"See, after Dr. Carrow, I decided to get you your second Pokémon- you're allowed three in your first year, you know, and most kids will have at least two—your mother only had her Petilil, but your father had a Cyndaquil, Rufflet, and Poliwag, overachiever he was.
So, you know, I figured a Pokémon would be a great gift, and I went around to a couple of the auction houses where they sell all sorts of types, and I even managed to nab one of your friend balls, so that I could put the Pokémon in an apricorn ball, like you like, but I wasn't really having much luck until I went to the flying type market, which is where I found her."
Hagrid whipped out Harry's friend ball with a flourish, and with a single push released a plump, fast asleep, speckled Pokémon directly in front of Harry's feet.
"She kept on trying to escape her cage, you know, but she was bred in captivity, so the chances of her surviving in the wild were low, and I just, I figured..."
"What- what is she?" Harry asked. He squatted down to get a better look, but he'd never seen anything like her.
"Why, she's a Rowlet, of course!" Hagrid said. "Rare, they are, but pretty useful battlers—got a real knack for it, you know. Um, she's a flying and grass type, if that's what you're asking. Can even photosynthesize a bit, which makes her a bit cheaper to keep."
"She's beautiful." Harry whispered.
She really was—primarily covered in light brown feathers, with stark white ones covering her face and stomach, she had a small sprig of leaves which sprang directly from her neck, and a bright orange beak.
"What- what's her name?" Harry asked. He carefully reached out to touch her, but yanked his hand back at the last second—he wouldn't want to be touched without permission, and he figured she wouldn't either, particularly when she was asleep.
"Well, she doesn't have one yet. That's your job, you know. But you should think long and hard on it—you'll be calling her that for the rest of your lives."
"Why is she asleep?" Harry asked. Beside him Bolt had finally gotten over his apprehension and was now tentatively sniffing at the newcomer, but he, too, kept a safe distance.
"Oh, well that's 'cause she had a nasty habit of clawing at anyone opening her cage or taking her out of her pokeball otherwise. She'll probably wake up soon—oh, and here's her ball."
Hagrid dropped the friend ball in Harry's hands. He took it and scrutinized it carefully. It looked no different than it had before Rowlet was in it, still the same green and yellow and white ball he'd brought back from Ollivander's, but somehow it felt different.
Harry hadn't really given much thought to having another Pokémon outside Bolt, as silly as that sounded. But now that the option was right in front of him? Harry could swear he could feel that she was supposed to be a part of his team.
He really hoped that when the Rowlet woke up, she'd want to stay with him and Bolt. He wouldn't make her if she didn't want to, but something about her made him certain that she and him would get along.
It took another fifteen minutes for the Rowlet to finally wake up. Actually, Harry was fairly sure that she was faking for the last several—Harry had used a similar trick himself in the past, and while she was good, she'd made the mistake of going completely still even though when she was actually asleep she'd occasionally shift somewhat. Harry was careful not to point out that he could tell she was awake, though—he wanted to give her time to get her boundaries.
Nevertheless, she did eventually open her eyes. The flying type looked around slowly, ruffling her feathers as she took in her environment.
Harry was still kneeling directly in front of her, and Bolt stood sentinel by his right shoulder, still eying the new Pokémon with no small amount of curiosity. Hagrid sat on his old bed a bit away—apparently dealing with new Pokémon, be they caught or bought, was considered a rite of passage, and Hagrid made it clear that he would not interfere unless things got dangerous—which he doubted was possible, given how young the Rowlet was.
"Hi, um, Rowlet." Harry started. "I'm Harry, and, and this is Bolt. He's my best friend." The Rowlet blinked. Harry shifted awkwardly, then grabbed the Rowlet's ball. "This is... this is what I'm keeping you in. It's called a friend ball, and it's made out of an apricorn and I'm pretty sure being in one feels much better than a pokeball—I can't test that, though. Apparently, humans can't go inside either. Um, do you want me to, to put you inside it? Temporarily? So you can see what it's like when you're awake?" Harry figured that if she hadn't liked being kept in a pokeball in the past, then maybe showing her that what he would be keeping her in—if she chose to stay—was not that would be a good idea.
