Chapter 3: It's worse than I thought

Disclaimer: Do children turn out articulate and capable of social functioning after ten dark and difficult years of regular solitary confinement and social isolation? If not, I don't own Harry Potter.

ANNOUNCEMENT: I've settled on Fridays as being upload day. Which is why you're getting chapter 3 so quickly. Current buffer: 6 chapters after this one.

Chapter 3

Forget what I said about Petunia being less culpable, her only difference from Vernon is her preferred approach. Insidious, rather than brutal, but every bit as barbaric. One way or another, her and her pet manatee are going fucking down. Made my peace with my own lack of vengeance years ago. Taking it on someone else's behalf? I foresee catharsis.

When I figure out the how of the thing, well: Lily sends her regards, you utter, utter cunt.

-oOo-

I spend the rest of the afternoon and evening - interrupted by Harry's bowl of leftovers and plate-scrapings, actually enough for a decent meal to my surprise - just chatting with him. I'm careful not to mention magic to him - he's an abused kid, if he starts to hate his magic there may be serious consequences. I say 'may' because Obscurials were only in the movies, and they are pretty obviously a slightly different universe to the books.

And, obviously, my presence means that this universe is a slightly different one to either. I can't take anything for granted, and there's another good reason to manage the release of information to the poor kid: he's already overwhelmed. His contact with other humans consists of Petunia's torments, his Uncle's occasional bellowing, virtually nothing from Dudley, and what he can hear from the television through at least one closed door and more often two.

We get a pleasant couple of hours out of the telly. Dudley comes home from the childminder, is fussed over by his mother, and parks his malnourished - overnutrition can be and in this case is as bad as underfeeding - arse in front of Childrens' BBC. Harry presses his ear to the cupboard door and I supply a running commentary on TV shows I haven't seen in thirty-five years.

True to type, Newsround and Think of a Number see Dudley get up and go pester his mother for snacks. I sneak a peek and see that he's got chocolate rolls and monster munch - roast beef flavour, when even a fool like him ought to know that the pickled onion ones were best - to fortify himself against even the slightest possibility of learning anything. Harry, on the other hand, takes an utter delight in both shows. Newsround, because it tells him there's a wider world he can escape to one day when he's a grown-up, and Think of a Number because Johnny Ball is a living avatar of the gods of enthusiasm and curiosity and Harry is determined not to be a complete lump like Dudley.

Oh, he doesn't say as much, but even at five he can tell there's something wrong with his cousin - I'm taking his word for it, the books show us Dudley as a toddler and as a much older little shit with criminal tendencies, I've seen very little of him myself - and has got hold of the idea that he doesn't want to be like that because Aunt Petunia likes him and she's horrible so whatever she likes must be horrible too. Bloody good reasoning for a five-year-old in solitary confinement, and I compliment him accordingly.

"What you've got to remember, though, Harry, is that Dudley has been made that way by Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon. They're trying to make him grow up to be as horrible and stupid as they are. It's not his fault, and maybe we can help him be better if we can think up a way to do it."

"Why?" Harry's not distracted by the telly at the moment, the BBC is running house trails, so he has a moment to sink his teeth into the big question of moral philosophy.

"There's lots of reasons to do the right thing, Harry. Sometimes it's one reason, sometimes it's the other. But mostly because it's nice to look at people who are all stupid and wrong and think Ha! I'm not like those people. I'm making it nice and simple for you while you're just learning, we'll get on to the cleverer stuff later when you've learned enough to understand."

"Like when I'm six?"

"Like when you're six. And then, even more when you're seven. And more still when you're eight. Always be learning if you can, it's always useful. Did you like Think of a Number?"

"Yeah. I want to see what he's talking about though." Wistful, rather than whining.

"Oh, yes. It would help a lot, Mr. Ball shows much more than he tells. Did it help that I was explaining stuff as he went along?"

"Bit. Oh! Dogtanian's starting!" Science and Maths and Education and like that there are going to have to wait: Dogtanian and the Three Muskehounds are important.

I, of course, quite agree, and I'm pleased to note that even after literal decades I can still remember the words of the theme song. Muskehounds are still always ready. Harry's practically insensible with silent, wheezing laughter. He manages to choke out that he didn't know grown-ups could be silly.

"I am quite serious, young Harry. There's nothing silly about being a Muskehound."

More giggles, and then we both go quiet to listen most carefully to this week's episode. Unlike Harry, I get to see what's on screen for a bit when I ghost in to the living room and check the Radio Times on the coffee table. This is on in Blue Peter's time-slot, which I'm a bit disappointed by since I was looking forward to that, most of the segments were educational and would spark Harry's curiosity. I'd quite forgotten that it went off the air over the summer holidays.

