Despite his best efforts, the first week of school left Richard with little time for retaliation. Too much of his attention was needed for all the new lessons. However – if he did see a possibility to make Potter look bad, he seized it. There was little magic to it at the beginning, though Richard came across a nice jinx to tie shoelaces together while he did his first charms homework. He practiced it on strangers in the hall, but decided not to use it on Potter, saving it for a special occasion instead.

Besides, when it came to non-magical bullying, he was the expert. Throwing around curses too much would have been attracting the wrong kind of attention, so instead he remembered all the little tricks he had learned at Muggle school. If Potter walked past him, Richard would stick out his foot to trip him up, and if Potter sat down he sometimes found a pin, pointy side up, on his chair. Books and quills and parchment would vanish from his bag, while once in a while items that weren’t his would show up with his belongings, and his ink-glasses would open seemingly on their own, ruining more than one homework assignment.

Richard was careful not to let himself get caught, especially when he nicked things from other students to drop them in Potter’s pockets. And yet, James was making new friends fast, leaving Richard to pair up with Jocelyn the strange whenever students were required to work together.

Not that Richard did mind. When he said: “pass me the roots,” in potions the first day they were actually allowed to brew something up, Jocelyn just did. She never argued. Actually, she rarely talked at all. They worked silently next to each other, until Jocelyn asked softly: “Where are you from?”

Richard, surprised that she had broken the silence, looked her up and down until she blushed. “London,” he said finally. “And you?”

“Chester,” she muttered. “You’re a Muggleborn, like me, aren’t you?”

“That is correct,” Richard said slowly, wondering where Jocelyn’s sudden interest came from.

“So there has never been a wizard in your family?” she added.

“That would be the definition of ‘Muggleborn’, yes,” Richard replied, still talking exaggeratedly slow. Jocelyn was not the brightest of students, but this question was dump even on her standards. He gave her a superior smile and watched satisfied how she turned scarlet again, before he turned back to the potion simmering in the cauldron.

It was Jocelyn’s cauldron, all new and shiny. His own one was used, and not perfectly round anymore, so he kept it hidden underneath his chair.

More important though was what was bubbling slightly in the cauldron. The draught was coming along quite nicely, though Richard was not perfectly happy with the color. The potion was supposed to have turned bright yellow by now, but his had still a hint of green. Carefully, doing his best to appear quite bored, he looked around the classroom. His potion was second best, he decided after a moment. Only Darrell’s draught was perfectly yellow.

He was working with Potter.

Richard wanted to grind his teeth, but he kept his face carefully composed.

“This is fun,” James was just saying, sounding surprised. “Ha! This is easy!”

“Only for you,” Darrel gave back. “My hand hurts.”

“Let me cut those roots then,” James said, reaching for the final ingredients. “Grandma showed me how to do it fast,” he added.

Richard watched him cut up the pieces, and threw a glance over the shoulder at Professor Slughorn, who was busy elsewhere, before pulling out his wand, a sly smile on his face. Pointing his wand he concentrated, focusing for all he was worth, and murmured a spell under his breath. Then he waited.

James did not notice how his shoelaces first loosened, and then tied themselves all together, forming a tight not, firmly tying his feet together. That was, until he got up to add the roots into his cauldron one by one as the textbooks said. At this point he stumbled, dropping the roots all at once and almost falling into the draught himself. Darrel just barely managed to catch him.

The potion turned orange and threatened to boil over.

Richard quickly pushed his wand up his sleeves and followed Shila and Jermaine slowly, who hurried to help James and Darrel. Behind him Jocelyn just stood and stared, for some reason holding her wand in hand. She put it away slowly, still staring.

At him, Richard realized.

He pulled himself up and glared at her until she lowered her head, returning back to their cauldron, carefully adding the final ingredients precisely as it was described.

“It was him,” James hissed. “I know it was him!”

“Who?” Darrel asked, while he cleaned up his desk.

“Him,” James repeated angrily. “Smith.”

Darrel looked over towards the strange boy, who was just presenting his results to Professor Slughorn.

