Chapter Text
Harry Potter couldn’t believe his luck.
For the first time in his life, it seemed he was part of a plan involving him leaving his cupboard and going outside.
Aunt Marge had come to visit earlier in the day, as she always did on Sundays—Harry suspected it was only to eat Aunt Petunia’s roast chicken—and from what Harry managed to gather from her babbling, they were later expected to attend a top-notch event at the Imperial War Museum featuring a retired military officer who Marge had apparently taken a liking to, someone called ‘Colonel Fubster’ (what kind of name was Fubster, anyway? Probably one of a man with a large moustache and maybe even a monocle) and the Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher.
Her presence and the importance it brought only caused the familiar shrill voice of Aunt Petunia’s to start ricocheting off every wall of the house, and Dudley bawling, ‘I don’t want him to come with us… make him go…’ because, to everyone’s annoyance, Mrs Figg wasn’t available to look after Harry.
Therefore, Harry had to sit straight on a footstool while Aunt Petunia fussed over his hair, combing harshly through the strands, muttering about how outrageous it was that he got to go with them, and how easy it would be for Uncle Vernon to abandon him to his fate on the sidewalk.
Harry didn’t say anything in response. He knew that if he did, his chance of leaving the house for something other than going to school or crossing the street to Mrs Figg’s would vanish with a poof. He knew how to act detached and make himself forgotten.
So he did just that: hid his favourite and only toy in his Bermuda shorts, kept his head lowered when Aunt Marge shoved him between her and Dudley in the car, watched the ballet of cars with avid eyes through the window, averted his gaze when Uncle Vernon glanced up in the rearview, and silently bit his tongue to prevent any screams when Dudley pinched his skin and cracked his knuckles beside his ears.
But he couldn’t hold on for much longer. The place they stopped at was crowded with people who looked important and serious. Harry shook hands with Colonel Fubster, who, unlike what he imagined, didn’t wear a moustache, and when they all moved to wait in a short queue in front of the building, under camera flashes and the envious stares of the public—who appeared not to be allowed in—Harry finally saw the two massive cannons behind the gate.
“Whoah!” he let out, amazed by the sight.
“Just wait when you see me parading, boy,” Colonel Fubster said with a wink, standing next to him.
But Harry didn’t even need to turn towards his relatives to know what they were plotting. Minutes later, after they all had entered the building and the Colonel started getting quickly pulled away, Harry was sent off to fetch two cones of ice cream with Cadbury chocolate for Dudley. This ended with him standing in the queue for way too long and missing the parade the Colonel had mentioned.
On top of that, Harry was scolded instead of his cousin for wasting money because the ends of the ice cream cones were left uneaten, which resulted in Harry being forced to finish them off. And right when he was lifting one soggy cone to his lips…
Smash!
Dudley knocked the cream bits all over his taped round glasses, guffawing loudly in the process. Harry bit his cheek to suppress a sob. He was sent off to the toilets to clean himself up, Aunt Petunia calling him a disgrace of a boy, and he ran off before they could see the tears swelling in his eyes.
The gents’ toilets were thankfully empty, although all the doors were clattering open and shut like fish mouths, causing Harry to cover his ears from the noise and duck into the only cubicle that wasn’t behaving erratically. It was much larger, featured a small sink decorated with a little mirror, and upon seeing his own face, Harry burst into tears.
He slid down next to the basin, removing his specs to clean them with a toilet roll. His nose was still running, and the tears worsened his already blurred sight. After he managed to remove most of the ice cream and crumbles from his glasses, he blew his nose and brought his knees to his chin. He pulled his toy from his pocket, the plastic warm against his skin. It was a small figure of a Jedi knight in white clothes with yellow hair—Luke Skywalker, from the movie Harry adored.
That was when the cubicle door flung open.
Harry jolted, his heart racing, and when he looked up he locked eyes with another boy—who wasn’t Dudley, he thought with relief—whose hair was spectacularly pale; and if Harry was honest, whose clothes seemed rather offbeat. Was that a bow tie?
“What’s that?” the boy asked after a beat, his angular chin pointing at Harry’s toy.
Harry clutched it tighter. “My toy.”
“What kind?” the boy said, still standing in the doorway.
Harry glanced at the boy’s high-knee socks, then looked up, suddenly feeling a bit defensive. “It’s from a movie. With spaceships.”
The other boy stepped closer, squinting. “Spaceships?”
“Yeah,” Harry answered, bracing for mockery, as he was used to with Dudley’s friends. “They fly. And fight. It’s called Star Wars.”
