Chapter Text

“I don’t like you right now.”

The sound of a growl comes from behind Harry.

“No, I *don’t *like you.” Harry keeps his back turned on the wild creature crouching behind him in the cupboard, his arms folded and his scowl there for all that it’s dark and they can’t see each other. *He *knows it’s there, and the *creature *knows it’s there, and that’s enough. “You got me in trouble, and now I have no food.”

The creature prowls around in front of him. Right now, it looks like a fox, a dark transparent fox made of floating blobs of darkness. It growls at him and tries to bite his foot, but Harry pulls his foot out of the way. He’s very fast thanks to Dudley and his games.

“You’re a bad thing.”

The fox flattens its ears at him.

“*Bad, *bad thing!”

Another growl.

“You’re *terrible *and I don’t want to know you!”

The creature leaps into the air and fades. Harry scowls after it.

*

David Potter has always known he’s the Boy-Who-Lived. It’s an immense burden to carry, but he also knows that he can’t show anyone how scared he is of it. What would people say then? How would they react to the sight of their Savior being scared, when he’s supposed to be so strong?

They would be terrified. Mum has explained it to him. So David waves to cheering people in Diagon Alley, and shakes the hands of people who offer, and never, ever shows how afraid he is.

He knows Voldemort is going to come back. He knows he’s going to have to fight him.

*Him, *just an ordinary boy in the end, despite the scar on his forehead and his survival of the Killing Curse the night that Voldemort killed their grandparents and rendered his twin brother Harry a Squib. No one knows what happened, not even Mum and Dad, and they’ve done a lot of research. People just assume it was a miracle and he can do it again.

How can I do it again? I have no idea what I did!

But he has to smile at people, and wave, and pretend he does.

He hates it.

He’s afraid all the time.

*

Harry Potter has almost always known that he’s a Squib. His aunt explained the magical world to him when he was five years old and someone came from a place called “the Ministry of Magic” to cast detection spells on Harry. It’s part of some kind of ongoing study.

“You’re like us, like me, like Dudley,” Aunt Petunia said, her hands clasped on the edges of her teacup so hard that they turned into claws. “You have no magic, but you have the chance to be a normal, *good *person. So try.”

Harry looked at her then and thought that his chance of being a normal good person was long past. For one thing, the Dursleys have always kept him in the cupboard under the stairs, and that didn’t change after the Ministry people started showing up. No normal person grows up like that.

For another, there’s the creature.

It’s never shown itself to the Ministry people, even when Harry wished as hard as he could for it to appear. It hides in cupboards and growls under tables and spoils things when Harry is wishing but not *trying *to perform magic and lurks like a feral cat in corners.

Harry supposes he should feel lucky it doesn’t *pee *like a feral cat, at least.

Harry doesn’t know why his magic is wild, exactly. It has something to do with why the Ministry people want to study him and why they abandoned him here, but Aunt Petunia doesn’t know the details. Harry’s parents are alive. But they’re magical, and don’t want a Squib.

Or whatever he is.

It hurts, but Harry got used to the pain long ago. What he really *wants *is to find a way to tame his magic, or at least make his peace with it, and have the magic do what he wants instead of things like blasting the refrigerator door open when Harry is trying to sneak out of the cupboard to get food. It always makes noise and wakes up the Dursleys.

Maybe his magic will never be normal, but at least it could be his *pet *instead of ruining things.

*

“Congratulations, David.”

Dad is grinning and ruffling his hair. David leans back in his chair with the Hogwarts letter in his hands and takes a deep, painful breath. This is the moment he’s been looking forward to for at least five years, ever since he really understood what Hogwarts was.

And dreading, too. Because at Hogwarts, he can’t just retreat into the house with his parents and his godfather every time he gets upset about the crowds *looking *at him. At Hogwarts, he’ll be on stage all the time.

He already hates the thought.

Mum comes into the kitchen and bends down to kiss his cheek. “Congratulations, David,” she repeats, like she and Dad have rehearsed it. She’s smiling, but when she stands up, she forgets to smile, and she and Dad exchange some kind of weird intense look.

“Mum?”

“Yes, sweetheart?”

“What was that look for? And don’t lie to me,” David adds. He’s a little proud that one way his accidental magic has manifested is letting him know when someone lies to him. “I’ll know it, and *you *know it.”

