Chapter Text
The letter comes while Harry is asleep.
It isn’t that the letter comes early. No, it sits buried between bills and adverts and postcards just like any other letter would, waiting patiently on the front step for someone to scoop it up. But Aunt Petunia wakes in a good mood, and dresses in a good mood, and comes downstairs in a good mood. She does not think to wake the vile little thing she has locked up in the boot cupboard beneath her stairs, because thinking of the freak is unpleasant, and she is in a good mood.
She puts the kettle on and peers judgmentally through her kitchen window at the neighbors’ inferior garden, stares in satisfaction at her own gorgeous blooms, and then goes to get the newspaper.
It is, perhaps, entirely unimportant to note that she had intended to keep the child. She had intended to love the child, and she had intended to raise the child just as she raised her own boy, given him her own name to start – because they were the same, weren’t they, and he’d do nothing but thank her if Lily Potter ever returned, shower her with gratitude for teaching him how absolutely vile his mother is –
But then the toys had begun floating.
Petunia’s motives do not matter. Her intentions do not matter. All that really matters is that when she feels that envelope, the press of a wax seal and high-end parchment, the glint of shiny ink – she can no longer deny what she has spent so long in willful ignorance of.
The freak becomes a freak, and Petunia goes white, lips pressed thin and pale with fury. She sets the mail down in a jumbled pile on her kitchen table, snatches the abominable letter up, and stalks towards the boot cupboard.
She drags the boy out by his arm, nails piercing flesh and so furious she cannot spit the vitriol boiling on her tongue at him. She thinks of the boy as it rather than he, but he lingers in her thoughts only long enough for her to wrench open the front door and hurtle him down the cement steps with all the force she can muster. It isn’t a lot, but the boy weighs hardly anything, and so Petunia’s strength does not really matter either.
“I’ll not have a freak in my house!” She hisses; hisses, because Petunia can be shrill and obnoxious but her rage has always been quiet, seething, lest it draw the attention of the neighborhood’s other housewives. She hurtles the letter at the freak, slams her front door shut, locks it, and breathes.
She smooths her hands down the front of her robe, and tucks a stray curl behind her ear, and then closes the door to the boot cupboard. The kettle begins to whistle.
She goes to make tea.
X
Harry, bruised and aching and bleeding from the puncture wounds in his arm, sits in his aunt’s yard for a heartbeat, and then two, and then three, before he sees the letter. The letter with his name on it, curled in beautiful calligraphy; Harry James Evans.
There are other words beneath it. No wonder, he thinks, he’s been thrown out. Someone taunting his aunt like that – she’d fear for the whole family’s reputation.
Harry takes the letter because he has nothing else to do, stuffs it into the waistband of his cousin’s ratty old sweatpants, and then sets out for the nearby park.
He hasn’t kept his bookbag in the Dursley’s home in years. He has his own locker at school, and Harry keeps his precious things inside it – nicer pencils and notebooks and the last little scrap of cloth he has from his baby blanket. His things aren’t safe there, not really – he knows the teachers routinely search his locker – but they don’t break things or take things when they look. And they don’t talk to him about it. So, it’s better than Dudley getting ahold of it.
Summers are harder, but there’s a nice little hollow at the top of one of the trees in the wooded part of the park he can fit it into, and so far, no one else has found it.
He doesn’t open the letter until he’s tucked away high in the tree’s branches, his backpack on his lap. He reads it through three times before putting it down, and Harry stares blankly out at the park, and frowns.
He doesn’t like this, he decides. But there’s an address, and a ticket, and a date – two dates. There’s enough to see, to verify. The letter isn’t very informative on its own – a materials list, a brief introduction, a ticket and a single sentence dedicated to one of two faculty-guided shopping days he’s been assigned. He and his guardians are expected to show up, if he wishes to attend.
Well. He doesn’t have guardians anymore. But if they think students will believe this, that magic exists, and that they’ll come, and that these magic people won’t even send someone with the letters –
Well.
He’d best get there early, he thinks.
X
The thing of it is – Harry James Evans is only partially correct in his assessment of Hogwarts’ attitudes towards those of its students not born to magical families.
Traditionally, only muggleborn students get a visit from a faculty member, to provide proof and an ease of transition. Muggleborn students are marked as such not by a faculty member, not by the Headmaster, not by a fallible living entity with bias and prejudice and faulty memory – but by the magic of Hogwarts itself.