But the boy didn’t laugh at him. Instead, he wrinkled his nose. “Never heard of it. Sounds made-up.”
Harry looked at him. How come this boy had never heard of Star Wars? “It’s not made-up,” he said quietly. “My cousin has loads of them. I only got this one.”
The boy crouched in front of him, allowing Harry a clearer view of his face. Unlike himself or Dudley, the boy appeared to have no bruises or blemishes. His skin was as smooth as a doll’s; his hair looked almost plastic as well. Harry felt a strange urge to touch him, if only to check if he was real.
“Does it do anything?” the boy said, drawing Harry’s attention back to the toy.
They both stared at it in silence. Then Harry replied, “He fights with a sword. It’s made of light.”
The boy tilted his head, white locks falling into his brows. “That’s a wand.”
“No, it’s not. It’s–it’s a lightsaber.”
“No, I tell you that’s a wand. Both my parents have one. When I grow up, I’ll have one too.”
“But he’s a Jedi Knight,” Harry corrected, voice rising slightly.
The boy lifted one brow. “And what are you, a Jedi Knight, too?”
Harry stared. “No… I’m just a boy. And you?”
“A wizard. How old are you?”
Harry knew better than to make people repeat themselves, even when he wasn’t sure he heard correctly, so he let the odd statement pass unquestioned. “I’m seven. You?”
“I just turned eight last week,” the boy said, clearly smug. “I’m older than you. What are you doing here?”
“Hiding.”
“From who?”
“From Dudley.”
“Dudley? Is that a person or a disease?”
Harry laughed, perhaps for the first time that day. The boy, however, scowled, clearly thinking that Harry was mocking him. Harry’s first instinct was to stop laughing, but the boy was genuinely funny, so Harry told him just that. And after a brief pause, the boy beamed at him.
Harry’s good mood didn’t last. He and his newfound friend were attempting to talk over one another amid fits of giggles when the door to the toilet swung open again as Dudley burst in. The blonde boy rose to his feet immediately. Harry followed, shrinking back and hiding the toy behind his back.
“Nice bow,” Dudley said, stepping in, “you look like a girl at a wedding.”
Harry’s stomach churned at the thought of his cousin beating up the only kid his age who had ever been friendly to him. He really wanted to say something, but he couldn’t risk moving without becoming a target.
“At least I don’t look like I ate the wedding,” the blonde boy replied, his high-pitched voice dripping with disdain.
Harry looked at him with widened eyes. That boy was mad! He wouldn’t make it through this altercation without a broken nose. On his spotless face, Harry thought sadly.
“Oi! Stop talking, or I’ll beat you up,” Dudley grumbled, raising his fist and stepping closer.
“Oh, I’m so scared,” the boy said in an almost bored voice. “You think because you’re bigger, you’re stronger?”
Dudley’s face reddened instantly.
“You stomp like a troll and talk like one, too,” the boy continued. “What are you? A halfbreed?”
“I’m not—!”
“Oh, but you are.” The boy was the one stepping closer this time. Harry’s eyes were still glued to him, clearly dazzled. “My father says trolls eat with their hands and never use magic. Just like Muggles. You look like one.”
“Shut up! I’m not a-a-a Gummles!”
Harry didn’t know what the blonde boy meant either, but he was delighted to see that his cousin was losing his grip.
“Or what?” the boy said, almost nose-to-nose with Dudley. “You’ll sit on me?”
Dudley lunged, his fists grasping the boy’s neat collar, but he didn’t so much as flinch.
“Go on. Try it. I dare you. See what happens.”
Harry’s heart was racing in his chest. He watched Dudley hesitate, and he knew why. The other boy’s words sounded so certain, and the threat real. He wasn’t scared of him. And that’s when Dudley’s eyes started to brim, the confusion, the insults, the humiliations catching up to him.
He shoved the boy and left the room, bawling, calling for his mum. The boy then turned to Harry, and his brows raised in shock.
“You’re trembling like a leaf! Are you scared of him?”
Harry lowered his head, clutching his toy to his chest, now that the menace had vanished. “He’s my cousin… Dudley. He’s scary. And mean.”
“That’s the Dudley you were speaking of?” The boy wrinkled his nose again. He seemed to do this a lot, Harry noticed. “But your cousin looks so dumb! There’s no reason to be scared. You should try threatening him, too. He’ll be staining his pants, you’ll see.”
Harry shrugged. “But I’m not scary,” he said in a small voice.
The boy looked at him, and Harry remarked his pale, almost silver, grey eyes. “Then act like you are.”
