Harry finally made his first friend in early December. Though he did not know it at the time, it would only be a month and a half more before he would leave St. Jerome’s for his new foster home.

Harry was sitting in the rec room before dinner one day, reading one of his school books, when someone sat down in the chair beside him. They did not greet him, and he returned the favor. Although the bullying of Harry had ceased once Ricky left a couple of weeks before, there seemed to be a barrier between him and the other children. Harry was not sure whether this had something to do with his blindness, or the residual fear of associating with him that Ricky had instilled, or something else entirely, but neither the other children nor Harry seemed able to breach it.

After about thirty minutes of sitting together in silence while Harry read his book, he began to smell what surely was dinner being served.

“What time is it?” Harry asked the other person. “Can you read the clock? Is it dinner time yet?”

Although Lucy had taught him about useful gadgets such as Braille watches, the government considered those to be optional purchases (unlike his white cane) when it was their money being spent. Although it galled him to be reliant on someone else, he swallowed his pride and usually resorted to asking whoever was around what time it was.

Harry frowned as the person beside him seemed to fidget and rustle around for a minute, then got up and walked away. He was confused by the encounter, but pushed it to the back of his mind and instead stood up to go see whether the children were lining up by the mess hall yet.

At dinner that night, he heard the children talking about one of the newcomers, a seven-year-old girl named Ada. They said that she had come with trunks full of clothing and toys, and that all the girls had heard her sobbing herself to sleep the night before. But the children seemed to find it especially juicy that she was deaf and spoke only sign language. They discussed this without bothering to whisper, speculating on what had brought her here and how long she would stay.

Harry, suspecting that she might have been the silent stranger from earlier, wondered if he could figure out a way to talk to her. He thought that perhaps he would run into her again, but soon learned that it was harder than he had anticipated to identify a girl who never spoke. Since none of the other children ever voluntarily spoke to him anyway, she blended into the masses at St. Jerome’s.

Several days later, Harry was stretched out in a drooping armchair in the rec room, listening to a couple of the toddlers playing in the corner and fingering the burn scar on his forearm, an idle habit he had developed. He heard quick, quiet steps pad up to him and then someone grabbed his right hand.

Startled, he snatched it back and barked out, “What? What do you want?” When he received no response, he frowned in consternation, then his eyes widened as comprehension dawned on him.

Tentatively, he stretched out his hand and someone’s trembling fingers grasped it, then he felt a finger swiping lines across his palm. He frowned, not understanding, and they repeated the gesture. After a few tries, he realized she was drawing letters on his palm, and after the seventh try he finally understood her strokes:

“A - D - A”

Grinning, he nodded, pointed to her with his free hand and repeated, “Ada.”

He heard her let out a little huff of pleasure, then Harry took the hand that had been tracing into his palm and held it in his left hand. He wrote into her palm with his right index, “H - A - R - R - Y,” and pointed to himself with the same finger. Then he spelled out, “N - I - C - E - T - O - M - E - E - T - Y - O - U,” and held out his right hand palm-up as he dropped hers, trying to signal that it was her turn.

She seemed to hesitate, then he heard her quiet footsteps head towards the door and out into the hall. Confused, he knit his brows together as he considered. Did she mean him to follow her? Or was that all, was she bored of attempting to bridge their communication barrier? Then he heard her re-enter the room and drag over the little table from the corner towards him. She settled herself in the folding chair to his right and grasped his hand again, brushing more letters into his palm. It took him a few tries to understand all of her letters and arrange them into sensible words, but he eventually read, “Too slow for you.”

Harry frowned, not comprehending her meaning, but then Ada shoved a pen into his right hand and placed his left onto the little table where a piece of paper rested. His frown deepened, but he wrote out, “You want me to write instead?” He tried to keep the letters legible by tracing his place with his left finger as he wrote, but he was not sure how it turned out.

Ada grasped his hand again and pumped it up and down in what he assumed was a signal for “yes,” then she spelled out, “Faster.” Harry was not certain he agreed that it was faster, but did not argue the point.

