Deep in the Hogwarts infirmary, there was a bed that was currently hosting none other than Harry Potter, the boy-who-lived, and now the two-time saviour of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and wizardry. The black-haired, green-eyed wizard had been told by the school's nurse, Madam Pomfrey, that there was no way on Earth that he was allowed to leave this bed tonight. He didn't like that fact, but honestly, he couldn't really blame her. If he had been in charge and found out that a nurse let someone who had been through what he had just been through walk away without receiving medical help then he'd definitely have to consider firing her.
As Harry lay back, he decided to busy himself by practising some magic, as there really wasn't much else to do given that the only book he had available to him was a transfiguration book that Madam Pomfrey had given him. He put his circle-shaped glass back on and took the book and skimmed through it, finding various spells with different levels of usefulness and interest to him. For example, he didn't really ever think that there would be many cases where he would want to change a cat into a cauldron, 'poor cat' he thought to himself. Nor did he want to turn an owl into opera glasses or turn a teapot into a turtle.
Thankfully there were spells that he could see the point in, the hardening spell, for example, the next time Malfoy decided to be a pest Harry would make his food as hard as stone and let the arrogant bully break his teeth, hopefully, he would talk less.
Eventually, Harry came across a spell that seemed really interesting, the 'draconifors' spell, a spell that was designed to change objects into dragons! Well, not massive fire breathing ones, instead they were all just small transfigured ones. Still, better than nothing. Harry saw that the spell was actually a third-year spell, something that made him hesitate, only for a moment though. He was nearly at the end of his second year, he'd be a third-year soon and didn't think that there was anything wrong with getting some early practise in.
'Plus, who honestly expects a nearly thirteen-year-old Gryffindor to resist the urge to make himself dragons?' He thought to himself.
Harry took a quill that had been lying around on the desk next to him, he mentally repeated the incantation for the spell and practised the wand movements several times. Eventually, Harry was ready, he imagined the dragon he wanted. He had decided that the dragon he would try to make would be a Norwegian Ridgeback like Hagrid's dragon, Norbert, from his first year.
"Draconifors." Harry incanted, aiming his wand at the feather. Nothing happened, much to Harry's disappointment, he took a deep breath and tried again. The quill feather sprouted brown wings from the side and legs grew near the tip, but that was it. It was an odd sight, looking at a motionless feather with wings and a tail. Harry sighed before reversing it back into a normal quill, he closed his eyes and took a deep breath. He opened them and tried again, it took a couple of tries but eventually, he was able to get it right. "Cool." He whispered to himself as he looked at the small brown dragon in his hand, Harry gingerly raised his spare hand and stroked the dragon's back. "I love magic." He grinned. Harry stared at his new dragon, wondering if there was any possible way he could get away with turning some of his relative's things into dragons when they annoyed him.
Magic was undoubtedly the best thing in Harry's life at the moment, which is why he felt it was a shame that he couldn't use it outside of school, even if he did understand the reasoning behind it.
Growing up in the Dursley household, he hadn't known that magic was actually real. His Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia had always done their best to stop even the barest mentioning of it, Harry could recall them refusing to let his cousin, Dudley, watch a tv show about magic, no matter how much he begged. In Harry's experience, if Dudley wanted something then he would get it, that was just the way the world worked. The sky was blue, water was wet and Dudley gets what he wants while Harry gets neglected and abused because he's a specky git. And if Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia were hesitant, then Dudley would simply ask again or at worse let some fake tears drip down his double-chinned face and they would cave.
But that was one of the few times that they hadn't, simply because they hated magic that much. In the past various weird things had happened around Harry, like the time he turned his teacher's hair blue, at the time he hadn't known that it was accidental magic. But his relatives at least knew that it was magic since they would always punish him more harshly than normal when stuff like that happened.
Eventually, though, everything changed when Hagrid forced his way through the door and told Harry all about the magical world, a world that he was a part of. Entering the magical world was an experience that Harry would never forget, providing that nobody hits him with a memory charm or anything like that. He gained a wand, the ability to do magic, and friends! Though, that didn't mean that there weren't any downsides.
Malfoy and Snape were good examples, the arrogant boy could insult and attack whoever he wanted and seemed to be focused on Harry. Sure some teachers would be willing to give him detentions but most of the time Snape overruled them and took over and Harry didn't doubt that Snape's detention wouldn't ever be worse than a simple lecture before being sent off to bed if you were Draco Malfoy, according to the Hogwarts rumour mill, Snape was Draco's godfather. Though Harry never put much stock in the rumour mill, especially this year.
Snape was a much bigger problem, the man appeared to have hated Harry from before Harry had even known about Snape's existence. Apparently, Snape had a grudge against Harry's father and that had somehow transferred to Harry, not that Harry understood why. Was it somehow his fault for not stopping whatever Harry's father had done to him, even though Harry hadn't been born at the time? Often times Snape acted like Harry's father, James, had raised Harry for the sole purpose of annoying him. Snape was seemingly unaware of the fact that Harry's father had died when Harry was roughly a year old, something that Harry doubted given that the whole wizarding world knew that, Harry suspected it was the far more likely option of Snape just purposely ignoring it because he wanted to continue his stupid little grudge and James Potter was too dead to do it.
Though the biggest problem so far had been Voldemort, the man that had murdered Harry's parents and had tried to kill him more than once since Harry's return to the wizarding world. In Harry's first year, Voldemort had possessed the defence against the dark arts teacher, Professor Quirrell. It was more than a little bit disturbing to learn that the guy who killed your parents was living on the back of your teacher's head.
Professor Quirrell-mort had tried to kill him during his first quidditch match, and once more that year when Harry and his two best friends, Hermione and Ron, tried to stop him from stealing the philosophers stone. The year ended with Harry being able to destroy Quirrell's body thanks to his mother's protection, but Voldemort had managed to escape.
This year had been worse than last year, they had another bad defence against the dark arts teacher in Professor Lockhart, a man who seemed less than competent and spent most of his time staring at his reflection. What made matters worse was that the famous wizard was a fraud who had simply been taking credit for other people's accomplishments and then wiping their memories. Harry had also discovered that he could speak to snakes, unfortunately, the rest of the school found out at the same time and started accusing him of being the heir of Slytherin who was attacking muggle-born students throughout the school.
Between dealing with the majority of the school hating him, Harry also had to deal with Dobby's horrible attempts to save him. Sure, Harry knew that the little house elf meant well, but trying to injure him with a bludger so he would leave the school? Really? Eventually, though Harry was able to find out the heir of Slytherin was actually an old book of Voldemort's that was possessing Ginny Weasley, Ron's little sister, and making her unleash a basilisk that had been hidden in the chamber of secrets.
One wild adventure later had ended with Lockhart being obliviated of all of his knowledge, Harry had ended up fighting the basilisk with just a sword, as one does. Fortunately, Harry had been able to kill the beast, but in doing so he had ended up being painfully stabbed in the arm by one of its teeth. Thankfully Dumbledore's phoenix, Fawkes, had been there and used his tears to neutralise the venom. Not long after that Harry had destroyed the book with the basilisk fang, and a short while later he managed to free Dobby from Lucius Malfoy, Draco's dickhead of a father and the idiot responsible for dropping the book in Ginny's possessions, thankfully ending this nightmare of a year.