September 1985
There's something about the first day of the new school year, an atmosphere never replicated at any other point: a heady mixture of shiny new shoes and immaculate bags that will be ink-stained and tatty by November, of excitement and nerves, voices that sound discordant and loud to speaker and listener and an overwhelming awareness of one's own feet.
The local school is miles away, in most senses, from Cokeworth Primary, but standing in the playground, hovering by the fence that smells of fresh paint, Lily is taken back twenty years, hurtling through time to a crisp September day when she held her mother's hand and was glad only that she had Tuney to look out for her.
"Mummy …"
Harry tugs at her sleeve, small fingers twisting themselves into the material. "I don't want to go," he mumbles, and Lily's heart contorts painfully at his eyes, forlorn and beseeching behind his glasses, which are slipping down his nose. He's tiny in his brand new jumper and trousers, smaller than most of the other children: how can she leave him?
"When it comes to hometime, you won't want to come home," she tells him gently. "You'll be having too much fun – much more fun than being at home all day."
Harry glances round at the playground, then says desperately, "but it's hometime now."
"It isn't, my sunshine," says Lily, kindly but firmly. "It's morning."
A frown. "But …"
"It won't be long until hometime. The day will go really quickly, I promise."
A young, sweet-faced woman is approaching, smiling openly: she greets them warmly.
"Hello! Are we starting in reception today?"
Lily nudges Harry, who's peeking out from behind her skirt, eyes wide. After a moment's hesitation, he nods shyly.
"What's your name, sweetheart?"
"Harry James Potter," he answers formally, as he always does: there's pride in his voice as he says his middle name. "My daddy plays rugby." A surreptitious glance at Lily, then, with an eager little smile, which Lily returns: he's keen to show that he remembers the cover stories they've constructed. It isn't nice to have to teach a five year old to lie, but having Muggle grandparents, Harry knows the difference between the two worlds. And he's awfully bright: she and James don't need to worry much about him mentioning Quidditch or the like at school.
"Well, isn't that lovely!" says the teacher warmly. She bends a little so she can address Harry directly. "I'm Miss Walker, Harry, and I'll be your teacher this year. Would you like to come and see our classroom, and the cloakroom? You have your very own peg for your coat and bag, just for you."
Harry looks torn. He's a curious child, naturally sociable and eager to explore new situations, and Lily knows that once his initial nerves have faded, he'll be the bubbly, excitable boy he usually is. But right now he doesn't want his mum to go.
She doesn't want to go, either.
"Why don't you wait with Mummy a little longer," says Miss Walker tactfully, sensing reluctance, "and then we'll go and have a look around and meet some friends, OK?"
Looking relieved, Harry nods. His grip on Lily's sleeve has tightened. When Miss Walker has moved away, Lily crouches down to his level, taking his little face in her hands, smoothing his hair – why won't it lie flat? – and nudging his glasses back into place.
"Now," she says, hoping he can't hear the tremor in her voice, "I know it's scary, starting school. I was scared too, but I soon got used to it. And when it was time for me to go to Hogwarts –" she lowers her voice, but Harry's eyes shine at the sheer mention of the school – "I wasn't nearly so scared, because I knew I would enjoy it."
Harry's bottom lip twists between his gappy teeth. "Will you be here to pick me up at hometime?"
"Of course I will, sunshine. I'll be here today, and some days it will be Daddy, and sometimes Nana and Granddad and Sirius will want to collect you – but there will always be one of us here."
Harry nods again. Then he flings his arms around Lily, burying his face in her neck, and Lily holds him closely to her, eyes squeezed tightly shut so that the tears don't flow.
She kisses her son's untidy head, murmurs, "I love you lots, sunshine," into his hair, and then he's gone, and she knows he will be fine, absolutely fine, because it's impossible not to love Harry - but she misses him already, her son, her friend, her Harry.
She reaches the gates and looks back, and her heart skips, because Harry, already surrounded by others, is looking back too.
* * *
Spring 1991
Miss Helen Fraser has been teaching Year Six – very successfully - for over twenty years, and in that time, she has never come across a family quite like the Potters.
