Chapter 4 – The Year of the Very Grumpy Caterpillar

…

Time seemed slow and heavy following that fateful exam at UA as Harry waited, patiently, anxiously, to receive the letter that would set the path of his new future, finally redeeming all the sweat and blood he had given to reach it.

And day after day, he waited in vain.

A year passed. Winter changed into spring. Spring changed into summer. Summer changed back into winter. And winter gave spring and summer a miss and went straight on into autumn.

At least, that's how it felt to the increasingly restless teenager stuck waiting on a letter that simply would not arrive! In fact, he found himself wondering if the school had somehow contracted the delivery out to Errol, the Weasley's geriatric old owl who had been infamous for two things: occasionally taking six months to deliver a letter only two blocks away, and baffling scientists and birdwatchers everywhere as they tried to comprehend exactly how such a blind, moldy old bag of crumpled feathers had still been capable of flight in the first place.

But at last, one day, an entire lifetime after the madness of the practical exam (or maybe just a few weeks; he couldn't quite tell), the letter finally arrived.

As Harry sat there, holding a heavy envelope bearing the school's logo pressed deeply into a brilliant red wax seal, he found himself remembering another letter just like it that he had received long ago.

That letter had set him on the path that would define his life for so long, opening him to a world he didn't understand, a legacy he could never escape, and a prophecy he was doomed to fulfill.

Looking back, he sometimes wondered if he would have opened that letter if he had known the fate it had in store for him.

He showed no such hesitation here. Grinning with eagerness, he broke the letter's seal and dumped out the contents without a moment's pause.

After all, unlike his first Hogwarts letter, this one marked a path he had chosen for himself, not had chosen for him by Seers or old wizards or snake-faced murderers with delusions of grandeur.

And he couldn't wait to learn how his first steps on his new path had gone!

However, as a heavy silver disk rolled out onto the table in front of him, and the air above it suddenly lit up with the light of a holographic projection, excitement and eagerness promptly faded from his mind, replaced by another, rather different emotion.

"BOOYAH! I am here as a projection now, ready to tell you the scores of your exam!" All Might's beaming face shouted from the hologram in front of the slack-jawed teenager. "Surprised, are you? You see, I didn't come to this city just to fight villains. You are looking at the newest UA faculty member!"

At this point, Harry's eye began a very slight twitch. And it only grew worse as the video continued playing, and a holographic All Might wearing a mustard-yellow pinstripe suit explained how the exam awarded students with both "villain points" for destroying robots and "rescue points" for heroic actions, decided by a panel of judges who had been watching the test play out, and guess which brand new UA faculty member had been on that panel?

By the time the screen showed Harry's score, his eye was stuck in practically a rapid-fire wink as he finally, after weeks of waiting, learned that he had indeed passed the exam and was now a member of UA High. At that point, though, he barely even registered the hologram listing the candidates with the top ten scores from the exam, many with unusually high scores in rescue points, just as he only distantly noticed holo-Might talking about the zero-pointer and using words like "inspiration" and "heroism" and "teamwork" as he praised both him and his new classmates for their actions in the test.

Frankly, Harry had more important matters on his mind just then.

"Seriously, Toshinori?!" a furious Harry shouted as the hologram finally closed. "I've been biting my nails for weeks over whether I passed or not, and you've known this entire time?!"

At the quiet thump of footsteps behind him, Harry turned to direct his glare at the decidedly scrawnier All Might standing just outside his room.

"Well, it would have been unfair of me to tell you your score when everyone else had to wait until now to learn theirs," a snickering Toshinori replied, his sunken blue eyes glimmering with mirth. "You wouldn't want me to abuse my position as a teacher like that, would you? Because that certainly wouldn't be very plus ultra of you!"

Harry's glare was unappeased. "And you never mentioned you'd be one of my teachers at UA becaaauuuse …" the irritated teen prompted.

"I guess it must have slipped my mind," Toshinori responded airily, all while his face proclaimed that butter would not melt in his mouth. "I just have so much on my mind these days, you see. You can't expect me to remember to share everything, can you?"

Harry practically bristled with indignation. "I'm living in your freaking apartment!" he cried. "You see me every day! For crying out loud, I'm usually the one who drags you out of bed in the morning!"

"Yeah, well, what can you do," Toshinori replied with a flippant shrug, not even bothering to hide his snickering at the teen's agitation.

Harry's eyes narrowed before his features suddenly softened into an almost genial expression. "Wow. I really have to hand it to you, Toshi. I knew you were strong, but I never quite realized just how brave you are, too."

Toshinori's snickering stopped dead. "Is that so?" he asked in an overly casual tone that his worried eyes undercut rather heavily. "And … what exactly prompted this little revelation of yours?"

"Hmm? Oh, it's nothing," Harry replied distractedly as he cleared the desk in front of him. "It's just that not many people would be so willing to mess with someone who has such easy access to the place where they sleep," he breezily explained. "… or to their clothes … or hair products …" He had an almost admiring look on his face as he finally turned back to All Might. "You have some serious guts!"

"… Well … thank you, young Harry. It's … always good to be appreciated," Toshinori responded, his fixed smile seeming more than a little uneasy. "Speaking of being appreciated, why don't I make you breakfast tomorrow? With all your favorites in it! After all, you should probably be having a good hearty breakfast before your appointments with Recovery Girl," Toshinori suggested in what was absolutely not an attempt at bribery, no matter the uneasy tone in his voice or the wary shift in his step as he took in how his rather peeved and creative house-guest was eyeing him.

"Oh, that's alright, Toshinori. You don't need to go to any trouble on my behalf," the selfless Harry shrugged off with a toothy, only slightly malicious grin. "Besides, I doubt a 'hearty breakfast' is going to be making much difference now, after enduring that woman's bloody treatments every day for the past few weeks straight."

At this point, he expression turned more annoyed than anything as he plucked irritably at one of the residual bandages encircling his right forearm. It had been there since he had utterly trashed his body in the zero-pointer fight and been taken to UA's healer Recovery Girl for the first of many treatments, though at least she had removed enough of the other bandages by now that he no longer looked like a reject mummy.

