Simple, Really.
Harry hated wearing wigs, his real hair was thick and itchy underneath it, and he thought he looked sickly as a blonde.
Of course, his Mom was beautiful in her blonde wig, and she never looked uncomfortable, no matter what she wore.
The books at the bookstore were amazing. One of the things he liked the most about the Wizarding World, no matter the country, were the moving pictures, not just photographs but drawings and paintings.
He was pretty sure the Louvre would lose its crap if they saw an old masterpiece start moving, or worse, start talking to them.
Harry was immediately drawn to the Charms books, which was by far his best subject, not having a wand -the one Mom had didn't work for him at all, Charms was the easiest to do wandlessly. Well, he supposed potions would be too, but they never had the ingredients necessary for the potion recipes they had picked up, nor did either of them particularly want to drag around a cauldron around.
Besides, both of them were lousy cooks, he couldn't imagine what would happen if they tried cooking with magic.
"Harry," Mom called softly.
He turned and found the book she was holding out, Transfigurations and Disguise.
Harry liked the idea of Transfiguration, but he had limited success with it. In turn, he showed her the book he couldn't leave on the shelf, Charms and the Art of Defense.
She dumped another pile on him. "What are these?" he asked, trying to balance them and succeeding.
"Fourth year books," she said in the quiet voice people use in libraries, "I told the man at the desk you were a transferring."
"Transferring from where, may I ask?" an aristocratic voice drawled, coming around the stack.
Neither Harry nor Natasha were surprised by his appearance, they had both spotted his shadow, heard his footfalls.
Unlike their golden blonde wigs, this man's hair was straight white blonde. They both took note of his snake designed cane.
"We're moving from Russia to London," Mom said, her accent a brilliant mix between media American, media British, and ever so softly Russian.
Harry's accent didn't sound as smooth, but it was similar enough that they sounded like they were from the same place, "And you are, sir?"
Then the man smirked, looking down his nose at them, and drawled, "Lucius Malfoy."
"Pleasure, Mr. Malfoy, I am Natasha Romanoff, and this is my son, Nathaniel Romanoff."
Harry shot her a look, but he knew why she had switched to his middle name instead, the name 'Harry Potter' was on every newspaper they passed. Apparently, the whole Goblet of Fire thing was a big deal.
"Hogwarts bound then. My son, Draco Malfoy, is also a fourth year," he said eyeing the books in Harry's arms.
Harry immediately disliked this nosy man.
"Is it a good school?" Mom asked him.
"The best," the man said immediately, "If one is sorted into the right house."
"House?" Harry asked.
Mr. Malfoy, pulled a book of from one of the isle tables, "Hogwarts A History, and Slytherin, is the superior house out of the four."
Harry stiffened at that, but his mom, of course, gave no sign of recognition. There had been one group of assassins when he was nine that Mom had interrogated before disposing of their bodies. They had claimed to have been Slytherins, well Slytherins and Death Eaters. Which was a stupid name, how does one eat death? Unless they meant they were meat eaters, or maybe cannibals?
"Thank you for the recommendation," Mom said, batting her eyes at him, and swaying her hips.
Harry saw the man notice, and really wanted to punch him in the solar plexus.
Mr. Malfoy nodded, "Have a good day, Ms. Romanoff. And I hope, Mr. Romanoff you make suitable friends at school." He turned on his heal with his purchase and disappeared.
"Whoever his son is," Mom said, "trip him."
Harry nodded, and they went to the register.
After the book store, they went to get a trunk for him and ended up getting two, both spelled with 'Feather Weight' charms.
"Magic is so awesome," Harry enthused as they made their way next to the cloak shop.
Natasha could only smile at her son's childlike glee. Of course, he was like this about most things, whether they had come across a bird he had never seen before or heard a new story that got his imagination going.
Sometimes she missed her old life, and she certainly wished she could have introduced Clint and his family to her son, but Natasha wouldn't have changed her fate.
