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Chapter Text

Lucius Abraxas Malfoy, or, to put it simply, just Lord Malfoy (and in all the wide world there were only three people who called him anything else, and one of them used the address 'papa,' another 'Luci,' and the third was missing), was striding down the corridor of the Ministry of Magic in a state that the unforgettable Tony Dolohov delicately called 'mixed feelings.'

First, the illustrious lord had a hangover. The day before, the aforementioned lord had indulged in reckless excesses, namely polishing off a bottle of 'Old Ogden's' all by himself. Even the finest firewhisky, when consumed in such a barbaric manner, leads to depressing consequences, and this truth Lucius had thoroughly proven to himself.

Second, Lord Malfoy had a reason for such an escapade, and quite a significant one.

Last Monday, he woke up itching and in pain, which he initially attributed to eczema. Alas, this pleasant illusion lasted about ten minutes, and the stubborn self-deception that followed did not last more than a day, though Lucius tried very hard. He made the house-elf throw out all the feather beds, claiming there were bedbugs in them. He ordered all bouquets in the house destroyed and solemnly gave up strawberries for breakfast, in case his suffering was caused by an allergy. He sent his new flannel pyjamas to indefinite exile, saying that his delicate skin was pricked by wool. He even replaced his exquisite hand cream with a jar of simple petroleum jelly.

The effect, as expected, was zero.

The thing was, the itching, tingling, and red spots were concentrated around a certain notorious tattoo located on Malfoy’s left forearm. After a day, the spots disappeared, but the tattoo itself itched so badly that it was heartbreaking. By the third day, the itch had transformed into a pulling pain, and the mark darkened distinctly. Today was the fourth day, but the clinical picture inspired no optimism. Lucius even put on a doublet under his mantle, which he usually avoided; it seemed to him that his dark mark, swollen and painful like a gouty limb, shone through the shirt and attracted the gaze of everyone passing by like a magnet.

Lucius was, by nature, impressionable and nervous; this could not be denied.

So, a hangover and a sad Malfoy very much wanted to cause a scandal, and he knew exactly where to go in such a mood. This year, the illustrious lord had joined the Hogwarts Board of Governors—how else, since his beloved offspring was about to start studying there. But Draco was not the only new student this year, and even if he were, he certainly did not need patronage. However, there was another pure-blood family which, alas, not only desperately needed sponsorship from the governors but also regularly relied on their financial support. Yes, the Weasleys. And Lucius planned a good scandal with Arthur on this very subject for today.

But his plans were not destined to come true, for providence was already leading him to another meeting—a truly fateful meeting that would define the face of the entire magical world for years to come.

Rufus Scrimgeour, the newly appointed head of the Auror Office, was also suffering from a hangover. Unlike Malfoy, he got drunk not alone, and his reason was much happier. But, as is known, if the chief dark wizard fighter cannot, while celebrating his appointment, outdrink all his subordinates one by one, the Auror Office will spew him out of its mouth—and in this case, it’s better to cast Avada Kedavra on himself immediately than live with such disgrace. Therefore, the battle with John Barleycorn was a fight for life and death—and Rufus won this battle, but at what cost!

He badly needed a hair of the dog. Or, at least, a quarrel, to make the world a little more uncomfortable and gloomy for someone else.

And then, as if on cue, long pale locks appeared in his field of vision. The illustrious Lord Malfoy strode down the corridor like a stray kneazle on a roof, wearing his usual haughty expression and waving his cane. The cane especially annoyed Rufus today. He pounced on his prey like a hawk.

'Ah, my dear Lord Malfoy! What are the Death Eaters doing today at the Ministry? Are you here to buy or sell?'

Malfoy gave Scrimgeour a cold glance and hissed through clenched teeth:

'I don't understand what you imply; there are no Death Eaters here.'

'How can there be none?' purred Rufus with friendly reproach. 'And your little mark?'

'I was under the Imperius curse!'

'Everyone says that… But I'd like physical proof.'

Lucius tightened his lips and went pale. Rufus observed with pleasure how Malfoy's face contorted with anger.

'I am clean before the law, Mister Auror!'—he even managed to say 'mister' as an insult.

'And if I check?' grinned Rufus. He loved scandals; they kept him in shape.

'Tu ferais mieux d'inspecter ton cul,' Lucius snapped. 'Check your arse first! Ten years have passed, and you still can’t settle down! Adieu!'

He turned sharply, wrapping his mantle around himself, and proudly walked away.

In a critical situation, Lucius could act fast and think even faster. Around the nearest corner, he tucked the cane under his arm, ran at a brisk pace down the corridor, jumped into a departing lift, and got to the common fireplace almost instantly. However, the countdown was not even in minutes—only seconds. The flame flickered with green and died down, and Lucius stepped from the Ministry hall into his own sitting room.

Narcissa, by fortunate coincidence, was drinking tea, passing the time by looking through the fashion catalogue 'Twilfitt and Tattings.' She looked up in surprise—the appearance of Lucius was hardly ordinary. Shaking off ash, he quickly said:

'Darling, the Aurors will arrive here soon—they must be detained at all costs, at least for five minutes, d'accord?'

Narcissa silently rose from the chair, evaporated her simple and elegant at-home morning ensemble to the last thread, and, naked, with only a wand in hand, summoned from the bedroom (a room three walls and a corridor away!—what a noble and ancient family means!) a translucent silk negligee. Lucius managed to catch all this only out of the corner of his eye (the negligee flying like a ghost through the air was especially good); Malfoy was not going to waste a precious moment. The fireplace flared up, and he heard Narcissa scream:

'Go away! You dirty animals! I'm not dressed!'

Lucius never loved her more than at that moment.

He rushed to the study, pulled a chain with a pin-sized key from under his undershirt—the safe was goblin-made, and the lock was equally tiny. Digging through documents and accounts, he feverishly searched—where was it? The album with 'French postcards,' the Algerian passport, the folder with the will… Ah, here it is! With trembling hands, he pulled from the safe’s depths the thing that must never, under any circumstances, fall into the Aurors' hands.

Especially considering that…

Considering the circumstances, in general.

By appearance, it looked like an old notebook, but what it actually was, only its owner knew. It had to be hidden fast and securely. Such a mission could be carried out by only one hero: modest and lacking external charm, but on whom they would all have to rely. Lucius took a deep breath.

'Dobby!'

Dobby was not the house-elf of a dream.

Moreover, Dobby was so far from the house-elf of dreams that only the completely uncontrollable Kreacher was worse, who, happily, was quietly dumped on Sirius. Now the poor thing lived as a hermit somewhere on Grimmauld Place, waiting for his master to be released from life imprisonment—a ruthless and meaningless venture, but such is the nature of house-elf loyalty. Rumours claimed that Lucius' sister-in-law's late elf had been even crazier than Kreacher, but Narcissa once declared that this was vulgar nonsense, and Lucius used to believe his wife unconditionally.

Returning to Dobby, entrusting him with any work that required the slightest imagination was, in general, risky. For Dobby clearly had an excess of imagination for a house-elf, and all of it went somewhere wrong.

However, now Lucius had no alternative, and he also had absolutely no time.

'Dobby! Dobby!!! Come here immediately!'

Barely had the big-eared misfit (again with all fingers bandaged; how had he managed to deserve such mutilation, scoundrel?) appeared before the eyes of the noble lord when Lucius shoved the notebook at him and shouted:

'Quick! Hide this where no one would ever think to look!'

Dobby squeaked, bowed, and vanished. Two seconds later, all lathered up and breathless, the Aurors burst into the study—but it was already too late.

Fate, disguised this time in the modest mask of Dobby, had already made its move.

Chapter Text

The notebook was old. Not old like 'worn and tattered' (though, God knows, that’s pretty much how it looked), but old as in 'antique.' Well, practically. It was just a tad short of being formally antique by no more than a couple of years. So—decently aged, period. And at the same time, it was completely new—in the sense that nobody had ever written anything in it. Its prim forty-eight-year-old virginity was only blemished by two marks hidden inside the front cover: the stamp 'WINSTANLEY'S Bookstore & Stationers, 422 Vauxhall Road' on the rear endpaper, and the calligraphically inscribed 'T.M. Riddle' on the front. Nothing more, only the emptiness and untouched smoothness of slightly yellowed lined pages.

Usually, Harry was irritated (infuriated to the point of seeing red, if you will) by finding marks left by previous owners on what was now his own property. He admitted, of course, even if only to himself, that none of his possessions ever truly belonged solely to him; none was brand new, exclusively his and no one else’s. But it’s one thing to realise that, and quite another to witness concrete proof: holes, patches, stains, burn marks, dirty fingerprints, and—the crowning foulness—signed names.

They reminded Harry of (yes, it was a somewhat mature and corrupted thought for an eleven-year-old, but you know, acceleration; plus, he'd read all sorts of things) a tattoo with the name of a first lover on the body of a fallen woman. Who puts names on things destined to end up in a thrift store, and why? Wasn't this urge to scribble your autograph everywhere, from the wall of a public toilet to the inside of a pair of shorts, a sort of absurdity?

His school backpack, for instance, was signed as 'Jane.' And she was covered with small pink flowers, that Jane, and only the laziest bully on earth wouldn’t have called Harry a faggot because of her. Harry was nearly ready to burn Jane on a ritual pyre the night before the new school year started. He wasn’t going to take such a stigma with him to secondary school, no thanks; he already had scars, glasses, and his deviltry. (His backup plan, however, was to accept his inner Jane and become the next David Bowie.)

Yet, miraculously, for some inexplicable reason, T.M. Riddle’s name didn’t summon Harry’s usual wave of distant hatred. In that name, he seemed to glimpse some kinship, something sentimental, as if Harry had found his grandfather’s wartime letters or his grandmother’s recipe book, as if he had stumbled upon a family photo, still black and white, yellowed and faded, or discovered a pressed flower between the pages of a volume of Yeats.

All these were, of course, borrowed literary associations, poor substitutes for real ones. Harry never saw a single family photo in his life (if you don’t count a picture of his chubby cousin), had no idea if his grandfather ever fought in a war, or if his grandmother ever held a ladle, whether anyone in their family loved Yeats besides Harry himself. He knew absolutely nothing about these people, and this 'nothing' resembled the emptiness after a recently lost baby tooth—a bloody socket you can’t stop poking at every minute.

And then he read: 'T.M. Riddle,' and something in that void suddenly responded, rang out like a thin, quiet string, wrapped itself in the feeling of a bright but forgotten dream, overwhelmed him with a sense of déjà vu so strong it seemed—just a moment more, and something extraordinarily important would come to mind. As if Harry saw the name of his old friend on paper—saw it and was glad to receive an unexpected letter from him.

Harry never had friends at all. Honestly, he didn’t need friends.

And yet he could not shake a strange inner tremor when he picked up a pen and wrote:

'23rd June

Dear Diary,

something amazing happened today.'

He was sitting in the cupboard. The overhead light wasn’t on—the switcher was located on outside, and his annoying cousin had kindly turned it off within the first couple of minutes, as he always did. Not a problem: Harry had a flashlight, and he vigilantly kept spare batteries (usually stolen from the TV remote). A strip of carpet nailed to the bottom panel of the door served as a reliable light camouflage. Harry hadn’t drunk anything since lunch, so humiliating physiological problems would bother him only closer to night. He could feel safe for now.

The cupboard under the stairs, nasty, cramped, stuffy, and dark, was also a shelter—a disgusting but familiar shell into which Harry poured his vulnerable parts. Inside it, he could be honest with himself. The whole world remained outside the door, and here was Harry’s own world, though tiny, resource-poor, and shabby, yet subject only to him. Dust specks swirled in the bluish flashlight glow like particles of cosmic streams in the boundless space abyss.

'We were in London, celebrating Dudley’s birthday, and went to the zoo. I liked it so much! Even the piglet, commonly known as my cousin by some mistake, couldn’t spoil it. Especially the Reptile House. And there was one snake, a boa constrictor, huge, about forty feet... I don’t even know how it happened, but I—'

Harry stopped for a minute, frowning thoughtfully. He didn’t want the first page to be all scribbled over in search of a better formulation. He had to write it right the first time, but how?

'I let the snake out of the cage—'

No, that was later. The deviltry, as his aunt called it, started earlier.

'I talked to the snake, and—'

No. Snakes don’t talk. First, they barely hear. Second, their mouths aren’t suitable for that at all.

One of the first books Harry conquered on his own (he learned to read so early it was considered deviltry) was 'Sherlock Holmes: The Complete Stories.' Among other things, it included a story about a snake, controlled by its owner with a whistle. Whether due to his young age or his impressionable nature, Harry was captivated by Holmes’ intellect. The bigger the disappointment when, a couple of years later, Harry got around to reading the Britannica. Holmes had his own take on the consumption of information (the costs of genius), but Harry didn’t care whether his mental 'attic' was in order or not. He read everything that fell into his hands and soon discovered snakes were actually mute and deaf. Holmes’ reputation now had a shameful snake-shaped hole (yet Harry’s infatuation never fully faded).

So—not speech, but still some communication took place. It means—what? Does it mean they talked mentally? Is that possible?

The thought took his breath away. Lines from Simak, and Wyndham, van Vogt, and Stapledon flashed in his memory, merging into a strange jumble. He knew, blimey, he wasn’t imagining it. It wasn’t a mistake, fantasy, or hallucination. If you can’t trust yourself, who can you trust?

‘I heard the snake’s mental speech—’

Wait, so all snakes are telepaths?!

Well, that’s news. Alright.

‘I accidentally overheard—’

And then the ink vanished.

Literally. The page emptied, not a trace left of anything written there.

Harry’s jaw dropped. What a trick! A girl in their class, Millie Brown, bragged about a 'magic' pen whose ink could be dissolved with a special eraser built into the other end of the pen. Of course, writing school homework (or anything school-related) with such a pen would never be allowed, so the miracle pen was quite useless—but silly Millie kept showing off.

