Chapter Text
The night was still and cold on Privet Drive. Streetlamps cast pools of yellow light onto perfectly trimmed hedges and tidy lawns, nothing out of the ordinary stirring in the quiet suburb. But on the doorstep of Number Four, something unusual had arrived.
Wrapped tightly in soft blankets was a small bundle—a baby boy, sleeping soundly despite the chill in the air. His dark hair was thick and unruly, his pale face peaceful beneath the stars.
Behind him, three figures stood silently. One was tall and imposing, with half-moon spectacles glinting in the lamplight. Beside him, a stern woman in emerald robes watched carefully, and a giant of a man loomed protectively nearby.
“This is the safest place for him,” the bespectacled man said softly, voice steady but tinged with sorrow. “Away from the fame that would overwhelm him, away from the dangers still lurking in the shadows.” He bent low to glance once more at the sleeping child. “He is protected, for now.”
The woman scowled, “But Albus, muggles are all betas, will they truly understand how to care for this alpha child? I’ve watched them all day, they are terribly prejudiced. They will treat him like an outcast like the rest of muggle society treats classified individuals.”
Albus sighed, “We can’t be certain of that, Minerva. These people are the only family he has left. This is where he belongs.”
Minerva didn’t look convinced, but then she heard sniffling and turned and saw the giant man rubbing his eyes, “Now, now, Hagrid, none of that. We’ll see the boy again soon enough.”
“Aye,” his voice was rough, “I know yer right, it’s just hard to leave ‘em.”
Dumbledore gave a weak smile, “Ah, but what is right and what is easy or not always the same thing.” They all looked back at the sleeping infant with saddened expressions.
With that, the three vanished into the darkness, leaving Harry Potter alone on the doorstep—his future unwritten, the weight of the wizarding world resting quietly upon his tiny shoulders.
~~~~*~~~~
The storm outside Malfoy Manor crackled against the windows, winter’s fury hissing like the dying breath of a basilisk. Inside, all was still. Too still.
Narcissa Malfoy stood before the fireplace in the drawing room, her icy-blue eyes locked on the writhing flames. She clutched a bundle of silver silk close to her chest. Her son. Her Draco. Barely a year old, warm and drowsy against her heart, unaware of the world shattering around him.
The door slammed open.
Lucius strode in, his pale face flushed with a rare emotion—fear, quickly masked beneath aristocratic disgust. He tossed his sodden cloak onto the nearest chair and stalked to her side, not even looking at the child yet.
“He’s gone,” he hissed, voice low and venomous. “The Dark Lord… he’s gone , Narcissa. Defeated by a baby. ”
Narcissa turned sharply, eyes narrowing. “What do you mean, gone ?”
“Destroyed. Or vanished. No one knows. They say he went to kill the Potter boy, and—he's just… disappeared . The house was destroyed. The boy lived.”
Draco stirred at the sharpness in his father’s voice. Narcissa rocked him instinctively, smoothing a hand down his tiny back, her fingers trembling.
“That’s impossible,” she whispered. “He—he was power itself. That child should have died—”
“But he didn’t,” Lucius growled. “And now the Aurors are hunting. The Ministry is rejoicing. The Dark Lord’s followers are being dragged from their homes like criminals.”
Narcissa’s knuckles whitened on Draco’s blanket. “They are criminals, Lucius. And now they’ll come for you. ”
He bristled. “They will not. I am not some street-crawling Death Eater. I have influence. Wealth. I’ll say I was Imperiused . We both will.”
“You think they’ll believe that?”
“They’ll have to. ” Lucius turned to her fully now, his steel-gray eyes glinting with fury and something deeper—calculation. “Do you want Draco growing up in an orphanage, Narcissa? Branded with his family’s shame?”
She looked down at her child. So small. So perfect. Pale blond hair like moonlight, a nose too fine for a toddler, lips already curled into something that might one day become a smirk. He deserved better. He deserved everything.
“No,” she said softly. “No, I won’t let them touch him.”
