Still kind of a rough-draft. Not sure where this would end up going. I just wanted to post something on my birthday (I'm 26 today).
Hoi Polloi
It would be fair to say that Harry Potter was a lonely child.
Growing up, he'd been ostracized by his peers due to his tatty, second-hand clothes, the unwarranted scorn he garnered from his teachers, the vicious bullying he received at Dudley's hands, and, of course, the slanderous lies Vernon and Petunia spread about him through the neighborhood. With all these factors playing against him, was it any wonder that Harry was shunned by the rest of his primary school classmates?
All little Harry Potter wanted was for someone to show him even a modicum of kindness, compassion, and love. He wanted to know he didn't deserve the hatred he lived with every day.
As Harry stumbled home after a particularly nasty beating courtesy of Dudley, a pair of eyes watched the child from the shadows. The eyes of the watcher were a rich blue, though they seemed purple in a certain light. This unnatural gaze followed young Harry, honing in on the waves of magical power that radiated from the boy like a beacon.
Yes, this was something he could work with. He had always been a patron of the outcast, the downtrodden, the foreigner, the immigrant, and all other groups which faced the cruelty of unjust leaders. Throughout the world, his followers celebrated his cause and hid themselves and their practices far away from the prying eyes of the unenlightened. His power opened the minds of men and women, alike, to see things far beyond the mortal coil and to express their thoughts and desires freely and without restraint.
It had been too long since he'd had a chosen servant in the world. Perhaps it was time he changed that?
The figure smirked to himself as he vanished into the gloom. The only sign of his presence was an unusual growth of ivy springing up around the house and yard of Number 7, Privet Drive where he'd been lurking.
Harry was working in the garden on a sweltering summer afternoon. He had been toiling away for hours, but he knew his aunt expected nothing less than perfection…or else. He was just about to tackle a very unpleasant patch of weeds when a whistle caught his attention. Harry turned around quickly and his eyes met those of a stranger perched on the fence.
This newcomer was a boy about Harry's own age. He had a smooth, tan complexion and sharp features. His thick, black curls nearly reached his shoulders, lending him an almost girlish quality. It was his eyes that were most interesting, though; a rich, royal blue with a purple tint to them.
"Afternoon," the boy said cheerily.
"H-Hello," Harry said shyly.
"My name's 'Dio.'"
"I-I'm Harry."
"Nice to meet you, Harry. Would you like to be friends?"
Children are very trusting souls, by nature. There may be the oddly mature child, every now and then, but children in general have yet to fully comprehend why they should be wary of strangers. Harry, so starved of love and attention, didn't even hesitate to accept the mysterious boy as his new friend.
Dio was a very free-spirited and lively boy. Harry was worried, at first, when his new friend coaxed him into abandoning his chores to go off and play, but Dio was very convincing. This marked the beginning of a series of bizarre and inexplicable events on Privet Drive. The first was that, upon returning from playing with Dio, Harry discovered that his chores had somehow been done for him – the garden-work, in particular, was far beyond anything Harry could have reasonably achieved. Even Harry's aunt and uncle found little to grumble about, though they began casting cautious glances at the 'freak.'
The second string of odd events was a far more serious matter. Not long after Harry became friends with Dio, bad things began to happen to the Dursleys. It started in little ways – the car not starting when Vernon was running late for work, Dudley getting chased and clawed by stray animals, Petunia becoming more and more fixated on cleaning to the point that she was starting to neglect everything else. However, things slowly escalated in gradually darker ways – Vernon having clutching pains in his chest and having trouble breathing, Dudley nearly getting hit by vehicles whenever he crossed the street, and Petunia steadily beginning to imagine seeing dirt on everything around her.
Harry, meanwhile, was spending more and more time with Dio. They mostly spent time in the park and Dio would bring a picnic basket of food and tell Harry stories – strange stories about times long ago, stories about kings and gods and madness and magic. Dio never minded Harry asking questions; in fact, he encouraged Harry to be inquisitive about anything and everything. With Dio's help, Harry became more confident and more distrustful of authority.
Soon, Dio showed Harry even more than he was expecting one day when, as if by magic, Dio transported the two of them to a forest.
