-This breaks the Minority Tracker placed on you when you received your wand for the first time. Drink the entire contents and magic is yours to use without any detection. Use it and be free.-
He stared at it in surprise. When he came up with a plan to figure his life out, he hadn’t expected anyone to ever help him or give him any breaks. But one Alastor Moody planted this and the black inky potion in his pocket just moments after he met them outside of King’s Cross Station. Huh, he hadn’t expected the cranky, paranoid ex-Auror to give him a free break. He half expected to be locked away once more while the ‘adults’ did all the work.
Harry growled in the back of his throat when these thoughts came to mind. His bright, jaded green eyes narrowed down at the scratched floorboards of his tiny room on number four, Privet Drive. He’d been sitting here contemplating his own life on his own when this popped up.
This simple little potion would take off his tracker. He could do magic. He’d be able to practice spells and not get in ridiculous trouble like last year.
He smirked and twirled the small crystal phial around in his fingers before uncorking it and then scrunching his nose to block out all taste before he downed it all in one go.
It felt as inky as it looked. It swam in his mouth and down his throat. He convulsed, his gag reflex attempting to upturn the contents, but he remained firm and allowed it to slide, cold, down inside of him.
He shivered, feeling a freezing cold current take over him. Harry instinctively lurched forward, eyes widening when he felt inky cords deep inside of him unravel.
Was that the Minority Tracker? He breathed in and stared down at the phial in his hands. It was now empty, not a drop was left. He was still feeling rather cold. He placed the phial down and ran a hand through his massively untidy jet-black hair, which fell absolutely everywhere. It was in uneven shards all around his head. Some of it was chin length, some of it was eye length, others cheek length. It didn’t really matter to his hair where it went so long as it didn’t lay flat.
He braced himself, lifted his wand, and twirled it a moment while staring at it before wincing and flicking it. “Accio Book!” The Advanced Defense book that lay on the desk rose in the air and zoomed straight to him. He caught it and then waited and watched out the window with bated breath for the owl to appear with an expulsion letter.
… But none came.
Five minutes passed and Harry crowed. “Hell yeah!” He couldn’t help himself. He was happy! This worked so well with the plan in his head. He’d been planning it since the day before he left Hogwarts.
Jumping up, he immediately flipped open his trunk and dug through it. A moment later, he pulled out a sack of money, sat back down on the bed, and then dumped it over. He needed muggle cash and not wizard money. Almost all of it was gold except for a few sickles and knuts. £7.00 equaled one gold galleon, roughly. It was a give or take sort of thing. He counted out what he thought he would need and placed it in a separate pouch. He snatched up a sheet of notebook paper and one of Dudley’s old pens that was left lying around and wrote down the estimated expenses.
1.) New clothes
2.) New LIFE
3.) New contacts
4.) New shoes
5.) Petty cash
This didn’t count the magical stuff he was going to have to buy. He was about to take on a dire move. An extreme one. He wasn’t worried about Voldemort. At the moment, he didn’t much give a damn. What he cared about was becoming free.
Without magic he expected a big struggle, but the fact was, he could now do magic and he no longer had to remain completely muggle. He smiled at this. When he was finished with this, he cast a feather light charm to the bag with a letter taped to it and then sent his trusty white owl off to Gringotts.
The rest of the night Harry spent tidying up his room. He wanted to get rid of all the dust that lingered from the lack of use over the year. He enjoyed using his wand. He banished some of Dudley’s old toys from the shelves and changed his sheets to a different colour than boring white with a floral pattern. He shuddered. He hated those. They turned solid dark green; Harry didn’t know how to add a design on it like Hermione or McGonagall, but basic coloring was better than nothing. He did this with his curtains, pillowcase, and the rest of his beddings. He wouldn’t be here for long, but this was better than nothing.
He also repaired the cracked mirror in the wardrobe and stared into it. He frowned at his clothes. They were pathetic. It didn‘t help that he was a little thinner than most boys.
