The Druid of Hogwarts
by Phantom Drache
Chapter 1: Planting the seeds
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There exists a house located at Number 4 Privet Drive, Little Whinging, Surrey, England. This is a completely normal house, which holds a completely normal family who all lead completely normal lives. At least, that is what Petunia and Vernon Dursley would like their neighbors to believe.
The truth is somehow far more intriguing and less pleasing than that though. The cause of this lay not in Petunia and Vernons son Dudley, but rather the fourth member of their family. The son of Petunias sister, Lily Potter-nee-Evans, one Harry Potter.
At the age of five, young Harry was a little short for his age, and definitely on the scrawny side of things. With black hair - that looked as though it had never seen a brush no matter what he or his aunt tried to do to it - bright green eyes, and somewhat baggy clothes, Harry looked a good fit for the 'emo' or 'goth' cliques in school.
Harry was not a part of either groups though, and his similarities in appearance were purely coincidental. His slim and petite figure - only accentuated by the baggy clothes - were because of a certain fact that the Dursleys would give anything to avoid having ousted: Harry was under-fed.
Now, were he ten years older, such afact might have been played off as a personal life choice he made, but at five - and especially when compared to his cousin who somewhat resembles a swine - anyone who looked closely enough at him would find cause for concern.
And as one looked closer and closer, the troubling signs only multiplied. Firstly, despite Vernon and Dudley being rather rotund figures, Harry was thin enough to nearly count as malnourished. Secondly, everything Dudley wore was brand-new, high-end designer clothing, while the best thing Harry wore looked to be three sizes too big and over a year old.
Thirdly, when the time came where most kids are given their very first chore in order to help them learn responsibility, Dudley was never given one while young Harry was told he had to keep the Dursley's extensive front and back yards in pristine condition.
Once more, if he was fifteen instead of five this might not have been an issue, but as he wasn't, it was hard work just to mow the grass. Harry had to mow the grass, pull any weeds, trim the bushes and trees, apply fertilizer, water the flowers, and make sure that everything was carefully arranged for the best appearance.
And as thanks for his efforts, Harry was rewarded with the bare minimum food required to make sure he didn't collapse, and a small cupboard under the stairs for a room. Should he ever miss one step or not perform to expectations, he was given even less food than normal and was given very stern 'lectures' on how useless he was, and how the Dursleys were doing him such a huge favor by taking care of him since his 'drunkard' parents died in a 'car-crash'.
Under normal circumstances, one would think that such horrible treatment of a child would be noticed fairly quickly, especially when young harry had offhandedly mentioned his home-life to no less than three elementary teachers who had inquired as to why he dressed and acted the way he did.
The fact that he had not actually known his own name was Harry Potter rather than 'boy' or 'freak' until his first day of school should also have tipped someone off. Sadly for the young man, there was one tiny detail that he didn't know of that was ensuring that his life did not change.
That detail was known as Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore. Headmaster of Hogwarts School for Witchcraft and Wizardry, Order of Merlin First-Class, Supreme Mugwump of the International Confederation of Wizards, and Chief Warlock of the Wizengamot.
Yep, you read that correctly. The reason why Harry's life wasn't the best it could be was because of an old, magical man. And the term 'magical' is used in complete seriousness. In this reality, magic does in fact exist, and Hogwarts is renowned as the most premier (read: only) school for magic in England, and Harry's parents - Lily and a James Potter - were magic users.
The rest of Harry's story is known far and wide in the magical world. There was a Dark Lord known as Voldemort, who lead a racist siege on all magicals who didn't come from a family that was regarded as "pure-blood", which simply meant you could trace your family back several generations and only get magicals. For reasons only known to Dumbledore, Voldemort and a select few others, Voldemort attacked the Potter residence one night, only for something to go horribly wrong.
The house was partially destroyed, Lily and James were dead, and the only thing left of Voldemort were his wand - which was snapped according to the news - and a lightning bolt scar left on Harry's forehead, which the young lad typically kept hidden under the fringe of his hair.
Of course, what the news knew and what the truth was were two completely different stories. In truth, there was a prophecy that Dumbledore interpreted to mean that one of two boys were destined to defeat Voldemort. One happened to be young Harry Potter. Because of this, a series of events were sent on course to make Harry's life less than perfect, though the exact details of those decisions are only known to Dumbledore himself, and are neither here nor there at this time.
