Harry had been running so long he thought his lungs were about to collapse.
Dudley and Piers and the rest had just found his last, best hiding spot in the park, which of course meant that he had to take off running to stay ahead of the gang. He hadn’t gotten breakfast because he burned the toast, and his stomach was hollow and angry, and Dudley was hyped up on smoothies and Harry’s scrambled eggs and excitement.
They were getting closer.
He saw a street sign he didn’t know and went that way, desperate enough to hope unfamiliar ground would confuse his cousin.
Then he saw another sign, this one outside a big ugly gray building: Public Library.
The school library—Harry remembered the school library was very strict about being quiet. It was also a place Dudley’s crew never went.
He didn’t have to think twice about flying up the steps and through the automatic glass doors.
From just inside, he saw Dudley and Sammy and Piers and Brian go running by, hollering and mad, Dudley and Piers both waving sticks. They didn’t even look at the library.
Deciding he might as well hang out for a bit, here where they couldn’t kick up a fuss even if they found him, Harry turned around.
It was bigger than the school library. A lot bigger.
He never liked the school library much; the librarian was a friend of Aunt Petunia’s from the PA, and she always watched him like she thought he was going to steal the books, or shred them, or possibly make a fire inside of a pentagram. (Harry wasn’t supposed to know what pentagrams were, but he’d eavesdropped on some of the older kids talking in gleeful whispers like children do when they come across forbidden knowledge that they don’t fully understand, and he knew it had to do with summoning the Devil. Aunt Petunia seemed to hate the Devil, though, so Harry figured vaguely that if he knew how to call on the Devil and the Devil would take his side against his aunt and uncle, he’d pick the devil over them every time. He didn’t actually know how to summon the Devil, though, and even if he did he wouldn’t do it in the school library.)
This library was different. The front desk didn’t have anyone sitting at it, and there were a number of people scattered about at plain beige tables, reading or typing or writing in silence. Harry narrowed his eyes at the kindly woman pushing a cart full of books by; she looked a bit like an old teacher of his, Mrs. Moore, who was plump and had a head full of wild dark curls and a really pretty accent and who slipped him extra corned beef sandwiches sometimes during lunch, except this lady’s skin was a little bit closer to copper than medium brown.
“E-excuse me,” Harry stammered.
She turned to him and blinked. He knew what she saw; knew his clothes were big and ugly and worn out and that he looked closer to five than seven years old. Harry put on his best innocent face, the one he wore with his teachers, making his eyes wide and vulnerable and his mouth hopeful. He also did his best to dim the unnatural green of his eyes. He knew it made some people uncomfortable and wasn’t sure exactly how it worked but he knew he could make them duller for short time periods if he concentrated, although it always gave him a headache afterward.
It seemed to work. The woman’s face softened almost immediately into a smile. Harry hid his satisfaction. “How can I help you, dearie?” she said, bending down a little bit.
He gave her his best shy smile in return. “I was wondering if—if you have books here… for kids?”
“Of course,” she said, her smile wider. “Want me to show you?”
“Thank you,” Harry said, looking bashfully at the ground, a move he’d learned from Piers Polkiss, who for all his rat-faced stupidity was weirdly good at manipulating teachers. Harry was pretty sure Piers only used the look-down-and-away maneuver because it was harder to trust him when you could see all his face.
“Are you a librarian?”
“I sure am,” the woman said. Harry squinted and made out the words on her name tag—Smithy. “Been working here for thirty-three years.”
“Gosh,” he said, trying to sound admiring. “That’s a long time to work anywhere.”
“I’m sure you get lots of advice from grown-ups, and I’m sure you find most of it’s useless,” Mrs. Smithy said with a wink. “But this bit’s never failed me yet. Do something you love and you’ll never work a day in your life.”
Harry frowned a little, thinking about that. It made sense, if work was something unpleasant you only did for money. He didn’t think Uncle Vernon’s job was very fun, based on how much Uncle Vernon complained about his boss and his coworkers and the people who worked for him and the companies he worked with and the layout of the parking garage and the quality of the coffee. Maybe if Uncle Vernon did something he liked, he wouldn’t be so irritable all the time.
“So get a job you like…” he said slowly, “and you won’t ever get bored with it? Or wish you didn’t have to do it?”
Mrs. Smithy smiled even brighter. “Exactly! You’re a clever one. How old are you? Five?”
“Seven,” Harry said, looking down again. This time it wasn’t a fake. He knew he was tiny for his age, and hated it.