They conversed for a while longer, though it was slow going. Harry could tell that Ada got frustrated at times by his slowness in understanding her tracings, especially as she tried to spell out longer sentences into his palm, but by dinner time they had settled into the beginnings of a rhythm. They walked to dinner together and sat together as they ate, and some of the other children noted that a small smile lingered on Harry’s face at first, though it did not take long to settle back into his usual stony expression.

xxXxx

A tall man in Muggle jeans and a black sweater stalked the streets of the city, sweeping in and out of shadows. Despite what he had said to McGonagall, he had no intention of backing off in his search for Harry Potter. But it was true that with practically the full Order, or those who were left anyway, out searching day and night, they ran much too high of a risk of alerting the wrong people of Potter’s status. And they could not afford such a mistake, not with the restlessness spreading among the ranks of the Death Eaters who had escaped Azkaban, and not with their spy exposed as siding with the Light…

And so, Severus had taken to scouring the cities and suburbs and speaking to those often overlooked by wizards and Muggles alike -- the drunkards, the vagrants, the felons, and the insane -- to see if they had seen any sign of the missing boy.

No, he could not give up. He had sworn to protect Harry, to protect Lily’s last wishes and to protect her legacy. He would find Harry Potter.

xxXxx

Over the next few weeks, Ada and Harry became fast friends. Ada would often find Harry while he was sitting or reading in the rec room, and Harry would sometimes seek out Ada’s quiet, padding footsteps in the hallways of St. Jerome’s. They used a rock as a paperweight for Harry, and he learned to hold his left thumb at the beginning of the line he was writing and follow its course with his left index finger as he wrote. Although he was sure his writing was nowhere near neat, this did help with its legibility. Ada would trace letters into Harry’s palm, and her frustration faded as Harry’s ability to understand improved, especially as they came up with some shortcuts for common words or phrases. She also taught him some simple signs and gestures which he would read by cupping his hands around hers as she signed, following her movements. He occasionally tried to return some of these signs to her, but she often laughed at his clumsy attempts and so he did not do so often.

Harry learned that Ada’s parents had been Deaf, but that they had both died in a car accident. She was an only child, and they spoke only BSL at home. She had no relatives able to care for her, so she had been placed (temporarily of course) at St. Jerome’s while they tried to find a foster family that knew BSL, or at least were willing to deal with such a huge communication barrier. Ada told him of her fears of living with people who did not speak her language, people who may force her to stop signing, and her fear of going to a mainstream school away from all of her friends.

In return, Harry told her that his parents had died in a car accident when he was just a baby, which was where he had received his lightning scar, and that he had lost his sight in another accident just a few months ago. He mentioned once that he was afraid no family would ever want him because he was a freak, but she grew quite angry at his usage of the word ‘freak,’ so he never broached the subject again.

Although he considered it, he never told her about his extended tactile senses. He was continuing to work on strengthening his mysterious ability, but he was afraid to tell anyone. He knew it was not a normal ability, and whenever he thought of telling Ada about it, the voices of the Dursleys calling him ‘freak’ seemed to echo in his head. Some part of Harry was afraid that telling Ada about his strange ability would change her mind about him, and show her just how appropriate the word ‘freak’ could be at times.

Ada and Harry also helped each other around the home. Ada helped Harry in his long search for a lock with a key, and Harry attempted to shield Ada from the taunting and teasing she was beginning to attract. Even with the vast majority of the children at the home staying for such brief periods, they still managed to form cliques, and they still managed to choose targets, and Ada somehow became a universal target.

Harry first noticed this when, while walking down the hallway with Ada, he heard odd flapping, clapping, and squawking noises coming from the group of older girls who were passing them. He tried to ask Ada what was going on, spinning his raised finger around in a small circle as Ada had taught him, but she ignored him, belying her usual chatty nature.

After that incident, Harry began to notice that the other children frequently made similar noises whenever they spotted Ada. He heard rumors of fights breaking out in the girls dormitory over Ada’s many toys and clothing, and heard girls scathingly ask her in the hallways, “When’s Daddy picking up his little girl? Did he forget to come back?”