Mum sighs, but her smile is proud, too. “I was just talking to Headmaster Dumbledore about whether a Hogwarts letter had gone to…your brother.”

“Oh,” David says softly. Sometimes he thinks he can almost remember Harry, as an ache in the night, a warmth that should be there when he rolls over and rests a hand on the other side of his pillow. And sometimes he thinks that he dreamed the whole thing. After all, Harry left when they were fifteen months old, too young to really make memories.

Does Harry remember him? David kind of hopes he does, and kind of hopes he doesn’t. Mum has explained, many times but mostly when David was young and lonely, that Harry will be happier in a world with people who can’t do magic and make him jealous.

“Yes, we still thought it was possible,” Mum says with a long sigh, letting her hand rest on his shoulder. “Harry demonstrated some accidental magic when you were younger, before…You-Know-Who came, and no one had ever heard of a magical attack making someone a Squib before. But multiple people from the Ministry examined him, and they can’t find any trace of his magic in his body. It would show up if it were there.”

David nods in silence. Yes, he knows that. He’s heard that.

He wishes it weren’t true, but he’s heard that.

“So!” Mum takes a step back and claps her hands. “Should we go shopping in Diagon Alley to get your school things today? Your own trunk, your own owl, your own wand? We have that party on your birthday itself, you remember.”

David stands a little taller. Sometimes it feels as if nothing will ever ease the fear. What can, when having Mum and Dad and Uncle Sirius and Remus around him most of the time doesn’t? But his own wand will be a start.

“Yeah, Mum. Let’s go.”

She kisses his forehead where the scar is, Dad ruffles his hair, and they go to the Floo.

*

Harry runs away from the Dursleys the day he turns eleven.

His thinking goes like this:

Magical children are considered old enough to go away to a boarding school if they’re eleven, even if they don’t turn eleven until *right *before September and so are almost a whole year younger than some of their classmates.

Harry is magical, just not in a way that anyone knows about.

His relatives hate him, and he hates them.

He has to tame his magic, and he’s not getting any closer just sitting in a Muggle house all day—Muggle is what the people from the Ministry call his relatives—and doing chores and running from Dudley.

He does *not *want to go to Stonewall.

He tricked his aunt into ranting about Diagon Alley and the way that she went there with her parents and Harry’s mum one time when she was younger. It was simple. All Harry had to do was mutter about his *real *parents and their magic and watch Aunt Petunia get upset.

He will go hungry sometimes if he runs away, but it’s not like that’s a new thing. And he would rather sleep in an alley crawling with magical rats and centipedes (do they have those?) than sleep in the cupboard.

*So. *It’s simple.

Harry steals money from Uncle Vernon, because he’ll need Muggle money for at least the trip to London and Aunt Petunia said something about a bank where you can convert that money to “gallons.” (Harry thinks that’s a silly name for magical money, but it was also silly of them to leave him in a non-magical household. So). He puts a few sets of clothes in a backpack with one good strap that Dudley used just once and leaves the house.

His wild magic comes with him, because it has to. Harry has figured out that it’s tied to him, and sometimes even inside his body, from the warmth he feels in his chest and the way that sparks sometimes break out of him right before something strange happens. It’s just never in his body when it’s convenient.

“I’m going to tame you,” Harry tells the tiger made of dark blobs lurking next to him on the train.

It hisses at him.

“You just watch.”

*

David knows it’s kind of silly to be worried about opening the box Ollivander gave him. For one thing, it’s in his trunk, and Mum and Dad don’t make a habit of poking through his stuff. For another, it’s not *illegal *to have a second wand in his possession.

But Mr. Ollivander called him back in a low voice when David would have left behind Dad, and David pretended to Dad that he was going back for one of his schoolbooks he’d left in the shop, and then the lie was out there and that was it.

“Take this wand, as well.”

David stared at the box when Mr. Ollivander held it out to him. “But I have a wand,” he said, a little nervously. The wand was holly and phoenix feather and the brother to Voldemort’s. Wasn’t *that *great news.

“This is the wand that would have belonged to your brother.”

