Chapter Text
The summer crept by quietly, the year Harry Potter turned eleven. There was nothing peculiar about that boy and his aunt loved him for it. Loved him as much as she could love a boy that was not her precious Dudley. She tweaked his cheek at the breakfast table and sometimes let him have an hour off from chores to go biking around the block. Vernon paid no attention to the boy. He barely knew his name, barely remembered he lived in the house, would have to take a guess if anyone asked what color his nephew’s eyes were.
Dudley didn’t hate his cousin. He only hated Harry when he got a little too close to winning their bike races. Otherwise, his feelings towards Harry settled into mild dislike and extreme disinterest. Petunia loved to brag with her girlfriends at brunch that she had mastered the art of a blended family.
“I just wish,” she said over her magazine one night, tucked into bed alongside Vernon, “that I had gotten the chance to get Lily out of it, too. You met the father, remember James? I think, if I’d had just a few more years to convince her to leave him and come home, all that magic nonsense wouldn’t have a chance to rub off on her anymore.”
“Mm,” Vernon responded. He flipped a page of his book. He was neither reading, nor listening.
“Just look at Harry. He’s doing so well. There’s no room in his head for that world. If those two had raised him— imagine! It’s lucky that he came to us.”
A letter addressed to Harry, his name written in green ink, fluttered through the mail slot the very next morning. He’d never had mail addressed to him before, not really. Letters from school were always to the “Parents or Guardians of H. Potter”, but this letter was for him and him alone.
He deposited the other letters at the breakfast table and took his seat, fumbling at the wax seal. Petunia peered at him curiously. A hint of fear wavered in her eyes that Harry missed.
“What’s that, dear?”
“I dunno,” he answered with a shrug. “Haven’t read it yet.”
Dudley and Vernon chatted aimlessly with each other, not caring enough to pay attention to Harry and his letter. But Petunia kept her gaze locked onto him. Her fork hovered in the air above her plate as his eyes skimmed over the letter.
His eyes got wider and wider. He flipped to the second page, his mouth hanging open, questions and exclamations trapped behind the giddy confusion that was bubbling up in his chest.
“It says… there’s this place called Hogwarts, and I’m supposed to be a student, and I have to go to this place called Diagon Alley to get my books, and—”
“Absolutely not,” Petunia whispered with surprising venom. She took the letter out of his hands, so fast that the edge of the envelope sliced against the pad of his finger and left a stinging paper cut behind. Her hands shook as she tore the whole stack in two. She stalked past Harry, looking anywhere but at his face, and threw the shreds into the fireplace.
“Mum, it’s summer—” Dudley began, watching her strike a match and toss it into the ink-marked kindling.
“There is no place for that nonsense in our house,” she barked over her shoulder. She knelt at the fireplace until she could see no trace of the letter in the embers. It was a beautiful image: her hands folded neatly in her lap, her ankles crossing and her brown kitten-heeled boots knocking into each other, a stray curl of hair on her forehead, her neck tilted in such a way that the flame cast such shadows across her cheeks. Outshining all the beauty, however, was the pure and unadulterated hatred in her eyes.
They did not speak of it again.
They spoke around the subject, instead. Harry and Petunia got into a heated debate about what one should value in a school, subjects and professors and being close to home — no school names were ever mentioned. One night, watching the news, Dudley wondered about what kind of sports other schools might have. Petunia monologued at length about how her sister never valued ‘traditional’ education and how much of a disappointment she was to the rest of her family.
At night, laying on his bed in the smallest bedroom of the house, Harry stared at his ceiling and muttered the words from the letter that he could remember under his breath. It would be easier if he could think this was a prank. If he could think it was a plot Dudley had hatched with his school friends, to make fun of Harry for believing it for even a second.
But Dudley seemed too curious, and Petunia seemed too mad. And Petunia kept talking about his parents, disparaging them in that quiet way she always did, but more frequently than she ever had before. Had they gone to Hogwarts? Was this his chance to find out about the people who had died and left him behind?
Across the hall in her own bed, Petunia wept and ranted to her husband until he grew tired of listening to her, rolling over and turning off the light. And even in the dark, she sniffled and could not quiet her thoughts. Hadn’t she done good? Hadn’t she done better than her parents, snuffing out any oddness that ever appeared in either of the boys? Hadn’t she celebrated the mundane? She was losing Harry. She saw the absent look in his eyes and the tightness of wonder in his shoulders. She was losing him just as she had lost Lily.