Magical children with non-magical parents get a visit; and Harry James Evans is not a magical child with non-magical parents.
In a time of peace, wherein no family fractured beneath warfare or strife – that would be enough. But the Wizarding World is hot off not one but two recent Dark Lords, and while Grindelwald’s war did not touch Britain quite as severely as the rest of Europe, Voldemort’s left more children orphaned than most realized.
A magical child with magical family, upon the death of her parents, is ordinarily sent to another magical relative. But the Death Eaters were thorough in their hunts; when they began to slaughter a family they did not stop until there was no one left. As interrelated and vast as the branches of wizarding families are, few were brave enough to take in the last of another line and risk the target that would put on their backs. Even after Charles Fleamont Potter defeated Lord Voldemort himself, the Death Eaters did not go quietly and it was simply easier to allow the child to…disappear.
After all – the muggle world, though mundane and inferior, was filled with families that wanted for children. Perhaps a non-magical relative, or a squib thrown out for the sin of existing – perhaps the child had family, still. And if not, well surely a muggle family would be eager to take in a child so vastly superior than a muggle baby.
And so – magical orphans were abandoned to the whims of the mundane world. All of them born to magical parents, all raised in non-magical households, all raised in a non-magical world.
Some, like Harry, will persevere and make their way to the Leaky Cauldron and Platform 9 ¾ anyway. Some will simply throw the letter away as a poor joke or incoherent nonsense, and move on with their lives. Some will see the letter as a threat.
Britain will lose nearly half a generation of magical blood to its carelessness.
It is an invisible oversight. It will not be corrected.
X
Surviving without the Dursleys is frighteningly easy in some ways, and infinitely harder in others. It always is.
Much of what Harry has grown up fearing is no longer a threat, and what new fears he faces are almost insignificant in the face of what he has left behind. He’s used to not having food, to scrounging and stealing just enough to keep himself alive. He’s used to tucking himself into small, uncomfortable places where no man nor animal can reach him.
But he’s never had to avoid quite so many people before.
He stays out of people’s way for the most part, tucks himself unseen between adults when sneaking onto buses and into stores. He’s got deft fingers, and he’s pickpocketed before, and Harry is discomforted to realize he’s better fed on the streets than he was with his Aunt and Uncle.
He spends the two weeks leading up to the date on his letter making his way into London proper, sleeping where he can, eating when he can, and washing when he can in whatever public restroom he can find.
The morning of, he puts on his only spare set of Dudley’s cast-offs, and breathes.
If this is fake, that’s okay too, he decides. It’ll be a little bit of a disappointment, but he knows how to live on the streets, and he’s quick, and he’s smart. He considers not going at all, considers what else he could do with his newfound freedom, considers where he could go and what he could do but –
But, but, but –
It explains too much about his aunt. Too much about himself, about the Dursley’s freak, about all those nonsensical punishments –
But he hungers.
He’d wanted to graduate with good grades and get his degree and do anything to get away from the Dursleys, because that had been the only realistic choice he’d had. He could go to the nearest police station and turn himself in, but they’d just take him right back to the Dursleys – they had before, they would again, and no matter what he does that path has been closed to him. He can’t enroll in a school on his own, without a place to live or money to buy materials.
And that will be a problem for this magical school, but there’s no mention of tuition on his letter and that might…indicate something.
He doesn’t know.
That’s the crux of it. There’s too much he doesn’t know.
So Harry goes.
X
The Leaky Cauldron could be a warm, welcoming place, worn and used in the way only something with great love can be, but it is not that. It is dark and dirty, dingy and crammed with so many people in such strange outfits that the knot of adults and wide-eyed children in regular clothing stands out like a beacon. There is a tall, stern woman in long black robes and a crooked, pointed witches hat checking off names on a roll of thick yellowed paper with a feather the size of her own arm. Harry approaches her first.
She frowns when she looks at him.
“Where are your parents, dear?”
“My guardians couldn’t make it.” Harry says quietly, and that is enough. She dismisses him with a disapproving frown, after checking his name off on her paper, and he scurries into the back of the group, ducks into the darker shadows in the bar, and waits.
It’s no different than any other event at school, at his old school. Parents side-eye him or sneer or both and children give him weird looks and shuffle away. That doesn’t bother Harry too much, though he is unimpressed with it. Figures he’d be freaky even among the other freaks.
