Chapter Text
Harry amused himself by making little drawings in the dirt.
He and the Dursleys had been holed up in a hut in the middle of the ocean for days, in an attempt to dodge those suspicious letters that had been sent to Privet Drive.
Harry had never seen anything like it. Hundreds of letters addressed to him had flooded in through the windows and the chimney. A couple had even shot up through the loo while Harry was in the washroom. But it’s just as well — he had run out of toilet paper anyway. Shame he hadn’t thought to read them before he wiped.
His Uncle Vernon had told him that it was a new form of junk mail, and that Harry would do well to avoid opening the letters at all cost. Uncle Vernon was always looking out for Harry like that, the big lovable lug.
When Harry and the Dursleys had begun hiding out in this rundown building, Uncle Vernon immediately spotter how filthy the beds were. He had then graciously offered Harry the opportunity to sleep on the floor instead, because said mattresses were so dirty.
It’s like Harry said, Uncle Vernon was a truly stand-up bloke like that.
Harry continued to lay down on his tummy, dragging his index finger through the dust on the floor. At the moment, he was drawing himself. Well, him, but like, him with BIG muscles, yeah? And a cape as well.
It was a very cool drawing and Harry was inordinately pleased with himself.
As Harry drew and happily kicked his feet behind him, some of the dust floated up into his nostrils. This caused him to sneeze, blowing away his filth illustration in the process. Bugger.
“Ah well. Easy come, easy go,” Harry muttered. No sense crying about it. There was no shortage of dirt on the floor to draw with.
Just as Harry started working on a fresh portrait of himself with even bigger muscles (and a skateboard) the door to their hut slammed open with so much force that it fell off its hinges.
The great booming crash of the door against the ground immediately roused the Dursleys from their slumber, and they all began shrieking and crowded around in the corner together.
Harry lifted his head to see what all the fuss was about, and froze in shock once he saw the imposing shadow of a man in the doorway, silhouetted against the thundering night sky.
He could make out a long mane of frizzy hair, complimented by a great bushy beard. The giant wore a long, thick overcoat and Harry could see that he was hiding a gift box behind his back.
Harry immediately rushed forward and embraced the mans midsection excitedly.
“Father Christmas!” Harry exclaimed, barely reining in his excitement.
“Err…pardon?” Santa Claus asked, sounding perturbed.
Uncle Vernon shakily beckoned Harry towards him. “That’s not Father Christmas, Potter! It’s July for Christ’s sake, you—dense twit!”
Harry gazed up at Santa in awe. “Hey, that’s right! Why have you come so early? Have I been that good?”
Santa bashfully scratched at the back of his neck. “Er, no. Think you’ve misunderstood, Harry. My name is Rubeus Hagrid!”
“Hagrid?” Harry eyed Not-Santa up and down carefully. Ah, course not. This couldn’t be Santa — Santa had white hair. But if this wasn’t Santa, then why had this ‘Hagrid’ fellow come here? “You’ll have to find another hut, Mr Hagrid. We’re already using this one…”
“Yeah, tell’em Harry!” Dudley, Harry’s best friend, chimed in.
Hagrid seemed taken aback by Harry’s behaviour, but pushed onward regardless.
“No, no. Y’see, I represent Hogwarts—“
“HOGWARTS?” Harry took a discreet step away from Hagrid. “I think they have an ointment for that, mate.”
Uncle Vernon snorted behind him, despite the situation.
Putting his hands up placatingly, Hagrid continued. “No, no! Not like that! Nothin’ like that! Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardy! Dumbledore sent me to see ‘yeh, ‘teh make that sure you were all right! Yeh’ weren’t respondin’ to yer’ letters is all...”
Ah, so this was the man sending all the junk mail.
Hogwarts? Dumbledore? Harry was pretty sure that this strange man was unwell and making most of these words up. “Huh?”
“Well, don’t tell me ‘yeh don’t know?”
“Know what?”
Hagrid knelt down on one knee and placed his massive hands on Harry’s shoulders. “‘Yer a wizard, Harry!”
“I’m a what?”
“A wizard! And a thumping good one I’d wager, once you’re trained up a little.”
