Chapter Text
The day of Harry Potter’s seventh birthday started in the same way most of his days did since he was five years old, four and a half if one was gracious about that sort of things.
Not that his relatives had ever been gracious about that sort of things.
Or anything Harry-related per se.
He had been rudely woken up, although he should not say rudely because he could be considered rude himself for saying such things about his “family”, by his aunt bashing on the door of his cupboard, whisper-yelling at him to get his lazy arse up and cook them breakfast. Whisper-yelling because her precious little Dudders was still sleeping and shouldn’t be disturbed, so Harry should hurry to make the food while also keeping quiet enough not to wake his cousin.
Other days, Dudley would have woken Harry up himself, jumping up and down the stairs right over his head, causing the entire cupboard to shake and dust to fall in his eyes. He supposed Aunt Petunia pounding on the door was cleaner, which was why he preferred it. He didn’t have to rub at his eyes and blink countlessly to get the specks out of them more than usual then. If was a weird thing to prefer, he knew that, but he took all the small mercies he could get.
He was used to their routine by now, but that didn’t mean he liked it.
Still, he did as he was told and began making breakfast, hoping forever that, if he did everything just right, they would realise he was worth something. So far, it had been nothing more than wishful thinking, but the future was bright and hope did die last.
Or so he had read in a book.
And the future seemed already brighter, for he was tall enough now to be able to see over the stove without having to use a chair or a stool. It was a very good thing, since Aunt Petunia didn’t like when he stood on the chairs, or when he sat on them, or when he was around her fancy and polished furniture longer than he should have been and without dusting anyway, and Uncle Vernon had thrown the stool away after Dudley had bumped into it.
Willingly, one that had witnessed the entire scene just as Harry did might say, since Aunt Petunia had told him he couldn’t use it to reach the top shelves where she kept the sweets and, usually, since Dudley couldn’t have or use something, it meant that neither could Harry.
Not that he had much anyway.
But Uncle Vernon always told him he was lucky to have what he did and Harry had figured a long time before that it was best to not rebut and talk back.
The consequences were never worth the momentary satisfaction of having the upper hand, after all.
And so the stool had been kicked out of the house because it was a “tripping hazard” and “poor Dudley, you’ve hurt your knee, why don’t we put an icepack over it and then have it seen by the GP? Would a lolly help make the pain go away?”, and Harry had to stand on his tippy toes and balance the pans as he cooked up meals for his family, not that they considered him as such.
He supposed he did not consider them as such either, but his primary teacher had been horrified by him when he told her he didn’t particularly care for the Dursleys and had forced him to make amends to them and apologise for his crude words. So he thought it best not to mention his “rude” feelings and bury them deep.
He was good at covering and burying things deep.
On the day of his seventh birthday, Harry was whisking up omelettes. That was not the usual approved breakfast that Aunt Petunia made him cook up, but he had read the recipe in a cooking book up in the library as he was hiding from Dudley and his gang the previous Wednesday and he had spent the day before asking Aunt Petunia if he could try to make them.
He thought that, if the food was good enough, perhaps he would receive a compliment and a seat at the table, so he was always finding ways to improve on his cooking. Besides, he enjoyed cooking and baking very much, whenever someone wasn’t yelling at him and causing him to mess up because they distracted him, so it was all in good fun.
He could experiment and he could improve and he could try to achieve the coveted prize of affection from his relatives.
It was all good fun.
Uncle Vernon had overheard their little conversation and told him to do it, surprisingly encouraging him, but he had also told him that when he would mess everything up he would be punished. Severely.
Harry had replied that he was confident he would not mess up, but his uncle had just smiled at him in the way that made him want to run away and hide. But he was good, he knew he was, and he knew that he could do it, had read the recipe over and over and had perfectly memorized the different ways the preparation went, and he was confident in his abilities, having mastered all sorts of dishes since he had been put up at the stove, so he ignored the feeling at the bottom of his stomach that made him want to curl up and cry.
He was very good at ignoring feelings from his stomach after all.
Harry was about to pour the egg mixture into the hot pan, the oiling sizzling up and splashing on his sleeves, long despite the stifling weather because he had learnt that the sleeves could prevent burns most of the time, when he heard a knock come from the window.
He looked up, not really expecting anything, considering that the window in front of him gave a direct view to the garden and there was supposedly no one there and so he might have imagined the knock, but had decided to check either way.
He looked back to the pan, calculating whether or not to toss the mixture in, and whether or not it would burn in case he did, since his attention was being pulled somewhere else.
He looked up again, trying to confirm that what he was witnessing was true and not a figment of his wild imagination.
Then he promptly put the bowl down on the counter and turned the heat down, realising that he should not be near a fire at the moment.
And stared at the window.