He felt like it would have made a bad first impression to still be wearing those when classes finally started next week, and he had had quite enough pointing and muttering from classmates in the past, thank you very much. He could definitely do without that here at UA. But at least he wasn't coming into this school with some nonsensical fame over his head. Nope! This time, he had a clean slate! No fame, no grudges, no rumors, and no enemies!

Of course, he didn't exactly plan on keeping his newfound anonymity for long. After all, he needed to make a name for himself if he wanted to have any shot of filling All Might's nearly Hagrid-sized shoes and taking his place as this world's new Symbol of Peace.

However, that didn't mean he couldn't enjoy that anonymity for as long as he possibly could. And as he sat back with a relaxed smile, already planning prank-filled vengeance on the nervously shifting Toshinori still lurking anxiously in his doorway, he intended to enjoy this peace and quiet very, very much indeed.

All of five seconds later

Harry wasn't the only new student to receive his acceptance letter that evening. And he also wasn't the only one to stare open-mouthed at the we're-too-cool-for-simple-paper holographic presentation it featured. In fact, many did, though mostly out of shock at the reveal that All Might, number one hero in the world, and unanimous idol to virtually every single prospective student of UA, would be one of their teachers this year.

However, in one home in particular, a certain new student's shock was almost completely unrelated to this Mighty reveal.

"… tenth place …" a disbelieving whisper echoed throughout the dingy room as wide, crimson eyes fixed unwaveringly on the list of top ten scores from the practical exam.

Rather than topping the list, as anticipated, the name Bakugo was placed squarely at the bottom.

This surprise was actually fairly warranted. In a typical year, the explosive teen's exorbitant score in villain points would have earned one of the top spots rather easily, even without a single rescue point to supplement them.

This year, however, had featured an unprecedented distribution of rescue points thanks to events in Battle Center C, placing names such as Ashido, Kendo, Tokoyami, and Tsunotori well above Bakugo's name, even with dramatically lower scores in villain points. Even Jiro, with only 32 villain points, was placed in ninth place thanks to her score of 46 rescue points, narrowly beating Bakugo's score of 77 villain points. Meanwhile, names like Shiozaki and Kirishima took fourth and third place with even higher villain and rescue point scores, while Usagiyama, with just as many villain points as Bakugo, but a generous helping of rescue points on top of them, easily took second, vastly outstripping the ashen-haired teen.

And there, at the top of the list …

Those crimson eyes widened even further in shocked recognition.

'My name is Harry Potter.'

His words seemed to echo through the room as Bakugo's mind flashed back to that day in the alley, and that disgusting sludge villain.

The feeling of being slowly swallowed up by that living puddle of slime still made Bakugo's skin crawl, but it had nothing on that smothering feeling of shame at having to have been rescued, which even now made sparks ignite in furiously clenched palms as the feeling welled up inside like bile.

But that green-eyed bastard who came charging in when all the "real" heroes were running scared …

'I don't have any powers.'

Explosions began rippling even more furiously throughout the now trembling fists.

Was it all just some joke? Bakugo thought, teeth grinding as red eyes stared at that damned name ranked as first. Bad enough that little bastard looked at me like … like … like some helpless THING that needed rescuing! Like I was too weak to help MYSELF!

Lips now lifted in a snarl as plumes of smoke drifted up from the spasming fists, still twitching as one explosion after another tried desperately to escape and destroy everything in sight.

But now this?! Bakugo's eyes narrowed. That bastard had a quirk all along! No way he got to first place with that score without one! So was he just tricking everyone that day? Pretending he didn't have a quirk?

Breaths started coming faster and faster as the explosive teen nearly hyperventilated, furious eyes staring through a red haze at that name!

Was he just trying to show me up?! Proving he could take that slimy fucker down even without using his power, when I couldn't stop it with all of mine?!

DOES HE THINK HE'S THAT MUCH BETTER THAN ME?!

… Is he?

With a roar, the dam finally broke. Like thunder in a bottle, the room groaned and shook as deafening explosions utterly decimated the desk and that damned holographic projector. The nearly rabid teen was soon left snarling in front of a pile of smoking wreckage, the list and everything around it nothing but ash drifting through the air like snow. However, those rage-filled eyes simply stared through it all, as if their crimson irises could pierce the walls and miles shielding their soon-to-be victim.

"HARRY POTTER! YOU ARE SO FUCKING DEAD!"

On the other side of town, Harry Potter's finely tuned someone-is-cursing-my-name-and-wishing-me-dead senses started tingling, prompting him to release a bone-weary sigh.

"Well … it was fun while it lasted," he lamented, solemnly grieving the rather sudden death of peaceful anonymity as he rubbed the age-old scar on his forehead.

Days later, in a bleak, almost lightless room buried deep underground, pale lips stretched in a gruesome smile.

"So … he's at UA."

With a faint smack, a heavy newspaper was laid on a table, its headline boldly declaring the abrupt career change of All Might, number one hero in the world, now assuming the role of hero course instructor at UA High. The picture accompanying the article showcased the boisterous hero in all his powerful glory as he posed for the camera in front of the famed hero academy, muscles bulging with strength as his beaming grin comforted the innocent and terrified the wicked in equal measure.

Nearby, an older newspaper presented a rather different image of the invulnerable "Symbol of Peace." Not knowingly, of course. In fact, this article did not even mention the famed hero, instead discussing the vicious attack of a "sludge villain" repelled not by pro heroes, but by a simple pair of teenagers. The picture in question showed these teens sprawling with exhaustion in the midst of a still smoldering alley, surrounded by concerned heroes and the scattered remnants of the slimy villain. But there in the background, cloaked in anonymity amongst a crowd of gawking bystanders, stood an emaciated man with scraggly golden hair. A man few would recognize as he was, sickly and weak, but which his own eye could never miss.

All Might. Mighty no more.

"It seems your attack was successful after all, sir," a balding man commented, eyes locked on the syringe in his hand as he filled it from a bottle filled with an unknown concoction. However, for all the man's dutiful focus on his given task, he was more than astute enough to know what his master was referring to, having pored over the same articles as him. "He may have survived, but the injury appears to have ruined his body's ability to contain his power. He's crippled."

