Disclaimer: I own nothing but my OCs and plot. Everything else goes to the Rowling-meister.
Title: A Different Kind of Schooling
Rating: T
Pairings: None foreseen, other than what is obvious
Author: Jaing
Chapter 3: A Wizard?
Gray eyes surveyed the mid-sized house before them, watching from behind a Disillusionment Charm. Is this the place? Can this really be where Harry Potter grew up? It's so... normal. Depressingly so, actually...
The thought's owner snorted, sniggering. Eh, silly muggles. Speaking of which...
A large, expensive-looking car rounded the corner at a thoroughly average pace.
Ah, a Mercedes... I think?... silver, could have picked a better color, but at least you really can't go wrong with it...
The subject of attention got out of the car - a large, fat man with little neck, followed by an equally massive - or soon to be, at any rate - son and a bony, lanky wife with a long, horse-like face face. And -
Good lord, he's tiny!
Harry Potter was unmistakable, even at this age. The unruly black hair was the deadest giveaway on the face of the known world. The Dursley patriarch lifted him by the scruff of his jacket and led him inside. "What the ruddy hell do you think you were doing boy? Removing the glass from the snake habitat! Unnatural, I tell you!"
"I didn't do anything!" Harry protested.
"Of course you did! Anything unnatural, and you're the cause of it, boy." Vernon sneered. They moved inside the house and shut the door, and no more could be heard.
Brilliant. Now I'm going to enjoy breaking down a door for a change...
Inside the Dursley House -
Harry sat on his cot inside the cupboard, holding his face in his hands. How did that glass just... vanish? That's impossible! And the snake talked to me. Something doesn't add up... 'course, being blamed for something you didn't do never adds up, now does it Harry? They blame me for every damned thing.
But he remembered just one other thing about the whole ordeal. He remembered the strange flush of cold from the back of his head that seemed to flow about him... right as the glass disappeared. The looks on the Dursleys' faces had been one of pure terror - well, Dudley was understandable... he ended up in a snake cage...
Harry lay down."No use worrying about it now, nothing I can do about it anyway.." he said to himself aloud, rolling over and fiddling with his lead soldiers.
BOOM!
Harry sat bolt upright, cursing as he smacked his head on the stairs above.
BOOM!
The whole house seemed to shudder, and Harry looked out the vent cover on the cupboard door. He could see someone's head above the doorway - at least, he could see a helmet. Uncle Vernon rounded the corner, bellowing oaths.
CRASH!
The door shattered - didn't give way, just shattered. Vernon stopped dead in his tracks, and a small-to-midsize armored figure stepped through the splinters; a short, wicked-looking rifle in its' hands. "Dursley?" a metallic, rasping, sinister voice asked.
"Yes?" Vernon stuttered, too terrified for belligerence.
"Bring Harry Potter to me. Now." the person ordered, the last word pronounced with the ring of absolute authority and the air of someone used to not being questioned. And indeed, they weren't. Vernon couldn't open the cupboard door fast enough, yanking Harry out of the cupboard and fairly well tossing him to the stranger - who caught him practically effortlessly, and set him on his feet. The helmet turned towards him, the black visor allowing no hint of an expression to escape it. "Mister Potter, back out the door." Harry obeyed, stepping back into the porch. The stranger stepped back with them, brandishing a short stick in place of the rifle now."Reparo!" and a flick later, and Harry was goggling at the repaired door.
"How did you do that?" he asked incredulously.
"You'll find out shortly enough, Mister Potter. Now, we've got to find a place to stay."
"Who are you?"
The armored figure turned away from the door, and takes Harry's hand, pulling him along behind a shrub, withdrawing their strange stick from a compartment on the forearm of their armor.
"Hold still."
Harry winced at the sharp rap on the head he received from the stick, and the strangest feeling took him, like a cracked egg poured over his head. He grabbed at it - and froze, as he could no longer see his hands.
"What have you done to me?" he asked in a whisper, terrified.
"Made you un-seeable, for the time being. It's a lot easier than a full-armored super troop dragging around a scrawny eleven year old, you've got to admit. Less cops involved, and that would be very... messy. At least for them, not so much for me. Now, come on, I have a lot to tell you and not a lot of time in which to get it done, so let's get out of here, shall we?" The stranger stated in a cheerfully detached voice, and somehow found Harry to pick him up in both arms, holding him like a much smaller child. Harry hid his face in an armored shoulder, the wind before them mounting as the trooper sped up to full speed, eating up a kilometer in less than a minute and a half. Before he knew it, they arrived in the lee of an abandoned warehouse.