"I promised to show you my home, didn't I?" said Dio. There was something different about Harry's friend. The boy appeared to exude a strange glow.
"How did we get here?" said Harry. "This can't be possible."
"Anything is possible when you have powers beyond what those simple mortals have, Harry. I was born with this divine gift…as were you."
"Me? But I'm just Harry."
Dio leapt up onto a nearby stump and looked smilingly back at Harry, causing the younger boy to gasp. His eyes had lost their blue color, turning more and more into a reddish-purple. Dio's very form and features seemed to shift and warp, as if Dio was not fully connected with reality; indeed, Dio appeared, all in the same moment, to resemble a boy, a teenager, and a bearded man. Within Dio's mess of black curls, Harry saw that two sets of horns twisted from his friend's scalp – one set curled in and down like those of a ram and the second arced upwards like the horns of a bull. Even Dio's clothes had changed from jeans and a t-shirt to a brightly-colored robe with a stole made from leopard skin.
Harry backed away in fear and tripped backwards over a tree root. This vision of his one friend in the world terrified him and he could feel his heart beat frantically against his ribs as he wondered what this powerful being was and would do.
But Dio just kept smiling at Harry and slowly drew close so he could offer a hand to help the boy to his feet.
"You don't have to be afraid of me, Harry," Dio said. His voice sounded older and had an otherworldly quality which Harry couldn't describe. "I never lied when I said we were friends. But there is something you should know about who I really am."
Number 4, Privet Drive looked absolutely nothing like Dumbledore remembered that fateful night he had left Harry on the doorstep in the cold of November.
The lawn was as thickly overgrown as a jungle, with grass nearly as tall as a man and ivy practically encasing the house, itself, and large trees towering overhead and casting dark shadows. As he made his way up the walk, Dumbledore could've sworn he saw things moving in the dense foliage surrounding him. Before he even had the chance to knock on the door, it swung open and there stood a ragged, unkempt Petunia Dursley.
"You're here for the boy," she said rather than asked, almost pleading. "Take him! For the love of God, take that freak from our home."
"What is going on, Petunia?" Dumbledore asked with a frown. "I am here because Harry never received the letters we sent to him." He would have sent Hagrid to straighten things out, but a moment of reason overcame the headmaster and it dawned on him that Hagrid might not be the most tactful individual to handle the situation - he'd send Hagrid later to escort Harry to Diagon Alley.
"The boy has been getting the letters," Petunia insisted. "He just refuses to open them."
"Why ever would he do that?"
"The little freak thinks it's funny to let our house fill with those letters. Just look at this mess!"
It was then that Dumbledore noticed that a pile of letters had flooded out of the door when Petunia had opened it.
"And all those filthy owls!" Petunia cried. "Getting dirt into my beautiful home. I haven't slept in four days from all the cleaning I've had to do!"
"May I see Harry?" Dumbledore asked, wanting to get this all sorted out and get away from the crazed woman. For a moment, Dumbledore wondered if leaving Harry with the Dursleys was a bad idea.
"Yes! Please, take him away! Get him out of my house!"
She grabbed Dumbledore by the arm and dragged him inside. The two of them waded through more piles of letters to the door to the back garden. Upon reaching the door, Petunia shoved the elderly wizard through it.
Dumbledore stumbled as he exited into the garden – and what a garden it was. Like in the front yard, tall trees grew as if they had been there since ancient times and encircled the space in heavy shade. Flowers, fragrant shrubs, and various types of berries grew around the space and, along a series of trellises in the few sunny parts of the garden, bushels of thick, succulent grapes grew in a rich abundance. Amidst all this, seated on a smooth, flat rock by a small, ornamental pond was Harry.
He certainly didn't look the way Dumbledore expected. While the boy was lean and lanky, much like his father had been, that was where the similarities to James Potter ended. Harry had grown out his messy, jet-black hair so that it nearly reached his shoulders, with the fringe covering over the famous scar on his forehead. The boy's skin had a healthy tan to it which James Potter had never managed despite all his time out playing Quidditch. The boy's clothing was also strange for having grown up among the muggles – he wore a Greek chiton in yellow and had woven a garland of ivy into his thick hair and, around his neck, he wore a gold pendant which appeared to be cast with the emblem of a pinecone. The boy's eyes, which stared curiously at Dumbledore, were Lily's emerald green, but held a strange spark in them which Dumbledore had never seen before.
