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Harry flew through the night, hands cramping on the handle of his broom from holding on too tightly. He stretched or shook his fingers occasionally, but each time he gripped the handle again he found himself tensing up almost immediately. The farther he got from Hogwarts the worse he felt. The binding contract wanted him back in proximity of the Cup, and every mile from it increased his discomfort.
On the outskirts of London he landed on a rooftop and rested for a few minutes in the mid-November predawn chill. He didn’t have much more time to get to his destination and he knew he’d need time to find it. Part of him wanted to try the Knight Bus, but he couldn’t risk it. Someone might have checked on his bed in the dorm room already and found him missing.
Harry felt inside the basket under his broom seat – it took his arm almost to the elbow, thank Merlin that Sirius had paid for every bell and whistle available when he bought the thing – and pulled out a muffin wrapped in a napkin. As he broke it in half a little burst of steam lifted the smell of cinnamon and pumpkin and he smiled sadly at the Dobby’s thoughtfulness when the elf had packed Harry’s “midnight snack.” He stared at the treat for a few minutes watching it cool, appetite gone, until he finally forced himself to eat it and get back on the broom, making sure his invisibility cloak was firmly wrapped around him. He wouldn’t have much longer to take care of his errand.
Harry flew in a careful search pattern, growing increasingly frantic as the tugging on his core started to become painful, but finally he saw the Leaky Cauldron. There was actually a broom pad on the roof, and he gave a little gasping laugh, because of course there would be. He racked his broom with several others and patted it sadly.
“I’ll miss you,” he said as he caressed the grip one last time. Then he pulled all his things out of the broom basket, checked that his bag was firmly over his shoulder, and then hurried down to the wall entrance. He tapped it with the pattern to open the doorway to Diagon Alley and made his way to the bank as fast as he could. Thankfully, the goblins either opened at dawn or had never closed in the first place. Harry took off his cloak and stuffed it into his pocket, then went up to the goblin on duty.
“Key?”
Harry handed it over. The goblin looked at it, and at him, and grunted inquiringly.
“How much can I take out at a time, and can most of it be in muggle money?” he asked, and was gratified by the response. Assuming he was careful he’d be ok for a while. Harry took the money with shaking hands and stuffed it into his bag, glad that it had an expanding charm inside. Then he slipped his vault key into an envelope along with a bit of ratty parchment and handed it over with a scroll he’d prepared.
“Could you keep this for me, and if you hear that I’ve died send it to Hermione Granger?” he hated doing this to her, but he couldn’t think of anyone else.
“Four sickles per year to hold it, a galleon to hold for pickup with notification by owl post, fifteen to deliver in person, fifty to deliver shielded and privately.” said the goblin, shoving a form at him with a lack of surprise that made Harry blink.
“What is a private delivery?”
“We deliver when the client is alone, and don’t record the delivery except in the vault records. We also don’t record when you come back to reclaim the key if you rescind the delivery. You will need a blood test to regain the key.”
“That’s fine,” he said, and signed on the line for the private delivery. “You can take the fee from my vault?”
The goblin sneered back affirmatively. Harry nodded sharply and turned away, closing up his bag, and slipped out of the bank. He had to stuff his hands in his pockets to hide how badly they were shaking now and the part of him that was connected to the competition was starting to hurt more intensely. He increasingly regretted the muffin and was glad he hadn’t eaten more.
Harry hastily moved through the Alley gathering up the things he’d put on his list. Some of them he had to get on Knocturn, but he managed. The most important was the portkey to Spain from the travel office. It was expensive, but absolutely necessary. The spell he’d found in the book from the Chamber of Secrets library to create a simulacrum of himself that would allow him to activate the portkey without actually traveling on it needed to be done quickly. He slipped into a public loo and took out the handkerchief he’d had a wank in the day before (boy was he not in the mood now, good thing he’d thought to keep it) and spat into it, then cut some hair to stick to the spit, then cut his thumb for the seven drops of blood to drip onto the nasty thing. He screwed it all up into a bundle and tied it tightly with a piece of thread he’d unraveled from one of his oldest pajama pants.
Harry slipped away into Muggle London. He made a few purchases there too. At the last minute he looked at his expandable bag and wondered if it would still work for him after the Cup took his magic, and ended the shopping trip with a visit to a muggle luggage store. He then went to a coffee shop and bought a drink just to be able to use their loo, where he transferred the bulk of his cash into the suitcase along with a change of clothing, his toiletries and camping gear, and the photo album of his parents. The two special books he’d found in the Chamber he stuck into his coat pockets, glad they were small. Of course if they hadn’t been pocket sized he wouldn’t have taken them in the first place, but…
After that he called Hedwig to him, gave her another letter he’d written before he left, petted and cuddled her and gave her three owl treats, then gave her the portkey and the handkerchief he’d prepared for her to drop somewhere along with a bag holding Spanish money and a full jar of Polyjuice; he’d told her to make sure the bag fell somewhere noticeable.
Now to see whether a) the spell from the book he’d found in the Chamber of Secrets would actually work and b) if it would do what he hoped it would. He hadn’t actually committed to the plan of running away until he read the spell description and realized what a huge difference it would make if he could draw the inevitable search off on a false trail. All that reading time he’d gotten in this year while hiding in the library from Ron and the Potter Stinks crowd had finally come in useful.
