x. the boy who lived
Harriet spent three days reading The Rise and Fall of the Dark Arts from cover to cover and didn't feel better when she finished it.
The Dark Arts, she learned, were a kind of particularly punishing magic that was, for the most part, used for the express purpose of evil. Spells themselves didn't have morality—but sometimes gathering the things that went into the preparations of the spells required evil, like fresh baby hearts or the eyes of your murder victim, or they needed you to feel evil things like hatred and rage or bloodlust before they could be cast.
The book talked about a witch named Morgana who was said to have brought the Dark Arts to Britain, and who hated Merlin—who actually existed, much to Harriet's shock. Page after page of Dark wizards and witches flipped by under Harriet's hands: Ekrizdis, Herpo the Foul, Godelot, Gormlaith Gaunt, Ethelred the Ever-Ready, and Emeric the Evil—on and on it went. Harriet felt queasy reading about the deeds they'd committed, the books they'd written, the places they'd built. So far, all she'd seen was the wonder of magic, but she soon came to understand magic was also capable of great terror.
When events encroached on the modern era, a curl of dread settled in Harriet's stomach. She learned of Gellert Grindelwald, who sought to dominate the Muggle world with magical might, who met his fate at the hands of a great wizard named Albus Dumbledore—and then he faded, replaced by a new section in the book attributed entirely to the "Wizarding War" and "The Dark Lord V—."
No history of the wizard's past could be found, and not a bloody hint of his name, either. The author referred to him only as "The Dark Lord" or "V—" or "You Know Who," which Harriet thought incredibly frustrating because no, no she did not know who. "V" rallied followers dubbed "Death Eaters" to his cause of pure-blood supremacy, wanting nothing more than the utter subjugation of the non-magical world.
He killed many people. Their names blurred together for Harriet, but she knew she'd see their children at Hogwarts, and that all this was more than some dry history in a book, or a fantastic fairytale about magic battles. This was real, and it was the world she'd been born into with so many others. Fear and uncertainty bled through the yellowing pages like wet ink.
She found her parents listed near the back. The passage read; "James and Lily Potter were both subjected to the Killing Curse by V— on the evening of October the 31st. V— ruined their residence with a Blasting Curse, overlooking the Potters' daughter, who survived in the wreckage."
That was it. Nothing about why they'd died, if they'd opposed "V" or if they'd been neutral or just people caught in the crossfire. The author hadn't even included Harriet's name, and though she really didn't want her name written in such a horrid book, it bothered her that she was separated from her parents even in print. James and Lily Potter. The Potters' daughter. Overlooked, it said. Wallowing, Harriet bitterly muttered that the word basically summed up the whole of her existence until now. Overlooked.
The worst part was learning "V" met his fate barely two hours later. His followers, his Death Eaters, raided a home in Dorset and killed a pure-blood witch named Alice Longbottom. The Death Eaters occupied her husband, Frank Longbottom, as "V" entered the home and aimed a Killing Curse at their son, Neville, only for the Dark Lord to vanish with an "agonized scream" before he could finish casting. No one was precisely sure what happened and the author included several interviews from various magical experts who postulated on the phenomenon, but one thing was certain; Neville Longbottom had survived the Dark Lord and was hailed "the Boy Who Lived." He was a hero. The war ended.
Anger and resentment festered in the deepest pits of Harriet's heart. Two hours. A decade of war, and her family was torn apart a measly two hours before it ended. Two bloody hours. If "V" had gone to the Longbottom's first, or if he'd stopped for supper or hit buggering magical traffic—Harriet would've spent the last ten years with her mum and dad at home, not living in a cupboard with spiders, not toiling in the garden and hoping she'd get dinner later. She couldn't even figure out the bastard's name.
Harriet hated that petty emotion. It was something the Dursleys would feel; slighted by fate, entitled, fussy and argumentative, like Dudley when he counted his presents and came up short. She wasn't the only one to lose people, not at all. Two hours, two days, two years—what did it matter? James and Lily were dead, and though Harriet was alone now, she had Hogwarts to look forward to, and perhaps friends.
At the bottom of the page, in the footer, her finger traced over the handwritten words "The best coups are silent." In light of everything she'd learned, Harriet could make little sense of the words, so she shoved them from her mind. She snapped the book closed, took a deep breath, and moved on.
On the thirty-first of July, Harriet Potter sprang out of bed more excited than she had ever been on her birthday before.