Those pale lips widened further in satisfaction at the doctor's astute observation. "And for all his efforts, the whole world has begun to notice," he reveled, having noted in delight as rumors began spreading about the number one hero's increasing absence from hero work. Where once, All Might had been renowned for his zeal, flitting from crime to catastrophe all hours of the day and night, now it seemed rare to catch more than one or two fleeting sightings of the "Symbol of Peace" in a day.

If not less.

"He probably hopes to use teaching as a cover for how little he can use his power nowadays," the doctor reasoned, gently flicking the filled syringe to free the air bubbles trapped inside.

"Oh, more than that," the man's master replied, scarred fingers gently tracing the older article's unknowing photo of the half-dead hero before trailing towards the announcement of his enemy's new vocation. "He's looking for a successor to pass his power on to."

Approaching the man's chair, the doctor paused. "Are you planning on attacking him there, sir?" he asked in muted concern, watching as those burned, twisted fingers continued tracing the picture of the school for burgeoning young heroes, where his master's nemesis could now be found. "Because I'm afraid we still have a long ways to go to help you recover from your own injuries."

This statement could easily be considered for Understatement of the Century as the doctor carefully injected the syringe in his hand into one of the dozens of tubes trailing from his master's back like roots from a tree. Each one terminated in a convoluted array of machinery providing complex readouts and delicately regulating the myriad of concoctions they pumped into the man to help restore his devastated body.

Designed by the doctor himself, these drugs and contraptions were leagues beyond anything the modern medicine community had to offer, hamstrung as they were by laws and budgets and their inane insistence on what they considered "ethical testing".

Freed as he was from their nonsensical restrictions, and with all he had learned from his master, he had made advances his former colleagues could never even dream of!

But even still, his best efforts could do little more than keep his master alive under the horrendous injuries scarring nearly every square inch of the man's skin, to say nothing of how they had ravaged his insides.

There was a reason All Might's smile was so terrifying to villains, after all.

"Sadly, it seems I must remain hands-off for the forseeable future," his master admitted reluctantly. "But that's alright for now." Those pale fingers began tightening, slowly but relentlessly crumpling the article, and its picture of the grinning buffoon. "After all, there may be nothing more satisfying than killing a man with your own two hands … but there's still something to be said for having others do it for you."

The doctor raised an eyebrow at that. "You really think they can pull that off?" he asked, somewhat doubtfully. "Kill the Symbol of Peace?"

The tubes clattered against each other as his master gave a slight shrug of apathy. "Maybe. Maybe not," he admitted, fingers dropping the crumbled, shredded article before gently trailing towards the other, older article. "But what better way to test my would-be successor than to have them try?" His smile returned, toothy and cruel. "Besides," he whispered, "there's more than one way to destroy a man."

This time, his scarred fingers ignored the delightful image of the broken All Might, lurking powerless amongst the crowd like some common bystander. Instead, he traced the subject of the defeated man's unusually rapt attention in the photograph:

A black-haired teen with a scar on his forehead.

Once more, those fingers tightened.

"Alright, first day! You excited?!"

"Yes, All Might," Harry's exceedingly flat voice responded.

"You sure you have everything? Book bag? Notebook? Extra pens?"

"Yes, All Might," Harry answered in the exact same tone, just as he had the last twelve times the excitable Symbol of Peace had asked.

"And you brought your security badge?"

"No. That's why the school's security system opened fire when I stepped inside the gate. I'm a ghost now. Very tragic."

"Now, you want to make a good impression on your classmates!" All Mother continued, utterly oblivious to the teen's facetiousness as he straightened the boy's tie and smoothed his lapels, an act roughly on par with being beaten by bludgers, given the man's insane super-strength and extreme over-exuberance. "So smile, introduce yourself, shake their hands …"

"You know, I perfected my friend-making system when I was a year old. I find a whale-sized child, move into his home, and for the next decade, I have a standing invite to join him and his gang in riveting matches of a game we call 'Harry Hunting'. Good times. Never fails."

"Oh, your hair's messy! You don't want to meet everyone looking like that!"

"Don't you have a class to teach?!" Harry begged, desperately fending off an All Might apparently possessed by Molly Weasley's spirit as the man tried straightening his hair with hands the size of trashcan lids.

"Sorry! Sorry!" The towering mother hen backed off. "It's just … my protege, about to take his first hero class! I'm so excited!"

Harry glared weakly up at him through freshly smoothed bangs. "I hadn't noticed," he remarked dryly. "But at this rate, we're both going to end up missing our first classes."

"Oh, geez, you're right!" the walking mass of muscles exclaimed, taking note of the decidedly empty school hallway they were currently standing in, everyone else already in their classrooms. "The fledgling Symbol of Peace can't be late for his first day! You need to hurry off to class!" All Might scolded the teen, as if he was the reason for their imminent tardiness and not the hulking superhero currently shifting into an almost exaggerated runner's stance. "I'll see you later, young Harry, and good luck in homeroom!"

With that, the hallway was struck with gale-force wind as the over seven-foot speedster vanished between one blink and the next, staggering Harry as he struggled to keep his feet under the jet-turbine-like forces. Bemused, Harry down the empty hallway as the newly created wind tunnel thoroughly undid all of the man's efforts to tidy his appearance. Smiling softly, Harry did his best to smooth his newly crumpled blazer, flapping tie, and absolutely wild hair as he continued heading to his homeroom class.

He gave Toshinori a hard time for it, but … to tell the truth, it felt rather nice to be fussed over like the man was fond of doing.

It made him feel like part of a family.

Of course, he'd never admit it to the man, though.

After a bit more walking, though, he found himself dragged out of these thoughts as he reached a door marked "1-A".

A door nearly fifteen feet tall.

Blinking, Harry suddenly envisioned a class full of Hagrids squeezed into tiny desks as they wrote with pencils that looked like toothpicks in their hands.

Well, that'd certainly be better than sharing a classroom with Malfoy or Snape, he acknowledged with a grin as he once more cherished his freedom from those two … "people". And hey! Maybe I'll even be able to get away from the constant murder attempts in school now!

"YOU!"

As Harry spun to face the source of the shout, a thunderous explosion made his ears ring as a human-shaped blur blasted towards him, grabbing him by his shirt and slamming him back against the door. "YOU'RE DEAD!"

