Harry
Sally and Harry walked past the hallway with the bedrooms and out into the main room. Two long tables were set out with children of various ages already sitting and eating breakfast. The orphanage housemother was travelling to and from the nearby kitchen with the last few platters of breakfast items.
A brown-haired boy noticed Sally and Harry arrive and waved them over. "Sally! Harry! Saved you seats over here! Got your dixon-urry too!" A thick book was on the table between two empty plates next to the boy.
"No yelling at the table, Brian," the housemother commented to the brown-haired boy as she placed the last platter of eggs on the table. She turned and smiled at Harry and Sally as they sat down at the table. "Good morning you two."
Next to him, Sally stiffened and didn't meet the housemother's gaze. Instead, Sally turned to Brian and stole a sausage off his plate. "It's dik-shun-air-ee, dumbo! How long 'er ya gonna get it wrong?"
The housemother's smile faded slightly, and Harry quickly smiled back at her. "Good morning, Housemother Johnson, the food looks great. Full English breakfast today? Is there a special occasion?"
"Mrs. Jenkins' cats had kittens!" Various children piped up around the room.
Over at the far corner of the other table, Housefather Frost spoke up, "Mrs. Jenkins said you kids helped her two grumpy cats become friends and decided to thank you all with a special breakfast. We'll make thank you cards during chore time today."
Housemother Johnson ruffled Harry's hair in a silent gesture of thanks before she headed over to sit with Housefather Frost. Sally immediately relaxed and started filling up both her and Harry's plates. She nudged the thick book on the table with her elbow and asked, "What words are ya gonna teach me today, Harry?"
Harry flipped open the dictionary and rolled his eyes at the blonde girl. "It cannot be called 'teaching ' if you never learn anything, Sally." Some of the older kids at the table laughed and started poking fun at Sally. They quizzed her on different words Harry read aloud for her at breakfast before and either took away or gave her extra pieces of bacon or fruit based on her answers.
It was great to see Sally and the older kids joking like that. Before Sally arrived at the orphanage two years ago, the other kids found it odd that Harry liked reading the dictionary and spoke using 'big grown-up words' and often got upset over it. It still confused him how anyone saw these actions as condescending or elitist. (Of course, the children actually said, "You think you're better than us, huh?" or "Guess you don't want to spend time with us dumb kids" instead of the words "condescending" or "elitist".) The mean-spirited comments inspired rage-filled Memory Moments half of the time, and confused bouts of loneliness the other half back then.
Then Sally joined the orphanage and turned Harry's vocabulary into a game and took the teasing onto herself. He was surprised by how she was the only one who figured out that when Harry used elevated language it was often on accident; he honestly did not know the definition of some of the words he said day-to-day. The words just sounded right when he said them, and only caught himself using a complicated word a fraction of the time. Sally decided on her own to start pointing out Harry's 'big grown-up words' whenever he used them, and Harry would pretend to be annoyed and find the definition for her and, secretly, for himself as well.
Sometimes he wondered why she helped. Why she cared.
Then he stopped thinking about it, too scared of the thought that confronting her about it would make her stop.
He turned through the "A" section of the dictionary as he looked for the word Saphyr used earlier that morning, as usual trying to guess the spelling of the word based off of how it sounded. In the latter half of the "A" section, Harry found the word he was looking for.
Ascertain: as-cer-tain, asərˈtān. Verb; to find (something) out for certain; make sure of.
It bothered Harry every time he found a definition that included part of the original word in it. Luckily, he already knew what 'certain' meant. He ran a hand down the page of the tome and wondered at the mix of feelings he felt every time he looked through the dictionary. Somehow, looking through the hundreds of words felt intimidating and nostalgic at the same time; as if it was both the first and the thousandth time Harry was reading each page.
He knew it must have something to do with his Memory Moments, but thankfully reading the dictionary fell under the category of positive reactions rather than the panic-inducing reactions.
"Okay, Harry," he jerked at the sound of Sally's voice loudly calling directly into his ear, "food time!" She nudged the book with a plate full of breakfast foods and Harry obediently closed it. The last time Harry insisted on looking up one more word Sally threatened to spill orange juice on the dictionary.
When breakfast ended, everyone helped clean up the table to make room for class time. Housefather Frost ushered the youngest kids to their play corner out of the way while any kid old enough helped separate leftovers, wash dishes, or wipe down the table. Harry enjoyed helping separate the leftovers into what went into the compost bin and what to donate to the local farms as it was more of an educational experience compared to washing dishes.
