Chapter Text
They had got there of course by Magic, which is the only way of getting to Narnia. – The Voyage of the Dawn Treader
This is how it begins… perhaps:
A boy walks into a castle, and his eyes are not wide with awe because he has spent years (and no time at all) living in a castle just as grand and just as magical. Instead, his bright green eyes are narrowed, taking in the moving portraits and ghosts that hover through walls, and also the people around him. He knows there are beasts here— centaurs and merfolk, talking animals and dragons. But in this castle only humans reign.
As this beginning unfolds, the boy stands up straight and waits for his name to be called. When the matronly woman at the front of the hall announces, “Potter, Harry!” he steps forward, shoulders back, and ignores the stares of the children surrounding him… and the curious gaze of the old man at the head of the table.
He takes his place on the stool and lets a hat fall over his eyes, and a voice inside his head makes a sound of surprise.
“It’s been an Age since I’ve sorted someone with two lifetimes in their soul,” it says.
“But it can be done?” Harry asks.
“Oh yes,” the hat says. “It’s just a tricky bit of business, deciding which lifetime to sort you on.”
Harry waits patiently.
“In your first life, the almost-eleven years spent here in England, you grew to be a determined young man,” the hat says. “One who overcame the most difficult of obstacles.” Harry feels the hat pull the images forward: years spent in a dark cupboard, never enough food. Sneaking bits of burnt bacon from the pan when nobody was looking, standing up to Dudley and his gang in the schoolyard before fists began to fly. The memories are painful, but distant now, and he pushes them away.
“And then,” the hat continues, “there are the years you spent Elsewhere.”
Harry smiles and lets the memories come to life in his mind. Loyalty and friendship—“You would do well in Hufflepuff, Mr. Potter, but then…”— and chivalry and daring— “… there is so much Gryffindor in you as well,”— and books and scrolls, diplomacy and wisdom—“Though I suppose Ravenclaw is not out of the question, lad… still…”— and the weight of leadership, responsibility and power, and a family (a father) who raised him to understand that everyone has shadows and secrets, and how to use them for the good of all.
Beyond the stool and the hat, the Great Hall begins to stir. Surely this is taking too long, the students murmur. Professors exchange weary glances.
Finally, the hat opens its mouth along a tear, and proclaims, “Slytherin!”
The boy removes the hat with a rueful grin, sweeps his robes with a grace that few children in the room possess, and makes his way to the table along the far wall, silence following in his wake.
But maybe this was not the beginning.
Maybe the beginning happened one summer afternoon in a dreary suburb called Little Whinging, in a dreary house on Privet Drive, where the same young boy is dragged down the hallway by his furious uncle. His arm aches and his wrist is bruised and he has welts from a beating which he dares not cry over.
But something lingers deep in his chest, behind the pain and fear. That something is dangerous, a word that he dares not ever utter aloud: magic.
He talked to a snake today, the boys thinks. He, plain old Harry, spoke to a boa constrictor and helped it escape and he made the glass vanish and— and— that is magic.
His uncle yells and threatens and Harry knows his punishment will be severe. Sure enough he sees the door to his cupboard looming, and feels the dread sinking through his limbs.
The door opens, and his uncle flings Harry into it. His shoulder wrenches from the violence as Harry tumbles in.
The door slams shut behind him.
Harry stumbles across the small space towards the tiny mattress pad that makes up his bed, his injured arm curled against his chest. He inches forward, and forward, but the mattress pad is nowhere to be found, and—
His cupboard can’t be this big, surely? Where is the back wall?
And—
There is a scent of flowers. His cupboard has never in Harry’s entire life smelled so lovely, but now he can smell roses like his Aunt grows (like Harry grows for her), fresh green things, and there’s a light, sunlight, dappling through dense branches, and—
And—
“Oh!” A woman’s voice exclaims. “Well, I’ll be. What in Aslan’s name are you doing here, lad?”
Harry ducks at the first sound, but this is not his Aunt’s shrill tone. There is no frying pan waiting to catch him out of line. Instead there is a… a beaver, wearing a frilly apron and carrying a basket.
This is not his cupboard. This is not the backyard of Number 4 Privet Drive. This is not the park down the road, where he flees from Dudley and his gang, or the schoolyard where he hides from teachers who think him dull.
“Oh,” the beaver says again, and this time her voice is dismayed. “Look at you. You’re injured, poor dear. Can you stand? Come with me, I’ll get you a nice cup of tea and we can see about getting you a healer, hm?”