I've been gone maybe ten seconds and get back to discover that Harry had noticed I was gone. I don't know if it's a significant change, because I think this is the first time I've left his presence while he's been awake.

"Where did you go?"

"Into the living room to look at the Radio Times."

"What's the Ra-di-o-Times?" he asks, enunciating the unfamiliar words carefully.

"It's a paper with all the telly programmes written on it, the shiny one on the coffee table. I wanted to read what was on next."

"Can you read?"

"Yes I can. Want to learn how?"

"Cor, yeah!"

"We'll work on it next time Petunia goes out for long enough. Now, pay attention, Muskehound!"

"Yes, sir!"

I'm quite pleased that Harry is a fan: whoever wrote Dogtanian really put some thought into it, and it's chock full of great messages for little kids. Be helpful, have fun, find good friends and stick with them, I approve wholeheartedly. Unlike Dumas's original, which was probably a bit unwholesome even for 17th century France, what with all those duels being basically romanticised murder.

I do want to know how Harry knew I was gone, but we can work on that when we don't have telly to listen to. Nattering about what we hear from the goggle box is how we pass the time. Coronation Street in particular is a right nostalgic listen for me - Bet Lynch is having some teething troubles settling in as the manager of the Rovers Return, which prompts a lot of explaining about what a pub is, it had been baffling Harry up to now. That carries us through to dinnertime and the long couple of hours it takes Harry to wind down to sleep. The Dursleys are content with the Freak being quiet, it seems like.

-oOo-

Harry drops off just in time for me to catch the Nine O' Clock news and confirm that Vernon's mid-week drinking is actually a habit and last night wasn't just a one-off. Petunia has finished with her magazine and has a pulp romance to read. A closer look tells me it's Riders by Jilly Cooper. Dated a girl who was into those books and read one myself, although where she found raciness and romance among the horsey set, I saw a whole bunch of entirely awful people who didn't get half the heartbreak, misery and STDs they deserved.

Enough with finding reasons to hold the Dursleys in contempt. Them being married is making two other people happier than they might otherwise be, after all. I've still got a lot of thinking to do about how to proceed: my resources here are my own mind and the (limited) physical and (non-existent) legal capabilities of a five year old. That puts a lot of barriers in our way.

Running away is a non-starter for the moment. Getting far enough away to be in a different county council's area and turning ourselves in to childrens' services would actually work provided Harry is careful to insist his name is freak and that he doesn't know where he lives. They'll issue him with a new name - Harry Potter can be his secret superhero identity or spy codename or something - and put him with properly-vetted foster parents. Trouble is, Harry can't get far as a little kid without the police being called. Lost children Harry's age draw attention, and the fact that he has neither proper clothes nor any kind of footwear would speed that reaction right up.

Reporting the matter to the proper authorities also won't work. The Dursleys, by accident or design and frankly I don't care which, stay juuuust on the side of the line where the criminal law takes over. I had occasion, during therapy, to look up the law from this time and discovered that I - and by extension Harry - weren't quite the victims of crime. The law's still as it was last amended in the 1930s, when the school-leaving age was 14 and a lot of kids were lucky they grew up at all. The law on corporal punishment hadn't been changed since the 19th century, when not sparing the rod lest they spoil the child was the watchword of parents everywhere. My dream of seeing them go down for historic offences against children shattered that day, and, I like to think, the healing began.

That leaves us with the county council's duty to intervene to help kids who are being neglected and abused through the civil side of child protection law. What Harry will get, if I can get anyone interested, is maybe a brief visit from an overworked social worker who's had this tacked on the end of a long and exhausting list of far more urgent cases with children who've turned up in hospital with broken bones, and the sure knowledge that the nice house in the nice village with the nice car in the driveway will go a long way to keeping trouble from the door of the company director with the Old School Tie. That's assuming that the social worker doesn't immediately agree that any talk about the company director with the Old School Tie must be malicious gossip and sorry to have bothered you Mr. Dursley.

I'm pretty sure Surrey County Council has been tory since the year dot, so social work will be right on the hind teat for funding. Even if we manage to get a social worker with a bit of class consciousness and the will to actually fight for Harry, he's going to get triaged right off the radar. You really don't need some master manipulator in the background to make an abused child fall through the cracks in a system that can't guarantee they'll catch all the ones in danger of being beaten to death. Depressing, but true, and things will get a lot worse for Harry if that happens. Petunia is still working on a grudge from before Harry was born, which will be a recurring theme in Harry's life, and Vernon's quite clearly a petty vindictive arsehole on only twenty-four hours' acquaintance.