“Oh, dearie me, I’m sorry. Well, I’m sure you’ll grow,” Mrs. Smithy assured him. “My son’s grown and gone now, of course, in his thirties now, but let me tell you, he was the shortest boy in his year until he turned sixteen, and then he shot up like a weed. Tallest of all his classmates inside eighteen months. And, here we are!”
“Wow,” Harry breathed, looking around with wide eyes. They had loads more books than the school library, and there was no beady-eyed Ms. Gurgle there to glare at him anytime he coughed. “Thanks!”
“Have a nice day, dearie,” Ms. Smithy said with one last smile, and then she bustled away.
Harry spent about a minute just wandering around, before he pulled out a blue paperback with a dragon on the cover and started reading.
***
The library became his escape.
Harry’s favorite thing about the fiction section was that—was that all the weird things about him—all his freakishness—well, in the books, it wasn’t freakish. It meant he was a magician, or a Dragon Rider, or a genie-in-training, or starstruck. It meant he was special, powerful, not just a kid from boring Little Whinging. Slowly, he started to think that maybe Aunt Petunia was wrong. She wasn’t a very nice person, after all—he’d believed her when she said he was a freak, but he hated Aunt Petunia, so maybe being something Aunt Petunia didn’t like was good.
He worked extra hard for a month, was on his best behavior, and worked up the courage to ask Aunt Petunia if he could read some of the old books Dudley got for Christmas and birthdays and cast aside to gather dust in his second bedroom. Her face got pinched and cruel, and for a second Harry was sure she’d take a broom to him, but then she nodded jerkily and told him harshly to “not even think about damaging them.” Harry thanked her and disappeared before she could change her mind.
He put in an extra effort at dinner that night. Not because he thought it was a kindness—he’d read enough to know his family sucked at being family, and that acting like a decent person for once didn’t count as something he should be grateful for—but because he figured it’d be easier to get concessions in the future if he gave something in return. Even if it was maddening.
Dudley never noticed the books’ absence, and Uncle Vernon never noticed them lined up at the low end of the cupboard when he threw Harry inside, and Harry and Aunt Petunia never brought it up again. But one by one, Dudley’s books walked away from his second bedroom and moved to Harry’s cupboard.
He was careful with them. But he didn’t ignore them.
***
Harry sat in the library one day, about a year after he’d first come here. He was frowning. He’d been trying to read for a while but he was distracted. He hadn’t come in a week, since Uncle Vernon saw him accidentally repair a broken dish in the kitchen and threw him in the cupboard for six days straight. Harry knew he had to learn to control his freakishness. Just like the characters in his books—they had to learn it, too.
“How you doing, Neal?” Mrs. Smithy asked, sticking her head into the corner Harry liked to read in.
He gave her his best sweet smile. “Hi, Mrs. Smithy! Pretty good.”
She looked at the closed book. “Is something wrong? Usually when I come back here, you’ve got your nose buried in the pages.”
Harry hesitated. “I…”
He might as well ask her. She was a grown-up, and while he didn’t trust her (no one had ever helped him, even when he asked; asking for help just got him could shouldered by adults at school and beaten at home by the Dursleys for being ungrateful and spreading rumours), he did like her. And he trusted her… a little more than any other adult.
“If you want to learn a new skill, how do you do it?” he said slowly. “One that you have to teach yourself.”
She paused. “Like a language?”
“I… guess.” That would work.
“Study and practice,” she said with a shrug. “Lots of practice. Even when you don’t see anything improving.”
He nodded slowly. “Oh… kay. Thanks.”
“If you need anything, let me know,” she said with a warm smile.
Food. A warm jacket. Bandaids. Books. Someone to whack my cousin in the face. Something to help me sleep at night. “I will, thanks.”
She disappeared, and Harry frowned at the book.
He’d made things move. He’d regrown his hair overnight. He’d accidentally resized his clothes at least twice that he knew of so he looked like was dressed in bits of tailored rags instead of just rags. He’d turned that one teacher’s hair a funny color when she laughed at him in class for being dumb, even though he was only being dumb so he wouldn’t do better than Dudley.
Harry tugged off his old, ratty beanie and thought about warmth. Warm showers on the rare days the Dursleys left him alone in the house. Warm summer sun and the baking asphalt in the park, soothing against his back even when Dudley’s gang was standing around laughing, even though his skin stung from sliding over the ground. Warm air hitting you in the face when you came in out of the cold.
He smelled smoke at the same time as his hands registered heat and looked down—and yelped.
His beanie was on fire.