“A…what?”
Hagrid’s grin dimmed slightly and he chuckles nervously. “A — A wizard, Harry! ‘Yer a wizard!”
“…I’m sorry, I don’t—“
“You don’t—?”
This was…unexpected. Hagrid took a deep breath and looked into Harry’s eyes beseechingly. “Surely ya’ know what a wizard is, don’t ‘ya, Harry?”
Harry worried his bottom lip between his teeth and thought hard. “You mean…like an iguana?”
Hagrid barked out a laugh before he realized that Harry wasn’t joking. “No, No. Not like an iguana, Harry. That’s—“
“Because I do eat bugs sometimes. But that’s just ‘cause I get curious. Oh god, I don’t want to be an iguana. They have those horrible eyes…”
Hagrid gave Harry a light shake once the lad started hyperventilating. “No, Harry. Iguanas are lizards. Lizards. ‘Yer a wizard. Wit’ a W.”
Sighing in relief, Harry slumped against Hagrid. Hagrid moved to awkwardly pat his back when Harry suddenly jolted away from him excitedly.
“Oh! Oh! I remember now! I know what wizards are!”
Hagrid let out the breath he’d been holding in, relieved. Maybe this situation wasn’t as dire as he had worried it might be. “Well, thas’ great, Harry. Then we can—“
“It’s when a girl likes other girls! But then, I can’t be a lizard, ‘cause I’m a boy. You must be at the wrong house, Santa.”
“…Harry, those are lesbians. That ‘dun even sound close to wizard…”
***
After many more explanations which Harry pretended to understand, he was finally whisked away to Diagon Alley. Something about the name made him frown thoughtfully, but he didn’t dwell on it.
...No, but really, why was it called Diagon Alley?
The first spot that Hagrid brought him to was a place to buy him some pyjamas, or robes as Hagrid insisted on calling them.
While the tailor was busy taking his measurements for his new pyjamas, a pointy little blond boy started chatting with Harry.
You might be wondering how a person could be described as pointy, but you wouldn’t have to wonder any longer once you’d met Draco Malfoy. He had a pointy chin, pointy eyebrows, pointy elbows and pointy knees. He even spoke pointedly.
Draco was good enough company until he had offered Harry his hand. Harry, having never been presented with someone’s hand before just followed the example that he had seen in the soap operas that he watched with Aunt Petunia on the telly — he grabbed Draco’s hand, bent down and kissed his knuckles.
After that, Draco had gotten even pointier, somehow, and stormed off with his face bright red.
Harry hoped that he hadn’t made Draco angry, but the tailor woman tittered lightly and told Harry that he was going to grow up to be a little heartbreaker, so he figures he must have done something right.
After retrieving his newly-fitted pyjamas, Harry sauntered back over to Hagrid and they went over to purchase a wand from some fellow named Garrick Salamander.
Hagrid let Harry enter the shop on his own, saying that he had something else that he needed to take care of in the meantime.
The shop was very stuffy and smelled sort of like the library, which put Harry off. Truly, there was something very spooky about the place and Harry would much rather fetch his little magic stick and leave as soon as possible.
Nervously, Harry approached the empty desk and, after waiting extremely patiently for fifteen seconds, began knocking on it repeatedly. “Hello? Hello! Hello? Hello, hello, hello, hello—!”
From a nearby alcove, a man slid into the room on a rolling ladder. His hair looked like a used cotton swab and there was an otherworldly, knowing look in his pale blue eyes. “I wondered when I would be seeing you, Mr Potter.”
Like Harry said, very spooky.
But still, he couldn’t let the man know how scared he was of him. He merely needed to behave just as cryptically and mysterious right back. That’d show him.
“And I…wondered when I would be seeing you, Mr Salamander…” Harry replied, scratching his chin contemplatively.
Harry smirked in satisfaction when the man looked briefly bewildered before moving to browse the shelves on the wall once more. Two could play at that game.
“Right…Hm, it seems like only yesterday your mother and father were here buying their first wands.”
“Impossible. My parents couldn’t have been here yesterday. They died ten years ago. Shows what you know,” Harry crossed his arms smugly. He knew this man was a fraud.
