Chapter 3: School
Due to the eavesdropping he's done over the years, Harry's accent is an atrocious mix of Indiana and Surrey. I'll let your imagination and my spelling take it from there. That's also how Harry's figured out what a lot of the words in his book mean, though there are also a lot of pictures. Also, Harry's lingual patterns are stunted by his lack of education, but his thoughts are as sophisticated as they should be.
"Albus, this is reprehensible! How do you justify roping this boy into competing in a tournament for wizards who are not only older but better trained than he, when he doesn't even have a wand!?" Minerva McGonagall was absolutely livid! How dare he! "And don't try to tell me you didn't put his name in the cup! You've been so desperate to find him for so many years, I have no trouble believing that you have all of his primary school work from before he was lost."
"How else were we going to find him, Minerva? After I foolishly trusted those people to care for him, he could no longer call their home his own, and everything else failed! He's been unconsciously exuding some kind of shield that has prevented all and sundry from even seeing him, let alone finding him!"
"Better that he had remained lost!" she shouted in his face.
"S'cuse me, but c'n I ask a question?" came the timid, gravely voice of Harry Potter.
The adults turned to see him poking his head through the door of Madame Pomfrey's office. Neither had heard his approach, nor felt him penetrate the silencing ward that had been placed upon the door.
Minerva shook her head. "Of course." She turned back to the Headmaster. "Leave. You've done enough."
"Minerva-"
"No! There is too much at stake! I will tell him everything he needs to know." The old man huffed, then turned and left the office with as much dignity as he could. The door swung behind him, and Harry closed it as he came fully into the room. "Now, I imagine you have all kinds of questions, Mr. Potter."
"Um, yeah." He cleared his throat. "The Dursleys didn' want me, 'cuz I'm so different. But the nurse said its magic. Mr. Dumbledore said I'm magic, and so's everyone in the school." He shrugged. "I guess I been hiding with magic, and I c'n sing things sometimes that happen, but I don' know how to do what he wuz talking about. I c'n read some, and write, but I ain't done any school work since, well-"
"Since you were abandoned. I understand." She gestured to a chair and Harry sat down in it. "Unfortunately, due to what he did, we none of us have a choice. It is normally against the rules of the Tournament to help the contestants in any way, but he shot the rules to pieces anyway, and I'm getting permission from the people running the tournament to help you. Your illiteracy, while not complete, is going to be a true handicap, and at the very least someone will need to help you read and research. We'll be able to help you get caught up in time, but with this farce in play we'll have to concentrate on helping you to survive." She smiled at him. "Not that you haven't done a marvelous job of surviving, but you've yet to face a magical threat since you were a wee bairn. Now, tell me about this singing."
Harry nodded. "Sometimes when I sing, stuff happens. Stuff disappears, or floats, or anythin' I really wanna do. Sometimes, I whistle, but it don' do the same. I helped my friend's wing to heal." Suddenly Harry frowned. "I guess Princess'll be on her own again. But all my stuff's still there!"
"We can send someone after it. Where were you hiding, anyway?"
Harry shrugged, his face very unhappy. "I don' know exactly. The people who'd camp there called it Turkey Run, an' I know it wuz America. I think it wuz Indiana, cuz the book I learned all my stuff from wuz called Survival Indiana. An' there wuz park rangers there, too, 'n' they kept folks from messin' with the woods too much 'r shootin' what they shouldn't. Folks could camp in the campgrounds, 'n' I'd take stuff from the trash all the time, stuff they'd leave behind." He smiled a little. "The rangers think I'm a ghost."
"Well, I think that's enough information for one of my associates to find your things. He has a very good nose. I'll give him a call later today. Now, what sorts of things have happened other than objects disappearing or levitating?"
"When Princess's wing wuz busted, I made 'er sleep. An' when tha' little girl wuz lost, I sat with 'er and sang. She calmed down, but I'm not sure if that's cuz o' the magic'r cuz she wun't alone no more. Mostly it jus' helps me hide an' helps my veggies grow faster."
"It may be difficult to change the way you use your magic now, as you've done so for many years this way. But perhaps we can change what you can do with it. Over the next few days, I'm going to show you several spells, and we'll see if we can get your singing magic to emulate the effects. We'll try you on a wand as well, of course, and see if we can't help you learn how to use it. But for the purposes of the Tournament, I think this way will be the best. For example," she drew her wand and aimed it at a picture on the wall. Slowly she intoned "Accio photograph." The picture came off the wall, sailing into her outstretched left hand. "Try that."
Harry nodded, then began singing, a quiet, ethereal sound that surprised her with its beauty. There were no words, only thick, full notes pushed through an open vowel sound that didn't correspond to any particular letter, though it was closer to an "a" than an "o". The picture left her hand and glided smoothly into his, though the photo moved to his rhythm rather than shooting across in a straight line.
"Very good," she said as he quieted. "Has your magic ever acted offensively?"
"What's that mean?"
"Have you ever used magic as a weapon?"
"Like for huntin'? No. I hunt and fish just fine. No need to magic anythin' to hurt it." He frowned. "'N fact, that sounds bad, usin' it that way. I did scare a poacher t' runnin' one year. That's how I come by the deer to make my jacket."
