This time, instead of using the fireplace at the Leaky Cauldron, James took Harry’s hand and did the same disappearing trick.
He said it was called Apparition and that Harry would get to learn it when he was older. Harry wasn’t sure how excited he was about that. Apparition was uncomfortable and felt too much like being molecularly taken apart, crammed through a straw, and put back together. Alekta shook herself and shreeed angrily.
Harry was too busy gaping at the house.
So this is where my brother got to grow up.
He kicked that scrap of resentment aside. Jules might be a prat, but he also might not, and Harry didn’t think highly of his father but that didn’t mean Jules was automatically nasty. On the other hand, Harry didn’t have a great track record with boys his age.
The house, though. The house was absolutely gorgeous.
It was made of old red brick, with loads of windows outlined with white shutters. The front porch was warmly lit and the front doors were massive and white-painted with iron handles. Harry counted four—no, five stories. You could fit four of Number 4, Privet Drive inside this house.
“Potter Manor,” James said, grinning at Harry and bounding up the steps. “The ancestral seat of our House. Your new home.”
This place isn’t home yet, Harry thought, but he followed James inside more or less willingly, looking around with interest at the paintings on the wall.
Paintings that moved.
Harry stumbled back with an embarrassing squeak when the nearest portrait shouted, “It’s the Heir! Harry Potter returns!”
James chuckled. “Sorry, forgot to warn you—pictures and paintings in the wizarding world move,” he explained as the other portraits started an excited high-volume conversation. “They’re basically moving reflections of the person they were made from. Most of them can move between portraits, too.” He nodded at a heavyset woman stumbling into a painting of three men playing cards. “I can make ours be quiet, as Lord Potter, but mostly I don’t. They deserve a little fun.”
Harry thought he’d make them quiet all the time when he was Lord, just for the sake of his sanity.
“Jules!” James bellowed up the massive staircase in the back left of the entrance hall. “Come on down! We have a guest!”
Harry shifted his pack.
The faint sound of footsteps reached his ears seconds before another boy skidded to a halt at the top of the staircase. “Oi! Harry!” he shouted, and hurtled down the stairs.
Harry forgot how to breathe.
Seeing James had been a weird trick of a funhouse mirror. Seeing Jules—his brother—was even worse. He was Harry’s exact copy, except his scar was bigger, more silvery, and more resembled a single line than a weird jagged shape. He had the round glasses, too, and Harry was suddenly glad he’d gotten the square pair.
“Julian,” he got out. “Er. Hi.”
Well that was bloody brilliant. Way to make a good first impression.
Julian’s eyes were just as wide. “Hi,” he managed. “This is weird. You look… exactly like me.”
Harry managed to get over the physical resemblance and look at the rest of his brother.
Julian’s shirt was a plain cotton T-shirt, and he was wearing khaki cargo-style shorts. Good to know wizards emulated some Muggle clothing choices. There was some kind of stain or smear on the red shirt and his hair was even wilder than Harry’s.
The silence stretched.
Harry opened his mouth even though he didn’t know what exactly he was going to say.
“Okay,” James said, clapping his hands together. “Jules, why don’t you show Harry his room? I’ll whip up some dinner for us.”
“Order out,” Jules said instantly. “Please.”
James made a face. “My cooking’s not that bad.”
“Yeah, but it’s not great,” Jules said. “And it’s Harry’s first night here.”
“Good point. Pizza sound good?”
“Um, yes. With pepperoni. And… sausage.”
“Some vegetables, too. Remember, you have to eat healthy to have a healthy body.”
“Fine, those pepper things.”
“Done. Harry, does that work?”
Harry blinked, still trying to process the rapid-fire conversation. Dudley would never talk like that to Uncle Vernon. Like… so friendly.
“Uh. Anything’s fine. I haven’t really had pizza before.”
Jules looked shocked. “What! How could you not have! Pizza is amazing. Dad, can we get three?”
James grinned. It didn’t even look that strained. “Three pizzas, coming right up.”
“Your room is this way,” Jules said, and then he was dragging Harry up the stairs, chattering on about the portraits and how he spent the morning cleaning out the room because it was right down the hall from his normal room and he kept stuff there sometimes and how he couldn’t wait to take Harry out and teach him flying and how he couldn’t believe he had a brother—
Harry did his best to remember how to breathe and walk without tripping at the same time.
“Here you go,” Jules said, throwing the door open. “It’s a little smaller than mine, but a lot of the rooms are closed up because there’s only been two of us in the house for ages and this was the one we could get ready fastest—”
“It’s great,” Harry interrupted him. “Really.”
“Okay good,” Jules said.
Harry tried to ignore how relieved he was that he got an actual bedroom, and a big one at that—bigger than either of Dudley’s rooms, to his satisfaction. The big bed was upholstered in red and gold on varnished warm brown wood; he had bookshelves and a big closet and a desk and a beanbag chair and an armchair in the corner and a big window looking out over a grass back lawn that backed up to a forest.
Jules threw himself out on Harry’s bed. “Do you like the quilt? I helped Dad pick it out. We have a bunch up in the attic with preservation charms on them. They were all kind of the same colors but this one was warmest. Red and gold are Gryffindor colors. Dad told you about the Houses, right? We’re both going to be in Gryffindor, I bet—it’s the best house!”
Harry took a deep breath and shot Jules his best smile. “Yeah, that’s all great—I, er, I kind of need to… change and stuff,” he said, waving a hand around vaguely. “And—sorry, it’s just—been a really long day, and I’d appreciate—a few minutes before dinner—”
“Oh! Yeah, okay.” Jules rolled off the bed with easy grace. “I’ll knock when the pizza’s here, yeah?”
“Sure. Thanks.”
Harry shut the door in his face and rested his head against it for a long moment.
Breathe. Breathe. You’re okay. Breathe.
He concentrated on the cool wood against his fingertips and forehead until things didn’t feel quite so much like an endless wave crashing down on his head, and then he turned around.
The room was almost too large. Harry couldn’t imagine owning enough things to take it all up. Couldn’t imagine considering this enough of a home that he could put clothes in the closet and books on the shelves and let his life be rooted here.
