The Silver Lining

Harry Potter X His Dark Materials

05 Gateway

Petunia and Neldan take them to King's Cross on September first because their father is still passed out on the sofa in his bedroom and neither sister is ever willing to wake him after one of his nights.

Ffionn has taken the shape of some spindly legged gazelle and is endlessly bounding around Lily as they make their way through the growing crowds of the station.

"Impala," Ffionn informs her as she circles. "C'mon Nel!"

"I will not," Neldan informs stiffly and Ffionn pauses long enough to peer up at the herring gull sitting rigidly on Petunia's shoulder. Neldan has Settled, but only recently, just yesterday, and while they are so happy for Petunia and Neldan it is still easy to forget in their excitement that Neldan can no longer shift into similar forms and play.

"You won't even fly with me?" Ffionn asks then, shifting into a very similar gull shape, but with darker colorations than Neldan has. Neldan, though, is not in the mood to accommodate Ffionn and Lily frowns at the sadness filtering through their bond as Neldan snuffs them.

Ffionn, subdued, imitates Neldan and perches atop Lily's shoulder and they follow Petunia through the early morning throngs to the point where Platform Nine meets up with Ten.

They are greeted by a stern, tall woman in a tartan wool dress and black hat sitting primly atop her head. The woman's daemon is a golden colored cat, but is larger than a house cat, some sort of wild medium sized breed with a bushy, ringed tail. He is seated primly at his human's feet.

They spot Lily right away.

"Hullo Professor McGonagoll," Lily greets as Ffionn echoes the greeting to the Professor's daemon, Alphardic.

"Good morning Ms. Evans," she returns with a strict nod in both sister's direction. "If you stay with me here, I will instruct you on how to access the Platform."

"Of course!" Lily says, "We've been ever so curious!"

McGonagoll smiles a little at this, but then turns to Petunia. "I am afraid that you may not be able to access the Gateway, Ms. Evans."

"Oh, what?" Ffionn says softly even as Lily turns forlornly to her sister. Petunia's face initially expresses her disappointment and rejection but it is wiped away very quickly and replaced by a moue of distaste.

"Very well," Petunia says, her voice tight, and Professor McGonagoll frowns at this. "I am late to class as it is."

Petunia turns on her heel without another word and begins to stalk away. Lily lets out a surprised sound and chases after her, catching the sleeve of her navy school jumper. Petunia stops but pulls out of her grasp just the same.

"Tunia," Lily starts, sad that her sister is so suddenly cold. Petunia's eyes soften a little and the perpetual anger that she has so much of lately fades a little and Lily can see that the barring of her to the magical platform hurts.

"Tunia-dan," Lily says, addressing them both as a whole in one combined name.

Petunia's face twists into displeasure suddenly and she snaps back, "stop doing that, Lily. It is not acceptable!"

Lily knows what she is talking about, Petunia has scolded her for it before, but never so coldly, so harshly and it silences her completely. She knows why. It is not really normal to speak to another person's daemon, nor really to acknowledge that human and daemon are one, connected, the same even though everybody knows it. It just isn't done and even though Lily thinks it is just silly, Petunia wants nothing more than to be perfectly normal, thank you very much.

So Lily drops her head with a very quiet mumbled apology to Petunia, and Ffionn speaks a polite and rather formal farewell to Neldan, who deigns to only respond with a regal nod of his head.

"I will see you at Christmas, Petunia?" Lily asks. "Our breaks are at the same time."

Petunia is silent for a long time and Lily looks up at her fearfully. Petunia is older, taller and longer and she is already dressed in her school uniform. Petunia doesn't attend a boarding school, but a local day school that has her coming and going instead of all shut in like children. Lily was going to go to the same, until her Hogwarts letter came and changed it all. Lily is wearing jeans and a pink jumper and it makes her feel so young next to her sister who is already sixteen and looks so grown up!

"You should stay there for the Hols," Petunia says finally and Lily can feel her face just fall.

Petunia says nothing else to her and again turns on her heel to march away. Lily watches her leave and can't bring herself to chase after her sister again.

ooo

When Professor McGonagoll escorts her through the Gateway to her new world, Lily will stubbornly return home for Christmas to see her sister and even their father, but it will be the only year of her schooling that she ever does so.

ooo

Vernon drops Harry off at King's Cross without a word. However, as Harry pulls his new trunk from the boot and struggles to haul it onto the curb, Pembe hangs her head out the open car window and squints at him darkly.

"Good riddance then," she pipes, her voice high and a little squeaky. Bice, who has been a harvest mouse hidden in his shirt all morning, pokes her head out in response.

