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Children of the Sun	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > General > General Views: 12412 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 2
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter. I am making no money from this story.

Chapter List
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Title: Nothing Gold
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Warnings: Slight angst
Rating: PG
Pairings: None, gen
Wordcount: 4000
Summary: It’s a month since Harry was in Madam Malkin’s and met a boy who told him what it meant that he had a golden snake by his side that was invisible to Muggles. And now Harry’s boarding the Hogwarts Express, and his main wish is that everyone would stop staring at him.
Author’s Notes: This is a one-shot sequel to “Children of the Sun,” probably eventually to become part of a longer series. The main thing you need to know is that wizards and witches have familiars in the form of animals that Muggles can’t see but they can, and these familiars follow a metallic hierarchy of colors, from tin at the bottom up through copper, bronze, and silver. Gold is at the top.
Nothing Gold
Harry hunched his shoulders. So much for his thought that he could slip into the Hogwarts Express unnoticed. The wizards and witches were at least easy to make out compared to the Muggles, because they turned around and stared at Golden.
The huge snake crawling at his side had always made Harry feel strange; he knew his aunt and uncle couldn’t see Golden, and neither could anyone else. Sometimes Harry had wondered if he was really mad or a freak, just like everyone said. And then he had come to the wizarding world, and everyone had an animal with them, and he was happy for a little while. He was going to be normal!
But of course he couldn’t be. He was the Boy-Who-Lived, and Golden was, well, gold. That made him special or something.
“I’m not special,” Harry muttered to Golden as he watched a red-headed family pass him. They all seemed to have bronze familiars, perched on their shoulders or trotting next to them or flying over their heads. Harry hadn’t seen a single other person with a gold one yet. “I’m Harry.”
Golden lifted up a section of his back for Harry to touch. From reading his schoolbooks for the past month, Harry knew the odd designs on his scales were actually runes of protection and defense. He supposed it made sense that they tended to appear when he felt like he was in danger.
His relatives had been unpleasant, but they hadn’t actually touched him or beaten him or starved him, because they couldn’t. There was always an invisible barrier when they tried to get to him, and barriers that would let Harry into the kitchen but not them.
Harry knew these barriers had come from Golden. But he’d never understood why. Now that he’d read the books, he did. Familiars expressed the magic of the wizards and witches they were bonded to. And Golden was bonded to Harry, and he directed Harry’s magic until Harry actually got a wand. Now that Harry had one, he and Harry would perform the spells together.
“Should we get on the Express?” Harry asked, staring up at the train looming above them. It blew smoke and a second later let out the loudest noise Harry thought he had ever heard. Well, except for Dudley crying when Aunt Petunia tried to put him on a diet.
Golden curled around his feet in answer, and then surged up on the platform. People froze and gaped, but Golden had learned to pay them no attention. He disappeared into the train with a little flip of his shining tail.
Harry wished he had managed to learn the same lesson. He tried to be calm and casual as he followed Golden. He didn’t think people could see his scar at this distance, which should help.
It didn’t matter, though, he saw with a sinking heart. They didn’t know he was Harry Potter, but they knew he had a golden familiar. There was a growing murmur, and several of them started towards him.
Harry leaped onto the train and bolted towards the first compartment he could find. It was empty, a good thing. Golden flowed into it, and Harry snapped the door shut just before the first people could come into the corridor looking for him.
Harry sighed and sank back on his seat, shaking his head. He’d hoped he could find Draco, the boy from the robe shop, but either he wasn’t here yet or he was already on, and Harry couldn’t go back out and look for him right now.
He looked gloomily out the window, at least until Golden tried to curl up in his lap the way he had when they were both smaller. He slid off now, of course. He was way too big a snake. Harry smiled and bent down, hugging him around the neck.
“I’m okay. It’s just stupid, for them to want to be near me when they can’t know what I’m like. What if I was like Dudley?”
Golden flickered out his tongue twice. Harry laughed. Golden had his tongue out all the time tasting the air, of course, but Harry knew what he meant when he did it twice in a row. He utterly didn’t believe that Harry could ever be like Dudley.
