Bravery And Ambition Chapter 1

A/N: This is a Harry Potter AU that I'm also posting on AO3. If you like it, please review and subscribe.

Life with the Dursleys was never quite pleasant. You could be Vernon, whose life was boring, unoriginal, and quite tense whenever you thought of Harry Potter. You could be Petunia Dursley, who ever so enjoyed the chance to gossip, judge your neighbors, and foist your house chores on Harry Potter. You could be Dudley Dursley, a spoiled brat of a boy who enjoyed eating, playing with your innumerable toys, or hunting down and bullying Harry Potter.

Or you could be Harry Potter, living in a cupboard under the stairs, quietly or loudly abused, called a liar, blamed for everything, and currently being punched in the stomach by your cousin Dudley. At nine years old, this reality was the life of little Harry Potter. It was a life without love, trust, or friends, a life with a family who hated you and didn't let you forget it, a life certainly without magic. It was the only life Harry Potter had ever known, and so he became good at being small, avoiding trouble, not asking questions, and running away from Dudley.

Which, as we've established, had not worked out today: Dudley and his gang had caught Harry at school. Harry, Dudley, Piers, Dennis, Malcolm and Gordon had sequestered themselves behind the school's cafeteria (a location chosen by majority vote, of course) and indulged in a new and wonderful game called "make Harry lose his lunch." This, of course, involved repeatedly punching Harry in the stomach.

Yet another student walked by as Dudley punched Harry's stomach again. "So, you think it'll be brown?" Dudley asked cheerfully. "Maybe orange? Or yellow?"

Harry, much less inclined to wonder what color his sick could be, just focused on keeping his lunch down and trying to shake his arms out of Pier's grasp. Pier Polkins usually kept Harry's arms tight, but today he was laughing too loudly and too wildly to care or focus. Harry had a good feeling about his chances to escape right then.

Dudley punched Harry again, knocking the air from his cousin, and Harry doubled his head forward to keep himself from spitting bile everywhere. When he thought he could breath again, Harry pulled his head up. "M-maybe it'll be green? You've always looked good in green.

Dudley paused to try and parse out what Harry had just said, when another student passed by. To Harry's brief surprise, they stopped, and eyed Harry, Dudley, and Dudley's gang.

Harry knew that, in the end, the other kid would walk away. Dudley's gang, the whole lot, were big and stupid kids. Nobody wanted to be on their bad side, not a single person. The teachers didn't believe any of the students anyway, especially when Harry was involved: Dudley was always an innocent little Angel around them, and Harry was a delinquent waiting to happen.

So no, no student ever tried to get on Dudley's bad side, and since the surest way to get on Dudley's bad side was to get on Harry's good side and act like you liked Harry, the students avoided him. That random student would turn around and walk away, if they knew what was good for them. After all, everyone else had. Only a person, looking for a fight, would ever stick around Harry.

So it was to Harry's great astonishment then, that the observing student turned on their heel, took off at a run, howled a battle cry, and hurled themselves right onto Dudley's back.

The whale of a boy squeaked like a pig and tumbled backwards, landing flat on his arse and dissolving into a shrieking mess as Harry's sudden rescuer started trying to strangle him. Harry, who would know a good chance to run when it bit Dudley on the hand, stomped on Pier's foot and made him howl in pain. Then he was free, running at his cousin.

In the confusion of Dudley being jumped and Harry breaking loose, the bullies disintegrated into incoherent madness. Malcolm and Gordon turned on one another, Piers was gripping his foot and dancing on his toes in pain, and Dennis very much looked like he didn't want to be there. Harry seized his cousin, levered Dudley over, grabbed his rescuer, and tore off across the playground, much to his savior's loud and furious protests. "HEY! I had him!"

"Just run!" Harry shouted, half dragging his savior behind him. By the time Dudley and his gang were back in order (with Gordon and Malcolm having gained a bruise or three between them), Harry had already ensconced himself and the heroic student on the small shrubby hill that formed one end of the playground. "…I think we lost them.".

"Blegh. We didn't have to, I could have taken them all," the girl said. Harry blinked before whipping his head around, to see that the student who had rescued him was, indeed, a girl. She was small for her age, gaunt in shape, her hair as messy and wild as his. One of her bangs was the wrong color, her eyes were a startling violet, her eyes sallow and worn. Her clothes were a patchwork of sizes, her shirt too large and her pants too short, leaving her ankles cold. She wore boots instead of trainers, and they were laced into shapeless knots and stuffed with newspaper.

Harry blinked at her, trying to put together the mess of a girl into something that made sense, and when he failed, spoke. "Uh… thank you?"

The girl snorted, catching the question mark that Harry included with his gratitude. "Yeah, you're welcome, you Muggle. Bet you wish you could beat them up the way I could."

Having never been called a Muggle before, Harry was left with more confusion and a bit of annoyance. "I could have gotten away myself," he retorted petulantly. "You just made it happen faster."

The cocked eyebrow was all the doubt Harry needed to see, and he continued quite hotly. "I could have! Really! Dudley isn't nearly as fast as I am anyway."

"Sure, sure," she replied, waving her hand dismissively. "And I'm guessing you could also fight your way out of four other boys as well?"

"You only beat up one," Harry countered. "And you had… had… the element of surprise."

"I had balls, unlike you," the girl shot back. When Harry gave her an utterly perplexed look, she burst into laughter. "Come on! You don't know what balls are? Never ask any questions?"

"My aunt Petunia tells me not to ask questions," Harry said, giving the girl a sullen look. He was starting to wish she would shut up.

For a moment, the girl really was quiet. She looked at Harry and clicked her tongue. "Well, what about your parents?" she asked.

Harry didn't say anything at first. "...They died. It was a car accident."

Maybe the girl hadn't been expecting that answer. Maybe she had, and was still surprised by it. In the end, she didn't have much to say. "Ah."

Harry took the moment to peek out of the shrubs and look around. Dudley and his gang were stalking through the playground and shoving anyone who got in their way. Eventually they found another boy, poor Mark Evans, and pulled him off. Harry winced and watched them carry off Mark: that boy hadn't been right since the summer holidays.

"I think Dudley is gonna leave us alone," Harry told her, ducking down into the bushes. "You should go now. Maybe he didn't get a good look at you?"

The girl popped her head up to check out the playground, and then looked down at Harry. "The hell I am," she declared, and when she saw Harry's owlish gaze at her curse, she burst into giggles. "I wanna knock that jerk down a peg."

"Well, if you stay with me, he'll try to knock your teeth in," Harry pointed out. Then he pointed to the cello tape on his glasses. "Or break your nose."

The girl's grin widened. "Maybe I want that Muggle to try. Oh! Where are my manners?" She stuck out a hand. "I'm Merula Snyde."

"…That's a weird name," Harry said. This was coming from the cousin of a certain Dudley Dursley. When the girl glared at him, he quickly took her hand and gave it a hearty shake. "I'm Harry. Harry Potter."

Merula jerked her hand back like Harry had shocked her. "W-wait wait wait! The! The Harry Potter!?" she blurted out in nearly a shriek.

Harry's finger snapped to his lips, shushing her wildly, before he stood up and looked over the playground. Dudley and his gang were long gone though, and he needn't have worried. "Is there another Harry Potter I should know about?"

