Chapter 7
Harry hated being so damned small.
It had been his biggest problem on the run, since there was always someone who deemed him too young to go into places, or to travel without a grown-up, or to be out alone at night. Adults had never helped him, but they seemed to enjoy getting in his way.
"Please, ma'am," implored Harry, "I'll be good, I promise."
"Children under sixteen not allowed without a responsible adult," droned again the ticket clerk in a bored tone, not even looking at him. "Get out of the way, boy. Next!"
It was the way she said 'boy' that did it. That, and the fact that he had walked since dawn to get here, and that he didn't see why he shouldn't be allowed in, and that he was no longer willing to let anyone dictate what he could or couldn't do. The cold anger made easy to reach for his deepest magic, and pleasurable to force the clerk to sell him a ticket and smile dazedly at him as she handed him a plan of the place and wished him a good day.
And that's how Harry found himself walking into the London Zoo for the second time in his life.
He wasn't sure how long it would take for the clerk lady to come back to her senses and maybe call security, so he quickly put as much distance from the entrance as possible, and just in case as soon as he found a secluded enough spot he stepped aside to change his hair style. Ever since that arduous first time when he had tried to replicate the hair growing and turning colour thing he had accidentally done as a little kid, the process had become second nature to him. Unlike the length, he still hadn't figured out how to make the colour stick (it only lasted a few hours at most) but at least at this point he no longer needed a mirror to know he had gotten the shade of blond he wanted instead of electric blue or something like that. And he could change eyebrows too.
His disguise was completed with a new cap he purchased at the zoo gift shop, and as an extra precautionary measure he decided to walk close to some family so it wouldn't be so obvious that he was alone. This proved to be both a good idea and a terrible one, since the first family he decided to trail turned out to be really nice and a constant cause of envy and sadness for Harry. Twice he caught himself staring at the mother with longing, wishing he could get a hug or a fond smile too, and even itching for the stern scolding of the father, since it wasn't anything like Uncle Vernon's threats and warnings and it actually sounded somewhat reassuring. He got the impression that the man would not hesitate to wrestle a bear to protect his children, although he would be seriously cross if it came to that.
"Are you lost, dear?" asked the woman with motherly concern, and Harry realized that he had been staring like a pathetic orphan again.
"No, ma'am," he assured her through the knot in his throat, "my parents are back there getting ice cream, thank you."
He rushed off before she could ask anything else, regretting his stupid decision of coming to a place crowded with happy families. Even the memories of his last visit with the Dursleys made him want to cry, knowing that he had ruined their awful family, and buying himself a large chocolate ice cream like the ones Uncle Vernon had bought Dudley and Piers didn't comfort him at all. Somehow he had enjoyed a lot more the cheap lemon ice pop he had been lucky to get last time.
Harry's situation had improved considerably in the last two weeks. Now he could eat whenever and whatever he wanted, and he had nice clothes that fit, and anyone who tried to hurt him quickly came to regret it. The only chores he had to do every day were to find shelter and to steal what he needed, both things he had gotten rather good at. Especially at stealing money, which he now could do without risking to rob houses or mug people. It was actually quite easy to pinpocket when one could just 'call' the contents of someone's pockets from a safe distance and be gone long before the person realized he had lost his wallet. And it felt less personal than breaking into people's homes and taking their belongings.
So he was doing fine, he supposed, at least in the surviving and staying off the radar aspects. But there was no denying that he felt completely miserable most of the time. And alone, so alone. At least at the Dursleys he had had company, bad as it had been, and a place to call home, sort of, while now... Harry had been constantly on the move since he had run away, not daring to stay in any given place for more than a day, and always too wary of being recognized or suspected as to risk interacting with anyone more than he absolutely had to. Even if he could afford to settle down somewhere and make friends without fear of Dudley scaring them off, Harry wasn't sure he would try, cut off from normal people as he felt.
That's why he had finally come to London, and why he was in the zoo today. He had tried to talk to any and all animals he had come across over the last two weeks, hoping to have an honest conversation with someone who couldn't turn him in to the police and who might be accepting of his freakishness, but none had seemed to understand him. Dogs, cats, birds, rats and several farm animals had all completely ignored him. So he had come here today in search of a wider variety of species, thinking that at the very least he might be able to talk with some snakes.
"What about you?" he asked a monkey when there wasn't anyone close to hear him. "Can you understand me?"
There was no answer. If anything, the monkey seemed even more indifferent.
"If you're just ignoring me, bear in mind that I could break you free if you just asked," he said irritably.
