Disclaimer: I do not own the original canon nor am I making any profit from writing this piece. All works are accredited to their original authors, performers, and producers while this piece is mine. No copyright infringement is intended. I acknowledge that all views and opinions expressed herein are merely my interpretations of the characters and situations found within the original canon and may not reflect the views and opinions of the original author(s), producer(s), and/or other people.

Warnings: This story may contain material that is not suitable for all audiences and may offend some readers. Please exercise understanding of personal sensitivities before and during reading.

Author's Note(s): This piece did not want to be written. Just saying.

Challenge/Competition Block:
Stacked with: QL (Season 8); MC4A
Team (Position): Wigtown Wanderers (Keeper)
Round Info: Season 08 – Round 09
QL Prompt(s)s: Your character needs to learn a new skill, one that is very difficult to achieve.
Individual Challenges: Magical MC (x2); Neurodivergent; Rowl in Her Grave; Rian-Russo Inversion; Ethnic & Present; Small Fry; Tiny Terror; Hold the Mayo; Lunar Era; Old Shoes (Y); Short Jog; Bucket Listing (Y); Two Cakes (Y); Eating Cake (Y); Green Ribbon; Greatest Gift
Other MC4A Challenges (Prompt): SpB [1E](Ribbon/Cord); TrB [2E](The Dragon); SuB [5C](Trip); TWT [GNC Harry; Golden](Hot Chocolate); Chim [Otis](Jewelry; "Wait for It" - Hamilton; Smoke); Fire [Hard](Adventure Writer); Hunt [Su Items](Sewing Kit); Garden [Chore List](Reading)
Representation: Desi & GNC Harry Potter
Primary & Secondary Bonus Challenge(s): Grease Monkey; Lyre Liar; Rock of Ages; Abandoned Ship; Chorus (Odd Feathers; Pear-Shaped; Bee Haven; Machismo; Peddling Pots; Fire Song; Mouth of Babes; Tomorrow's Shade; A Long Dog; Eternal Boredom; Larger than Life; Unicorn; Creature Feature); Second Verse (Persistence Still; Spinning Plates; Unwanted Advice; Car in a Tutu; Lovely Coconuts)
Tertiary & Generic Bonus Challenges: T3 (Toad); SN (Rail; Spare); O3 (Orator; Oath)
Word Count: 2644

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A Series of Odd Events
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Harry learned to sew on his own. It had been necessary. If any of the Dursleys had ripped their clothes or had a button come loose, they would just throw out the offending item and replace it. Harry didn't have that option. If he threw out any of his clothing, it wouldn't be immediately replaced. And between his chores and how baggy Dudley's old clothes were on him, he was more prone to ripping his clothes.

So he took the sewing kit from the laundry room and he just… figured it out.

It wasn't like it hard either. Threading the needle was tricky, true, but that had more to do with Harry's poor eyesight and shaky hands than it did with the concept. Shaking hands also made it difficult to keep his stitches in a straight line, but the general concept of how the stitches worked wasn't hard to grasp. When he started school and discovered the concept of libraries, he found that there were countless books on how to sew. Every single one seemed to empathize how everyone could learn to sew, if only they would stick with it long enough to get the hang of it.

Perhaps that should have been his first clue that there was something different about him. But honestly, he was already so different from everyone around him, set apart by both his darker skin and whatever freakishness that the Dursleys wanted to beat out him, that Harry just didn't think anything of the skill he had picked up with a needle.

Rips needed to be mended.

So that was what Harry did.

And sometimes, he would save the clothes that the Dursleys had destined for the garbage bin. With the tools in the sewing kit that he still routinely took from the laundry room, he would cut those clothes into pieces before stitching them back together in a different configuration. On his own, with only a little help from the books he read in the library while hiding from Dudley and his gang, Harry figured out how to make all manner of things to improve his drab life.

Sure, most of the things he made ended up being just as drab as the rest of his life. The colors that Uncle Vernon and Dudley preferred for their clothes were neutral colors with the wildest being the most generic shades of blue. Harry knew just how many shades there were of both gray and black, and how to tell if something was smoke or charcoal. Aunt Petunia didn't have a lot of bright colors either, of course. She preferred pastels or similar soft colors. Harry thought all of the Dursleys looked vaguely ill in their color choices, but it wasn't like he could tell them that, so it didn't matter.

Occasionally, Aunt Petunia would throw away something made of something other than the cotton and synthetic fabrics that the Dursleys wore most of the time. Harry loved those things, even if he knew Aunt Petunia would be doubly upset to know that he was saving the delicate lace, cool silk, and slippery satin. He loved the feel of them most of all. Sometimes, he wouldn't immediately cut up those rescued articles and instead would wear them in the dubious sanctuary of his cupboard.