Harry dropped it, and then came to his senses and stomped on it until the baby flames were gone, and then nervously peeked out of his corner.
No one had noticed.
He let out a breath and picked up the beanie; if you turned it inside out, you wouldn’t even be able to tell it was damaged.
He hadn’t burned the library down, and he had gotten a reaction.
At least it proved he had some degree of control.
***
It took a month for Harry to master the warming. He could put warmth into an item of clothing or pretty much anything else, although paper was hard, that would last a few minutes to all day, depending on how much strength he put into it. At first even a little bit made him dizzy and exhausted, but with practice, it got easier and easier. He found himself sleeping loads better with warmth sunk deep into his thin, ratty blanket.
Fire was easier; he didn’t have to worry about the line between heat and burning. When he needed to burn something, he just thought about all the times Dudley pushed him down the stairs or broke things and blamed it on Harry or flaunted his piles of presents in Harry’s face or stole Harry’s food, the times Aunt Petunia whacked him with a broom or a frying pan, the times Uncle Vernon got out his belt or his big meaty hands for a beating, and things ignited easily. Harry normally kept his anger packed away. It was interesting to learn that it could, sometimes, be useful.
But if he really thought about it, his anger wasn’t really hot. It helped with fire, but mostly Harry’s anger felt cold in his stomach. Cold and dense like the glaciers he’d read about. So that was what he did next—freezing things. Ice came even easier than fire did. And he got a spark of happiness that lasted for a week when he glared at the pavement and spread ice over it just in time for Dudley and Piers and Sammy to slip and fall into a rubbish bin.
When they turned around, he was gone.
Harry didn’t even get blamed.
He learned a lesson from that, too:
Don’t get caught.
***
Around the time he turned nine, his aunt started locking him in the cupboard at night. So Harry took it upon himself to learn how to unlock things.
He spent an hour every night for three months glaring at his cupboard and concentrating until his head hurt and he had to give up and go to sleep because Aunt Petunia made him get up at six every morning to make breakfast.
The first time he heard a grudging click, Harry’s breath caught in his throat.
He reached out slowly for the door. If he’d imagined it—
But he hadn’t, and the door opened slowly at the touch of his fingertips.
Harry smiled, slow and sharp.
***
He ate better after that, and while he didn’t really grow, the ability to creep out and snag a piece of leftover chicken, a slice or two of bread, a few swallows of milk straight from the carton, cold carrots or celery from the counter—it made all the difference. Harry found he had more energy, needed less sleep, and got sick less often. If his aunt and uncle noticed, they didn’t say anything, and he gladly took the free time that resulted from not finishing his chores more quickly than they expected and then hiding in the garden shed where no one else really went. Between warming charms and Dudley’s old books, many a pleasant hour was snatched in the garden shed.
Using his freakishness didn’t tire him out as quickly, either, and learning new things took just as long but he didn’t get migraines and dizziness like before. Harry worked at locking and unlocking his cupboard, then the front door, then the back door, then the padlock on the garden shed, then Uncle Vernon’s car doors, until he could do it consistently and with his eyes closed, and then when Aunt Petunia scolded him for going through lightbulbs too quickly in his cupboard despite the fact that there was only one bare bulb that he only used for reading at night, he decided to learn something else. This one was easier than the locks. Summoning a ball of light to one palm wasn’t very different from the warming he could put on things. Making it float up by the ceiling of his cupboard was harder, but Harry managed eventually, and the light wasn’t particularly strong but it worked. Eventually he got to the point where he could make it as small as a pinhead or as big as a basketball and anywhere in between, and the colors of the light could change, though bigger lights, or color changing, still tired him out easily.
After that he set himself to learning how to move things. Doing more than moving one of the kitchen chairs a foot or two, or pushing his cupboard door open or closed, was hard, but the night Harry managed to lift his mattress a few inches off the cot with himself sitting on it was one of the best nights of his life.
He’d make it through school. He would survive. After he turned eleven, he’d be going to a different school from Dudley; maybe then he could make actual friends and get decent grades and use all the knowledge he’d been gaining and then hiding in class and in the library for all these years.
He’d use his freakishness when he could, and keep it secret, and stay sneaky, and not get caught, and one day he’d make it out of here and he would never come back.
Sometimes Harry fantasized about payback. Sometimes he imagined holding Dudley’s head in the toilet without moving a finger, or spreading ice beneath Uncle Vernon’s feet at the top of the stairs, or making the flames of the stovetop grow and reach for Aunt Petunia’s apron. But those were the thoughts that became painful because he couldn’t do anything about them (yet) so he just shoved them into the back corner of his mind and ignored them when they cropped up again.
