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When harry first realised he had magic he was 8 years old.
1989
January
It was the first week back from the winter holidays, and Harry was in the school playground during lunchtime and heard a couple of the older years talking about magic! They were having a conversation about how some people had powers and can lift things up without touching them just with a thought. How others can fly or teleport. That some can control water, air, fire and water (the elements) or all 4. Turning invisible, turning into animals and even time travel. They were even showing off the books with this information to their friends. There were even pictures showing how the powers worked! Now Harry wasn't dumb, but hearing about this, these people surely were - as his aunt always told him and Dudley that there was no such thing as magic. The stories the older kids talked about sounded much like Matilda - the fictional book they were reading in class. As amazing as those powers sounded it just wasn't true.
~
Harry changed his mind two weeks later.
It was just another lunchtime, and Harry was running away from Dudley and his gang because they were playing harry hunting as usual. Just as he ran into a dead end with nowhere to escape, he ended up on the roof as if he teleported. One second, he was stepping backwards away from Dudley and his gang, then the next step he took he was on the school roof two stories above the ground. It had to be magic as there was no other way he could have gotten on the roof without magic being the cause. As there were no access door on the roof or a ladder down to the floor, the school had to call the firemen to rescue harry.
Aunt petunia was very displeased to hear that the fire brigade was called because of him and chucked Harry into his cupboard as soon as he was home, locking him in there for a couple of days.
Harry would have thought that the mysterious teleporting incident and subsequent rescue was just a dream - due to him being in his cupboard for too long - if he hadn't heard the teachers talking about it the next time he was allowed to go to school.
~
February
The second time something magical happened to Harry was when his aunt cut his hair about a month after he heard the kids talking about magic.
She got mad at him for doing better than Dudley in school and decided to shave all but his fringe off. Why not his fringe? Because supposedly his scar is a hideous thing and all it does is remind her about how Harry’s parents died in a car crash because they were drunk, leading her to be burdened with a freak like Harry. It was the worst haircut ever. And harry hated it, he'd be bullied more than ever, and the bullying was already quite bad.
Luckly the horrible haircut he went through didn't stay for long. The morning after his aunt got her hands on the kitchen scissors, Harry’s hair looked exactly as it was before aunt petunia cut it. No one talked about it and he didn’t get into trouble. Did it happen? Was it a dream or hallucination? If it was then that explains why he wasn’t punished. Although if it was magic, did it erase their memories of the event?
~
March
This debate went on in his head for a while until the next incident occurred.
It was March and just a normal Wednesday afternoon. Harry was sitting in the back of his classroom. It was a maths period, and he was getting his results to his most recent test back. Harry was quite anxious for the test results as he had studied and tried his very best. Even though he normally gets into trouble with his aunt when getting better marks than Dudley, Harry knew that learning was important, especially if he wanted to get good jobs and leave the Dursleys (Harry loved learning and hates trying to curb his grades to the level of Dudley). As he got his maths test back, he found that he got 100 percent! The teacher even said that she put extra questions meant for the higher years and Academy students, to introduce them to the future maths problems they will eventually learn to do, to not worry about the score they got and to just give the questions a try. Harry got all of them right even the algebra and trigonometry!
After Harrys’ teacher finished handing out all of the results, she then addressed the class. “Well done everyone! You are all at the level I would expect and thank you for attempting the extra problems. I am very impressed with those that manged to give a reason for their answers and even those that even got one or two correct. I am disappointed with one of you for cheating, I have thought better than you. How else are you meant to learn and improve when we, the teachers don’t know what you don’t understand and need help on.”
Throughout the beginning of the teacher’ speech Harry was puzzled as Dudley wouldn’t have managed to pass on his own. He was then relieved and confused when his teacher said that someone was cheating, relieved that she caught Dudley cheating, though confused as his cousin never got called out by this teacher as she was in Harry's aunt’s bridge club.
“I could tell that this person cheated due to getting everything correct” his teacher continued. ‘Wait what? Harry got 100 percent, but he didn’t cheat!’ “I am very disappointed in you Harry, especially as I gave you all the chances to change and improve yourself as a person, but your aunt was right in that you are just a troubled and disturbed child, that will continue to lie and cheat to get through life!”
Harry was going to be in big trouble as not only would he be punished for getting better marks than his cousin, but the school was for sure going to call his aunt about this!