They exited the toilets. All the cubicle doors were no longer acting erratically, and the boy told him he had to return to his parents. Harry didn’t know what to tell him or how to thank him, so he did the only thing that came to mind—and that he’d probably regret later. He handed him his only toy, his fingers trembling, mumbling a quiet, “He fights with light.”
When the boy took it, clearly confused, Harry bolted, too shy to even wait for an answer. He didn’t look behind him, nor did the boy call after him.
*
Harry didn’t have much, but because of one boy in a bow tie who once told him to act like he was scary, he did have five tiny victories to celebrate.
The first was a few weeks after the museum, when Colonel Fubster got him a gift for his eighth birthday.
It was a green naval gun toy, just like the one he’d seen outside the museum. And for once, it was entirely his; something he didn’t need to steal from Dudley’s broken hand-me-downs, something new he could play with since he’d given his only action figure and was only left with his headless toy soldiers. Harry was so startled by the feeling that he darted down the hall to hide it under his mattress, only to be stopped by Dudley on his way to the cupboard.
“Give it to me or I’ll fart in your cupboard again.”
Harry hid the toy behind his back. His instincts were telling him to flee, go to Colonel Fubster and grass Dudley up, but then he remembered the sharp-tongued boy in the museum. He took a deep breath, heart racing in his chest, and locked eyes with Dudley.
“Get off me, you Muggle!”
He said the word without even knowing what it meant, only because the boy had looked cool when he’d said it, and Dudley had since been acting like it was the most insulting thing he’d ever heard. Harry watched his cousin’s face crumple, red starting to creep up his cheeks, and he bravely swallowed the urge to apologise.
“What did you call me?” Dudley asked threateningly, cracking his knuckles near Harry’s face.
“You heard me,” Harry repeated, his voice trying to sound confident. “Muggle. And you can’t beat me up for that.”
He was trying to keep his voice and body steady, but Dudley was so scary. His fingers—crossed behind his back, hiding the toy—were trembling from how hard he was pretending not to be afraid. But the boy in the museum had said to act scary, and he trusted him enough to pretend at least.
“Really?” Dudley said, grabbing him by the collar. “And why’s that?”
“Because,” Harry started, his mind racing to come up with something, “I—I’ll tell everyone you cried for your mum that time at the museum!”
And it landed. Dudley looked thrown off, eyes wide.
“That’s not even—! You’re lying!”
“Try me,” Harry said, echoing the boy’s words with a shrug, and wriggled free. “And see what happens.”
What happened was that Dudley never asked for Harry’s toy again, far too afraid of what might happen if he did. It was the first time Harry successfully threatened his cousin into backing down, and the power it gave him wasn’t short-lived.
The second time Dudley tried cornering him for the toy, he brought his friend Piers and demanded Harry hand it over in exchange for jelly snakes. Harry refused, holding up a rusty screwdriver, and lied:
“Come closer, and I’ll jab your tooth out. Bet your mum won’t love you with a gap in your smile.”
Dudley had just lost a milk tooth the night before and had cried for hours, so Harry knew exactly what he was doing. As expected, they backed off.
The third time was at a dinner party for Dudley’s ninth birthday. His cousin kicked him under the table for reaching for a slice of cake, but Harry didn’t act immediately, well aware no one would bat an eye if Dudley suddenly decided to beat him up. He waited until the party was over and they were both sent to wash up, then walked past him and muttered:
“You know what that boy at the museum called you? A Muggle? I reckon it’s the word for people who pig themselves with chocolate cake.”
The next morning, Dudley refused to eat the rest of his cake, and Harry, triumphant, was allowed to finish it.
The fourth time Harry used this threatening persona on Dudley, he was ten, and by then, so used to faking it that it had become a real personality trait. Harry wasn’t as scared of his cousin anymore, so when Dudley spread a rumour at school that Harry wet the bed, he caught him in a quiet corner.
“You should check your pillow,” Harry murmured. “I’ve been training a rat to sleep in your room. It bites in its sleep.”
That night, Dudley screamed and made a fuss until his mattress was thrown out the window. Uncle Vernon blamed mice, and Harry spent the night laughing in his cupboard.
The fifth time had been right before his Hogwarts letter arrived. That day, Dudley shoved him against the wall after breakfast. Harry, nearly eleven, wasn’t impressed with his cousin’s antics anymore and only stared at him with cold eyes.
“You remember that snake at the zoo?” he asked, feigning innocence. “The one that looked right at me? I think it’s still following me. I dreamt it whispered your name last night. Should I send it after you?”
Dudley turned pale and refused to sit near Harry for days—which only worsened when they learned, a few days later, that Harry was a wizard.
Just like the boy in the museum.