"Hello, sir," Harry said. "May I help you?"
He was polite, at least. It seemed whatever lunacy was affecting Petunia had, thankfully, spared Harry.
"Good morning, Harry," Dumbledore said. "I am Albus Dumbledore, Headmaster of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry."
Harry blinked at him.
"If you say so, sir," said Harry.
Dumbledore frowned at the response. While the statement implied skepticism, Harry's tone was perfectly even…almost rehearsed. Dumbledore had been expecting disbelief, shock, maybe even amazement, but not this…this, whatever this was. Dumbledore was relieved, at least, that Harry did not appear to have the dangerous, sociopathic qualities he had noted in a young Tom Riddle, despite the boy's strange attitude.
"Indeed, my boy," Dumbledore said. "And I was hoping to invite you to attend Hogwarts. I believe you got a letter from-" Harry raised an eyebrow and gave the headmaster a look that indicated he was pushing into the zone of obviousness. "Yes, well, what do you say, Harry?"
Harry's gaze was unreadable and Dumbledore, finally unable to resist, chanced a quick peek into the boy's mind with a legilimancy probe. The wild barrage of colors and disjointed images slammed so hard into Albus' mind that it caused him to physical jolt back from the force of it. That couldn't have been possible. Either Harry had somehow developed an incredibly powerful illusionary mental shield or…or something was badly wrong with the boy's mental wellness. Albus also added a third possibility; that being that, perhaps, the Horcrux in Harry's scar caused the anomaly.
None of those options boded well.
"…I said 'yes,' Headmaster," Harry's voice broke through. "Were you not listening?"
"I…my apologies, Harry," said Dumbledore. "I must be more tired than I thought. I do have a great deal of work to do before school starts, you know."
"Ah, yes, I understand. I look forward to seeing you at Hogwarts, Headmaster."
"Likewise, Harry. I will send someone to show you where to purchase your school supplies. Would tomorrow morning be acceptable?"
"It would. Around nine o'clock?"
Dumbledore nodded and quickly showed himself out, not seeing the eerie smirk spreading across the eleven-year-old's face.
Dumbledore waited impatiently for Hagrid to return and tell him more about Harry Potter. He hadn't been comfortable with what he'd seen yesterday and he hoped that someone as kind, jovial, and trusting as Hagrid would have no trouble getting the boy to open up, even if the half-giant didn't realize just how significant (or how potentially dangerous) the information about Harry was.
When Hagrid Flooed into Dumbledore's office, carefully presenting the little parcel with Flamel's Philosopher's Stone to the headmaster, Dumbledore schooled his features to those of the grandfatherly-figure he presented himself as.
"Ah, Hagrid," he said. "All went well, I take it?"
"Right so, Headmaster," said Hagrid with a wide smile. "Li'l Harry is all set to start at Hogwarts."
"No problems, then?"
"None. Well…"
"What is it, Hagrid?"
"Don' know if it's anythin' ter worry about, Headmaster, but there were a few small things that seemed odd ter me."
"Such as?"
"Well, fer a start, we goes ter Gringotts. The goblins was their usual selves, right huffy an' impatient with us. But, then, they gets a good look at Harry and this necklace he's got on and they start actin' really polite and helpful-like."
"Are you sure they didn't simply take a liking to Harry?"
"Goblins don't really take much of a likin' ter anybody, beggin' yer pardon, Headmaster. No, it was when they saw that necklace with the pinecone on it."
"I see. Did anything else unusual happen?"
"Well, the animals in the pet shop started gettin' a bit antsy when Harry walked by them. Thought that was a bit strange. An' Mr. Ollivander was surprised by the wand that chose Harry."
Dumbledore nodded along. He'd been expecting something strange to happen with Harry's wand selection, knowing that it was surely inevitable that the brother-wand of Voldemort's would choose Harry. After all, what other wand could Harry possibly have gotten?