David shivered a little and raised his eyes to Mr. Ollivander’s face. Mr. Ollivander wasn’t laughing or doing anything else that would make it look like he was joking. David concentrated as hard as he could, the way no one could slip a lie past him, and whispered, “Why do you think it matters? Harry’s a Squib—”

“I believe it is more complicated than that.”

It sounded like he was telling the truth. David swallowed slowly and opened the box. It showed a wand of dark wood—ebony, he decided, a moment later—and Mr. Ollivander reached out and tapped it and said, “Tiger hair for the core.”

“But that’s not magical—is it?”

Mr. Ollivander smiled and urged David out of the shop then. That was a good thing, because Dad would probably have stormed Ollivander’s if David were out of sight for much longer. But it meant David didn’t get the chance to hear whether Mr. Ollivander was telling the truth.

Now, David stares at the wand and shakes his head. It seems something strange is going on with his brother.

But on the other hand, how *can *it be if Harry didn’t get a Hogwarts letter? Mum told David that Hogwarts sends letters to everyone who can do magic, even if they don’t have much power. There’s a difference between someone with little magic and a Squib.

Harry didn’t get one.

David closes the wand box back into his trunk, and vows to give it to his brother if he ever meets him.

*

Diagon Alley is big and bright and colorful, and Harry wishes he could stop and gape at everything. But he doesn’t have the money for it, and one thing that doing the shopping for Aunt Petunia has taught him is that everyone wants you to have money if you look too long at something.

Harry will have money *after *he goes to the bank. The barman at the Leaky Cauldron told Harry where Gringotts was, although after he gaped for a creepily long time at Harry’s face.

“What do you think it is?” Harry asks his magic as he climbs the big white steps in front of the bank and nods to the goblins on guard. “Are people in the magical world just ruder than normal, or is it because of this scar?” He has one on his forehead, just a little cut, but it’s never healed.

His magic flows from the form of a tiger into the form of a snake and hisses at him. The goblins on the doors tighten their hold on their weapons.

Harry gives them an apologetic smile and slips past them into the bank. It’s a really big place! He turns in a slow circle, gaping at the white marble and the gold and the silver and the goblins counting jewels, until he realizes that irritated people are giving him weird looks. Then he blushes and gets in line.

When he gets up to the first goblin who’s free, behind a podium, he gets a suspicious look and a drawled, “Name?”

“Harry Potter,” Harry says, and fumbles for the Muggle money. “My aunt said that you could change this into gallons?”

The goblin’s eyes narrow. “Is this a joke?”

“No, sorry?” Harry blinks. “Was she wrong? Can you tell me where to go to get the money changed, then? Sorry to bother you?”

“Follow me.”

Maybe they don’t change Muggle money in front of magical people. Maybe it would cause a riot or something. Harry happily follows the goblin further into the bank, to an office where his magic coils itself around the chair’s legs and sulks. Harry sits in the chair and gapes at the armor and weapons on the walls.

The first goblin leaves. Another goblin comes in several minutes later. This one has silver hair and silver eyes and huge silver rings in her ears. Harry eyes them and wonders why the barman stared at his scar, if huge earrings are common in the magical world.

The goblin sits down behind the scarred oak desk in front of Harry and asks, “Why do you claim that your name is Harry Potter?”

“Because it is,” Harry says. “That’s what my aunt told me. I know I have living magical family somewhere, but they left me in the Muggle world because they think I’m a Squib. But I have magic, just not the usual kind.” He indicates the magical snake who’s raised its head and now flares a hood like a cobra’s at the goblin, which is kind of cool. “I came to the magical world hoping to learn how to tame it. It’s sort of wild.”

The goblin stares at his magic, which stares back. Then she looks at Harry. “We were told that you were a Squib and would never come to claim any share of your family’s money.”

Harry blinks. “I didn’t come to do that. I didn’t know they had money.”

“So you do not want it?”

“I mean, not if they’re going to come and tell me it would be wrong for me to have it and get upset because I’m not a Squib.”

The goblin takes her time examining him, tilting her head back and forth so that the silver rings in her ears chime softly together. Harry waits patiently. He knows how to do that, one of the lessons of the cupboard. His magic gets bored and climbs the chair to coil around his shoulders.

“So you do not want us to inform your parents that you have manifested magic,” the goblin says abruptly.

