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Harry stands, only to be pushed against the wall by another one of Dudley’s friends, Gordon, who laughs and finds a seat next to Piers. 

“Is everything all right?” asks a wispy voice. Miss Turner fiddles with her big, beaded necklace and blinks down at Harry. He peers around her, where Piers and Gordon are eyeing him threateningly. 

He won’t say a word.

“Yes, Miss Turner,” Harry replies dully. “I slipped when I was looking at the . . .”

“Calendar?”

Harry nods and turns to face the grid, noticing his name printed in one of the squares.

“Why is my name here?” he asks, pointing to the square. His Year 4 teacher always put his name on the blackboard if he misbehaved; Aunt Petunia would lock him in the cupboard all night.

Miss Turner frowns. “Your birthday isn’t on the 31st?”

Harry glances at the calendar once more. He finds Piers’s name in the square reserved for 28 July. An American film about dinosaurs was released that day; Dudley and Piers went to the cinema for it. They returned to taunt Harry, saying that an animated orphan was far better than a real one.

Swallowing the memory, he counts the squares. If Miss Turner’s calendar is correct, his ninth birthday was only three days later. 

“I didn’t know I had a birthday.” 

“Everyone has a birthday,” Miss Turner says, confused. “Did you forget?”

Other boys and girls are watching them, falling silent. Harry feels his cheeks grow hot. He knew he had to have a birthday, but Aunt Petunia told him she didn’t know when it was, which is why he couldn’t have a birthday party or presents. 

“I forgot,” he lies, as Piers and Gordon snicker at each other. Miss Turner shrugs and nudges him toward an open seat near the front. 

The school bell rings only a few moments later, sparing Harry from further embarrassment. He keeps his gaze on the date shown in the grid, memorizing it so he won’t forget. 31 July 1980 is my birthday, he thinks repeatedly, wondering what that day was like for his parents. He knows they died when he was already over a year old.

Had his birthday been celebrated once, when they were alive? 

“Harry Potter!”

Harry blinks up at Miss Turner. She holds out a red pencil, topped with a star-shaped eraser, wrapped with a golden ribbon. It has a card attached to it, with “Happy Birthday!” printed in big, bold letters.

“Here you are,” Miss Turner says, handing him the pencil. “We’re celebrating everyone who had birthdays in July and August.” She moves onto the next student, Gemma Rollins, whose birthday was two weeks before the start of term. Harry holds the pencil gingerly, the only birthday gift he’s received (that he knows of). He chooses not to write with it. It’s special, just for him, something Dudley can’t take away. 

But Piers can take it away, and by lunch, it’s no longer in Harry’s possession. By the end of the day, Gordon snaps it in half and tears the star-shaped eraser in two. The card is in shreds, carried off by the wind. 

Harry knows better than to complain. Now that he knows his birthday, he can tell Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon. He won’t get much for his birthday, if Christmas is anything to go by, but something is better than nothing.

It’s much later that day, after Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon have heard about Dudley’s marvelous first day of school, that Harry brings up his discovery. He’s done washing the dishes and finds Aunt Petunia in the garden, trimming the hydrangeas. 

“Aunt Petunia?”

“Have you broken something?” she says, snipping a stem with a scowl. 

“I found out when my birthday is.” He pushes his glasses up his nose, wishing they fit his face better. “The 31st of July. My teacher, Miss Turner, has a calendar with our birthdays on it.”

Aunt Petunia flinches. “It must be correct.”

“If I know my birthday now, can I get pre—”

“Only good, well-behaved boys get presents,” she snaps, twisting the head of a hydrangea clean off its stem. “Father Christmas doesn’t bring presents to naughty children. Why would naughty boys and girls get presents for their birthdays?” 

Harry almost tells her he did get a birthday gift, a pencil, but Piers took it away. “Yes, Aunt Petunia,” he says miserably.

“Go to your cupboard. You’re going to get filthy if you stay out here.” 