Or not.

"Am I?" he asked, blinking stars out of his eyes. "Well, then, you probably want to send out a bulletin or something. There's some people who have a lot of celebrating to do."

With one last head shake, he finally got a good look at his attacker. Spiky ash-blonde hair practically seemed to bristle with rage, and deep crimson irises perfectly suited the fury that filled them, as did the flaring nostrils and acrid smell of smoke.

All these things triggered flashes of familiarity, but it was that snarling voice threatening death and violence …

"Wait a minute, it's you!" he finally realized. "The girl from the alley!"

Impressively, the girl's snarl seemed to grow even more feral at these words. "How'd you beat my score?!" she demanded, twisting his shirt even tighter in her grip.

"Um … what?" he asked, completely at a loss.

"Don't play dumb with me!" she shouted, apparently growing even more infuriated, hard as that was to believe. "The exam! I was supposed to come in first place! But instead, you did! How?!"

He blinked at her. "I came in first?" he asked in genuine surprise, only now realizing he had forgotten to check what his actual score was, having been just a tad bit distracted by the revelation about Toshinori, as well as his plans for vengeance against the man. "Huh. How about that?" he commented with a pleased smile. "Well, if I had to guess how, I'd say that I probably earned more points than you. That's just a hunch, though."

He could actually hear her teeth grinding at his response. "You said in the alley that you didn't have any powers," she hissed through her clenched teeth. "And you didn't use any, either! So, what, were you just trying to show off?! Prove you could fight that thing without them?! Make yourself look better when The-Boy-Without-Powers comes in first in the exam?!"

By now, a vein had begun throbbing in her temple, leaving him genuinely worried she was about to have an aneurysm.

Of course, the stuff she was ranting started making him wonder if she had already had one.

"Yeeesss," he slowly enunciated. "I risked my life to fight that monster without any powers just to impress some girl I had never even met. Because I am just that bloody desperate."

The trails of smoke rising from her palms said she did not find his response particularly calming.

"Why'd you say you didn't have any powers?" she growled, her narrowed eyes reminding him of Lupin's as a werewolf.

"Because I didn't," he replied honestly. "Not then, anyway. I got powers since then."

"Bullshit!" she barked, eyes widening in disbelief that he'd even try to claim something so ridiculous. "How stupid do you think I am?! You really expect me to believe that load of garbage?!"

"I don't really give a damn what you believe," Harry retorted evenly, making her head jerk back a bit in surprise. He didn't really care, though. He was about through playing nice with this girl holding him against a bloody wall. "I don't know you. I don't lie awake at night obsessing over what you think of me, and I'm not so paranoid that I think that everything everyone does is some kind of plot to show me up."

With that, he reached up and grabbed her wrists, gently but firmly pulling her hands free of his shirt, the merest trickles of One for All flowing through his muscles enough to completely ignore her own attempts to stop him. He watched her eyes widen further as she tugged at her arms, achieving as much as if her wrists were held tight by a stone statue. As her eyes turned back to his, smoke once more began rising from her fists.

"I don't know what the hell you're up to, but it won't matter," she snarled. "I'm going to rise to the top, and I'll blow away anyone who gets in my way!" As she made one more furious tug at her hands, he finally let go. "So just stay the hell out of my way if you know what's good for you!" she continued. "There can only be one top hero in the world, and I'm going to make damn sure it's me! Not you, not our classmates, not even All Might! Me!"

"Knock yourself out," he mildly replied, straightening his shirt for the third time in as many minutes, though at this point, it looked like it had been beaten with rocks, so his efforts seemed pretty pointless.

"You think I can't?!" she demanded, almost seeming offended as his casual response. "You think I don't stand a chance against you, is that it?!"

"Oh, for God's sake!" he finally snapped. "What part of 'I don't give a damn' are you not getting?! I don't care if you're better than me! I don't care if you're more powerful than me! I don't even care if you beat me and become the best hero!" She looked poleaxed at that response, but he wasn't done. "Unlike you, I didn't come here as some kind of pissing match between myself and the whole damn planet! I didn't come here to prove I'm better than anyone! I came here to make myself better than the person I've been so I have a shot at helping make the world a better place. End of story. I'm not here for you. So if you're looking for someone to prove yourself against, look elsewhere. I've already spent five years playing along with this other idiot desperate to validate himself by trodding all over me and my friends. I'm not interested in a repeat performance. But just as a suggestion, you might want to try focusing less on other people and more on yourself."

And here, he had thought she looked poleaxed before. He was wrong. "Instead of obsessing over who might be better than you, or desperately trying to make sure no one is in your way, try surpassing yourself instead. I've learned the hard way that a person is their own greatest rival, and their greatest obstacle." Well, technically Voldemort learned that lesson the hard way, obsessing over any potential rival he might have to the point of creating his worst fear and orchestrating his own downfall. But the point remained.

"If you keep trying to get better than your past self, you'll rise as high as you possibly can. If all you ever focus on is what everyone else can do, you'll be so busy chasing after them that you'll never get farther than second place." He finally gave up trying to smooth the mass of wrinkles formerly known as his shirt to look back at the speechless girl. "Good luck."

With that, he turned back to the class door, only for it to slide open before he could even touch it.

"Man, what is going on out here? What's with all the shouting?" a rather familiar-looking pink-skinned girl asked, poking her head curiously into the hallway, only to freeze as her eyes met his. "YOU!"

"So I hear," he bemusedly replied, only to have the wind knocked out of him as she suddenly tacked him in a violent hug nearly on par with the blonde girl's assault.

"You're okay!" she shouted delightedly, squeezing her arms around him even tighter.

"Relatively," he groaned, hearing his ribs creak under the pressure.

"Ashido, who are you talking to?" a familiar voice called out from the classroom.

"It's Potter, Jiro!" she shouted back delightedly, grabbing him by the arm and dragging him into the classroom in a fairly surprising display of strength, given that she was nearly a head shorter than he was.