However, his pen was as ordinary as ordinary could be, maybe worse (yes, deep down Harry considered 'ordinary' an insult—a mild one, like 'get lost,' but still). A thin, uncomfortable faceted transparent plastic body, scratched and with a crack from Polkiss’ heel, a blue cap with disgusting dents made by teeth (Harry washed it twice with soap, yet the image of a foreign slobbering mouth hovered persistently over the pen)—no writing instrument could be more banal and tacky. Harry swiped it from someone’s bag in the cloakroom. The previous pen had been drowned in the toilet bowl by the same Polkiss, a good-hearted soul. No reason to assume anything wondrous in it, right?

Could it be not the pen, but the notebook?

The notebook came to Harry no more legally than the pen. He didn’t care—as the saying goes, beggars can’t be choosers, and his aunt so rarely remembered that stationery was essential for school that he could barely count on her help. He managed to get something from careless classmates, something from Dudley, usually in poor condition. Most things he had to 'acquire' at stationery sections in supermarkets, bookstores, and charity shop stalls.

That time (it was last Wednesday), Harry was hunting for something worthy at the secondhand bookshop—the only one in Little Whinging, so previously he always paid honestly when buying there. But when he saw this particular notebook lying in a mesh basket among heaps of long-expired diaries, he just couldn’t resist.

The ink’s disappearance ceased to be an intriguing mystery within a second. Right there on the first page, titled '1st January 1943' (who cares about the exact date, really, Harry wasn’t going to skip half the diary just for that, and the weekdays didn’t match anyway)—the words appeared letter by letter, as if someone from the other side of the sheet was writing them:

'Greetings to you, stranger.

Actually, this is my diary. However, so be it, I'll give you my permission to use it for now.

How did you get it, by the way?

What is your name?

And what happened at the zoo, finally? It's even weird how long it takes you to formulate the sequel. Have you fallen asleep?'

The handwriting was insultingly beautiful. Perfect, somewhat old-fashioned, perhaps with all those long tails on 'g' and 'y,' but flawless otherwise. Harry, with his chicken scratch, could hardly dream of calligraphy like this—and for some strange reason, he cared about that flaw. Enough to spend a couple of seconds, in an emergency like this, on a fierce fit of envy.

So. The notebook was talking to him. Or rather… rather, someone who said this was his notebook. Somehow, this someone read what Harry wrote and answered him.

As nonsensical as snakes speaking English.

There must be another explanation. Probably the object is not a notebook. Or there are alien technologies involved. Harry feverishly flipped through the mental pages of all science fiction novels he’d ever read while shakily writing:

'how do you write there

do you see me

where are you

your diary so that’s your name signed inside the cover

I'm Harry

hi'

This time, he noticed the moment the ink vanished: it seemed absorbed into the paper, soaked up like water into a sponge. The reply came instantly. Interesting—does it read even while you write? Or does it simply need so little time to read? Who or what is it, a mutant with a super brain? A computer?

'Ah, these are combined charms of my own design. Not to boast, but they're quite complex. To explain further, I’d like to know how much you understand about the subject. What year are you in at Hogwarts?

No, I don’t see.

Right here in front of you.

Yes. Tom Marvolo Riddle, at your service. May I know your full name, Harry? You’re not ashamed of your surname, right? Why didn’t you say it then?

Zoo? Don't keep me waiting.'

Well. Not a computer, definitely. He could still be a mutant. On the other hand—'charms'?

'I don’t understand anything. What stuff is Hogwarts? A secondary school? I'm not in any year, I’m only ten; eleven next month. What are charms?

Do you mean you’re INVISIBLE, or what?

I’m not ashamed. Potter. Harry James Potter, at your service.

That zoo thing—a long story. I think I can somehow talk to snakes. I released one, scared my cousin. He’s a pig. I got punished. Well, sort of. Just locked up, which isn’t so bad. I like being alone. Just bored a bit.'

Unaware, Harry was trembling from head to toe. Pure adrenaline poured into his bloodstream, making his head pleasantly spin. At that moment, the whole world outside the cupboard could vanish without a trace, and he wouldn’t shed a tear of regret. Here, in Harry’s hands, was a secret and a miracle—hundreds of other people’s stories read, borrowed experiences and adventures fully prepared him for this moment. And it had come—a moment of truth and glory, proving what Harry had always known and what others at least suspected, sensed about him because of his… deviltry.

Harry was special.

'What do you mean 'don't understand anything'? You’re almost eleven years old and don’t know what charms are? Are you joking me?

Well, no. Looks like you’re just dumb a bit. What a pity, right?

In front of you—means right in front of you. Before your eyes, that's perfectly clear, isn't it?

Not invisible. I’m in the diary, dummy. Inside it. Is that apprehensible at last?

See? Politeness shall not hurt you.

I'm pleased to make your acquaintance, Harry. I suggest we drop formality. Though I’m older, you may call me by my first name, I allow.

Right. Tell me more, I’m not in a hurry. Especially the part about talking with the snakes.

What’s your cousin’s name?

I see. I usually prefer solitude too.

Bored? Do your parents lock you where there are no books? You could hide a couple, if that’s your usual punishment.'

Mutant, definitely a mutant; maybe from the future, as Stapledon described. At least their culture wasn’t that different—books still existed. Or it might be a parallel world. Doesn’t matter—Harry will figure it out. But the arrogance of this (super?) person was stunning. Shouldn’t they speak on equal terms? Since they managed to make contact at all, wasn’t that fact proof of Harry’s worth? Or was it because of the age difference? Harry would swear it wasn’t significant. His interlocutor didn’t seem even remotely like a seventy-something old man. Just didn’t.

'Listen, smarty, cut that out. Yeah, I don’t know what charms are. Get over it and explain properly.

WOW. So you’re like… a consciousness inside a computer? Is that it?

You’re such a snob. Fine, deal.

No, you go first. How can you be inside a diary? Explain, please, I’m VERY interested!!!

Dudley. Dudley Vernon Dursley. Why do you need his name? I don’t get it.

Oh, yeah. I don’t like people much. Mostly, they're just trouble. I’d live on a desert island if I could, like Crusoe—that fool still complained about something!'

Harry’s initial intent to immediately study the phenomenon of a consciousness placed in an object looking like a notebook quickly evaporated under the last question. Tom ('call me by my first name'—who even says it like that?) clearly hit a nerve.

'OF COURSE I have no books here, I borrow them at the library and read there because if I bring home anything, my nasty cousin ruins or steals and throws them away, and I CAN’T risk losing my library card. I DID hide a couple, but it’s more complicated than you think, got it?

They’re not my parents; mine both died. And this, blimey, is a CUPBOARD, the size of a washing machine box, no window, nothing. I even sleep on the floor now, since having outgrown the cot, and I have to lie DIAGONALLY. One day I’ll grow enough to occupy it FULLY, I swear, and when I do, I’ll have to squeeze in, pressing knees to ears and nose to belly button. No reading nightlight—just a bulb on the ceiling. No bed linen, only a bare mattress. And my pillow—trust me, you would never wanna see it; it’s stone-hard and STINKS. And the blanket has moth holes you can fit your thumb in. Plus, it’s stuffy here in summer and winter, but in winter is also COLD.

But you know, when I say it’s not so bad, I really mean it.

At least here, no one bothers me. No housework. No gardening. No cooking. And no shouting.

AND YES, right now I am NOT bored at all, that’s for sure!

Only hungry. Usually not fed when locked here.’

Frankly, Harry had ways to leave the cupboard. The least destructive, allowing simply 'persuading' the latch to open, he mastered at about five, when he got fed up with the 'Bedwetter' moniker. But of course, he used it only at night. The other methods, especially one, involving fire, were better never used, even the first time he invented them.

So, at night Harry planned to sneak out and find something in the fridge. Besides, the outing was inevitable, so why not grab a snack? A cup of tea wouldn’t hurt either. He had long perfected the art of stealing food little by little, so it was barely noticeable.

After making these plans, Harry thought Tom would definitely like to know about the… deviltry. Tom meanwhile was already writing:

'Language, Harry.

We probably started wrong. Harry, what do you know about the magical world?

Mostly right. Consciousness and memory locked in this diary. Suspect for a long time. What year is it now? The war ended, right?

Language, please. Keep talking like that and you’ll be known as a rabble. And reputation runs far ahead of people.

It’s high-order magic. Circumstances made me create a kind of copy of my personality and place it in this item. My original 'self' was threatened with death then, so… any risks were justified.

Answer is simple: I’m trying to recall your surname (or your cousin’s, since you mentioned him) among names I knew before. I’ve never heard of the Dursleys, but Potters are a rather famous pure-blood family, though not the most renowned. And yet you claim you know nothing about charms. That’s inconsistent, and I want to clarify how that’s possible.

I can only say I understand your situation better than you might think. We’ll talk about it sometime later.

So you can talk to snakes? You promised me to tell.'

Harry took a while to think over the answer. What war? Oh. Oh no. Lord help. Harry should have guessed right away that '1943' hinted at something. Perhaps that’s when Tom placed 'a kind of copy of his personality,' whatever that meant, into the notebook, assuming it was a good way to escape death.

Outside the cupboard, normal evening life flowed—a distant TV mumbling in the sitting room, the refrigerator door popping in the kitchen, water murmuring in the toilet, footsteps creaking on the stairs. The smell of fried potatoes seeped through the door. Inside the shelter, nothing happened—and that was comforting. The ghostly flashlight flickered, dust motes hovered as before. The flattened mattress had long taken the shape of Harry’s body, and the hardness of the floor beneath it was felt with every bone. Harry turned onto his stomach and moved the diary from his knees to the floor. The flashlight set aside cast deep, grotesque shadows with strange outlines. Harry gripped the pen tighter in his tired fingers and wrote:

'I think I KNOW ABSOLUTELY NOTHING about the magical world?

1991. Sorry. The war ended long ago, back in ‘45.

What happened to your 'original self' in the end? Did he die, or what?

What. The heck. Is 'pure-blood family'? And what’s it got to do with me?

Alright. But don’t expect me to forget.

With one snake, technically, but—yes. We definitely spoke. That boa constrictor at the zoo today—it called me 'amigo,' can you believe it?'

Then, led by intuition, he added:

'Oh, and something else happened. One jerk, a henchman of my nasty cousin, pushed me, I fell and got really furious, and THEN the terrarium glass just VANISHED, and the serpent slipped out, and it was just awesome, I swear. Polkiss and Dudley squealed like pigs, although no one touched them. That was worth any punishment. And it felt good to help the snake escape if it wanted to.

You know, I can do those sorts of things, especially when I’m angry or upset.

I can also move things without touching them.'

The ink disappeared almost before he finished.

'And animals obey you without any training.'

Wow. It didn't look like a question, did it? He remembered Mrs. Figg’s cats, aunt Marge’s bulldog—and carefully confirmed:

'Sometimes'

'And you can hurt people if you want to.'

Harry didn’t intend to reveal that much. The letters melted away, but he kept staring at the blank page. He wrote nothing in response.

'No obligation to confess, but say 'no' if it’s not true.'

Harry… didn’t say 'no.'

'I think even if you don’t know about the magical world, you already realise you’re different from those around you, right?'

Yes.

'You’re not like them. You’re special.'

Harry always knew it, and today—he was finally sure.

'That's what charms are. Magic. You're a wizard, Harry.'

Slowly, gently, Little Whinging was falling asleep. Lights went out in identical houses behind identical hedges, dew settled on identical neat lawns, and only moonlight, like a mischievous boy, joyfully rolled over identical roof slopes. Owls, shooting stars, and oddly dressed gentlemen didn’t disturb the tranquility of Privet Drive and its residents. Only behind the tightly closed cupboard door under the stairs at number four did the dim light of a pocket flashlight burn all night until the last spare battery died.

By that time, Harry James Potter already knew everything he was supposed to know about himself.

Chapter Text

Over the next few weeks, Harry rather resembled a happy zombie. A zombie because he tried to spend as little time sleeping as humanly possible. Happy because he had acquired a secret.

And it wasn't some grubby, nasty little secret, like how Mark Dennis had a wank during lessons through a hole in his trouser pocket lining, or how Abby Williams was pregnant by either Jim Lewis or Dick Abrams, or how Reggie Warren and Eddie MacLachlan had been smoking dope in the bushes behind the gymnasium. And it certainly wasn't some tedious, grown-up 'secret' like how Uncle Vernon fiddled his tax returns, or how Mr Graham two doors down was nicking electricity past the meter, or how the headmaster kept a half-empty bottle of gin in the bottom drawer of his desk.

No, this was a real, proper Secret, the sort secrets ought to be.

But Tom was even more than the most proper secret in the world. He had become Harry's Friend, and it had happened in a single night.

Looking back, Harry realised that the transition from 'I'm not interested in the very concept of friendship' to 'Tom and I are best mates forever' had been rather abrupt. But then again, if there was such a thing as love at first sight (and there was—Harry had read about it loads of times), then why couldn't there be friendship at first, er, word? And there had been, no doubt about it; the thought of being separated from Tom now, even for one day, was about as appealing as the prospect of losing some part of his own body.

This gave rise to fears previously unknown to Harry. Before, he'd had precious little to hide—nothing in his possession that was quite so valuable and important—but now the lack of a secure hiding place tormented him hourly. There was absolutely no question of simply leaving Tom in the cupboard—anyone could pop in there at any time and do something dreadful to Harry's things. In books, heroes usually made hiding places under floorboards or somewhere in the walls, but in the bloody cupboard the walls were barely an inch thick including the plaster, and the floor was just a thin layer of lino. Door, walls, floor, ceiling—every night Harry examined them afresh, hoping for inspiration, but it never came. Hiding the diary somewhere outside the cupboard seemed utterly impossible, unthinkable—he'd worry himself sick, wouldn't be able to sit through even half a day at school, let alone a whole one, wouldn't be able to sleep at night if he moved even two feet away from his treasure.

