Chapter Text
Harry stifled a scream as his palms scraped the pavement and left a trace of blood smeared across the white-grey concrete. His glasses slid right off his face, and he hastily grabbed them and slid them back over his eyes.
The jeers and taunts of Dudley and his gang were a faint echo in the distance, but the wild panic in Harry’s chest did not dissipate; it only tightened. He knew that if Dudley did not get to enjoy an afternoon of beating and kicking him, he would be trudging back to the house to a beating from Uncle Vernon, no food, and a week locked in his cupboard. His arms started unconsciously shaking as he wrapped them around his body.
No. He decided he would rather take the evil that seemed so much further in the future than stop and bend himself to his pig-like cousin’s whims in the present.
He slowly unwound his hands, leaving traces of crimson on the sides of his ragged, too-large shirt, and scanned around frantically for a place to hide.
He nearly pitched forwards again when he heard Dudley and his heavy breathing and the slap that his sneakers made as his overweight body slammed his feet into the pavement approach again. It was like his heartbeat filled Harry’s ears and beat into his mind like a drum, and Harry stifled a cry as he clutched his ears and made a beeline blindly in a random direction.
A blur of green caught his eye. It was the community greenhouse, he blearily recalled. He’d passed by the rather humble, unnoticeable structure when he walked home from school, resigned to carrying Dudley’s truck of a backpack while his cousin ran off with his gang of horrid friends.
Dudley and Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia would never get their hands dirty working in a greenhouse, he thought, not when they had him around to do so. In fact, he didn’t think he’d ever seen Dudley or his gang step anywhere near the place. It was rather open, and exposed, but he didn’t even need to think twice as he pushed himself to run even faster, up to the path of the greenhouse. He threw open the door and stepped inside, shivering, ducking behind one of the tomato plants that he remembered seeing in Aunt Petunia’s garden. A wave of comfort washed over him.
He took a moment to calm himself down, as the sun beat into his back through the glass windows, making him all too aware of the sweat dampening his already dirty shirt.
“Oh, dear, are you alright?”
He looked up and saw a lady that looked to be about in her 50s, with brunette hair and soft, almost-wrinkles that crinkled around her too-kind eyes.
“This is a community greenhouse, right?” He managed, trying to draw on the air of a young, naïve child. He had tried the act, once, on one of his teachers named Mrs. Smith during kindergarten. He’d let a few tears drip down his face and with a sliver of hope let it slip about being forced to live in a cupboard. He’d gone home the next day and was beat until he was black and blue and cleaned the entire house over three times, just for the sake of it. By the end his hands were blistered and raw from a constant scrubbing of water, and his knees were red and hurt touch from his constant kneeling.
Mrs. Smith had never looked at him the same way in school again, still professionally polite but distant. He knew exactly what lies Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon had spun to make him seem like a spoiled, selfish prat.
The woman smiled at him like Mrs. Smith had smiled at him once before. “Yes. But I’m normally the one tending to the greenhouse – why, I don’t think I’ve had a single visitor this past week.” Her smile was blinding. Harry decided he rather liked such a smile turned on him, after he’d seen the same one directed to his pig-headed cousin so often. “Did you need something, dear?”
To be taken away from my Aunt and Uncle’s house forever. To expose their hypocrisy to every single person who’s fallen headfirst into believing their lies. But Harry knew better than to speak about his experiences to strangers. “No…I was playing hide-and-seek with my cousin, but I tripped and fell into some mud.” Harry smiled sheepishly. “I saw the greenhouse and I remembered passing by it a few times, so I wanted to check it out while I was hiding from him.” The best lies were the ones spun in truth, he remembered. It was a lesson he’d learned well since his childhood.
“If you wanted to work here, I wouldn’t be opposed.” The lady smiled. “It’s not very intensive. It’s very fun. My name is Mrs. Wright, and you are?”
“Harry.” Harry smiled and didn’t offer his hand. “So I can just come here and work whenever I want to?”