Harry was the very best thing to ever happen to her.
She only ever felt guilty for keeping him to herself, he had a type of kindness to him that she seldom encountered. And she was proud of him, so proud.
Proud of this child she had raised, that she brought up to be strong, noble, and sensible.
"Alright, owl," she said, "You lead the way."
"Hedwig," Harry corrected.
The snowy owl, Hedwig, led them out of the Wizarding sectioned off area, and led them to the train station before circling back to her perch on Harry's shoulder.
They entered the train station, walking slowly, both she and Harry trying to both look and not look at the owl who they were waiting for a signal from.
When they reached a piller after platform nine, she again departed from Harry's shoulder and flew through the third pillar between nine and ten.
Harry gave her a look, then they both shrugged and casually walked through the wall.
Harry laughed when they didn't go whack against the bricks. Hedwig flew North over the tracks before looping back. She hooted, and shook off her feathers, Natasha saw the shimmer of magic spark off those white wings that told her the owl had some type of Charm placed on her.
How smart was this bird? Had she been instructed to lead them this way?
"I don't think a train is coming," Harry said.
She turned to him, raising a brow, "Since, when do you mind waiting at the station?" It was one of his favourite times to read, as he prefered to watch the landscape and escape into his own thoughts when the trains were moving.
Harry held up a Hogwarts A History, "The Hogwarts Express only comes and goes during the start and end of term and winter break."
She put her hands on her hips, "When did you have time to read that far?"
He grinned sheepishly, "When you were changing into your new robes."
She sighed, he read books like others breathed, and she had a feeling that with his new featherweight, expanded trunk, he would have a true library with him by the end of the year.
"So we walk," she said, hopping down onto the tracks, he followed easily behind her. The trunks they got had their backpacks in them, and they had straps that they slung over their shoulder. It wasn't a comfortable fit, but it wasn't difficult, it felt like carrying empty boxes.
"Do you think we will make it in time for the First Task?"
She nodded, "We have twenty days or so, we will make it there before then."
"Hiking?" he asked with an edge of excitement to his voice.
She nodded, "Well, hiking on tracks. I think we have time to wander if we see a town near enough."
He grinned, "I hope we get all the way to the Highlands."
"You say that now, but it will get colder."
His grin didn't falter, "Sorry, Mom, but you had us spend every Christmas in St. Petersburg. Unless there's an arctic storm, I think I can handle it."
She grinned back, "That's my boy."
Unsurprisingly, no sign of their son showed up.
"Lily, Lily look at me," James said, catching his pacing wife, holding her by the shoulders. Their apartment was nothing impressive, nothing like the home they had in Godric's Hollow.
"We aren't going to find him," he said.
"You're giving up!?" she spluttered. "We finally have a lead!"
"Lily!" he yelled, "Enough, it's enough. His name was put in the Goblet as lark."
"But the magic recognized him, choose him, it-"
"How many 'Harry Potters' have we found in the last thirteen years, Lils. There are hundreds, it's a common name. 'Not just another Tom, Dick, or Harry' is a saying for a reason. Who knows who the Goblet was referring to, for all we know we've been tracking some distant relative of mine."
"He's out there, I know it-"
"We don't know it. Lily, you just want it so badly you have let yourself believe that he's-"
"We died," she said in a low voice.
James froze, it was the first time she had talked about that in twelve years. Sirius had told them they had been gone for either five minutes or hours, but on the other side it had been lifetimes.
He couldn't remember it, not really, not truly, but he felt it. Perhaps they hadn't stayed dead, but death had changed them.
"I remember, James, I remember."
"What do you remember?" he asked carefully.
She swallowed hard, her eyes were wet, but she didn't cry, Lily hadn't cried, not a single damn tear in all these years. As if crying was admitting defeat.
James had made up for that with all tears he had shed over the years.
"He died too, Harry… he was in my arms, and I told him to live, I begged for it not to be so, not Harry, and then he shown with white light, and I know he came back. He's alive. I know it."