"We did wonder. Did you have a heavier coat, as well?"
"Yeah, from squirrel and rabbit furs. But I'd out grow'd it. I's gettin' ready to sew a new one. I take 'em with a sling, like that David kid from the Bible I heard of, 'n' fish with the pole I bought first thing when I's lost. I bought seeds, like fer pumpkins 'n' cabbages, so I don' run out o' that kind o' food, neither. Always save yer seeds."
Minerva sat back in her chair, thinking. "All right. I think we have a foundation we can build on, and I imagine you are quite hungry." She sat up straight, then called, "Tuffy!"
A tiny person with a big head and a very small body popped into the room out of thin air. She had a little bow on her head, big pointed ears that flopped over like a rabbit's and big blue eyes the size of apples, and she wore a black shift with some kind of coat of arms embroidered into it. In a high, squeaky voice, she said, "Mistress called Tuffy?"
"There is an empty guest suite on the second floor near the Great Hall. Please have it smartened up, fresh linens and all that. And have the kitchens bring dinner for a fourth year student here to the infirmary."
"Yes, Mistress." With a bob, she popped back out.
"What was that?" asked Harry.
"Tuffy is a House Elf. There are quite a number of them working for Hogwarts. It is they who keep it clean and keep us fed. Now, let's go back out into the main room, shall we? You mentioned someone you called Princess. Was this a pet?"
"I guess you c'd say that. She's a hoot owl, an' I found 'er one day with a broke wing. I sang 'er to sleep, then splinted 'er wing, 'n' when she woke up, she aimed to call me 'er own! 'Er attitude wuz all prissy, so I called 'er Princess."
"Then she is probably the owl who has been attempting all day to get into the infirmary. You were holding on to her when the Triwizard Cup's magic dumped you in the Great Hall. She was shooed out of the Hall while we were trying to see to your health, but there's no reason we can't let her in now."
Harry's eyes lit up at the thought of having his friend with him again, a little familiarity in this new and daunting place. Minerva aimed her wand at one of the upper windows, and a streak of brown and white feathers came through it at high speed.
Princess landed on the bed that Harry had woke up in, and he quickly hopped back into it to join her. Very quietly, he said, "Glad yer good, Princess. Thought I'd lost ya fer a mo."
Soon Tuffy brought Harry's dinner in, and he promptly began to feed himself and his owl. Minerva took the opportunity to speak with Madame Pomfrey about her patient. The nurse said, "Well, he's a bit under fed, but his weight and nutrition is within acceptable limits. He's very well-muscled, just with a bit less fat than I'd like to see on a boy his age. His height is average, and other than the one scar he's picked up a few others over the years from his rough living. All in all, I'd say he managed to take very good care of himself. But he desperately needs a new prescription for his glasses, and before the first bloody Task of this Merlin-damned Tournament."
"Well, he can't have seen anyone about them since he was seven years old at the very least. Can you adjust it, or do we need to bring in a specialist?"
"I'd bring in someone. I don't trust myself to do it. One very strange thing, though. I expected his magical channels to either be underdeveloped or to go through his hands, but I found them all wrapped around his neck!"
"He sings, Poppy. He uses his voice, not his hand. He may never be able to use a wand."
Madame Pomfrey stared at her. "That's-"
"I know. I've never heard of that adaptation outside of a Banshee, and of course he's not one, nor are there any in his family line."
They watched him feeding his owl for a few moments. Then Madame Pomfrey said, "Albus wanted me to check him for the Parselmouth Gift."
"Because of Riddle?"
"I assume so."
"I'll ask him, and I'll explain. And I'll use the bastard's nom de guerre, too. He hasn't Tabooed it yet."
"He was living in a park of some kind?"
"I think it was a National Forest. He mentioned its name and State. I think I'll give Remus Lupin a call, see if he can go in and get the boy's belongings. I'm sure he'll appreciate having familiar things around him while this trial is dealt with." Minerva shook her head. "It's a good thing that Harry is obligated by the Tournament to remain on the grounds or we'd have to worry about one of the pureblood families kidnapping him. As it is, we're going to need to put him with a an official foster family, and quickly, or one of them will get him legally by petitioning for custody."
Unbeknownst to the two ladies, Harry heard every word they said, though he didn't understand them all. The prescription had to be about his glasses, and privately he agreed. But he had no idea what they were talking about when they spoke of a Parselmouth or a Banshee or a Riddle. Also, they were apparently worried about the wrong sort of family taking him in. Idly he wondered where they were when he was placed with the Dursley family, but that was in the past. He also wondered who this Remus Lupin was, and he was quite grateful for their thought to have his belongings brought from the forest.
He took hope in the fact that no one mentioned an orphanage, and he wondered if the Dursleys had just made them up, but then he decided it didn't matter. He would never regret having lived in Turkey Run, and he'd pay them back one day if he could.
Of course, though he was paying very close attention to the conversation of the two ladies, he was also paying attention to his food. Never had he tasted such rich food! He honestly wasn't sure he liked it, having been much more used to far simpler tastes. The only spices he'd had were onion and salt. He fed bits of ham to Princess, who regarded them with all the pickiness of a starveling.