The Rowlet blinked, again, but slower. Harry wondered if that meant yes or no, but he figured he could just recall then release her really quickly. He carefully pointed the opening of the ball towards her, watching for a reaction, but she simply sat quietly, if tensely, and watched him in return.
He took a deep breath and pressed the button, absorbing her into the apricorn in a wave of light. After quietly counting to thirty, he pressed the button again.
"PReck!"
"Oh, I—I'm sorry! Did, did it hurt you, or-" Harry gasped desperately as the Rowlet lifted her wings in a clearly offensive gesture. But just as quickly as the Rowlet had been to express her displeasure she calmed down, settling on her haunches and staring at him once more.
Harry glanced at first Bolt, then Hagrid, at a loss of what to do next. Hagrid, at least, seemed fairly surprised by her reaction—after a few seconds he mumbled at a volume that was clearly meant to be too quiet for the Rowlet to hear "she was much more upset when they let her out of the pokeball they were keeping her in."
In a rush of air the Rowlet launched herself at Hagrid, only to be intercepted halfway there by the much larger Bolt, who tackled her with a growl.
"Careful!" Harry shouted. He fumbled for the button on Rowlet's ball.
"Let them fight it out," Hagrid advised. "They're going to have to learn some time, and neither of them are at all strong enough to do much damage to the room."
The Rowlet precked again and in a burst of motion flung a mass of vaguely leaf-shaped green energy directly at Bolt, who tackled her again in retaliation. However, just as Hagrid said, the blob of energy dissipated only half a meter or so after it started, leaving Harry's bed completely unharmed.
Harry found himself frozen with indecision. He held the Rowlet's ball in his hand, and with a click of a button he could end the fight without anyone getting hurt. At the same time, however, Hagrid's words rang in his head. He knew that once he got to Spoinkperl he'd have to let his Pokémon fight, and while Bolt acted, if anything, eager for the future promise of battling, Harry knew he was decidedly less prepared. If he let the Rowlet and Bolt continue, it would be as much for his benefit as their own.
In the end, the decision was not one he had to make. Bolt pinned Rowlet to the ground in seconds, and after a few last futile pecks, the flying/grass type finally gave up.
Bolt slowly backed up, growling softly, before, apparently assured of his victory, he suddenly shot off around the room, yipping in glee as he jumped from bed to bed to table.
Hagrid laughed. "A Pokémon's first win always stays with them! Look at him go!" But Harry was distracted by the obviously hurt Rowlet. He approached her slowly, carefully picking her up and setting her down on his bed as Bolt slowed to a stop by his side.
"Will she be okay?"
"Oh, of course! A bit of rest, a bit of food, and it'll be like nothing ever happened."
"Bolt's scars haven't disappeared." Harry rebutted.
"Well, yeah, but he went a long time without treatment to get those...wherever he got them. But you should have noticed that since we went to the Pokémon Center his scars have been disappearing."
Harry frowned—he actually hadn't thought to check, mostly because all of Bolt's cicatrices were covered by his fur. He knelt down beside the Shinx, carefully pulling apart the fur on his stomach where he remembered a series of scars were from when Bolt had tried to slide under the Dursley's fence.
Sure enough, it was only because Harry knew what he was looking for that he managed to see any marks, and even then the blemishes were so small that it was hard to believe that they had once been a similar angry red to Harry's scar—which had, unlike Bolt's injuries, not changed color since his own visit to the doctor.
Regardless, it didn't look like the Rowlet was bleeding, just exhausted, so he carefully pulled apart some of his birthday cake and tried feeding it to her. While she clearly, visibly, and loudly didn't enjoy the flavor, she nonetheless gobbled it up the second it was within her reach, before promptly hopping on top of Harry's pillow, settling comfortably in the very middle of it, and falling asleep, apparently perfectly happy to remain just where she was.
Before he could think of what to do next, Harry was interrupted by Bolt butting into his knee repeatedly.
"He wants a prize, Harry, for winning." Hagrid said helpfully. Of course, it would have been more helpful if he'd actually intervened when all of this was going on or told Harry more than a sentence or two of information at a time, but apparently Okoku was very into letting kids figure things out by themselves—by Hagrid's estimation he was being especially considerate of Harry's lack of a knowledgebase by explaining as much as he did.