“Of course.” Mrs. Wright gestured over to one of the houses he had run past. “I live right over there, so I come and tend to the greenhouse often. No one really owns the area, you see. So you’re free to come in and help.”
If Harry had known there was a sanctuary like this before, he’d have spent every second of his free time in the greenhouse. “I’d love to stay and help!” he said with great enthusiasm. “Is there anything specific you need me to do?”
He eagerly followed Mrs. Wright has she led him over to some parsley that were sitting out in pots. They’d need to be replanted, she explained.
“It’s alright,” Harry said when she tried to show him how to plant the parsley. “I have a garden back at home that I’ve worked in. I know how to do so.”
She smiled. “Oh, do you! Well that’s lovely. I’d love for you to show me around sometime.”
Never. Harry thought, but he returned her smile and nodded his hand and talked with her a little more before she went to tend to another section of the greenhouse.
When Harry sank his fingers underneath the soil, he thought he felt oddly serene. Perhaps, he thought, the life he had felt so accustomed to was finally changing.
*
He didn’t mind being punished, really. Something good had happened to Uncle Vernon’s business or something (Harry really didn’t find it in himself to care too much), and so he didn’t feel the usual vindicative anger he usually did when he took his fury out on his favorite punching bag. So Harry got away with only a few bruises and a mild scrape somewhere around his midsection from crashing into the stairs
Petunia had sent him out to work in the garden for the next few days under the blistering sun. He hadn’t ever understood why gardening was meant to be a punishment, other than when it was on hot days like this. In fact, he found a new appreciation of the life blooming just outside the house he had never noticed before.
He hummed as he discarded another weed besides him, and paused when he noticed some movement between the growing carrots in the garden.
“Foolish creatures,” he heard something hiss. “Always not watching and blundering around and stepping on anything in their path –”
“Hello?” Harry said. The rather pretty blue snake that had been the one hissing looked up in more surprise than Harry thought he would ever see on a reptile.
“You’re a Speaker!” The snake wriggled with a note of what seemed like excitement in the its hiss, and Harry privately thought the action was quite adorable. “There hasn’t been a Speaker in very long.” The snake wriggled closer, and Harry held out a hand with a little trepidation. He’d heard that brilliantly colored animals could sometimes be venomous or poisonous, but he was a little awed by the talking snake that no doubt had to do with his “freakishness”. The snake coiled itself around Harry’s arm as its tongue darted in and out.
“Is this something people normally don’t do, then?” Harry was somewhat intrigued. Uncle Vernon would definitely have started beating him up if he saw this conversation.
“No. People are stupid, but you seem to be less stupid.” The snake tilted its head. “What are you doing here, Speaker?”
“Tending to my Aunt and Uncle’s garden.” Harry answered, reaching a hand out to caress the snake.
“Those large humans?” The snake seemed to consider his words, nestling its head into Harry’s fingers. “I saw them earlier, and you looked like you didn’t like them. I don’t like them.”
Harry paused. He didn’t think he’d ever believe that he was hearing these words, frankly mild insults compared to some others he’d thought of, come from a snake. “Yes. I suppose that’s putting it mildly.”
“They are harming you, Speaker.” There was a tilt in the snake’s hiss that Harry somehow detected as anger. “I shall bite them for you.”
“Wait!” Harry shook his head with some panic. “I appreciate it, really. But if something were to happen to them, I’d have to go to an orphanage.” It had been a particularly cruel tactic, once, that his Uncle had used to try to ensure his obedience. He’d taken Harry to an orphanage and left him there for a month. After a month of bullying and whispers of being possessed by the Devil he’d taken a lonely and terrified child back. Harry had been quite sure that the Dursleys couldn’t do that, and yet the matron had done so with an odd glazed-look on her expression. Whatever the case, Harry was sure the Dursleys had been quite happy that he hadn’t complained about anything they did to him for the next few months.
