Lost Boy 01

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Lost Boy

Part the First

“Dudley, go get the post.”

“Make Harry get it.”

“Harry, get the post.”

“Make Dudley get it.”

Of course, Uncle Vernon didn’t listen to Harry.  He never did.  He made a clicking sound with his teeth, and Harry obediently went out into the hallway and picked up the post.  There seemed to be a bill and a postcard.  He checked the signature.  It was from Aunt Marge.  There was also a thick envelope.  Harry checked the direction.  In emerald ink, it was addressed to: Mr. H. Potter, Cupboard Under the Stairs, Little Whinging, Surrey. 

Harry was so shocked he dropped the bill and the postcard.

Turning the envelope over he saw a seal in wax of a lion, a badger, a raven, and a snake surrounding a large letter H. 

“Boy, where’s the post?”

Harry didn’t listen.  Instead, he slipped his finger under the seal and pulled.

All of a sudden it was as if a hook slipped under his navel and pulled.  Harry’s feet were suddenly not on the floor anymore and he was jerked away from the hallway and out of the door.  Colors whirled around him and he whooshed through the air until he was pulled through another door and he landed in the entryway of another house.

Falling to the floor, Harry grasped the letter in his hand and quickly looked up. 

He looked at it strangely.  He turned it over.  It wasn’t addressed to “Mr. H. Potter” anymore, not exactly, but to “Mr. Hartwig Potter, Potter Abbey, Godric’s Hollow, Devon.”

Harry stared at it.

There was the sound of hurrying steps from somewhere to the left and Harry stood up quickly, clutching his—er, Mr. Hartwig Potter’s—letter to his chest.

An elderly woman—in robes—appeared in the hall and stared at him.  She had silver white hair and hazel eyes.  “James?” she breathed as if she had seen a ghost.  “Jamesie!”  She ran up to him and pulled him close to her, hugging him.  “James, you’re awake.”

Harry wasn’t certain what to say.  He wasn’t sure who Hartwig was, he was certain his name was Harry, and he thought his father’s name had been James, and his dad had died in a car crash when he was little. 

The woman was now crying into his hair, whispering, “James, James,” again and again. 

Finally, she pulled away and really looked at him.  “What happened to your glasses, darling?”

“Er—” he muttered, unsure what to say.  “Dudley broke them.”

“Dudley?”

“Yes’m,” he admitted carefully. 

She ran her hand through her hair and stared at him for a long moment.  “Your eyes are green.”

Harry honestly didn’t know how to answer that.  His eyes had always been a green.  He looked off to the side and then back at the woman. 

She ran her hand through his hair again thoughtfully and then seemed to notice the scar on his forehead.  “James,” she whispered, “how did you get that?”

“I—”

But she wasn’t listening.  She had taken his hand and was pulling him forward out of the hallway and up a large staircase.  Harry looked about him a bit and saw that the house was much larger (and much older) than the house in Little Whinging.  They went up three landings and walked past several portraits.  The eyes of the paintings seemed to follow them, but Harry assured himself it was just a trick of the light. 

Holding onto the letter, Harry let the woman lead him to a set of doors, that she opened carefully, pulling him through.

It was a boy’s bedroom.  There were clothes littered everywhere and magazines laid out, and Harry saw a broom leaning in a corner.—a broom?  Harry did a double take. 

The woman led him up to a bed and Harry looked down to see a boy with messy black hair lying there as if dead.  His face was gray and ghostly but there was something familiar about it.  The boy looked just like Harry except he was a little broader about the shoulders and looked like he had three square meals a day, although he looked slightly older.

“You’re not James,” the woman murmured, as she looked down at the boy. 

The boy must be James, then.

She turned to Harry.  “Who are you?”

“I—”  Harry stared at the boy.  He could be Harry’s twin.

“Oh, dear, I am sorry,” the woman whispered, as if afraid to wake the dead.  She turned to the boy and ran a hand down his cheek before leading Harry out of the room.  Closing the doors behind them, she turned to Harry.  “It’s startling to see someone suffering from Living Death.”  Her face had turned stark, the tears dried on her face, making her look so terribly old.  She looked Harry over from head to foot.  “You’re obviously a Potter.  You’re James’s spitting image.”

“I—I’m Harry Potter.”

Her face softened slightly.  “What’s your wizarding name?”

Wizarding?  Harry looked at the woman in front of him.  It was true she was wearing a vibrant red cloak.  Could she be a—a wizardess?

He looked down at his letter.  “Hartwig,” he told her carefully.  “I got this letter—” He held it out to her and she took it, a small smile on her face.