The tall woman introduces herself in clipped tones as Professor McGonagall, Deputy Headmistress, Head of Gryffindor House, and Professor of Transfiguration. She tells them that while they are free to do their own shopping, certain school-approved stores have prepared for their arrival, and it would be best to visit each during their allotted time. She shows them how to get into Diagon Alley – Harry thinks it’s brilliant, a whole shopping district hidden behind an otherwise-solid brick wall, wonders if he could hide himself like that.
Non-magical folk, muggles, cannot open Diagon on their own. Wizards do not need a wand to open the entryway, but most prefer to use one instead of tapping the admittedly slimy bricks with their own hands. Harry likes this; it means he can come back.
Professor McGonagall leads them at a quick, brisk pace straight down a cobblestone street lined with brilliantly strange shops towards what she says is a bank, Gringotts, run by goblins. They will need to obtain an account manager to set up a vault and streamline currency exchange; wizards do not use pounds. They cannot move on to the shops until they’ve completed their business here.
She takes them straight to a clump of small, sneering figures at the far end of the bank’s lobby – unnaturally large compared to its outside – from the tellers and their wobbly lines of wizards and witches. The goblins make quick work of separating out the families, assigning them a goblin, and vanishing into an ominously dark hall behind the nearest teller’s counter. Harry watches this process curiously for a few moments, before stepping up to the first goblin to meet his gaze.
“With me.” The goblin barks, and immediately sets out. He – Harry thinks the goblin is male – is surprisingly quick given his short stature, and Harry jogs to keep up. They rush down a twisting maze of passages and halls and the goblin turns so abruptly into a seemingly random room that Harry nearly trips over his feet in his haste to get inside.
He’s waved towards a stool on the close side of a heavy, ornate stone desk. When he sits, and the goblin sits in a high-backed chair on the other side, Harry is just below eye-level, and he can’t help but giggle a little. The goblin’s lips twitch up, baring his teeth.
“I am Griphook. I doubt the witch bothered to explain our procedures properly, wizardkind never does. Where are your guardians?”
Guardians, this one says, Harry notes. He considers his words carefully, and then smiles back, with teeth.
“They got rid of me when I got my letter.”
The goblin doesn’t look surprised.
“You’ll find, child, that wizards are more useless than even muggles.”
But the goblin doesn’t move to kick him out, and – Harry tilts his head curiously.
“I obviously don’t have any money. Or anyone who could give me any. Why keep talking to me?”
Griphook smirks, and produces a stiff, shiny square of thick paper like that his letter his written on.
“Wizardkind manages themselves through family magics. There is, technically, a process for releasing a family’s magic and bestowing it upon a worthy recipient, but it must be completed by the family’s Lord or Lady – an adult witch or wizard in charge of the rest of their kin – prior to death. Very, very few risk such a ritual. Most deceased families’ magics go dormant until a child with a similar magical signature is born, or until some cast-out descendant of a squib child is born to magic. Both categories are referred to as muggleborn by wizardkind.”
“So I might…inherit something.”
“Most muggleborn children do. The British wizarding world has just recently survived two great wars in rapid succession, and has been on the decline for centuries prior. The number of otherwise-extinct lines is numerous, and Gringotts profits substantially by reviving them. It helps, perhaps, that it infuriates wizardkind.”
“Because they don’t like you.”
“Mm. We assist in raising political figures that owe us – or perhaps simply bear us some goodwill. Goblinkind is willing and able to bleed and make bleed for our fights, but wizards prefer politics and beating them at their own game is always delicious.”
Griphook is – open. Harry thinks it’s calculated. He knows what he looks like, what the goblin has likely – correctly – assumed about his past. He has heard enough whispers and read enough pamphlets while locked in the nurse’s office to know that this is an appeasement, an olive branch, as much as it is a tactic.
But the offer is nonsense. Nothing Harry thinks he wouldn’t do on his own. If the goblins prove trustworthy…
“There’s a test?”
Griphook produces a dagger, crafted in smooth lines out of a solid piece of metal, and hands it over.
“Three drops on the parchment. It has already been treated. Your injury will heal promptly after; take care not to lose any of your blood carelessly. It can be used against you.”
Harry repeats the warning in his thoughts while he cuts himself, examines the blade to be sure there is no blood on it, and hands it back. Three drops hit the paper, the parchment, and sink into it without a trace.
