Harry wasn't sure what woke him that night, only that suddenly he was awake and staring up at the bottom of the stairs through the darkness. It was late, very late, and he laid there for several minutes, listening. He was about to roll over and go back to sleep when he finally heard it. Long, slow sniffing, outside the door to his cupboard.
He froze, heart starting to pound in his chest, wondering what kind of animal could have found its way into the Dursleys' house without making a horrendous amount of noise.
He got his answer sooner than he would have liked.
The lock on the door slid back, and the door itself swung open, revealing three human-shaped figures in the darkness of the entryway, only partially lit by streetlights. Two of them – the tallest and broadest, and the one crouched in front that opened the door – were naked, skin black as pitch but smooth and sexless, save for feminine curves on the crouching one. The third was dressed in nothing but a pair of cutoff jeans, more human than the other two but at least partway through becoming the same kind of creature, his eyes pale and skin a dark grey. All three of them had wickedly sharp antlers curving up from the crowns of their heads.
The more human looking one let his eyes sweep over Harry and his cupboard, before his eyes narrowed and jaw drew tight.
Without visible prompting, the female creature shifted aside, allowing him to approach and take her place in front of the cupboard, crouching so he was level with Harry. As the boy watched, the antlers seemed to retract into his skull, disappearing into his dark, curly hair. His skin lightened and eyes darkened, and by the time he spoke he looked just like anyone else.
"Hello," he said with surprising gentleness and an American accent, "What's your name?"
"Harry. Harry Potter."
"Hello, Harry. My name is Will, and this is Hannibal." He pointed at the taller creature, who inclined his head. "And Abigail." The smaller creature waived a wet, clawed hand.
Even in the dark, Harry saw the light glinting off the blood. He felt queerly detached, and yet perfectly at ease with these strange beings. He couldn't say how he knew they wouldn't hurt him, only that he did. "Did you kill them? The Dursleys?"
The man went still, and looked carefully into his eyes before saying, "Yes."
A relieved sigh whooshed from his lungs. "Thank you."
The taller creature hummed faintly, and exchanged glances with the man. The female creature looked hopeful, although Harry couldn't say how he knew that, either.
"Would you like to come with us?" Will asked.
Harry thought about it for only a second. His aunt and uncle had often told him stories about orphanages and threatened to leave him at one when he 'misbehaved.' He assumed that now that they were dead, he would have to go – assuming he didn't go with Will and Hannibal and Abigail. He had seen orphanages on TV now and then, and while they didn't quite live up to the Dursleys' horror stories, he still had no desire to live in one.
"Yes. Yes, please."
Harry slept most of the way to their house, leaning against Abigail's shoulder after she resumed human form, lulled to sleep by the sounds of her whispering to Hannibal and Will in the front seats.
The house was much larger than the Dursleys', a stately manor house that backed up to an ancient wood. He only caught vague glimpses of it through the dark, but despite the circumstances it didn't seem truly sinister at all, even if the trees behind it did take on strange shapes.
He got his own room next to Abigail's, with Hannibal and Will just down the hall. When he climbed into the bed, it felt like he was lying on a cloud, much softer and more comfortable than his cot under the stairs, and he dropped off to sleep almost immediately.
When he woke in the morning, he was half-convinced he was still asleep, and any minute he would be woken up by Aunt Petunia hammering at the door, telling him to get up and do his chores.
But when he opened his eyes, the bed didn't vanish under him, the room didn't disappear around him. The room was pastel blue with white trim, with a white-framed painting of a house by a stream on the wall opposite the bed. One of the white doors led to a bathroom done in soft grey stone with silvery fixtures; another led to a closet easily twice as big as his cupboard.
The last led out into the hall, where he smelled food cooking.
Harry followed his nose to the kitchen, where he found Will nursing coffee and Abigail laying out a tray of cold cuts, while Hannibal stood at the stove, sautéing something in a deep-sided pan. Of all of them, he was the only one fully dressed in a white shirt with the sleeves rolled up, dark pants, and dark dress shoes. Everyone else, including Harry himself, was still in their pajamas, complete with bedhead.
Will looked up when he entered and gave him a sleepy smile. "Good morning, Harry."
"Good morning." He returned the smile shyly and sat down across from the man when he was waved over.
"After breakfast, we'll be heading out to get you clothes and the like, so eat well," said Hannibal, coming over with plates of scrambled eggs, crispy bacon, and roasted potatoes. Once they were carefully laid out on the table, he went back and returned with a bowl of fresh fruit and a tray of toast laid out in an elegant fan.
Despite being the biggest of all of them (although not by much, in Will's case), Hannibal was the most delicate eater of all of them. The others finished long before him and excused themselves from the table to get dressed. Harry did the same, and returned to his room to dress himself in his cousin's hand-me-downs for what he knew was the last time.
Eventually, Will took him aside and explained what the three of them were, the forms he'd seen that night in the Dursleys' house.
Wendigo, creatures born from humans who eat the flesh of other humans.
"Am I going to become one?" he had asked, "Are you going to make me one?"
"Not until you're older. At least of age. And not if you don't want to be one," was the reply, "You're, what, six? Seven?"
"Six and a half."
"Then you have ten years to think about it."
He did think about it, on nights when his fathers left him with Abigail while they hunted more human monsters, or with Will while Hannibal taught Abigail how to get away with murder and elevate it to art. He thought about it when Will and Abigail took him out into the woods to teach him how to shoot, or when all his family taught him how to defend himself against monsters that were all too human.
He thought about it when he started working with Hannibal to build a mind palace, and make his spurts of magic less accidental and more intentional. (Because what else could it be when a dropped teacup came back together in his hands? What else could it be when a gash that needed sixteen stitches was healed without a scar by morning? What else could it be when he willed things to happen, and they did?)
He was still thinking about it when The Letter arrived.
A/N: Maybe it's pre-S2 finale. Maybe it's not. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Idk. Abigail's here.