Harry Potter and the Boy Who Lived

Chapter 5: Durmstrang Spring Part 2

Taking Steps and Making Acquaintances

Harry's Room, Durmstrang, Feb. 15 th

It had been over two weeks since Harry spent his first night in the Durmstrang infirmary, and he was committed to making sure his first visit was his last.

While Lady Shluga had healed him, his first month at Durmstrang had Harry on guard. He knew that he hadn't made a lot of friends at Durmstrang – in fact, if one discounted Viktor, he hadn't made any friends. The fact that Harry was slowly starting to become one of the top students in most of his classes only seemed to further antagonize his classmates. In a place as competitive as Durmstrang, a new, successful, student –who just happened to be a half-blood– was bound to make a few people angry.

Harry had hoped to try to discover the identity of his attacker immediately after being released. He and Viktor had discussed it, and, unfortunately, they came had come to the conclusion that it would be impossible unless the attacker was stupid enough to brag about it. Harry was taking classes with first, second, and third years, and any of them could have been behind the attack. While it was highly unlikely for a first, second, or third year could properly cast the bone-breaking curse, most students had some kind of family connection to someone else at Durmstrang.

Fortunately, most of the upper-year students at Durmstrang didn't bother with the squabbling of the younger students. By the time sixth and seventh year came around, the pecking order for upper-class students was well established, and they were more worried about completing their advanced final projects or angering another upperclassman than paying attention to what some first year was doing. Still, there were always exceptions, and if an upperclassman was responsible, Harry knew that he was going to be in for a long and dangerous year.

Harry had been initially hesitant to wander around the school following the attack; however, after the first week, he realized something important. If his peers thought they could get away with cursing him, what would stop them from trying again? Harry loathed the thought of having to sneak around the school when he was alone, or having to plan his schedule around Viktor so that people would be less likely to attack him. When Viktor wasn't available, Harry retreated to the library where Lady Doktor kept a very sharp eye on him.

If the Durmstrang librarian had been short-tempered to students before the attack, she was now outright hostile to anyone who had their wands out. Harry wished that he could say that the librarian was upset that he had been injured under her watch, but that just wasn't the case. While Lady Doktor had treated Harry better than most students at Durmstrang, it was obvious she was enraged that anyone would dare use an offensive spell near her books. Harry had witnessed her on three separate occasions threaten students with detention for simply practicing the wand movements for spells, or for casting a warming charm without her permission.

The one positive aspect that came from Lady Doktor's intense scrutiny was that fewer students were visiting the library. Also, since Lady Doktor knew that Harry hadn't been the person who sent the curse, he was treated slightly better than the majority of the other students. This allowed him to spend a lot of time undisturbed in the library, and he began to browse through the Dark Arts section. Even if he wasn't interested in learning anything really dangerous or dark, Harry figured if people saw him looking at or reading a lot of books known for dark curses, they wouldn't think to pick a fight with him.

Viktor helped him when he could, and Harry discovered that his friend wasn't universally poor at all his classes. It turned out that Viktor's swift defeat of the four third-years in the abandoned Charms classroom was by no means a stroke of luck. The intense conditioning and reflex training Viktor did to practice for Quidditch actually made him a very talented duelist.