The ink that darkens the parchment is dark, but in the office’s light it is also red, and Harry is so entranced by the color that he almost misses the startled noise that escapes Griphook. His gaze flicks to the goblin, and then back to the paper, and Harry feels himself freeze.
“’S not normal.”
“…Lost heirs are not quite so uncommon as you think, child. It is you yourself that makes these results…interesting.”
He’s got a living mother listed, and a living father. And a living brother. Lily and James and Charles Potter. But Harry’s name is still as it ever was, Harry James Evans.
Below that is listed Heir Potter and Heir Black. He’s got a godfather listed by that last one, a living Sirius Black, and –
The goblin cackles, slaps the corner of his desk with an open palm and leans back in his chair. He looks gleeful, and Harry’s chest hurts and his hands are shaking where he has his fingers curled hard enough to ache around the edge of his stool, but he focuses in on the goblin’s glee and steels himself anyway.
“They’re alive?”
“They are the most famous wizarding family in the country, child.”
“Why’d they get rid of – or why am I still heir if they got rid of me?” His change in question is sloppy and crackly around the edges, but the goblin does not remark on it.
He’s not sure what heir means in the magical context, but he knows what it means in the regular, in the muggle, and Griphook has already mentioned inheritance, and –
He does not find it hard to believe that Petunia’s sister is so similar to her. He does find it hard to believe that anyone related to Petunia would have allowed him a title, let alone whatever else comes with it.
“I will answer to the best of my abilities. Firstborn children tend to inherit the regard of their family’s magic, although it is not always a given; I know of at least two other children who have stronger claim to House Black by blood and age, but it is you the family magic has chosen as heir. You are a twin; the elder, in fact. Your family may be able to…materially disinherit you – toss you aside, refuse to provide for you – but they cannot magically disinherit you any longer. The practice was abused so thoroughly that, centuries ago, wizardkind worked a great geas to prevent family magics themselves from unravelling. Modern wizardkind solves the problem by killing the offending child – your parents were apparently too weak-willed to see that through.”
“Maybe they thought Aunt Petunia would do it for them.” Harry murmurs without thinking, but the goblin does not make a production of the admission.
“You are Heir Potter through your biological…parents. And you are Heir Black through your godfather.”
“What does that mean for me?”
“Ah, this is the fun part, child. Your name was changed. You are now an Evans, not a Potter, nor a Black – but for the magical world, a name change is retroactive too. Accounts and permissions granted to you before the name change were not invalidated by it. That means the Hogwarts tuition paid at your birth for Harry James Potter is now marked for Harry James Evans. The Potters will not be alerted to your existence if you do not wish it.”
“That doesn’t sound exciting enough to call fun.” Harry points out, but it is exciting enough that he cannot properly wrestle down the panicked joyhopeohgod rising in his chest, searing in his veins.
His tuition is already paid. And he won’t have to talk to these people, those that have thrown him away.
Griphook’s smile is rabid.
“I do not know the details. I do not know why you are a lost heir. I do know that you will have unfettered access to the Potter family vaults, and the Black family vaults. I do know that Lord Potter does not monitor his vaults as closely as he should, and that while Lord Black does, he will not receive notice of his heir accessing those vaults until the evening post, if we are efficient.”
“Why would I want to access those vaults?” Harry asks. Money, of course, but this is something else, he thinks.
“You are in need of galleons and school supplies, child, appropriate for your needs. Family vaults are hoards, and magical goods grow stronger with age.”
“High-quality stuff. Instead of buying it I can just take it.”
“As you are entitled.”
Harry looks back down at the parchment, hesitates, and then taps the final line.
“And Slytherin?”
“You are not heir of House Slytherin. You carry enough of the blood that the family magics has, however, accepted you as a member. That may pose a problem for you.”
“How so?”
Griphook’s face scrunches up. Not a scowl, but something like it. His eyes are too amused for that.
“The only other known, living member of House Slytherin is the same man that attempted to slaughter the Potters – the same man your younger brother allegedly defeated while an infant. The same man that nearly brought the wizarding world to its knees.”
X
Griphook takes him to the Black vaults first. Harry is, technically, a lost heir, and Griphook has earned the right – by goblin standards – to be Harry’s sole point of contact even though both the families that have apparently claimed him have their own account managers. Griphook looks delighted at the prospect of hiding their activities from other goblins.
