A/N: Enjoy.

After finishing with the Gobstones, Albus and his new friend played tag all around the house. Father didn't like Albus running up and down the stairs and told him to go outside. The two boys therefore continued their game out in the back garden, where Nurse was sitting on a bench in the sun. For some reason, she watched them with great puzzlement and concern before hurrying inside.

Albus didn't care; Nurse would probably have told them to stop shouting or something. Now she was gone, they could scream as much as they liked. Little did he know that a certain large golden bird was staring at him from a beech tree.

Fawkes had been grooming himself with his beak when Albus's screams reached him. He sighed and rolled his eyes. He didn't even know why he was staying near Albus; it wasn't fun and in Fawkes's opinion, a young phoenix had better things to do, like flirting with sparrows and sleeping with hawks.

"Why the hell are you screaming!" he moaned, wishing he could block out the sound. "Stupid little-"

He stopped and looked at the scene more closely. Albus was running around screaming his head off and laughing at the same time. He suddenly stopped, pouted and then resumed running, this time looking rather more intent, with his arms stretched out as though reaching for something. He waved his arm in a portion of thin air and let out an unmistakeable cry of triumph before turning around and pelting off in the opposite direction, screaming again.

"Weird…" said Fawkes speculatively. But then, perhaps this was normal for human children. Perhaps all humans ran around like headless chickens swiping at empty air.

Albus suddenly stopped running, turned and looked disappointed.

"Oh," he moaned. "Can you come again?" There was a pause and then Albus beamed. "All right! See you tomorrow!" He waved at a nearby tree.

Fawkes blinked. This certainly couldn't be normal. Albus was acting as though someone else was present when there clearly wasn't. The child was utterly alone.

"Trust me to waste my time with the village idiot," groaned the phoenix. "Typical. Just typical."

Albus smiled at the space where his friend had just been. For a moment, he thought that it was slightly odd for the other boy to have simply vanished without a sound and as much as a wave of a wand. Then he shook his head and thought no more of it. He sat, beaming and panting, at the foot of a tree. He was glad that he had someone to play with now. Maybe his friend was one of those 'other little boys' Father had mentioned.

At dinner that night, Father asked what Albus had been doing when he'd been running up and down the stairs that afternoon. In fact, he seemed rather pleased at the idea of Albus running up and down the stairs, for some bizarre reason. Albus answered matter-of-factly.

"Tag, Father."

"Tag?" Father raised an eyebrow as he sipped at his wine. "I was under the illusion you needed two people to play Tag."

"Yes, I was playing it with my friend," said Albus vaguely, eyeing a potato doubtfully.

"What friend is this?" asked Mother, looking confused.

"My friend," said Albus helpfully, trying to cut up his potato without spraying gravy everywhere.

Mother and Father were now exchanging strange looks.

"What name does he go by?" asked Mother carefully.

"I don't know," admitted Albus. "I asked but he didn't tell me."

Father sighed. "Albus, you shouldn't answer the door on your own and you certainly shouldn't let in anybody without informing us."

"I didn't let him in, Father," protested Albus, a suspicious expression on his face as he looked at the piece of potato on his fork. "He already was in."

Mother and Father looked at each other in alarm. Albus sensed the sudden change in mood and took the opportunity to forget about his potato.

"I suppose-" said Mother, looking at Father with wide eyes. "A boy from the village-"

Father was frowning. "The Wards must have come down… I should have known if someone had entered the house…"

Father took his wand out of his pocket and closed his eyes. Albus was surprised; Mother had once told Father off for taking his wand out at the dinner table - apparently it was bad manners - but she wasn't making any protest now. Father muttered words under his breath and waved his wand in a complicated movement. To Albus's amazement, glowing green threads of magic suddenly lined the walls - as though the magic was the bare bones of the building. He stared at them, impressed.

Eventually the magic faded and Father put his wand away still frowning. "The Wards weren't breached…" He turned to Albus. "Albus, you shouldn't let in any lads off the street without telling someone."

Albus opened his mouth to explain that he hadn't but Mother told him to eat his potato, which he did with something less than enthusiasm.

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The next day, Albus's friend came again - appearing in his bedroom as though Albus had somehow dreamt him up during the night. He had arrived at the perfect time - just as Moopy had departed from doing up the complicated buckles on Albus's shoes for him. This time, however, the boy was not alone - another boy had arrived too.

Albus greeted his friend before looking at the other boy. This other child had short wispy auburn hair that reached his neck and didn't seem to cover his head properly and wore black robes more in the style that Albus was accustomed to. He had very strange eyes - they seemed to change colour constantly. At one moment, they seemed a fierce blue, the next, a dull black. He seemed intensely familiar to Albus but he couldn't think of where he had seen him before, so he dismissed the thought quickly.

