A/N: special thanks to mickey882 for beta-reading and correction of my many mistakes in this chapter.
CHAPTER 1 – A KIND OF MAGIC
The four-year-old boy called Harry Potter was happy. Not that he knew that was his name, as he never was called that by his relatives. He only knew himself as just 'boy' or 'freak'. Once again he was walking with his auntie Petunia and cousin Dudley to the playground. It was not the present company that made the boy happy, as his relatives had no good feelings for him. Neither the playground, as he was forbidden to leave the sandbox there, and even then he was severely restricted on what he could do. What made the boy happy was the chance to see his friend Liz again.
Harry first met her just two days ago, and she quickly became the best presence in his life, as she was the first person in his memory to ever make him happy, as far as he could remember. Ignored by the other children due to his extremely large clothes and sad mood, as well as the stern look of his auntie and the threats of his cousin towards anyone approaching him, Harry was experienced in being alone. For some reason, the little girl also seemed to be lonely, and that caught his attention.
Liz was always in the company of her mother. Both used to walk hand in hand through the park, or sit together on one of the benches to watch the other children playing around. Liz was always quiet at her mother's side instead of playing with the toys or approaching the other children. Harry noted that the mother talked a lot with her daughter, but the girl usually just answered with nods, rarely saying a word.
It was during one of their walks when they both were near the boy, that little Liz surprised her mother by leaving her side to walk to Harry and took a seat near him in the sandbox, looking at the drawings the boy was making in the sand. Harry, also surprised, was barely able to give her a small smile before turning back to his drawing, far from being at ease with the sudden attention. The girl remained quiet at his side, just watching him for nearly twenty minutes, when the boy finally decided to try to interact with the girl. Shyly, he offered her the Popsicle stick he was using to draw in the sand.
Liz glanced between the stick and the boy, as if in doubt about what to do. Noting that, Harry, without leaving his place, reached out and placed the stick at her side before returning to his original position, smiling at her. The girl looked at the stick and then at Harry who, still smiling, nodded his head, inviting her to take the stick.
Surprising her mother, who was watching attentively without interfering, and also the boy, Liz finally took the stick but, instead of beginning a drawing of her own, came to the boy and sat very close to him, putting the stick back in his hand and pointing to his incomplete drawing, urging him to restart. Harry just nodded and went back to his work, the girl glued at his side, watching attentively.
Uneasy with the silence but knowing that the girl was naturally quiet, Harry started a one-sided conversation explaining in detail to the girl whatever he was doing. He wasn't expecting for answers and she gave him none. Even so, the boy was happy with the attention the girl paid to his words, nodding occasionally. Truth be told, that was more than he had expected, and that simple activity gave him the best moments of his life. He was sure he would remember this afternoon for a long time as a special gift.
Harry didn't know how much time they expended that way, hours for sure, when he noticed the sun approaching the horizon, a sure signal that soon his auntie would want to go back home to start dinner. Seeing that his time there was coming to an end, Harry decided to try a closer interaction with the girl. Changing sides relative to her, he took her small right hand, gave her the stick and softly guided her hand through a simple drawing, talking softly to her: "… the other eye… now the mouth…" To his contentment the excitement of the girl was quite noticeable. His heart almost jumped when the girl, finished with the drawing, turned to him and gave the most beautiful smile he ever saw, her eyes shining in happiness.
Harry had little time to taste his success, as his auntie was already preparing to walk back home. While he was standing up, the girl also stood up and gave him his first hug, while the mother gently ruffled his hair and whispered a 'thank you' as she walked to her daughter. The boy was sure he was the one in debt, so he was lost in thought trying to understand what he was thanked for.
-o0o-
The next day Harry was a little sad when he arrived at the playground and did not see the little girl in her usual spot, but soon he saw the little one marching his way, pulling her mother by her hand. Without hesitation, the girl sat close at his side, eyes shining and a big smile on her cute face. Harry smiled back and, showing the stick, asked: "Want to draw together?" to which the girl avidly nodded. A smile exchanged with her mother let the boy know he was welcome to play with her daughter.
Harry had another wonderful afternoon that even the angry looks of his auntie and cousin couldn't ruin. Even better, between ice cream and snacks that the girl's mother graciously provided both children, the boy felt for the first time what it was like being satiated. Harry not only received one of everything the girl had, he also ended with half of what the girl received, as usually a half portion was enough for her.
Without letting the boy know, the girl's mother certainly noted the several, and severe, differences between Harry and his cousin. One had everything, the other nothing, be it food, tenderness, care, toys, or clothes. While her daughter was finally drawing her first unaided figure, she talked with the shy boy.
"Sorry for not talking to you sooner, I hated to meddle when you were so focused. My name is Iekaterina, but everybody call me Beth, thanks to this little girl who is called Elizabeth, or Liz as she prefers."