The upshot of these agonising and fruitless deliberations was that the diary now travelled everywhere with Harry. At first he put it in his rucksack—Jane was granted the greatest honour of her pathetic existence, though she hardly deserved it—but then even the rucksack ceased to seem a reliable receptacle. Gordon, Malcolm, Dennis and the other resident wits could easily turn Jane inside out just for a laugh, as they'd done before, and during this vile comedy Tom might come to harm. Harry found the very thought of such desecration revolting. Now he carried the diary directly on his person, strapped with an elastic bandage between his vest and shirt. The outer layers of clothing—blazer or jumper, or both together—reliably concealed any suspicious outlines. Only this solution, temporary and imperfect though it was, brought Harry some measure of peace.

Besides the Secret and the Friend—or rather, the Secret Friend—Harry had also acquired a mystery, otherwise known as the Mystery of Origins.

For as long as he could remember, Harry had hated his parents. To start with, they were dead—had managed to kill themselves in a car crash whilst leaving Harry with a scar as a memento, and not just anywhere, but right on his face where it was impossible to miss. Harry harboured no particular illusions—the nickname 'freak' that had stuck to him thanks to his idiot cousin wasn't connected solely to the scar. But without that dubious decoration, Harry's life would clearly have been much easier.

And as if that weren't enough, his parents, even whilst being dead, remained a blot on his reputation. Aunt Petunia never tired of reminding Harry that his father had been 'worthless' and 'crackbrained,' whilst his mother was 'abnormal'—a 'freak' whose true, and very low, worth only Petunia knew. That was individually—together, the Potter couple were described more frankly: as 'junkies,' 'alcoholics' and 'washed-up hippies.' Little Whinging was a quiet, respectable place, but even here one could find opportunities to observe alcoholics, junkies and washed-up hippies if one wished. Needless to say, Harry found such parentage completely uninspiring.

And finally, their greatest sin lay in the fact that Harry's parents hadn't left him so much as a brass farthing. He ate, drank, slept, received Dudley's cast-offs and various rubbish from charity shop sales purely out of charity, like some blasted Dickensian orphan. And like a Dickensian orphan, he had to work off his guardians' 'kindness' daily, hourly—the true 'kindness' of the parish beadle, 'kindness' armed with a bowl of thin gruel and a heavy cane for beatings.

Yes, Harry hated his parents, but until now this anger had been muffled, background noise, rather like the distant sound of rain, the ache of old dog bite wounds, and the throb of an improperly healed wrist; it had been barely glowing coals, gently simmering stew—present, but almost never commanding his full attention.

After his conversations with Tom, it had turned to fury. It had become the deafening roar of a downpour, soared to a piercing note, bubbled with bloody foam and blazed in bonfires reaching to the sky, like Guy Fawkes Night.

What. The. Heck.

If the surname 'Potter' meant what it was supposed to mean, then his father had been a pureblood. His mother almost certainly belonged to the Muggle-born—the horror and hatred with which Aunt Petunia reacted to any 'delitry' spoke for themselves.

But his father.

All pureblood families were connected to each other through a complex web of marriage and kinship, absolutely everyone was some sort of distant cousin to everyone else, and a whole enormous crowd of people could have taken responsibility for caring for Harry after his useless parents' deaths.

At the very least, there were his grandfather and grandmother (plus great-grandfather and great-grandmother) on the Potter side, his great-grandmother on the Black side and her enormous clan in addition, and attached to the Blacks in turn came the Crabbes, the Prewetts and the Rosiers—and those were only the ones Tom could remember off the top of his head.

So why, one might ask, was Harry living with Muggles?

Had his parents not bothered with any sort of will whatsoever?

By this time, Harry's vocabulary had expanded exponentially. He now had the proper word for his dearly beloved aunt and uncle and their revolting spawn, and whilst he was at it, for that little toerag Polkiss, for Dennis and Malcolm, for show-off Brown and moron Gordon. And that word was 'Muggles.'

Simpletons. Creatures helpless before a properly trained wizard, yet practically useless as well. The previous stage of evolution, already doomed by nature to extinction, but still numerous for now. Tom didn't even need to explain in detail—Harry had already read all this many times over in his favourite books. He understood the concept perfectly.

In the long term, Muggles weren't a problem. As soon as he received his Hogwarts letter—and he would receive it, there was no doubt about that, and Tom had already explained roughly how it would happen (it had worked out rather well, in a sense, that they were both half-bloods, only Tom's mother had been the pureblood witch)—as soon as someone from the staff came to Harry and delivered the necessary documents, Harry would be able to shake the dust of the Muggle world from his soles forever. One way or another, he wouldn't be returning to Privet Drive. Among wizards, he'd find a place better than this one.

Therefore, there wasn't even much point in trying to put the fear of God into his Muggle cousin, his Muggle mates, or his aunt and uncle. Their shelf life was limited and consisted of a couple of weeks at most.

Given the circumstances, Harry took a philosophical approach to the continuation of his imprisonment in the cupboard. It was actually rather convenient. If only he didn't have to attend that Muggle school, things would be perfect, but the holidays hadn't arrived yet—on the contrary, all the fuss about end-of-year exams was in full swing. Until very recently, Harry would have seen them as his chance, a glimmer of hope for secondary school without Dudley and a better class than before—but now, naturally, he'd completely lost interest and was preparing half-heartedly. He had more important things to occupy himself with. And far more interesting ones at that.

He'd had to buy batteries. The money he'd scraped together by hook or by crook, from walking other people's dogs to hunting for stray coins inside the sofa cushions, he was loath to spend, but the television remote in the sitting room simply couldn't cover his increased lighting needs. If the batteries in it mysteriously 'ran down' every night, even the Muggles would smell a rat.

Harry begrudged the time spent sleeping. He begrudged time spent on anything that wasn't Tom.

They were friends, after all.

'22nd July,

Dear Tom!'

This greeting had replaced 'Dear Diary.' Tom found it infinitely irritating, but he was also (Harry could somehow sense this, that was all) grateful for the precise date, since he himself had absolutely no way of knowing it.

And that, when you thought about it, was rather ghastly. And uncomfortable.

When asked about how he spent his time inside the diary when he wasn't talking to Harry, Tom had stated the following:

'Time feels different for me.

It's not something you should worry about.'

Which, as Harry realised much later, had somehow transformed in his head into an assertion that things weren't too bad. Which Tom hadn't actually said. And that in itself was very telling in a thoroughly unpleasant way, because if things really weren't too bad, why not say so directly? What was the point of these careful, evasive formulations?

Harry was gradually beginning to understand that Tom was simply a master at concealing all sorts of dreadful things behind careful, evasive formulations.

So. Providing today's date was the least Harry could do, though it probably wasn't nearly enough.

'Dear Tom,

today I had to spend nearly the whole day at barmy old Mrs Figg's. You probably remember her, since I've already told you about her—she's the one with the broken leg. Today she was slightly less unbearable than usual...'

Harry had intended to move quickly from the comic episode with the old woman tripping over her own cat to the joyful news about finishing his school exams—but not a bit of it. Tom had suddenly become intensely interested in these very cats for some reason.

'Well yes, six toes each. All of them. Ghastly business. I think it's all the inbreeding...

Sort of mottled. No, the tail isn't bald. Yes. There are tufts on their ears. Looks utterly ridiculous.

Clever? I wouldn't say so. They don't do anything really, just sleep mostly.'

'Harry,' Tom concluded, having extracted every possible detail about the old woman's pets, inside and out, and though it was only one line, it looked—for want of a better word—ominous, 'Harry, these animals aren't cats, or only half-cats. I'm fairly certain they're Kneazles. Kneazles are magical creatures. I'll tell you about them later if you want, but right now the important thing is this: like other magical creatures, they don't get along with Muggles.

Your neighbour Mrs Figg is either a witch or a Squib. And you didn't know this, and she never told you, am I right?'

Bloody right, that's what.

'Blimey!

Blimey blimey BLIMEY

Tom. You're not mistaken, are you? You can't be mistaken?!'

'Language, Harry.'

Which meant: stop swearing like a Muggle. That is—stop using Muggle curse words. Because if you continue doing so, purebloods will pretend you're eating excrement right in front of them every single time. They were supposed to have never heard anything even remotely resembling Muggle profanity, and if they did hear it, that was it—shock, horror, coffin on a gun carriage. Which, as Tom explained, was ninety-nine point nine percent bollocks, but such were the rules of the game—rather like how sixth-form girls supposedly had never clapped eyes on a real cock—and you simply had to stick to these rules. Develop the habit.

It also meant that Tom wouldn't answer until he corrected himself.

'MERLIN'S SWEATY BOLLOCKS, TOM'

'Unfortunately, there can be no mistake. These are Kneazles or part-Kneazles, which means their owner is a witch or a Squib.'

Harry collapsed onto his back, rolled about on his lumpy mattress, covered his face with the diary and let out a quiet groan. Did she know or not that he was a wizard? If she knew—why had she kept quiet? Why hadn't she protected him somehow? They were only Muggles, after all; surely there had to be some authority over them, surely it couldn't be that a magical child could simply be thrown to a pack of Muggles and they could be allowed to treat him however they pleased... Why hadn't she intervened? Couldn't she see—what he was dressed in, how they treated him, didn't she notice the bruises, didn't she... Right, sod it, he simply didn't have the strength to think about this right now.

'What's a Squib?'

Few things in life pleased Tom as much as showing off his knowledge. And Harry was happy to give him opportunity after opportunity—it was mutually beneficial. Besides, this was what real friends did, wasn't it? They gave each other chances to show off. Especially when there were girls around. Though it was fine without girls too.

Tom, as usual, didn't disappoint:

'Imagine a child whose parents, even before his conception, opened an account at a goblin bank. Into this account they immediately deposited a tidy sum—let's say fifty thousand Galleons. Enough for a whole lifetime, you'd think. But then the day of birth arrives—and it transpires that over the past nine months, the key to the vault at Gringotts has been lost. Desperate searches lead nowhere, and the child, whilst owning a fortune that could provide for him completely, remains a pauper with nothing but a hole in his pocket.

Here, the gold is his magic. A Squib is one who, whilst possessing magic, cannot make use of it in the slightest.

It's a truly pitiful existence, and the birth of Squibs is feared like the plague. In the old days they were killed, and even now the old pureblood families are prepared to do almost anything to cover up their shame. Squibs are hidden away, exiled to distant estates, committed to sanatoriums with trumped-up diagnoses (and there they're sometimes treated to death), abandoned to Muggles, or—yes—killed.

Less conservative wizards are prepared to accept a Squib, even help them get established in life. Some are palmed off into positions as caretakers and cleaners, others are found places in the Muggle world, especially if the family has money.

What complicates matters is that you can't identify a Squib whilst they're still in nappies. Magical outbursts begin in children at different ages—there are late bloomers too—and parents wait calmly until about age seven, still hope until about nine, know almost certainly by ten, but only if the child's name doesn't appear in the Book of Hogwarts at the stroke of midnight on their twelfth birthday—only then is the sentence considered final.

Squibs can see enchanted buildings and interact with magical creatures; magical medicines work on them—and that's all. Active spellcasting is impossible for them in any form, and no wand will respond in their hands.

If Arabella Figg is a Squib, then she has lived a long, unhappy life.'

Harry discovered that he couldn't find much pity in himself for the bitter fate of Arabella Figg, possible Squib. Instead, other thoughts swarmed in his head.

'And I was just... dumped like that, wasn't I?

Just like that. With Muggles.

And kept locked up, like...'

'You're not a Squib, Harry,' Tom wrote quickly, and Harry gave a little sob; he hadn't meant to, it just happened. 'You're quite the opposite.'

And at that very moment Harry desperately wished he could hear Tom's voice someday. What sort of voice would he have, he wondered? Probably very warm.

Like a real elder brother.

Chapter Text

The first day of the summer holidays—the day Harry discovered Mrs Figg’s true, sly nature—also proved to be the last day of the Prisoner of the Cupboard’s confinement. While Harry was trapped at the crackpot cat lady's, his aunt was dragging his cousin round the shops, and by Monday evening, the Dursleys were immersed in a pleasant task: ensuring Piglet's new school uniform was ready. Hog was so delighted with his progeny he actually shed a tear, while Harry was already savouring how he’d describe the cane and the boater to Tom: to his taste, Swine looked remarkably foolish in his attire (though Harry prudently kept that opinion to himself).

The next morning began with Aunt Petunia messing around with some of Dudley’s cast-offs in the kitchen. For some reason, she believed that plenty of dirty water and an even larger quantity of stench would somehow transform these sorry-looking rags into an acceptable set of school uniform for Harry. To be fair, this plan raised not only Harry’s skepticism, but Aunt Petunia was determined to see it through, despite the protests of her son and husband (mostly about the smell—the final outcome didn’t concern them). Harry refrained from protesting; Muggles could amuse themselves as they pleased; in his future school, no one wore anything of the kind anyway.

And speaking of school, that same morning Harry received a most curious letter.

It arrived by ordinary Muggle post, along with the usual rubbish—bills and postcards—but the letter itself was anything but ordinary. Enclosed in a parchment envelope without a stamp, addressed in bright green ink and sealed with wax, it all but screamed who it was meant for simply by its appearance—and that’s without the trouble of reading the address; the latter left no room for doubt at all.

‘Mr H.J. Potter
the cupboard under the stairs, 4 Privet Drive, Little Whinging, Surrey’

Well, it looked splendid at first sight, but there must be something wrong: Harry had, generally speaking, expected a personal visit from a member of staff. Tucking the letter into the waistband of his house jeans and smoothing his T-shirt over it, he went back to the kitchen.

