Harry read the strange letter which had just arrived for him delivered by the owl. The moment he had seen the letter, he'd been mystified. He never received letters, especially at the Dursleys. He also hadn't subscribed to any magazine, and besides the owl was also a curiosity.

The front of the letter didn't have a postmark or a stamp; it just had the address of where Harry was in the foster home, what floor, and where in London.

That kind of information was just simply too detailed for his liking. Most letters did not add details like which floor and which bedroom in the foster home he was in, and the accuracy was extremely disturbing towards the ten-year-old boy, and as he picked it up, Harry was surprised; the paper of the envelope was extremely different from anything he had ever felt before. It was a yellow-white colour, and it reminded him of parchment from the old books he had found in the British Library.

But who would use such an outdated paper to write formal letters?

For a moment, Harry wondered if this was a joke, something to aggravate him, a trick by the kids in the foster home. But that made little sense; the kids at the foster home didn't have the imagination to do something like this. No, their usual tricks were simpler, more childish, and were designed to humiliate him.

They wouldn't send him something like this, and how would they have an owl of all things deliver it? Harry sighed as he opened the owl, upon noticing how impatiently the owl was waiting for him to take the letter.

"Okay, I'm opening it," Harry took the letter and opened it up and took the letter out and began to read it.

Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.

Headmaster Albus Wulfric Percival Brian Dumbledore.

(Order of Merlin, First Class, Grand Sorcerer, Chief Warlock, Supreme Mugwump, International Confederation of Wizards)

Dear Mr Potter,

We are pleased to inform you that you have a place at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Please find enclosed a list of all necessary books and equipment.

Term begins on 1st September. We await your owl by no later than 31st July.

Minerva McGonagall.

Deputy Headmistress.

"Hogwarts? School of witchcraft and wizardry?" Harry whispered to himself. In his mind, he remembered every single thing that happened to him as a child, and while he had always known it was magic, having this final confirmation which proved his childish belief in magic was a dream come true.

As the years passed since his escape from the Dursleys, Harry Potter felt his life was improving steadily; while he rarely spent any time with the kids at the children's home, except for meals, he largely kept to his own company. The Dursleys had made it impossible for him to really socialise with others and so he had come to find that he liked his own company. It had worried the staff at the children's home and the school before the inevitable happened when he was picked on for being small and rather introverted, and he had lashed out with his violent temper and his powers had reacted, and some of the bullies had ended up thrown away from him without him touching them.

After that, some of the kids called him a freak and the teachers and some of the staff here had begun calling him a freak. The only reason his life was improving steadily had nothing to do with the thoughts and the views of the staff and people who worked here; Harry didn't care about them, their opinions didn't matter to him.

In a few months, he would be heading off into secondary education, meaning his future was within reach. Or at least that was the plan before he had gotten this letter. Who would pass up the chance to learn magic? Harry had longed to understand and develop his powers to a greater extent than what he was capable of.

But he was confused by the last part of the letter.

"What does it mean, we await your owl?" Harry asked himself before he turned to the owl curiously. "Do they want me to write something that confirms my interest?"

The owl hooted.

'I'll take that as a yes, and it might help me learn more about my family, and find out what happened to them.'

"Fair enough, just bear with me for a few minutes." Harry picked up his notebook and he wrote in his best handwriting a small letter after spending a minute thinking through what he would like to say before he began writing. Once he was finished he gave the letter to the owl, and as he saw it flying off, Harry wondered what the response would be.

Xxxx

Bathsheda Babbling, the nineteen-year-old professor of Ancient Runes at Hogwarts, stared at the children's home sadly. She had never liked the concept of orphanages. But it was an occupational hazard for some muggle-borns and even a few half-bloods to be raised in places like this.

Today, she was here to induct a muggle-born student, Harry Potter, into Hogwarts. Ordinarily, this would not be her job, even if it was written into her contract which all Hogwarts professors signed when they were hired to their posts, to accept the responsibility of travelling to the homes of muggles and tell them and their children of the magical world.

Usually, the Heads of Houses would do it, even if Snape was somehow exempt from the job and Dumbledore allowed the greasy bastard to get away with it, but Professor Sprout was away at a Herbology conference, and Professor Flitwick was away, and Professor McGonagall was busy with other muggle-borns.

In the end, the responsibility rested on the shoulders of herself, Septima Vector, and Lily Potter. But Septima had drawn straws with her, and Bathsheda was convinced the other woman had rigged the whole thing. Lily was at home with her family, so the job fell to her. Nobody in their right mind would give that prattling drunken idiot Trelawney the job, and Binns was dead.

Bathsheda took a deep breath and walked inside.

