Chapter Text
Harry, take my body back will you? Take my body back to my father.
There was a chill - vining through his fingers, wrapping tenderly around his wrists, his neck, his everything that ever was - cold embraced, utterly iced, so painfully sharp.
The dementor only glided closer, closer, closer,.
Something happy, Harry thought desperately, eyes stung, staring into only that gaping emptiness, a siphoning void.
He would fight, he would always fight, no matter that the fight had been verging on impossible lately.
Kill the spare.
Harry was going to vomit all over the dementor, would it be angry with him if he did? Could it feel anger, could it feel anything? Did it matter?
Focus.
“Expecto patronum,” lax and loose it fell from him, as half hearted as the accompanying swish -
Not Harry, not Harry!
There - the smallest rush of warmth, of deep golden goodness - soft smiles, a small hand in his father's, a brilliant beam, their silent laughter melting into their snow dappled globe of wonder - hopeful, happy, his.
Harry's parents who gave their lives so he could hold the smallest chance of one. They'd wanted to Harry to live, Harry remembered frantically, they'd given everything so he could live. Who was he to disagree?
"Expecto patronum!" At fucking last. Harry pushed into the velveted warmth, finally, briefly comforted - the vibrant white stag bursting explosively, subsuming the breadth of Harry with its pure heat.
The dementor didn't stand a chance, cowed by its vivid illumination - fled, gone, done.
The comfort faded, a dying aching thing Harry could feel ebbing away in his gut - but he wasn't done, oh no, he was never, never done.
Harry turned back towards Dudley, slumped, covered in the same omen - Hedwig, he recalled achingly, utterly opulent feathers, sharp smart eyes, gentle pecks and above all else, a dear and wonderful friend.
That she was waiting for Harry right now in the utter hell of Privet Drive - as simply content with his company as he with hers was enough - was everything.
How good it is to have a friend.
Harry would make it back to Hedwig, of that there was no doubt.
So, expecto patronum again, all but ripped from him - banishing the dementor with haste and hell, ruthlessly chasing in its fierceness until it too vanished into the night, Harry's happy thoughts were simply through.
Kill the spare - this echoed now, reverberating, bell like in its insistence, rising as though given worship, chanted unstoppably.
“Uhhhh,” came the low moan from Dudley.
The stupid lump couldn't even wait a minute as Harry caught his breath from saving both of their lives -
“Aaaaaah.”
“Shut up,” Harry just about managed to snap at Dudley’s sprawled out form, pathetically limp like a melted biscuit.
Must he always be the centre of attention, even when Harry was dying?
Dudley continued dourly.
Harry let him, just held his head and pressed deep into his temples, breathing heavily - pressure mounting in a way he'd become accustomed to when on the fringes of falling asleep but this - Harry gasped sharply, frantic - this was unbearable, spine shaking, sickening - Harry ground his teeth achingly.
Emerging from the white light of this surgical pain came a series of images - quickly flittering and flashing, stark but too quick to grasp. Harry closed his eyes, tried foolishly to reach for them.
So maybe he was getting a little desperate to see, to know something, anything. More flashes, more confusion until it settled, took form shakily as though watching through a river, ripples distorting the scene, disturbing the swathes of black that were two figures, maybe - what was he looking at?
Red eyes - just fleetingly, Harry didn't breathe, couldn't - a pale hand gripping a bone handled wand -
“My lord -” Harry strained to hear further, digging harshly into his face - the voice ebbed out into a sea of voices and low murmurs until he caught another wheedling voice instead.
“It would be folly surely to try to-”
Harry’s arm jerked out without his permission.
A bellowing shriek of pain erupted, Harry couldn't stop the cry that tore out of him too, panic rising.
“...need it! Above all else...”
That voice...Harry wanted very quickly to be done with this whole thing but something stayed him, tied him to this scene of horror he could barely see, needing so desperately to know, to understand anything -
Plain as day were those red narrowed eyes, dirty fingers curved around that deformed handle.
“...not at all adept, my lord,” someone sneered though it dipped low in places, cold but piercing.
“...lacking in intelligence.” the man declared. Harry lurched, shaking, he knew that voice. How did he know that voice?