"The Harry Potter!" Merula cried, her hands up and waving wildly. "The one person who managed to kill Voldemort! The one person to not be killed by the killing curse! The most famous Wizard in Britain! The Boy Who Lived!"

"…What?" Harry asked, wondering if the girl he was talking to was completely loopy. Then: "Are… did Dudley knock your head on the ground?"

"FKFUWCBAIDG! HOW COULD YOU NOT KNOW IF YOU'RE HARRY POTTER!?" Merula bellowed. Harry, unprepared for the volume, squeaked, stumbled back and fell on his butt.

For a few moments, he and Merula looked at one another. Harry's rescuer gave him an assessing stare. "…Are you a Muggle?" she finally asked.

Harry broke Petunia's golden rule. "What's a Muggle?"

"A person who can't do magic," Merula answered, like a school teacher addressing a particularly stupid child.

Harry pouted at her. "Well, I'm not. I can do this," he said. He folded his hands together, twisted his fingers, and made it look like he could remove his thumb. It was literally the only magic trick Harry could ever learn to do.

Merula and Harry stared at one another, as Harry pretended to remove his thumb.

Merula burst into laughter. It started small and quiet, shaking her frame, until it bubbled up like soda fizz and became obnoxious and wild. She fell back onto the ground, clutching her sides, laughing until tears started to form on the edges of her eyes. "You!… Not… Harry?" she wheezed out. When Harry shook his head, she dissolved into hysterics.

When the bout of raucous mirth had passed them by, and Harry had started to wonder if he should turn around and run away from this obviously mad girl, she finally recovered herself and gave him a big and toothy smile. "Sorry. I just know about a guy named Harry Potter. It's… crazy. But Britain's a big place: I bet there are loads of people named Harry Potter."

"Well, I'm the only Harry I know," Harry told her. Merula nearly burst into laughter again. "Stop doing that."

"I can't. It's so fucking funny." Then she saw Harry's complete shock at her genuinely serious curse, and she really did laugh again. "Oh, I am not missing this. Wanna hang out?"

"You shouldn't hang out with me," Harry told her warningly. "Otherwise, Dudley will think you like me."

Merula tapped her chin. "Does that mean he'll try to fight me?"

"…" It took Harry several seconds to realize that Merula would want that. "Uh… maybe?"

Merula grinned. "Then I'm not going anywhere."

"He'll beat you up!"

Merula's grin was wild and eager. "Yeah? So will I. Beat him up, that is."

Harry gave Merula a very dubious look. She smiled back at him. "Maybe I want to punch his dumb mug… his dumb face."

"…He has a gang behind him."

"More faces to punch!"

"And I'm not really worth it."

"You're a trouble magnet. That's enough for me."

"Well, what do you think would happen if you get caught, or he tells a teacher?"

Merula snorted. "He'd tell someone a girl beat him up?"

Harry ran out of excuses in the face of that impervious logic, and so resorted to modesty. "I don't really deserve it though…"

Merula's smile didn't waver. "So what? A lot of good people don't get what they deserve. I say you should have fun. Come on: it'll be like having a bodyguard." Merula folded her arms across her chest. "I'll be the most powerful bodyguard at school."

Harry looked at her.

This strange, crass, nutty young girl. She looked back, still smiling, still looking ready to fight his cousin, and he realized that he probably wouldn't be getting rid of her any time soon. That meant he was stuck with her, and it… it also meant that he had a… a friend. A real, actual, sort of, friend.

So he sighed and shook his head, though he also couldn't help smiling. "Whatever you say Merula."

Merula Snyde stuck a hand out for Harry Potter to shake, and up on that shrubby hill he shook it, and though they didn't know it, their lives would never be the same again.

Merula Snyde, Harry learned quickly, was a touch odd.

Oh, there were some obvious bits that made her stand out. Her hair was one: she cut it herself, and never did a good job, and didn't care. She liked that one of her bangs was also the wrong color compared to the rest, a sort of hay color compared to the hazel she had.

Other parts included her mouth. If Merula could swear, she swore like a sailor, dropping curses like math teachers dropped division problems. Harry quickly learned that it wasn't because she was any sort of naturally foul mouthed person, it was just because she liked to watch people flinch.

Then there were her clothes. Harry's were all hand-me-downs: big, roomy cast offs that Dudley thought were too girly or too childish or too small for himself. Merula's clothing was out and out old, with barely mended patchwork and sewing lines running through some of the most decrepit pieces. Her boots were the most sturdy article she wore, and they were so big she stuffed many socks, or newspapers into them.

Her grades were another thing. Harry had never known a girl to be so thick headed in his whole life. She could, at times, be quite brilliant: if there was a king she had to name, she could name them, their siblings, and who killed them and why. Math was an enigma to her, while reading was a bore. And no matter how many times Harry tried to make her use a pencil, every day she came to class with a large quill. "It's how I learned to write," she told him as she scrawled her name in ugly, blotchy capitals.

The last thing that made Merula odd though, wasn't her clothing, or her speaking, or her hair, or her grades, though Harry suspected that she blamed everything that made her stand out on the final bit. No, the crowning fact that set Merula firmly apart from all the rest of the school and every student and child that Harry had ever known, was that she firmly and irrefutably believed that she was a Witch.

After that first day, when Merula had talked about Wizards and Dark Lords and Muggles and people named Dumbledore and Voldemort, Merula had kept herself more tight lipped. Like all children of course, she slipped up somewhat often: sometimes she pretended she didn't know the name of some common object like a telephone, or an automobile. Other times she would curse in Merlin's name, or Morgan Le Fey's. Once, when Dudley had punched Harry in the face hard enough to knock him silly, Merula had shouted "AVADA KADAVRA!" three times at Dudley before just punching him back. But chief among the oddities of these moments was that whenever Harry caught Merula in that act, she'd go temporarily deaf and blind and start talking about the weather, until Harry dropped the subject.

Harry didn't need an explanation for why Merula believed that she was a Witch. He had grown up in Surrey all his life, ever since his parents had been killed in a car accident, and he wanted to believe anything about his family, no matter how outlandish, if only it meant leaving behind the Dursley's and never seeing them again. Life in Surrey, life with the Dursley's, was terribly boring and sad, and if Merula believed she was a Witch, Harry wouldn't bother to tell her otherwise. Although…

"So, have you ever done a magic trick?" Harry asked one grey, dull day in mid-autumn. School had let out a few hours ago, and rather than try to do any homework, Harry and Merula had commandeered the swings at a park near Number 4, Privet Drive. They had promised themselves that when the clouds that had threatened rain finally broke, they would part ways and run home, but it was now getting on to five in the evening, and not a drop had fallen yet.

"Hmm? You mean, like… uh…" Merula, who was idly hanging next to Harry as he swung himself back and forth, seemed at a loss for words for a moment. "Like a card trick?"

"…Sure, that's what I mean," Harry said. As he pushed himself higher and faster on the swing, he felt the yearning for the sky that he sometimes got on the swing set. 'Just a little higher' he always thought, 'just until you're flying.'

"Nope!" Merula said with a pop in her voice. "Can't do anything with cards. Not good with them, not one whit."

Harry could imagine she was changing the topic, because her voice had that rushed squeak that Aunt Petunia's had whenever she said, "don't ask questions!" Of course, Merula never said that, and cursed Aunt Petunia every time Harry mentioned she did, so Harry liked to ask all the questions he could with Merula. "Oh come on. You have to know at least one card trick?"

