ONE: You’re No Wizard
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ust as Harry had suspected, Snape’s assignments arrived early the next morning. He was
just releasing Errol, who’d had a good night’s rest, when Pig came zooming
through the open window, panting, looking like a normal owl who’d just made an
all-night trip, for once.
Harry frowned, taking the small package from the
owl as well as the note attached to his leg. The package, Harry noted, had the
dimensions of a paperback novel. Frowning, he opened the letter.
Harry,
Here are all of the assignments Snape
gave us over the summer. Mrs.
Weasley was nice enough to shrink them
to half-size so that Pig could carry
them all, but you can blow them up without magic.
Go to the library and use
the copier to make them bigger. The writing
should be a bit fuzzy, but legible.
I’ve
done it before, when I forgot some things I needed at
home.
Mr. Weasley, of
course, finds this all incredibly fascinating.
-Hermione
P.S. – He won’t get away with this.
Harry’s eyebrows lifted. Hermione wasn’t one for
breaking school rules or defying teachers, but when she did do, she
always managed something spectacular. He felt a brief surge of vindicated glee
just wondering what the girl planned on doing to Professor Snape.
Harry straightened as he heard a sudden rap on his
bedroom door.
“Breakfast!”
“Wait!” Harry called out, suddenly remembering his
cousin’s kindness the day before. “Come in a minute.”
“All the way,” Harry snapped. He’d long since
learned that
“Got some cake,” Harry replied simply, nudging the
loose floorboard away.
“I use it to hide sweets,” Harry admitted. “Well,
I also use it to hide magical objects and books and things,” he added
mercilessly, feeling a rush of satisfaction when
Harry shook his head. He supposed it wasn’t an odd
question, given the toffee. “Here,” he said. He cut himself a far smaller slice
and took a bite.
“
Both Dudley and Harry straightened suddenly and
guiltily, staring wide-eyed at the closed door. Harry waited for his heartbeat
to slow, reminding himself to take deep breaths.
“Dudders, darling, where
are you?”
Harry nodded. “I need another favor,” he said
quickly. “Look, can you take these to the library and make them big enough to
read? I’ll give you money.”
Harry sighed. “Well, tell them you’re going to a
friend’s house, or something. The way you do when you don’t want to be
bothered.”
The sun was setting before Harry
realized his shoulders were sunburned and his muscles ached. He had taken to
work like it was a harsh meditation, spending the entire day in a daze,
half-aware of sound and sensation. It felt almost good, really.
When he came back into the house, splattered with
paint and feeling disgustingly sweaty, there was a large stack of papers
sitting on his bed.
Harry picked them up and flipped through them,
groaning. There was easily enough there for a summer’s worth of reading, and
more. He rubbed his forehead in circles, realizing he should have known when
Hermione of all people had admitted she wasn’t yet done.
He showered, then
returned to his room. He was staring at the infamous anemone article when a
small tap sounded at the door. He was so absorbed that it didn’t quite register
for a moment. Finally, the door opened, and
“What?” Harry murmured. “Oh. Yeah, go ahead.”
Harry eyed him contemptuously. “Being a Muggle... you can’t, er, catch
that, can you?” he echoed in a lumbering, Goyle-like
voice.
Harry resigned himself to distraction. “Stuff for school.”
“Oh, that’s revealing. Glad you cleared it
up.”
Harry sat up suddenly, glaring at his cousin. “You
don’t want to know about my school.”
“You read some of it!” Harry squeaked.
“It was just photocopies, it’s not magic in and of
itself,”
Harry felt flummoxed. “Y-yeah,” he mumbled,
feeling like he’d woken on a different planet that morning. Or
was dreaming. Yeah, dreaming, he decided.
“So you take Chemistry?”
“Well – they call it Potions,” Harry replied, the
feeling of dreamy unreality persisting. “But yeah, from what I know of
chemistry, it’s similar to a practical chemistry course. Put a bunch of stuff
together, hope it doesn’t explode. That sort of thing.”
“My teacher is a bit of a bastard,” he added
lightly. “He didn’t send me my summer work until now.”
“I’d think I’d like that sort of teacher,”
“No, he’ll still want it all at the start of
term,” Harry clarified. “He’s trying to make certain I have a disadvantage,
that’s all.”
Harry pondered this. “Well, I suppose. I mean,
some of them are purely magic, like Charms and Transfiguration. But then
there’s Herbology and Potions–”
“Like Biology and Chemistry?”