"Nice to meet you, madam. I hope you don't mind me playing with Liz."
"Oh, not at all. I even want to thank you for that; she used to be so lonely…"
"If you don't mind my question, why are you called Beth?"
"Well, you see, when I was teaching Liz her name, I asked her if she would prefer to be called Liz or Beth for short. She thought for a while then just answered me 'I Liz, you Beth'. And that is it, I became Beth since then. But you didn't tell me your name yet."
"Well, you can call me…" started the boy, but his aunt interceded.
"It's Harry." Petunia said from her bench, and the amazement in the boy's face made it clear it was the first time he heard his own name. 'Very strange!' thought Beth.
Liz, who was at Harry's side and heard the tale, looked at them and smiled, satisfied with her choice of name for her mother. Unfortunately, Harry's auntie was too close for Beth to comfortably discuss Harry's home life with the boy, so she decided to address another matter. She had noticed the boy's curiosity about her daughter's behaviour and his uneasiness to ask about her silence and loneliness. She decided he deserved some answers.
"Liz is a smart girl, Harry. If she doesn't talk too much, it's just because English is a new language for her. We came from Russia not too long ago, and she will need some more time to adjust to all the new things plus the new language. Don't let her present shyness fool you, she usually is very forward. She is only a little ashamed of not understanding enough to talk back yet."
That was followed by the mentioned girl's cry of "Mum!" in protest, but now knowing the reason for the girl's silence, Harry doubled his efforts to talk to her, both about what they were drawing as well as everything else that caught their attention. Soon they started a little game, with Liz pointing or mimicking something for Harry to tell her the name of it in English, which she then repeated while he corrected her pronunciation.
Usually Beth was very concerned about her and her daughter's diet, but today she had bought around a lot of sweets for Liz and Harry, just to see how starved the boy was. And what she discovered made her both sad and angry. Her little experiment had confirmed that the boy was being underfed by his relatives. His shyness, clothes and what she saw of his and his relatives' behaviour were not good signals. Beth's scientifically-trained mind was trying to understand why such an amazing and charming boy had been so poorly treated, and how she could stop it. She was convinced the boy had been abused, at least emotionally, and she was now cataloguing all the evidences she could, before presenting a complaint to the proper authorities.
Beth certainly would have avoided her little experiment if she knew what it would cost the little boy. As soon as they came back to number 4 Privet Drive, Petunia took him by his ear and screamed at him for his lack of proper behaviour in accepting food from strangers, and not offering some to his cousin, and thousands of other little things she deemed to consider severe offenses to her sense of rightness. The boy never thought so many of his actions could be considered wrong doings, especially when some of them were praised when performed by his cousin. To 'think about his mistakes', the boy was locked in the cupboard under the stairs with the worst punishment of all if he didn't amend his behaviour: being forbidden to go again to the playground.
-o0o-
That night had everything to be one of the worst nights of the boy's short life, but a surprise was soon to occur to change his life forever, just because he was kind to a little girl with curled blonde hair.
With his belly full of sweets and in a boring environment, Harry soon was asleep. In the middle of his dreams, a childish voice woke the boy, asking him, "Want to play?" The boy slowly opened his eyes and searched for the source of the voice, finding Liz's face just inches from his, clearly visible even without his glasses.
"Liz? How did you get in here?" he asked the girl while he finished waking up. Although he soon recognized the interior of the cupboard under the stairs, so used he was to that small space, the situation he found himself was totally new and frightening. If it weren't for the presence of the little girl at his side, giggling at his discomfort to keep him from panicking and let him know that no immediate danger was present, he would be terrified.
What captivated his attention at first glance was his body floating a foot above the floor, followed by the translucent and ethereal aspect of both his and Liz's bodies. Then he realized that both bodies were in the nude, but that was soon forgotten as he saw, below himself, 'another' Harry calmly sleeping, this one with the 'normal' appearance of a body made of flesh and bones.
"First time?" asked Liz, evicting the boy from the stupor he had fallen into.
The boy just nodded affirmatively, while still trying to make sense of the strange situation. 'Why is it always me the freakish things have to happen to?' was his first thought. Then another one crossed his mind, and he had to take care of it immediately: "We died?"
"No, silly, we just aren't stuck anymore."
From that moment on, what followed was the most fantastic, exultant, exciting, amazing and thrilling night he ever had, or he ever will have, he thought. It was a real watershed in his life, something to define the before from the after as the most significant event of his life. There were so many discoveries in such a small time that had changed the boy so much that he felt as if he was awake for the first time, everything before being just a sad and greyish dream to forget.
As he awoke the next morning he was so overwhelmed and he was happy his auntie didn't mind freeing him for breakfast, he had so much to think about! It was the time he needed to put some order to the mess that was his thoughts. And the first thing to do was summarize all the discoveries of the previous night.