Hiding, in this case, just means burying the truth in so much red tape and paperwork no one finds out until Harry’s seventeen and no one will have claim to him. He’ll be a legal adult a whole year earlier in the wizarding world than the muggle, and they can’t kick him out of the magical world as long as he passes some sort of test at the end of his fifth year at Hogwarts.
He’s been giddy since he found out. They are goalposts, things to work for. Because magic is real, and he wants it like he’s never wanted anything before; not even food, a family, safety.
“What should I look for?” He asks Griphook, legs a little wobbly after the cart ride. Griphook seems darkly amused that Harry doesn’t really mind the transport – it isn’t very fun, but it isn’t unbearable either.
“You have your supplies list. I would recommend searching for all you will need for your safety, comfort, and education. The family magics will be eager to feel you – let it lead you.”
The advice seems vague and stupid right up until the vault is open and Harry sees the absolute mess inside.
There is furniture and knickknacks and books and money and clothes and art and rugs and a hundred other things he cannot even comprehend. None of it is organized. Most of it sits in literal piles, like a dragon’s horde, towering high above his head. There are narrow paths leading deep into the mess, dark and ominous – Harry cannot see the back wall of the vault peeking over the piles.
Wandering until some sort of magic tells him stop seems like the safest approach.
“I will accompany you. You will need assistance in identifying things.” Griphook declares. Harry does not argue with him, not when the entrance to the vault shudders shut behind them and silver flames burst into existence in the air above their head. Harry doesn’t think they should produce as much light as they do, but he’s grateful for it all the same.
So – he wanders. He’s not really sure he feels anything, not something tugging at him or pulling at him or directing him. Griphook snorts and says of course not; mage-sense does not run in his family tree. Harry doesn’t know what that’s supposed to mean until something catches his eye, though, and he finds himself crouched in front of a half-buried trunk. The trunk trembles.
A trunk had been on his list. Something to live out of while he’s at Hogwarts, to carry all his things. Now that he isn’t with the Dursleys, it is perhaps even more necessary than before. He moves the antiques pinning the poor thing in place, and it shoots out so quickly it nearly bowls over Griphook. The pile it had been in creaks ominously, but settles. The trunk hadn’t been load-bearing, luckily.
The trunk has mashed itself against Harry’s legs, vibrating, clattering side-to-side in place. Griphook looks bewildered, but shrugs when Harry looks at him, so Harry kneels down at the trunk’s side. It is made of wood, dark like a thunderstorm, grey like fog. Silver metal gleams at its corners, its clasp, lines its lips. There is no crest engraved on it or initials carved into it, nothing to set it apart from naught but a handsome, but otherwise unremarkable trunk.
Harry flips the clasps. The round knob between them spins wildly, nearly-invisible engravings flashing by too quickly to see. The round nub of metal protruding from the center of the knob sharpens to a point. Blood, Harry assumes. Something for security.
Harry pricks his finger, and the trunk’s lid flies open, and the trunk itself explodes.
Whomever had last used it had not cleaned it out. Harry can’t imagine how much time has passed; the smell of rot is faint, vials filled with desiccated and dried-out matter cracking to dust on the floor. Potions ingredients, he thinks, his supply list folded tightly in one hand. Ancient.
And then come the corpses.
“Gringotts does not suffer these vermin.” Griphook says tightly as a flood of rat carcasses and tiny, sharp-toothed humanoid skeletons spill over their feet.
“Maybe it hunts? Or hunted. Before it was put in here.” Harry points out.
“That would not be surprising, give the Black family’s…reputation.”
“What reputation is that?”
“House Black treasures the darker side of magic, and shows no mercy to its enemies. You should be able to extrapolate the rest, child.”
One last flood of dead things, and the trunk’s lid snaps shut. It whirls to face them, no less excited, and Harry can’t help but smile.
“Do you want to come with me?” He asks, and the trunk surges through its former contents towards him. Its lid rises and snaps shut in rapid succession, and then it angles itself so that its dial faces him.
There is a hanger, a book, a cauldron, a feather, a briefcase, an unadorned circle. When he sets the dial to the hanger and pricks his finger again, the trunk flings its lid open and Harry finds himself staring into a very peculiar silver contraption.
Griphook reaches past him, grabs one of the metal bars, and pulls.
