AN: A Harry Potter fusion, based on a prompt from cyanclouds for her Secret Santa fic on the USUK LJ comm.

Arthur was fourteen years old the year Alfred came to Hogwarts - fourteen and a prefect, the youngest prefect in Hogwarts for two hundred years. He was a fifth-year though - starting his education a year early on account of being an orphan - an orphan who was heir to House Kirkland and all its wealth, its manors, and its honor - an orphan whose relatives fought over the privilege of taking him in, until they discovered that an iron-clad will and thin-lipped, keen-eyed barristers meant that the wealth and the manors and the honor would go to none but Arthur. Then they no longer desired to house him and feed him, and called him a selfish boy. And he would be shuffled off to the next family, who would try to be friends, and then they would find out about the will, and the whole cycle was repeated again. At first Arthur would cry when his 'new family' turned cold and distant, but then he understood them, and he stopped.

He had lived in Scotland, Wales, and Ireland - in London, on the Yorkshire moors, and in Cornwall - up and down the United Kingdom like a gypsy. When he was ten years old, hiding in the woods from his bigger cousins, he decided that enough was enough, and that he would go to Hogwarts now, instead of the year after. His parents' barristers helped him. And he enjoyed the look on his cousins' faces when he announced that he had been accepted into Hogwarts - "special circumstances".

So he went, and he threw himself into the schoolwork. The years with his relatives had made him solitary, and he could not break the habit of it - but the other students left him alone and they respected him for his intelligence and his toughness, which was more than all his cousins ever did; and the teachers liked him. He got top marks in every subject, never caused trouble, and would not suffer trouble to be caused in his vicinity. Therefore they made him a prefect of Gryffindor.

He absently rubbed the already-gleaming badge pinned upon his robes as he watched the year's Sorting. He knew - all knew - that this was the year Alfred F. Jones - the Boy Who Didn't Die - savior of the wizarding world - was to come to Hogwarts. It would be the first time in ten years anyone in Britain had laid eyes on him, because it had been reported (shortly after, the reporter who had written that story came under investigation and faded away into obscurity) that the baby, newly-orphaned, newly triumphant over evil, had been shipped away to some foreign land, to protect him from vengeful servants of the one he had slain. But of course he had to come back to attend Hogwarts.

Arthur wondered what he looked like, but then was distracted when his eyes were caught by a boy in the line. He was tiny - smaller than anyone else in his year, much smaller than an eleven-year-old should be. His round-cheeked face was like a cherub's, and his big blue eyes - shimmering with tears - like sapphires. He looked afraid and lonely, standing apart when all the other, larger children were grouped up, chattering to each other excitedly or looking around with great interest. Arthur's heart went out at once to the little boy, seeing shades of another small scared child in him. The new prefect tried to give an encouraging smile when their eyes met, and was pleased when the boy visibly relaxed, and even sent a tiny, tremulous smile in return. Beside him, his seatmate had dropped his spoon in shock at the sight of Arthur Kirkland - Arthur "Iceheart" Kirkland - smiling such a tender, soft smile.

And then the deputy headmaster boomed out: "Jones, Alfred!" and the little cherub started as violently as a hound-pup hit by a thrown slipper; jaws all around the Great Hall dropped. This trembling little thing was the slayer of the Dark Lord, the hero of the wizarding world? Most of them had their bets on a tall, dark-haired lad who walked with glowing self-assurance; or on a scrappy little brown-haired fighter already wrestling with a bigger boy in the line. None of them (except Arthur) had spared two glances for the tiny child trying to hide in the shadows of his yearmates.

But it was the little blond who crept to the Sorting Hat, none of the watching professors turning him away and indeed watching his progress with an interest that terrified Alfred and confirmed his identity to the rest of the school. Alfred's eyes were wide and tear-bright as he climbed up the stool (being just a bit too small to simply seat himself on it as did most other first-years) and the last thing he saw, before the brim of the magical Sorting Hat slipped over his eyes, was the nice boy with the green eyes, and the red-and-gold lion on his prefect's badge.

Then he heard whispering winds flowing through his head, words like the undercurrents of a river just below the surface; and it flickered through his memories like a man flipping through the pages of a picture-book. Alfred squirmed and bit his lip uncomfortably.

"Ho! You can feel that, can you? Haven't had such a mind in here since that Kirkland boy...and before him, nothing for centuries. It's going to be a very interesting time in the old castle, I think. Now, where should I put you, my rare-minded little lad?"

Less a full-formed thought and more a strong feeling, Alfred answered with: {nice boy} - a strange tangled twist of {green eyes} and {red-gold lion} and {smile} and {smile-at-me} mostly, but the Hat - being theHat - knew what Alfred meant.

"You're a little young for that, aren't you?"

"...for what...?"

"Never mind. Are you sure, you could be great you know, Slytherin will help fetch it out...no? Well, then, if you're sure, better beGRYFFINDOR!" The Hat yelled that last aloud, the word ringing in the hushed Hall. And then one-and-all the Gryffindors rose up in their seats, and cheered like they had been at the Quidditch World Cup, and England had just triumphed.

"We got Jones! We got Jones!" sang out a pair of red-haired twins, while Arthur took Alfred by the arm - gently - as the boy came stumbling towards his new House, and made him sit next to the prefect, and he loaded Alfred's plate up with food.

"Here, eat," he said earnestly. "God knows you need to."

Alfred blushed and ducked his head, but his eyes were shining and he smiled.

tbc