One day as Harry and Ada sat in their usual chairs in the rec room, a nine-year-old girl who had only been at St. Jerome’s for a couple of days came over with a group of her giggling friends and snatched something away from Ada, causing Ada to gasp in surprise.

“Why do you get so many pretty dolls?” the new girl asked bitingly. “What makes you more special than us?”

Harry stood up and faced her. “Give it back,” he ordered quietly.

The girl seemed to consider him for a moment, then asked, “And who’s gonna make me? You?”

He gritted his teeth, then answered, “Maybe.”

The girls all broke into laughter, then the ringleader said, “And what will you do about it, huh?” For a moment, no one moved or said anything, then she finished, “Nothing.”

Harry slouched back into his seat as he heard the chattering girls leave, gloating over their victory. Ada tried to regain his attention, but he was wrapped up in his own swirling thoughts. He had vowed not to give anyone control, he had promised himself not to let them win! At some point along the way, he had decided to protect Ada, though he had not realized it until just now.

He went to bed that night ashamed at his cowardice and insecurity, but resolved not to back down again.

xxXxx

A few days later as he left the boys dormitory, he heard Ada’s familiar steps running down the hallway towards him and the sound of two older boys’ laughter behind her. Planting his feet solidly and resting the tip of his cane on the ground between his feet so that it rose up vertically to his chest, he called out, “Why can’t you guys all leave her alone? What did she ever do to you?”

Their laughter stopped and he heard them approach as Ada came to stand behind him.

“And I suppose you’re going to be her big protector,” one of the boys taunted as they came to a stop in front of Harry. “C’mon, you didn’t stand up to Millie, you won’t stand up to me. You freakish long-termers are all the same: cowards and weirdos.”

Harry’s jaw clenched. “I’m warning you…”

The two of them guffawed, then the second boy spoke up, “Why should we be afraid of you anyway? What good is a blind kid in a fight?”

At this, cold anger flashed down Harry’s spine, and he whipped his cane out, striking the legs of the boy on the right. He heard the other step towards him and before he could back up a punch landed on his cheek, whipping his head to the side. Harry just managed to strike out with the butt-end of his cane’s grip, feeling it connect with flesh somewhere above him, before a foot swept his weak right leg out from underneath him. He stumbled backwards and to the ground. Dazed, he did not notice them approach him until he was picked up from the floor.

“This’ll teach you…” one of them grunted, then swung the back of Harry’s hand into the stone wall, hard.

Harry managed not to whimper as he was allowed to slide back to the floor.

xxXxx

As it turned out, Harry had given one of them a bloody nose and left a red welt across the other’s legs. Harry himself was soon sporting a black eye and a very swollen right hand. Overall, Harry felt fairly good about his performance, considering that it had been two on one and the other boys were three years older than him. His only regret was that he had allowed his right hand to be injured. The tightly wrapped ace bandage made it awkward and difficult for him to grip his cane, forcing him to hold it in his left hand and making navigation a more cumbersome experience for several days while the swelling came down.

All three of the boys were grounded for fighting, meaning they had to spend all of their free time confined to their dormitory. The caretakers apparently thought that being kept in the same room for hours at a time with little else to do would force them to reconcile, but the two boys just ignored Harry and Harry followed suit. Harry would not have minded the punishment so much except that it separated him from Ada, since girls were not allowed into the boys dormitory and vice versa. Although they sat together at mealtimes, it was difficult for them to converse while eating.

Then on his last day of the grounding, she did not sit with him at dinner. When, after much deliberation, he finally asked one of the caretakers if she was ok, they told him she was gone. Some family friends had been battling for custody of her and had finally succeeded in gaining it.

Harry was glad for Ada, that she was out of St. Jerome’s, and that she was with a Deaf family that she knew, but now that he had learned what it meant to have a friend, his isolation felt all the more lonely. And so he closed off the piece of his heart that yearned for company, and tucked it away beneath growing layers of ice.