Chapter 6

Like many towns in England, the historical churches in town had long ago been turned over to the Anglican Church. As the Catholics emerged out of hiding and persecution, and were again allowed public worship, they thus had to build new churches, which were frequently less centrally located than the old historical churches. Thus it was that one such, St. John Fisher,¹ was established just far enough out of the direct path between the local primary school and home that Harry occasionally went near it, but not so close that it was a common feature of either his or Dudley’s mental map of Little Whinging. Harry, always looking for new places to hide, eventually entered one afternoon in late October.

The Dursleys were not a church going family, and even if they had been, they would not have brought “that Potter boy” with them (never mind that Vernon, as the consummate British bigot, would never have gone to a Catholic church), so Harry was not really familiar with churches. He quickly decided the outer room, separated from the outside world only by glass doors and entirely devoid of furniture, was entirely too open for his purposes, but there was a large inner room much like the auditorium at school, but with benches instead of rows of chairs. He figured that if he sat low down in one of the benches, no one would notice him. He was almost right.

Father Patrick² was praying quietly in the back of the church. As quiet as Harry was, Fr. Patrick noticed the door to the otherwise silent and empty church open, and the small boy slip in. There was something odd about the boy, so odd that Fr. Patrick, normally a very observant man, wouldn’t notice the oversized rags the boy was wearing that day at all. Whatever it was drew his eye to the boy, as his mind struggled to comprehend what it was he was seeing. Or not seeing really, but that was the only word he could come up with. Definitely perceiving at least. It was almost as if he were seeing the boy through a pane of antique glass, or maybe as if the boy were under water… but neither of those was really the right description. Whatever it was, it was distracting, so much so that this first time that Harry hid in the Church Fr. Patrick spent so much time puzzling over what it was he was or was not seeing that it only occurred to him that he ought to have gone up to the boy and actually investigated the matter much latter that night long after Harry had left. Thus it was that Harry never knew that he had not, in fact, successfully hidden that day, and that someone, for the first time in almost three months, had spontaneously seen him.

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Over the next few weeks, Harry started to find refuge in St. John’s more and more often. He did not know why, but despite the fact that he was now going there nearly every other day, Dudley had not once found him there. Once or twice Dudley had gone as far as looking in the outer room, but not once had he so much as peeked through the windows of the inner doors. Harry didn’t know why it never occurred to Dudley to look further into the Church, but he was safe, warm, and free to do his homework for one of the first times ever. He was almost afraid to question it, almost superstitious that if he poked at it too deeply that the mysterious protection would evaporate and the Church would become just another building.

Father Patrick was not consistently available any given afternoon - the life of a parish priest is a full and demanding one. Still, the priest did habitually merge his daytime prayers³ with quiet contemplation before the tabernacle in the often empty church. His schedule was such that these daytime prayers were not always during the after-school-before-dinner hours that Harry frequented the building. Still, it was often enough the distraction he experienced when Harry was around became a problem, and once he identified it that way, he found that there was even more to disturb him. There was a child clearly hiding in his church; the child was dressed in ill-fitting cast-off clothing equally clearly intended for a much larger child. Why was the child hiding? If the child was getting clothing from one of the local charities, why had none of the social workers helped get him more appropriately sized clothing? If the clothing was provided by family, how was it that clothing from an apparently massively overweight child was available when a second (third? forth?) child was very very not massively overweight? Families, in his experience, rarely had such different builds in same-gendered children – especially coupled with that pinched, hungry look the child had. He didn’t want to spook the child, if he really is hiding, spooking him might mean he doesn’t come back, and that might endanger the child. But he was concerned. So he started quietly making a few calls, he did after all, know most of the locally charities and council social programs; in some cases he even knew the workers personally.

Several weeks later, Father Patrick found himself sitting in the church, his prayers again disturbed, not because the child had made any noise, for he never did, but for that same undefinable something that he simply could not identify. Sitting there, unable to focus, Father Patrick knew that the time had come to try to talk to the mysterious boy.