“Your Hogwarts letter, dear,” she told him.  “A proud time in your life.  Did—did your letter bring you to Potter Abbey?”

“Yes’m,” he told her in relief.

“Old magic,” she told him sincerely.  “All Potters come here if they are lost.  You must have been lost to us.”  She looked up at him and ran a hand through his hair.  “You must be a nephew or a cousin, Hartwig.  I’m sorry I startled you.  Well, you must want to read your letter.  You should probably like to see your Uncle Fleamont as well.  Magic has decreed us your guardians.”  She looked over her shoulder at the door.  “Your cousin James is unwell.  He would have been a third year.”

“Oh,” Harry answered quietly, still a little confused.  “I’m sorry.”

“Nothing to be sorry for,” his—he wasn’t sure who she was.

“Who are you?”

She was now leading him back down the steps they had climbed up.  She startled and looked down at him.  “Oh, forgive me, Hartwig.  I’m your Aunt Euphemia.  This is Potter Abbey in Devon.  All Potters are welcome here.”  They stopped on the first floor and went down a hallway.

The portraits were definitely following Harry with their eyes. 

“I believe Fleamont is in his potions lab, but I will fetch him for you.  Where have you been living, Hartwig?  We don’t want your parents to be missing you.”

“My parents died,” he admitted quietly, “in a car crash.”

“Car crash?” she asked, leading him into a nice living room.  It was so lovely Harry was afraid to touch anything.  “How peculiar.  That must be how you became lost.  Were you living with wizards?”

“W-wizards?” Harry asked.  “N-no.”

“Ah,” she murmured, offering him a seat.  “You read your letter.  I’ll be back in a moment.”

Harry watched her go and then turned back to his letter.  “Mr. Hartwig Potter, Potter Abbey, Godric’s Hollow, Devon.”  Harry blinked at it.  He carefully turned it over and saw where he had torn the seal.  He carefully ripped it the rest of the way open and took out the pages inside. 

He read it over twice.  Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry?  Him?

There was a pop and Harry looked into bulbous eyes of the strangest creature he had ever seen.  Harry squeaked.

The little elf put down a pot of tea on a tray and biscuits.  “Erky helps little master!” it insisted before it popped back out, disappearing right before Harry’s eyes.

Harry just stared.  He was still staring when Aunt Euphemia returned with an elderly looking wizard with a pipe and a bit of a belly.

“Hartwig!” his Uncle Fleamont greeted, startling him. 

Harry looked up and blinked at him, quickly standing up.

“None of that, boy, none of that,” Uncle Fleamont insisted, waving his hand.  “We haven’t had a Lost Boy in over a century!  Let me take a look at you!”  He came up to Harry on strong legs and peered into Harry’s green eyes.  “Ah, yes, the eyes give it away,” he told Aunt Euphemia.  He then took out what was clearly a wand and tapped Harry’s glasses.  Harry flinched.  “Reparo!” he cried, and Harry’s glasses repaired themselves.

Harry looked at his glasses cross-eyed.

“That should do.”  Uncle Fleamont sounded self-satisfied. 

He sat down in a chair and tapped the teapot.  It started to pour tea into the teacups without any help.  Harry stared at it.  If Harry hadn’t believed in magic half an hour before, he certainly believed in it now.

“I hear you’ve been living with Muggles.”

Harry looked away from the teacup that was hovering near his hands.  “What’s a Muggle?”

Uncle Fleamont puffed on his pipe.  “A non-magical person.  Not one of us.”

“Y-yes,” Harry agreed.  “Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon.”

Aunt Euphemia tsked.  “Perhaps his mother is a Muggleborn.”

“A half-blood Potter,” Uncle Fleamont considered, looking Harry over.  “Hartwig is an unusual name for a half-blood, but we named our son ‘James’ so we can’t talk.”  He puffed his pipe again, his belly bouncing.  “We’re also only third generation.”

“James is fourth,” Euphemia seemed to be reminding him.  The lines in her face were creasing.

“Yes, fourth now.  I’m sure we can have Hartwig’s blood tested when he turns fifteen.” 

Harry didn’t know what they were talking about.

“What’s a half-blood?”

“It means, dear,” Aunt Euphemia explain, putting her cup back down in its saucer, “that you have both magical and non-magical ancestors.  Nothing to be ashamed of.  The Potters are purebloods, new blood, true, but purebloods nonetheless.  We just don’t know where you come from.”

“I’ve never heard of magic before today.”

“They could have been random Muggles,” Uncle Fleamont suggested hopefully.  “Did they just want you to call them ‘Aunt’ and ‘Uncle’?”

Harry looked confused.

