Harry Potter, The Boy Who... Wrote?

Chapter One: The Muse

With the heat that accompanied the arrival of the summer, it was common for the streets to be deserted. No one in their right mind would go out on such a hot day unless it was terribly important. Even the trees seemed to be drooping from the heat, the leaves still, no sign of wind anywhere. Movement was restricted to the occasional car that zoomed by, all the windows rolled up and the air conditioner on full blast inside, no one taking any notice of the lone figure that was staring, despairingly, at the sky above, taking an age to move.

'Just a few more houses,' Harry thought to himself as he trudged up the walk wearily. He had been out of the house the whole day, dragging his feet to various doorsteps that looked all the same to him. Aunt Petunia was a member of some activist group that Harry could never quite remember the name of, although he was sure it had something to do with flowers.

As such, she often sent Harry out with a stack of flyers, enough to plaster Little Whinging in bright yellow, telling him not to come back until he had distributed all of them. Unluckily enough for him, she seemingly only got into one of what he called her 'flyer moods' when he was around during the holidays. Harry had left the house that morning with his pen stuck behind his ear, and a very cross look on his face as he looked at the enormous pile of papers on the doorstep. His aunt was gesticulating wildly through the window at him, and he made a game of pretending not to understand what she was saying until he saw her disappear from the window, and knew she had gone to get the frying pan.

For Harry, the expression 'from the frying pan into the fire' held quite a meaning, as he was frequently whacked with the former while being threatened with the latter. And not wanting to walk around with a painful lump on his head was something Harry would have liked very much, so he sighed before picking up the stack, trying to see his way around the pile that blocked his view of the walk in front of him.

By four p.m., half the pile was gone. Harry had walked down Privet Drive, putting down the bright yellow stack in front of every house, untying the top bundle in the stack, and shoving the flyers under doors and into letterboxes before moving on. He was growing increasingly irritable, and when a gust of wind tore away the papers from a bundle Harry had just untied, he made no attempt to go after them, just watching them float about and get themselves stuck in various places.

'People will get the message anyway,' he thought tiredly. He sat down on the hot stone of the curb, right next to the remainder of the stack, watching the yellow flutter about. Luckily for him, no one was about, although he was very sure the next day there would be an anti-littering notice with the post. Right now, though, he couldn't even care. He could feel a headache coming on from being in the sun all day, and his stomach growled uncomfortably, but he knew that he couldn't even think of going back to the house because Aunt Petunia wouldn't let him in unless she was sure that every last flyer had been given out. He licked his dry lips, and tried not to think about anything remotely associated with food or water.

A shabby old man with long, straggly ginger hair shuffled past the end of the drive. Harry looked at him for a second; the man was wearing an odd, lumpy overcoat, even in this weather, and his eyes darted everywhere before settling on Harry. He nodded to the boy, and Harry waved at him in return. He didn't even know who this man might be, but the sight of him somehow always made Harry feel oddly comforted. He stuck out in this area of posh, neat houses where everyone lived with their perfect ('and,' Harry reminded himself, 'completely normal,') families and sometimes he could feel a certain sense of empathy for this stranger who never really showed up within Privet Drive, but was always shuffling about at the end of it, around the old abandoned playground and once in a while could be seen sleeping on the wall at the end of Magnolia Crescent if one was out extremely late or really early. Like Harry, he haunted this place where everything about him seemed out of place and unwelcome.

Harry watched him as he disappeared around the corner, his fingers instinctively reaching for the pen behind his ear.

'Well, this paper has got to be good for something,' he mumbled to himself as he grabbed the topmost bundle and pulled out a few flyers, turning them over and chewing on the end of his pen as he put them down on the hot stone. While he was aware of how odd it looked, him sitting next to a pile of yellow paper, furiously sketching on the curb, he didn't really care because, as he kept on reminding himself, it wasn't anyone else's business, just his.

Not like that would have stopped anyone from staring, but... then again... being stared at was something Harry was so used to by now that he didn't give a damn.

The sun shone down on the back of Harry's neck, and he was sure that it had probably been burned an ugly shade of brown. The pen had refused to work properly on the stone, and finally he had the idea of using the remaining flyers as a makeshift table as he sketched. Soon, the mass of lines on the page had morphed into a recognizable figure, that of a scruffy tramp of a man, wearing robes that were dirty and too large, yet held up by something hidden under them that let the figure's boots be shown. The hair almost covered the face, and a pipe stuck out of the small mouth. The eyes were small and stared to the side of the picture, obviously looking at something... but at what?

Nothing, really.

Harry bit his lower lip, trying to ignore the heat of the sun and the feeling of his shirt sticking to his back because of the heat, then added a cloud of smoke coming from the pipe.

He stared at the drawing he had just made, his fingers itching as the pen hovered over the sketch.

'Who are you?' he said quietly, looking up again, hoping to see the old tramp shuffling past but not being lucky enough to catch him again. The figure stared beadily to the side of the picture, as if expecting someone to walk into it, and Harry himself sat expectantly, watching the sketch for that hidden someone, before breaking out into a large grin.

