#para02

FREDDIE HAYWARD

To say that Freddie Hayward was an overly-energetic dude would very likely be… quite a big understatement?  Yeah.  That was probably a good way to put it.

In short, everything excited this kid.  Everything!

And sometimes, that didn’t really gel well with everyone.  It was kind of the biggest reason he’d been sort of apprehensive about joining Wink in the first place.  The thing is, when it comes to Freddie, you kind of either like him or you want to push him in front of a moving train.  There’s really no in between.  He didn’t think so, at least.

SO LIKE, it was a REALLY GOOD FEELING that people actually wanted to hang out with him.  Elise Gilbert most especially and specifically being one of those people.  Because Elise Gilbert?  Easily one of the people he was most stoked to talk to every day.

AND they got to see dogs.  AND she was going to bring him Benadryl in case he died or something.  AND she wanted to hang out with him, too.

There was, basically, no losing in this scenario.

So heck yeah, he was excited!

Excited to the point that he was pretty much bouncing on the balls of his feet as he waited outside the shelter.  They’d sort of arranged an estimated meeting time between messages, and he’d showed up a little ahead of schedule — which was actually kind of out of character for him, all things considered.  But he also was really excited, so he was sure that had something to do with it.

Once he noticed Elise approaching, his smile widened.  She was prettier in person than she was in her pictures on the app, and he didn’t know how that could be, like, possible.  BUT IT WAS.

“Elise!” he exclaimed, moving toward her and lifting his hand in a wave.  “Hey!”

Did he go in for a hug?

As if he had stopped thinking about it since the subject first came up. He gave a stiff nod and tossed a bit of his, now sodden, pumpkin pasty into the lake. They waited a few moments, watching as the ripples in the water grow bigger and bigger until a large, purple tentacle broke the surface. As quickly as the limb had appeared, it was gone, pasty in tow. Harry repeated the process until the rest of his lunch had disappeared. Finally, he sighed. “Ladon reckons that I should just go out and find a bloke to kiss,” he muttered. “To see if I’ve turned bi or not, I guess. Do you think I…”

A weight settled on his arm, fingers curling cautiously around his wrist. “Honestly, Harry, you can’t turn any kind of sexuality. I would have thought your Ladon would be responsible enough to explain that to you.” He didn’t bother correcting her that Ladon wasn’t his. Ladon wasn’t his, but it still felt like he was sometimes. A little his. “If you are bisexual,” she continued, blind to his inner musings, “then you’ve always been bisexual. It’s just a matter of discovering that about yourself.”

There was a beat of silence. He waited, but the silence stretched on until it was tangible around them. When she still didn’t offer any more information, he pulled his arm out from under her hand. “And?” he pressed.

“And I can’t tell you what your sexuality is, Harry. You have to decide that for yourself.” Her brown eyes met his and the softness in them made him avert his gaze. “What I can tell you is that I have heard you rant about how attractive several men are throughout our years of being friends and that most straight people probably don’t question their sexuality. Whether that means anything or not… That’s up to you.”

Disappointment washed over him. He was so used to Hermione having the answers, so it was a real let down when she couldn’t provide them. An inkling of guilt crept over him at that thought; he could remember her frustration on their hunt for the horcruxes at being left to do most of the magical legwork and it wasn’t fair to put all of the responsibility on her. “You’re right,” he said, with a grudging sigh. 

She nudged him in the side, digging deeper into his ribs until he finally looked up, annoyed. “Ladon was right about finding a guy to kiss though. If that’s what it’s going to take for you to know for sure, then you should do it, Harry.”

“Yeah? You think so?”

“Yes. Otherwise, you’re going to obsess about it and over analyze it for months because not knowing will drive you mad.” Exasperation leaked into her voice. “You always do that. It would be much kinder to yourself to just take the plunge and see what you feel.” She tilted her head towards him, eyes glittering and a sly smile curving her mouth. He braced himself, sure that he wasn’t going to like whatever came next. “Take Ron for example,” she said. “He’s been far less insufferable about Viktor since he came to help with the war clean-up effort and I gave Ron a free pass to kiss him. Haven’t heard a single word against Viktor since.”

“I… you… Ron… What?” Harry spluttered, not knowing what to do with the information that he now possessed. Hermione watched him, eyebrows raised as his brain began to slot old memories into place. 

