Chapter 4 – A New Acquaintance... Or Not?

Harry's POV

As it turned out, Harry's hopes that Dudley had forgotten half of their deal had been in vain. That was to be expected, though: his brain might miss a beat every now and then, but his stomach never forgot anything.

"Hey, freak! Get me some of that ice-cream, and make it quick!"

Ice-cream. He'd already gotten him crisps and cookies safely more than once, so why not ice-cream? He'd even seen Aunt Petunia put it back, so he wouldn't have to waste precious seconds looking for it. He passed by the kitchen, pretending to be busy, and had a peek inside: the coast seemed to be clear.

He counted the steps that separated him from the fridge, his heart beating faster and faster. Now all he had to do was open that door, grab the requested food and make a run for it. He'd think of the spoon later. He reached out a hand. Almost done...

"What do you think you're doing?" Harry spun on his heel so fast that the whole world seemed to wobble a bit around him. Oh, no. That was it. He'd been caught red-handed, and that pretty much meant he was done for, unless Uncle Vernon was feeling merciful, which, judging by the dangerous tone of purple that was quickly spreading on his face, he wasn't.

"I-I... I was just―" An insane part of him considered telling him the truth, that he was getting food for Dudley and not himself, but the chances of his uncle actually believing him looked very, very slim.

"What? Stealing our food? Don't deny it, boy! I already suspected you, but this is proof! Now... do you know what it means?"

"It... it means I've been bad, sir."

"Just what I wanted to hear. And do you know what bad boys deserve?"

"T-They deserve punishment, sir."

Now Harry was entirely sure he was in for it. That little show they'd just done – those words they'd both learnt by heart – were his favourite way to start one of those punishments he'd never forget.

"Take off your shirt."

A vague sense of nausea welled up in his chest as he obeyed. He had the awful feeling this would be the worst one he'd had in a while. His instinct were telling him to run, but where would he run to anyway? He offered his bare back and shut his eyes tightly, listening to the sounds that always preceded the pain. The belt whipped the air first, as if to warn him. A sudden hiss made him vaguely aware that Tabby was there. She'd never really hissed like that: she'd been angry, but never to the point of doing that.

Harry waited for the first hit. He waited and waited, but the burning pain never came. Instead, a female voice he'd never heard before shook the entire room: "Don't you dare touch him, you sorry excuse of a Muggle!"

Uncle Vernon started stuttering incoherently: "But―but―who―what―" Those were likely the beginnings of the same thousands of questions Harry himself wanted to ask, such as 'Who are you?' and 'What are you doing here?', but he seemed unable to finish a sentence. He was very curious as to what was going on and wanted nothing more than to open his eyes and find out, but if the scene scared his uncle, he would probably die of fright the moment he saw it, so he kept them safely closed.

Then the unknown woman said another funny word, and two more strange things happened in quick succession: first, the colours behind his eyelids changed for an instant, as if for a bright light, and second, there was a heavy thud that sounded exactly as though Uncle Vernon had just fallen to the floor.

The quick patter of two pairs of feet and a shrill: "What's happening?" alerted him to the presence of Aunt Petunia and Dudley, but the stranger just repeated that odd word twice more, and the flashes and sounds that followed suggested that they had fallen too. It was as if that word was causing it all, but how could anyone make people drop to the floor like that just by stringing together a handful of letters?

"Harry?" His heart missed a beat. Was she going to do that to him too? It sounded like it hurt, maybe even more than his uncle's beatings. He knew he was getting into even more trouble, but he didn't open his eyes, even though that would have probably been the polite thing to do, since she'd called him. By the way, how did she know his name when he had no idea who she was?

"Harry, please, at least open your eyes."

He didn't know exactly what it was that made some of his fear melt away―the fact that she didn't seem to be half as angry at him as she had been at his uncle, that she'd used his proper name twice in a matter of seconds or that she'd actually said 'please'. Still, he did as she said, and found himself gaping at her open-mouthed, with only a tiny fraction of his mind telling him it wasn't very nice of him.

