Chapter Text
[place chapter art here]
MONDAY 12TH MARCH, 1988
Dewy grass compressed under the soles of fresh sneakers, his pants hung in the air. He sprinted across the field on that warm spring day. His yellow umbrella lay on the soaked wooden bench, two glasses of juice left abandoned along with it.
He ran for his life, his flaxen-ribboned boater hat jarring askew, as he looked behind him. He heightened his speed, before feeling a rock hook his foot - he fell flat on his face, scraping his knees on the stiff mud and ruining his baby yellow tweed coat, however still managing to keep his hands clasped closed.
On such days like this, children like him should be inside, reading a book near the fire, or learning to knit with their mothers. Fixing their broken toy broomsticks or learning to write runes, or understand latin, french, or one of those other fancy languages.
But Harry Potter was always a bit of a weirdo.
"Leave it alone!" He screamed, painful tears streaming from his eyes, burning in his corneas and pacing down his cheeks. He clutched the baby chick to his chest, sobbing out and curling up into a shield from the blonde in blue trying to pry his closed knuckles open, rolling in his lovely yellow coat in the damp grass.
Such a shame.
"It's going to die, anyway!" the blonde gritted out - a boy just an inch taller than the other - an insufferable fact he'd been unable to close his mouth about, in the same clothes as the other, in a soft baby blue, complete with matching ribboned boater hat. He tugged at the black haired boy's arm with the hand that wasn't holding his little blue umbrella. "Give - it - to - me!"
"No!" the little black-haired boy screamed. "It's just a baby!" He cried harder, clutching the baby chick to his chest, desperately protecting it from whatever cruel fate Draco had for it.
"It's parents are gone. Nobody's going to take care of it, just give it over, Harry!" Little Draco looked at his very best friend in the whole wide world, sobbing his eyes out on the floor, in the terrible terrible rain, while their half-empty juices lay forgotten, next to his umbrella.
His nice yellow clothes had been ruined; this made Draco particularly upset, as he had asked their mothers to buy them matching ones in their favourite colours.
Harry nestled it in his coat pocket, where it would be lovely and warm, feeling it burrow into the very corner and smiling, before turning to Draco, who he really hated right now.
Harry sniffed; his nose had been running from all the crying he had been doing. He wiped it with the coat of his yellow coat, and Draco winced.
His dark skin felt stiff and uncomfortable with the residue of tears, his green eyes red from sorrow. Draco fixed his hat askew.
Yes, Draco! His very best friend in the whole wide world! How could he ever hate him? He held Draco's hand, as the two children toddled over to Harry's lone yellow umbrella, and Harry realised it would all be okay then.
The baby chick would survive; Harry would bring it back to the manor, and incubate it and raise it up, and Harry would get to keep it as a pet forever and ever! Yes, that sounded perfect!
"There's no need to kill it," Harry said very proudly, smiling as him and Draco walked back to the Potter Manor, where they were having a sleepover while Draco's parents were away for a weekend doing whatever it is they do. Their little five year old legs managed to get just past the Wiltshire village before getting tired; sitting on a dryer bench outside the village's sweetshop, sucking on Ice Mice, umbrellas over their heads to protect against the rain.
They bought two each with their pocket money, Draco giving Harry one of his as he didn't have much of a sweet tooth. Harry was relishing the sweet taste of the bubblegum flavour when Draco turned to him. "It's still in there, isn't it?" Harry nodded happily.
"Yep, and it's still alive!" He grinned at Draco with his missing canine.
"Yes, well, it won't be forever." The smile on Harry's face slid off like slime, and he fixed Draco with a stare. "Don't look at me like that - nothing lasts forever, that's what my mother tells me."
"Adults aren't always right, Draco," Harry frowned at him, and Draco frowned back. "Now come on, let's go back home!" he grabbed Draco by the hand and led him towards the path to Potter Manor, near the fire lily fields.
Draco hadn't finished his ice mouse, so they walked back in silence - Harry knew it would survive, but Harry couldn't shake off what Draco said. Nothing lasts forever… but it would! It had to!
The rain was getting worse now, pittering and pattering against his yellow umbrella as he practically hiked up the cobblestone stairs towards his manor house, Draco in his stead. He was on the pathway to the landing, before his heart gave a horrible, devastating jolt.
A weak twitch came from the pocket where he'd put the chick, and he stopped in his tracks, keeping entirely still to feel another, another burrow, another even slight twitch.
Nothing.
Painful tears pricked his eyes; a swarm of sadness came over him, he launched himself on the floor and cried, throwing his umbrella to the side and sobbing.
The rain ran down his face, coagulating with his tears as he sobbed his eyes out. He banged his fists on the ground, kicking his legs and screaming. The rain was hitting him harder now, and the objectively light (but unbearable for a 7 year old having a tantrum) pain made him cry out louder.
He felt a shield over his face; and the shadow of a figure above him. Draco had put his blue umbrella over him, and was now crouching down over Harry's pocket.
"Let me see."
"No!" Harry cried, clutching his coat tight.
"Why are you still crying? You knew it was going to die, I told you so, didn't I?" Draco said apathetically, looking at his sobbing best friend confusedly. "All you're doing is getting your new clothes dirty, again."
"I don't care," Harry weeped. "I looked after it and- and I kept it warm, but it still died, I don't understand!"
"Mother said that's how life works."
"I don't care - it's not- it's not fair!" Harry howled, dampening his hands with tears. He felt warm arms around him, and he wanted to push them away, he really did, but he found himself sobbing into his best friend's shoulder over the chick in his pocket.
