A school, but where? Platform 9 ¾? That was… nonsense. And how was she supposed to buy her school supplies? Some of it she could improvise, given time, but a cauldron, dragonhide gloves? It wasn't as though there was a magic-mart just down the block beside the Tesco.
Harry had drifted off, dozed, woken, dozed off again, and was just starting the cycle once more when Aunt Petunia rapped a knuckle on the cupboard door.
"Get up and set the table. Hurry up before your uncle comes down!"
"Yes, Aunt Petunia," Harry murmured, rubbing her eyes.
The latch clicked, and Harry took a moment to pull on her clothes before nudging the cupboard door open. Morning was always blinding after nights spent under the stairs. She winced, rubbed her eyes some more, and then leaned back into the cupboard.
"I'll bring you something. What do you want?"
Blackscale opened a yellow eye. "Just water. Too much food makes me sluggish."
"Okay."
She was just turning to close the cupboard when there was a booming knock at the front door. Harry went wide-eyed at the dust now sifting down from the stairs, and then looked at the door.
"Get the door!" her aunt yelled shrilly from the kitchen.
"Yes, Aunt Petunia," Harry called back.
She scurried to the front door and glanced through the frosted windows on each side before she undid the lock. Whoever was outside was big enough to cast both windows into shadow.
Harry shrugged.
As long as it wasn't Aunt Marge, she didn't really care.
She opened the door.
A man- a giant man filled the space outside. Dark eyes beamed down at her from a beard thick enough to hide her in its entirety.
"Hullo, Harry," the giant said.
XXX
Harry was coming to reconsider her feelings on London. She'd only visited the city a few times, but this round she was finding especially overwhelming. Part of that was the revelations that Hagrid had brought about a secret society of witches and wizards, and part of it was the noise, the bustle, and the people.
Any hope that the wizards would be better was quashed as soon as she stepped foot in the Leaky Cauldron. People wanted to meet her. To shake her hand. A man actually wept with joy when she shook his.
She'd had fantasies of being important, being famous. Hard not to when she was about as popular with the Dursleys as dry rot. But to actually be famous. To have people know her. To turn their heads when she walked by.
It made her skin crawl.
The steady thrum of the crowd in Diagon Alley was a relief after the pub. She vanished into the crowd, becoming just another shopper. Not Famous Harry Potter.
What she was famous for, she hadn't quite figured out yet, even if everyone else seemed to know. Hagrid had tried to explain it, something about a dark wizard and her apparently vanquishing him? But how was a one-year old supposed to do that? If she had that kind of power, then how come Dudley had always been able to knock her silly?
Hagrid was a steady presence, tugging her along, her hand wrapped around one of his huge fingers. He parted the crowd with his size, and that alone made the street less cloying. But there was also his smell, like woodsmoke and leather and earth, and the way he had leaves caught in his beard like some kind of ancient tree spirit. It was like walking with part of the forest.
XXX
They shopped.
Gringotts. A ride through the tunnels and caves that she enjoyed, even if Hagrid didn't. And then-
Money.
She was still dazed with the image of that gold-stacked vault by the time they made it back to the surface. Hagrid, still somewhat queasy as well, sent her towards Madame Malkin's so he could have a break.
Robes were… kind of itchy. And a bit too hot for the summer sun. But no one else seemed troubled. Was there a magic for that as well? She wouldn't mind learning that one first.
A blond-haired boy joined her during the fitting.
He gave her a once-over, taking in her scrawny, tanned limbs and over-large sneakers. The set of Dudley's jeans she'd cut off into capris. The snarl of black hair that she'd given up trying to tame and finally just twisted back with twigs like hairpins.
His lip curled, and he turned away.
Harry wasn't sorry to leave the shop.
Hagrid was waiting outside with ice cream. She'd forgotten the sneering boy by the time she'd taken her first bite.
"Where next?" Hagrid rumbled, his ice cream scaled up to match his size, nearly the size of a traffic cone.