She was... well, she was a mile away from the sort of person his relatives would have welcomed into their house. She looked pretty old, but her posture was nothing like that of other old people he'd seen. She was wearing green from head to toe, but those clothes weren't normal at all. They seemed to have come straight out of a film―not that he'd ever watched any, but he'd caught bits and pieces, and sometimes the characters dressed like that when the story took place a few centuries before. If she really had come out of the TV screen or something (and quite frankly, with all the weird things that had already happened in the past few minutes, nothing was impossible), though, she clearly belonged in the kind of film they were the least likely to allow him to watch, because that thing on her head was no less than a witch's hat, just like the ones he'd seen in a couple of children's books before they could snatch them away from him, muttering something about them having a bad influence on kids.

Then Harry remembered to close his mouth and was hit by two realisations at once: first, all three of his relatives were sprawled on the floor and, as far as he could tell, looked like they'd fainted. Second, the woman was holding a sort of stick.

All of his fear came back in full force. Was she going to hit him with it? That was a new form of punishment. What was going on? Had his uncle called someone else who could punish him in his place? Did he think his methods weren't enough? But then, why would she have knocked him unconscious? Surely he would have wanted to watch, to see if she was doing it properly.

"Please, don't hurt me..." he said in a much smaller voice than he would have liked. "Please." He kept his eyes more on the stick than on her as he talked.

"Hurt you? But I―" She stopped and gasped slightly, as if suddenly understanding something. "You mean with this? No, Harry. I promise that I will never, ever use it to hurt you. I'm afraid I can't say the same for them, though." As if to reinforce her words, she put it away; he briefly saw that she had something under her sleeve that was probably designed to keep it. A part of Harry really wanted to believe her, but experience told him that grown-ups never kept their word, unless they were promising to punish him.

"Are they hurt?"

"They're out cold, but they'll be fine."

"Don't do the same to me, please."

"I've already told you I won't. I realise that you don't know me," here she paused and smiled for some reason, "and that asking you to trust me is a lot, but Harry, why would I stop him from hurting you only to harm you myself?"

Was that a trick question? It had to be some sort of test, so Harry thought hard, if only to prove to her that he wasn't as stupid as they always said, but none of the answers that came to his mind seemed to make much sense.

"I think I believe you." Harry felt as if a huge weight had just been taken off his chest, but many more of them were still there. There were hundreds of things he would have loved to ask her, but what if she didn't like questions? It was probably wiser to talk to her only when spoken to.

"Put your shirt back on, Harry. No one's going to hurt you anymore."

Does that mean just for tonight or forever? Those words were just about to come out of his mouth without his permission, but he forced them back down.

As he fumbled with his shirt, she added: "Just so you know... if there's anything you want to ask me, just do it."

His jaw almost dropped again. Was he really allowed to do that?

Now fully clothed again, Harry decided to start from the basics: "Um... I don't mean to be rude, but... who are you, exactly?"

"Of course, I haven't introduced myself. I'm Professor McGonagall, but you may call me Minerva if you'd like."

Harry was in awe. Professor? Whoa―not only she could somehow stop Uncle Vernon from hitting him, but she was also a very important person. He suddenly felt very small.

"Also, how did you get here? I didn't hear you come in, you were just... there all of a sudden."

"Ah, well, that might be a little more complicated to explain." She paused again, frowning, as if looking for the right words to say. "Harry... those things you do, 'freaky things', I believe you call them... I can do them too, you know?"

That handful of words contained enough shocking news to knock him unconscious too. That woman, Minerva, not only knew he was a freak, but had just admitted to being one herself, and―wait. She sounded like she was perfectly okay with it. That was probably the strangest thing of all.

"So... so you just found yourself here?" That had happened to him once, only he hadn't been so lucky as to land neatly and silently in a room. No, his destination had been the roof of the school kitchen, and he'd screamed too, but more out of surprise than fear. There were things that Harry was afraid of, of course, but heights were not one of them. To be fair, he kind of liked them.

"Not exactly, Harry. I've been here for quite a while, actually."

