A/N: I don't want to write much on here because I have come to dislike how many authors use author notes as a way to spoil a lot of the themes/plot points of the stories. Nevertheless, I feel like a small introduction is almost required of a new story from an unestablished writer, so here goes.
There are two main reasons for my creating this story.
1. Practice. I want to get better at writing fiction, I am still very fond of the Harry Potter universe, therefore I have decided to write out a Harry Potter fanfic, allowing me to stay in relatively safe waters for now.
2. I think that there are several ways in which JKR does her universe and its lore a disservice, but one of the biggest is failing to consider the way in which the existence of magic can impact the psychological development of children, both those raised in wizarding society and brought into it after their 11th birthdays. Every character's sense of wonder and awe at the fantastical achievements of wizardry (bar some solitary moments when Harry marvels at how a seemingly small space can be expanded from within, etc) seems to disappear extremely quickly and that is that. Magic does not impact their ambitions, their dreams, their personalities, the way they think or behave. Hermione's ambitions are realised by essentially becoming a politician, while Harry's by becoming a policeman. Hermione herself (and Harry, as well as other muggleborns/muggle-raised people, to some extent) is used to bring in interesting commentary on wizarding society, but not on wizardry itself. This fanfic is an attempt at rectifying this.
The first chapter is short - I'm testing the waters, and also hesitant to include descriptions of what happens in the books unless the events are changed drastically enough for them to have consequence for the plot/provide new and interesting information for the reader.
Cheers!
A Hummingbird's Threnody
Chapter 1: Wonder Woman
Harry sent only a single furtive glance at the shrinking form of the Hogwarts groundskeeper when he left him in front of Madam Malkin's in the pursuit of a Leaky Cauldron 'pick-me-up'. The gentle giant made for good enough company, but it was only now that Harry Potter, who had not yet even fully come to terms with the wondrous revelation that had come with his Hogwarts letter, was fully unleashed into this brave, new world – without Hagrid's well-meaning, but nevertheless slightly stifling supervision ("Don't have to worry about those books yet, Harry, yer 'fessors know which ones yer gonna need . . . No, yeh can't get a broom yet, Harry").
Admittedly, Harry's never felt a great interest in muggle fashion, and, despite his determination to be as open-minded as one could be, he doubted that a sprinkling of magic would change his disposition much. He'd much rather be given free rein in one of the many bookshops he and Hagrid had passed on their way from Gringotts, or perhaps in the wandmaker's shop that they were yet to visit. Then again, Harry couldn't really be sure what his actual passions were – the Dursley upbringing made counting sheep before sleep the most interesting pastime he could ever try mastering.
Before Harry could make up his mind about his passion (or lack thereof) for wizarding fashion, the front door of Madam Malkin's shop opened before him, revealing a squat, smiling witch dressed all in mauve.
"You in need of a Hogwarts uniform, dear?" she asked Harry, stepping to the side to allow him passage when he nodded in response. "Well, come on in, love. You've got no time to waste, I'm sure."
Harry did as he was told, stepping into a shop which varied significantly from the few muggle clothing shops he had been to before. Instead of a sea of racks and aisles filled with light, breezy summer garments, the interior was mostly empty, only its walls presenting some of the available products, much in the same way that mannequins would at a muggle storefront. The robes were heavy and long, and their colours dark, deep purples and forest greens dominating all other hues – a fact made note of not only by him, but also, in an irritated fashion, by a girl who was standing on a footstool in the back of the shop, surrounded by two figures that must have been her parents.
"I want my uniform in white, mummy," she whined.
"You know very well that you cannot have it in white, dear," responded a deep voice. Her father's?
"Well, I should! Black is such a drab colour. This is–"
"Oh, stop it, Daphne," growled a feminine voice, which must have been her mother's. "We will not be tolerating another one of your silly tantrums. Merlin knows you've caused us enough trouble at Ollivander's." The girl – Daphne – responded by muttering something that Harry was not able to understand. Was it even in English?
At this point, Madam Malkin had moved Harry to a stool next to the squabbling family. From there, he could clearly see that the conversation between mother and daughter had moved into the realm of the non-verbal, the two engaged in an intense staring contest that lasted way shorter than it felt to the spectating boy, ending when Daphne finally blinked and turned her head away with a huff. Her mother must have accepted the begrudging act of surrender, because she responded by pulling the girl's father towards the till in the corner of the shop, presumably to pay for their daughter's uniform.