The last thing Harry saw was the glimmer from that silver mask as its wearer bowed down low to the ground -
“Harry?”
As rapidly as a switch being flicked off, the image vanished, white-hot pain ceased into a low throbbing and Harry opened his eyes, mouth gaping.
Slowly, he lowered his hands, head prickling all over from deep nail scratches.
“Mrs Figg?” his voice was just a garbled foreign thing, even to himself. Harry's arm, the one that had flinched of its own accord, ached fiercely.
How, why?
She helped him to his feet, steadied Harry's shoulders.
"Goodness how you tower over me now," she was shaking her head fondly.
"What?" Harry muttered as he stood, heart pounding madly with the thrumming insistence that something was still so very wrong.
"They seem to be gone for now,Harry, dear." Mrs Figg said kindly and yes, Harry wasn't blind, he could see that, "We'll need to get back quickly, help me with him won't you?"
Together they heaved Dudley back to Privet Drive, literally no light task. It might have been easier, Harry reflected tiredly, to simply roll him like a boulder.
Those fractured images, the seething eyes of Voldemort, dirty fingers dirty wand - figures he was so evil he didn't even stop to wash his hands.
Who though was the sneering man, the follower in the silver mask? What did Voldemort need so badly, and apparently ill-advisedly that even his death eaters would question it?
A long trained instinct flared up, an ingrained longing to tell Ron and Hermione and just like that, the anger rose again, utterly tidal and just as sea-large.
It wasn't as though anyone had bothered to tell him a single thing since they’d dumped him there and left.
Spending every summer with the Dursleys was bad enough but the special hell waiting for Harry had received an ungracious extension, school finished early in light of the - Harry's throat tightened - events of the final task.
So Harry had come back a few weeks ago to an absolutely incensed Vernon and Petunia nearly three months before he was due, at the end of April.
Harry's only pleasure since was the brief moment where he'd honestly thought Vernon was having a heart attack from the very sight of him.
Somehow, an eternity and a slice later, they finally arrived at number four, Mrs Figg's chatter pure background noise.
"- but then the time simply passes so quickly and when you're as old as I am, it's easy enough to forget these things altogether."
"Right." Harry muttered, mentally a thousand light years away, drenched in sweat from heaving Dudley's vast and ever growing bulk, feverish and shaky.
"Here, Harry," Mrs Figg fished around in her embroidered floral bag so Harry waited eagerly, perhaps she was going to pull out something useful like a portkey to another realm or a surrogate family. A tent so he could sleep comfortably outside once the Dursleys were done with him.
Instead, she handed him a slightly crushed KitKat and patted his arm gently, as though these things were helpful.
"For the tremors dear," she said with a small smile and even just this fleeting kindness was the best thing Harry had felt in weeks, "Now, get inside and don't come back out again. Get some rest too, that's a very nasty shock you've just had.”
Was that it?
Harry opened his mouth to protest but she immediately shook her head and made to leave.
“Someone will be in touch, Harry, I'm only sorry I can't say anymore." She patted him one last time before turning away.
“But what’s going to happen?” she was already leaving, Harry noted with bitterness, like the rest of them, determined to drop him in it all himself, to deal with everything himself - then she was out of sight and Harry was out of might - wanting desperately to drop Dudley in the nearest hydrangea bush and run back to Mrs Figg - to shake her and demand some answers - to hold on to her tightly and sob into her coat. Didn't they know he couldn't keep going on like this?
The boulder gave another pitiful moan though and Harry steeled himself for another waking nightmare as the door to number four swung open with a damning haste.
The ensuing nightmare was almost as miserable as the dementor attack. At least they were (presumably) created soulless, what was the excuse for these last remnants he had to call family?
Five owls, a mysterious howler to aunt Petunia, a potential expulsion from the ministry pending and no sight of any explanations was enough to make Harry snap too.
"What does ‘remember my last’ mean?" Harry rounded on Petunia as the Howler disintegrated before them. "The last what? Have you been in contact with wizards-"
"That is enough!" Vernon bellowed, having not been the centre of attention for some time with Harry and petunia snapping at each other, he was now clearly distressed, bristling like a particularly angry bush.
He stalked over to Harry and shook him hard by his neck, "Get out, this instant!"
