Chapter Text
November 2nd, 1988:
Harry Potter knew he was dreaming. He'd had this dream before. The knowledge never stopped him from being overjoyed.
A big black dog sniffed at his hand and barked happily. "Come on, Harry!" it said, and wagged its tail. "We're going on an adventure!" And it turned around and galloped down the sidewalk. Harry ran after it, whooping. He was going away! He was free! No more Dursleys, no more cupboard, free, free, FREE!
Harry felt free as a bird as he swooped through the sky. The engine of a huge motorbike purred beneath him, and wisps of cloud danced through his fingers. The dog sat behind him, holding him safely to its chest. Harry turned around to watch Number 4, Privet Drive shrink behind him. Then a cloud drifted in front of it, and Harry knew he would never see it again.
"Up, up, up!" said the dog, and Harry's stomach dropped as they rose higher and higher, faster and faster, until the air turned freezing cold and snowflakes whirled around them -
"Up! Up!" came the shrill voice again, and Harry's eyes popped open. It was dark. He was back in his cupboard, which smelled of sweat and rotten food and (very faintly) of urine.
"Up!" Aunt Petunia shrieked again, slamming her hand on the door.
"Nngh," Harry replied, his head still in the clouds. "I'm coming, I'm coming..."
He heard Aunt Petunia walk away as he felt around for his glasses. The problem, he thought, with that sort of dream, was how it hurt to wake up. He was, once again, trapped inevitably in the darkness under the Dursleys' stairs. For most of his life, he had fantasized about some distant cousin coming to take him away. But he was beginning to accept that there was no escape from this place.
Harry found his glasses, pulled them toward his face, and managed to poke himself in the eye. He yelped.
"What is it, boy?" Uncle Vernon shouted.
"Nothing, Uncle Vernon," Harry hollered back as he nursed his eye. The pain was soothing, in a way. It gave him something to think about besides his disappointment. Harry blinked to clear away the pain, and let the dream melt from his mind like the morning mist.
§§§§§
Harry kicked a rock. It skittered off the sidewalk and into the bushes. He huffed and dragged his feet as he shuffled toward home.
It had been a crummy Wednesday to continue a crummy week to cap off his crummy life. Their usual math teacher, a nice lady with bright green hair, was busy having a baby. A scrawny woman with purple lipstick had been brought in as a substitute for the rest of the semester, and Harry hated her. She had started their first lesson by making fun of his clothes and glasses, and while Harry was used to that from the other kids, it hurt a lot worse when it came from a grown-up. And then she had told Eloise to skip lunch or she'd "burst right out of those clothes, you're almost that wide already" and Harry, unable to contain himself, had snapped, "Better than being as thin as a stick."
Needless to say, Harry would be spending a lot of time this week in detention. His ears still hurt from all the yelling she had done at him. And now he was headed home, back to chores and cooking and dodging Dudley. He kicked another rock. He hated being at the Dursleys.
Harry closed his eyes and let himself imagine, for a moment, that he was someone else, returning to a home somewhere else, a brighter place where there was enough love to go around for everyone.
Harry was not an observant eight-year-old. He had learned to listen for Dudley's footsteps and whoops of laughter, but when it came to something other than basic self-preservation, Harry was not perceptive. So he didn't notice the raven that kept cawing at him, hopping impatiently from tree to tree, any more than he had noticed it hanging around his house yesterday.
He kept right on not noticing it until it landed heavily on his shoulder and bit him on the nose.
"Yeeeeouch!" Harry yelped.
"Caw! Caw!" said the raven. It launched off his shoulder and swooped to a nearby tree.
Harry grabbed his nose. It wasn't bleeding, but it hurt like the dickens. He glared at the raven, and the raven glared right back.
"That wasn't very nice!"
The raven cawed again and flicked its head in an odd sort of way, as if it were gesturing, follow me.
Harry obediently walked toward the tree.
The raven fluttered away, but only a few feet. Now it was perched on Mrs. Watersmith's fence.
"Caw, caw!" the bird called.
Harry followed it.
The raven led him off the main road, between two of his neighbors' houses, over a creek and through a little cluster of trees. Harry grew excited as he chased the odd bird from perch to perch. He didn't remember when or where, but he felt like he had done this before.
Finally, they arrived in one of Surrey's rare patches of forest. Harry was out of breath, and his fingers were starting to go numb. The raven seemed tired as well - its commanding caws had faded to harsh chirps, and its wings and tail were drooping. Wearily, it hopped to a stretch of dead brown grass. Then Harry yelled and stumbled backwards as the bird began to grow.
Black feathers morphed into hair and clothing. Wings unfolded, narrowed and sprouted fingers. Spindly legs swelled into shoes. The long beak collapsed back into a rather beak-like nose. Where the raven had perched, there now stood a tall, sallow man, wearing a strange black - dress? His eyes were cold like dark tunnels, but his mouth was curved into a warm smile of welcome.
"Hello, Harry Potter," said the man. "I was a friend of your parents," he lied, "and I've come to take you away."