For now, he’d bee leaving everything in the trunk.
Harry put the summer cloak away and swapped his tunic for a plain black T shirt, one of few options that resembled normal Muggle clothes from the tailor’s. He chewed his lip for a minute before putting on jeans and keeping his dragonhide boots. The holly wand went in his back pocket. He put the clothes he’d been wearing away in his trunk, re-shrunk it, and put it back in his pack. Then he changed his mind and took the trunk out and blew it up to full size and left it at the foot of the bed. He could make that much of a concession. But he wasn’t going to unpack anything, in case he needed to leave in a hurry.
That done, he stood in the middle of his new room and had nothing left to do.
Harry heaved a sigh. With James standing there, Petunia hadn’t refused when Harry asked if he could take some of Dudley’s old Muggle fiction books with him. He’d chosen his eight favorites and James had put them in a bag that had an Undetectable Expansion Charm on it. Harry could’ve read one of those now, but he didn’t want to go track James down just yet to ask for them back.
He ran through his wandless spells just to make sure he hadn’t lost them now that he had a wand. Everything worked perfectly, from the warming charm to the light summoning to the levitation to the regrowth of his hair. He even unlocked and locked the door a couple times, but when he tried that on the trunk, his magic slipped and slid away from the locks. Which at least showed the wards and the password protection were working.
Okay. So he still had his wandless magic ability. He’d have to keep working on that, see if he could learn other tricks…
Harry huffed a sigh and pulled out the book of Charms. They were arranged alphabetically, but if he tapped it with his wand and said “Easy,” all the charms considered beginner level glowed a soft minty color. He flipped through and tried a simple levitation charm— “Wingardium leviosa! ”—on his pack a few times before it wobbled and slid upright in the air. He frowned, concentrated, and the pack stabilized.
A bit of experimentation had Harry able to levitate things wordlessly. He had a lot more control with his wand, he noticed, over the movement of the thing he was levitating, and it tired him out a lot less. He moved on to levitating different things at the same time and got up to four pillows in the air before he started fumbling it. When levitating multiple things, Harry found he still needed the incantation.
Something to work on.
He picked up his wand again and twirled it around his fingers for a bit, lying back on the bed. It was kind of nice to just relax. This day had been absolutely exhausting, and now he’d just spent thirty minutes practicing magic…
Someone was banging on the door. “Oi! Harry! Pizza’s here!”
Harry blinked his eyes open and took in the high ceiling, the room. Right. Wizard. Father. Brother. Pizza.
His stomach growled, reminding him how good an idea food was.
Harry stuffed the holly wand in his pocket and opened the door.
Jules jerked his head in the direction of the stairs. “Kitchen’s this way.”
“Do you normally walk all this way for food?” Harry said. They were going down a different staircase, a smaller one built into the wall instead of the grand sweeping one down into the entrance hall.
Jules shrugged. “I guess. It doesn’t seem to matter much.”
“Does Dad usually cook?”
“Yeah, him or the house-elves.”
“House-elves?”
Jules made a face. He was so expressive. Harry didn’t know how his twin was comfortable just wearing his emotions out there like that for the world to see. “They look a little like goblins except not as hard-edged, and smaller. They’re bound to serve the family living in their house.”
“So like slavery.”
Jules looked horrified. “No! They like serving. It’s the biggest shame for a house-elf to be let go.”
“Hm.” Harry’d have to see that for himself, but he supposed he’d tentatively believe Jules for now. “Like brownies, I guess.”
“I’m going to assume you don’t mean the pastry and move on,” Jules said.
So you can be witty. Maybe there’s hope for this yet. “And they cook?”
“Yeah. It usually only takes a few minutes between when I walk into the kitchen and when the food’s ready. They don’t do pizza well, for some reason. Might just be ours—Bidda and Corker are both kind of old, and Marnee is… strange. You’ll see.”
“Do they take requests?” Harry asked, thinking of the naan bread and spicy curry he’d eaten as leftovers when Aunt Petunia relented and got takeout one time. None of the Dursleys had liked the spices and she gave him all the leftovers. It had been a fantastic meal.
“Yeah, we’ll get there,” Jules said. “What was it like with the Muggles? Do their pictures really not move?”
“Er, no. Unless you go to a movie, which is like… a sequence of events, recorded, and played back. Except most movies are fiction. They don’t interact with you at all.”
“So not like portraits, then,” Jules said. “Wait, we have that one of Sir Lucas on the fourth floor and he just reenacts the same jousting tournament over and over and doesn’t talk to anyone—is that kind of what it is?”
“Sounds like it’s on the right track at least,” Harry said.
“Can we go see a movie sometime? How do you do that? Where are they kept?”
Harry did his best to explain the cinema and was relieved when they got to the kitchen and the presence of food distracted Jules.
He was pretty sure Jules’s earlier hyper nonstop talking had just been excitement, and that now that his brother had calmed down some, there’d be… curiosity. Harry hoped they could be friends, at least, though it might be a long time before he called Jules brother in anything other than blood. And he didn’t think he’d ever call James Dad.
Jules and James tore into the pizza. Harry guarded his two slices and listened to their awkward, stilted conversation; it was made weird by his presence. The two-person dynamic of the house had fundamentally shifted.
Harry hated being the one who was mucking things up.
The pizza was good, at least, and things warmed up a little bit. Harry had to tread carefully around all of Jules’s questions about growing up a Muggle, but most of them centered around how the Muggle world worked and not specifically Harry’s role in it, which made it somewhat easier. James seemed wound impossibly tight but Harry ignored him and focused on Jules. Baby steps.
Jules seemed a little unsure of himself around Harry, too, but it could’ve been worse. They could’ve hated each other on sight.
Although it was still weird to look at another person and see a mirror image of himself looking back.
Harry watched how much Jules ate, and stayed about a slice behind his brother, keeping an eye on James to make sure he didn’t eat more than he was allowed. But James didn’t seem to care how much Harry ate.
Even though he wasn’t really hungry, he took one more piece than Jules did.
James didn’t say anything.