Her exploration of Diagon Alley and the adjoining lanes had taken her all over in the week Harriet had been boarding at the Leaky Cauldron. She ate ice cream at Florean's almost every day and wandered from there, through Diagon and Horizont, along Empiric Alley and Toad Road all the way to Carkitt Market, where she liked to watch the wizards work at the Bowman E. Wright Blacksmith and listen to explosions coming from Dr Filibuster's Fireworks. A teenage witch intern at Globus Mundi Travel Agency liked to chat with Harriet about all the magical societies scattered around the world, and the clock outside Cogg and Bell Clockmakers always chimed the hour with a series of strange, screaming bird calls. Harriet's favorite stop, though, was The Junk Shop, where she'd poke through all manner of delightful bits and bobs, most of it broken, but some of the stuff quite interesting all the same.
Today, Harriet had a special destination in mind: the Magical Menagerie.
She had seen the owls at Eeylops and cats ran rampant throughout the whole of the Wizarding quarter, but there was only one kind of animal for Harriet and it wasn't allowed at Hogwarts. Resigned, she promised herself she wouldn't stop by the store until her birthday, when she'd go to fawn over the great scaly beasts none of the other witches or wizards seemed inclined pay attention to. It promised to be the best birthday ever.
No bell chimed when Harriet edged open the door to the Magical Menagerie early that afternoon; instead, she was greeted by collective squawking from an—she squinted—unkindness of black-feathered ravens. There were no shelves in the Menagerie; rather, the aisles themselves were comprised of dozens and dozens of cages stacked atop each other, the interior a constant riot of squeals and barks and cries. Several haughty owls lined the top of a rail protruding from the brick wall and they glared at Harriet as she passed them by. A small dog with a forked tail dashed around the store chased by a younger witch spouting muttered obscenities.
The snakes and other less popular pets were kept farther in the store's depths, nearer the smudged windows that looked out over Horizont Alley and the corner of Gringotts. There weren't many there; a few skinny garter snakes, some darkly colored adders, two sleepy cobras with glittering scales of gold, and a very ornery boomslang tearing up his bed of green leaves.
"Hello," Harriet, crouching down before the glass tanks, whispered. The snakes paused as all snakes did when they suddenly heard Harriet talking to them. "You're all very pretty."
The cobras preened like peacocks, if such a thing were possible. "Misstresss," the garter snakes jabbered. The boomslang's tongue flickered in and out at a rapid pace before it slunk beneath its torn bed and disappeared. Harriet guessed he or she wasn't up for conversation.
"A Sspeaker?"
Startled, Harriet glanced at the larger tank that sat above the others, partially covered by a velvet drape and dark on the inside. Scales glittered in the sparse illumination of the sun, and she reached up to give the drape a gentle nudge or two. Two blue eyes appeared to float in the tank's inky shadows—but, no, there was serpent hidden inside. It was mostly black, body larger than the littler snakes below with silvery scales on its belly and a crown of stubby white horns. A small gemstone that looked like a sapphire rested on the crest of its angular head.
"Ssspeak," the serpent ordered as its violet tongue flicked out of its mouth. Harriet guessed it to be five feet or so in length, thicker than her arm.
"I've never seen a snake like you," she blurted, almost nose to nose with the creature on the other side of the glass. Those eyes burned blue and white, fierce and unnaturally intelligent. "What are you?"
"You tell me," the serpent returned. "If you are ssso sssmart. I call mysself Liviusss."
Harriet didn't know snakes could have names—or that they could be so snooty. She'd asked the little grass snakes and adders who visited Number Four before, but to the last they seemed confused by the concept. Truly, most snakes Harriet encountered hadn't been terribly bright. They chatted about crickets and mice and had little patience for any other kind of conversation.
"That's a nice name," Harriet told the serpent. "You are very pretty."
The snake—Livius—scoffed at Harriet. Scoffed! "You sssaid that to the…othersss." Given its tone, Livius didn't appear to enjoy the company of his monosyllabic friends in the tanks below.
Harriet blinked. "Well, you are very pretty. You have a gem on your—err—forehead. I imagine it glitters in the sun."
Livius lifted its head an increment higher and swayed as it continued to study Harriet. "I wouldn't know. I wasss hatched in thiss placcce. The ssun iss beyond me."
"How terrible."
Livius swayed again, the motion hypnotic. "Yesss. Terrible…Misstresss."
"Are you talking to that snake?"
Harriet jumped and blushed when she realized how close her nose had gotten to the glass. "Um." Turning, she found a girl about her age standing nearby, though she rose a full head taller than poor Harriet in height. She wore black wizarding robes with silver thread tooled about the wide sleeves and the high collar, a little pin with a crest attached to the lapel. The girl was much prettier than Harriet, she noted with chagrin, her black hair neatly brushed and gathered in a bun at the nape of her neck, her gray eyes able to look about without the obnoxious cover of thick glasses or a wild fringe. She had a bent notebook in her slender hands.
"Yeah," Harriet finally admitted. The girl leaned nearer the tank to peek at the serpent inside, her lips tipping into a slight frown.
"I didn't know witches or wizards could do that," the girl said.