Harry didn’t think they knew all the experience had done to him was a cement a cold part in his heart that would have reveled in their misery.
“An orphanage is a really bad place.” The snake deduced. Harry gave the most genuine smile he had in over a year.
“Not really its definition, but yeah. I don’t want to go there.”
“I shall not bite them.” The snake pronounced magnanimously. “And they should be thankful they have a Speaker as kind as you residing with them.”
”If only.” Harry’s mind traced back to something he had heard the snake say. “You said that there was another Speaker? A fre-someone like me?”
“Yesss.” The s-sound was drawn out this time. “I heard he could do special things. Magic, I believe, is the human term for it.”
Harry winced at the sound of the forbidden word. “M-Magic doesn’t exist. What I have is…it’s…freakishness.” But the word didn’t really sound as blasphemous as it had before, flying along with spittle out of Uncle Vernon’s face as he screamed at Harry. If the freakishness allowed him to experience a world as comforting as this, to have the first real conversation he’d had in years…he wouldn’t mind keeping it.
“Foolish Speaker.” There was mirth in the two words. “You are smart. You are talking to us. You, Speaker, have the same special abilities the other Speaker had.”
There was a coldness that started to creep up his gut, a feeling he knew was an anger that burned so hot it was cold, after years of being suppressed and tried to be beaten out of him.
“Magic.” He tested the word on his tongue. Nothing happened. He felt his teeth clench.
“The humans you live with are too stupid to understand.” The snake wriggled like it had before. “You are smart. You should not refuse to utilize your gifts.”
Gifts. He’d heard the term used often to describe Dudley’s useless pile of toys and books that he would never read and plethora of food that only fueled his cousin’s insatiable appetite. But the word here, in this context, was different. It felt…more. It felt special. And it was something that Harry had been taught to avoid all his life, in place of being normal.
He decided he quite liked being special.
He lifted his hand towards the carrots that the snake had slithered through. In a moment of reckless abandon, he reached in himself and he focused on the plant, and he pictured it growing, life blooming, as nature dictated that it should.
The plant shook and grew. It stopped only because Harry had been a little startled by the immediate action.
“You are very connected with the earth.” The snake, still wrapped around his arm, slithered off and to the ground.
“I…suppose so.” Harry reached his hand out and felt about his magic. The plant continued to grow, to ripen, and to mature. He only froze again because he could hear the familiar patter of footsteps approaching the front door. “You need to go. My Aunt and Uncle are coming.”
“Very well, Speaker.” The snake returned down the path it had originally slithered across. “I shall be here the next time you find time to Speak to me.”
And here, covered in dirt and grime, crouching on knees that began to feel raw, amidst a garden he had never once considered anything but a picture of punishment –
Harry began looking forwards to the future.
*
“WHAT are you doing, boy?” Harry felt a cold fear tingle down his spine. Uncle Vernon was not supposed to be back. He still had two hours. He knew that. He had every hour every minute every second planned out and he could, would, should have heard his Uncle’s footsteps and heartbeats.
The soft murmur of the plants he was tending to was rather melancholy. It was something he’d learned to do – hearing the plants murmur – the weeks following Harry meeting Viraea, as he learned the snake was called. Apparently, the snake had explained, she had been born from the ashes of a fire that some humans had caused. Harry didn’t think that was common, but he didn’t have anyone to give his thoughts to that wasn’t the snake.
Nonetheless, he’d felt more comfortable with the wind in his hair and sunlight dappling his cheeks, with his hands dripping dirt and water from tending to the plants, then he’d ever had. The world inside the house seemed to be a separate, once horrid dream, when he’d held onto the thought that he would be able to spend more time outside tomorrow.
Uncle Vernon was not supposed to be back right now. He was not supposed to be back when there was no one outside, that could have curbed his violence and only because they did not dare display violence in front of their neighbors. He was not supposed to be back, and he was not supposed to see Harry tending to a plant with his – magic – and he was not supposed to see Harry bent over, exchanging conversation with a reptile.