He shuffles away, avoiding Dudley’s chocolatey smirk and Uncle Vernon’s glare, and throws himself on the thin mattress in the cupboard. He feels something jabbing his side and hopes it’s not a mouse. Turning over, Harry sees the golden ribbon. The red pencil is on his bed, whole and untouched, with its star-shaped eraser and attached card.

With a grin, Harry stores the gift in an empty shoebox at the foot of his bed. He falls asleep, dreaming of flying, a gentle, tinkling laugh, and warm, hazel eyes crinkled with joy. 

...

He is two and he doesn’t really know what he has or what he’s missing, doesn’t feel it through the veil in a way he understands. It isn’t a song. It isn’t a candle. But something that’s always there is somehow more there, this day.

He is three. Four. Five. Sixseveneightnineten. Every September, his birthday goes on the class chart at the bottom of a month that’s already done. He’s seen enough things that he could wish, perhaps, for some of them. But he can’t be too greedy and he can’t seem to decide.

He is eleven and the door to a cold shack falls to the ground.

He is twelve and thirteen and he still might have dreamed it all. Fourteen, hiding four cakes under the floorboards.

He is fifteen and none of it matters. Sixteen, and most of it matters even less.

He is seventeen and her kiss will be what holds him steady as he dies.

And then….

It’s impossible. But he is eighteen.

Nineteen. Twenty. Twenty one. He is older than his parents. He has a child of his own and it makes sense to him now; he knows how they loved him because he knows how he loves James.

He’s thirty and the kitchen is snowing in July because Albus didn’t mean to make the flour bag explode.

Several sweet sunlit years pass, just enough birthdays and never enough kisses; the baby who once had just a scar and a blanket wakes each morning gently baffled by the richness of his life. His children grow, the world moves on, the next generation is born without a war in it.

When they finally make it downstairs (‘can’t we stay in bed? There won’t be any crimes on your birthday, out of respect’), the kitchen’s hot and noisy, an absolute tip, bacon fat and baked bean dribbles on every surface, smell of burnt toast that’s apparently Seamus’ fault (‘Fucked up my one job. Don’t evict me, yeah?’) They’ve got the Muggle radio on, the presenter's husky tones talking up Robbie Williams’ new song, out that morning, something about a rock and a DJ. ‘Happy birthday!’ beams Neville, handing him a coffee and a new potted plant he fears will be dead by Christmas. Dean, munching noisily on his cereal, chucks him a postcard from Luna promising to name the first snorkack she finds after him (‘She’s such a cheapskate,’ Ron grumbles. ‘Wish I’d known I could’ve gotten you an imaginary gift.’) Hermione continues her post-war birthday tradition of bursting into tears at the sight of him. ‘Pull yourself together,’ he says fondly, slings an arm around her as he opens a card covered in crayon squiggles (‘from Teddy’) as Hermione soaks his t-shirt through. 

There actually aren’t that many crimes, that day - not new ones, anyway, so he and Ron stroll through a bustling Diagon Alley then sit in the office pretending to do paperwork in the afternoon, magical sun streaming in. They’ve got the Muggle radio working, Radio 1 milking the Robbie single for all it’s worth. ‘It’s good, this,’ says Ron, approvingly, turning it up, drumming his quill on the desk to the punchy synths. ‘What does ‘pimpin’ ain’t easy’ mean, though, is that a Muggle thing?’

After work, they meet Hermione in the crowded atrium, only half-listening to her detailed recap of a day spent deciding where a comma ought to go in some draft legislation (‘it’s actually really very important - yes, fine, we did decide to keep it where it was in the end, that's not the point’). It’s gorgeous out, twenty five, that perfect London sunny, pints weather. So they walk back up through central, past the laughing crowds of students in Holborn, loud braying bankers in suits spilling out of Soho pubs, roaring double deckers, the honk of car horns, sounds of the city. Inevitably, they stop for a half at a noisy pub off Tottenham Court Road, toast to the three of them. ‘I’d say for old time’s sake,’ says Ron over the revellers, ‘but I think I prefer the new times, don’t you?’