“And Care of Magical Creatures.”
They shared a grin, but Harry was feeling slightly
ill. His brain was scrambling to continue the conversation with his cousin, to
keep things light and hopefully a bit funny, to cultivate the goodwill that
they now shared. He cast about for something else to say, and found it.
“Want to see my birthday present?” he inquired. He
opened the desk drawer and fished out the golden bauble. When his hands closed
around it, it glowed crimson. Harry blinked, and
looked up at
“What does it do?”
“It’s a Dark Detector,” Harry said. “Look, it
glows different colors depending on the people around you.”
“Do you want to hold it? It won’t hurt you.”
The small light thinned, then
flickered before winking out entirely.
“I expect it’ll only light for a wizard or witch,”
Harry explained.
Just as Harry was finishing, the light returned.
“Or not?”
Harry peered into the darkness of the sphere. At
the very center was a cool, dim blue-violet glow. “
“Right,” Harry whispered. “Too
right. Make it go brighter,
“Make it go–!” But it already was. The cool
light expanded to twice its size before burning itself out, a very small flare.
Harry reclaimed the bauble with shaking fingers.
“Oh. How... how interesting.”
“What does that mean, interesting!”
“It means... oh, I don’t know what it means. I
expect I’ll have to ask Hermione.” Harry frowned, suddenly resenting his first
reaction. “Or we can find out ourselves. Here.” He placed the bauble back into
“Don’t want to? Don’t you want to know?”
For a moment his cousin was silent, the expression
on his face resentful. “Maybe not,” he answered flatly, slapping the item back
into Harry’s palm. “For all I know, you’re lying, or it doesn’t work the way
you thought, or you’re the one making it glow in the first place.”
In Harry’s hands, the bauble began to shift from
red to orange to gold, bathing Harry’s bedroom in a spectrum of warm colors.
“Come on,
“No,”
Then, he fled.
Harry didn’t see
“Best thing all around, Petunia,” he said one
evening as the four of them sat around the dinner table. “Best thing all
around, that
This sounded so like what Draco
Malfoy had said on the Hogwarts Express back in first
year that Harry couldn’t help but issue a little snort of his own.
“You think that’s funny, boy?”
He and his,
Harry realized, his eyes going automatically to his cousin. If
“Well!”
“Not funny,” Harry admitted, and didn’t say
anything else for the rest of the meal.
Meanwhile, Harry continued to work through his
Potions assignments, although he’d long since realized there was no chance of
his finishing up before he arrived at Hogwarts. The best he could manage would
be to do what looked easiest, first, and hope to remain one step ahead of the
Potions Master.
One night, three days before the Hogsmeade trip,
It was the bauble.
“What – when did you-!”
“Nicked it this morning,”
Harry mastered his anger. “And?”
“And... I gave it to Mum and Dad–”
“ – if they’d even guessed it was magical-!”
“Well, they didn’t. Thought it was a Christmas
ornament. Blown glass,” he continued.
Harry sat up, frowning at his cousin, suddenly
concerned at the clipped sentences and the odd, helpless cast of
“Not a thing,”
Harry didn’t know what to say, so he remained
silent.
“I haven’t been able to eat since this morning.”
In
Harry pondered over how to answer this. “Don’t
think so, Dudders,” he replied, trying for levity.
“It lights up all the way for me, you know. Barely a spark
for you. I doubt you’re contaminated in any way.” He couldn’t help the
bitterness in his voice.
“I am,”
“Give you... what? Where’s what?”
“Your... your wand, you idiot,”
Now Harry knew he’d heard it all. “
“Well... yeah, of course it would...”
“Well, I’m going to get them for you, along with
your other... things. And in return, I’m going to use your wand.”
Five minutes later,
Holly, phoenix feather, eleven inches, Harry mused. At first, he was reluctant to hand it over,
at least as reluctant as he’d been to give it to Vernon Dursley.
Then he caught the terrible stubbornness in his cousin’s eyes, and the terror
beneath the surface. “All right, Dudley,” he said quietly, and placed the wand
in his cousin’s hands.
Harry blinked. “Well... uh, lift your arm out...
yes, like that.” He moved a piece of parchment in front of
Harry watched with something like incredulity
while
“Sometimes it takes a few tries...”
Harry smirked.
“I’m all right with it being you, Harry,”
“The bauble probably’s
very sensitive,” Harry guessed. “But if you don’t have enough magic to do Wingardium Leviosa,
you’re no wizard.”