From within the intrigue and drama of Slytherin house, Harry must navigate the perils of his first year- friends, enemies, blood politics… and in the middle of it all, Lord Voldemort is hunting the Philosopher's Stone hidden in Hogwarts.

May this place of rest in the fold of your journey bind you to hope; you will never walk alone

Part One

Harry and Tracey met Hermione outside the Great Hall.

"Good, I've been waiting for you two," she said. "You can come sit with me- there are no rules against that, and if anyone cares, I will just tell them you saved my life. Because it's true."

Harry and Tracey exchanged a look.

"Wait, you want us to sit with you? At the Gryffindor table?" Tracey asked, gesturing between herself and Tracey.

"Well, yes," Hermione replied, blinking at them. "Why not?"

"I'm not sure whether I'd rather sit with Gryffindor, where they all hate us, or Slytherin, where some of them don't," Harry replied, blinking and glancing away as he crossed his arms. He heard footsteps coming from the direction Hufflepuff and Slytherin used to get to the Great Hall. "Someone's coming."

"Come on, just sit with me," Hermione said, crossing her arms in response. "I promise I'll keep them off your back, and I don't break my promises!"

"Will the rest of your house keep your promises, though?" Harry asked, watching the shorter of the two girls through narrow eyes. "They all think we hate them because we're Slytherins, and they hate us because we're Slytherins."

"How about I solve this conundrum of yours, and all three of you can come sit at the Hufflepuff table with me," Cedric said, stepping up to the three first-years and resting his arms around Harry and Tracey's shoulders.

"That would work," Harry acquiesced, nodding. Tracey's head eagerly tried to fly off her neck as she wrapped her arms around Cedric's torso. Hermione started blushing, and she started opening her mouth to say something before she caught herself. She followed Cedric, Harry, and Tracey into the Great Hall and then sat down with the group.

The Hufflepuff table was different from both Gryffindor and Slytherin tables- where Slytherin was reserved, Hufflepuff was warm, and where Gryffindor was boisterous, Hufflepuff hummed. There was a group talking about schoolwork at one end and some of the students who ate vegetarian or kosher diets were sharing their diets with other students. Even the sour-personalitied Hufflepuffs didn't seem left out- no matter how many times Zacharias Smith postured, someone would just smile, gently correct him, and continue on.

There were students talking about last night's troll incident- no one had seen the troll, and outside of Harry, Tracey, Hermione, and the teachers, no one actually knew it existed for sure. No one had even noticed the points change on the counters.

Well, no one knew until Professor McGonagall took to the podium.

"Good morning, students. It is my regretful duty to inform you that classes are canceled today."

Gryffindor cheered the loudest. Their Head of House glared at them, fire and death in her stare.

They quieted down.

"The reason for this is so that you may pack to take the train home overnight. The school is being temporarily closed so that warders and cursebreakers can examine the wards for the hole that allowed the troll in last night."

"There was really a troll?" several students exclaimed and/or screamed.

Professor McGonagall raised a hand and the Hall quieted down.

"Yes. There was indeed a real, live troll within the school last night. It has since been taken care of, but we must make sure that nothing of that sort happens here again, so the school will be closed for a few weeks and you will be sent home to your families. Professors may assign homework by mail. You can expect the first few weeks back to be filled with practical work based on the assignments, so be well-read on whatever theory is assigned to you. The Hogwarts Express will be leaving at precisely seven PM and if you are not on it your guardians will be notified and proper steps will be taken to insure you make it home and do not miss the Express again. Good day."

Harry felt his stomach sink.

"I wish I could kidnap you or something," Tracey said as they walked towards the dungeons. "It's going to be booooring with just my little siblings."

"I'd happily let you kidnap me," Harry replied. Tracey looked at him and raised an eyebrow.

"You don't want to see your family?" she asked, and he wiggled nervously.

"Well… not really," he replied. "They'll be kind of… upset that I'll be interrupting whatever plans they already had."

"Oh," Tracey replied, blinking once. She chewed her lip, lost in thought for a moment. "Well, I could smuggle you home with me. I don't think my parents would really mind."

Her parents minded.

Tracey had gotten a seventh year Ravenclaw to practice an undetectable expansion spell on her trunk, and then when they were coming into London at an hour in the morning no kid should be awake at, she had him put his trunk in hers and then climb in. She had then let him out in front of her parents, at her house, while her younger siblings were watching.

"Tracey…" her mum began, a tone to her voice that suggested she was rather unsurprised by the whole situation. "Why did you smuggle some kid home in your trunk?"

"Mum, dad, this is my friend, he wanted to spend our surprise break with me and there wasn't enough time to write you so I just… brought him with me," she said, shrugging.

Her dad sighed. "Tracey, this could be considered kidnapping. We could get charged for it."

"It's not like my relatives would actually press charges," Harry muttered. The discomfort of being so thoroughly the center of attention sent crawling feelings up and down his arms.

Mrs. Davis's eyes fixed on Harry's form. The dark circles underneath them belied her late nights in the Floo Network office (whatever that was- Tracey had barely gotten around to telling him where she worked), but her blue eyes were sharp and focused and he felt like he was being slowly dissected by her vision.

Mr. Davis's eyes- so similar to his daughter's- were also locked onto Harry. He had heard the boy's muttered statement- for a family not to press charges? When an eleven-year-old had all but vanished?

He was glad he had sent Tracey's younger siblings to their room. They did not need to be exposed to the cruelty of the world the two eleven-year-olds in front of him had apparently already been exposed to.

The boy in front of him was small for his age. Small, skinny, and skittish. But when the boy's green eyes- a brighter, more vibrant green than the color he shared with his daughter- finally glanced up to meet his, Mr. Davis sighed.

"If you're going to be staying with us, you might as well start by calling us Tory and Janette."

Accidentally took six months to write this chapter, oops.

To tell you the truth, after stewing over some of the reviews on this I've gotten, I've finally decided to continue. I ranted about it on tumblr. Kestrel-is-Kit-Hawthorne. Look me up. I yell about anarchy and communism.

It's been a wild few months. I graduated high school, got my first job, had burnout yesterday- you know, normal things. Decided to just bite the bullet and post it before it turned into drabbles pretending to be a chapter.

Please review. I might yell about you on tumblr, but I yell about a lot of things on tumblr.

(also I found a therapist and lost a therapist and came out as non-binary partially and had to leave the church I had been at because if I had kept going to that one it would've killed me because I can't watch what I say about myself and so I cut ties before I could let slip I'm queer and they could cut the ties for me)

(pronouns are zie/zir)

With love,

Kestrel