“Is this—” Harry’s mouth snaps shut. Questions are dangerous. But he cannot hold this one inside himself any longer, whatever the risk. “Is this heaven?” he asks.
The beaver tuts, and wraps him in a knit shawl that is so soft it feels like silk. “Goodness no,” she says. “This is Narnia, my dear.”
Of course, Harry would argue that neither of those were truly the beginning. If asked, he would say that the beginning came the day that he met a king.
***
Harry has not known much kindness in his life, but the last week has been overflowing with it to the point where he has already started to forget about the dark, painful life he’s left behind. His new home with Mrs. Beaver is everything he could have dreamed of and more: warmth and sunlight, wildflowers carrying perfumed air in through the open windows, warm bread and honey on the table whenever his stomach growls.
On his first evening, there is a knock at the door and a man enters.
“No, not a man,” comes the gentle correction. “I am a faun, and you can call me Tulous. I have been studying healing under Queen Lucy the Valiant herself, and I am here to help you.”
And so Harry learns about fauns, while his shoulder his examined and bandaged, and he learns about dryads and dwarves from Mr. Tulous while the faun rubs a minty-scented lotion over the bruises on his wrist, and he learns about the Kings and Queens of Narnia while Mr. Tulous and Mrs. Beaver help him to bathe and dress in clothes that do not hang off him, and feed him fresh fish and carrots from the garden and apple pie for dessert.
“You should take him to Cair Paravel,” Mr. Tulous says, when he thinks Harry is asleep on the (soft! and warm! and all his!) bed that Mrs. Beaver has led him to, tucking him in and humming a lullaby.
“In a few days, perhaps,” Mrs. Beaver agrees. “Sons of Adam belong with their own. But I think he needs more time to heal, first.”
Mr. Tulous agrees and plans to accompany them one week from then, and leaves behind more pots of salve. He brushes a gentle hand over Harry’s head, and Harry drifts off to the sound of him departing the cozy den.
And so it is that after a week of kindness and good food, of not being hit or forced to do chores, Harry has discovered what it is to smile and laugh and find joy in life. He skips alongside Mrs. Beaver and Mr. Tulous as they set out in the morning for Cair Paravel.
“Where the Kings and Queens live,” Harry states.
“Yes,” Mrs. Beaver says. “Do you remember their names?”
Harry has absorbed everything about his new life with relish. “Oh yes, Mrs. Beaver. There is Queen Lucy the Valiant, who taught Mr. Tulous how to heal. And there is Queen Susan the Gentle, who can fire and bow and arrow and hit anything she aims for. And there is King Edmund the Just, who knows all of the laws and is friends with all the other countries.” Harry pauses to inspect a butterfly, then dashes to catch up. “And then there’s King Peter the Magnificent, who is the High King and the bravest of them all!”
“Very good, Harry,” Mr. Tulous says, and begins to quiz him on Narnian geography.
They reach Cair Paravel by lunchtime, and Harry’s excitement dims in the shadow of the imposing castle. Mrs. Beaver guides him across the drawbridge, pointing out the drwarven guards and the gryphons stationed up above. A fox meets them just inside the entrance and leads them down a hallway.
Harry does mean to stay with Mrs. Beaver and Mr. Tulous. He means to behave, truly! But there are so many things to see in the castle, and Mrs. Beaver is talking to the fox about their appointment, and Harry stops to look at a painting of very large boat and a sea monster, and then—
When he looks up, the fox and Mr. Tulous and Mrs. Beaver have vanished.
Suddenly the castle seems less exciting and more scary. Harry walks down the hallway and turns a corner, but there is nobody in sight. He continues walking, another corridor and another turn, until he hears someone. It is a man’s voice, and there are loud words, and the sound of heavy footsteps, and Harry’s heart begins to race.
He bolts, turning back the way he came—or at least the way he thinks he came— and he runs and runs and hopes that whoever is behind him is not following. He risks a look, to make sure he is not being chased—
— and slams into something large and hard.
Harry screams.
The thing he has run into shouts.
Harry begins to cry. He knows that crying makes things worse, it’s one of the first lessons he learned in the place Before, but he cannot help himself. He is lost and afraid and he has done something wrong by not staying with Mrs. Beaver and Mr. Tulous, and he remembers what happens when he does something wrong. He curls up on the floor, arms wrapped around himself as he shakes, and waits for the pain to return.