Memo: find out how closely Dumbledore's woman is watching and if possible how much she's reporting. One of them's shirking their responsibilities and I want to know which. It'll be important later, I'm sure of it.

With escape and rescue out of the question, that leaves survival. Step one is in hand: don't provoke the menagerie. Vernon could turn violent very easily, especially with a few drinks in him. Petunia's verbal and emotional violence is already well to the fore, she restrains the physical stuff to not enough to break the skin (yet: that non-stick aluminium frying pan in the kitchen may well have Harry's name on it if he fails to duck).

If they think that actually injuring the child is merited, though, it wouldn't even be remotely out of character. Even a brief loss of control would do it. So, keep the odd occurrences as under control as we can. If we can get Harry in command of his magic early and convince him to be sneaky about it, that'll help a lot. Even if we can't - and that might be a good thing, don't want anyone seeing uncomfortable parallels with Tom Riddle, after all - helping Harry to self-soothe and be at peace with the torment around him will do him good. Just knowing there's someone on his side, however powerless I might be, is going to help a lot. Reducing the accidental magic will be a helpful side effect.

Step two is teaching Harry early what I learned late: self-control, subterfuge and stealth. He's going to have to learn to steal food, exercise in secret and learn on the sly. Self-reliance is the downtrodden kid's friend: he's a quick learner and it should only need a modest amount of guidance to keep it from turning into unhealthy coping mechanisms. Right? I can hope, anyway.

Step three et sequelae is entirely up in the air for the time being. I'm aware that the names and addresses I've seen could still be a bizarre coincidence, and if we're talking parallel universes there could be one where J K Rowling wrote a series of books about a boy superhero whose superpowers have precisely jack to do with Hogwarts and magic. If I'm in one of those then I'm as in the dark as Harry about what's going to happen.

The Dursleys turn in after the news finishes - the City news makes me think that it'd be good if we could get some of Harry's money out of Gringotts and ready for the bubbles I know are coming. Being able to cash out of the market the week before Black Monday - back half of October '87, as I recall - and take a shitload of short positions would be a good way to fill our boots. The reason I'm aware of this is that the early news of next year's big deregulation, the so-called Big Bang, was part of that City report. Pretty sure it counts as insider trading - it's a generously defined crime, after all - but let's see them prove prescience in court! Vernon gets the Financial Times delivered but I doubt he actually reads it. If I can convince Harry to learn to read out of the newspaper I can start getting my eye back in on the companies news.

Idle speculation is getting me nowhere. I'm not even properly planning, just blueskying general ideas. I resolve to do some more reconnaissance. A quick check that Harry's asleep and not having a nightmare - he's not, although his hair has fallen away from That Scar and I'm really not sure what I'm supposed to do about that - and I'm away again.

I remember that a common theme in fanfics was Lily leaving a box of personal effects to her sister and it winding up shoved away in the loft and forgotten about until Harry can find it, learn about his heritage and become SuperHarry. I think it unlikely - surely Petunia would have said something as part of that half-arsed apology in the last book - but unlikely or not, I'm going to spend the five minutes it takes to check. Plus, any further intelligence as to what kind of world we're in and what kind of life Harry has coming will be welcome.

I start with the loft that is, at first, as dark as a yard up a pig's arse. Whatever I'm using for vision, though, I noticed last night that it adapts quite well to low light conditions and since it was full moon last night, the shadows got really dark. There's some outside light coming in through an air brick in one of the gable ends, and that lets me see that what's stored up here is: bugger all. Header tank for the central heating and hot water - old fashioned type, remind Harry not to drink from the hot tap because occasionally squirrels, bats, pigeons and mice drown in those things and don't get found for years. Nothing else, not even loft insulation because Vernon's too bloody bone idle to even pick up the phone and get a couple of lads in. If Lily did send anything to Petunia, it got binned. Or stored somewhere else.

It takes me half an hour to look in to every part of the house that even the smallest amount of light reaches and I don't find anything. There's a battered old shoebox shoved to the back of the top shelf of the fitted wardrobe in the master bedroom that might hold the promise of old, saved letters, but they're as likely to be billets-doux from Vernon during their courtship and more likely still to be other, less intelligence-rich mementoes. As soon as I can get Harry's nerve up to it we'll be checking that out all the same.

Out into the wide blue yonder, then. Up, out through the roof on a whim and a lark, and it occurs to me that maybe an aerial view might help. Or, more honestly, couldn't hurt and since I'm disembodied and floating free I might as well eke out what scraps of fun there are to be had. I get up to a hundred metres or so - fear of heights left behind with the mortal coil that could be hurt by the fall - and take a moment to look around.

