The Boy Who Lived

August 30, 9 years after Godric's Hollow

"Yer a wizard, Harry," said the bushy-bearded, three meter giant who had burst into the stone fishing lodge a few minutes earlier.

"A wi-what?" the eleven-year old boy in question stammered at the sitting giant — Rubeus Hagrid, he had called himself.

"A wizard," Mr. Hagrid repeated excitedly. "And a thumping good one, I'd wager. Once you train up a little."

Harry blinked and adjusted his glasses — then rubbed the circular lenses against the left sleeve of his baggy, worn flannel shirt. He also rubbed his eyes for good measure, and pinched himself as an afterthought.

"This isn't real," Harry told himself. Because that's who he was speaking to. All that would be there when he woke up.

As much as he'd like to believe that he was talking to a giant who had just broken down the door, stopped sir from getting angry, was talking to him instead of Dudley and had even given him a (birthday?) cake — it was far too good to be true.

Getting to see sir's fishing lodge is already a treat, Harry thought, trying to banish this dream before it became painful.

"Well," Mr. Hagrid — not real, not real — smiled conspiratorially, "Did you ever make anything happen? Anything you couldn't explain?"

No! Stop!, Harry thought with desperate shakes of his head as quick as his heartbeat.

"Time to repent, freak."

"You dare hurt my son, Satan worshiper!"

"Foul bastard! If it weren't for 'Tunia, I'd drown you this second."

"In the name of the Lord, I will beat the darkness out of you, antichrist."

"You will never bring the work of evil to my son's school again, infernal spirit!"

"When I'm done with you, you'll kneel to the Lord your God and repent, demon!"

"I give you everything, and you try to murder my son! This time, you'll beg for hell."

"One more yelp, and you will wish you had been in the car with your parents that night!"

Harry backed away from the giant, the many memories of the times he repented to sir and the Lord throbbing all over his body.

"You…you're trying to test me!" Harry whispered in horror.

"That's enough of your devil speak!" Sir shouted from the wall he'd been standing against.

The giant stood as his face contorted into fury. Harry stumbled back hastily and landed painfully on his bum.

"Blimey, what in the blazes have you been telling him?" the giant bellowed at sir and ma'am.

"The truth," Ma'am hissed as she paced against the wall. "My mother and father were so proud the day my sister got her letter. We have a witch in the family, isn't it wonderful?"

Somehow, the giant grew more furious with each passing second. Harry feared he might actually blow the house down with his huffs and puffs.

"I was the only one to see her for what she was," Ma'am continued, undeterred. "A freak! Then she met that Potter, and then she had you and I know she'd have you and you'd be the same. Just as strange, just as abnormal…"

"Just as Satanic," Sir growled.

"…and then if you please, she went and got herself blown up!" Ma'am shouted with disgust. "And we got landed with you !"

"Got herself blown up!" the giant thundered, shaking with more fury than the storm outside. "You dare talk about Lily and James Potter like that!"

"I dare!" Ma'am returned.

"And the boy will not being going with your…cult," Sir determined.

"Oh, I suppose a great muggle like yourself is going to stop him, are you?" the giant sneered.

"Muggle?" Harry couldn't help but ask, never hearing the term yourself.

"Non-magic folk," the giant answered.

"Non-Satanic folk," Sir answered simultaneously.

"This boy is going to the finest school of witchcraft and wizardry in the world…" the giant started again.

Harry reflexively flinched at the words "witchcraft" and "wizardry."

"…he'll be under the finest headmaster that Hogwarts has ever seen. Albus Dumbledore!" the giant concluded.

"I will never pay to have that crackpot old fool teach him your demoncraft!" Sir roared with anger. "I would rather die."

Suddenly, the giant pointed his long, pointy-ended umbrella at sir like he was holding a shotgun with one hand.

"Never insult Albus Dumbledore in front of me," he growled in a low voice far more threatening than his earlier shouts.

For several seconds, the giant and sir stared at each other, waiting to see who would flinch first.

Then, before Harry could blink, the giant whipped the pointed-end of his umbrella to the right and shot a blue beam of light at Dudley's bum — which suddenly grew a tail?

Despite his present situation (dream? vision?) being as surreal as it was dangerous, Harry couldn't help but laugh as his brutish bully of a cousin jumped up and down — shrieking in a more girlish voice than Harry ever had during his repentings.

"Weak," Harry spat with disgust as a smirk lined his face. A smirk that turned to a snarl when he noticed the cake icing on Dudley's face.

Everything. He takes everything!

Suddenly, the entire cake — mostly intact despite Dudley's ravenous appetite — launched itself at the blond's face.