Harry looked at the girl – Daphne – again, able to see her face in more detail this time. It was… a bird-like face, cloaked by waves of black hair that seemed to turn navy blue when stroked by sunlight, much like the hair of the superheroine Harry had once seen on the cover of one of Dudley's highly treasured comic-books. Wonder Woman, was it?
Harry had trouble deciding why her face seemed bird-like. He could not pinpoint any specific facial feature of Daphne's that, by itself, looked as if it were taken from the face of a bird. Not one to waste time on a doomed quest, Harry decided to go the other way, asking not how it was that she looked like a bird, but rather what bird she resembled most. Now, it most certainly wasn't an eagle that she looked like – her nose was too small, too straight, and her blue eyes, at least in Harry's mind, could not house the gaze of a predator. No, indeed, when he looked at her, he did not see a bird of prey, but rather one of the many small avian friends that would perch on windowsills and curiously watch his work in the garden of 4 Privet Drive, their soft, melodious chirping making the heat and physical exertion that much more bearable. Then, finally, it hit him – Daphne's face was that of a hummingbird.
Harry had been thinking a lot about hummingbirds in the days after Hagrid came to his rescue. He still remembered the hummingbird trivia they covered one day in school – including tidbits about their short lifespans and weak hearts – and he couldn't help but see himself as one such hummingbird. A small and weak creature given wings, only to have them taken away not long afterwards. What if Harry's fellow wizards deem him a 'freak' as well? What if he won't be able to learn magic fast enough and end up expelled from Hogwarts at the end of the year? His sudden discovery of magical powers was as wondrous and exciting as it was fraught with fear and anxiety.
Now Harry had another hummingbird in front of him. Of course, she might not truly have been one. Perhaps she already knew some magic… Perhaps she already knew a lot of magic. It was quite possible that she shared none of the fears that had been building up in Harry's mind ever since he had learned of Hogwarts. Her wings might not be facing the imminent danger of snapping. Yet, she looked like a hummingbird! That was something. A shred of connection, a quality to be shared, even if only superficially – something to prove that he wasn't a freak here, or that, at the very least, he wasn't the only freak here.
"You're staring," Daphne said suddenly, her voice snapping him back to immediate reality. "It's rude."
Harry froze, and he was certain that he spent at least as much time piecing together a response as he did staring at her. "I– Sorry. I got lost in thought, I guess."
The black-haired girl gave him a look he could not put a name to, then nodded and turned away from him, silence ensuing. In any other situation, Harry would have been fine with silence. He was used to people underestimating his capabilities as a conversationalist – not that he was much of one. This time, however, he had something to prove. He was not a freak, and he would make a friend today if he could help it. Harry deemed it necessary to break the silence.
"So…" he began, realising immediately that he did not know what to lead with. What's her name? He knew that already. Was she going to Hogwarts as well? Of course she was, what a stupid question. Was she a first year like him? She most probably was – why else would she have been getting her uniform? What about… "What happened at Ollivander's?"
Harry winced as soon as the words left his mouth. Rude, rude, rude!
Daphne gave him another unnameable look – here comes the scolding, oh dear – and then her hummingbird-like face suddenly lit up with the glow of a passionate actress that has just been thrust on stage.
"Oh, it was the most dreadful thing ever!" she started, her knuckles briefly flying to her temple in the same way Harry had seen some women do in Aunt Petunia's telenovelas whenever they were relaying terribly dramatic news. "You see, I've known for some time now that I need to have an oak wand. I've planned it all some time ago. I do not care much about the core, but the wood had to be oak, that was…" she stopped for a second, clearly in search for the next word. "Imperative! That was imperative, yes. I requested as much from that old coot, and do you know what he did?"
"What?"
"He scoffed! Said something about oak not being a good fit for me – as if! – and then proceeded to give me anything but oak!"
Harry nodded slowly, unsure about why oak wood could be so important to her. As he did so, he managed to catch a glimpse of the two ladies that were fitting both him and Daphne, looking at each other, rolling their eyes and sharing knowing smiles.
"I gave him a piece of my mind, of course, but that incorrigible fool just kept going!" What did 'incorrigible' even mean, Harry wondered? "It was all quite ridiculous, but in the end it was me against him and my parents, so I could do nothing more than accept my poor fate."
"I see," said Harry, although he did not, in fact, really see much reason in her actions. "Why is oak so important, anyways? Isn't it, like, common and… I don't know, mundane? Grows just about anywhere."
