Harry Potter and the Foster Child, Part 1 (and a cameo of a one shot yet to come)
Harry Potter
1, muggle/squib Grim
Grim had heard a lot about this Dumbledore guy, and frankly, he was unimpressed.
And, unlike seemingly everyone else, he did his research. And independent thinking, but that could be handled later.
2, muggle Grim
The Dursleys take in a foster child when Harry Potter, the freak under stairs, is seven.
This changes everything.
The decision is half out of greed, and half out of reputation points. “Oh how kind of you, Petunia.” Simpers Pier’s mother at the book club. “How charitable.” Say Vernon’s work contacts, looking just a bit more willing to listen.
Said foster child, a nine-year-old with a mop of black hair similar to Harry’s and something strong in his stance and eyes, is unimpressed.
Frankly, Harry thinks the entire situation is miraculous. To appease the foster worker, they had moved Harry and his meager belongings, as well as a bunch of freshly-bought cheap furniture up into Dudley’s Toy Room, which they promise to replace in full on his coming birthday. Grim, as the boy insists to be called, is to share the room with him, since the social worker seemed smarter than anyone else Harry had ever met, and promised to pop in. Regularly. Randomly.
He won’t tell them what his old name was before he got it legally changed, but the social worker called him Nius, and that matched the paperwork.
Aunt Petunia called him Peter, in a search for normalcy, and the boy only wrinkled his nose, gaze searching.
Harry sat on his new bed. It had his old mattress from under the stairs, but still! Thick blankets, clean sheets, no spiders in his hair.
He did feel a bit exposed though. He bit his lip, looking around at all the empty space around him, then at the stranger sitting across from him, unpacking his things from a stuffed backpack with a measured amount of caution.
He missed the safe, solid walls of his cupboard. Which was strange, since he had hated those restrictive things for years. They stopped him from stretching out fully, trapped and helpless, all coiled up and shut up in the darkness.
Grim didn’t unpack much: Most of the staff stayed in his bag, carefully nestled at the end of the bed. A flashlight and non-descript box on the bedside table, some toiletries in the drawer, and everything else is arranged carefully in the bag, presumably, from the way he fiddles with it. An extra blanket goes on top of his comforter, and a yoga mat is handed to him, which Harry stares at blankly for a moment as the other child seems to try to mentally communicate.
He sighs. “For your mattress. A spring stabbed you earlier, right?” Harry looked up, suprised. He hardly even winced at the sting of a sudden metal coil anymore. Just how closely as this kid watching?
Still, he set up the mat underneath the sheets, after some fumbling.
He lays on the comforter, and doesn’t feel any pain stabbing into his back. It’s almost foreign. He blinks at the other boy, and wearily registers this act of kindness.
Aunt Petunia calls them down fairly quickly, ordering them to start dinner. It’s Thursday, so he goes about making the usual; chicken with peas and mashed potatoes.
While he’s preparing the chicken for the pan, he notices something odd about his new companion, more so than his easy ability to go along with how Harry silently shows him how to do something. He looks around, seemingly randomly. His gaze flicks and holds to spots all over, then he focuses back in on what he was doing.
Harry remembers once, a TV show doctor explaining hallucinations. Maybe Grim had that?
He shudders. He’d hate to see what his brain would conjure up for him, and seasons the meat with shaky hands.
They aren’t allowed to eat, of course. Or at least not at the table. They eat the leftover scraps.
He feels a pang of sadness; so little food split between two hungry mouths, now. He can feel the hunger pains already. Then he throws out the thought without so much as a twitch. That’s so ungrateful! He was a freak, and freaks got what they deserved. In more ways than one.
Grim watches not quite impassively, standing beside Harry in his usual corner by the door.
It’s almost as if they’ve made a game of seeing how much they can eat each time. How little they can leave behind.
