Chapter 27: Nobody's Hero
The Hogwarts Express smelled of steam, sweets, and, to Harry, it smelled like home. He sank into the plush seat of the compartment, feeling how the tension of his horrible summer at Privet Drive dissolved. Ron, beside him, was already ranting about the rescue in the flying car and the scolding his mother had given him on the platform, but Harry barely heard him. He was nervous.
His first year hadn't ended with exams and good grades; it had ended in an underground chamber, with his hands burning a professor possessed by his parents' killer. After a summer with crazy house elves, death warnings, and bars on his window, Harry was convinced that "normalcy" was no longer an option for him. He expected danger to be the new norm. He was on edge, waiting for the other shoe to drop.
The compartment door opened. Harry looked up, expecting a seller or, worse, Malfoy.
It was Timothy Hunter.
Harry tensed for an instant. He perfectly remembered the Timothy from the end of the last term, the "Ghost of the Tower", the pale and perpetually distracted boy who seemed to look through people, his mind a million miles away.
But the boy who entered seemed... different. He was more relaxed than Harry had ever seen him, calm, and he gave the compartment a genuine and casual smile.
"Any room?", he asked.
"Tim! Come in", said Harry, surprised by his own relief.
Timothy sat next to Hermione. "I see the journey was rough, Ron", he said, pointing to Pigwidgeon's broken cage.
"You can't imagine!", started Ron.
Harry watched, thrown off. Timothy joked with Ron about Quidditch tactics (Harry didn't even know Tim cared about Quidditch) and then engaged in a friendly debate with Hermione about the utility of Divination as a subject. It was... normal. It was the Timothy he had played chess with in the empty Gryffindor common room during the Christmas holidays. Harry relaxed. It was good to have him back.
That night, the Welcome Feast was loud and cheerful. Harry clapped loudly when Ginny was sorted into Gryffindor. Finally, Dumbledore stood up, his arms spread wide.
Harry leaned forward, his hands tightening slightly on the table. Here it came. The warning. He vividly remembered the speech from last year, the cryptic warning about the third-floor corridor on the right-hand side. What would it be this time? The Forbidden Forest again? Some haunted dungeon?
"Welcome!", said Dumbledore, his eyes twinkling. "Welcome to another year at Hogwarts! I have only a few words to start, and here they are: Nitwit! Blubber! Oddment! Tweak! And now, before we fall upon our excellent banquet, let us welcome our new Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher, Gilderoy Lockhart!".
The food appeared. Ron cheered and dove for a chicken leg. Harry stared at his empty gold plate. That was it? No monsters? No deadly corridors? Just... a new and smug professor? He felt strangely disappointed. It was unsettling. It was too normal.
If Harry thought the feast had been weirdly normal, his first Defense Against the Dark Arts class was actively ridiculous.
The room smelled strongly of... well, Gilderoy Lockhart. There were portraits of the man everywhere, all smiling and winking at them. Lockhart himself, dressed in bright turquoise robes, was seated behind his desk, beaming.
"Me!", he said, his voice echoing in the classroom. "Gilderoy Lockhart, Order of Merlin, Third Class, Honorary Member of the Dark Force Defence League, and five-time winner of Witch Weekly's Most Charming Smile Award!".
Harry exchanged a look of absolute disbelief with Ron. This had to be a joke. But the real madness began when Lockhart handed out the quiz. Harry read it, his eyes widening with horror at every question.
What is Gilderoy Lockhart's favorite color?
What is Gilderoy Lockhart's secret ambition?
When is Gilderoy Lockhart's birthday, and what would be his ideal gift?
"Thirty minutes!", announced Lockhart cheerfully. "Start... now!".
Harry looked around, searching for someone, anyone, who shared his indignation. It was then that he noticed the two anomalies.
The first was Hermione. She was sitting in the front row, her back straight, writing furiously on her parchment. She wasn't even consulting the books; she was writing from memory, a small and happy smile on her face. He looked at her for a moment, her eyes shining with pure adoration for the professor. Harry felt dizzy. The same Hermione who had solved Snape's riddle under pressure was now... in love with this fraud?
The second anomaly was at the back of the room. Bewildered, Harry looked for Timothy. The Ravenclaw was leaning back in his chair, arms crossed and a faint smile on his face. He wasn't horrified. He wasn't indignant. He seemed... perpetually amused. He was watching Lockhart with a purely analytical amusement, as if he were watching an especially bad play.
When the class culminated with Lockhart releasing a cage of Cornish Pixies, the chaos was instant. The blue creatures shrieked, throwing inkwells and tearing books. Neville ended up hanging from the ceiling chandelier.
