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lomonaaerenTitle: The Accidental Anaconda
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Pairing: None, gen
Content Notes: Alternate universe, backstory, mild angst
Rating: PG
Wordcount: 2900
Summary: Harry’s childhood is filled with accidental magic, wonder, and the giant anaconda that watches over him.
Author’s Notes: This is another of my From Samhain to the Solstice fics for Fredrich, who asked for a one-shot in the backstory of the Children of the Sun series, with Golden and accidental magical adventures in Harry’s childhood. It’s probably best to have read at least “Aurumorphia” before you read this, if not the rest of the series.
The Accidental Anaconda
“Golden, leave the apple alone.”
Harry kept his voice to a low hiss. It always upset his primary school teachers when he spoke to the air. Well, it wasn’t really the air, it was Golden, but none of them could sense him, so them it was like the air.
Golden gave him a bright look. Then he eased towards Mrs. Wiggins’s desk, and the apple that sat on the edge of it.
Harry sighed. He knew the apple was probably going to disappear in seconds, and then Mrs. Wiggins would blame him. Harry couldn’t help it. He could only reason with Golden, not stop him if he really wanted to do something.
Mrs. Wiggins sort of deserved it, anyway. She was the kind of teacher who bought Dudley’s innocent act and cooed over him when he came in with stories about his “horrible cousin.” And she talked to Harry as if she thought he was dumb. Harry wasn’t dumb. He just couldn’t show that he was smart, ‘cause then Dudley would try to beat him up even more and the Dursleys would glare at him.
Golden made sure they couldn’t lock him in the cupboard anymore. But it was still annoying.
“Mrs. Wiggins, Mrs. Wiggins! Where did your apple go?”
That was Suzie, a whiny girl Harry didn’t like. She was blonde like Dudley and she simpered like Dudley did. And she called attention to things that Harry didn’t want her calling attention to, either.
Mrs. Wiggins turned around sharply and shrieked when she saw the apple was gone. Harry was the only one who could see the lump in Golden’s throat as it moved down his neck, of course. He sighed and leaned back, and waited for Dudley to say what he was going to say next, which would blame it on Harry.
“Harry must have stolen it,” Dudley sang out, and grinned meanly at Harry over Mrs. Wiggins’s shoulder as she turned back around.
“You nasty little boy!” Mrs. Wiggins had her hands pressed to her heart as if she thought Harry would come over and steal that, too. “Did you take my apple?”
“I didn’t, Mrs. Wiggins. I’m sitting right here. I didn’t get up and take the apple.” Harry had at least learned to say that kind of thing calmly, even though he didn’t like Mrs. Wiggins and he really didn’t like Dudley. If he got upset, people would just believe he was lying. He kept on drawing the house he was drawing.
“You must have had something to do with it! You nasty little boy!”
Harry only blinked at her and added a chimney to the house.
“Freak,” Dudley added, and Dudley’s friends who were sitting next to him snickered.
Mrs. Wiggins ended up taking him to the Head’s office. The Head seemed irritated and told her that Harry probably had taken the apple, but unless she had proof, they couldn’t do anything. Mrs. Wiggins fumed like Aunt Petunia all the way back to the classroom.
When they were back at Privet Drive after school, Harry gave Golden a sharp look. “Stop stealing apples! Just stop stealing things in general! You get me in trouble when you do that!”
Golden just curled up along the bottom of the cupboard and yawned at him. Harry sighed and leaned back so he could study the lightbulb above him. He needed to know how to make Golden stop stealing apples.
People wanted all sorts of things, he knew. His relatives wanted endless money and for Harry to go away and leave them alone. Kids at school wanted sweets and money and no homework and for Dudley to stop beating them up. People on the telly that Harry sometimes saw before Dudley changed the channel wanted love, money, guns, and people to die.
Harry just wanted his invisible golden anaconda to stop stealing apples.
*
“Get him, Dudley!”
Harry ran around the corner as fast as he could. Most of the time, he didn’t need to worry about his cousin bothering him anymore, except when Dudley lied to the teachers about something Golden had done. His snake would just look at his relatives and glow a little, and they would find something else to do. But when they were at school and Dudley was with his friends and Golden was asleep in a patch of sunlight somewhere…
Then Harry had to worry.