Harry ate it slowly, waiting for a reaction, but James didn’t seem to notice, much less care, which of them had eaten more. Harry decided that was a point in his favor. At least Jules had gotten a decent upbringing.
“Dad, it’s still light out,” Jules said, turning puppy dog eyes on James. “Can I take Harry flying?”
Flying. Now that sounded fun. Harry desperately wanted to try. But he was also exhausted and he’d spent enough time cooking and cleaning on little sleep to know that he got clumsier the more tired he was.
“Today’s maybe not the best time,” he said. “It’s been a long day, I’m super tired. Maybe tomorrow instead?”
“Sure,” Jules said, shrugging and returning to picking at his last piece of pizza.
“And I was thinking we could give you a tour of the house,” James said.
Harry cocked his head. “I’d like that.” He planned to explore on his own, of course, but having a guide would tell him for sure what parts of the house he was allowed into and give him a chance to ask questions, to figure out what the boundaries were.
He’d have to write Nott sometime in the next few days. Hopefully Alekta already had some sense of how to deliver mail. He’d let her out of her cage, and the falcon had immediately shot away to hunt.
“James?” he said hesitantly. “Today, you… flipped out about Theo Nott. How much of a threat are the Death Eaters still?”
James put his napkin down slowly.
Jules met Harry’s eyes, suddenly serious. “They’re still out there,” he said. “Some of them. And a lot of the pureblood beliefs are still around. The Nott family’s one of them. Did you meet their son?”
“Yes,” Harry said, wondering how to put this. “I, er, ran into him buying telescopes today. We talked for a bit.”
“The Notts are an old family,” James cut in. “I think there were a few cousins who stayed out of the war, but the main branch… they were very much supporting You-Know-Who.”
Harry frowned at Jules. “Do you know Theo Nott?”
“I wish I didn’t,” Jules muttered. “Yeah, he comes to a lot of the same parties and galas and stuff.”
Harry sent James a confused look.
“Jules’s the Boy Who Lived,” James said, with a proud look for his younger son. “It comes with a lot of media attention. We host a charity gala every Christmas; I run a Quidditch training camp in his name for kids from families who can’t afford sleep-away camps in the summer. Things like that.”
“They wrote books,” Jules said, sounding vaguely horrified. “Children’s books, can you imagine? ‘Jules Potter and the Surly Snowman.’ It’s ridiculous. I’m destined to fight Dark wizards, not run around making friends out of enchanted snowmen.”
“Jules,” James reprimanded gently. And ineffectively.
Harry tried not to roll his eyes at them.
But—
“So you go to social things,” he said. “With… other pureblood kids.”
“We kind of have to,” James said. “The adults use them for political negotiations and networking. As Head Auror and the holder of a Wizengamot seat, I unofficially have to be at these things. The kids play in the host family’s house while we talk and any older siblings supervise. It happens, oh, a few times a year.”
Harry decided to ask about the other kids in his age group later, when he wasn’t too tired to think straight. He added that to his ever-growing mental list of questions.
“Your original question, though—it’s not so much Death Eaters as dark wizards in general,” James explained. “There’s always some witch or wizard out there with a wand and a willingness to do bad things. It’d immortalize anyone’s name if they took down the Boy Who Lived. Jules’s a target.”
Harry’s brother was a celebrity with huge social power and cultural importance, and also a walking target for any up-and-coming wannabe magic crime lord. Fantastic.
“May I go to my room?” he said quietly. “I’m… really tired.”
“Yeah, of course,” James said, looking startled. “Do you remember the way, or—”
“I’ve got it, thanks,” Harry said.
James nodded. “If you need anything, call out the name “Corker” to summon a house-elf. He’ll handle it for you. The room’s okay?”
“It’s great,” Harry said, only having to fake a little of his enthusiasm.
“Good,” James said with visible relief. “All right, off you go.”
Harry walked out of the room and made a point of letting his footsteps noisily retreat from the room before he crept back to eavesdrop.
“—kind of quiet,” Jules was saying. “It’s weird. He’s weird.”
Harry narrowed his eyes.
“Well,” James said after a pause that told Harry he didn’t disagree, “he’s had a very different childhood from yours.” I didn’t have a childhood, thanks to you, James Potter. “You guys might look alike but you weren’t going to just connect like the Weasley twins.”
“I know, but—” Jules broke off with a frustrated noise. “Are we gonna… tell people? The papers will go crazy over this, won’t they?”
James sighed. “Yeah, they will. For sure. I’ll talk to Ethan tomorrow or the day after to sort out how and when we reveal Harry. For now, I guess… the best thing we can do is try and help him adjust. Make sure he’s not too far behind everyone else when school starts.”
“Okay,” Jules said. Pause. “I have to invite him out with all my friends, don’t I.”
“It’d be rude if you didn’t,” James said.
Harry promptly decided to accept at least the first such invitation, even if he didn’t feel like talking to people, just so he could irritate Jules Potter. Who was apparently not much less of a prat than James.
“I guess...”
Harry decided he’d heard enough and crept back upstairs to his room.
Only once he had the door shut did he let his hands tremble and his eyes burn. He glared around the shadows of the room, barely noticing Alektra when she flapped over to perch on his shoulder, hardly aware that he’d lifted a shaking hand to stroke her.
So James and Jules thought he was weird. Too quiet, too different.
Freak.
Harry glared at the charms book sitting on his desk. Fine. If they thought he was weird, he’d be weird. If Jules’s friends didn’t like him, he’d just make his own friends, or maybe not, depending on what kinds of people he met. If he didn’t find anyone—well, he’d done just fine all these years without friends his own age. He could manage a few more.
And in the meantime, he’d be better than Jules. He’d be better than all of Jules’s friends. He’d prove that they should’ve kept him, that James Potter was wrong to not want him.
If that made him a freak to them, he’d live with it. Freak just meant different. People were afraid of things that were different. If his stupid family thought he was a freak, then he could make them afraid of him, because he didn’t mind being different from people he didn’t like.
Harry closed his eyes and let his resolution sink into his mind like a stone, and then he gently shifted Alektra onto her perch and changed into his new pajamas and crawled into his new bed.
