Switched

But even if Harry hadn't had potential friends and enemies and teachers and clubs and new hobbies to entertain himself (though those would be enough to make the school far more appealing than Little Whinging all on their own) and an enormous bloody castle to explore—

-v-

(Weds 4 Sept)

"I swear it was this way!" Danny muttered. "Behind the tapestry right after the portrait of Gylmyne MacAbhra, down to the third landing, take the door on the left, then turn right..."

"Oi, you there, with the sheep!" Harry said, waving at a boy in a nearby painting. "Could you tell us where we are, exactly?"

The boy laughed at them. "Not where you're trying to go, that's for sure!" Right. That was exactly as helpful as Harry had expected it to be. He was half convinced that every portrait and ghost they'd asked for directions since they'd left the stairwell was screwing with them.

"This is the fourth floor," a witch in another portrait kindly informed them. "The Axial Corridor is that way." She pointed to her left, Harry's right. Exactly the direction they'd just come from. Plus, they'd expected to be on the second floor. At least they could still see the lake from the exterior windows (the ones not overlooking lower roofs and towers and making Harry want to go climbing instead of to dinner), so they were definitely still on the north side of the Castle, but on the west side, instead of the east.

"See, I told you we got turned around somewhere. Do you still have the list?" They'd been given lists of directions to most of the places they'd need to go in the Castle. Not maps, because the Castle wasn't really amenable to mapping — stairs or doors might lead to different places at different days or times or just whenever they felt like it, and even when they didn't Harry was positive there was some weird space-warping thing going on, letting some secret passages go straight through spaces where there were definitely other corridors without actually intersecting them — but directions, like the ones Danny had been muttering to himself. He'd left his copy in their room, since they'd been to the Great Hall half a dozen times now, he'd figured they'd be fine. But at this rate, they weren't just going to miss dinner, they were going to be late for Astronomy afterward too.

Danny dug the list out of his bag, eyes skimming over the directions.

Harry peered over his shoulder at it. "See, there, what's that asterisk?"

The asterisk directed them to the back of the second page, and a note which neither of them had previously noticed. "Except on Wednesdays and Fridays, when the staircase merges with its equivalent in the west-north-west tower. On Wednesdays, the first landing down will lead to the fifth floor on the west side of the Castle, alternating down; on Fridays, the first landing will lead to the fourth floor on the west side of the Castle, alternating down. To reach the second floor on the east side of the building, go down to the sixth landing, instead of the third." Danny glowered at the page. "Well...crap. How do we get back to the staircase?"

Harry rolled his eyes, grabbing his roommate by the elbow and pulling him back toward the stairs. "It's this way."

"Are you sure? Maybe we should ask one of the portraits. We have been wandering around in circles for—"

He cut himself off as Harry dragged him around a corner, through a short passage that was really more like an abandoned classroom with doors on both sides, and back to the west-north-west tower stair, which was itself indistinguishable from the east-north-east tower stair, but the view of the lake outside the windows was completely different. Yes, they had been wandering around for at least twenty minutes, but they'd ended up almost back to where they'd started, backtracking and trying different directions. "Yes, I'm sure. Let's go..."

-ʌ-

—Hogwarts would still be bloody great because at Hogwarts, there was magic.

He didn't mean that he could learn magic here, he could learn magic on his own in Charing — probably a lot faster than he would in lessons. (He did have less time to practise spells here, but there were enough interesting things and people around that he didn't really mind...much.) He meant there was magic. More magic than he'd ever imagined, surrounding him, all the time.

Not just magic like there was magic everywhere, just existing as part of the world, or even like in Diagon or Knockturn, harnessed to do things, but magic that was a living, feeling being. The Castle was alive, Harry was sure of it, and it knew he was there and it loved him unconditionally, as it loved all of its students — they were its reason for being, after all — like the dying, ancient not-girl in his dreams loved him. He belonged at Hogwarts. It really didn't matter if the other students or teachers didn't think so, the school itself thought so.

It wasn't just that though. It had taken a while for Harry to notice, caught up with the magic of the wards and the living magic of the Castle, but there wasn't just more magic doing things here, there was more magic period.

-v-

(Fri 20 Sept)

The footsteps drew closer. Harry pressed himself back further into the nook he'd decided to hide in, waiting to see who it was. He'd been looking for Professor Sinistra, mostly because he'd woken up early and was bored and figured she'd probably be awake, even if he'd missed having tea and/or lunch at two. (It was almost four-thirty.)