"But he's gone," James pleaded, and damn him if he didn't have fresh tears rolling down his face.
"We haven't found Peter either."
It couldn't have hurt more if she stabbed him through with a dull knife.
She cupped his cheeks, pulling him down into a kiss, "We'll find our son, I believe it. I truly believe it. We're so close."
James wrapped his arms around her and buried his face in her flaming hair, breathing her in as if she were life itself, "I don't know if I can survive another disappointment, Lily."
She held him, but had no more words of comfort to give him. Even she didn't know where next to look.
They arrived in Hogsmeade the day of the First Task, and checked in to a little rustic place called the Three Broomsticks Inn as Natasha and Nathaniel Romanoff.
"I can't believe they really ride broomsticks," Natasha muttered under her breath as she unpacked her weapons on her bed.
She didn't have any guns, as she had discovered that apparently one of the downsides of being a witch or wizard in this world meant that some technology and electronics would break down, or in the case of guns, have a more than fifty percent chance of jamming or misfiring.
So she had purchased more throwing knives and even invested in a crossbow, whose simpler mechanisms didn't seem to give a shit about her magical powers.
Harry had jumped into the shower, clearly not wanting to have his first day of school looking like he had been sleeping in the woods for the last few weeks.
"They are going to know we are connected," she said, he had left the door cracked open so he could hear her.
"I think you should play it low, we can use Hedwig to pass messages, Hindi-Russian?" he asked.
Hindi-Russian was their code, they used Russian words, French grammar, and Sanskrit script to pass private messages along, so far no one had been able to crack that particular code. Mostly, because you had to be fluent in all three languages and understand all their inside jokes.
"So you want me to scout and keep my distance?"
"If this really is my 'first day of school' as you keep teasing me with, then do you really want to be the mom who had to chaperone?"
"Brat."
"Taught and raised," he shot back, turning off the water.
"Harry, these people, they all have magic, you could-"
"I can defend myself," he huffed, and she could hear the scowl in his voice, "Besides, my magical shield charms are better than yours, and you're the one with the stick."
"Wand," she corrected, even though she was usually the one to call it her stick.
More often than not, in public, around men who looked at her hungrily, which caused Harry to sink into his chair and fight off a blush.
Less than a minute later he came out in trousers, his hair dripping wet. He slung the towel over his head, showing off the tonality of his muscles.
Natasha knew body fitness, and she had him eating the right foods and working out on the right schedule that his body was at its best, though not its most extreme.
He was no match for her, and likely if he went to an American football line up, he wouldn't be a match with kids his own age, he would not be the biggest nor the strongest. But chances were good he would be the most agile, one of the fastest, and certainly one of the most enduring.
"Whatever this competition is, you'll win," she said, almost but not quite keeping the smugness out of her voice. He was her prodigy after all, and no son of Black Widow would come in second place in a real fight.
He snorted, "Yeah, unless, you know, it's some formal test of any of the magicks that I have no formal training in. Learning magic from books isn't really the same."
"You're the one who didn't want to attend Hogwarts when you were eleven."
"Yeah, well, three years ago I didn't have my magic on the line for being stripped away."
Natasha understood that, though her magic hadn't been something she had been born with, it was very much was a part of her now, an intrinsic part of her that even when she wasn't using it, she could feel it like a second sense.
She tossed him a shirt, "If you don't hurry, you will be late."
"You'll be in the crowd?" he asked, slipping on the long sleeve green sweater shirt that brought out his eyes.
"Yes, and I won't follow you into the castle, but I will be checking out the perimeter. You have a week before I start scaling the walls."
A week for him to tell her any secret entrances and the security system.
"Right," he said, tying up his boots. He grabbed his luggage, "See you around, Mum." He kissed her cheek, and she pulled him into a hug, kissing both his cheeks.
"Wow them."
He grinned, pushing up his rimless glasses on his nose, "Considered them wowed."