A shadow looms over him, and Harry tenses.
Instead, there are gentle arms surrounding him.
“Oh, child,” a man says, who is not Uncle Vernon and is not angry at all. “It’s okay, nothing will harm you here. Shh, no need for tears. What’s your name, little one?”
Harry manages his name around hiccupping breaths.
“Harry.” The man sounds confused. “Where are you from, Harry?”
Slowly the tears recede, though Harry does not uncurl yet. “I live with Mrs. Beaver now,” he says.
“And before that?” the man asks. “Where did you live before that?”
Harry does not like thinking about Before. In the last week, he has decided with all the confidence of a ten (almost eleven) year old boy that he will never, ever go back there. But the man holding him is calm and kind, and the fear of Before still lingers. “Little Whinging,” he says. “That’s in Surrey.”
“England.” The man exhales the word. “You’re from England.”
Something about the man’s tone makes Harry open his eyes and unclench his arms. He uncurls and looks up at the man holding him.
Dark hair, pale skin. He is older, but not old… like Harry’s first primary school teacher, who Aunt Petunia said was much too young to be a teacher, she should be looking for a husband at her age with a sniff.
“You look like me,” Harry says.
The man quirks a smile. “So I do,” he says. “I think this is a sign that we should be very good friends, Harry.”
Harry sits up, the fear almost forgotten in the face of this new excitement. “I’ve never had a friend before,” he confesses.
Something crosses the man’s face, sharp, there and gone in a split second. “Neither had I, until I came to Narnia.”
“What’s your name?” Harry asks.
“My name is Edmund,” he says, offering a hand and another smile. “Now, let’s see if we can find Mrs. Beaver. I’m sure she’s very worried about you.”
(This is the beginning.)
***
Albus Dumbledore had seen many things in his many years on Earth, but Harry Potter is easily one of the most baffling of them all.
The boy defies explanation.
“Why aren’t you in Gryffindor?” the youngest Weasley boy asks in the hallway, the day after the Sorting.
Albus watches from a distance as Harry pauses and appears to think through the question. “Well,” he says finally, “the hat did consider me for it. But I suppose I’m too much like my father in the end.”
He turns and leaves young Weasley—and a dozen others who were listening in as well—with furrowed brows as they tried to process that.
“I thought both his parents were Gryffindors,” a Hufflepuff third year says.
“He’s not going to last a week in Slytherin if he goes about talking to blood traitors like that.” That from the Malfoy boy, and oh how Albus had wished Harry was not sharing a dorm with that one.
The Weasley boy overhears of course, and insults begin to fly, drawing the crowd’s attention away from Harry as he makes his way towards his first class. Only Dumbledore notices the way Harry stands and walks—like a trained Auror, instead of an eleven year old child.
It’s only one of the many things about Harry Potter that concern Albus. There is the fact that Harry’s owl returned promptly with a neatly written acceptance letter, rather than the difficulty Albus had anticipated from Petunia and her husband. Then, Harry himself showing up for school with his supplies, though nobody had been asked to escort him to Diagon Alley or Platform 9 ¾, and there was only the word of Mundungus—drunk, of course—that Harry had been spotted out and about, escorted by old Fleamont Potter of all people… as though Fleamont had not been dead over a decade now.
And then there’s the matter of the scar.
Or, rather, the lack thereof.
***
“Father!” Harry looks up from his book, delighted. “I thought you were still in Archenland to finalize the trade negotiations.”
His father manages a smile despite his obvious exhaustion. “I received a message from Mr. Tumnus that troubled me, so I left Lord Pirium in charge of the remaining negotiations and returned home.”
Harry sets the book aside and sits up straight, frowning. “Mr. Tumnus rarely reports to you directly,” he points out. “He is one of Aunt Lucy’s advisors. If he is sending you an urgent missive, then it means something is wrong.”
“Not wrong.” King Edmund taps his fingers against his thigh, the only sign that he’s frustrated. “Though, perhaps, not right.”
Harry is sixteen years old, and has grown into maturity in Narnia. He knows the walls of Cair Paravel as well as the backs of his own hands, knows its people and its beasts as well as he knows himself. There are few things that could cause his father to be so cautious.
“A sign from Aslan?” he asks.
“Perhaps.” Edmund pauses, then says, “The White Stag has returned to Narnia.”
Harry’s eyes narrow. “A questing beast. So there’s to be a hunt.”
