For a long time, Harry thought he was just floating.
No cupboard. No thin mattress with springs digging into his back. No ache in his shoulders from scrubbing floors.
Just…warmth.
He became aware of red first.
Not a face, not eyes, nothing clear—just a curtain of soft, bright red drifting in front of him, filling everything. It smelled like something gentle and clean, like soap and flowers and the faintest hint of something sweet.
Mum, his mind supplied, without him deciding to think it.
He had never seen her. Not really. There were no photographs in the cupboard. The Dursleys never mentioned her, except when they muttered that she'd been "a freak." But something inside him knew: this red, this warmth, belonged to her.
His body, out of habit, tried to curl in on itself, bracing for the usual pain—the deep, grinding ache in his bones, the sharp bruises in his ribs, the dull throb in his wrist, the constant sore pull in his back. The familiar list of hurts waited for their turn.
They didn't come.
The pain that had always been there—so much a part of him that he'd stopped noticing most of it—began to…fade. Not vanish all at once, but loosen, like tight strings being cut one by one.
His wrist stopped screaming in that sharp, wrong way. The deep, dragging heaviness in his legs eased. The ache in his shoulders smoothed out, like knotted muscles being gently pushed flat.
He realized—with a little jolt of confusion—that he was being held.
Arms wrapped around him, solid and sure, his cheek pressed against something soft that rose and fell in a slow, steady rhythm. A hand stroked his hair the way he'd once seen a mother on the playground stroke her child's head after they'd fallen.
He didn't flinch.
Whatever was holding him didn't smell like Vernon's sweat or Petunia's sharp cleaning chemicals. It was warm and safe and everything he'd ever pretended he didn't want, because wanting hurt too much.
He was carried.
Not down stairs to the kitchen, not out to the garden with a list of chores, but along a feeling of softness and quiet. The red followed him, like a veil he could never quite pull aside to see the face behind it.
He was lowered gently, as if he were something precious, onto a bed that gave under his weight instead of jabbing him. A blanket settled over him, heavy and comforting.
Something touched his lips.
"Open," someone might have said, but the sound was more like a feeling than a word.
He did, because for once he wasn't afraid of what would happen if he obeyed.
Warmth slid into his mouth. It tasted earthy and rich, like the smell of the ground after rain, with something bright and clean under it. Not like Dudley's sweets or dry toast crusts—this was different, deeper. It went down his throat in a soft wave and spread through his chest, his stomach, out to his fingers and toes.
Where it went, old hurts flinched and then went quiet.
He swallowed greedily, half-terrified it would be taken away, and felt something amused and fond brush against his thoughts, like a laugh without sound.
The red curtain leaned closer. He couldn't see a face, but he could feel the love—so big it almost hurt. Not sharp, not like the pain he knew. This hurt in a new way, stretching an empty space inside him that had never been filled before.
Mine, that warmth seemed to say. My boy. My brave, stubborn boy.
He might have cried. He wasn't sure. If he did, no one told him to stop. No one called him stupid or weak. A hand brushed the side of his face, catching tears he barely felt fall.
Sleep tugged at him again, heavier this time. Not the fearful, tight sleep of the cupboard, where every creak could mean a new chore or a new punishment, but a deep, sinking rest that asked nothing of him.
He let go.
As he drifted down, the red dimmed, blending into darkness. Somewhere above him, the warmth that wasn't quite his mum and wasn't quite anything else stayed, like a blanket draped over his mind.
He might have slept for a minute or a year. Time didn't matter here.
Then something changed.
A point of light appeared in the dark. Not bright, but very, very clear. It pulsed once, twice, like a star winking at him through a cloudy sky.
A voice came with it.
Not high, not low, not really male or female. It slid around those words, fitting into every shape at once, like it could have been anything.
"Time to wake up, my little star."
The phrase slipped into him like another warm drink, settling somewhere deep. Little star. No one had ever called him anything like that.
He wanted to hold onto the darkness, to the red hair, to the feeling of being carried and fed and loved. But the light tugged gently but firmly, like a hand on his shoulder.
Up, now.
His eyes flew open.
The first thing he saw was a ceiling.
He blinked, disoriented, mouth dry. Gone were the splintery wooden slats above the cupboard or the flaking paint of the Dursleys' hallway. Instead, a smooth, pale ceiling arched above him.
Only it wasn't just a ceiling.
Silver lines crawled across it.
At least, that's what they looked like—thin, bright threads tracing patterns he didn't understand. They ran along the stone, crisscrossing, looping, knotting together in strange shapes. Some glowed faintly, others were dim, but when he focused on them his head went light, like he was trying to look at something too far away and too close at the same time.
They weren't really there, he realized. If he squinted, he could see plain old ceiling through them. But some new part of him—something that hadn't existed before the explosion—insisted the silver lines were real too.
They hummed softly in the back of his mind, like some distant song just out of hearing.
"Good," an older voice said somewhere to his right. "You are awake, Mister Potter."
The words dropped into him like stones into a still pond.
Harry's head whipped toward the sound.
As he moved, something inside reacted faster than he ever could. A pulse of energy ripped through him, starting somewhere near his chest and slamming outward, ready to…do something. Not the wild, tearing rage from the kitchen—that had been like a bomb. This was tighter, sharper, more focused.
His skin prickled. The air around him thickened just a fraction, like it was bracing with him.
An old man stood beside the bed.
He was tall and thin, wrapped in robes that looked far too nice to be anywhere near dust or dirt. Long silver hair and beard, a crooked nose that looked like it had been broken once and never quite set right. Half-moon glasses perched low on his nose, hiding none of the sharp blue eyes behind them.
Harry didn't recognize him.
But his magic—or whatever it was in him that had started paying attention to things differently—reacted like it did. It curled, not like it had at Vernon, not with fear or rage, but with wary readiness.
Everything in Harry's life had taught him one thing: adults were dangerous until proven otherwise.
He swallowed, throat tight. The blankets were soft around him, the mattress thick and warm. It felt wrong to be sitting up in something so comfortable while staring at a stranger.
"Mister Potter," the man said again, voice gentle, eyes intent.
The name hit the same way it always had at school—roll calls, teachers saying "Potter" with varying amounts of annoyance. It always felt like they were talking about someone else, some boy who belonged to a proper family with a proper name.
The Dursleys never called him that. To them he was boy or freak or you. Not Potter. Not Harry, unless they were spitting it like a bad taste.
Something stubborn rose in his chest, unexpected and hot. Maybe it was the same small bit of him that had thought no in the kitchen.
He met the old man's eyes, heart pounding, that new pulse of energy still coiled and ready inside him.
"I'm…sorry, mister," he said, voice hoarse but steady. "But who is Mister Potter?"
He swallowed, feeling his palms go damp. "My name is Harry."