Disclaimer: Chances are if you missed the disclaimer in the first chapter, you’re skimming this fic and probably missing more of the story than you think.
Chapter One
Psychology 101
Date - Unknown
T: Unknown
The hypnotic swirl of dark water untangled its coils from around his mind and Harry came to with a quick, startled inhalation.
Bright light hit his eyes.
For a moment, he was too shocked at being alive to do anything.
Then, half-blinded, furious with adrenaline and panic, Harry found himself on his feet, wand outstretched and humming in his palm.
He blinked the spots from his vision, feeling remarkably well despite the crick in his neck that came from lying on the floor for too long. In fact, there was a distinct lack of pain; no fire seeping into his belly from being gutted alive, no shards of bones that were once his ribs jabbing into his lungs, no tang of blood on his breath. Now, his pulse beat as steady and strong in his veins as a metronome, breath sweet and his lungs whole and hale.
Harry wobbled in place, vertigo almost taking his feet out from under him.
Light streamed in through the window. Harry turned, raising a hand in front of his eyes to ward off the glare, Fatty's overcoat tangling around his ankles. How odd, he thought, for some reason he remembered it hitting a bit below his knees.
It was sunny outside. Sunny like summer, hot and bright with the promise of rain on the wind. Stumbling toward the light, Harry grabbed hold of the sill before he might fall through the open window.
The sky was so blue, so clean; no smoke, no acrid stench of dead things and hot metal, no trace of ozone – dark magic – stinging his nostrils. Everything smelled moist and green and fresh. There was a breeze outside and it tasted of sun-warmed tarmac and cut grass and the heat upon his face felt so different from the cold mid-winter night of moments before.
He blinked, wondering if this was like one of those desert mirages, thirst and heat haze drawing an oasis from the sands.
Something metallic roared nearby, the growl rumbling up the side of the room.
Harry flinched at the sound, old instincts clamouring to take hold. He hit the wall, back braced against the side of the window, wand in hand and a spell on the tip of his tongue, black-lacquered wood gone damp with sweat in his grip.
A clunk sounded from the shifting of mechanical components.
Was that…
…a car?
Harry peeked around the edge of the sill, eyes wide and stunned as he watched a man in the small cobalt vehicle fumble with something near the gear shift, before backing out of the driveway. The mini-cooper took a left at the end of the street and disappeared around the corner of a well-manicured garden.
Harry gawked.
As far as desert mirages went, this one was really fucking convincing.
He swallowed; sweat dripping down his face as he slowly lowered his wand.
There was something very, very wrong here.
'Torture?' he wondered. 'Is this supposed to be torture? Some clever illusion designed to look like Muggle suburbia so I'll let my guard down?'
Whoever had created this technique must not have been very bright, because Harry still had both swords, his wand and his Berretta nine with two spare magazines stuffed into his pouch along with his heavy winter robes.
Was it some kind of head game, like Legilimency? A hallucinatory potion, maybe?
The room around him was bare of excess and painted a stark, institutional white, sunlight glancing bright and piercing off the walls. It was Spartan in nature, adorned only with a plywood wardrobe, a desk and chair set, and a small bed that had definitely seen better days. There was a ratty blanket on the bed and a thin pillow, both that dingy grey that only came with age and wear. Beside it was a small pile of textbooks, parchment scraps poking out their tops; A History of Magic by Bathilda Bagshot read the title of one; 1,001 Magical Herbs and Fungi (and where to find them!) read another, a fluffy quill and half-finished essay sticking out the side.
These were a schoolboy's books, Harry thought with a perplexed huff of laughter, and a wizard's to boot.
Harry glanced around the room. A Gryffindor banner was pinned up behind the door and a polished broom stood in the corner next to the wardrobe. There was a calendar on the wall, red slashes marked through most of the days. A brass bound trunk lay open at the foot of the bed, black robes spilling over the edge and on top of the wardrobe sat a plain, wrought-iron bird cage with a bag of owl treats sitting beside it.