He laughed to himself. 'Idiot. Not in this world, no... no one's going to walk into pictures here.'

The sound of someone shouting made him look up. Old Mrs. Figg stood a couple of doors down from him, staring off into the distance, calling one of her beloved cats. Although she was almost blind, and her thick glasses seemed to obscure what little vision she had even more, Harry had seen her make her way down Privet Drive to buy cat food for her beloved felines and heard her calling to them quite often... although being woken up at some ungodly hour. Once in a while, she would actually trip over him, sitting out on the sidewalk, but rather than chiding him, she would always seem rather pleased and invite him over to tea.

The only thing that ever made Harry say yes to tea with Mrs. Figg was that, like Harry and the strange man, she didn't quite fit in with the rest of Privet Drive's residents. He didn't mind the stale cake and watery tea, and her incessant ramblings about each of the cats she had ever owned, because he knew that he was probably the only person who didn't... look down on her. Probably since he'd been looked down on so much himself. Probably because only he didn't think she was mad for talking to her cats. After all... when he spent half his time hiding in another world of his own creation, it seemed out of place to object to Mrs. Figg's idea that cats were also people.

A cat streaked out from under a car as she called, its tail in the air.

'Mr. Tibbles! Where have you been?' she addressed the animal. Harry stared at the woman, bending over as she let the cat rub its head on her hand as a greeting, continuously talking to it like it was another human being. The bag hanging from her wrist made a loud clanging sound, like tins crashing together.

Again, Harry put his pen to paper, but this time he kept on looking up at Mrs. Figg, now standing at the edge of the curb and looking around, calling some other cat. Slowly, her image was transferred onto the page, a batty old woman in carpet slippers and with a shopping bag in her hands. Only now, the shopping bag was raised over the head of the tramp he had drawn earlier. Harry quickly added a few more details to his earlier work; now the tramp looked surprised. Mrs. Figg had a look on her face that Harry knew he could never see in real life; she looked positively angry, her mouth open in a shout.

Again he looked up at Mrs. Figg, watching her retreat into her own house before he got to his feet. He gave her an unseen, grateful nod before shoving the paper and pen into his pocket and resuming his work of distributing flyers, considerably less tired than he had been before. Sure, he was still hungry, but he ignored the feeling completely, resigning himself to the fact that there was nothing he could do about that.

Well, unless he suddenly decided to eat the flyers...

'Sun's been affecting you, Potter,' he told himself, knowing full well that even he wasn't that desperate. Not yet he wasn't, anyway.

*

The book had been hidden carefully, wrapped up in a sweatshirt that had once upon a time been blue but was now so faded and had splotches of so many things down its front that Harry refused t wear it anymore. It was old, and the pages were yellowed like in any old book, and between its two thick, brown covers it held a wealth of words.

Of course, it wasn't like Dudley ever noticed when the big old dictionary Uncle Vernon had given him disappeared... just as he had never noticed when the book on Greek mythology had suddenly vanished from the bookshelf... in fact, if Dudley were to walk into Harry's room right now, he'd see a lot of books that he had forgotten that he had owned strewn about the floor.

Harry unwrapped the book and tossed the sweatshirt back into the cupboard. He was sitting cross-legged on the floor, surrounded by books, the fingers of one hand hovering over an open book as he flipped through the dictionary with the other. Behind him, a floorboard had been carefully pulled out of its place and kept aside; through the gap that was left, several other books could be seen, as well as an assortment of other curious items of clothing that they had been wrapped up in. A faint smell of dust rose from the pages of the dictionary that Harry was looking through and he coughed violently, trying his best to muffle the sound. He rubbed his eyes and yawned before going back to pore over the tiny print of the dictionary.

It was late. Everyone was asleep; Harry could hear Dudley's snores from the next room. He knew that he had to be quiet or else everyone would wake up and demand to know what he was doing at such an ungodly hour, and he was in no mood to humor them, or their remarks about his eccentricity. That, and he wasn't eager for anyone to know about his hiding place under the loose floorboard in his room, or everything would be taken away and it would take him an age to get it all back from Dudley's room where he would most probably find all those books thrown aside and forgotten like he had originally.

'Dammit,' he swore under his breath as he closed the dictionary and placed it aside. He was so tired, and his arms itched from the sunburn he had gotten while he was out delivering flyers. But he couldn't sleep, no matter how hard he tried. The drawing he had made earlier lay on the ground in front of him, in the dim light of the lamp looking as if they were peering out of the paper at Harry and the shadows that danced over them making them look alive.

Harry glanced at the drawing. The image of the old tramp that he had drawn taunted him, and he growled at it, snatching it up from the floor.

'Who are you?' he whispered, holding the paper barely an inch from his face so that his breath made it flutter. 'Who are you, dammit, and why don't you let me be?'

Harry laughed, a tired, drawn out laugh.