They leave eventually, off to watch Dudley’s favorite show on the telly in the other room. He methodically cleans up, scraping off the leftover food into each other’s mouths in turn; he gets the hint pretty quickly when Harry offers Petunia’s plate to him; a few surviving vegetables from the salad still remaining, along with a chunk of chicken and some potato.
Somber eyes meet his as Grim takes the plate.
The rest of the evening is spent in silence.
Grim makes a beeline for his bag when they’re locked in their room. (And isn’t that a rush. Their room.) He rustles around, face impassive, moves silent.
His hand withdraws, and brings food with it. Granola bars he had seen in lunches at school, cans of soup and fruit, dried vegetables.
He presses a finger to his lips, smirking, and pushes an even amount of both under their covers. When Vernon comes in just before bed ‘to check on the freaks,’ their bellies quite a bit fuller, he winks.
Harry couldn’t sleep. The empty space taunted him.
Look at all the directions they could sneak up on you from.
Look at how vulnerable you are.
How exposed.
He huddles under his new sheets and reminds himself that he’s grateful. That having this room was a privilege. That light and carpet and windows and free space were a good thing.
He squeezes his eyes shut, biting his swollen lip.
The floorboard beside his bed creaks, and he shoots up, eyes peering blurrily into the darkness.
A figure looms next to him in the black, and his heart lurches for a terrifying moment before his brain catches up. The shape was too small to be Dudley, and too short to be Aunt Petunia or Uncle Vernon.
Heart going a bit too fast still, he swallows. “Hi-i?”
He hadn’t talked to people much. Only to respond to orders, or to warn ignorant new kids to get away. Maybe answer a question in class, when they felt nice or evil, it depended.
To scream.
His throat felt slightly scratchy, unused to the usage it was getting.
Grim shuffles back a bit. “You’re scared.”
Eyes flick to the door, but nothing stirs. Harry is caught between fear and mortification.
But there’s no denying it. He is.
“I- I wanna go back to my cupboard.”
He can’t see eyebrows raise in the dark, nor the frown that develops, the eyes that narrow. But he can hear just fine, and the tone hasn’t changed at all, so he knows he did fine.
“So, closed in? Safe from several sides?”
Harry nods, trembling into the black.
There’s a moment of silence.
“Do you think Vernon will come and bother us in the morning?”
Harry swallows. “Aunt Petunia wakes me up before dawn every day to make breakfast.” Not that it mattered, since Dudley and Uncle Vernon often didn’t get up ‘till much later.
A quiet hum.
Quiet footsteps padding around the room. Faint scraping over what feels like hours, each sound followed by a period of silence to check to see if they’ve woken anyone up.
Grim sounds like he’s pushing something towards the corner, which is… weird?
A flashlight beam, cutting through the darkness. It’s pointed towards, the corner, away from the window and door.
Harry’s eyes widen.
The dresser that had previously been filled with old DVD’s and smaller toys and trinkets was now pushed parallel to the wall where the window was. Creating a barrier between the wall and the door.
A grin is in Grim’s voice when he whispers now.
“Should we drag your bed over here, or make a setup and save that for some other time?”
And then he’s nearly crying.
He sleeps well, that night.
Harry doesn’t ask where Grim’s food stash comes from- he logically would have run out by now, or the stuff would have gone stale or moldy. But everything’s fairly fresh, and he never runs out, just low. It’s been weeks, but that bag of his shows no signs of being any less full.
He doesn’t ask about the extensive medical kit the older boy has either, or how it never quite runs out of supplies either. Or how much he knows about nutrition, or how to make the other kids at school not glare at him or try to ‘show him his place.’ It’s a weird trade of posturing, insults, and harsh truths.
It helps that one afternoon Grim beat Dudley into the dusty ground after a particularly rough schoolday, quick as a whip and nimble as anything, and threatens him calmly with a knife when he blubbers about telling Vernon. (Grim insists that a family title was too personal to use with the people he shares a house with.)
He stares into the overweight boy’s eyes whenever he could for a week, including at meals. Unblinking, unflinching, unphased.