Draco looked at his best friend, screaming in sorrow, and he felt a hot tear roll down his cheek. He sniffled, and hugged Harry tighter.
☆
"You're such a crybaby," Draco sniffed, his mouth full of Ginger Newt, swaddled in a thick blue blanket by Mrs Potter near the fire in Harry's lounge, engrossed in the Tales of Beedle the Bard while sitting on the scarlet velvet sofa, propped up on some pillows.
"You were crying too," Harry pointed out, reading over his shoulder, wrapped up in a thick yellow blanket next to him as he picked a shortbread salamander from the biscuit tin.
"Yeah but less than you," Harry sniffed at him offendedly.
The door to the manor had eventually been opened by a very concerned house elf, who had led the two boys in, giving them a warm bath and dressing them into their (once again, by request, matching yellow and blue) pyjamas, leaving them with a biscuit tin and the Tales of Beedle the Bard.
It took Harry's third action of curling up by the fire before Mrs Potter's maternal senses apparently kicked in and she swaddled the two of them in thick cotton blankets and a kiss on the forehead each.
"When we go to Hogwarts, I bet you'll be in Hufflepuff," Draco snickered, popping another Ginger Newt into his mouth. "That's where all the babies go."
"My mummy and daddy say there's some really good people in Hufflepuff, and they're both Gryffindors," Harry sniffled. "Dadi Euphemia was a Hufflepuff... I might not even be going to Hogwarts, anyway."
Draco looked crestfallen. "But we'll be away from eachother! We're always together - We're going to Hogwarts, together and we'll both be in Slytherin, right? Your mum, dad and your grandmother went to Hogwarts, so why can't you?"
"Dadi is different, you know she is, and Mum's from England, and she's muggleborn..." Harry trailed off. "Baba says Viskakhantra is really good - things like Astrology and wandless magic, they do that better than Hogwarts."
"But my mum says I have to go to Hogwarts," Draco frowned, "She won't let me go to any of the foreign schools, and we're always together."
"We could work something out," Harry bargained sheepishly. "It's not for certain, you know..."
Draco didn't look comforted. He looked into the fire, huffing. "Well, if it is, I could always bully Father into sending me there. You'd have to help me out, though, cause I don't know much of the lingo."
Harry laughed at Draco's funny word for language. "I speak Hindi, but I'm sure a load of the students there speak English. Viskakhantra takes students from everywhere, remember?"
Draco groaned. "Even more languages to communicate with, and you know I'm hopeless at that. Remember that German man at Father's charity ball?"
"You were only six then," Harry snorted.
"I'm seven now, but we're both turning eight soon. We're gonna be big boys, going to school," Draco smiled proudly.
"Yes," Harry smiled back. "Yes we are."
It was just a matter of which.
☆
It took a lot of pleading, and a lot of crying, but after an hour Harry's parents finally let up. James said that Harry was allowed to go to Hogwarts, but soon as he even caught wind that Harry wasn't happy there, he was being packed up and transferred to Viskakhantra, which Draco didn't dare take with a grain of salt.
The two of them had finished their dinner and had gone into the back garden, racing eachother on toy broomsticks until after ten minutes, when they decided that skimming the grass simply wasn't good enough.
Harry begged his mother on his knees to take turns on Uncle Sirius' proper broomstick, just one go each and they promised to put it away. Of course, Lily, being the frustratingly responsible parent she is, said no, denying Harry and Draco their fun.
But James, who Harry and Draco knew messed about in their school years, snuck them into the garage, where rested Lily's muggle car and the broomsticks. He kept watch of the kitchen door for any nosy house-elves, while they both took turns on Sirius' Silver Arrow Five. Harry thought he would burn alive with jealousy watching Draco take the first turn, zooming around the garden at high speed. But after five minutes when Draco landed softly on the grass, it was Harry's turn. As he was mounding, he felt a light nausea in his stomach, what felt like butterflies swarming up his esophagus - he pushed up, just like he had seen Draco do it, and felt the nausea evaporate, just to be taken over by pure exhilaration.
It felt like being reborn - as a grand pheonix, swishing across the skies, the wind tousling his hair as he crowned the clouds, rising higher and higher; he’d fly to the heavens, if he could make it.
"Harry!" He thought he heard his father say, but what use did he have for the ground when he felt he belonged to the sky? He was an idiot for sticking to the toy broomstick, he knew that now, but now he had gotten a taste of freedom, of what it felt like to fly, he was on Cloud Nine, and merlin be damned if he was never going to feel like this again. He took sharp turns, weaving in and out through the condensations of residual rain clouds, flying and zipping so fast he cut through the moisture of the air, his tiny body lining the skies like a bullet. He had just turned around when he realised he had passed the manor, and was just in front of the village ahead. He whipped around, making a deliciously sharp turn before speeding back to Potter Manor, gliding over the courtyard and landing smoothly in front of a distraught James Potter and a grinning Sirius Black.
"Never do that again," James panted, wiping his forehead with his sleave, while Draco beamed behind him.
"You make a good flyer, but try not to nearly break your neck next time," Sirius chuckled, Draco cutting in.
"He didn't!" Draco protested. "He had total control, didn't you, Harry?" Harry nodded, beaming.
"Of course you're a good flyer, you have Potter blood in you!" James ruffled Harry's windswept hair.
"Bloody sky creatures," Sirius huffed, Draco and Harry giggling at the rude word as James elbowed him in the rib. "Now come on, let's put all this away before Lily has our heads...... ah."
"Hello, dear," James said weakly. "How's work going?" Harry didn't think he'd ever see his Dad's deep skin so unfortunately blanched, as a livid Lily Potter charged into the back garden, looking utterly murderous.