"Books?"
"Alright 'en."
They parted the crowed once more.
Something he'd said earlier came back to her. Harry tugged at Hagrid's index finger.
"Hagrid- did you say there are dragons at Gringotts?"
His face lit up. "Aye. Never seen em myself, but yer can 'ear em sometimes. Always wanted a dragon..."
"So… Dragons are real?"
"Course they are."
She grinned up at him. Did dragons count as snakes? She hoped so. "Can you tell me about them?"
The duo that entered Flourish and Blotts was a tower. Nearly fifteen feet high, a slip of a girl riding on a giant's shoulders, her shoes dangling from skinny legs as she balanced an ice cream.
Hagrid had tired of talking down to her and pulled her up to his level so she could hear him better.
And he knew a lot about dragons.
Flourish and Blotts was familiar in an odd way, in that it reminded her exactly how little she knew about everything. Not just about magic in all its facets, but the things she thought she was just getting a handle on- nature, plants, animals, apparently all had magical variants.
Harry snatched up every book on "Herbology" and "Magizoology" she could, enlisting Hagrid to help carry, and then for advice. She hadn't given much thought to what a groundskeeper was, but Hagrid seemed to know as much about magical flora and fauna as he did about dragons.
She left the store with enough books that the bookseller had thrown in a complimentary 'Flourish and Blotts Extended Expanda-bag' to carry all of them.
"Les get yer wand now, I think," Hagrid said, checking her list.
XXX
Holly and phoenix feather.
"After all, He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named did great things. Terrible! Yes. But great."
XXX
She departed Ollivander's much quieter than she'd entered it.
Hagrid, seeming to sense her discomfort, slowed and patted her on the head. "Don' pay him any mind. He's a weird ole bloke. Been there forever, I think."
"Yeah." Harry nodded. That Hagrid honestly seemed to care she was upset made her feel a bit better.
"Cmon, pet shop's up 'ere. Might be nice if you get an owl. You and yer friends can write to each other."
She smiled at that, but her first thought was a long-time mantra: I don't have any friends.
Another voice spoke up, softer than the first.'I've got Blackscale.' Harry looked up at the massive man escorting her through Diagon. Her smile became truer. 'And Hagrid.'
And that shut the nagging little voice up right sharp.
XXX
As it turned out, she couldn't speak to lizards, frogs, toads, or salamanders. Not even slowworms, legless lizards that were for all intents and purposes, snakes. Apparently her speech only worked on 100% snakes.
It worked well enough on the massive Brazilian Mirror Viper in the far corner. His tank was marked with "HIGHLY POISONOUS! COLLECTORS ONLY!", but that didn't stop Harry from having a quick talk with him about his life in the petshop.
The store clerks wouldn't sell him to her though, and she didn't have enough money on hand anyway.
Hagrid, distracted by owls and owl accessories, hadn't noticed her conversation with the viper, but he did catch on once the clerk started yelling at him to fetch Harry away from the "incredibly deadly serpent."
He'd been put-off by her interest, she could tell, and Harry allowed him to lead her away.
It didn't rekindle her interest in an owl, and she was forced to admit to Hagrid that she wouldn't have anyone to write to anyway, and that he should save the money.
The tall man looked at her for a long, heavy moment, his thick brows knitted.
"Next year, 'Arry. Next year, yer'll need an owl. Promise yer that. I'll get yer one then."
He took her hand and led her out of the emporium. Harry waved goodbye to the Mirror Viper as she went.
XXX
"So… yer like the Mirror Viper? Those're something. I know yer'd take good care of 'im, but McGonagall'd have my head if I let yer bring that into the school." He smiled ruefully at her. "Tell yer what. I've got loads of beasts at school that plenty of people're too scared of to 'preciate. Yer can come see 'em any time."
Harry found herself matching his smile. "His name was Rain-slick-slither-skin. He had a weird accent, but he was nice."
