Chapter Text
Harry Potter felt miserable.
No—miserable didn’t even come close. He felt like a total wreck.
The humiliation of collapsing on the Hogwarts Express because of the Dementor had been bad enough. But it was nothing compared with the raw, hollow grief that had settled over him since the night before, heavy as lead and just as cold.
It had been his mum.
Harry was sure of it now. That scream—ragged, terrified, fierce—had belonged to the woman who had stepped in front of a Killing Curse to save him. The sound had torn through him just before everything had gone black, and now it kept replaying behind his eyes as if his mind had decided to punish him for ever thinking he’d made peace with the past.
And because of that sick, twisted man—because of Voldemort—Harry had grown up without his parents. Instead he had the Dursleys: his aunt’s tight mouth, Uncle Vernon’s roar, Dudley’s fists. A family that had never wanted him, and had never let him forget it.
Harry didn’t often let himself sink this far. He’d learnt, very early on, that despair was a slippery slope: once you started sliding, it was hard to find anything to grab on to. Getting lost in your own head was the first shove.
But today he’d sought solitude on purpose. He was tucked beneath a tree near the lake, school robes pulled close more out of habit than comfort, staring at nothing in particular. He couldn’t face Ron and Hermione—not when his chest felt as though it had been cracked open and left to the wind.
It might have been funny, in another mood, that the grounds were deserted. It was a Sunday—September 2nd—and you’d have thought at least a couple of students would be out, enjoying the last day before lessons began properly. Yet there wasn’t a soul in sight. Even the Giant Squid hadn’t surfaced, as though the lake itself had decided to stay quiet.
Harry didn’t care. After spending most of his life alone, the silence was familiar. What he wanted—needed—was to be left to it, to ride out the awful, twisting storm inside him without anyone trying to fix it.
Despair. Sadness. Loneliness. Longing. Bitterness. And underneath it all, a thin, sharp thread of guilt that kept tightening whenever he tried to breathe. He was exhausted, too—bone-deep tired in the way you got when sleep had become something your body did without your mind’s permission.
It wasn’t that Harry was the sort to complain. He rarely had, no matter how bad things were. Complaining at Privet Drive never earned sympathy—only a swat, if he was lucky, or a week of being ignored as though he didn’t exist.
But being forced to listen to his mother screaming right before she died?
He reckoned he was entitled to a bit of brooding.
So he sat there, robes on so no prefect or professor could decide he was out of place, pretending he was simply “enjoying” the last quiet Sunday before classes started the following day. The truth was he couldn’t bring himself to move. Moving meant thinking about something else, and thinking about something else felt like betrayal.
He knew Ron and Hermione would be looking for him. He’d slipped down to breakfast earlier than usual, before they’d properly woken, and now it was nearly lunchtime and he still hadn’t gone back. They would be furious—Ron would go red and splutter, Hermione would fix him with that glare that somehow managed to be both worried and scolding.
They’d tell him it was dangerous, that there was a mad convict on the loose, that he couldn’t just wander off on his own. They’d say it like it was obvious. Like fear was something you could reason with.
Harry didn’t have the energy for it. He didn’t give a rat’s arse, not today.
Ron and Hermione didn’t understand. How could they? They both had parents who wrote to them, who worried about them, who existed in their lives like something solid and certain. When Harry’s grief showed, Hermione’s eyes always went soft with pity, and Ron’s support came in a clumsy silence that still managed to feel like pity all the same.
What good would their presence do now? Harry was here, physically, but his mind was miles away—caught on that single sound, that single moment he’d never lived through and yet had been made to hear. He sat with his back against the tree’s thick roots, fingers tearing at the grass until it came away in ragged little clumps, as if he could pull the feeling out of the ground along with it.
He could see the bottom of the well he’d spent his whole life pretending wasn’t there.
And it was darker than he’d ever imagined.
That was why he didn’t notice the small boy approaching until a throat cleared, tentative and too close.