And Piers Polkiss, Dudley’s best friend, seemed able to ignore Golden’s glowing sometimes. He was focused on Harry and he wanted to torment him. Harry thought that was why.
Harry ran around the corner, and saw Golden slithering towards him, fast. But he knew Golden wouldn’t get there before Dudley and his gang did, and if he stood still, they would beat him up. Harry didn’t want to get beaten up. So he kept running.
Suddenly, he saw the writing on Golden’s scales glowing. It only did that, most of the time, when Golden was getting food or making his relatives ignore him or doing something else special and important. This time, Harry thought he saw a few of the letters leap up into the air and rotate around before the glow reached out and grabbed him.
And then he disappeared.
And reappeared. Harry shook his head. He didn’t think he cared much for disappearing. It was dark and there was a sensation like someone had squeezed him like toothpaste.
He looked down and realized he was on the roof of the school. His hands clutched the edges of the roof in shock. Dudley and his friends were staring up at Harry in shock, too. Golden had slowed down and was only swaying in place, although now and then his tongue extended in a way that said he was enjoying himself.
Harry would have scolded Golden and asked what he did if they were alone, but they weren’t alone. So he scowled at Golden in a way that promised they would be talking later. Golden only twisted his neck to the side, the way he did when he was being stubborn.
Dudley looks at Piers, and they looked around at their other friends, and then Dudley said firmly, “Must’ve been the wind.”
“Must’ve.” Piers bobbed his head fiercely, the stupidest expression Harry had ever seen on his face. “How else can you explain that?”
“Freak,” Dudley said to Harry. “You’re in trouble, freak.” Then he turned and walked towards the school, acting as if he wasn’t scared at all. But Harry knew he was. That was too similar to the kinds of things that happened at home, when Dudley would see his parents suddenly forget about punishing Harry.
Harry leaned over the edge of the roof and scowled at Golden. “You shouldn’t have done that.”
Golden swayed in place, gazing up at him with bright eyes.
“And now that I’m here,” Harry said, waving his hands around, “how am I going to get down?”
The glow slowly rose from the letters on Golden’s back again, and reached out to embrace Harry. Harry caught his breath for a second as he seemed to whirl and blaze through the sky like a boomerang. Then he landed in front of the school, and stared around in circles. Golden danced in front of him.
“Okay,” Harry said. “Okay. But that’s not something you should do all the time!”
Golden waved his tail in the dust, and then crawled away. That afternoon, several sandwiches went missing from the teachers’ refrigerator. Harry was only glad that he was in a completely different part of the school and couldn’t be blamed—although from what he heard, Mrs. Wiggins wanted to anyway.
In the cupboard that night, he put his hand on Golden’s head and stared into his eyes. “You have to stop stealing,” he said.
Golden pointed his nose towards the Dursleys’ refrigerator, which Harry understood. The Dursleys kept trying to get away without feeding him—because they weren’t very smart and didn’t learn—but Golden would make sure that they could open the locked cupboard and get the food they needed.
“Well, that’s different,” said Harry weakly. He lay back on his cot and frowned at Golden, who was looking patient. “They deserve it.”
Golden’s gaze said as plain as the words he sometimes spoke in that he thought Harry’s teachers deserved it, too. Especially Mrs. Wiggins.
*
“Golden, come back here!”
Golden was wriggling ahead of him so fast that Harry thought he would have lost sight of him by now if he hadn’t been the color he was. Harry chased him across the Dursleys’ garden and over to the far wall. Golden whipped himself under the rosebushes, making Harry want to tear his hair out. Aunt Petunia wouldn’t be able to do anything to him if her precious rosebushes got damaged, but she would sneer and look at him, and Harry preferred it when his relatives ignored him completely.
“Get out of there!”
Golden came out of the rosebushes with a small snake next to him. Harry blinked and stared. He thought it was a grass snake, but he couldn’t be sure. They hadn’t learned that much about snakes in school.