He wishes he was as brave as Grim. Or as smart.
But he’s just a useless, dumb freak.
He understands why Grim insists he’s not a delinquent now, though. Because he’s not a criminal-in-the-making, if anyone in the neighborhood was, it was Grim.
Grim snorted when he told him that, and said that was only if he got caught. Then he thought another second, and added that was implying that what he was doing was wrong.
He also told him he was proud he told him that, which was weird.
He wonders if Grim is a freak like him, if that’s why he doesn’t have any parents. Maybe they got rid of him, like how Vernon threatens to do sometimes. If that’s how his supplies never run low, why he never seems to run out of options, how he never seems truly scared. Not how Harry was, when Vernon moved too fast nearby, or when Petunia hefted the frying pan a bit too much like a weapon.
But if he was also a freak, that would mean that was a freak trait, and Harry’s a freak and he’s not brave or smart or resourceful.
If he’s a freak, is that why he sees stuff Harry can’t? Maybe it really is hallucinations. Or maybe Harry’s just broken?
No, he doesn’t think he’s broken. Grim showed him an article from the science side of the paper the other day, talking about how hard teleportation would be, if it was even possible. As someone who had teleported at least a hundred meters earlier in the school year, he was fairly convinced he was pretty good at whatever freakishness ran in his blood.
Or maybe all freaks are super-duper powerful and he’s only kinda powerful?
Nah. If they were they probably would have taken over the world or something, like all the villains in the cartoons he heard about through the walls of his cupboard.
Maybe he’ll ask some of these things, someday. But that day was not today.
On some level, he was surprised with how quickly he was willing to trust the older kid.
Another part was eternally grateful he had someone to trust.
The revelation that he could talk to snakes happened during the summer, when they had been sent outside to weed the garden in preparation for the Best Garden Award Harry had won for Petunia two years running.
He had been kneeling by the tulips, since Grim insisted he would be the one to risk the roses, when he saw a flash of bright green among the dark, wet soil and paler hue of the flower’s leaves.
Wide eyed, he leaned to one side, and saw a coil of scaly green looking back up at him, forked tongue out.
Grim was right. They didn’t have snouts, they have snoots.
He could understand why people would be afraid of them; the lack of legs was a bit weird if he thought about it too hard, and the dark eyes seemed to gleam at a certain angle.
But the scales seemed so smooth, his snoot so pretty.
“Oh…” He breathed. “Hello. You’re so pretty…” Grim’s eyes flicked over from the rose bushes, but he waved him off. The snake hadn’t moved, or even hissed.
The snake cocked it’s head to one side. “A sssspeaker?”
He blinked, a bit confused. “Well, we all speak. Humans, I mean. Well, mostly? One friend of Grim’s doesn’t like to, but he can if he has to. It makes him sad and scared.”
A low hiss that dipped in volume, a bit like a chuckle. “Not like that, hatchling. You are speaking our language, not Human Language.”
His brow furrowed, glancing up at the window to check Petunia wasn’t about to lean over and down to smack him for the offense.
“I- I didn’t realize. Am I really?”
The snake hiss-laughed again. “Yesss, hatchling. You seem sickly, hatchling. The sire and madam of this nest are not good parents, I know. Are you proficient in hunting?”
He shook his head; he wouldn’t know how to catch an animal any more than he would know how to tell the future. “Grim gets me food, and healing supplies. He’s really good at it, too.”
The snake nodded, and Harry realised he’d been horribly rude, even if it was only to a snake. “Oh, do you have a name? Mine's Harry.”
She, he got a feeling she was indeed a she, hissed lowly in a way that didn’t translate, not quite the laugh of earlier. “We do no have namess the ssssame way you humanss do. But you may call me Jade.” Jade. That sounded pretty.
He beamed at Jade, though still slightly suspicious. No, maybe frazzled was a better word. Confused?