A week before Harry’s birthday, Petunia caught him alone in the kitchen.
“You want to go,” she said. Not a question.
Harry nodded and did not dare speak. Did not dare clarify. If either one of them said the words ‘letter’ or ‘Hogwarts’, the conversation would be over in desperation and rage.
“There is no place in our family for… for that.”
Harry nodded again, slower, his eyes focused on the linoleum tiles of the kitchen floor.
“And you still want to go.” Petunia’s voice wavered for a second.
Not knowing if it was the right answer, Harry nodded.
Petunia’s whole body deflated. She picked up her wallet and took out a thin stack of cash, tossing it carelessly onto the breakfast table. Her eyes did not meet Harry’s as she spoke. “You can get your own things, and get yourself there. If it isn’t enough, you better hope your professors are understanding. This is your choice, and you can’t take it back.”
She left the kitchen before Harry could respond, but he didn’t know what he would have said if she had stayed.
Two days later, Harry called himself a cab. The driver had never heard of a place called Diagon Alley, but the letter said it was off of Charing Cross Road. He wandered up and down the street until he caught sight of a family with a kid his age, hand clutching a cream-colored letter with green ink.
They ducked into an inn he hadn’t noticed before, eyes glazing over the Three Broomsticks sign as he searched. He ducked in after them and was overwhelmed by the heat and hubbub of the first floor.
Bodies bumped past him. Voices shouted, drinks spilled. The family with the kid and their letter had disappeared into it all. Harry stood in the midst of it all. Petunia’s money sat heavy in his pocket. Did he have to buy his way into Diagon Alley? Climb up onto a barstool and beg for help?
He didn’t have a letter. Didn’t have any proof he was meant to be here. Sweat began to gather behind his ears. His hands grew numb and his feet sank into the floor.
A series of images: returning home with his tail between his legs. Handing the fist of cash back to his aunt. The coldness in her eyes softening over the rest of the summer. Everything going back to normal. No passive-aggressive speeches over the dinner table.
“Merlin’s beard… Ja— Harry?”
A giant loomed over him. He had sun-tanned skin, and black curly hair that spilled off of his shoulders and blending into his beard. The giant knelt down so that he was almost at the same head height as Harry, clasping his arms with his large and sturdy hands. Harry stopped sinking into the floor, focusing on that firm grip on his arms.
“I’m sorry sir,” Harry said, tremulous. “Who are you?”
“The name’s Hagrid,” the giant said with a shrug. “I’m a friend of your parents.”
A million questions rushed through Harry’s mind. It was hard to pick just one.
“Does that mean you know about Hogwarts?”
Hagrid let out a great belly laugh that shook the skull behind Harry’s eyes.
“‘Course I know about Hogwarts. I work there, don’t I?”
“My letter got… I lost it. I’m not sure where exactly to go.”
“Well, you don’t need to worry about that, it’s my day off. I can help you.”
Harry followed Hagrid through the inn to a brick wall. After a furtive glance over his shoulder, the giant tapped a sequence of bricks with an umbrella he kept inside his oversized jacket.
In front of Harry’s wide, disbelieving eyes, the brick wall opened up into a bustling city street.
“Welcome to Diagon Alley. Let’s stop at Gringotts first.”
They went to the bank, that odd place with its Goblin caretakers and a vault full of money under the Potter name. They visited a bookstore and Harry stared longingly at the animals in the window of quite a few pet stores.
When Harry’s stomach started to grumble, Hagrid dropped him off at a robe shop and promised to return in thirty minutes with something to eat.
A bell rang when Harry entered. The shop was surprisingly empty for how dense the street was with people. A handful of teenage-looking students hung around the racks of robes by the front of the store. In the back was a wall of mirrors and three pedestals to stand on for alterations.
A blond kid, perhaps Harry’s age, stood on the center pedestal. He drowned in his robes, black swaths of fabric, and stared himself down in the mirrors. A woman with her wand stuck in her hair was pinning different sections of it into place.
“Hello, darling. First year?” she called. Her voice was muffled; a handful of pins hung out of the corner of her mouth. Harry nodded shyly. “Are you wanting custom or off-the-rack, then?”