He forced out the three tears he needed to let fall on the cloth (that was dreadful, he only needed three but the tears kept flowing after he started and he had to whisk the cloth hastily away before he spoiled his work), then tapped the handkerchief with his wand. “Geminus hostia,” he said, pushing as much power into it as he could manage. He was rewarded with a ghostly image of himself that emerged from the fabric as he activated the portkey. Owls couldn’t use portkeys, but the spell that made the handkerchief carry an image of himself should be enough to allow it to take her along.
He watched his owl disappear in a swirl of light. She would fly back from Spain having laid a false trail for him – between that and the purchase (yes, he noticed the clerk who sold it to him doing a double take and making for the back door of the shop after he bought it, that was the point). As soon as she was gone he had second thoughts that he should have sent the wand with Hedwig to drop somewhere too. There was the Trace on it, and he wouldn’t be able to use it if the penalty was real (oh, he thought with another hit to the pit of his stomach – some part of him still hoped it wasn’t). But he couldn’t bear to give it up. If he knew any spells that would go off on a delay to set the Trace off in Spain, he would have used them. But he could absolutely not allow it to be found with the Geminus spell as the last spell used, or the false trail would be spoiled.
The tugging on his core was getting bad, now. He put on the joke hat he’d swiped from Fred (or possibly George) that made the wearer look two hundred years old and tottered into a hotel to book a room. The muggle at the desk really didn’t want to book him without a credit card (although the blank piece of paper he’d bought in Knockturn Alley that claimed to be muggle ID was taken without question) but he was able to get her to agree to let him stay with a prepayment of three nights.
He barely made it into the room with the door locked behind him and the do not disturb sign on the knob before he was overcome by a crushing pain in his chest. He fell to the floor whimpering. Everything in the dim quiet room was somehow too loud, and too bright, and he ached inside and out. Harry crawled towards the bed but it was too high up so he pulled down the bedspread and wrapped it around himself. A couple of pillows fell down with it so he hugged one to his chest and finally let the tears flow. He curled up, sobbing, as his magical core crumbled unbearably inside him. He felt the pressure rise and rise until finally the throbbing heat inside him unraveled away into a burst of light – even with his eyes closed he saw the brilliant line stabbing northward towards Hogwarts as his magic was sucked away to fuel the Competition Cup. The hollowness left behind rose up and swallowed him whole.
As he lay on his nest in the hotel room he dreamed of memories as vivid as living them over again.
The jolt of betrayal when Ron, who instead of believing him when he denied putting his name in the cup, glared at him with anger and jealousy, helped their classmates hand out the Potter Stinks badges, and wore one himself.
Dumbledore, face melancholy as he gently assured Harry that he had to compete while McGonagall looked on grim but unhelpful, and his sinking sense of betrayal as they explained he was bound by a contract he had not agreed to but would strip him of his magic if he declined to compete.
The further realization that if Dumbledore couldn’t or wouldn’t help him against as transparent a case of fraud as this, and Harry somehow managed to survive this tournament, he was surely going to have his name entered without his consent on ever worse contracts until one of them took him out.
The wizarding journalists, especially Skeeter, writing lie after lie about him that his schoolmates seemed eager to believe, and the dismay sinking his heart until he could no longer keep his appetite long enough to eat at the breakfast table seeing the owls delivering the paper that carried their stories to the avid readers.
Hagrid, telling him the first task was a dragon. A dragon! The memory of his stunned dismay twisted his heart as if the feeling was brand-new and vibrant.
The loneliness as Sirius had to sneak and hide any contact, and Harry would still have to go back to the awful Dursleys, and all his friends except Hermione at school had turned from him. The worry whenever he saw Sirius acting odd or skittish, and the realization that even if the man really loved him (and how likely was that? No one else did, except maybe Hermione) Sirius really was severely damaged by spending over a third of his life in an abusive prison. Harry wanted to feel safe around him, but he didn’t.
The ever-increasing pain and nightmares as his scar flared up, sending him unwelcome and terrifying dreams (as he remembered, hot pain spread from his forehead while the pull of the emptiness in his chest began to yank on the scar from the inside)
The gradual realization that Hogwarts was no longer a home, that the people he had relied upon were helpless to prevent him from being threatened (the heat in his forehead sank down behind his eyes and expanded to fill his head with pain)
And the thought that struck him like a bolt of lightning in some random corridor at night as he roamed the castle restlessly under his invisibility cloak while unable to sleep: magic was not an escape anymore, but a death sentence, and that he would rather be a live muggle than a dead wizard. (heat flared intense enough to turn cold, and sank again from his head into the hollow space in his chest where his magic used to sing and BURNED)
He’d started making plans the very next morning after that realization. He’d found out that the Competition contract would allow up to 12 hours away from Hogwarts grounds for “personal errands” during the competition time before the penalty would apply. He read that some competitor hundreds of years ago had missed her mother’s funeral, and the adaptation was built into future events. That was enough time to fly to London, do his planned shopping, and find a place to hole up while he waited for whatever would happen (the hollow center of him flickered from scorching heat to icy cold and he would have screamed if he could)
Harry woke up into a surge of nausea and scrambled to the bathroom of the hotel room just in time to hurl bile and spit into the toilet instead of the floor. He looked at the bowl blearily as the thought slowly came to him that he had to have been out long enough to digest the muffin, or it would have come up.