"I didn't know either." Harriet wondered how many others spoke to snakes. Perhaps it was one of those things in the long list of things that made Harriet odd, even among magical folk. "This one's kind of bossy."
"Bossy?"
"Yeah. All the snakes I've found in the garden before just want to chat about bugs or where the sunniest spot is to nap. Two grass snakes once argued over which rock in the flowerbed was best, so they both napped on the rocks for about an hour while I weeded to test the theory."
The corner of the girl's lips twitched into a lopsided smirk, which looked a bit odd on her otherwise prim face. "How strange."
Harriet shrugged, self-conscious.
"Do you know what kind of snake it is—?"
A shadow fell across the pair, and together they glanced up into the face of an older wizard with a tremendous mustache. "A Horned Serpent," he said as he brusquely shoved by them and went to properly cover the tank again. Livius hissed with displeasure as it disappeared from view. "An exceedingly rare and exceedingly expensive male specimen from North America. It's also quite venomous and not for sale to children. Move along."
The clerk chivvied them back toward the shop's front, which was crowded with kittens and a litter of those playful fork-tailed puppies. "Well, that's rude," the other girl murmured, watching the wizard walk away from the corner of her eye. "Seems an odd choice to keep the creature in the shop then scare off potential customers."
Harriet shrugged again. "I can't buy it anyway. Hogwarts doesn't allow snakes, and where would I keep a thing like that? With my socks?" Chuckling, she poked a finger through the bars of a box containing oddly purring puffballs puddled together. A long pink tongue slipped out to lick Harriet's skin. "Oh, gross."
The girl didn't reply. Harriet glanced about and saw that she had her pale gaze fixated on something occurring out on the street. Harriet craned her neck to see over the top of a crate and through the window, but all she could really see was the backside of a plump wizard talking with the witch next to him. A number of people were clustered in the alley now, all facing something obscured from view.
"Wonder what that's all about," Harriet commented. The girl shook her head in silent answer, then moved toward the rail of owls Harriet had spotted at her entree. Harriet followed along, unsure of what else to do, and the girl didn't appear to mind.
"I need an owl," she said. Harriet decided the statement was directed at her and took the chance at conversation.
"An owl? They have a ton at Eeylops Owl Emporium. It's on the other side of Gringotts. They're a lot more—." Harriet glanced at one of the glowering screech owls. "Friendly."
"I didn't like any of those." The girl pursed her lips as she studied her choices. She had a calm mien, quiet and considerate, relaxed. Harriet, who didn't know how to act in situations like this, felt antsy and wagered that the other girl probably had plenty of Wizarding friends, so it was just Harriet who was awkward and anxious like Aunt Petunia just before Dudley started in on one of his really nasty tantrums.
The door to the shop jerked open and Harriet jumped at the sudden clamor of voices. A boy slipped inside. The door was promptly closed by a wizard wearing maroon robes with fitted attire underneath, who then leaned against the door to prevent it from being opened again. Harriet—who had spent far too many years locked in the cupboard—didn't much like being trapped in a shop, but she swallowed her protests and turned her attention back to the owls.
The girl held up her arm, bent at the elbow, and one of the largest creatures hopped down. Harriet thought it was the meanest looking one of the bunch, with furious golden eyes and a face set in a permanent scowl, but he hooted softly at the girl and gave her fingers a gentle nip. She stroked the glossy black feathers, revealing spots of brown and gray around the back of the bird's head.
"It'd be really useful to have an owl," Harriet babbled. She fussed with the sleeves of her new casual robes. "And he's really big. He could probably carry mail far without getting tired. I read that Hogwarts is in Scotland, so he looks like he could make it back to London without a problem. That's, err, if you are going to Hogwarts and do need to write letters to London…." Harriet subsided into silence.
"…I think I'll get him," the girl replied, voice distant as if lost in thought. She blinked then and gave Harriet a small smile. "I'm sorry for being rude. I'm Elara, and I am starting Hogwarts this year."
Harriet grinned in return. "I'm Harriet."
A loud gasp from the store's manager had Harriet jumping yet again, and the owl on Elara's arm gave his wings an indignant flap. The mustachioed wizard and the younger witch Harriet had seen chasing the dog were both standing by the blond boy who had come inside, the wizard seemingly in raptures and the witch gushing on.
"—and I wasn't even supposed to come in today, it was supposed to be Maggie, it was—."
"—the wife won't even believe me when I tell her—."
"—Morgana's knickers, if I can't even believe it, Belinda's going to be over the moon. Wait until I tell Maggie—."
"—the Boy Who Lived, in my shop!"
Oh, Harriet thought as she stared at the boy who was no older than herself. Youth still clung to the round cheeks of his face and the wide grin he plastered on didn't quite reach his eyes, but his posture oozed easy confidence and he had a cocky set to his jaw, chin tipped up and one hand propped on his hip like he practiced the pose in the mirror.