Could Grim speak Snake as well as summoning bandages and herbs...? he wondered absently.
Jade slithered away, murmuring about her nest, which was apparently within a tree, and hatchling, though whether her own or Harry was unclear.
He watched her go, then stared at where she had disappeared in the grass for a moment, before shaking himself.
He had lots of weeding to get done, and the azaleas were looking parched.
“Harry?”
He looked up at Grim from where he had focused in on a particularly dirty kitchen tile. “Yeah?” He whispered back, listening hard for footsteps. None came.
Grim smiled, a familiar grin taking over his features. “How’d you feel about meeting some friends of mine, getting out of here for a second?”
And well, that didn’t sound bad at all.
Grim even warned them not to overwhelm Harry. And, well, to be fair, there was an effort. Disease didn’t immediately tackle either of them, Famine looked somewhat presentable, War was doing his best to be as non-threatening as possible. (Mainly by cuddling Famine and Disease at every opportunity, since Headless was busy and Death threatened to punch him if he tried ruining his rep.) Death was pretending to be asleep, since he hadn’t wanted to not meet his newest brother-in-arms, and would pretend to wake up when it suited him.
Disease, Famine and War were doing their best to keep up a spirited card game while not breaking cuddling formation. They nearly kicked Death a few times, but managed to keep things under control, so it was fine.
So now they were teaching Harry the rules to a nonsensical card game they had made up that was originally based on go-fish, Uno, poker, and some regular card game with Jack or something in the name, but had slowly warped over the years to be completely unrecognizable.
Plus, all the cards were… thrifted? Was that the right word for it? It’s not like they had enough money to justify spending on a full, new pack, so cards were gathered, filched, or bartered for until they had well over three stack’s worth of mitch-match cards.
They solved any and all problems they had, such as a takeover of threes, by liberal use of a bright pink sharpie.
Candy was the main betting material; actual money being in second place, and then non-essential items like an extra blanket you’d probably get even if you lost, a nice-looking rock, a nick-nack from a corner store, a shiny piece of paper. Stuff like that.
“Draw two.”
“That’s a lie, draw one. Disease, play nice.” Headless cut in, not unkindly. Disease huffed, but didn’t complain. He had gotten a rucksack from somewhere, and Grim could see the glint of seemingly empty little glass jars, dozens and dozens of them, peering at him ominous through the gap between the flap and the sides of the bag.
He probably hadn’t had time to set up his lab yet in the new spot.
Harry dutifully drew a card from the center, carefully looking over his hand and trying to avoid any cheating hands or eyes. He mostly failed, but he was getting better at it. Besides, they really were playing nice with him. So far, War had only used his knowledge of the kid’s hand in order to make him feel better when he realized he wasn’t doing well and let him one-up him, which was very sweet of him.
“Are you guys… weird, like me and Grim?” Grim was weird in a way that his personality stuck out, and his determination to not blend in to boot. Harry was weird because he was a freak, because that was hereditary. He didn’t know which kind of weird he was asking about, really.
Disease hummed. “Yeah. My vision’s real funky. War can shapeshift, Famine is chaotic good, and Death can do spooky stuff.” That… was a shockingly decent description of their powers from Disease, if vague and incredibly misleading.
Grim poked him, and Disease only stuck out his tongue in retaliation. “I can see and manipulate germs. War can actually shapeshift, but we dunno how much. Famine can steal people’s calories, and put them in himself or other people, and Death has telekinesis, when he’s really angry he turns into a storm cloud, and can manipulate light. Or darkness. We don’t know that either. He prefers to say darkness, because he’s emo. ”
“Causation or correlation.” Famine said quietly, probably having learned that with Disease in one of their deep-dives at the public library.
Grim nodded. “Makes sense.” War passed him a card, and he tried to mentally recall all the rules from the last time he played. Damn it, this was too complicated.
Somehow, Harry picked up on the whole thing faster than he did. This was likely in large part along by how he utterly gave up on doing well three turns in, but he was still mildly impressed.