"You know, I'm pretty sure he's capable of walking, Ashido," that same wry voice commented as he was pulled into a neatly arranged classroom. Spotting the voice's source in the second row, he now realized it was coming from the girl with earphone jacks dangling from her earlobes, one of which she was idly twirling around her fingertip as she rested her chin on her palm. Looking more closely, he also realized that her hair wasn't black like he had thought. Instead, it was a deep purple, and as she shifted her head, the streaks of reflected light made it almost look like soundwaves were patterned into her hair.

And, as he glanced at the rest of his classmates, he soon realized that she looked decidedly normal compared to some of the other students.

"Alright, you're back!" a boisterous voice shouted next to Harry as a dark-skinned, muscular arm was thrown across his shoulders. Turning, his eyes were immediately pulled not to the wide, cocky grin or piercing red eyes, but to the pair of tall, happily twitching white rabbit ears on top of the girl's head. "Here I was worried you'd be stuck in a hospital or something for the first half of the year! My last name's Usagiyama, but with all the ass you kicked in the exam, you can call me Rumi!"

With effort, he finally tore his eyes off her large rabbit ears and long, equally white hair to try and respond.

"Errr …"

"Hi! Glad okay!" another nearby girl called out brokenly. Turning once again, he recognized the blonde girl with horse hooves for feet and tall horns on her head. This time, though, he also noticed her almost uncannily large, doe-like blue eyes and round face that gave her a look of guileless innocence. "I'm Pony!"

"Hi-"

"Wait, are you okay? The last time we saw you, you looked like you were half dead! How'd you heal so fast?" the excitable pink girl next to him asked in concern. Looking at her, he blinked in surprise as he noticed that the whites of her eyes were jet black, while her irises were a polished amber. Rather than make her look intimidating, though, as might be expected, it somehow made her look even more adorable, as did her fluffy pink hair, which he also now noticed was home to a pair of small, crooked horns.

"Yes, I'm-"

"Popular one, ain'tcha?" yet another voice sounded in his ear. This time, though, he jumped nearly a foot as he saw not another classmate standing next to him, but instead just a mouth and chin floating in the air next to his ear. "Aww, no scream? Not even a squeal? Lame." Pouting, the mouth blew a raspberry at him before floating towards a girl with wavy green hair sitting near the back of the class. As her mouth rejoined with her face, she flashed him a sharp-toothed, teasing grin.

"Tokage, try and hold yourself together, would you? Giving your classmates a heart attack isn't exactly the best first impression," a girl with red hair pulled into a side ponytail scolded her tiredly from the front row before flashing him a weary, apologetic smile. "Sorry about her. I'm Kendo, in case you forgot. Good to see you up and about."

"Yeah, what she said! I was worried about ya', man!" the equally red-haired Kirishima called out from the middle of the class with a cheery wave.

By this point, though, Harry's powers of speech were pretty much failing him, overwhelmed as he was by … well … everything.

A feeling not helped by the repeated uses of his name he kept hearing throughout the class as students he didn't recognize from the exam apparently asked students he did recognize exactly why everyone seemed to know him. Given the wide, amazed eyes that kept turning back towards him and the others, he guessed they were being given a somewhat glorified account of their desperate play against the zero-pointer.

With how the blonde-haired girl with the explosive quirk roughly shoulder-checked him as she stalked towards her desk, though, he guessed that not everyone was particularly thrilled by these stories.

You know, maybe I should have listened to All Might's guide about first impressions after all, he pondered, struggling to get back on balance enough to finally stop just standing there like a statue.

Taking a deep breath, he finally started speaking. "Good to meet all-"

"If you're just here to make friends, you can go ahead and leave right now."

For some reason, that simple, tired voice cut through all the chatter in the classroom and left everyone dead silent.

Turning, Harry's confused eyes spotted only an empty doorway behind him where the voice had come from, only to slowly lower to the floor to spot …

"Is that a sleeping bag?" Rumi asked for him, her tall rabbit ears almost frozen in astonished confusion.

Sure enough, it was indeed a large, squashy-looking sleeping bag lying on the floor just outside the classroom door. More interestingly than that, however, was the fact that it was currently occupied.

"Asking questions you already know the answer to is a sign of irrationality," a tired, unshaved face responded, the only visible part of the man not cocooned inside the sleeping bag. "Welcome to UA's hero course. I'm Shota Aizawa, your teacher," the bored-sounding man announced as he unzipped the bag from the inside, giving them all a better look at their new homeroom teacher.

Shrouding the man from chin to chest was a massive, coiling scarf made of some strange gray material Harry couldn't place. However, standing in stark contrast to the sheer mass of cloth draped across his shoulders, the man's body was actually almost beanpole thin, accentuated by the baggy, plain-black clothing he wore.

Of greater concern to Harry, though, was the man's long, greasy black hair that hung to his shoulders. Combined with the heavy bags under the man's eyes, giving them what looked like a perpetual glare of irritability …

Well, that settles it, Harry decided. I'm dead, and this is hell.

This seemed the only logical explanation for how he could be finding himself with a reincarnated Severus Snape for a teacher.

Desperate to distract himself from his role as fate's hacky sack, though, he looked past the man rolling up his sleeping bag to take note of the long, empty hallway behind him.

Ooookay. Option one: he walked here with his sleeping bag, then curled up inside it for all of twenty seconds before it was time for class, Harry theorized. Option two: he got some other teacher to drag him in his sleeping bag to our classroom door. Here, Harry desperately fought down a bubbling laugh.

Or, option three: he inched all the way to our class inside his sleeping bag like a caterpillar.

At that, he couldn't hold it in any longer.

In that dead-silent classroom, his bark of laughter rang like a crystal bell, drawing all eyes immediately to him, including the bloodshot eyes of his teacher.

"Something you'd like to share?" the exhausted man asked him in a tone that was somehow both acidic and utterly flat. However, his irritable expression soon changed to one of recognition.

A change that did not comfort Harry in the slightest.

"Ah, yes," he said softly, "Harry Potter." His bloodshot eyes drifted across the rest of the class, most of whom had just ceased gossiping about the zero-pointer battle, and his own role within it. "Our … new … celebrity."

A horror-struck Harry began internally screaming.

"Nothing to share after all?" the teacher asked flatly. "In that case, everyone, put on your gym uniforms and head outside." Even shrouded by fatigue, those dark eyes pierced Harry's own. "I have a test for you to take."