"Bice," Harry warns softly, hoping to stave off any particularly nasty comments his daemon may feel the need to make. Bice shifts then, from tiny mouse to a clinging monkey with a wild, brightly colored mane of hair and sticks a long tongue out at the mole who doesn't really see the gesture at all, but Vernon does.

"Good riddance, boy," his uncle echoes and with a rather loud squeal of his tires, Vernon drives off, leaving his nephew on a street corner in London. Harry just stares after the black car balefully, wondering if his uncle will bother to pick him back up at the end of the school year or not and trying to decide if he cares at all.

Bice crawls out of his shirt and perches on his shoulder, her tail curling around his chest and under his arm. Harry glances at her to find her making obnoxious faces after the disappearing car and he barks out a laugh at the sight of her contorting lips and tongue.

She has shifted into some kind of jungle monkey with brilliant shaggy fur. It is an uncontested orange in color, and covers her in a pillow of long hair all along her body, down her tail and rings her face in the wildest mane of hair he has seen outside of a lion. As it is she still looks like she had stuck her finger into a light socket.

"Am I funny?" he asks impishly, looking down at his shaggy body.

"You look like a cross between a monkey and a Pomeranian," Harry tells him, grinning.

Bice huffs. "Lion tamarin," he informs him. Harry just shrugs, upsetting his perch enough that he crawls up to sit on his head.

"I like the golden eyes," Harry commented as he grabs his trunk and begins the long trek into and through King's Cross Station. He can feel Bice preening from his compliment, probably trying to tame that mess of hair that covers him.

With the orange, hairy monkey draped atop his head, it is no wonder the slightly frazzled woman mistakes him for one of her own copper-haired children. There are at least five of them circling her in wild orbits, all loudly proclaiming, their daemons scampering around them like a bunch of little moons. It is like a rather horribly executed play of the solar system, complete with astroid belt of luggage carts and animal cages.

Harry hears the words 'Platform Nine and Three Quarters' which was the major reason that he lets the woman push him into a wall. The other being her unexpected strength for a woman who looks so pillowy and soft.

Instead of the unrelenting brick of a mortared wall, however, Harry and Bice suddenly find themselves somewhere else entirely. The busy platform before them is a riot of colors and shapes and sounds, a hodgepodge of human and daemon of variable shape and size. It is nothing at all like either Platform Nine, with its quiet thin crowd after a recent departing train, nor Platform Ten which had been bustling with workers over a mechanical error on it's rusty green engine.

No. Platform Nine and Three Quarters sports a brilliant red engine of some antique model with a bustle of people that are dressed in the most eclectic assortment of dress imaginable.

"So that's what Snape meant about the barrier," Bice comments and Harry can feel him twisting to look at the brick wall behind them.

"I guess so," Harry says.

"It wasn't quite what I had imagined."

Harry grins and Bice slides down from the top of his head to drape over his shoulders and peer at the bustling, wild crowd ahead of them.

"It's better," Harry comments.

They are jostled from their inspection by another body running into them from behind.

Having forgotten entirely about the wall-turned-doorway and the family of redheads behind him, Harry had managed to stand straight in the way of of one of them coming through behind him. The force of it sends them both to the ground in a tangle of limbs of luggage.

"Oh, sorry!" the redhead exclaims, trying to stand and in the process kneeing Harry in his ribs, then stepped on his hand. "Excuse me, sorry!"

"S'alright," Harry manages, clutching his side and scooting away from the long-limbed redheaded monster. With distance he can finally see that it isn't just one large person who had ran into him, but rather two long-limbed ones. Identical ones. Their daemons are scrabbling around the pair in twin jackrabbit forms, all hind limbs and ears and excited exclamations and laughs.

Above his head, Harry feels the steady displacement of air that is caused by Bice's flapping wings. Neither of the twins have yet bothered to stand up. In point of fact, they appear quite content to remain in a tangled heap on the floor with their daemons chattering at them while they laugh.

The arrival of redhead number three brings Harry into their plan.

Their equally tall, and slightly older looking brother appears through the bricks and promptly falls flat over the twins tangled on the floor. His daemon, who had been a proud looking bird of black colors flaps wildly and caws out indignant sounds as they join the twins.

Harry just sort of watches the mess with a rather stupefied expression, having never really seen a collection of teenagers act quite like that before. Bice settles onto his shoulder and Harry catches the flash of green feathers from the corner of his eye.

"Fascinating," Bice comments, watching the tangled display with as much interest as Harry.

"Yes."