Death ‘woke up’ about half an hour later, and gave everyone an excellent opportunity to explain selective mutism while he made hot cocoa on a hot plate. From what he could tell they were stealing electricity in small increments from nearly every building on the block. Apparently a nice old lady who ran a knitting shop on the corner with her genderfluid partner was spared, though. She gave them new hats, gloves, scarves and sweaters at the beginning of last fall, and they therefore gave her a small treasure trove of sweets, craft books, and new yarn, (bits and bobs collected through a series of fortunate events, some threats, and a few wholesome conversations) and painted a decent mural on the storefront over the course of a single night, since her hanging sign was going to be beyond repair pretty soon. She had slipped them new socks when she thanked them, and they still didn’t quite know how to respond.
Anyway, cocoa was had, card games were won, (Harry won the second round, and everyone congratulated him. After he got over the ‘they can’t possibly be talking to me,’ and the ‘they must be lying’ thing, he took it pretty well. He felt strangely proud.
He smirked into his chipped bright orange mug when Harry accepted a group hug. Even Death joined in, after a slightly tense moment.
Drama king.
They had put two and two together by the time they were packing up to leave, and were pondering what to put in the gift bag, a hiking backpack capable of carrying pounds and pounds of stuff.
“A knife, check.”
“Do two knives.” War suggested. Famine grinned, and Disease dutifully unearthed another sheath from their supply stock before rustling through the growing pile of stuff.
“Excellent point. Ok, canned food, bread, you’re gunna wanna eat that real quick, a hot plate, some cold stuff in a hot n’ cold bag for you Grimsy, some meat for Har-Bear, dried seeds and fruit, yes Headless I put in some veggies quit looking at me like that, herbs and bandages, all the water ever, med kit, a few changes of clothes, two blankets, hairbrush, stuffy, tissues, soap and shampoo, toothbrushes, toothpaste, floss, towels, water filter, a few nasty cases of the cold-”
“Disease.”
“Shhhh, this is the reinforced bottle, it won’t crack on accident. It might be useful!” A huff, but no argument.
“Right, batteries, flashlight, rope, tarps, matches, scissors, Tupperware, silverware… anythin’ else, gang?” He still didn’t quite know how or when the southern accent had become permanent. Disease had started using it as a joke, then out of irony, and somehow it just stuck. Despite the fact that none of them had ever left the continent.
“More water. And veggies!” Headless nudged War a bit, who sighed and started a grand journey of looking deep into the recesses of their crate collection.
“Yes, mom.” Death slipped in several extra pairs of gloves, glasses, contacts, sock and underwear without any prompting or change in expression before attempting to meld into the concrete.
Harry watched, wide eyed, as they all bickered. He nudged the kid when he opened his mouth, sensing a ‘you guys don’t have to’ or maybe a ‘I don’t deserve all this’ coming on, and winked down at him. Harry huffed, but settled down marginally into Famine’s sleeping bag again.
“Tape, don’t forget tape. Basic table setup stuff, a mini crowbar-”
“Where did you get a mini crowbar?”
“-and pencils, paper, animal stickers, of course. Only the necessities, really.” War grinned as he handed over the stuffed bag, and Grim shouldered it easily. It came down to nearly his knees, but he adjusted fine to the weight even if it was a bit awkward. Famine wordlessly handed Harry a stuffed bunny, smiled a bit shyly, and latched on to War in a koala hug for moral support. War, having been turned around, was vaguely confused was pretty ok with it, and Disease brightly chipped in that if he needed a restock on colds, he could always swing by for a refill.
They gave him a series of small mirrors that were pocketed into oversized jeans with ease, scribbled down a morse code translation on the back of a scrap of paper, and promised to keep an eye on the house.
He believed them.
Harry, the clever little tod he was, saw the problem early on, even around his happy mood, soft bunny plush, and big smile.