***
Harry rolled over.
It was so warm… the Dursleys must have turned on the heating vent in the cupboard for once… And his pajamas felt weirdly soft…
Someone banged on the door.
“Coming, Aunt Petunia,” Harry said as strongly as he could manage, and opened his eyes.
Oh. Right. Potter Manor. His real family. Magic.
Harry bounced out of bed and yanked the door open.
“Aunt Petunia,” Jules said. “Mum’s sister?”
“Yeah,” Harry said shortly. He didn’t want to talk about the Dursleys. Or James. Both of those things would ruin his current good mood.
“I want to meet her someday,” Jules said.
“No, you don’t, she’s not very nice.” Harry stepped aside and Jules did exactly as he expected, barging straight into the room and somehow making the entire space feel a lot smaller. He jumped on Harry’s beanbag.
“Where are your clothes?” Jules said, looking at the half-open closet with a frown.
Harry pointed at his trunk.
“You haven’t unpacked yet?”
“There doesn’t seem to be much point,” Harry said truthfully. “We’re leaving for school in a month.”
“I guess.” Jules looked at the trunk. “You got your school books, right? Don’t they look boring? I just want to learn hexes.” He pulled out his wand and waved it about. “Do you know any spells yet?”
“Er—kind of,” Harry said.
“Which?”
“The levitation charm. Reparo.”
“I’ve been doing those for ages,” Jules said rudely.
Harry blinked. And here he thought he’d been doing well. For just a second, embarrassment flooded his gut, and then he shook it off and resolved to work harder.
“Can I see?” Jules said, grinning.
Harry pointed his wand at the beanbag. “Wingardium leviosa!”
Jules yelped as the beanbag slowly but steadily rose about a foot off the ground.
Harry gritted his teeth and concentrated, fighting to hold it steady. He could only keep such a large object, supporting that much weight, off the ground for so long.
The landing was a little rough, but at least he didn’t just drop Jules on the floor.
“Wicked,” Jules said. “I haven’t lifted anything that big yet. Can I try?”
He made to get up from the beanbag, but Harry was in no way ready to trust Jules enough to let him levitate Harry around the room. “Show me something else?” he said hurriedly. “A—a spell I don’t know.”
Jules thought for a second. “Okay… Oh, here, Dad uses this one when we play Quidditch.” He pointed his wand in the air and said, “Aquafy!”
A stream of water leaped out of the wand, arched through the air, and disappeared before it hit the ground. Jules showed Harry how to drink from the stream of water, and then said “Finite,” ending the spell.
“Cool,” said Harry, who did not actually find it all that cool.
Jules grinned. “That one’s fun. I also know the Trip Jinx but I’m not very good at it yet.”
“What’s the… words?” Harry said.
“Incantation,” Jules corrected him proudly. Harry resisted the urge to spray the Aquafy water in Jules’s face, mainly because he wasn’t sure the charm would work right on the first try and it would be embarrassing if he failed. “Fallo ambulare.”
Harry committed that to memory and reached for his trunk, whispering the new password—Firedrake, after a character in one of his favorite books—and opened it to the clothes compartment.
“Anyway. Dad’s not up yet, either that or he had to run in to work early, so I was thinking we can go get breakfast from the house-elves and get you on a broom,” Jules said.
Can you think about anything other than flying? “Sounds fun.”
Harry pulled out a gray shirt, jeans, and his boots, because Jules was wearing a T-shirt and another pair of cargo shorts, and he didn’t want to be overdressed for anything. Then he hesitated—at school, in gym, most kids just changed in front of each other, but Harry never had. No matter how much he got teased for it, hiding in a bathroom stall was better than showing everyone his scars. And Jules didn’t need to see them yet.
“I—sorry, it must be a Muggle thing, but I don’t—like changing in front of people,” he said, stumbling a bit over the words. “Can you—”
“Oh! Right, sure.” Jules slid off the beanbag and jammed his wand into his pocket. “See you downstairs. Oh, and I have some friends coming over later today. We had it planned before I learned about you, and now you’re here you can meet all our year-mates. We can fly for a bit and then come in for lunch before they get here.”
Harry stared at the door after his brother left.
People. On top of the chaos of the last twenty-four hours, he was now expected to deal with people.
Harry tried to calm his breathing before he tipped into hyperventilation. He’d done all right with Nott yesterday. Okay, so that was one other boy instead of multiple, and Nott seemed very decent, which he didn’t think Jules’s friends probably would be.
I’ll be fine. I’ll be fine. Harry clung to his wand and changed as fast as he could, deciding he’d probably need food to make it through today.
The house-elves were as good as Jules said. Harry walked into the kitchen and found his brother sitting at the big old table in front of a massive plate of scrambled eggs, bacon, toast, oatmeal, and sliced apples. There was an identical place across the table from him.
“This is all for me?” Harry checked, staring at the food. It was more than he’d ever eaten at one time in his life.
“Yuff,” Jules said, and swallowed hard. “If it’s not enough, the elves will bring more.”
Harry switched his staring from the plate to his brother. “No way could I eat… all of this!”
Jules shrugged. “You should see Ron. He could eat double that. Not to mention the twins.”
Harry remembered James talking about a set of twins, but not a Ron. “Who’re they?” he asked, starting in on the food, which was delicious. He could really appreciate the benefits of house-elves.
“Weasleys,” Jules said. “They’re a big old family, allies of the Potters. They’ve got loads of kids. The twins Fred and George are two years older than us, Ron’s our age, and Ginny’s a year younger. Ron’s my best mate. He and the twins and Ginny are coming over today.”
Harry just nodded. Having food in his mouth was a great way to avoid having to talk. He’d grown up being quiet and he already thought James and Jules were way too talkative for him.
Jules, thankfully, seemed willing to relax and eat without talking.
Harry eyed him and then looked at the battered old watch on his wrist, wondering how long Jules could go in silence.
An impressive three minutes later, Jules finished his food and propped his elbows on the table. “Ready?”