Harry wrinkles his nose. “No, thanks.”

“Why not?”

“My aunt had Ministry officials visiting for years, and they did tests on me,” Harry explains, wincing at the memory of some of the pain of those spells. “But they always decided I didn’t have magic because it’s not in my body. They would get upset if they saw that I sort of have it, and do more tests. And maybe make me go stay in the Ministry so they could run experiments.” He sometimes saw fragments of shows like that on the Dursleys’ telly. “So I think I will go stay somewhere else that’s not the Ministry, please.”

“Staying in Diagon Alley long-term would certainly expose your presence to the Potters.”

“Oh.” Harry is disappointed. He liked the look of Diagon Alley. “Is there anywhere else?”

“I do know a sanctuary where the ones who have unusual magic go.”

The goblin seems to be waiting for him to ask a question. Harry thinks about the right one, and finally asks, “Do I have to pay to stay there? Would the money I have with me be enough to pay for it?” He pulls it out of his pocket. “I mean, once you change it to gallons?”

“Galleons, child. They are large gold coins. Sickles are smaller silver ones, and Knuts are the smallest, made of bronze.”

“Oh. Do I have to pay?”

“No. But you would have to stay with people who are—not human as you understand them. Some of my kind. Some hags, some vampires, some werewolves.” The goblin pauses and studies him again.

“That just sounds cool. Sorry if that’s not what you want me to say.”

The goblin laughs abruptly, or Harry thinks it’s laughter. Since it’s like rocks bouncing along more rocks, he’s not sure. “It seems a Muggle education has its advantages.” She nods to the money Harry has. “I will change that for you, but you do not need to pay to remain in the sanctuary. You will need to prove that you belong there, though.”

“How do I do that?”

“Each person who comes to the sanctuary receives a different test,” the goblin says unhelpfully. She eyes him when his magic spits at her. “But I think you will prove interesting for them to have. Interesting indeed.”

*

David shudders a little as he steps off the Hogwarts Express. He has people he knows with him—Ron and Neville and Seamus, whom he’s known all his life, and Hermione Granger, a Muggleborn girl he met on the train—but everyone else is staring at him and whispering, and, just—

Do they *have *to?

“All right there, mate?”

Ron sounds a little anxious. David nods. He knows that Ron is worried himself about making the right impression, since they’ve met all sorts of people who think he isn’t good enough to be the Boy-Who-Lived’s best friend. “Fine, Ron,” David says in the calmest voice he can.

He has to be strong for Ron, if not for himself. There’s no way that he can just collapse and give in to weakness, as much as he would like to.

“Firs’ years over here!”

David has also known Hagrid all his life, and manages a weak smile for the half-giant as they follow him down the slippery path and get into the boats. The sight of Hogwarts makes most of the children with David gasp with awe, but David just rubs his sweaty palms on his robes.

He knows all the stories about Hogwarts. But that just means he has even *more *to live up to. The legacy of his parents’ good marks and Gryffindor pranks and cleverness and friendliness as well as the legacy of defeating Voldemort.

The very thought makes him want to throw up, honestly.

David scrambles out of the boat he was sharing with Ron and Neville and Hermione, and walks into the room where he has to wait with the other first-years to be Sorted. He tries to smile at Professor McGonagall, who he’s met before, but she just gives him a faint nod of approval and sweeps away again.

Then Draco Malfoy begins taunting Hermione, who flushes brightly enough for David to see it under her brown skin. David turns towards Malfoy and manages a confident smile. This is the role that he’s spent the most time practicing for.

“Trying to distract attention from the tattoo on your daddy’s arm, Malfoy?”

That gets Malfoy shouting at him, but David puts up with it gladly. Being yelled at by blood purists is nothing like the nightmares he has, of Voldemort coming back and finishing the job, or of people finding him lacking.

Of being a failure.

Malfoy shuts up fast enough when Professor McGonagall comes back and leads them into the Great Hall. David stares around at the shining candles and torches and feels even his nausea calm down a little.

Parents aren’t supposed to tell their kids about how they get Sorted, but Mum did, once she saw how anxious David was about it. So David isn’t surprised by the singing Hat, although he’s a little surprised by some of its choices, like Hermione going to Gryffindor when she seemed like a perfect fit for Ravenclaw on the train.