His height had taken a small upturn over the sixth year. He was about a bit taller than Dudley. If Harry had to actually make an educated guess, he would say he was roughly five foot seven. The last he checked, he was five four, and that was at the beginning of the fifth year.
That night, after his relatives pissed off to bed and some of the music in the bedroom died down, Harry made quick work of a hot shower. When he came out he slipped on some black baggy pajama bottoms he nicked from Ron. They weren’t nearly as big as Dudley’s and they were more comfortable. His physique was not as bird-like and concave as it had once been. Between Quidditch and duels with Death Eaters, Harry’s body, while thin in many areas, had some toned ability. After a few strokes through his wild hair, he cleaned the bathroom and then headed for bed. He had a long day ahead of him.
Harry awoke to the sound of chirping. He moaned and turned over, raised a hand, and attempted to bat the feather ball away from his head, but all he got was a sharp nip on the finger. He knew it couldn’t have been Hedwig. She would have flapped her wing on his head if he tried to bat her away.
“Ow!” He raised his head up from his pillow and squinted blearily up at a dark brown owl. “What the hell do you want?” He shifted onto his knees and grabbed his glasses. He gasped when he saw a hefty parcel with the Gringotts seal. “Oh! I‘m sorry!” He apologized as the owl glared at him. He handed the owl one of the treats from Hedwig’s cage. She had come back sometime in the night and was glaring at the brown owl like it were a mouse she wanted to snap between her beak.
He handed the owl the treat and in return he got his parcel and letter. There was a hoot of thanks and then it took off into the morning skies.
He rubbed his head and stared at the clock to see that it read eight.
Lovely! He thought, shaking his head and opening the parcel to see a ton of muggle cash sitting there. “Fuck.” It was an instant word; he’d been around Dean too much throughout the year. But he hadn’t been able to help it.
He laughed as he pulled out the crisp bills. It looked like he robbed a bank. This was a lot of money. Probably three times the mortgage every month of this place.
He placed the money back into the bag and then picked up the letter and broke its seal. When he did, two black cards toppled out. Each had his name on it; one said Gringotts National Card, and the other was the muggle crest for the most reliable card.
“Huh.” He said aloud.
Dear Mr. Potter,
We accept your gold in exchange for muggle currency. We would also like to inform you that as of today, 300,000 in gold has been transferred to your account from the newly deceased Sirius Orion Black. The rest of your belongings are to be given to you by Albus Dumbledore. Also, inside are two cards. One is a Muggle Credit Card; the directions of activating it are below, and the second is a Wizard’s Gold Card, which also has the directions below on how to activate it. They will work all around the world, one in the world of magic and the other in the world of muggles. Please take care and thank you for choosing Gringotts as your personal haven for all things gold.
Sincerely,
Chief Ragnok
His heart ached when he read the name of his godfather. He had been purposely blocking the man out of his mind and feelings. It was too painful. He grimaced and felt something in his throat, like he wanted to be sick. He swallowed it down and put up his mental barriers. He didn’t know if they were real or not but it was good enough to stop how he felt. To numb it.
“Wow.” Harry looked at both cards and then the activations. Both of them had to have Harry’s magical signature and blood infused on the back of it to become active.
This would really help, the teen thought, glancing back at the stash of bills neatly wrapped up.
Fully awake now, he made swift work on getting dressed. He heard his Uncle leave the house for work and he could vaguely hear the humming of his aunt downstairs.
Quickly donning a loose white t-shirt and a pair of extra baggy jeans, Harry stuffed the cards and a lot of money in different parts of his wallet and then his pockets before hiding the rest of the money in the bottom of his trunk underneath the belted Monster Book of Monsters. He grabbed his bag of toiletries and ran to brush his teeth and wash his face. He had a lot to do today.
He grabbed a black hooded cloak, his invisibility cloak, and bag of galleons so that he didn’t have to give his name when he used his Wizard Gold Card.
It took absolutely nothing to sneak out. He was passing the park when he finally went behind a tree and threw off the invisibility cloak and then made a run toward the bus shelter. He only vaguely knew his direction.