Harry kicked out furiously, as if he would be here by choice, as if he would ever be here of his own volition!
"Get off you idiot-" Harry could only choke, struggling as Vernon tried to drag him towards the door by his collar, meaty hands pinching his neck and Harry was starting to panic -"He'll have to stay, Vernon."
This, from Petunia, level, oddly subdued, was enough to still the world so it seemed to Harry. He did push Vernon's horrible hand away though, slumping onto the kitchen stool, shaking, weak.
An expulsion, potentially. And he was absolutely option less wasn't he? Staying with Ron and Hermione was immediately struck-out if he wanted to maintain his grudge against them forever - which he think, thank you. Sirius's unhelpful note to just stay put and don't do any more magic didn't seem supportive enough to suggest he would take Harry on as a refugee from the law (and wasn't he also still a refugee from the law himself?) and those were all of the options.
Dobby might be persuaded to let him stay at Hogwarts, Harry's cleaning wasn't too shabby but there was a sudden frightful image of Malfoy sauntering into the Hogwarts kitchens to give Harry his dirty dishes.
He would never, ever, wash Draco Malfoy's dirty dishes.
So, where did that leave him if he really was going to be expelled from Hogwarts, he wondered with a kind of curious horror, what professions even were there in the magical world? Perhaps he could drive the Knight Bus once he was tall enough...
Harry remembered suddenly that he was supposed to be chasing answers.
"What 'awful boy' did you mean?" he asked Petunia suspiciously, surely not his father? She hadn't said so after all.
"That's enough out of you, boy, you've yet to tell us how to fix Dudley!" Vernon snapped.
As far as Harry was concerned, this was an improvement.
Harry shrugged, "Give him some chocolate and put him to bed I guess."
"Give him some chocolate?" Vernon wheezed as though rapidly running out of air. Harry could take meagre comfort in the fact that he probably was at least shortening his lifespan in some way.
"That's what it says in my Dark Arts textbook," Harry emphasised, "chocolate aids Dementor exposure. I'll fetch it for you if you'd like to have a look." There were no such books but then the Dursleys would probably rather have a vegetable for a son than take anything from Harry anyway.
"Dark arts?" Vernon sputtered, outraged. "You - you just call one of your little - whatsits- and you make them sort him out-"
"Oh I'd love to but they don't reply to me." Even admitting it, just shaping those words and letting them fall, stung beyond belief.
"Nobody tells me a damn thing." Harry stated bitterly.
All they did, both of them, was stare at him with utter, undisguised contempt - and Harry had saved their son tonight.
Petunia clutched Dudley as though he might vanish at any moment, Vernon was still a dangerous shade of purple - both a losing battle. Harry was so exponentially tired of those and yet everyone was keen to blame him, he shouldn't expect anything different, especially here.
It was way past time to escape this, Harry slunk away soundlessly, went straight to his room, only just catching Aunt Petunia’s low murmur, " - there's some Ferrero Rocher here somewhere..."
Harry had long since surpassed exhaustion, now he was absolutely wired.
The bin overflowed with drafts, piled high with the - less kinder - thoughts he had very mercifully decided to spare his friends from.
Why even bother though? Harry thought bitterly, why spare their feelings? They’d had no problem forgetting about him, forgetting about everything that had happened only a few weeks ago. And who could blame them? None of them had been there in the graveyard with him, it was easy to forget something you weren’t a part of in the first place.
Harry was never going to forget. A few touching words from Dumbledore about what a kind and brave boy Cedric had been ‘right until the very end’ were not enough to make him forget what that very end had looked like.
There were dementors in Little Whinging and I want to know why -
This was snuffed out before it could carry on any further, far too childish. Plus, if it were intercepted, Voldemort might get the idea that Harry wasn’t as well protected as he supposedly was. Harry frowned, had his safety been compromised now that dementors could apparently attack him if they wanted to? He supposed he’d better hope not.
I’ve got to go to a hearing for underage magic, do you know anything about wizard legal proceedings?
This still seemed like too much information to give away. Plus, if anyone else was reading Hermione’s letters he’d look like an idiot.
Why is everyone still keeping me in the dark? Don’t you think I have a right to know what’s going on after everything? Don’t you trust me at all?