Hagrid stopped so suddenly that the crowd had to part around them like a river around a rock.
XXX
Hagrid tried his best to explain what she'd done wrong, and that he wasn't mad, but Harry still ended their trip sure that she'd messed up somehow.
So apparently certain people had magic, but certain people who had magic also had magic that other wizards didn't.
Hagrid led the way back to the Leaky Cauldron, Harry still holding his hand, but trailing a few steps behind now, her eyes down.
Parselmouth. Parseltongue.
There was something ugly and jarring about the terms that she didn't like. Being a Speaker meant having a title. A role. Something that snakes understood and respected.
Being a Parselmouth was just another one of those things she didn't understand. That no one had ever bothered to explain, but that everyone but her seemed to know. It was too much like being with the Dursleys or at primary school. All these rules and unspoken understoods. Like playing a game where everyone else already knew the rules.
Warm sunlight gave way to brick and cobble, and then the smoky darkness of the pub.
"I'll floo yer back," Hagrid said. "Don' wanna mess round with apparatin.' Too much strain on yer."
She nodded slowly. What floo was, she wasn't sure. Apparation was teleporting. They'd done that to get to Diagon in the first place, but it had made her horribly nauseous for several minutes, and Hagrid had apologized profusely.
"I think that'll be fine," she said.
They crossed in front of the bar, Hagrid towing her toward a back hallway, when-
"My g-goodness, H-harriet Potter?"
A man sitting at the bar had turned to stare at them.
Harry tugged Hagrid's hand, mentally urging him onward. She didn't want to meet-and-greet anyone else today. But Hagrid had stopped.
"Professor Quirrel. Didn' think I'd see yer round here."
The man, Quirrel, young and pale, built like a scarecrow, stood from his stool. "J-just having a drink b-before term s-starts," he said tremulously.
He wore an odd, purple turban, incongruous beside his European features and his wizard robes. But… it wasn't like Harry hadn't seen a dozen weirder looking people in the alley alone.
"I-is this r-really Harriet Potter?" Quirrel asked.
"'Arry and I were just finishing school shopping." Hagrid patted her shoulder, nudging her forward. "'Arry, this is Professor Quirrel. He'll be teaching Muggle- er, 'scuse me, Quirrel. He'll be teaching Defense agains' the Dark Arts this year at Hogwarts."
"I'm l-looking forward to t-teaching you, Miss Potter." Quirrel held out a hand.
Dutifully, Harry reached out.
He had very long fingers. Thin. Like a spider.
Their hands touched.
Something in her magic shifted. A lurch behind her ribs, on her forehead, at the base of her spine, something stirring, and-
Harry drew back, gasping, her hand halfway to her forehead by the time she realized the feeling was gone.
"'Arry?" Hagrid rumbled. "Yer okay?"
She blinked.
Quirrel was pressed against the bar, his eyes wide, hand still outstretched.
"It- it was nothing," Harry muttered. "Just a bit of magic."
"It's been a long day," Hagrid added, as though that explained things. And then he was drawing her away again, maybe a little more quickly than before.
Behind her, the tall man moved, his robes rustling like snakeskin.
"I'm looking forward to teaching you, Harry Potter."
XXX
Hagrid flooed her home via Mrs. Figgs' fireplace. That, in itself, was a revelation. But it was a discovery for another day. Harry just nodded tiredly at her neighbor, hefted her things, and headed for Privet Drive.
She entered just long enough to stow her things in Dudley's spare- her new room, and then she was off, Blackscale around her neck, headed back to the forest.
There was quiet there, and time to think.
XXX
XXX
In retrospect, this is a fairly standard Diagon Alley sequence. I'd like to have changed things up a bit more, but I think the tone is sufficiently different enough that it's bearable. The most salient points are probably how Harry reacts to what's going on around her, and how quickly dreams of importance and fame sour. I'm pleased with that much.
Oh, and Quirrel's there too.