No answer. Harry sighed and moved on to the lions, feeling dejected and wondering if he had lost his mind at some point and not noticed. Maybe he had never left Privet Drive and he was still locked up in his cupboard, hallucinating with freedom and power and food.
If this is madness, I welcome it, he thought, feeling his magic strong and eager inside him, even if it's lonely.
The lions were too far from the fence as to be able to talk to them without raising his voice, so Harry just watched them for a while and kept going, thinking that they would likely be just as uncommunicative as cats and tigers. Giraffes, turtles and kangaroos also kept silence, and while parrots talked plenty Harry was certain that they didn't really understand him. By the time he reached the reptile house he was seriously beginning to fear that he might not be able to talk to any animals at all. It wouldn't make any sense that he could talk only with snakes, after all. What if his chat with the boa constrictor hadn't really happened? Now that he thought about it, it had been he who had done most of the talking, the snake had mostly just moved its head or eyes. The only thing Harry had thought to hear it say had been a hissed 'thanksss, amigo' while it swiftly slid past him, and he had been so shocked by the whole situation at the time that his brain could have easily been malfunctioning.
Maybe he had felt so identified with the bored, lonely snake locked up in a tank all day long that he had wanted to connect with it and had imagined he did. Maybe he had just wanted to think he had a friend, someone who understood what it was like to be locked up and who also thought Dudley was annoying. And he had accidentally set his new friend free, just as he had always wished some imaginary friend would do for him.
A moment later he was considering again the possibility of having lost his mind long ago and hallucinated the entire zoo incident. Now not only he doubted he had ever talked to a boa constrictor, he seriously feared he had never vanished a glass to set it free, since both snake and glass were still there.
Harry placed a hand on the glass and stared at the sleeping boa with a mixture of horror and confusion. Could this be a different one they had brought as a replacement? Somehow he knew it wasn't.
The snake suddenly opened its beady eyes, and slowly, very slowly, raised its head until its eyes were on a level with Harry's.
"You again," it hissed, apparently recognizing him despite his disguise. "No annoying humans with you today?"
A wave of relief coursed through Harry. He hadn't imagined it, at least not the talking part.
"No, I'm alone now," he murmured sadly through the glass. "I had thought you would be in Brazil by now."
Harry got the impression that the snake let out a sigh, if such a thing were possible for snakes.
"I didn't get too far before they caught me and brought me back," it explained with resignation.
"I can break you free again," offered Harry, thinking that if he used his magic carefully he might be able to do it in a way that gave the snake more time to put some distance from the zoo before they realized it was gone.
The boa shook its head.
"I appreciate it, little human, but don't bother. It was a fool's dream. I don't even know which way Brazil is, I would never get there."
Harry had not thought of that. Brazil was in another continent, all the way across the ocean. How would a snake get there? Swimming? Unlikely. And it wasn't as if it would be easy for a massive boa constrictor to board a plane or a ship. Someone would have to take it or send it there, and that would probably require a lot of permissions and money and stuff. Harry might have magic and some resources now, but he was pretty sure it wasn't something he could pull off without risking getting caught himself.
"Does it have to be Brazil?" he asked. "There are woods in England, I could help you get to some place nearby where you could live without people knocking at your glass all day long."
"This land of yours is too cold," complained the snake. "I don't belong here. And it's not so bad inside my cage, actually. I've never gone hungry, I'm always warm, and the caretakers are nice even if they can't understand me."
"But you're not free," pointed out Harry.
"I'm used to it," hissed the snake with a jerk of the head that might be the equivalent of a shrug. "And it's all I've known, so I can't really miss Brazil."
Harry didn't know what to say. He had been stupid to think that freeing someone could be as simple as vanishing a glass. He knew how easy it was to get used to living in captivity, especially when one hadn't known anything else, and how hard it was to leave the relative safety and comfort of one's familiar cage. Now that Harry had had a taste of freedom and independency, he would not go back to the Dursleys for anything in the world, but he doubted he would have changed his cupboard for the streets if he had had food, warmth and nice caretakers there.
His experience also told him that having freedom was not enough to be happy. He certainly was miserable roaming a land that in a way was also too cold for him and to which he also didn't belong. It would be different if he could be free in a magical world, just as it would be different for the snake to be free in Brazil, but as it was...
"I will take you to Brazil someday," he promised solemnly. "I can't now, but someday I will."
"Can't you take me home with you in the meantime?" asked the snake wistfully. "I would rather live with a friend who understands me."