What is important at this point in time, is that one of those decisions made it so that no matter what occured, Harry Potter could not be removed from the Dursleys family home. And so, none of the signs were noticed by anyone who might do anything to help the young child.
When Harry noticed that no matter what happened to him nobody would come help, he retreated into himself. He found things to make his life bearable. Books were a good retreat every now and then, but when his grades pulled ahead of Dudleys due to the fact that the bigger kid seemed to not even know what a book was let lone how to read, Petunia and Vernon made it absolutely clear that out-doing Dudley was unacceptable. Harry spent a whole weekend living on a couple slices of bread and a glass of water for that.
And so he dropped his grades back down to an 'acceptable level', even if he did still occasionally find his way back to the library. Books didn't yell at him, or make him feel bad. Similar thoughts lead him to his second -and probably better for his sanity- retreat: the yard-work.
What was at first a punishment for simply existing became first a hobby, and then a large facet of who Harry was. Dudley, picking up on his parents dislike of his cousin, made school-life even harder by being a stereotypical bully, complete with goons who repeated whatever he said, and no other kids wanted to deal with Dudley, so Harry was alone most of the time at school.
His only safe place was the yards, and only because as much as Dudley enjoyed tormenting his cousin, not even his aunts love for him would save him if he messed up the yards while trying to mess up Harry's face. This meant Harry proceeded to spend the vast majority of his time in the yards, tending for the various plants.
After a few years of this, Harry slowly stopped speaking. Plants and books don't require him speak, and nobody outside of teachers and his family ever directed their voices to him, and so there was no need to keep talking. The Dursley adults liked when he was quiet, and this meant he got fed more often as they simply forgot to take away his food for random things outside of his control.
Another side-effect was that his figure, formerly pale and scrawny, slowly started to tan and bulk up thanks to the hard work. His hair also lengthened, and after a while it was long enough for him to tie into a loose ponytail. Oddly, his emerald eyes actually darkened over time, becoming closer to a forest green.
Animals also slowly started to take a liking to him, which lead to an interesting discovery on a dull spring afternoon during his 8th year of life. Vernon was at work at his drill company desk job, Petunia was out at some random home being her usual gossipy self, and Dudley had left to go hang out with his friends-slash-yes-men.
This left Harry alone with nothing but the plants and a few critters to keep him company. Harry normally didn't take much notice of the things that wandered into the garden, but today's guests included a garden snake, and he knew that Petunia had a weird thing against snakes. Deciding the at least give the thing fair warning, he opened his mouth, only for sounds that were definitely not english to fall out.
"[Hey, be careful not to be seen by the long-necked lady. She doesn't like snakes.]" Harry's eyes widen a little when instead of english, his words come out in a noise that any outsider knowledgeable in languages might call an odd mix between Gaelic and Welsh.
"{Ah, thank you Shaman. I had not expected to meet one of our kind here, though I appreciate the warning.}" The snakes response, equally unexpected, came in the form of hissing that Harry could intellectually recall not meaning anything, but to his ears translated into an actual sentence.
Pausing in his inspection of a small rose bush, Harry turned to face the snake, who had also stopped what it was doing. Blinking in confusion for a moment, Harry speaks twice in one day for the first time in over a year.
"[Shaman?]" The snake tilts its head a little, similar to a person doing the same in confusion. Harry could almost imagine a tiny eyebrow being raised at him.
"{Do you not know of your heritage, Shaman? The tales of those who wield the power of nature's love and wrath?}" The youth shakes his head, noticing the other animals that tend to crowd him also come closer, making various sounds that he was fairly certain shouldn't have translated into the hushed whispers he was hearing.
And thus the scattered entities that live in Little Whinging Surrey slowly taught Harry what they knew of those that could communicate with animals. some species knew them as Shamans, others called them Warlocks, or Guardians, or a dozen other names. The one that Harry liked best though was when a Merlin referred to him as a 'druid'. Something about the term just sounded right to his ears, and that's the term he took to using in reference to himself and the other people that the animals were telling him about.
Apparently true Druids were very few and far between, though there were certain people out there who had inherited a portion of the ability to speak with all creatures, and were able to speak to one particular group. Examples given were the Parselmouths who could speak to snakes, and Aurans who were those who speak bird.
