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Harry Potter knew he was strange in the boxy-hedges rows of Privet drive houses. He’d accepted that long before he knew he was a wizard. For one, he was a minority, a tanned-skinned, dark haired little Latino boy. Of course, he didn’t quite know that was why people stared until he started school- he didn’t even know that he was a Latino until he started school- he just thought he was darker. But coupled with his brilliant green eyes, which Aunt Petunia said were “unnatural in a face like that,” he stood out as an anomaly in Little Whinging. Perhaps that is why nobody asked any questions when he showed up to school with bruises or when he was walking gingerly due to a very obvious injury that was clearly not an accident. Therefore, he figured it was part of the “abnormality,” that he was just as familiar with Spanish as with English. He couldn’t possibly remember that his father spent his first year keeping up a constant stream of one-sided conversation with him in that very language. When Aunt Petunia caught him thinking out loud in beautifully-accented castellano when he was five, she shrieked at him for “speaking in tongues,” gave him to Vernon for a “lesson,” and threw him in his cupboard hungry. Harry might’ve wondered why they were so upset about it when they were always going on about buying that vacation home in Majorca, but Harry had figured out by that point that it wasn’t the language that was strange, it was the fact that he spoke it. Oblivious as he was to most things though he was, it could not be said that he didn’t pay attention- he simply spent all his attention on doing what he needed to survive at the Dursley’s. He of course knew he wasn’t quite normal in the strictest sense of the word, but he was too busy trying to appear that way so that he could eat and sustain as little injury as possible (not that it often worked) that he didn’t stop to ponder why.
When dear Hagrid told him he was a wizard, he automatically assumed that being bilingual was just part of the package. It was why he didn’t find anything strange in his speaking parseltongue. When the teachers commented on the state of his handwriting (some more scathing than others), they didn’t realize that Harry’s thoughts sometimes switched from English to Spanish mid-sentence, and the chosen one himself was so used to it he didn’t really think as to its being unusual. The fact that he never talked about his “miserable” childhood wasn’t exactly conducive to communication, and eccentricities became issues. He did, however, manage to speak completely in English, even if many to most of his thoughts were in the language of his father. The Dursley’s had seen to that.
Leaving Harry without an explanation for these kinds of things left him with his rather imaginative assumptions. Combine that little tendency with Hermione’s fascination for muggle genetics, and Harry assumed that languages travelled down through magical DNA like some kind of awesome wizard perk.
Nothing else came of it until the world cup the summer before fourth year. The trio, Ginny, Fred and George were wandering around looking at all the campsites. Now that Ginny had gotten over her hero-worshipping crush on Harry, they had a lot of fun together, and Harry felt like she was the little sister he never had. They passed a tent with peacocks strutting around in front. That must be Draco’s, Harry thought to himself, never noticing that he called the Malfoy heir Draco in his own mind. He was laughing at some joke about Welsh Greenbacks that Gin got from Charlie when he they came upon a bit of a scene. Someone wearing a Bulgaria pin was being yelled at by an Ireland fan who didn’t appear to like the enemy on their turf. Harry recognized the accent trying and failing to speak broken English, and he jumped into the fray as only Harry Potter was wont to do.
“Que pasa señor?” he asked.
The poor fellow looked like he'd never been so happy to see another hispanohablante in his life, and his face lit up as he let loose a rapid stream that would have been difficult for anyone but a native speaker to understand.
“Ay, dios mío. Dejé caer mi varita mágica en camino al área para aficionados de Bulgaria. No puedo hablar el inglés y este hombre,” here he pointed to the screaming Irishman, “cree que estoy aquí a molestar los aficionados del Equipo irlandesa.”
“It’s okay,” he said to the Irish fan, who now realized with no little shock that the helpful translator was the famous Harry Potter. “He’s just dropped his wand somewhere on the way to the Bulgaria campsite and came back to look for it. Would you mind just letting him look without harassing him?” The sentence, while worded politely, had Harry’s trademark sass seeping through, and the chastened wizard bowed his head and faded into the crowd.
“Bloody ‘ell mate, do you just make a habit of secretly speaking foreign languages?”
“I dunno,” Harry scratched the back of his neck sheepishly. “My dad was Latino, so I figured I inherited it.”
“Harry, you can’t inherit a language, chap.” Fred and George were trying very hard not to laugh.
“Wait, so that’s not a wizard thing?”
Ginny smacked him upside the head. “You doofus, if that was true, we’d all be speaking Gaelic.”
“Wha...?” Poor Harry was a little behind from having his beliefs turned on their heads.
“If you could inherit languages, the whole family would be bilingual. As far as heritage goes, we Weasley’s are as Irish as they come. Where do you think we got all our ginger?”
“But Dr- Malfoy speaks French!” Harry protested feebly.
“Because he had a tutor!” Hermione’s frizzy curls bounced about everywhere as she shook her head in exasperation. “What are we to do with you, Harry?”
“Feed him?” Ron suggested, rubbing his own growling stomach as they all laughed and walked towards their own tent, hoping Mr. Weasley hadn’t been too busy playing with the matches to cook the sausages.
“Is there anything else you’re misguided about?” ‘Mione teased as they walked.
“Well, now that you ask, is it normal to blow up your aunt?”
End