“Never mind, never mind.  We don’t want to befuddle you, Hartwig,” Uncle Fleamont assured him.  He sat forward and looked Harry over again.  “He certainly looks like a Potter.”

“Yes, I did notice that, dear,” Aunt Euphemia agreed.  “I thought he was James.”

“James’s twin,” Fleamont mused.

“My father’s name was James,” Harry told them, which caused them to look at him in confusion. 

“What’s your mother’s name?” Uncle Fleamont asked carefully.

“Lily.”

“Wizard’s name,” Fleamont decided, before taking another puff of his pipe.  “But that is not—”  He looked behind him at the clock.  “We’ll have to fix that old thing.”

“Yes, we must put Hartwig on it,” Aunt Euphemia agreed.  She looked pensive.  “What magic have you done, Hartwig?”

“Magic?” he squeaked.  “I don’t think I’ve ever done magic.”

“Of course you’ve done magic!” Uncle Fleamont insisted.  “Haven’t you ever done something you couldn’t explain when you were scared or angry?”  He looked at Harry with hazel eyes. 

“Er—I can make my hair grow when Aunt Petunia cuts it.”

Aunt Euphemia visibly startled so much that she upset her teacup.  “You can make your hair grow?”  She exchanged a look with Uncle Fleamont.

“Er—yes.”

“Black blood?” Uncle Fleamont murmured, eyes wide.  “Do you think we have a young metamorphmagus?”

“There’s one way to find out.”  Aunt Euphemia stood and approached Harry.  “Do we have your permission to give you a potion, Hartwig?”

Harry wondered if he should ask them to call him ‘Harry’ instead of ‘Hartwig,’ but they seemed so nice—and if he was a wizard, maybe he should have a wizarding name?  The letter was for him, after all, and it said his name was Hartwig.

Harry looked up, slightly confused.  “A potion?”

“Yes.  To see what you look like.”

“You—know what I look like.”

Uncle Fleamont chuckled.  “If you’re a metamorphmagus, this is not what you look like,” he told Harry.  “But if you’re not, then it won’t harm you.”

“What’s a metamorph—” Harry stumbled over the word.

“It’s an old Black ability,” Aunt Euphemia told him.  “Metamorphmagi have the ability to change their features at will.  It takes a great deal of practice.  Some metamorphmagi let it be known that they can change their hair, their eyes, the shape of their faces.  Others keep it secret.”

“Why?”

“Because it’s a weapon,” Uncle Fleamont told him.  “You can become anyone you want whenever you want.  If people don’t know you can do that, then you will never be suspected.  People can’t use it against you.”

Harry’s eyes widened.  “I don’t need to be Harry Potter anymore?”  The idea had some merit.  Harry Potter always was hunted and slept in a cupboard.  He didn’t want to do that anymore.

“Who would you want to be?” Aunt Euphemia questioned.

Harry looked down at his letter.  That was the question.  “Hartwig perhaps.”

Uncle Fleamont and Aunt Euphemia exchanged a look.

“I could get rid of this scar.  Sometimes I think—”  He remembered back and remembered a great deal of green light.  “I think I got it in the car crash that killed my parents.”

“I’ll brew that potion,” Aunt Euphemia promised.  “Give me three days.”

“Three days,” Harry agreed, and he smiled for the first time since he picked up the letter in the hall of the Dursley House.

Of course, at Potter Abbey he had his own room.  It was next to James’s.  The doors were warded shut so he wouldn’t accidentally go into James’s room.  “It’s not contagious,” Aunt Euphemia told him, “but James should not be disturbed.”

He had a desk with parchment and quills and on the second day, Aunt Euphemia gave him a calendar with Quidditch players zooming across the dates.  Pictures seemed to move in the wizarding world.  Harry could sit and watch them all day.

The only problem was, and it was perhaps not exactly a problem, but the calendar read 1973.  Harry was born in 1980.  Harry thought perhaps he should bring it up to Aunt Euphemia that the calendar was wrong, but she seemed to think it was fine.  He snuck into Uncle Fleamont’s study and saw that his calendar also read 1973.  He then remembered that the boy—James—had the same name as his dad.  The thought scared him a little.  He didn’t want to be sent back to the Dursleys however.  If he told Aunt Euphemia that she might—somehow—be his grandmother (because if James, the boy in the coma, was his dad, then Euphemia and Fleamont were his grandparents) they might find some special type of magic to send him back to the future, and he didn’t want to go back.

He thought about this long and hard for half a day.

What if James didn’t wake up?

Did this mean he would never be born?

Did opening his Hogwarts letter save his life?

He didn’t have the answers, but he asked Uncle Fleamont the next time he saw him if he had any books on time travel.  “I’m interested,” Harry told him.  “Just some light reading.”

