Harliquin's Chosen 2
3 April 2014 22:26![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mimi_sardiniaWow, I actually have a little bit more of this.
Things took a turn for the strange right after that, the first thing to happen was when he got home that afternoon, Uncle Vernon went into the expected rant about "freakishness" after hearing Dudley's exaggerated tale of Harry vanishing (Harry was pretty sure there were no window-shattering booms or great geysers of flame), only the moment he raised his hand to "give Harry a good thumping" for it... It would be something Harry thought he would remember for the rest of his life, when as he swung his meaty fist, Vernon somehow spun around, losing his balance and fell to the floor with a great thump. To add to the hilarious absurdity, Aunt Petunia, after going into a rant about Harry's "freakishness", would also end up in a heap on the floor due to a similar case of clumsiness as she tried to hit Harry with a broom.
Harry was very quickly ordered to his cupboard while Petunia panicked over her husband's state, only when he got there... that was the second big change in his life. As soon as the door closed behind him, the cupboard turned into a dramatically spacious room with a huge bed a nice elegant furnishings, including a nice two-seater sofa, a bookcase full of books, and a writing desk of a strangely older-fashioned style than the Dursleys were known to approve of (what with their need to be the best of everyone in the neighbourhood and have the newest (though not too flashy) style of furnishings every few years).
As Harry turned around the room, he spied sitting on the bedside table an envelope. Picking it up, he found it held shut by a wax seal with a stylized flame, which, when compared to the necklace Miss Pridain had given him, proved to be the same flame. Opening the letter showed Miss Pridain's usual manner of handwriting saying:
Dear Harry,
After today's little incident I decided I needed to look closer into your situation, as what I know of your uncle is, unfortunately, not very positive in his attitude towards you. It has come to my attention that your living arrangements - that is your bedroom - is dreadfully below standard, so I have taken the liberty of improving it a little.
If you will note, there is a second door, besides the one leading back into your Aunt and Uncle's house. This door leads to a number of other rooms, including the bathroom, and a dining room. If your relations do not allow you sufficient use of the bathroom, you have another avenue, and if they forget to supply you with a meal, there will always be food available in the dining room.
If you will also note, have supplied you with a selection of books that I would advise you read. Take your time with them, and I will discuss their contents with you at school.
Yours sincerely, Mikaela Pridain.
Her signature was all in capitals, as far as Harry could tell, had curious curls on some letters, and three dots over each of the A's. There was also a small hand-drawn smiley jester like the one on the necklace next to her signature.
Harry thought over the letter for a moment before putting it down and going to look at the bookcase. The books in it were... odd, with titles like "Young Wizard Stories", and "The Tales of Beedle the Bard", to ones with titles like "Theory of Magic" and "Hogwarts: A History". At first Harry thought the former ones were simply titles to draw attention - he was not far wrong, though something in the stories inside seemed to strongly imply that the writer and reader were legitimately wizards - or in the case of the latter ones, titles made to sound like textbooks for what were, in reality, fiction - which as it turned out was far off base, as the books read like text books without any of the subtle hints that would give it away to a discerning reader that they were fiction.
Either in spite of Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia's efforts to keep Harry from reading anything, or possibly due to Miss Pridain's encouragement at school for Harry to read anything and everything he wanted, Harry was quite a discerning reader, for his age.
I just that first night, Harry managed to get through a good three chapters each of both of those text books he first noticed, and by the next day, once he was at school, was all but bouncing to speak to Miss Pridain about them, and although his eager manner also gained unwanted attention from Dudley and his gang, another incident like what happened to Vernon the night before happened, with not only Dudley, but his cronies, suddenly becoming unexpectedly clumsy and falling over their own feet without managing to even land a single glancing blow on Harry.