Unlike the first boy, this boy did not look very happy at all. In fact, he looked annoyed and stared at Albus as though he was a nasty smell under his nose. He didn't appear to like the first boy at all either, glaring at him with his mouth a thin line.

"Hello, Albus," said his friend, beaming. Then his grin faded and he said apologetically, "Thom had to come too."

"Oh," said Albus. He held out a hand to Thom. "Hello, Thom."

Thom sniffed and turned his back to Albus, facing the wall. Albus understood: this boy did not want to be friends. He decided to ignore him and turned to his friend.

"Shall we go and play in the garden again?"

"Yes, let's!" said the other boy, grinning and hopping from one foot to the other in enthusiasm.

The pair rushed down the stairs together, laughing. Thom trailed behind, looking as though he wanted to vomit. Albus felt as though they should somehow include Thom but the expression on Thom's face stopped him from asking him whether he wanted to join in with their games.

Albus and his friend played Tag first whilst Thom sat on the bench and glared at them. After exhausting the game of Tag, Albus's friend started climbing one of the trees, apparently devoid of fear. Albus, seeing his friend do it, saw no reason not to do it himself and was soon up on a branch with his friend, giggling and pulling off pine cones. Thom stood under the tree, glaring upwards. Albus's friend threw a pine cone at him. Thom dodged it but went back to the bench and watched from there.

A voice was carried to them on the wind, interrupting their antics. Albus realised that it was Nurse calling him to lunch. He backed his way down the tree and jumped the last foot. He landed awkwardly and his friend back up in the tree laughed.

"On your bum! On your bum!"

Both boys lapsed into giggling.

"Bum!"

"Bum!"

Again, Nurse called. Albus wanted to keep on playing but knew that Mummy and Daddy wouldn't be very pleased if they knew that Albus had been playing with other little boys again. He took a step away from the tree and then remembered vaguely that he should really ask if Thom or his friend wanted anything to eat.

"Do you want anything to eat?" he asked.

Thom gave no sign that he'd heard but the other boy up in the tree shook his head firmly. "Don't worry, I'll be all right."

"Will you be here when I come back?" Albus asked. He very much wanted to keep on playing with his friend.

"Yes, we'll be here," said his friend and so Albus went off to lunch reluctantly.

Unfortunately, he'd forgotten that he had a lesson with Professor Wood and so had to leave his friend for even longer than he had planned. Professor Wood seemed to realise that he wasn't attentive as he'd been in the first lesson and started scowling again, so Albus made himself concentrate; he wanted Mother to be pleased. At the end of the lesson, Professor Wood once again said he'd done well and told him to tell his parents that he'd been very good at his reading.

Albus scampered off to find his parents - both of whom were in the living room this time. Once again, Mother hugged and praised him but Father again just grunted and didn't seem very interested. Feeling oddly disappointed, Albus left the room - but stopped when he heard his name mentioned.

"Ulfin, what ails you?" he heard Mother say in an annoyed voice. "Albus has been doing very well and you're giving him no encouragement at all!"

Albus heard Father sigh. "I don't know, Maria - he's already so bookish and he's only five years old-"

Mother made a snorting, derisive noise. "Bookish? Ulfin, he has just learnt to read!"

"-And so unlike how I was as a lad," said Daddy, apparently not listening. "When I was his age, I was climbing trees and catching frogs and zooming around on a toy broomstick outside, not hunched up in a library reading-"

"Ulfin, don't be silly. Just because he's taken a more constructive interest then you did-"

"Maria, I was a real little boy. Albus isn't. I think all this staying indoors reading is making him a bit strange."

"Nonsense! He's perfectly normal. Give him time; he's only five. I expect by the time he's ten you'll be wishing you'd encouraged him to be a bit calmer."

Father grunted and Albus walked away, feeling sad and confused for no clear reason. Father didn't think Albus was a real boy? (1) What did that mean?

Thom and his friend were still there, as his friend had promised. As he approached the tree feeling happier at the thought of playing some more, Thom suddenly got up from his bench and walked over to him.

"Father doesn't like you as much as Mother," said Thom in a nasty little voice.

Albus was surprised and wrong-footed. What was Thom talking about? Mother and Father both loved him… Somehow, although what Thom had said didn't really make sense, he felt sadder and less like playing.

Later that night, after both Thom and his friend had disappeared, Albus sat down and drew a picture of them both as well as himself. He did it in wizarding crayons, which were nice to suck as they were all different flavours, giving himself big orange-red hair and Thom big black eyes. He tried to draw his friend's funny clothes from memory and drew big circles around his eyes for the glasses. He used red to draw the funny-shaped mark on his friend's forehead before labelling the picture. He wrote 'Thom' under Thom and 'Albus' under himself but once again realised that he didn't know his friend's name. He decided to settle for 'My Speshal Frend' before going to bed and dreaming of trees and Thom's big black eyes.

(1) - I could be really mean and give Albus gender confusion... but I won't.