"Mmmmf!" Dudley wailed as he clumsily flailed, so unlike the popular boy who dominated school sports.

Harry's laughter grew louder as his fiend of a cousin tripped and fell flat on his face, before abruptly silencing in the face of Sir's utter fury.

Sir, who was clutching his shotgun so tightly that his hands were white. Harry's heart stopped at the sight, even with the gun's barrel bent at a 90 degree angle at its midway point.

"I swear on God's name that if you ever — ever — touch my son again, I'll blow you straight to hell! You hear me!" Sir had promised after Dudley ended up in the python pen at the zoo.

The giant however stepped in front of Harry, hiding him from Sir. He also leveled his umbrella point directly against Sir's throat.

"Come wit' me, Harry," the giant said softly but with authority as he offered his left hand.

With Sir still holding his shotgun, Dudley screaming louder than anyone he'd ever heard and Ma'am glaring with more hate than he thought possible, Harry realized he had only two options. Wake up from this dream, or go with the giant.

Well, I'd probably have to go out the door to wake up anyway, Harry decided as he took the gia— Mr. Hagrid's hand.

He'd come to remember this as the best moment of his life.

"I still need…a wand," Harry noted from the supply list.

In the past half-day, he'd learned that the name Harry Potter was one of the most celebrated in Wizarding Britain. And that in spite of having hand-me-down clothes and scraps at the table for all his life, he apparently was filthy rich.

Harry couldn't decide whether he was amazed or bitter. Possibly both?

Or maybe I'm still dreaming, Harry wondered. If this was all true, his life was stranger than fiction.

"A wand?" Mr. Hagrid asked. Harry nodded.

"Well, you'll want Ollivander's," Mr. Hagrid answered as he casually pointed at a store just up the street. "No place better. Why don't run along there and wait, I just got one more thing I gotta do. Won't be long."

Harry walked into the small store, first noticing the massive stacks of small boxes that lined the side and back walls of the front room. A point-of-sale desk sat near the back of the room equidistant from the side walls, but empty. The door at the back wall was empty, and the stairway leading up to a door directly above the first floor's was empty as well.

The store was empty save for the quiet hum of energy that warmed it like a bonfire.

"Hello?" Harry called.

Nothing.

"Hello?" Harry called again as he meandered toward the desk.

Guess I'll have to come another time, Harry thought with a sigh.

Or maybe this is where the dream ends.

"I wondered when I'd be seeing you, Mr. Potter," an elder man's voice suddenly spoke from behind him.

Harry whirled around and stumbled back, not having been snuck up on since he was five.

"It seems only yesterday your mother and father were buying their first wands," the man continued with a kindly smile as his baby-blue eyes shined on Harry.

"You have your mother's eyes," the store owner — Mr. Ollivander, presumably — noted as he produced a wand. "She was as great a master of healing charms and protective magic as I ever saw. Unicorn-tail-hair core, wood of willow, somewhat swishy."

Harry took the liberty of assuming the unicorn and willow stuff described his mother's wand, not her.

That, or I've just crossed over into the Twilight Zone, Harry thought with a small chuckle.

Harry clutched the wand, and he felt nothing but a thirty centimeter wooden stick.

"Hmmm, perhaps you are more like your father," Mr. Ollivander considered as he took the first wand back and handed the one in his left hand to Harry. "You look so very like he did at your age."

"A mighty core made from Hungarian Horntail's heartstring," Mr. Ollivander described the wand Harry was now holding — and presumably the wand of Harry's father. "Mahogany wood — terrific for transfiguration."

This time, Harry felt power jolt from the wand — but with no focus.

"I'm so sorry!" Harry exclaimed as he rushed to help Mr. Ollivander, who he had just knocked flat on his back.

"No, no, the fault is mine," Mr. Ollivander said as he took Harry's hand, but got up on his strength. "Say, perhaps you have a duelist's disposition. And the dragon heartstring reacted to your power."

Mr. Ollivander reached out with another wand that instead of handing to Harry, he pointed around the store while he closed his eyes in concentration.

After seven or so seconds, a white wand seemingly made from shined ivory leapt forward from near the front-left corner of the room till it stopped just before Mr. Ollivader, after which it delicately floated into Harry's hand.

Harry raised the wand immediately, feeling much more in tune with it than the previous two. Harry smiled, truly smiled, as power whistled through him and the wand — and between them.

Harry stepped right-foot forward, slid right-foot backward, twirled in a one-eighty on the balls of his right foot then did a second one-eighty on the balls of his left-foot. He twirled his wand with each motion similarly to how Dudley would move when practicing karate.