He cast a quick Tempus to check the time, instantly panicked because he’d thoughtlessly activated the Trace and spoiled everything, and then the panic dissolved into crushing despair because nothing had actually happened. His wand was a dead piece of wood in his hand. He curled up miserably on the tile floor and looked at his fingers, which had no warming flow of magic. He could see then holding his wand and feel its smooth surface, but there was no welcoming thrum that had always come when he touched it. He wrapped his arms around his head leaving the wand on the floor and mourned his magic for a few minutes before dragging himself to his feet, recognizing with disgust that during the agony of his magic being sucked away he’d pissed himself. He felt like the cold remains of a bonfire. Even his rank sweat smelled smoky.
“Well, dummy, it’s just as well you’re a muggle now, or the Trace would have gone off and all this work would have been for nothing,” he muttered to himself, feeling as stupid as a five-year-old trying to run away from home with a sandwich and a towel. He’d been returned by Mrs. Figg after a cup of tea, and had spent four days straight in the cupboard with only water. Well, he never needed to see her or the Dursleys again, he thought with tired resentment.
After he showered and changed into a set of clean clothes, Harry went and picked up the joke hat and tried it on in front of the bathroom mirror. All he saw was himself wearing a tacky looking hat. He sighed again; the research he’d done with the Muggle Studies resources in the school library had indicated that many magical items either didn’t work at all for muggles or had very limited effect. He’d seen warnings that potions especially were mostly ineffective if they weren’t actively dangerous, something about the magic of the brew interacting with a wixen’s magical core and bypassing biological processes for magical people, but the chemistry of them worked fine on Muggles – mostly as poisons. There were very strong warnings for muggleborn students not to try using them on their family. Curiously, the potions did work on squibs. He idly wondered why, then shrugged. Another thing he didn’t need to worry about.
He stroked the fabric of the invisibility cloak. It felt the same as always. With great trepidation he wrapped it around himself in front of the mirror. It did not work. The cloak itself became invisible. He could feel it on his body, but the fabric did not make him invisible with it.
He scrabbled for his photo album and dissolved into grateful tears when he saw that the pictures still moved for him.
After recovering from that alarm he then turned to his expandable bag and reached in. It had only one thing in it, a spare pair of glasses. He took them out, lips twisting in dismay, then saw with relief that once his hand came out of the bag the glasses had been replaced with one his books. Oh.
After some testing, he determined that the bag still worked but on a first-in-first-out basis. Apparently, it took a magical core to reach into the expandable space and sort through things, but the actual enchantment worked whether he was magical or not. He stroked the smooth wood of his wand. On the one hand, it had a trace on it. On the other, he couldn’t use it anymore. On the third, it was a symbol of everything he’d hoped to have and lost. On the fourth, it was the twin to Riddle’s wand. Every one of these was an excellent reason why he really should break it and toss the bits into a dumpster. He knew he wouldn’t be able to.
In a moment of curiosity, he picked up the magical fake ID he’d used on the clerk and saw with bemusement that it was a driver’s permit for Evan Harrison and the picture on it was a face that matched the joke hat. Well, no use leaving evidence of magic behind, and it was the name he’d chosen for himself to use after he wasn’t Harry anymore anyway. He spent some time emptying the bag and repacking it with the things he thought he’d need more up front, with the wand, cloak, and the ID and joke hat as the first things in. He also transferred most of his money back into the bag. Then he sat panting in exhaustion and rubbing the new cold spot in his chest.
He lifted his head as someone knocked on the door and called “housekeeping!”
Harry groaned. “Come back later,” he replied, irritated that they had ignored the Do Not Disturb.
“Checkout is in two hours, or you need to pay for another day,” came the response. He heard the cleaning trolly move on to the next door, and the sound of knocking.
Harry blinked.
He’d paid for three days, were they trying to cheat him?
He looked at the nest of pillows and comforter that he’d woken up in, remembered how utterly rank he and his clothes had been, and sat down abruptly. Then he flicked on the television and checked the time and date. After a minute of shivering, he gave a silent thank you to the obnoxious clerk who had semi-forced him to prepay for three days, because apparently, he’d been unconscious the whole time and had barely woken in time to check out. He briefly considered pretending to be the grandson of the man who had checked in and paying for another day but decided the risk wasn’t worth it. He gathered up his things and left.
The very first thing he did after buying himself a breakfast sandwich at a fast-food place was to regret having left the hotel, because he could have washed his nasty clothes in the machine there while eating some of the free breakfast. The breakfast place he’d gone to had an ad for the very hotel he’d stayed at laminated onto the table and it named those perks. He’d woken up early enough to have done both those things instead of repacking all his stuff, which he could have done anytime.
Good going, Potter, he said to himself. What a way to start learning how to be a Muggle. He resolved to make sure he knew about any perks for any service before he bought it going forward, but it didn’t help much now.