Breakfast seemed to drag on for an eternity, and then he had to wash up afterwards—and scrub the floor, the table, the sink, and every other surface remotely involved in the preparation and consumption of food. Harry solemnly swore to himself that, once he crossed the threshold of this house for the last time, he would never again touch a rag or a sponge.

That work could and should be done by magic, or by house-elves, if you happened to have any. Harry was curious to see even one; he had no doubt he would someday.

He desperately wished he could perform magic right now. How glorious it would be to wave a wand and make the things around him do exactly what he wanted! Accidental magic was all very well in its fashion, but it was limited—mere crumbs from the table of real, complex, varied magic. Before Tom, Harry hadn’t realised precisely what he’d been deprived of since childhood; now he did, all too clearly. The need for magic, once a mosquito-bite itch at the edge of his consciousness, shapeless and unrecognised, had turned into twitching phantom pains, into a nagging sense of loss and incompleteness. There was a way to make absolutely everything better with magic—and Harry, stuck with Muggles, was cut off from that entirely. He needed Cleaning Charms, and Mending Charms, and Concealment Charms, and—oh, Morgana, what a useful thing—Muggle-Repelling Charms, perfect for the diary, and healing, and water-repelling, and all the other charms too.

‘Soon,’ Harry told himself, ‘very soon I’ll have them. I just have to wait a little.’

In the privacy of his cupboard he switched on his torch and hurried to pull out the stiff, crackling envelope.

‘Dear Mr Potter,

We are pleased to inform you that you have been accepted at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.

Please find enclosed a list of all necessary books and equipment.

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

Yours sincerely,

Minerva McGonagall,

Deputy Headmistress’

Adorned at the top with the Hogwarts crest and furnished with an ornate heading (which, on closer inspection, turned out to be a laughably long list of the Headmaster’s names and titles), the message was the very model of brevity. Harry felt a degree of bewilderment.

Where was the date of the visit? Was no one going to come at all? Had this Minerva McGonagall even realised that Harry lived with Muggles? She must have, since the letter hadn’t come by owl. Yet she expected a reply by magical post—what nonsense! It was lucky there was still nearly a week before the deadline. But never mind the reply—what about his school purchases? The list on the second sheet looked ominously extensive, and Harry hadn’t the faintest idea where he was supposed to get money even for a wand, let alone everything else.

A professor had come to Tom. Offered help and an escort. Brought a bursary from the school’s Board of Governors—barely enough, but it had covered the essentials.

He’d lifted it from school as well, this time off the staffroom desk—a farewell keepsake, for a long bad memory, so to speak. A wizard was supposed to write with quill and ink (in class too—Harry didn’t like that), but it was still better than pencil. He addressed it: ‘To Minerva McGonagall, Deputy Headmistress, Hogwarts,’ and slipped the little triangle into his pocket.

Old Mrs Figg, it seemed, wasn’t expecting callers. She opened the door in a faded calico wrapper, her head stuffed with pink curlers—so many it looked like a brain bulging out, as in the comic books. The cats—all four—yowled in chorus behind her, hoping, no doubt, for an unscheduled dinner. Harry lowered his gaze and smiled modestly.

‘Good afternoon, Mrs Figg,’ he cooed, looking at his trainers (formerly Dudley’s trainers, which had seen much better days). ‘I really need your help. Please, may I come in?’

Amid the cabbage reek and feline miasma of the old woman’s parlour they sipped weak, nasty tea while Harry pondered the neatest way to crack the horrid old fraud wide open.

‘Mrs Figg,’ he began, ‘your cats have always seemed cleverer than usual to me. And those tufts on their ears give them such a distinctive look! But I’ve forgotten the name of the breed. If I’m not mistaken… Kneazles?’ He held his breath.

‘Maine Coons, dear,’ the crone poured milk into her cup with an unflinching hand; Harry had the impression the milk had soured, though perhaps it was something else stinking—cat vomit in a corner, say. ‘The breed is called Maine Coon. You said you wanted to ask me a favour?’

‘I’ll never make a spy,’ thought Harry.

‘I need an owl.’

‘An owl? What an extraordinary wish. And what has that to do with me?’

The joke has gone too far.

‘Mrs Figg. Please. I need an owl. I’ve had a letter from school, and there’s very little time left to reply.’

In the background a cat (a Maine Coon—or perhaps a Kneazle after all) was struggling desperately to expel a hairball.

‘Ah, Harry,’ the cup clinked against cheap crockery and the old woman’s face, like a crumpled apricot, took on a particularly tearful look, ‘so you know everything?’

‘Ah, you cow,’ thought Harry, angry, ‘so you know everything. Just you wait. I’ll get to you someday.’

‘Yes. I already know everything. So—about the owl?’

‘I haven’t got one.’

He blinked.

‘I’m not a witch, dear,’ Mrs Figg hid behind her cup. ‘Mm, it’s awkward to talk about, isn’t it? I’m from a magical family, but I can’t do magic myself. That’s how it is. You’ll understand such things when you’re older.’

Fury kept the tears from coming, but Harry made an effort.

‘But, Mrs Figg! I really need one,’ he whinged. ‘What am I going to do?’

‘Well, dear,’ mumbled Mrs Figg, ‘why don’t you, er… why not send it from Diagon Alley? There’s certainly a public owlery there. Or… I’m sure Tom would be happy to help you.’

Something must have flashed across Harry’s face, because the old woman hastened to explain:

‘Oh—the innkeeper of the Leaky Cauldron. His name’s Tom.’

Harry exhaled. And was genuinely indignant, at that:

‘But how am I supposed to get there?! On my own? I’m small! And I’ve absolutely no money!’

It came out piercingly. The cats set up a thin‑voiced keening like a choir of castrati.

Mrs Figg broke.

‘I, I… all right! Let’s go!’

Having picked their way through Mrs Figg’s dwelling—every bit as eccentric and slovenly as the lady herself—the old woman and Harry found themselves on a skewed back step. The yard beyond, scarcely larger than a pocket handkerchief, was choked with elder, with only a gigantic crop of nettles—like Christmas trees—disputing the space. Mrs Figg, casting furtive glances about, plunged a hand down the front of her bodice. After a quick rummage she fished out a long silvery whistle on a thin chain. When she blew it—absolutely soundlessly, one might note—an owl fell upon her from above.

It was the most ordinary owl—not that Harry had seen many in his life, but this was exactly the kind that illustrated ‘Owls’ in the Encyclopaedia Britannica. A long‑eared owl, Asio otus. Brown, mottled plumage, feather tufts—indeed like long ears—on its head, and round honey‑yellow eyes. It looked not at all magical, but very put out. Mrs Figg transferred it to her shoulder and the owl began pecking at her curlers.

‘Dear, where’s your letter? Give it here.’

At sight of the little orphan’s triangle the old woman raised her eyebrows, but said nothing. The owl, when the missive was thrust into its beak, squirmed crossly and began to flap—first gingerly, then faster, wider and higher, like a very angry angel on someone’s tombstone. In broad daylight the spectacle was particularly dismal. At last it heaved itself off—only the nettle tops swayed—and flew away. Harry wished it a safe journey with all his heart.

Before leaving he had to drink another cup of vile tea and listen once more to the story of how Mr Tibbles caught a frog, brought it indoors and then lost it. The tale was, in principle, amusing—the first three times. Harry did his best to behave properly and even praised the old woman’s chocolate cake—though, warned by bitter past experience, he did not eat it.

Home welcomed Harry as usual—with warmth and tenderness—that is, with a shrill ‘Boy! Where, for God' sake, have you been?’ and a list of forced labours. Harry hoovered, peeled potatoes and scrubbed tiles like a robot. His thoughts were far away—drifting among the clouds with the owl, sliding back like snakes to Mrs Figg’s house. He couldn’t have said exactly what he wanted to do to her, for she never helped him in anything anyway—today barely counted and even then she’d had to be wheedled into that small effort—but he certainly wanted to do something nasty. She deserved it.

Before supper Harry went to shower—and nearly brained himself, because he managed to fall asleep standing under the warm spray. The lack of adequate sleep was becoming increasingly apparent, but Harry preferred not to notice. The closer night came, the more his nerves strung tight—he didn’t feel lively, but he wasn’t the least bit sleepy either. And tonight, the moment he was shut up in the shell of his cupboard and pulled out the diary, the exhaustion ebbed to the back of his mind and stopped mattering.

‘Still 23 July

Dear Tom…’

For success in sending the reply to school Harry earned praise—Tom appreciated the performance he’d staged. They reviewed the plan again and agreed that if no one had turned up by Friday—not even an owl with another letter—then he’d have to make his own way to Diagon Alley. Harry thanked the powers above for Tom with all his heart—Tom knew what was where, understood school procedures, moved through the magical world like a fish in water—Harry couldn’t imagine, and didn’t want to, how he’d be extricating himself from this mess without him.

Harry read the letter again, this time paying more attention to the list of books and equipment: ‘standard size two pewter cauldron? are there non‑standard ones? why are the scales specifically copper? a pointed hat, seriously? did you wear one? and what, does anyone truly choose a toad as a familiar?’. He turned over the ticket for the Hogwarts Express: ‘they stole WHAT? you’re joking? how do you steal an entire train?’. He admired the wax with the Hogwarts seal: ‘but why a badger? I mean—it’s just odd, isn’t it?’. Tom didn’t seem to mind answering Harry's questions—on the contrary, he appeared to be genuinely amused, making frequent comments about his correspondent’s mental capacities. Tom, truth be told, was a terrible tease—but Harry liked that about him too.

Tom even told him something amusing about McGonagall—he’d known her as a girl, it turned out; she’d been two or three years younger and in Gryffindor House. Tom remembered her as a lively, cocksure lass who poured herself into Quidditch—a magical sport with convoluted rules and a preposterously high injury rate. It was odd to think about—odd, but funny. Now she was Deputy Headmistress.

But when the conversation turned to the Headmaster himself (formerly the Transfiguration professor), Tom went grave as a sexton. The chap with the name like a dog’s pedigree and a title longer than Merlin’s beard was no simple customer.

‘Harry,’ wrote Tom, and every curl of his hand seemed to exude an unease that made you shiver, ‘listen to me with the utmost attention.

This man is VERY DANGEROUS.’

From there it went straight into fairy‑tale territory—the 'scarier and scarier' bit. The titled old codger—Albus the Great and Terrible, Knight of This and That, Supreme Mugwump (supreme over whom? Harry would have to ask), in short, that chap—could read minds. Which, in itself, wasn’t an enormous deal; plenty could, including Tom, but the devil was in the details. The old man was better at Legilimency than most—and, crucially:

‘He can do it without your consent, on the sly.

So under no circumstances look him in the eyes—don’t make it easier for him to creep into your mind.’

And Tom, it seemed, considered Goodwin—i.e. Albus—either a paedophile, or a die‑hard prankster, or both at once:

‘Don’t eat or drink anything he offers.

Try not to be alone with him. If you end up alone—find an excuse to leave as soon as you can.’

And suspected him of working for MI5:

‘Don’t tell him anything without thinking three times.

Under no circumstances mention that you speak Parseltongue.

Best not to tell him anything about yourself at all—answer only direct questions, and as briefly as possible.’

Taken together… downright sinister.

‘When I was about your age I was foolish enough to blab something about my abilities to him. The one conversation in which I was careless. After that he hounded me for YEARS, watched my every move, wore me down with suspicion.’

Blimey.

‘You’re describing him as—I don’t know—some really evil version of Professor Xavier. Is he really that bad?’

‘Much WORSE.’

Tom underlined ‘worse’.

Harry wondered if he truly understood the comparison. As with the word ‘computer’—and a few similar cases—Harry wouldn’t have sworn that Tom somehow knew the meaning (theoretically impossible, and yet—Tom), or merely guessed from context. Harry had the impression Tom would rather bite his tongue off (metaphorically) than admit he hadn’t understood something.

‘Harry, he will hate you too if you give him the slightest pretext!

Be cautious. Do you understand?’

So—a super‑evil Professor X. Brilliant. Harry was in for it, clearly. Well. He’d rather liked Magneto anyway.

‘Yeah. All right. I’ve got you. I’ll try.’

‘Good lad,’ Tom thawed, and abruptly changed the subject:

‘Would you like me to show you one of my memories?’

Harry nearly jumped—but contented himself in the end with rolling quickly onto his stomach and clapping his hands over his mouth.

‘!!!

Do you even have to ask!

Of course I do—very much!

You can do that?

Why didn’t you before?

What do you need for it?’

Tom waited until Harry ran down a little and wrote back:

‘In that case, let’s try.

I can, but there are limits. You’ll see.

For this I’ll have to… take a sliver of your life force. I haven’t any magic of my own—only what you choose to share with me.

It doesn’t hurt. You won’t feel anything special, but for the next few days you’d best not try any magic; and you should sleep and eat more than usual. You may feel a little irritable and drowsy. In short, the risks are small, but it isn’t something to do often.

Well—do you agree?’

Harry most definitely agreed, and confirmed it as ardently as he could.

‘Good. Get comfortable, relax, look straight ahead and try not to think of anything. Let me know when you’re ready.’

Harry wriggled on his stomach and decided he was as comfortable as he was going to get—nothing on this wretched pallet would allow for better. He propped his head on his left hand, adjusted his glasses and firmly wrote ‘ready’, then honestly tried to relax and think of nothing.

For a second or two nothing happened, then the diary’s pages stirred as if in a draught—only there was no draught. The diary began to turn its own pages—faster, faster still, the leaves flickering by—and suddenly Harry realised that these weren’t pages—they were the spokes of a gigantic wheel spinning before him—and he also realised that somehow he could make out the gaps between the spokes, and that one could step into those gaps, and beyond them—darkness.

