Chapter 14: Fireflies

Sitting upon his blanket of sky, Harry absently chewed on his fingers as he contemplated his Lily Book. His mummy had been a beautiful and colorful little girl, and he couldn't be more grateful for the pictures his aunt and uncle had given to him on his birthday. The only trouble was that every time he looked through the book, he found a new mystery he wanted to solve. He would stare into a picture, waiting for it to give him just a little something more, before becoming restless and asking the only other carrier of these mysteries who he could talk to.

His Aunt Tuna, as nice as she sometimes was now, would probably never be friendly over questions. She hated them and the more Harry asked her, the more upset she'd get. He had years of experience with this, but when it came to anything about his parents, she was ten times worse. Harry was trying to keep his questions in for as long as he could, so that she wouldn't get too mad about hearing a ton of them at once. He'd asked a few questions a day at first, until she'd started snapping and hissing at him like a scared cat. Now he delayed his investigations, spreading the questions out to one a day, at most.

Still, he had managed to gain a wealth of knowledge.

Aunt Tuna and his mummy hadn't grown up in the house Harry lived in now, or even in the same town. They'd lived in a town called Crystal Waters, and his Aunt Tuna's face had twisted with disgust as she'd said the name. Their house had been nice, though not as big as Number Four. Harry knew that the yard that went with the house had been huge, since a lot of the outdoor pictures were taken there. There was a park nearby, too, and a river somewhere, that the town had been named after.

Information on his grandparents was harder to come by. After seeing them in his book, he recognized their pictures on the mantel in the living room, and wondered why he'd never asked more about them. His grandmother's name was Rose. She was a florist, which had nothing to do with floors; it meant she'd had a shop that sold flowers. Harry's grandfather's name was Matthew. He was a good man, and that was all Aunt Tuna had to say.

The only other thing he'd been able to learn about his grandparents, after waiting a couple days and recruiting Dudley for help, was that their grandfather had died before they were born but their grandmother had loved both of them very much. Dudley had been a little disappointed with the brief answer they'd gotten before his mother had started talking loudly about dinner burning. Harry, who had spent some time wondering if anyone had ever loved him, was far more satisfied with hearing that his grandmother had.

There were two pictures of his mother apparently in tights and a bathing suit. After showing them to his aunt, he learned that his mummy had taken ballet classes when she was little, for a couple years. When Harry asked, he found that he was right about the sulky pout on the girl's face; even though she looked pretty and the girls around her in one of the pictures were smiling, she'd been unhappy about taking classes. 'Too much order,' Aunt Tuna had told him in an exasperated tone, and then she'd shaken her head and walked away from him. A few days later, Harry had carefully coaxed the names of the other girls from his aunt's memory, repeating them to himself until he could easily match them to their faces.

The blonde girl named Abigail appeared in one other picture, sporting pigtails and a silly grin as she stood with her arm draped around his mummy. Theresa, a girl with brown hair and bright blue eyes, appeared in one more picture, sitting beside his mummy in a pile of leaves, the two girls smiling with leaves in their hair. The third girl in the group photo of little ballerinas was Chelsea, who had dark hair and deep brown eyes, and Harry couldn't find her anywhere else in the book. The only other girl in the book was his Aunt Tuna, who was tall, slim and serious even as a child.

There was only one boy, but he was pictured more times than his mummy's other friends were. When Harry asked, he learned it was because the boy had been her best friend. Aunt Tuna said she couldn't remember his name, but from the way she'd sneered at the boy's image, Harry doubted that was true. Even if she hadn't disliked him, the boy looked pretty memorable to Harry. He had a nose like a bird's beak, long black hair and clothes that hung off from him, like Harry's secondhand ones had. It was hard to tell, but the boy's eyes were so dark Harry thought they might be black. He was in three pictures and in two of them, his mummy was smiling warmly at the boy. Clearly, Lily Potter had loved mysteries as well.

Harry's current predicament was over the third picture of his mummy and her best friend. They were standing outside, in what Harry recognized as the backyard behind his grandparents' house in Crystal Waters. It was late evening, with the sky darkening behind them, and they were both facing the camera, smiling proudly as they held up jars that had specks of light in them. It was a small mystery, but his mummy and the boy seemed awfully glad to be in on the secret of it.