“I will bite him if he touches you!” Viraea hissed as Uncle Vernon marched towards Harry, his steps kicking up dirt, a loud thump-thump that finally drowned out the whispers of the plants and the ground and the Earth.
Harry only shook his head and tried to silently gesture Viraea to leave. But Vernon was there in a second with the dreaded golf club he could feel slamming into his small body already. “You stupid –” his words cut off as his eyes landed on the hissing snake in front of him. His fat face grew a purple-red Harry knew meant that he was really angry, and that usually was the case when he caught Harry doing something with his magic.
“Petunia!” He hollered, beady eyes fixated on Harry and his increasingly dropping heart. “The freak is talking to a snake!” His voice tilted into what might have been fear, or what might have been rage. It was probably rage.
The snake in question was still hissing threats, curled up around Harry’s arm.
“I shall protect you. I have seen you covered in blue and black, Speaker.”
Harry shook and tried, in vain, to hide Viraea away.
But as Petunia’s face (pinched like a lemon, as Viraea had described it) stuck out from inside the doorway and had only glared at him with a disgusted anger, and Vernon reached out and grabbed the collar of his shirt and used his free appendage to reach for Viraea, Harry was not stupid enough to not know what was coming.
They would not hurt Viraea, he decided then. His eyes were aflame when he pushed with all he had against Vernon.
And the Earth answered, and Harry’s entire being rearranged itself into something new.
There was a surge of vibrant green and dark brown and Harry found himself landing softly on the grass in a position that allowed him to continue to shield Viraea if Vernon were to decide to start swinging the golf club at Viraea. He had just used his magic outright against Vernon, but he decided he would rather be tossed into the orphanage than have Viraea be killed.
“Don’t move!” Harry said, voice as cold as the frost gathering in his gut. Vernon, who was now covered in dirt, veins bulging, screamed at him.
“You INSOLENT freak!” He lifted his golf club, and Harry saw red.
A flower, blood red, petals curled up in unusual patterns, bloomed from Vernon’s skin. The golf club was dropped as Vernon clutched his arm and screamed, and Petunia rushed out towards him. Petunia, hands shaking, reached for the flower on Vernon’s arm that was dripping blood and now growing more greenery.
“Stop it.” Her voice trembled in fear of a boy that was not even a third of her age. The flower and the growing plants stilled with her words, and Harry titled his head at her.
“Leave me alone. Promise me that you and Uncle Vernon will leave me alone to do what I want.”
“YOU –”
“Uncle Vernon.” Harry reached his towards Viraea and stroked her giddily. “I could make flowers grow from your heart. I could have plants grow in your throat until you choke on its petals. I can fill your lungs with leaves.” He didn’t know if he could really, but the crimson flowers growing from under Vernon’s skin fed him confidence and Vernon fear. “I really, really, would consider my act of peace, when you’ve beaten and starved me for eight years.”
Vernon was frightened, but his anger won out. “You FREAK –”
“Stop!” Petunia rested a hand on Vernon’s shoulder and shot Harry a look that reminded him of the look the orphanage director had given him when she thought he was the incarnate of the Devil. “Dear, we might as well just ignore him. Think about how much more pleasant our life will be, if we don’t given him any attention.”
“I’ll cook and clean for you.” Harry decided this would be the best course of action. In the end, he would still not like to go back to the orphanage. Having the family rely on him for their needs would be useful in the long run. “But I want to live in Dudley’s second bedroom. I swear I’ll leave you alone if you allow me to.”
As a sign of good faith, he felt for the essence of the flower, and it wilted and dropped to the Earth. Vernon’s arm was still bleeding from some gap in his skin that didn’t exist. Harry was rather curious about how that worked.