“Light?” Fleamont laughed before he showed him to the small library.  “Let me find something for you.”

What Fleamont found for him was A Twist of Time, which was a young adult novel about time travel with something called a time turner.  Harry devoured it and looked for other books by the same author, Hermione Granger.  Unfortunately, she didn’t seem to have written anything else.  He moved on to An Encyclopedia of Time, which was a large tome which was over a thousand pages long.

On the third day, which was a Saturday here in 1973, Aunt Euphemia had the potion. 

“If it works,” she warned him, “it may feel strange.”

“Strange?” he asked.

“Yes.  You may feel your hair grow, your bones shift, that sort of thing.”  She gave him a weathered smile.  Harry wondered just how old she was.  “It’s best to lie down for this.”

“Yes,” Uncle Fleamont agreed.  “We’ll be right there with you.”

Harry had been wearing James’s old robes and he took off his cloak and lay down on his bed.  Euphemia had a hand mirror, which she set on his bedside table, and then unstoppered a bottle. 

“Best to take it in one large swig.”

It smelled like bubblegum.

It didn’t taste like bubblegum.

It tasted like orange icicles that had been left in the sun for too long.  It was rather sweet and horribly disgusting.  Harry nearly gagged but he drank it all down, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand before he lay down.

“Give in a few minutes,” Aunt Euphemia told him, and Harry closed his eyes and settled down.

At first he thought it didn’t work.  Then the roots of his hair began to tingle.  Then burn.  He was suddenly aware of a rushing sound and he could feel his hair brush his chin and fall over his shoulders.  His hair continued to burn, and Harry clenched his teeth and balled his hands into fists.  The only problem was that his nails suddenly started drawing blood and he had to stretch his fingers out as his nails began to ache.

His jaw clicked several times out of place and then back into joint.  His nose broke and he shouted out in pain and his eyes stung so much that he could feel himself crying. 

Then it all seemed to settle and Harry wiped his eyes clean, aware of the blood caking on the palms of his hand.

“There you go,” Euphemia soothed as she ran a hand through his hair, his incredibly long hair.  “It’s over now.”

Harry sat up with her help and looked around.  “Do I look much different?”

“You look like a Prewett,” Uncle Fleamont remarked, and Harry just blinked at him. 

“Sorry?”

“Nothing, dear,” Aunt Euphemia assured him.  She came up to him and flicked her wand.  His nails cut down to his fingers and shone like he had had one of Aunt Petunia’s manicures.  Aunt Euphemia ran her fingers through his long bangs and out of his eyes.  “No scar.  Good.  It was an identifying mark.”  She picked up the mirror and held it in front of Harry’s face.

He looked at himself in the mirror.

Harry looked completely different.

He blinked.

“This is Hartwig,” Uncle Fleamont told him. 

Harry looked back into the mirror.  His vision was fuzzy.  Taking off his glasses, he put them aside.  He saw clearly for the first time in years.  Clearly he didn’t need his glasses anymore.

Harry had long auburn hair with a bit of a curl to it that fell down past his shoulders, his eyes now a darker green.  His cheekbones were higher, his eyes rounder, and the scar was completely missing from his forehead.  No freckles.  His skin was pale and completely unblemished.

“Would you like us to get you a haircut?  Something a little more manageable perhaps?” Aunt Euphemia asked.  “To your shoulders perhaps?”

Harry blinked at his reflection again and put down the mirror.  “I think I can do that.  I just have to go to sleep and wake up again.”  His voice was the same.  That was good.

“Well then, dear.”  She conjured a brush in her hand and indicated his desk chair.  “Let’s just clean you up a bit.”

Harry glanced at the brush.  He’d never had anyone brush his hair before, but it seemed like Aunt Euphemia was planning to do just that.  He warily went to the chair and sat and felt Aunt Euphemia come up behind him.  She took the brush and pulled it through his hair, getting it caught on a couple of snags.

“Such lovely curls,” she complimented.  “None of that Potter mess.  It seems as a young child you wanted to look like your Potter father and changed your appearance to look like him.”  She fussed over him a little, wiping the blood off his hands with a washcloth she conjured out of thin air.

Harry looked over at Uncle Fleamont who was leaning against the wall, smoking his ever present pipe.  They shared a look as if to say, “Witches!”

“We’ll go to Diagon Alley tomorrow,” Aunt Euphemia went on, “get you your Hogwarts robes and some of your own so you’re not always wearing James’s things, an owl for your post, a wand.  That will be nice.”

“He definitely looks like a Prewett,” Fleamont insisted.  “Good old wizarding family.  Must get it through his mother.  Lily Prewett.  Sounds about right.”

