Childhood Magic
A/N: Hey guys! Here's another fic for y'all. I know it's kind of similar to all my other ones, but I decided to post it anyway. I have a few other fics on my computer from a while ago that I found…I might post them too, and then I thought it might be fun to change it up and write an older Harry fic, probably Harry/Ginny. Anyway, that probably won't be for a while since I'm starting school soon (unless I'm able to write it before school starts, but that's pretty unlikely), so enjoy this one for now!
It was a Monday morning at the Dursley household, and everything was as normal as could be. Vernon had gone off to work, Dudley was watching cartoons, and Petunia was washing the breakfast dishes. As for her nephew, 5-year-old Harry Potter, Petunia had just sent him outside to rake the fall leaves that were beginning to assault her perfect yard.
The window above the kitchen sink gave her a perfect view of her backyard. She could see everything: the shed, the garden, the trees lining the edge of her porch, the box on the porch where Dudley kept his outside toys, and the little boy with messy black hair trudging to the shed to fetch the rake. About a minute later, he emerged from the shed, dragging a rake that was about twice his size. As she watched from the window, Harry grasped the rake with both hands, using all his strength just to lift it up slightly, before bringing it down and dragging it across the lawn, the end of the rake hitting him in the head. He struggled with it for a while, trying to scrape together a pile of leaves, but only ever bringing in about a handful of leaves with each drag of the huge rake. After about 10 minutes, he had managed to make a pile that just barely reached his knees. It was at this point that he dropped the rake. He seemed to have lost interest in the chore, even though there was still quite a lot of leaves blanketing the lawn. She watched as Harry leapt into the pile of leaves, completely disregarding the obvious consequence of having to rake them back up again. He rolled around, tossing the leaves in the air, and smiling like she hadn't seen in a long time. Petunia thought about going outside to scold him but decided against it. After all, her nephew was only 5 years old, and with every 5-year-old comes a short attention span. Deep down she knew it wasn't reasonable to expect him to rake the entire yard. Besides, despite her frequent mistreatment of the boy, Petunia wasn't all bad.
As she watched Harry enjoying his precious moments of playtime, she noticed something strange. It seemed that Harry was now sorting the leaves into two separate piles - one pile for all the yellow colored leaves, and one pile for all the rest. Why he wanted all the yellow leaves was completely beyond Petunia, and she continued to watch, both bemused and curious. But then Harry did something that Petunia would never forget. When he had finished his careful pile, he began grabbing handfuls of the yellow leaves with his tiny hands and rubbing them in his hair. It didn't seem like anything too harmless, except for the fact that at that very moment, while Harry was furiously working the leaves through his hair, his eyes screwed up in concentration ("What on earth was he doing anyway?" Petunia thought), Harry's dark unruly hair suddenly changed to be precisely the same blondish yellow color as the fallen leaves. Petunia stared in horror. Her hands had stopped scrubbing, and the dish she was holding fell out of her hands and crashed into the sink. Harry seemed to have noticed this change as well, as his bangs fell into his eyes. Laughing with delight, he danced around in the leaves for a minute longer before stopping and staring into the distance. His eyes took on a look of deep thought, but only for a moment. In a second he had broken out of his stupor and was racing toward the back door.
Petunia still hadn't quite gotten over her shock of what just happened, when the back door burst open, and a cold, (cheeks, ears, and nose tinged with pink) now blonde Harry, clearly trying to suppress his excitement, bounced into the kitchen.
"Look, look Aunt Tuna! My hair looks like yours now!" he squealed.
For a moment, Petunia couldn't quite find the words to respond to this strange situation. Strange. Abnormal. Freakish….Magic. The boy was, in every way, exactly what she had feared he would be. Exactly like his dratted mother, his foolish father…. she now had no doubt in her mind that Harry Potter was a wizard.
Meanwhile, Harry couldn't quite understand why his aunt was staring at him that way: her eyes wide, teeth clenched, fear and anger evident in every facial feature. He thought that she would be just as happy as he was! Now he looked more like the rest of the Dursley family after all. Maybe she would treat him like a part of the family too! His mind was racing, his imagination running wild as he pictured himself sleeping in Dudley's second bedroom, playing with his own toys, wearing new clothes, eating dinner every night with the rest of the family…. he would be a part of the family now, he just knew it.