“Just the rack is fine, ma’am.”
“Have a look through the ones up here by the mirrors. Find one in your size and throw it over your clothes, I’ll be with you for a fitting in just a second.”
Harry nodded again and obediently went to rifle through the rack of small black robes. He glanced furtively over his shoulder at the teenagers by the windows before holding up one to his chest to gauge the fit.
One of the teenagers approached the woman just as Harry finished sliding the robe over his clothes and climbing onto the pedestal. She put one last pin into the boy's robe and told him she would be right back, dashing over to the counter.
“She does fine alterations, but the custom robes always look better.”
Harry looked at the boy on the pedestal next to him. He had gray eyes that were staring very intensely at the baggy fit of his own robes.
“Well, I figured, I’d just grow out of them by next year, right?”
The boy looked stumped at this reasoning.
“My mum said I had to get custom ones.” There was a long awkward pause, as Harry had no clue what to say to that. “And, this way, I can get it lined with green.”
“Is that your favorite color?”
The boy scoffed, making Harry blush.
“It’s my house colors, obviously. I already know I’m going to be in Slytherin. It’s my family’s house, you know.”
“Oh.” Harry took a second to ponder this over. “Do all families have a house?”
“I mean, the good ones do.” There was a sneer in the boy’s voice that hadn’t been there before. “Did your parents even go to Hogwarts?”
“Yeah,” Harry said. His voice went high-pitched with defensiveness. “But I don’t know what houses they were in.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t know, they died when I was a baby.”
The boy, very quickly, stopped looking at Harry.
Neither of them said anything until Harry was leaving the shop, having been magicked into a robe with more fitting shoulders.
“I’ll see you at Hogwarts?” The boy asked, a little meekly.
Harry nodded, and slipped out of the shop to meet Hagrid.
The two of them ate some gyros wrapped in parchment paper as they continued down the street, picking up supplies from a handful of shops.
The last shop they visited sold wands. Hagrid led Harry into the dark and dusty building, its walls piled thick with small boxes, the ceiling looming down above them. A flurry of conversation, and then Harry was alone with the boney old man named Ollivander.
He did not bother with smalltalk. He looked Harry up and down, leaving a trail of pin-prick anxiety on his skin, and then bustled off to pull a box off a shelf.
“I doubt this one will do it,” Ollivander said, unpacking the thin, red wand inside the box. “But it will give us a good nudge in the right direction.”
Harry took the offered wand from Ollivander. It sat in his hand, a dead weight.
“What do I do?” he asked. His voice shook.
“Hm,” Ollivander hummed in lieu of a real answer. “Not that one, then.”
A pattern was quickly established. Ollivander produced a wand from the shelves and Harry balanced the elaborate stick in his hand. Nothing would happen, then Ollivander would hum, and off he went again to the shelves. The pile of boxes containing wands that had done nothing in Harry’s hand grew on the front desk of the shop.
After yet another lackluster display, Ollivander spent what felt like an entire hour staring at the boy, his gaunt and wrinkled face slowly twisting into a contemplative frown.
Harry’s heart refused to beat. Ollivander disappeared into the shelves and returned with a box covered by a thick layer of dust. Slowly, reverently, he unboxed the wand. The tips of his fingers barely gripped it as he held it out to Harry.
Harry gasped. “It’s warm,” he said, a hint of giddiness slipping past the nerves. He gripped the wand tighter.
As if a god sat in the corner of the room, and had been holding his breath all this time only to just release it, a breath of wind swept through the wand shop. Papers rustled and the few strands of hair on Ollivander’s hair flew up and then down.
“Interesting,” Ollivander said. No expression crossed his face—he was careful not to let it. “Very interesting.”
Whereas time had slowed and stretched with each wand pulled off a shelf, it now snapped quickly into place again. Ollivander took Harry’s money for the wand and sent him out the door.
Hagrid met him on the street and presented him with an owl. Harry named the creature and subsequently pleaded that Hagrid keep for the rest of the summer, as Aunt Petunia was allergic to pets.
Harry sat with a smile on his taxi ride home. For the first night in weeks, he did not mind the cold glare from Pentunia as they all sat at the dinner table. He had other things to keep him warm.