Harry hugged Golden again and pulled one of the books on familiars out of the bag. He didn’t understand as much as he should about how he would make magic with Golden, because he hadn’t been able to practice with his wand. Maybe now that he could use his wand, he’d see better.
*
“Um. Excuse me. Is anyone else sitting here?”
Harry looked up in surprise. Golden had gone to sleep under the seat, and Harry thought that was the only reason the red-haired boy had come into the compartment with him. It was one of the family Harry had seen earlier. He looked like he was Harry’s own age.
He moved a little to the side as if he thought Harry was asking to see his familiar. And there he was, a bronze wolf who wagged his tail and promptly stalked over to sniff Harry’s chin and then sniff Golden where his tail stuck out.
Harry was watching, and sighed a little at the boy’s slightly dropped jaw when Golden came slithering out and yawned with a baring of his teeth. The boy didn’t look frightened, at least, but he said in a low voice, “You have a golden familiar.”
“Yes,” Harry said. “And his name’s Golden. That’s because I named him when I was a little kid, and he refuses to let me change it.”
The boy blinked. Harry relaxed a little. He hoped that would make him sound ordinary. Someone who had a fancy name for their familiar would probably intimidate the boy more. Harry imagined what effect Draco, with his silver familiar named after a goddess, would have, and almost snorted.
“Um. I’m Ron Weasley, and this is Arctos.” Weasley patted his wolf on the head. Arctos yawned and wandered back to investigate Harry again, wagging his tail harder when he came to the pocket where Harry had put a biscuit that morning. Harry dumped out a few crumbs and let the wolf lick them up from his palm. Arctos’s tongue was warm and barely there. “You haven’t said what your name is.”
“Harry Potter.”
Weasley actually took a step back as if he would run away. Golden made a little motion, but Harry shook his head at him. If Weasley was afraid, there was nothing they could do to change it. He would just have to find Weasley later, or show him he was ordinary when they got to the school and hope he would come back.
Then Weasley did something worse than running away. He bowed so deeply Harry thought he was going to bash his nose into his knees, and muttered, “If you only knew how honored I felt—”
“Yeah, well, I don’t.”
Weasley froze, and then seemed to realize how silly it was for him to stand there locked in a bow and stood up cautiously. “What?”
“I think it’s silly for you to feel honored just because I have Golden.” Golden decided then that he wanted to ooze his head onto Harry’s lap, and Harry had to lean back on the seat so he could. “I could be a horrible person, for all you know. I could be a bully. I could beat up people like my cousin does. I could be plotting to take over the world like this Dark Lord Voldemort I’ve read all about. You don’t actually know who I am. Are all people who have golden familiars good?”
Weasley blinked again. Then he said, “Well, no, I don’t think so. Sometimes there are Dark Lords with golden familiars.” He took a deep breath and then blurted out, “You—you’re really Harry Potter? And you say You-Know-Who’s name? And you don’t want me bowing to you even though I should?”
“Yes, and yes, and yes,” said Harry, grinning at him. He was happy that Weasley was getting past the silliness so quickly. He didn’t think most of the people on the platform would have. “Can you sit down and actually tell me about yourself and Arctos? Why did you name him Arctos? Was that your family I saw you with? What are they like?”
Weasley—Ron—sat slowly down on the seat across from Harry, watching him cross-eyed. “Um, I named him Arctos because we had a big book of maps,” he said. “Old maps. Muggle maps, I mean. Dad likes Muggles, I think he got it from somewhere. And one morning Arctos knocked the book down and put his paw on the page it fell open to and howled. That was the only word on the part where he was pressing, so I named him that.”
“Wow.” Harry stared at Arctos, who had sat down and was glancing around with lifted ears and a sniffing nose. “I wish I had a good story like that. I just called Golden by his color, and then he refused everything else.”
“Arctos knows what he wants, most of the time.” Ron was grinning. “You really think it’s a good story?”