Harry’s head snapped up. His hand flew to his chest as though he could steady his heart by force. The sudden movement startled the boy, who stumbled back a couple of steps, eyes wide.
He was short and thin—almost as thin as Harry, which was saying something. But he was younger, definitely; he couldn’t have been more than eleven. His eyes were a pale, watery blue, and his hair was blond, though not the bright, almost-white shade Malfoy wore. It was darker, closer to brown, like it had never been properly in the sun. His skin was white and pale like Harry’s, but no freckles to be seen.
For a moment the boy reminded Harry of Colin Creevey—only poorer, quieter, and somehow more skittish. His clothes were clearly hand-me-downs: too big in the shoulders, frayed at the cuffs, with little tears that looked as though they’d been mended and then torn again. And unlike Harry, he wasn’t wearing Hogwarts robes at all—just Muggle clothes that didn’t belong on the grounds of the school.
Nearly a full minute passed with the boy staring as if he’d forgotten how to blink. He stood a few paces away, mouth slightly open, and the look on his face—half awe, half panic—made something hot and prickly rise in Harry’s throat.
Maybe it was the lack of sleep, or maybe it was the way grief turned every nerve raw. Either way, the staring began to irritate him.
“Is there something I can help you with,” Harry said sharply, “or do you intend to keep gawping at me all day?”
The words did what Harry’s tone was meant to do: they jolted the boy into motion. He snapped his mouth shut and glanced away—towards the lake, though not at the water itself. His gaze fixed on a point somewhere over it, as if he was checking that something was still there.
Colour rose from his neck to his cheeks until his whole face flushed crimson. He looked terrified and embarrassed all at once, like a rabbit caught in torchlight.
Harry’s anger didn’t vanish, but it shifted, souring into regret.
Brilliant, he thought. Now I’ve gone and made a firstie miserable.
He let out a breath and tried again, forcing his voice to soften. “You should be wearing your robes, you know. If a professor catches you out here dressed like that, they’ll tell you off.”
The boy turned back, curiosity flickering through the fear. It was an odd look—too alert for someone who seemed so nervous. Harry rubbed at his eyes with the heel of his hand.
“Yeah,” he went on, more gently, “it doesn’t matter if it’s a Sunday, or if you’re a first year. If you’re a student, you’re meant to wear robes.”
“I-I…” The boy swallowed. “I am not a s-student.” His voice was barely above a whisper.
That made Harry sit up properly, shoulders pressing against the tree’s root as if bracing himself. Not a student? Then what—
And then he noticed it: the boy’s voice wasn’t just quiet; it was childish in a way that didn’t fit. Too high, too small. The boy himself was easily a foot shorter than Harry, and Harry wasn’t exactly tall for his age, years of being underfed had seen to that. Yet this kid looked as though he might have been swallowed by the grounds if the wind picked up.
“You’re not a student?” Harry repeated, slower this time, studying him.
Instead of answering, the boy’s eyes darted back to that same spot over the lake. His hands clenched at his sides. When he spoke again, the stutter was worse.
“Y-you are H-Harry Potter, aren’t you?”
Harry closed his eyes for a second, irritation flaring despite himself.
Oh, brilliant. First I faint because of the Dementor. Now I’m going to get the ‘Boy-Who-Lived’ treatment from someone who’s barely out of short trousers.
“Yes,” he said, opening his eyes with a weary sigh. “Yes, I am. And you are?”
The boy looked as though he might bolt. He stared over the lake once more, as if taking courage from whatever he saw—or thought he saw—then turned back to Harry, blue eyes shining with a nervous determination.
“M-my name is E-Edward.”
He drew in a breath that trembled, held it, then let it out with something like resolve. The jitters seemed to drain from his face, leaving him pale but steady. When he spoke again, the words came out clear enough to hit Harry like a blow.
“My name is Edward,” the boy said. “And I have a message from your father, James.”