Magical Twins
Chapter 1
It was the last day before the beginning of the Christmas holidays, a time, which eight-year-old Harry dreaded immensely. He hated holidays in general, but nothing could be as bad as the winter holidays. During the first days, he always had to cook Christmas meals for the Dursleys, only to be thrown in his cupboard to spend very lonely holidays, listening to all the excitement that was going on outside his tiny room.
At the moment, Harry was sitting at his desk in his primary school, trying to concentrate on the essay he had to write, while his classmates were eating their lunch packets.
"Don't you have any lunch with you, Harry?" the teacher enquired softly, throwing the small child a pitying look.
"I have, but I'm not hungry," Harry lied, partly glad that he indeed didn't feel hungry at the moment.
Suddenly, everyone's attention was drawn to Dudley and Thomas, both sitting in the row behind Harry.
"You took my chocolate," Dudley shouted, angrily trying to grab something out of Thomas' box.
"No, that's mine," the other boy replied angrily, fiercely kicking Dudley in the ribs, causing him to fly a few metres through the room.
"You'll regret that," Dudley hissed, glaring at the box on the boy's table, and all of a sudden, in front of everyone's eyes the chocolate from Thomas' box moved and slowly hovered through the air over to Dudley, who quickly unwrapped the sweet and put it into his mouth, before he let out a shocked squeak and dashed out of the room, spitting the chocolate out as he ran.
Without even thinking, Harry ran after Dudley, catching up with him out in the hall, where Dudley was sitting on the floor, leaned against the white wall.
"I'm a freak just like you," he sobbed angrily.
"You're all right, Dudley. Such things happen. You know they happen to me all the time, but nobody calls you freak," Harry replied soothingly, hesitantly putting a hand on Dudley's arm, noticing that for the first time in their lives Dudley seemed to not mind the body contact.
"They will now," Dudley cried. "The teacher is going to tell Mum and Dad, and they will be so disappointed. You know how they are. They're going to hate me just as much as they hate you."
"Then we still have each other," Harry whispered quietly, thinking, 'I'd love Dudley to be a freak just like me. Everything would be so much fun together.'
HP
Only a few hours later, Harry should know how right Dudley had been. Vernon pulled him out of his cupboard and began to shout.
"You ungrateful little freak. Was it not enough to ruin all our lives? Now you have infested Dudley with your freakishness! Get out of the house!" With that, Vernon shoved Harry and Dudley out of the house, while Petunia was standing there in shock, her hand pressed over her mouth, unable to say anything. Vernon pushed the two boys into the car and drove away.
Harry and Dudley sat next to each other, frightened. After an amount of time that seemed to be endless to the boys, Vernon stopped the car and walked around it, opening the back door at Dudley's side.
"Get out!" he spat. "I never ever want to see you again!" With that he pushed both of them down a hill, causing them to roll down faster and faster until they finally came to rest on a snow-covered field.
'Thank God it's snowy,' Harry mused, looking at the sky that was just getting dark, 'so we can at least see something. Otherwise, it would be completely dark.' "Dudley, are you all right?" he queried, trying to keep his teeth from chattering.
"S...so c... c... cold," Dudley replied, scrambling onto his feet.
"It is," Harry replied, shivering violently.
"W... what are we going to do now?" Dudley asked, frightened, throwing his cousin an expecting look.
"We'll hide together. Let me try something." He looked intensely at his cousin's features and wished to look like his cousin, knowing from experience that he was able to change his exterior, since he had often spent the time in his cupboard changing parts of his body just out of boredom.
"Wow, how did you do that?" Dudley asked in amazement. "Now we look like twins. Cool. So what are we going to do now?" he repeated his earlier question.
Harry remained pensive for a moment, before he replied, "Do you remember when I made myself jump up onto the school roof when I was running away from you and your friends?"
Dudley nodded wearily.
"Take my hand. We'll both try to wish us somewhere safe," Harry suggested, reaching out for the other boy's arm.
"Do you think that'll work?" Dudley asked, doubtfully eying his smaller cousin.
"I don't know. Let me try," Harry tried to reassure him. 'I don't know why, but I think it should work,' he mused as he concentrated on his wish, holding on to Dudley's arm like a lifeline.
Suddenly, he felt a tingling sensation run through his body, mixing up with the cold and wet from the snow, before he became very dizzy. Finally, the world turned black.
HP
When Dudley's mind slowly turned to awareness, he noticed that they were both lying in the snow in front of an incredibly large stone building. 'This looks like a castle. What are we doing here?' he wondered, anxiously looking around. A few metres to the side, he could see a lake that was reflecting the rays of the early morning sun in a golden light. 'It was just going to be dark; did we spend the whole night out here in the snow?' Dudley mused terrified, realising that he couldn't keep his teeth from chattering and his whole body was shaking from the cold. Harry still seemed to be fast asleep.