“Fine.” Petunia continued to eye him fearfully. “Come on, dear, let’s get you back inside…”
Vernon, who had a good enough sense of not to push the situation any further, turned a glare on Harry. Harry only grinned when he saw Vernon’s hand clutch his still bleeding arm.
“You did well, Speaker.” Viraea sounded smug. “If they harm you again, I will bite them, unnoticed. Then you shall not be blamed.”
Harry was still feeling oddly giddy after his display of power towards the faces that once haunted him at every nightmare locked up in a dark and spider-filled cupboard. “They would find a way to blame me anyways. But I suspect they shall not try to hurt me again.”
“The large one didn’t seem to be reasonable.”
“But the skinny one,” Harry explained with a grin, “is scared of me. She will not allow him to harm me, if only to save her own skin.”
“The lemon human should be scared of you. You are powerful. You are special.” Harry felt the brush of her tongue very clearly amidst her praises.
“Since they are not going to be bothering me any longer for today, how about you and I work on my magic?” Harry bent down and allowed Viraea to reclaim her position around Harry’s arm. Pandora’s box had been opened, and Harry did not wish to close the box back up. “We shall train so that I will not be caught off guard by someone approaching ever again, and then I shall experiment with plants.”
Viraea bobbed her head in an approving manner. “You shall have a way to defend yourself, then.”
“Yes. No one will hurt me ever again.”
*
The days passed in a blur, after that. Harry would cook and clean and disappear out of the house for the next few hours. Petunia seemed perfectly happy with that. There was only one incident, when Dudley, unaccepting of the fact that Harry had received a luxury as basic as a bedroom, called Piers and the rest of his gang to beat Harry up in his backyard.
Viraea had leapt and coiled around Dudley’s neck, only barely cutting off his air. Harry called to the Earth and plants shot out of the ground and curled themselves around the gang’s ankles. The murmurs of the plants were angry. Harry felt that anger and he warned the gang off that time.
Dudley left him alone after that.
He spent the first few days in the garden before he decided to take Viraea with him to the greenhouse. She curled herself around Harry’s abdomen – a way for transportation Harry had found to be the most convenient because his wardrobe lacked many long-sleeved clothing – as Harry enjoyed his walk towards the greenhouse and listening to Viraea’s newest commentary about some inane thing.
“Humans are just so odd!” She was complaining about the Dudley once again, lamenting Harry's association with the boy. “What is the point of eating this – junk food – if it is so bad?”
“For enjoyment, Viraea.”
“I see no enjoyment in eating something bad for me.” Viraea hissed. “It’s simply irrational. It makes no sense, Speaker.”
Harry sighed in exasperation as he approached the greenhouse. Mrs. Wright waved at him from where she was tending to the tomato plants, and Harry waved back before skirting past her to check on the cucumbers he had planted a week ago in the greenhouse.
Viraea hissed again and uncurled from Harry’s abdomen as she dove into the plants to check for any organisms. It had been a system they had worked out, after Viraea had found a particularly juicy rat in his garden a few weeks ago. Harry hummed to himself, which he found himself doing more often, and went to grab the watering can and a shovel.
Harry spent a few minutes watering the plants outside, taking care to avoid Viraea, who she learned quite disliked water (he guessed that had something to do with her “being born in fire”).
He smiled in contentment.
*
Harry wasn’t sure why he wasn’t expecting to come up to Mrs. Wright in tears one day. Everything good in life, he learned, always preceded something bad. It was only natural that the small good in his life would be destroyed sometime soon.
He felt Viraea curl tighter around him as she felt his heart start palpitating faster.
“What happened?” He glanced around at the charred remains of the garden outside the greenhouse.
“Some people came and vandalized it.” She sniffed. “I managed to call the authorities and limit the damage to the greenhouse, but…” she trailed off. Harry didn’t mind. He thought that she loved the plants almost as much as he did, was the closest a person could come to being truly connected to the Earth without actually having a connection like him. Undoubtedly, she was feeling a rage similar to the biting coldness that Harry was feeling.