"Never gonna happen," Merula declared sheepishly. "I'm terrible at cards anyway. Really, really fucking bad. My luck is just-"

Harry suddenly soared up higher on the swing than he ever had, and with a whoop he went right over the top and finished a full loop de loop. He stopped swinging himself faster and let himself sway back and forth next to Merula, who appropriately broke into applause. "Thank you, thank you!"

"Hehehehe! You'd make a great broom rider-Bike rider, or Roller Coaster person," Merula said, tripping over her words in a fit of giggles. She was so impressed with Harry's little feat, and so embarrassed by her slip, that she missed that the look of triumph on Harry's face didn't have much to do with the swing. Harry, and he knew he should feel bad about tricking Merula whenever he did it but hardly ever did, knew that fishing out another little tidbit about the magical world in Merula's head was always an achievement.

Harry lowered his legs and dragged his heels through the dirt of the playground, arresting his swing. "That was really cool," he said, before twirling the swing around until the chains were all knotted, and hung from the middle of his back to let them unwind. "Woooo!"

Merula burst into another fit of giggles. "It won't beat broom riding," she said, before clamming up again. Harry, quite dizzy from the spinning, swayed into a sitting position.

"What's broom riding like?"

"…Do you think it's gonna rain any time soon?" Merula asked. As that was rather pertinent for once, Harry looked up at the clouds and tried to gauge if rain was coming. Seeing as the world was still spinning, he could only make an educated grunt.

As his vision came back to the edge of the pool and got out to dry itself off, Harry started to swing again, quiet and more pensive than he had been at the start. Merula herself simply hung next to him, eyeing the skies in somber silence. "…Everything alright?" Harry asked her.

"It's… a week until Halloween," Merula answered, which made Harry stop and stare at her. "Oh, I know that that means candy for a lot of people, but… I don't like Halloween."

"Why's that?" Harry asked. "You love candy and you're always trying to steal anything that Dudley gets. You also try to steal from me if I ever find any."

"Dudley's a fat-ass, he doesn't need candy and you know it," Merula declared hotly. Her anger didn't stay so bright though, but she glowered at Harry. "…My parents just used to hate Halloween. That's all it is"

"Hmm… because Dumbledore?" Harry prodded. It was probably a good idea to get Merula's head off of anything involving her parents. That had been the one subject that had ever truly upset Merula, and the one time Harry had brought it up, had earned him a punch right in the stomach. Ever since, he had given the topic a wide berth, and now he thought it would be a good time to talk about the weather.

"Yep, because Dumbledore," Merula admitted, making Harry fall right out of the swing and land on his face. "It's all his damn fault."

"Ooooowww…"

Merula huffed deeply, but grief and frustration possessed her and urged her on. "So after Halloween of 1981, Dumbledore led the whole ministry in a crusade against anyone who was with Voldemort. Every person who didn't say they were bewitched got thrown in Azkaban, and everyone who said they were bewitched got scrutinized. My parents were talked into saying they were charmed by Voldemort and never even believed what he was saying about Purebloods and Half-Bloods and Mudbloods."

"Merula, I landed in my face…"

"So after that my parents got out scot free by naming names and saying that Barry Crouch was a Death Eater, but they hated sending him away and never forgave themselves for it. So they made it a little game for themselves, every Halloween. They'd go out and give a bunch of Muggles their just-deserts. For Barty. For Voldemort. Just cause they thought they should have gone to Azkaban instead."

"I think I broke my nose…"

"Quit your whining!" Merula blurted, whipping around in her swing to glare at Harry for interrupting her. Then her eyes widened when Harry looked up at her and she quickly rushed to his side. "Your nose is bleeding!"

"It is?" Harry asked, sitting up and dabbing at his upper lip. He was surprised to see his finger come back bright red. "Oh no! Aunt Petunia will kill me if I get blood on my shirt."

"…Don't worry, I got this!" Merula declared. When Harry gave her a perplexed look, she put one hand on his aching nose, and waved her other about. "Healeo!"

Literally nothing happened.

Harry put his hand underneath his nose and waited for the bleeding to subside. Merula went awkwardly quiet as she thought about what she had said to him about Wizards and her parents. Harry decided to try to placate her. "So… your parents are in jail?"

"…Sure, yeah," Merula said in a shockingly small voice.

"Because of Dumbledore?" Harry asked, intuiting that Dumbledore must have been a cop who had caught Merula's parents breaking the law.

"Yeah, because of Dumbledore…" Merula said, sitting down and staring at her knees.

"…Fuck Dumbledore," Harry Potter said. Merula burst into such a loud and hysterical fit of giggles that Harry was swept along with her, giggling softly and letting blood run down his hand and lips in his mirth. The two of them didn't stop for minutes on end, and every time they came close they'd look at each other and keep on going.

"Yeah! Fuck Dumbledore!" Merula declared. She stood up and pointed to the darkening grey sky. "You hear that! Fuck you Dumbledore!"

"Language young lady!" shouted an old woman across the street, whom Harry and Merula quickly recognized as Arabella Figg. Her warning was such a shock that the two children broke into hysterics all over again, and this time they didn't stop until disaster finally arrived. Several drops of rain finally fell.

Harry and Merula tossed themselves to their feet, grabbing their packs and their coats, and Harry bid his best friend a fond farewell, rushing off into the rain, to get back to Number 4, Privet Drive.

As he tried to beat the rain, Harry thought about Merula, and knew she was strange and that she was simply off in her own world. And he decided that, no matter what, he wouldn't care. So what if Merula was a little nutty in the head and thought she was a Witch?

Merula was Harry's best friend, and he wouldn't like a little weirdness to get in the way of that.

The Summer of 1989 was a hot one, one that seemed to strain at the edges of perception and come down on your head like a hammer blow. Merula knew that, for the boy whose cupboard was well within the house of Number 4 Privet Drive, summer time was occasionally a struggle for that reason. It had also, once, been unbearable. With school out, Dudley and his gang of bullies were free to play their favorite game of Harry Hunting, and once that had been what made summers truly terrible. Of course, that had all been from before Harry met Merula.

"You can't do this!" Piers Polkis shouted as Merula smashed a rock into his shoulder. He was the last to run away though, the rat faced Muggle bully backpedaling fast and turning to run, while Dudley and the rest were already well down the street. Gordon, the first to run, was clutching his bleeding shoulder: Merula had nailed him with the sharper end of the rock.

Merula watched them go, panting heavily and unable to suppress a wild grin as they fled. An unnamable thrill had seized her, as it often did when she saw Dudley's gang finally turn tail and run, and today that was better than ever. She turned to the small bush that she had been guarding quite protectively, and held up her arms. "Success!"

The branches shifted, and then small Harry Potter popped his head out from the bush. "Are you sure that Piers' parents aren't going to come after you?" He asked worriedly. "Or any of the rest? I know Dudley wouldn't tell Aunt Petunia or Uncle Vernon that a girl could beat him up, but what about everyone else?"

"Eh!" Merula retorted, dismissing the question out of hand. "If they did, what would they do, find me? No one knows where I live."

Which was true: Merula lived in her aunt's old tenement house, an otherwise vacant space usually occupied only by herself and her aunt and her aunt's rotating cast of boyfriends. The house had, supposedly, once belonged to her mother's side of the family, though they were all dead now. Number 8, Lynx Hill, was a house warded against Muggle intrusion, and Merula knew that if Harry's cousin and his gang ever tried to follow her home, they'd become lost and confused.