It was perfect. Or was it? For a reason he didn't understand, Harry said.

"The wand is amazing, but there's something that feels…incomplete," Harry struggled to voice. "No, not incomplete. Slightly trapped…or caged?"

Never again, Harry thought as he imagined his years cramped in the cupboard.

"Caged, you say?" Mr. Ollivander asked. "Hmmm, most intriguing."

"You may be a rare customer indeed, Mr. Potter," Mr. Ollivander hummed as he guided the ivory-looking wand back to its box — the same thing he must have done with the first two wands.

After about ten seconds, a wand that looked like a replica of the one Harry had just tried floated into his hand.

"Aspen wood, just as before, but with a phoenix-feather core," Mr. Ollivander explained. "Phoenix feathers are the most feisty of wand cores — well, except for special one-off cases — but they produce the greatest range of magic once you grow into them."

Harry clasped onto the wand instantly felt a surge of elation rush through his being.

"Yes!" Harry said exuberantly, feeling the wand's hum resonate through his being as energy seemed to loop back from him into the wand.

But when Harry focused — really focused — there seemed to be something slightly off-center. His power didn't feel caged as it did last time, but it didn't feel like it had struck quite the right note.

Mr. Ollivander seemed to notice the slight furrow in his brow.

"Well," he whispered half to Harry, half to himself. "You clearly are matched with the duelist's aspen, and you are destined for a phoenix core. But perhaps it's the question of what phoenix…"

Mr. Ollivander walked to the back-right corner of the room and plucked out the lowest box.

"Try this," Mr. Ollivander said quietly, almost solemnly. "The wood is made of holly, but perhaps…"

Where Harry felt tremors of power before, he now felt as if a lightning bolt sparked through every molecule of his being. The shop instantly faded from view, replaced with…

"SLYTHERIN!" a voice above him bellowed just as a hood — or a hat? — touched his head.

"Speak to me, greatest of the Hogwarts four," Harry hissed at a large statue of a long-bearded head. It's mouth opened to answer, but before Harry could hear the response…

"The least Hogwarts can do is make sure the thing that killed their daughter is slaughtered," Harry valiantly promised as he prepared to take down a monster — and its shadowy keeper.

"I hereby grant you the Special Award for Services to the School," a long-bearded, aged wizard told Harry as he presented a gold-rimmed, shield-shaped silver badge.

"I see you becoming the greatest wizard of all," a slightly pudgy man with earnest blue-gray eyes told him as they stood in…a chemistry lab?

"Wherever you go after this, I will follow you every step of the way," promised a muscular dark-haired guy. A trio of similarly-aged older teenage guys in similar forest-green robes nodded in agreement.

"I understand—I know what it feels like to be subjugated. For others to fear you for your talents," Harry told a lanky, long-haired, pale-skinned teenage guy (eighteen?) as they sat in a dingy pub.

"I have pushed the boundaries of magic further, perhaps, than they have ever been pushed…" Harry stated with confidence, though whether to the same lanky guy, he could not see.

"Together, we shall liberate our brethren from the oppression of muggle-kind!" he cried exuberantly to a dark-robed group. Some sort of coven apparently, foremost among whom stood a man with piercing steel-blue eyes and flowing pale-blond hair. Harry also sighted the guy from the pub standing not too far behind the blond.

Harry woke up from the trance feeling more alive than he ever had. More like himself than ever, as if a limb had been asleep all this time and finally moved freely.

This wand — it connected to his spirit in a way no other. It was destined for him, and through it he would achieve the destiny he had just seen.

Will I be the greatest wizard of all time? Harry wondered. That vision somehow felt realer than anything he had ever experienced. And if magic was true, which Harry now believed beyond a shadow of a doubt, then he had just seen the future.

Harry smiled, suddenly feeling all burden and worry flow off him as if washed away by a warm shower. He had finally found his place. His purpose.

And yet, something seemed hesitant about the cream-white wand itself, which jerked in Harry's hand. Jerked very slightly, but in a way Harry knew he wasn't doing himself.

"Curious, very curious," Mr. Ollivander said while looking directly at the wand. "It is, in a way, fitting that tail feather chose you. It just so happens that phoenix gave one other feather, just one."

"What was his name?" Harry asked excitedly, wondering if perhaps he could meet this wizard.

"I—I…" Mr. Ollivander stammered.

"Please mister," Harry begged impulsively. "What was the boy's name?"

"The boy's name was Tom Riddle," Mr. Ollivander answered in a solemn voice.

He died then, Harry thought glumly.

"Was he a great wizard?" Harry asked.