Daphne responded to that with a glare, which quickly relented when she looked Harry up and down. "You're muggleborn, aren't you?"
"Is that a bad thing?" asked Harry, deciding to address her seeming hostility rather than her misguided assumptions about his heritage.
"No, but you tend to be rather uninformed. Then again, my parents do not really understand much as well, and they're not muggleborn." she responded and, after sighing quite ostentatiously, continued. "Very well, I'll take pity on you. What do you know of the great Hecate?"
"Who?"
"Oh dear," Daphne shook her head. "You're hopeless, then. I don't think I have time to explain that much."
She did not, in fact, have any time left, because the lady attending to her had just finished fitting her uniform and Daphne's parents, having already paid, returned to usher her off the stool.
"In any case, it was nice to meet you," Daphne said with an air of impressively assumed formality, turning towards Harry one last time. "I'll probably see you at Hogwarts. Do read up on some of the textbooks before we get there, though, educate yourself a little bit – you don't want to join the dummies at Hufflepuff, do you?" Having finished off her rather condescending closing speech with a dramatic shiver, she turned around and followed her parents out of the shop.
Harry watched her leave, her glittering grey robes shining alive when she passed the doorstep, her black tresses turning deep, navy blue when mixed with the sunlight outside – just like Wonder Woman's.
The sorting feast put Harry's knowledge of birds into question. As it turned out, he was not a hummingbird – far from it, in fact, as was proven by the brown eagle that now proudly adorned his robes. Daphne Greengrass (as he now knew her, owing to Professor McGonagall's roll call), on the other hand, was not even a bird at all! Her feathers had turned into scales and, as the Sorting Hat shouted 'Slytherin' after a few good minutes of deliberation, a hummingbird morphed into a serpent. She seemed quite content with the decision as she made her way to her new house's table, joining a brown-haired girl whom she soon swept into an animated torrent of conversation.
Was he content with his sorting? Harry had trouble categorising the many stares that had fallen upon him before the assorted Ravenclaws began clapping and cheering for their new housemate. Daphne had stared at him. Ron Weasley, the boy Harry had sat with on the train, had stared at him. So had Hermione Granger, Draco Malfoy and many other kids whose names he could not yet had known. So had the teachers, so had McGonagall herself. Was that only because they had witnessed the 'spectacle' (how he deplored thinking along those lines!) of Harry Potter's sorting? Or had they expected something else from him? Had he already done something wrong?
Of course, he hadn't really done anything! The Sorting Hat hadn't given him any choice. It did deliberate a little bit and there was some talk of 'Gryffindor spirit' and 'becoming great' in Slytherin, but the hat had resolved to dig deeper, uncovering a 'voracious thirst for knowledge' and 'deep insight' that would seal his sorting into Ravenclaw.
Harry didn't know about 'deep insight' – what insight could he have had when Anthony Goldstein, sat next to him, had to explain Quidditch basics to him using cutlery? – but he found it hard to argue with the 'thirst for knowledge'. Ever since Hagrid had come to his rescue a few months ago, Harry had felt that there was a thick veil separating him from the new world he had been thrust into. The Hogwarts groundskeeper had made some small peepholes through which Harry could peer into the realm of magic, but he yearned for more – he felt a deep desire to not only pierce the veil, but tear it down once and for all. Magic, after all, had saved him from a drab, soulless life with the Dursleys. It made him feel special – him, the scrawny freakish boy who now had the chance to become someone that all the kids that had picked on him in the past could only fantasise about – how could he not seize that opportunity? He had struck gold, and knew that he could – and should – only dig deeper.
Ravenclaw made him pretty content, Harry realised, looking around at his new housemates. To his left sat Anthony Goldstein, who was still flying a fork through the air, trying to jab a little piece of bread – the 'snitch' – which he held in his other hand. To his right sat Padma Patil, who had just finished an excited conversation with some other girl sat further down the table and turned towards Harry, asking him a question. Harry, though, moved and kept his eyes on her shining Ravenclaw badge, watching how lively blue mixed with the grainy black of her robe. Cerulean hues slowly spreading from dark muddy depths and then flowing into the sharp, glinting whites of reflected light. From black, through blue, to white. From dark, through blue, to light, and back again.
Harry managed to reach the conclusion that he really liked black and blue together before Padma's voice managed to finally snap him back to reality.
"I– Sorry. I got lost in thought, I guess," he sheepishly defended himself before listening to the girl's theories on how the teachers managed to enchant the ceiling to imitate a starry night sky.