***
He’d never let Aunt Petunia know, but Harry actually rather liked gardening. He could drink from the hose to keep himself from getting thirsty or even too hungry, and it was satisfying in a weird way. So he kept his face blank when she sent him outside but trimming the roses and mowing the lawn and weeding the flowerbeds were some of his favorite chores.
It did get lonely, though. Harry hated it but he did feel intensely lonely sometimes. He’d never had a friend; Dudley chased everyone away at school, and anyway he thought most of his classmates were a little too dumb and annoying to be real friends even if Harry’s cousin hadn’t been the bullying terror of the school. He started talking to himself sometimes, or the flowers, just to hear his own voice. “Oh no you don’t” when a rosebush tried to tear his shirt; “take that” when he yanked a particularly stubborn root; “well that’s just nasty” when he came across slugs hiding under low-growing leaves in the spring.
He happened across a gardener snake one summer day. Harry was distracted thinking about his cousin’s birthday the next day, and how he’d have to get up extra early and be especially careful not to burn the bacon, and wondering if he could use his freakishness to lift some bacon to his mouth while his hands were busy, and he almost stepped on the snake.
“Oh no—” He stumbled, tripped, and fell.
“Stupid clumsy humans,” the snake hissed.
Harry froze.
The snake glared at him. “Are you going to start screaming too, you big dumb lump?”
“Sorry—what?” Harry choked, realizing that his words had come out with a little bit of a hissy sound.
The snake reared back, seeming as shocked as Harry. “You are a speaker!”
“I… guess?”
“How interesting.” The snake seemed curious now. “I apologize for calling you dumb. I still think you’re a lump. Humans are clumsy.”
“I was trying not to step on you,” Harry said indignantly, forgetting to be shocked.
“Thanks for that, I suppose,” the snake said. “I haven’t met a speaker before.”
“So it’s not common? Being able to talk to snakes?”
“Oh, by my egg, no.”
Harry paused.
“If there’s nothing else, I need to go hunt,” the snake said irritably.
“Right—sorry. Um. I can—I’d like to—talk more. If you can come back,” Harry blurted, not wanting to lose this sudden and unexpected connection.
The snake seemed to think it over. “I have heard that humans can stroke snakes in a way that feels nice. If you will try, I will come back… sometime.”
“Deal,” Harry said quickly.
The snake slipped away so easily that Harry blinked and it was gone.
Okay. So he could talk to snakes. That was… not actually any weirder than lighting things on fire with his mind or hovering himself off the ground like his mattress was trying to copy Aladdin’s magic carpet.
***
Word spread, and gardening got a lot less lonely after that, as a number of local snakes showed up to talk to chat while Harry worked. The first snake he’d met went by a name that Harry heard as Jase and seemed particularly fond of gentle rubbing of his back, though he wasn’t the only one. Snakes didn’t provide the most interesting of conversation. Mostly they talked about their nests, their prey, how the day’s hunting had gone, looking for a mate, preparing for hibernation, or nice places to laze in the sun. Harry got good fast at talking about snake things. Snakes also, he learned, liked attention; if he stroked them when they asked him to and asked questions and let them talk about themselves and their days, they quickly came to see him as an interesting and somewhat useful diversion.
He was sorry when interference from school cut back on his time in the garden, and sorrier when the cooling weather sent many of his scaly friends into hibernation. The winter looked even longer after a few months of companionship that, despite his companions not being actual people, had felt like a gift to the conversation-starved boy.
***
“Get the mail, Dudley.”
“Make Harry do it.”
“Get the mail, Harry.”
“Make Dudley do it.”
“Poke him with your Smelting stick, Dudley.”
Harry dodged the Smelting stick and happily fled the chaos of the kitchen, the stink of his new school uniform, the pile of presents, and the terror that was Dudley armed with a school-issued weapon.
Honestly, he thought, what kind of school gives all the kids actual clubs to hit each other with?
He took his time collecting the mail and sifting through the envelopes, prolonging his freedom from the kitchen as long as possible.
His hands froze.
Harry brought the letter almost up to his nose, squinting at the letters.
Mr. H. Potter
The Cupboard Under the Stairs
Number 4 Privet Drive
Little Whinging, Surrey
A… letter. To him.
From someone who knew he slept in a cupboard.