“Of course.” Harry blinked at Ron. “What, you don’t?”
“I don’t know. My family thinks it’s silly most of the time, so I suppose I thought—I mean, the twins thought other people would think it was silly, too.”
Harry shook his head firmly. “No. I don’t. You have twins in your family?” That was fascinating, Harry thought. Sometimes he had pretended he had a twin when he lay in the cupboard under the stairs, squashed in against Golden, and his twin would know everything and get someone to rescue Harry and think exactly like him. “Brothers or sisters?”
“Brothers. All of us are brothers except my one sister. Ginny. She won’t be coming to Hogwarts until next year. And my twin brothers are Fred and George, and,” Ron sighed hard, “they have cockatoos. Fabian for Fred and Gideon for George. It’s so brilliant. They can fly, and cockatoos can pick everything open that they try their beaks on. Fabian used to open cupboards and get food for Fred and George, but they didn’t always share it with me. And Gideon can find every toy my parents ever hid.”
“Sometimes I wish Golden could fly,” said Harry, and hugged the coil that still lay in his lap. “But not very often.”
“Well, but he doesn’t need to. I mean, he’s golden.”
Golden raised his head and darted his tongue out. Ron laughed in surprise as the tongue tickled his hand. Harry snickered. “That’s one thing that I hadn’t thought about when I named him. Now, every time people get stupid about my familiar’s color, Golden will just think they’re talking about him.”
Ron was giving him a very weird look. “You don’t really like having a gold familiar? I mean, that’s brilliant, too. More brilliant than Fabian and Gideon.”
Harry shook his head firmly. “I want brothers and sisters more than anything else,” he said truthfully. “And my parents back. Hagrid told me—he’s a friend who took me to Diagon Alley—how they died. It was the first time I ever knew. I grew up with my Muggle aunt and uncle, and I didn’t know what Golden was, and I didn’t know what magic was or where my parents went. They told me my parents had died acting stupid and reckless.”
Ron sat there with an open mouth. Harry smiled at him. “You should close your mouth or I’m going to tell Golden to crawl into it.”
That worked. Ron shook his head and said simply, “I can’t imagine. I mean, my dad’s mad for Muggles—that’s why we had that book of maps I named Arctos from—but I can’t imagine living with them.”
He looked at Harry with true sympathy, Harry thought. And Arctos trotted over and nudged at Harry’s knee with his nose. Harry petted him, and marveled at how soft his fur was, compared to the roughness of Golden’s scales. He couldn’t see any runes on Arctos the way there were on Golden, but maybe Ron had used his magic differently.
Harry was about to ask, when Ron’s pocket stirred. A rat poked its head out of it, and Harry looked at him in delight. “I didn’t know anyone had two familiars!” The rat’s fur was grey, but Harry thought that must make him a tin one. Or a silver.
“Oh, I don’t.” Ron was bright red. He took the rat out of his pocket and balanced it in his palm, where the rat rolled on his back and promptly went to sleep. “This is our pet rat. Scabbers. My older brother Percy had him at school for a while, and then he passed him down to me. There are certain pieces of magic Arctos is good at, but sometimes you can get even better at others if you have another animal working with your familiar.”
Harry sighed in envy. He didn’t have another animal. He’d had to refuse Hagrid’s gift when he tried to buy Harry an owl. The Dursleys would never have let him keep another animal, and the owl wouldn’t have been able to protect herself the way Golden could.
Golden nudged his knee where Arctos had. Harry scratched behind his left eye, and said, “Brilliant. Can you show me some magic?”
For some reason, Ron turned bright red again, but he took out his wand. Arctos immediately bounded over to his side and stood there with his head tilted back so that his nose touched the back of Ron’s elbow. He was braced like he was dragging against a huge weight.
Harry smiled again. This was going to be lots of fun, seeing the different way that everyone used their familiars.
“Butter and marigolds,” Ron began.