“Grim.” He looked down at the little guy, shifting the straps of the bag slightly to ease some pressure off a certain spot. Harry had tried to insist he carried it for a little while, but Grim was no idiot. “How are we going to get it past Au- uh, the Dursleys?”
He grinned. “You can move stuff with your mind, can’t you? Float it up to the window, I left it unlocked. Otherwise we can use my sneaky smuggling ninja skills, so no worries.” He resisted the urge to ruffle his hair or pat him on the head. Barely.
Instead he winked, and Harry beamed. He wasn’t used to thinking about his ‘freakishness’ in a positive way.
Grim aimed to change that. But for now, he was content with keeping the tyke fed and happy.
And figuring out what was up with the owl population, and that one grey stray cat that kept staring at them. Those were american owl breeds, so what…?
Mysteries for another day. After school they’d go in the library to escape Dudley the Idiot and look and see if owls can get lost, and maybe cat behaviors while they’re at it.
Harry would probably like to solve a mystery.
They didn’t figure out the owl thing for years, until the answer landed right in their laps. As it was, things were fairly routine. Chores and ‘punishments’ lessened to a great extent with Grim present, and whenever it got too much they would take a trip over to the Horsemen anywhere from an afternoon to a month.
Grim was fairly good at seeing other people’s point of view, but that didn’t mean he had to like it. He talked Harry through Dudley’s point of view one day, tucked in the back of the library. “So. You’ve got the Dursley’s as your parents, this kid you’ve been raised to hate under the stairs, and are constantly being encouraged to be a brat and angry and violent. Has anyone ever told him off for how he acts, or sat him down all disappointed? Even over his grades?”
Harry shook his head, eyes wide as he considered all that. Grim nods approvingly.
“So all you ever know is to be violent and controlling and a jerk. He’s never been told the difference between right and wrong. No one to stand up to him or challenge him.” And then a grin he couldn’t stop spread.
“Until he met me.”
Grim’s unofficial policy on that sort of thing was ‘I may have met a lot of sh*tty people, but all those people also met me.’ He had a lot of mantras like that, for nearly every situation. Some of them were variations of common ones.
“Dog eat dog world and all. That, or you make friends. Come back leadin’ the pack, ya hear me, Harry?”
“Keep your wits about you. Keep your head down when need be, and gather your things. Keep your cards close to your chest until the ultimate strategy is ready to become a reality.”
“Ya know curiosity killed the cat and all? Apparently that’s only half of the phrase, there’s ‘and satisfaction brought it back’ tacked onto the end. I’ve got a bit of a problem with that. Come prepared when you’re curious. Look danger in the eyes and punch it.”
“Roll with the punches, then hit back. Better yet, block the punches. Distract, disengage if you have to. Be unexpected, unpredictable. Be dangerous, be safe. Well. Safe-er. Be in a better situation than it could have been, alright? Look, some of this doesn’t just roll off the tongue you little brat-”
“I’ve never got the thing about playin’ dead. Play rabid, play mad. Make them keep their distance to begin with. Screw reputation, get your goals and damn the consequences. Future is tomorrow, today is now. And today is consequence-free.”
“Your enemies can be your allies if you’re smart about it. Be a polite bastard, if nothin’ else. Be someone who sticks to their word no matter what. Either make your opinion known or don’t, either way, commit. That can keep you alive. And happy, but alive comes first.”
“Happiness is important. Get friends, get help, get therapy if you can. Be careful about it of course; check for betrayal, be paranoid if that’s what it takes.”
“Harry, listen to me. It’s not paranoia if they’re really out to get ya.”
“Everything is not as it seems. Therefore, threaten ‘it’ in a dark alley until all is in the open. Otherwise, seek other options. Look to their enemies; an enemy of an enemy is not always a friend, but they sure can be an ally.”
“Don’t believe things at face value. Do your own research. But knowledge has a cost and all; be ready to run, be ready to fight. Have at least two backup plans at all times. Okay, maybe when you’re likely to be threatened, that sounds stressful.”