"Can we have your autograph, Mr. Longbottom? Oh, it would just be such a treat for Belinda—."
The boy gave a slight nod, still smiling, and said, "Of course, sir."
That ugly seed of resentment still rattled about in Harriet's middle as she looked at Neville Longbottom and she squashed the emotion, feeling small and ugly herself for that bitter voice in the back of her head. He took the quill and parchment proffered to him by the wizard and signed his name with a flourish.
Elara watched the scene, the frown once more set on her face. The witch and wizard continued to prattle on and on.
"We should get him some owl treats," Harriet said, wanting to do something besides stand there like a numpty with her stomach full of spiderwebs. "And a cage. I saw some over here…."
Harriet and Elara ventured deeper into the store again and Elara lifted the owl to her shoulder so she could lower her arm. She grabbed a cage off a rack and Harriet sussed out a package of owl treats from behind a bag of lime green fish food.
"Do you reckon he'll like these?" Harriet asked as they started toward the front of the store with the purchases in hand. Elara was rather quiet and Harriet hoped she wasn't bugging the other girl. She tended to be a chatty when nervous. "I mean, I don't know if they come in different flavors or anything. Mrs Figg used to babysit me, and she had all these cats and said they each liked a different kind of canned food—."
They almost bumped into Neville Longbottom coming out of the aisle. Both girls took a step back and Harriet suppressed a grimace.
"Sorry about that," he said with another quick grin. He looked between Elara and Harriet, then asked, "You don't want autographs, do you?"
It was the awkward sort of question Harriet could've never asked with that level of aplomb, but Neville pulled it off as if he did so regularly—which he probably did, considering his level of celebrity. "Er," Harriet said, fiddling with corner of the owl treats bag until it frazzled. Shoot. "No thanks…?"
He blinked, taken aback, like no one had ever turned down an autograph from the Boy Who Lived before. The more Harriet thought on it, the sillier the name sounded. He was the Boy Who Lived and everyone else was the People Who Died or the People Who Are Just Grateful A Murderer Isn't Hanging About Anymore.
Neville didn't look as surefooted as he had a few minutes ago. He acted as if Harriet had gone wildly off script and now he had to improvise.
"If you'll excuse us," Elara said, breaking the awkward silence. "We have somewhere to be."
"Sure, uh—."
Elara stepped around the boy, keeping a polite distance despite the abruptness of her exit, and Harriet scuttled after her. She was grateful for the excuse to leave Neville behind and would have thanked the other girl, had Elara seemed remotely interested in being thanked. The wizard behind the register was still exchanging excited whispers with his assistant, so Elara had to clear her throat to get his attention as she set the ungainly cage on the counter and urged the great horned owl inside of it.
Miffed, the wizard gave Elara her total, and instead of reaching for her purse, the girl asked to borrow the wizard's quill and used it to write something down inside that notebook she'd been carrying since Harriet first saw her. Harriet watched as Elara carefully detached a slip of parchment from the binding, and the inked numbers on the slip glowed for a second before the parchment vanished, only to be replaced by a small pile of gleaming Galleons.
"Wicked!" Harriet said. "And here I've been lugging about all those bloody coins. It's like checks!"
"A bit," Elara admitted as she accepted the cage with her owl and the wizard shrunk the treats down so they could fit inside her pocket. "My guardian showed them to me."
The wizard dressed in maroon robes opened the door and helped them through the crowd standing just outside. The throng had multiplied in the past several minutes. They called Longbottom's name and were disappointed when two girls came out instead. Harriet wondered how Neville dealt with popularity like that. She had difficulty with simple conversation, let alone being some kind of international idol.
"It was really nice to meet you," Harriet said to Elara once they broke out of the milling bodies and began to part ways. The other girl seemed to be headed back toward the Leaky Cauldron while Harriet wanted to return to Gringotts and see about getting one of those nifty checkbooks. Maybe she could bribe Griphook into saying 'happy birthday.'
"You as well." Elara turned to leave—then paused, facing Harriet once more with a determined expression. She jostled the owl about and extended a hand.
Smiling, Harriet offered her own hand and they shook. Is this what it's like to have a friend? Harriet didn't know, but excitement unfurled in her belly at the prospect of finding out. Elara departed then, and Harriet called after her with a happy wave.
"See you at Hogwarts!"
A/N: Dumbledore's initial fear in allowing Harry to grow up in the Wizarding world was that he'd become incredibly arrogant and self-centered. I think Neville, raised in that image from infancy (by a father who survived as well), would have developed a different personality than the one we know—or, at least, would display a more forthright and self-assured exterior than may be present on the inside.
No Hedwig :(. If Hagrid hadn't have been there in Harry's story, I have to wonder if he would have gotten a pet at all.