This was his room. This was his room from Number Four, Privet Drive in Little Whinging, Surrey right down to the very last, half-remembered detail.
Only, it wasn't really his, was it? "His" referred to that rash, teenage-version of himself. The stupid kid of bygone years who was more concerned with silly things like girls and Quidditch and completing his homework. The boy who hardly understood what he was getting into when he accepted his place in Hogwarts.
He may as well have signed his name in the Devil’s book of the Damned.
Harry glanced at his hands, stained dark and sticky from where they peaked out of Fatty's too long sleeves.
Oh nicely done. Whoever’s idea this was, trapping Harry in ‘Number Four’ was subtler than he originally thought. Hell of a distraction – make his mind wander and while he strolled along memory lane, they’d suck him under further.
Extending his senses, Harry searched for a flaw in the falsely fabricated world around him. Ran sensory-fingers of thought over the room, trying to find where solidness dissolved into the surrealism of dreams; dancing hippos, neon lights, white masks, and other random tastes and sounds flashing in nonsensical rhythms along his neurons.
Nothing.
They’d gotten smarter since the last time he'd been captured. No cracks in the mind-construct, no little mouse-holes to slip out of, no smooth walls for his mind to bump up against, no telltale sign that there was even a cage meant to contain him.
No way for him to find his way out.
Voices underfoot shattered the pin-drop silence.
Harry jumped, heart pounding in his ears like thunder, shivering even as Fatty's overcoat heated in the – false – summer sunshine coming through the open window. Then there was the muted stomp of heels hitting carpeted stairs and a strident, feminine tone cut through the air. “Harry Potter!” the voice shrilled, a hand knocking sharp and loud on the door. “Don't you dare think you'll be sleeping in all day.”
He twitched, eyes darting over the room for cover, pulse pounding in his throat. His mind scrabbled at the walls around him, struggling for some way to turn the room into a dense forest of trees, branches twisting to hide his thought-form from searching eyes. Cold panic stung the back of his throat, so close like the snow he imagined underfoot, but the room remained stubbornly fixed in place.
The doorknob rattled. “Get up!”
“Petty,” came another voice from below, this one starched, ostentatious, and definitely male. “Do you need a hand with the boy?”
Harry froze, stunned disbelief gluing his feet to the floor.
'Petty?' he mouthed. Petunia? As in Aunt Petunia?
“Oh Fuck Me!” he breathed.
“I beg your pardon!” said a woman from the open doorway. Harry whirled and dropped to a crouch, palm finding the Berretta nine holstered under his left arm, wand tucked out of sight.
The thing imitating Petunia glared at him, blue eyes sparking with anger, wheat-blonde hair pulled back from its face with a gold barrette. “I will not have that kind of language in my house!” Thin nostrils flared as it inhaled, pink spots of hectic indignation forming high on its cheeks. “Is that perfectly clear?”
Harry flicked off the strap holding the weapon in place, waiting for the thing's face to distort and turn into the white mask of a Death Eater. Or worse, for its mouth to fall open in a smile, growing wider and wider until its skin split at the seams, jaw yawning into an Inferi's vacant-eyed leer of hunger.
He went still, hand poised upon his weapon and ready to draw.
Its lip curled, picture perfect imitation of Petunia Dursley. “What have you smeared – ” It said the word with a shudder, like it could actually taste the mess coating Harry’s form on its tongue. “– all over your face? If you've been practising your freakishness in this house, I promise you, there will be hell to pay.”
Not-Petunia spun on one tall, expensive heel and stomped her way out of the room, peach-coloured dress swishing about her calves. “And go take a shower,” it barked at him over her shoulder. “You smell like death warmed over.”
The door slammed behind her, bouncing back open from the force of her swing.
Oh what to do, what to do...
Harry silently slipped out the door.