Golden crawled straight up to Harry with the grass snake and swayed his head back and forth. Harry looked from Golden to the snake, and wondered what was supposed to happen next. But Golden seemed pretty insistent, so Harry tried, “Hello?”
The snake immediately reared back like Golden trying to reach a sandwich on a table and said, “You speak!”
“Yes? Most humans do.”
“No! Not many of them can speak the language of snakes!”
Harry blinked. Oh, yes. He supposed that was different. And he wondered if that was what Golden had wanted him to see when he pulled the grass snake out of the rosebushes. “I can speak to you. Do you need help?”
The grass snake considered him from several different angles, as though it wanted to see whether Harry’s language would change when it did that. Harry stood still and shot a glance at Golden. Golden just looked as calm as he always did.
“No,” the grass snake said finally. “But it is interesting that there is a boy with such a powerful gift who dwells here. I might tell others about you. We might come to visit.”
Harry smiled. He didn’t have any friends other than Golden. Dudley kept some of the kids away, and the others stayed away because they knew there was something strange about Harry, even though they couldn’t see or hear or feel Golden. “I would like that. The more people I can speak to, the better.”
“You called us people!”
Harry looked at the snake. “Uh—is that an insult or not?”
“You did not mean it as an insult, so that is not one,” said the small snake, and wriggled back into the thick grass around the rosebushes.
Harry shot a suspicious look at Golden, wondering if he had actually done something good by introducing Harry to a snake. But Golden was basking in the sun, and didn’t respond to any of Harry’s questions, because what he was doing was very important.
*
“Mr. Potter! I want to speak with you.”
Harry halted and looked up in surprise. It had actually been years since he was in Mrs. Wiggins’s class; he was ten now. But Mrs. Wiggins was standing in front of him with her hands planted on her hips. Harry sighed and resigned himself. “What is it, Mrs. Wiggins?” He glared at Golden, who was sneaking up behind her. Golden stopped and tilted his head to the side.
That didn’t really reassure Harry, either. Golden sometimes let things go when he looked like that, but other times, he was plotting something.
“Look at me when I’m talking to you, boy!”
Harry didn’t much like being called “boy,” since Uncle Vernon used it all the time, but he knew he couldn’t get angry without explaining lots of uncomfortable things. He lifted his eyes back to his teacher’s face. “Yes, Mrs. Wiggins?”
“I may never have caught you stealing my apples or sandwiches all those years ago, but I know it was you!” Mrs. Wiggins shook her finger at him. “I will have you know stealing is wrong, boy! And then I met your aunt yesterday, and she said that you steal food at home all the time, as well! How can you explain that to me, boy?”
Because otherwise my relatives wouldn’t feed me, and anyway, it’s mostly Golden, not me. But Harry knew those words would get him in trouble even if Mrs. Wiggins was kind. He knew what she wanted, so he said it. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Wiggins.”
“I just don’t understand how your aunt and uncle had the raising of you and yet you turned out so different from your cousin. Just goes to show there’s bad seed and good seed, I suppose…”
Golden appeared behind Mrs. Wiggins. His head rose and he looked steadily at the back of his hair. Harry gave him a warning glance. Mrs. Wiggins, who was still talking about what a bad seed he was and how generous the Dursleys were for raising him, didn’t notice.
Don’t, Harry thought as hard as he could. But Golden was swaying a little and the words on his back were glowing, and Harry didn’t think he was going to listen.
It seemed Mrs. Wiggins had noticed that Harry wasn’t paying as much attention as he should. She put her hands on her hips and tapped her foot on the floor. “Are you listening to me, boy?”
“Sorry, Mrs. Wiggins.”
The golden glow rose higher and higher. Then it streaked over and touched the back of Mrs. Wiggins’s hair. Her hair flashed once and then turned blue. Harry’s mouth fell open. He stared at Golden. That was sort of revenge, since she was proud of her hair, but it wasn’t one that he would have thought of.
Golden looked pleased with himself. He flicked out his tongue, and then crawled into a corner of the corridor that got some sunlight through a window.
“What are you gaping at, boy?”
