|
||||||||
|
||||||||
Author: angelmorph Story: A Different Boy Who Lived Rating: Everyone Setting: AU Status: WIP Reviews: 8 Words: 62,801
Acknowledgements: I would like to credit ER Queen of Insanity at FFN with some of the ideas that appear in this chapter. Colin came over bright and early the next morning. Well, not incredibly early, the boys were already up and outside, after all. But it was early enough that he seemed to exude even more energy than he had the first time they’d met. “I asked mum if I could come and play and she said okay, as long as I didn’t wander off too far or you were too busy to keep me company. You’re not too busy are you?” Neville answered, “No.” “We were just trying to decide what to play,” added Harry. “What do you want to play?” asked Neville. “What about tag?” Colin suggested. “We can’t play tag,” Before Harry could explain why they couldn’t play tag, Neville cut him off and finished for him, “We’re not enough people for tag.” Colin giggled, “You guys are funny.” Twin looks of confusion crossed the boys’ faces, “Huh?” queried Harry. “Why are we funny?” asked Neville. “You finish each other’s sentences,” the younger boy explained. “My cousins do that too. But they’re twins.” “Oh.” The looks of confusion dissipated, “We’re not twins,” replied Harry “We’re not even related,” added Neville “But we do spend a lot of time together,” finished Harry. “Neville’s been living with us for a long time. Since we were babies.” “Like Dennis?” “Who’s Dennis?” asked Neville. “He’s my baby brother. Sometimes mum lets me hold him. He sleeps a lot,” Colin explained matter-of-factly, quite proud at being bigger than his brother and no longer needing to sleep so much. “Really? It’s just me and Neville here, and we’re almost exactly the same age.” “I’m older,” piped in Neville. “By one day,” countered Harry. Then turning to Colin he whispered, “He never lets me forget it.” Not wanting to be excluded any further from the conversation, Neville changed the topic, “So what are we going to play?” “What about hide and go seek?” Colin suggested. It was his favourite game to play, but he hadn’t had anyone to play it with since his mum had taken him out of daycare. “We need more people for that too,” replied Neville. Noticing the disappointed look on Colin’s face, Harry added, “But maybe we can play some other time. We play sometimes when Sirius and Remus come over.” “But Sirius cheats,” Neville pouted. “He peeks? At daycare they made us wear blindfolds so we couldn’t peek.” Colin said, proud of his solution, even if it wasn’t really his. “No, he doesn’t peek, he turns into Padfoot and sniffs us out,” Harry explained as if this were the only way of cheating and quite obvious. “How does he do that? I don’t smell.. well not unless I wet myself, and I haven’t done that in ages. Dennis is smelly sometimes though… What’s a pafoot?” The boys had once more succeeded in confusing him. “I don’t know how he does it,” replied Harry. “It’s magic,” offered Neville, cutting off before he could explain what Padfoot was. “Padfoot is what dad and Remus call him when he turns into a dog,” continued Harry. “Dogs have a very good nose. They can smell children,” added Neville. “But you can’t tell anyone about Padfoot,” warned Harry. “It’s a secret,” explained Neville. “Okay,” replied Colin, still slightly confused. But it was magic, after all, and magic couldn’t always be explained. So instead of asking more questions about Padfoot, he asked instead, “So what are we going to play?” The boys sat several minutes in silence, thinking. Even Colin didn’t move for three whole minutes, despite the energy balled up inside him. Finally, Harry broke the silence, “I have an idea, let’s play Aurors and Dark wizards” “What’s that?” the muggle-born wizard asked. But neither of the other two boys knew how to explain. Instead, Lily who had been watching the entire discourse replied, “It’s kind of like cop and robbers, but you play with magic wands.” “I don’t have a magic wand…” Colin pointed out. It was starting to occur to him that he and his new friends were different from each other. Harry, noting Colin’s concern replied, “Neither do I, but dad promised me and Neville a toy one for Christmas. It’s supposed to be really cool. It makes real sparks and everything. But we can just play with sticks.” “Come on, it’ll be fun,” Neville piped as he and Harry dragged him off to find straight sticks, explaining the game as they went. Now as often happens when little boys, or little girls for that matter, start playing their little games and enter into the realm of their imaginations, they eventually lost track of time. The sun was high in the sky by the time they stopped playing and even then they only stopped because Mrs. Creevey called Colin in for lunch. Otherwise they would have likely continued until the sun sank so low in the sky that they could no longer see what they were doing. Or perhaps they would have stopped when their stomachs began gnawing in hunger… But as things stand, Carla called her son in at about noon and he returned home rather reluctantly mumbling, “Bye, I’ll see you later okay?” to his friends. Lunch was on the table when Colin entered the house but before he could sit himself down and dig in, he was ushered to the washroom. “Don’t you even think of eating with those dirty hands of yours. Go wash them first and be sure to use soap. Your friends can wait a few minutes longer. Besides they’re probably eating too. You’re not missing anything.” Sure enough, the two older boys were also being called in to eat. Of course, this fact was not enough to stop Colin from protesting about being forced to wash before lunch and he finally did so only reluctantly. He returned, not quite clean, but cleaner than he had left. His mum, nodding her approval at his improved appearance asked, as he sat down to eat, “So what were you boys playing anyway that you were so reluctant to come and eat?” Forgetting that he was upset at her for calling him in, Colin rattled off his tale in his ever excited tone, “We were playing the coolest game. It was like cops and robbers except we used magic wands instead of guns, but they weren’t real wands. They were just sticks but Harry’s mum has a real wand and I saw her use it and she hung the laundry up without even touching it and we cast magic spells too but they weren’t really magic spells. They were just pretend and Neville says he can’t wait to go Hogwarts because then he can learn real magic and get a real wand and he says I can go too and…” The young boy rattled on for quite some time, amazing his mum with his ability to go on for so long without stopping to breathe. He told her quite a bit of what he had heard about the magical world as well but all that really registered in her mind was that her son had finally found friends that rivalled him in the imagination department. A.N. Well what do you think? I hope the dialogue wasn’t overdone. I quite enjoyed writing it. The conversation ended up taking up so much space that I didn’t get a chance to include everything I wanted. That means more fun and games to come. Oh well, hope you enjoyed and leave reviews. I like reviews. I would also like to thank my beta Aggiebell for working through the holiday weekend to get this back to me in record time and for catching all the mistakes I made…
|