"How come I've never seen you?"

"You have, only I didn't look like this. You may know me as Tabby."

"But―but―how is that possible?"

"Magic. That's the proper name for your 'freaky things'."

Okay, now he'd definitely had too many shocks in a row. Magic? The place for magic was in fairy tales, and that was where it was supposed to stay! Admittedly, he didn't really want it to stay there, but still, why was she talking about it as though it were normal? And when she said that she and Tabby were one and the same, did she really mean it?

"I know this is a lot to handle, but it's the truth. You are not a freak, Harry. In fact, I'll be very pleased with you if you never, ever use that word again. The correct term is 'wizard'."

Perhaps it was the prospect of someone so important being actually pleased with him that gave him courage, because somehow he managed to say: "I'm... I'm a wizard?" Oh, how that word rolled off his tongue. It was a thousand times better than 'freak'. They meant pretty much the same thing, but 'wizard' didn't sound like something awful, something that wasn't supposed to be. Sure, it was something he'd always believed to be fictional, but at least it didn't have a bad ring to it.

"Exactly. You're a wizard, and I'm a witch."

Harry couldn't help it. He snorted. "I'm sorry! I'm so sorry, I wasn't laughing at you, I swear! It just... doesn't seem like a very nice thing to say to a woman."

"You'll get used to it. It's neither a compliment nor an insult, really. It's just a fact."

"So... being a f―er, I mean, a wizard, isn't a bad thing?"

"No, not at all! You see, Harry, magic isn't good or bad in itself. There are good wizards and bad wizards in this world, but it doesn't depend on magic, just on how it is used."

"You must be a very good witch, then. You know, because of... that." He pointed in the vague direction of the three unconscious forms.

"Thank you. That I can definitely take as a compliment."

"May I ask you just one more thing, Professor?"

"Sure, Harry."

"What you said about Tabby... what did you mean by it? Could you maybe show me?"

Considering that he'd only heard her say those words, he'd technically never seen any magic before―well, except for his own, and even then, his first instinct had been to hide it. It still felt like a bit of a contradiction to be talking about it so openly; blimey, it was strange to have someone who would listen in the first place. He half-expected one of them to wake up and punish him for it. This time, however, his eyes were wide open. She was like him, she really was, and maybe she could help him stop it or something. She definitely sounded like an expert.

"Of course. Watch."

It was as though someone had pressed the 'fast forward' button on an invisible remote control. She seemed to shrink and deform right then and there, and in the space of the blink of an eye, Professor McGonagall was gone and Tabby was standing in her place. She allowed herself a meow, of the happy-sounding kind that had greeted him every morning since the deal with his cousin, and then turned back. She didn't even have to put her hat straight.

"Whoa."

"That's what most of my students say. It's a way like any other to make a good impression on the first day of class."

"Wait, so you let your students know you're a―" Harry caught himself just in time, "witch?"

"How could I not? I left something out when I introduced myself. I didn't lie to you in saying I'm a professor, Harry, but I'm not exactly the kind of teacher you might be used to. I work at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry."

Harry knew the feeling of being punched in the gut all too well, and this left him just as breathless as that. Not only Professor McGonagall was a witch, but there were enough people like them in the world to fill a whole school? And―wait just one second. Why would anyone want to teach them to get even better at doing all those strange things? The fewer he did, the happier his relatives were, right?

"There's a school of magic?"

"More than one, to be exact, but yes. In fact, we expect you to come to Hogwarts in a few years' time. Not that we're forcing you, but we just so happen to be the most renowned school in Europe, so... what do you say to that?"

"Me? I'm... I'm sorry, but I think you have the wrong person. Maybe you confused me with somebody else. I'm not..." Harry paused. How could he put it in words? He wanted to tell her that he probably wasn't smart enough to attend what she'd called 'the most renowned school in Europe', but the rest of the sentence died on his lips.

"Not what?"

"I'm not good enough."

"'Not good enough', eh? And would you mind telling me exactly what makes you think that?"