The twins eventually make it to their feet, collect their belongings and corral their bounding daemons, all before their brother manages to right himself. Harry suddenly finds himself hemmed in by the two identical red-heads, one on each arm as they haul him away with them, leaving their brother behind to sort himself.

"Well met!" One exclaims.

"I'm Fred!"

"No I'm Fred," the other says, "you're George!"

"Am I? Are you quite certain?"

"Certainly."

"I'm Harry," Harry intercedes, still quite fascinated by the two. "And Bice," he points to his daemon who is trailing them in a very bright green parrot shape. Harry catches sight of a red bill and there is a light blue tinge to his tail feathers.

"Wotcher!" the twins says simultaneously to Harry and in exactly the same inflection.

"Tovi!" pipes one of the identical jackrabbits that are bounding about them.

"And Taffy," says the other, and it is quite obvious that they are speaking to Bice, as the jackrabbits introduce themselves by leaping up near his flight path. Harry hasn't a clue which is which - either for the twins nor for their daemons, though at the moment George - who thinks he's Fred - is on Harry's right side.

"Got my trunk?" Harry asks them curiously.

"Got it!" George says with seeming endless enthusiasm and Harry glances behind him to see all three of their trunks, his with Hedwig's cage sitting atop it, ambling along behind them as if they had sprouted legs of their own.

"That's a neat trick," Bice comments and flies a neat circle around Hedwig's cage. The snowy owl merely peers at the parrot through one slitted eye before turning her head half way around and settling into sleep, apparently completely undisturbed by the chaos of the platform.

"We've many, of course," Fred comments with a grin.

"Maybe we'll show you a few of them?" George says and Harry thinks his smile is a little too sharp.

"Maybe I'll pass," Harry tells them, which instead of turning them off just makes the twins laugh, delighted.

Navigating the brilliant red locomotive and the narrow hallway with its endless stream of compartments filled to the brim with chattering students of all ages is made much easier with the twins, who are much bigger and seem to be something of a force of nature. Many students simply get out of the way and the stragglers are able to demonstrate to Harry that he was right in refusing their tricks.

"Here we go," George says - though Harry is quite sure that it is Fred, simple because he introduced himself as George - and the twins escort him and all their luggage into an empty compartment. Somewhere in the shuffle of settling the trunks under the seats and Hedwig in her cage in the racks overhead one of the twins catch sight of the jagged scar on his forehead.

"Blimey, George," he says and Harry pays attention enough to note which one is now George and which is Fred and he's quite sure they've switched on him.

"I see it!" the other says.

"See what?" Harry asks, but Bice is who answers.

"You're scar."

Harry brushes at the fringe in front of his face, alternately baring and covering the scar. He remembers how the people in Diagon Alley had reacted to it, always staring at his forehead instead of his eyes and how they all wanted to shake his hand at once and it wasn't until Bice's monkey tail got stepped on that Professor Snape got in between them all and Harry got away. Bice had spent the remaining trip as a very small spider hiding away in his hair, something that did not go unnoticed by Snape.

"Weasley," Fred tells him and Harry blinks owlishly at the sudden word.

"You're a Potter," George elaborates, "And we're a Weasley, see!"

Harry huffs out a laugh which becomes a real smile when neither of them stare at his head, nor comment on Bice's current male gender and instead pull something suspicious from one of their trunks and slink right back out the door, mumbling about guard details and celebrities and duties.

Harry is suddenly left alone in a compartment with Bice, a sleeping Hedwig and three trunks stowed expertly under the seats.

Harry remains blinking at the closed door to the compartment for a long minute, feeling a little harried and still trying to catch his breath from the crowd and madness of the twins.

"I like them."

Harry lets out a bark of a laugh and throws himself across one of the bench seats. Bice lands on the cushion next to him and flows into a shape that is almost perfectly like that of the twins' jackrabbit daemons, but he is the same color as the twin's bright copper hair instead of anything natural. Harry runs his hand down his back and tweaks his fluff of a tail, admiring his choice and amused by it as well.

"Pretty," he compliments with a crooked smile.

"I like it for now," he says. His long ears swing around and Harry thinks the endless twitching of his nose is positively adorable.

They watch the thinning crowd on the platform out the window until the train ambles out of the station. Harry is rather fascinated by the red-headed family bustling about just two windows down and he almost wishes he could hear their conversation, especially when the twins flit through them in unending movement.

"Maybe we'll be in their house?" Bice says, pushing his twitching nose to the window in order to peer at them better.

"Maybe."

ooo

Harry settles into the seat with the big book of magical history that Snape had picked out for him. While the early chapters on the legends and myths surrounding Merlin and Arthur were fascinating, Harry had found his own name in the latest chapters weeks ago and had begun to steadily work his way through the book in reverse.

