The Hidden Hero

Chapter-14 Harry Potter Lost

At Mark Twist's incredible challenge that Harry Potter was a fake, the crowd gasped, and Harry 2 froze. "What did you say?" he whispered.

"You are not Harry Potter," repeated Harry. "You are an imposter. Harry Potter has green eyes. You have brown."

"What!" "No way!" "Are you out of your mind?" were among the various comments the students shouted at Harry.

Draco shouldered his way past Harry 2 and shoved Harry hard. Harry fell back a step, but did not respond. "That's not true!" yelled Draco. Draco turned to Harry 2 and demanded, "Tell him. Tell him that you're Harry Potter!"

Harry 2 had turned sheet white. He tried to laugh dismissively, but it came out sounding insincere. "Of course, I'm Harry Potter," he said. But, he didn't sound convincing. "Who says Harry Potter has green eyes, anyway?" he challenged. "No one else has ever mentioned it."

Harry thought quickly. "Hagrid told me," he lied. Silently, Harry kicked himself. He had let his temper get the better of him and had unmasked Harry 2. But, he didn't have a story ready to explain how he knew that Harry 2 was an imposter. Winging it, Harry hoped fervently that no one would ever check with Hagrid. "He was the one who took Potter to his aunt's house after Potter defeated You Know Who. Hagrid told me that the baby looked like his parents – black hair from his father and green eyes from his mother.

"At first, I wondered why no one else questioned why you didn't have green eyes. But, then, I realized that very few people saw Potter as a baby. After all, his parents went into hiding before he was even born. The only picture I've ever seen of the kid wasn't clear enough to see his eye color."

"Kids' eyes change color! Or, Hagrid realized he was mistaken," insisted Harry 2. "He's not the one questioning me." Despite his arguments, the other students were looking at him more and more suspiciously.

Harry didn't back down. "Potter was already 15 months old when Hagrid last saw him and green eyes don't turn another color. I don't think Hagrid realized that. But, when Hagrid mentioned that the kid had green eyes, I became suspicious and I wondered whether you were a fake. After all, you had denied that you were Harry Potter when you were first found. And, you don't have any scar on your forehead.

"I contacted the school Potter attended before he went missing. It wasn't hard to do. I know how to deal with muggles. I'm a muggleborn, remember?" He enjoyed rubbing that in Harry 2's face. "I pretended that I was a principal of another school where Harry Potter had been a student. I wrote that I needed to reach his relatives but that our files on him were misplaced. I said I remembered that Potter had previously attended this other school and I asked if the principal could give me his family's contact information. And, to make sure that we were talking about the same boy, I wrote that the Harry Potter I was interested in had dark hair and brown eyes." Harry waited a beat, staring directly at the other boy, who gazed back defiantly. "Well, the principal wrote back and said that, unfortunately, he couldn't help me. The Harry Potter who had attended his school had dark hair and green eyes – bright green."

There was silence. The watching students waited anxiously to hear what Harry 2 would say. Harry 2 didn't look at the other students; he kept his eyes trained on Harry and tried to bluff his way through. Going on the offensive, Harry 2 unwittingly hit upon the weak link in Harry's story. "Oh, yeah? Where is this letter? And, why haven't you said anything before?" he challenged.

Harry hesitated a beat. "I threw the letter out." Harry could almost feel the skepticism that greeted this weak response. The students were starting to side with Harry 2 again.