And, well, would you look at that. An owl. Common barn owl, Tyto alba. Watching them hunt is one of the great pleasures of a quiet stroll at night in the summer. Quite surprising to see one at this altitude, they take their prey from the ground and seldom go above treetop height. It's flying a lazy circle, so I watch in the hope of seeing it stoop. It takes a second or two, but I finally spot that it's wearing jesses. Which makes me think at first that it's someone's falconry bird, until I spot the small scroll tied in the jesses. It's a messenger bird!

Well, if I wasn't sure that Harry was a wizard, I am now. Who's this owl delivering to? If I've got another magical in the neighbourhood I want to know about it. No such luck, however. It circles a few more times and then heads off westward faster than I can follow. Letter for Harry that couldn't get past Dumbledore's protective spells? Possibly. It's certainly improbable that from '81 to '91 he didn't even get fan-mail, after all. I can't even fault Dumbledore for the precaution in a world where hate-mail can and does try and kill or maim the recipient. I file it away for future consideration.

From up here I can see the rich glow of night-time London to the north east, another larger small town along the road past the primary school, and the rest of Surrey all around. The moon's a night past full in clear skies so it's all beautifully lit. It looks like there's a new housing estate, or a second phase of the one we're on, being put in between Little Whinging and the school, and it looks like there's going to be a playground as part of it. They're just breaking ground on another bit on the other side of the main road, by the looks. Hopefully they include some more shops, because as things stand Little Whinging is coming up a bit short in the old amenities department and won't cope at all when it doubles in size - the new housing estate is if anything slightly larger than the one the Dursleys live on - over the next couple of years.

I peg the railway station as in the big village up the road, mostly by spotting the late service stopping there. Bog standard two tracks, two platforms and a ticket machine sort of place - are automated ticket machines a thing yet? - that missed the Beeching Axe by the skin of its teeth. Or, more likely, its utility to commuting City suits. Have to go take a look at the posted timetables at some point, find out where Harry can get to from there. Once I've got him alongside raiding Vernon's wallet, that is.

Have to be careful about that last, of course. I take the view that Harry is stranded in enemy territory and is quite justified in looting enemy supplies to survive and escape. It's certainly how I felt about the worse bits of my own childhood, after all. I'm confident Harry is bright enough to understand that the rules change as between 'dealing with enemies' and 'dealing with friends and everyone else'. The Dursleys are trying to destroy him, which makes them his enemies, and inter arma enim silent leges after all. Striking back in small ways will help him resist and develop skills and confidences we can fondly hope he'll never need again.

I spend a couple of hours up in the sky, spinning my mental wheels. I end up with quite a long list of Stuff I Need To Find Out, ranging from the state of Harry's inclusion in the non-magical side of things to whether or not I can get in to Diagon Alley, where I can experiment with my interactions with wizards and witches. A lot of possible plans - some of them, sad to say, cribbed from fanfiction - are heavily dependent on getting information about magic and the magical world. There's going to be a powerful lot of waiting and surviving for Harry.

If I want information about the magical world, there's only one possible repository of it in reasonable spooking distance. That I know about, at any rate. Arabella Figg's house on Wisteria walk. Positives: she's a named character in the books, sympathetic to Harry, has a link to the magical world, and isn't a full-blown witch who might have magical defences against the likes of me. Negatives: she's an agent of Dumbledore's, so he might well have left defences there, her sympathy for Harry didn't extend to actually telling him who his parents were and what he himself was, and she doesn't just have cats, she has part-magical cats. Who can definitely see me and might raise an alarm.

Of course, if I make enough of a fuss to get Dumbledore to visit Little Whinging I can watch how he reacts. It won't tell me much about the man's character, but it'll be more than I know now. The downside risk, of course, is that Dumbledore learns about me and does something effective to keep me from helping Harry. Doubtless with the very best of intentions, but he paves himself a fine road with those through the course of the books. Thing is, I know I came down on the other side of this decision only the night before, but the ensuing time has impressed me with an urgent need to do something. Anything. To keep my own conscience quiet, at the very least. I've mocked the Politician's Syllogism - Something must be done, this is Something, Therefore it Must Be Done - in my past life, but here I am doing it. In my defence, the risk is low - one wizard has something of a sense of whether I'm right next to him or not but can't see me and the only entities that can actually see me can't speak english. Unless there's a charm for talking to part-kneazles, which might be the case because I seem to recall Sirius Black getting on famously with Crookshanks during Prisoner of Azkaban.