Harry stepped, and went in, into the darkness.

He dropped from a height of about a foot and a half, nearly fell, staggered—but kept his feet. The darkness gave way to bright sunlight.

Looking round, Harry saw a bustling city street. He didn’t know for certain where he was—London, perhaps?—but one thing was beyond doubt: this was the past. Old‑fashioned folk were going about their business without paying him the slightest heed, a boxy antique tram rattled along rails, and the milkman’s cart was pulled by a real live horse—a small, skinny, mouse-colored creature.

‘Come on,’ someone said imperiously right beside him, and Harry turned.

He wasn’t warm. Neither his voice nor he himself: tall, handsome, arrogant, dangerous—anything but warm. And yet, in some unfathomable way he looked and sounded exactly like an elder brother. Harry found he couldn’t move.

Tom, who had already taken a step, stopped, turned and gave Harry a thoughtful once‑over. All Harry could do was stare back. His glasses fogged. Tom’s face took on a look of quiet amusement with a small sadistic note hidden in it. He raised an eyebrow.

‘You do keep surprising, don’t you? You know, many can recognise perfection when they see it, but you really are the first to cry.’

It was… so very Tom that Harry’s heart broke. Again.

‘May I touch you?’ he managed.

He longed to hug Tom—but Tom shook his head, still smiling lightly.

‘You can’t. We’re inside a memory—neither of us is really here. And I’m nowhere at all. I’m not even a ghost.’

Harry made an inarticulate, protesting noise; he hadn’t the strength for more. He’d meant something else—permission—because Tom was definitely not the sort to encourage being grabbed without prior, explicit consent. But Tom either hadn’t understood him, or had understood only too well—and answered him about possibility. About the lack of it. Harry would have preferred a prohibition.

‘Follow me,’ Tom repeated. ‘I’ll show you something.’

‘Tall’ didn’t cover it—he literally blocked out the sun. Harry had to take two steps for every one of his, which meant not walking but practically trotting, like a short‑legged little dog, a Spitz or the like. His mantle—long, black, flowing—flared as he moved. Knife‑edge creases marked his trousers, a neatly tied knot showed at the V of his jumper, his polished Oxfords gleamed. The wavy lock falling on his brow bounced as he walked. He looked perfect—better than Harry had imagined—better than anyone.

‘And stop snivelling.’

They passed through rust‑eaten iron gates into a bare, empty yard before a rather dreary building with a square grey façade surrounded by high railings. The heavy front door swung open to them; a flustered girl in a stiffly starched apron glimpsed. Tom skirted her without a glance, as though she were furniture, crossed a hall tiled in black and white and plunged into a narrow, ill‑lit corridor—confident and purposeful, like Virgil leading Dante down into the depths of Hell. Harry could barely keep up with his swift stride. They climbed a stair, passed another corridor, gloomier than the last, and came to an end door at the corner, the last in a monotonous row. It stood half‑open.

The room beyond was like a coffin—both in atmosphere and in size. A high, grimy window seemed to absorb light rather than give it. A table and chair, pressed up against the sill, was squeezed between two narrow beds. The wallpaper hung in strips. A cupboard loomed like a monolith in the corner. Stench seeped from between the floorboards like bog water. On the left‑hand bed, on a soldier‑grey blanket, a boy sat reading a book.

Harry recognised him at once.

He was Harry’s age, at least to look at. Dark‑haired, thin, sullen. Dangerous. Not yet perfect, but it would come—the living proof of this announcement watched from the corner; cold eyes drilled into Harry with curiosity, a gaze crawling across his face like a fly—Harry longed to brush it off.

‘Like it? Cosy, isn’t it?’

Harry swallowed.

‘No—sorry. What is this place, anyway?’

Not that he had no idea at all, but…

‘An orphanage. I live here.’ Tom smiled, very broadly, and, for some reason, Harry shuddered. ‘I said I understood your circumstances—well then. Now you can see with your own eyes—it’s true.’

Harry had no answer ready. For the first time it occurred to him that perhaps the Dursleys hadn’t been all that bad. Appalling, no question—but… Here the very notion of ‘bad’ acquired a new meaning and depth.

Footsteps sounded on the stairs, and a thin, jingling woman’s voice said, ‘We’ve come.’ The boy looked up and put aside his book. Tom seemed to gather himself, and anticipation flickered on his face, replaced by a mask of detached, cold amusement.

‘I brought you here for this, in fact. Watch closely; don’t miss anything.’

And Harry watched.

He saw eyes glittering with a mysterious sheen behind half‑moon spectacles.

He saw sternness and reproach in those eyes—and remembered eyes that had looked at him with stern reproof.

He saw the cupboard go up in flames—and broke into a cold sweat, imagining flames swallowing another cupboard, the one whose inner wall bore the crooked scrawl ‘Harry's Room’.

He saw the sad pile of stolen tat dumped on the blanket—and pictured being forced to return, with apologies, the pens and rubbers, exercise books and pencils, torch and batteries, the bent tin horsemen and the figurine of Jack‑o’‑Lantern.

Being forced to hand over Tom.

‘And mind you: Hogwarts will not tolerate theft,’ the man in half‑moon spectacles was already telling him, and the long name and odd set of titles no longer seemed funny.

‘Yes, sir,’ said Harry. He was cold. His head swam. He’d missed dinner—wanted to read. The corridor smelt of gin—Mrs Cole was listening. She was always listening.

‘The Ministry punishes offenders severely,’ declaimed the clownishly dressed man in spectacles. He had bad teeth. Too many sweets. Harry didn’t like sweets.

‘Yes, sir.’

‘See you at Hogwarts, Tom,’ said the man who had robbed him in broad daylight and set his cupboard on fire.

‘I can talk to snakes,’ Harry answered—and only then remembered he wasn’t supposed to.

No one must learn his secret.

‘That’s quite enough,’ came a voice suddenly above Harry’s head.

It was Tom’s voice—serious, worried. Harry scrunched his eyes shut as hard as he could. He wanted desperately to cry.

‘Tom, Tom,’ he shouted, ‘wait—just a minute.’

‘What now, you insufferable child?’

Harry opened his eyes and found Tom—right in front of him. He had to tilt his head back—and back again; that’s how tall Tom was. The wizard in spectacles had gone. The sullen boy sat on the blanket, kicking the bed‑leg. Children squealed, sobbed and laughed beyond the door. The place smelt of boiled cabbage. Tom regarded him from above with concern.

‘I know I’ve asked before. But I’ll ask again—and this time will you please answer properly? Please,’ Harry was trembling. The dizziness hadn’t gone—if anything it was worse; the floor seemed to sway. ‘What happens to you when the diary is shut?’

‘I know I’ve answered before,’ Tom said coolly, a polite, empty expression dropping over his face like a mask. ‘But I’ll answer again—just this once—and you mustn’t ask me again. Nothing happens to me. When the diary is shut—I cease to exist. Every time.’

Harry nodded slowly.

‘Sorry. I understand. I won’t ask again. But…’

He drew a breath. The room now swayed, rocked and spun like a broken carousel. Harry clenched his fists and lifted his chin higher.

‘…I promise—no, I swear—that I’ll find a way to get you out of here.’

Tom smirked.

‘No need to fall to pieces. That's not worth such ridiculous agitation.’

Harry didn’t like that answer.

‘Tom!’ he protested—but Tom only flashed him a contemptuous look.

‘Harry! Don’t say what you don’t mean—let Muggles pronounce words like 'swear' and then do nothing. It’s unworthy of a wizard. Don’t disgrace me—or yourself.’

‘But I do mean it,’ Harry insisted, fighting the wave of nausea. ‘I do. I’ll do it. I don’t know how—but however it takes. I don’t care. By any means.’

‘Really?’ Tom seemed surprised—in a good way. Harry thought he liked that look on Tom’s face.

‘Definitely really.’

Tom’s grin widened:

‘Then promise as a wizard, not as a Muggle.’

‘I don’t know how…’

‘Repeat after me: 'I, Harry James Potter…''

‘…by my soul, my magic and the breath of my mouth, do swear…’

‘…to help Tom Marvolo Riddle…’

‘…to return to life by any means necessary.’

‘And let magic be my witness in this.’

Tom still looked pleasantly surprised. And doubtful. And by the tiniest drop—as though he were happy. Harry loved him so much in that moment.

He flashed Tom a radiant, triumphant smile. And fainted.

Chapter Text

'26th July

Dear Tom...'

Harry had been in a foul mood since the morning.

For one thing, his head ached—a dull, heavy, persistent pain that throbbed behind his eyes and shot through his scar. He'd have given anything for some healing potion right now—or even just plain aspirin, but alas, his only medicine was a cold, damp towel which he dutifully pressed to his forehead. His aunt had begrudged the ailing orphan even aspirin, and potions were about as easy to get hold of as the moon.

Secondly, Tom, the blighter, had been refusing to speak to him for three whole days. And with this, as Harry discovered with irritation, there was absolutely nothing he could do. The brief 'Go and rest' he'd received the morning before yesterday was the last message Harry had read, after which the diary had fallen silent. With a stubbornness he'd never suspected in himself, Harry continued writing to him roughly every half hour, but Tom, it seemed, was even more stubborn and wouldn't respond.

To be fair, Tom's words had made sense. That very morning before yesterday, Harry had barely escaped the clutches of a sticky nightmare in which he was descending some endless staircases somewhere, chasing after an enormous, daft snake. The snake kept running away, Harry got angry, the staircases played sliding puzzles with him, and at the end a spider suddenly appeared, plump as a sofa cushion and rather disgusting-looking, and squeaked in an unexpectedly thin voice like the whistle of a deflating balloon:

'Boy! Come on, get up! Get up at once!'

'Blimey, an arachnid! A talking one!' Harry marvelled and finally woke up.

He'd overslept. The demands to get up immediately and prepare breakfast were actually coming from his furious aunt, not from an alien intelligent spider as Harry had fancied. His head was splitting. The toasts burnt, and Harry was banished from the table without even being allowed a cup of tea. And Tom had told him to rest.

Harry decided out of spite that that was exactly what he'd do. He slept like the dead in his cupboard until noon, when his compassionate aunt extracted him from there with fresh curses and sent Harry to weed the flower beds in the blazing heat of the day. Crouching over the fading phlox, covered in soil up to his ears, Harry secretly scribbled: 'Tom?' but got no answer.

Yesterday had been calmer, and Harry himself had recovered a bit, though he still dreamt some nonsense—something about a flooded cave, and for some reason there were children screaming. Tom didn't answer. His aunt grumbled. Dudley systematically broke his birthday presents. Harry was bored stiff and ended up going to bed early—they hadn't even finished watching the news on television in the sitting room.

Today the boycott continued. Harry thought this unfair—in his own opinion, he'd already rested quite enough. Besides, the thought about 'when the diary is closed—I disappear' kept nagging at him.

So why wouldn't Tom respond, the bloody masochist?!

'Tom?

Tom!

TOM

TomTomTom

Toooooooom'

Finally—at last, merciful Merlin!—the ink was absorbed into the paper and disappeared.

'Well, that was brave,' Tom wrote, but immediately added with obvious reproach:

'And incredibly stupid as well! Why should you have endured to the very end? Especially to fall unconscious afterwards? Overstraining your magic is reckless and dangerous, Harry!'

Harry only snorted, completely unimpressed. If he hadn't seized the moment—who knows when Tom would have deigned to reveal even a little of his secrets? Knowing the horrible truth was, well, horrible, but much better than not knowing.

Tom erased what he'd written and continued:

'Did you think for even a second about what position I'd be in if you were hurt or even killed through your own carelessness?'

This made Harry settle down—he really hadn't considered his behaviour from that angle.

'Oh. Sorry! I understand'

'I hope so. But still, let me repeat, your endurance deserves praise. Godric could be proud of you, inappropriately brave child. But he won't be'

Harry turned over on the lumpy, compressed mattress. Everything was working out, and that was excellent. He set aside the wet towel, rubbed his eyes under his glasses. The torch glowed, flickering faintly. Dust motes swirled. His aunt was clattering baking trays in the kitchen, there was a smell of pastry. The door was shut. The refuge embraced Harry with its cramped darkness, like a mother's womb—stifling, but safe and peaceful.

'Oh? Why not?'

Harry grinned. He knew which direction the conversation would flow next: they'd already discussed the Houses, and several times since Tom had first mentioned them. Harry had extracted a detailed account from him, then returned to the topic again and again seeking clarification. Tom—well, naturally—had his own firmly established vision of Harry's future in the academic field.

'Because he won't get you. Instead, Harry, you'll be Salazar's pride'

At last someone acknowledged him. Let Harry know that he recognised his worth. This was so pleasant, simply balm for the soul. Harry wasn't often told he could be a source of pride. Even when Harry thought he truly deserved it.

'You're so certain I'll get into Slytherin?'

'Of course. Where did that silly question come from?'

Harry bit his lip.

'I'm just curious. There must be a reason why you don't doubt it'

Actually he hoped Tom would say something nice again. Something complimentary about Harry. Tom was quite devoted to his House and, since he destined Harry for Slytherin House, he must suppose Harry possessed some virtues suited to that particular House.

'Parseltongue, you dolt. It's obvious, surely'

Perhaps—for those as clever as Tom. Harry sighed impatiently.

'And it's obvious because...?'

'Parseltongue is considered Dark magic'

Brilliant; was there anything even slightly cool in the world that wasn't considered Dark magic? Or did being cool and brilliant automatically mean being Dark? Harry thought of Darth Vader and realised that perhaps it did.

'And is that true?'