"Yes," the wand store owner said with a distant look in his eyes. "He did great things…and it's clear we can expect great things from you."

"Then I will be just as great as Mr. Riddle, to honor his memory," Harry determined — though not sure why he even felt so strongly about this Tom Riddle.

At that moment, Harry felt a crack appear in the wand in his right hand — the wand with the core of destiny.

"Ah," Mr. Ollivander said with a subdued tone. "Holly wood and phoenix-tail feathers are notoriously difficult to pair. As I mentioned, phoenix-tail feathers produce the greatest range of magic once a wizard fully accepts all aspects of him or herself. Holly, on the other hand, near-exclusively chooses wizards and witches seeking to overcome certain default tendencies."

Harry couldn't determine whether Ollivander was saying holly was for monks, or if "seeking to overcome default tendencies" was a euphemism to spare Harry's feelings. He suspected more of the latter with Ollivander's next sentence.

"I had created this wand for a young wizard who would find himself uniquely opposed by forces of darkness," Mr. Ollivander continued as his eyes grew more distant with each word. "But it is clear the core is destined for you nonetheless."

Harry didn't know how to take this. With gratitude that he wouldn't have dark wizards knocking on his door every other day to kill him, or with the disappointment that underlined Mr. Ollivander's voice.

"Is it possible to transfer that feather core to this wand?" Harry asked as he held up the aspen wand in his left hand. "Or an empty wand just like it?"

They're the same length too, Harry realized as he compared the two 36 centimeter wands.

"Yes, yes," Mr. Ollivander confirmed, once again fully present. "If it would be possible for you to wait two or three hours, I can custom make it for you this very day. It will the wand of a revolutionary."

"Do you know who Tom Riddle was?" Harry asked Mr. Hagrid as they sat at the Leaky Cauldron for a late lunch.

The giant instantly tensed at the name, but only for a fraction-of-a-second. Had Harry not learned to watch out for punches, kicks and all manners of physical attacks so carefully, he would have missed it.

"Mr. Hagrid?" Harry asked softly, sorry that he had upset the man.

"That's a name I haven't heard in a long time," Mr. Hagrid answered carefully. "Where did you hear it?"

"Mr. Ollivander pointed out how my wand core came from the same phoenix as his, and that there's no other like it," Harry explained.

"Hmmm," Mr. Hagrid hummed.

A brief silence followed, in which Harry took another — not too hasty but wow it was delicious — shepherd's pie.

"First," Mr. Hagrid began in a low, serious whisper, "understand this Harry, cause it's very important. Not all wizards are good. Some of them go bad. A few years ago, there was one wizard who went as bad as you can go."

Harry leaned forward in anticipation, both excited and yet somewhat nervous to hear the name of this leader of darkness.

"His name was V—" Hagrid started

So not Tom, Harry thought with a flash of relief.

But Hagrid didn't get past the V, not after three tries.

"Maybe if you wrote it down?" Harry suggested, very much wanting to hear the name of this dark wizard.

Was this the man who killed my parents? Harry wondered.

"No, I can't spell it," Mr. Hagrid denied.

Harry's eyes fell at this, something the giant noticed.

"Alright… Voldemort ," Mr. Hagrid whispered.

"Voldemort?" Harry asked.

"Shhh," Mr. Hagrid immediately reacted.

So it's taboo to say his name? Like taking the Lord's name in vain? Harry considered.

"It was dark times Harry, dark times," Mr. Hagrid began to explain. "Voldemort started to gather some followers, brought them over to the dark side. Anyone that stood up to him ended up dead. Your parents fought against him…"

Harry gasped.

"But no one lived when he decided to kill 'em," Mr. Hagrid confirmed the identity of Harry's parents' murderer. "Nobody, not one, 'cept you."

"Me?" Harry gasped again, this time with pure shock. "Voldemort tried to kill me ?"

"Yes," Mr. Hagrid said. "That ain't no ordinary cut on your forehead Harry. A mark like that only comes from being touched by a curse, and an evil curse at that."

"What happened to Voldemort?" Harry asked with a whisper.

"Well, some say he died," Mr. Hagrid offered dismissively, clearly not believing this. "Codswallop in my opinion. Nope, I reckon he's out there still — too tired to carry on. But one thing's absolutely certain. Something about you stumped him that night. That's why you're famous. That's why everyone knows your name. You're the boy who lived."

"And Tom didn't?" Harry asked, looping this back to his first question.

A faraway look came in Mr. Hagrid's eyes, just like the one in Mr. Ollivander's.

"No," Mr. Hagrid answered after a pause. "He didn't."