Do I look ready? Harry wanted to snap. He looked down at the food left on his plate and decided he probably shouldn’t eat more anyway. His stomach was used to small meals, and he’d stuffed himself on the few occasions Aunt Petunia let him eat as much as he wanted, and every time it ended up with him vomiting in the bathroom later. He’d have to adjust to full meals. “Yeah, I’m done.”
Jules dragged him up and out the back of the house, onto the lawn Harry could see from his window. There was a small shed tucked up in the garden against the back of the house. Jules put a hand on the lock and said “Open,” and it clicked and let them in.
Harry blinked, letting his eyes adjust to the dimness in the shed. Jules grabbed something and threw it to Harry, who flinched back and barely caught it.
A broom. Much sleeker than the ones he’d seen in the vault. This one even had leg braces. It was taller than Harry himself and practically hummed with potential.
His grip tightened.
“These are Cleansweep Tens,” Jules said. “Dad promised be a Nimbus Two Thousand if I make the Gryffindor Quidditch team, but for now we’re stuck with these old ones.” He had a broom identical to Harry’s in his hand.
“Are Cleansweep Tens not nice?” Harry asked.
Jules shrugged, leading the way back out of the shed. “They came out last year, so I guess they’re decent. Not the best, though.”
He was reminding Harry uncomfortably of Dudley. Thirty-six! Last year I got thirty-eight presents! Harry tried to hold onto his good mood.
“Okay, put it on the ground,” Jules instructed. Harry copied him, standing just to the left of his broom.
“Hold out your hand and say Up!” When Jules did it, the broom shot up off the ground and into his hand with a smack.
“Up!” Harry said, feeling foolish, but the broom jumped into his palm almost as quickly as Jules’s had.
“Nice,” Jules said.
He showed Harry how to straddle the broom, how to grip the handle, and where his feet would go.
“Then you just do this,” Jules said, and pushed off the ground gently so he was hovering a bit above the ground. He leaned and his broom spun in a slow circle, and Harry narrowed his eyes, looking at Jules’s form, his feet, the way he leaned forward. “You try.”
Harry took a deep breath and pushed off the ground.
The Cushioning Charm on the broom kicked in and Harry felt the ground drop away from his feet and couldn’t stop a huge grin from spreading across his face.
“Right?” Jules said, grinning back. “It’s amazing.”
“Yeah,” Harry breathed. “Okay, how do I—”
He heard a whoosh and a whoop and looked up and Jules was gone, speeding away over the house.
“Prat,” Harry shouted after him, but Jules disappeared.
He sighed. Looked down at the ground. Leaned forward a bit and pushed down—his broom dipped slowly down towards the earth.
He paused, standing there, looking towards the house. He should probably put the broom away and go inside and wait until James or Jules was around to keep trying.
That would be the smart thing.
But—he had a point to prove. That he was as good as Jules. That he wasn’t just a failure. And Harry knew he wouldn’t instantly be as good at flying as Jules, but he also wouldn’t be the weak one who couldn’t fly.
“Okay,” he muttered, kicking off again. Just lightly, so he was only about two feet off the ground. “Okay, nice and slow…”
He experimented with slow, subtle movements, leaning one way, then another, careful to never overcompensate and never do anything too drastic. He could go up and down, turn both ways in place, and make big looping circles over the lawn by the time he heard a loud slam from the house.
Harry looked up sharply before he realized it was just a door slamming. The motion upset his balance and he had to flounder for a second to stay on the broom and when he looked back at the house, it seemed like nothing had changed.
He saw a small pond tucked back by the edge of the trees, near the east side of the house, and aimed the broom that way. If he wanted to try anything more complicated, he’d rather fall into water than onto dry land.
The pond was big, about the size of the parking lot at the library. Harry did a few circles around it and then dared to go higher and try a few dives, always pulling up well above the water but getting a little closer every time. His speed turned the warm July air into a cool breeze on his face and he felt like he could outrun anything. Harry couldn’t stop smiling. He never wanted to give this feeling up.
He dove down towards the pond and dared stray close to the water, spinning a tight lap around the pond, then on a whim he took one foot off the footrests and skimmed his toes across the water.
“Yaaaaaah!”
A blur of red and blue shot past Harry’s shoulder. Followed promptly by another.
He twisted away violently. Towards the foot that wasn’t on his broom.
And the next thing Harry knew, he was crashing into the water.
He flailed and floundered. Up and down lost all meaning. There was water around his ears, water in his nose and eyes, and all he could think about was the time Dudley and Piers spent an hour ducking him in and out of the water, holding him down until he started to thrash, that time at the lake three years ago, and how he couldn’t swim—
And then a hand latched onto his shirt and dragged him up out of the water.
Harry choked and coughed and thrashed. He needed to get away get away from whoever was holding him—
“Harry!” someone shouted, and the shock of hearing his own name brought him back. Harry wiped water out of his eyes and shook it out of his ears and promptly registered a group of children standing about on the shore laughing at him.
The one who’d pulled him out of the pond was a slightly older boy with violently red hair and a soaking wet blue shirt. “You okay, mate?”
Someone on a broom slid smoothly to a halt next to him. Harry looked between them in confusion. Twins.
The Weasley twins.
“Sorry about that,” Broom Twin said. “We didn’t mean—”
“—for you to go in,” Pond Twin said. “Just wanted—
“—to surprise you, really.”
“Consider me surprised,” Harry said stiffly. The twins were both smirking, but there was a canny intelligence in their eyes and the glance they shared indicated they at least realized they’d pushed a more sensitive button than they realized.
“You can’t swim, then?” Pond Twin said.
“What tipped you off?” Harry snarled, wading out of the pond and glaring at the pack of laughing kids his own age a little ways off, around the shore and closer to the house.
Broom Twin landed and handed Harry his Cleansweep. “Oh, maybe just that you had a bloody panic attack.”
“Pretty big clue right there,” Pond Twin agreed.
Harry looked back and forth between them. He’d never have been able to keep them straight if not for the fact that one of them was completely soaked. Although Broom Twin seemed just a little wilder, somehow, than the other one.