For there was a hawk perched on the sill, delicately arranged in between the vases of herbs and small flowers that lived perpetually there, with their neatly folded wings brushing Aunt Petunia’s flowers.
Although Harry thought of them as his flowers, instead of primarily hers, considering he was the only one who took care of them. Aunt Petunia thought of the garden and the flowers as her property, but Harry thought of them as his little secret family, cherishing them and tending to them in the way a family would.
Not that he really knew how a family would cherish or tend to someone.
Anyway, the hawk was staring right back at him with curious and intelligent eyes, that seemed to be scanning his face before landing on the mop of hair that covered his forehead, probably detecting the scar underneath, before returning to stare him down, as if beckoning him to open the window.
The entire thing was curious.
Firstly, there was the hawk situation. Harry had read many books on animals, both because he liked them and because it seemed to him that he could talk to some, mostly salamanders and little snakes.
Of course, that could have been his imagination, as Aunt Petunia had told him once when he claimed he had not climbed up the cabinet to grab biscuit from the highest shelf and that the biscuit had instead come to him. She had been very alarmed at him afterwards and had locked him into his cupboard for the entire day, which he thought was very cruel as a punishment, since when Dudley had torn down the kitchen trying to find his favourite snack, Uncle Vernon had just laughed and told Harry to clean up, letting his son eat the entire bag of crisps. Aunt Petunia hadn’t even let him take the biscuit with him, tossing it into the bin while murmuring about wicked and rotten things happening in her normal household.
So, Harry didn’t really believe he could talk to animals, but he still liked them enough to read about them. And in his many visits to the library he had read tons and he had discovered native species to England and Surrey.
He had seen all the images of all the birds that were a native species to England and Surrey.
The hawk, while clearly a hawk, did not resemble a goshawk nor a sparrowhawk not a merlin, nor any of the birds of prey that were in Harry’s books. Which meant they weren’t local.
Which meant they were definitely not supposed to be perched on the kitchen’s windowsill.
Secondly, the hawk was dressed. Animals did not wear clothes, unless it was in fairytale books or fantasy films or stories where they behaved like humans.
Technically speaking, Harry didn’t think what the hawk was wearing could be considered “clothes”. At least not in their time and age. It was chainmail armour, as if it had come out straight out of a book, clinging to the hawk body and leaving the wings free to move. Harry had read somewhere that usually with armour came a particular metal hat, to protect from head injuries in the battlefield, but the hawk was missing it.
He had seen a dog once, wearing a vest, but that was an oddity and an exception to the rule. Some owners put their animals in clothes, he had heard, from the comfort of his cupboard, as Aunt Petunia complained to one of her friends at tea one time as they mentioned the obscenity of it all. And he knew that non-native species were usually kept in captivity, which meant they had owners.
Perhaps the hawk’s owner was peculiar enough to put the bird in chainmail, for whatever reason.
Perhaps the hawk had enemies and therefore he needed the protection?
Harry supposed he could have asked the hawk himself, but birds tended to not reply to him when he tried to speak to them, although he had the feeling he could understand them, if he tried hard enough to concentrate.
Thirdly, the hawk was staring him down in the way his teachers often did, as if they were expecting him to answer a question well and would be disappointed in him if he didn’t.
Not that he ever did answer questions in class, the results from Dudley were not nice when he did, so he preferred to keep his mouth shut and pretend he didn’t know things. Besides, Uncle Vernon had told the school he was a stupid delinquent and they had all believed him, so it would have been useless to show otherwise.
But his math teacher and his science teacher always stared at him and sighed whenever he refused to do well in their classes. Almost as if they were disappointed in him, but realised that whatever was forcing him to hold back was not worth dwelling on.
Harry didn’t think hawks could sigh, but the poor bird looked like he would have done so if he didn’t open the window soon enough.
And so, to avoid a seemingly inevitable bird sigh, although it would have been a wicked thing to witness, Harry did what he was silently stared down to do. He was terribly afraid the hawk would have flown inside, causing a mess and ending Harry up in punishment, but the bird remained on the windowsill, now looking at their raised leg that they were, surprisingly, offering to Harry.
In their claws, very sharp looking claws that screamed of blood and battles, was a letter.
Now, Harry had been told he had a fervid imagination all his life.
His aunt and uncle told him so whenever something unusual happened, like the telly changing channels out of its own will, his hair growing back right after they were cut, or the roses he tended in the garden being always in full bloom even in winter.
His art teacher told him so when he had to paint the thing he was most grateful for and he had painted the little spiders that kept him company in his cupboard.
His headmaster told him so when he recounted how Dudley and his friends had chased him down the courtyard and made him fall into the mud, which ended him up in detention for causing a ruckus. His headmaster had then told him that it was a “very rude thing to invent stories about your friends and trying to have them up in trouble as well, young man, that is considered defamation in the grown-up world and it is a very serious thing, not to be trifled with.”
