Mudbloods Grimoire

The first time I saw Harry Potter, he was asleep.

Not the gentle, storybook kind of asleep, either. He was slumped against the window of a train compartment, cheek smeared flat against the glass, mouth open, a thin line of drool connecting his chin to his collar. His glasses had slipped sideways and one of the lenses had fogged up from his breath. He looked like someone who'd been dropped there by accident and forgotten.

I stood in the corridor with my trunk handle cutting into my palm and watched him for longer than was polite. I told myself I was waiting for a seat. The train was full, everyone knew that, and the compartments had been filling up since King's Cross. But I could have knocked. I could have slid the door open and asked, the way I'd asked at every other compartment, my voice getting smaller each time.

Instead I watched him sleep.

He was skinny in a way that made me think of the kids at primary school who got free lunches and never talked about it. His robes were too big. There was a smudge of something dark on his knuckles, dirt or ink, and a fresh scratch running from his wrist to his thumb like he'd been in a fight with a cat.

I knocked.

He jerked awake so fast he banged his knee on the table and knocked his glasses off completely. They clattered to the floor and he scrambled for them, muttering something that might have been sorry or might have been a swear word, I couldn't tell.

"I'm looking for a seat," I said. "Everywhere else is full."

He found his glasses and put them on and looked at me like I'd asked him to solve a riddle. His eyes were very green. I noticed that immediately and wished I hadn't.

"Yeah," he said. "Sure. Come in."

I heaved my trunk onto the rack and sat down across from him. The compartment smelled like sweets and something else, something sharp and animal, like the inside of a dog's mouth. I wrinkled my nose before I could stop myself.

"Sorry," he said. "It's probably me. I've been staying with my aunt and uncle. Their dog sleeps on my bed."

"Doesn't it have its own bed?"

"He does. He just prefers mine."

I didn't know what to say to that. I pulled out my copy of Hogwarts: A History and opened it to a page I'd already read three times, mostly so I'd have something to look at besides him. He watched me do it. I could feel his eyes on my hands, on the book, on the way I turned pages too fast because I was nervous.

"You've read that already," he said.

"How would you know?"

"You're not reading it. You're just staring at the same paragraph."

I felt my face go hot. I closed the book and set it on my lap.

"I'm Hermione Granger," I said. "I'm starting first year. I've read all the coursebooks already. I've memorized the school song, the founders' names, and the entire history of the castle, though I suspect some of it is embellished."

He blinked at me.

"I'm Harry," he said. "Harry Potter."

I knew the name. Everyone knew the name, even me, even before I'd gotten my letter, even before I'd known there was a world where names meant something. I'd read about him in the books my parents bought me after Professor McGonagall came to our house. The Boy Who Lived. The baby who survived a killing curse. The scar.

I looked at his forehead. There it was, half-hidden under a mess of black hair, a thin red bolt of lightning.

"I know who you are," I said. And then, because I couldn't help myself, because the question had been sitting in my chest since the moment I'd first read his story: "What was it like? When it happened? Do you remember anything?"

His face closed up like a door.

"No," he said. "I don't remember."

The silence after that was thick enough to chew. I'd done something wrong. I knew it the way you know you've stepped on a dog's tail before it yelps. I wanted to take the question back, to fold it up and put it away, but words don't work like that.

"I'm sorry," I said. "That was rude."

"It's fine."

It wasn't fine. His shoulders had gone stiff and he was looking out the window at the countryside blurring past, and I could tell he was counting the seconds until someone else opened the door and gave us both an excuse to stop talking.

I pulled a chocolate frog from my bag, one of the ones I'd bought at the station, and held it out to him.

"Peace offering," I said. "I've got about twenty. My parents went a bit overboard."

He looked at the frog, then at me. Something in his face softened, just a little, like ice cracking on a pond.

"Thanks," he said, and took it.

The frog jumped the moment he opened the box, launching itself onto his shoulder and then onto the floor, and we both dove for it at the same time and cracked our heads together hard enough that I saw stars.

"Ow," I said, and he started laughing.

It was a strange laugh, like he wasn't used to doing it, like it surprised him as much as it surprised me. He laughed and rubbed his head and the frog got away, hopping under the seat and disappearing into the gap between the wall and the floor.

"I think that's a lost cause," he said.

"It's fine. I've got nineteen more."

We spent the next hour eating chocolate frogs and trading cards. He had a Dumbledore already. I had two. I gave him one and he gave me a Morgana in return, and we argued about whether she was really a villain or just misunderstood, and by the time the train started to slow he was sitting forward with his elbows on his knees and his eyes bright and he'd stopped looking at the door.

I didn't know then what I know now. I didn't know that the boy across from me would become the axis the rest of my life turned on. I didn't know about the war or the losses or the long nights I'd spend awake wondering if he was still breathing. I didn't know that loving him would be the easiest and hardest thing I'd ever do.

What I knew was this: he had a scar he didn't want to talk about, and a laugh that came out sideways, and when he looked at me he actually looked at me, not through me, not past me. Most people didn't. I'd spent eleven years being the girl who talked too much and knew too many answers and corrected everyone's pronunciation. Harry didn't seem to mind.

The train hissed to a stop. Outside, the sky had gone purple and the platform was lit with lanterns, and a giant man was calling for first years, his voice carrying over the crowd like a bell.

Harry stood up and grabbed his trunk. He was still too skinny, still had dirt on his knuckles, still had that scratch on his hand. But he smiled at me, a quick, crooked thing, and he said, "You coming?"

And I did.

I followed him off the train and into the dark, and I didn't know it yet, but I was already gone.