Harry twirled the vine wand in his fingers as he sat by his little pond. That Ollivander fellow had given him a curious look at the specific wand combination he'd sold him – vine (a rare choice of wand wood, associated with a mysterious nature and sense of higher purpose) and phoenix feather (a finicky and stubborn substance with a tendency to act of its own accord and very difficult for a wielder to tame) were seldom matched together, according to the old wandmaker. The particular phoenix feather within Harry's wand had been obtained from a very ancient phoenix living in the Zagros Mountains between Iran and Iraq.
"So, where do we go from here?" Harry said.
"Just as I have instructed," his master's voice answered from the empty air. "You will perfect your magic, as befitting of a high priest. And you shall gather into my service the outcasts, the weary, the lost, and those who hunger for the acceptance the normal world will never give them."
"Are there really that many in the magical community?"
"More than you would expect. Be prepared to face hostility, maybe even persecution, for my sake. It would not be the first time my worshippers faced antagonism from the uninitiated. Go forward, Harry Potter, and face your future without fear in your heart, for I and the subjects of my court will be there to watch over you so long as you pay me homage."
"Thank you, Lord Dionysus. I will bring honor to your name and to the Dionysia."
Omake: Hogwarts House 01 (my first pick for Harry's house)
Albus wanted to bang his head against his desk. How the hell did the Boy-Who-Lived, the Chosen One destined to defeat Voldemort, end up in Hufflepuff?
The long-haired, ethereal child seemed to have gathered a swarm of friends almost immediately and Albus had noticed a disturbing trend of people from other houses ending up in the hospital wing after attempting to bully anyone from Hufflepuff. Several older students appeared to have had mental breakdowns and started screaming about badgers eating their entrails. Then there was the mess of dismembered cow parts which had mysteriously been scattered around the Slytherin common room (something which prompted several Slytherins to swear off eating meat ever again). Or how the Gryffindors had started seeing their housemates as actual lions and started hexing each other.
Omake: Hogwarts House 02 (my second pick for Harry's house, mostly because of animal symbolism)
Harry smiled at the group of Slytherins who had ganged up on him in an attempt to intimidate the 'Golden Boy' in their house.
"Any last words, Potter," the largest, meanest-looking boy growled.
"Yes, in fact," Harry said calmly. "I'm very sorry about what I'm about to do and I hope we can be friends afterwards."
Just as the large Slytherin was about to bring his meaty fist down on Harry's face, Harry whipped out a long wand which was topped with a pinecone and smacked the older boy over the head with it. The dazed Seventh-Year stopped, blinked, and stared around in a daze before he started screaming when he saw his friends. The boy ran around in a panic and began fighting and tossing spells whenever one of his buddies got too close.
The younger students turned back to stare at a grinning Harry Potter, who now had a serpent with glowing eyes coiling around him. There was a reason why you don't mess with the servant of a god of madness, especially in a domain ruled by one of the god's sacred animals.
Omake: Riddles are boring, let's have a tipple
"Ooh, this isn't magic," said Hermione. "It's logic. It's a riddle. One of these potions will send us forward, one will send us back, three are poison, and two are wine. Just give me a moment to figure out—Harry, what are you doing?!"
Harry held up a finger to halt her inquiry as he continued to chug down the contents of one of the bottles. Once it was empty, he set it back and grabbed a second one which he promptly downed in record speed before, once more, setting the bottle back where it was. Now rosy-cheeked and lightly swaying from side-to-side, Harry gave a soft hiccup and smiled at his friend.
"Well, found the two bottles of wine," he said. "What's next?"
"How did you do that?"
"I've got a good nose for wine. This stuff Snape put out is top-notch. I don't normally go for nettle, but it has a pleasant tang to it."
"Harry, you shouldn't be drinking alcohol. You're only eleven, for goodness' sake. And don't ever scare me like that, again. I was terrified you might have drunk the poison."
"Have a little faith in me, Hermione. Now, let's finish with this challenge. Should be a bit easier now, don't you think?"
Omake: Coming-of-age
Harry was thirteen. A powerful age, despite the dark connotations of the number. He was entering the transition point between childhood and adolescence. His body had begun to change and his hormones had begun to awaken. It was time.