…Well, okay, more lost and confused than normal, but still.

Harry was brushing the leaves from his shirt when he gasped loudly, and pointed at Merula's shoulder. "Merula, you're bleeding!" he said in shock. It took Merula a second to crane her neck over to where he was pointing, and rolled her eyes as she saw two narrow streams of scarlet running down her left shoulder.

"It's just a scratch," she said, rolling her sleeve up to check. The cut, in so much as it could be called a cut, was rather shallow and thin, and really was hardly bleeding. "See?" she told him, turning her shoulder to Harry.

Harry leaned in, adjusting his glasses and looking incongruously like a doctor before his patient. There was another small edge to his expression though, one of puzzlement. "It looks alright, but… what's that?" Harry asked her, tapping a spot of black ink on her shoulder. With her sleeve a little up, only the bottom half of what looked like a triangle was visible.

Merula gave Harry a cheeky grin and rolled her sleeve up further, to reveal the mark prominent on her shoulder. It was a strange, almost tattoo looking mark: a triangle, with a circle transcribed within, and a narrow line going from the triangle's apex through the circle and to the base. "It's a family crest," she explained.

Harry had a puzzled look on his face, rubbing his chin and eyeing the mark. "Of the Snyde family?" he asked her, and Merula paused to consider her answer. She could tell him the truth, but… well… actually, she could. Just nothing involving magic.

"It's the crest of the Gaunt family," Merula told him, her voice becoming very formal and pompous. "They're a very ancient family line, said to go back a thousand years. While I'm not a Gaunt by blood, this mark was given to me to let me become the legally recognized heir of the family. It was a gift."

Supposedly, that gift had come from none other than Lord Voldemort himself. As a recognition for her parent's service despite their humble stature, and noble respect for their Dark Lord, Voldemort had bestowed upon Merula the gift of a family line, when otherwise the Snyde family was an otherwise unremarkable and impoverished branch of a greater Pureblood house. Merula traced her finger along the mark's edge. "Apparently, it means I'm special…"

She rolled her sleeve down. "Personally, I don't see it. I'm special because I'm a Snyde, no other reason. But it's a cool mark though."

"Like a tattoo," Harry said, in awe of his friend. Merula nodded smartly.

"Just like a tattoo," she told him, covering the mark up once more.

Harry Potter, Merula noted, was a strange little muggle.

In truth, the idea of knowing the one and only Harry Potter had been incredibly exciting. Hearing Harry give her his name had set her mind spinning around in her head, as she wondered about the possibilities. Harry Potter, the Boy Who Lived, defeater of Voldemort, and sitting right across from her? She had seen her teaching him magic, taking him to Slytherin house, becoming the most powerful Witch and Wizard Hogwarts had ever known. Surely he was powerful: he had defeated Voldemort after all.

It would have been awesome.

Of course, then that little Muggle brat had gone and ruined it. He wasn't, he insisted, a wizard. He was nothing special at all, just an orphan boy who lived with his Aunt and Uncle. He didn't know about the Wizarding World, or Hogwarts, or Voldemort, or Dumbledore. He didn't know anything at all about her world, about Harry Potter's world.

All of the little oddities Merula noticed were explained away. The lightning bolt scar on his forehead was just a remnant of the car accident that killed his parents. He had never done magic, which was why he never turned his cousin Dudley into a pig. Harry had never written a letter by owl, and didn't know owls were used for the post, and when Merula had shown him a fancy eagle feather quill, he had not one idea how to use it right.

Merula had been so happy, so ready, so eager to think that the boy sitting opposite her on that scrubby hill in the back of a muggle school yard had indeed been the most famous boy in all the wizarding world. But no: she was not that lucky. Merula, simply enough, was never that lucky.

From there came the rub. Merula, and the Snyde Family, were Purebloods. All of them, to the one, an offshoot of the Sacred 28, some of the most pure, powerful, and regal magicians of Great Britain, the only ones worthy of attending Hogwarts, the only people worth the time of anyone who was anyone. Her parents had been faithful servants of Lord Voldemort during the Wizarding War of Britain, even delaying their own marriage for his sake, to fight against the Ministry and try to set it right and kick out the Mudbloods who were polluting the bloodlines of magic. Merula was a Witch, a Pureblood, and the daughter of Death Eaters, and she could not be seen with a Muggle Boy.

But… well… Merula wasn't exactly in the business of choosing her friends, and the big question of "why" all came down to a single and horrible night.

Merula did remember that night vividly. It had been the late summer of 1988. She had been eight years old, and her parents had come home from a lovely date. They were coquettish and flirty and Merula had blanched when they had kissed, and she had tried to go back to bed. Anything, in her mind, to get herself away from the lovebirds.

It was then that the door to their small London townhouse had been blown in with the Bombarda spell. Four aurors charged into the Snyde home, wands drawn, curses on their lips. Her father, Thomas, had his wand in hand and cast the first spell that came to mind, disarming an Auror, before a triumvirate of Stunners had sent him flying into a wall. Her mother, Agatha, shuffled Merula into a broom closet and pulled out her own wand, before she was disarmed, stunned, and punched in the face. The aurors had opened the closet and, lacking any sort of subtlety or mercy, had taken Merula with them.

The Wizengamot had been grave. They invited friends of Merula's parents to speak on their behalf. Lucius Malfoy had railed against the assembled wizards and witches for their return to the trials of the Death Eaters, asking the council if they intended to throw the people they declared innocent into Azkaban? Hadn't Agatha and Thomas proven their innocence, proven they had been under the Imperius Curse, and gone above and beyond from that to name names and send all three lethal and dangerous Lestranges to Azkaban, including Lucius' own sister in law, at great personal danger to themselves and their daughter?

The Wizengamot had been silent, and then Albus Dumbledore had spoken on their behalf. "The evidence of the pensieve is incontrovertible, Lucius. We have found the muggles they tortured, Carrie, Jacob, and Mark Evans, and we have extracted their memories, oblivated their torture, and reviewed the evidence. Agatha and Thomas Snyde were seen, clear as day, to torture Muggles with the Cruciatus Curse. We summoned them here to hear their alibis, and we have heard none. We have summoned you here… to hear, if you had helped them escape Azkaban at the cost of your sister-in-law."

The verdict had been near unanimous. Guilty, on all accounts. Guilty of torture of Muggles. Guilty of lying before the Wizengamot. Guilty of being Death Eaters loyal to Voldemort.

Guilty, and to be sent to Azkaban.

That may have been it, for the Snydes. What more could Albus Dumbledore take away from Merula? What more could he do, to hurt her?

What more became clear, when that dratted Arthur Weasley and his son Bill, Bill who hadn't even graduated Hogwarts then, came out of the woodwork. Arthur had been the head of some department, Merula didn't know, and he had talked Fudge into letting him investigate Lucius Malfoy and other accused Death Eaters. The "make a sure thing of it" she had heard him say, when the Dementor guards had led her parents and her from the chamber of the Wizengamot.

A cursory investigation may have turned up nothing, but Arthur Weasley was married to old Molly Prewett, whose brothers had been killed by Death Eaters in the War. Caught flatfooted, with a determined man on their heels and with his gifted son Bill choosing to drop out of Hogwarts to do the job, Lucius Malfoy had been the first man back into the chambers of the Wizengamot… and this time, he was the accused.