During the first few days on the streets, Harry/Evan thought a lot about going to Sirius for help. Surely the man would know what it was like, how much he needed help, more than anyone else would. Unless he was angry about Harry missing the fire call…But that had been the only night he was sure he’d be able to get away. After the first week and someone beating him up to steal the rolling suitcase (which, thankfully, didn’t have anything irreplaceable in it) he rode the bus and walked all the way to the cross street closest to Grimmauld Place and stared at the street sign. And then he turned away again. The Black family had kicked out a squib before for having no magic, and what Evan had done to himself was worse. He would rather not know for sure if Sirius would turn him away. He rubbed the cold ache in his chest instead and made his way to the nearby bus stop.
As he sat on the bus stop bench, though, he saw an owl on a fence looking around. It was Hedwig, he’d recognize that pattern anywhere. He called her name softly and she turned her head to look, but took off when he tried to approach. He stared after her, baffled. Owls had been able to deliver to sqibs like Mrs. Figg, and he’d even seen one go to the Dursleys. Was he so unrecognizeable now?
He checked the next mirror he found and looked at his reflection. He saw messy black hair, green eyes, glasses held together with tape again from the incident with the suitcase, cheeks maybe a little thinner than they had been, but himself. Well, his scar had faded a bit.
He saw the owl several more times over the course of the next few days, touching down on lamp posts or fences near him and looking around in clear and growing confusion. She would give the trilling hoot that she made when she needed to get his attention. He would approach her, and she would watch him until he got within a few feet and then hoot or hiss at him and fly away. Eventually he decided that whatever it was that allowed owls to find people even in the most hidden places with no directions could no longer recognize him. He stopped trying to interact and eventually stopped seeing her.
After the third week of sleeping rough, Evan managed to find a job unpacking and shelving deliveries for cash under the table in the back room of a sketchy shop whose manager ostentatiously didn’t notice him sleeping in the broom cupboard after his shift. Then he got an actual name badge and finally had a chance to use the name he’d chosen for his new life. He even got practice answering to it. Honestly, he was more grateful for the closet than the scant wages even though he knew he’d need to stretch his cash with as much new income as he could. What had seemed like an enormous amount of money when he took it out of the bank turned into a frighteningly small number when he divided it by the days he had until he turned 18..
He spent some time in the Muggle library looking into early emancipation but stopped even thinking about it after four nights in a row of nightmares that the Dursleys, no longer frightened of his freaky magic, found out from the filing records that he was still alive and helpless and reclaimed him for his slave labor.
As stressful and weird as returning to muggle life was, he found it was actually reassuring in a rather morbid sort of way that he was only having normal nightmares about things like the Dursleys being mean. No strange images, no hissing voices, no stabs of pain for no apparent reason. In fact, his scar didn’t hurt even once after that time in the hotel, though he knew for a fact that Lord Moldyshorts was absolutely having a shit fit – even the Muggle news had picked up a story about an enormous explosion and fire in Spain in the location where he’d sent the portkey. The first news report said someone had been claiming they saw the Spirit of Death swooping around the site, though someone must have Obliviated them directly after because he didn’t see anything like that again. He had some nightmares after that about burning people shouting at him that he’d killed them, though. He lost his appetite for a week or so and eventually had to force himself to start eating again.
Two months after he got the backroom job he finally came out of his funk enough to notice that people around him were getting good tip money doing chores. He bought himself a cell phone, went to the library to learn how to use it (he was the only person in the free library “how to use a cell phone” class without grey hair) and started picking up dog walking gigs.
One small bit of good news was that he hadn’t been mistaken that first day after seeing Hedwig. The red in his scar was actually starting to fade out. Within a month it looked as old and white as a scar that had been on him for years should have been: pale and no longer raised. It got progressively easier to cover with make-up, too. With that realization he bought some bleach and hair dye and did an astonishingly poor job of stripping his hair and coloring it red. After all, the less he looked like himself the better, right? And with his hair getting longer he could pull it back into a half ponytail soon. With the scar covered and his hair back, he was a lot less likely to be noticed by a stray muggleborn, or an auror searching in the muggle world! He grinned at his reflection, and the fellow with the clear forehead and terrible dye-job, who was definitely not Harry Potter, grinned back.
One of those dog-walking jobs turned into extra money doing yard work, which he actually enjoyed because the clients (a lovely gay couple) were nowhere near as exacting as Petunia. They not only recognized the quality of his work but appreciated his advice about their roses. They were a true pleasure to work for and if he hadn’t been so broke he’d had done what they needed for just the snacks and drinks they gave him while he worked.
On the other hand, they made assumptions about the utter silence he gave in answer to family questions and bossily moved him into a lesbian friend’s spare bedroom, claiming she needed the extra security of someone in the place when she was working her night shift. The friend, Mandy Proctor, also showed him how to dye his hair properly. He still didn’t look like he was born a redhead, certainly not anything like a Weasley, but he felt that the color looked right on him and he could smile when he saw himself in the mirror again.
Nine months after he left Hogwarts, in late August, he woke from a dream about flying and fell down onto his mattress. He lay there, bouncing slightly, eyes wide and breath panting with the adrenaline suddenly coursing through every vein. He clutched the cold spot on his chest. It ached more sharply than usual. He couldn’t have been floating more than an inch above the covers, but from what he’d read this should have been entirely impossible.