He prowled down the hallway from the recreated model of his room at Number Four. The house was almost a perfect reincarnation of his memories, but warped just subtle enough to throw his perceptions off and make him feel seasick. It was like being stuck in a carnival funhouse with the crazy mirrors and furniture nailed to the ceiling. The doorknobs and windows were set higher than they should be, the floor too close like one of those goofy 3D films where shit popped out of the screen at you.
Harry shuddered, nausea rolling about in his belly. This was weird. They left him his weapons, but paid a hell of a lot of attention to the insignificant details of the scene. Someone's priorities were a little fucked up.
The stairs creaked beneath his weight in the exact same pattern as before Privet Drive became ash and embers. An imitation Dudley sat enthralled by the chattering telly, brilliant colours flickering seizure-quick across the screen. Not-Dudley didn’t even notice him, which was a fairly accurate approximation of his real cousin’s self-absorbed personality.
Full points for that Death Eater’s portrayal.
Harry stepped into the kitchen, the ugly oriental carpet changing to white linoleum.
Petunia stood in the kitchen, rubber gloves covering her hands to her elbows as she washed dishes, Brillo pad scritch-scratching at a particularly stubborn spot of grease. She was oblivious to Harry as he stood behind her, the Berretta nine in hand and braced to fire. There were so many silencing spells scrawled along the barrel of the weapon, he could put two rounds in her head, walk over to the fat-ass on the couch, put two rounds in his head – and no one would be the wiser. Or maybe he’d slide up behind her and cut her throat. Snicker-snack and then it'd all be over.
Not that easy, though. Never that easy.
The Death Eaters thought wrong if they believed Petunia’s face would temper Harry’s wrath, his hate. Bloodlust was riding him so hard right then, he was dizzy with it; rage sinking low enough in his belly it felt like arousal.
Forks and knives clattered together in the sink.
Harry took another step forward, a beam of light from the kitchen window passing over his face. He was less than three feet behind Not-Petunia and she had no fucking idea, couldn’t even hear the sound of his breathing, let alone Fatty’s coat brushing against his ankles over the water running in the sink.
The gun gleamed as black as sin in the sunlight, its presence just as alien an anomaly as Harry in Not-Petunia’s well-ordered kitchen.
He stilled, weapon aimed at the back of her head.
“Mum!”
Harry whirled to face the doorway at the sound of Not-Dudley’s cry from the other room, the Berretta nine hidden near his shoulder holster, but his hands were shaking and the holster was sliding all over the place, the worn leather gaping funny in the shoulders, he couldn’t get a hold of the damn thing –
“Mum, the telly’s gone all fuzzy!”
Then there was a shrill, airy yelp from behind him and Harry twisted to find Not-Petunia staring at him from way too close, like she’d turned from the sink while simultaneously taking a step forward at Dudley’s whine. She leaned back from him, one sopping rubber glove braced over her heart. If her eyes got any wider, they might roll out of her head and onto the floor.
“Mum!”
Not-Dudley had gotten up from the couch and was clomping his way towards the kitchen, clueless as usual to the world around him.
“Who are you?” asked Not-Dudley in a petulant voice.
Tilting his head, Harry stared.
Dudley fucking Dursley peered at him from just outside the doorway.
Or, at least it looked like his cousin.
Harry turned to face the Death Eater.
He’d heard a story about cooking frogs once during a patrol a few years back. How when placed in boiling water, they’d jump back out, but when placed in cool water, the frogs would sit croaking and bumping about the bottom of the pot while the water temperature rose ever higher around them. He wondered how long it’d take for Not-Dudley to realize how warm the water was.
Harry moved slow and smooth, sidled right up beside the Death Eater like the serpent in the Garden. Not-Dudley took a hesitant step backward and Harry began to circle him, sliding loose-limbed and soundless over the carpet around the Death Eater’s bulk. It was a good imitation of a young Dudley Dursley. Right down to the pudge of belly creeping over his belt and his heavy, open-mouth breathing, the buttery stink of fat-sweat clinging to his Muggle clothes.
The thing flinched. “What are you doing?”