They are alone until the door slams open to admit two bodies, two daemons and a billow of orange smoke. Harry vaguely catches sight of the two boys, one already dressed in black Hogwarts robes before the smoke fills the compartment. The door slides shut with another slam.

Harry hunkers low in the seat and pulls the hem of his t-shirt up to cover his nose, even though the orange smoke doesn't smell smokey.

"Pumpkins," Bice comments from his lap, atop the book. "The smoke smells like pumpkins."

The other two boys stumble into the compartment, coughing and making a lot of noise. Harry's foot gets stepped on, and one of the boys' daemons darts across the back of the seat in some sort of sleek furry shape that has Harry leaning forward away from it.

"This is ridiculous," one of their daemons says, then one of the boys calls out a spell which makes the smoke swirl ominously around them in a gust of wind. Someone lets out a surprised yell, and then a pained one. It doesn't clear it at all, and in fact only makes it worse and Harry finally manages to find the latch to the window and slide it open.

Spell-wrought tornado, orange smoke and all get sucked out of the thrown window.

The smell of pumpkins linger.

Left behind are two very disheveled boys, both with dark hair and eyes and rather pale complexions. The elder, and already dressed in his robes trimmed with green, is squarer of face next to the barely younger, but far more reedy boy. There is a red fox and a black colored sleek house cat along with them. All of them, and Harry included, are looking rather ruffled at the sudden smoke and wind disturbance.

"Hullo," Harry says, watching the two with interest.

The younger recovers first, and sits up from his sprawl across the opposite seat where he'd fallen at some point. He is long-limbed and skinny, and he has little trouble reaching across the aisle to offer Harry his hand.

"Hello," he says and when Harry grips his hand to shake, continues, "I'm Theodore Nott."

"Harry."

Theodore eyes him for a long minute but when his surname is clearly not forthcoming, he gestures to his elder.

"This is Egan Wilkes."

"Pleasure," Wilkes says from up his nose. "Muggleborn?"

Harry blinks at the sudden address. "What makes you think so?"

Wilkes's eyes rake coldly down Harry's body and then completely away from him. The boy's cat daemon jumps up into his arms, and then to his shoulder, not even deigning to offer Bice half a glance.

"Your clothes tell me all I need to know," Wilkes tells him, favoring his daemon with his look rather than giving Harry another glance at all, even though it's Harry who he is talking to.

Harry is less hurt by this treatment than he is annoyed. He is still wearing a set of Dudley's old clothes, and they are both a little dingy and far too big for him. Also, they are very Muggle, and Harry picked up enough from his day in Diagon Alley to know that.

Harry returns Wilkes's eye-down look, which is noticed by both boys, even if Wilkes isn't looking directly at him. Theodore's eyes widen at the response, but Wilkes finally turns his eyes back to Harry, narrowed.

Harry dismisses Wilkes in the same way the older boy had done to him. In silence, by looking away from him.

"Where did you collect that pumpkin smoke?" Harry asks Theodore.

Theodore's eyes widen a little more then return to something like normal. Like Harry, he does not look directly at Wilkes and Harry almost smiles.

"A couple of older years dropped some sort of smoke bomb in the corridor," Theodore answers, "I think they were brothers, they looked very much alike."

Harry suspects he may know who he's talking about, but doesn't quite get a chance to continue the conversation when Wilkes speaks up again.

"Now see here, you Mudblood, twerp!"

"Egan!" Theodore says at the same time Harry stands to face the older boy. Wilkes is taller and certainly heavier, though not by a great amount and he is no where near Dudley's girth, so Harry suspects that he has a good chance against him. Out of the corner of his eye he can see Bice poised at the edge of the seat, still in the coppery jackrabbit shape inspired by the twins, but he has his ears pinned back and his big fore-teeth are largely displayed through a wide-mouthed snarl.

"Both of my parents were magical, Wilkes," Harry spits out at him. "Don't insult them when you don't even know my name."

"Some name I should know?"

Harry smirks thinly. "I know more about your family than you do mine at this moment," he says. That history book had been so informative. It came complete with an entire chapter dedicated to the Death Eater Trials of the early 1980's and Sr. Wilkes had been listed along with his companions, killed resisting arrest. "Wilkes. What reputation did your father leave you?"

Wilkes is looking both murderous and a little sickly now and his daemon has her fur raised and is hissing quietly at him.

Beside Harry on the bench, Bice is shifting from angered jackrabbit into something much larger and scaled and Harry recognizes the brightly colored sailfin lizard as a shape he's taken before. He's chosen a dark red color with red eyes and it is a very striking look with the tall fins along his spine fading into a bloody red.

