A/N. I realize that nothing much is happening yet. I'm trying to get to some action, I promise!
By the end of July, my solitary existence was wearing on me. Beyond a few niceties exchanged on my resupply runs, I hadn't had a single conversation since my visit to Diagon Alley. I had also recently realized that my memories from before waking in Harry Potter's body were fading. This made my loneliness transform into an existential angst; it felt like dying.
I'd spent the past few days furiously writing down everything I could remember - where I'd been born, the names of my friends and family, cities I'd lived in, and other people and places that were important to me. Once I'd completed this small autobiography I listed every important person, company, and event I could remember from the 90's and 00's. There was no telling how similar events in this timeline would be, but the newspaper headlines I saw seemed reasonable for 1991. Maybe I'd be able to make a fortune on the stock market, get in early on Microsoft or Google.
That is, if Wizards even had any use for Muggle money. I still had no understand of the workings of the Wizarding economy, and its relationship to the Muggle one. Frustrated with my lack of knowledge, I'd used my introductory texts for Potions and Herbalism, along with the Owl order potion-ingredient catalog I'd picked up at Jigger's, to tabulate costs for all of the first year potions. My plan was to compare these costs to the listed prices for those potions in Diagon Alley, to get an idea of the profit margins. My hypothesis was that simple potions like these wouldn't be worth selling; the profits would more likely be in the most complex and volatile brews. Still, every hypothesis needs to be tested.
In addition to my memoir writing and potion pricing, I had finished reading all of my first year books and felt confident that I would be rivaling even Hermione's preparedness. While I seemed to have some talent for Charms and little trouble mastering even second year charms, Transfiguration had proved quite a bit more difficult. Getting the eye in a needle when transfiguring it from a toothpick had been a serious headache.
While I could conceivably continue hiding and studying right up until the Hogwarts Express left King's Cross, I was just too bored, sick of the unchanging surroundings in my humble abode. Harry's birthday was coming up on the 31st of July, and I decided that I'd celebrate it. My own had passed unnoticed during my initial captivity at the Dursley's. Harry's 11th birthday would be a rite of passage, a personal ritual to seal my identity as Harry Potter. The end of an old chapter, and the start of a new one.
The day itself arrived quickly. I had devoted intense Occlumency sessions to locking the fading remnants my old identity in the deepest recesses of my mind, and reinforcing my new one. 'I am Harry James Potter' became a mantra I repeated to myself for hours on end. Perhaps I was being paranoid, but I wanted to avoid detection by Dumbledore at all costs. I hadn't chosen to possess Harry Potter, yet I suspected the Headmaster (and Professor Snape, for that matter) would not take kindly to the possession of the Boy-Who-Lived by an interdimensional traveller, accidental or not.
Butterflies roiled about in my stomach as I stepped out of the undergrowth in Regent's Park around mid-morning, all of my world possessions in the packed-up tent slung across my back. I had memorized the route to the Leaky Cauldron using my atlas of London, and I followed it automatically, preoccupied with worry over the coming day.
I knew today would be pivotal, no matter what the outcome of contacting Dumbledore. Would Hagrid still be sent to Number Two Privet Drive, given that I had managed to open my Hogwarts letter and avoided the dramatic events leading to the Hut-on-the-Rock in the books? Would Dumbledore have been alerted to my extended absence from Privet Drive? I doubted the Dursleys would have contacted him, but Arabella Figg might have inquired after me, or Dumbledore might have divined my absence through magical means.
My biggest fear was that Dumbledore would insist I return to Privet Drive; despite the loneliness my weeks in isolation had engendered, the Dursleys were not the sort of social contact I wanted. Unfortunately, I wasn't sure what alternatives I could suggest; Dumbledore would surely insist that I have adult supervision, even if he could be convinced to let me leave the protection of the blood wards.
Only stopping for a hearty breakfast at a small cafe, I reached the Leaky Cauldron in the early afternoon, still lacking a solution to my dilemma. Telling Dumbledore the truth of my situation might lead to imprisonment with the Dursleys, but lying to him about it would, at best, lead to another month of camping in London parks. Perhaps using the floo in the Cauldron to reach out to Professor McGonagall? If I could manage to win her over to my cause, I might have useful ally in avoiding being sent back to the Dursleys.
I had prepared a letter to Dumbledore earlier in the morning, stating that I would indeed be attending Hogwarts. I'd also added that my relatives had requested no owls or visitors in the intervening month, out of concern for their privacy. Sighing, I entered the Cauldron and moved quickly and quietly through the dim pub and into the back alley. As tempting as it was to reach out to McGonagall or another potential ally, the risk was simply too high that it would backfire and they wouldn't take me seriously.