Bolt butted into him again and Harry walked back to the table to pick up a larger piece of cake, which he placed on a plate on the floor. As Bolt attacked his reward with relish, Harry gave him plenty of scratches. He still wasn't quite sure how he felt about battling, but Bolt certainly seemed to like it and the Rowlet hadn't seemed to take her loss that badly. Moreover, Bolt had won, and given that that was apparently all Spoinkperl cared about, it was good that Bolt had some talent, at least—Harry really didn't want to end up at the bottom of the totem pole; he knew firsthand what that experience was like and really wanted to avoid it in the place he hoped would end up being his home.
The rest of the morning passed in a much less exciting fashion, with Hagrid helping Harry set up his binders and folders for the impending school term. After a brief lunch from the Leaky Shuckle, though, Hagrid had Harry return Rowlet (who had woken up but was pretending to still be asleep) and Bolt. He said he'd gotten an idea of what to do for the afternoon, but he wanted it to be a surprise.
Hagrid led Harry up Diagon Alley, down Parsh Alley, past Ecksp Lane, and through Prymar Alley, until they finally arrived at Fyzik Alley. Lined with wide multi-story buildings, unlike most of the streets in Public City this one wasn't transected by multiple floors of walking paths. Instead, each and every building stood entirely on its own. There were four of them in total—two to a side—and each and every one had, in massive, oversized, letters, the words 'Fitness Center' fixed to their sides. In fact, with the exception of color, the main difference between all the buildings were the words directly on top of 'Fitness Center.'
Hagrid led Harry into one that was labeled "Pyroar Fitness Center", and was primarily painted in shades of orange and red, a sharp differentiation from the blues and browns, greens and greys, and yellows and blacks that made up the rest of the street. The inside was at least as ostentatious, painted in the same colors but with more patterning and the addition of a mainly grey floor with red and orange highlights. The atmosphere was additionally helped along by the pervasive smell of sweat, metal, and, oddly enough, burning in the air.
The atrium itself wasn't much to look at—a bored teenager was manning the front desk, where Hagrid showed his card to get entrance (Harry got in as a guest), and there was no other furniture, only four doors—the entrance they'd already come through, a door helpfully labeled 'employees only', a door with the symbol of a woman, and a door with the symbol of a man.
Hagrid led Harry through the latter, which opened into a locker room which was even more... aromatic... then the room preceding it.
During the entire trip up to this point, from leaving the inn to arriving at Pyroar Fitness Center, Harry had been pestering Hagrid incessantly over what they were doing, but Hagrid had kept mum. Still, the location was a bit of a giveaway, and as they passed through the locker room, an adjacent hallway, and a staircase, Harry started to get increasingly worried.
He may have not stopped Bolt and Rowlet from battling, but he was quite sure he was not yet ready to instruct either of them.
As it turned out, though, his fears where unfounded. After pushing through one last set of double doors, Hagrid and Harry arrived not at an arena but at a long, nearly empty room, which had a series of benches placed a meter or so from the walls on the right and left sides of the room. The walls themselves? They were completely covered in windows, which overlooked the very arenas that Harry had been so worried about finding himself in.
"I figured," Hagrid explained, "that you might like to see what Pokémon battling looks like—you know, to get a feel for it."
Harry nodded absent-mindedly, slowly crossing the room while staring out the windows. The platform overlooked six separate arenas, and four of them were currently in use. It was the last one he saw that interested him the most, if only because the participants were clearly his age.
There were four people and two Pokémon in the room. Harry was fairly sure the two adults were the parents of the two kids, who were the ones actually shouting the orders to the Pokémon in front of them.
One of the battlers was a girl with long dark hair. As she was facing away from him, Harry could tell little else. He did know what kind of Pokémon she was directing, though: a Combee, which, according to his nature documentaries, had to mostly worry about Ursaring in terms of natural predators and were known to be, as a whole, fairly week, although some of the females would eventually evolve into Vespiqueen, who had a much better reputation.
Harry squinted at the arena, trying to see if this Combee had the tell-tale red marking which denoted females, but the distance was too much to tell.
Across the battlefield stood a boy with slicked back blond hair. He carried himself with the kind of self-assurance which only came from constant reinforcement, and from what Harry could tell, the boy, with the help of his Pokémon (a small bluish-purplish creature Harry didn't know the name of) seemed to be winning.