He chewed a hangnail as he looked at the picture. He'd seen lights like that before, sparkling outside at night, but talking to his aunt or uncle about seeing lights outside that didn't come from houses only made them edgy.

He could show his aunt the picture, so she'd know what he was talking about.

She might answer.

Except that Harry had just bothered her that morning, asking if she'd remembered the boy's name yet.

"Oopth," he lamented around his fingertips, thinking that there was no way she'd stopped fuming already. He lay down on his stomach and continued staring into the picture, trying to get the answers he wanted from the image of the mystery.

Petunia was still reluctant to admit it, but Harry wasn't all that hard to stand. The boy was easily satisfied and normally polite, aside from his insistence on calling her a fish. His bright green eyes were less of a lance to her after she'd gotten some practice at looking into them. He was so much like Lily, but the ache of it was dulling to the point where she could almost take pleasure in the fact. Once upon a time, she and Lily had cherished one another, and no matter how badly her sister had turned out, Petunia still loved the girl she'd once been.

The only real trouble was the boy's questions. The pictures of his mother had led to Harry asking what seemed like a barrage of questions everyday since his birthday, two and a half weeks before.

The first thing Harry had asked was whether she had any pictures of his father. She had told him no, and it was the truth. That had been the only question she'd felt prepared for, as she hadn't expected a torrent of random inquiries to start following her throughout the days.

"Where did you live?" Harry asked as he looked up from a picture of his mother and aunt in their kitchen, comparing it to the one he was standing in. "Here?"

"No. We lived in a town called Crystal Waters." A country town set next to a filthy river.

Petunia brought a hand to her temple and tried to ward off a familiar headache. Everyday now, she was forced to recall the things she'd rather forget. Her fresh start in Little Whinging had once felt so liberating...

Shaking her head, Petunia stood at the bottom of the stairs to call her nephew for lunch. "Harry! Lunch!" She waited a moment and then yelled again, "Harry!"

"Mummy," Dudley complained from the living room, "I can't hear!" He was scowling at the television and leaning forward with the remote, beginning to blast the volume so that he could better hear his program.

"Not so loud, Diddydums," Petunia scolded, and then she went up the stairs to fetch Harry in person, so that she wouldn't be bothering her dumpling.

She came to her nephew's door and opened it without knocking, seeing no reason to warn him to hide whatever mischief he might be up to. He was asleep on his bed, lying down on his stomach on top of the blankets, with his feet on his pillow and his head pressed against the open pages of his photo album. He looked ridiculous, which in Petunia's vernacular could be translated to deeply unamusing. Taking a moment to observe the boy, she noted that he was far less objectionable with his eyes and mouth shut. Were he not rubbing his smelly socks against the clean pillowcase and drooling onto the plastic sleeve of an album page, she could almost see him as a simple, sweetly sleeping child.

Of course, she knew better. Petunia went over to wake the sleeping terror, curiously eyeing the edges of the pictures Harry had fallen asleep to. She shook his shoulder and he moaned quietly, curling in on himself before twitching and opening his eyes.

"Aun' Tuna?" he asked as he looked up at her with his glasses askew.

"It's time for lunch," she told him crisply, watching as he pushed himself up onto his elbows, revealing the photos that had been covered by his face. Ah, she thought in disgust, him again. Harry was most annoyingly persistent in his questions about that boy. She knew now that she should have lied the first time Harry had asked who he was, instead of offering the brief but honest answer that he was Lily's best friend. Of course her troublesome nephew wouldn't be satisfied to leave it at that. Even without a name, Harry's curiosity was sparked.

He straightened his glasses and looked between her and the album, quickly finding his resolve. He held his Lily Book up expectantly. "Aunt Tuna," he began.

"No," she interrupted, "I don't remember his name."

Harry's nose scrunched up. "I wasn't gonna ask that," he denied. "I wanted to know about this," he said with more energy, thrusting the Lily Book up and pointing to the middle of the picture on the right page.