Suddenly at the end of her sentence, her hair tuned blue!
Was that another case of magic? Why did her hair turn blue? Nothing dropped on her head, so it had to be magic! Why did the magic happen though, that is the 3 rd time magic happened around harry recently. The teleportation; Harry's hair growing back and now his teacher's hair tuning blue!
During these ruminations Harry was sent to the headteacher’s office for further actions due to him “cheating” and “playing a mean-spirited prank against the teacher to undermine their authority”. The headteacher didn’t bother getting Harry’s side of the story as he too believes Harry’s aunt that Harry is a bad behaved kid (the whole neighbourhood does at this point) and so gave him a 2-day suspension.
His aunt had to pick him up.
Harry was sent to his cupboard again and was continuing his previous line of thought about magic. The thing in common with these incidents was that Harry was there and that the magic affected a person. It affected harry twice and his teacher once. Twice it changed hair and twice it happened at school. Did magic do it by itself? But the books that the older kids were talking about said that a person did it. If that was true than who? His teacher? She was at school and could have changed her hair blue and magicked Harry onto the roof, but she wasn’t in his house when his hair grew.
Does that mean it was Dudley? He was in class and laughed when her hair turned blue, he also lives in the house and could have made Harry's hair grow as a joke. Dudley was also playing Harry hunting when Harry was magicked up on the roof and could have thought it was funny for him to be stuck on the roof. Yeah, the more Harry thought the one who had to be magic was Dudley!
What was his cousin’s powers? What else could he do to Harry? Even if Dudley used them against Harry, Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon wouldn’t believe it. They don’t believe in magic and if they did Dudley never gets into trouble. They would probably even get Dudley into a top-secret magic school if they knew.
Wait, what if they already knew? They could be saying magic isn’t real to protect Dudley and that’s why they didn’t mention when Harry’s hair grew back to not draw attention to Dudley’s powers! That has to be it, especially if Dudley couldn’t control his powers, they wouldn’t want anyone to know and take his cousin away. Maybe that is why Harry is a burden; they are spending a lot of time protecting Dudley and hiding his magics existence. Maybe if Harry helps them, they will talk to him and involve him in their family more. To help Dudley he would need to know more about magic.
He could check the school library for books! It would make sense that magic is thought to be not real to protect others. The next time Harry was in school, he would check the fictional section for books about magic.
~
Two weeks later Harry has read everything about magic the school library had to offer. He found out that everyone had a specific power. Like in Matilda she could move things with her mind. There were other powers like talking to animals, growing things - like plants, changing time, turning invisible, flying and even super strength. Basically, anything you could imagine it was there. Harry also found that the older you got and the more practise you have the more control you have over your powers and the stronger your magic would get. That there were people that used the magic for good and helped others, but that there were people who used their powers for evil. He hoped Dudley wouldn’t use them badly. Due to all the research Harry did, he believed that Dudley had illusion and manipulation magic. He could have put an illusion on the teacher's hair making everyone see it was blue, and made an illusion that Harry was on the roof and manipulated his memory making Harry believe he was on the roof. Dudley would also had to have had manipulated Harry’s memory of having his hair cut. It seemed that Dudley had no control over his magic and needed to practice more.
With everything he had found Harry thought it was time to tell his aunt and uncle that he knew Dudley had magic and even figured out what type of magic!
~
Telling them didn’t go well.
Harry doesn’t remember much from that night apart from his uncle screaming that magic doesn’t exist and his aunt going into hysterics that her precious Dudley doesn’t have magic. Maybe they didn’t know? Or in denial?
Harry does remember that he was locked in his cupboard for the next couple of days and that he hurt a lot.
He had a lot of time to think and came to the conclusion that Dudley was hiding his magic from his parents. Harry decided that his next cause of action was to tell his cousin that Harry knew about his magic and to help him control it.
~
A week later Harry saw his opportunity to talk to Dudley by himself. Harry cornered Dudley in the playground at lunchtime. He told Dudley all about the research and what type of magic powers Dudley had, and that Harry would help him hide and control them.
Dudley just laughed and called him a weirdo. He also got his friends and beat up Harry.
Harry stopped believing that Dudley had magic but that stood the question; if Dudley didn’t, who did? As Harry was the only other person that was there, and he doesn’t have any magic, he would have known if he did.