Ginny’s already waiting for them, got their old favourite table at the back of the restaurant, round the corner, tucked away. Her hair’s down and her smile’s bright, looking impossibly fit in a new dress he’s already imagining on their bedroom floor. She’s talked the owner into letting her decorate this little corner of the restaurant they've got to themselves (‘Hermione, it’s fine, a bit of Snitch bunting won’t break the Statute of Secrecy, it barely even moves’). They order too much pasta and far too much wine, laugh too loud then shush each other when the waiters start to glare. He keeps his arm around Ginny's chair while her hand wanders to his lap, fingertips drawing little maps to nowhere on his knee. 

The pub on the corner’s not heaving, it being a Monday, and they order three pints and a tap water (‘I can’t be hungover! We have to talk about that comma again tomorrow!’) A woman with a kind face tips her hat to him with a wink; a man in a cloak mutters ‘bless you’ on his way out. For the most part, though, they’re left alone to piss about together in a corner booth, reminisce about birthdays past (‘if you’ve never been poisoned on your birthday, don’t talk to me’). When the Robbie song comes on again Ron chucks the barman a couple of quid to get him to turn it up, full volume. ‘Come on, dance with me,’ he begs Hermione, and she says Ron! and we can’t! and there are people here! but goes anyway, lets him twirl her around til she’s dizzy. ‘You heard Mr Williams,’ says Ron sharply, tugging Harry to his feet after Ginny bounces up to steal a dance with Hermione. ‘It’s time to move your body!'

‘Is this the kind of peace and quiet you were after?’ Ginny shouts at him over Robbie, grinning wickedly as he scoops her up, drunk and giddy, kisses her til Ron yelps in disgust.

It’s only at closing time that Hermione shrieks at the top of her voice that they’ve forgotten to do the sodding cake. So they pile out, into the lamplit street, watched on by two owls perched on the roof across the square, a curious tabby cat who pads atop a nearby garden wall. Ron digs out the Deluminator, sends lights dancing around the leafy street as Hermione pulls a cake tin and candles from of her bag. ‘Make a wish!’ she urges him, and he’s too well-trained by now not to do as she says.

They all grow quiet as they eat, crumbs pooling in the palms of their hands. When at last they’ve dawdled out the last of the day, he hugs his best mates goodbye, watching as their hands wind together and they vanish off into the night with a soft crack. And then it’s just them, just two. He brushes loose the crumbs and pulls her close, rests his head on top of hers, listens to the dull sounds of the city in the distance. ‘They’re good, birthdays,’ he says. ‘Reckon I’d like a few more of them, what d’you reckon?’ 

‘Sounds good,’ she mumbles, drunk and sleepy and warm in his arms. ‘I do use all my own wishes wishing for that, so you better bloody had stick around.'

He smiles into her hair, glowing rich red in the light of the streetlamp. He lets his eyes follow the side street leading from the empty square, out to the corner of Pentonville Road, the path downhill that would take him on to the station. Can’t imagine how he ever considered it: doing it, boarding a train.

‘Not sure we managed peace and quiet, though,' she yawns, into his chest. ‘Maybe next year.’ 

‘No chance,’ he says. ‘Not even when we’re really, really old.’ Remembers the plan to decorate their bedroom floor with that dress, then, so takes her arm and starts to think of home, just as the tabby cat, satisfied, slips behind a garden gate, off, and out of sight.

Traditions

He’d been at the Burrow for her birthday before. But perhaps he’d been too preoccupied with the War and all that shit to notice the rituals which surrounded it - the special song and the cake and ice-cream and the specific order of the day - until this one, when Ginny turned seventeen in a world grieving and rejoicing all at once.

He squeezed her hand as she blew out the candles and slipped unobtrusively into the house. They would understand. They knew that he was still a stranger to the easy intimacy of family life.

