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Harry Potter and the First Division

PART I - NOVICE

Chapter 2

Dealing with (Metaphorical) Demons

Disclaimer: I do not own the world or characters of Harry Potter, and I do not make any money from writing about them. Also, I am not a TV evangelist in disguise.

Harry felt like he was floating.

Opening his eyes, he discovered that he was. All he could see was a kind of soft white glow, extending forever with no horizon. Strangely, he seemed unable to be concerned about his surroundings. Nothing seemed scary at all, actually.

"Hello?" Harry called to the air. His voice sounded strange, like a man's voice rather than a boy's. The air seemed to absorb the word, neither echoing nor muffling the sound.

Somehow, the glow that came from everywhere pulsed once, gently, and Harry had a sensation he assumed to be like big arms wrapping him in a hug. He couldn't remember having any hugs, though, so he couldn't be sure. The invisible arms held him for a time, strongly but tenderly, and he slowly drifted off to sleep again.

As the last vestiges of conciousness left him, Harry thought he heard a voice echoing in his head.

"Do keep faith with Me, Harry Potter, for I will always keep faith with you...and I shall use you do great things indeed..."

"-ry? Harry, son, it's time to wake up now."

When next Harry woke, he found himself in a strange place. Again. It certainly wasn't his cupboard at home. An old man was leaning over him, one hand on Harry's shoulder as though to shake him awake. Uncle Vern and Aunt 'Tunia were sitting nearby, looking simultaneously nervous and astounded. They were in a wood panelled office, similar to the Head Teacher's office at school, and Harry was laying on a long sofa. The old man moved his hand when Harry opened his eyes, and the boy sat up, looking at his Aunt and Uncle confusedly.

"Aunt 'Tunia, where're we?" he asked groggily. Where had that other place been? Had it been a dream? It seemed so real.

"We're at church, boy...Harry," Uncle Vern answered for his wife, who was still staring at her nephew.

The strange old man spoke up. "Harry, you're at Saint Joseph's Catholic Church, and my name is Father Gerard Cunningham. Do you remember coming here?"

Harry squinted up at the man. "I remember the pointy building, and the music," he answered suspiciously. "Whose father are you?"

Father Gerard chuckled. "'Father' is a title, my boy. It means I lead the church here at St. Joseph's."

"Oh. What's church?" Aunt 'Tunia started a little at that, like he should have known. Should he? He didn't remember hearing about church before.

The man hummed and moved to sit in a chair near the sofa, leaning back and pressing his fingertips together as he studied the boy. "Church, Harry, is where people go to say 'thank you' to God, the One who made all of us, and to learn about Him, and to learn how to live as He would like us to live," he said after a minute. "It's also a place where people go to be with other people who believe in Him. Do you understand all that, Harry?"

"Umm...I think so," Harry answered, face scrunched up in thought as he tried to decipher the Father's words. "Someone made us?"

"Yes, Harry. God made me and your Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon, and your cousin Dudley, and you, as well. He made the whole world, actually."

"Oh. Why do people come here to say thank you? Does God live here?" Harry wondered if he should be apologizing for having his trainers on God's sofa - they still had mud on them from The Storm In The Garden.

"God lives everywhere, Harry," Father Gerard said. "He is in the plants, and the animals, and the people that love Him...He's in the very air that we breath and the light from the sun."

Something clicked in Harry's mind, and he started talking very quickly. "Is God in the white place? I thought there were great arms around me, but I didn't see any arms. Did God give me a hug? Is that what a hug is like? I like hugs. I heard someone talking. Was that God?" Harry spoke so rapidly and was so focused on Father Gerard that he didn't notice Aunt 'Tunia and Uncle Vern paling even further.

Father Gerard held up a hand, chuckling merrily. "Hold on, Harry. I can't answer your questions if you don't stop asking them for a moment." Now the old man peered intently at Harry. "A white place, you say? Where did you see this white place? Can you describe it?"

Harry blushed at having been caught chattering. "Umm..." he said, suddenly shy. "It was just white. There wasn't anything around, not even the ground, and I was floating. Then I felt the arms, and I heard someone talking, and then I fell to sleep and I woke up here."

