Everything Black | Harry Potter

4. Paint it Black

Harry's last month with the Dursleys was actually quite boring. True, Harry did find it as funny as he had the first time, that Dudley was now so scared of Harry he wouldn't stay in the same room. Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon didn't shut Harry in his cupboard, force him to do anything, or shout at him –in fact, they didn't speak to him at all. Half terrified, half furious, they acted as though any chair with Harry in it were empty. Although this was an improvement in many ways, it did become a bit depressing after a while and very, very boring.

Harry kept to his room, with Hedwig being his only company; and even that was sporadic at times, what with the owling back and forth between himself and Draco.

Oh, the sheer amount of owling.

Harry was completely convinced that if the Malfoy Heir hadn't been brought up to believe in what he had, and if Hermione hadn't been so desperate for validation, the two of them would have been thicker than thieves the first time 'round.

Draco wanted to know everything.

At first it had just been a general overview of what had actually happened during Harrys' first year escapade at the end of the year. Of course, that had then led to Draco asking why said escapade had even come to pass, which then led to more questions about the year, which led to trying to retrace all of Harrys' footsteps, which then led to Draco interrogating Harry about how many times he had sneezed during that year, when, where and why.

. . . well, not that last one, obviously, but it may as well have been on the list. That boys' thirst for knowledge put the entire house of Ravenclaw to shame.

Among other things that Harry had learned about the other boy –man?–, being quite a bit paranoid was definitely one –not that Harry could claim any better. The Malfoy Heir had insisted on creating codes, so in the situation of anyone accidentally overhearing them talk about their original timeline –"not that that'll happen, will it Potter, because we wouldn't be that stupid, would we Potter?"– they won't be immediately suspicious, just confused. Harry would've teased Malfoy, but he was well aware of how paranoid he himself had become in the past year. He'd never admit to the other boy, but using code to disguise their 'sensitive information' made him feel ever-so-slightly more secure.

As such, anything like 'blank happened in the original timeline' became 'blank happened Before', and, and 'Voldemort' had for some reason become 'Stanley'.

. . . Harry blamed that one on the insomnia.

It was hard to sleep when the dead kept intruding on his dreams.

Not dead. . . not this time.

#

In the meantime, Harry had also taken to refamiliarizing himself with the first-year schoolbooks. They weren't terribly interesting to him –he was, after all, more used sixth year levels of content– but he rationalised that he didn't want to seem like he already knew how to do the whole years' worth of material and some. He was aiming for smart-enough-to-answer-questions-correctly-in-class and never-get-in-trouble-for-not-doing-homework, not Hermione Granger level of bow-down-to-me-you-inferior-brained-plebeians and you-will-never-reach-my-level-of-intellect-no-matter-how-hard-you-hope-and-dream.

Not that Hermione would ever think of saying or doing that, but there still stood the fact that she was –or is? tenses are starting to get confusing now– an insane level of clever.

He'd also gotten a start on the extra books he bought, although he was fairly sure most of it wasn't helpful. The books on time travel only ever warned the reader of its danger, and how it shouldn't be used with proper procedures and heavy regulation –obviously commissioned by the Ministry and completely full of not-so-subtle propaganda bullshit. The magical theory books seemed like they were more useful, but a lot of it went over Harry's head. While not dumb, especially if he put his mind to something, but magical theory just did not make sense to him.