Harry cleared his throat, but it took him a couple tries before he could say it. “Um, Mrs. Wiggins—your hair—”
“What are you talking about, boy?”
“It’s turned blue, miss. Sorry.”
Mrs. Wiggins rolled her eyes at him and said, “I hope that you know I can see right through your pathetic lies, boy.” Then she turned and flounced dramatically away in the direction of the teachers’ lounge.
Harry glared down at Golden. “Why did you do that?” he whispered. “I’m the one who gets in trouble, you know, since no one can see you.”
Golden came over and nudged him gently with his blunt nose, and then spoke softly in the hissing language that Harry had also used with the grass snake. “You won’t get in trouble. Mrs. Wiggins is the only one who believes that you can actually do things like this, and she isn’t your teacher anymore. You’ll be fine. She deserved it.”
“But I don’t want to cause pain to people.”
Golden reared back and looked at him in disbelief. “The only thing that blue hair will hurt is her pride. She did far worse to you.”
“She never did!”
“She caused you pain when she believed Dudley’s lies and always assumed you were cheating or behind anything that went wrong in class. Do you remember the day when she decided that you must have stolen some sweets she brought in and it was a day that you were absent because you were sick?”
Harry nodded slowly. He normally didn’t get to stay home when he was sick, but his fever had been so high that Golden had cooled him down and he’d seen things that weren’t there. Aunt Petunia had kept him home because of what she feared people might say if Harry went to school and stumbled around staring into the air and babbling about things.
“You deserve to have someone care about you, too. You deserve to have someone say it’s wrong when you’re hurt.” Golden nudged Harry nearly hard enough in the chest with his snout to make him fall over. “I’m going to be the person, because you relatives don’t care and the teachers here are ineffective even if they’re nice to you. I love you. I won’t let you suffer.”
Harry slowly put his arms around Golden’s neck and leaned his chin against his scales. Golden vibrated softly the way he would sometimes do, which was almost like a cat purring.
“Mental Potter! Hugging the air!”
But Harry ignored that. Other people couldn’t see Golden for some reason, but he could. And Golden would always be with him.
The End.
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Pairing: None, gen
Content Notes: Alternate universe, backstory, mild angst
Rating: PG
Wordcount: 2900
Summary: Harry’s childhood is filled with accidental magic, wonder, and the giant anaconda that watches over him.
Author’s Notes: This is another of my From Samhain to the Solstice fics for Fredrich, who asked for a one-shot in the backstory of the Children of the Sun series, with Golden and accidental magical adventures in Harry’s childhood. It’s probably best to have read at least “Aurumorphia” before you read this, if not the rest of the series.
The Accidental Anaconda
“Golden, leave the apple alone.”
Harry kept his voice to a low hiss. It always upset his primary school teachers when he spoke to the air. Well, it wasn’t really the air, it was Golden, but none of them could sense him, so them it was like the air.
Golden gave him a bright look. Then he eased towards Mrs. Wiggins’s desk, and the apple that sat on the edge of it.
Harry sighed. He knew the apple was probably going to disappear in seconds, and then Mrs. Wiggins would blame him. Harry couldn’t help it. He could only reason with Golden, not stop him if he really wanted to do something.
Mrs. Wiggins sort of deserved it, anyway. She was the kind of teacher who bought Dudley’s innocent act and cooed over him when he came in with stories about his “horrible cousin.” And she talked to Harry as if she thought he was dumb. Harry wasn’t dumb. He just couldn’t show that he was smart, ‘cause then Dudley would try to beat him up even more and the Dursleys would glare at him.
Golden made sure they couldn’t lock him in the cupboard anymore. But it was still annoying.
“Mrs. Wiggins, Mrs. Wiggins! Where did your apple go?”
That was Suzie, a whiny girl Harry didn’t like. She was blonde like Dudley and she simpered like Dudley did. And she called attention to things that Harry didn’t want her calling attention to, either.
Mrs. Wiggins turned around sharply and shrieked when she saw the apple was gone. Harry was the only one who could see the lump in Golden’s throat as it moved down his neck, of course. He sighed and leaned back, and waited for Dudley to say what he was going to say next, which would blame it on Harry.