“Very good,” the oldest teacher of the curriculum was just saying with a wide smile. “Very good work indeed, Mr. Smith and Ms. Davidson. Wonderful result for your first attempt at brewing. That’s five points for Gryffindor.”

Jocelyn blushed scarlet and stared down at her feet, muttering “Thank you, Sir,” before she ducked away quickly. “Thank you, Sir” Richard repeated politely, flashing a smile of happiness and elation, which seemed to fade when Slughorn turned around and said: “You all did good work today. I am quite glad to have such a promising class.”

When James met Richard’s gaze a piece of ice ran down his spine. There was something terribly cold and calculating in his eyes, even though he was still smiling.

“Ye know, James, think you’re right,” Darrel muttered. “Bet it was him. Did ye see his smile fade when Slughorn said we’d all done good?”

Richard cursed himself softly for letting his anger show, but Slughorn’s reaction had annoyed him deeply. After all, he had done most of the work alone, what was Jocelyn being praised for? And what was all that nonsense about ‘a promising class’?

But there was nobody to complain to, so he moved on to the library to search for new spells he could use on James and that shadow of his, but also to do some more research for his charms homework. This would be their first graded assignment, and Richard was determined to come out head of class again.

Shila seemed to think similarly. When Richard entered the library early the following day, a Saturday, long before James and the rest were even awake, Shila was already there, half hidden behind the books she had piled onto her table. The parchment she was writing on was already hanging to the floor, and still she was writing furiously. Just as Richard passed her, though, she gave a soft shriek, threw her quill down and ran a frustrated hand through her hair. From the look of it, she had done so quite a few times already.

Richard shook his head and placed himself on a table behind Shila’s back, to watch her without being seen. What was wrong with her? Being best in class was important to him, certainly, but this was something different. Shila was looking downright desperate.

Around ten a boy came over to Shila’s table. He might have been fourth or fifth grader, with dark hair and eyes, just like Shila. He sat down across from her, so Richard could see his face, and extended a hand.

“So, let me see,” he said, rather unfriendly, felt Richard. Shila didn’t seem to move, and the other boy grumbled: “Look, do you want my help or not? I got OWLs to study for, you know.”

Fifth grader then. The way he said OWLs made it very clear that he thought those were way more important than Shila’s homework.

“Sorry to bother you, Raj,” Shila said, so softly that Richard had to strain his ears to listen in. After a moment she handed him the scrambled parchment snake. The older boy threw a look at it and rolled his eyes. “Your handwriting is still awful,” he stated coolly. “And you misspelled assessment, there’s four ‘s’ in there. Oh my, and you misspelled Hover charm. Only one ‘o’ in hover.”

He looked up with a hard expression. “You misspelled the very charm you are writing about? Have you even opened a single book before you wrote this?”

Shila didn’t answer anything, and the other boy – her brother, Richard guessed – went on. After a few minutes Richard got up and found a different place to finish his own essay. He would have never considered himself to be faint of heart, still the way her brother was tearing Shila’s hard work apart somehow got to him. Did this boy even realize that this was a first grader’s essay?

But he picked up some useful remarks for his own work, and was quite satisfied by the time he went to lunch. Potter had not dared messing with his food again, which he took as a good sign and it was a rather pleasant day for September, so after lunch he went outside to watch the Quidditch trials and maybe learn some more about this sport that was so terribly important to all the boys. Or at least all the boys who were not Muggleborn.

Rawenclaws and Hufflepuffs had already tried out in the morning, and as he strolled down to the field, Richard heard someone complain how there was no way any team Gryffindor could assemble would ever beat the Hufflepuffs, unless they all played blindfolded. Richard didn’t really care about beating Hufflepuff, but he did notice that the seven boys and girls in yellow robes leaning against the stands looked rather confident as they watched the hopefuls trying out for Gryffindor. James’s freckled friend was one of them, and naturally James himself was not far away. Darrel and Jaden stood with him and apparently tried to explain the rules to Finn. Richard kept his distance, and suddenly he stood next to Jocelyn Davidson, who sighed and said to no one in particular: “I wish first years could try out.”

Richard nodded noncommittally. He had never even ridden a broomstick, since their first flying lesson scheduled for last week had been cancelled due to bad weather. He was quite surprised that Jocelyn of all people, a Muggleborn like him, would be so eager to play Quidditch.

