Disclaimer: I don't own x-men or Harry Potter.

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"Terrible isn't it ?"

The woman jolts from her intense staring and turns her head towards the man next to her. " 'Scuse me?"

He inclines his head towards Ellis island, the target of her staring, without meeting her gaze.

"The mutant registration act?" She asks her brow wrinkling.

He nods his head. "Mmm."

She snorts slipping back into her 'normal' persona, he's not worth her time and she has more important things to be doing. She turns her attention back to the island. She tells him what she thinks he wants to hear. "Yeah. The freaks. Who knows what they could do, we need to protect ourselves."

"They're not freaks" he says looking her directly in the eyes for the first time. "People just fear what they don't understand."

She's surprised because he says it like he actually believes it. His green eyes don't waver, under her gaze. He doesn't back down.

"But they can hurt people, some can controls your minds" she tells him like he's stupid.

"So can normal people. You hear it on the news everyday, muster, kidnap, rape. And the human race has birthed many master manipulators, a few sly words here, a few smooth words there. You don't need to be a mutant to do that."

"It seems like when anyone says mutant everyone looses their heads and all common sense."

"And you don't?"

He laughs "no. I for one hope they vote against it."

"Why do you even care?"

"Everyone should care, what's happening is wrong. But I guess I'd like to meet one, a mutant" he admits, leaning forward so his forearms rest on his knees.

"Really?" She can't fathom why. The only people that ever want to meet mutants are other mutants themselves or obsessive government scientists who want to cut them up to see what makes them tick. She pulls her coat tighter around her, even though she doesn't feel the cold. She hopes he isn't the latter.

"Mhhm" he murmurs absentmindedly.

"Why?" She asks because she can't help herself.

He shrugs "why not?"

Why not she thinks, a million reasons 'why not?' whizz around her head, but she doesn't voice any of them out loud.

In the silence he leans back against the bench.

"What would you do?"

"Sorry?" He inquires.

"What would you do, if you met one, a mutant?"

"Shake their hand, take them for a drink" he smiles at her "show them there's still some good in the world."

She doesn't have reply to that and eventually the man leaves, nodding to her before goes, rubbing his gloved hands together as he walks away.

She thinks on his words briefly, she thinks of Charles, their now shattered friendship, the school he has, she wonders if she had grown up there, things would have been different. But it wasn't and she didn't. She thinks of the taunts and the betrayals and senator Kelly. She's been bought many drinks over the years but none have ever shown her the good of the human race, perhaps Charles at one point, but eventually everyone falls back onto human nature. She does not fit into this world, this society, so instead she'll make a new society, one where she has nothing to fear and the brotherhood are in control and the normals accept that mutants are the next step in the chain of evolution.

Ultimately it would take more than a strangers words to change her course. She doesn't think about him again.