Susan Bones

It took nearly half an hour for Harry to hear three knocks on the door of his compartment. To some extent, it made sense - he hadn't specified anything about timing, and it might well have taken whoever his wish picked that long to have wrapped up whatever conversation they were having and walk the length of the train to come meet him. With wording as ambiguous as he had used, it could have taken until near the end of the train ride for him to meet whoever had been chosen.

Moving Silver from where it had been resting in Harry's lap onto the table in the middle, Harry stood up and walked over to the door to meet his new potential friend.

There were a few things that Harry noticed in no particular order upon opening the door to his train compartment. His potential friend was a girl about as tall as him with reddish-brown hair that fell past her shoulders. She had her trunk with her, meaning that she had fully left whichever compartment she had originally been in. She looked fairly surprised to see him, but that could be for any number of reasons. She also had the largest chest of any woman that he had ever seen, barring Hagard whose significantly larger frame scaled up a fairly normal body into sizes unattainable for normal people.

Harry caught himself looking and tore his gaze up from her chest before she recovered from her surprise. He decided to take the first step and introduce himself.

"Hello, I'm Harry. What's your name?"

The girl started at that. "Ah, I'm Susan, Susan Bones. I'm sorry for staring, I just wasn't expecting to see a boy. You're Harry Potter, right? The Boy-Who-Lived?"

Almost everything that she said confused him to an extent, so he decided to just focus on one piece of it. "Yes, I'm Harry Potter. Would you like to come in and have a seat?"

"Yes, please."

Harry stepped aside and let her in, closing the door behind her before helping her get her trunk into the overhead storage. Once she had situated herself and Harry had returned Silver to its place on his lap, Harry began asking the questions that her introduction had raised.

"So, what did you mean by 'boy-who-lived'? I am Harry Potter, but I've never been called that before."

Susan froze at that, and he could see her face shift through different expressions before she replied. "No, of course you wouldn't have. That makes... too much sense, now that I think about it." She was silent for a moment before a thought occurred to her. "Wait, you have to have been to Diagon Alley for school supplies, right? Someone there should have mentioned it at least."

Harry shook his head. "One of the teachers at Hogwarts came to my grandparents' house and told me I was a wizard. She took me to the wand shop through our fireplace and I ended up taking long enough to get a wand that she finished the rest of my shopping. Why would someone have called me that? Am I famous or something? I just found out that I was a wizard a few weeks ago."

"...I'm not qualified for this." Despite her mumbled words, the girl sitting across from him took a deep breath and leaned forwards, resting her massive chest on the table as she did so. "You are famous, Harry. I'll do my best to go over everything, but you should really ask Heistress Dumbledore when we get to Hogwarts."

Susan took another deep breath and began telling him a story of the most powerful Dark Lady in history, a woman so feared that even Susan couldn't bring herself to name her. Stories of destruction and death, a grand scheme to take over the world, and a prophecy that all but assured her victory. For some unknown reason, however, she personally went to kill Harry's mother and father, and when all was said and done Harry was the only living being in a ruined nursery with three corpses on the ground - his mother's, his father's, and the Dark Lady's.

"...And after that, nobody knows where you went. Well, obviously you do, but none of the magical world had any clue. There were a few people who wanted to study how you survived, but from what my aunt told me most everyone was celebrating for a few months after."

"So, let me get this straight," Harry began. "I killed this Dark Lady as a baby, and everybody knows about it. Everybody but me, apparently."

"Yes, that's about right."

He was quiet for a few minutes, running a hand along Silver's scales as he tried to come to with the news that he had just heard. His grandparents had tried to avoid the topic of his parent's death for the most part, and seeing how it hurt them to talk about it Harry avoided pushing them for more. His grandma told him that it was a home accident, but that she didn't have any more details about it than that. This... it didn't entirely make sense, but Susan looked like she genuinely believed it.

"I'm sorry." Susan's voice cut through his thoughts. "I didn't think- I... I thought you would have known. I'm sorry for dumping all of this on you, you don't deserve it from me."

"Thank you for telling me." Harry leaned back in his seat. "Someone had to, and to be honest I prefer you doing it now when there's only one person than in front of the whole school or something."

As his mind was abuzz with this new information, Harry asked the other pressing question from her introduction.

"On a different note, What did you mean when you said that you weren't expecting to see a boy? Is this an all-female car like they have in some parts of the world? I got to the station pretty early, and didn't see anyone else or any signs telling me not to sit here."

The more he spoke, the closer Susan's question got to despair. "Oh no. I... There's no easy way to say this, so I'm going to rip the bandage off. You are the only boy on this train. More than that, you'll be the only boy at the school. Normally, only girls are able to do magic, but you're the Boy-Who-Lived. You are the first male human to be able to use magic in history. I'm sorry."

It took Harry almost as long to process that as it had taken him to process the news about his parents' death and his unknown celebrity status. He wanted to trust her, but this was just unbelievable. Susan didn't seem like she was playing a prank on him, but Harry had to confirm it. He thought for a bit about how to phrase his wish, wary of letting that slip and add to his uniqueness even more.

"I wish I knew if you were joking-"

The answer came to him as the wish completed, despite his intent to continue the sentence. She hadn't been joking, about his parents or the 'boy-who-lived' business or about him being the only male wizard in the world. Harry didn't know what to do with that, but he pushed on and completed his sentence.

"-but I'm pretty sure you're not." The silence stretched between them for a bit until Harry connected the dots. "That's why it's specifically the boy who lived, right? Because being a boy was just as unbelievable as killing a Dark Lady as a baby. Is that also part of why some people wanted to study me?"

"Maybe? I don't know, I was about as old as you were at the time. But for the Boy Who Lived, I think so. I'm sorry that I'm the one to tell you this, I probably messed it all up."

Harry took a few deep breaths before responding. "No, you're all good. Like I said earlier, better now than in front of everyone. I... I might need a minute. I'm going to go use the bathroom, could you keep Silver occupied while I do?"

With her mumbled acceptance, Harry handed his pet dragon over to her and stood up in a daze. The world around him was a blur as he walked through the train car to the bathroom, He thankfully didn't encounter anyone on his way there, and it was a single-occupant bathroom that he locked the door of and went over to the sink to let the running water ground him.

"I wish..." The words left his mouth before he could stop himself, but the thought died there. What did he really want?