Evan scrambled from his bed, pulled his magic bag from the space he’d made under the floorboards, and emptied it down to the very last item. He caressed his wand and felt, very very faintly, a slight vibration under his fingertips. Then he slung his cloak over his shoulders in front of the mirror and saw himself disappear. He also felt an immediate strain as if he was carrying a box that was almost but not quite too heavy, so he took it right back off. But it had worked. Evan grinned wildly at his newly-reappeared reflection. Then he sat on the floor among piles of his money and books and wizarding belongings with his wand in his hands and his back against the wall for some long and uncounted time, thinking about accidental magic and people who told lies.
Eventually the pale predawn light announced that his roommate, for whom he was supposed to cook breakfast as part of his cook-clean-and-“guard” rent, was going to arrive soon. He shoveled the things back into the bag, which still only allowed him to see one thing at a time. The joke hat still didn’t work either. Evan patted it fondly. He suddenly had faith that this would come in time. He saw a future that wasn’t just scratching for survival while he waited until he turned 18 and could change his name legally.
Evan still put the wand in first as he repacked it, but he left out the three books on magical theory that he’d bought during his last-minute shopping frenzy in the intent to research how permanent his condition really was, but had been too depressed and busy to even think about opening, as well as the books from the Chamber.
He dithered around the house stress-cleaning after he fed Mandy her breakfast and waved her off to bed. While she slept Evan skimmed all three of his Alley books front to back and took notes, somewhat hampered by the fact that one of the books was actually volume 2 of a two-book set that constantly referred to points made in Volume 1. Also, a lot of the references were to things that he presumed were common knowledge in the magical world but he didn’t have the foundation to understand them. Evan wished he’d spent more time learning about magic while he was at an actual magic school, but then he’d had a lot of distractions. He also wished he’d brought his schoolbooks with him, though at the time he’d thought he would never need them again. He settled in for a more thorough reading over the next few days. The most useful things that came of that was the information that the Trace was only useful in areas with low magic use; he’d be able to use his wand for low-level spells (in all honesty the only ones he knew) in places like Diagon Alley where the ambient magic was higher than his wand was producing.
September first came and went. He called out sick from work that day because he could not force himself out of bed.
In the next weeks he read and re-read all five magical books, even the household charms, thinking over everything he didn’t understand. The Sorting Hat had told him he had “not a bad mind” as if Ravenclaw wasn’t out of the question as an option. He knew he’d never put enough effort into his classes but still made passing grades. He wondered with some resentment if he’d have been a stronger student if he’d been able to be a normal student. He knew he was at a disadvantage going into these books that assumed a depth of knowledge that he didn’t have - though the Wandless book actually offered the most useful insight on magical theory. However, this was something he wanted to learn about now with a deep and painful yearning.
In addition to the five magical volumes he went to the library and read Muggle medicine books about scar tissue, trauma, amputation and anything else that seemed relevant.
His research and rumination brought him to a few…not conclusions, that was too definite. Hypotheses, maybe.
The magical books were quite firm that losing your magical core was a permanent thing. Cores did not grow back from the sundering he’d experienced. And his experience was very well documented, despite being rare. He recognized all of it: the crumbling sensation, the crack and burst of light, and the feeling of burning that turned to a cold spot in his chest. All of that matched. Although he wanted more sources for his research, it really did look as if what had happened to him was – well, not impossible, clearly, because it had happened. But what didn’t match was the sensation he clearly remembered afterward of heat moving from his forehead to behind his eyes, then flowing into his chest.
And what had just happened to him: floating a few inches above the bed? That was one of the five most common types of accidental magic that happened for baby wixen. In addition, the books firmly stated that the earlier accidental magic occurred, the more powerful their core tended to be. Anything that happened before age 1 ½ was notable, and before a year was rare indeed. He remembered Neville mentioning that his first accidental magic was well into older childhood, and Neville was one of the weakest wixen he knew. The boy was clever and adaptable, and his connection with magical plants was notable, but he’d always had to strain to do things that other wixen found easy. Hermione was incredibly clever and insightful, brilliant even, but her spells were not much stronger than anyone else’s. She was just able to do more of them faster and with more accuracy.
If Harry’s core had somehow been reborn from whatever it was in his scar that connected him to Voldemort, then there was a possibility he was still somehow connected to Psycho Death Wizard who was one of the strongest wizards of the century. As much as he really didn’t want to acknowledge this, it seemed plausible, if his core was actually somehow reborn.
Evan’s preferred theory was that Harry’s splintered core had somehow retained a fragment as some kind of adhesion because of the curse scar. When the rest of the core was drawn away, the splinter had been pulled free from the scar but not in time to join the rest of his core as it had been pulled away, so it fell into the space his core had emptied and begun to grow back. If cores were like rose cuttings, anyway. Neville liked to talk about how cuttings could graft onto rootstock and make a whole new identical plant.
His memory about Neville, plus his day job gardening, expanded his research into plant grafting and he read a truly fascinating volume about grafting delicate varietals of roses and fruit trees onto hardier rootstock. He had no actual clue whether wizarding cores had any similarities to plants, but operating as he was in a near vacuum of information he was not about to leave any potential scenario go unexamined. Evan wondered if his core would grow back to the size it was before, and realized he didn’t really care. He wasn’t going to have to go into battle; if he just had enough strength to use the household charm spells he knew, and a couple of defensive spells like expelliarmus, he’d be content.