Mrs Figg, from a few houses down the road, told him as such when he mentioned how her cats didn’t look like cats at all and had tried to change the topic at all costs, despite being the first person to mention cats in all of Surrey.
So, Harry knew his imagination could be huge and inappropriate at times.
He also knew it wasn’t big enough to imagine an armoured hawk standing on his windowsill and silently offering him a crimson envelope as he was making breakfast for his relatives.
Still, he felt very silly standing there in silence with the hawk and it would feel rude not to accept the letter. So he did, nodding his head and murmuring “Thank you” to the bird faintly, to avoid detection.
Uncle Vernon always yelled at him whenever he spoke without permission, so he tried to not raise his voice when he was conversing with animals, certain that no one would give him permission to do so. He barely was allowed to breath sometimes.
The bird seemed to actually understand him, for they nodded back and flew away satisfied, leaving behind a baffled and bewildered Harry.
He turned the crimson envelope in his hands.
The paper was rough yet soft, and it felt very ancient and official, for some reason. If felt as old the World, as old as monarchy, and as old as stone, even if those things had little in common with each other. It felt proud and precise and vengeful. And it emanated a feeling of calmness and purpose.
The seal showcased a red G surrounded by weapons and, weirdly, what seemed to be coins, and reminded him a bit of the colour blood. He found, in his mind, the weird image of a ruined battlefield with tattered flags flying in the wind as someone got crowned, surrounded by destruction and with their heart full of satisfaction, when he ran his fingers over it, his thumb taking in the small details imprinted in the wax..
The ink was shiny and black, carved in elegant letters that had ran smoothly on the paper, in a manner that somehow spoke to him of running into the wind and fighting in the moonlight and camping outside big impenetrable cities, but also of tending to one’s family, of running around a garden chasing a flock of shrieking children laughing, of the creasing lines around someone else’s eyes.
And there, written plainly and directly, was his name.
Sort of.
“To the hands of
Heir Harrison James Potter,
number 4 Privet Drive, Little Winging,
Surrey, England.
From the desk of
Master Goblin of the Office for Hereditary Affairs and General of the Goblin Armies
Rotgard Longsword of the Silverfang Clan
London Branch of the Gringotts Bank, Diagon Alley,
London, England.”
It was easily the fanciest penmanship Harry had ever seen.
It was also the first time he saw his full name written out.
Granted, he thought it was just “Harry Potter”, given that was what the school called him and he had learnt his name there, so he supposed they knew best.
He didn’t know he had a middle name nor did he know why he had been given it, but he thought it might be from his dad’s side, since Aunt Petunia had never mentioned it. And she never mentioned things from his dad’s side, instead of the little bitter comments he could get out of her when he wanted to know things from her and his mom’s side.
He had found out that Harry was the shortened version of Harrison from one of his teachers, who refused to call him by a “nickname” since it would have been “an improper way to communicate with someone who is not related to you and you are already a little troublemaker, so I have to try and mould you into a respectable member of society.”
He did not know what “Heir” meant, but there was a feeling in the back of his head telling him he should look into it in the library as soon as he could, while a weird pull at the bottom of his stomach told him to ignore it and ran away as fast as he could.
He had no idea who this Rotgard Longsword was, nor had ever heard of the Gringotts Bank, nor had a clue about what an Office of Hereditary Affairs could want from him. He was just a poor orphan whose parents had left him nothing, he had nothing to do with inheritances nor banks.
He knew where London was, though, which was something at least. He was good in geography, after all, even if he had to hide it.
But the rest was all a big mystery.
The only Goblins he had knowledge of were from books and he doubted the ones Tolkien wrote about would have nice penmanship. When Harry had read his books he had envisioned them as burly things, somewhat big and hairless and shirtless and somehow always brewing chaos and singing loudly and slightly off key. Which was an image that did not go well with the overall feeling that radiated from the armoured hawk and the crimson envelope and the fancy paper.
But Harry didn’t have time to dwell on it and investigate further, even if he truly wanted to, since he could hear Dudley run upstairs, already bemoaning for his breakfast, followed by the deep voice of a pleased Uncle Vernon telling him it would “be a nice one today, Dudley, we’re certainly going to enjoy it.”
He felt dread creep down his spine as the stairs creaked.
So he shoved the envelope down his shirt and tucked it into his giant trousers, hoping it wouldn’t burn accidentally staying too close to the stove, and then returned to his task, thankful that the pan was still hot and ready for the omelettes he wanted to make.
Was it perhaps a bit weird that the temperature was still perfect despite the loss of heat? Maybe.
But weirder things had happened to Harry.
