Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter or the associated characters, and no money is being made from the posting of this story.
Summary: See previous chapters.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Harry Potter-Irons was a perfectly normal boy, thank you very much.
But not too normal, as 'Normal' was over-rated, and quickly translated to 'Boring', if you weren't careful to temper it with the occasional bout of impulsive eccentricity. That was what his mum said, anyway, often in a lofty tone and accompanied by a toss of her head, after a visit with her younger sister and extended family, most of whom seemed to disapprove of her.
Mum said it, and proved it through her actions (The neighbours laughed when Mrs Dursley tried to call his parents freaks, but Harry was pretty sure that no-one else's mum fought off bad guys while armed with nothing more than kitchen utensils.) so it must be true. Harry's parents taught him that very few things should be taken at face value and without question, but Natasja never said anything that she couldn't back up with action, so her word was among those few things – along with bedtime and eating your vegetables.
Natasja wasn't his real mum, but actually a distant relative. Henry wasn't his real dad, either, except for marrying Natasja. They had been the ones to adopt and raise him, however, so that was close enough, as far as both of them were concerned. She always smiled and hugged him when he presented her with whatever his class had made for Mother's Day, and never tried to stop him from calling her that, so Harry thought that she must not mind too much.
It was really good that Natasja and Henry didn't-mind occasional bouts of strangeness (even if his mum didn't entirely like the way they tended to disrupt whatever she was doing, like when the table containing all of her marking turned into a penguin), because strange things tended to happen a lot around Harry.
They happened a lot around Neville, who came to visit a lot because his family still thought he was non-magical (Neville didn't want to inform them otherwise yet), and around Colin and Dennis, who lived next door, too. No one was sure if it was related to the occasionally annoying not-quite-worship of the slightly older boy that had the Creevy brothers trying to copy everything Harry did, but his mother only closed her eyes and sighed, and the Creevys never brought it up, so it didn't matter.
Harry knew about Magic, since his father was magical, but he had sort of been hoping that he wasn't a wizard.
His first experiences with Magic (that he could recall) were a flash of green light and a high-pitched laugh, which he knew was somehow connected to the night his birth parents had died. Harry also remembered the several times that someone had appeared in their home and tried to take him away, before being disarmed or defeated with a rolling pin and no magic at all, which proved that having magic didn't make you better than everyone else, just different, like being extra-smart, or a good athlete.
He and the other boys had all begged Natasja to teach them, and she had agreed to teach them when Harry and Neville turned nine, which was their next birthday. Henry had stopped laughing when Natasja had said that he could help her teach them, as he already knew more self-defence than she did. Harry's mum would never raise a violent hand in anger against her family, and Henry could cast cushioning charms, but that didn't make Natasja any less formidable.
Then there was the time a wizard had come to inspect Harry's house for evidence of 'misuse of magic' when the magic police, Aurors, didn't believe that an ordinary woman could take down a killer on her own. The wizard had spent several hours poking around, breaking his mother's favourite vase and stressing her out before another witch showed up and told him off. Harry's mother had been near tears when the wizard finally left, and had cried when Harry's father got home and asked her if she was all right.
Harry didn't like anyone who made his mother cry.
There was still the small chance that the strange things were someone else's fault and Harry was just being 'par-an-oid', but the odd happenings pointed toward Harry being a wizard.
There was the time Harry's teacher's wig had turned blue when he tried to punish Harry for something that every other student in the class had sworn was Dudley Dursley's fault. He was worried that he would be suspended, like the teacher threatened, but Natasja and Henry had demanded either solid proof that Harry was behind the colour-change, or a hearing with the School Board before punishments were handed out. Besides, as they had pointed out, it was a science class, so the wig changing colour could easily have been the result of chemicals reacting with something.
The matter was dropped when the wig turned purple only a day later, after Colin's class had been yelled at for talking while conducting an experiment.
Then there was the time his parents had received an angry letter from the Principal after Harry had found himself on the kitchen roof after running from Dudley Dursley and his Gang. Natasja and Henry had sat him down and asked what had happened. Harry had explained as best he could, hoping that perhaps the wind had just picked him up when he tried to jump behind the bins. When he finished, his parents had exchanged a glance, before Natasja went to her study to write an equally angry letter, demanding to know why Harry would feel the need to climb a building to escape a group of bullies, especially on a supposedly-supervised playground.
The confrontation between Mr and Mrs Dursley and Harry's parents had kept the neighbourhood gossips occupied for weeks, and Dudley's gang had cut back on the bullying.
The narrow escape had been good, but otherwise, Harry just didn't see what was so great about it all. His father didn't need magic to do his job as a policeman, and his mother got along just fine. .As far as Harry's young mind could figure out, all magic did was give you a leg-up on chores and an over-inflated sense of your own sup-er-i-or-ity.
Harry liked practicing with big words. Natasja didn't care if books were '3-6' or '6-12' when Harry found a story he liked, and it was fun to watch adults squirm when they realized that Harry understood all the fancy words they were using.
Only a few weeks later, Harry and Neville ran into a like-minded little girl at a dentist appointment. Little Hermione Granger loved big words and reading even more than Harry did, and was fiendishly intelligent. She was, in Henry's words to his wife "A mini-version of you, except magnified." Natasja could not really dispute that, as Hermione had proved herself not so much a prodigy, as almost scarily dedicated to studying everything that interested her. While Natasja had been mainly interested in History and literature, Hermione had a thirst to learn everything about everything she came across. Seeing an out-of-reach book fly into Hermione's hands when she wanted it, Natasja felt a momentary stab of pity for the Hogwarts teachers. They would be in for a rough ride with this one, if her parents chose to let her go.
It was quickly stifled by the belief that a precocious Muggle Born would do the archaic institution some good, followed in turn by the temptation to set up a few play-dates between Hermione and her boys. It would do Harry, Neville and the Creevy boys some good to realize that girls were not aliens, and Hermione could use a few friends who didn't mind a strong-willed woman telling them what to do, but would also stand their ground if she got too bossy.
On second thought, maybe she would give the boys a gentle nudge, and let them bring the idea up. Few people could resist Colin's boundless energy or Dennis's current level of adorable, and the Grangers were unlikely to be any exception. Harry already liked her. Neville was still shy and slow to warm up to strangers, but being responsible for teaching someone about the magical world, and having a peer who was a near stranger stand up for him (seeing Hermione deck Piers Polkiss for teasing Neville had been the highlight of Natasja's day) would do wonders for Neville's confidence.
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A/N: Before anyone claims that I am being unrealistic, I know four-year-olds who can use 'atrocious' in a sentence and one child who read 'Lord of the Rings' when they were seven. I was reading the 'Chronicles of Narnia' when I was three, and all of my older relatives complain that I never used a child's vocabulary. Ever.
Apparently that was very annoying, if the number of times my peers told be to shut up or speak in plain English was any indication.
I'm going away for Christmas on the 20th, and won't be back until after New Year, so I'm posting several updates now to tide you all over. Reviews make wonderful Christmas Presents!
Thanks, Nat.