All this musing brings me to ground level at the end of Wisteria Walk - like Privet Drive, a cul-de-sac, albeit a longer one with a mixture of smaller house designs and bungalows - and the problem of figuring out which of these is the home of the local crazy old cat lady.

I immediately realise that this is harder than it looks. Obviously, Statute of Secrecy being what it is, I can't just go looking for Fanged Geraniums - whatever they look like - among the bedding plants around the lawn. The back gardens might hold more promise of that sort of thing, although if I were a wizard in a muggle neighbourhood I'd put up a greenhouse, with year-round shading paint for privacy. The cats would help, at least until I can discern which of the cat ladies - there's never just one - are muggles and which the squib, but I can't count on them being conveniently arrayed outside their house or indeed conveniently anywhere, because cats. I can't even count entirely on Ms. Figg being actually old: someone who's impossibly ancient through a five-year-old's eyes could well be in prime dating range for a man my age. The only other thing I can think of - the powerful smell of cabbage in her house - is no use because I don't have a sense of smell right now.

I start with a simple cull of the available candidates: eliminate all the houses with cars from consideration. I'm probably leaping to conclusions, here, but someone close to the magical world has options like the Floo and the Knight Bus for getting around that are cheaper and nearly as convenient as owning a car, even in these days before fuel and insurance prices went up to silly levels. Of the few homes left, I decide to investigate the bungalows first as being the more economical option for a woman living alone.

Eliminate all the ones with kids' toys anywhere visible, and we're down to four. Of which one has a great big dog kenneled in the back garden and one is unoccupied with an estate agent's board outside telling me it's sold subject to contract. The other two have single women in residence, both tucked up for the night but only one with great big moggies on every available surface. Four cats are sharing her bed with her, and there must be at least a dozen in the house. Wouldn't remotely surprise me if the cabbage was kept on the boil to cover up the stench of overloaded litter trays: it turns out Kneazle crosses are hefty beasts and it'd be no surprise if their droppings were equally burdensome.

Inside, my presence isn't enough to disturb the felines from their repose beyond an occasional flick of the ear. Which is good news. Less good is that a quick scout through everything but the single bedroom - I'm squeamish about any more invasion of privacy than I need to confirm she's asleep - shows no obvious sign of magical paraphernalia or literature: the small bookcase in the living room is stuffed full of books on cat breeding and care with a couple of Geoffrey Archer novels for that essential touch of the Dark Side.

I track back to the dining-kitchen, where I saw the household correspondence stacked on the dining table. The top item is the household rates bill, addressed to 'The Occupier', which isn't a lot of use. Fortunately, there's a houseful of cats to take the blame for what I'm about to do. Concentrated effort makes the top sheet slide off and over the edge of the table, revealing an uncashed Unemployment Benefit giro. Next item down is one for Housing Benefit. Both are made out to a Mrs. A. Figg. Jackpot! The rest of the paperwork relates to gas, water and electricity - privatisation hasn't happened yet, so I'm in for the bloody annoying "If you see Sid" adverts all over again - and a blurry mimeographed newsletter from a cat fanciers and breeders club. No telephone bill, alas, and I don't recall seeing one in the hall. Not that itemised bills are a thing yet, I'm pretty sure most of the country is still making calls through mechanical exchanges, but someone who spent a lot of time on the phone might be worth eavesdropping on.

Clearly she's living on the purely muggle economy, and I sincerely hope she's worked enough on the non-magical side to have made National Insurance contributions to cover the benefits she's getting. I'm a little surprised to learn that she's renting, here, since the whole buy-to-rent fad is at least a decade away and I'm pretty sure this isn't a council house. Not actually an important matter: I've found the right house and I can keep an eye on things even if there's no useful intelligence here.

I pause to consider looking in the bedroom in more detail. As a private space it might hold more promise of interesting finds. And then I realise: single bedroom? Nobody builds single bedroom houses, and I'm pretty sure they didn't back in the eighties either. Single bedroom flats, sure, and bedsits are still a thing at this time, but even the pokiest bungalow merits two bedrooms. In the hallway, I see that there's a book case doing duty as a display case for old-lady knick-knacks, mostly photographs of cats, cat-show trophies, and sculpture of a generally feline theme. What it's also doing is standing right where a door would be if there was one to a part of the house I've not actually been in.

Either I need to get much more used to just gliding straight through walls - going between rooms via the doors is the literal habit of a lifetime - or this house has been somehow set up to divert attention to the fact that it has a fourth room. It's possible to do this sort of thing non-magically, it's how priest holes in old houses worked.