The man's lips quirked in a small, unkind smile.

Harry sighed tiredly. Well, it just wouldn't be a proper school year without a teacher who hated my guts, he noted with a wry headshake as he and his muttering classmates followed the teacher's unexpected orders. Now to see if he'll be the teacher who tries to kill me this year. It's tradition, after all.

"A quirk assessment test?" his astonished classmates echoed in almost perfect unison, now standing outside dressed in matching blue-and-white jumpsuits.

"That's right," the still bored-sounding teacher replied. "You need a concrete grasp of your abilities and your limits if you want to learn how to improve them. A measurable test is the most rational way to accomplish this."

"But … sir, what about orientation?" a student tentatively asked from the crowd, apparently aware that their class was supposed to be joining the rest of the school for a welcoming assembly right about now.

"What about it?" Mr. Aizawa asked, unimpressed. "It's nothing more than a pointless ceremony. Is that really how you want to spend your time?"

As no one answered, Mr. Aizawa turned from the testing grounds to face them all. "Let me make something clear to you: I'm not here to babysit children; I'm here to train heroes. As for you, you only have three years to learn all that it takes to be a pro." His exhausted eyes turned almost pitying. "To be frank, that's nowhere near enough time. Not by half. But, that's the system that's in place, so that's what we have to work with, irrational though it may be." Here, his lips quirked in a small smile, but not a kind one. "Thankfully, though, we're not tethered to tradition here at UA, which means I can run my class as I see fit. So if that means skipping useless wastes of time like orientation, then that's what's going to happen. If anyone doesn't like it, you can go ahead and pack up your things, because I promise you, it isn't going to get any easier."

No one moved to follow his advice.

"Still here?" he asked after a moment. "Good. In that case …" Harry's hand snapped up to catch a softball as the teacher lobbed it at him. "Potter. You got the top score in the entrance exam. Stand in the circle and throw this as far as you can. Use your quirk."

Given the sound of grinding teeth he heard behind him, Harry guessed that the blonde girl with the explosive quirk didn't care for the reminder about his ranking in the test. But he didn't bother looking back as he headed to the circle the teacher indicated. Hefting the ball, he realized it had machinery of some kind built into it, likely to let them measure how far it was thrown.

I hope they made this thing sturdy, he reflected as he sent the crackling green power of One for All racing through his muscles, bracing his body with the shield of glittering white energy at the same time. Focusing the power largely in his chest and arm, he took his position and cocked back his arm, feeling his muscles creak as they were supercharged.

The field echoed with a thunderous boom and a torrent of gale-force wind as he sent the ball hurtling across the sky faster than the eye could see. Of course, not many eyes were on it in the first place, given how everyone was bracing themselves against the staggering wind and shielding their eyes from the sudden dust storm it created.

After a few seconds, the violently displaced air finally settled, leaving most of his classmates muttering to each other as they peered at the horizon in a fruitless effort to see where the ball went.

As for Harry, his trained seeker's eyes easily tracked the faint glimmer of sunlight reflecting off the machinery built into the ball as it arced towards the ground far in the distance.

Hearing a faint beep from the device in Mr. Aizawa's hand, everyone turned to their teacher, who wordlessly turned the device to show them all its display.

"Damn! 1,200 meters?" Rumi exclaimed, her loud voice effortlessly cutting through the astonished chatter of their classmates. "You don't mess around, do you?"

Her excited grin said she was more eager than ever to take her own shot at the test.

"Heck yeah! Now this is what I'm talking about!" Kirishima yelled, grinning from ear to ear. "We finally get to use our quirks as much as we want! This is awesome!"

"You think this is a game, do you?" Aizawa asked quietly.

Once more, the entire class fell silent at his voice.

"I see I failed to impress on you just how serious this training would be," Aizawa continued, bloodshot eyes piercing them all. "Did you think your classes here would be all about fun and games? Or perhaps that being a pro hero would be? It's not. In fact, let me share an inside secret with you all." Once more, a small, unpleasant smile spread across his lips. "A hero's life sucks."

By the look on most of his classmates' faces, Harry guessed that they considered these words nothing less than blasphemy.

He did not. He knew better.

"A hero's life is hard," Aizawa continued, still brutally honest. "It's painful. It's full of suffering and death, and little appreciation, if any. It's not fun. It's not a game. And it's almost never fair." That small smile grew vicious. "Which is why one of you will be going home today."

A chorus of gasps rippled across the entire class, and this time, Harry joined them.

"You mean … one of us is going to be expelled?" a short, brown-haired girl asked tremulously.

Aizawa nodded.

"But … it's only our first day! You can't do that!" she cried, panic and denial welling in her eyes.

"Is that what you plan to tell a fire that just destroyed someone's home?" Aizawa asked, glittering black eyes absolutely pitiless. "Or a murderer that's just torn someone's family apart? 'You can't do this'?" He snorted. "That's not how a hero's life works. Crime, tragedy, natural disasters … they never make sense. They're never fair. And you don't get to just decide that they won't happen. As heroes, all we can ever do is respond, and try and pick up the pieces they leave behind." His eyes narrowed. "If you can't handle that, you have no business trying to live this type of life. Better to leave now before your denial gets somebody killed."

Stunned silence greeted this speech.

Damn, Harry thought as his teacher's eyes passed over his. Harsh, but … he gets it. As he clenched his fist, he felt the skin pull tight from the scars on the back of his palm, just as he felt a phantom ache in each of the many, many other scars painting his body in a brutal legacy of just how unfair and utterly painful a hero's life could be.

He really gets it.

Reincarnation of Snape or not, Harry felt a budding respect take root as he listened to his new teacher.

"So may I assume that whomever comes in last in this test will be the one sent home?" a tall girl with a spiky black ponytail asked, raising her hand primly.

"I'm not sure," Aizawa answered, sweeping lanky black hair out of his eyes. "That would be a rational choice, but I'm not the one who will decide."

Everyone looked confused at that response.

"So … who will decide?" Ashido finally asked, pink-skinned face already wincing in fear of the answer.

Aizawa's small smile returned. "The person who comes in first."