“Harry must have stolen it,” Dudley sang out, and grinned meanly at Harry over Mrs. Wiggins’s shoulder as she turned back around.
“You nasty little boy!” Mrs. Wiggins had her hands pressed to her heart as if she thought Harry would come over and steal that, too. “Did you take my apple?”
“I didn’t, Mrs. Wiggins. I’m sitting right here. I didn’t get up and take the apple.” Harry had at least learned to say that kind of thing calmly, even though he didn’t like Mrs. Wiggins and he really didn’t like Dudley. If he got upset, people would just believe he was lying. He kept on drawing the house he was drawing.
“You must have had something to do with it! You nasty little boy!”
Harry only blinked at her and added a chimney to the house.
“Freak,” Dudley added, and Dudley’s friends who were sitting next to him snickered.
Mrs. Wiggins ended up taking him to the Head’s office. The Head seemed irritated and told her that Harry probably had taken the apple, but unless she had proof, they couldn’t do anything. Mrs. Wiggins fumed like Aunt Petunia all the way back to the classroom.
When they were back at Privet Drive after school, Harry gave Golden a sharp look. “Stop stealing apples! Just stop stealing things in general! You get me in trouble when you do that!”
Golden just curled up along the bottom of the cupboard and yawned at him. Harry sighed and leaned back so he could study the lightbulb above him. He needed to know how to make Golden stop stealing apples.
People wanted all sorts of things, he knew. His relatives wanted endless money and for Harry to go away and leave them alone. Kids at school wanted sweets and money and no homework and for Dudley to stop beating them up. People on the telly that Harry sometimes saw before Dudley changed the channel wanted love, money, guns, and people to die.
Harry just wanted his invisible golden anaconda to stop stealing apples.
*
“Get him, Dudley!”
Harry ran around the corner as fast as he could. Most of the time, he didn’t need to worry about his cousin bothering him anymore, except when Dudley lied to the teachers about something Golden had done. His snake would just look at his relatives and glow a little, and they would find something else to do. But when they were at school and Dudley was with his friends and Golden was asleep in a patch of sunlight somewhere…
Then Harry had to worry.
And Piers Polkiss, Dudley’s best friend, seemed able to ignore Golden’s glowing sometimes. He was focused on Harry and he wanted to torment him. Harry thought that was why.
Harry ran around the corner, and saw Golden slithering towards him, fast. But he knew Golden wouldn’t get there before Dudley and his gang did, and if he stood still, they would beat him up. Harry didn’t want to get beaten up. So he kept running.
Suddenly, he saw the writing on Golden’s scales glowing. It only did that, most of the time, when Golden was getting food or making his relatives ignore him or doing something else special and important. This time, Harry thought he saw a few of the letters leap up into the air and rotate around before the glow reached out and grabbed him.
And then he disappeared.
And reappeared. Harry shook his head. He didn’t think he cared much for disappearing. It was dark and there was a sensation like someone had squeezed him like toothpaste.
He looked down and realized he was on the roof of the school. His hands clutched the edges of the roof in shock. Dudley and his friends were staring up at Harry in shock, too. Golden had slowed down and was only swaying in place, although now and then his tongue extended in a way that said he was enjoying himself.
Harry would have scolded Golden and asked what he did if they were alone, but they weren’t alone. So he scowled at Golden in a way that promised they would be talking later. Golden only twisted his neck to the side, the way he did when he was being stubborn.
Dudley looks at Piers, and they looked around at their other friends, and then Dudley said firmly, “Must’ve been the wind.”
“Must’ve.” Piers bobbed his head fiercely, the stupidest expression Harry had ever seen on his face. “How else can you explain that?”
“Freak,” Dudley said to Harry. “You’re in trouble, freak.” Then he turned and walked towards the school, acting as if he wasn’t scared at all. But Harry knew he was. That was too similar to the kinds of things that happened at home, when Dudley would see his parents suddenly forget about punishing Harry.
Harry leaned over the edge of the roof and scowled at Golden. “You shouldn’t have done that.”