As Mr and Mrs. Potter seat themselves in her classroom, she takes a moment to massage her temples in preparation for the meeting. There's something about the Potters, she's found, that requires you to stay on the ball.
She remembers quite vividly the first time she met the Potters, having only heard about them in the staff room. Despite forewarning, they weren't at all what she expected. Barely thirty, despite having a ten-year old son, they were, from the outset, charming. Ridiculously so. It doesn't matter that every time Miss Fraser has had to call them in, it's been to discuss the latest trouble Harry has found himself in – somehow, every meeting ends with her feeling as if she's been chatting idly over drinks – and having put Harry's misbehaviour quite out of mind.
So as the Potters look at her expectantly, she tells herself that this time, she will stayed focused. She will not let them sway her.
"Mr and Mrs. Potter, thank you for coming in."
"Of course," says Mrs. Potter, smoothing back her pretty hair. "Is something the matter?"
Miss Fraser clears her throat, shuffling papers on her desk unnecessarily.
"Yes. Yes, well … I'm afraid there's been another – incident with Harry."
She watches their faces carefully, but there's not a flicker from either of them: no surprise, no disappointment, nothing. Their expressions are unreadable.
"Oh dear," says Mr. Potter after a pause. "What - was the incident?" He leans forwards slightly in his chair, and Miss Fraser, despite herself, feels her face reddening. Not conventionally attractive, perhaps, he still has that lanky, boyish charm, with his collar crooked and his glasses lopsided.
Composing herself, she clears her throat again and tells them: "Well, as you know, we took the class to the park yesterday as a special treat. Harry was very well-behaved, but when it was his turn on the swings, he – well – jumped off the swing at its highest point and he … he flew." Her face grows even warmer: it sounds absolutely ridiculous to her own ears, what must the Potters be thinking? But she saw it – she saw it with her own eyes! Harry Potter, still small for his age, soaring across the playground, landing on his feet like a cat, grinning all the while.
So preoccupied is she with the memory that she misses the small glance exchanged by the Potters. What she does see, when she collects herself, is that their faces still register no surprise at all. In fact, Mrs. Potter is smiling kindly.
"Harry has always been very good at jumping," she says, as if it's normal. But it wasn't jumping, Miss Fraser thinks wildly. Goodness, how can she explain this without sounding quite insane?
"Very good," Mr. Potter agrees, nodding proudly. "In fact, we're thinking of encouraging him to go in for the M- for the Olympic Games, when he's old enough, for the high jump."
"Long jump," says his wife at once.
"I thought we agreed high jump."
"No, we said long jump. It makes far more sense." Mrs. Potter rolls her eyes at Miss Fraser, who doesn't quite manage to smile back. "You saw Harry yesterday – he jumped very far, didn't he? Horizontally?"
"Er – yes," says Miss Fraser, because it is true – but should a child be able to jump that far? Why, she's not sure grown men even jump that far in the Olympic Games! Hastily, she moves on to another point, hoping she'll regain control of the conversation this way: "Look, it's not just about Harry's – er, gift – it's that the other children tried to copy him. We had a number of injuries before we had to just take them all back to school."
At this, the Potters look somewhat abashed. "Ah," says Mr. Potter, shifting in his seat, "right - well. We didn't think that would …"
"We'll talk to Harry," Mrs. Potter interrupts politely, "about his … jumping. It won't happen again."
"Thank you," Miss Fraser says, relieved. She glances down at her notes and wonders if, while they're here, she ought to broach the subject of the local vicar's toupee, which had started flopping about wildly upon its owner's head during a particularly long assembly – but of course, she has no proof that it was Harry, especially since she doesn't even know how he might have done it. All she knows is that strange things have happened in her Year Six class this year, unexplainable things, and more often than not they can be traced to the little black-haired boy with the toothy grin.
And what good will talking to his parents do? Harry isn't a problem child, not really: he is usually well-behaved and generally polite, apart from a few instances of Talking Back; he works hard, plays nicely, completes his homework well and on time … although there was the incident last month, when he produced nothing but the excuse – the oldest excuse in the book - "my dog ate my homework!"
(If Miss Fraser knew that the dog in question was actually Harry's godfather, and that he had eaten Harry's homework as a joke, she would probably resign on the spot.)