Harry eyed the three unconscious figures on the floor, but for the second time, the words he'd meant to say took on a life of their own and refused to come out of his mouth.

She followed his gaze and said: "Excuse me, Harry, but I really don't believe they are in the best position to tell you how good or bad you are, either as a person or at something that is completely foreign to them such as magic."

"But I'm not even that good at my normal school! Even if I do come with you, I bet I'll be the worst in my class."

"Oh, Harry, please. Have you already forgotten that I watched you do homework, even if it wasn't yours? Quite frankly, I don't think you could have written half of those answers if you really were stupid, and I'm saying this as a teacher, not as your loyal house cat."

Harry blushed violently. It was the first real compliment he could remember getting, so he wasn't exactly sure how to answer to that. Would a simple 'Thank you' be enough? Besides, there was a bigger problem at hand.

"I'm... I'm sorry for treating you like a cat all this time. It must have been embarrassing for you."

"I didn't mind. How else could I get to know you?"

"Um... I know I've practically done nothing but ask questions, but... why did you want to get to know me anyway?"

"That, Harry, is a very long story. One that I promise I'll tell you, but we can't risk them waking up. I think it's going to take a while, but still, better safe than sorry. This is not the place to discuss it."

"Where are we going, then?"

"To Mrs. Figg's, for now. And then, if you'd like, I can take you to see Hogwarts."

"That would be great!" Harry had heard his share of stories about what happened to kids who trusted strangers to take them to unknown places, but he couldn't exactly think of her as a stranger anymore, and besides, if the place in question was a school of magic that was probably packed with people who could understand him as well as she did, he couldn't wait to get there.

"It's settled, then. But first..."

She pulled out that strange stick of hers again – Harry made a mental note to ask about it as soon as he could – and bent over Uncle Vernon. He made it a point to listen carefully this time.

"Obliviate." Okay, he still couldn't get it to make sense, but maybe he would learn what it meant someday.

"What did you do to him? He doesn't look any different."

"On the outside, he doesn't. But he won't remember ever seeing me in human form."

Harry stared as she did the same to the other two. Could magic really do that? Whoa. He distinctly felt as though he'd learnt so many things in so little time that they couldn't all fit into his head. Then he had another thought, one so big and so insane that it made even some of his amazement fade away. If she could make them forget they'd ever seen her, could she also make them forget that they hated him so much?

"Professor? I was thinking... well, it's a bit much to ask, but―"

"Harry, whatever they told you, asking questions isn't a bad thing. Just spill, and I'll be the one to tell if it is or it isn't too much."

"Could you... could you please make sure they don't hurt me again?"

"That would be very difficult to do." Oh, no! He knew he'd pushed it too far. She'd already stopped him once, and he should have been content with what he had. What would she do now? Would she think he was ungrateful too? "Instead, I can make sure they never see you again. Unless you'd like to stay, of course..."

"How... how can you do that? More magic?"

"Hmm, yes and no. You see, I know the person who decided you should be here in the first place. Once he sees you, I'm sure he will realise just how wrong he was and find you some other home. And quite honestly, if he doesn't change his mind, I'll make him. Let's get going, shall we?"

"Okay. Hey, wait a second, if you and Mrs. Figg know each other, that's how she knew that―" Harry stopped abruptly again, his face burning with shame at the thought of all the silly things he'd said to her when she was his pet.

"That I was a female cat? Exactly. Now, there's no need to be embarrassed. How could you have known?"

"Are you sure you're not mad at me?"

"For something you couldn't help? I don't think so."

"I've been in trouble for things I couldn't help before," said Harry sadly. He still couldn't shake off the feeling that complaining about his relatives wasn't the best possible move―after all, they'd given him a place to stay. The professor didn't seem to like them, though, so he hoped he was free to say anything he wanted in front of her.

"Well, that's all in the past now. Pack anything you may want to take with you and let's get out of here."

"Forever?"

"Yes, Harry. Forever."

"Then I guess I'll get my books and my clothes. There's not much else, really. I won't take long."