He was not the last.

The Averys. The Crabbes. The Parkinsons. The Notts. All at once, in a singular wild night, their houses were raided. Dark Artifacts were found. Proclamations were made. "Dark Wizards Slipped Crouch's Net!" the Daily Prophet screamed. The Malfoys were hauled in front of the Wizengamot, and escaped Azkaban by less than the skin of their teeth: as far as Merula knew, they lost their house, their prestige, and their acclaim, and were living with someone named Tonks. Whoever that was.

All of it was horrific for Merula, for one reason. A reason that the papers, the Ministry, plenty of her old family friends, and even her aunt made very clear. Because, in the end, none of this wouldn't have been happening if her parents hadn't gotten caught.

So her parents were in Azkaban. Everyone hated Merula. So much so that, when her Aunt finally took her in, she went to the nearest Muggle primary school, bewitched the Headmaster, and made him take Merula on as a student, just so she didn't have to worry about watching Merula on a day to day basis.

Merula hated it. Merula screamed about it. But in the end, nothing changed, and Merula was all, painfully, alone.

So when a random muggle decided that Merula was her friend, Merula decided that if she was damned, she was damned, and she was going to take her damning with her new friend who just so happened to be named Harry Potter. Besides, if she couldn't have the Harry Potter, she could at least have a Harry Potter. That was better than nothing, wasn't it? Which was why, one day, Merula came to school with a special little thing for Harry.

Harry directed Merula a calm, cold, simmering look of anger. "After all this time…?"

"Always…" Merula breathed solemnly.

"How dare you… how dare you. You, my own best friend… my only friend. You had the gall… to hide candy from me!"

Merula burst into giggles, and after a moment Harry followed suit.

It was November 7th, only a few days after Halloween, and Harry had found Merula hiding behind the cafeteria of his school. A "Hello Merula!" had been right on Harry's lips when she turned around to face him, her lips smeared with chocolate. The betrayal had been impossible to hide then, even after Merula had wiped her mouth clean.

"Well, I can't just eat it in class," Merula told Harry as he settled down next to her. "Plenty of these candies are… weird. And the school would take them even if they weren't weird." Serendipitously, Merula flipped the Chocolate Frog card upside down to hide it from Harry.

Harry, who hadn't noticed that, was instead going over Merula's haul. "Wow! This is weird… Drooble's Best Blowing Gum, Licorice Wands… Bertie Botts every flavor beans?"

"Careful with those," Merula said around a cauldron cake. "They really do mean every flavor. I once ate one that tasted like vomit."

"I've never heard of these candies before," Harry said, but he didn't let that get in his way. Instead, he opened the tin of candied beans and nibbled at a few. They really did taste like everything: spicy pepper, pumpkin, milk, roast beef, cheddar cheese, and after a tentative taste of a curious green one, tea. "These are really good!"

"Let me have one, it's my candy," Merula told him, reaching over. Harry handed her the tin, and as she stuffed her hand into it, his eyes landed on the card next to Merula. He picked it up.

A man with white hair, a long beard, a crooked nose, and half-moon spectacles looked back at Harry. A heading beneath the card read "Albus Dumbledore." More perplexed than anything else, Harry turned the card over and began to read.

"Albus Dumbledore, currently headmaster-"

Merula choked loudly, and when Harry gave her a panicked look she dove and grabbed the card from his hand. "Meru-HEY!"

Merula hastily stuffed the card down her shirt and shook her head furiously. "That card's mine!" she shouted, making Harry flinch backwards. It took Harry a moment then, to realize that he had put his arms up to ward off a blow, and Merula went from panicked and angry to remorseful. "O-oh…"

Harry lowered his arms and chuckled, despite himself. "Yeah, you sounded like Dudley there for a moment. It's alright, if you wanted the card that badly, you could have just asked," he told her. "…Or maybe you just wanted to see how you'd do in a fight against me," he added, teasing.

Merula was blushing quite hard now and she had to look away with a huff. "Well, yeah. The candy's my property, and you only get it if I say you do. It's the best candy I've had in a long time and it's mine to keep!"

"Whatever you say Merula," Harry noted. He looked at the mess of strange candies and a question came to mind. "Which houses did you get these from? Uncle Vernon's never come back with candy like this."

As the Dursley's were a very normal and unexciting family, they didn't enjoy such things as dressing up and engaging in imagination. They preferred it that way. But when it came to Halloween, and Dudley's loud begging for candy, Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia always caved, and bought Dudley several bags of candy. Harry, who stole what candy he could whenever he could, did wonder if his Uncle knew where to look for the sorts of candies Merula had.

Merula looked over her shoulder, eyebrow cocked. "Didn't I tell you… no, I didn't… No! I didn't tell you!" she said in realization. She burst out into the biggest smile. "Harry, oh Harry… how old do you think I am?"

"Nine," Harry told her. But then Merula shook her head. "Uh… eight?"

"Nope! I'm ten years old!" she said proudly, and Harry gasped in amazement. "I turned ten on the 31st of September, but I didn't get any presents. So I stole a bunch of money out of my aunt's dresser and bought all this candy."

That, as a story, was a little true: Merula really hadn't gotten a birthday present for her tenth birthday. But rather than go to a store to buy her candy, she stole twenty galleons from her aunt's desk, loaded them into an envelope, and sent a letter by owl to Slockos Sweet Shop in Diagon Alley. They had been more than happy to send a parcel of candy back to Merula the day after Halloween, and she had been gouging herself since.

"Happy birthday Merula," Harry said cheerfully. He paused and gave her an awkward smile. "I don't have a present for you…"

"Well, go find one!" Merula commanded impetuously. She stood up straighter. "It's not every day you turn ten, is it?" Then, feeling a bit generous, Merula went on: "Hey, when's your birthday anyway?"

"Oh? July 31st," Harry answered. "But I never get any presents from the Dursley's… well, nothing good. Once I got one of Vernon's old socks. Another time, Dudley gave me a ball of twine he unwound."

Merula blinked owlishly at Harry. "Okay, if you're fishing for ideas of what to get me… not that. Not any of that."

"Drat," Harry said dramatically. "Then again, I think I know what to get you, that's not any of that. I even have it right here." Harry took up his pack, hid it from Merula's view, and opened it. He rummaged around inside for a moment, before coming back with empty hands.

"Here it is. The gift of Nothing! Mwuhahahaha!"

Merula thumbed Harry on the head. "Bastard," she said.

"Meanie," Harry retorted.

She stuck out her tongue.

He stuck out his tongue.

They both broke down giggling.

It wouldn't be until much later that day that Harry found himself walking back behind the school, going home to the Dursley's, when he saw the small card that Merula had taken from him and stuffed down her shirt. It was laying on the concrete, face down, and Harry reckoned it must have fallen out. He picked up the Card and read it.

"Albus Dumbledore, Current Headmaster of Hogwarts Academy. Considered by many the greatest wizard of modern times, Dumbledore is particularly famous for his defeat of the dark wizard Grindelwald in 1945, for the discovery of the twelve uses of Dragon's blood, and his work on Alchemy with his partner Nicholas Flamel. Professor Dumbledore enjoys chamber music, and ten pin bowling."

