Harry stamps into the Slytherin common room, and he pushes past the two prefects that try and hold him back and ask if he’s alright; his face is bright red and he just can’t get over the complete humiliation flooding through him. He barely even feels anger, he just feels sick and embarrassed and upset. He had defended Ron Weasley when Malfoy had insulted the state of his secondhand school books, and Ron had only spat that he didn’t need any defence from a slimy snake. Well, Harry knows exactly how he’s going to deal with that.

There'd been a passage in An Introduction To The Wizarding World, one about how seriously letters are taken amongst the wizards. Everyone writes each other for everything, because it's so much cheaper and more functional than using Floo Powder to call someone most of the time, and when you don't need a more complex dialogue you can just send letters. There'd been all sorts of information about how letters are used - most of it is the same as how Muggles use it, obviously, just that wizards use post more than Muggles do nowadays, but part of it had been about famous letters used to win political wars.

Harry isn't in a political war, obviously, but sending a letter is going to do a lot more good than anything else.

Dear Mrs Weasley,

He doesn’t know her first name, but that doesn’t matter, not really. He doesn't need her first name, and using her first name would only make him seem older than he is. He wants her to think of him as young right now, young and vulnerable. And he is, sort of, it's not like that's a lie.

I’m sorry if this letter is disturbing you but I just wanted to
thank you for giving me so much help on Platform 9 and ¾
a few weeks ago, when I was on my way to Hogwarts for
the first time.

I was really lost, to be honest, as Ive never really
experenced the wizarding world before and no one gave me
any instructons for finding the platform (I was raised by
my aunt and uncle, who are Muggles and dont approve of
magic), and I just wanted to say properly how grateful I am.

It’s unfortunnate sad that your son, Ron, and I won’t be
friends now, as he’s taken really unkindly to how I was
sorted into Slytherin and made it ovvious he doesn’t want to
talk to me now, but I didn’t want that to efect me thanking you
for your help.

So thank you so much Mrs Weasley! I was really lucky to run
into one of the nicest witches in the train station.

Yours truly,
Harry James Potter

He makes to roll the parchment up to go and send, but he knocks his ink bottle over and grabs it just as it splatters on the bottom of the page. The quill hurts his hand a bit to use, more than a pen does, but he's getting used to it. The ink he's getting used to slower. He mutters irritably, but then, struck by a sudden thought, he grabs at the quill again. Why not be honest about that bit?

PS: Sorry for the ink blots. I’m still getting used to using quills
and ink.

He looks down at his scrawled handwriting upon the page, and he smirks with an almost-bitter satisfaction – Harry isn’t a cruel boy, not as a rule, and he doesn’t want to hurt Ron, but he wants something to make him think twice about being so horrible. He doesn't want to actually be nasty to him, doesn't want to call him names or anything, and Harry would have liked to be his friend, but for now he'll just settle for Ron keeping his distance from Harry.

“You alright, Potter?” Prefect Lanjwani's tone doesn't really offer space for him to argue with her, and she stands in his and Draco's dormitory doorway, her arms crossed over her chest and her expression rather stern. Harry doesn't want to lie to her, but he doesn't want to go into the details about why he's upset, either - the idea of being upset about a Gryffindor not being friends with him will probably sound stupid to a lot of the Slytherins, who seem to take the house rivalry quite seriously.

“Yes, yeah, Afifa, I’m fine.” Lanjwani frowns at him, her pretty forehead furrowing and showing wrinkles, and Harry adds, “I’m sorting it out, I promise. I'd come to you if I needed help.” This, she accepts, and she gives a simple nod, stepping back down the hall. Harry dries the parchment’s ink with a charm – the little book of charms had had almost a hundred spells, and one of the easiest to learn was a very simple one for drying ink. Harry wishes Wingardium Leviosa was as easy, but he's not nearly as lucky. He rolls his piece of parchment up, tying it up, and makes his way out.

He begins to walk out of the common room, up through the dungeons and to the entrance hall, but it’s there that he’s stopped short, two more Weasleys appearing in front of him. Harry freezes, staring between Fred and George, and his hand goes to his wand and holds it out – strange, how swiftly that’s become instinct. He doesn’t even know any hexes yet, but he supposes he could always use a cleaning charm on them. George's shoes could do with a polish.