"Harry, whoever we'll get to complete your education probably won't want to use the same books you've studied on so far, and as for your clothes, did you really think I'd let you wear those? They're at least four sizes too big for you!"

"It's always been like this. I've never had any clothes of my own, just some of Dudley's old things. They said I didn't deserve them."

"That's ridiculous! In fact, I think I've just had a brilliant idea, if I do say so myself. What's your favourite colour?"

Harry had already done the math. If she was asking him that, then hopefully it meant she would make him some new clothes with magic. The problem was that he'd never really thought about what colour he liked best: he just wore whatever they gave him and didn't care about what he looked like... much. How was he supposed to know what looked best on him? There were people who worried about such things – especially girls, as far as he could tell –, but he wasn't one of them.

Then it clicked. How many times had he stared at his reflection in the mirror, wondering if he looked anything like his parents, wishing for a picture of them to compare his face to?

"Green. My favourite colour is green." Besides, she seemed to like it too, right?

"Wonderful. It matches your eyes. I don't expect they've ever told you, but you have exactly your mother's eyes."

"I-I do? Wow, I never knew..."

Rage flickered across her face and Harry found himself shrinking back from the thin line of her lips.

"Horrible Muggles, I swear I'll... I'll..."

"Is that a bad word? You called Uncle Vernon that before, but I don't know what it means." He hated admitting he didn't know something in front of an adult―they would usually call him stupid for that. Instead, Professor McGonagall just smiled.

"No, it's just our term for a non-magical person. Now, about your clothes..."

She seemed to size him up, then started waving her stick – come to think of it, from what little he'd heard about magic when the Dursleys weren't around, it was probably a wand or something, and Harry made a mental note to remember that to avoid embarrassing himself even further – and he distinctly felt his enormous T-shirt tightening around his body until it fit perfectly. It changed colour too: it was green, just like she'd promised. The rest of his clothes shrank as well; they didn't look very different, but they were now his size, and more importantly, they were as good as new.

Harry remembered a story he'd heard. They'd never read him any fairy tales, but all the other kids at school knew about it, so somehow he'd pieced the plot together. He was slowly coming to the conclusion that maybe Professor McGonagall was to him what her Fairy Godmother had been to Cinderella: she'd appeared all of a sudden, she was giving him the chance to get away from a life made mostly of chores and she'd given him new clothes to wear. Now he only had to hope it wouldn't all end by midnight.

"Thank you."

"Do you like them?"

"Are you kidding? I love them!"

"Glad to hear that. It's actually my specialty, you know? Turning something into something else. It's called Transfiguration, and it's what I teach."

"I'll remember that." It was a big word, but Harry decided that he liked it. If that was what Transfiguration could do, then he would do his best when the day came for him to learn it. Wait a minute, was he really excited to do that? It couldn't be right, could it? He'd thought it was a bad thing until she came and reversed everything in a handful of minutes!

"Good. Now that you're all set―oh, wait, you're not." She crouched so that their faces were on the same level and pointed her wand straight at him. Harry gasped and backed away from it, but her smile encouraged him to step forward again. The tip was so close that he had to go cross-eyed to look at it. "Reparo."

The layers upon layers of sellotape that held the nosepiece of his glasses together vanished. For a split second, Harry was afraid they would fall apart, but then realised there was no need for it anymore. It was as if they had never been broken.

"Now you're ready. Come on, I've made you wait long enough." She made towards the front door.

"Um... Professor, your clothes..."

"Oh. You're not the first to tell me. I'm no expert in Muggle fashion, to be honest. It'll be quicker if I just go as Tabby, which suits me just fine, by the way. I'd never really considered giving my cat form a name of her own. Do you mind if I stick with it?"

And with that, she transformed again. Harry wasn't even startled this time. Was it possible that he was already getting used to magic?

They simply walked to Mrs. Figg's side by side in the same sort of companionable silence they'd shared so many times recently. Harry rang the doorbell and waited for her to answer.

"Harry! What brings you here at this hour, and alone on top of that?"

"I'm not alone, Mrs. Figg. In fact, I don't think I'm ever going to be alone again."