Edmund tenses, and then pulls the chair out from the table across from Harry and slides into it. “There will be a hunt,” he says, “because Peter will be compelled to seek the Stag. But there is something else going on here—something darker.”
Of all inhabitants of Cair Paravel, it is Edmund and his adopted son Harry who know darkness best.
“Explain.”
“I’ve explained before that my siblings and I came from England, just like you, though many years earlier. And, while my siblings have lived blissfully in Narnia without any thought of that world we left behind, I have always suspected that we would be forced to return there someday.”
The room feels heavy around them. “You think that time approaches.”
“I do.” A beat, and Edmund reaches out his hand, takes Harry’s in it. “For all of us.”
Harry swallows hard. “I won’t go back to my past. I won’t go back to the pain and darkness. Not when I’ve finally had a chance to live in the light.”
“I would never dream of allowing such a thing,” Edmund says, and he speaks as a king, with certainty and authority. “Now listen carefully, I don’t know how much time we have.”
***
“Excuse me, Professor Binns?”
The entire class starts, many of them from where they have dozed off on their desks. Nobody asks a question in History of Magic. Ever.
Their professor seems just as surprised as the students.
“Yes, er—”
“Potter, sir.”
“Yes, Mr. Potter.”
“The text states that the Goblin Wars of 1683 ended when the dwarves abandoned their underground mines and forged a doorway to Somewhere Else, thus leaving their gold and gems to the goblins.”
Binns visibly flounders. “Yes, Mr. Potter…”
“But the text doesn’t say where the dwarves went to. Clearly they are no longer here on Earth, as we have no sign of dwarves to be found. So I was wondering where they might be?”
“That is—I mean to say—” Binns stumbles over his own words, going extremely transparent for a moment before his normal opacity returns. “I’m afraid we don’t cover Other Worlds in this class, Mr. Potter,” he finally says. “Suffice it to say that the dwarves were the greatest magical builders history has ever known—they helped to build Hogwarts, after all. So it’s likely that wherever they went is somewhere that we humans cannot possibly reach.”
***
There is a room in Hogwarts that few have ever found. It is located on the seventh floor, past a tapestry of trolls doing ballet.
It is said that if you walk across the empty wall in that abandoned corridor three times, a door will appear.
Think about what you require, and the castle shall provide.
The request must be born of need.
“I need a doorway to return home,” Harry whispers.
The door, when it appears, is clearly not of human make. The rivets that hold it together are of the finest dwarven craftsmanship—at least, to those who know to look.
When the doorway opens, the scent of fresh wildflowers fills the air.
***
It is said that Queen Lucy the Valiant is the most renowned healer in the land.
Harry knows this, because Mrs. Beaver and Mr. Tulous taught him about Narnia’s rulers. But they did not say that Queen Lucy is beautiful like the woman Harry sees in his dreams, or that her laughter makes the sun brighter. They didn’t say that she is very good at checkers (having beaten Harry three times) or that she enjoys playing pranks on her siblings.
But then, Harry is realizing that there is a lot that Mr. Tulous and Mrs. Beaver left out of their tales. Like how King Edmund is the nicest man Harry has ever met, and also the smartest. How he never calls Harry dumb or makes fun of him when he messes up a word or a maths sum, like Dudley and his other classmates did. How he seems to know everything that is going on in the castle, how he talks to the birds and the mice and the smallest of the Talking Animals and listens to their reports.
While he misses Mrs. Beaver and Mr. Tulous, the two weeks that he has spent now at Cair Paravel with Queen Lucy and King Edmund have been full of wonder. He spends his mornings in lessons, and his afternoons running around with a bear cub named Bumbrose and satyr named Wyrus, having adventures and getting into all kinds of trouble.
And once every few days he meets with Queen Lucy, who sits him down in her healing rooms and checks over his arm (healed) and his weight (“much improved, but please eat your vegetables, Harry”) and then, with a frown, the scar on his forehead.
One day she calls King Edmund in to join them. Harry is always excited to see the King, who looks just like him (“except for our eyes!”) and who teaches him with such patience.
“I don’t know what to make of it,” she says to King Edmund, running her thumb over the scar. “There is something dark about it, Ed.”
King Edmund tightens his hand on Harry’s shoulder. “Dark like her?” he asks.
“That’s why I called you in to look.” Lucy is pale. “I’m sorry to have to ask, but you are the most familiar with her magic, I thought maybe you might know for certain.”