Lucius nodded, more to himself than her. “Then we play the part. We weep. We shake. We claim we were under the Imperius Curse, forced into obedience. I’ll burn the Mark from my arm if I have to.”
Narcissa’s mouth fell open in horror. “You’d burn your Mark?”
“If it protects us?” Lucius looked down at his son—his legacy. “I’d burn the whole damn world.”
The silence that followed was brittle.
“And when—if—he returns?” she asked, dread curling in her gut like the serpent sigil on their family crest.
“Then we welcome him back with open arms. But until then…” Lucius leaned close, lowering his voice even further. “Draco is going to grow up to be a strong leader, like his father. Regardless that he is an omega. And that means he needs opportunity. Connections. Hogwarts. The Ministry. Respect. None of that comes from being on the losing side.”
Her lips pressed together in a thin line. “You’re already planning his future?”
“I’ve always planned his future. He is my legacy.”
Narcissa looked down at her baby again. “He’s so soft.”
“He won’t stay soft. He’ll grow teeth. He’ll learn to hide them, but he’ll have them.”
She swallowed. “He’s just a baby.”
Lucius placed a hand on her shoulder. “He won’t be a baby forever . ”
Narcissa nodded slowly, hugging Draco closer as the firelight flickered against her pale skin. “We lie, then. We bow. We smile at the Ministry if we must. But if they ever threaten him—”
“They won’t,” Lucius said coldly. “They’ll never get close enough.”
Outside, the wind howled, but inside Malfoy Manor, the masks were already being fitted—polished, painted, and prepared.
For now, the serpents would coil quietly in the grass. But they would wait. And remember.
~~~~*~~~~
Ten years had passed since the night the Potters died, and nothing about Number Four Privet Drive had changed—except for the boy who lived in the cupboard beneath the stairs.
Harry Potter was small for his age, with wild black hair that refused to lie flat and bright green eyes hidden behind scratched glasses. He wore clothes three sizes too large, hand-me-downs from his cousin Dudley, and had to tie the waist of his trousers with an old bit of string. The sleeves hung over his hands like empty bags.
The Dursleys had never liked Harry, and he knew it. They said he was strange, unnatural. He was told his parents had died in a car crash—drunk, reckless, foolish. Sometimes, if Uncle Vernon had had a bad day at work, or Dudley had whined loud enough, Harry was punished. A slap. A shove. Sometimes worse. A locked cupboard and no meals. That was his normal.
He never cried.
He’d learned early that tears made them angrier.
What the Dursleys never admitted, but Harry had started to notice, was that odd things happened around him—things he couldn’t explain. Like the time his hair had grown back overnight after Aunt Petunia had shaved it all off “to teach him humility.” Or when Dudley had pushed him hard and Harry ended up on the roof of the school, his palms scraped but otherwise unhurt.
And the time the window slammed shut just before Aunt Petunia could toss out his only drawing—one he’d made of a lion cub curled protectively around a tiny owl chick.
They hated when things like that happened. Uncle Vernon had once said, white-faced, “ We’ll crush it out of him. ”
Lately, something inside Harry felt... compressed. Like his skin didn’t quite fit, and there was a pressure building in his chest he couldn’t name. It was worse when Dudley sneered at him, or when Aunt Petunia called him a freak. Like now.
“Pass the bacon, freak,” Dudley said one morning at breakfast.
Harry did as he was told.
Dudley turned to his friend Piers, who had come over for the day. “Did you see that Little in the store yesterday? Bloody ridiculous. Cuddling a teddy bear. They should all be locked away, like babies.”
“Yeah,” Piers said. “Classifieds are disgusting. Especially those Little ones. Crying and whining all the time. Makes me sick.”
Something in Harry tensed. A low, barely audible growl started in his throat.
Aunt Petunia slapped the back of his head. “No noises,” she hissed. “No growling. We are a respectable Beta household. You will not act like some Alpha animal in this house!”
Harry bit the inside of his cheek. Blood filled his mouth, but he said nothing.