He wished he had an actual book on wixen childraising, but he had to make do with the single chapter discussing normal core development in children.
Harry made a list of the most common forms of accidental magic and posted it as a reminder so he could watch for them:
- floating self or objects, most commonly displayed by bringing desired objects nearer
- catching items on fire while angry
- pushing away threatening objects or people
- superficial changes to appearance like hair color and length
- vanishing (non-magical) obstacle items like doors or furniture
He looked up some of the less common ones as well but they all seemed like specific interactions with a gift the child turned out to have later in life, like a child who could change household objects such as spoons into toys who turned out later to be gifted at transfiguration; another child who interacted safely with dangerous (muggle) animals who later became a noted adventurer who worked as a magical animal rights activist. If this accidental magic wasn’t a one-off thing (please please please said his heart, begging for it not to be a one-time thing, even as his mind shied away in fear from the idea) If this was not just a fluke, he needed to keep notes on what his accidental magic did outside those common five.
He also read the chapter in his books about the Obscurus with great care. If his weird ability to be an exception to every rule had somehow made him the first ever wizard to regain his core after losing it (whether it was regrowing from nothing, or a retained fragment, or something else entirely) he would never want to risk turning into that. He resolved not to strain for accidental magic, but he wouldn’t suppress it either. He just had to be really careful. He couldn’t afford to have the Accidental Magic Department find him for such a stupid reason. No blowing up the bully on the street corner like Aunt Marge!
Part of him wondered, starting him into a rather hysterical giggle, whether he’d shown up as a newborn Muggleborn on some Ministry plotter that would generate a letter in eleven years inviting Evan Harrison to Hogwarts. Maybe he shouldn’t have picked a name so evocative of his history, but he really hadn’t been willing to lose every single part of his identity when he was already giving up so much. He dithered over it, and spent some sleepless nights worrying before he shrugged and decided if anything bad would happen it was already baked in. He’d have eleven years before it would be a problem. Wixen didn’t seem to care much about muggleborns who didn’t make it to school age. And maybe the solution would be as simple as declining the offer once the letter arrived.
Now that he was watching for accidental magic, hoping for it and longing for it, it was as elusive as smoke. Objects did not come to him when he desired them, candles did not light, his hair did not grow faster when he decided to wear it longer, and doors did not vanish for him. He gritted his teeth and resolved again not to strain himself. After all, if he counted his rebirth from the day his original core was destroyed, his new core was barely a toddler yet. He read and reread the Wandless Magic book and did all the exercises, but all they did was tire him out. But then he would find a desired gardening tool by his hand when he was nearly sure he’d placed it back in the tote bag, or he’d get up from a fall and find his hands and knees unscratched and unbruised. Something was happening. He could be patient. (No he absolutely could not! But the magic still would not come when called.)
He was not willing to put himself into threatening circumstances to test item three on the list.
He also spent some time prodding his (still fading) scar in the mirror after he took his makeup off at night wondering if he would start having Those Dreams again as his new core strengthened.
Eventually he just went to the zoo and wandered into the reptile house to look at the snakes and listen to them talk to each other. He did not insert himself into their conversations but their banal comments about the food or the temperature or complaining about the public tapping at the glass enclosure walls soothed his worries like little else. And he went back to his rather sad life of being a dog-walking gardener who worked in the back room of a sketchy shop and technically guarded a flat in a slightly less sketchy neighborhood by sleeping in the guest room, but was actually paying rent by providing cooking and cleaning services. But he wasn’t being made to fight dragons, and as long as no one continued to know where he was, he found himself content not to be in any more danger than an occasional mugging.
As it got closer to Halloween Evan started to carry the invisibility cloak around with him. He sewed a bag to hold it in and hung it around his neck. Bad things always happened on October 31st and even though he had been given no reason to believe that he was in any more danger than usual, or even really any at all outside the usual dangers of city life, being able to reach into the bag and touch the cloak’s slippery odd fabric made him feel better.
All that happened on Halloween was the couple he gardened for invited him and Mandy to help hand out candy for trick-or-treaters, and sent him home with the excess candy after they shut off the light. And the joke hat worked again.
When November 1st dawned without anything more terrible than a stomach ache, he smiled. It was his day off. He had a cloak that worked again, albeit for short durations and he felt ill afterward. Evan decided that the need for more information about his condition justified the risk of revisiting the shops on Knocturn. He headed out towards the Leaky Cauldron with the plan that he would go to the main room wearing his joke hat and wait for a patron to activate the wall for Diagon Alley so he could follow them through. He’d seen a used book shop near the entrance of Knocturn Alley. School was in session, and the people who knew him as Harry Potter would be looking for a dark-haired boy with glasses and a head of messy black hair, not a redhead in a ponytail, much less a 200-year-old former redhead with a pony tail. It was worth taking the risk. He reminded himself it was a risk, and still couldn’t make himself not go.
It took him a week to actually get up the nerve to do it, though.