"There is one big fact that you need to know Harry, and that is that magic is real." Miss Pridain said as Harry raised the question of how the books treated magic as though it was total fact. Before he could even protest, she raise a finger, adding: "No matter what your aunt and uncle might have ever said, true magic, the sort where people can do things like this-" With a wave of her hand a small diamond-shaped paperweight made of green glass started to float up to hover above Miss Pridain's desk, lazily spinning.
Harry found himself staring at the glass object until, with another wave of her hand, Miss Pridain turned it into a bright green bird that fluttered around the room before settling on the desk, then turned into a stone sculpture of a bird, then into the diamond again, which proceeded to float back to it's setting.
"Now most people who have magic - they usually refer to themselves as 'witches' and 'wizards' - need to use a wand to do magic, and go to a magic school to learn how to do so." Miss Pridain started speaking with a matter-of-fact tone as she turned to dig through a bag that seemed deeper than it looked, even once reaching so far in her arm was right up to the shoulder. With a bright "Ah-ha!" She pulled out what looked like a jester's baton, deftly spinning it a few times like an acrobat before a flash of momentary colour and the baton changed into a shorter, plainer-shaped white stick. "I admit, I am a bit different to most magical people, so I often do not use a wand in private, but I like to avoid showing off in public, so I use this." She traced a sideways figure eight - or infinity symbol, Harry's memory from random reading supplied - and let loose a flurry of multi-coloured sparkles.
"Now the laws of magical people do not allow children to use wands, but I can start teaching you a number of things that do not need one." Miss Pridain sat down in her chair, absently spinning the wand between her fingers. "I personally believe that restricting people to using wands has made the majority of Wizarding society a little handicapped, so I would like to see you learn right from the start how to not depend on such things. Oh, when you officially start attending magical school-" She held up a finger before Harry could protest. "And you will! There are people in the Wizarding World who will insist that you do and will not allow your aunt and uncle to prevent you from doing so - you will have to purchase a wand and at least appear to be learning how to perform magic in the manner the Wizarding World expects."
"But I don't have any money, and I don't know where to buy a wand anyway." Harry spoke up.
Miss Pridain sighed, rubbing her forehead. "Unfortunately, magic is not the only thing your aunt and uncle has lied about." She started, her voice sounding a little tired. "Your parents were not drunks and they did not die in a car accident, nor were they penniless, but the money they left behind for you to inherit is not available to your aunt and uncle - a good thing too... though..." Her voice trailed off as she frowned in thought. "Maybe some time soon we should go check on the state of your accounts. Make sure they have not been touched while you have been hidden out here in the non-magical world." Miss Pridain tapped her chin in thought for another moment before beginning again. "Anyway, wizards live both side-by-side with non-magical people, but at the same time they keep themselves separate, to the point where they can be woefully ignorant of much of how non-magical people live. They have their own shopping areas and the largest such place is Diagon Alley, in London. It is there that you will find shops that sell any number of magical goods, including wands, though you will not be able to get a wand for yourself until you turn eleven, so until then I will train you in wandless magic."
Harry, a bit dumbfounded by all this information, could only nod, biting his lip in his overwhelmed state of mind. Noticing his confusion, Miss Pridain gave him a gentle smile. "Don''t worry about it all too much. We'll take it slowly to start with."
"Um... Why are you doing all of this for me?" Harry asked tentatively.
Miss Pridain sighed. "Because... helping you learn magic will help me in the long run, and in the time I have known you, I have found you a nice boy, who despite living with the awful relatives you have, still manages to be a good young man." She stood up from her chair and stepped around the desk, to crouch in front of Harry. "Simply... I like you Harry, and I want to see you have a good life. Is that acceptable with you?"
Harry, a little amazed that someone actually wanted to be nice to him - someone who it seemed Uncle Vernon could not stop from being nice to him - found himself nodding his acceptance.
* The "diamond-shaped" green glass paperweight, in mind, is a hexagonal bipyramid. That is the shape of the "PlumbBob" in The Sims - the floating diamond that indicates who is the currently active sim. My best quality models for what Mikaela looks like are a handful of screencaps I took of a sim I made up of her.