Petunia looked at him skeptically, and then examined the picture more closely. The two children displayed their mason jars with looks of triumph. "Fireflies," she said in confusion. Looking to Harry's face, which was rapt in excitement, she understood that this was the information he'd been questing for. She sighed, relieved and exasperated at once. Bugs, she thought, the boy just wants to know about bugs. How...normal. She snorted and shook her head, handing the album back.

"They're just little bugs that light up," she explained easily.

Harry frowned. "You knew about this?"

"Of course," she snipped. He drew back and tilted his head to the side, and she waved a hand in the air as though she could brush away her frustrations. It was much better to discuss insects than her childhood. "They're easy to catch at night. Some people keep them in jars for a short while. They are rather interesting to look at," she distantly recalled.

"I can catch them?" he asked eagerly.

She pursed her lips. "I suppose," she allowed after a moment.

His eyes lit up. "Where do they live?"

"Outdoors. In the trees, bushes and grass. It's still the right season, we could probably find some in the park..." She trailed off in thought, wondering if Dudley would enjoy an outing like that.

"No way."

"Oh, come on," Harry whined. "We have to go! Please!"

"I don't have to go anywhere," Dudley argued. He wasn't going to give up the evening movie to go chase bugs with his nutcase cousin.

"But she said we could only go tonight if you wanted to, too! Please, Dudley, I really want to see some. I've never seen them up close before. Aunt Tuna wouldn't even admit they were there before!"

Dudley scowled, completely unsympathetic. "They're on the telly all the time. I've told you to watch it more."

Harry stamped his foot lightly in frustration, a habit he'd picked up from Dudley. "Telly isn't the same as real life," he said angrily. He couldn't see why Dudley didn't get that. He couldn't pet the bears in the electric box, could he? Couldn't smell the flowers or get answers to any questions he asked, either. It was useless.

"You sound like Daddy," Dudley said accusingly. He hated hearing any mention of 'real life.'

That startled Harry, but then he lifted his chin up and crossed his arms. "Well, he's right! You'll never learn anything like this."

"Good. I don't want to learn anything." He turned back to the screen, ignoring Harry.

Harry stood there scowling, just simmering for a moment. Then he realized that he was acting like Dudley would, which was no way to win against him at all. Imitating his cousin was always more likely to cause trouble than fix it. The things Dudley did to get his way just didn't work out the same when Harry tried them, and they never had. He took a deep breath and tried to calm himself down, mind working to find a better strategy.

Dudley pouted at the television, wondering how he'd gotten stuck with a cousin like Harry. The telly had so much more than anything they could find outside, and they didn't have to go anywhere or do anything to see it all. He couldn't understand why Harry didn't get that. The dogs down the street didn't have any funny adventures, or even wear clothes. The neighbors probably weren't aliens, or spies or superheroes. The really great things in the world were only on television.

Sitting down on the couch beside him, Harry spoke quietly. "Aren't you even a little interested?"

"No," Dudley answered flatly.

"But what makes them glow?"

He shrugged. "I dunno," he said carelessly.

"Where do they come from?"

Dudley turned and looked at him funny. "They're bugs. They come from dirt and stuff."

"I think they're aliens," Harry ventured, and raised his chin up in defiance of any denials.

"Aliens?" Dudley scrutinized his cousin's face, and then shook his head. "No, you don't. You're a crummy liar," he mocked.

"But they could be," Harry persisted, sure that he was taking the right tack. "They could be sent here by them, to spy on earth. And they're everywhere and everyone just thinks they're bugs but they're not. They're from space."

"They are not," he dismissed lazily, but inside his cogs were working. They could be. What Harry said sounded like some of the weirder shows he'd seen. "What do you want to see them for, anyway?"

"Because! Because they're different and I've never seen one up close before. And maybe..." Harry trailed off, not about to mention learning again. Learning about them, learning to be like them, finding out what sounds they made and whether he could make them back. He thought it might be a good idea to never talk like that in front of Dudley again, if he wanted something from him.

Dudley screwed his face up. "You're such a freak. Don't you get it? We have to go to school in a week." He turned around on the couch to sit face to face with Harry, determined to get this point across. "We're going to be stuck there for the rest of our lives," he said grimly. "We have to go there everyday, all day, for years and years until we're old. And you want to waste the time we have left, running around looking for bugs?"