When he got to the heart of London shopping centers, he followed a group of men and women off and then stared around him. Besides his strange outages, he’d never truly been in London. He didn’t count running away, flying on thestrals, and following Mr. Weasley to the Ministry of Magic.
Before he went to indulge himself in a new life, he grabbed breakfast at McDonalds. He’d only ever been to McDonald’s one time in his life and that was when the Dursleys had had to take him somewhere and not leave him with a babysitter. It felt nice, not being gawked at by fellow witches and wizards for being the boy-who-lived.
After a quick breakfast, he found an optometrist a block away. The place smelled instantly of a hospital and soft classical music was playing somewhere up above. The music reminded him of the stuff he heard last night. He’d have to remember to get himself a Walkman before he left. Perhaps he could get Hermione to fix it to work in Hogwarts.
“Can I help you, son?” A graying man with light eyes asked in the kindest of tones.
Harry smiled shyly and waltzed up to the counter. “Hi Sir, I’m, uh, looking for contacts to replace my glasses.” He tapped the middle of his frames. “And perhaps get colored ones as well?”
He beamed. “Well, certainly, certainly so! When was the last time you had your eyes checked, and have you ever been with us before?”
Harry tried to think of the last time he saw an eye doctor. It hadn’t been this place, he was sure. “Uhm, I was nine or ten, and I don’t think so.”
“And you are-?”
“Sixteen.” He was close enough.
The Doctor was shocked. “That’s a lot time without a follow up, son.”
“I have boarding school, hardly any time.” Harry insisted, not telling him that the Dursleys didn’t give a damn if he went blind or not.
“Oh, I see. Well, I have a free opening right now if you would like to take an exam now?”
Harry nodded swiftly. “Yes, Sir, that’s perfect.”
“Great. My name is Andrew Westback.”
“James Evans.” Harry gave him a false name and declined giving him a phone number and gave him the address of Mrs. Figg instead of his own.
The examination took forty-five minutes and before long, Harry was rubbing his head and the doctor was tutting. “Your sight has worsened. It’s a wonder that you can see with those things. They’re very outdated…”
Harry picked out a new set of glasses where the frames weren’t so flamboyant. In fact, you wouldn’t be able to tell he was wearing them unless you looked up close. They fit the structure of his face perfectly. He also bought a pair of regular contacts and then a set of blue/gray ones for a cover. He’d have to pick them up in three days.
When he left, he scouted out a clothing shop and after being bugged continuously by a female sales lady with too much cleavage, he was left on his own.
Harry found that he had a taste for clothing that he hadn’t expected. Before, he’d never really given it much thought. He was always in Dudley’s junky stuff or his robes and it didn’t seem to matter. But now, here he was with a pocket full of money and endless options.
All the options for him. He had a few on his arms when someone came up behind him and tapped him on the shoulder. Jumping, Harry whirled around and gasped when he came face to face with a boy.
This boy was taller than him, slender, with black hair that was to his shoulders. He had a pale, long face with light blue or gray eyes. They reminded him of – wait, no. They reminded him of the contacts he picked out. He was standing there in black baggy trousers and a ripped up black shirt that clung to him like skin. He had a ball in his eyebrow, a ring in his nose, and then a piercing just underneath his bottom lip. His arms were covered in tattoos.
“You have the most beautiful eyes I’ve ever seen.” He grinned seductively and Harry found that he had to resist a shiver. He stepped up close to Harry, whose eyes went wide. “You’re an innocent; a beautiful green-eyed innocent.” He reached up and pulled Harry’s glasses from his face.
Everything blurred. “Such obstruction.”
“I just ordered contacts?” Was all Harry could come up with.
I just ordered contacts? Harry wanted to hit himself in the head as he repeated that line in his head. How stupid could he get?
The boy chuckled. “Did you? Good.” He placed the glasses back on Harry’s face and then tapped his nose. “You are in need of a new wardrobe.” He looked Harry up and down.