The Headmaster's Only Mistake

When Lost in Thought

 A/N: So, I don't really know what dates/timeline I mapped out through the summer as "summer snippets" was just stories of the whole summer and I don't think I specified when Harry visited the Flamel's. I also don't remember when the book said Harry and the Weasleys went to Diagon Alley.

Let's just pretend that "summer snippets" is a variety of dates from June to August, Harry visited the Flamel's close to the end of July and he went to Diagon Alley at the beginning of August. Lastly, in this chapter I mention the Birthday Ball in honor of Harry. This was on his birthday (july 31) but I'm mentioning it in this chapter , where the present time in the story would be September 1st.

Sorry for the confusion!

•••

Remus shook his head and chuckled, muttering something about entitled rich kids and Americans.

•••

The rest of summer passed by in a quick blur for Harry. There were only two notable things had happened.

The first was a visit Harry paid Morten sometime in mid July. 

Harry, for the first time in ages, actually appreciated the sickness that came with soul-travel to the Underworld as he was pretty sure he wouldn't have been able to leave the bed for at least two days afterwards anyways and he didn't feel like a explaining his very obvious limp to Sirius and Remus.

He had instead just stayed locked into his room for a day longer to nurse away any soreness.

Morten had been very apologetic about the whole thing, but the smugness that had laced his voice had made Harry want to slap him across the face.

The second memory from the summer that stood out to Harry was the yearly ball held on his birthday to celebrate "The Boy Who Lived." In other words: himself.

•••

The ball had started much like any other. He had greeted his family, his friends whose families had been invited, and any one else who came up to shake his hand.

This year - he noticed - more prominent people had begun discussing politics and the economy with him, for some reason.

It had all been incredibly boring, but he remembered his lessons and tried his best to smile and nod along.

He had been saved from another talk with Lord Baldwin about his opinions on the hunting of Veela clans and the recent bill that had been passed to prevent them, (which differed greatly from Harry's), by Hannah.

She arrived, accidentally -or rather very much on purpose- bumping into Harry and spilling her drink, along with two others, on Lord Baldwin.

The fat man let out an outraged sound between a grunt and a shriek as his cerulean colored robes stained purple. The three glasses that Hannah held were now empty, but the last few drops of red liquid dripped from the rims.

"Oh dear," Hannah said apologetically. "Terribly sorry my lord, I'm a bit of a klutz, you see. Let me fix that up for you."

She reached over to a waiter that was walking past and stole a paper napkin from his tray. Hannah then turned towards Lord Baldwin and tried to clean the stain. However, instead of disappearing, the stain grew larger and larger, while Lord Baldwin turned redder and redder.

Lady Aster and Lady Barrymore giggled as they walked past the scene, shooting Harry and Hannah grins.

"THAT IS ENOUGH!" Lord Baldwin yelled at Hannah as the stain was very clearly not disappearing. "You stupid little girl can't even clean properly! What is the point of a woman if she can't clean!"