'Of course not. It's simply a language. The language of snakes, nothing more or less'

Which still sounded mad, since snakes couldn't have a language—in the sense of a language as such, with phonetics and lexicon and morphology and all that sort of thing. Tom had quite definitely stated that non-Parselmouths hear Parseltongue, they just don't understand it, and this completely disproved the previous hypothesis about thought-speech. It was an enormous puzzle, and it fascinated Harry.

'Then I still don't understand'

Harry scratched his forehead. The headache had subsided, but his scar twinged occasionally.

'Then engage your lazy mind a little'

Tom, the plague and sadist, devotee of the Socratic method and teacher born, ignored the request for a hint, and this meant the answer really did lie somewhere quite on the surface.

'Bloody hell. Oh, I mean—Mordred and Morgana! Salazar was a Parselmouth, wasn't he? I bet he was'

Well of course! He was the chief snake-lover of all time, he'd even chosen a snake as the symbol of his House at Hogwarts.

'Exactly so. Harry, how many Parselmouths do you think there are in Magical Britain?'

The question, if you really thought about it, already contained the answer.

'...not very many, eh?'

'Myself. You. One might say, at the present moment—only you'

Harry knew he was special. There was nothing to be surprised about, really.

'Crikey. And this matters because...? No, don't tell me off, wait. Because of Salazar again? No, I still don't understand. Will you explain?'

'Because of Salazar, correct. There's a well-known legend that his heir by blood and magic has the power to find and open a chamber hidden in the depths of Hogwarts, in which the greatest legacy of Slytherin is kept. For many years the entrance was considered lost, and even its very existence began to be doubted. But it's not a fairy tale at all: the Chamber of Secrets and Slytherin's legacy truly exist—and are ready to open to one who is worthy'

Harry rubbed his forehead again. Aha!

'And the simplest way to recognise the worthy one is to look for a Parselmouth, right?'

'Exactly so'

Harry thought about this. Then thought some more. And more.

'Ah, well in that context it does make sense.

wait

hang on

wait wait

no way

NO BLOODY WAY'

'Language, Harry.

Yes. Quite so'

Lines of text cannot smile; still less can they have an insufferably smug look about them. But this line—could, and its look was precisely smug.

Harry rolled his eyes. Tom. Bloody show-off. A proper elder brother, odious beyond belief and yet the best in the world. The heir, damn him, of Salazar Slytherin. That simply wouldn't fit in the head.

Harry had roughly a million questions (one of the first was—surely he and Tom weren't blood relatives by any chance? Could there be two heirs from completely different families? Though Salazar had lived nearly a thousand years ago...), but he needed time to think before starting to ask them. For now he returned to other questions—simpler ones, but no less pressing.

'Your argument has completely convinced me, but'

'What now?'

'What if the Sorting Hat decides I'm not suited to Slytherin? I'm only a half-blood, after all. And—and anyway...'

Tom was certain he knew which House Harry would end up a student of, but Harry himself wasn't so sure. Parseltongue was all very well, but what if it turned out that Harry was, well, somehow unworthy, that was all? The thought was terrifying, but real.

'Nonsense. If worst comes to worst, threaten to set it on fire'

A-a-and, it was at moments like this that Harry could practically see some infernal switch clicking in Tom's head, flipping to 'I'm from an orphanage, I'm allowed' (usually this switch was set to 'I'm a refined lord and pureblood wizard, try proving otherwise'). But the suggested method rather interested him.

'Did that work for you?'

'Who said I had to?'

Certainly not Harry. If Tom wasn't suitable for Slytherin—then Slytherin itself wasn't suitable for Slytherin.

Harry was still pondering Salazar's legacy, sprawled on his mattress and absent-mindedly playing with his pen (the open diary lay beside him, and Tom, clearly amusing himself, was drawing intertwining snakes and skulls on its pages), when the sound of the doorbell reached him.

'Boy!' Petunia shrieked from the kitchen. 'Go and see who's there!'

'I'm not a servant,' the 'heir of Salazar by blood and magic' muttered proudly, but still got up, took the diary, tugged down the enormous shirt that had once belonged to his cousin (anyone looking at it could have guessed why his cousin bore the nickname of pig), and shuffled off to answer the door.

On the threshold stood some unfamiliar dark-haired bloke, dressed all in black like a vicar, only without a clerical collar. He had a long face, an even longer nose, and long greasy locks that reached his jaw. The bloke looked about thirty to thirty-five, which in Harry's estimation was if not deep old age, then at least rather elderly. He and the unexpected visitor stared at each other without the slightest hint of cordiality.

***

Severus Tobias Snape, the youngest Potions master in a century and a half (alas, Snape had long since ceased to feel remotely young, and his mastery was rather wasted on trifles), once a promising young scholar (that too was in the past—he hadn't published anything for six years now), Hogwarts professor (though not even of the subject he actually favoured), acting Head of Slytherin House (to his enduring horror), and generally a man thoroughly disillusioned with life, had also been in a dreadful mood since morning.

Having surveyed the boy who'd opened the door of number four, Privet Drive, Snape involuntarily grimaced. The sight before him was hardly easy on the eyes. The child was bespectacled, dishevelled, and dressed in some rubbish cast-offs: jeans—torn through, T-shirt—with a peeling print, shirt—covered in stains and faded besides. For a completely finished fashionable punk look, all that was missing was a safety pin somewhere in his nose and a tattoo on his forehead—though the safety pin, Severus suspected, even punks probably removed at home, and there was a scar on his forehead—it rather adequately substituted for a tattoo.

'Brainless attention-seeker, just like his father,' Snape diagnosed. The only thing of Lily's in the child were his eyes, and even those looked almost blasphemous on the Potter face. The punk gave an expressive sniff.

'Good afternoon,' he uttered with intonation far from courteous, 'and you're here to see whom?'

'Apparently you,' Snape sighed inwardly (he'd once been cured of sighing aloud by an excessively irritable acquaintance—try to sigh under the Cruciatus) and asked purely for form's sake:

'Mr Potter, I presume?'

The punk nodded thoughtfully and astounded him:

'So you're from the Board of Governors?'

'No,' Severus replied, wondering what could have prompted such a supposition. 'To our mutual misfortune, I am your future professor. My name is Severus Snape, I'm Professor of Potions and Head of Slytherin House. At the request,' Snape grimaced in such a way that it would have been absurd not to guess—the request was of the sort one doesn't refuse, 'of our esteemed headmaster, I've brought you the key to your vault at Gringotts. I assume you need funds for school shopping.'

'More likely for the latest broomstick, or whatever else an utterly spoilt brat might desire,' Severus continued mentally. 'I don't believe Petunia lacks the money for a dozen books, a robe, and a pewter cauldron. Though let them both choke on it.'

By the second 'both,' Snape meant the headmaster. Behind the brief summary of the 'request' lay a disgraceful half-hour row that Minerva had given Albus about the wretched key.

'Forgot? Forgot?!' she'd shrieked like a banshee, and the windows in the headmaster's office had clinked ominously in response. 'What do you mean—you forgot to give them the key? In what sense—it got mislaid somewhere?! Albus, if you've lost Mordred's key! I! Personally! Shall conduct a spring clean here! And throw out! All! The rubbish!!! So nothing else of yours can get mislaid! High time too!'

The headmaster merely grunted and sighed reproachfully, peering over his spectacles. In some ways, Snape rather understood the late Dark Lord—for every such sigh, one's hands truly itched to deliver a Cruciatus.

Severus understood Minerva too. Everyone has their boiling point. Minerva's sublimation temperature was remarkably high—she uncomplainingly shouldered the administrative work, negotiations with governors, most of the school correspondence, and absolutely all the bookkeeping (since Flitwick had declared he could just as well develop a hunchback over ledgers at Gringotts, and thenceforth refused once and for all even to touch the Hogwarts accounts). She met with Muggle-born first-years and their parents, and she compiled the lesson timetables. The daughter of a vicar, Minerva, even being a witch, seemed to continue believing that hard labour by the sweat of one's brow saves the soul from perdition.

But the addition of a new ingredient had destroyed the fragile balance that had existed hitherto. Minerva shifted to gaseous state and spontaneously combusted in eleven seconds—exactly how long it took her to read the note (owing to the absence of an envelope, it could hardly be called a letter) from the great hero of Magical Britain, the blessed child—deliverer from the yoke of dark forces, known in everyday life as Harry Potter.

Who had written that he had no money for school shopping. As it turned out—he'd written the absolute truth: money, if there was any, was only Muggle money, since the key to the Potter vault had peacefully spent all these ten years in the depths of the headmaster's office.

Severus had been present for the entire drama from beginning to end, and it had rather entertained him, until the headmaster turned upon him the gaze of his kind, slightly watery eyes.

'Severus, my boy,' he began with another exaggeratedly heavy sigh, and Snape hastily took defensive positions.

'I won't go. Let Minerva go—she's his Head of House.'

Minerva wasn't Potter's Head of House yet, but didn't argue, only snorted in a thoroughly feline manner:

'And you'll deal with the Muggle-borns then, shall you, Severus? See for yourself, but I have two families on my list, not one—it's an unequal exchange.'

'I could send Hagrid,' Albus immediately threw in his two Knuts' worth, and Snape clutched his head. There was only one case in which one should send Hagrid to Muggle-borns—or to Potter, there wasn't much difference: if one fine morning Severus finally snapped, poisoned all his colleagues at breakfast, and then finish himself on the pile of corpses. Sometimes he was rather tempted.

'Stop the blackmail, Albus,' he said with displeasure. 'Very well, I'll go.'

And so Severus had ended up today on the doorstep of Petunia's dwelling, where he was met by a young clone of the villain James, identical to the original down to his inexplicably charming manners—for instance, he hadn't even thought to invite Severus into the house.

Snape extracted a small golden key from his pocket and held it out on his open palm to Potter.

'There you are.'

The punk snatched the key, pressed it to his chest, and immediately began whining:

'Professor, sir... And who'll accompany me shopping? Or at least to the Leaky Cauldron?'

Oh no, Severus hadn't signed up for that.

'You, Mr Potter,' he said sternly, 'are not nearly as important a personage as you've evidently fancied yourself to be. Go with your guardians—what's the problem?'

'With Muggles!' the boy exclaimed indignantly; Snape very much disliked the expression on his face—there was something... particular about it. Half-forgotten, but revoltingly familiar.

'What's wrong with Muggles for you, Mr Potter,' he asked insidiously, 'when your own mother was Muggle-born?'

'My own mother is dead, sir,' he spat, 'and consequently has lost her right to a voice in the matter.'

That was quite enough. Severus began to shake—with fury, with hurt, and heaven knows what else. He spun on his heels and Apparated home to Cokeworth. He had fulfilled his task here completely.

...had even overfulfilled it, as became apparent a moment later. The disgusting boy was doubled up at his feet, straining to turn his stomach inside out. With one hand he was still convulsively clutching the edge of Snape's robes. Severus was flummoxed.

'Have you gone mad?' he asked the young suicide. 'What if you'd splinched yourself?'

'You don't understand,' the boy coughed and spat out a glob of saliva. 'They won't go anywhere with me. They hate wizards and magic both. Sir, you're free to think whatever you like, but I've no reason to love Muggles. They're awful, and mine are among the very worst.'

Severus decided not to respond to that—arguing with a brat would mean utterly debasing himself.

'Well, what am I supposed to do with you?' he asked rhetorically. The boy started up. His glasses glinted, his Adam's apple bobbed on his thin neck.

'Professor! Please, now you'll take me to the entrance to Diagon Alley, won't you?'

'I should take you not there,' Snape felt his irritation mounting again, 'but back home, where you belong.'

'If you do that,' Potter said seriously, the true son of his dreadful father, 'then I'll write to the Board of Governors again. And I'll keep writing for the whole month until Hogwarts if I have to, until they send me an escort. I'll specifically request—you.'

Seized this time by genuine fury, Severus grabbed the wretch by the scruff of the neck and silently transported himself with him to the Leaky Cauldron.

'It's hard to refuse a hero,' he hissed, holding the half-dead insolent upright by the scruff—whilst the boy kept trying to fall sideways and repeatedly swallowed saliva hastily—'especially when he asks so touchingly. Off you go, Mr Potter, enjoy yourself!'

With these words he shoved—a little more and one could have said 'hurled'—Mordred's spawn through the door that appeared as if from nowhere in the gap between a bookshop and a record shop.

***

The pub was dark, smoky, and, to put it bluntly, rather grubby. The few patrons huddled in corners. Behind the bar Harry saw a bald, wrinkled fellow with unkempt whiskers, no more presentable than his establishment. Harry, suppressing nausea and dizziness as he went, made straight for him—he didn't plan to linger in this den a minute longer than necessary.

'Excuse me?... Might I have a moment? I beg your pardon, I'd rather like to get to Diagon Alley—you wouldn't help, would you?'

The barman—Harry had to keep reminding himself that he was also called Tom (which felt strange and quite wrong, as if other Toms had a right to exist in the world besides Tom)—looked up from smearing greasy marks across a tall beer glass. His eyes widened comically, his whiskers trembled, and he collapsed chest-first onto the bar as if intending to crawl over it and grab Harry.

'Can it be?!' he exclaimed in a strangled whisper. 'Is it you? Really you?'

Harry realised he'd definitely had quite enough for one day. Of course, he'd encountered before how adults could be absolutely delighted to amuse themselves at Harry's expense (or other children's, but their problems weren't Harry's concern), without constraining themselves with even the faintest hint of delicacy. But right now, another old fool putting on an act was the last straw. Harry lost his temper.

He too collapsed—admittedly not chest-first but cheek-first, though that was all he could manage to reach—onto the bar, goggled his eyes, and, responding by lowering his voice, declared passionately:

'No! It's not me!'

The barman hiccupped. Harry continued, improvising as he went—for some reason he was reminded of the Admiral Benbow inn from Treasure Island, the atmosphere must have suggested it, and the style fitted rather well with the whole absurd scene—so Harry's improvisation was born in the appropriate spirit.