Once more, stunned silence reigned.

"That's right," Aizawa confirmed. "One of you will be responsible for deciding which of your classmates will be expelled from UA High, likely destroying their dreams of being a pro hero for good."

Clearly, this was not a man who minced words.

"Now, if they choose rationally, they'll select one of two people," Aizawa explained, still visibly unconcerned. "Either they'll pick the student who came in last, who likely doesn't have enough potential to be a pro anyway … or they'll choose whoever came in second, who'll probably pose the biggest threat to their own chances of becoming the top hero." He shrugged apathetically. "But the choice is entirely up to them. So the only real way to be safe is to make sure you take that top slot." His black eyes glittered darkly as they met Harry's. "Or else pray for mercy, and hope you haven't made any enemies who might want you gone."

Grimacing internally, Harry found his gaze drawn to the explosive girl with spiky blonde hair.

Her smile was as wide as it was vicious as she stared back at Harry.

Lovely, he thought with grimace of resignation. Well … Plus Ultra, I guess.

He sighed tiredly.

Fifty-meter dash. Grip strength. Standing long jump. Repeated side steps. Ball throw. Distance run. Sit ups. Seated toe-touch.

Eight physical tests to determine who would progress in UA's hero course.

And who would be sent home for good.

Admittedly, Harry was a little unsure how tests like the seated toe-touch were supposed to prove anything about their power or their potential as heroes, but c'est la vie.

As the exam progressed, and he watched his classmates' efforts, he found himself feeling both impressed at his classmates' powers and amused at how they applied them to excel in the different tests.

In the ball throw, for instance, a short, brown-haired girl simply hefted the ball and gently lobbed it.

Harry's eyebrows rose higher and higher as the ball casually soared past the horizon.

"My quirk lets me make things weightless," she explained bashfully to the bug-eyed classmates staring at her.

Well, that would explain it, Harry thought with a chuckle as the teacher revealed her score of infinity for the test, the ball having drifted all the way into space.

But this had nothing on the shenanigans he saw in some of the other tests.

"Mr. Aizawa? Exactly how much of us has to cross the finish line?" the green-haired Tokage asked as she took her position for the fifty-meter dash, alongside the tall, black-haired boy with rectangular glasses that Harry remembered from before the practical exam. Harry blinked as he saw the boy's legs, though. With his pants rolled up at the knees, the boy's strangely large and angular calves were left exposed.

And sticking out of the back of them were what looked like short metal exhausts from an engine.

"Standard racing rules apply," the bored teacher answered her question. "So any part of you crossing the line counts."

Her sharp-toothed grin looked deviously delighted.

"Runners, on your marks!" the robotic start line called out, prompting the black-haired boy to shift into an experienced runner's stance. "Get set!"

A grinning Tokage twisted her body as if preparing for a kick.

"Go!"

Roaring with effort, the boy exploded into action, hot air rushing out the exhausts in his calves as his quirk, Engine, let him sprint faster and faster.

This test seemed to be the perfect match for the speedster.

"2.96 seconds!" the robotic finish line cheerily announced as a small, strange shape flew past the teen to cross the finish line moments before he did.

Sliding to a halt at a score of "3.04 seconds," Tenya Iida cast a flabbergasted look at his "opponent".

A severed, shoe-clad foot.

"So what do you think?" the rest of his now one-footed opponent called out to him, still back at the starting line. "'I really kicked your butt', or 'I guess I gave you the boot'? I can't decide which one I like best!"

As the foot came floating back to the laughing girl, the horrified speedster fell to his knees, apparently stricken with shame at having lost the one test his quirk was best suited for.

Despite feeling a bit queasy at watching her Lizard-Tail quirk in action, Harry simply snickered at the girl's very loose definition of "race."

She didn't seem alone in this, either. In the endurance run, the tall girl with the spiky black ponytail that he noticed earlier turned away from everyone and seemed to open her shirt, of all things, after which a strange, glittering pink glow seemed to originate from her stomach. Moments later, she was driving around the track on a solar-powered scooter that her quirk, Creation, let her conjure from the lipids in her own body.

Despite groaning and complaining from their classmates as this Momo Yaoyorozu surpassed all their scores in what they felt was a less than fair move, Harry simply laughed as the girl's quirk made him remember a time he watched a teacher transform her desk into a pig and back.

Only now, years later, after losing the ability himself, did he finally realize just how powerful transfiguration magic could truly be.

He wished he could tell McGonagall.

Of course, as Aizawa had so brutally predicted, the test wasn't all fun and games. In fact, as the exam went on, Harry increasingly noticed looks of anxiety and concern in his classmates' eyes.

On its own, this wouldn't be too surprising, given that they were taking a major exam on their first day. But the hesitant way they approached each test, and the way they kept eyeing each other uncertainly, showed that it wasn't just a fear of losing that was affecting them.

It was a fear of winning.

After all, whoever came in first would have to expel one of their own classmates, and as Aizawa said, this would also likely mean the end of that student's hope for becoming a pro hero.

This was a burden few seemed eager to take on.

"6.38 seconds!" a robotic assistant called out as a frog-like girl hopped across the finish line for the fifty-meter dash. But as she walked away, hands absently dry-washing each other, she showed neither pride in her score nor disappointment.

All she showed was uncertainty.

"Four-hundred kilograms!" another machine announced as a remarkably tall boy with three limbs extending from each shoulder finished the grip-strength test. Afterwards, though, despite his nose and mouth being shrouded behind a mask, the way he stared at his hands made his feelings clear.

Doubt. And regret.

However, not every student seemed to wrestle with these feeling of anxiety about winning, or uncertainty about whether they really tried their hardest.

"Later, losers!" Rumi laughed as her large rabbit's feet sent her hurtling across the sky, easily claiming one of the top scores for the standing long jump.

"DIE!" the spiky-haired blonde roared as she sent a ball rocketing across the sky chased by an explosion from her palm.

The way she glared at Harry said she wasn't talking to the ball.

As for Harry himself …

"And now it's time for the moment of truth," Aizawa announced after the last person completed the final test. "Time to see who won … and who's going home."

With a gentle, almost light-hearted beep, Aizawa's phone projected a list of twenty names, ranked from first to last.