~
May
The magic stopped happening, there hasn’t been any for about a month now, though it could be happening where Harry couldn’t see it. The question still stands on who is doing the magic and why. There was no logical reason for the teacher’s hair to turn blue or for Harry’s hair to grow back. Yes, Harry teleporting away from his cousin and his gang helped him in the moment, but Harry ended up stuck on the roof and in more trouble when he got home. There was no point in these incidents, it didn’t help, and they weren’t funny.
~
Magic showed up again three days later.
Aunt Petunia was trying to get Harry into one of Dudley’s ugly old jumpers, it was too big for Harry, had disgusting stains, and it was in a terrible shade of green (it looked like a pickle!). Aunt Petunia kept forcing the jumper on Harry, when suddenly the jumper shrank to fit Harry and changed to a nice jade green, it looked brand new – no stains in site. The magic happened again! This time it made Harry’s jumper shrink to fit him perfectly, he never had anything fit before. And the jumper looked a lot better than before!
Aunt Petunia didn’t say anything about it shrinking except to put her nose in the air and sniff disdainfully.
The magic only made Harry happy, so it definitely wasn’t Dudley doing it (even if harry still believed it was him). Harry really didn’t understand why this person was using their magic like this, it didn’t help them and how did they even do it when they aren’t in the house?
~
June
It was Dudley’s birthday, so they were going to the zoo to celebrate it. Harry has never been to the zoo before and it was only because his aunt couldn’t get a babysitter, that he got to go with them.
It was amazing; there were penguins, and tigers, meerkats, red pandas, and all types of birds. Fishes, and monkeys, they even had a reptile house and many other animals. They were in the reptile house currently, and Harry was amazed. He found a large boa constrictor and started talking to it, pretending it was his friend. Harry was complementing the snake’s appearance, and telling the snake his day, when the snake started slithering closer and closer till it was right by the glass. The snake started hissing back at him only it sounded English to Harry. He could talk to snakes, that was so cool! The snake was talking about how it wanted to travel and live in the jungle, and what it was like living in the zoo. The snake eventually conceded that it didn’t mind living in the snake enclosure and that the only bad thing was the humans.
Was that magic? A snake was an animal and animal speaking was a type of magic power. He only understood the snake though, none of the other animals made sense to him. Does this mean it was Harry behind the incidents? He was at every one. Maybe he had lots of little powers. Animal speaking – only to snakes so far, teleportation – little distances, colour changing, appearance changing and item shrinking! That was a lot. What other things can harry do?
At this point it was time to go back to his house as Dudley wanted to watch his TV program, so experimenting had to wait.
~
It was another week before Harry had time to experiment with his newfound powers. He was in the little forest near the playground. Harry already had found that he couldn’t talk to birds, didn’t have super strength and couldn’t fly. Messing with time sounded tricky and he didn’t believe he had enough power to do it. Maybe he should start small. What is small? Ooh. Moving things with his mind sounded easy. How to go about it though? He decided to sit down and relax, that should make it easier to use magic. He never did any magic on purpose so taking it slow and having no pressure on him might make the magic cooperate more. When he was feeling relaxed and calm, Harry decided to try and levitate a small stone. He imagined it being lifted by an invisible hand.
...
It started floating! He was doing magic! He was making a rock float! He was... The rock dropped. Harry got too excited and lost focus making the rock fall. Ok, let's try again. Harry once again imagined the rock being lifted by an invisible hand – the rock twitched only to stay put on the floor. It didn’t work that time? What was different? Oh, Harry didn’t relax and calm down from the excitement of him doing magic. He once again slowed down his racing thoughts and calmed down his breathing - taking slow breaths. Once he was calm once more, he tried lifting the rock with his magic. The rock was faster at floating up that time and Harry concentrated on keeping it in the air. When it had been around a minute, he then thought it back down slowly to the ground.
With this experiment he found that emotions might affect magic, concentration definitely does and the way to do magic was to meditate first, or at least that what helps him start.
Harry then moved on to trying to get different sized sticks to float and move them more. He decided to float a small branch, doing the breathing exercises beforehand, he found that it took more effort lifting it. Maybe his magic was getting tired? With this idea he tried to lift a tiny stick, it shot up into the air two times faster than the branch – startling Harry causing him to lose control of the stick, essentially throwing up - into the sky. A distant thud was heard.