"Fireflies," Harry corrected. "It isn't wasting time." He pointed to the television. "This is wasting time."

He huffed. "You're a moron," he told him, and it was the least of what he wanted to say. Harry was just too weird. Why couldn't he be a normal kid?

Harry's face fell, and he went back to begging. "Please. We can do whatever you want, tomorrow."

This was an offer worth considering. Dudley mulled it over and then conceded. "Alright. We'll go to the park and play with your stupid bugs tonight."

Harry jumped up with a cry of joy and bounced on the couch once, before settling back down, afraid of what his aunt would say if she came in and caught him jumping on the furniture.

"But only if you do whatever I say for the rest of the week."

"What?" he asked in shock. "That's not the deal."

"Yes it is."

"No! It's just tomorrow."

Dudley shrugged. "Then I guess you don't really want to go, do you?"

He did. These things didn't just glow, they flew. They were little dancing fires, and what was more, his mummy had known about them. What if she'd spoken to them? What if they knew her, or could even fly up to see her in heaven? These fireflies were a clue towards seeing her again, and just maybe they could tell him the name of her friend, too.

"I'll do it."

Dudley frowned in confusion. "You will? Just like that?"

Harry nodded. "If that's the only way you'll go."

For a second, Dudley almost felt guilty. Then he grinned and nodded. "Awesome! I'm gonna make you watch the telly until you like it. All day, everyday. Then you'll be normal when we get to school!"

Harry grimaced. It sounded horrible, but he supposed it could be worse. Well, it still might get worse. Just wait for it. He'll think of something rottener soon enough...

Vernon was surprised to find that a family outing could be painless. He and his Pet were sitting on a park bench, peacefully enjoying the fresh evening air, while watching their boys chase small moving lights through the grass. Petunia made a humming noise and slipped her hand into his and Vernon upgraded the night from painless to pleasant. Harry and Dudley were far enough away, approaching the bushes at the end of the park, that if they were bickering with each other, Vernon couldn't hear it as anything but a muffled chatter on the wind. This was certainly a marked improvement over the usual 'family bonding' excursions.

"Don't step on them," Harry reminded his cousin for what might have been the hundredth time that night.

Dudley rolled his eyes but held back on his desire to just start outright stomping on every bug in sight. He'd already nearly squished one, and Harry had screamed. "I'm not," he muttered in annoyance. It was hard not to though, since the little green lights were everywhere, and he could only see the bugs while they were lit up.

Harry ignored Dudley, his attention already diverted to the beautiful creature on his fingertip. Even surrounded by them, he was in awe. They looked a bit like beetles, but with tiny green light bulbs at the ends. "Hello," he greeted this one, as he'd greeted every other one, "I'm Harry, and this is Dudley."

Raising his mason jar to his mouth, Dudley told the three fireflies inside of it, "We want contact with the mothership!"

"Don't yell at them," Harry scolded.

Dudley glared. "They've got little ears. We have to yell." He turned back to his jar. "Take me to your leader!" he bellowed into it.

It hadn't occurred to Harry that they might need to speak up for the fireflies to hear them. He was in the habit of speaking quietly, so that people wouldn't hear him and get him in trouble. He leaned in closer towards the firefly and spoke as clearly as he could, a bit louder than usual. "Do you know Crystal Waters? Have you been there?" The bug lit up for a moment, then flitted off from his finger, landing in the grass. Harry watched it with a small frown. "What's that mean?"

"Means it's a dumb bug," Dudley explained in exasperation. "You're not gonna do this stuff at school, are you? Cause kids'll think you're weird, Harry."

"I don't care," Harry denied.

Dudley narrowed his eyes. "I'm not gonna be friends with you if people think you're weird." Then they'd start thinking Dudley was weird, too.

Rather than get upset, Harry looked surprised. "We're friends?" Some of the bugs he'd caught were climbing out from his jar, crawling over his hand, but he ignored them. For awhile now, he hadn't known what to call the change between him and Dudley. They got along, sometimes, and they played together a lot. Harry had more fun with his cousin now than he'd ever had without him. He would have thought calling them 'friends' would have been going a bit too far, though.