They were too polite to ask, but Molly’s pinched lips whenever the Dursleys were mentioned told him as clearly as if she had shouted it that she knew there had been no cake and ice-cream waiting for him on his birthday. He was grateful, in a way, that nobody had ever forced him to confess it out loud: ‘well, I don’t have any birthday traditions because I’m an orphan and I was raised by people who detested me simply for existing.’

He was grateful, in a way, that nobody could entirely understand - and, therefore, that they were too nervous about upsetting him to say anything - that being an orphan is like being a palimpsest. That your life is a constant search for something - a flicker of ink beneath the layers, a single blood-cell in the bone-marrow, a ripped stitch still clinging to a hem - that ties you to your family. He wondered if his dad had liked treacle tart, or if his mum had such a distinctive facial expression that she could be recognised through Polyjuice, or if either of them talked with their hands. He wished he’d asked Sirius. He wished he had time to.

He wished he’d remembered more things about Lupin, so that when Teddy asked him the same - ‘did he talk like me, or walk like me, or think like me’ - he could say something.

He wished he’d known more orphans. 

Other than the obvious one.

‘What if we’d sat down and said, “hey, having no parents is a fucking trip”? What would have happened then?’ he said aloud, lying on his back on Ginny’s rumpled sheets.

The real answer, of course, was that he’d have been murdered. But, in his fantasy world, they might have compared the faded manuscripts of their ancestry and Harry might have learned of a kindred spirit, engaged in a desperate quest to share something other than a face and a name with a father, or a strange language with a mother. A quest to know if the magpieishness or the love of monologuing ran in the blood. A quest to, quite literally, solve riddles.

There can be even fewer birthday traditions in orphanages than in the Dursleys’ square little house.

Perhaps orphans sit on narrow windowsills and watch the fireworks on New Year’s Eve, and imagine they are for them.

Harry rose and looked out from the window, across the burnished fields of high-summer barley, and tried to imagine that the molten patchwork of the landscape was gleaming just for him; that the world had decked herself in the strawberry ice-cream streak of the evening sky and the golden-snitch glitter of the countryside in order to celebrate him.

The air smelled of honeysuckle and peace.

The Underside

Harry's eyes keep meeting Uncle Vernon's in the rearview mirror.  It's two days before his tenth birthday. They've only been driving for forty-five minutes and Dudley's already been sick twice. Harry's pretty sure his aunt and uncle think it's his fault, somehow, but he's not the one who piled Dudley's plate with a half-dozen fried eggs this morning.

Weird things have been happening around him, though. That's the only reason they've brought him along instead of locking him up—he'd prepared himself to spend the day sipping underbrewed tea and letting his eyes glaze over at thirty years of snapshots of Mrs. Figg's dead cats, but when his aunt marched him over this morning, the old woman never answered her door. One of her cats was in the front window, switching its tail to and fro as she knocked and knocked, as if to say, time's ticking, Petunia, you're going to be late—

So, after a whispered argument in the kitchen—no, that boy's not to be trusted, we'll come home to the whole place in flames—his uncle dragged him by the arm to the backseat of the car. Dudley's brought along so many road-snacks and toy dumptrucks that Harry only has half a seat to squeeze himself into, but it's sort of nice. He doesn't get many long rides. Past the rows of houses and the repeating grids of car parks there are farms like he's seen in storybooks, rumpled over the hills, ribbed like green corduroy with cabbages in rows. Cows kneel in the shade of trees. What a life it would be, Harry thinks, to wander all day in the grass of a field, bothered only by the odd horsefly. Eating his fill. Surrounded by friends.

—

While Vernon's at the convention, Petunia takes them to the pleasure pier. Dudley tries for one of the big prizes, a stuffed gorilla that looks rather like his dad, but his strategy is to hurl the ball with as much destructive force as possible and he's swiftly banned from the Coconut Shy. He does the same at the pingpong ball and fishbowls, whipping the ball like he's trying to murder a fish, and while Petunia is arguing with the teenaged game-operator, Harry boredly tosses one of Dudley's unused pingpongs. It plops right into the centre of a fishbowl, where a longfinned red-and-gold fish circles it and issues a surprised silver bubble from its puckering mouth.