She rubs her temples again. No. There's nothing to be done.
Swiftly, she changes tack, to one that makes her feel quite a lot more positive. "Where will Harry be going in September?" she asks. "The comprehensive in town?" Because I really ought to send a letter of warning to the Head …
But the Potters shake their heads. "James' family have been going to the same school for generations," explains Mrs. Potter. "We feel it's the best place for Harry."
A school knowing generations of Potters, Miss Fraser thinks when they've gone.
God help them.* * *
July 1991"Harry?" Lily taps at her son's bedroom door. There's no response from inside, so she elbows her way into the room.
Harry is sitting at his desk, surrounded by his brand new textbooks: he appears deeply absorbed in One Thousand Magical Herbs and Fungi, and it's only when Lily clears her throat that he looks up, apparently startled.
"Oh, Mum! I didn't hear you, I was so busy reading," says Harry earnestly. "I'm learning so much." He pauses briefly, letting that sink in, and then adds casually, "was there something you wanted?"
God, she mustn't laugh. She mustn't.
(But he's so like his father she wants to simultaneously hug him and hit him around the head with a broomstick.)
No – steely resolve. Firm. Be firm.
"Well, I hate to interrupt your learning, but if you don't get your shoes on now, we'll be late getting to Petunia and Vernon's, and I know how you'd hate that."
Harry's face is a picture. "Is that today?" he cries, eyes wide with innocence that's oh so feigned. "Mum, you should have said! I completely forgot – oh, and now I'm so caught up in my books, it would a shame for me to have to –"
"Shoes," says Lily, masking her urge to laugh with the sternest tone she can muster. "Now."
-
James gives his son a sympathetic look when he slopes into the hall, scowling. It was a good attempt, but James knows from experience that very little can get them out of a visit to the Dursleys'.
He doesn't understand these visits. For the majority of the year, Lily and Petunia barely speak: Christmas and birthday cards, yes, and there's the occasional Sunday lunch at their parents' house, but little else. Then every so often – once every three years, James would estimate – one of them will have a sudden compulsion to bring the two families together for an afternoon that is always excruciating. James puts it down to two factors: Lily's heart of gold, and Petunia and Vernon's desire to show off their supposedly perfect life, house and son.
Naturally, Harry hates such occasions, and since he was old enough to understand the concept of excuses has been fighting tooth and nail to get out of them.
"Sirius gave me some Dungbombs," he confides to James when Lily is out of earshot. "D'you think if I happened to drop one –"
"Petunia would kill you," says James without hesitation. Harry wrinkles his nose, then seems to concede that this is likely.
"I'll think of something else," he assures his father, and bends down to put his shoes on: James spots, at once, the wand sticking out of his back pocket, and grins to himself. Really he knows he shouldn't encourage this – but it's Petunia and Vernon. And everyone has their limits.
-
Merlin's balls, it's excruciating. He wishes he hadn't discouraged the Dungbombs now. He feels like he's drowning in a sea of magnolia walls and weak tea.
And boasting.
"… much bigger office, on the ninth floor, well-deserved if you ask me, the hours I've put in this year, I wouldn't be surprised if there was a nice bonus waiting for me at the end of the year. Some people in the company, well, they just don't pull their weight, lazy, insolent lot they are …" Vernon's small eyes rest on James, who only just manages not to stick his tongue out. "It happens everywhere – people like that leaving hard-working individuals to pick up the slack."
"It's just not right," Petunia chips in, shaking her head. "More tea?"
Only if it's got poison in it, thinks James.
He glances at Harry. His son is slumped in an armchair, staring at the wall with quiet desperation written into every line of his face. On the other side of the living room, even Dudley, too, seems bored by his father's monologues.
"Come and see my Game Boy," he commands Harry suddenly.
"Your what?" says Harry blankly.
Dudley opens his mouth incredulously, but Petunia cuts in first, looking deeply uneasy. "Diddy, darling, that's perhaps not the best idea … I think you two had better stay here, where – where we can keep an eye on you."
She isn't fooling James – nor, by the looks on their faces, Lily and Harry.
"Harry isn't dangerous, Tuney," says Lily exasperatedly. "He hasn't even learnt any proper magic yet."