The mention of reaching into a bag, right to the shoulder, though the bag does not look big enough is another little nod to Mary Poppins, where she goes hunting through her carpet bag for her measuring tape.
Also, the slightly curly writing of Mikaela's signature, with it's gratuitous dots refers to a Tolkien font that I have on my Middle Earth map, with long tails on Fs, Ks and Rs, curly stands on d's, as well as the three dots on a's. Go watch the prologue scene in The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey and you'll see Bilbo adding those three dots.
I feel Mikaela shows more Mary Sueness here. I tried to cut it down, as well as cutting down excessive description of irreverent details like hexagonal bipyramids and Mikaela's jester baton. I cannot throw out all references to the baton and Mikaela's jester insignias, as I want to firmly establish her symbols early on. Ideally, as I go on, the story would stay firmly in Harry's POV, which for the most part would leave Mikaela in the background, but not that far back as she would insist on wriggling her way into Hogwarts to keep an eye on Harry. I have a thought that she manages to grab a hold of the Muggle Studies position, which she proceeds to thumb her nose at everyone who protests that she is not teaching the set curriculum because she is actually teaching students about the real 1990s muggle world instead of the out-of-date information Wizarding Britain sets for the class (because I like the idea that not all of the Wizarding World is as inept as Britain, and probably some parts of Europe).
I still don't know for sure whether this fic would have Harliquin fighting against Voldemort, or if it would end up so anti-Dumbledore that he's the real bad guy and Voldemort is just a chump who went down the wrong path. I don't think I could write something that is not at least a little anti-Dumbledore, and this bit already has set-up for Mikaela preparing Harry to subvert Dumbledore's "Greater Good".
I also have vague thoughts of incidental appearances of Mal - Mikaela's boyfriend - but they would either be totally pointless asides, or lead-in to gratuitous porn that I would not be confident enough to write. Why is it I am totally fine with RP porn but quail at the mere thought of putting it in fanfic?
Things took a turn for the strange right after that, the first thing to happen was when he got home that afternoon, Uncle Vernon went into the expected rant about "freakishness" after hearing Dudley's exaggerated tale of Harry vanishing (Harry was pretty sure there were no window-shattering booms or great geysers of flame), only the moment he raised his hand to "give Harry a good thumping" for it... It would be something Harry thought he would remember for the rest of his life, when as he swung his meaty fist, Vernon somehow spun around, losing his balance and fell to the floor with a great thump. To add to the hilarious absurdity, Aunt Petunia, after going into a rant about Harry's "freakishness", would also end up in a heap on the floor due to a similar case of clumsiness as she tried to hit Harry with a broom.
Harry was very quickly ordered to his cupboard while Petunia panicked over her husband's state, only when he got there... that was the second big change in his life. As soon as the door closed behind him, the cupboard turned into a dramatically spacious room with a huge bed a nice elegant furnishings, including a nice two-seater sofa, a bookcase full of books, and a writing desk of a strangely older-fashioned style than the Dursleys were known to approve of (what with their need to be the best of everyone in the neighbourhood and have the newest (though not too flashy) style of furnishings every few years).
As Harry turned around the room, he spied sitting on the bedside table an envelope. Picking it up, he found it held shut by a wax seal with a stylized flame, which, when compared to the necklace Miss Pridain had given him, proved to be the same flame. Opening the letter showed Miss Pridain's usual manner of handwriting saying:
Dear Harry,
After today's little incident I decided I needed to look closer into your situation, as what I know of your uncle is, unfortunately, not very positive in his attitude towards you. It has come to my attention that your living arrangements - that is your bedroom - is dreadfully below standard, so I have taken the liberty of improving it a little.
If you will note, there is a second door, besides the one leading back into your Aunt and Uncle's house. This door leads to a number of other rooms, including the bathroom, and a dining room. If your relations do not allow you sufficient use of the bathroom, you have another avenue, and if they forget to supply you with a meal, there will always be food available in the dining room.