Bice hisses from his throat and Wilkes' eyes dart to him in sudden alarm.

Wilkes leaves with little more than half-mumbled words and Harry does not bother to hear them. He returns to his seat next to Bice when the compartment door shuts after the departed Wilkes.

"His father's daemon was a lizard," Theodore offers into the ensuing silence.

"I didn't know."

"How could you have?" Theodore shrugs, but he's eyeing Harry a little warily. "Are you going to call out my father, too?"

Harry stares at him, lost. Theodore does not volunteer his meaning and Harry scrambles to find it in the past conversation and has a sinking suspicion that he knows.

"Your father was -"

"Yes."

Theodore does not elaborate, nor does he defend, and he is watching Harry very carefully his face blank. Harry isn't sure that he much cares if the senior Nott was a Death Eater. The Dursleys are all jerks and while Dudley may take after his father, Harry certainly does not and he was 'raised' by them as well. Harry rolls his shoulders in a shrug and leans back into the seat cushions.

"Only if you insult mine," Harry offers.

Theodore thinks about this for a long few minutes, stiff and uncomfortable in his seat while his fox daemon is curled tightly around his feet, staring at Bice with rather wide eyes. Finally, Theodore relaxes marginally, and Harry can see his shoulders fall from the up-tight defensive posture they had taken.

Theodore's voice is lighter when he speaks. "What is your family name, anyways?"

Harry looks at him sharply. "Does it matter?"

"Maybe not," he says with a crooked smile, "Maybe so."

Harry huffs but tells him anyways, "Potter."

Theodore stares at him owlishly for a long minute before letting out a loud guffaw of laughter. Harry can't pretend to know why Theodore finds this so funny so he just waits the other out.

"Wilkes is going to go round the bend when he finds out," Theodore says, still fighting off a stubborn grin.

"Why?"

"Potter is an old family," Theodore says. "Not exactly Pureblood, as they have a tendency to marry muggleborns rather regularly, but old anyways. They're related to many of the old families, too. I think a Black recently married a Potter."

"My mother was muggleborn," Harry says.

"Yeah. Everyone knows."

Harry nods once and strokes his fingers down the side of Bice's flank. He is very large for his age in the species, probably longer than Harry's whole arm from snout to tail. He is silent as Theodore's daemon is so. The red fox is curled around her boy's feet, watching them with avid, yellow eyes. Bice only occasionally returns the gaze.

"I didn't," Harry finally reveals, focused on stroking Bice. "I didn't know until only a few weeks ago."

"What do you mean?"

"I grew up in the muggle world," Harry says, watching Theodore through his shaggy fringe. The other boy is staring at him like he can't believe what Harry is saying. "I didn't know I was a wizard, or that my parents were magical, or anything. I thought they had died in a car crash."

"A car crash!"

"I don't know anything about this world. I've got loads to learn."

Theodore's daemon shifts around his feet, and looks up at her boy.

"You'll learn," Theodore says. "Muggleborns come to Hogwarts every year and they are no further behind than most others. Besides, your Harry bloody Potter."

Harry snorts, already quite disillusioned with his own celebrity.

"This is Muirenn," Theodore says suddenly, introducing the red fox wrapped around his feet. Bice perks up his head from the light doze Harry's petting had put him in to peer at the fox over the side of the bench.

"Bice," he says. "Greetings."

Both Theodore and Muirenn blink in surprise at Bice's boy voice, but they don't comment on it. Their reaction tells Harry that having a daemon of the same gender is as rare in the Wizarding world as it is in the Muggle. That Bice can change gender as often as shape is likely as strange, not that Bice has cared one wit about that for some years now.

"It is a pleasure to meet you, Bice," Muirenn says in a feathery, feminine voice. "Shall we be friends?"

"We've never had a friend before," Bice reveals to Harry's mild embarrassment. But Bice is already flowing down the side of the seat and taking on the coppery jackrabbit form again, his good mood restored. Muirenn greets him with a delicate nose-to-nose nuzzle. Harry just shrugs and offers Theodore a tenuous smile.

Harry has always wanted a friend, and who is he to be picky?

ooo

"Has anybody seen a toad? A boy named Neville has lost his."

"No."

"Why does it smell like pumpkins in here?"

"That's a good question."

"Oh! I've read that book! It's absolutely fascinating! Especially the history of the last few decades. I've also read Hogwarts, A History, and the two accounts of the war don't always add up, which does make me wonder which may be accurate. Oh, I do hope that the professors will be able to clear that up for me before we're tested on the subject!"