Harry turned the card over… and let out a disappointed sigh. Earlier that morning, the card had had the image of the fictional man it described stamped upon it, but a day in the mud had ruined the ink, and Albus Dumbledore's likeness was nowhere to be seen.

He put the card down, and left, and wondered to himself who had made such a strange card, especially since it couldn't possibly be real. After all, if there really was a man named Albus Dumbledore, and he really was a Wizard, that would make Merula a Witch, and Witches weren't real.

…And if Merula was a real witch, then… was she a wicked witch? Because she seemed to very much like Lord Voldemort…

Harry put the thought from his mind, and walked home, and did his homework, and slept in his cupboard, and dreamt of bright green light, and searing pain in his forehead… and of something new: a high, cold laugh.

'Wait a minute…' Merula thought one afternoon in November 1989.

'Stop that,' she asked quietly, on a morning in January 1990.

'Slow down…' She thought as she turned eleven on September 31st, 1990.

'I don't want to leave yet,' she realized in March 1991.

'Don't make me leave my friend!' she screamed at the Calendar, in July of 1991, less than two months away from Hogwarts.

"Merula, are you okay?" Harry asked. He had been on his swing, in the playground that Harry and Merula called Their Playground, and was staring at Merula. She was hanging limply from her swing, staring down at her knees, and silently realizing that she was a Witch, and she would be attending Hogwarts, and her one and only friend… wouldn't. "Merula?"

When Merula didn't say anything, Harry gently poked her. "Hey. You haven't been listening at all to my story? About why I was out of school for the start of summer vacation? It's really cool. It's about how a snake got loose on Dudley's birthday and talked to me. Come on, it sounds like something you'd love Meru-"

"…I'm not okay…" Merula said. Her voice was low, lower than it usually was, and heavy. "I'm just… I'm not."

Harry stopped swinging and looked at her out of the side of his eye. Without his glasses between them, she was a narrow blur of a girl. "…Well, what's up?"

Merula wrung her hands and didn't answer.

"School's a long way off… trouble with homework?"

"School…" She trailed off, as though picking the word up was like picking up a great weight.

"Are-" Harry's voice hitched in alarm. "Is your family sending you to a different school?"

A bird called overhead. The wind picked up for a moment, and then died down. Merula wrung her hands, turning them over and over. Harry gulped, a sudden lump in his throat. "Merula, I think… maybe if I asked my aunt and uncle-"

The notion, the concept, the very idea of Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon ever doing anything for Harry out of the goodness of their hearts, hit Merula like a bludger. She burst out laughing, the high, wild noise sending tremors across her entire body. It bounced back and forth from her head to her toes, and she laughed until she burst into tears and hung her head in her hands, and then she cried until she laughed like a madwoman, arms clutched around her midriff.

Harry stared at her, confused and worried, and finally he got up and put an arm around her shoulders. Merula, slowly, painfully, steadied herself. The bout of hysterics hadn't helped her mood at all.

"You can't come. You're a… a… a Muggle…" she murmured. She shook her head.

"Um… what's a Muggle?" Harry asked. The word was scrambling around in his memory, half recognized.

Merula paused and looked up at him. She chewed her lip, thinking over what she was going to say. "You… You have to promise me something, Harry. Okay? Promise me you will never, ever tell anyone about what I'm about to tell you. If you keep it a secret, I promise I'll visit you every summer, until I graduate, but you can't breathe a word to anyone else, ever. Not. One. Word."

Harry flinched back. Looking down his glasses at Merula, the raw horror and seriousness in her eyes struck him like a blow. She was his friend but, this… no, she was his friend, and he'd keep any secret of hers, he told himself. "I promise."

Merula hesitated. She worked her jaw, trying to find the words. Finally, they came together, in the faintest of whispers. "Harry…"

"I'm a witch."

"…You're a what?" Harry replied, his voice forgetting to whisper. "You're a witch?"

The disbelief in Harry's voice almost stopped Merula's heart. "I… I am! I am a witch?" She blurted out, not bothering to keep her voice down. She leapt from the swing, her hands together, pleading. Praying. "You have to believe me, I am."

He couldn't look her in the eye. There was too much shock, too much pain in there. Harry knew that Merula believed she was a Witch, that she believed her parents were dark sorcerers and that someone named Lord Voldemort commanded them, but the idea was… insane. Impossible. It couldn't be true. "Merula…"

"Harry, please," Merula said, her voice cracking. "You're my be- you're my only friend. Please, you have to believe me, you have to!"

The wind blew through the trees again. Harry gulped, trying to turn the words over in his head. Why was she asking him to do this? To believe in the impossible, to believe in… in magic.

But…

Hadn't strange things happened around Merula before? Hadn't he once seen her jump from the ground to the roof of a school (and needed him to help her down)? Hadn't Dudley once punched her in the stomach, and gotten punched back, and vomited slugs? He knew that, once, when he had spent all day complaining about his aunt sending him to school without any lunch, he had opened his lunchbox to find a cheeseburger inside of it?

And the people. Strangely dressed people they were: women and men, some very young, some very old, in robes and pointed hats, who visited Harry and Merula sometimes. Hadn't an old man in blue robes shorter than he was shaken his hand? A woman in bright pink waved furiously at them? A pair of twinned boys with flaming red hair slipped them candy, before running away?

Harry stared at Merula, and tried to explain what he had seen… and slowly, a small grin spread across his lips.

Merula let out an overly exhausted sigh, before suddenly hugging her best, only, friend. Harry squeaked in surprise, and just as quickly she pulled away. She looked to be in a foul mood. "You ever tell anyone I hugged a Muggle, I will hex you silly," she declared. "I have a reputation to maintain."

"As a delinquent?" Harry asked.

"As a Pureblood."

"As a Pureblood Delinquent?"

"Fuck you Harry."

"Whatever you say Merula."

Merula cuffed him on the head. Harry burst into giggles. She followed suit a few moments later.

When the two of them were able to finally speak to each other and not sound like they were choking, Harry decided to ask the obvious question. "So… you're going to school for the year?" he asked her. He tried not to sound worried.

"I'm going to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry," Merula recited. "It's deep in the Scottish Highlands, Hogwarts. The school for magic, the best and greatest school in all of Britain."

"And… you'll be there all year?"

For a moment, Merula deflated. "Yeah… from September 1st to June 24th. And… well… my family is going to have me leave to stay with them and get ready beforehand."

"…When do you leave?" Harry asked, a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach. He had never been to Merula's house, but if she was leaving town, she wouldn't be able to find him before September… which meant their time was limited.

"…Tomorrow. Tomorrow morning."

Very limited.

Harry gulped and took Merula's hands. "Then we'll do all the things we like to do today! We'll go into town and buy candy, we'll play at the park, we'll sneak into the movies: we've always wanted to do that! Come on, we should go now."

Harry tugged Merula and she stumbled forward. "Harry… you don't need to-"

"I do!" Harry told her. He smiled. "I'm your best and only friend after all, even if I am a Muggle. Come on Merula, let's do this."

Merula, slowly, but surely, felt a smile sliding across her lips. Then she was ahead of Harry, and dragging him behind her. "Let's go you lazy ass! We have one day to do this all!"

"BOY!"