Learning new information was great because he could tell when he was learning something completely new - no nostalgia, no panic, just a bright sense of new. A burst of energy accompanied learning something new. It filled him with a deep sense of satisfaction and pride that the Memories did not know everything and Harry found out something on his own.
It felt like winning.
Harry wished he knew who he was playing against.
Sally helped Harry take the separated bags of leftovers outside to the compost and farm donation bins. One of the neighbors would collect the food from the donation bin after each mealtime to portion out for the local livestock to eat.
Taking advantage of a rare moment of privacy, Harry nudged Sally with his shoulder and asked, "You ok?"
The blonde girl tugged lightly on one of her pigtails as she frowned. "Yeah, I'm fine," she muttered, roughly shoving a bag of food into the donation bin. "It's daft, I know... Housemother's jus' tryin' to be nice."
"She's a grown-up," Harry replied while carefully distributing the leftovers for the compost into the proper bin.
Sally's frown twisted and she slammed the donation bin shut. With a sigh, Harry concluded today was not the day he learned why adults unnerved his friend. It didn't stop him from trying to console his friend, though. "It's not your fault someone else hurt you, Sally. Grown-ups can be intimidating in general, anyway."
"There you go with them big words again Harry," Sally said as she laughed and turned away. "At least I've heard that one before." She walked back into the orphanage. As she left, Harry caught how Sally's ribbon shifted slightly on her face, revealing a hint of the scarred crater where her right eye should be. Idly, he touched the scar on his own face, aware that it was likely why Sally befriended him in the first place.
Other orphans at St Martin's Orphanage had 'unique appearances' as Housefather Frost put it. Harry assumed it was a result of the orphanage being on an island that was also a frequent tourist stop. People who wished to hide away a scarred, disfigured, or otherwise disabled child could 'go on vacation' then leave the child behind. Many of the orphans were left on one of the island's many beaches, including Sally.
Harry knew he was one of three orphans ever left at St Martin's as a baby. Was his appearance so abhorrent? How was a mere toddler a source of shame to be discarded? Would it be better or worse if his parents were dead and there was no one else to take him in?
The soft chatter of the orphans inside the main room brought Harry out of his morbid thoughts. A rolling chalkboard was in front of the two tables and announced today was a Reading Day.
Reading Day meant each child could pick their own book to read, as long as they finished the book eventually. The houseparents would make sure the reading was appropriate for the orphan's level. Every month or so Housefather Frost assigned writing assignments to the older kids on what they read so far in their respective books and Housemother Johnson had the younger children try and draw something from a story.
With only so many books available at a time, no one complained when Harry elected to stick to reading the dictionary for the day. He could continue reading the chapter book about Scruffles the Canine Detective another time.
On the other side of the room, Sally was reading out loud to a few of the younger children from a collection of folk and fairy tales. She smiled brightest when the little ones laughed, gasped, and hung on to her retellings.
Harry was in the middle of trying to find the definition of 'situated' when Brian wandered over to where Harry was sitting. The other boy's face was deep in a book about the ocean.
"Hey Harry, lemme look at that real quick," Brian said before he blindly took the dictionary out of Harry's hands.
Harry looked up, startled to see Brian standing with the dictionary held above him and his vision blurred.
A light-haired boy held a book teasingly out of reach with a sneer on his face.
A rabbit floated up towards decaying rafters.
A wardrobe caught on fire.
Before he was fully conscious of doing so, Harry was on his feet and grabbed the dictionary back from Brian, growling, "Give it back!"
The brown-haired boy stumbled back, hands up in surrender, and suddenly Harry was aware of wide eyes staring at him from all over the room. He sprinted away, dictionary clutched in his arms, and heard Sally yell, "Brian! Can't you ask all polite and proper just once?"
Harry's lungs burned from running so fast, his face burned with embarrassment, and his heart burned with indignant rage. After a rush of scenery flew by, he found himself huddled in a corner of the abandoned hallway hugging the dictionary to his chest and breathing rapidly.
He lifted his arms to throw the thick book and something inside him resisted the thought of harming it. Which was utterly daft. It wasn't his book, no matter how much just thinking that angered him. He didn't mean to be so rude to Brian, he just reacted. No one would really know that, though, and then he'd be labeled a bully, and then even the other orphans wouldn't want him here, but the other boy stole from him...!
Suddenly Sally was there hugging him, and a choked sob erupted from Harry's throat. She always knew where to find him when he got like this.