In fact, just as Harry thought that, one of the purple Pokémon's attacks (a sort of stream of needles) slammed into the Combee. The flying/bug Pokémon's rapidly beating wings faltered, picked back up, then failed outright, dropping the Combee onto the ground.
Harry winced in sympathy, but the girl simply returned her Pokémon and sent out the next without hesitation. This one was another Harry recognized: a Phanpy, the pre-evolution of the Pokémon Donphan that Harry had learned were fond of rolling down hills at full speed as a method of attack.
Across the field the boy did not seem overjoyed about the new opponent. His mouth, which had formed a smirk as the Combee had to be recalled, fell back into a more neutral expression, but even at his distance Harry could tell that the boy was actively trying not to frown more than he already was. Behind him, the man who could only be the boy's father shifted and frowned as well.
Up on the platform Harry finally took a seat on the bench facing that particular arena. He was interested to see wear the match would go—if he had to guess, the bluish-purplish Pokémon was probably a poison type, and his nature documentaries had stressed how poorly poison types did against ground types.
In the arena the Phanpy trumpeted with its trunk, and the girl shouted her first order. Across the field the boy shouted another out to his own Pokémon. Instead of attacking as Harry had expected, though, both Pokémon held their positions. In fact, neither of them looked like they were doing anything at all—at least, from his angle.
"They're setting up." Hagrid said, sitting next to him. Harry looked at him questioningly—while his favored programs had done much to expand his knowledge of the number of Pokémon and their types, it had done little to teach him how to professionally battle.
"Setting up is like... well, most Pokémon have moves that don't directly attack your opponent—like your Bolt has Leer, or Charge. And if I remember rightly, your Rowlet has Growl and Defog, which are both called set up moves because they kind of make the other Pokémon weaker, or your own stronger, instead of attacking—Leer makes it harder for the opponent to take hits, Growl makes it harder for the opponent to deal hits. Things like that."
"And people will use those first? And then attack?"
"Well- it's not really that simple." Hagrid replied. "Some Pokémon are better suited to using more or less set up moves than others. And some people are more or less suited to it to. For instance, Gryffindor—I have told you about the houses, right Harry?"
"You talked about them a bit when we were hiking to Route 66."
"Good. Well, anyway, Gryffindor—my alma mater, you know, and your parents, too—they're kind of known for not using many set up moves. Slytherin, on the other hand, are thought to use them the most."
"How about the other two houses?" Harry asked.
"Oh, well they're known for battle styles too. Ravenclaws are known for treating battles like math equations, while Hufflepuffs... let's see... well, I guess you can say they're known for unpredictability—generally most of the poorer battlers are Hufflepuff, but there are always a couple that rise to the top, and all of them like doing random things in battle. Sometimes it helps, sometimes it doesn't."
Harry nodded. Below them, the boy's Pokémon had finally fainted, and he'd promptly replaced it with another—a black and red cat, which Hagrid immediately took note of.
"Oh-ho! Look, he has a Litten. Good animal, that. Watch out for it, Harry—the Litten line are natural predators of the Rowlet line."
Hagrid and Harry stayed on the platform watching battles until dinnertime. Harry tried to watch the battles with younger participants, if possible—he wanted to get an idea of what his classmates were like before meeting them. That said, what interested him the most about all of the battles was how much care was shown by many, if not most, of the trainers to their Pokémon. While they were quick to withdraw any who fainted, those who were still on the field when the battle was over were quick to be cuddled and hugged and given treats, regardless of whether they won or lost. Not only that, but the Pokemon clearly enjoyed battling. All in all, it wasn't nearly as bad as Harry had first feared.
After a quick dinner from a street vendor, Hagrid had taken Harry back to the inn in a rush—apparently, he was late for some sort of meeting. Before he left, however, he'd had Harry sign a paper officially turning over the ownership of Rowlet—apparently Hagrid wasn't allowed to have her for more than a day, but Hagrid didn't actually explain why before he'd gathered Harry and the now released Bolt into a large hug, warned Harry to take care of himself, and disappeared out the door.
Still.
Harry could honestly say it was the best birthday he'd ever had.