(Not by Malfoy going to Slytherin, though. Uncle Sirius already predicted that with a laugh months ago).

Then it’s his turn, and everyone is staring at him as he walks forwards and sits on the stool and puts on the Hat. David sits there trying to calculate what the expected length of time is for him to be up here and if people will be disappointed or upset by a longer time. Or a shorter one?

I am the only one who says how long you will spend here, young man.

David jumps, but at least the Hat doesn’t slide off his head the way it almost did off Neville’s. He bites his lip and whispers, “What do you mean?”

*I am the Sorting Hat. And I am the judge. And I wanted to tell you that being brave doesn’t disqualify you for Gryffindor. The bravest are often the most afraid. *

David sits up a little. *It doesn’t matter what I want, though, *he tries to think to the Hat, without speaking aloud. These are private thoughts and the kind of thing he can’t share. Everyone expects me to be a Gryffindor.

*What do you want? *

David hesitates. Then he finally admits, I don’t know.

Then trust me to make the decision, hmmm?

Right.

“GRYFFINDOR!”

David sighs and takes the Hat off with some reluctance and some satisfaction, then stumbles towards the table in red and gold going steadily more mad. At least he’ll be with most of his friends, and a few minutes later, he knows he’ll be with Ron, too.

It will have to be enough.

*

Harry lies on his bed in the sanctuary, which is only half in the real world as most people understand it, not far past the entrance of Knockturn Alley. It looks like an ordinary, dingy shopfront from the street, but inside, it’s a maze of starlit tunnels that twist up and down and lead to separate rooms.

Harry thinks that having his own room is the most brilliant thing he’s experienced so far, even though it doesn’t have any windows.

His magic is imitating a huge black lion at the moment, and hanging upside-down from the ceiling for some reason. Harry squints up at it around his book. Faint glowing balls of white light cling to the walls and floor here, and he can see well enough normally, but the lion dims some of them.

“You could get down.”

His magic ignores him.

“You’re just showing off.”

More ignoring.

“You haven’t been the same since you ate that hag.”

Now his magic reacts, turning a smug face towards him. Harry knows what smugness feels like on it, even if a lion’s face isn’t the best for showing that particular emotion.

Harry shakes his head. The goblin said there would be a test to enter the sanctuary. Harry’s was walking through the door of the shop and meeting a hag who took one look at him, cackled, and charged with long sickle-shaped claws upraised. Harry yelped and stumbled backwards, his arms windmilling.

Then his magic manifested in front of him as a giant snake, hissed, and attacked the hag with its mouth all the way open.

And swallowed her. And put her…somewhere. Harry still doesn’t know where. It’s not like his magic really has a stomach.

Apparently, killing someone was enough to pass the test. A silver door on the back of the “shop” swung open, and the werewolf in charge of the sanctuary, who twenty-nine days of the month is a witch called Miranda Yaxley, came to welcome Harry and escort him to a room.

Harry goes back to reading his book. He bought it with some of his Galleons in Knockturn Alley. It’s all about taming vicious and violent magical creatures. The main technique in the section he’s reading is to appreciate them and show gentleness and kindness.

Hmm. Worth a try. Harry is exasperated with his magic a lot more than he’s gentle to it.

He puts down the book and coughs. The magic turns to look at him.

“I really did appreciate the way you ate that hag,” Harry says earnestly. “She would have killed me, and then I wouldn’t have survived to stay here and have a brilliant room and eat three meals a day.” That’s something else the sanctuary provides, courtesy of Miranda. There’s a lot of meat, freshly hunted down, but it’s not like Harry *minds *that. “And I think that you’re—powerful, most of the time. I wish we could work together better, but you’re powerful! I really admire that.”

The lion stares at him in silence. For long seconds, Harry thinks it isn’t going to work.

Then the lion leaps down and stalks across the room to him on soundless feet. It reaches out and leans its head against his. Harry freezes a little. He’s close to those massive jaws.

His magic purrs.

Harry reaches out and feathers a shaky hand through the lion’s mane, which changes to scales as he touches it. His magic drapes itself over Harry as the giant snake that swallowed the hag.

Harry sighs. It’s a start.