The wandmaker’s eyes shifted to Harry for a moment. “I meant no offence, Mr Potter. It’s only an expression.”
“You’re only an expression…” Harry pouted, placing his hands in his pockets and kicking his foot against the floor.
Garrick hummed noncommittally, unsure of how he was meant to respond. He then placed a wand down in front of Harry and urged the boy to give it a try.
They worked their way through a third of the shop’s inventory with varying degrees of success. Of course, Ollivander could already sense which wand would suit Harry the best. But he liked building suspense.
Finally, Ollivander felt like it was time. He retrieved the wand with eager hands. Holly and phoenix feather, the brother wand to the Dark Lord Voldemort’s.
Reverently, he handed the wand over to Harry. Harry Potter, saviour of the wizarding world. To think, the great things he would undoubtedly come to accomplish with that wand. It could very well be the deciding factor in—
Harry tripped and face-planted onto the floor, snapping the wand under his chest in the process.
Ollivander shrieked in abject horror, as his gnarled hands flew up to cover his gaping mouth.
Harry sat back up and mournfully rubbed his sore chest. “Shoot. Don’t worry, mister. I’ll pay for that one as well. Turns out I’ve got loads of dosh in the bank.”
The wandmaker barely registered the boys words, still staring with wide eyes at the snapped wand on the ground — sparking, crackling and broken beyond repair.
“Guess we need to keep looking, huh?”
Ollivander dropped to his knees and cradles the broken halves of the holly wand in his palms as Harry continued to try out random wands around the shop.
***
Hagrid held onto Harry’s hand on the way to King’s Cross Station.
The contact might have seemed a bit familiar given that they had only just met…but Hagrid didn’t want to risk Harry wandering off again.
Hagrid would need to warn Dumbledore about Harry’s…about Harry’s nature. The boy had a kind soul. He meant well. And he was a cute kid — the girls wouldn’t be able to resist him once he grew up some. But, well, there was no kind way to phrase it—
The boy was a bit dim, bless his heart.
Back at Diagon Alley, Hagrid had thought that it would be a nice surprise to buy Harry his own pet for school. He picked out the most beautiful, gentle bird available. It was a snowy owl that appeared to have a soothing, patient temperament and Hagrid knew she would serve Harry well.
When Hagrid had shown the bird to Harry, the boy seemed very touched by the offer but politely declined, revealing that he had already found a pet to bring with him.
Then he had reached into the breast pocket of his coat and pulled out a pigeon.
The pigeon was so docile and unmoving that Hagrid thought it might be dead for a moment, before it slowly blinked. Upon closer inspection, the bird appeared to be cross-eyed and blinking out of sync.
But Harry seemed so thrilled with his new companion that Hagrid couldn’t bring himself to dampen his spirits. He forced a smile on his face and asked Harry if he chose a name yet.
“Harry,” Harry had said.
“…Er, no. I mean, have you named the bird yet?”
“Yeah? I named it Harry,” Harry repeated, looking up at Hagrid like he was stupid.
Hagrid had looked up to the clouds and taken a deep breath. Merlin. “Harry…YOU’RE Harry. ‘Yer bird can’t be Harry too.”
Clutching Harry to his chest protectively, Harry eyed Hagrid warily. “Says who? I like my name. It’s a good name. So, I’m going to share it.”
“I don’t—I just…” Hagrid let out a world-weary sigh. “‘Yeh know what? You’re right. That’s…very kind of yeh’, Harry.”
Harry beamed up at him and shoved the pigeon back in to his pocket. One of its limp wings were hanging out the top.
Shaking his head at the memory, Hagrid broke out of his reverie.
…And promptly realized that Harry had disappeared once more.
In the middle of a crowded muggle train station.
Hagrid looked out over the sea of heads in the crowd. Harry’s shock of messy black hair was nowhere to be seen.
“Argh…Ah well, I’m sure he’ll figure out how to get on the platform.”
Hagrid turned around and headed back to Diagon Alley. He needed a drink.
***
Harry had no idea how to get onto the platform.