He couldn't keep a lot of things in his cupboard. The space was only so big, after all, and the shelf of cleaning supplies took up most of it. Fortunately, the Dursleys had given him a few boxes to keep the clothes he was supposed to have in, so he could hide some of his creations. With the cupboard being so small, Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia also didn't scrutinize the nest he was allowed to create under the angled part.

Harry panicked for multiple reasons when the first letter arrived and they moved him to Dudley's second bedroom. He was lucky that they were more worried about whoever the letter sender was rather than checking his meager belongings. Dudley's second bedroom had enough nooks and crannies that Harry could easily hide his treasures, both created and stolen, without much trouble, but getting them all upstairs unnoticed was the trick. He managed, but it still made his heart pound to think about it.

When Uncle Vernon made them leave Privet Drive because the letters wouldn't stop, Harry only managed to grab a single thing from his hidden caches in Dudley's second bedroom. He had made small sausage-like shape from some of the first of Aunt Petunia's things that he had saved. The lace had long since gotten a bit raggedly around the edges but the silk that made up the bulk of its body had held up well. The lavender silk had smoke-colored splotches from Harry's first attempt to use bleach while doing laundry. He had managed to smuggle home from school a couple of brass buttons which were now serving as eyes for the thing. It fit easily in the pockets of Dudley's old jeans, which was the only reason that Harry was able to take it with him during the wild car trip.

Diagon Alley was… well, it was confusing. It was full of old-fashioned shop fronts complete with distinctive signs hanging from each one. As Hagrid ushered them down the main throughfare, Harry spotted several branching roads that he wanted to explore. From half-way up the steps of Gringotts (which sat like a gleaming jewel at the center of a fork in the road), Harry spotted the sign of what had to be a jeweler. Who else would have a gold ring as their sign?

Gringotts was a trip in itself. The goblins were brisk and blunt but still nice, even when Hagrid made such a mess of the clerk's desk looking for the key to Harry's fault. The carts were awesome, zooming along the track like impossible roller coasters. (Harry thought he saw the spout of flame from a dragon. He hoped not, because that would mean the poor creature was locked away in darkness. He didn't want to think that the goblins could treat anything like the Dursleys treated him.) What was really so incredible was how Harry had an entire fault full of gold coins. He vowed right then and there that the Dursleys would never find out. If they did, Harry knew that it being wizarding money would not stop them from taking it all.

Harry barely managed to put Hagrid off the idea of buying him an owl. While it would be nice to have a companion, Harry knew that the Dursleys would be angry if he brought home another mouth to feed. As it was, they were going to be angry about him going off with Hagrid and leaving them stranded on that rock. He didn't need to make the situation worse.

He convinced Hagrid to get him a book that caught his eye while they were picking out his textbooks instead. The slim volume had nothing on the gray cover except for the rather bland title of Working with Needles in equally plain blank font. Since a lot of the books he had read on sewing had similar titles, Harry did not think anything of it. Hagrid must not have either, because he didn't bother opening the book before agreeing.

He might not have bought it if he had.

When Harry opened the book on the train ride from London to Little Whinging, he discovered that the book was not about sewing or embroidery. It wasn't even about crocheting or knitting. Instead it was about the magical ways of piercing and creating tattoos. The brief history given was fascinating. The idea of being able to enchant objects was something Harry had already seen all over the wizarding world. It made sense that jewelry could be enchanted as well. And if pictures could move, why wouldn't tattoos?

Harry had finished the book by the time the train had arrived at the station nearest Privet Drive in Little Whinging. He still had to carry his trunk about six blocks from the station to Privet Drive, but the trunk was more bulky than heavy. The effort allowed his thoughts to wander, just like they tended to do while he was doing his chores.

He was already handy with one type of needle. What was stopping him from expanding that? The Dursleys would disapprove, but they already disapproved of everything that Harry did. What did that matter? If he could learn how to do piercings safely and then create jewelry specifically for an individual, he could probably really help people. The book mentioned how ribbons and things could be incorporated into a set of piercings to achieve different effects, things too complex to be held in a single item alone. Thus it really was just extending his skills in sewing and needlepoint.

He thought of the small toy in his pocket and of the pretty things that Aunt Petunia had just thrown out when she couldn't see their worth. He had saved them, giving them new purpose by collecting them. The book had said that silk was the fabric that could hold the most magic with leather right behind it. Maybe he could practice embroidering different symbols onto what he had.

He remembered covering different ways of writing in school. He was certain that he could come up with something that did some kind of effect while still looking nice. He particularly liked the look of Sanskrit, but that might be due to how much it had annoyed the Dursleys when the teacher had taught the lesson. Uncle Vernon had been very vocal about how it might encourage Harry.