Petunia glances about wildly, as if neighbours might suddenly materialise in the living room. "Keep your voice down!" Her gaze shifts protectively to Dudley, and she suggests to him gently, "Diddy, why don't you go and put your Smeltings uniform on to show your aunt and uncle?"
"Smeltings?" repeats James, wrinkling his nose, when Dudley has lumbered off.
"It's a fine establishment," Vernon booms. "The men of my family have been going there for generations. No finer education to be found anywhere!" The beady eyes narrow. "I suppose this one –" Lily rolls her eyes almost audibly – "will be going to that … Warthog place?"
James is dying to answer – but Harry gets there first.
"That's right," he says, seriously. "Warthogs' Wizard Academy. The headmaster is a warthog, that's how it got its name."
"Don't talk nonsense," Vernon barks at once. His moustache quivers alarmingly.
"Oh – well, he was a human," Harry amends, straight-faced, "but he offended another wizard twenty years ago and got turned into a warthog. He's still a brilliant headmaster, so everyone says – isn't that right, Dad?"
"Indeed," James agrees gravely. He's almost bursting with pride. "Quite brilliant - if a little hard to understand."
There's an odd squeaking noise from Lily's direction: his wife has her hands pressed over her mouth, shoulders shaking with poorly suppressed laughter. She isn't helped by Dudley's return to the living room in the most ridiculous outfit James has ever seen.
"Oh God," Lily gasps in between howls of laughter, when Petunia has promptly – and coldly – shown them to the door five minutes later. "I know it's wrong to laugh – that poor boy –"
"You have to be a bloody saint not to laugh," James remarks. He ruffles Harry's hair, grinning. "You did very well, son."
"That was the hardest thing I've ever had to do," says Harry fervently.
August 1991
On days like these, when the sky is a piercing, vivid blue and not a single cloud obscures the sun, James and Harry only need exchange one look over breakfast, a look that says, quite simply:
Quidditch.While Lily tends to the garden, a floppy hat pulled low over her face, James and Harry spend a good two hours alternating between the roles of Chaser and Keeper, and practicing moves: though Harry looks like he'll be a Seeker, James still teaches him all he knows, because it makes him positively ache with pride to see his son pull off the moves perfectly.
At noon, when the sun becomes too scorching to remain in the sky, they settle beneath the shade of a large tree.
"It's a real shame you can't have your broom at school," James sighs. "I think I might give Dumbledore the money to upgrade all the school brooms – you can't practice properly on those."
"Mm …"
James glances at Harry: he's cross-legged, picking idly at the grass with one hand and a scab on his knee with the other. James nudges him. "All right, you?" he asks gently.
Harry shrugs.
"Nervous about next week?"
Another shrug.
James leans back on his elbows, watching the white streak of a Muggle aeroplane moving across the sky. "Anything in particular?"
He only has to wait a moment or two before Harry's resolve breaks.
"Everyone's going to expect me to be really good at everything," he blurts out, "like you and Mum were – to be top of the class in Potions and Transfiguration and everything, and be really good at Quidditch, and – what if I'm not?"
"But you are," says James in surprise. "Well – no one knows how well they'll do in school 'til they get there, but you're a brilliant flier, and I'm not just saying that 'cause I'm your dad and I have to." He pauses. "And to be honest, mate – you've got Mum's genes, and you've got my genes, and frankly I don't see how you could possibly be anything less than – well, perfect with that combination."
Harry snorts.
"You really think I'll do all right? I won't … let you and Mum down?"
"You could never," says James. "Whatever you do, we'll be proud of you."
"What if I murdered someone?" Harry returns at once. "What if I killed a teacher? What if I snuck out of bounds with – with a dragon and – befriended a mass-murderer?"
"I would be neither surprised nor disappointed," James says solemnly. "In fact, I'd be highly disappointed if you didn't sneak out of bounds. Regularly. You've got the Map, haven't you?"
Grinning, Harry says, "thanks, Dad," and James' heart swells. If he could speak to his teenage self, he thinks, he'd say you know how proud you felt when you won the Quidditch Cup? Well, that's nothing compared to how you'll feel about your son.