"Well," Dudley hedged, "yeah." He looked Harry over, with his rat nest hair, dorky clothes and bug-covered arms. "I guess."

Harry beamed. "Me too," he agreed, happy at the thought.

"But not if you act like a freak at school," Dudley amended.

"Oh." Harry looked to the amazing fireflies crawling over him, and wondered what it would be like to pass up investigating mysteries like them, just because they were at school. Wasn't the whole point of going to school that they would learn there? He didn't know if he could pass up an opportunity, just because now Dudley said they were friends. Dudley could always change his mind the next day, for some other reason that had nothing to do with anything Harry'd done.

"Boys!" Petunia called, and they pretended not to hear her as they looked to the flashing grass between them.

Harry began brushing the fireflies off from his arm and back into his jar, fumbling as most of them flew away. He bent to the ground, trying to scoop them up from the grass.

"Boys!" she called again, louder.

Carefully screwing the lid onto his mason jar, Harry saw Dudley about to do the same and warned, "Don't squish them."

Dudley sighed, but nodded and shook the jar to get the bugs down to the bottom before putting the lid on tight. Harry looked a little sick at seeing the bugs shaken. "They're fine," Dudley spat, getting frustrated over all the fuss. "They don't have feelings anyway, you know."

"They do too," Harry objected.

"They're bugs," Dudley emphasized, just in case Harry hadn't noticed.

Harry's shoulders slumped, disappointed with his cousin's attitude. These fireflies had their own lives, with business to see to, and secrets to keep. They were just as alive as he was - and maybe more so, since they were lit up like the stars in heaven. How could they not have feelings? "They try to get away, don't they? If you scare them?"

"So?"

"So they wouldn't bother if they couldn't be hurt. Right?"

Dudley just scowled.

"Harry!" Uncle Vernon hollered. "Dudley! Time to go home!"

The boys finally turned to look, seeing Vernon and Petunia standing a bit away from the bench where they'd been sitting. They looked a little impatient, which Dudley didn't mind, but Harry started walking over, stepping around any patches of ground that were lighting up, and Dudley followed, stepping much less carefully.

Vernon smiled down on them good naturedly. "So then, how many have you got, eh?" he asked as he bent to see the jars.

Dudley thrust his jar out with his chin up, glad that he'd gotten more than his cousin, since he hadn't been fooling around as much with talking to the bugs.

Harry looked to his uncle with a pleased grin of his own, holding up the jar filled with beautiful lights. He had about seven, he thought.

Petunia gave a sad smile at the mirror of Lily and Severus.

"Lily Potter," Harry whispered into the holes in the lid of his jar, "she was 'bout my age, with red hair, and green eyes. They were like mine, but sparklier. Kinda like you."

The fireflies continued crawling about the sides of the jar, apparently ignoring him.

Harry sighed. They didn't make any noise, so this wasn't much better than talking to flowers. "And her friend was a little taller than her," he persisted, because persistence was everything. After he and Dudley had been sent to bed, Harry had started talking to the fireflies in earnest, spilling all of the details he was afraid to have Dudley repeat in front of his aunt. There was no way Aunt Tuna would approve of him talking to the fireflies about his parents, when she didn't like him talking to her about them, and he wasn't really supposed to talk to bugs at all. Aunt Tuna didn't want him talking to anything that couldn't talk back right away, because she didn't understand that they could talk back, after awhile.

He was starting to suspect that the trouble with fireflies, like the trouble with everyone else who wasn't human, was that they didn't speak the same language. With birds that was easy to get around, since they still spoke. Even cats would talk to him sometimes, meowing, purring and hissing. Fireflies seemed to only speak in flashes of light.

Leaning back against his pillows, Harry thought it over. After a moment's indecision, he reached over to set the jar down on his nightstand, and then watched the fireflies' flashing. Then he turned his bedside lamp on, waited a second, and turned it off again. He repeated this three times, copying the flashes he'd just seen from the fireflies.

Their lights went out, and he waited anxiously for their next signals.

Vernon was watching the late night news when the phone rang. His Pet answered it in the kitchen and he put it out of his mind.

Then Petunia's voice went shrill, carrying into the living room. "Electrical problem?"

Harry's gaze snapped up from the fireflies when he heard his door open.