Harry never did figure out how it would encourage Harry, but now that he knew that magic was real, he had a feeling that it might not be as much about his obvious Indian heritage as he had previously believed. The book had mentioned some wizards and witches used drawings, symbols, and letters to cast spells even more powerful than anything that could be achieved with a wand. And wasn't he thinking of trying his hand at it now that he knew it was possible?

If he learned to use Sanskrit to cast magic, would his parents be proud of him?

He had to have inherited his complexion from one of them. Wouldn't they want him to try and learn what bits of culture that they might have practiced? The Dursleys didn't want anything to remind people that Harry wasn't as white as they were, and Aunt Marge had always had a sly comment implying how dirty and tainted his mother had been.

Was spite alone enough to do something that sounded like it would be difficult?

Over the little bit of time he had before leaving for Hogwarts, Harry managed to sneak away to the local library a lot. He wanted to know more about piercing and jewelry making before getting swept up with the inevitable chaos of starting a new school. He also managed to get back to London in order to buy more books and exchanged more of his gold coins into Muggle cash. Before returning to Little Whinging, he picked up some things that would make his life easier, such as a set of wheels that snapped onto his trunk that allowed him to pull it along behind him instead of needing to carry it.

Rather than risk Uncle Vernon's temper by asking for a ride to London to catch the Hogwarts Express, Harry took the train into the city the night before and rented a room at the Leaky Cauldron. A weedy looking wizard who had been reading a Muggle science book and nursing a cup of hot chocolate at the table nearest the stairs when Harry had come down the next morning warned him that there were spells hiding the magical platforms after noticing Harry's Muggle clothes.

"Of course, you could always just take the Floo directly to the platform and save yourself the hassle of navigating the crowd," he told Harry without taking his eyes off his book, "but I'm just an old man reading in a pub. What do I know?"

"You don't look old, sir," Harry replied. The man closed his book around his index finger and focused on examining Harry like he was a very interesting bug. Harry swallowed against the lump that suddenly formed in his throat at the intense look in those dark blue eyes.

"You are very interesting," the man declared finally. He tapped his lips thoughtfully with the index finger on his free hand. "What did you say you were called again?"

"I didn't say, sir," Harry answered carefully. He remembered his primary teachers' lectures on the danger of strangers. The man was being helpful, though. "I'm Harry—" He remembered how weird everyone had gotten when Hagrid had announced his name during the trip on his birthday. "I'm just Harry, sir."

"Well, just Harry," the man said sounding amused, "you seem like the type that will do great things. I would not be surprised to hear that you'd have been sorted into Slytherin, despite how maligned the House's reputation has become in recent decades. You've got a good head on your shoulders. Sidestepping my inquiry about your name the way you did showed a tidy bit of cunning."

"The boy in the shop said he was going to be a Slytherin," Harry said, not really certain why he was sharing this with a stranger. "I don't think I would like to share a House with him. He seemed like a bit of a pompus git, actually."

The man gave a startled laugh. His eyes twinkled like they had stars in them.

"I had a friend like that once," he replied after a bit. This time he sounded like Aunt Marge did when she got deep enough in her cups to begin reminiscing about when Thatcher was Prime Minister. "He didn't start out as my friend, of course, because he was an awful human being, but under the awfulness, he was—well, he was as brave as he was stupid, really. He did manage to grow out of the awfulness, eventually. He was my very best friend." He glanced at the grandfather clock tucked into the corner farthest from the door. Then he looked back at Harry. "Now you really do need to use the Floo if you're going to make the train in time to find a decent spot. Come. I'll talk you through it since this is your first time."

Just as Harry was about to step into the emerald flames with his trunk, the man laid a hand on his shoulder. Harry tilted his head up to meet the man's eyes again.

"Whatever the universe may ask of you, just Harry," the man cautioned, "be sure to only do it if it will benefit you after the cost has been paid. Fate doesn't discriminate between the sinners and the saints. It just takes its due, regardless. So do not set yourself on fire to keep the world warm. Take it from an old man that great things will still be great even if they take a little bit longer to achieve."

"You still don't look very old, sir," Harry said. The man gave him a wan smile.

"When magic is involved, looks can be very deceptive. Anything could be hiding behind the obvious, and everything has multiple facets." He patted Harry on the shoulder. "Run along now, Harry, and remember what I've said. No matter where you end up, I'm sure that I'll be hearing about your exploits soon enough."

Looking back on that conversation later, Harry would wonder if maybe the man had been a Seer.

He kind of wish that he had gotten the man's name so that he could ask.

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An Ending
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