Grim was what Harry wanted to be before meeting him, plus maybe ten degrees to the left. He was strong and brave and unyielding. He believed what he believed unflinchingly. He acknowledged his pain and built off it, he used his weaknesses along with his strengths, but he was friendly (most of the time) and welcoming. He offered stray cats and dogs pieces of his meals, split portions with kids new to the streets or were struggling, gave advice out freely.
It was just that his morals were a little different from Harry’s. On several accounts. Maybe he was being naive, but he didn’t believe stealing or anything more drastic than that was necessary.
Grim had looked at him carefully, and asked, fully serious, if he had any other ideas of what to do.
And Harry hadn’t known how to respond.
They shared a distrust of strangers and authority, but their friendly nature contradicted this. Harry wished he had someone to turn to to be morally right in times of trouble, Grim had nearly given up on the possibility. At the very least, he wasn’t casting his bets on a dream.
They agreed change needed to happen, and a vague place of where things needed to end up, but not how to get there. Grim had sighed, smiled a bit, and said that was the case for a lot of things, as far as he could tell.
But Grim stayed within the lines for the most part. He stole from people (often huge, multi billion dollar companies) who could afford to lose a cheap toothbrush, or some trail mix. He was quicker to argue than punch, but he saw both as good options.
Harry’s eleventh birthday was celebrated with a pair of cupcakes that had been offered as samples at the supermarket the day before. They had been a bit dry from sitting out all night, the frosting smudged from sitting in Grim’s back on the journey home, but had been delicious.
He hugged Grim just before Petunia came to fetch them to start on breakfast. Grim grinned, and used his newfound height from a recent growth spurt to sweep him off his feet to return the gesture. They looked to be of equal height, if Harry’s feet hadn’t been dangling a foot or so in the air.
He had swatted at the older boy, and they went down peacefully to start on eggs, bacon, hash browns, and toast. Coffee and orange juice on the side, a half a grapefruit for Petunia alongside her single piece of toast and a sliver of hash browns.
Grim purposefully ‘burned’ two pieces of toast so they wouldn’t pass inspection from Vernon, and slipped their soon-to-be-breakfast onto the counter in the corner, tucked behind the fruit bowl and out of sight. Otherwise Harry slipped a piece of bacon, and Grim got the burn edges of the hashbrowns due to the uneven heat of the stove.
They stood in the corner, as usual, until the mailman knocked on their door. He was late this morning on doing his rounds.
Harry glanced over to Grim. He grinned and nudged the younger boy to take care of it; he’d handle any blow-ups.
So Harry scuttled into the hallway, and carefully sorted the mail. Bills, a letter from a Marge he vaguely recalled, some business updates. And at the back of the pile his nimble fingers found an unusual texture; rougher and less square-cut than the perfect little white envelopes.
He flicked to the back, and stared. It was how he imagined medieval letters to look; crackly parchment and thick, red wax seal. It looked like a crest of some kind, with four parts. His best guess at the slightly misshapen seal was a snake in the lower right bit.
But even more shocking was it’s address.
Number 4 Little Whinging, Surrey, England, of course. But then, in big, official looking text-
Harry James Potter
Shared Bedroom at the Top of the Stairs to the Right
Hogwart Acceptance Letter
He turned the strange thing over in his hands. Was it a prank? If so, it was a dumb one. Who knew where his bedroom was? Who knew and remembered it?
No time, he could hear Vernon calling out to him from the kitchen. He slipped the odd letter between the folds of the grate in his old cupboard, dismissing the idea of shoving down his baggy pants or up his shirt. It would easily fit, yes, but it would be uncomfortable and precarious enough that he might give the game away. Since he had stopped sleeping there his old cupboard had been turned into extra storage; some cleaning supplies were in there so there’d be a decent chance of getting back to it before long.