Merula and Harry froze. A car had come up along the playground, and having emerged from it, marching across the grounds, was Harry's uncle Vernon. "You come right here boy," he ordered, red eyed and angry. "You thought you could get away from our house and your chores? You are coming straight home," he declared. "The carpet needs vacuuming, and Dudley's room needs cleaning. Get in the car."

Vernon stopped, looking over Harry and Merula. "Who is this?" He said, red faced and pointing at Merula.

Harry and Merula exchanged a look of worry, before Merula gently let Harry go. "She's just… a friend from school," Harry told his uncle. She nodded and Harry knew he had said the right thing. "I'll come with you."

"Good," Vernon said, glowering at the strange tomboy Harry had hung out with. Merula remained frozen in her spot, until Vernon turned and followed Harry back to the Dursley's car. Harry himself felt his heart clutch: his last day with Merula… and he as he buckled into the back seat, he knew he didn't get to have it.

At least she had told him she was a Witch…

"HARRY!" Merula had sprinted across the playground the heartbeat Vernon Dursley had gotten into his car, running so fast that she slammed into the backdoor and bashed her head into the window. "Stay awake to midnight," she whispered.

"GO AWAY!" Vernon roared, before stomping the accelerator and causing Merula to spin off from his car. Harry looked over his shoulder to see Merula get up and dust herself off, before flashing him the widest of grins… and then they turned a corner, and Harry couldn't see her any more.

Tick. Tick. Tick.

Harry Potter lay in his bed, in his cupboard under the stairs, listening to the faint ticking of the clock in the hallway.

Tick. Tick. Tick.

He guessed it was somewhere around midnight: his aunt and uncle and cousin had long ago slipped into bed after a day of watching Harry do chores, or in Dudley's case, wearing his new uniform for Smeltings. Harry, who had swept, dusted, and organized much of the house, had needed the chance to see Dudley in the maroon tailcoat, orange trousers, and flat capped straw hat that was called a boater. It had really cheered him up, to see Dudley look like the pig in a wig he really was.

Tick. Tick. Tick.

But the good mood had only lasted so long. Now Harry lay alone in his cupboard, thinking quietly about Merula. His one, his only friend.

Tick. Tick. Tick.

She was a Witch, and she was going to Witch School. Hogwarts. For an entire year. Harry wondered if he could go an entire year without her. He doubted it.

Tick. Tick. Tick.

Okay, maybe it wouldn't be that bad at Stonewall High. Dudley wouldn't be going to Stonewall, so he wouldn't bully him. Maybe Harry would get a fresh start? A time away from bullies. A time to make other friends.

Tick. Tick. Tick.

He doubted it.

Tick. Tick. Tick.

Harry rolled over in his bed, looking up at the low ceiling of his cupboard. Merula said that he should stay up until Midnight. Maybe she was going to come along with a Witch and take him away with her to Hogwarts, where he'd be given the gift of magic and taught how to cast spells and fly brooms and maybe even enchant a motorcycle to fly? Maybe he'd even meet the so-called Harry Potter, the Boy Who Lived, and they could bond over both being named Harry Potter?

Tick. Tick. Tick.

Harry very much doubted it.

Knock. Knock. Knock.

"I'm up, I'm up," Harry groaned. He rose from his bed and dodged a descending spider. He must have dreamed that he had stayed awake, and it was now morning, and Merula was gone, and Aunt Petunia wanted him to cook their bacon. Harry opened his door.

Merula was grinning on the other side. "Hey there Potter."

Harry let out a strangulated squeak and stumbled back onto his bed, landing with a thud on the frame. Upstairs, Uncle Vernon snorted in his sleep, rolled over, and went back to snoring. Harry eyed Merula in silent shock. "…Wah?"

Merula was wearing the strangest ensemble of clothing Harry had ever seen upon her. A long black robe with emerald trim that looked fitted to a woman twice her height was belted at her waist, a pointed black hat perched on her head, and a pair of wind goggles were wrapped around her neck. A weather-worn broom was tucked underneath an arm, the words "Comet 260" written on the side in faded silver lettering. "Glad to see you stayed up for me," she said, leaning into his cupboard. "Feeling alright?"

"…how did you get in?" Harry said in reply, his shock of her arrival compounding as he failed to make sense of it. "Did you… did you magic the locks open? The doors are locked this time of night."

"The doors were locked," Merula confirmed. "It was easy to get in though: Muggles never lock the windows." She turned on her heel and swept off from Harry's cupboard. "You coming or what?"

Harry followed Merula to the kitchen, and with her scrambled out through the window, his eyes always on that broom. A strange, almost familiar feeling was running through his hands then, as he looked down at the aged wood she now slung over her shoulder. "Merula… are you-"

"We are going out. Flying," Merula declared in a soft voice. Though the rooms of Harry's extended family were all on the other side of the house, it was still better to be more cautious than not. "Tonight, you get to experience the world from, woah!" Merula was cut off then, when Harry threw his hands around her and pulled her into a tight embrace.

"That sounds amazing," Harry whispered, smiling all the while. "Really, a whole night?"

"Eh, only a few hours," Merula admitted. "If we're out too long, past five, the sun will come up and Muggles might see us. That's why I have this," she said, tugging at the neck of her robe.

Harry gasped. "Is that an invisibility cloak?"

"Nah," Merula said cheerfully. "It's just black, good camouflage for night flying." Merula dropped her broom to the soil. "Now… are you ready to see some actual magic?" She whispered.

Harry's eyes widened behind his glasses, and he nodded profusely.

Merula smirked, put her hand out over the prone broom, and commanded: "Up."

The broom remained on the ground. Merula gave it a confused look and repeated herself. "Up!"

Harry looked at the broom, wondering for a moment if it was going to move at all. Merula said "UP" again, and nothing seemed to happen. "Uh… I think it wiggled there, for a moment."

Merula shot Harry an angry look. "It's supposed to jump right to my hand!" she hissed at him. She looked straight down at the broom, and outright shouted. "UP! Dammit, UP!"

The broom remained stubbornly inert.

After a moment, Harry stepped up next to Merula, and she glowered at him. "…You think I'm crazy, don't you? That I do all this for so long and it turns out that I'm not actually magic, just a mad little girl with mad little dreams of being a witch, right?"

Harry stuck out his hand and smiled at his friend. "Maybe it just needs two people? Why don't we say it together?"

Merula rolled her eyes. "It doesn't work with Muggles; you need to be actual magic."

"And if I do it, then what does that mean about your reputation as a Pureblood delinquent?"

Merula shot Harry a very angry glare, and Harry cheekily smiled back. Finally, she put her hand over his, and together, they spoke. "Up!"

The broom leapt up in a heartbeat, and Harry's hand closed around it by reflex when it smacked his palm. For a moment, Harry and Merula stared at it in shock, before Harry gasped. "Merula! That was incredible, that was actual magic! You really did it!"

"…And there's the tone of surprise…" Merula grumbled, but she couldn't help the giant smile on her face. She took the broom from Harry's hand and slipped it between her legs. "Alright, straddle the broom, and grip it firmly with both hands."

Harry did so, seating himself in front of Merula and taking the broom. She quickly undid the front of her massive black robe and bundled him into it with her, disguising them both against the jet black sky. "Okay. Take a deep breath, and kick off firmly from the ground. On three. One. Two… THREE!"