Breathing deeply, Harry released a long, slow breath of acceptance as everyone around him started muttering worriedly.

"What?! Bullshit! I want a redo!" Bakugo shouted, muscles in her neck spasming as her disbelieving eyes took in her ranking.

"You don't get one," Aizawa answered boredly, clearly not moved by her reluctance to accept anything less than first place.

Even fifth.

"I guess it's up to you, Potter," Aizawa announced, closing the list and staring at the motionless teen. "So tell us, Mr. First Place: who's going home?"

All his classmates fell dead silent at this declaration.

Harry gave a slow, accepting nod.

It wasn't any surprise to him that he won. After all, his power was about as perfectly suited for all these tests as any single power could be. But it was more than that. He hadn't been one of those who approached each test with hesitation, reluctant to try his hardest for fear of having to expel one of his classmates.

Just the opposite, in fact.

He had never tried harder in a test in his life.

With a small, wistful smile, he imagined that somewhere, Hermione was shaking her head in pride and exasperation.

Dragging himself out of the past, Harry looked around at his present, and the array of potential heroes spread out before him.

They were as odd as they were incredible, even the ones like Bakugo. Their powers, their drive, their willingn– … no … their eagerness to give themselves to a life as brutal and selfless as hero-work … it was truly amazing to him.

Unlike him, they didn't just constantly find themselves in situations that forced them to do what others would call heroic. They were seeking it out.

He had no doubt that each one of them could go on to do great things for this world.

Even the unpleasant blonde girl glaring murderously at him as if daring him to expel her.

"Well, Number One? Who's it going to be?" Aizawa asked again, dark eyes fixed unwaveringly on his.

All Might's gonna kill me, Harry thought with gentle amusement as his back straightened. Meeting Aizawa's eyes evenly, he answered simply, and without any uncertainty whatsoever.

"Me."

And there it is, Aizawa noted with a tired head shake as he continued to meet the idiot boy's eyes, ignoring the gasps of shock coming from everyone else.

Except for the now bug-eyed young Bakugo, of course, who blessedly seemed to have lost the powers of speech at the boy's answer.

Unlike them, however, Aizawa was not surprised at all.

He had seen the footage of the zero-pointer nonsense. He knew what he was dealing with in this idiot.

"So that's it?" he asked the young moron in front of him, lips twisting in annoyance as the boy simply stood there calmly, clearly at peace with his pointless martyrdom. "Day one, and you're throwing in the towel? Walking away from being a hero just because you don't want to make the hard choice of sending someone else home?"

"I'm not walking away from anything," the boy answered. "I believe that everyone here is capable of doing a lot of good for this world, and they deserve a chance to make that happen. If I have the power to make sure they get it, why would I do anything else?" Here, his brow furrowed in confusion over those damn, resolute eyes. "Besides, isn't that what a hero would do?"

Once again, muttering spread across the class, only this time, it wasn't whispers of surprise.

It was agreement.

"You're not a hero," Aizawa said bluntly. "None of you are."

The whispers stopped dead.

"You're students," he continued, speaking to the entire class. "It's not your job to be selfless, or self-sacrificing. Not yet. It's your job to be selfish. To latch onto each and every scrap of knowledge and window of opportunity you can get your hands on, and not let go. That's the only way any of you have even the slightest chance of making it in this school, and becoming pro heroes." He tried to impress on them how crucial this was as he met each of his students' eyes. "You know how competitive today's hero world has become. So many people are scrambling to become heroes nowadays that only the absolute best of the best have any shot of being anything more than a glorified beat cop in a fancy costume."

His eyes turned back to young Potter's. "And each of you needs to remember that, at the end of the day, you're not teammates. You're not friends. Your classmates aren't helpless innocents for you to rescue. Their rivals. One person's success means another person's failure. That's just how the world works. Only one person can be the top hero, and that means making sure someone else is number two."

Once more, he swept his gaze across the rest of the class. "So let me ask you this: can each of you tell me, without a shadow of a doubt, that you truly gave it your all in this exam? Are you absolutely sure that you didn't hold back, even a little, because you were afraid of having to expel one of your classmates?"

Some students met his gaze unflinchingly. Bakugo. Usagiyama. Yaoyorozu. Todoroki. Others. They were the ones who had accepted the harsh reality of competition, and their showing in this exam proved it.

It was no accident that they all held the top scores below Potter's.

But for the majority of the class, and especially those others involved in that zero-pointer nonsense, guilty eyes averted his gaze.

"That's what I thought," he continued, shaking his head with irritation. "That kind of attitude will ruin any chance you have of becoming a pro. So I suggest you all ask yourself why you're really here, and just how important that is to you." A smile spread across his lips. "Because if I catch any of you holding back again like you did today, someone will be going home for real. So try and remember that you're here for you and not your classmates, would you? Expulsions involve a lot of paperwork, after all, and I'd hate to have to deal with that this early in the year."

As he turned and walked away, he heard students whispering in confusion at what he said, causing his smile to broaden.

"Wait … so am I not going home?" young Potter finally called after him.

"Of course not," he replied without turning around, a broad grin on his face. "That was just a logical deception I used to illustrate a point."

He laughed at the burst of outrage that rose from the entire class behind him, but he simply continued walking.

In his experience, harsh lessons left the deepest impressions, and whether they liked it or not, their little display with the zero-pointer proved that this was a lesson they desperately needed to learn.

Young Potter in particular.

He wasn't here to train a bunch of martyrs; he was here to teach them all to be heroes.

Even aside from them tanking their chances to make it in this school, wannabe-martyrs who jump in front of every single bullet eventually end up as remarkably selfless corpses who are of no use whatsoever to the next person to find themselves at gunpoint. It may not be pretty, and it may not sound "heroic", but the simple fact was that heroes need to take care of themselves too if they want to survive long enough to actually manage to help others. The sooner these kids learned that, the better off they'd be.

It was simply rational.

His smile widened. Of course, that doesn't mean I can't enjoy teaching these blockheads that particular lesson, he admitted to himself as the clamor of griping teenagers continued to rise behind him, making him laugh once again. After all, a little schadenfreude never hurt anyone.