"Luuucy, I'm hoooome..." the trooper said, then snorted. "Made a mess of the place, she did..."
Harry was set on his feet, and he looked about - he didn't recognize the area they were in, but it had the seedy, unsafe feel of a factory district.
"Hey, Harry, if you don't mind getting your behind in here..."
Harry turned, and saw the trooper standing next to the door, giving every air of a tapping foot while being absolutely immobile. He trudged up to the entrance, and went through, eyes barely adjusted to the darkness before light flooded in from apparently nowhere - first from two lamps on the collarbone-area of the trooper's armor, and then from a massive patch of bluebell flames that appeared from nowhere at the flick of the strange stick. Harry jumped back, away from the flames - but felt no heat coming from them. He hesitantly walked up to it, but feeling no heat, summons a bit of courage - and plunges his hand into it, half expecting it to instantly melt away. But he felt no harm, and looked back wonderingly, and the trooper chuckled.
"Teach you how to do that someday? Certainly. Have to. But now, children, it's story time. Come and have a seat."
The trooper dropped cross-legged to the floor, patting a spot in front of them. Harry walked over, and sat in the indicated place.
"First, yes, I do have a lot of explaining to do. I'll get to that in due time. I'm going to start with a little story." The trooper began.
"Once upon a time - actually, it was just about forty years ago - there was a young boy in an orphanage. He was funny and charismatic when he wanted to be, but sadistic and cruel by nature. He should have ended up in an asylum - but he was special. A kindly old man, a teacher from a prestigious school, was chosen to deliver an invitation to the school to the boy. He did so, arriving in the orphanage with no doubt whatsoever that the child would become a normal student. But the orphanage owner liked to tell stories, you see... she told the kindly old man of strange happenings, things that happened around him... evil things that she knew he'd done but just could not prove."
Harry fidgeted, thinking of the vanishing glass, but the trooper went on in the same soft, expressive storytelling voice.
"The man thanked her, and tricked her into thinking he could go up to see the boy - for he was special, as well. She showed him, and the man spoke with the boy. He made him admit and reverse what of his actions he could through the use of his power. The boy went to school, but the man never stopped keeping an eye on him. And he was right to, for while the boy was winning school awards left and right, and bending the other teachers around his little finger, the old man was always the only one who saw straight through him. He knew of his dark rituals and secret researches, knew of his gathering of like-minded students... but, in his foolishness, he allowed his predilection to believe the best about people to stay his hand from breaking it at the root."
"This one decision changed the world - my world, your world, our world - forever."
"The boy became a man, and the man became older. The younger built his powerbase and began secretly performing intensely dark rituals, murdering innocents, and causing general mayhem. The whole of our world feared him, and grew into a state of terror."
"The older discovered this, and built a competing group to help fight him. They made progress, but the younger nearly won the war... until he made a truly fatal error. For you see, a young couple was fighting on the side of the older man, and was becoming an intense thorn in the side of the younger man's forces, as both the husband and the wife were fierce warriors. But something unexpected happened - they had a baby. Later that year, a prophecy was made by a young woman in a dusty bar, and someone overheard it who shouldn't've. The prophecy pertained to the couple and their baby, so the young man went into action. One frosty October night, the man personally lead an attack upon their house."
"The father died, trying to protect his wife and son, but he was no match, for he was unarmed."
Harry felt an unnatural chill down his spine, and his nightmares of a green flash came to his mind.
"The wife and mother begged for her son to be spared, but that was the man's objective. He tried to get her to move, to give him up, but she refused, so he killed her."
A woman's scream blew through his mental ears, green flashing before his eyes.
"So the man turned to the son, who had done no wrong, who was as innocent and pure as the driven snow. He raised his weapon, and tried to kill him as well. But the son's mother's sacrifice had given the son a power all his own, and the man's own power rebounded on him, killing him on the spot. But he was not dead, nor was he living - he was less than the meanest ghost, fleeing his body and the scene. The son was soon found among the wreckage of the house, alive. He was brought to live with his relatives, in the hopes that his blood bond with them would save him, should the man return."
Harry looked up in shock, and the trooper nodded."That story is the story of how your parents died, Harry... but you have the same power as they, the same power as both men. That power is, literally, magic."
"You're a wizard, Harry."