Ghosting through the shelves I find myself in the second bedroom. Which looks a lot more like a storeroom than someone's secret spy lair, to be frank, but there's a bound set of KwikSpell course material (clearly Filch isn't the only one bitter about being a squib) on a cheap-looking flatpack desk next to a mirror-looking thing that's stood there like the family photo one might have on one's desk at work. There's also a box full of parchment scrolls which I don't disturb because I won't be able to put them back. On the opposite wall to the dresser there's a dresser racked with bottles and jars bearing handwritten labels. Potions and ingredients, all of them, although some could sit on open display in the kitchen without compromising secrecy. I can think of several places in the muggle world that sell dried Feverfew and Skullcap, for instance. The large jar of pickled frogs is better off hidden in either world, of course. Frogs are unfortunate-looking beasts at the best of times and the pickling process has done nothing to improve them.

Also on the dresser is a fairly thick volume with 'Cat Remedies For The Home Brewer' neatly lettered on the spine. Everything else in the room is neatly packed in cardboard boxes, and I'm about to leave when I spot movement in the mirror-thingy. A closer look shows me that the words 'Foe Glass' are lettered on the frame, and the movement I caught was, well, me. It seems that by whatever standard this thing was enchanted to work on, I count as inimical to Arabella Figg. Fair's fair, I am trespassing in her home and spying on her. It's also possible that it just works as a straight-up mirror for supernatural entities. Whether it's a feature of the glass or a result of my new status I look like your classic movie-issue ghost, all monochrome and translucent. I feel sure that my hair and beard would be all floaty if they were longer than the number-two buzzcut I favour. The injuries I died of aren't in evidence though, so I'm not your Potterverse-style ghost with eg. a semi-detached head. You can, however, tell I died in dire need of a shave.

What have we learned? Arabella Figg is, while not a witch, witch-adjacent. Between the Dursleys, the owl, Ms. Figg, and the definitely-Potterverse magic item, the coincidences are stacked up far too high for this to be anything other than the Harry Potter 'verse (although I can't rule out one of the fanfiction variations, nor for that matter canon from a universe not my own, but other than being alert for differences from what I remember there's nothing to be done about that.) Mrs. Figg is there, I can assume, to report on Harry, with orders from Dumbledore - as she tells Harry later - not to say anything to him about the magical world. Kind of see the point of that one: I've not been forthcoming myself, although I'm not such an idiot as to see it as more than a temporary measure. With a bit of advice from me, Harry should be able to talk her into doing things a lot better than she did in the books. Nothing else, if Harry assures her he'll tell the Dursleys he hates it at her house, she can be a better host and he can get sent here more often. Slip her the suggestion to crack on that she finds Harry useful for mucking out the litter trays and Petunia might actually pay her as a childminder on the regular.

And, of course, if Harry hints that his Aunt Petunia has let slip that her sister was a witch, dear batty old Arabella might think it's all right to open up a bit herself. Nothing else, it might get Dumbledore here without any suspicion of wandering spirits about the place. I know I'm on Harry's side, but that's not obvious to third parties and no way to prove it either.

-oOo-

I beat the milkman back to Number Four this time, and go straight in to check on Harry. He's curled up on his side, hands tucked in to his chest for warmth, and frowning in his sleep. If he's dreaming, I see no sign, but I hear the boiler fire up at five so it should get warmer in here soon. I move in close to the famous scar to see what it's like. Lightning-bolt shaped, a sowilo rune if ever I saw one. I never paid much attention to the folklore that goes with them: I'm aware there's a rune-poem for each one but never did more than skim the wikipedia page once and chuckle over the fact that most known rune inscriptions are norse graffiti and say things like "Halfdan was here" and "Ragnar loves cock".

It's the rune of the sun, I remember that much, the conqueror of darkness. If, as anyone with an ounce of sense might surmise, Voldemort's destruction was wrought by Harry's parents, that rune is a Clue. Thinking about it, they might not have needed to be wholly successful either. By the time he went to Godric's Hollow, Tom Riddle had practically used the entire corpus of world folklore as a checklist for how to piss off the powers that be.

Taking on faith that my experience with the Moirai was genuine and that their rules apply, Tom was a kin-slayer, had violated guest-right, styled himself a lord outwith the service of an anointed king, and forsaken even that shaky claim to lordship by standing forsworn to at least one of his liegemen if not more. He lacked only dancing on a mountaintop wearing a pointy copper hat in a thunderstorm in the 'asking for it' stakes, because if the Fates are real, so are the … let's exercise appropriate caution and refer to them as The Kindly Ones. If the Potters' hopeless last ditch defence and surrender of their own lives in sacrifice was part of some subtly-enacted ritual magic, Voldemort had made himself a perfect target for it.