"Come on, boys, round them up!", shouted Lockhart, before two pixies grabbed him by the ears and he fled to his office, leaving the students to fend for themselves.
Amidst the pandemonium, Harry saw Timothy raise a hand idly, without even getting up from his chair. A pixie that was lunging at him froze suddenly in mid-air, spun three times, and fell to the floor, unconscious.
Harry didn't know what was worse: Lockhart's incompetence, Hermione's blind adoration, or the fact that Timothy seemed to find it all an entertaining spectacle. While Ron shouted "Peskipiksi Pesternomi!" uselessly at the horde, Harry covered his head with his book and shared a look of absolute despair with his best friend. This was going to be a very, very long year.
September turned into October. The castle prepared for Halloween. And Harry... waited.
He found himself listening intently in the quiet corridors between classes. He waited for... something. A whisper. A voice. The previous year, the danger had announced itself with a troll and a three-headed dog. This year, the greatest danger was being crushed by the stack of autographed Lockhart books. He kept waiting for the other shoe to drop.
The Halloween feast arrived, and Harry sat at the Gryffindor table feeling a familiar tension in his stomach. He remembered the last Halloween party, the panic, the troll... Dumbledore stood up. Harry held his breath.
"Happy Halloween!", said the headmaster cheerfully. "Let the feast begin!".
And that was it. The pumpkins grinned, the food appeared, and the ghosts did their usual parade. There were no screams, no terrified professors, no monsters on the loose. It was... a feast. Harry ate, feeling strangely empty.
The year progressed with an almost painful normality. Life became a mundane routine: Quidditch (they had a good team this year), homework (a ridiculous amount), and the farce of Lockhart's classes. The biggest crisis of the term wasn't a deadly monster, but the result of Ron's broken wand. After Malfoy called Hermione "Mudblood" (a term that made Harry feel a deeper hatred than ever), Ron's attempt to defend her went spectacularly wrong.
Watching his best friend vomit huge, slimy slugs into a bucket was disgusting, yes. But it wasn't Voldemort. It was just... a disgusting accident.
Harry found himself in a strange position. He had prepared himself for another battle for his life. He had saved the Philosopher's Stone. He had faced his parents' killer for the second time. And now... he was worried about a Potions exam.
He felt deeply relieved. He was safe. His friends were safe. And yet, a part of him, a part that shamed him, felt... restless. Useless. He was the Boy-Who-Lived, but this year, there was nothing to live through. He was a soldier trained for a war that wasn't coming. A hero with nothing to save. Nobody's hero.
The library had become the setting for Harry's new normal. It was a quiet place, at least until Ron started snoring over his History of Magic essay. Harry sighed, his quill dripping ink onto the parchment. He was trying to write about the Shrinking Solution, but his mind kept wandering.
Next to him, Hermione was in another world. But it wasn't the world of Snape's homework. Her nose was buried in Year with the Yeti, and a silly smile played on her lips.
"Seems like a fascinating subject", said a quiet voice.
Harry looked up, surprised. Timothy Hunter slid into the empty seat next to him, dropping a book onto the table. Harry looked at the cover. It wasn't an ancient tome on runes or alchemy. It was Quidditch Through the Ages.
Ron woke up with a start. "You're reading about Quidditch? You?".
Timothy shrugged, opening the book. "Dumbledore advised me to 'relax' and 'live a little' this year", he said, as if quoting a manual. "I'm following his advice. Besides", he added, his finger tracing a diagram of a Firebolt, "the aerodynamics of racing brooms are theoretically fascinating. It's a study of applied charms".
Ron looked like he was going to argue physics, but Hermione looked up from her book, her eyes shining. "Speaking of fascinating, did you know that Professor Lockhart...?".
"Oh, no, here we go again!", groaned Ron, dropping his head onto the table again.
Harry leaned back in his chair and watched the scene. It was the second term, and this was his new normal. Ron complaining about Lockhart. Hermione defending him with absurd arguments. And Timothy... the genius of the castle, the "Ghost of the Tower", quietly reading a book about Quidditch as if it were the most normal thing in the world.
For some reason, Timothy's calm was an anchor. While his two best friends were caught up in the Lockhart drama, the strangest boy he knew was the only one who seemed grounded. Harry smiled to himself. The Ravenclaw's quiet and analytical presence was, in a very strange way, comforting.
Maybe, thought Harry as he returned to his disastrous Potions essay, a peaceful year wasn't so bad after all.
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