the compartment door.
The sight that greeted them almost made Harry facepalm. It was a frizzy-haired girl with buck teeth, looking at the two of them with an expectant look.
"Has anyone seen a toad? Someone down the compartment lost theirs," the girl.
Harry wondered who the fuck had lost their toad for this exact situation to happen.
Neville, to whom the toad had originally belonged in the original books, hadn't had one from what he had seen, and Hermione wouldn't have been helping him if he lost it. That's what Harley was there for.
"Who lost it?" he asked.
"His name's Ron, and he's a first-year student like me," Hermione said.
Harry realised that with James and Sirius alive and Pettigrew in Azkaban, there would be no Scabbers for Percy to pass down to his younger brother. Thus, it seemed like the Weasley family had gotten the boy a toad instead. He shook his head at the irony.
"Well, if you go to a Prefect, they can help you summon it. As long as you give them the name or description or something," he suggested.
Tonks gave him a queer look. "Why do you say that? Your summoning charm is probably way better than anyone in that compartment full of suck-ups," she said, probably remembering how he'd used it to pull her out of the way of Greyback several times last year.
Hermione paled a bit at the disrespect, but then turned doubtfully to Harry and looked him up and down. "Really, what's the summoning charm?" she asked.
Harry gave her a deadpan look. "It does exactly what it says it does. It summons objects to you. Of course, a toad is not an object, but it's hardly an animal with a strong enough sense of self to prevent magic being applied to it. The only thing that I need is some sort of denominator to have an idea of what sort of toad I'm summoning."
"Its name is Cannon. Can I see you doing the spell?" Hermione asked excitedly, bouncing seemingly up and down at the fact that she would be seeing some magic.
Harry shrugged, pulled his wand from his holster and held it in the air. "I suggest getting out of the door-frame," he said, and the smaller girl went into the compartment to sit down next to the two of them.
"Accio, Cannon the toad," Harry said and heard panicked croaks in the distance as some students shrieked. A large orange toad came zooming into their compartment and towards his hand. He caught it in a telekinetic hold rather than with his own hand, not knowing if the thing was poisonous.
"You want it?" he asked the girl and floated the toad towards her. It was pathetically kicking its legs in the air.
Hermione seems to seriously consider her life choices before extending a hand and letting him plop the toad down in it. She closed it in her fingers with a squeamish look on her face and stood up to power walk out of the compartment, presumably to find Ron.
"Wonderful spell!" she called after herself as she left.
Harry and Tonks watched her go before exchanging a look.
"Who the hell wants a toad as a pet?" the boy asked.
Tonks shrugged. "I don't know. But I think it's already turning out to be an interesting year."
Harry closed his eyes in frustration. "You know that's not necessarily a good thing. There's a reason that 'May you live in interesting times,' is a curse said to one's enemies in China."
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AN: FINALLY, AFTER 2 YEARS OF WRITING, I'VE FINALLY REACHED CANNON. WE ARE SO BACK AND YOU HAVE NO FUCKING IDEA WHAT I HAVE PLANNED FOR THIS YEAR. If you want to immediately skip to the middle of the year, chapter 114, there's always Patreon ;)