That they all might think he had become untrustworthy after causing Voldemort's return made him sick with dread, night after night. No, he hadn’t meant to end up in that graveyard or even in the tournament but he had and now Voldemort was back in his body, in full strength, thanks to Harry. Thanks to his blood, his idiocy.
Why hadn’t he refused to participate in the tournament? Why hadn’t he left Hogwarts the second everyone turned on him for something he hadn’t done?
He’d been such a fool, no wonder nobody wanted to tell him anything now.
Will I be leaving the Dursleys soon? They were pretty angry with me about the dementor thing, I think Dudley will be okay but -
It sounded like whining, whinging, ungratefulness, after everything he'd done too. There was probably a good reason why they'd decided they didn’t want Harry around for the summer this time. Nobody wanted the job of minding him, there would be no Quidditch marches this summer. Everyone would have to focus all their resources on dealing with Voldemort now that Harry had brought him back.
Will you write back? I just want to talk to someone.
How sad, Harry thought twistedly, burning inside, what sad embarrassing words.
There was no one to address this to either. Ron and Hermione had sent nothing so far this summer, what he was meant to think about that? Sirius’s letter to 'just stay put' after the dementors had been brief and to the point, as though he wasn’t still a mass murderer on the run with literally nothing to do but sit inside his house all day. Remus was as much of a mystery to Harry now as he had been in his third year so he couldn’t help the churning resentfulness at the thought of his fathers few remaining friends. Hell, Harry had had more contact with Peter bloody Pettigrew than Remus this past year.
Cho sent him one letter a few weeks ago too, the day he'd come back and Harry had kept it in his trunk underneath a mountain of jumpers, too alarmed about the contents to even consider opening it.
So, there was no one, no one at all.
Harry screwed the paper up and scrapped it too. In the end, he sent nothing. Sitting at the window stroking Hedwig for hours was all he needed, he reasoned hollowly, burning up with dejection pushed deep down.
When he did eventually lie down, fully clothing, something poked uncomfortably into his thigh - Harry withdrew the now half melted KitKat, stomach rumbling furiously, reminding him of that paltry breakfast, a glass of milk.
Turning it over, it was two years expired and Harry had to laugh. Well, it was the thought that counted wasn't it?
Harry's resolve was still a fairly resilient thing though and it'd returned the next day.
Having waited until midday with still no news and not so much as a hope your soul's still intact from his friends, he prepared a new plan of attack. There was still someone here who could give him answers - she owed him nearly fifteen years worth of them.
Vernon was gone, Dudley was still sleeping off his bout with the Dementors. Needling her relentlessly was very much on the table and Harry might just get what he wanted.
First, ambush in the kitchen.
"How's Dudley?" Harry asked loudly, immediately feeling stupid, she knows you don't care.
Petunia sniffed at him in disdain.
"Better, no thanks to you."
"The Ferrero Rocher didn't help then?" he asked lightly.
She glared, Harry triumphed internally. Nobody was immune to Ferrero Rocher.
"Why are you bothering me?" she barked, “haven't you done enough bother already?"
"What bother?" Harry snapped indignantly, furious, "the bother where a soul sucking creature tried to attack me for literally no reason?" Let her fight to conjure a happy memory when kill the spare was on a loop.
"You're the one that goes cavorting with the freak show," Petunia pointed at him backing away slightly, "you're the one that invites this - this madness wherever you go!"
"I am not!" Doubt rippled through Harry - she was wrong, he didn't ask for this, he never had.
"You're just like them," Petunia spat nastily, "causing chaos wherever you go and leaving others to pick up the pieces - well I didn't ask for you. I didn't need another mouth to feed, I had a family and a life all of my own!"
Harry had never heard Aunt Petunia talk this way in his whole life. Oddly, it pinged a thought of Cedric's family - of his father - don't think about it.
Petunia had opened her mouth to carry on, then seemed to stop herself. She picked up a tea towel instead, refolded it and put it back in the same spot, then turned away,
Harry recovered quicker though.
"Who did you mean by that awful boy?" he demanded, stepping closer, “I want to know who you meant."
"What?" Petunia scoffed, "they didn't tell you who she was friends with? And what good were they in the end? Magical beings and magical friends in her magical school."