“Such a pity,” Broom Twin said.
“Got a whole summer left.”
“Be a shame to waste it.”
“I’m Fred, by the way.”
“No, I’m Fred. You’re George. Honestly, did Mum clock you on the head again?”
They both sniggered, but Harry stiffened. The Weasley mother—
The twins looked at Harry’s face and their laughter died. “Was a joke, mate,” Broom Twin said. “She wouldn’t actually…”
He trailed off, and the twins shared another loaded glance, and Harry knew they were putting some of the pieces together.
“I’m Harry,” he said. “I’d thank you for dragging me out of the pond except you’re the reason I was there in the first place.”
George/Fred/Pond Twin shrugged unrepentantly. “That’s fair. We can—”
“—teach you,” the other one added. “Gesture of goodwill and all.”
Harry looked at them. He wasn’t sure about these two yet but at least they weren’t mocking him like the rest. “Deal.”
Broom Twin clapped Harry on the back. “Come on, let’s go find the rest of the babies.”
“I’m not a baby,” Harry said indignantly, heading back for the other kids even though he really did not want to.
The twins grinned as they tagged along on either side of him, identical expressions of pure mischief. “Ohh, ickle baby Harry doesn’t like being the baby, hm?”
“Are you cranky?” the other one teased. “Do you need your diaper changed?”
“Only if I get to rub the used one in your face,” Harry returned.
“Ahey, it bites!” Broom Twin said, reeling backwards with a hand clamped dramatically to his chest.
“I like this one,” Pond Twin said to his brother over Harry’s head.
Broom Twin smirked. “This will be an interesting year, for sure.”
Harry decided he wasn’t going to hold a grudge for getting dumped in the pond. They wouldn’t have predicted that his reflexes were jacked up and would dump him off his broom. They’d fished him out of the water and not even ribbed him too badly for his inability to swim.
The others, though—
Harry could clearly see a red-headed boy who looked like a skinny younger brother to the twins reenacting Harry’s panicked floundering. A girl, also ginger, was giggling, but it seemed like that was mostly because she was obviously infatuated with Jules, who was laughing so hard Harry was vaguely surprised he could even stay on his feet. Two other girls who looked like their family came from southern Asia shifted uncomfortably, and a sandy blond pudgy boy laughed a little along with Jules and the redhead.
“Think it’s funny?” Harry said coolly.
“Bloody hilarious, that was,” the redhead said, grinning. “I’m Ron, by the way. Ron Weasley.”
“Way to make a first impression, Har,” Jules said with a snicker.
Harry didn’t smile.
Jules and Weasley’s laughter slowly died.
“That’s our brother,” Broom Twin said, pointing at Weasley. “He’s a prat, you can ignore him.”
“Hey!” Weasley protested.
“And that’s our little sister Ginevra,” Pond Twin added, nodding at the girl, who scowled.
“Ginny,” she snapped. “If anyone calls me Ginevra I’ll hex them as soon as I get a wand.”
“Which is a year from now,” Weasley said dismissively. “Like you’d remember.”
Ginny turned the full force of her scowl on him. Harry raised an eyebrow. The girl had fire, that was for sure. He wouldn’t bet on her forgetting who she wanted to hex. He would bet that Ron was on that list.
“I’m Parvati,” one of the other girls said.
“And I’m Padma,” the other added.
“There’s way too many twins around here,” Harry muttered.
Both of them half-smiled, half-grimaced. “Yes, well, we’re easier to tell apart, at least,” said Parvati. “I’m an inch shorter.”
Harry turned to the last boy in the group.
“Neville,” the boy said, and cleared his throat. “Neville Longbottom.”
Unfortunate last name. “A pleasure,” Harry said, looking around the group and imitating how he’d seen one of Vernon’s coworkers treat Petunia when he came over for dinner. Harry had gotten the distinct impression then that the man didn’t find it pleasurable at all to be meeting the walrus man’s wife, and he did his best to get the same message across here.
Longbottom blinked, and Padma and Parvati seemed to pick up on his subtle jibe, but it went right over Weasley and Jules and Ginny’s heads.
The Weasley twins shared another loaded glance.
“Let’s head back up to the house so I can get changed,” Pond Twin suggested. “I bet Harry’d like dry clothes, too. Then we can all get brooms and play a bit.”
“Someone better teach Harry how to stay on the broom first,” Weasley added.
Harry decided Weasley was now on his “to be hexed” list.
“I can do a drying charm,” Padma said, pulling out a wand and waving it in a specific pattern at Harry and Pond Twin. “Adsiche.”
Their clothes and hair dried instantly. Harry wriggled his feet and thought his toes were still damp, but he wasn’t complaining. He made a note to look that charm up later.
“But the Trace!” Longbottom protested.
Parvati rolled her eyes. “They ignore the Trace for students before first year,” she said in the manner of someone who likes knowing things others don’t, and likes to show it. “And besides, we’re at a wizarding family home. Any Trace that goes off here, they’d have no idea if it was us or Lord Potter.”
“He’s told you to call him James loads of times,” Jules said, and he and Padma and Parvati started bickering as they made their way back up towards the Manor.
Harry hung back. The twins had moved on to teasing Ginny, flying circles around her head and tossing leaves pulled from who knew where down at her. Weasley joined in the bickering with Jules and the girls, leaving—
“Sorry about all that,” Longbottom said, dropping back with Harry. They were a little ways behind the rest of the group. “I’m pants at flying, too, it’s not that big a deal.”
I’m not pants at flying. “Thanks.”
Longbottom looked at him, then at the other boys. “You—oh, you’re just pissed at Jules and Ron.”
Harry didn’t answer, which he supposed was an answer on its own.
“They’re kinda…” Longbottom trailed off, obviously not sure how to finish that sentence, and Harry didn’t bother trying to continue the conversation. He’d been right about Jules’ friends.
“Is anyone else coming?” he said after a second.
Longbottom shrugged. “I think this girl Luna Lovegood was supposed to come but she doesn’t do so great with being on time. Seamus Finnegan, Cedric Diggory, a few others.”