Unfortunately, he hadn't realised that the sword being held by the suit of armour he was lurking behind wasn't actually attached to anything. Sinking another inch or two back, he accidentally jostled the display. The sword tipped forward before he realised what was happening, falling to the floor with an almighty clatter.

The person responsible for the footsteps shrieked.

Oh, it was Sinistra. Good. "Ah. Morning, professor," he greeted her, stepping out of hiding and putting the ancient weapon back.

"Circe's saggy tits, Potter! What the fuck! You scared the shite out of me! I thought you were Peeves! We have got to stop meeting like this!"

"Sorry! I wasn't trying to scare you! I just heard your footsteps and was hiding in case it wasn't you!"

"Oh, for God's sake! It's always going to be me! Or, well. It might be one of the NEWT Astronomy students — I have a lesson at five — but Argus and most of the other professors aren't awake yet, and Severus makes about as much noise as a ghost."

"Okay, noted. Sorry. I didn't realise there were NEWT Astronomy students." Their Astronomy lessons weren't on the course schedules in the Common Room, just written in at the bottom of the time tables Professor Flitwick had given them at breakfast on the first day.

"Oh, yes, there are always a few who find the subject fascinating enough to continue on, despite their complaints about the schedule. There are ten this year. Six seventh-years, and four sixth-years. If you're just looking to chat, you're going to have to walk and talk. I have a couple of things to grab from my office before the lesson." She started walking away before she even stopped talking.

Harry grinned, skipping to catch up. "That's fine. And yes, I was just exploring. Can I sit in?"

The professor snorted. "What, on the seventh-years' lesson?"

He nodded. "Yeah. Sounds like fun." Well, more fun than wandering aimlessly around the corridors. He was in one of those weird moods where he wanted to do something, but also didn't really want to do anything, so he was just sort of killing time until other people woke up.

She stopped to look down at him, with her back to a window so she could see his face. "You do realise you're not going to understand a bloody thing. We're talking about the influence of celestial movements on the initial development of terrestrial magical environments — heavily theoretical fundamentals of geomancy and geology — and impacts on the ebb and flow of established ambient magical currents. We spent an hour on a tangent about the magical resistance of quartz versus feldspar yesterday."

Harry gave the professor his best begging puppy-dog eyes. "Please? I promise I won't be distracting or ask questions or anything. I'll just sit in the back and take notes, and look things up later. I don't have anything to do at all today. Well, History, but that doesn't count."

The ghost professor had spent the past three weeks droning about some Dark Lord called Emeric the Evil who'd lived in the Southwest in the Twelve Hundreds. Harry felt very much as though he'd just sat down in the middle of a story, attempting to actually pay attention in class, because as far as he could tell there was no rhyme or reason to starting their studies of magical history with this particular bloke and his attempts to conquer London. It...might have had something to do with the Second Barons' War? maybe?

In any case, he was sure Sinistra's lecture would be more interesting than that, especially since he was actually curious about ambient magic and where it came from and how it worked, and this was the first anyone had really mentioned it outside of Theo telling him normal (human) people couldn't see patterns in it.

She gave an exasperated little tch. "Fine. Come on, then..."

The seventh-years weren't nearly as awake at five in the morning as Harry. It took several minutes before anyone noticed or asked why there was a firstie in the corner. Sinistra's answer was a snarky, "I didn't have the heart to kick it out. I know you all definitely did the reading this time, so who wants to summarise the Messier article for those who are just having a bit of trouble recalling any of the details of his observations and conclusions at this ungodly hour of the morning? Courtney, I see you at least have a copy of the article, so..."

They did wake up and become more animated over the course of the lesson, though, which was much more like a discussion than a lecture, and sort of fascinating to listen to. Not because he actually understood a bloody thing (Sinistra had been right, he barely followed any of it), but because he'd never really had a teacher who asked their students to think about things and form their own conclusions, and especially not one who encouraged their students to disagree with her and each other and try to defend their positions, like that Messier was a bloody lunatic (because further research had shown that ninety-nine point eight per cent of all the variation he detected could be explained by factors other than astrological phenomena, and the other point two per cent weren't statistically significant) or that he was a lunatic who'd been on to something (because when his analytical method was applied to the relative position of stars within a certain distance of earth, rather than the movements of planets, asteroids, and comets, it predicted the location of major and minor geomantic reservoirs within a few degrees, and that couldn't possibly be a coincidence).