'Maybe this is actually what's making me go insane... I'm actually talking to imaginary characters on paper now,' he thought out loud. He knew, though, that this was not the first time he had stayed up all night, either writing or trying to figure out something to do with whatever he was writing about, and it definitely wouldn't be the last.

When the muse struck, there was nothing that Harry could do. He was a slave to this very muse, obeying its every whim and calling. When it struck, he could stay up all night, scribbling away frantically, until his hands shook and the pen dropped from his grasp, and when it was gone, he would lie in bed for hours, praying for it to come back. When the muse gripped him, he became the god of his world, creating and destroying as he saw fit, blowing the winds of change across his fictional land with the ease of stirring his morning tea. When it left him, it left him forlorn and without any means of escape from his drab and dreary life; it left him with nowhere to flee when he wanted to block out his cousin's taunts and his aunt and uncle's constant complaints.

But now, he was like a frantic fanatic, a devout devotee to words, and he would not be able to sleep until he had exhausted himself, until the fire that ran through him had dulled and he was, to some extent, satisfied by what he had done.

He stared at the paper, willing it to come to life. For the third time that night, he posed the same question to it: 'Who are you?' he said slowly, willing the jumbled mess of lines to talk to him, but of course, got no answer. His eyes strained themselves to see anything that might help him, went over each small line of the sketch, finally coming to settle on the thick cloud of smoke that issued from the pipe in the figure's mouth. He could almost imagine the smell from that pipe in his mind; a rich, strong, filthy odor of cheap tobacco, a stench that would hang off the tramp even when he wasn't smoking... he could almost smell it...

*

A strong smell of tobacco came from the living room. If Harry hadn't known better, it would seem as if Uncle Vernon had lighted a bonfire in the living room, and then dumped all the tobacco in Surrey onto it. His head spun from the smell, and when he stepped into the room, he had to hold his breath so that he didn't pass out.

He immediately found the source of the odor- one of Uncle Vernon's business associates, a certain Mr. Fletcher, was puffing away at a pipe, the smoke rising from it enveloping the man's features and filling the living room with a stench that was almost tangible. Uncle Vernon was coughing and sputtering and his face was a shade that Harry had never seen it turn.

'Harry,' Uncle Vernon coughed, 'just put the tray on the table.'

'Right,' Harry said, immediately regretting it as his lungs were assaulted with smoke that seemed to choke him. He tottered forward with the tray of drinks, concentrating on each step he took as he tried to hold his breath again; unfortunately, the taste of the smoke had lodged itself firmly in his mouth and it was all he could do not to fall to the floor and try to take deep, clean breaths from the clean air below. He placed the tray on the table and made for the door, feeling the veins around his eyes about to burst. He needed air... clean air, not some foul, tobacco-scented semblance of it...

Behind him, Uncle Vernon was waving his hands wildly in a vain effort to clear the smoke. Harry only heard him exclaim through his coughs, 'Goodness, Fletcher, do you have to smoke that dastardly Mundungus in the house? You know that Petunia...' before he got out of the living room. Immediately, he dropped to his knees, sucking in the air, his mind spinning.

This was how Aunt Petunia found him a minute later, still coughing slightly, eyes running and clothes reeking with the stench of cheap tobacco.

'Harry! Get upstairs and take a bath, now! You're positively stinking of that horrible stuff!'

*

'Mundungus,' Harry whispered, his eyes lighting up as he stared at the drawing, his eyes fixed on the thick lines that represented smoke. 'Mundungus Fletcher, that's who you are.' He grabbed a pen from the floor and scrawled the name under the figure.

For the first time that night, he was welcoming the feeling of his eyelids drooping and he hurriedly gathered up everything he had scattered on the floor, carefully tying them up in old clothes and lowering them into the space before replacing the floorboard that covered it. The drawing was still in his hands, and Harry walked over to the desk and carefully placed it in an open drawer, on top of a pile of other drawings, before quietly shutting it.

He yawned and glanced at the clock. It was 2:27 a.m. But that didn't matter. Harry grinned.

'Gotta love the muse,' he thought as he clambered into bed, still fully clothed, only pausing to take off his glasses and place them on the bedside table before resting his head on the pillow. His eyes closed and he was fast asleep in a few seconds, completely oblivious to anything except the welcoming black.

Outside, an owl hooted. But Harry didn't hear it, nor did he know when it passed right by his window. The owl's wing brushed against the window softly, and Harry only mumbled in his sleep, not aware of anything. The owl perched for a second on the clothesline in the backyard, staring up at the closed window with its large yellow eyes before taking off again, finally finding the person it was looking for.

The owl hooted and the scruffy tramp moved into the light of a streetlamp, putting out his arm for the owl to perch on. He looked up at the window of Harry's bedroom, seeing the light on in there, and only smiled.

'He's alrigh' then?' he whispered, more to himself than the owl, but it gave an affirmative hoot anyway as the man turned and lurched away down the street, melting into the shadows once more as the owl took flight, a small piece of paper dangling from its leg.