Soo, the bigger the object the more effort needed to get it to float. The smaller the object the faster it will float, and too much power would cause it to float up too fast and is harder to control.
There is enough time for Harry to try a different power before he should get back. Teleporting? It would be helpful and he has done it before. What did he do last time? He was thinking of getting away from Dudley and his gang, to somewhere they couldn’t hurt him. He took a step, and he was then on the roof.
Okay, he will try to teleport! First things first Harry started meditating getting to that calm point where he previously used his magic purposely. Once he was at that stage he then rose to his feet, thinking of being next to a tree 5 metres ahead of him. Once he had that image clear in his mind he took a step.
Harry looked up; he didn’t move. Thats fine things don’t always work first try. What could he do to make that happen? With the rock he imagined a hand picking it up. He didn’t imagine anything for this. Perhaps that was why it didn’t work. What to imagine? An invisible portal that he could walk through? That might work, it seemed the closest thing to what happened the day he ended up on the roof, if not he could always try and imagine something else.
Harry tried again but this time thinking of the portal taking him to the tree. As he took a step he felt power wrapping around his body, blanketing him. Other than that, nothing else happened. Did he teleport? He opened his eyes hoping he did, as he looked around Harry found he was standing next to the tree he thought of. He did it! He can teleport now! Or should he call it portaling? Portal? Portaled?
He will call it a portal. As Harry was thinking of using a portal again to practice his powers, a wave of tiredness suddenly slammed into him. Must be from practicing his magic. Due to feeling exhausted, Harry decided to go back to his house earlier than he expected.
~
July
As the weeks went by Harry continued to practice using his powers, levitating any objects he found, the object progressively getting bigger and bigger the more he practiced, till he could lift up a small fallen tree with no difficulties. Harry found that after a month of practice he could portal up to 15 metres! He also discovered that he could change the colour of his clothes and hair, create a small breeze and even hold a small flame in his hands.
Due to needing to meditate before using magic, Harry decided to meditate every time he was in his cupboard – he managed to do it at least twice a day - when he first woke up and before he went to sleep. The more often he spent time meditating the easier it was to use his magic. Harry also found it helpful around his relatives, he was calmer and didn’t react to their verbal jabs anymore. He could think clearer than before since he started practicing his magic. Nothing weird happened around Harry nowadays as he was tiring out his magic weekly.
Of course that’s when something was going to go wrong soon. It all came to a head at the very end of August when Harry’s magic changed him.
~
August
Since the beginning of August Harry found it harder and harder to slip away from the house to the forest to practice his powers. Till one day his trips had stopped completely.
Due to it being the summer holidays, the Dursleys decided to make day trips to the beach, cinemas, theme parks and more. However, Harry was never allowed to go on these trips, so he was locked in his cupboard when they were away because they didn’t trust him to be in the main house alone. And when they came back Harry had to do his chores that were piling up. This mean there was no free time to practice his powers, as his cupboard was too crowded and dark. When the Dursleys were away Harry spent most of his time meditating and sometimes he chanced a small spark in his hands.
After a week of this Harry noticed in the bathroom mirror that his appearance kept changing slightly, his eyes would sometimes change colours – amber, dark green, blue and even purple, - his hair changed lengths and have some coloured highlights. He even noticed he had some freckles on his nose once, but these changes always disappeared before he left the bathroom.
As the weeks went by, more magical stuff was happening around Harry, the dishes would be dry as soon as he took them out of the sink and a small breeze would pass by. The weeds pulled themselves out of the ground, the tablecloth would change colours once Harry set it out. He was very lucky his relatives did not notice this, or he would for sure be in trouble.
It all came to a head at the end of the summer holidays. It was the early morning, and Harry was meditating in his cupboard as usual when he felt his magic blanketing him like he was going to portal, the magic then felt like something shifted, then nothing. Harry opened his eyes, he realised that he was... still in his cupboard? What did his magic do then if not portal him? As he was preparing to summon a spark in his hands, his aunt unlocked his cupboard door and shrieked. She then proceeded to call for Uncle Vernon, yelling something about a wild animal? Harry tried to sit up to see what the commotion was about, when he realised that the word was a lot smaller. Looking down to see what the problem was he saw his hands were furry orange paws. WHAT? Suddenly Harry was plunged into darkness again and could hear a lock turning, before footsteps were heard running up the stairs.
