Disclaimer: I am not J.K. Rowling. I do not own Harry Potter.

Note: The following somewhat frivolous alternate universe piece is posted as part of my trying to get back into writing Harry Potter fanfiction, following a brief absence. Some of the sentences are a bit long; this is done to try and convey some of the confusion that the protagonist feels at some of the events going on. The conceit of this particular universe is that the Potter family of canon became extinct in the 1940's, with various situations and events diverging from there.

Further Note: This story is a one-shot. This story is rated K+.

"…Your Uncle Severus is a wizard and your Aunty Lily is a witch. Now me; I'm more of a fool or a joker…"

-Sirius Black to Harry.

It started in January 1987 from the point of view of Harry Black – well the weird stuff did. Admittedly there had been occasional odd things before that, such as the never-seen 'Uncle Severus and Aunty Lily' who sent old-fashioned Christmas presents, and who Harry's dad insisted letters be written back to with proper ink pens, but it was on a January morning in 1987 when Harry's older sister, Zelda, stuck a temporary teacher to the ceiling of a classroom and made her hair go green that things got really obviously weird. Especially when, within moments of said objectionable teacher 'getting stuck', the men and women in really silly clothes showed up, as the teacher hung there, her facing going red, and shouting and screaming, whilst the pupils all laughed. And the men and women in really silly clothes each had a stick that they were waving around, whilst they said strange stuff, and one of the men made a glowy light round their stick that then shot off to circle round Zelda's head, and the man approached Zelda and growled 'And just who are you, little girl?' sounding really scary, and when Zelda had swallowed and told him the room had gone really quiet.

'Did you just say Black?' the man had demanded again.

And when Zelda had defiantly looked back at the man, obviously deciding she didn't like him, (not that Harry did either) and had said 'No, I said Green.' and the man had dropped his stick somehow and the men and women in really silly clothes had seemed really excited and really confused – and to have completely forgotten (for now) about the teacher stuck to the ceiling.

At this point the deputy-headmistress had walked in, and the men and women in really silly clothes had done something with their sticks, freezing her in place, and then this really creepy looking old man with a long white beard in even sillier clothes had shown up, who the other men and women in silly clothes apparently took orders from; it had ended up with school finishing early for the day and Zelda, Harry, and Gusty all being taken to daddy's showroom, where Daddy was in the middle of selling a car to an important businessman called 'Vernon Dursley', and Daddy looking not very pleased about all these people in really silly clothes hanging around. (The customer, Mr. Dursley, didn't seem very happy about it either, muttering something about 'freaks with no respect getting everywhere these days', and shouting that his sister-in-law was 'a witch', and that the men and women in silly clothes had better not try any of their 'jiggery-pokery' on him.)

And the really creepy old man turned out to be 'The Vicar for Magic', 'Albert-something-or-other' (or something like that) and he seemed to be really pleased to find Harry's father, although Harry's daddy didn't seem to want to see him, and there was a lot of really complicated and adult talk about Daddy's mother, and someone called 'The Wizard Gammot' and bloody people and houses and Harry's daddy got very cross and saying he 'walked away from all that rubbish' and that there was no way that any of his children were going to get dragged into any of it.

To which the really creepy old man had said something about a 'Secret International Statue' which had made Harry's daddy go quiet and stare and Harry had decided at that moment that he most definitely did not like the nasty, scary, really creepy old man – with his silly glasses and his even sillier clothes and his not-very-nice smile.

Then the really creepy old man noticed that the children were looking at him, and the not-very-nice smile vanished, to be replaced by a friendlier one, but Harry and Zelda (and Gusty too, although she was probably too young to work out what was going on) had seen the not-very-nice smile, and knew that this was a bad man, and that the friendly smile was a fake one, hiding something much worse.

And then the really creepy old man and the men and women in silly clothes all left, and somehow nobody at school the next day remembered what had happened with the temporary teacher being stuck to the ceiling and the deputy headmistress and everything. Well nobody remembered apart from Harry and Zelda (and Gusty for the later bit when she'd joined them on the way to the showroom).

But Daddy had said that something like this would probably happen, and it would be a waste of time talking about it to anyone at school, and that he'd try and explain things to the children at the weekend.

And that was how Harry Black found out about magic.

Author Notes:

For those familiar with canon and who care to know such things, with no meeting with James Potter on the Hogwarts Express, Sirius Black ended up sorting into Slytherin, where the most rebellious and daring thing he could quickly discover to do to annoy his parents was to hook up with Severus Snape - a boy who's mother had been disowned by the Prince family for marrying a muggle. Anyway, Sirius and Severus ended up as best of friends (and occasional prankers of their fellow Slytherins), which resulted in Severus not joining the Death Eaters, and Sirius' parents eventually disowning him for hanging around with Severus. After Hogwarts, Severus married Lily Evans and went to set up an apothecary business in Diagon Alley, whilst Sirius married a muggle named Agnes and got a job as a motorbike salesman. By the time of this one-shot, Sirius has become a sufficiently successful businessman to own a car-salesroom. Sirius and Agnes' eldest three children (all mentioned in this story) are Zelda, Harry, and Augusta ('Gusty'). They have several more daughters.

Harry Black was born in July, 1980. Like his mum, Agnes, he's short and wears glasses. It aggrieves Harry somewhat that none of his sisters (so far) show any signs of being short-sighted. (Harry's sister Gusty tries to assure him that wearing glasses makes him 'look clever'.) Harry's older sister, Zelda, was born in September, 1979, which puts her in the same year as Harry at school.

Sirius' brother, Regulus, still ended up joining the Death Eaters and dying in much the same fashion as canon.

Peter Pettigrew in this universe ran away to France as soon as he was done with Hogwarts, where he teaches transfiguration at Beauxbatons.

Remus Lupin joined the Order of the Phoenix out of gratitude to Albus Dumbledore, but since the war has been drifting (much as I get the impression he ended up doing in canon).

Albus Dumbledore became Minister for Magic in the latter stages of the Wizarding War (no Millicent Bagnold), and Dedalus Diggle eventually became headmaster of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.

Neville Longbottom is this universe's Boy-Who-Lived; Voldemort's spy in the Department of Mysteries, Augustus Rookwood, discovered and reported this universe's 'one with the power' prophecy to his master.

This piece is a one-shot.

Update (2nd December, 2014):

To respond to a question in one early review, as far as Harry in this piece is concerned 'Minister' is an overly posh term for a vicar.