'I swear to God, sir, it's not me! Don't give me away, I beg you! I mustn't be seen here!'

In his passion he even forgot to mention Merlin or Morgana, but the barman fortunately paid no attention to that. He leaned closer to Harry and also began muttering, anxiously twitching his whiskers:

'I understand! I understand! Sir! But your scar—the thing is, sir, it's rather conspicuous! If it weren't for that, I truly wouldn't have recognised you at all!'

Harry, whom an adult had called 'sir' for the first time in his life, was primary astonished, then realised the barman was playing along with him, though the joke was beginning to get slightly out of hand.

The scar as well. Harry suppressed a martyred groan. That bloody thing really was trying to ruin his life, wasn't it? He'd hoped that at least in the wizarding world such things would stop—but no.

'What's to be done, sir?' he asked tragically, wondering how far the barman intended to take his jest.

'Sir! My advice to you: it ought to be disguised somehow. And then—complete incognito, I assure you!'

Harry turned his best pleading expression on him—it worked without fail on Muggle teachers, especially women.

'Sir,' he stammered and blinked; his eyes filled with tears, which were not at all difficult to summon since Harry was still feeling queasy, 'help me! Think of something!'

The barman scratched his bald head. Then triumphantly raised a finger:

'Sir! I think I know what we must do!' and with these words he drew a magic wand from his sleeve.

Five minutes later, from an archway hidden behind a magical barrier (and behind dustbins, to Harry's horror) at the dead end of Diagon Alley, emerged a boy with his head clumsily bandaged. His appearance, not least because of the bandages wound up to his eyes—but also because of clothes obviously hand-me-downs—was that of the offspring of a heavily drinking family. Having walked a dozen yards and made sure the passage behind him had closed, the boy tore the untidy bandage from his head and hurled it to the ground.

'Nutter!' he declared with feeling. 'Salazar preserve us, what a bloody day this is turning out to be, eh?'

Chapter Text

Diagon Alley wasn't actually Diagonal—straight, crooked, skew and so forth; it couldn't be described by any simple geometric figure. It coiled like a snake in grass, and every building—every single one, without exaggeration—stood on a corner. Harry couldn't for the life of him understand how such a result could even be achieved in space with ordinary Euclidean metrics. It was impressive.

All the visible structures were shops and stores without exception—as one would expect—and each sold something amazing and strange. Harry suspected one could spend hours just studying the local merchandise, and it would be at least as fascinating as a visit to the Natural History Museum. He walked forward, forcing himself with all his might not to get distracted. Fortunately, his destination was visible from afar—it towered above all the rooftops of the district, white and slightly curved, like a solitary fang in someone's maw. Gringotts.

Near the tall wrought-iron doors leading into the bank stood...

Well, Harry knew it was a goblin; Tom had told him about them. He'd even imagined from those stories what goblins looked like. As it turned out—he'd imagined very poorly. The goblin resembled a gargoyle that had escaped from a medieval cathedral portal—both in appearance and facial expression. Harry nervously cleared his throat.

'Hello?'

The goblin stared at him but didn't utter a word in response.

'I can... go in, can't I?'

The goblin bowed silently. It didn't look like an obsequious gesture, but rather like a greeting before the start of a duel.

'Er, thank you, I think?...'

Receiving no answer this time either, Harry forced himself to break off this one-sided dialogue and pulled the door handle. The heavy-looking panel opened unexpectedly easily, as if it had hydraulic assistance. Harry sighed, felt his pocket (the key was in place) and went inside.

Inside there were more goblins. Many of them. Harry uncertainly looked around for a free teller's counter or something similar—and eventually approached the first desk that caught his eye. The goblin behind it was studying a thick ledger, running a ruler along the lines, whilst with his other hand making notes on parchment lying nearby. Harry got out the golden key and presented it to the bent head of the accountant.

'Excuse me?... Excuse me, I need to get to my vault.'

Because—yes, to the vault, not at it. The storage areas here were enormous, they were entire rooms, not some sort of cells like the Muggles had. Harry couldn't wait to see it.

Without raising his head, the goblin grated:

'Name?'

'Harry James Potter.'

The goblin perked up. Producing a magnifying glass from somewhere (it seemed—right out of thin air), he snatched the key from Harry and examined it from all sides.

'Everything appears to be in order. Wait here.'

He departed through one of the numerous doors in the far wall of the banking hall, but soon returned, bringing with him another goblin, swarthy, slant-eyed and bearded.

'Griphook will escort you.'

Griphook led Harry through another door, behind which unexpectedly lay a tunnel, rather reminiscent of either a mine or the Underground—roughly hewn rock walls and rails on the floor, along which, responding to the goblin's whistle, an empty cart trundled up by itself. It turned out to be nothing other than the local transport. Harry wondered—how far did the passage extend, how many such tunnels were there in total, and where did it all fit? From outside the bank building hadn't looked large, and Harry could have sworn they hadn't gone downwards.

The cart went on and on, as if in one of Dudley's video games, torches burned on the walls of the rocky corridor, stalactites hung from the ceiling, puddles appeared periodically on the floor, and once—an entire lake with frighteningly black water. Finally, they stopped next to a low, unremarkable door. Harry, desperately shy yet burning with impatience, unlocked it with his little key.

Inside was gold. A real mountain—Harry immediately remembered that parable about Squibs that Tom had told him.

'Griphook, tell me... You must know. How much is there altogether?'

'Fifty thousand six hundred and twenty-five Galleons,' croaked the hitherto silent Griphook, 'counting coins of smaller denominations as well, naturally.'

Yes, there were piles of silver in the corners—Harry hadn't noticed them at first—and copper, dully gleaming circles.

'Enough for a whole lifetime...'

Harry seemed to hear Tom's voice as if in reality; in the underground silence the illusion was so complete that it seemed—turn around, and you'd see a tall figure frozen behind your back.

'...but the key to the vault at Gringotts has been lost—and the child, whilst owning a fortune that could provide for him completely, remains a pauper...'

'Where did I get them from?'

'From your parents; more precisely—from your father. And he had them from his parents, and so on. Excellent clients, your whole family, Mr Potter, if you want my opinion.'

Harry only nodded silently, enchanted.

All his life he'd received nothing but scraps and hand-me-downs. Lived in a cupboard, listening to reproaches about every crust of bread. Out of charity, as they always told him. And meanwhile he had—this.

Blinding rage, white as the brightest light, hot as dripping metal, was born somewhere in the depths of his consciousness. His mind was empty, scattered, full of strange wandering echoes.

They had taken the wizarding world away from Harry—for ten whole years his magic had been stolen, he hadn't even suspected it until he met Tom. Now it turned out they'd robbed him even more literally.

'Tell me, Griphook, you wouldn't happen to have... a purse or some sort of pouch? I rather didn't bring anything with me.'

A purse was found. Expensive—five gold coins (they were indeed called Galleons), and Harry thought it was a bit pricey, but it was worth every one. The pouch was magical—small, empty-looking and very light, it could store within itself everything Harry was contemplating around him, such a quantity of gold that his pockets would have burst and torn off. Harry poured several handfuls into it, not counting. He had to force himself to stop—he understood he was unlikely to need it all at once. But stopping was difficult.

'Thank you, Griphook. I'm ready to go.'

The cart carried them away—through tunnels, through impenetrable darkness, through the smell of mould and weeping stone, past the underground lake, past stalactites—towards the bustle of the banking hall and the sunny day beyond. Harry emerged onto the street subdued. His head was splitting with thoughts.

He wasn't poor. There was no need to beg and economise. He could afford new robes, not second-hand ones, any books, the best potion ingredients. A golden cauldron instead of pewter, if he wished. A wand—yes, that was decided, he'd buy a wand right now. Such abundance had never even been dreamed of by Tom—it was pleasant to exceed him in at least something.

In Mordred and Morgana's names! Tom! Tom didn't know anything yet!

Harry pressed his hand to his chest, feeling the reassuring weight of the diary beneath the layers of fabric. This sobered him a little. He needed to catch his breath. Harry turned his head—he'd seen a café somewhere nearby. Ah, there it was. Excellent—he had no desire whatsoever to return to the dirty dark pub, especially since the barman was quite the joker, and clearly not right in the head.

He strode towards the striped awning, where people were eating, drinking, showing each other their purchases, gossiping and laughing. They were all wizards. Harry was a wizard too. This was his world. A world that belonged to him by right. He finally felt in his proper place.

The waitress smiled at Harry and asked:

'Where are your parents, little one?'

'Shopping,' Harry lied without batting an eye. 'Don't worry, miss, they gave me money. Could you bring me some tea? I'll wait for them here—it's probably going to be a while.'

'Of course,' she replied, relaxing. 'How about cucumber sandwiches? Or try our signature trifle, would you like that?'

Harry beamed. After all, he was just a little boy who'd been fed poorly and meagrely most of his life.

'I would! If I may—both, please,' the woman smiled kindly at his enthusiasm. 'And treacle tart, if you have it!'

In the shade of the awning, beside a lush potted plant (the plant was probably magical: it moved its leaves slightly, quite out of time with the blowing breeze, and occasionally shot one of them into the air; then the leaf would spin, twist and finally fly off somewhere into the blue sky), Harry got out the diary and laid it on the tablecloth. There was no pen—it was still lying in the cupboard, presumably—but Harry dug up a pencil from his pocket, a blunt and very small stub, a symbol of his entire previous life. Harry sipped his tea, bit into his sandwich and wrote:

'Still 26th July

Dear Tom!

I'm about to tell you something—you won't believe it!

Went to Gringotts...

No, wait, I'll start from the beginning—a professor came to see me...'

The wretched pencil wrote feebly, of course, but Tom didn't think to complain. He absorbed Harry's narrative, barely interrupting, and only occasionally threw in clarifying questions. Harry wouldn't have minded knowing the answers to many of them himself—for instance, who had kept the key to his bank vault all this time, and by what right? But they could only be added to the growing list of things he needed to try to find out (somehow) at Hogwarts.

Hogwarts was a beacon, the Promised Land, El Dorado—it seemed that once he got there, all problems would be resolved. Harry understood this was only seeming, but the feeling persisted. He'd never even seen Hogwarts—but yearned for it like a chick of a migratory bird, guided by unerring instinct, like a salmon recognising its native river among thousands of others just by the taste of the water, like a little turtle crawling towards the ocean's edge, having dug itself out of the sand.

Refuge. Safety. Home. Tom loved Hogwarts devotedly, and because of Tom, Harry had come to love it too—sight unseen, even before their first meeting.

When the tea was drunk, the food eaten, and Harry's excited account of the morning's events had come to an end, Tom summarised:

'The news is excellent. This simplifies everything considerably. However, you still need to do what you came here for in the first place: acquire robes, equipment, and the recommended books from the list, nothing's changed there'

Harry nearly groaned aloud. The list! He'd completely forgotten about it!

'Tom!!! my letter—it's still in the cupboard, what shall I do'

'Stop panicking,' Tom chided, 'I'm with you, and I remember everything. Don't be so absent-minded in future, but for now—look:

first of all go for a magic wand,

then—mantles, and choose something decent, Slytherin House judges by appearances,

at the bookshop say you're for first year—they used to have ready sets of textbooks for each year,

you'll find phials at the apothecary,

that leaves cauldron, scales and telescope.

Got that?'

Harry confirmed.

'Then—forward. Conduct yourself worthily, Harry, I don't intend to blush for you'

Harry, who was licking his fingers after the trifle, blushed instead and hastily wiped them with his napkin.

'What's that you have there, dear?' the approaching waitress nodded at the diary. 'Surely not summer homework?'

She waved her wand, and the dirty crockery collected itself onto a tray. Harry suppressed the impulse that flared instantly to snap the notebook shut and press it furiously to his chest. He carefully turned the cover and smiled just as carefully, deliberately.

'No, this is... personal. Nothing important.'

The waitress chuckled.

'Oh come now, you needn't be embarrassed,' she said with a wink. 'Everyone goes through it. I wrote poetry at your age too.'

'In Merlin's name,' Harry thought, having barely waited for her to leave and shoving the diary into its usual storage place, under the elastic bandages hidden by his clothes, 'I should be more careful.'

He paid the bill, not forgetting a tip, left the café behind and, without delaying a minute longer, set off in search of a trader in the most magical of all goods.

A suitable sign was found quite quickly. It read: 'Ollivanders'. Fine Wands since 382 B.C.' The gilt had almost completely peeled from the letters. The little shop generally looked shabby to the extreme and hardly matched its boastful inscription. Harry surveyed it sceptically, but went in anyway.

Ollivander turned out to be a white-eyed old man, whose appearance Harry couldn't have chosen between describing as 'repulsive' or 'frightening'. He measured Harry as thoroughly as if he were going to build him a suit, then made him touch wand after wand, which he drew from long narrow cases that occupied all the space behind the counter. In some cases nothing happened, in others the wand spat out a coloured spark, grew warm, cold, or did something else. Once something crashed in the depths of the shop, exploding. The next wand caught fire. Blood flowed from the one after that.

It wasn't clear what effects the seller hoped to see, but evidently none of what had already happened satisfied him. He became more and more excited—his eyes glittered, he rubbed his dry little palms, shifted from foot to foot and kept saying: 'So, so, so... And you're a difficult customer, aren't you?' This was precisely how maniacs behaved in Harry's imagination, and so he felt increasingly uncomfortable.

'Really? Though perhaps... Could it be? And why not!' the old man's speech finally lost all coherence. He rummaged somewhere under the counter and extracted an incredibly dusty box. Inside, naturally, was a wand.

'Phoenix feather and holly! Contradictory, bold, unusual!' he proclaimed. 'Come now, young man, try it!'

And then Harry finally understood what Ollivander was trying to achieve and what should have happened.