Harry gasps when King Edmund kneels down before him, their faces only inches apart. “I don’t want my scar to be dark,” he says. “The cupboard I lived in was dark, and it was always painful in there, and hungry.”
The King’s face looks hurt, the way it always does when Harry talks about his time Before.
“There are different kinds of darkness,” Kind Edmund says softly. His thumb traces the path that Queen Lucy’s had just taken, zig-zagging over the lightning pattern. “There’s the darkness of night, which brings comfort and sleep. There’s the dark of a shady tree on a hot summer’s day. And there’s darkness like you have lived, with hunger and hurt. But there are other kinds of dark too… darkness that is sharp like knives or teeth, and the dark that lingers in a man’s heart and festers, wrought from jealousy.”
Behind him, Queen Lucy inhales audibly.
King Edmund closes his eyes, and Harry, feeling the words weave around them, mirrors him. His thumb is a solid pressure on Harry’s forehead.
“Darkness can heal, and hide, and protect. It can wrap secrets up and tuck them away, and watch over weary travelers in need of respite.” King Edmund’s voice is calm, but there is magic in every word. “And darkness can cause the smallest wound to grow, can torment a man’s mind. The dark can tear apart the soul of those who seek it out without understanding it.”
Something changes, like the air before lightning strikes.
“You’ve met darkness in a way that few will every experience, Harry,” King Edmund says. “But your heart is light. Your future is light. Your soul is light.”
The static in the air grows.
“This is a dark soul, but it is not yours,” the King says at last. “Someone has split their soul, the darkest of all acts, and a piece has found its way to you, by what means I know not.”
The pressure on Harry’s forehead vanishes, and with it the tension in the room dispels. Harry inhales, gasping, as though he had been holding his breath the entire time. When he blinks open his eyes, he’s almost shocked to find that it is still mid-afternoon, sunlight filtering through the windows.
“Can you get it out?” Harry asks.
King Edmund leans back on his heels and smiles. “I, too, know what darkness feels like,” he says. “I won’t let it touch you ever again, Harry. We’ll get the soul fragment out.”
***
“Potter!”
Harry ignores the call at first. He has spent four months at Hogwarts now, and has learned its ebbs and flows. It is much like the court at Cair Paravel in its own way: there are politics to be played, secrets to be kept, lessons to be learned.
One of the first lessons he mastered was how to deal with Draco Malfoy, scion of Lucius Malfoy. Harry has quickly picked up on the relevant history, not only of the Malfoy family but of how their actions impacted his own.
And part of that lesson was in how to avoid Draco Malfoy, who was as spoiled as a Terebinthian lordling but with much less common sense.
Unfortunately, such things were not always possible.
“Potter!” comes the call again. “I saw that you put your name down on the list to go home for the winter holidays. Going back to those Muggles of yours?”
Harry doesn’t rise to the taunt. He double checks his suitcase beside him, making sure he has packed the alchemical text he found in the library to continue his studies over the break. His winter robes are overly-warm, and though he has been taught not to fidget from the discomfort, he does hope the carriages to the Express will show up soon.
It is Professor Snape who forces him to answer, however, as the man emerges from the school behind them.
“Indeed, Potter,” he drawls, and his eyes narrow dangerously. At one time Harry thought he was a man to be weary of, but now he knows the Potions professor’s cruel words are nothing more than an old, unhealed grudge. (Harry learned from the best, and his spy network is well-established—portraits and ghosts, other students.) “The Headmaster was under the impression that you would be staying at Hogwarts over Christmas.”
Harry forces a thin smile, the kind he would give at court to a visiting ambassador who hid insults beneath false sincerity. He should keep silent, rather than give them the satisfaction of a response, but—
He is sixteen and he is eleven and he misses his home and his family, and he has never tolerated cruelty or taunting.
“I’m not sure why the Headmaster would assume such a thing,” he says, “nor why my dormmate would have such an obsessive interest in where I spend my holidays.” Draco’s cheeks go pink. “But to clarify any confusion, I intend to spend the holidays with my aunts, my uncle, and my father.”
Finally, the carriages roll up.
“I wish you all a very Happy Christmas,” he says, enjoying the looks of confusion and shock on Professor Snape and Malfoy’s faces, “and look forward to seeing you in January.”
***
“You should not be here.”
Harry bows deeply, then meets the eyes of the centaur before him. “I apologize for coming to your borders, Lord Centaur,” he says. “But it has always been the policy of the Lords of Narnia to introduce themselves to their neighbors so that no conflict may arise from miscommunication.”
