My dearest darling,
That child of ours, born of the devil, shall burden us no longer. I know that I am no devil so, my dear, I have to wonder what has cursed us - mayhaps, if you were another, I would be tempted to muse that you are what I am not. However, as I know the warmth in your heart will ignite when passion strikes, even in your cold cell, I know you are no more a devil than I. You have been unfairly imprisoned but at least presently, I am prepared for your return as we have no demon to occupy our time or resources. Perhaps what was unfairly born into this world of ours, bathed in sin that marred its skin, is not yet dead, but now I can be assured that only one worthy of the plights that child will bring will be burdened with it. I eagerly await your return and hope the imprisonment has not changed you my dear and those bitter guards have not washed away your being or motivation.
There was long grass that grew in patches in fields and on gardens in Little Whinging where people rarely traversed. In the middle of a barren space where no one passed, two boys lay between the dewy blades. The sun shone brightly in the watercolour sky of midday and midsummer and warmed their skin.
"Only one more year," Harry Potter smiled "Then no Dudley - at least not at school,"
Allen smiled "Do you know what secondary school you're going to then?"
"Probably one for delinquents, but they will certainly send Dudley to Smeltings,"
Allen knew all about Smeltings, as did Harry. It was the school that Vernon Dursley had gone to, full of spoiled kids that would bully each other by exploiting any weaknesses of the other spoiled kids. They wore uniforms that made Harry want to laugh and employed pompous teachers that spoke a forced version of the queen's English. Honestly, neither boy had any modicum of desire to attend the prestigious school.
A new start was what they needed, away from everyone they knew, who knew the manipulated form of them that Dudley had concocted to repel prospective friends. But there was one person they did not want to lose.
"We need to go to the same school," Allen commented. Harry hummed and nodded, forearm thrown across his face to shelter his emerald eyes from the blinding brightness.
"And you need a haircut," he giggled, soft, young voice carried by the wind that caused the grass in which they lay to sway around them, dancing to the soft tune of the music they could hear playing distantly.
Allen hissed jokingly, pulling at the hair he still had not cut from the day they had met and casting it over his shoulders.
"Why bother?" He joked "Besides, have you seen your hair? You are in no position to talk,"
Allen was right, of course. Harry's hair grew into a large mess that he couldn't hope to tame. The dark waves fell over his forehead, masking the thin, red scar in the shape of a stylised lightning bolt.
When school started again, there was a focus on their upcoming SAT test. Allen and Harry both tried their best, Allen distinctly better with the language aspects than the mathematics and science. Harry wasn't bad but he wasn't the best, like he was hovering in some unremarkable grey area alongside the majority of the class. If only both boys knew, when they filled out the varying test papers, that they would not need the material ever again.
Owls started to swarm around Little Whinging, once a rare sight even at night but suddenly a common sight even in the broad daylight. There were all variations of the supposedly nocturnal birds that landed on the front garden of number four privet drive. The inhabitants of the house grew more and more frustrated as the days went on and, with each new wave of owls came a new wave of heavy parchment envelopes with the address of their recipient written in viridian cursive. When a flood of identical letters came spilling down the chimney, Vernon Dursley had to give in, for he couldn't live like that.
The family left for a cheap motel but, when that proved to provide no shelter from the incessant onslaught of letters addressed to a certain Harry James Potter, Vernon shipped them off again, to an old, worn-down, wooden cabin on a craggy rock in the middle of an angry grey sea.
Still, as Petunia predicted, they could not escape what their nephew was.
Meanwhile, at the little whinging orphanage, Annabelle and Joe were very startled when the letter appeared outside of their door on Sunday. Both the day of delivery and the delivery itself were suspect. It was an old-fashioned letter with old-fashioned writing and a rather noticeable heft to it. But that wasn't the problem, the problem was the address. It was specific enough to specify something that no one outside of the orphanage, bar a few friends of the children, should know - it was addressed to Allen Walker at the Little Whinging Orphanage, room number fourteen, the bed nearest the door.
Frightened that they might startle one of the other children if they talked about it publically, they ushered Allen to the little office where they had first discussed his paperwork. He sat down on the geometrically patterned chair and watched the fish that had, since his arrival, been his responsibility to clean and feed.
Joe sat down on the chair next to his as Annabelle settled herself across the desk, both looking serious.