He decided to start with Liz herself. He was really happy to discover how intelligent and eloquent his little friend was. He had been worried and sad listening to his auntie Petunia talking with malice about how the behaviour and silence of the girl were proof that she was mentally deficient, and how Harry would be able to relate well with her through that. That, as almost everything that came from the Dursleys, was just another lie, fruit of the prejudice, ignorance and pure evil of them towards everybody else. To the family he lived with, Harry soon discovered that nobody but they and Margie, a female version of Vernon, had any value.
From what he had discovered from Liz, the girl always entered that state whenever she had fell asleep, and it was something natural to her. In that ethereal state, Liz discovered she was exempt from any pain or danger and, knowing this, she was much more energetic and active in that state than when she was awake. It was just a matter of feeling secure. Even being invisible to normal ('awakened') people, Liz soon started to search far-away places where children were active and playing while she was sleeping. She liked to be near other children, to spend time with them as if she were really there playing along with them, even if she couldn't be seen or heard by them.
One gift that helped a lot was her ability, in that state, to comprehend what they were saying and thinking, even when in another language. Without a body she couldn't really listen to what was said, but that state was a kind of mental state with a closeness to thoughts and emotions, so she was always aware of what people and the more developed animals were thinking or feeling. Liz, being so used to staying quiet around those children during her sleep, just used to be equally quiet during her awakened hours, something Harry intended to change for her well-being.
During their time together something very special occurred that was new even to the experienced Liz. While they were playfully flying around, their 'ghost' bodies accidentally superimposed. What then happened was that each one was totally exposed to the other; their memories, thoughts, emotions, everything that defined them as individuals was exposed in full to the other, no secrets kept. Harry had the full experience of what being Liz meant, and it was fantastic but also frightening and so amazingly intimate! And the shame to know that Liz had discovered all his fears, his faults, the punishments the Dursleys had inflicted on him for his misbehaviours! But, to his surprise, the girl did not think for a moment that he was at fault. No, she blamed all of it on his relatives! That was an amazing feeling, the girl absolving him for all those imaginary faults was just what he needed to absolve himself and put the blame where it was really deserved. That single moment washed away the years of insecurities and abuse he had under his relatives' 'care'.
Harry was astonished by the cultural, geographical and ethnical knowledge of his little friend, not that he knew any of those words. The places she had been, the people she had met doing every kind of action, from work to partying, from crimes to praying, the physical differences between them, their different clothes, habits, customs, traditions, houses, tools… everything she had absorbed without criticism or prejudices. She saw every action as their particular answers to their problems, the joys and the hard times of being alive. She was able to predict what a certain person would do in a specific situation, and was able to explain, to the astonished boy, the reasons for whatever they were doing.
Another great source of happiness to the boy was the total freedom of movement while in 'ghost form'. He was capable of flying without any equipment or support at amazing speeds, doing the most amazing aerial ballet imaginable, and with no risks of injuring himself. They had spent hours just playing seeker or follow-the-leader while doing the most daring pirouettes and acrobatics, not only in the sky, but also deep in the sea and even diving through solid rock. At the beginning he had feared getting lost, but Liz soon explained to him how he could quickly come back to her side, or a place he knew, just by wanting to be there.
The total absence of inertia allowed them to accelerate instantaneously without motion sickness or the pressure of multiple gravities air pilots and astronauts were subjected to in their flying machines. It was perfect: no need to breathe, no tiredness, no sore muscles, no coldness or hotness, no pressure in the ears, no risk of collisions.
After some time just enjoying the feeling of it by playing around his aunt's home, Liz guided him through an unending sequence of the most amazing places on Earth. The Grand Canyon and Niagara falls; the Caribbean islands, with amazing blue sea and white sand beaches; the Amazon forest; the icebergs of Antarctica; the African savannahs with their amazing animals; the pyramids in Egypt; the lights and delights of a Parisian night; the Great Wall of China and the strange fauna at Australia, New Zealand and New Guinea were just part of what they saw during the night. There was nothing better to two curious and adventurous children than to have the ability to travel instantly and safely to anywhere they fancied! It was so amazing that Harry became worried about some hidden price to pay for such amazing gift.
When Petunia finally came to free him from the cupboard, lunch was ready to be served. As soon as he walked out, she started to tell him what exactly she expected his behaviour to be. Unfortunately, she wanted him far from the girl and her mother, no talking and no accepting anything from them. He almost desisted to go; just the thought that, perhaps, Liz would still want to play at night in ghostly form to keep him from suffering even more. And Dudley, that pig! All the time behind his mother, unseen by her, made faces and mocked Harry's suffering, as if it was the funniest thing in the world! Sure it would be a hell of a day to little Harry.
