Harry Potter had been having strange encounters with strange people his entire life. People he didn't know shaking his hand in the street, or greeting him enthusiastically, and someone had even bowed to him once in a shop. His aunt and uncle had been furious over that, no matter how much he said he didn't know the man. However, the one that really stood out in his memory occurred when he was six years old. It wasn't so memorable because the stranger in question was any more extraordinary or weird looking than the others; if anything the man was the most ordinary of the lot, with no bowing or enthusiastic hand shaking, and even fairly normal clothes (but Harry knew he was strange like the others, he just couldn't say how or why). In fact, Harry barely remembered what he looked like, only that he was tall and blonde, and had very green eyes. No, the reason the encounter stood out to him so much was of what the man had done.
Harry had been sat on his own, as usual. He was in the park, pinching his nose since it was bleeding after Dudley got lucky and managed to catch him for once. Or rather, his friends had grabbed Harry whilst his cousin punched him in the face, breaking his glasses. Harry had managed to wriggle free and run away, struggling to see through the cracked frames that he had to hold up to his face - he'd have to sellotape them back together again later - and was currently sat half hidden behind the trees and bushes at the edge of the park, watching dully as Aunt Petunia pushed Dudley on the swings. They had arrived some time after him, and neither of them knew he was there - Aunt Petunia didn't care where he went, though she fussed over Dudley even when he was just in the back garden - but Harry preferred it that way. No one made him do chores when he was on his own, no one shouted, no one called him a freak.
Then suddenly, he was not on his own.
"Hello," A man was stood over him. Tall, blonde, green eyes. Harry hadn't heard him approach, and stopped pinching his nose; it had stopped bleeding, anyway.
"Hello," He said, a little warily. The man had a nice smile, and didn't look particularly threatening, but Aunt Petunia smiled nicely enough in front of anyone who wasn't him. They'd been taught at school about stranger danger, about bad people stealing away little boys and girls; his teacher had said that if they were ever approached by a man they didn't know then they should scream, or run away. Harry didn't scream, and he didn't run either. If Uncle Vernon was to be believed, no stranger would want him anyway, so he wasn't too worried.
"Why aren't you playing with the other children?" The man came and sat down on the slightly grass beside him, not seeming to care that it was damp, and a little muddy. That was weird, for a grown up.
"I don't know," He didn't want to admit to anyone else that he had no friends, and his family would rather he wasn't there.
"You're all alone in a park, and you're barely six. There must be a reason," Harry narrowed his eyes, suspicious as to why the man was asking all these questions, and how he knew how old he was. He didn't ask, though. Don't ask questions.
"I'm not alone," He said instead. "That's my aunt and cousin, over there," He'd met the well-meaning adult-type before, usually mothers at the park who asked him where his mummy was, and if he was lost, and tried to take him back home. He'd learned to avoid them, and they now avoided him too, after their own children told them about the weird kid at school and they started to talk amongst themselves about 'that freakish Potter boy'.
Somehow this man didn't seem to fit the well-meaning adult-type.
"Oh yes," The stranger seemed to recognise his aunt, eyeing the Dursleys for a moment and then turning back to Harry. "Is your cousin the fat one, blonde hair?" Harry let out a snort of laughter.
"My aunt says he looks like a baby angel," He found himself saying. "I think he looks like a pig in a wig," He then realised what he'd said and turned horrified to the man, only to find him grinning.
"You don't like your cousin much?" He asked. Harry said nothing. Over by the swings, Dudley was having a tantrum. The man raised an eyebrow. "Can't imagine why. He reminds me of my sister's boy, just three times the size," He turned back to Harry. "Did he do that?" He gestured to his bloody nose, and the broken glasses he was still holding to his face.
"He doesn't normally catch me," Harry said, slightly defensive. The man smiled wryly.
"Of course you'd be fast," He said, an odd look on his face for a split second. Then he straightened. "James always needed glasses. His stayed on his face without him holding them, though,"
"Who's James?" Harry asked. The man wasn't paying attention.
"Let's see..." Without an answer, he grabbed the glasses from Harry, who gave a small cry of protest as his vision blurred. He reached out, snatching wildly at the vague smudged figure of the man, until he suddenly felt the glasses be pressed into his hand again. He crammed them onto his face, and blinked in surprise as he discovered the lenses weren't cracked anymore. Not even the small chip in the glass that had been there before. And, he realised, they weren't broken in half. Even before Dudley had hit him today, they had been taped together. Now they weren't. They were even better than when Aunt Petunia had first got them. He turned to the man, who had amusement written all over his face.
"How did you do that?" He asked, a little awed, a little suspicious.
"I'm a wizard," The man said with a smirk. "Magic," Harry didn't believe him, but said nothing. You never got a straight answer out of grown ups when they said that.
"Well, thanks," He mumbled.
"No problem," The man shrugged. "They shouldn't break so easily again, either," Harry looked at the flimsy NHS frames doubtfully, but didn't argue. "Now," He turned to Harry. "You'll have to forgive me, but I need you to help me test something. You don't have to do much. Just yell as loud as you can," Without warning, he grabbed Harry's wrist and hauled him to his feet, dragging him rather roughly out of the bushes. Harry immediately started to struggle - he knew he shouldn't have trusted anyone being nice to him - vaguely noticing that the blonde haired man had changed; his hair was now brown, his face uglier, and Harry was sure he had been taller and leaner before. Maybe it was a different man? Maybe his glasses had been more broken than he thought. But no, those green eyes were still there. They weren't green like his own, they were... brighter, and unmistakable.
"Let me go!" Harry was scared, angry too, as eyes from people in the park began to be drawn towards them. There weren't many, just his Aunt, cousin, and a woman with her daughters. "I don't know you, get off," The man ignored him. Harry's heart sank. Would the police even look for him, or would the Dursleys tell them not to bother? But then his eyes widened as he saw Aunt Petunia hurrying over, even as Dudley shrieked in protest from the swings behind her.
"What are you doing?" She asked the man sharply, in the voice that usually meant Harry was in big trouble. "That's my nephew,"
"Is he?" The man's voice was different too. Before, he'd had an accent; Harry thought it sounded Irish, a bit like that man on telly. Now he sounded like he came from Surrey, like them. He was just as charming, though, too polite for someone who'd just tried to drag a child away. "Sorry, my mistake. Just making sure the boy is... safe," He let Harry go. His Aunt grabbed his wrist tightly with her bony fingers, pulling him towards her and eyeing the man suspiciously as he stepped back.
"Do I know you?" Aunt Petunia snapped. "You're one of them," She said 'them' in a lowered voice, like it was a dirty word.
"We've met," He shrugged. "Ill be off, then. He seems safe at least, if not as happy as hoped," He winked at Harry with those sharp green eyes, and seemed to... grow as he walked away. Then Aunt Petunia was dragging Harry away by the wrist, hissing furiously in his ear about getting himself kidnapped. Harry said nothing. He was still more than surprised she'd come to help him, and wondered where he'd be if she hadn't. For a moment, he felt more than fear and anger towards the woman.
He forgot that, however, when she locked him in his cupboard with no dinner when they got home. Apparently the whole thing had been his fault. He wasn't surprised, though. It normally was.
