I don't own Harry Potter.
Harry Potter didn't mean to cause trouble, really he didn't. It just had a funny way of following him. Food disappearing from the pantry? His stomach's fault, not his. He certainly never intended to grow hungry. Grass snakes congregating in the backyard to sacrifice small insects to him? It wasn't his fault they mistook him for some all-powerful snake god in human flesh after speaking to them while gardening. And as far as accidentally turning himself into some sort of were-mermaid during a visit to the old ruins, well, that was just a simple case of wrong place, wrong time.
When the Hogwarts letter finally arrived it was a surprisingly dull affair. The secret of his parents had long since come out, of course. There was really no hiding that he was a little... strange. Compared to growing a fish tail and long red hair every time Dudley hit him with a glass of water, a magical courier-owl was really just a blip on the radar.
That's not to say the Dursleys were on board with the whole magic thing. That's why when school shopping could be put off no longer he found himself alone in Diagon Alley. Of necessity he was all decked out in his rain gear. At school he could get away with t-shirts and the like, but here the possibility of accidental transformation was simply too high. A few drops of water on his skin and he'd have trouble even walking, a few more and he'd be a mermaid in a matter of moments. He really only was able to dress normally at school thanks to Dudley and his gang. They'd basically declared him their personal punching bag, keeping those with both friendly or antagonistic intetions from getting close enough to pour water on him accidentally or otherwise. And it certainly wasn't as if Dudley would dare expose his secret outside the house.
Mermaid transformation issues aside, Harry was a bit flummoxed as to how he would buy all the required materials on only twenty pounds. Not that he wasn't grateful, it was more than his allowance for the past four years put together after all, but it did leave him in a bit of a sticky wicket. Well, he was always one for problem solving. "A wand..." he whispered to himself. Well, a wand was really just a fancy stick, right? He could carve one of those easily enough. "One down." The cauldron was a simple fix as well. The junkyard back home definitely had some old cast iron pots, and quite frankly he was never quite certain what distinguished them from cauldrons in the first place.
The textbooks he could probably borrow from the school library, or perhaps bum them off a classmate. If worst came to worst, it was a boarding school. They had to sleep sometime. The telescope? Well, he could see the stars well enough for his own purposes, and the gloves were for the unwary. Pets he would already have plenty of if the snakes around Hogwarts had already heard of him by rumor, though they would protest being called such. The only real sticking point here were the robes. Teachers tended to get a little persnickety from what he'd heard if you were out of uniform. Course decided, he slipped into the first clothing shop he could find and sat down to be fitted. "You there." Harry turned to his right, surprised to see a boy with shockingly blond hair. He hadn't expected expected to see a wizard going for the punk rocker look, even if he had forgotten to style his hair correctly for it. "What's your business?"
"Isn't it obvious?" replied Harry. "I'm here for a robe."
"But why are you waring such a garish yellow longcoat? Are you some sort of muggleborn?"
"I know not of any muggles or borns, but I have before been called Raincoat Boy. I have all the powers of a boy in a large yellow raincoat. Able to deflect small droplets of water with ease, and avoid sunburn on the most cloudless of days." Surprisingly that seemed to shut the boy up. Harry had expected the boy to continue pestering him for at least another minute or two. Several minutes later the fitting was done and Harry received a copy of the Hogwarts uniform. Three would have been better, certainly, but as it turned out the exchange rate between galleons and pounds was exceedingly poor. Well, no matter, he would make due. There was no more time to haggle or search out other shops in any case, as if he was not back outside Diagon Alley by the time Mr. Dursley drove past he would have to find his own ride home.
All in all it wasn't the most exciting adventure he'd ever had, but there had at least been a few amazing sights. That miniature dragon had been undoubtedly his favorite. He wondered if it spoke the same tongue as snakes. Well, no matter, that among so many other mysteries would be solved with time. He might even meet other mermaids at Hogwarts. Or at least were-mermaids. He couldn't have been the only one to stumble into a circle of ancient runes on the day of an eclipse and accidentally offer his blood in some sort of pagan ritual, right?
End Chapter 1.
Just a teaser.