A pull-out closet, he realizes, as it all unfolds. There are metal hangers rattling emptily on the bar, small drawers lined with black velvet for jewelry and cubbies for shoes, drawers for folded clothes and even a skeletal mannequin. For armor, Griphook tells him. Each part rotates with the spin of a dial on the nearest metal bar. And each dial, small and subtle and almost unnoticeable, has a nub just like the dial on the outside of the trunk too. When Harry’s fingers drift too close, the nub sharpens to a wicked point.
“For added security, I would imagine. Clothing items you wish to hide, or may be deemed inappropriate by others – I would assume the other compartments will have a similar feature.”
“But how much will it hold?”
“Magic grows in power as it ages, child. This trunk will have more room than you could ever hope to fill even if you took everything in your families’ vaults with you.”
Harry gently pushes the closet’s extensions back down, and takes a moment to stare.
“Is he right?” He asks softly, and the trunk wobbles in something approximating a nod.
The cauldron leads to a potions compartment, which comes equipped with vial slots for potions and vial slots for ingredients, each separate. There are specialized cupboards for tools, and two large compartments – one cold, one heated – that Griphook tells him are layered in so much preservation magic that whatever goes inside will take decades to rot.
Food, Harry thinks, and his hands tremble.
The book opens to a library compartment. It does not extend out of the trunk, but instead Harry finds himself looking at two shelves, each with those dials hidden below them, half of the first taken up with a honeycomb of hollow tubes meant for scrolls. Griphook tells him this will be especially useful, given that the British magical government is apparently very big on censorship; the most interest bits of magic are illegal, and he should take care if he finds himself in possession of any unknown tome to keep it hidden.
The feather opens a writing compartment, for writing supplies and other paraphernalia. It includes a flat surface large enough to write on, if he were alright sitting on the floor. There are fewer of the dials in this compartment – just on strangely-shaped drawers Griphook tells him will be for letters and scrolls used in correspondence.
The briefcase symbol opens to a completely empty too-large-on-the-inside compartment; for whatever else he happens to want, Harry thinks.
The unadorned circle opens to a regular-sized trunk’s innards, lined with black velvet. For travel, to hide amongst muggles, he’s told.
Harry’s got worn notebooks missing their covers, a handful of broken pencils, a soft, tattered square of burgundy cloth, a water bottle, and a filthy change of his cousin’s clothes in the ratty backpack on his back. It’s stuffed to the brim, but only because it is small.
“What now?”
“We fill it.” Griphook says blandly, and bullies Harry to his feet. The trunk snaps closed of its own volition, and excitedly begins leading the way deeper into the vault. He feels a little floaty, a little odd, a lot overwhelmed, but Harry follows.
X
He finds clothes. They are old-fashioned, Griphook tells him, but not so much as to make him stick out. Griphook and the trunk make him try on every piece before it goes in. Harry’s ecstatic to have nearly-new clothing in such good condition; and the magic besides – boots charmed to be silent, trousers charmed to grow with him, cuffs that resize themselves automatically, cloaks that will keep him warm or cool or dry no matter the weather. Griphook hunts down some belts, and some jewelry, and a mound of wizard robes for everyday wear to match – cufflinks and necklaces and earrings and rings. Harry realizes he can get his ears pierced, and as tedious as the clothes are, he still beams as he scribbles down a new list on a mostly untouched page of one of his notebooks; he’ll need to buy his school uniforms, and socks, and underwear on his own.
The trunk hoards books, too – swallows them whole before Harry can stop it, digs them up like a bloodhound. Harry has no idea what he should be looking for when it comes to texts, so he isn’t too concerned, but he does take note of how many the trunk devours. It’s intimidating, but reassuring in the same vein – he’s a lot to learn, but he’ll have a lot to learn from.
“There are kits, in most bookstores. I would recommend used sets. Wizardkind does not formally educate children before the age of eleven, but it does have a very large market for child-appropriate texts on the academic subjects you will be learning at Hogwarts and beyond.” Griphook tells him. Apparently there is no market for children’s fiction – or fiction of most any kind in the Wizarding World – and age-appropriate textbooks have always filled that niche. Languages, he’s told, are another area of pre-Hogwarts study.
Harry scoops piles of gold into the trunk, and a handful of quills after Griphook makes sure they won’t kill him – that that is even a legitimate concern is hard to wrap his head around – and he carefully tucks a beautiful telescope and an astroglobe and a tarot deck and other things that catch his attention inside.