Uncle Vernon was standing in his doorway, giving him a perplexed look. "What the devil are you doing, boy? That's you, turning it on and off?"

"Sorry, Uncle Vernon," Harry offered without explanation, and turned the lamp back off again.

"What are you doing, playing with the lamp like that? It's not a toy!" Vernon came into the room, standing beside Harry's bed with his hands on his hips. "Mrs. McGillan just called, about the light going on and off. Thought there was a wiring problem."

"Sorry," Harry repeated. He hoped this didn't mean he'd have to move out of his new room.

"That sort of thing's serious," Uncle Vernon carried on. "A fire could start if there were an electrical short."

Harry squirmed down under the blankets, getting comfortable while he could. Uncle Vernon was just gaining steam, he could tell.

"You shouldn't be setting off false alarms like this. Haven't you ever heard of the boy who cried wolf? He got eaten in the end, you know! And do you know what would happen if Petunia and I learned to ignore things like this? You and Dudley and the whole house, with all of us in it, could burn to a crisp! All because you want to play games with the light! Doesn't that sound fair?"

"No, Uncle Vernon," Harry mumbled, subdued. He hadn't thought that turning the light on and off could start a fire. He didn't know what crying or wolves had to do with it, either, since he hadn't been crying and there weren't any wolves in his room.

Vernon sighed in exasperation. Sometimes he felt that the boy spoke an entirely different language. "We'll talk about this more in the morning. Go to bed," he instructed sternly.

Harry, who was already in bed, and had been for hours, cocked his head to the side in confusion. "Yes, Uncle Vernon," he said, as he knew he ought to.

"To sleep," Vernon clarified.

"Okay," Harry agreed.

His uncle huffed, then leaned over and drew the blankets up to Harry's chin, patting at them as though that would help to keep him in place. "Goodnight," Uncle Vernon said, and it sounded like an order.

"Night," Harry echoed, and watched as his uncle left the room, closing the door behind him. He listened to the heavy steps going down the hall, stopping after a few paces.

"Dudley," he heard his uncle sigh, "get back into bed. You should be sleeping by now."

"Is Harry in trouble?" Dudley asked in a bold voice.

Harry couldn't hear the answer, as they lowered their voices. All he could hear was their footsteps, shifting into the room beside his own, and the hum of their muffled words through the walls. He smacked his head back against his pillow and harrumphed. Of course he was in trouble - things hadn't changed that much. Though snuggling into his bed, he did have to admit that things had changed well enough.

He rolled over to face the glowing jar on his nightstand, rubbing his face against his sky blanket. The fireflies hadn't said anything he could understand, yet. He was still trying to work out what all their flashing was about, but just as he was patient in listening to the birds, he'd take his time in trying to decipher the difference between blink, blink, blink and blink, blink.

They were wonderful to look at, whatever they were saying. He supposed they might be saying that they wanted to come out from their jar, or that they thought he was an ugly, mean little monster for putting them in there. Maybe they really were talking about an alien mothership that they needed to report to. As he lay there with his eyes growing heavy, what mattered most to Harry was that they were incredible, with a sparkle that his mother had loved, which had perhaps rubbed off into her eyes.

He reached a hand out and traced lines in the air, connecting the dots of light. Maybe it was the other way around, too, he thought sleepily. Maybe some of his mummy's sparkle had rubbed off onto the fireflies. Harry yawned and rolled over again, closing his eyes.

Before going to sleep, he went through his new routine. Since determining that there wasn't any piece of the monster girl he'd met while school shopping left in the bag she'd touched, he'd decided that the best way to find other monsters really was through asking the shadows. Unfortunately, after spending a lot of time with his backpack over his head, he'd concluded that the shadows inside the bag weren't a shortcut, even at night.

Harry reached out for the fluttery warmth which he was getting used to falling asleep with. A flutter like a firefly's wings, he thought. Warm like sunlight, warm like...

His fire was wrapped around him again, as he swayed back and forth in the air. It was burning indoors this time, with the forest on the other side of a window. Howling came from the woods and the fire held him tighter, beginning to hum.