Harry also learned about something far more intriguing than simply the ability to converse with any living being as if in their natural tongue. He learned that he has access to magic. The animals didn't know any technical details, with most only knowing of Druids through a combination of family stories and genetic memory, and most referred to it by a different name (Ether, Nature's Will, and Channeling being the most common), but Harry had quickly become able to piece together what a dozen voices were telling him and translate it into words he could understand.
While it would have been nice, having some measure of clear instruction on what to do, Harry found it almost freeing to be the only person with the knowledge or power he now had at his fingertips. The Dursley's didn't know about it, nor had he heard of anyone else being able to converse with animals - though that Steve Irwin figure he once saw on the telly while Dudley was distracted might have been an exception - so it was something unique to Harry.
It took some time, though that was something he had in spades. When he wasn't doing yard-work, cooking (which Petunia had had him start doing at 7), or at school, Harry would sit in the backyard and meditate. After two weeks of this, he was able to tap into something within him.
It felt like static electricity, though far more powerful yet without the pain. The sensation fled as quickly as it came, though now that Harry knew what to look for, he was able to find it again within an hour. For another month, Harry merely practised reaching for the power and holding it, until it was always just beneath the surface, ready to be brought up at a moments notice.
After that was the slow process of learning to utilize the power. At first, nothing happened no matter what Harry tried to do. If he hadn't been so determined, he might have written off the talking animals as him finally going crazy, and given up. However, he was dead-set on magic being real, partly in the childish glee that only the young can have, and partly because it represented a certain power that nobody could take from him.
Finally, he seemed to figure out what the animals meant when they kept referring to magic as "nature's love and wrath". Pouring his power into a plant caused it to rapidly grow larger and healthier than what was naturally possible, and Harry was able to manipulate the very elements to a certain extent.
Causing breezes was fairly simple, as was creating small flames in the palms of his hands, but creating water proved very draining, and moving water or the earth seemed beyond him for now. After that, Harry tested out enhancing himself with his magic, to mixed results.
He could make himself a little stronger, and his skin a bit harder, but it was far from the image he had in his head of being able to take down Dudley and his gang single-handedly, so he didn't even try that. A bit of experimentation revealed that making plant material stronger was far easier than making himself stronger, and so Harry took to carrying a small walking stick with him everywhere he went.
It was from a nearby ash tree, and a slight push from his magic could cause the wood in his hand to come to life once more, lengthening and splitting off into branches. If a few new trees suddenly appeared in the local parks over the course of the next few months, nobody noticed or cared. With a little 'help' from Dudley and his goons, he also taught himself how to use the stick to defend himself, though that earned him another lecture and another weekend in the cupboard, this time without food or drink not that he needed it.
One of the few tricks he learned that Harry actually found indispensable was the fact that his magic could actually substitute food and sleep, though he needed those in order to replenish his magic. Interestingly, simply staying outside in nature would also do so, albeit at a far slower rate. He used this ability without hesitation, and it allowed him to quickly overcome what the near-malnutrition did to his body in earlier years, filling out his body and giving him a good growth spurt.
And so Harry Potter the young Druid lived the next few years, until a fateful day on his eleventh birthday. Thanks to his very active lifestyle and the self-sustenance ability, he was a bit larger than the average boy at 155 cm and 45 kg, though it was all wiry muscle. His eyesight had also slowly corrected itself thanks to the magic Harry channeled through his body near constantly, and he had stopped wearing glasses almost a year ago.
As for his clothes, the Dursleys still only gave him Dudley's 'hand-me-downs', though Harry had learned how to remove fabric from the articles and use magic to 'stitch' them back together, now far closer to his own size though still a bit loose. Extra material was kept in reserve to patch up any holes or tears his clothing accumulated.
A few days before his birthday, Harry experienced the second change in his life. It had started as a normal day: stop his morning meditation, get up, make breakfast, and retrieve the mail when it got to Number 4 and Dudley inevitably refused to get up from his own meal to grab it. It was at that last step that things went awry.
Most of the envelopes were the normal bills and letters from 'friends' of the Dursleys, as well as their family, but one of them was different. It felt a bit heavier, as well as made of rougher material. On the front are green letters, and on the back is a deep purple wax seal. The seal is a crest with four creatures and the words "Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry", and on the front: Mr. H. Potter, The Cupboard under the Stairs, #4 Privet Drive, Little Whinging, Surrey.
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