The centaur stills. “It has been many ages since we have met one of our cousins from beyond a doorway,” he says finally.
“I would be happy to come to you sometime and tell you of the Narnian centaurs that I knew,” Harry says. “Like Oreius, who commanded a legion under High King Peter against the White Witch and won great acclaim. Or his daughter Moonfall, who was my friend and advisor and who Saw truth and future in the stars.”
There is a rustling, and another centaur emerges. “Mercury is bright tonight,” he says.
The first centaur nods. “Firenze, this is a Narnian Lord, who brings us tales of our kin from distant lands.”
Firenze stares at the boy before him. “Harry Potter,” he states, and it’s not a question but Harry nods anyways. “A child of prophecy who managed to escape the grasp of the stars.”
The hairs on Harry’s arms stand on end. A prophecy about him? One that, from the sound of it, no longer applies? That bears investigation. “I only came to introduce myself.”
“It is an honor to meet you, Harry Potter of Narnia,” the first centaur says. “I am called Bane, and I am pack leader of this band of centaurs. And you are welcome to our fires.”
***
The second time Harry steps foot in Narnia, he is fourteen (and nineteen). His priorities have been split this year—there is a tricky bit of magical legal work that he is unraveling, which even his father would find exasperating, and his godfather (the one from Earth, as opposed to Mr. Tulous, who earned the honor alongside Mrs. Beaver) is behaving erratically after escaping prison the year before.
But all of this falls to the wayside when he steps foot in Narnia once again.
The laugh that escapes him is one of boyish delight, but he cannot help himself.
Finally, he is home.
***
“Now listen carefully, I don’t know how much time we have.”
Magic, Harry realizes, when he is ten (and when he is sixteen) (and when he is ten-almost-eleven again), defies the laws of all reason. The boundaries are only what one’s imagination enforces. In Narnia, magic is a bottle of cordial that will heal any wound, and winters that last decades. It is untamed and brutal and Harry revels in it as he grows up, runs enchantments through his fingers and learns to read nature alongside his histories.
On Earth, magic is something leashed, a wild beast that the humans have attempted to tame. But Harry knows otherwise, and sees the whites of its eyes and frothing around its mouth as it strains at its harness.
So there is no surprise when he steps through a cave entrance, seeking shelter from a sudden rainstorm during his quest for the White Stag, and finds himself stumbling into an unfamiliar (and oh, all too familiar) cupboard.
He had expected this from the moment he was separated from his aunts and uncle and his father during the hunt, but at sixteen he was well-trained in the art of the sword (his Uncle Peter would expect nothing less) and a fair hand at the bow (though his Aunt Susan could split any arrow that he landed, laughing with him at the game).
There’s a moment when panic overtakes him. The cupboard is too small, even though he, too, is small once again. His arm is long-since healed, and he must thank Aslan for at least not returning the old injuries to him—even as he curses him for forcing Harry to leave in the first place.
But his father’s words hold him steady—“I won’t let you return to the darkness.”
They made a plan, and nobody in Narnia is as wise and cunning as King Edmund.
He breathes, and waits.
Three hours later, to the best of his reckoning, there is a knock at the door of Number 4, Privet Drive.
Harry presses his ear to the cupboard door as he smiles, and waits for the door to open and light to return.
***
Harry steps off the train, halfway through his first year of school. He crosses the platform barrier in Muggle London, and is promptly wrapped up in his father’s embrace.
“I’ve missed you so much,” King Edmund says, only he is not King here in this Earthly train station. He is just Edmund, sixty-one years old and not looking a day over forty, wearing a tailored suit the way he used to wear golden armor.
“Four months is too long,” Harry agrees. “I have missed you fiercely.”
There’s a laugh at his side, and then, “Well, I suppose the rest of us are as important as a bucket in an empty well.”
He manages to pull himself away from his father, only to be pulled into an embrace by his Aunt Lucy. And then it is his Aunt Susan and his Uncle Peter, taking their turns. Harry feels tears in his eyes, but doesn’t bother to wipe them away; there’s no shame in this emotion, this pure joy he’s feeling.
“Why didn’t you meet me on the platform?” he asks. “You’re just as magical as any wizard.”
“Easier to avoid unwanted attention and unwanted questions,” his father, ever the diplomat (ever the spy) says. “Now, let’s take you home. We have so much to catch up on.”