"Here," Joe said in his usual warm, smooth tone, sliding an odd envelope to Allen. He nodded politely as he carefully tore the wax seal up and pulled the first part of the letter out. On the parchment was written something that, had the person to whom it was addressed been anyone but Allen they would have disregard as complete and utter poppycock. But when shaking walls and instantly-healing wounds were involved, they couldn't simply disregard it.
Allen read the letter. The words didn't make much sense, but, at the same time, they explained so much. He could feel a bubble of disbelief grow in his chest but he had a feeling it wasn't nearly as large or suffocating as it probably should have been. He felt almost accustomed with the oddities that suddenly filled his head.
He, Allen Walker, was a wizard. And it all made so much sense.
Harry could feel the little boat rock and jerk over the rushing waves, powering along quickly with the great giant of a man - Rubeus Hagrid.
"Where are we going, Hagrid?" Harry asked, suddenly looking up from the cinereal waves that pushed them along.
"We'll be heading to Diagon alley soon," he said gruffly, his little, black beetle eyes glittering "So you can pick up your things for school. But there's something else we've got to pick up first,"
"What is it?" Harry asked, shivering in non-weather appropriate clothing.
"A boy, a boy named Allen Walker," Harry felt his face split into a large smile and, while he could not see Hagrid's mouth due to it being obscured by the masses of matted, greying beard surrounding it, Harry was sure he was grinning too.
They picked Allen up from the familiar orphanage that Harry had visited a number of times before and, instantly, he and Allen returned to their usual fashion of friendly, easy conversation. The only difference was the fact that, this time around, they had something brand new and very exciting to talk about.
"Looks like we're going to the same secondary school!" Harry exclaimed as Allen stepped down from the doorstep, his old, scuffed trainers silent on the walkway leading to the door that was gradually becoming overrun with the fresh verdigris of the overgrown grass.
"And here I was," Allen chuckled "thinking that would be impossible when I read that letter,"
"What are the odds?" Harry breathed, gazing around in wonder as though he were seeing the familiar scenery from a completely new perspective.
Allen didn't have an answer, but he had an entirely new topic of conversation.
"But did you see the look on Joe and Annabelle's faces when they opened the door?" His laugh filled the mostly quiet atmosphere in the vicinity, filling it with a sort of childlike mirth. Hagrid glanced over his broad shoulder and down at the two short children, glad to see the Harry Potter he had delivered as a baby to the family that had so clearly been dragging him down as happy as he was in that moment, in the company of a very good friend.
The stark difference between little Whinging and London was stark but neither boy would say anything bad about the city when all it made them think of was that school-arranged excursion that had further deepened their friendship. Still, good memories did not stop the stench of exhaust pipes and industry from permeating the air. There was a mismatched conglomerate of music blasting through open windows that all mingled together before being drowned by the conversations in the streets and the cars commuting down the busy roads.
Harry looked at the extensive equipment list in his hands. A wand, robes, a cauldron, and all other kinds of unusual things.
"Hagrid, can we really get all of this in London," he tilted his head to the side.
"Only if you know where to look," He tapped his nose and lead them down the street with a mission. They crossed a few more roads and bumped into a few more white-collar workers before they found themselves standing outside the threshold of an old pub with a very unappetising name.
It called itself the leaky cauldron.
They walked in and Allen couldn't stop himself from yawning. The second he closed his mouth he inhaled a significant quantity of dust and sneezed. Harry tried to suppress the urge to do the same as Hagrid pushed them forward, through the crowd of strangely dressed people. The pub, as many did, smelled strongly of stale alcohol and food. The same could be sad of a number of the pub's patrons, though many smelled worse and of much stranger things.
"Hello Tom," Hagrid said to the man behind the bar who was wiping away at the inside of a glass with an off-white rag.
"Hello Hagrid," the man greeted with a lopsided smile that, due to the unfortunate lighting, was made to look sinister by the strange, dark shadows on his pale face "The usual, I presume?"
"Not today Tom," Hagrid waved one of his inhumanly large hands in polite dismissal "I'm taking young Harry and Allen to get their stuff for school,"
"Well I never!" The man exclaimed, leaning over the counter and craning his thin neck so he could look at Harry properly "It's Harry Potter!"