Harry winced. He did not want more people around to watch Jules and Ron take turns having a go at him, but it seemed he wasn’t going to get a choice.
Jules yanked open the broom shed and started passing out brooms. The Weasley twins apparently played for the Gryffindor team and had brought their own brooms along today; Weasley, Longbottom, Padma, Parvati, and Ginny didn’t have decent brooms of their own, so Jules lent them his.
“I don’t know why Jules put him on a Cleansweep Ten to start with,” Harry heard someone whisper.
He realized that, leaning against the outside of the broom shed, he could hear someone inside it, just on the other side of the wall. Someone who sounded a lot like Pond Twin.
“It’s a racing broom,” Broom Twin said. “Or a Quidditch broom—for a beginner?”
“Jules has never been the fastest broom in the shed,” Pond Twin said, which made both of them snigger and might have made Harry laugh if he hadn’t been so bloody furious.
A pause, during which Harry assumed they were communicating wordlessly somehow, and then, “No, you’re right, it’s too clever by half for Jules.”
“Mind, putting a beginner on that broom is something we might do.”
“We did do it. Remember Ginny?”
“Except she flew it like she was born in the air.”
“Ickle Potter was doing pretty well before we scared him.”
Pause again.
Harry was about ready to punch Jules. The twins seemed to think plotting to make Harry look ridiculous by throwing him on a high-quality hard-to-fly broom was too clever for Jules, and Harry was inclined to agree, but even then it proved Jules was self-centered, inconsiderate, and foolish.
Harry’s grip on the broom tightened to the point that his hand hurt.
He added Quidditch to the list of things at which he fully intended to beat Jules Potter.
But he wasn’t good enough yet to show up his brother now. So when the others came back out of the shed and took to the sky, passing around a big red ball called a Quaffle while the Weasley twins looped them and tried to knock it out of people’s hands, Harry was cautious. He kept his turns big and his speed down and one hand on the broom at all times. He didn’t give them any reason to laugh at him, but he didn’t call attention to himself either. He made sure to fly just barely not quite as well as the Weasley girl, who was a year younger but had at least been on brooms before.
Luna Lovegood was the next to arrive, a dreamy blond girl who most of the others seemed to view with vague contempt, except Ginny and Neville. Ginny seemed to consider Luna an odd friend, and Neville hovered around her with obvious fascination, probably because Luna was so obviously off. Harry watched her dreamy gaze and watched her tell Jules that he needed to dodge something called a Wrackspurt, watched the way Jules and Ron and Parvati seemed to make fun of her, and decided Luna was another kid who’d probably been called a freak before.
He didn’t like Seamus Finnegan much. The boy was brash, somewhat rude, and talked far too much about how his dad was a famous author. Dean Thomas was all right, as were Susan Bones and Ernie MacMillan, but Harry didn’t like how they all hung on his brother’s every word. Longbottom might be okay if he got over his shyness and obvious insecurity.
Harry eventually excused himself from the Quidditch game and sat down on the grass with Ginny, Luna, and Neville to watch the others play. Luna was telling a fascinated and confused Neville about a Crumple-horned Snorkack, and Ginny was frowning at the players.
“Not a Quidditch fan?” Harry asked her.
She huffed. “I love Quidditch, but Mum doesn’t like me playing and Ron will tell.”
Harry noted that she specified Ron, not the twins. That held with what he’d picked up; they were pranksters and probably lived to cause trouble.
“You were flying well, you know,” she said. “Before the twins scared you.”
He cut her a sideways glance. “Thanks.”
She nodded. Harry noticed that she was mostly watching Jules do loops and dives around Weasley and Finnegan, who clearly had slower brooms and couldn’t quite match Jules’ pace. He’d seen girls act like this at school. Ginny had a crush.
Harry hid a smirk and lay back on the grass, paying less attention to the players and more to the sky.
***
Jules’ friends left around one, after a rowdy lunch that left Harry exhausted just from trying to keep up with everything going on. He got largely ignored in the chaos, except for Longbottom and Lovegood, because the former was curious about the Muggles and the latter just seemed curious in general. Even the Weasley twins got sidetracked poking fun at Jules, their brother, Finnegan, and Thomas, for which Harry didn’t fault them because he greatly enjoyed watching Weasley and Finnegan in particular receive the teasing.
Jules apparently had some kind of special tutoring session on weekday afternoons for “physical training,” whatever that was, after which he sometimes had dinner with friends, and as James still hadn’t come home from work, Harry had the whole house to himself for the afternoon.
He spent it curled up with one of his new books on wizarding etiquette, politics, and history.
***
Harry dedicated the rest of his summer to making sure he wouldn’t be hopelessly behind the other students when he went to school.
James and Jules gave him a tour of the house; Harry tried not to let slip how strongly he disliked both of them and asked questions about the house. To his surprise, none of it was technically off limits, though James warned him that going into any of the locked rooms would probably give him a sneezing fit from all the dust. He also matched James and Jules’ level of interest in the library, which was very low, and promptly began using it as an escape.
It was easily his favorite place in the entire house.
Harry spent hours curled up in some strange nook in the library. Growing up in the cupboard had taught him to make himself comfortable in weird places and awkward positions; he could clamber up shelves like a monkey, tuck himself into corners, and crawl into small spaces, and be just fine there for an hour or three. He didn’t understand most of what he read, but what he did get was fascinating. A certain section of the library wouldn’t even let him in. He spent a week attacking it with various unlocking spells from the books he’d bought at Flourish and Blotts, and then in his next letter to Nott, he asked for help. Nott sent back a book on ward spells, both setting and breaking, with the warning that it was not legal to own and most of the spells in it were at the very least restricted. Harry was pretty sure it was a test of some kind, and he made sure to thank Nott sincerely in his response, as well as tell him that after two hours of work he finally managed to get into the restricted section of the Potter family library.
The books there were definitely borderline Dark. Or at least what James Potter called “dark magic” in one of his long rants about the Dark Side and the Light Side and Death Eaters that he was prone to falling into in the evenings. Harry would prod him into a rant and then just listen and gather information that James let slip in his anger. James would probably go through the roof if he knew what kinds of books Harry was finding back here. Even though Harry couldn’t understand most of them and didn’t bother trying most of the spells… something about the promises held in these pages, promises of tricky curses and slow pain and the ability to protect himself and get payback on the people who’d hurt him—was appealing.