Time, at last, for him to be fully received into the priesthood of Dionysus according to the sacred Mysteries. He had to wait until the time of the Dionysia festival, however. It took him into a new school year and the danger of an escaped murderer, but Harry was patient and focused on his studies until the day of the Winter Solstice arrived.
Ignoring the danger which stalked him and the warnings of the staff not to go wandering around in the Forbidden Forest, Harry let Dionysus guide him through the chill and the snow to a clearing deep in the woods which, miraculously, remained warm and dry against the frigid weather of the Scottish Highlands. Entering the circle, Harry cast off his dull, black robes and withdrew from a satchel his priest's chiton and leopard pelt. Loosing his long hair from the ponytail he kept it in at school, Harry then donned a crown woven of ivy and grape leaves. He then took up his thyrsus staff – a long wand topped with a pinecone – and gave a pass with it over the circle, letting forth a deep, loud cry that echoed through the woods.
Soon, the air was filled with the haunting sounds of drums, rattles, and flutes played by an invisible orchestra. Harry stamped his feet upon the earth and called out his high, keening wail as he chanted to the wine-god. This song and dance was something primal and wild, older than the Greeks, older than the Mycenaeans, older even than the Keftiu Minoan people of Crete.
As the noise reached a fevered pitch, Dionysus returned to his young priest. In his hands he held a golden cup filled with dark, red wine. It didn't look like modern vintage, nor did it smell like it. But Harry gladly took the cup from Dionysus and, after bowing to the god, drank it.
The wine had a rich, warm taste. Sweet, like honey. And there was something metallic about the liquid, a kind of rusty aftertaste which reminded Harry of when he'd accidentally bitten his tongue and could taste blood from the wound. He quickly downed the drink and passed the goblet back to Dionysus to show that he had consumed all. His master smiled at him and rested a hand upon Harry's head, speaking in an archaic dialect of Greek.
"Congratulations, my high priest," Dionysus said. "Now, at last, you may proceed with recruiting my followers and initiating them into the Mysteries."
Omake: A responsible adult
"Wait, so my godson is head of a religion that enables and encourages drunkenness, disrespect of authority, and sexual promiscuity?" said Sirius Black.
"Yeah, pretty much," said Harry.
"…Harry, have I ever mentioned how proud I am of you?"
"We only met ten minutes ago."
Omake: Satyrs
"Hey, Harry," a strange little man said as he passed them by. He had long, skinny legs for his short stature, his hair was long and mane-like though thinning at the top, his face was crinkled up around his snub nose, his ears pointed high and long and covered in thin brown hairs, and he had a long horse tail coming out from his hindquarters.
"Harry, who was that?" said Hermione.
"Hmm, oh, that was Silenos," said Harry. "He's leader of the satyrs."
"But, didn't he look…"
"What?"
"…He had horse-like traits. The ears, the mane, the tail, and the legs."
"Yeah, so?"
"Don't satyrs have, you know, goat-like attributes?"
"Why does everyone say that? That's just Pan and the fauns who've got the goaty bits. Satyrs are part-horse like the centaurs. The two races are actually distant cousins, but don't bring that up around the centaurs – they get all kinds of huffy when the comparison is made."
Omake: Tournament (or, Dionysians don't 'do' sports)
"Please tell me this ridiculous event won't have me doing anything too athletic," Harry said, wrinkling his nose. "I detest sports."
"Well, Mr. Potter," Ludo Bagman said with a huff. "What do you consider worthwhile entertainment?"
"Me? I think we should settle this as the Athenians did at the Dionysia festival. With a contest of theater and art."
Honestly, they needed to bring back writers like Sophocles to entertain the masses. Where else could you go for a healthy dose of incest, mutilation, brutality, and suicide? It's not like you could put things like that on television, right?
Omake: Correction, there is one sport which Dionysus approves of
"Chariot races are the only acceptable sport," Harry said sagely.
"It's just a bunch of grown men driving around and around in a circle," said Hermione.
"I know. It's a sport that's easy to follow if you're drunk. It's like that thing with cars in America…NASCAR, that's it. Look, they're making a left turn! They're making another left turn! Oh, they're making another left turn!"