If you will also note, have supplied you with a selection of books that I would advise you read. Take your time with them, and I will discuss their contents with you at school.
Yours sincerely, Mikaela Pridain.
Her signature was all in capitals, as far as Harry could tell, had curious curls on some letters, and three dots over each of the A's. There was also a small hand-drawn smiley jester like the one on the necklace next to her signature.
Harry thought over the letter for a moment before putting it down and going to look at the bookcase. The books in it were... odd, with titles like "Young Wizard Stories", and "The Tales of Beedle the Bard", to ones with titles like "Theory of Magic" and "Hogwarts: A History". At first Harry thought the former ones were simply titles to draw attention - he was not far wrong, though something in the stories inside seemed to strongly imply that the writer and reader were legitimately wizards - or in the case of the latter ones, titles made to sound like textbooks for what were, in reality, fiction - which as it turned out was far off base, as the books read like text books without any of the subtle hints that would give it away to a discerning reader that they were fiction.
Either in spite of Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia's efforts to keep Harry from reading anything, or possibly due to Miss Pridain's encouragement at school for Harry to read anything and everything he wanted, Harry was quite a discerning reader, for his age.
I just that first night, Harry managed to get through a good three chapters each of both of those text books he first noticed, and by the next day, once he was at school, was all but bouncing to speak to Miss Pridain about them, and although his eager manner also gained unwanted attention from Dudley and his gang, another incident like what happened to Vernon the night before happened, with not only Dudley, but his cronies, suddenly becoming unexpectedly clumsy and falling over their own feet without managing to even land a single glancing blow on Harry.
"There is one big fact that you need to know Harry, and that is that magic is real." Miss Pridain said as Harry raised the question of how the books treated magic as though it was total fact. Before he could even protest, she raise a finger, adding: "No matter what your aunt and uncle might have ever said, true magic, the sort where people can do things like this-" With a wave of her hand a small diamond-shaped paperweight made of green glass started to float up to hover above Miss Pridain's desk, lazily spinning.
Harry found himself staring at the glass object until, with another wave of her hand, Miss Pridain turned it into a bright green bird that fluttered around the room before settling on the desk, then turned into a stone sculpture of a bird, then into the diamond again, which proceeded to float back to it's setting.
"Now most people who have magic - they usually refer to themselves as 'witches' and 'wizards' - need to use a wand to do magic, and go to a magic school to learn how to do so." Miss Pridain started speaking with a matter-of-fact tone as she turned to dig through a bag that seemed deeper than it looked, even once reaching so far in her arm was right up to the shoulder. With a bright "Ah-ha!" She pulled out what looked like a jester's baton, deftly spinning it a few times like an acrobat before a flash of momentary colour and the baton changed into a shorter, plainer-shaped white stick. "I admit, I am a bit different to most magical people, so I often do not use a wand in private, but I like to avoid showing off in public, so I use this." She traced a sideways figure eight - or infinity symbol, Harry's memory from random reading supplied - and let loose a flurry of multi-coloured sparkles.
"Now the laws of magical people do not allow children to use wands, but I can start teaching you a number of things that do not need one." Miss Pridain sat down in her chair, absently spinning the wand between her fingers. "I personally believe that restricting people to using wands has made the majority of Wizarding society a little handicapped, so I would like to see you learn right from the start how to not depend on such things. Oh, when you officially start attending magical school-" She held up a finger before Harry could protest. "And you will! There are people in the Wizarding World who will insist that you do and will not allow your aunt and uncle to prevent you from doing so - you will have to purchase a wand and at least appear to be learning how to perform magic in the manner the Wizarding World expects."
"But I don't have any money, and I don't know where to buy a wand anyway." Harry spoke up.