Of course, if he gets around to drinking Unicorn blood in a few years' time, that mountaintop dance will be accompanied by a chant of "all gods are bastards." I'm not just yarning, here: Voldemort's tragic flaws and inevitable fall follow an ages-old pattern followed by storytellers back to the neolithic age. In a universe where there are actual entities enforcing those rules and well documented as doing so over literal millennia? Acting like Tom did goes beyond hubris and well into "what an idiot" territory.

I watch over Harry, generally thinking over the things I've learned and how they fit in to my understanding of the story he has ahead of him, while the house warms up around us. I can't feel it, of course - still dead, thanks for asking - but I watch Harry slowly unclench as he no longer has to huddle against low temperatures. I hope he's had a blanket or something during the winter - this is the height of summer, when it only gets uncomfortably cool at night - but I wouldn't care to bet much on it.

It occurs to me that while I now know a great deal about Arabella Figg's household finances, I haven't had a nosey into the Dursleys. Learning whether or not they're claiming Child Benefit for Harry would certainly be interesting. I'm still not sure whether they've made Harry's presence here in any way official. I can't recall seeing any paperwork left out where I can read it, but it won't be too hard to monitor the incoming post to see what's what in that department.

The day begins just like yesterday did, except that, as I learn over breakfast, Dudley is not off to the childminder today. It seems that she doesn't do Fridays during school holidays, how very dare she, and this on top of what she charges. (The figure Petunia names is entirely reasonable, doubly so for a problem child like Dudley.)

Well, you could actually try caring for your misbehaving little fleshlump yourself, Petunia, I think, but I suspect that dealing with the consequences of your own actions is a touch beyond you. I don't think I'm too jaundiced by her treatment of Harry when I note that literally the only part of her life that isn't her own fault is her sister being a witch. It was her choice how she handled that, and all her choices from from that day to this. On which she's sitting married to Vernon as he commits slow suicide by cholesterol while not enjoying her meagre breakfast - I'm pretty sure the kid she hates gets nearly as many calories of a morning as she serves herself.

Deciding I don't want to hear any of Vernon's self-important announcements of what he's going to achieve today in the big wide world of drill sales management, I go back in to Harry's Secret Base. "Looks like Dudley's staying at home today. Does that mean we get to stay in here?"

"Think so," Harry replies, squished in to the corner and hugging his knees. He doesn't seem too unhappy about it.

"Does Dudley get to play outside yet?" I can but hope. I'm a bit hazy on the age kids get let (or chucked, as I was) out to play unsupervised in the 80s. Certainly the approach most parents took in the 70s would shock parents of the 20-teens with the lack of supervision in evidence. Not that I'm complaining, the longer I stayed outdoors the less time I spent getting walloped for reasons I didn't - still don't - understand.

"Sometimes," Harry says, but he doesn't sound sure. I suppose I can't expect a kid his age to be keeping mental notes and spotting patterns of behaviour, although he will develop the skill earlier than other kids will.

"Doesn't much matter, really," I say, "I was asking to try and guess what's going to be on the telly."

"Dudley's allowed to watch ITV when Uncle Vernon's out at work. Aunt Petunia says he's not allowed to tell Uncle Vernon he's not watching BBC programmes," Harry informs me with the gleeful air of being allowed to grass someone up without consequences.

"Is he now?" I say, getting in on the conspiracy, "Does Uncle Vernon know that Coronation Street isn't on the BBC?" I'm actually a bit surprised by this revelation: I thought I was the only one who grew up in a household where the controlling bullshit extended to which channels were considered 'proper'.

"Prob'ly," Harry says, "but Aunt Petunia shouts if he tries to turn it off." Harry's fascination with the show may just have an explanation beyond enjoying the story.

"I'll bet she does. What else does she shout at Uncle Vernon about?" I'm not hopeful that Harry has any particular recollection. At his age, grownups having a row is like having Godzilla and King Kong fighting outside your house; you don't know what it's about and wouldn't care if you did, you're just terrified the violence is going to drop on you at some point. Because sooner or later, it usually does.

Harry just shrugs. Just as I thought.

"So, we've got a whole day to sit and talk. Well, I'll talk and you'll whisper, because we don't want them to hear. What do you want to talk about?"

"Can… can you tell me about my mum and dad?"

I'd sort of hoped to get started on educating the kid. You know, counting, times tables, the sounds of the letters and the alphabet song since he'd mentioned hearing Sesame Street on the telly. There are however, as he has just reminded me, priorities. I'm going to have to edit things a bit. Well, a lot; I can get away with a mention of magic or two here and there to set the scene for the big reveal later, but most of the meat of the story is going to have to be in general terms. I think a bit about that and decide that my conscience can only take it if I'm up front about what I'm doing.