Harry and Merula bent their knees, and together they pushed up hard from the ground. For a moment, Harry thought their little hop would have them back on the ground in a heartbeat, but then the ground kept receding, and receding, and falling further and further away… And then, as they passed the rooftops of Privet Drive, Harry realized that he and Merula were genuinely flying! The stars reached out far around them, the air growing cooler with only the cloak to shield them, and still the ground fell away from them, and the world unfolded like a map of gold and shadows.

Harry let out a wild "WHOOP" that carried further than any shout he had ever made, while Merula was laughing in exhilaration as they finally finished ascending some two hundred feet abve Surrey. From on high, the world looked so different, a spider web of streetlights, painted on silky black canvas, stretching out magically for miles in every direction. Without realizing what he was doing, Harry leaned forward on the broom, and the two suddenly sped off among the low clouds

"Woah!" Merula shouted, ill prepared for Harry's flying. She tugged him and the broom backwards, bringing them to heel quickly. "Easy there cowboy. Who's the witch here?"

"This is incredible!" Harry said, not at all caring for Merula's attempt to rein him in. The wind was blowing towards them, coming out of the north and blowing through their perpetually untidy hair. "How come you don't fly a broom to school every day?"

"Well, magic's supposed to be a secret," Merula told him ruefully. "Though if you've ever heard my dad tell it, he spent his whole life taunting muggles from his broomstick." Merula leaned forward, pushing Harry along, and their broom sped off through the clouds. "But this? This is awesome."

"This is brilliant!" Harry cried. "Do a loop!"

Merula smirked, and suddenly the Comet 260 started to climb up and over, the two of them feeling their bodies shift from level, to vertical, to upside down, to a rushing descent, and level again. Harry threw his hands up and screamed in excitement, all while Merula was laughing her heart out.

The two of them danced through the clouds: barrel rolls, aileron rolls, flips, hairpin turns, and endless aerial tricks and stunts. High above the town of Surrey, time seemed to melt away, passing through their hands like grains of sand from a shattered hourglass. Neither of them cared. In that sky, time had no meaning, and all the world was theirs.

As the sun slowly began to climb from the horizon, and the sky turned from rich sable to violet, magenta, and rosy pink, Harry noticed something slowly coming down from above them. For the first time in hours, Harry wondered if they were high enough to be hit by airplanes, and if they could be in danger of muggle air traffic… and then his eyes widened to see that what was coming down on them wasn't an airplane. "M-Merula? Are… we allowed to be up here?"

"Uh… no?" Merula said, confused and not knowing why Harry sounded so scared. "Why?"

Harry gestured behind them, and when Merula looked back she gasped. Trailing high above them, but coming up quickly with a tailwind to their back, was a lumpy shape that was rapidly starting to look like a person. Specifically, a person flying towards them! "An Auror!" Merula gasped.

"A what?" Harry said in panic, as Merula pulled her flight goggles up from her neck. "What's an Auror?"

"Magic police!" Merula affixed her goggles firmly. "If we're caught, they'll take your memories and expel me from Hogwarts! We need to run!"

"Can we?" Harry asked.

Merula leaned forwards, and Harry felt the Comet 260 put on a burst of speed. "Pick a god and pray that we can!"

It was, in the end, a plan that couldn't have been simpler, or more effective. Comet 260's were very much brooms that were for show and lacked true technical strengths, but like all brooms and even wands they were ultimately tools that Wizards used to focus their magic. And two very, very desperate Wizards were riding on this broom. So it wasn't such a miracle that the broom accelerated spectacularly into the gathering dawn.

There was a hitch to this straightforward and brilliant plan however. See, the Auror they were fleeing from had once had a close friend, a Gryffindor Seeker by the name of Mr. Charlie Weasley, and Charlie had taught this Auror everything he knew about broom work, after having won a bet to be allowed to use the Auror's first name. With a whoop of exhilaration, the Auror dove hard, building speed into the descent and coming out both lower and faster than Harry and Merula. With the grace of long practice, the Wizard cop accelerated, caught the two children, did a barrel roll to go from below them to right above their heads, overtook them, and turned hard to skid to a halt in midair, hand up. "STOP!"

Merula and Harry turned their broom and came up not a foot away from the Auror. Harry stared at their pursuer: A young, rather slim, and lovely woman, with short hair of an almost violently vivid pink. She had a mousy look to her, which contrasted quite nicely with the wand she was pointing triumphantly at them. He gulped. "Go-od morning officer?"

"Wotcher boy," She said with a smile. "So, two little kids, out foooorr… a flyyyyy…" She trailed off slowly, as she stared at Harry and then Merula. Her pink hair slowly faded to a dazed sort of yellow. "Uh… huh… Hello?"

Merula stepped in. "Hello there. Me and my…" She looked at Harry. "Husband, we're just out for a midnight flight! Good morning. Surely you can't arrest us for that?"

It was absolutely and indisputably the worst, most ridiculous lie that anyone would ever tell, if you discounted the infamous Roonil Wazlib incident. Their pursuer stared owlishly at Harry and Merula, clicked her tongue, and decided to buy it in bulk. "So does the romantic couple have a name?"

Merula and Harry gulped and shared a look. "Uh… Bellatrix and Lucius Malfoy?" Merula volunteered.

The Auror considered that, and looked at them both. They looked nothing like the suggested pair. "Cool. I'll put you both down for a warning, but the next time I catch you two flying above a muggle city-"

"OKAYBYE!" Merula and Harry shouted, before tearing off towards Number 4, Privet Drive. The Auror clicked her tongue, and mused upon what she would say back home, and finally permitted herself the chance to laugh.

Harry and Merula landed gently in the Dursley's backyard, touching down with care. Merula dismounted, and when Harry had done so as well, she hugged him tightly. "I'll miss you."

Harry hugged her back. "Thanks Merula. I'll… I'll wait for you. Here. I won't go anywhere. And by next Summer, we can see each other again. Maybe you can even show me some magic?"

Merula giggled. "Absolutely. OH! It's your birthday in a week, so…" Merula fished into her pocket, and pulled out a small parchment letter. It had her name and address on it in flowing green script, and on one side was stamped with a purple wax seal. "I figured that a flight around Surrey would be a great going away present, but you can have this for your birthday. It's my Hogwarts letter… proof that you didn't imagine or dream this night."

Harry took the letter with trembling hands, and looked at it in amazement, because he had never gotten a birthday present. "Merula… Tha-"

"You don't get to thank me," she teased, before turning around and marching for the gate out from the backyard. "I know it's the best birthday gift you've ever gotten."

Merula looked over her shoulder and gave Harry a thumbs up. "Have a good time at Stonewall."

Harry, finally, gave her a small smile and a thumbs up. "Have a good time at Hogwarts," he said.

Harry watched Merula go, and then quietly ambled into the kitchen. Aunt Petunia, Uncle Vernon, and Dudley were already down in the kitchen, absorbed into their breakfast, and Vernon only took the time to look up from his meal. "Comb your hair," he barked. "What were you doing outside?"

"Admiring the sunrise," Harry told him, which got him a hard look. Vernon's retort was cut off when they all heard the click of the mail flap. Harry decided to forestall the angry grumbles by standing up. "I'll get it."

Harry fled the table, and reached the front door. There was a pile of letters on the floor: a mixture of bills, a few pieces of junk, a letter from Uncle Vernon's sister Marge, and…

…and a letter… a Hogwarts letter… for Harry.