Ron’s adoration of Krum at the Quidditch World Cup; the careful way he’d divvied up his money to ensure that he could support his team at the match but still have enough left over to purchase an action figure of the opposing team’s seeker; how he’d nearly pulled Harry’s arm out of the socket when Krum had shown up for the tournament; the way he’d made room at the Gryffindor table, hopeful that Krum would sit next to him; Ron’s mouth hanging open, mouthing wordlessly, as his eyes slid over the length of Krum’s navy robes. 

“You really are quite unobservant about these things, aren’t you?” 

The world tilted slightly as the implication of those memories hit him. Ron hadn’t been jealous of Krum; he’d been jealous of both Krum and Hermione, and he hadn’t known who he wanted to be with more. His view of the world was tunnel visioned, he saw that now, but how many more hits could his vision take before it shattered completely?

Harry struggled to his feet, fighting against the mud that had suctioned him to the earth. “I need to take a walk,” he muttered, not daring to look at the pitying look he was sure was on Hermione’s face. He waved his wand over his robes with a quick tergeo and wandered off into the woods without a backward glance, needing some time to just exist without other people.

----

Harry wandered to the more secluded side of the lake, where he, Hermione, and Sirius had almost lost their souls to dementors. He sat on a log that had been long since claimed by moss and weeds, and contemplated just how much he’d missed out on his time as the chosen one. Entire relationships had come and gone without Harry so much as noticing them. There was an entire subset of Hogwarts culture that he simply wasn’t privy to because he’d been too focused on not dying. It was like entering the wizarding world again for the first time; only this time, people weren’t as forgiving at his ignorance. Not when he’d been living in the world, oblivious. 

He wasn’t entirely sure how much time passed while he sat there, but the light shifted through the trees and the temperature rose to a toasty nine degrees before starting to drop once more. Harry barely noticed. He was starting to realize that his time at Hogwarts had not been as full as it could have been. Dumbledore and Voldemort had robbed him of his time to just be a teenager. The old resentment bubbled up inside of him at his snatched youth and he fixated on that for a long time as he stared at the surface of the lake, picturing what could have been. The light had shifted further until it was barely peeking behind the trees, when Harry realized he was wasting even more of his time pitying himself. With a sigh, he forced himself to standing and started picking his way back through the overgrowth towards the inviting warmth of the castle.

----

Shouts bled out of the Great Hall, a cacophony of sharp and panicked voices. He heard something about a rescue. All thoughts of the bacon butty he’d been hoping to grab fled Harry’s mind. He took out his wand as he raced inside, heart pounding against his chest, as he mentally prepared for whatever he was going to meet. Ex-death eaters out for revenge? Rouge dementors that had yet to be rounded up? 

Harry banged through the doors with a deafening boom and skidded to a stop, wand held aloft as he prepared to help fight. “Who.. what…” he puffed. 

All of the sound cut out as around fifty pairs of eyes turned to stare at him, mouths open. Headmistress McGonagall stood at the front of the room, looking war ready. Around the room stood what looked like all of the seventh and eighth years combined. Even the Slytherins were there, though they looked the least panicked out of anyone. In fact, they looked downright bored. Was Pansy Parkinson filing her nails?

“What’s happened?” he managed to huff out. “Who needs rescuing?”

An uncomfortable cough sounded in the back, several people turned away awkwardly to stare at their friends or dust in the corner. Pansy rolled her eyes, turned on her heel and walked out of the room, not even stopping the perfecting of her nails as she did so.

Confused, Harry glanced back at the Headmistress, and was even more puzzled to find her swelling with rage. “We were coming to save you, you ungracious, procacious, ignoramus.” The students twittered nervously, now that Harry was apparently not in any danger.

Now was probably not the time to point out McGonagall’s rhyming skills, as respectful as they were.

“You were coming to save me from my walk?” “Your walk?” McGonagall’s accent grew more pronounced the angrier she got, Harry noticed. Had it always been like that? “Potter, you’ve been missing for six hours! Ms. Granger finally came to notify me of the situation ninety minutes ago.” He glared across the hall at Hermione, who didn’t back down from his gaze. She merely met his eyes and shrugged. “We were about to send search teams out to comb the grounds! What do you have to say for yourself?” 