“Who did it.”
Mrs. Wright shook her head. Harry thought about Dudley, who had been avoiding him for months after the incident, who had been increasingly glaring at him in school and whispering to his gang, who had been complaining to Petunia and Vernon about him increasingly over the last few days.
Viraea’s squeeze was an anchor when he began to walk back.
*
Harry grabbed the golf club that Vernon swung at him and stopped it in its tracks. He clenched his hand around the metal and without even a glance at it he threw it behind him, hearing it hit the wall with a resounding crack. Harry threw out his hand and he could feel something grow without even looking at Vernon.
“Give me one reason,” Harry hissed, “that I shouldn’t let you choke out right now.”
Dudley clutched at his throat, which was currently sprouting some lovely golden-yellow tansies. Harry wasn’t particularly empathetic to the fact that Dudley could not speak.
“I warned you!” Harry’s voice was a snarl. “I told you to leave me alone! I told you to not bother me!”
“Please!” Petunia, with all her cowardice, seemed to genuinely care for her son. Perhaps they hadn’t dumbed him down just to spite him. Harry found himself sneering at the display of affection that he knew he would never get, and the look Petunia directed at him that made him out to be someone dangerous.
All he wanted was not to be provoked.
But Harry was not unreasonable. He doubted Dudley would be even that stupid enough to attack him again when he was literally choking out. So he let Dudley gasp for air for a moment longer before he willed the plants to return and thus they disappeared. As Dudley collapsed to the floor he turned on Vernon.
“I can tolerate acting for Dudley just this once.” Harry’s smile had all the frigidity and sharpness of ice. “But don’t try it again.”
Viraea, who was currently wrapped around Harry’s neck, hissed a few threats at the purpling man. He had had to stop her from literally lunging and biting Dudley, and he knew she was currently unhappy because in her words, he constantly denied her efforts to try to protect him, so he let her have her fun.
After a minute, he pointedly released the plants that had crawn over the fat man. He ran his hand along her scales and turned towards the front door, slamming it open and closed as he left for the rest of the evening.
He did not notice the large dent in the wall nor the bent golf club lying beside the stairs. But Viraea had.
“You are not like them.” She hissed as Harry walked through the ruined garden for the fourth time that day as he waited for Mrs. Wright to finish assessing the extent of the damage of the fire.
“We already know that.” Harry suppressed the rage in his voice.
“I do not mean your magic or sense. I mean that you are not fully human.” Viraea’s voice stopped him in his tracks.
“What do you mean?”
“Think.” Viraea’s hiss was oddly soothing. “Speaker, you have always had oddly sensitive hearing. While some special people can make plants grow, I don’t think hearing plants talk is common. And, Speaker, you are oddly strong. You bent that gray rod of metal and cracked the wall of your house.”
Harry’s mind sputtered to a stop at her hisses. It was true, that he’d always seemed to be able to outrun Dudley and his gang – and while Dudley was not the most fit, there were a few boys he knew were decent runners, who should have been much better than a boy who was locked in a cupboard for years. He thought the deliberate avoidance of talking about heartbeats and footsteps had been just a way for the Dursleys to make him miserable – but he supposed it could have been unusual.
And the plants. He could feel something full and complete, around him, as his senses had heightened since he had started developing his powers two years ago. It was something primitive and beautiful, and it lit something deep in his soul. Perhaps it was true – not only did he have magic, but he wasn’t even fully human. He was something that felt nature more deeply than other people did.
“You may be onto something, Viraea. You’ve certainly given me something to consider.”
*
A few months later, a grey and brown speckled owl dropped a letter off at 4 Privet Drive, Little Whinging, Surrey, in the backyard where a boy who had just turned 11 was tending to the garden.
He opened the contents of the letter and petted a snake that had slithered up to where he knelt. He smiled, and even the shadows of the plants shifted in anticipation.