"Do you remember what the someone said?" Father Gerard asked.

Harry thought for a moment, then shook his head. "No sir, I'm sorry," he answered.

The kindly old man smiled gently. "Quite alright, young Harry. Now I can't say for sure if that was God, as I wasn't there with you, but I think you might be right. Something tells me you're a very special little boy."

Harry immediately shook his head. "No, sir, not me," he replied at once. "I think God might have messed something up when he made me."

"Oh? And why do you think that?" Father Gerard asked, one eyebrow raised. Harry thought he looked funny that way.

He glanced nervously at Aunt 'Tunia and Uncle Vern. Leaning in close, he whispered loudly, "Sometimes I do freaky things."

The father leaned in as well and whispered back, "What kind of freaky things?"

The boy again looked carefully at his Aunt before turning back to Father Gerard. "I made a storm in the garden yesterday," Harry said solemnly.

Both of Father Gerard's eyebrows went up this time, and he leaned back, folding his hands in his lap. "Oh dear, yes that is odd," the father agreed. "Was there much lightening in this storm?" Harry nodded, wide-eyed. He'd never had anyone react this calmly to his freakiness before. "Was anyone hurt?"

Harry shook his head. "No, sir," he said. "But...Aunt 'Tunia almost got hit by a lightening." He glanced over to Aunt 'Tunia and saw her face was pinched, like she had just licked a lemon, though she still hadn't lost the look of shock she'd been wearing since Harry woke up.

"Oh my," Father Gerard exclaimed, snapping Harry's attention back to him. "That sounds like it would have hurt."

"Yes, sir. A lightening hit a tree on Wisteria Walk last month and it broke the tree into two pieces." Harry was surprised to see the old man's face twist not into surprise or disgust or fear, which he was used to, but rather into a look that Aunt 'Tunia and Uncle Vern gave to Dudley. He wasn't sure what it meant.

"Very good, Harry!" Father Gerard leaned forward, holding Harry's eyes intently, and the little boy stared at him. No one had ever praised him like that before.

"You have a gift, Harry, one that I will tell you more about, but it's very important that you realize your gift can hurt people. That's very good - never forget that you can hurt people without meaning to." Then the Father's face changed from serious to cheerful so abruptly that Harry sat up, surprised. "Now then, Harry, what I can tell you for certain is that God didn't mess up a thing when He made you. You are exactly the little boy God planned to make, from long before your mummy and daddy even thought of you."

Harry looked up into the old man's smiling eyes with a heart-breaking look of hope on his face. "D'you really think so?"

"I know so, Harry." Father Gerard then leaned back, finally glancing at the stricken Dursleys across the room. "Harry, I'd like to tell you more about your gift, and I will very, very soon, but right now I need to speak with your Aunt and Uncle alone, please. Would you mind waiting just outside my office for a bit? Sister Rebecca is out there, and I'm sure she has some story books she can read to you."

Harry was still a little dazed by the thought of not being a mistake, and agreed readily enough. As the door closed behind him, he missed Father Gerard's friendly face being overcome by a look that would have gone nicely with a small, angry storm cloud.

"Let me begin by making one thing very clear," Father Gerard started coldly, once the door clicked shut. "The only reason I've not phoned the police already is because of Harry's unique circumstances. If I find that you are unable to become the fit guardians that he is desperately in need of, I will not hesitate to report you for child abuse, endangerment, neglect, and any other charges the investigation might turn up." His face smoothed out into his friendly smile, this time with a hint of steel behind it. "However, I am heartened by the fact that you brought the child here, rather than dumping him in the nearest orphanage or, God forbid, murdering the boy in cold blood, so perhaps we can all come to understand each other." Here he leaned forward. "Now, which one of you wants to tell me what on God's green earth you were thinking when you chose to treat a child that way for four years?"

The three adults stared at each other in silence for a full minute - Father Gerard waiting for one of the Dursleys to speak, and the Dursleys too petrified to utter a word. Ultimately, it was Vernon who found the gumption to respond. "Father, I was raised to be a God-fearing man," he started, trying not to show that he was sweating bullets. "I always dismissed the verses in the Old Testament about witches and enchanters; after all, what reasonable person would believe in magic? But it turns out it's real. The Bible says 'thou shall not suffer a witch to live.' Was I supposed to kill a child?"