What kind of family would they choose for him? Would they have other children? Would they like him, or would they treat him as the Dursleys had? And would they understand that he had spent nearly half his life living on his own or would they treat him like a child? He certainly had no way of knowing, and it was worries like this that had kept him from leaving the woods in the first place.
But now he'd been found. He would have to deal with what came next, just as he had done when he was first abandoned.
Minerva returned to Harry's bedside. "Mr. Potter, I feel you are owed a warning. Because of what happened when you were a mere babe, you are quite famous in our world. The Headmaster, Albums Dumbledore, placed you with your last living relatives, expecting them to love you because they were family, because he did not want you to grow up around all of that. But he did not thoroughly investigate them. And you paid the price. Now the reason you are famous, the event which caused all of this to be necessary in the first place, was your survival of your parents' murder. On Halloween night, thirteen years ago yesterday, a man called Voldemort broke past the powerful magical protections on your house, intent on killing you because someone had prophesied that you would be born with the power to defeat him."
She sighed. "Of course, they then decided to abandon you in America. This broke the protections Albus had put on their home for your sake, and Voldemort's followers found them and killed them, trying to find out where you were. Their son Dudley now lives with his Aunt on his father's side. The magic of the cup will prevent you from leaving the grounds of Hogwarts for now, which means you'll be safe from any attempt to kidnap you, but there is every reason to think that one of them might try to legally adopt you in an effort to bring you to their master. He wasn't killed, you see, by the spell he tried to murder you with. He had used a series of objects to hold pieces of his soul, anchoring him to this world, and eventually one of his servants was able to use them to bring him back to full power, and many of his servants are hidden in normal society, having escaped justice by the simple expedient of bribery, and several have other children your age, so they would look good on paper. We want to put you, instead, with a family of good standing who would be trustworthy to care for you properly."
His mind milled around what she'd told him. "What's bribery?"
"Giving money to a person in authority, paying them to cheat, using that authority for the benefit of the person paying them."
"Ah." Harry thought about that for a few minutes. Minerva pulled up a chair to wait while he thought. Then he said, "Will I be meetin' these folks?"
"Yes, of course. And there are several candidates I believe would match you well. The Weasley family has six children of varying ages, though only three still in school and living at home. Then there are the Finnegans, the Thomases, the Abbots, the Diggorys, the Spinnets, the Boots family, and several others. The ones you'd have to worry about would be the Malfoys especially, the Crabbes, Goyles, and Notts."
"All right. Well, what'll I be doin' in this contest?"
"The Champions of the Tournament are pitted against each other in three Tasks designed to test their magical ability and skill, their bravery and their intelligence. The first Task has traditionally been a dangerous magical animal, the second an environmental challenge, and the third some form of race. Each Task is scored, and the scores from the first two tasks will indicate the beginning placement of the Champions in that race."
Harry nodded and would have said something else, but suddenly the door to the infirmary opened, admitting a portly gentleman in a lime green bowler hat wearing a black robe and a matching lime green tie. "Harry Potter! Wonderful to see you alive and well!"
Albus came in behind him. "Cornelius, I must protest. Mr. Potter was forced by the cup to Apparate from America to here, and though he is unharmed, I doubt he's yet up for company."
Minerva glared at the both of them.
"Nonsense," said the man in the hat. "He's sitting up, eating, feeding his owl!"
"Gentlemen, please be quiet!" said Madame Pomfrey. "This is a hospital, not a Quidditch game, and Mr. Potter is not my only patient."
"I can be quiet, but I must meet the boy for myself!"
Reluctantly, the two women stood aside, and the man approached Harry. "Hello, young man. My name is Cornelius Fudge. I am the Minister of Magic for Great Britain. You've certainly stirred up the country with your reappearance! You must tell me how you've remained hidden all these years!"
Behind Minister Fudge and out of his field of vision, Minerva shook her head, and Harry smoothly lied. "I really don' know, mister. I just know I been lost since m' fam'ly dumped me 't Wal-Mart."
"That must have been quite frightening."
Harry shrugged. "I done okay." Then, to his embarrassment, a massive yawn nearly split his face in half.
That was Madame Pomfrey's queue. "Really, I must insist on everyone leaving. I'm sure Mr. Potter will be feeling better tomorrow, but he needs his rest."
Reluctantly, both the Minister and the Headmaster left the infirmary. Minerva said, "I'll be going as well. I'll contact my friend to see about your belongings. He'll come by tomorrow and work with you on putting together a map so that he can reach your place in the park. He's quite good with maps, so I doubt he'll have any problems."
Harry lay down again in the impossibly soft bed, pulling the blanket over him. It was a bit chilly, though at least there wasn't any wind. Uneasiness still bounded through his mind, worry for what was going to be happening in the future. But the support of the nurse and the teacher encouraged him. At least if he had to be here and face this he wouldn't be alone to do it.
Hope you all enjoyed that. Sorry it took so long. Next chapter will have a lot more introductions. And thanks to everyone who reviewed!
