Harry Potter and the Way of Kings

Gifted

Most witches and wizards would agree that the day he got branded on his forehead by death and betrayal was the day that Harry Potter's story began.

Yet, when Harry looks back, today, he wonders. The table clock on his office desk keeps ticking the seconds away, brass hands peeking out from behind a jar of the worn and bent quills he lets fly scratching over report after report, which then pile up in messy stacks beside his chipped, but favourite tea mug, a bunch of literature on legal theories and their applications in law enforcement and a box of Bertie Bott's.

He wonders how that fateful evening so long ago could ever be called the beginning of his story, when he had been nothing else than a small child, caged in by the weakness of his body and his mind, incapacitated by the lack of growth.

He is certain that this had not been the day when his story began, rather, it had marked a turning point in the story of others: Dumbledore's, Voldemort's, his parents'. Severus Snape's. Peter Pettigrew's. Because even a rat had made more choices on that day than he. He had the agency of a sack of potatoes.

Harry stops at his mindless, yet meaningful task to push open the desk drawer. Dust motes rise up to flicker and glimmer in the warm shine of the desk lamp. He pushes his glasses back onto his nose. For a moment, he is tempted to fix their prescription power with a flick of his wand, but then decides to leave things as they are for a few days longer, maybe a week. He has aged, just as the precious item inside the drawer, and he guesses he has aged well, and what else would have been expected from the Boy Who Lived? Smiling, he pictures sprightly, grey haired Ginny, who still settles as confidently onto a broom as other witches of her age might settle into a recliner. Their rambunctious children have long since written their own history, as have their children theirs.

Harry's nose tickles from the smell of old paper. While he lets his fingers slowly trail over the wrinkled and faded cover, he feels a warmth spreading inside his belly that has nothing to do with the Firewhisky he had in his tea. It has to do with a memory. A memory of the day a story began.

It was a bright day with a clear sky and a golden sun, and it would have been warm if it hadn't been so cold. Harry shivered, gripping his baggy jumper on both sides, in an attempt to keep in a measure of warmth. But then the tips of his fingers were getting numb, so he tucked them under his armpits. The wind was so cold up here that the broken-and-patched frame of his glasses caught frost. His teeth chattered, but over this, he could very well make out the voices rising up from below.

"Potter – Rotter!" He ducked the attack that followed, crouching low behind the wall. "What's that freak doin' up there? Oi! Oi, Potter! Look what I have for you!"

He didn't look, of course. One shower of snow had already been enough. It was gradually melting its way through his collar and down the back of his neck. Harry cursed Dudley's gang of witless bullies as much as he was baffled at how he had managed to get onto the roof of the school. He knew he had been running down a corridor one second, pulse and feet racing, the lot of them at his heels, jeering. The next second, he was on the flat roof. On a very beautifully blue-skied and frost-glazed, very Februarish day. Without mittens or cap or jacket. It didn't make any sense whatsoever. Plus, they had found him nonetheless.

Another snowball swished over his head.

"What's that racket? Caught and cornered something, you lovely beasts?"

Harry risked a peek over the low wall. He didn't know if he should feel relieved by what he saw. It was the new caretaker, a really –really– tall man with jet-black hair and eyes of an icy blue. It was not that he often noted with such detail the features of the grown-ups that were a part of, but not really took a part in his life. But Mister Heimlich? He had eyes you couldn't ever forget, Harry was sure. It was not really because of their startling blueness, but because of the intensity with which they shone. And there was something else – Harry couldn't describe it. He didn't really look like a caretaker, yet somehow he did.