What Harry wanted to ask was if they would have gotten this worked up over someone who wasn’t, well, him. If they would have even noticed if someone who wasn’t Harry Potter was gone for a few hours. Instead, he sighed, finally lowering his wand. “Sorry, Prof- er, Headmistress. I just needed to be alone for a bit and I must have lost track of time. I didn’t mean to worry you. Or anyone else.”

McGonagall harrumphed at him but looked mollified. “You can’t disappear like that, Potter. At least let Ms.Granger know where you are. If you aren’t going to learn to send messages with your patronus, then you need to see about getting a new owl.”

Harry stiffened at these words and turned his eyes towards the enchanted ceiling, trying to keep the image of green light and a feathery body tumbling to the ground from his mind. He swallowed hard around a knot in his throat. Pressed his lips together. Nodded. “Yes, Headmistress,” was all he could manage to say in response. He wasn’t getting a new owl. Not any time soon.

She studied him for a moment over her spectacles before nodding. “Very well. Off to bed. All of you,” she said the last part pointedly to the gathered crowd, who began gathering their things, muttering to each other.

Great. Just what he needed. To be the focus of the school’s conversations, again.

He didn’t wait around to talk to his fellow students like everyone else did. He simply turned on his heel, not waiting for Hermione to make her way across the room to him. Surely she had explanations and apologies for whipping the school into a frenzy, but he didn’t want to hear them. With all the magic she had in her arsenal, there had to be a way to find him that didn’t involve stressing everyone out. He wasn’t going to shut her out but talking to her could wait until the morning when he wasn’t so annoyed.

----

The common room was deserted, probably because all of his classmates were still talking about him in the Great Hall, and Harry went to his dorm before he had to face anyone. About five minutes of laying face down on his bed was all he got, before Dean burst into the room and flopped down on the bed opposite Harry.

“Just like old times, eh? Classic Harry Potter.”

With insurmountable effort, Harry lifted his head off his bed and glared. “Sod off.”

 “So,” he said, chuckling. “Where did you run off to for six hours? Ginny was in the Great Hall, so I assume not with her.”

Guilt coiled in his stomach as Harry realized he hadn’t even looked for her. Or thought about her. “I wasn’t with anyone,” he mumbled, pushing himself to sitting. “Like I said, I just wanted to be alone. Had some stuff to think about.”

“Ah.” Dean looked at him with a knowing smirk. “You’re still on about the identity crisis then?” Heat licked Harry’s ears and he spluttered indignantly, causing Dean to roar with laughter. “Come off it, mate. All year you’ve been skulking about, asking me about my relationship with Seamus and how I knew I was into lads. It doesn’t take Hermione Granger to put the pieces together.”

Everyone seemed to be really good at figuring out things about his life before he was even aware. At this point, he was fairly certain that he could just live on autopilot while his peers filled in the gaps for him.  He gave the begrudging sigh of someone who has been heavily put upon and began to tell his tale, ending with what Ladon and Hermione thought was the solution to all of his problems.

Dean rubbed his neck, deep in thought as Harry finished. “You know, we’re due for a good party. Haven’t had one since we started eighth year. Far too long in my opinion. I’ll let Terry Boot and Hannah know so they can spread the word to their houses. Hufflepuff is always good for snacks and Ravenclaw is good for music. They’re both good for spin the bottle. We’ll get you snogged yet.”

He grinned lavisciously at Harry but something about the statement bothered him. After a moment of puzzling it out, he figured out what it was. “What about Slytherin?”

“Slytherin? What about them?” The thought seemed to confuse Dean.

“We’re inviting them too, aren’t we?”

His question was met with a chortle as Dean laid down on his bed. “Good one, Harry.”

All of the conversations with Ladon ran through his mind, the discussions about no one really giving Slytherins a fair chance. How the wizarding world could pretend that they were healing but it didn’t matter when no one wanted to change their attitudes. “The whole us versus them thing is what got us into a war in the first place,” he insisted. “We can’t keep holding their parents’ mistakes against them. We share a common room, the least we can do is extend the invite. They probably won’t even take it.”

“You’re serious?” Dean studied him pensively from across the room, trying to gauge whether Harry was pulling an elaborate prank. Finally, he shrugged. “They can come. But you’ve got to do the inviting.” 

Harry spluttered in protest. “Me? Why me? They’ll kill me!”

“Eh, the world has been trying to kill Harry Potter for a long time now. If anyone has a chance of surviving then it’s you.”