Father Gerard gazed at the man, stubbornly trying to keep his chin up in the face of his own mistakes, and murmured, "Let he among you who is without sin cast the first stone." Vernon held his gaze for a moment more, then deflated like a leaky balloon. Petunia, grasping Vernon's hand like a lifeline, crumbled in her seat, shaking. "And you, Petunia? What do you have to say for yourself?"

The woman just sat there for a while, trying to compose herself. Finally, without looking up, she started talking. "My sister, Lily...she was the first...w-witch...in our family. The woman that brought her acceptance letter to that school told us that all her outbursts were called 'accidental magic', and that it reacted to extreme emotions. Lily's emotions were almost always extreme. She controlled it around our mother and father - they wouldn't have put up with her flinging things at them. They only ever saw the tame things, like making biscuits fly off the counter, or the one time she made a kitten appear out of nowhere. The woman from the school said that Lily was very powerful, and very powerful children had a harder time with the accidental magic. Looking back, I suppose that was why things always happened when she and I argued, but back then I was convinced she wanted to kill me. I spent most of my childhood terrified of my baby sister, and then when her son turned up on my doorstep..." She took a deep, shuddering breath, a few tears slipping down her face. "Harry's first accidental magic in our home was the day after he turned up. I had him in the kitchen with me, and he started crying. Every piece of glass in the room exploded." At this point, Petunia broke down crying, heaving sobs wracking her thin frame.

Vernon gripped his wife's hand tightly, rubbing her back with his free hand, and looked up at the priest. "Pet was in hospital for three days after that, Father," he said solemnly. "Do you understand now? I'm not saying what we did was right, but we had to protect ourselves, and our son." His piece said, Vernon turned his attention to comforting his wife.

Father Gerard watched the couple quietly, thoughts whirling behind his solemn mask. He did understand now, not that he agreed with the pair's actions. He was not an expert by any means, but as far as he knew, accidental magic had to be extremely powerful to cause that kind of damage. And for a toddler to have so much power already was, indeed, a frightening thought. He let the couple compose themselves a bit before moving to kneel in front of Petunia.

He gently laid a hand on her still shaking shoulder, and began to say a simple prayer over her, "Holy Father, this woman has faced great suffering at the hands of magic-users. She is burdened by fear, and haunted by past events that taint her memory of her sister. Lord, I ask that you send forth your mercy and ease her pain, so that she may put the past behind her, and raise up her children in the way they should go, and not lead them unwittingly into the arms of the Dark One. Amen." All three were silent for a moment, the two men rallying quietly around the shattered woman.

Afterwards, Father Gerard called Petunia's name quietly, grabbing her attention. She reluctantly raised red-rimmed eyes to meet his. "You have shown great strength today, sharing that with us. Do you think you can be strong from here on, and raise Harry and Dudley to walk with God? Remember, God will never give you a task you are unable to complete - with His help, of course."

Petunia was looked down again, and for a long pause the only sound in the office was the ticking of the clock on the wall. Finally, she looked up at her husband, straightened her shoulders, and nodded firmly. "Yes, I believe I can," she declared.

A/N: A bit more intro here, and some background into my Petunia's issues with magic. Next chapter will include quite a lot of that creative licensing going on (with the history part, not the religion part, so don't throttle me), and some set up for the rest of Harry's pre-Hogwarts years. I anticipate six more chapters in Part I, unless I choose to split a chapter, like I did this one, into two parts.

Also, before I get a bunch of comments about Harry's grammar, please keep in mind that the child is just approaching 5 years old. I tried to model his speech patterns after my younger son's when he was that age, and I hope I've come close. Either way, five year-olds typically don't deal well with expressing abstract ideas, thus the rather concrete quality to Harry's conversation.

As always, I welcome any thoughts, as long as they aren't flames. And I'm still in the market for a Brit-picker and brain sources, as mentioned in the first chapter.

Cheers,
Courtney