Was he the ‘wild animal’? Instead of using a portal, he changed into an animal? Would make sense on why he had furry paws instead of hands. Even though Harry didn’t know how it happened, he decided to change back to human and figure out what happened later. He quickly slips into his meditating mindset and calls his magic to blanket him like it did earlier, instead of the shifting feeling the magic felt like it was buzzing around him before his skin felt tingly.
By this point his aunt and uncle were outside his cupboard. His aunt was explaining that there was a wild animal in his cupboard and that Harry himself had disappeared. His aunt then unlocked the cupboard, temporarily blinding harry with the light. When he looked down again hoping to see what happened to his hands, he realised that the fur from before was still there but instead of orange it was now red. So instead of turning back like he hoped to, he changed the colour of his fur. Harry looked up at his aunt and uncle with a deer in the headlight's kind of look, fearing for what will happen next.
At this point his aunt figured out that the ‘wild animal’ was indeed her nephew. She then proceeded to tell Harry that “if he didn’t change back soon and stopped being so freakish by the time she next unlocked the cupboard, that she would get rid of him, and he won’t ever be able to disgrace their doorstep with his presence again”. With that the cupboard door was then slammed shut, rattling the walls and the sound of multiple locks being locked was heard.
Harry’s thoughts began to race, ‘what does she mean? Will he get kicked out? Will they kill him?! How can he change back? He doesn’t know how his magic did this in the first place!’ Because Harry started to panic and couldn’t achieve the calm needed to do the magic to change back, he decided to go back to sleep hoping he would be calm the next time he wakes up.
~
1 st September – the next day
BANG, BANG, BANG.
Harry woke up with a jolt, figuring out that he slept in, Harry was quick to sit up (although he realised that he was on all fours) and call out to his aunt that he was coming, only it sounded like a yip?
“Freak! I hope you stopped this useless freakishness and are going to make our breakfast this instant” Harry’s aunt says as she went to unlock the cupboard door. ‘Weird, what did she mean?’ Yesterday's memories sped through his brain and with it the knowledge that the Dursleys were finally going to get rid of him - like they always threatened to do. Harry’s breathing picked up as his aunt finally opened the door. “You useless FREAK ! After all we gave you, this is how you choose to repay us – with all of your Freakishness and being an ungrateful, disobedient little brat ! Well not anymore, we have had it!” Petunia yelled, “And it's not like anyone would care if you went missing either!” she finished in a mumble.
With that she put on some gloves and snatched up Harry by the neck heading for the door. She lugged him across the driveway toward the car and threw him into the boot and slammed it shut. Aunt Petunia then switched on the car and started driving.
About an hour later the car switched off and the boot was opened. Before Harry could get his bearings again, he was yanked up again by his aunt. She then hurried into a building chucked Harry onto the floor, rushed away back to the car and drove off again.
So, she didn’t kill him - like Aunt Marge does with the runts of the litter – only abandoned him. Once Harry had gotten his sense of direction back, he realised he was in a train station. As he looked around, he saw a glass wall that shows off a reflection. Harry once again got up on all fours and moved towards the glass wall to investigate what happened to him. When he got there, he saw he was a red animal – a small fox to be precise. He had black paws, a white belly, a red bushy tail tipped with white, two pointed ears and amber eyes. He was a Fox! He could shapeshift into animals! Not that he didn’t already know that yesterday, but looking at himself there was no doubt.
Throughout this the station got busier as people were coming in to get to work. Harry ended up getting kicked and jostled around so he ran further into the station to get away from the entrance. He found it there were less people the closer he got to the area near station 10. After getting away from the bustle that is the morning rush hour, Harry decided to rest and make a plan on what he is going to do next. As being in where he assumes is London (where there are no forests) there are not that many places a fox could hide (or secluded places where he could try and turn back to himself).
Harry would need to find a way to turn back, food and shelter soon as there is no way the Dursleys would take him back even if he returned. He moved to an out of the way pillar, using that to hide from the train station workers in the hopes he won’t get thrown out.
Harry was just leaning against the pillar to ground himself from the events that happened this morning, when a wave of magic came over him. As a rainbow of colour shimmered across his eyes, and he found himself on a similar looking platform to what he had just been on with nearly no one there.
He looked up and saw on one of the signs that he was on platform 9¾.
~ To be continued ~