The door to the compartment abruptly opened, and Harry jumped and turned around. A brown-haired girl stepped inside and asked them, “Have you seen a toad? Neville’s lost his toad familiar, and—”
A slender shape on her shoulder popped its head around hers and wrinkled its nose. Harry had to laugh. It looked like a weasel, but it had a tail with a black tip, and pale fur that shone silver. “What’s your familiar?”
“Oh.” The girl blinked at him, then smiled. “This is Regina. She’s an ermine—well, a stoat, but she’s always been white, so I call her an ermine.” She caught sight of Golden, and gasped. “Oh, my. And you have a golden snake!” Her hand drifted up and landed on her ermine’s back.
“He won’t eat any other familiars,” Harry told her, amused. He used to be puzzled when he was a kid because Golden didn’t eat, but he had found out from some of the books on the magical world that familiars existed on the magic of their witch or wizard.
“Right. I should have known that from reading Hogwarts, A History.” The girl blushed a little, and then stuck out her hand. “My name is Hermione Granger.”
“You’re Muggleborn?” Ron asked from his seat. “I’m Ron Weasley, and this is Arctos.” Arctos grunted a little as Ron touched his back, although he was watching Regina as if he thought the ermine would try to creep down and bite his tail.
“Yes.” Hermione’s chin tilted up, and Harry thought she was going to defend herself if necessary. He could understand that. Some of the books had been explicit about how much prejudice Muggleborns faced in the wizarding world.
“I don’t mean anything by it,” Ron said hastily. “I just didn’t recognize your name, and here you are.”
“Right.” Hermione turned to face Harry. “You haven’t introduced yourself yet.”
“Harry Potter. This is Golden.”
Harry was trying to rush past his name, because if Hermione had read a lot he thought he knew what would happen, but it didn’t work. She did gasp a little, but her eyes shone, and she moved forwards as if she’d stopped being afraid of Golden. “You really are the one who defeated You-Know-Who? Oh, I’ve read all about you. Great Wizarding Events of the Twentieth Century—but none of them mentioned you had a golden familiar—”
“They might have assumed that the right kind of people would find out directly from Harry himself.”
Hermione swung around with a little squeak as Kali flew past her shoulder. Regina hid behind her neck. Ron stood up, and Arctos was with him, growling quietly. Harry blinked at Draco, who had called Kali back to his fist. He had on a glove made of what looked like silver scales stitched with golden thread.
“I’m Harry’s friend,” Draco said. He looked at Hermione and away again, as if he didn’t want to see Regina. “I know who you are, Weasley, with your red hair and your bronze familiar. And you’re Muggleborn, Granger. I heard you say. If you’ve read all the books, you ought to know as well as Weasley does that neither of you is a fit friend for someone with a golden familiar.”
“You take that back,” said Ron, and he was bristling all over like Arctos. Harry thought someone was going to attack any minute.
Hermione was only staring at Draco as if she had no idea what to say to him. Regina peered out, and Draco’s face changed a little. But then Hermione’s lips began to quiver, and Harry was afraid she would start crying. He always felt helpless when girls cried.
He spoke as fast as he could, before Draco or Ron got angrier or Hermione ran away. “You told me when I first met that people with golden familiars could choose to do anything they wanted, Draco.”
Draco blinked. So did Kali, ruffling her wings and looking around as if she thought she would be called on to attack someone. “Yes, I did. What does that have to do with this?”
“So I can be friends with anyone I want,” Harry continued stubbornly. “And you told me yourself that you’re tired of having to be the leader all the time and not having real friends. The way you described it made it sound horrible, I don’t want to be like that, either. I want all of you to be my friends instead of Draco treating me like a leader or Hermione treating me like someone she read about or Ron treating me like he should be bowing instead of sitting there. I should get what I want, right? Since I have a golden familiar.”
Golden raised his head at the sound of his name, and let his tongue tickle the center of Harry’s palm. Harry smiled down at him, rested his hand on Golden’s head, and looked at Draco. He wasn’t sure whether looking innocent or proud would be better, so he settled for an expression he hoped was normal and happy.