He re-entered the kitchen with his face carefully blank, putting the rest of the mail at Vernon’s elbow and returning to position in the safety of Grim’s side.
He winked at Grim, and he relaxed. Weird, but alright.
It was a good birthday.
The letter was no less weird in the timeless dusty afternoon shut in their room than it had been in the early morning. He had been able to smuggle the thing upstairs in his pants under guise of cleaning the upstairs while Grim took the downstairs. Sore from weeding, he laid out carefully on his caught, parchment-letter in hand. (Was it real parchment? Who put that much effort into a letter?)
Grim was intrigued, and sat up from his own similar position in his own bed. “What’s that?”
Harry shrugged, picking at the thick seal binding the front. It felt smooth around the edges, very satisfying.
“I dunno. But it’s addressed to me.” They both considered that for a second, before, predictably, curiosity won over.
“Well? What are you waiting for? You’ve already got your formal invitation, no waiting required, go ahead and open it.”
Harry flushed a bit and slid one nail under the crest to preserve as best as he could. It didn’t pop off easily, but managed to salvage the crest itself even if the bottom was mangled between his nails and the paper.
More parchment fell out of the thick envelope onto the bed sheets, and he plucked them into his hands easily enough.
HOGWARTS SCHOOL of WITCHCRAFT and WIZARDRY
(Order of Merlin, First Class, Grand Sorc., Chf. Warlock,
Supreme Mugwump, International Confed. of Wizards)
Dear Mr. Potter,
We are pleased to inform you that you have been accepted at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Please find enclosed a list of all necessary books and equipment.
Term begins on September the 1st. We await your owl by no later than the 31 of July.
Yours sincerely,
Minerva McGonagall
Deputy Headmistress
Her name was in fancy cursive; it took a second of squinting to read, but he got the idea.
He flipped over to the next page.
HOGWARTS SCHOOL of WITCHCRAFT and WIZARDRY
UNIFORM
First-year students will require:
- Three sets of plain work robes (black)
- One plain pointed hat (black) for day wear
- One pair of protective gloves (dragon hide or similar)
- One winter cloak (black, with silver fastenings)
Please note that all pupil's clothes should carry name tags.
COURSE BOOKS
All students should have a copy of each of the following:
The Standard Book of Spells (Grade 1)
A Beginner's Guide to Transfiguration
One Thousand Magical Herbs and Fungi
Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them
The Dark Forces: A Guide to Self-Protection
OTHER EQUIPMENT
1 wand
1 cauldron (pewter, standard size 2)
1 set glass or crystal phials
1 set brass scales
Students may also bring, if they desire, an owl OR a cat OR a toad.
PARENTS ARE REMINDED THAT FIRST YEARS
ARE NOT ALLOWED THEIR OWN BROOMSTICK
And, well, what was he supposed to do with that?
He handed the letter over the Grim, who read it with a similar amount of skepticism, and put the parchment down with a sigh.
“Right. Cloaks, broomsticks, cauldrons. Witchcraft and wizardry… you think this is the owl thing? They say they expect an owl where one would ask for a reply, do they use them like messenger pigeons?”
Harry shrugged, and Grim sighed again. “Right, right. Okay. New day trip sometime soon, I guess. But if this is real… I think we’re about to get our long-due explanation.”
Harry felt his eyes widen, surprise and hope lighting in his chest. “You- it could be-”
The idea that his abilities were some sort of normal to someone out there, that someone could show him how to use them, involve him in a true community, that this wasn’t some cruel joke of fate or bad luck.
Grim snorted. “Well, I wouldn’t very well know, would I? But it’s worth a shot. We can track down an owl after school since it doesn’t have a return address.” Harry snorted at the idea of the two of them accosting an owl to tie a letter to it. Wouldn’t that be something.
An arm wrapped around his shoulders. A familiar grin. “S’alright, Harry. We’ll figure things out.”
He relaxed into the hold, letting himself loosen up some.
Because it would.
And maybe, just maybe. Things would get better.