Xxxx

Harry was playing with his guitar when he got the visit from Professor Babbling. It was strange when he was growing up he had never considered music to be worth his time; Dudley had always made his parents buy him the noisiest musical instruments he could find out about, but he always failed to realise making a noise with them didn't automatically grant him the gift of being a musician.

What made it worse was Vernon and Petunia always seemed to know that in a few weeks, their spoilt brat of a son would bang and bang and bang and he wouldn't be able to achieve a decent melody. And then he would destroy it completely or throw the remains in the second bedroom.

While Vernon and Petunia didn't fail to spoil their son, they had their limits, and musical instruments were one of them. They hated having to buy their son musical instruments that Dudley lacked the discipline or the commitment to learn about. And they hated the noises he made.

Music had never been something Harry had much time for either, and when he had been younger he had never truly cared. All of that had changed for good when he had gone to London and he had seen real musicians for the first time.

And what soul did some of them have?

He had learnt how to play the guitar from a gifted busker when he had been on the streets. The busker had played in the London Underground station at Victoria, one of the busiest stations on the network; Harry had been picking people's pockets at the time when he had heard some of the most beautiful music he had ever heard.

Harry had always hated music lessons at school, being how regimented they were, and how the teachers kept the activities to a minimum that reduced the fun in them by a massive degree.

But the busker was a true musician, he was talented and he played with a soulful touch that none of the sorry excuses for musicians Harry had heard over the years. Harry had expressed his interest and the busker, seeing his fascination, gave him a few lessons right there on the spot, discovering he had a gift for the guitar.

After a few more lessons which stretched across four brief months, Harry had become good at playing the guitar, and the busker had taught him how to read a music sheet; he had stolen a few wallets and he used the money to buy himself a small guitar, and he quickly got into the practice.

He played the guitar, writing up songs in his mind, as a hobby, but also to think; it was a bit like Sherlock Holmes using the violin to help him think through a particularly difficult and tricky case.

He was thinking about the Hogwarts letter. It was only a few days, but he was beginning to wonder if it was real or not, even if he still had the letter in question and the envelope in which it had arrived. All of it was there, and he had seen the list, but there was no sign of a map to the place where he could get them. While magic certainly explained, Harry couldn't do much else, and he was beginning to feel disheartened and even angry he'd been tricked since there was no way he could get his supplies.

The door knocked and Harry looked up and stopped playing with his guitar. "Yes?"

The door opened and Gail, the matron stepped inside. "Hello, Harry," she greeted with a little rancour in her voice. She had originally liked him before discovering those magical moments that surrounded him, but she had become terrified of him later on. "There's a teacher here to see you. She says you've received a scholarship to some prestigious school."

Harry sat up, pushing the guitar aside. "A school? I don't know anything about any scholarship?"

"Then tell her that," Gail snapped before she walked out, and Harry picked up on a whispered conversation. Then he heard a pair of footsteps walking away from the door before another woman stepped in. She was a beautiful young woman dressed in a smart business suit that gave her a truly professional air. The woman, the teacher, had beautiful dark skin and long dark hair that was pulled back into an elegant bun, and her eyes gleamed like melted chocolate.

"Hello, there," the woman said before her smile seemed to fade on her face.

Harry watched her for a moment, wondering what was wrong. "Is everything alright?" He asked while he tried to keep the trepidation out of his voice. He wondered how long this woman had been with Gail, and what hateful things she'd heard, but it appeared she was friendly enough but he was uncertain whether he should trust her.

"I'm sorry, but do you know a Lily and James Potter?" The woman asked after she'd spent a few moments examining the boy's features; he greatly resembled James Potter too much for it to be a coincidence and he resembled Charlie Potter as well, but he had the emerald green eyes that glowed with power, exactly like Lily.

Harry blinked, far-off memories sparking in his mind. "I…think so," he said. "Why?"

Bathsheda rubbed her chin thoughtfully, wondering how this was possible. She decided there and then to make sure this boy went to get an inheritance test at Gringotts; it would cost, but she was willing to foot the bill to discover if this boy was related to the Potters. "I think they're your parents," she admitted.

Harry backed away in shock. "What?" The implications of what she'd just meant came to his mind. "Y-you mean they're alive?"

"What, you thought they were dead?"

"I was told they'd died in a car crash! They've been alive this whole time?" Harry had known for years the Dursleys lied to him, but this was too much in his mind.

Bathsheda was horrified by what she'd just heard, and she decided this was going to be a quick introduction. "Harry, I know this is a shock, but please, bear with me," she pleaded; she had never had a problem keeping order in her classes, this was out of her depth. The kids she dealt with usually gave her lip over homework and projects, but this was something new and she didn't like the implications. "I will help you find out what happened, I promise. But first, I need to ask you something; I am a witch, and I practice magic. I am a teacher at Hogwarts where I teach Ancient Runes."

Harry calmed down enough to become intrigued even if he wanted answers.