He didn’t know what classification he was—no one had told him anything. But he knew deep down he was not a Beta. The more the Dursleys insisted he was, the more wrong it felt. There were days his instincts rose in his throat like fire, begging to protect, to soothe, to hold, to guard. And every time they surfaced, the Dursleys punished him. Classified people were looked down upon in society as uncontrolled and weak.
That weekend, they went to the zoo.
Harry was allowed to come only because Mrs. Figg had broken her ankle and couldn’t take him. He stayed quiet in the backseat, eyes down, trying not to anger anyone.
At the reptile house, Dudley banged his fists against the glass of the snake enclosure, demanding it move. Harry hung back. His skin prickled—something about the air felt different.
Then Dudley shoved a small boy—couldn’t be older than six—out of the way to get a better view. The child gave a frightened whimper and hugged a soft rabbit plush to his chest.
“Move it, baby,” Dudley jeered.
Harry moved before he thought.
His hand clamped around Dudley’s arm and squeezed —not enough to bruise, but enough to warn . “Leave him alone.”
Dudley stared at him, stunned. Aunt Petunia gasped.
The child looked up at Harry with wide eyes. Harry gave him a soft nod. “You’re alright,” he murmured, low and careful.
And something shifted .
The snake behind the glass lifted its head.
Harry turned toward it, breath catching.
“Thanksss,” it said.
Harry blinked. “Did you just—?”
The glass disappeared.
Dudley shrieked, stumbling back. The child ran to his mother.
The snake slithered past Harry, pausing briefly. “Protector,” it whispered before slipping away.
The glass slammed shut again.
Harry stood there, stunned, heart pounding.
He felt... calm .
More than calm. Centered. Like a missing piece inside him had clicked into place.
Aunt Petunia grabbed his arm. “You freak ! What did you do?!”
But Harry barely heard her.
Harry knew he was in big trouble.
The cupboard had never felt more suffocating.
Since the zoo, Harry had been locked inside with only a bucket, water, one moldy blanket, and the scolding echo of Aunt Petunia’s voice: “You humiliated us. You’ll stay there until you learn to act normal.”
Three days had passed. Maybe four. Time was slippery in the dark. His stomach gnawed at itself. His body ached from curling up on the too-short cot. His throat was dry, his limbs heavy—but his mind kept circling that moment with the snake. The child. The feeling of rightness when he'd stepped between them. The way the glass had disappeared. The word the snake had used.
Protector.
The word repeated itself in his head like a heartbeat.
He didn’t understand what it meant, but something inside him had shifted. For once, something fit .
Then, on the fifth morning, when he was finally let out of the cupboard, the letter arrived.
It came with the post—unlike anything else in the pile of bills and circulars. The envelope was thick and creamy, the ink a vibrant emerald green. The handwriting was old-fashioned and formal:
Mr. H. Potter, Alpha
The Cupboard under the Stairs
4 Privet Drive
Little Whinging, Surrey
Harry’s breath caught.
“Alpha,” he whispered. The word looked strange, printed on paper instead of hissed in disgust. Alpha. The thing the Dursleys said he couldn’t be. The thing they punished him for acting like. But this letter—this letter knew .
He reached for it with shaking hands.
Uncle Vernon’s sausage-thick fingers snatched it away.
“What’s this filth?” Vernon bellowed. He turned the envelope over and went pale. “No, no—no, we stopped this, we burned this out of him—” His voice turned into a sputtering growl.
Harry stood frozen. His fingers still tingled with the feel of the parchment.
“You’re not reading this,” Vernon snapped. He tore the envelope in two, then again, shredding it with trembling hands.
Harry’s heart sank.
“But—what did it say?” he asked, voice barely audible. “Why did it call me Alpha?”
Vernon spun toward him, eyes wild. “ There are no Alphas in this house! ” he shouted. “You are a Beta , boy! A sniveling, ungrateful, unnatural Beta, and you’ll act like one!”
Harry flinched.
Aunt Petunia peered at her husband, clutching her pearls. “Vernon, they know where he sleeps. ” Her voice was brittle with fear.