When he got up the nerve to slip through the small crowd in the Leaky Cauldron he chose a couple who were very clearly going shopping and followed them through the wall when they opened it. Just as planned, though the ease made him nervous. After a little disorientation he found the entrance to Knocturn and then the bookstore, where he found himself overwhelmed with choice. He flipped through the selections, feeling remarkably like he was channeling Hermione, but this was the most magical he’d felt in over a year.
He picked up a book on magical herbs and admired the pictures. He flipped through a book on the Goblin Wars and grinned nostalgically about the horror of Binn’s lectures. He picked up a book that claimed on the cover to be about broom maintenance but the pages inside had directions for sexual positions. With moving pictures. He shut it with burning cheeks and set it back on the shelf.
He reminded himself that his stock of galleons was limited, as was his time, and he wound up just buying a few items: a well-worn book on wixen child development, a household potions recipe book, an introduction to medi-witch training, and all the Hogwarts textbooks they had, which were the full set of first-year books, the second, fourth and fifth-year volumes for Transfiguration and Charms, and the seventh year book for DADA. He also got a chocolate frog from the bin of impulse items at the register. While they rang him up he asked if they had anything on wands. The clerk pulled a volume from behind the counter and named a price higher than all the other books put together. Evan winced.
“Can I look at it for a minute to make sure it’s what I need?”
“If you’re looking to break the Trace, it’s what you need,” the clerk said grumpily.
Evan gaped at him a minute. The clerk rolled his eyes.
“I read that one last year myself, no one asks for it if they’re not underage except if they’re a professor of herbology or care of magical creatures. Forgive me but you aren’t either. Besides, I recognize the hat,” he said with a bit of a sneer. “That’s last year’s gag. But, you know, all you really need is a secondhand wand. We’ve got some here that cost half what that book does, and save you trying to brew a potion that might turn you as old as you look in the hat, but permanently.”
Evan asked to look at the book anyway, and after seeing the list of ingredients for the potion (with the clerk’s thumb planted firmly in the middle so he couldn’t see them all – of course Evan didn’t have a pensieve, but he couldn’t fault the man for taking precautions) he agreed to look at the box of wands.
“No waving these,” the clerk said warningly. “We don’t have a dozen elves for cleanup like Ollivander’s. Just do a simple Lumos and see what happens. And no, I have no idea what any of the cores are, just try them.”
Evan found one made of a nearly white wood that buzzed happily in his hand, and bought it even though the Lumos he cast from it was barely visible. A weak wand was better than none.
The medi-witch book had a section on scar treatment and removal. It warned not to use the contents on curse scars, and said that monster scars were sometimes problematic to remove, but provided a recipe for a potion to use as a salve, and a ritual to perform that would help the salve along on more stubborn or older scars.
The next weekend he was back in Knocturn, riding the high of successfully testing his new wand to do the dishes and clean potatoes, this time to visit an apothecary looking for the ritual materials. He stopped at a table displaying scar removal cream. It was expensive, but the gear for making his own wouldn’t be much cheaper and he might not be able to brew it correctly the first time. The stuff Madame Pomfrey had used on him worked well to prevent scarring – he had barely a dimple from being stabbed with the basilisk fang – but it hadn’t worked on his forehead at all and he had never been brave enough to show her the scars he’d gotten from the Dursleys. But now…the scar from Voldemort’s attack had changed, and it was fading. Now that he wasn’t the Boy-Who-Lived anymore he wanted it gone.
A saleswoman came up to him while he was looking at the display.
“That’s the good stuff,” she said to him. “Just came out, from one of the best potion researchers. You know Snape, works as a professor?” Evan twitched a bit but nodded.
“Apparently he’s been working on this recipe a while,” she gushed. “It’s the best I’ve seen, but it needs intention. Before you buy this make sure you really want the scar gone, especially if it holds memories. Otherwise it doesn’t work. Still want some?”
Evan nodded decisively, even though the purchases would leave him only a handful of sickles and knuts. He needed needed the scar off. He’d hated it all his life, and surely he could have this one thing go right.
As he stuffed his purchases into the expandable bag something itched at his brain. Looking at the Goblin Wars book the week before had reminded him of something that stuck from his lessons. Goblins were outside Wixen law enforcement; they both handled their own security at the bank and were not obligated to report lawbreakers to the Wixen world. After a moment of dithering, he decided to go to Gringotts and reclaim his key. The goblins would not report him. Maybe. He hoped. He stopped outside the bank doors and dithered again. Then he saw the very small placard set below eye height for humans but just right for goblins, that said in at least four languages (he recognized English and French but the other two were in different alphabets) that across the entrance lay sovereign Goblin territory and all who entered were bound to follow the goblin-wixen treaty of 1642. It also advised that a copy of the treaty was available free of charge by request inside, limit one per customer.
Evan went in, asked for a copy of the treaty and was grudgingly given a scroll and offered a room to read it in. It took an hour and a follow-up request for the loan of a dictionary, but he was able to puzzle through it well enough to go up to a teller with confidence. He advised the teller that he did not have his key and had come to reclaim it and provided his vault number.
The goblin snarled that the key had been claimed and was no longer available, but a blood test for vault ownership could be provided. Evan thought for a moment but decided to go with it. The goblins couldn’t tell anyone outside the bank about him except Hermione, and he’d already trusted her with his key.
