Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter, or any of the associated characters. Given the average common-sense quota of some of them, I'm not sure I'd want to.
Summary: See previous Chapters.
CHAPTER NINE
With the kind of problems Harry would probably face, Natasja wanted him to have as much up his sleeve as possible. Mrs Thomas didn't have the training of a Bruja, but she remembered some of the theory from memories of her mother, which offered a good grounding.
Dennis was also showing signs of magic, at what was usually considered an early age, which Henry and Mrs Longbottom found confusing, as his power level didn't seem higher than average. Natasja and Mrs Thomas thought that it might have something to do with the amount of magic he witnessed when visiting, and the lack of anyone telling him that half the accidental magic he did should have been impossible.
What Muggle-Borns knew of Magic was usually what little they witnessed when a Hogwarts teacher showed up, and what they read of in fantasy books, many of which had younger people performing remarkable feats at a young age, and young minds were highly impressionable for the first several years of life.
Natasja's younger sister, for example, had always managed to tell her twin older sisters apart, when even their parents had trouble, simply because no one had told her that she wasn't supposed to be able to. One of her cousins had been a dancer practically since she could stand upright, because she had somehow missed the fact that two-year-olds are meant to still have a few co-ordination issues. Natasja had been reading chapter books at age three (with help on the bigger words), because no one had told her not to.
Neville's lack of magic when he was younger, and his proficiency growing in leaps and bounds after, was almost certainly due to his family's constant insistence that he would never be as good as his father and worries about him being a Squib, followed by the consistently-voiced belief at the Irons' that he was just a slow learner. As the Boy-Who-Lived, people expected great things from Harry, and Harry tended to try very hard to live up to people's expectations.
Actually, that probably went a good way toward explaining at least a quarter of the accidental magic he had done, such as the school kitchen roof.
It had bad effects, too, however. People had called Hermione a bossy know-it-all with no friends for so long that the girl had come very close to believing that she really did know all, rather than just an intimidating degree of most things, could never be wrong, and didn't need friends. Thankfully, time spent with children her own age who really were more knowledgeable about some things had stopped that attitude before 'Insufferable' could be added to the list.
Harry was better at flying (Natasja nearly had a heart-attack when Harry decided to try stunt-flying his first time on a broom), Dean did know more about foreign types of magic, Neville had been raised in Magic Society (whether that was a good thing was still under debate) and therefore had a deeper level of understanding, no one could match Dennis for getting into places he wasn't supposed to be (precisely how a three-year-old had managed to get into an air duct was still a mystery) and Natasja actually gave serious thought to Mrs Creevy's laughing story about the nurse who was convinced Colin had been born with a camera in hand.
It had actually been that his flailing arms had knocked the camera his father had been holding into the cot just before the nurse came in, and Colin's tiny hand had been touching in, but that didn't make the story any less amusing.
Remus Lupin had visited a few more times, still trying to persuade them that Harry would need to attend Hogwarts, if only because someone in the Ministry of Magic would use his absence to proclaim Natasja and Henry unfit guardians depriving him of an education and take him away to attend Hogwarts anyway. With Dumbledore, the 'Leader of the Light' as the head of the magical equivalent of Parliament, the Wizengamot, and as the Headmaster of Hogwarts, most likely to be leading the case, or at least siding with the accusers, the Irons' didn't have that much hope of winning, even if they could claim lack of impartiality on Dumbledore's part.
Having informed Henry of this while Natasja was out of hearing range (she had commissioned a supposedly-ornamental larger version of Henry's silver Potions knife after the misunderstanding of his first visit, and Remus doubted that she wouldn't use it if he had been telling her this) Remus knew he was lucky that Henry had a policy of not shooting/hexing the messenger. Neither of the Irons' liked Dumbledore, and any news of him was greeted with scorn or outright dislike. Even the average Mountain Troll could have told you that being told that they would have to send their son to a school where Dumbledore would have almost total control over his life for nine months of the year was never going to have been received well.
Actually, Remus was surprised that Natasja hadn't yet threatened to up and move to somewhere that had a bad relationship with the Magical part of the UK. But, if she hadn't, he wasn't about to mention the idea.
As it was, Remus only hoped that the children didn't find a way to sneak rolling pins or frying pans into their school trunks. With an adoptive mother/frequent caretaker like Natasja Irons, however, it was only a matter of time.
There was another unexpected side-effect for when they told Harry about the circumstances of him probably going to Hogwarts.
Colin and Dennis were one and three years younger than the rest of the group, respectively, and thoroughly dismayed at the idea that they would be going away and leaving the Creevy brothers behind in Little Whinging. Their dismay was nearly enough to make Harry refuse to go to Hogwarts (again), until Hermione pointed out that they would probably follow them in a year or two.
Natasja considered pointing out that it might not even matter, as the first year would decide whether or not Harry would continue at Hogwarts, which would, in turn, have some bearing on whether the others stayed at Hogwarts, as they had become a fairly tight-knit group.
Neville's grandmother was so fixed on him becoming a carbon copy of his father that she would probably insist that he remain at Hogwarts, which might also affect things, as the others would not wish to leave him alone.
It was a largely useless thought, but Natasja was starting to get very sick of scenarios that boiled down to 'Wait and see', especially when it involved her son and anything to do with the Magical World.
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A/N: Right, the latest chapter is up, and without too long a wait. I hope you all like it.
Next chapter will take place during Harry's First Year. I don't plan on doing a complete re-write of the series (since I'm already doing that with The Dursley Witch), so the chapters covering the Hogwarts Years will likely be a series of snippets covering the events that would be affected by Harry's different upbringing.
I don't want to sound like I'm begging or nagging, but I really do thrive on reviews and feedback, and being told about good parts and problem areas really does help me write faster and better.
Thanks, Nat