He had asked one of the attendants who worked at the station, but when he mentioned Platform 9¾ the man gave him That Look that people usually give him when he Asks Questions.
Sitting on his trunk forlornly, Harry petted Harry’s little feathered head with his thumb and waited for Hagrid to find him.
As he sat there feeling sorry for himself, he notices a wild pack of gingers roaming in his peripheral vision.
He watched as the family ran straight through a brick wall, one by one.
Wait. They were running through the wall?
Harry did a double take. No, yeah, they were definitely disappearing into a brick wall. Odd, that. Maybe having less melanin granted the human body the ability to phase through solid matter.
He turned back around, gazing thoughtfully down at his trainers.
It took him a moment, but he got there eventually.
“Ooooh!”
That must be how magical folk were meant to get on the platform. Harry stood up and puffed his chest out proudly, mentally patting himself on the back for his keen deductive reasoning.
Harry lined himself up directly with the wall and sprinted forward.
Unfortunately, Harry crashed into the wall full force. His head made a hollow thunk against the bricks as he fell flat on his back.
Sitting back up, Harry rubbed the bump on his forehead and inspected the wall again. Ah, he had run into the wall between platforms seven and eight by accident.
“Piss.”
Just as Harry started to stand up, the one remaining redhead noticed the state of him and hurried over to help him up.
“Blimey, are you alright? You need to watch where you’re going, mate.”
Harry gratefully accepted the hand that was offered to him and allows himself to be pulled to his feet by the taller ginger boy. “Psh, I meant to do that.”
The befreckled boy gave him an odd look but shrugged and let the comment slide. Seeing as Harry hadn’t let go of his hand yet, the boy gave it two firm shakes. “I’m Ron. Ron Weasley.”
Ah, introductions. Good thing Harry had been able to practice this with Draco at Madam Malkin’s.
Harry tugged Ron’s hand up and pressed a smooch to his knuckles. “Harry Potter. Nice to meet you.”
Ron eeped and jerked his hand back as if he’d been burned. Oddly enough, Harry got the sense that Ron was about to punch him or something before his words seemed to register.
“Wait? You—You’re Harry Potter? The Harry Potter?!” Ron shouted, his previously flushed face turning pale and slack-jawed.
Harry preened and rubbed the back of his neck, discreetly flexing his meagre bicep in the process. “The one and only…I’m uh, kind of a big deal around here.”
“You’re telling me! I can’t believe it! Do you really have the—the—y’know?” Ron gestured vaguely to Harry’s head.
“The what?”
Ron leaned in closer, as if he were imparting some great secret. “The scar.”
Harry frowned and rolled his sleeve up past the elbow, looking down at the mark on his forearm that he had gotten from trying to make friends with a squirrel in the park when he was nine years old. “How did you know about that?”
“Wha—? No, I mean the one on your forehead! You know — The scar,” Ron said, peering closer to Harry’s face than he was comfortable with. His breath smelled like pancakes. There were worse things to smell like, Harry supposed.
Harry held his fringe up with his hand, showing off his scar to Ron, who looked equal parts frightened and delighted. “You mean the N?”
Ron stopped fawning over his forehead for long enough to frown at him in confusion. “What do you mean, ‘the N’?”
“The scar on my forehead,” Harry explained, pointing towards the scar. “It’s shaped like a capital N.”
“No, it’s shaped like a lightning bolt! Like in all those stories about you! Folks always mention the lightning bolt scar!” Ron insisted.
“Uh, mate, I think I know more about my own scar than you do. It’s clearly an N.”
Ron must have been getting frustrated, because his cheeks were getting red again. One of the great wisdoms that Dudley had imparted upon Harry was that if a ginger starts to turn red, they either have a crush on you or you’re about to get elbowed in the bread basket.
Harry hurried to defuse the situation.
Waving his hands in front of him, Harry said, “Well, maybe you’re right. Who knows? I’m just saying: why would it be in the shape of a lightning bolt? That doesn’t make any sense.”
Ron threw his arms up in the air, exasperated. “It make more sense than it being a capital N!”
“Well, maybe it’s the dark lords initial?”
“What?”