And then they come to a chest filled with sticks. Wands.
“The wand, as they say, chooses the wizard. See if any feel right to you, child. It will not be a great loss if none do – wands tend to be loyal things and rarely choose another – but it will not hurt to look.”
“What if more than one chooses me?”
“Ah. Some wizards will keep spare wands – doing so will be a mistake. You are entering a partnership with your wand, child. To take another while the first still serves is to disrespect it, and to disrespect magic.”
The advice ends up being unneeded; some of the sticks hum but none of them feel right, and so they leave wandless.
The Potter vaults are next.
Unlike the Black vaults, the Potters have organized theirs. This makes Harry nervous, but Griphook seems dismissive.
“An attentive Lord would notice, but Lord Potter is anything but, and neither was his father or his father before him. The women on the other hand…”
The things here are homier, Harry thinks. He finds blankets, hand-sewn by his ancestors. Cushions, embroidered with moving creatures made of thread and the name of the Potter who had done the work. He finds a great deal of potions tools – cauldrons and stirrers, knives and cutting boards, and he listens to Griphook’s recommendations on what to take carefully. He finds more quills, and more cloaks and robes and jewelry – he notes with some amusement that the trunk takes far fewer Potter baubles. Harry finds a satchel, plain and unadorned in a rich oak-brown, charmed to be larger on the inside and light as a feather. He takes it to carry with him during the school day, and, finally, tucks the only thing of value in his muggle backpack – the remains of his baby blanket – into his trunk.
He's not supposed to bring a broom his first year, but the trunk takes one anyway, and then they come to the wands, and Harry’s reaching into the display cabinet before he knows what he is doing.
Iolanthe Peverell, the tag reads. He mouths the name as the world lights up around him, as something cool settles in his palm.
Mine, he might think, or he might hear.
When he comes back to himself, Griphook is watching with some amusement, and the trunk is settled at Harry’s side, purring.
“Take a holster with you, child. Add polish to your list. That is an old wand, and will need more care than most.”
X
Griphook recommends a place to stay just off Diagon’s main drag, and sends him on his way with a promise to be in contact.
Harry’s trunk doesn’t like having to play at being inanimate, but it behaves as he ducks into Madame Malkins’ and the apothecary and the bookstore and the writing instruments’ shop. He avoids the crowd of muggleborns further down the way, entering only after they have moved on. He’s wearing his new clothes now. They’ll ask questions, and he does not intend to answer them.
He finds a grocer on the way to the inn Griphook had told him about, and, finally finished, Harry retires. He’s given a room with hardly a look despite his age, and the woman in charge does not even bat an eyelash when he tells her the duration of his stay. He’s relieved, and exhausted, and he closes and locks the door to his room behind him, sets down his trunk and lets it scuttle about and investigate, and then drops onto a soft, plush bed just his size, and sobs.
X
This is what he learns, over the coming weeks.
His mother is muggleborn. His father is what they call a pureblood, born to a family so magical it merits special distinction. So, to, is his godfather. Harry by definition would then be a halfblood, but he cannot claim that privilege if he wishes the Potters to remain unaware of his presence. And he does, desperately, because nothing he reads about his family’s successes or renown spell good things for him.
They are war heroes. Charles is hailed as the Boy-Who-Lived and celebrated as a saint. The Potters are public figures just like the celebrity families Aunt Petunia had tracked so carefully in her magazines and on the news; adoring parents and successful political figures. His father’s speeches at the wizarding Ministry draw crowds. His mother’s robes set new fashion trends. His brother does sponsored advertisements for toys and brooms and stores. They are charitable and progressive and beloved.
What would they do, how desperate would they be, to keep the child they abandoned secret? Griphook had said wizarding families typically killed unwanted heirs; the Potters had not killed him, but he’d also been tucked away in the nonmagical world where he could never be a threat to them. They had put him with Aunt Petunia, when a stranger would have been more secure for their reputation.
It doesn’t make sense, and the story of his family’s fame makes his reality all the more confusing.
The Potters had been on the front lines of the war against the Dark Lord, some of the few capable of holding their own against Voldemort directly. They’d gone into hiding when he and his brother were born – Charles, the books say, but they are twins and Harry is intelligent – and only resurfaced after the attack, miracle baby in tow and Voldemort’s spy caught.