“Surely you must have dreamed of flying when you were a kid?” Jocelyn asked him. “It was the thing I wanted to learn more than everything ever since I found out I was a witch.”

Richard rolled his eyes. “And you found out you’re a witch how long ago, two months? Three?”

“Oh,” Jocelyn said, and stared down at her feet. “Um,” she added softly. “No, I – I’ve known for years.”

“Please,” Richard gave back coolly. “I’ve read it up, you know? It’s all in Hogwarts: A History. Muggleborns don’t get told until right before they go to school, so there’s no time for them to tell it all around.”

“Yes, I know,” Jocelyn said softly. She gave him a sideway glance. “Things were, er, different for me. See, my father is a Muggle, and my mother too, but my grandmother had a, er, sister who was a witch. She was – was killed by – by Voldemort, and her son was taken in by my grandparents. So my Dad grew up with a wizard, and he – recognized it when I – I set a pullover on fire when I was seven. Mom was so shocked, she even called Dad, though they’d been divorced for years then.”

She shrugged. “He told her some lie cause he wasn’t sure how the Ministry of Magic would react if he just told her. But when I came over for the weekend next time, he told me the truth, and Mum too.”

Richard was not quite sure what to make of Jocelyn’s sudden talkativeness.

“Now, I’m not allowed at my Grandparent’s place anymore,” she already went on. “Granddad Vernon actually yelled at Dad. One wizard was enough for life, he said, and what Dad went and got another one for. So Dad isn’t talking to him anymore, but he and Mom get along a lot better and I get to stay a lot more at Dad’s.”

Jocelyn glanced up into the air where Potter’s friend Fred Weasley was trying out as a Beater. “What about your family?” she asked.

Richard looked up into the sky as well, and wondered if he could tell her. It might not be so bad after all, to have a friend at Hogwarts, and Jocelyn didn’t seem to like James Potter more than he did, so at least they had something in common. But what if she turned away when she knew about his parents? Worse, what if she told anyone else?

Richard threw her a sideways glance. After a moment he decided it probably would not matter to anyone of the wizarding world anyway. It wasn’t like his father was in Azkaban or a Death Eater. Quite the contrary, it might even play out in his favor. The poor Gryffindor growing up with horrible Muggles? It had worked before, hadn’t it? And for famous Harry Potter, too.

And if Jocelyn turned away, well, then he would do without friends like he had always done.

“My Dad’s in prison,” he said softly, just as Jocelyn looked at him inquiringly.

“Oh,” said Jocelyn, and the way she shifted her weight did not exactly bode well. But there was no point of stopping now.

“He stabbed a man in a bar fight,” Richard went on. “Wasn’t his first offence, too, so he’s not coming out for a few more years.”

Jocelyn avoided his gaze. “So you live with your mother?” she wanted to know.

Richard stared up into the sky again. “Yeah,” he said, but then, suddenly, he wanted to tell her the full story. “Mostly I live by myself”, he corrected. “Mum’s a drunk and a junkie, and since Dad’s in the pen she’s usually too out of it to care ’bout anything else. Professor McGonagall tried to put a spell on her to sober her up, when she came with my letter, but then all Mum did was fall around the kitchen to find more booze. She kept mumbling something about how Professor McGonagall was a real horrible hallucination. So the Professor and me decided it was probably better to let her think that. Went outside and she gave me my letter on a park bench where we wouldn’t be bothered. I told her later I got a place at some public school outside of London. Dad was furious when she told him, said his son wouldn’t go to no fancy school and that I had to learn a real trade, but it wasn’t like he could do anything about it.”

“Wow,” Jocelyn said. “I’m sorry.”

Richard shrugged. He pretended to follow the try-outs, but watched her out of the corner of his eyes. She had leaned away from him and after a moment she said: “Look, I still have that charms’ homework to finish... Gotta go back to the library for that.”

Richard nodded once to acknowledge that he had heard the words and she turned. He did not expect to talk to Jocelyn again any time soon, but then she stopped and asked: “Er... see you at dinner?”