At first, he thought any physical contact while he was panicking would make things worse. It was only during his first hug from Sally - during the one and only time she set off a Memory Moment - that Harry felt that same bright feeling when he learned something new. Hugs were new, at least to the Memories, and that thought brought tears to Harry's eyes every time.
He didn't know how much time passed while Sally silently hugged him. He liked how she never asked him to outright explain, which is why he did the same for her. His breaths evened out and then the tears stopped. He finally loosened his grip on the dictionary.
He stared at the book in his lap as he leaned into Sally's embrace. "It's not my book," he whispered weakly, "I shouldn't have-"
"Brian knows better, it ain't your fault, Harry," Sally cut in. "Housemother Johnson been tellin' him not to snatch stuff from people and there's - what's that word you used last time? - Ah, consequences."
Harry gave a startled laugh. "You remembered." That was from a particularly bad Memory Moment about a week ago, when the rage actually took over. He barely remembered what set him off that time, only that he spouted off a string of angry words he later privately swore to never follow through with.
It was a testament to the ragtag variety of orphans with their own levels of issues at the orphanage that no one took his angry words too seriously.
"It ain't your fault, Harry," Sally repeated, leaning back out of their hug. "Jus' like you told me it ain't my fault grown-ups..." she paused before shaking her head and continuing, "scare me. Other people did that to me, and we just gotta keep goin' n' try not to hurt our friends on the way, yeah?"
Harry nodded, and he knew he would remember that Sally mentioned multiple people and not just one specific adult. Something else she said stuck out to him, though. "You think Brian thinks I'm his friend?"
"Of course," the blonde quickly replied, grinning. "Saves us seats every mornin' right?" Sally gently helped Harry to his feet. "Come on, we're gonna miss all of Free Time if we stick 'round here too long. Brian wants to say sorry to you, too."
The walk back to the main room was uneventful save for them walking past a few of the orphans heading into the bedrooms.
After class was Free Time and was everyone's favorite time at the orphanage. It was exactly what it sounded like: a section of the day that the orphans were allowed to spend however they wished. There were only a few age-related rules regarding what the children were restricted from doing or how many of them must be together in order to leave the building.
Housefather Frost was in the main room sitting with a couple of children busy writing. The diagrams on the chalkboard showed the adult was helping them with their penmanship. The man looked up at Harry and smiled. "Feeling better, Harry?"
Somewhere in the back of his mind, Harry was certain an adult in charge of children shouldn't be so casual about their charge's state of mind, but no one ever said the houseparents were exemplary guardians. After meeting Sally, though, Harry preferred the adults he knew over ones he didn't.
Sally stayed back while Harry went over to the housefather. Moments like this Harry thought it was such a luxury to distrust the houseparents. They were all that was available to the orphans here.
Housefather Frost's smile started to fall, and Harry realized he took too long to answer. "Yes, I'm... better. I'm-" he coughed lightly, clearing his throat to hopefully sound less like he was sobbing for the past fifteen minutes, "I'm going to talk to Brian now."
The smile returned. "That's great, Harry, I'm proud of you. Brian's out in the field with Jason and the others as usual. Go have fun!"
Jason and the others. Right. Harry relayed the information to Sally and breathed a sigh of relief when she set off in a direction outside the orphanage confidently.
Despite living his whole life at the orphanage, Harry only truly recognized a few of the people there. Each day he noticed enough to note someone as familiar or not before placing them in a mental box labeled, "Apathetic Disinterest". It never occurred to him to even try and remember more than that until one of the houseparents asked him to help find someone for them one day.
He knew Brian had brown hair and always forgot to ask first before taking things from people, not just Harry. The houseparents were the houseparents, the only adults at the orphanage. Andrew only had one arm. Ruby hated being wrong almost as much as Harry hated people taking what was his. Sally and Saphyr were the only ones Harry could remember and describe out loud in vivid detail without being right next to them.
Harry followed Sally past the orphanage's vegetable garden and lemon trees, past a wall of hedges, and over to a wide-open field bordered by a few sloping hills. Some of the island's locals were out walking their dogs, one family was having a picnic on the side of a hill, and in the middle of the flattest area of the field was a group of children kicking a ball between two large baskets on their sides.
The group saw them approaching and called out greetings to Sally. With a jolt, Harry understood this must be where the blonde girl traipsed off to on days when Harry stayed indoors to read during Free Time instead of wandering around with Sally. A bundle of sharp hot jealousy and ice-cold guilt started to grip Harry's heart when Sally laughed joyfully and waved back at the group of orphans.