He all but sprinted out of the inn, heading to the field where Professor Filius Flitwick had said the First Task would be.
It was easy enough to find, the roar of the crowd and the large tent visible at a distance.
Harry entered that tent, dropping his bag to the side. He heard what the announcer outside said, "Now, according to the rules, the Hogwarts champion has twenty minutes to show up to the First Task before being officially disqualified."
Booing and outrage greeted this announcement and Harry breathed out a sigh of relief. He wasn't too late.
Only one other person stood in the tent. He was a large man, with blonde hair, and was peeking out of a tent flap.
Harry was glad he didn't have to wear that damn wig, and that he would be going by his real name Harry Nathaniel Romanoff. No sense hiding when he was about to partake in a very public game.
His stomach twisted at that thought, he knew he would do what was needed, but he didn't relish the idea of being the centre of attention, and if the sound of the crowd was anything to go by, it was a large crowd.
And then Harry heard something that stilled the blood in his veins, a roar sounded, thunderous enough to shake the very ground.
It sounded like a dinosaur, and that thought gave him a sinking suspension as to what the First Task was.
He just hoped no one asked him to kill anything.
Approaching the man, he coughed.
The man jumped, and whirled, "Who-" his blue eyes went so wide Harry worried they might fall out of his skull. "James- no, Harry Potter? Is that, by Scott, you're alive!"
"Yeah," Harry agreed calmly, "And my name is Harry Romanoff, and I'm here to keep my magic, so if you could explain the rules?"
The man flushed, "Um, oh, well, gosh, you-urm."
"There's a time limit," Harry prompted him.
"Right," the man said, taking a deep breath, "Dragons, the First Task is dragons, and you have to get the golden egg away from the mother dragon."
Harry blinked at him, he wanted to say well, that sounds stupid. Then he thought about what his mother would say, and so he grinned and said, "Okay."
His mother had a will of steel, and in the last few years had him doing obstacle courses that had made him wish for a dragon. But he somehow doubted she would be able to keep completely cool watching him face off with a real fire breathing drake.
Taking in a steadying breath, Harry pushed out into the sunlight, past the stuttering man.
He was as ready as he was ever going to be.
A complete hush fell over the crowd when a figure emerged from the tent.
"It can't be," Mad-Eye Moody breathed, his magical eye zooming in on the figure.
Minerva was standing, and Filius hanging onto the rail at her side, said, "Bless that snowy owl."
The figure certainly looked like he could have been Harry Potter, he was the spitting image of his father. He was tallish for a fourteen year old, and he walked with a grace that spoke of some intense sport.
While the crowd was memorized by him, the mother Hungarian Horntail was enraged. When she spotted him and sucked a breath in before unleashing an inferno at him.
People in the crowd gasped and screamed.
When the flames cleared, the boy was nowhere to be seen.
Someone pointed him out, crouched behind a pile of rocks, and creeping closer to the dragon in a bent kneed gate.
Albus, who was sitting at the judges' table, was bent forward nearly in half to see, he whispered, "It can't be him."
Tears spilled down Minerva's cheeks, "After all these years..."
The dragon found him, again shooting fire like water from a fire hydrant, and Minerva clapped a hand to her mouth.
The crowd held its collective breath, and when an unharmed Harry Potter began another slow creep toward the dragon's other side, the crowd broke out into cheers and applause.
Which seemed to aggravate the Horntail, who began spewing fire at random, but always seemed to miss the boy who always vanished from the dragon's sideline behind a pile of rocks.
When the Horntail finally paused in spewing fire, flicking her deadly tail, something happened that no one expected -well aside from the one uninvited person in the crowd who had expected it.
The boy ran straight at the dragon, quick as racing greyhound.
The dragon saw him, and lowered her head, opening her maw directly into the boy's path.
He jumped.
And every single wizard and witch in that stadium, but for one, believed he was about to get eaten.