Harry’s eyes narrowed, even as his heart pounded with excitement. He wanted to be excited… but it could also be a nasty prank. Though the handwriting was too neat to belong to any of Dudley’s friends, who knew about the cupboard, and anyway all of them were too dumb to write something like “Mr. H. Potter.” He couldn’t think who else would be willing to prank him and also know about the cupboard. Aunt Marge, maybe?
But this wasn’t her style. If she wanted to hurt him she’d just show up and sic Ripper on him. In fact, she had, just a few weeks ago.
“Boy!” Uncle Vernon bellowed, and Harry jumped and stuff the letter into the waistband of Dudley’s old shorts before trotting back into the kitchen.
“Sorry, Uncle Vernon,” he said, handing over the stack of letters and returning to the counter.
He was cooking the bacon, amidst Aunt Petunia’s shrill orders for him to not burn it, when the knock sounded.
“I bet it’s Piers!” Dudley shouted, moving faster than Harry would’ve expected a boy Dudley’s size to be able to move.
Harry did his best to calm his heart rate and hoped that Piers’ arrival would mean Aunt Petunia would kick him out of the kitchen so he could read the letter.
Then a shriek from the front hall jolted him out of his thoughts, and Harry almost dropped the pan.
Vernon’s head snapped up, and his eyes sharpened. “Petunia?”
“—not have you in my house!” Aunt Petunia’s rose over the low murmurs of conversation—Dudley’s voice, and then another man Harry didn’t recognize. Hers were the only words he could pick out over the sizzle of cooking bacon.
“Petunia, now is not the time,” someone said, quite clearly, and then someone stepped into the kitchen and Harry looked up and froze.
He was looking at a mirror of himself, if he were twenty years older, and if his older self got regular exercise and meals and had a life that would put a healthy glow in his skin. Same wild black hair, same round wire-frame glasses, same lean build, same mischievous set of his mouth. The only difference was that while Harry’s eyes were bright green, this man’s were a warm hazel, and while Harry had a small scar on his forehead from the car crash that killed his parents, this man’s skin was unblemished. Harry could tell because his own hair flopped forward and hid the scar but this man’s hair was swept back and up off his forehead in a carelessly stylish way.
Harry realized he was gaping and shut his mouth rapidly and returned to the bacon. If he burned it, he’d be in trouble.
“Boy, leave the bacon,” Uncle Vernon ordered.
Harry did as he was told as quickly as possible. He knew the tension in the room; knew it usually meant violence if he wasn’t really, really careful.
Then he dared peek up and pay attention to the adults. The strange man was looking around the room, slow and stunned like he couldn’t process everything. Aunt Petunia had pushed her way into the kitchen and was standing by Uncle Vernon. Dudley, meanwhile, was in the hall still, unable to fit his girth behind the stranger and shouting about how he wanted his presents and he wanted his breakfast and who is this in the house, Mum, he’s in my way, Mum what’s going on?
Harry saw how his aunt and uncle were staring at the stranger and a few pieces clicked together. They knew him. They knew him, from somewhere, and they were not happy to see him, and the reason why had something to do with Harry.
“Harry?” the strange man said uncertainly.
“Yes, sir,” he said politely.
“Harry, I’m… it’s me,” the stranger said. “James… Potter?”
Harry’s eyes darted to Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon before he could help it. He knew that name. That was his father’s name. His father, who was dead.
This was all a joke.
Strangely, that was enough to make Harry relax. A joke he could deal with. It made him angry, of course, but where Dudley’s anger was hot Harry’s ran cold, and he could set it aside to deal with what was in front of him.
“Petunia,” the stranger said slowly, clearly fighting back anger of his own. “Petunia, what—”
“You said you weren’t coming back,” Aunt Petunia said in the tone of voice that said she was dangerously angry. Harry was more scared of her when she got that tone than he ever was of Uncle Vernon no matter how much his uncle stomped or yelled or used his belt. “You said you couldn’t take care of him. That we had to raise him because you couldn’t.”
“I didn’t—I asked you to tell him about us,” the stranger said, something weird in his voice.
Harry was starting to doubt the prank conclusion. This was too clever and too well acted for the Dursleys, not to mention too complicated, not to mention they’d never do it on Dudley’s birthday.
“You forfeited any say in his upbringing when you dumped your one-year-old son in my arms in the middle of the night, gave me a thirty-minute rushed explanation, and disappeared for ten years,” Aunt Petunia hissed.
Harry choked. “You’re—you’re my—what?” he gasped out before he could stop himself.
The stranger looked pained when he finally met Harry’s eyes. “Yes, Harry. I’m… your father.”
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