Harry hesitated. He felt unbelievably touched to be called someone's friend, but much as he too longed for the company of a friend who understood him he knew he couldn't take it with him.
"I'm sorry," he said sadly, "but I don't have a home to take you to. I couldn't keep you warm, and it would draw too much attention to go around with a boa constrictor in tow. They would catch us and send us back to our cages before we got too far."
"It's all right, little human," hissed the snake soothingly. "It was another fool's dream. Now go, don't let them catch you."
Harry hesitated again, but no matter how many times he turned the matter inside his head he couldn't see a way of taking the snake with him on the run. It was just too big, and Harry didn't have anything to offer. Finally he whispered a goodbye and walked out of the reptil house and the zoo feeling horribly depressed and guilty.
That night, as he curled to sleep in his latest shelter, he tried to imagine how it would feel to have a huge boa protectively wrapped around him. Harry had never been hugged, but he suspected it might feel the way a hug looked: comforting and safe.
The next morning Harry went to King's Cross. September 1st was still two weeks away, but he wanted to check whether there was a Platform Nine and Three-Quarters and maybe to get another ticket beforehand. His talk with the snake yesterday had decided him to take the risk of attending the magical school if possible, even though it was highly likely they knew about Uncle Vernon —Harry's name and crime hadn't appeared in the news, as far as he knew, but he doubted very much that people who had apparently watched him closely enough as to know he lived inside a cupboard would go unaware of the fact that he had murdered his uncle. They probably had already decided to rescind Harry's acceptance, and they might report him to the police the moment they realized who he was, but he just had to go. Maybe he could pretend to be someone else, with another name and a different appearance, show them his magic so they would consider to accept him and then steal enough money to pay the enrolment and to buy his magical supplies as soon as he figured out where that stuff was sold. If that didn't work, he could go back on the run, but at least then he would have made contact with people like him and discovered where they were hiding.
It was a good plan, he thought, but entirely dependent on finding an apparently inexistent site.
Harry stood facing the platforms. There was a big plastic number nine over the one on the left and a big plastic number ten over the one on the right, and three quarters between them... nothing at all.
He knew it was physically impossible for an extra platform to be somehow crammed between the two, but he had done plenty of impossible things with his magic so far, so after watching for a while Harry approached the brick barrier to examine it at close range. Could there be some sort of portal around here to access another dimension? It sounded delirious, but so it did the whole idea of magic, and it would actually make sense if magical people and creatures like dragons lived in some sort of parallel world. Harry had once half-watched, half-listened from his cupboard a movie about a girl that followed a rabbit into a burrow and landed in a nonsensical world where animals talked and people could be shrunk or enlarged by eating a mushroom. Could this be something like that? He had already shrunk clothes and talked to snakes, and a platform nine and three quarters definitely sounded nonsensical (why not 9 and a half?), so maybe...
Harry stared at the very-solid looking wall, really hoping any magical world he found wasn't scary and filled with crazy people or animals like the one in the movie. Maybe he had to open it with a wish or a magical password like Ali Baba's cave? Or vanish a piece of wall to get access? He couldn't very well try that with a lot of people watching, though, could he? Harry glanced around self-consciously, but people didn't seem to notice him at all as they rushed past him on their way to platforms nine or ten. In fact...
Following a gut-feeling, he raised a hand to the air as if to greet someone in the crowd. No one even blinked in his direction, not even when he threw all caution to the wind and began waving his arms over his head to unsuccessfully draw people's attention. It was as if they couldn't see him, even though he checked and he still hadn't managed to turn himself invisible. Taking this as a sign that he was looking for a magical portal in the right place, Harry turned back to the barrier and made to place a hand over the wall with the intention of opening it the way he opened regular doors or vanishing the bricks if that didn't work.
He let out an involuntary yelp of shock when his hand and entire arm went through the wall. He removed it at once, his heart pounding madly inside his chest, and looked around again to check that no one had noticed. Forcing himself to calm down, Harry raised his hand again and gingerly buried a finger into a not-so-solid-after-all brick, marvelling at the first real evidence of magic that hadn't come from inside him.
He knew it was insanely reckless to just 'jump' through a wall without knowing for a fact that it was safe on the other side, but the prospect excited him more than scared him. This was the gateway to a world he might belong to, and he was determined to meet that world even at the risk of finding himself in a dangerous or crazy place.
And so it was that Harry took a deep breath and marched forward, right through a brick wall and into Platform Nine and Three-Quarters.
This chapter was posted on Apr 10 2022