No, my freedom needed to remain a secret, for now, and possibly for my entire tenure at Hogwarts. If the books had made one thing clear, it was that Dumbledore was convinced beyond a shadow of a doubt that being at the Dursleys, behind the protection of Lily Potter's sacrifice, was the best location for the eleven-year old boy whose body I now happened to possess.
The Alley was still quiet this early in the morning, and I leaned against the wall across from the entrance, where the shadows were deepest. Hopefully someone entered from the Cauldron instead of leaving the Alley so that I could observe the proper sequence of bricks to tap to open the way; waiting for a stranger to enter the alley was quite inconvenient and it would doubtless be awkward if I were noticed skulking about.
Eventually a harried looking middle-aged wizard with thinning sandy hair rushed passed me and flicked his wand across the wall, too rapidly to follow. I growled as he rushed through, and decided to wait for the next opportunity. Unfortunately, no one else approached as the minutes slowly passed, and my mind began to drift to my plans for the remainder of the summer.
It was surprising, really, how a few weeks of solitude was making me feel so isolated and restless. Boredom didn't explain it; it wasn't like I lacked books to read or spells to practice, though the bland diet was wearing on me. No, it was more likely a combination of several things - that I felt helpless in a child's body, that I had no friends or family to confide in, that I was homeless, and that my memories of my previous life - my real life, were growing less clear each day.
I shook my head. No wonder I'm a mess. The self-pity wasn't helping, though. I'd just have to suck it up for the next month; once I got to Hogwarts I'd have a completely different set of problems, and plenty of time to come up with a more comfortable arrangement for next summer. Hogwarts was what I really needed to be thinking about, and I realized just how little of a plan I had.
Should I attempt to follow the timeline, to really be Harry, to get the most benefit of my foreknowledge? Should I use my knowledge to right wrongs and help people reach their potential sooner? Or perhaps I should just be myself, and ignore what Harry did in canon entirely. Who knew if I'd even be able to pull everything off just like Harry, and maybe it'd be smarter to just do things my way from the start.
My musings were interrupted by the arrival of a family, a cautious-looking couple being led by an exuberant young boy who was clutching a wand in one fist while dragging his mother behind him with the other.
"And you promised," the boy was saying, "that I would get an owl this year. Remember how Professor Flitwick opened the Alley entrance last year? I can do it now! Watch! Dad, watch!"
I forced myself to remain relaxed as the father peered closely into the shadows that hid me, but his son had drawn his attention before I was spotted. The child made a great show of tapping the bricks and I had no trouble catching the pattern this time. Just to make sure, I waited until the family had passed through and the wall had closed up again before pulling my own wand out and tapping the bricks in the same sequence, while the memory was still fresh. The bricks shifted apart, and I hurried into Diagon Alley.
The Alley had grown significantly more crowded when I sat down for lunch several hours later. I'd revisited the store where I bought my tent, and after searching it from top to bottom, had acquired a number of useful items in a second-hand bargain shelf in a recessed alcove at the rear of the establishment.
A set of pans and cutlery with self-cleaning charms would make my culinary efforts much more enjoyable and efficient. I also picked up a Muggle fishing pole that had been charmed to never tangle and automatically reel in fish when hooked. If I ended up camped near water, it'd be an easy source of free and healthy food.
The final item I'd found was what currently occupied my attention. A battered and dog-eared journal, it was filled with dense, spidery handwriting and hand drawn maps. Deciphering it was slow going, but what little I had read before purchasing it had sparked my interest. Now that spark was kindling a larger fire of excitement as I leafed through the tattered yellow pages between bites of steaming pot pie.
While I couldn't determine the author's identity, it was clear they had been very interested in the outdoors. The author had been focused on the location of rare magical herbs that resisted cultivation and could only be found in the wild, and the various maps were devoted to locations where these herbs had been found. However, the text was rambling and often digressed into asides about spells the author found useful while roughing it in the wilderness on herb-gathering expeditions.
Details on how to cast the more obscure spells were sparse, but at least the name of the spell would give me a starting point for further research. What really had me interested, though, was a paragraph I'd found under one of the maps.