He stewed for a few days before deciding that James and Jules never spent time in the library and no one would notice if some of these books went missing. Harry was the Heir to House Potter, anyway; technically he had just as much of a right to the contents of the library as James. Most of the “Dark” books he left on the shelves, but his book collection grew a lot with tomes snagged from the Potter library.
Things only got more tense after Jules and Harry’s birthday; the mysterious Ethan had apparently decided to reveal Harry’s presence during a press conference, and when James proposed the idea, Harry responded with a flat no. There was no way he was joining the Potter Family Drama before he knew hardly anything about the wizarding world. He’d probably put his foot so far in his mouth he’d kick his own tonsils. That, of course, led to a three hour argument that Harry concluded by locking himself in his room and burning three of his pillows to ash. The house-elves replaced them without comment and Harry hid in his room during the Boy Who Lived’s birthday gala, which was apparently one of the summer’s biggest social events. The twins tracked him down and hung out with him for a bit, the three of them aiming trip jinxes at random people from Harry’s second floor window, which conveniently overlooked the backyard and the bulk of the party. Only when a red haired woman saw Ron Weasley face-plant into a rhododendron and looked up at the open window did the twins retreat and leave Harry alone with his books again.
He told himself he wasn’t lonely, or jealous.
Ethan turned out to be Ethan Thorne, the Potter family lawyer and one of James’ good friends. He’d been made Jules’ second godfather when Jules was three, since his original godfather, Peter Pettigrew, was dead. Harry asked about his own godfather and learned that he’d once been named Hadrian Sirius Potter, until Sirius betrayed them to You-Know-Who and almost cost Harry and Jules their lives, at which point James made his other friend Remus into Harry’s godfather and had Harry’s middle name legally changed. Remus, however, hadn’t been back to England in almost seven years; he was traveling somewhere in Europe or possibly Asia. Harry thought it was a bit odd that a supposed best friend was so out of touch with James but decided it wasn’t worth his time. Ethan, on the other hand, was… concerning. Harry didn’t like how perceptive the tall, gangly man was. He had watery blue eyes a little on the large side that never seemed to miss a thing. And he definitely didn’t like Harry. Harry made polite conversation all the way through dinner and plead a headache to go to leave early.
Flying, at least, was incredible, and it quickly became the bulk of the time Harry spent with his father and brother. The three of them went flying a few times a week. Harry gritted his teeth through their tasteless jokes and filed away all their tips; he studied moving diagrams in Quidditch Through the Ages and Exercises for the Beginning Flyer and Basics of Broomsticks and Quidditch Training: The Fundamentals for drills he could run on the afternoons and evenings that James and Jules were busy doing Boy Who Lived things. A lot of it seemed to involve going to various Ministry functions, occasional press conferences, social calls at various people’s houses, and Jules’ mysterious “training” that seemed to be mostly indoctrination of the whole “Everyone who doesn’t like House Potter and Gryffindors and the Ministry is evil” schema, as well as “how to dodge when bad guys are shooting spells at you” since he was technically to young to be casting spells. He was a naturally gifted flyer, though, and he had a lot more practice than Harry, so Harry ignored Jules going on about the Patil twins and Ronald bloody Weasley and copied him in the air. James seemed to think they were destined to be the golden Gryffindor Quidditch players, the heirs to the legend of James Potter, then Charlie Weasley, then the Weasley twins, and now back to the Potters.
Harry was careful to be not as good as Jules when flying. Or doing anything else. James relented and taught them a few basic spells, like a Color-Change Charm that you could put on someone’s hair as a prank, and a really simple blocking spell for oncoming jinxes, and the Jelly-Legs Jinx. Harry made sure that Jules succeeded at casting them first, even though he probably could’ve beaten his brother. It helped, a little, to see that he was doing at least as well with his magic as Jules, who’d grown up a wizard.
And at night, he swapped the holly wand out for the ash wand and practiced with it until he was too tired to fire off a single spell.
He knew from his book of wand lore that ash wood was good for intelligence, planning, knowledge, and cleverness, while holly was associated with protection and fire. He got to know the personalities of the wands more than anything else. The holly wand felt like Harry himself—young, untested, eager, curious. It seemed to like casting new spells and his magic felt volatile when he used it.
The ash wand, on the other hand, was distinctly patient. Harry got the sense that it liked him but was only humoring him until he got to the point where he could cast harder spells. It seemed particularly willing to cast jinxes and hexes that he practiced in the dead of night from books Nott recommended or that he’d bought without James knowing or that he’d swiped from the library.
His correspondence with Nott was consistent and—lukewarm. Neither of them was fully willing to open up via letter; Harry suspected Nott was as reluctant as Harry himself to commit anything to ink and paper that could be used against either of them later. Harry got quite good at reading between the lines, and at writing convoluted letters in return that implied in their subtext Harry’s irritation with his father and ongoing interest in questionable magic. Nott seemed particularly interested in Herbology, and when Harry found a book near (but not in) the restricted section covering various Dark plants and their uses and growth conditions, he spent two weeks learning the Geminio Charm so he could take a duplicate with him to school. He planned to give it to Nott in exchange for the book on ward spells, which had already been useful not just for getting into the library, but also augmenting the wards on Harry’s trunk and allowing him to break into Jules’ room and poke around one afternoon. Not that he found anything particularly interesting, but it was still a decent diversion.
He hung out with Jules’ friends. The Weasley twins were funny, and Harry thought someday he might come to count them friends. Same for Ginny, and Longbottom if he could ever stop stuttering and hovering awkwardly. Diggory was all right, if a bit too straightforward and easy to read to really old Harry’s interest. But most of the others—at best, Harry found them boring. At worst, they were downright prats.
Mainly that category included Ron Weasley and Seamus Finnegan. And of course Jules Potter himself.
Harry counted down the days until September first.
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