"All right, all right! I want everyone to read the Macsutov and Baily articles for next week. Oh, and Dobson! Rosier has some interesting commentary as well, if you want to get into multiversal interpretations of Messier and why that point two per cent actually is significant. I listed the relevant citations on the syllabus for those who are interested, but I'm not cruel enough to require the rest of you to read temporospatial arithmancy articles. You're welcome. Now let's move on to the Rowen Document. Atlas, please remind your peers what we're talking about...?"

"Oh! Well. Er. I did read it, I swear!" The older boy said defensively, shuffling through his notes. "Er. Right. Rowen Document. Rumoured to have been written by Ravenclaw herself, though it almost certainly wasn't — there are clues suggesting that it's actually from the Thirteenth Century, and the earliest extant copy is from the Fifteenth Century. But it's still the oldest surviving geomantic survey of any location in the British Isles, and focuses on the Hogsmeade Valley Reservoir, so, um...that's neat. But it doesn't really explain why the three ley lines converge at the hot spot here. And I'm not sure I buy this trans-dimensional shite. I mean, ambient magic is a part of this plane, clearly, so..."

"It makes sense if you just replace 'metaphysical plane' with 'magical landscape', though," a boy called Dane said. "I don't think they used 'plane' the same way we do."

"The metaphysical plane refers to the Void or the Beyond," Sinistra informed them, "the extraplanar well of magical energy from which we draw when we conjure objects and to which the excess energy is sent when an object is vanished. Septima can explain it better than I can, she wrote her mastery paper on it. The important part of the Rowan Document, for our purposes, was the geomantic mapping of the region, which I believe I asked you to compare to the Seventeen Twenty-Five and Nineteen Fifty European Geomantic Survey Maps? And five points for anyone who took the next logical step and located corresponding star charts..."

-ʌ-

Whatever the reason those three magical currents came together in the valley (Sinistra had made a convincing argument for stars having something to do with it, though Harry still didn't understand exactly how, despite spending the rest of the day in the library trying to figure it out), what it meant was there was far more ambient magic here than practically anywhere else in Britain. There were maybe a couple dozen or so places where two ley lines crossed, but three was rare.

For Harry what it meant was...

It was like...like he could breathe, here. He could relax in a way he'd never really realised he wasn't relaxed before, out in the world where there was less magic. He could almost feel himself perking up, like a plant half-dead from not being watered coming back to life after the rain. It was just... He felt better here. Healthier. Not that he could remember actually being ill, but he felt more...present, more in tune with and a part of the world around him. Especially out in the Forest, where the magic was so thick he could practically taste it.

The idea of leaving Hogwarts, going back to Little Whinging — not just to visit, but actually trying to live there again — was... Well, he sort of hated it. He wouldn't be, if he could help it, which Aunt Petunia said was fine, especially since he wasn't even really her nephew.

-v-

(Wed 11 Sept)

9 September 1991

Dear Harry,

Well, I really don't know what to say.

(From your signature, I presume you still intend to go by Harry, even with those in the know.)

Perhaps that I'm not entirely surprised, especially given that Albus Dumbledore is still responsible for your presence in my life. I will admit that I thought that first morning, when I found you in the back garden babbling in French and that bloody note on the step, that if you hadn't had Lily's eyes I would have wondered whether he'd sent the right child. Perhaps I might also say that you might have opened with what I suspect we both consider the most important bit of news, rather than hiding it halfway through your letter.

I did not doubt that you would arrive safely at that absurd institution. Indeed I would be shocked had you not.

Do not send Dudley any magical chocolates — I do not want him thinking magic is anything other than perfectly boring, a fact of which you are well aware. I was under the impression we were in agreement on that point. That you no longer live with him and therefore would not be subject to his begging for more "cool magic tricks" does not change the fact that I do not want him exposed to it any more than absolutely necessary.

I did not need to know that the magic world has giant talking spiders. "Don't worry, I killed it" is hardly reassuring. Where there is one spider, there are always more. I'm not advising you to burn an entire forest to the ground, but I would not hold you accountable if you were to do so. Provided you found some way to ensure the spiders did not escape, obviously.