Harry latched onto the sound in his mind and took a few deep breaths. Sally deserved friends. She deserved to have people to hang out with when Harry wanted to be alone. When he first met her, Sally was such a quiet, scared girl. Sally had been at the orphanage for two years now and it was ignorant of him to not know more about how she spent her free time and arrogant to think only he mattered to her.
He looked over at his friend, often surprised by how his mind wandered on tangents in her presence. Before she came to the orphanage, he was constantly aware of everything going on around him. Harry' s thoughts back then were obsessed with what could set off a Memory Moment and how to avoid that happening.
Was that what a "milestone" was? There was a Before Sally and an After Sally. Harry could tell there was a Before Saphyr and After Saphyr, too.
Sometime during his pondering, Brian walked up to them. The boy ran a hand through his disheveled brown hair and toed the grass with his foot. Harry suddenly felt his face heat up and fought the urge to reach for Sally's hand.
"Hey, Harry," Brian said, his smile small. "I'm sorry about before."
Harry shook his head. "It was inappropriate of me to yell at you. Grabbing the dictionary back was far from mature as well." Laughter from Brian and a comforting shoulder nudge from Sally helped Harry relax and smile.
"Scared me more than usual," the brown-haired boy joked, then winced when Harry flinched. "Ah, yeah, it's all my bad there's a 'usual', Harry, no worries. Hey, so, I know you usually like to go run after..." Brian trailed off, and Harry nodded to show he understood. "Well, rather do some fun running?" The boy gestured behind him.
Harry froze at the invitation, staring into Brian's startling bright hazel eyes. The panic from earlier was still buzzing along his limbs and Harry knew exercising would help. The fact Brian noticed and remembered that about Harry was... thoughtful of him.
Playing with the other children, though... What if the Memories didn't like organized sports? Was there a risk of another Memory Moment?
Sally jumped in, as always understanding Harry's fears. "That'd be a sight! D'you even know how ta play football, Harry?"
He didn't deserve such a wonderful and clever friend. Harry took the lifeline she threw out and tried to see if he already knew the rules of the sport or not, eyeing the multi-colored ball and the two baskets out on the field.
The bright feeling of new, of an empty space in his mind eager and ready to learn, filled Harry and he grinned. "No, no I don't know how to play," he breathed. He smirked at Sally's answering grin. "Maybe you could finally teach me something for once, Sally."
Harry thoroughly enjoyed the sport. He chose to be on Ruby's team, correctly guessing she hated losing as much as she hated being wrong, and discovered that she had hazel eyes a few shades darker than Brian's. Harry learned that even with one arm, Andrew was a fantastic goalie who liked to gloat every time he managed to catch the ball with his hand.
Harry met Jason, a younger orphan with black hair like Harry's who stuttered but knew how to direct the opposing team like a seasoned captain. He also met Juliana, an older girl who was left at the orphanage only a few days ago and whose flaming red hair caught Harry's attention in a way he wondered how he never noticed it before.
All throughout dinner Sally and Brian teased Harry for looking over at Juliana so many times. He was both ecstatic and mortified by how juvenile it all was. He knew he hugged Sally all the time but she was Sally. The thought of attempting anything similar with the older redhead was... weird no matter what Sally or Brian seemed to think.
Was this what it felt like to joke around with friends?
Over the next few days, Harry adjusted his routine. Mornings were spent with Saphyr, breakfast with Sally and Brian, then class time. If the football group went to the field, Harry went with them. If not, he stayed indoors reading. After that was lunch, chores or plant-tending, then dinner before bedtime.
Somewhere in the back of Harry's mind, though, he couldn't shake the feeling that he was waiting for something. Searching, almost.
He checked in on Saphyr and made sure the snake was satisfied with its rock pool. The blue and pearl serpent remained insistent on staying there even after its form grew long and thick enough to fill the small pool.
Nothing else around the orphanage seemed different, either, until the next Science Day when Sally and Harry were on their hands and knees checking up on their strawberry plants.
Harry felt a headache blooming behind his eyes and groaned.
"Harry," Sally whispered urgently as she glanced around, "Go to the loo and look in the mirror immediately. I'll say something to the houseparents."
Nodding, Harry kept his face down as he hurried inside to the bathroom. Sally spoke properly that time- something serious was going on and he didn't doubt the headache was related somehow.
'Where- where am I?'
A voice called out inside Harry's head and he stumbled so hard he nearly fell through the bathroom door after slamming into the threshold.
Harry clenched his eyes shut and hissed at the pain in his side from tripping into the bathroom.