Her voice dropped, she stared out of the window, "What's the use of all that magical fairy nonsense when that - thing - killed her anyway."
Harry could hardly breathe - stricken - flashes of green and pleading, that utterly anguished pleading -
"Who did you mean, Aunt Petunia?" he was nearly pleading with her now, writhingly desperate. What was so wrong with him that nobody would tell him anything?
Nobody trusts you.
"Severus!” she sneered, “that was his name. A nasty little boy and a stupid name to boot."
Harry would have preferred a slap, a hit, anything but that name. For the first time in his life, he found himself in agreement with Aunt Petunia. These really were dark days.
"I don't believe you." How could it be true, how could his mother have known Snape? And liked him enough apparently that he'd even told her about the magical world, like they were friends?
Aunt Petunia scoffed again, "I don't care what you believe, you're just like her. Head full of air indeed and you'll get yourself killed in the same stupid way!"
"Don't you dare talk about my mother like that!" Harry's wand emerged without a thought, he held the tip inches away from her face, enjoying her shock. Let her be afraid, let her be scared for once.
Petunia didn't move, she stared only at Harry's wand, oddly still, unblinking.
A maddening foolishness settled into Harry now that he remembered his purpose, stupid.
Lowering his wand, he attempted contrition, "Aunt Petunia -" she stalked out of the kitchen hurriedly. Harry wasn't letting her go that easily, he followed her, irate.
"It wasn't my mom's fault he came after her. She didn't ask for any of it to happen!" Harry shouted up the stairs. Petunia hurried up them as though his words were giving chase and slammed Dudley's door closed behind her. Dudley, who still had a mother to dote on him. Dudley, whose mother hadn’t had to give her life for his.
That bouncing resolve deflated just like Harry, a ringing in his ears sounded dully instead, hounding Petunia didn’t seem so important after all.
Harry just heaved himself back to the room with every effort he possessed and fell into an uneasy sleep.
Uneasy and fitful, Harry woke in bouts of segmented confusion - dreams muddied and chaotic, as they usually were these days. Harry missed normal dreams, dreams of failing quidditch, of pushing Draco Malfoy into a very thick and foul-smelling bog.
Instead, it had to be Voldemort himself, body rising from the cauldron but here he - it - that - turned to face Harry - a snake burst through the skin of the deformation, destroying those unformed eyes, the half-nose, lurching at him with horrible speed, poised to bite -
- a long and endless corridor, looking for something, he couldn't stop looking, this he felt urgently, blistering under his skin, where was it? Where would they keep it from him? Every turn ended in nothing and everything, a loop, a perfectly coiled snake swelling in itself -
- Cedric pushed Harry behind him, wand pointed at Wormtail, “Not Harry,” he shouted, “not Harry!”
Wormtail laughed, "Stand aside," he said -
- Harry was swinging sickeningly in the park. Was there a way to stop? He couldn't remember - a boy and a girl ran past him, narrowly avoiding his swinging feet. The girl held a long daisy chain and the boys hand as they ran to the slide, easily 20 metres high, stilll they climbed it all too quickly, Harry watched this in a dazing jolt of backwards and forwards, nausea mounting.
The girl went down first, sliding for an eternity, then the boy appeared at the top but he had changed - Harry's stomach dropped, he watched in horror as Professor Snape descended the sleep yellow slide, glaring at Harry as he did.
Then he stood and started stalking towards Harry.
“Potter!” Snape said, utterly incensed.
“You’re not real!” Harry yelled back, panicked, he couldn't remember if this was real but he jumped the swings anyway and started to run.
“Potter!” Snape shouted again, furiously running now too, his wand out and firing a medley of spells in ribbons of yellow and green.
“Get lost!” Harry shouted even as he ran, furious that Snape would show up to torment him in his dreams. “This is my dream! Get out!”
“Potter!”
Harry gasped, lurched up violently, covers all twisted around him as he fumbled for his glasses.
They brought into view quite the sight, the fleeting sensation for a moment that he must still be dreaming as he stared at the man in front of him, disbelief paralysing him.
“Potter.” Snape sneered, looking down at him. Harry could only stare up in absolute horror, clutching the sheets protectively.
What in Merlin’s name had he done to deserve this?