Omake: AA is for quitters
"I'm tired of hearing that the followers of Dionysus drink too much," said Harry.
"Because it's not true?" said Hermione.
"What? No, it's true, I'm just tired of hearing it."
Omake: The great god Pan is dead
"No, I'm not," the hairy, little goat-like man protested.
"But, it was accounted in the work of Plutarch," Hermione said. "Someone on the island of Paxos called out to a sailor named 'Thamus' that he should tell the world that the 'great god Pan is dead.'"
"No, no," said Pan, shaking his head. "What the sailors passing by Paxos heard was the locals crying out the phrase 'Thamus Panmegas tethneke.' Translated properly, it means 'Tammuz the all-great is dead.' In layman's terms, it was Ishtar's idiot ex-husband who died, not me."
Omake: Dionysus's Bacchae Story
The grinning, effeminate youth stood calmly before the throne of the sneering mortal king he had the misfortune to call his cousin. Pentheus was and always had been an utter prick, but Dionysus was willing to be nice considering they were family, after all. So, despite being a son of Zeus and able to call on terrible, horrific retribution, Dionysus bore the indignity of being shackled and insulted with a surprising grace.
"…you are a disgusting, perverse little creature," King Pentheus continued to rant. "A filthy, freakish kinaidos with more makeup on your face than a cheap whore who has come to corrupt the honorable people of Thebes."
Dionysus clenched his jaw at that, especially at being called a 'kinaidos.' Inside his head, he kept repeating over and over, Don't kill him. Don't kill him. He's your mother's sister's son. Do not kill!
"…Your father couldn't possibly be Zeus, as you claim," Pentheus continued. "Semele was just a slut who spread her legs to a drunkard-"
A rumble shook the ground and the marble floor cracked around him. Dionysus could handle the insults towards himself, but when his dead mother got brought into the mix, that's when he got more than a little testy.
His smile became sharp and menacing as he slowly began to unveil tiny parts of his godly form so that only Pentheus would see it. Pentheus would see the horns curling around Dionysus's head, see the unnatural purple-red of his eyes, see the twisted animalistic shape of his divine appearance. And Dionysus would just stand and watch as the king's mind shattered.
Author's Note: Basic premise is that Harry gets an ancient Greek god as a patron and mentor figure. I'm sure typical response would be to choose Zeus or Athena or Poseidon or even Hades considering Harry is Master of Death (looking at you, Percy Jackson fans – I actually don't know much about the Percy Jackson series, so I'm just straight-up writing whatever crap dribbles out of my brain from my years as a Classical Studies and Archaeology major). My choice for Harry's benefactor is the party god Dionysus, who is actually way more interesting than he's given credit for.
This fic could go a lot of ways. Mostly, it would be an excuse to write smut because, hey, Bacchic orgies and lots and lots of nudity (seriously, the worshippers of Dionysus honored their god by parading around with a penis statue and then got high and banged each other). Definitely going to include Luna Lovegood at some point, but I kind of rushed this out the door without thinking of a segment to include her in.
Dionysus is a super old deity, despite the fact that he was left out of the Hellenic movement for a long time (he isn't even mentioned in most literary works following the Greek Dark Ages for centuries) and his worship was suppressed because of its acceptance of women, foreigners, and minority groups into the cult and its attitude of dismissing socially acceptable behavior and the control of the free-born, property-owning, old men who thought that only other men who were just like them even counted as people. Heck, much of Dionysus's mythos is about him defending his status as a god to doubters and hanging out with women and poor people.
Got the idea for this from watching the YouTube channel 'Overly Sarcastic Productions.' They do a lot of summaries and analyses of mythology, history, fiction tropes, and classical literature. I highly recommend checking it out (plus, the art is pretty cute).
Did you know that, in classical art, satyrs are actually depicted with horse ears and tails rather than being goat-men? It's just that, at a certain point, people started conflating satyrs with Pan's goat-man image. Actually, for a while, the Greeks abandoned the animal parts and just made satyrs look like hella-attractive young men (because, well, ancient Greece) who sometimes had pointy ears and little tails – make of that what you will. It was in the later Hellenistic period and then the Roman Empire which brought on the goat-man motif.