Spoke with Dippet today on my way into the Firbadin Forest. He wants more Icebloom petals… how many times do I need to tell him they only flower in the winter?! Acted affronted I can't get them, said I was being immature when I asked him if he knew a charm to change the season. Immature! As if I needed his permission to enter the Forest. The Ministry Wilds Act of 1689 clearly gives any witch or wizard with legitimate need access to the Occluded Wilds.
The Occluded Wilds were not something I remembered from canon. The reference to Dippet was what had caught my interest - was that the same Dippet who'd been the Headmaster of Hogwarts during Tom Riddle's time? The similarity between Firbadin and Forbidden also caught my eye. Was that a coincidence, or could this be referring to the Forbidden Forest at Hogwarts? Surely the author's wouldn't have misspelled it that egregiously. Perhaps Forbidden was a play on words, a reference to the original name.
The plural Occluded Wilds implied that, if the Forbidden Forest was one, there were more. More research was needed, but I had a hunch that the Ministry Wilds Act had hidden several areas of wilderness with magical flora or fauna from Muggles, probably for their mutual protection. A stop at Flourish & Blotts was definitely in order before I left the Alley.
Finishing my lunch, I stuffed the journal into a pocket and made my way to the potion shop I remembered seeing, J. Pippin's Potions. My funds were inexhaustible, so I avoided browsing the wares and made a beeline for a stack of mail-order catalogues on the unattended cashier's counter. This joined the journal in my robe pocket as I made my way back out and toward Flourish & Blotts.
A few hours later, much of my theory had been confirmed. Thousands of acres of magical wilderness had been hidden away from the Muggle world, made Unplottable and totally inaccessible except through specific Portals. The exception to this was Firbadin Forest, which had no portal and was accessed through the Hogwarts grounds. No mention was made of the Forbidden Forest, but I felt it safe to assume this was a neologism coined by the staff or students of Hogwarts. I made a mental note to see if I could find any mention of this in my copy of Hogwarts: A History.
Most of the books I'd gone through were stacked neatly on the table I'd been using, in a pile for the staff to reshelf. I carried only two books to the front of the shop to purchase - A Comprehensive Listing of Ministry Acts and Treaties, 1630-1930. A bit dated and very dry, the massive tome was nevertheless packed with the full text of every law passed in those three centuries, something that would no doubt prove an invaluable resource.
I was really proud of my other find, a slim old canvas-bound volume simply entitled The Occluded Wilds. The title was printed in tiny, faded text on the spine of the volume and I had gone by it on the shelves without seeing it several times before I noticed it. Within was a chapter on each hidden area, including a brief history, prominent magical plants, creatures, and beings residing within, and most importantly, the location of the Portal permitting access and instructions on using it.
Paying for my books, I ambled over to Wiseacre's Wizarding Equipment, where I had purchased my telescope for Hogwarts. I didn't have a clock of any sort, which hadn't been much of an issue yet, but it was irritating never knowing the exact time, and I had noticed some magical watches and clocks at Wiseacre's during my first visit.
Indeed, an entire shelf was devoted to timepieces, and a few large grandfather clocks even stood off to the side. I saw that one of them had a display similar to the Weasley family clock, though the hands were unlabelled.
The price tags attached to many of the more advanced models was quite high, but the bottom shelf contained discontinued models which were much more affordable. I eventually chose a dented and scratched brass pocket watch with several useful features. In addition to a perpetual calendar displaying the date, it featured a compass and altimeter, which Harry hadn't seen on any except the most expensive current models.
Along the outer rim of the watch's face, stylized suns and moons indicated the times of the next sunrise, sunset, moonrise, and moonset. I had already read a number of references to magic that only worked or worked best during one of these times, and this would be a great way to get myself used to keeping track of these events. I'd never had any reason to pay them much attention in my prior existence as a Muggle.
I counted out my money to verify I had enough to pay for the pocket watch, which I did but only barely. Since I wanted to buy an owl - Hedwig, if I could find her - this meant I had to make another trip to Gringotts. I didn't relish another encounter with the Goblins but I saw no way of avoiding it.
The trip to my vault went off without a hitch, though I had to wait for almost an hour before a Goblin was available to take me down on a cart. I'd taken the opportunity to set up my tent inside my vault and transfer several hundred Galleons to my trunk, figuring it would be all but impossible to get back to Diagon Alley during the school year if I ran out of money again. The piles of gold Harry's parents had left him were already sadly diminished from their initial state.
At Eeylops Owl Emporium my luck held true and soon I was standing outside, holding a cage containing a beautiful snowy white owl that I felt sure was Hedwig in one hand, a heavy bag containing a year's worth of owl supplies and a book on their care in the other. The sky was beginning to take on a reddish tinge from the setting sun.