"I certainly can, but I want you to understand something first. So I want you to listen very carefully to what I'm about to say and tell me what you understand about what I've told you. Can you do that for me?"

Fervent nodding. It's not terribly fair: I suspect he'd agree to anything as the price of knowing about his real mummy and daddy. Still, if I just dump magic and everything on him straight away it'll hurt him terribly. And I have no idea what the limits of accidental magic might or might not be, and whether or not an obscurus is even a theoretical possibility because they didn't turn up until the Fantastic Beasts movie, and I'm not taking risks with the health and safety of any child, never mind one this vulnerable.

"Well, first of all, I'm not going to tell you all of the story. Some of it will have to wait until you're all grown up. There are some things it isn't good for children to know, and some things it's against the rules, very good rules, for children to know. Some of it will have to wait until you're a bit older, because it's stuff that older children can know but not children who are five."

"So you can tell me when I'm six?" Attaboy. Negotiate: it gets you things and makes 'em argue for everything they want to keep from you.

"Yes! Some of it when you're six, some of it when you're seven…" I give him an opening

"And some of it when I'm eight!" he says the last word out loud and then slaps both hands over his mouth, having spoken in a normal indoor voice in his excitement.

"Well done! I can see we're going to do well teaching you your numbers, Harry. " And inductive reasoning and extrapolation, but you don't need to know the names for those things to do them. "What's more, I'm not going to tell you everything all today. We've got a lot of time to sit and talk, so we're going to take our time. Remember how eating all that food yesterday made you need the loo?"

Nod nod nodnodnod.

"It's a bit like that with big stories that make you happy and sad and excited and afraid. You have to take them bit by bit so you remember the happy parts and use them to make the sad parts better, and remember the exciting parts and use them to make the scary parts a bit more fun." There you go: pacing in storytelling, distilled for pre-schoolers. "Do you think you can explain that back to me in your own words?"

There's a long pause, garnished with the serious frown of a little boy thinking Very Hard Indeed. "You're gonna tell me the bits of the story that are all right for little kids, and tell it slowly so, uh, it doesn't make me poo?"

"Oh, close, very well done. You got the bit about the parts for little kids right, but it's so it doesn't make your feelings go all pooey. Not about actually making you poo."

Much giggling. Poo is the funniest thing ever, of course. Knowing that is half the battle when keeping small children engaged and entertained.

"So, are you okay with me telling you the story a bit at a time like that? With not getting everything all at once? I want it to be good for you, you see."

The "yes" I get is tiny and quiet and comes with big, shiny eyes. You really don't have to show this kid much of any kind of concern to be the best grown-up he's ever met.

"Well, a long time ago, before you were born, James Potter and Lily Evans got on a train to go to a special school, all the way up north in Scotland. Your Aunt Petunia couldn't go to the same school, because she didn't pass the test to get in like your mum Lily did, and so she has been jealous and angry ever since. Now, on the train, they met and at first they didn't get on..."

-oOo-

AUTHOR NOTES:

I'm going to admit I had a lot of fun digging through youtube for kids' television from 1985 that I have fond memories of, and yes, I really did still remember the theme song from Dogtanian well enough to sing along after all these years.

The bit about investments: Qualifying as a solicitor includes getting certified as a Financial Adviser: passed mine in either late '95 or '96. You don't actually need much future knowledge to figure out how the markets are going to react, and a major price correction like Black Monday of October '87 leaves the bear investors farting through silk. Knowing the movements of individual companies helps, of course, but you can do pretty well with nothing but futures and derivatives and tracker funds if you know the big events and how markets react to them. A lot of time-travel fanfics really overcomplicate that part, if they get into it at all.

The musings about Voldemort's self-sabotage are drawn from a generalist-hobbyist's understanding of the study of folklore and mythology. It's a fascinating field of study, and I've long wished I had the time and budget to dive deeper into it. JKR could only have made her villain's fall more folkloric by giving him a ritual triple death and burying him, unmarked, in a peat bog. (The fact that she got the 'sacrifice' aspect of Harry's walk into the woods subtly wrong we can chalk up to the fact that, as a victim of her own success, she ended up having to rush the last two books to market.)

Fanfic recommendation: Delenda Est by Lord Silvere, only on FFN as far as I'm aware. One of the classics of HP Fanfic, time travel means the Dursleys never raise Harry, but you do get to see them treated to a modest amount of hilarity which they would, in another life, have richly deserved.