That evening, without explanation, they moved him into Dudley’s second bedroom. It was dusty and filled with broken toys and junk Dudley didn’t want anymore, but it had a window and space to stand up. Harry didn’t understand why. No one spoke to him.
The next morning, there were three letters.
By the end of the week, a dozen had arrived—stuffed under the door, slotted through the mail slot, even slipped in through the cracks in the window frame. All addressed in that same precise green script.
Mr. H. Potter, Alpha
The Smallest Bedroom
4 Privet Drive
Uncle Vernon lost his mind.
He burned the letters in the fireplace. He nailed shut the mail slot. He tried—fruitlessly—to tell the postman they were being harassed by “dangerous deviants.” He shouted that Harry was ungrateful, unworthy, unclassified .
But Harry had seen it now. Alpha. The letters called him that over and over. They didn’t say freak. They didn’t say mistake. They said Alpha.
He began to keep scraps of letters that Vernon failed to burn entirely—fragments of sentences, of names, of words like “Hogwarts” and “Acceptance” and “Classification.”
He tucked the fragments into the pages of an old science book, the one with the broken spine and the note in the front that said “Property of Dudley Dursley.”
He turned those pages over and over again, reading the scraps like scripture.
Somewhere, someone knew what he was.
Someone saw him.
And slowly, under the weight of every ripped letter, every cruel word, every slammed door—hope started to bloom inside Harry Potter.
Maybe there was a world where he didn’t have to hide. Where he could growl without being hit. Where he could protect someone and be thanked for it.
Where Alpha didn’t mean danger.
Where Harry could just be... himself.
When the hundreds of envelopes came raining down from the chimney one Sunday afternoon, Uncle Vernon lost his mind. He bundled the whole family in the car and took them far away to a hut on a rock in the middle of the sea.
The wind screamed against the crooked boards of the shack like something alive, furious and desperate to get in. Rain lashed against the broken windows. Inside, the air was damp and cold and heavy with silence.
Harry sat curled on the hard wooden floor, knees pulled to his chest, watching the minute hand of the clock inch toward midnight. His eleventh birthday. The Dursleys hadn't mentioned it. Of course they hadn’t. He’d long stopped expecting cake or presents or even a kind word.
Still, some small, stubborn hope inside him counted down with every tick. Maybe… just maybe, something would change.
His eyes drifted to Uncle Vernon, snoring in a corner with a rusting rifle in his lap, white-knuckled and twitchy even in sleep. Dudley snored louder, sprawled on the ratty sofa, and Aunt Petunia sat upright like a corpse, unmoving but clearly awake. The room stank of seawater and fear.
The clock struck twelve. One breath. Two.
BOOM.
The door exploded inward with a blast of wind and wood. Harry flinched hard, heart leaping into his throat.
A giant stood in the doorway, taller than anyone Harry had ever seen, soaked to the skin and lit by a flash of lightning behind him like some storm-born god.
“Sorry ‘bout that,” the man said, stepping inside with surprising gentleness for someone so large. “Should’ve knocked, I s’pose.”
Vernon scrambled to his feet, brandishing the rifle like a torch. “I—I’m warning you! I’ll shoot—”
“Put that thing away,” the giant said mildly, snapping the barrel in half with one hand.
Harry stared. The man turned to him and smiled.
“Harry Potter,” he said, eyes twinkling. “I’ve been waitin’ a long time to meet yeh.”
Harry blinked. “Me?”
The man pulled something from his coat—an envelope. It was the letter, the name written in emerald ink:
Mr. H. Potter, Alpha
The Floor,
Hut-on-the-Rock,
The Sea
His breath caught in his throat. Hands shaking, Harry took the envelope.
The wax seal was heavy and official. He broke it.
His eyes skimmed the words about magical education.
“I’m a wizard!? That can’t be right.” He looked up at the giant man who just smiled down at him.
“‘Course it’s right. You’ve been written down in Hogwarts Book of Admittance since you were a baby.” He beamed down at Harry, “Showed signs of magic real young, you did.”