Every eye in the pub turned to Harry and he suddenly felt very small. He was thrust a few hands that, unsurely, he shook as all kinds of gossip about him filled the space. He understood none of it. The crowd fizzled out in good time but, ever since the moment the attention had been shifted, Allen could feel intense eyes focused on him although he could not quite trace them to any one person. He only wished their intensity would fizzle out. A shiver ran up and down his spine like a series of tiny hands clawing their way across it. He hunched his shoulders and bowed his head and tried to make himself as small and unnoticeable as he could hope to be.
One particular voice surfaced after the others had gone. It stuttered Harry's name and he turned to find who was speaking. It was a man with a large turban balanced on top of his frail head. Hagrid introduced him as professor Quirrell, the Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher at Hogwarts. They would get to know him better over the course of the year, Hagrid said. Honestly, what Harry and Allen were really anticipating getting to learn more about during the year was simply what exactly the subject of Defense Against the dark Arts was about.
Hagrid excused them from the dank interior of the pub, pulling them into an alley behind it, besides the bins. They had escaped the damp smell of the inside of the pub that made mould grow up the walls and ceiling, they could barely see it in the dim light but were sure was there. But one unpleasant stench was replaced by another: there was a sweet smell that came from the bins, one that felt like it went straight to their heads and tangled itself around their brains. Harry and Allen scrunched their noses. They wished the strong smell of alcohol that had lingered even outside was just a little stronger, strong enough to mask the smell of the bins.
Hagrid drew his umbrella from one of his many oversized pockets. Harry cast a confused glance at it, remembering what it had done to Dudley and suppressing a giggle as he thought about the little, curly, pink tail. Allen looked at him, unsure.
Hagrid looked over the brick wall in front of them before tapping a few select bricks with the end of his umbrella as he muttered something unintelligible under his breath. Nothing happened for a moment and harry and Allen just stared with raised eyebrows as they waited. It was clear Hagrid was expecting something to happen but they couldn't hope to predict what. Harry was about to question what Hagrid was doing but then it finally took effect.
The beige bricks began to move, shifting apart until they began to open in the centre. They pulled apart and Harry and Allen could see a steadily growing glimpse of what lay beyond it. At first it was just colours, part of the side of a building, fabrics that swayed around moving bodies. Then there were noises, conversations that remained mostly unintelligible. Then it opened a little more and they could see down the centre of an alley lined with all manner of intriguing, eccentric shops that oddly dressed people traversed between. Some looked determined, like they were searching for something very particular, others mad, others happy. There were a few kids their age and younger that looked around in disbelieving wonder, especially those dressed in a fashion not dissimilar to their own.
"What is this place," Allen asked, noting exactly how many ways there were for him to get himself lost.
"Welcome," Hagrid began as he gently pushed them through the arch the brick had formed and into the weird street "to Diagon Alley,"
Allen was determined not to let himself get lost so he stuck close to Hagrid's leg and tried not to be distracted by everything around him. It was difficult. Harry didn't even try. He kept falling behind his friend and guide as he stopped to admire all of the strange shops and their window displays that were nothing like he had ever seen before. It was almost surreal to think that he would be seeing them again.
They stopped after coming up to an imposing building of white stone that stood at an odd angle. Hagrid led them up the marble stairs, to the grand front doors. Allen read the plaque mounted on the wall beside them, like a sinister warning to all those who dared enter the grand, imposing building, as if they were not welcome. Allen stepped through the heavy door that Hagrid held open for him, immediately stepping from the relative warmth of the sunlit outdoors to the frigid confines of the old building.
People milled about, following various paths to various desks, dressed in the same mix of attire as the people outside in a relatively similar proportion. Footsteps clacked across the tiled floors, tracking dirt across the floor they could only imagine had been white that morning before the work day began. It would be clean again the next day.
The employees sitting behind the desks were not quite human. Their eyes were dark and beady and beetle-like - somewhat reminiscent of Hagrid's - and their statures were about knee-high to the average man. They had larged, hooked noses and sallow skin that fell in wrinkles, resulting in all of them looking as though they should be superannuated.
Hagrid's twinkling eyes scanned the large room quickly, familiarly, before he headed to a desk with a short queue before it. On the other side of that queue was an antique mahogany escritoire that a goblin with small spectacle perched on his nose sat behind.
"We would like to withdraw some money for Mr. Harry Potter," Hagrid announced, booming voice echoing around the empty space.
"And does Mr. Potter have his key?" The goblin leaned over, peering down at Harry from his elevated seat as if regarding some seemingly insignificant organism through the scope of a microscope. Harry could almost hear the dramatic music that he felt, were the event embedded within a film, would swell as the creature slowly leaned forwards.