Golden swayed in place, gazing up at him with bright eyes.
“And now that I’m here,” Harry said, waving his hands around, “how am I going to get down?”
The glow slowly rose from the letters on Golden’s back again, and reached out to embrace Harry. Harry caught his breath for a second as he seemed to whirl and blaze through the sky like a boomerang. Then he landed in front of the school, and stared around in circles. Golden danced in front of him.
“Okay,” Harry said. “Okay. But that’s not something you should do all the time!”
Golden waved his tail in the dust, and then crawled away. That afternoon, several sandwiches went missing from the teachers’ refrigerator. Harry was only glad that he was in a completely different part of the school and couldn’t be blamed—although from what he heard, Mrs. Wiggins wanted to anyway.
In the cupboard that night, he put his hand on Golden’s head and stared into his eyes. “You have to stop stealing,” he said.
Golden pointed his nose towards the Dursleys’ refrigerator, which Harry understood. The Dursleys kept trying to get away without feeding him—because they weren’t very smart and didn’t learn—but Golden would make sure that they could open the locked cupboard and get the food they needed.
“Well, that’s different,” said Harry weakly. He lay back on his cot and frowned at Golden, who was looking patient. “They deserve it.”
Golden’s gaze said as plain as the words he sometimes spoke in that he thought Harry’s teachers deserved it, too. Especially Mrs. Wiggins.
*
“Golden, come back here!”
Golden was wriggling ahead of him so fast that Harry thought he would have lost sight of him by now if he hadn’t been the color he was. Harry chased him across the Dursleys’ garden and over to the far wall. Golden whipped himself under the rosebushes, making Harry want to tear his hair out. Aunt Petunia wouldn’t be able to do anything to him if her precious rosebushes got damaged, but she would sneer and look at him, and Harry preferred it when his relatives ignored him completely.
“Get out of there!”
Golden came out of the rosebushes with a small snake next to him. Harry blinked and stared. He thought it was a grass snake, but he couldn’t be sure. They hadn’t learned that much about snakes in school.
Golden crawled straight up to Harry with the grass snake and swayed his head back and forth. Harry looked from Golden to the snake, and wondered what was supposed to happen next. But Golden seemed pretty insistent, so Harry tried, “Hello?”
The snake immediately reared back like Golden trying to reach a sandwich on a table and said, “You speak!”
“Yes? Most humans do.”
“No! Not many of them can speak the language of snakes!”
Harry blinked. Oh, yes. He supposed that was different. And he wondered if that was what Golden had wanted him to see when he pulled the grass snake out of the rosebushes. “I can speak to you. Do you need help?”
The grass snake considered him from several different angles, as though it wanted to see whether Harry’s language would change when it did that. Harry stood still and shot a glance at Golden. Golden just looked as calm as he always did.
“No,” the grass snake said finally. “But it is interesting that there is a boy with such a powerful gift who dwells here. I might tell others about you. We might come to visit.”
Harry smiled. He didn’t have any friends other than Golden. Dudley kept some of the kids away, and the others stayed away because they knew there was something strange about Harry, even though they couldn’t see or hear or feel Golden. “I would like that. The more people I can speak to, the better.”
“You called us people!”
Harry looked at the snake. “Uh—is that an insult or not?”
“You did not mean it as an insult, so that is not one,” said the small snake, and wriggled back into the thick grass around the rosebushes.
Harry shot a suspicious look at Golden, wondering if he had actually done something good by introducing Harry to a snake. But Golden was basking in the sun, and didn’t respond to any of Harry’s questions, because what he was doing was very important.
*
“Mr. Potter! I want to speak with you.”
Harry halted and looked up in surprise. It had actually been years since he was in Mrs. Wiggins’s class; he was ten now. But Mrs. Wiggins was standing in front of him with her hands planted on her hips. Harry sighed and resigned himself. “What is it, Mrs. Wiggins?” He glared at Golden, who was sneaking up behind her. Golden stopped and tilted his head to the side.
That didn’t really reassure Harry, either. Golden sometimes let things go when he looked like that, but other times, he was plotting something.
“Look at me when I’m talking to you, boy!”