"Who are you? Why are you in my head?" Harry asked aloud. The headache gradually began to fade, and Harry locked himself into the bathroom. No need to have anyone come across Harry talking to himself like he was mad.
'Is this… a bathroom?' the young, male-sounding voice asked.
Harry gasped, turning to grip the sink with shaking hands. "You can see through my eyes?" His head shot up to look in the mirror, now remembering Sally's earlier instructions.
There in Harry's reflection was his unruly black hair, slightly waving in random angles as usual. His mouth and nose were the same as always, his ears as well. A straight, thin scar ran down his face starting above his right eye and down to his cheek through the middle of his eye. The eye was a familiar crimson red, the pupil vertically slit in line with his scar. The black pupil stretched slightly over the red iris.
His left eye, however…
What in the world—!
Where Harry usually saw emerald green was now a deep gold.
Deep in his mind, Harry heard a gasp. 'Are you… Harry?'
Harry's blood chilled in his veins as his heart started pounding in his ears. Who was this voice? Was it the source of the Memories? Did Harry somehow wake them up? But then why were they only here now?
"Who. Are. You?" he growled at the mirror.
The voice took Harry's lack of an answer as a confirmation and actually squealed. Not the source of the Memories, then.
'Oh, you're Harry! I found you! Well, sort of, but hi! It's Aster! I can't believe I found you!'
Harry squinted his eyes at the mirror in confusion. 'Found me…?' he thought and was startled when the voice immediately responded.
'You don't remember me?' The voice, Aster, sounded so shocked Harry thought he proclaimed to have forgotten his own name.
Harry raised an eyebrow at the mirror, staring into the golden eye now sitting in his face. 'Is it customary for you to demand answers while refusing to offer any in return?'
'Oh! I'm sorry I got so excited I found you, and then I thought if I remembered you that you would remember me, too… I mean, we are twins, after all—'
'What?' Harry clutched his head again. Was the room spinning or was that all in his head, too? 'Twins? You're my brother?' Family. He had a sibling. A sibling who wasn't here where Harry grew up. That must mean—No, he would not think about that just yet.
'You didn't know? That makes sense, though,' the voice rambled, 'if you don't remember me, then you wouldn't know, and no one was there to tell you and—'
'How are you here? Why are you here? How do I know you're even telling the truth?'
'Telling the truth?' Something deep inside Harry hurt at how Aster's voice cracked around the words. 'Harry, I… Merlin.'
Harry only got a few moments to wonder what an old man from Arthurian legend had to do with the current situation before Aster spoke again quickly.
'I think I'm waking up. Broom accident. Maybe if I got in another accident, I'll come back…? I don't have time to figure that out right now. Harry, I'll find you. Um, find you for real, not just in your head, promise. I'll fix everything, and everyone will be happy, I'll—' the voice cut off. With a blink, Harry's left eye returned to its normal emerald green.
A harsh whooshing sound filled the room and Harry realized it was his own labored breathing echoing in the room. If that really was his brother… his twin, what twist of fate made Aster such a chatterbox? The other boy was clearly not the brightest child purely by the implication that Aster was somehow hurt by a broom severely enough to end up in Harry's head.
It was only recently that Harry participated in activities that counted falling unconscious among the list of potential risks. He was far from inclined to test the viability of mental teleportation via knockout, though.
Harry was also decidedly not thinking about the circumstances that brought Aster to his mind. How Aster somehow remembered Harry, what sort of childhood Aster had, whether Aster was also an orphan at a different orphanage, if their parents…
Yes, decidedly not thinking about any of that.
A knock on the bathroom door accompanied Housemother Johnson's voice. "Harry, are you all right? Class time is over now, do you need anything?"
"I'm okay," he called back, frowning at how shaky his voice sounded. "Can you… can you get Sally?"
"Right here, Harry." The sound of his friend's voice was such a relief. Harry unlocked the bathroom door and almost instantly found himself in Sally's arms.
"You ok?" she whispered.
He shrugged silently in response, honestly unsure of how to answer.
Dimly, Harry was aware of Sally telling Housemother Johnson they were heading outside for Free Time. He should say something to commemorate Sally speaking directly to the older woman for the first time, but his mind was racing, wondering how to even explain to Sally what happened.
Without another word, Harry led Sally towards the Great Bay and the little rock pool in the cliffside there.
He needed to talk to Saphyr. The serpent spoke often of seeing many sights and speaking to numerous humans over its lifetime. Saphyr would know what to do.