Then, suddenly, as though an elephant had fallen and crushed the instrument beneath it, Hagrid broke in and the goblin sat back, clearly aware his over-dramatised moment had been ruined.
"I had it here," Hagrid muttered to himself, his so-called muttering being a similar volume to most people's regular speech. He reached deep inside his seemingly bottomless pockets and pulled out multifarious items. As hagrid scattered half crushed dog biscuits across the polished escritoire the goblin looked at him with disapproving disgust. Hagrid appeared oblivious. He kept digging. Then he procured it from the depths of one of his interior pockets. The key was old fashioned and wrought of a dark metal that had probably grown darker with its age, The goblin took it and inspected it before leading them through a door and into a tunnel that grew gradually darker as they headed down it. The further down they went, the more the stench of mildew filled Allen's nose. It was almost a sweet smell, but it was the type of sweetness that felt like it burrowed within you and tied itself around your stomach, lungs and brain, constricting them just enough to make it uncomfortable. Allen breathed it in as he waited for the light to reappear.
Soon after they were guided to a cart on a track that they struggled to fit in. The track led them downwards, rushing quickly deeper and deeper into the Earth. Allen looked up until the ceiling disappeared. He could feel the sting of the wind and the dust and the dirt that flew up with it as it whipped across his face. He didn't mind it. In fact, the rush of the journey made him feel alive, like he was on a rollercoaster. His cheeks went red and his eyes watered and, Harry noticed, in that moment he looked so happy; happier than Harry had ever seen him.
Hagrid, on the other hand, was green, beady eyes squeezed as tightly shut as they could be. His dustbin lid-sized hands were clasped tightly around the side of the cart, hairy knuckles quickly turning white.
They left the bank, Hagrid's green tinge only just beginning to dull. Harry couldn't believe that he finally had money of his own. He had a coin sack in his pocket and he could hear the coins within it jingling. It was so startlingly foreign to him that he couldn't shake the feeling that, at any moment, he would be told to pass the money over to its rightful owner.
Hagrid weaves through the streets, dipping in and out of shops, picking up tome after tome, adding various items from the apothecary and a pewter cauldron to the top of the stack. Allen had giggled in childlike mirth as Harry, whose new fortune caused Allen's school-supplied funds to pale in comparison, tried to insist to Hagrid that he needed to purchase a solid gold cauldron instead. Allen had purposely kept the price tag of that one beyond his line of sight.
Hagrid then made a beeline for a robe shop on the corner. The boys couldn't escape it quick enough. The owner of the shop seemed to be unrelenting throwing comments about their heights (or lack thereof) around. They were then sent to be measured beside a boy who looked so remarkably like a weasel Harry was tempted to muse he had undergone a similar treatment to his cousin who still had the small, bouncy pig tail attached to his rear end.
The boy's voice was soft, both in a prepubescent way and a high-class way, and seemed to slither about. It was like it was an entity of its own, some snake with the most absurd behaviour ever observed within its kind. It moved throughout the room, sending lines of gooseflesh up Harry's arms and making Allen's too-long hair stand up. He spoke of Hogwarts, of his hopes, of his family, but there was something about the way he did it that was just disconcerting. Like he was preaching his ego their inadequacy, like he knew everything and everything he knew was indisputably factual. Allen had a suspicion it might not be.
Their last stop was the oldest shop Harry had seen all day. The storefront was dark, layers of paint peeling away to reveal the aged wood beneath. Painted across the top of it, legibility fading, was the name of the business. Ollivanders.
Hagrid pushed open the old door and it's oxidised hinges creaked as though threatening to become unattached from the frame. A little bell jingled as they stepped into the dark interior of the shop. Allen sniffed the air as he heard shuffling as an old man with silver hair removed himself from a ladder and walked to meet them. It smelled like mildew and must. He sneezed as the dust tickled his nose.
Ollivander greeted Hagrid with familiarity, talking about his wand, snapped long ago, in a way that made Hagrid shuffle uncomfortably in place. The rather childish mannerism appeared mismatched with his hulking frame. He then turned to the children.
"Harry Potter, I remember your parents coming here to get their first wands. Such a shame," Harry nodded mutely, staring at his hands rather than Ollivander's all-seeing bug eyes. They were the same shining silver as his hair and encompassed the same wild energy.