Days later, Aunt Petunia found him on her doorstep.
There is a picture in one of the books of a worn young man, heavily scarred with gentle eyes. Remus Lupin, he is identified as. The man who was watching Charles, and presumably Harry. The man who died defending them. Harry traces his fingertips over the man’s face and wonders.
And then he stops, and reels all those thoughts into a tangled knot and tucks it away.
They didn’t want him; that’s fine. He doesn’t want them either.
And anyway. He’s got textbooks to read.
X
He asks his trunk what it thinks Harry should study, and he has to spend an afternoon sorting all of the books the trunk promptly regurgitates on him.
The books gathered from Gringotts are too dense, too involved, and too technical for him to really understand. The older and more powerful they are, the more incomprehensible. Harry turns to the children’s texts he’d purchased, and finds them strangely stunted.
The children’s book sets, he comes to find, are all Ministry-approved. They take into account the wand ban on minors, and as such focus almost exclusively on theory. They reference, but do not do a good job at explaining, the magical laws and theorems filling the Gringotts books. Too dangerous, children shouldn’t ask questions, a hundred other paltry justifications Harry is familiar with from Petunia’s rants and also the Ministry printed justifications in the foreword to the textbooks.
But – combined, Harry finds himself making solid progress. Slow progress, slow enough to make him nervous, but steady, and that’s – worth it.
He spends his mornings chatting with his trunk and going over the children’s texts, progressing through each difficulty set gradually. After three days spent eating the meals the innkeeper provides, he risks a trip to the muggle world and purchases himself cookware, and come night asks his trunk and scrambles through back alleys after it until he finds a small, dingy shop that sells novelty camping gear – including portable stoves and ovens and sinks and…
Harry cries that night, but come morning he gets to make himself his own bacon and eggs and toast and he even gets to eat it all, and the world seems large and terrifying and strange in that moment, but his trunk presses itself as close as it physically can against him and he breathes through the feeling.
He names it – her – Hedwig.
X
“I’ve never made lists before.” Harry says conversationally. His trunk clatters excitedly, and spits up a silky black ribbon to tie his parchment with.
“Thanks. I’ll get a notebook and use that once I know what I’m going to do. When I have a plan. Dudley used to burn my stuff so I usually keep it all in my head but there’s too much here.”
Hedwig shifts a little closer, and the front edge of a book slips out of her opening. Harry recognizes it as a foreign book, something he can’t read yet, and he sighs.
“Yeah. Languages will be…important. But there’s potions! And the recipes look easy. I’ll try brewing them when we get to Hogwarts. Then I can figure out how to smuggle books through owl order or something.”
He’ll need a leg up. Every leg up he can get, if he wants to stay in this world. There’s a soft purr.
“Uh – no. I’m not going to do good in classes. Just – average. I’ll look at the school records and figure out what I should be getting. Except for the tests! I’m going to blow everything away on the tests. But that’s not until fifth year. And seventh.” He doesn’t want to draw attention to himself, he doesn’t say. But there’s a rumbling brush against his knee, and he knows she understands.
He unrolls his list one more time, stares at how long it is, and how messy it is, and then hesitantly picks up his quill and adds penmanship in shaky letters at the bottom.
X
He gets new glasses the day before he leaves for the Hogwarts Express. He waits so long in case the optometrist asks questions he cannot answer, in case she asks about guardians and why he is alone and why his current pair are in such bad shape, in case she looks at his thick, round frames so like those Lord Potter wears and thinks. His worry is for naught; she flicks her wand a few times at him, takes his coin, and gives him a pair of rectangular wire frames in silver. He buys a matching spare, just in case, and retreats to his room.
Griphook doesn’t contact him, and he doesn’t dare return to Gringotts yet, but Harry isn’t lonely. It’s probably strange, to cuddle with a trunk, but Hedwig is eager for attention and perfectly willing to bully Harry to get what she wants; he buys some mice for her if she agrees not to get viscera all over Harry’s things. And she definitely hunts; Harry cannot help but wonder with a kind of morbid fascination what she would do to a potential thief.
“I don’t know that they’d let me keep you if they knew how special you are. So – be sneaky, okay?” He whispers to her. Hedwig bobs in agreement under his palms, and Harry takes a breath.
He closes his fingers around her silver handle, and tugs her after him.
The Hogwarts Express awaits.
X
Better be…Slytherin!