“Yeah, like it was his way of marking me with his signature or something. The dark lord…Noldemort.”
“…”
”…”
“No, you’re right. That’s rubbish,” Harry admitted.
Ron’s face had paled significantly. When he spoke next it was in a hushed whisper. “First of all, you said his name wrong. Second of all, you’re not supposed to say his name at all!”
Harry’s face twisted in confusion. “Whose name?”
“You-Know-Who!”
“…I don’t.”
“Don’t what?”
“I don’t know who.”
“You don’t know You-Know-Who?”
“No, do you?”
“I know You-Know-Who. Why don’t you know You-Know-Who?”
“I want to know who, but you know who and won’t tell me who You-Know-Who is even though you know You-Know-Who and I don’t...know who...”
“Voldemort!” Ron screamed in frustration as he tugged at his shaggy red hair. “HIS NAME IS VOLDEMORT!”
“Stop yelling at me!” Harry shouted back, with tears welling up in his eyes.
Ron’s anger immediately gave way to guilt once he saw Harry’s bottom lip quivering and his shoulders slump. He hadn’t even made it to Hogwarts yet and he’d already managed to make the Boy-Who-Lived cry. Mum was gonna have a fit once she caught wind of this.
“I’m sorry, mate. It’s just—You’re not supposed to say his name out loud. So instead we say, well, you know…”
“I know NOW. You could have just said so in the first place.” Harry wiped his sleeve across his eyes before anyone else could see, because cool heroes with big muscles don’t openly weep in train stations.
Before Ron could apologize any further, his mother’s head popped out from the wall in front of them.
“Ronald Weasley! The Hogwarts Express is going to leave any moment now! Quit lallygagging and get on the train before I put my foot—“
Halfway through her threat, Molly noticed a timid lad hiding behind her son. The boy looks to be at least half a head shorter than her Ronald, and was looking up at her with big green doe eyes.
Molly walked the rest of the way through the platform and approached the boy, barely resisting the urge to coo and pinch his cheek. “Well, hello! It’s so nice to see Ron making friends! He’s usually so prickly with the other children…”
“Oi! Mum!”
Molly nudged her indignant son out of the way with her hip and ushered Harry towards the wall with a hand on his back. “Let’s get you on the train, dear. You don’t want to be late.”
Harry let himself be lead through the wall and Ron begrudgingly followed along behind them, mumbling something or other about traitorous parents.
***
“I heard that first years need to fight a troll for the sorting ceremony…”
Harry ignored all the whispering from his soon-to-be peers and instead focused on making sure his hair was just right. He wanted to make sure he was presentable for his big debut tonight.
A few of the girls in their little group had tried to strike up a conversation, but Dudley told Harry that girls have cooties, so — no thanks. Instead, he entertained himself by chatting with Ron about his favourite cartoons while Ron nodded indulgently and pretended to know what cartoons were.
After several moments of waiting, the deputy headmistress returned and beckoned them to follow her into the great hall.
Harry thinks her name might’ve been McDougal or something. He had been busy counting Ron’s freckles when she first introduced herself.
Sixty-seven, by the way. And that’s just on his face.
McDougal lined them all up and began calling out their names. Evidently, all they needed to do was wear a hat for a moment, and then they’d be sorted.
A bit dull, honestly. Harry had been hoping there’d be a dragon to wrestle or something so that he could impress his new BFF Ron, but whatever.
After the first few names were called Harry figured out that the list has been sorted alphabetically and his face twisted in displeasure. ‘Potter’ is pretty far down the alphabet and his legs were tired.
Having lost the last bit of his patience, Harry pushed his way past the other students and began walking over to the sorting hat.
McDougal’s brow furrowed when she saw that Harry was cutting ahead in line. “That’s enough. You are to return to the group immediately and wait for your turn, Mr Potter—“
Upon hearing his name, the great hall erupted in chatter.
“Did she say Potter?”
“Harry Potter?!”
“The Boy-Who-Lived? Here? Really?”
“Pass the potatoes, Crabbe, you greedy guts.”
Harry grinned smugly and continued on his way to the sorting hat, undeterred by the Professor’s stern look.