Looking up into the flames, Harry found himself checking for fireflies. A pretty burning green sparkle, which for some reason he thought he should be able to see hidden in his fire. He reached a hand up, watching it get swallowed up in the flames. "Mn," he heard himself protest, and the harder he looked, the more clearly he saw that he'd opened his eyes, interrupting his dream of the singing fire.

He saw his hand reaching out towards the jar of burning fireflies on his nightstand and he relaxed back against the pillows, blinking drowsily. His favorite type of dream had been cut short, but he found he wasn't upset. He still felt warm, and after a moment he registered that the gentle fluttering that came from shadow mysteries was covering his skin, reassuring him that monsters really were real and he wasn't just weird or crazy, like Dudley thought. A sense of peace came over him.

Though he started calling the flutter up at night because he wanted to know more about that girl, and any other monsters that might look like people, tonight he found himself distracted. He watched the play of light between the fingers of his outstretched hand and wondered more about the fireflies. What were they saying, where did they come from, how did they light up, like little dazzling stars? And oh, how he wished he could talk to them. If only he could light up, too.

He squinted his eyes so that the blinking lights became blurred around his hand, pretending that he could glow, too. Closing his eyes again, he thought of it as he would growing wings or stealing the warts from a toad. He pictured himself lighting up like a firefly, a cheery blinking green. There would be so much light it would just spill out from him, filling up all the shadows, like the sun.

When he opened his eyes, all he saw was the light from his mason jar.

Harry closed his eyes again in grief, letting his hand fall back to the bed. Still, he had the flutter around him, and it was difficult to despair when surrounded by his greatest hope. He wished he could see that, at least. Looking to his hand again, thinking he might see some trace of the invisible thing laying over his skin, he blinked once in shock, and then was afraid to close his eyes again.

His hand was glowing.

There was a soft white glow covering all of his skin, wherever he looked. It was moving slightly, in a calm ripple, matching the gentle fluttering Harry felt around him. As he stared at it, the light grew steadily brighter. He let out the breath he'd been holding, and then began panting slightly as he tried not to yell in excitement. It had worked! Finally, something had worked!

So he wasn't meant to be a toad, or a cat, or maybe not even a bird. What did it matter? He could learn to be like a firefly! They had wings!

When Harry's light grew to be as bright as his lamp, he startled slightly and pulled the blankets over his head. He didn't need Mrs. McGillan calling about the lights again.

He held his hands out in front of him in awe, somewhat stunned as he saw that the light continued to grow. When will it stop? He wondered. Then he realized his problem. What if it doesn't stop? What if it just gets brighter and brighter until I can't hide it anymore?

According to Aunt Tuna and Uncle Vernon, little boys didn't grow wings, or tails, or sprout plants out of their ears or start singing like sparrows, no matter what. Harry probably wasn't supposed to start glowing, either. As he worried about it, he saw the flutter growing dimmer. He chewed on his glowing lip, trying to make a decision. Go to the Dursleys and show them that he could too light up, or stay under his covers and keep it to himself?

If he went to them now, they couldn't argue that he wasn't glowing, because little boys don't glow, since he very clearly did. Aunt Tuna might even surprise him and say that it was normal, like she had with the fireflies that afternoon. This had come from a trick of the shadows though, something Harry had learned a long time ago that he should never try to talk about with his aunt and uncle. They didn't believe in things being there in the dark, and gone in the light. They didn't understand the secrets that were right in front of them, and this light, like the fluttery feeling, had definitely come from the same type of mystery the Dursleys didn't want to figure out.

Maybe though, he thought as he eyed the swirls of light playing over his fingers, maybe Dudley would understand?

They were supposed to be friends now, but it was Harry's first friendship and he wasn't sure of just what it meant. Would Dudley keep his secrets? It just wasn't worth chancing tonight. For the moment, he'd found a new secret to keep to himself, the answer to a mystery he was only just starting to unravel. It was his most exciting find yet and he smiled to himself, savoring it.

He just hoped he stopped glowing before the sun came up. Peeking under the edge of the blankets, he saw that the fireflies had stopped flashing. Still, he went to work at trying to make his own light flash like theirs could. Blink, blink, blink, he tried to tell the light around him. Looking into the white glow, he willed it as strongly as he knew how. Blink, blink.