“Oooh, look at that, George.” They're both smirking, and Harry looks between them in the same hurried way he used to look between Dudley and Dudley's friends when they had him cornered, but they're years older than him and they know magic – Harry doesn't think running away would do him much good.

“Oh, I know, Fred. Suddenly not so friendly, is he?” George tuts, shaking his head, as if Harry's the one who started the unfriendliness.

“Anyone’d think we wanted to do him harm.” Fred Weasley is smirking at the idea, and Harry glances in the mirrored shield of the knight to his right, but there are no other Slytherins behind him – the Entrance Hall is, unfortunately, empty, and the twins are between him and the entrance to the Great Hall, as well as the way out and into the courtyard.

“You do do Slytherins harm," Harry points out, tone defensive. The twins hadn't seemed that bad on the train, but Harry's heard some of the stuff they've done to the Slytherin first years, and he heard how they booed at the Sorting Hat last week.

“Harm? Not at all. The occasional prank here and there-”

“A joke or two-”

“Just a laugh-”

“I don’t want a laugh," Harry says firmly. "I just want to go to the owlery."

“You sending a letter to your folks?” George’s face is softer than his brother’s as he asks the question, his smirk replaced by a gentler smile, something warmer. Harry hesitates: he could lie, and maybe the sentimental George will let him past, or he can tell the truth, and maybe they’ll be too scared not to. She’s their mum as well, after all, and she'd already seemed pretty done with them at the station.

“I’m sending one to your mum, actually. Just wanted to thank her for help on the platform, but I guess I can add a postscript about you two.” George looks as horrified as Harry had hoped, but Fred just grins. For a second, Harry's heart sinks, and he wonders if he's going to be pelted with coloured pellets and dungbombs.

“You sneaky little sod,” Fred Weasley proclaims, as if it’s the biggest compliment he could ever bestow, and with a bow, not seeming intimidated in the least, he steps aside with a dramatic flourish.

George takes a similar step, but then he says, “We weren’t going to have a go, by the way, Potter. Just wanted to see if the snakes had corrupted you.”

“Seems they have,” Fred says, apparently delighted by Harry’s nefarious threat of writing to their mother. What a strange boy. Harry slowly lowers his wand, and he sets it into his pocket again before, with a moment’s more caution, offering a small smile.

“Seems like you’d have corrupted me if I’d been in Gryffindor anyway," Harry points out, doing his best to be a bit friendlier, and the twins take it well, beaming at each other before looking back to Harry. They constantly seem to be thinking, Harry thinks, and he can't help but wonder if the two of them use some sort of secret language to co-ordinate themselves so well.

“He’s got us pegged, hasn’t he, Fred?”

“Seems like he does, George. Cleverer than little Ronnie, anyway,” Fred says agreeably, and adds, “We'd best tell Ginny about this. Maybe she'll stop being in such awe of him, and start being scared of him." Harry doesn't really want anyone to be scared of him, but-

“Awe?” Harry repeats, a bit uncomfortable, but the two of them just shoot him twin grins without explaining anything more.

"We’ll see you around, Potter.”

“Tell Mum we’ll pick up that toilet seat," George says, and Harry laughs despite himself. He watches the two older boys walk away, a bit surprised by how well that conversation had gone, and then he turns and makes his way outside. The Hogwarts grounds, thank goodness, are way harder to get lost in than the castle itself.

----

“So, what do you think is on the third floor, Hermione?” Harry asks. Hermione looks up from her book, surprised by the question.

“What?” Harry’s in a better mood when he sits down with his Gryffindor friend in the library, and she stares at him, evidently discomfited at his question. The walk back from the owlery had been nice, and he'd said hello to Padma and Parvati Patil, who'd been quite friendly. Parvati hadn't seemed nearly as uncomfortable with his crest as the other Gryffindors, and she'd not seemed to give it any thought. Padma had been the same, and had even jokingly suggested that Harry would look better if he wore even more green.

“You know, the third floor. What do you think it is?”