“Yes, that would be fine,” he said.
The goblin ushered him into an office and closed the door. A few minutes later another goblin came in, wizened and old enough to not have any recognizable gender; Evan was afraid to ask. The teller introduced them as Flintedge and departed at speed.
Flintedge looked at him with an expression that combined aggression and disgust.
“Remove your headgear,” they growled.
Evan sighed and did so. The goblin did not react except to nod and pull out a form to slap onto the desk. They pointed at a circle on the form and told him to put three drops of blood inside it. Evan stared at it a moment and looked around while the goblin looked on unhelpfully as if stupidity was only to be expected. Eventually he saw that the quill stand also had a small decorative knife. He used that to prick his finger, let the drops fall as directed and watched the blood very slowly spread to the edges of the circle. It started to swirl as letters appeared on the parchment. He looked away and picked his nails, not really wanting to see his name appear in print after so long without using it, until the goblin huffed impatiently.
“The evaluation has finished generating. Do you plan to look at it, Mr. Harrison?”
Evan looked up in surprise at the name and then looked at the document.
Name: Evan Harrison
Date of birth: November 22, 1994
Note: adjustment for discrepancy – physical age 15 years, 3 months, 3 weeks and 5 days;
(time travel test recommended)
Parents: Tom Marvolo Riddle, Jr., Lord Voldemort (First of that Name, by Right of Conquest) and Henry James Potter
Carrier Grandparents: James Fleamont Potter and Lily Elaine Evans
Note: additional heritage by Blood adoption of Henry James Potter, godfather Sirius Orion Black, Lord Black
Paternal Grandparents: Tom Marvolo Riddle, Sr. (muggle) and Merope Rosella Gaunt
Titles: Heir Presumptive to the Ancient and Honorable House of Black, Heir to the Ancient house of Potter, Heir Presumptive to the House of Voldemort
Custody status: unclaimed, not emancipated
Vault access status: all unclaimed
Vault number: 687
Vault status: in care of Hermione Granger, trustee (minor child trustee, no parental rights apply)
Owner: Evan Harrison
Vault number: 711
Vault status: Heir subchamber access pending acknowledgement by Lord Black
Owner: Lord Sirius Black
Vault number: 2077
Vault status: access subject to parental permission, no Heir subchamber exists
Owner: Tom Marvolo Riddle, Jr., Lord Voldemort
Evan blinked at the document.
“That’s…not what I was expecting,” he said in bewilderment.
Flintedge growled. “The test is accurate, Mr. Harrison. Blood and magic do not lie.”
Evan waved at the form, which stated his birthday had been the day before.
“But, it says I’m a year old!”
The goblin narrowed their eyes. “Goblins do not celebrate birthdays, Mr. Harrison. Our testing spells do make appropriate adjustments to account for time travel and other wizarding follies as you can see here on the document.” They tapped the line about his physical age, then continued.
“As no other Potter heirs survive at the present moment, you are the undisputed current owner of the Potter vault, though your withdrawal limit is still capped per the minor child guidelines until your physical body has reached the age of majority. Do you wish to make a deposit or a withdrawal?”
Evan gulped. “Um…a withdrawal, please?”
Flintedge shoved another form at him. “Write down your withdrawal request here. Do you wish to recall your key, or have another one made?”
Evan shook his head. “Neither, leave the key with Hermione.”
“Very well. Fill out this withdrawal slip. Without the key we will not allow you to make a personal visit to your vault, is that understood.”
Evan acknowledged that he did, and waited with his knee jiggling while Flintedge sent the withdrawal request to another goblin to handle. Flintedge then turned back to him and tapped on the next line of the scroll.
“Do you plan to make any claim on the additional vaults? We will need to advise the owners if you do.”
Evan shook his head vigorously. “No,” he said faintly. “I need to think about what to do.”
Some time later, with shaking legs and a copy of the scroll stuffed into his bag (the original, Flintedge explained, had to be filed with the record of the withdrawal transaction). He absent-mindedly filled his purchase list of books and didn’t realize until he’d stepped into the Cauldron that he’d never put the joke hat back on. Evan scurried to the exit as quickly as he could and vanished back into Muggle London with many glances behind him. He took a long and circuitous return path home and changed buses several times, but never saw a follower. He also cast a hopeful “finite’’ on every article of clothing he had worn just in case, before slipping back into his room and lying down on his bed to shiver and stare at the ceiling looking at a memory of the inheritance test overlaid on the clean white expanse.
Somehow, his core had been replaced by a graft from Voldemort. His scar had held a piece of the man.
He wondered how much Dumbledore knew, and if he would ever have told him about what the scar carried. He burned with alternating mortification, rage, and unutterable disgust. The magic he had been so excited to recover was tainted at the source. He resolved to live as a muggle. He would burn every book and magical thing he owned.
Except the photo album. He couldn’t burn that.
Eventually dawn broke and with it his determination. Evan did not want to lose this second chance. He rubbed the warm spot in his chest where it had been cold for nine months and dragged himself out of bed. Reading his new purchases and learning more about what happened would have to wait until after he’d done today’s work, but he was going to recover his magic and make it his own, and if he chose to return to the magical world after, well, he’d let Hermione and Sirius know but everyone else could take their chances.