Draco’s jaw was a little open. Harry smiled. He knew Draco was sort of restrained, and that was the equivalent of the way Ron was gaping. Hermione had stopped sniffling and looked back and forth at everyone as if this was a fascinating play.
“But,” said Draco, in the tones of Aunt Petunia talking about the neighbors, “she’s Muggleborn. That means she grew up thinking her familiar was just an imaginary friend. I know. My father’s talked to them. She won’t know anything about the proper way to treat familiars. Even her own familiar.”
“I know exactly how to treat Regina,” said Hermione coldly. “She does whatever she wants except hurt other people, and she doesn’t want to do that anyway. And I always knew she was real. When I read what it meant to have a silver familiar, though, I thought it was silly. I’m not a person destined to revere Potter or lord it over someone with a bronze one.” She nodded to Ron.
Ron looked even more shocked than Draco. Draco turned to Harry and tried to put on a different tone. He just sounded like he was whining instead. “You’re not really, Harry. Right?”
“If I got rid of Hermione,” Harry said, “I’d have to do the same thing to you. Because you both have silver familiars, so that means I have to treat you the same, right?”
Draco stood there looking stumped. Harry didn’t think that happened very often. Draco seemed to have a lot of answers the day they’d met in the robe shop, at least once he started talking to Harry instead of bowing to him.
“Right,” Harry said, because Draco still didn’t say anything, and he turned to Hermione. “I didn’t know about familiars and the magical world growing up, either. We’ll learn together, and if you find anything out we need to know you can come talk to me, all right?”
“But how can you not know? You’re in all those books.”
“Books don’t have all the answers, Granger,” said Draco, in a lecturing tone that made him sound like he was the one who thought they did. “You’ll have to accept that Harry is just an expert on some things.”
“Except he just said he isn’t,” Hermione pointed out.
Harry grinned at her, especially when Draco looked stumped again. He turned to Ron. “And you can teach me all about living in the wizarding world, and what it’s like to be part of a big family, and why you wanted to bow to me.”
Draco interrupted before Ron, who looked stunned, could talk. “Why him and not me?”
“Because I don’t think you have a big family,” Harry said patiently. “Do you? I thought it was just you and your mum and dad.”
Draco hesitated. “That’s not the point.”
“The point is that I need all of you,” said Harry. “I had the chance to read some books about the magical world, but not all that many. And I don’t know what it’s like to grow up in it. And I don’t know all the—” he almost said “nonsense” “—things about golden familiars and silver and the rest of it. I need people to tell me that. And I want to be friends with all of you. And I want you to get along. If you don’t get along because you’re lecturing people or telling them off for being Muggleborn or upset because you think having a bronze familiar makes you inferior, then you need to leave. Now.” Harry folded his arms and glared around.
Golden swayed at his feet, hissing in the way that Harry knew meant he was amused. The other humans stood there and looked at each other.
The familiars had more sense. Regina ran down Hermione’s arm and touched noses with Arctos. Then both of them turned and looked at Kali.
Kali stood there with her tail tense and quivering, probably because Draco was the most difficult of them. Then she pranced to the end of Draco’s wrist and bowed her head. Arctos licked her neck and made her hiss, but Regina just reared up and looked at her, and that was apparently acceptable.
“I don’t know how to be friends with people with bronze familiars,” said Draco plaintively.
Harry put his hands on his hips, then had to take them off again because Golden didn’t like him doing that and had coiled up beside him to nudge at his hands. “Do you know how to be friends with people with golden familiars?”
Draco shook his head.
“Well, then,” said Harry, and he looked around the compartment, and watched Hermione admire Kali and open her mouth to ask a question, and Ron and Arctos exchange glances, and Draco look at Golden with an expression near to love. “We’ll all just have to learn.”
The End.
*
Elsecaller: Thanks. It’ll be a series of one-shots for the moment, not a novel, but I’m glad you like the story.
SP777: Or at least a longer one!
djaddict: Thank you!
Hestia: It’s starting to move in that direction, at least.
AwfulLawful: Thank you!
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Children of the Sun