“We’ll have to see if there are any Prewetts at Hogwarts,” Euphemia agreed, tying Harry’s hair back with a ribbon so that it was out of his face.  “There we have it.  We’ll have to practice your metamorphmagus skills when you’re at home.”

“I would say he was Charlus and Dorea’s boy, but they never had a son,” Uncle Fleamont continued.  “She’s a Black but that doesn’t explain the Prewett looks.”

“No, no, it doesn’t,” Aunt Euphemia agreed.

Harry turned around in his seat and looked at his aunt and uncle.  “Are they relatives?”

“Charlus is another nephew,” Uncle Fleamont explained.  “My brother Eustace’s grandson.  You’ll certainly meet him before you go to Hogwarts.—Christmas at the latest.”  He puffed his pipe.  “Not that skilled at Potions I’m sad to say.”

Harry had learned that Uncle Fleamont and Aunt Euphemia were world famous Potioneers.  They had an entire floor devoted to potions labs and potion ingredient storage.  He wasn’t allowed down there except if he was accompanied by one of them.  He hadn’t gone yet.  He was a little afraid to.

He did shorten his hair in his sleep, just as he thought he would.  He left it curling at his shoulders with a fringe.  He was so used to covering a scar that he left his forehead covered.  When Harry caught himself passing a mirror, he always did a doubletake, he was so unused to his reflection. 

Diagon Alley was a whirl.  There was so much to see, so much to get.  Harry was like a little kid in a candy shop.

Eeylop’s Owl Emporium was full of different colored feathers and Harry decided on a masked owl that he named Boleyn. 

The final shop they went to was Ollivander’s, Purveyors of Fine Wands since 382 BC.  The shop was small and dusty with shelves reaching high into the rafters.  There was one spindly old chair for customers and Aunt Euphemia cast a cleaning charm on it before sitting down on it regally.

“A Lost Boy,” a hushed voice echoed through the shop before a small wizard with spectacles came out.  “I don’t think I know who you are, young man.”

“Hartwig Potter,” Uncle Fleamont answered for him.  “He’s our new charge.”

“A Potter,” Ollivander breathed, looking closely at Harry.  “Well, we better get started.”  He snapped his fingers, and a measuring tape sprang to life and began to measure Harry every which way without any assistance from anyone in the shop.  It was just measuring the length of Harry’s earlobe when Ollivander brought down his first wand.  “Try this one.  Seven inches.  Maple.  Dragon heartstring.  Give it a wave.” 

Harry picked it up and had barely raised it when Ollivander whipped it out of his hand.

“No, no, not that one.  Try this one.  Nine inches.  Oak.  Unicorn hair.”

Harry raised it and lifted it over his head, but Ollivander jumped up and grabbed it before Harry could make a fool of himself.

“Eight and a half inches.  Yew.  Dragon heartstring.”

“Nine inches.  Oak.  Phoenix feather.”

“Twelve inches.  Holly.  Dragon heartstring.”

“Ten inches.  Oak.  Dragon heartstring.”  Harry lifted this one up, but Ollivander took it out of his hand again.  “No, dragon heartstring is all wrong.  Who are your parents?”

Harry opened his mouth to answer, but Uncle Fleamont interrupted him.  “You yourself said it, Ollivander.  He’s a Lost Boy.”

“Yes, yes, quite right.  I only wanted a hint.”  He took down another wand.  “Try this one.  Ten and a half inches.  Oak.  Phoenix feather.”

“Nine and three quarter inches.  Maple.  Phoenix feather.—Yes, phoenix feather, but not maple.”  He went searching through his shelves again.

After four more wands were discarded, Ollivander came out and looked at Harry closely.  “I wonder.”  He went to a back shelf and took down a wand.  “I remember every wand I’ve ever sold, Mr. Potter.  Every wand.  The brother to this wand did great things.  Terrible things, but great.  I sold it to another Lost Boy.  Eleven inches.  Holly.  Phoenix feather.  Give it a wave.”

Harry took it in his hand and instantly felt a surge of power.  He lifted the wand above his head and brought it down to a string of gold and green sparks.

Aunt Euphemia clapped and Uncle Fleamont looked pleased. 

“And you wondered if you were a wizard, Hartwig,” Uncle Fleamont laughed.  “As if there was any doubt.”

They paid seven galleons for the wand and flooed home to Potter Abbey. 

That night, wand in hand, Harry managed to sneak into James’s room.  He stood over the comatose boy and carefully reached out to touch him on the shoulder. 

“I’ll make you proud of me, Dad,” he promised into the hushed room.  “I’ll make you proud.”