“It doesn’t matter," comes the firm insistence, stubborn and particular. “It’s out of bounds, and it’s dangerous. You heard what Dumbledore said.” Harry knows that it's out of bounds, but he's curious. He doesn't actually want to go right up to it now, not when he'd obviously get caught and not when it really could be dangerous, but there's nothing wrong with thinking about it, is there?

“But don’t you want to know?”

“It could kill us, Harry! Or worse, get us expelled.”

“What if it’s books, Hermione? Complicated books no one's been allowed to read for years and years?”

The ghost of curiosity on her features lasts only a fraction of a second. “Let’s just do our Herbology essay, Harry.”

Harry relents and picks up his quill; he’d really only been considering it after hearing a few of the sixth years discuss it over magical poker in the Slytherin common room – it’s not that he really wants to know, not enough to actually go and see, but he’s curious. And his mind, working as it does, flickers back to the grubby brown package Hagrid had collected from Vault 713, the grubby brown package that someone had broken into Gringotts to steal.

---

Harry smiles at Hedwig when she comes down to him at breakfast that morning, and he strokes her chest with two knuckles as he looks over the letter.

“Who’s that from, Potter?”

“Molly Weasley,” Harry answers distractedly, and he ignores Malfoy’s snicker as his eyes scan over the page, noting the woman’s first name at the bottom in a looping and rushed script. Her handwriting is much neater than his, obviously, but it seems like she'd written the letter in a hurry. She might do everything in a hurry, though, given how harried she'd seemed at the train station.

Dear Harry,

Oh, bless you for being such a thoughtful young man!
I said to my husband, Arthur, that you’d been so terribly
polite at the station, and how I’m sure you’ll grow up
to be charming! I am very sorry to hear about Ronald’s
rudeness, and I just want to make sure you know that we
did not raise our children to be rude to anyone based
on anything so petty as their Hogwarts house!

Harry doubts this is completely true, based on Ron's complete u-turn, but he won’t point that out when he writes her back.

I will be having a word with Ronald, and I just want
to assure you, Harry, that a boy as kind as you will
always be welcome in our house, and if you ever want
to write me for anything at all, please do!

Yours,
Molly Weasley

PS. Make sure you eat up, Harry. You seemed so skinny
at the station!

She’s a nice woman, Mrs Molly Weasley – Harry can practically feel her maternity radiating from the page of parchment, and he smiles a little despite himself – he’ll keep writing to her, he thinks; she’s so nice, and Harry can’t help but feel warm at the idea of someone worrying about him. Writing letters actually seems quite fun, especially given that he's not really talked to an adult wizard who doesn't work at Hogwarts, yet, and- No one's ever really worried about him before, without counting the Dursleys worrying that he's having too much fun at school. Mrs Weasley's care is comforting.

“Why would you want to write to that broodmother, Harry?” He and Draco are on proper first name terms now. Harry smirks at him, and though he feels a bit guilty for having used Mrs Weasley like this, his plan as worked: he points up. A tired, old and grey looking owl flaps tiredly into the hall, having lagged behind the rest. Within its talons, bright scarlet and exactly like the picture Harry had seen in An Introduction to the Wizarding World.

As one, the lips of the other Slytherin first years part, and all of their eyes widen. It takes a few more seconds before the first, harsh “RONALD WEASLEY! HOW COULD YOU BE SO CRUEL!?” echoes across the room.

Ron Weasley runs from the great hall with his letter held in front of him as Mrs Weasley screeches about the impropriety of being mean to a boy with dead parents, and, slightly embarrassing though it might be for an entire hall of people to hear someone else’s mum worrying about him at high volume, it’s worth it to see how red Ron’s face is.

“Well done, Potter.” Afifa Lanjwani’s hand is upon Harry’s shoulder, and Harry’s guilt, small and niggling at his belly, fades away, replaced with a sense of pride as she smirks down at him. “That should teach the rest of you what a letter can do.” Her words linger in Harry’s mind as she walks away, and he frowns a little, thoughtful, as he looks at Molly Weasley’s letter in his hand. Letters can do an awful lot indeed, just like the book had said, and-

Well. There are a lot of people that would probably write Harry back.