Just before he sat down, Harry shot finger guns at the crowd and winked. Several Gryffindors swooned and Draco Malfoy choked on his pumpkin juice.
The deputy-headmistress knew that she didn’t have any choice but to proceed now that all the students had gotten so worked up, but made a note to speak with Harry about his entitled behaviour later on.
The sorting hat was begrudgingly placed upon Harry’s head and—
Nothing happened.
Harry wasn’t sure what he expected, but…Seriously nothing was happening. Maybe the hat was busted?
The entire school waited with bated breath as the hat judged Harry. The longer the sorting hat took, the more whispers broke out among the student body.
“How long has it been now?”
“A hat stall? I can’t remember the last time that happened!”
“Crabbe, seriously. Leave some for the rest of us…”
“It must be because he’s such a genius! He’s so emotionally complex that the hat can’t decide where to place him!”
Meanwhile, Harry jolted in his seat when an incredulous disembodied voice spoke in his mind after seven minutes of silence.
“…My word. There is…nothing going on in here. Any given human’s mind is comparable to an ocean in its depth…and you are like a puddle, Mr Potter. I’ve never seen anything like it. Ever.”
“Hey!” Harry replied, wounded.
“Now, now. It’s not necessarily a bad thing… Alas, I have no idea what to do with you.”
“Do you want to flip a coin to decide which house I go to?”
“There are four houses, Mr Potter. We can’t flip a coin for it.”
“I’m sure I could find you a four-sided coin somewhere,” Harry offered.
“…Fuck it.” The hat drooped down in agony before shouting, “Hufflepuff!”
Most students began to clap politely, despite being baffled over the decision. The saviour of the wizarding world...in Hufflepuff?
Meanwhile, the Hufflepuffs were absolutely losing their minds, stomping their feet and wolf whistling at the news.
“First Diggory, and now Potter. It’s finally our time. Hufflepuff will rise,” Pomona Sprout muttered to herself, ominously, as Professor Flitwick scooted his chair further away from her.
Harry was about to march over to the other Hufflepuffs when he noticed Hagrid sat at the end of the staff table. He was happy to see the giant, but also wanted to go give him a piece of his mind for abandoning him at King’s Cross.
As Harry approached Hagrid, Pigeon Harry flew out of his robes and began pecking at Professor Quirrel’s turban.
Harry was pretty sure that was a hate crime and rushed over to stop his pigeon, who was apparently a racist. He would need to have a talk with him about that once they’d settled down. Harry refused to abide by bigoted fowl.
Quirrel was ineffectually batting his hands at Pigeon Harry to no avail, so human Harry lunged forward to grab the feathered fiend.
Unfortunately, Harry missed and grabbed onto Quirrel’s face instead. He was about to start apologizing when Quirrel began screeching at the top of his lungs and clawing at Harry’s hands.
Harry immediately backed off but the damage was already done. He and the rest of the school watched on in horror as Quirrel’s skin began cracking and crumbling before their very eyes.
As he slowly turned to dust, Quirrel’s turban unravelled and fell to the ground, revealing a second snakelike face growing out of the back of his head.
“Kill him! Kill the boy, quickly!” Snakeface yelled.
Quirrel attempted to obey and charged at Harry with murderous intent, but was effortlessly disarmed by Headmaster Dumbledore before he could even get close.
As the last of Quirrel’s body finally faded away, his breath rattled, “Mister Voldemort…I don’t feel so good.”
There was a tense, disbelieving moment of silence as the school processed what they had just witnessed.
Then Harry vomited all over Quirrel’s remains.
Dumbledore graciously vanished Harry’s sick with his wand and laid a comforting hand between Harry’s shoulder-blades before turning to address his students.
“Fifty points to Hufflepuff, for defeating the Dark Lord Voldemort.”
As the great hall exploded with applause and screaming, Harry wiped the last bit of bile from his lips and smiled charmingly at the gathering crowd.
Not a bad first day, he reckoned.
...
Wait. Harry frowned.
Wait a minute...
...
...
...
“Oh! Diagon Alley! Like, diagonally! Oh, that’s a fun name!”