Ickle Firsties – Chapter One
Leaving Home
AN: This should be a good one for all you fans of 'Yet Another Harry Potter Story'. I've been dying to do this fic for ages, and while Chapter Four of YAHPS is at the beta's, I thought I'd take the opportunity to write. Please review!
James Potter could hardly contain his excitement. His parents were in their sitting room now, talking in hushed voices about a letter. Oh, but it was not just any letter. It was a letter from that- excuse the word- magical place that his brother Rob had disappeared to seven years earlier. Although James had been very young while his brother was at school (he was only eleven now), he could still vividly remember his brother's visits over the summer holidays, speaking of his friends and the spells that he had learned and Quidditch- could a school really have a Quidditch team? There was no town team in Fuellis, but if there was, James was sure he'd be on it. When, on the rare occasion that Rob found time to play with the brother so far behind him in age, the experience was full of encouraging smiles and "Why can't he be on our team? He's better than Poudrier!" And now it was his turn to play Quidditch and make real friends (other than the exceedingly bland Muggles that lived in Fuellis) and learn spells! He fought hard not to burst into the sitting room and demand to be taken to buy his school supplies that very instant.
He pressed his ear against the door, every one of his senses alert, listening. His ear caught a creak the wall, the scratch of nail upon flesh, and muffled voices speaking, but he couldn't make out what they were saying.
It was agonizing; he wanted them to come out and tell him that he was free, that he could go. He gave up trying to hear what they were saying and slumped down on the floor, running his finger absentmindedly along the lead-lined crack in the door, the crack which ran diagonally from the floor to the place where the handsome wood of the door met the edge of its frame, the crack for which he was responsible. He grinned at the memory. It had been three years ago, when he was eight…
**Flashback**
"Robbie!" cried James's mother, flinging her arms around her eldest son, who was going into his fifth year at Hogwarts.
"Mum," Rob gasped, patting his mother slightly on the back. "You're choking me, Mum!"
"Yes," said Mrs. Potter, taking a step back to admire him. "Well, I've baked fresh biscuits, and I've made tea…" she bustled off to the kitchen.
James's dad exchanged a much shorter and looser hug with Rob, and then joined his wife in the kitchen.
Rob shot James a grin, and drew a small bag out of his pocket. He handed it to James. Inside were some heavy oval-shaped spheres.
"What are they?" James had asked.
"Dungbombs," said Rob, exchanging another grin with his little brother.
"Wow!" exclaimed James. "What do they do? Can I put it in Mrs. Gregoria's flower bed down the street?"
"Er, I don't think that's a very good idea, James," said Rob.
"How do you set them off?" asked James anxiously.
"Drop them," Rob said. "There's also a rumor that if you leave them sitting in one place for too long, they'll explode, but I'm not entirely sure if that's true…"
"Wow!" exclaimed James. Looking back, what he did next seems very stupid, but you couldn't rewrite the past. Well, you could, if you had a Time-Turner, but… that was beside the point.
James inserted his hand inside the bag and pulled out a Dungbomb. Then he flung it at the door that he would be anxiously pressing his ear against in three years' time. With an ear-shattering boom, a small section of the door broke off.
**End of Flashback**
James continued running his finger along the crack, recalling with amusement the punishments that his parents had tried to give him, all of which he had thwarted spectacularly.
He was still running his finger along the crack, when he felt, for the first time, a small bit of imperfection in the otherwise smooth wood. A splinter.
James began picking at the splinter. At first, it offered resistance, but then pieces of the fine wood began to brake away. At last, all that was left was a gash in the handsome wood so deep it was almost a hole in the wood. James leaned back to admire his handiwork, and suddenly realized that the instant his parents exited the room, they would notice. And he would be dead.
Then he spotted his mum's wand on the kitchen table. "Excellent," James murmured. He could just do that repairing spell thing, and it would be fixed. It would look better than ever, and it would give him good practice for school.
He got up and retrieved the wand. Now, what was the incantation? Reparo? Repara? Reparon? Yes, that was it. Reparon.
"Reparon!" cried James, swishing the wand perhaps a little more violently than was necessary.
Instead of repairing the gash in the door, James found himself being thrown backwards by the force that blasted the door off its hinges. And who better to be standing on the other side of the wreckage than his mum and dad.
"Oops," he said, grinning sheepishly. He stood up and brushed off the sawdust (was it sawdust?) that was all down his front. He gave his wand back to his mum.
"Scourgify," she said, and the sawdust, or whatever it was, disappeared from James's robes. She directed her wand at the door now. "Reparo." The door repaired itself.
So it was reparo, thought James, a horrible feeling rising in the pit of his stomach. Would they allow him to go to school now, or would they make him wait another year? The door had certainly been repaired easily, but his parents were far from happy. They couldn't hold him back now, they had to let him go, they just had to…
"What were you doing, James?" asked his father.
"Er," said James, trying to think of a good excuse. "Practicing?"
At this, he though he saw the beginnings of a smile forming on his father's face, but if they were there, they disappeared as quickly as they had come. Instead he raised his eyebrows. "Practicing?"
"For, you know, school," James said.
"School," repeated his mum. "And what makes you think that you are going to school?"
Fear settled inside of him. "Well, that letter," he began shakily. "It was for me, wasn't it? About school, right?
"Well, can I read it?" asked James, a boyish grin spreading over his face, forgetting that he was going to be punished.
"First, I believe a punishment is in order," said his mum icily.
The grin fell from James's face.
James's mum and dad exchanged glances. "No Quidditch in the backyard for the rest of the week, I think," said his father at last. His mum nodded in agreement.
"Does- does that mean I can still go to school?" he asked.
"Of course," said his father, knowing what James didn't: school was as much a punishment as a reward. "We weren't willing to delay your education just because you blasted the sitting door apart."
James smiled, alight with happiness, as his father handed him a thick parchment envelope with his name on it in green ink.
He was going to Hogwarts.
AN: So, how was it? Please review!! You can flame me if you want to, but please have a good reason. :D
--Juli