Now that's out of the way, thank you for informing me of "Danny's" existence. If he wishes to meet me after he learns of our relationship, I suppose I could, but I cannot say I'm particularly eager to do so. As you know, Lily and I had not so much as exchanged letters for over a year at the time of her death. As far as I am concerned any familial obligations between us were terminated when she refused to attend our parents' funeral. I have no particular interest in getting to know her son solely on the basis of our shared blood.

For now in any case, from what you've written, he is happy, healthy, and well taken care of, and I see no reason to trouble him by revealing your respective birth identities. Your new friend and his mother seem to have a good handle on the situation. I would trust their judgement if I were you, and allow "Danny's" foster-mother to tell him when she believes the time is right.

Similarly, I support the idea of concealing your awareness of the situation from "His Nibs" and will make no mention of it should I have further reason to contact him. I suggest you speak to these women directly, especially the one who is a solicitor, and prepare a legal case against him to be brought immediately upon his admitting the truth to you. Regardless of whether what passes for the government of that wretched collection of freaks thought it a good idea to terminate your birth-mother's parental rights in favour of giving custody of you to the least responsible wizard they could find, they cannot possibly have endorsed the idea of concealing from two children their true identities, and spiriting one off to be raised by the "muggles" of whom they are so disparaging when there were clearly other options.

I have, of course, informed Vernon of the situation. The part where the wizards placed you with us in place of our actual nephew for reasons unknown, not the part where your birth mother is a madwoman and convicted war criminal ultimately responsible for thousands of deaths in my world and yours, and your biological father is her equally mad first cousin. Keep that to yourself in polite company. (Though I do suppose you come by being a questionably sane demon-child honestly after all.) I will tell Dudley and Marge in person, when next I see them.

While it seems cold-hearted to entirely disown a boy I have raised as my nephew for his entire life, I cannot pretend that the offer to repay us for the financial burdens we suffered to raise you is not appreciated. I personally am of a mind not to ask such a thing of you, given that the true fault here lies with that unscrupulous man who lied to us both, but Vernon has made a spreadsheet accounting for said costs, if you truly wish to do so. I have enclosed a copy of the spreadsheet more with the thought that it may be helpful to have an accounting on record should you bring a case against the party responsible than because we require repayment, and certainly not before you come of age and/or win said case. (I would contact a solicitor myself, but as a citizen of their backward nation I expect they will take you more seriously despite your age.)

If "Will you still be expecting me to come home for the holidays?" was a subtle attempt to seek my permission to make your own plans, you have it. Truth be told, I was not expecting you to come home for the holidays even before this revelation. I was rather under the impression, given your decision to stay in London throughout August, that you would prefer to spend your school holidays somewhere you can indulge in practising your unnaturalness without fear of official repercussions, regardless of whether you are or are not actually my nephew. As such, I would not have expected you to return for any length of time regardless of that same fact.

Honestly I anticipated you finding alternative accommodations in future, and have therefore taken the opportunity to begin transforming your former bedroom into an in-house studio, with the thought that I might take up ceramic sculpture now that I have the resources to do so and there are no other demands on my time. I've already gotten rid of the bed, but I believe we still have a cot or two packed away from Vernon and Dudley's ill-fated tenting excursion. You may visit over Christmas if you wish to do so, though I understand if you would rather stay with one of your friends and experience the culture you ought to have been raised in, especially given the circumstances.

If you do decide to visit, please write ahead. And all jokes about burning the forest aside, do behave yourself, Harry.

Yours sincerely,

Petunia Dursley

-ʌ-

Even going back to Periwinkle Way would be...stressful. Maybe he'd change his mind after he'd been here a few months and wasn't so...parched. Magic-deprived. Whatever. Maybe in a few months, it wouldn't seem so bad spending a couple of weeks away for the winter holiday, or even months over summer hols, but at the moment Harry couldn't imagine doing so voluntarily. So of course when Prefect "Call Me Chris" Harcourt asked Harry and Danny whether they were coming to the Mabon ritual (and Danny had explained how traditional holiday rituals were a thing, though they probably wouldn't sacrifice an animal here — there were loads of different holiday rituals), Harry had said yes.

Honestly, he wasn't sure how that was even a question...