But his jump turned into a roll, and as the dragon released her wrath, Harry Potter, rolled up her snout, grabbing ahold of one of her spikes on her head, he held on like a piece of stubborn tinsel.
The Horntail began to shake her head back and forth, back and forth.
"Does he have a wand!?" Filius exclaimed.
Horror flooded all the professors and judges, as it finally registered what it would mean for Lily and James Potter's fourteen year old son to compete in the Triwizard Tournament.
Their fourteen year old son who wasn't magically educated who had just walked into a pit with one of the most dangerous dragons in the magical realm: a mother Hungarian Horntail guarding her eggs.
"Lily is going to kill us all," Severus muttered helpfully as they all watched Harry Potter hold onto the dragon's head.
Surprisingly, for those who could make out Harry's expression, it looked as if he were smiling.
In fury, the Horntail let out a blaze of flame that obscured the audience's version of the boy valiantly holding on.
When the flames disappeared, so had the boy.
The dragon tilted its head, shook it, then settled over her clutch of eggs. Raising the spines on her tail, she waited, her eyes searching the stadium for movement.
In the stands, Padma Patil said, "Well, there goes the Boy Who Lived."
Hermione smacked her shoulder.
Meanwhile, Albus was sweating in his robes as he and everyone else searched for any sign of a boy, a splattered body, or a charred ash heap.
Natasha Romanoff was grinning to herself in the uppermost corner of one of the stands, having gone completely unnoticed by any, she saw what the others missed.
Karkaroff leaned back in his chair, "He should have forfeited, losing his magic would be perhaps not as bad as losing his life."
Maxime glared at him and opened her mouth to say something, one a golden egg appeared on the ledge before the judges' table.
Moments later, Harry Potter climbed up on the ledge. Standing, and dusting himself off, he placed the Golden Egg in front of Albus Dumbledore. He raised one dark brow.
The crowd spotted him, and again, everyone fell completely silent as they all took in what had just happened.
"So," Harry said, "I get to keep my magic, right?"
Albus opened his mouth, but no sound came out, when he tried again, he asked, "How?"
Harry took of his glasses and washed them with the edge of his sweater, in the process avoiding everyone's direct gaze as he said, "I let go while she was distracted, slid down her neck, slipped underneath her with the eggs, she wasn't lying directly on them, of course, so there was enough space to crawl on my stomach, grab the fake egg, escape from her blind side, her left hind-leg to be precise, and then I climbed up this banner." He put his glasses back on, "Simple, really."
Madame Maxime held up a wand and a ten appeared above her.
A deafening roar, louder than the dragon sounded around the stadium.
And as if not to be outdone, the actual dragon roared at them all shooting fire at everything and anything, but everyone was out of reach.
Mr. Crouch, shot up a ten as well.
Albus, a bit numbly, shot up a ten.
Kakuroff sneered at Harry, shooting up a four. "No magic," he said.
Harry smiled at him, clearly not giving a flying shit.
Bagman, who had run up to the stands throw up a ten with his wand, then pointed his wand throat, "Harry Romanoff, forty-four points!"
The crowd again exploded, which again, pissed off the Horntail.
Harry turned to the crowd, and caught his mother disappearing from view.
"Romanoff?" Minerva asked.
Harry smiled at her, "Yep, that's me, Harry Nathaniel Romanoff."
"You're Russian?" Pomona squeaked, startled by the name and his accent, and generally, the whole watching him run at an angry mother dragon without drawing a wand.
Harry shrugged, "More Russian than British, I guess, I certainly spent more time there than here."
"But you are Harry Potter?" Minerva pressed, though she didn't need to, "You have your mother's eyes, but you look like James's clone."
Those emerald eyes narrowed on her, "My birth parents are dead, my name is Harry Romanoff."
The Hogwarts staff stared at him, and none of them knew quite where to begin.
AN: Theories, dreams, thoughts, or mother dragon fire? Please, pretty, pretty please?