Miss Pridain sighed, rubbing her forehead. "Unfortunately, magic is not the only thing your aunt and uncle has lied about." She started, her voice sounding a little tired. "Your parents were not drunks and they did not die in a car accident, nor were they penniless, but the money they left behind for you to inherit is not available to your aunt and uncle - a good thing too... though..." Her voice trailed off as she frowned in thought. "Maybe some time soon we should go check on the state of your accounts. Make sure they have not been touched while you have been hidden out here in the non-magical world." Miss Pridain tapped her chin in thought for another moment before beginning again. "Anyway, wizards live both side-by-side with non-magical people, but at the same time they keep themselves separate, to the point where they can be woefully ignorant of much of how non-magical people live. They have their own shopping areas and the largest such place is Diagon Alley, in London. It is there that you will find shops that sell any number of magical goods, including wands, though you will not be able to get a wand for yourself until you turn eleven, so until then I will train you in wandless magic."
Harry, a bit dumbfounded by all this information, could only nod, biting his lip in his overwhelmed state of mind. Noticing his confusion, Miss Pridain gave him a gentle smile. "Don''t worry about it all too much. We'll take it slowly to start with."
"Um... Why are you doing all of this for me?" Harry asked tentatively.
Miss Pridain sighed. "Because... helping you learn magic will help me in the long run, and in the time I have known you, I have found you a nice boy, who despite living with the awful relatives you have, still manages to be a good young man." She stood up from her chair and stepped around the desk, to crouch in front of Harry. "Simply... I like you Harry, and I want to see you have a good life. Is that acceptable with you?"
Harry, a little amazed that someone actually wanted to be nice to him - someone who it seemed Uncle Vernon could not stop from being nice to him - found himself nodding his acceptance.
* The "diamond-shaped" green glass paperweight, in mind, is a hexagonal bipyramid. That is the shape of the "PlumbBob" in The Sims - the floating diamond that indicates who is the currently active sim. My best quality models for what Mikaela looks like are a handful of screencaps I took of a sim I made up of her.
The mention of reaching into a bag, right to the shoulder, though the bag does not look big enough is another little nod to Mary Poppins, where she goes hunting through her carpet bag for her measuring tape.
Also, the slightly curly writing of Mikaela's signature, with it's gratuitous dots refers to a Tolkien font that I have on my Middle Earth map, with long tails on Fs, Ks and Rs, curly stands on d's, as well as the three dots on a's. Go watch the prologue scene in The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey and you'll see Bilbo adding those three dots.
I feel Mikaela shows more Mary Sueness here. I tried to cut it down, as well as cutting down excessive description of irreverent details like hexagonal bipyramids and Mikaela's jester baton. I cannot throw out all references to the baton and Mikaela's jester insignias, as I want to firmly establish her symbols early on. Ideally, as I go on, the story would stay firmly in Harry's POV, which for the most part would leave Mikaela in the background, but not that far back as she would insist on wriggling her way into Hogwarts to keep an eye on Harry. I have a thought that she manages to grab a hold of the Muggle Studies position, which she proceeds to thumb her nose at everyone who protests that she is not teaching the set curriculum because she is actually teaching students about the real 1990s muggle world instead of the out-of-date information Wizarding Britain sets for the class (because I like the idea that not all of the Wizarding World is as inept as Britain, and probably some parts of Europe).
I still don't know for sure whether this fic would have Harliquin fighting against Voldemort, or if it would end up so anti-Dumbledore that he's the real bad guy and Voldemort is just a chump who went down the wrong path. I don't think I could write something that is not at least a little anti-Dumbledore, and this bit already has set-up for Mikaela preparing Harry to subvert Dumbledore's "Greater Good".
I also have vague thoughts of incidental appearances of Mal - Mikaela's boyfriend - but they would either be totally pointless asides, or lead-in to gratuitous porn that I would not be confident enough to write. Why is it I am totally fine with RP porn but quail at the mere thought of putting it in fanfic?