Somehow feeling too weak to scramble onto his feet, Dudley leaned over to Harry, shaking him forcefully. "Harry, wake up. It's too cold here," he said, pleadingly looking at his cousin, who merely let out a few coughs in return as he slowly woke up.
HP
"Where are we?" Harry asked, shocked at how hoarse his voice sounded, just when a deep, silky voice interrupted him.
"Good morning boys. May I ask what you're doing here?"
Harry and Dudley looked up in fright, only to see a tall man, completely dressed in what seemed to be a black one-piece.
"Good morning sir," Harry was the first to reply. 'What are we going to do?' he thought frantically. 'We can't tell them our real names; otherwise they'll just send us back to the Dursleys.'
"Excuse me, sir, my father threw us out, and we were wishing for a safe place and came here," Dudley stammered. His speech was interrupted by several sneezes and coughs.
The tall man raised an eyebrow, throwing the boys a questioning look. "Your names?" he drawled, causing Harry's thoughts to go haywire.
'Julia Taylor,' he remembered the name of a girl in his primary school, whom he liked a lot. "We're Dudley and Julian Taylor," he croaked, feverishly trying to keep his teeth from chattering.
"Well, come inside before you catch your death," the man sneered, motioning the boys to follow him towards the huge entrance door.
HP
Realising that the boys were obviously too cold to move their limbs, Severus gently helped them up and led them into the castle. 'I've never heard of a magical family with the name Taylor,' he pondered, 'on the other hand, at least the kids must be wizards; otherwise, they wouldn't have been able to apparate to Hogwarts. They must have spent most part of the night in the cold; I better take them to Poppy. Maybe she'll be able to prevent them from catching pneumonia.'
"As both of you seem to have caught a cold outside in the snow, I shall take you to the infirmary," Severus announced, observing how the larger boy nodded, while his skinny brother's face turned even whiter than it had been before.
"Follow me; don't dawdle," Severus instructed the boys, leading them to the hospital wing, where he motioned them to sit on a bed as he strode towards the Mediwitch's office, his robes dramatically billowing behind him.
Dudley immediately complied, making himself comfortable by gathering the covers around his shivering form, while Julian uncertainly stood next to the bed, following the tall man with his eyes.
Severus entered the office and quickly filled the Mediwitch in, who immediately turned into Healer's mode and hurried to the two boys' beds.
"Sit or better lie down," she instructed Julian, gently helping him up on the bed, covering him with the blankets. "Are you twins?" she asked softly, turning to Dudley, who gave her a small nod. Pulling her wand out of her robe pocket, she noticed that both boys backed up, eyeing her wand in fright.
"Oh, are you not used to magic?" she queried in surprise, glancing at Severus, who stepped next to Julian's bed.
"There is no such thing as magic," Dudley replied knowingly, while Julian shivered violently, partly because of the cold, partly because he remembered the nightmare he sometimes had, in which someone waved a similar stick, causing a green flash to move towards himself, hurting him badly.
"There is magic, and you're both wizards, who are able to do magic. That's why you managed to come here to our school," Severus explained patiently in his softest voice, which he normally only used for his Slytherin first-years, who were either abused or extremely frightened for some reason. "Madam Pomfrey will check on you using her wand, so we'll know what potions you need to feel better quickly."
"All right," Julian croaked, causing Dudley to nod anxiously, slightly moving his position towards Julian's bed.
"Very well, then I'll begin with your brother," Poppy said softly, waving her wand over Julian to cast a comprehensive diagnostic spell.
After a minute, a small parchment emerged from the tip of her wand. Poppy frowned, holding it out to her colleague so they could read together.
Age: Eight years, four months, twenty-one days
Height: 1,32 m
Weight: 50 percent underweight
Level of magic: 40 percent,
Magic depleted by 90 percent
Temperature 35.5 too low
Signs of illness:
Beginning pneumonia,
Several bones broken and improperly healed,
Bruises and scars covering 82.3 percent of body,
Eye sight poor
Sighing, the Mediwitch pressed the parchment into Severus' hand and turned to the other boy, making a similar parchment appear.
Age: Eight years, five months, twenty-seven days
Height: 1,42 m
Weight: 50 percent overweight
Level of magic: 10 percent,
Magic depleted by 50 percent
Temperature 35.6 too low
Signs of illness:
Beginning pneumonia
Madam Pomfrey let out a gasp, showing the parchment to her colleague, who raised an eyebrow before he sneered, "How is it possible for twins to be a whole month apart, especially if the parents are Muggles and unable to magically prolong the pregnancy?"
tbc...
I'm not a native speaker of English. Please excuse my mistakes or help me to correct them.
All recognizable characters belong to J. K. Rowling, and I am not earning anything by writing this story.