There was no wand. There was—a continuation of his arm. A completion of his arm—as if until now it had always been incomplete. A gleam of golden radiance ran along the walls. His fingers grew warm.

'Magnificent! Yes! You see! Splendid!' the repulsive frightening old man clenched his hands; it seemed he was about to applaud from excess of feeling. 'Seven Galleons, if you please! However, this is curious! Very, very curious!'

'Don't even want to know what you find curious, you old ghoul,' Harry thought, counting out seven Galleons and dreaming only of escaping as quickly as possible with his newfound wand. But Ollivander forgot to ask his opinion. He continued as if conversing with himself:

'Yes, curious... You see, the wand chooses the wizard, not the wizard the wand, this you know, of course. And here's the thing—this wand chose you specifically, yet its sister... I remember every wand I've sold—every single one. Yours has a core of phoenix feather, as I said. Well, the phoenix gave me two feathers from its tail that time, not one as is usual. And the first went to you, but the second... Yes, what's the point of hiding it—the second serves as the core of the wand that left that scar on your forehead.'

And with these words he poked his finger right at Harry's forehead. The finger was thin and gnarled, with a long pointed nail resembling a claw. Harry was flummoxed.

'You're mistaken,' was all he said, 'I've had this scar since childhood. I was in an accident.'

'No, you are mistaken, Harry James Potter! Don't look like that, I recognised you immediately, and your scar too,' the old man smiled unpleasantly, showing yellowish teeth.

'My scar—I should know better!' Harry protested.

'How do you know that you know?' the shopkeeper asked Jesuitically. Harry couldn't find an answer, and he continued, getting worked up:

'However you deny it, there's one truth—that scar was left by the wand of a wizard who did great deeds. Yes, I don't dispute—terrible ones!' he raised his voice. 'But at the same time great ones! And you, I believe, are destined for a most curious fate. I shall watch with interest to see where it leads you, Harry James Potter!'

'Be my guest,' the thoroughly scandalised Harry muttered and fled.

'I'm having such luck with madmen today,' he mused, slowly wandering along the street. 'However, Merlin knows, he's right about some things. He knows me from somewhere after all, and the barman knew me too, I just didn't understand it at first. There's some other mystery behind all this.'

Then he realised he'd been shifting from foot to foot for some time, mindlessly staring at a shop window. The window displayed robes, so it had worked out rather well, all things considered. He glanced briefly at the sign—'Madame Malkin's Mantles for All Occasions'—and went in.

A doorbell tinkled; a stocky middle-aged woman dressed in a mauve robe was already hurrying towards Harry. She smiled:

'Hogwarts, dear? And where are your parents?'

Harry was beginning to find this question tiresome. On the other hand, he'd just discovered an interesting pattern: those two who somehow knew Harry hadn't asked about his parents. Why might that be?

'Buying my textbooks,' he lied smoothly again. 'No need to wait for them, ma'am, I have money with me.'

'Well then, if that's the case, you've come to the right place,' the woman led Harry to a fitting platform and helped him climb onto it. 'Three everyday black mantles and one for winter—that's right, isn't it, dear?'

'Yes, ma'am,' it was strange to look down at an adult from the height of the platform. 'One request... don't economise on material or anything else, please. I need to make a very good first impression... you understand?' Harry smiled ingratiatingly. 'Money's no problem, I'll pay extra on top of whatever's needed.'

'Madame' (though frankly, she didn't pass for French, at least by her accent) Malkin only snorted with amusement.

'Oh, Slytherin? I thought as much. You snake children, that's all you care about—how to pull the wool over people's eyes. Very well, dear, we'll do as you say. Let's take your measurements—and come back in about two hours for the finished items. Agreed?'

In the end she unobtrusively forced Harry to acquire an entire wardrobe—shirts, trousers, a couple of jumpers, a waistcoat, gloves, hat, scarf, pyjamas, even long socks and (Harry blushed scarlet but didn't dare object) underpants. According to her: 'of course your outfit is charming, however most people wouldn't... appreciate such things; believe me, I'd wear piercings and fishnet tights myself if I could'. Harry, struck by the mental image of Madame (or was it just Mrs?) Malkin in fishnet tights, meekly agreed with every word. Having left her an enormous order, Harry departed, promising to return later. He was streaming with perspiration—the ordeal had been truly arduous—but at least he'd more or less fulfilled Tom's instruction.

But in the bookshop—it was called Flourish and Blotts—Harry managed to rest his soul. They didn't have ready sets of textbooks, but they did have lists of recommended texts for first through fifth years, and thus everything worked out perfectly. Harry spent truly magical hour and a half rummaging through endless mountains of books. It took enormous effort not to buy half the shop, but there were some things he simply couldn't resist: for instance, 'Between Us Witches. The Best Household and Cosmetic Charms' (cosmetic charms didn't interest Harry, but household ones certainly did!) or 'How to Curse and Not to Be Cursed'.

Only firm confidence that Hogwarts had its own library (and one of the best in Magical Britain at that, as Tom proudly attested) kept Harry from acquiring too many extra-curricular publications. But he still collected about half a dozen, and together with the textbooks they would have represented considerable weight if the shopkeeper hadn't kindly offered to shrink them. Harry gladly agreed—he liked useful magic, and it was simply curious to watch. The shrunken books, each the size of a matchbox, easily fit into a paper bag like those used for selling pastries.

Finding himself on the street again, Harry pondered. Now he'd collect his clothes, and it was frightening even to think what a pile of gear that would be, yet he still had other purchases ahead. It seemed... no, quite definitely—he'd passed somewhere at the very beginning of the alley past an establishment selling suitcases. That was just what he needed.

Squeezed between an apothecary and a Quidditch supplies shop, the little store Trunks and Portmanteaux itself resembled a battered trunk. Inside it proved unexpectedly spacious (Harry suspected extension charms were involved) and crammed to the ceiling with suitcases and bags, not to mention the titular goods, namely trunks and portmanteaux. There were tiny handbags, barely bigger than a finger, and trunks of such immense size that one could probably pack an entire automobile—if, of course, anyone suddenly had such an absurd desire. The shop assistant, a young blond with crossed eyes, met Harry with the traditional question about parents, from which Harry concluded this was a sensible person he could deal with safely.

'You see,' Harry declared, 'I urgently need a suitcase or trunk. Only I don't know which to choose. Will you show me what you have here generally?'

Having received assurances that the new customer didn't intend to stint on money, the salesman developed considerable activity. In the next half hour, he and Harry reviewed the entire stock, and Harry kept gasping, simply marvelling at the achievements of modern spatial magic. Most items were charmed in some way for weight reduction and contained undetectable extension charms. There were quite exotic variants too—trunks arranged like bookcases, suitcases with imitations of Muggle items, portmanteaux with entire rooms inside, and even a lady's dressing case with a built-in triple mirror. But Harry was immediately smitten with a strange small trunk that had spider legs. It looked... cryptozoological.

'This is our pride,' the assistant informed him. 'Exclusive model, made by an American manufacturer to our specifications. Requires no levitation charms, can independently follow its owner everywhere—and I mean truly everywhere—resistant to jolts and impacts, plus it has three isolated compartments with built-in sorting, cleaning and pressing charms. A traveller's dream! Take it, you won't regret it.'

Harry knew he wouldn't regret it. The trunk cost astronomical money—a hundred and fifty Galleons—but he paid without hesitation.

The day was drawing towards evening, the cross-eyed lad seemed to have few customers—in all this time no one else had come in besides Harry—and gradually they fell into conversation.

'Yes, we're rather out of fashion these days,' the shopkeeper complained, 'probably our business will never be what it was. You know, it's so hurtful when you yourself haven't done a single bad thing in your life, but people, the moment they hear your surname, turn around and walk away? Prejudice is so sad...'

'Tell me,' Harry tried to slip this in casually, 'have you ever heard of Harry Potter?'

The salesman goggled.

'Harry Potter?'

'Well, yes. Everyone here seems to know him...'

The cross-eyed man squinted suspiciously. In his case this looked ghastly.

'Don't you know?'

'Imagine, no. We only moved here recently and from very far away. My parents lived almost their whole lives... ' Harry quickly calculated what he knew to be the most remote place on earth from England, '...in Peru, and I was actually born there.'

'Oh, fancy that, what a small world,' the assistant marvelled, 'and I have a cousin in Peru, he's a dragonologist, studies Vipertooth dragons. Well, that explains it then. Don't worry, you'll settle in here gradually. And Harry Potter—how could you not know him, he's the Boy Who Lived.'

'The boy who lived where?' Harry didn't understand.

'Not where, but from what!' his companion laughed. 'From the Killing Curse, of course! Oh, Merlin's beard, is there really still someone who doesn't know this story! Yes, we think we're the centre of the universe here, but it turns out... Well, listen. Here in Magical Britain, ten years ago there was a real war...'

It sounded like the opening to Star Wars, only it lacked the solemn background music—and everything that followed was in much the same spirit. The only hitch came when it got to the villain's name. It turned out it couldn't be spoken.

'What do you mean, can't be spoken?' Harry was astonished. 'Is it cursed or something?'

The assistant flinched and for some reason looked around.

'Could be,' he said vaguely. 'Maybe it is cursed. Though now, probably, it doesn't matter anymore...'

'So how?...'

'Well, that's just how they said it: 'He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named'. Or this too: 'You-Know-Who'.'

'That's not what I meant! What was his real name?'

The shopkeeper's face contorted in a piteous grimace.

'I... can't. I'm afraid!' he whispered, almost in tears.

'Well at least write it down!'

Having finally read the mysterious name on a piece of paper, Harry could only just manage to suppress the laughter bursting to get out. The terror of Magical Britain, the darkest of dark wizards, in whom, according to the cross-eyed fellow, 'there was hardly anything human left,' was called... Voldemort.

Oh, thrice-greatest Merlin!

Why hadn't he called himself, for instance, the Darkwing Duck? Really, it would have been no worse!

About himself Harry learned things even more entertaining. Apparently, Lord Darkwing Duck—that is, Voldemort, of course—had appeared to kill Harry's parents, which he managed quite successfully, and then tried to Killing Curse Harry himself (for reference, Harry was fifteen months old at the time), but something went wrong, and he mysteriously disappeared, leaving Harry with the fame of the Boy Who Lived through the Killing Curse. Since then Magical Britain celebrated that day every year—well, would have celebrated anyway, since it happened to be Halloween.

'Wonderful story,' Harry said sincerely when he'd finished listening. 'Thank you very much! However, I must go, my parents will surely have been waiting for me.'

He said farewell and left the shop; the trunk trotted briskly after him. Some time later Harry updated his purchase, putting in it a cauldron (that very one, standard pewter size 2, as required), scales and telescope, along with considerable supplies of parchment, quills and ink—Harry understood that if he wanted to keep up with lectures at Hogwarts, he'd need to improve his penmanship. He acquired phials (the apothecary proved an absolutely charming little place—it had, literally like in Shakespeare, a crocodile hanging from the ceiling and a tortoise shell in the corner, not to mention various other dried and preserved creatures), dragonhide gloves, a hat (pointed, for everyday wear) and finally felt ready to return to the merciless but professional embraces of 'Madame Malkin's.'

'Blast me with a Thestral! Oh, sorry!' Malkin slapped her lips with her plump palm. 'Slipped out accidentally, dear. You shouldn't know such words, remember. Only—what's that you have?'

Harry proudly looked back at his—pet? He couldn't decide whether the trunk should be considered alive; it was more like a cyber, but it definitely had some pseudo-consciousness—at his acquisition, and replied:

'It's a trunk. It's called Trunk for now, but later I might think of something better. Do you like it too? Isn't it lovely?'

'Merlin,' Malkin said in a weak voice. 'Yes, of course. And where did you get it?'

'I bought it!'

'Well I gathered you didn't steal it! Dear boy, that's a dark artefact, dark as they come. Who sold you such a thing?'

Harry scowled. Well, there you go. The theory was confirmed—any cool and brilliant thing in the world was immediately branded with that word.

'A friend. We had a lovely chat. He has a cousin living in Peru.'

Malkin gasped and went pale:

'Rosier?! The wretch!'

Harry felt glum.

'Ma'am,' he said in a bored voice, 'may I collect my order? How much do I owe?'

The woman gave him an angry and sad look and shook her head.

'Well, perhaps it's all right,' she muttered doubtfully. 'Oh, dear boy... Yes, of course. Look, we'll pack everything up now. So, here—the shirts...'

Harry dutifully examined the clothes presented—by quantity they rivalled an entire department in some Muggle store (though judging by the prices, it should rather have been a boutique)—commanded the Trunk to open and, under Malkin's disapproving gaze, fed it the entire pile. The Trunk clicked its lid contentedly and licked its lips. Malkin shuddered.

'I hope,' she declared emphatically, 'your parents sort this out.'

'Have no doubt, ma'am,' Harry agreed. 'Thank you, it's been a pleasure doing business with you. Good day!'

Yet another mention of parents came at an awkward moment. The merry shopping expedition was over, and only then did Harry wonder—how was he to get back to Privet Drive with such a companion? He'd never manage to pass the Trunk off as ordinary Muggle luggage.

He trudged back towards the Leaky Cauldron, shoving his hands deep in his pockets. The wand, hidden next to Tom, sent gentle waves of warmth, as if trying to comfort him. Harry contemplated the shops slowly drifting past, and dull despair mixed with irritation grew in his heart. It was so right and good here, why should he have to leave at all? He was a magician, and this was a magical place, they suited each other. Returning to the Muggles was like sawing himself through the middle with a blunt saw; the mere prospect already caused pain.

Wait a moment.

Struck by a sudden revelation, Harry stopped.

Did he actually need to return to the Muggles?

His gaze fixed on a notice:

'ROOMS TO LET.'