"And Allen…" he paused for a moment as though in consideration or hesitation "Walker. I remember your parents, by birth only of course,"
"I don't," Allen said, so quietly the soft noise didn't even reach his own ears. Yet somehow Ollivander picked up on it, cocking a single bushy, white eyebrow.
"Great wands," he shook his head, melancholy "yet such despicable actions. I hope you never come into contact with those again, Mr. Walker,"
Allen didn't know how to respond, didn't know what he could possibly say. Sure, he knew his mother was a bad person, but now he knew a little more. He knew she was still alive, he knew the same of his father. He knew they weren't just bad people, they were bad wizards. He had come to learn over the course if just that single day what label could be assigned to every bad wizard: murderer.
He wasn't upset. He probably should have been. He felt a foreign sensation tingle up his spine, like it was trying to tear through his flesh and dissociate itself from him and what he had just learned. He was disgusted, but not upset.
Hagrid left, not telling the boys where he was going, only that he'd meet with them once they got their wands. The bell jingled again as he stooped through the narrow door frame.
Ollivander began to measure them, enchanted tape measures dancing through the air. He clapped his hands sharply and they fell lifelessly to the floor. Harry stared at them in disbelieving wonder. Allen just watched Ollivander as he moved between shelves of narrow boxes, he had a feeling he should be more ensorcelled than he was.
Ollivander's thin fingers danced along the edge of some of his boxes. He picked up some, blowing the dust off of each and looking over them for a moment before either replacing them on the shelves or piling them in his arms.
He returned to them, setting the multifarious wands down carefully. He opened one box and placed the decorative wand within it into Harry's hand. He gazed at it, arm stiff, as he waited to be instructed on what to do.
"Well give it a wave!" Ollivander exclaimed, like it was common sense. In hindsight, Harry supposed it was.
Feeling very much silly, he flicked his wrist. The wand did nothing and, before he could even look at it again, Ollivander plucked it from his grip. Then the next wand took its place, then the next, and the next. With each failure Harry felt his heart speed up more and more. The nagging thought in his head he had been trying so hard to suppress grew and grew until his defenses against it became futile. What if he isn't actually a wizard? The idea of a prank became constantly more unlikely but it could still be a mistake. The world of wizards existed, but perhaps Harry wasn't part of it, perhaps something had gone wrong, there had been a typo on the registry. Harry Potter wasn't an uncommon name, perhaps he was just the wrong one. Maybe the scar on his forehead was simply a sick coincidence.
He swallowed his doubts and waved the next wand. A warm sensation filled his body, running up his veins like blood as light bloomed from the wand and surrounded him. He watched it bring a little light to the dank room. He breathed his relief and let his worry dissipate, carried away by the steadily fading glow. Soon it too disappeared.
"Curious, very curious,"
"I'm sorry," Harry felt like he had forgotten how to speak, like his traitorous mouth and tongue were no longer his, like they had migrated in to another "But what's curious?"
"The phoenix whose feather is in this wand," Ollivander examined it with a caring sort of curiosity "gave another feather. Just one other. And it just so happens that wand," he went silent for a brief moment as he took a single gliding step towards Harry. His nimble fingers barely brushed Harry's messy fringe "gave you this scar," his voice dulled to a whisper. Allen shivered as he stared in, maintaining the silence he had kept since Ollivander last addressed him.
"Now," Ollivander's voice was full again as he turned on his heel and faced the white-haired boy who was sat uncomfortably in an old wooden chair that Hagrid had previously broken "Let's see what we can do for you,"
Allen was nothing if not unnerved by the glimmer of apprehensive glee in the old man's insane eyes.
A/N
As bad as i am at consistent updates, I would never abandon a story after a single chapter, so fear not. I know someone guessed that Allen might be a Malfoy last chapter and I will say that he is not. However, as this chapter would imply, that isn't that far off. If you really wanna know who they are before I reveal anything, think more obscure, much more obscure, as well as much later into the story of Harry Potter. Thank you for all the reads, reviews, follows and favourites on the last chapter, they are much appreciated and I would love to see what people think of this chapter. You're entitled to an opinion and constructive criticism is more than welcome. Also, I apologise for typos and/or strange formatting. This is written on and uploaded from my phone so it isn't unlikely, also please don't think British spellings are typos, I know sometimes people do and that definitely isn't something I'd be willing to "fix".
All the best,
We'reAllABitOdd