Petunia's convinced Harry cheated (and he's not entirely sure, actually, that he didn't. He's had a lot of weird luck and near-misses, lately. Last week, Dudley tried to hit him with a water balloon and it bounced off Harry's chest, hit Dudley square in the crotch, and made it look like he'd wet his trousers) so Dudley gets the fish, of course. It's in a few inches of water inside a plastic bag. He swings it around violently as they walk through the arcade.

I'm sorry, Harry thinks at the fish. I didn't mean to make things worse for you.

At the beach, while Petunia is buttering Dudley with suncream, Harry walks into the chilly water until it's up to his chest. The swells lift him off his feet, a bit, and the sand feels warm when he scrunches his toes. When he stretches out his arms and legs to float on his back, it's like the sea is cradling him, holding him up, and after a moment the sensation is uncomfortable for some reason so he curls into a ball and sinks under the surface, pinching his nose.

It burns a little when he opens his eyes, but he's instantly stricken by how peaceful it is under there and he doesn't want to close them. Above his head, there's the sparkling tumult of the waves. Below, the sand moves slow, like it's sleepy. There are the legs of other swimmers, kicking, oblivious. There's a spiky little crab with an orange pill-bottle for a shell. There's a grumpy-looking grey-green fish with rippling fins, flat and creeping along the bottom like it's trying not to be noticed. Harry wishes he could do that. He's always drawing attention to himself, blurting out a sarky thought when he ought to have just kept quiet, having some lucky thing happen that makes Dudley wail and Vernon haul him by the collar across the house and into his cupboard. If only he could stay here, in this secret world underneath the waves, where no-one on the shore even knew he was there...

A cloud of minnows, moving as one, drifts like a shadow in front of his face. They all turn sideways and seem to look at him with their iridescent eyes. He looks back, wondering if he's disturbing them, his chest starting to prickle as he runs out of air.

Before he can push off the sand and come up, all the little minnows rush at him, stroking their cool bodies along his cheeks, wriggling through his hair. He shuts his eyes, but just as quickly they're gone. He turns to see the grey ghost of them vanishing into the blue distance.

Then a hand is in his hair, yanking, and he's swallowing salt, breaking the surface and blind in the afternoon sun.

"You can't drown today, you knob, Dad's got a very exclusive dinner with a client," Dudley shouts in his face. Harry sputters, there's water stinging in his nose, and on the shore he can see Aunt Petunia waving her sunhat at the two of them, stepping along the lacy hem of the water like she's afraid to let it touch her feet.

—

"The double-augur—that's the crown jewel of the Heavy-Duty line," Vernon is telling Petunia, but in the rearview his eyes are on Harry like he thinks he's up to something. Harry's skin still smells faintly of salt. Dudley's plopped his goldfish onto the pile of plastic dumptrucks like it's just another toy. Harry picks it up and peers into the plastic bag; it's hard to tell because the car is moving, but it looks like it might already be dead.

"Cheap ruddy fish," Dudley sulks. "Didn't even last 'til dinner."

"All cheats, those game operators," Vernon huffs.

"We'll get you a better fish tomorrow, Popkin," cooes Petunia. "A couple of fighting fish, maybe, wouldn't that be fun?"

"I'd do myself in too if I had to share a room with you," Harry mutters. The back of Vernon's neck goes purple, and he nearly crashes the car shouting at Harry, and Dudley pinches his arm hard enough to leave a bruise, but Harry finds he's not bothered. He closes his eyes as the cabbage-fields are crowded out by houses. There's a world out there, huge and hidden, full of colours he's only seen in dreams, full of creatures and beautiful tricks of the light, and he'll get back to it someday—he'll take a breath, he'll dive down into deep water, and he'll open his eyes—