Harry was in shock. He looked back down at the letter and continued to read. His eyes froze on a line he didn’t understand.
We are also pleased to confirm your secondary classifications have been identified as Alpha, Caregiver.
What?
“What—what does that mean?” Harry asked, voice barely audible, pointing to the line in the letter.
“Exactly what it says,” the man—Hagrid, he’d said—replied kindly. “You’re an Alpha biologically. But also a Caregiver by nature.”
Harry shook his head. His heart was racing, skin prickling with something between terror and longing. “That’s not possible. I—I don’t know how to take care of anyone. I don’t even know how to take care of myself. ”
His voice cracked on the last word.
Hagrid knelt down, his eyes at Harry’s level now. “I know. That’s what makes yeh one, if yeh ask me. Most Caregivers come from broken things. Grows in the cracks.”
Harry blinked hard. He wanted to argue, to insist he couldn’t be this thing they said he was. How could he be built to protect others when no one had ever protected him?
But his throat felt tight. His chest ached in a way he didn’t have words for. And even as he sat frozen on the floor, some other part of him stirred—a quiet yearning that had lived buried under cupboards and silence and locked doors.
Hagrid reached into his coat again and pulled out a small, enchanted blanket—soft gray with tiny warming runes sewn along the edge. He handed it to Harry.
Instinctively, Harry gripped it and felt warmth bloom in his fingertips.
“You’ll learn what it means, lad,” Hagrid said softly. “At Hogwarts. There’s magic lessons. Nurture and Nature classes, grounding spells. You’ll learn how to be what yeh are. And maybe more importantly… you’ll meet others like yeh.”
Others like me.
For the first time in Harry’s life, he didn’t feel entirely alone.
And that tiny, stubborn hope inside him? It didn’t feel so small anymore.
Uncle Vernon’s voice thundered through the cramped shack, his fists clenched so tight his knuckles whitened. “He will not be going to that blasted school! Not under my roof!”
Hagrid’s broad shoulders squared, and his voice rumbled back, steady and fierce. “He’s goin’, and there’s not a thing you can do to stop it.”
Petunia’s bitter sneer cut through the tension like a knife. “You think I don’t know what your kind are like? My precious sister was the same. A freak. That’s why she died. Magic’ll rot a person’s soul, and now she’s dead and gone.”
Harry’s heart skipped a beat. “But... I thought they died in a car crash,” he said quietly, eyes wide.
Hagrid’s face grew grave, the warmth draining from his voice. “No, Harry. Not a car crash. Yer parents were murdered.”
Harry’s heart pounded in his chest, “Murdered…”
Hagrid paused, searching for words that could carry the weight of the truth. “Yes, by an evil dark wizard. We don’t like to say his name, but they called him… Voldemort. ” Hagrid shuddered, “He was the darkest wizard who ever lived. Tried ter kill yeh too, but the curse rebounded, left you that scar,” he pointed to Harry’s head, “But, it destroyed You-Know-Who instead. You’re famous in our world, Harry. You’re The Boy Who Lived.”
Harry’s fingers instinctively touched the lightning-shaped scar on his forehead. “The Boy Who Lived?” he whispered.
Hagrid nodded, a fierce pride mixed with sorrow in his eyes. “Aye. That’s yeh. You’re a symbol of hope.”
Uncle Vernon scoffed, stepping forward. “You lot and your fairy tales. He’s just a boy. A pathetic freak like his unnatural parents, and he’s not going anywhere!”
Hagrid’s voice hardened. “And what are yeh muggles gonna do? You can’t stop Harry from goin’ where he belongs.”
“Muggles?” Harry questioned.
“Non-magic folk,” Hagrid explained quickly. He knelt down beside Harry, resting a huge hand on his shoulder. “Tomorrow, we’ll get yer school supplies. An’ the next day, we’ll get yeh to King’s Cross. Hogwarts awaits.”
Harry felt a flicker of hope ignite inside him, brighter than the shack’s lonely lantern.
Maybe this was the beginning of everything.