Harry didn’t much like being called “boy,” since Uncle Vernon used it all the time, but he knew he couldn’t get angry without explaining lots of uncomfortable things. He lifted his eyes back to his teacher’s face. “Yes, Mrs. Wiggins?”
“I may never have caught you stealing my apples or sandwiches all those years ago, but I know it was you!” Mrs. Wiggins shook her finger at him. “I will have you know stealing is wrong, boy! And then I met your aunt yesterday, and she said that you steal food at home all the time, as well! How can you explain that to me, boy?”
Because otherwise my relatives wouldn’t feed me, and anyway, it’s mostly Golden, not me. But Harry knew those words would get him in trouble even if Mrs. Wiggins was kind. He knew what she wanted, so he said it. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Wiggins.”
“I just don’t understand how your aunt and uncle had the raising of you and yet you turned out so different from your cousin. Just goes to show there’s bad seed and good seed, I suppose…”
Golden appeared behind Mrs. Wiggins. His head rose and he looked steadily at the back of his hair. Harry gave him a warning glance. Mrs. Wiggins, who was still talking about what a bad seed he was and how generous the Dursleys were for raising him, didn’t notice.
Don’t, Harry thought as hard as he could. But Golden was swaying a little and the words on his back were glowing, and Harry didn’t think he was going to listen.
It seemed Mrs. Wiggins had noticed that Harry wasn’t paying as much attention as he should. She put her hands on her hips and tapped her foot on the floor. “Are you listening to me, boy?”
“Sorry, Mrs. Wiggins.”
The golden glow rose higher and higher. Then it streaked over and touched the back of Mrs. Wiggins’s hair. Her hair flashed once and then turned blue. Harry’s mouth fell open. He stared at Golden. That was sort of revenge, since she was proud of her hair, but it wasn’t one that he would have thought of.
Golden looked pleased with himself. He flicked out his tongue, and then crawled into a corner of the corridor that got some sunlight through a window.
“What are you gaping at, boy?”
Harry cleared his throat, but it took him a couple tries before he could say it. “Um, Mrs. Wiggins—your hair—”
“What are you talking about, boy?”
“It’s turned blue, miss. Sorry.”
Mrs. Wiggins rolled her eyes at him and said, “I hope that you know I can see right through your pathetic lies, boy.” Then she turned and flounced dramatically away in the direction of the teachers’ lounge.
Harry glared down at Golden. “Why did you do that?” he whispered. “I’m the one who gets in trouble, you know, since no one can see you.”
Golden came over and nudged him gently with his blunt nose, and then spoke softly in the hissing language that Harry had also used with the grass snake. “You won’t get in trouble. Mrs. Wiggins is the only one who believes that you can actually do things like this, and she isn’t your teacher anymore. You’ll be fine. She deserved it.”
“But I don’t want to cause pain to people.”
Golden reared back and looked at him in disbelief. “The only thing that blue hair will hurt is her pride. She did far worse to you.”
“She never did!”
“She caused you pain when she believed Dudley’s lies and always assumed you were cheating or behind anything that went wrong in class. Do you remember the day when she decided that you must have stolen some sweets she brought in and it was a day that you were absent because you were sick?”
Harry nodded slowly. He normally didn’t get to stay home when he was sick, but his fever had been so high that Golden had cooled him down and he’d seen things that weren’t there. Aunt Petunia had kept him home because of what she feared people might say if Harry went to school and stumbled around staring into the air and babbling about things.
“You deserve to have someone care about you, too. You deserve to have someone say it’s wrong when you’re hurt.” Golden nudged Harry nearly hard enough in the chest with his snout to make him fall over. “I’m going to be the person, because you relatives don’t care and the teachers here are ineffective even if they’re nice to you. I love you. I won’t let you suffer.”
Harry slowly put his arms around Golden’s neck and leaned his chin against his scales. Golden vibrated softly the way he would sometimes do, which was almost like a cat purring.
“Mental Potter! Hugging the air!”
But Harry ignored that. Other people couldn’t see Golden for some reason, but he could. And Golden would always be with him.
The End.
