It is not the sort of day on which most children would want to go out to play, but he has no choice. His father had been at the neighbourhood pub until the wee hours of the morning, and started drinking as soon as he woke up to “ease the hangover”, as he put it. It isn’t yet noon, but his parents are already fighting. He knows his father would soon turn violent, so he runs.
He sometimes wishes he could rescue his mother from his father’s wrath, but he is realistic about his size, his abilities and his personality. He is a stringy, underfed child, with no physical way of fighting back and no wand. He is no selfless, chivalrous Gryffindor, either. He knows he will be a Slytherin. Slytherins watch out for themselves first, others second. He knows when to flee, and he knows he must leave his mother to fend for herself. Besides, she never stands up for him, either.
Out of habit, his feet make their way to the park. It is not a particularly hospitable place on such a rainy day. If he had thought about it, he might have made his way to the library or city hall “ warm, dry places he can loiter in as long as he likes for free. He isn’t thinking, though, he’s just walking.
The rain starts coming down even harder as he reaches the park. Briefly, he considers turning back, but he knows it isn’t a wise choice with the situation at home. Instead, he scans the park, looking for the least wet place to settle himself until the storm lets up a bit. The park is almost as new as the fancy new suburb that surrounds it, so there are not any old trees with large, sheltering canopies yet. Thankfully, he spots a large bush by the edge of the playground. It looks like it has the best chance of keeping him dry, but he is loathe go and sit under it. The simple act of going so near a playground, the place that adults always want to stereotype him into, is degrading. However, he decides that looking like a soaked rat is more so, and he makes his way under it.
After well over an hour passes, he is immersed in 1000 Magical Herbs and Fungi. When he was four, he nicked one of his mother’s schoolbooks from her trunk and, with determination, taught himself to read it. Ever since, he has been working his way through the magic books, but he often finds himself returning to the ones on potion-making, especially this one. He has read it so many times that he practically has it memorised, but there is something comforting about rereading it yet another time.
He is so busy trying to find an alternate ingredient for Forgetfulness Potion to replace the scales of two Vanishing Guppies, a rather weak ingredient, that it takes him a while to notice the sounds of children playing nearby. When he does, he looks up, and notices that the rain has softened and some clouds are even beginning to clear. He decides to leave and find a more peaceful place to read. When he stands up and starts to slink out of the bush, he freezes.
On the playground are two girls. One appears to be a little older than him, but the other looks about his age. She is quite pretty “ rather short with hair that is a stunningly deep shade of red. This, however, is not what catches his eye. As he looks at her through the foliage, she jumps from the top of the jungle gym, five meters above the ground. He is convinced that she will fall and break her arm or at least twist her ankle. Instead, she slowly floats to the ground, completely defying gravity.
He stands in the bush, transfixed. He continues to watch her play, unsure of what to do. He has never had much interest in children his own age before. True, he’d never had much exposure to them, but it had seemed no tragedy to him. Now, the red-headed girl has caught his eye. He finds anything she does, ordinary or extraordinary, fascinating. He wishes he knew how to approach her, because he is, for the first time in his life, feeling a great need to get to know somebody “ her.
He hangs back, unsure. His gaunt appearance and worn clothes have never encouraged others to befriend him before. Besides, he has no idea of how to start a conversation with her. Even with his lack of social skills, he suspects that saying “I’m in awe of you,” isn’t the right thing to say.
So he hangs back and continues to watch. At one point amazing point, she hangs upside down from the monkey bars with only her pinkies brushing at one point; at another, a swing goes from soaking wet to comfortably dry just as she sits on it. Unnoticed, his book slips from his hands and lands in a puddle, something he later almost “ but not quite “ regrets.
He has met almost no children from the wizarding world. However, he can surmise from his experiences, from what he has read and the two brief, strained visits he has had with his mother’s sister and her sons that this girl has remarkable control over her magic for her age. These aren’t random outbursts of magic resulting from fear or anger, but calculated uses of her powers to enhance her play.
An hour or so later, the girl and her sister leave the playground before he can find the right way to approach her. Grudgingly, he returns to reading his book. However, he finds himself reading the same paragraph about sneezewort again and again without any real comprehension. Instead, he finds his mind wandering the memory of the red-headed girl suspended in mid-air, the sun illuminating the hints of gold in her hair like a halo. This image is still engraved on his eyelids as he tries in vain to fall asleep that night.
As he tosses and turns in bed, there is even more to his thoughts than that. The girl’s older sister had chastised the girl whenever she did any magic. These feats, so beautiful to him, seemed to scare the teenager greatly. The younger girl obviously looked up to her sister, and had apologised whenever she exercised her powers. He wanted her to know that her magic was amazing and breathtaking, not despicable. He needs to rescue her from the tyranny of her mundane older sister, he decides, and expose her to the wonders of the magical world to which she so clearly belongs.
Hours earlier, he had thought he’d never be anyone’s knight in shining armour. Now, he’s seen a different kind of damsel in distress, he desperately wants to be.
Nobody's Knight by sorrow_of_severus
Chapter Notes: J.K. Rowling owns everything in this story except the scales of the Vanishing Guppy, which are mine.
Chapter Endnotes: I owe so much to my beta Emma (Amortentia x). She went beyond merely correcting grammar and made the story so much more believable and helped with the ending.