I moved off out of the flow of shoppers, set Hedwig and her supplies down, and pulled out my pocket watch. The time was half past seven, and sunset was just over an hour away. I frowned, as I barely had enough time to get back to Regent's Park before dark. I didn't want to risk being out at night in London as an eleven year old, so I decided to return to the closer, if less secluded, spot I had first camped out at in Hyde Park.
Not wanting to carry an owl through the streets of Muggle London, I sent Hedwig off to Dumbledore with the letter I'd prepared. The flight to Scotland would take her until well after nightfall, so I told her to rest at Hogwarts and to come find me at her leisure the following night, hoping her light hoot before taking off meant she understood.
I managed to stuff all of the owl supplies into the expanded pockets of my robe, so I only had to carry the empty cage. Getting into my trunk meant setting up my tent, not something that felt appropriate in the middle of Diagon Alley, but the cage was light enough. Returning to the Muggle side of London through the Leaky Cauldron, I hastened along the now familiar route back to Hyde Park.
Later that evening found me standing outside of my tent in the moonlight, holding my hand above the Cleansweep 7 lying on the ground in front of me. After getting back and setting up camp, I'd plunged into The Occluded Wilds.
Most of the wilds were full of dangerous magical creatures, but several seemed quite safe. From what Harry had been able to gather during his earlier research at Flourish and Blotts, they were all quite rarely visited; in fact, it wasn't even well known that they existed. Many of them were filled with dangerous magical creatures, but several looked quite safe.
I had initially dismissed learning to fly as too dangerous, but now I was very tempted. The smallest of the wilds, known as Sopophorous Isle, was a marshy island in the mouth of the River Thames. Unlike the other larger wilds, Sopophorous Isle didn't play host to any magical beings or beasts, or anything magical except the rare Sopophorous plants that grew there.
The plants had no harvestable ingredients in the summer, so it was extremely unlikely I'd run into anyone there. I'd have the run of the place to myself, my own private island for all intents and purposes. A dream I'd had in my Muggle life which seemed no less enticing in my new circumstances.
The problem was that, short of renting a boat or going for a swim, the only way I'd be able to reach the Portal was by broom. Located on a tiny island off of the main Isle and not magically inaccessible, there was a sketch showing its distinctive shape - which reminded me vaguely of an elephant with its trunk curved upwards - as well as its location on the shoreline.
I was fairly sure I'd located that bit of shoreline in my atlas, though the little island itself was too small and useless a speck of land to be depicted. No more than fifty miles outside London, I figured I could follow the Thames east at night from the sky and be there in a few hours. The risk of being spotted in the dark wearing all black and hundreds of feet up was minimal.
Yes, it was worth the risk, I had decided. A month of hiding out in the parks of Muggle London promised tedium and boredom, and carried risks of its own, of the Muggle variety. Muggers, pedophiles, and all manner of deviants - I knew I was lucky I hadn't had any problems of this nature so far. My tent was charmed to repel Muggles, but I had to leave it sometimes.
"Up," I confidently intoned.
The broom didn't move under my outstretched arm. Not a twitch. I sighed. Of course it wouldn't be that easy.
"Up," I repeated.
By the first rays of dawn, my voice was hoarse and my eyes were grainy, but the broom smacked satisfyingly into my hand each time I croaked the command. Shooting an Aguamenti into my parched throat, then choking a bit as some of it went down the wrong way, I made my way back into my tent to sleep.
Over the next week I learned to fly. I proceeded with extreme caution, as I was very aware that I had no Madame Pomfrey to visit. I spent the first two nights merely getting comfortable hovering and moving at a slow drift. By the fifth night I could cruise along at speeds that felt similar to riding a bicycle, and felt steady enough in flight that I started flying higher and higher.
On the sixth night I left Hyde Park and flew to Regent Park and back, and felt completely invisible the whole time. Wearing black from head to toe, there was no chance someone would see me at night, as long as I stayed high enough.
I mostly spent the mornings sleeping and the afternoons reading or practicing magic in my tent, though I ventured out of the park once to stock up on dried food to round out the rice I already had. Oatmeal, several varieties of lentils and nuts, raisins and a few other kinds of dried fruit. Nothing fancy, but it would keep me from starving if I couldn't find any other sources of food.
On the seventh night, August 7th, I packed up my tent, slung it on my back, straddled my broom, and took off into the sky, heading for the Thames. Turning east, I set off for Sopophorous Isle.