Harry clicked his tongue in disappointment as the impersonator whirled around in circles to follow him. “Fat, fat, fatty,” he rasped, grinning as the Death Eater flushed red with anger.
“I'm not fat!” the impersonator bellowed, face turning splotchy with rage.
“Don’t talk to it, Dudley!” said Not-Petunia with growing alarm. She’d backed up against the kitchen counter, eyes darting towards the door and away, skittering over Harry’s form like she couldn’t quite accept his presence as real. “That’s not your cousin anymore.”
“Of course not,” Harry purred. “Nice costume, by the way. Very realistic.” He held up his hand in the A-okay gesture and gave Not-Dudley an exaggerated wink. “Got my fat-ass cousin down to a T.”
The thing's fists clenched, doughy face purpling like a pig’s; a short, roly-poly Vernon with Vernon’s shitty sense of humour.
Harry laughed low and throaty. Who’d be faster? The Death Eater in disguise? Or himself, riding the adrenaline rush from the promise of spilled blood? “Are you going to hit me?” His smile widened, more teeth than mirth showing now. “Hurt me until I tell you all of my secrets?”
Not-Dudley's eyes widened from their piggish squint. “Harry?” he breathed. The impersonator stared wide-eyed from the sludge caked on Harry’s boots and streaked on Fatty's coat all the way to the blood drying stiff and spiky in his hair. “What did you do to yourself?”
“Don’t talk to it, Dudley!” Petunia shrieked, almost crawling up onto the counter to get away from Harry.
Her scream hit a crescendo when Harry abruptly pointed the Berretta nine at her. “Shut your flapping maw,” Harry snarled. “Goddamned blithering bint.”
Sweat dripped down Not-Dudley’s face. “That’s not real,” he stuttered, eyes fixed on the sleek weapon in Harry’s hands. “That’s just a toy.”
“Sure it is,” Harry agreed, teeth still bared in that terrible caricature of a grin. “Check this out, Dudders. Look right up here,” he drawled in a voice as slow as molasses, bringing his hands up like in prayer, tapping the space between his eyes with the cold barrel of the gun. “Look at my scar. Hideous fucking thing, isn’t it?”
The Death Eater stupidly followed the glint of sunlight travelling up the line of the weapon until he met Harry’s eyes.
Fast as a snake, Harry’s Legilimency reached out and sank its fingers into the Death Eater's mind, pushing at the walls of Not-Dudley’s brain for the key to his cage.
His cousin howled with pain, blood dripping from his nose as he screamed, hands pressed to the sides of his skull.
Lights.
Colour.
Sound.
Oh God, oh God...
He hadn't even registered that his back had hit the wall, or that his legs had crumpled underneath him or that his ass had met the floor in a tangled heap of limbs and bloodstained overcoat.
Dudley Dursley took off towards the stairs at a speed Harry wouldn't have believed of him if he hadn't just been faced with undeniable proof that Not-Dudley was in fact his cousin. Fat, sloppy, slobby Dudley Dursley in the fucking flesh. Live and kicking.
Emboldened, Petunia lunged at the sink and seized a metal spatula. She let out a high, strangled cry and flung it at Harry, taking a chip out of the drywall above his head.
“Get out!” she screamed, thrashing against the counter where her dress was caught on the lip of the sink. The flat murmur of tearing cloth echoed through the kitchen and Petunia – Aunt Petunia – jackknifed off the counter, hard enough she almost landed on her hands and knees. “Get out of my house, you freak!”
Harry stood, someone else at the helm of his body, and jerkily began to make his way to the stairs, feet shuffling across the carpet. Something grabbed hold of Fatty’s overcoat and Harry tilted his head to the side to see what it was, boneless with disbelief.
Petunia tightened her grip on his collar and shook him vigorously. “You bad boy!” she admonished him like Marge would her bulldog when it piddled on the carpet, a finger wagging under Harry’s nose. “Bad, bad boy! We take you in and this is how you repay us? Get out!”
In a surprising feat of strength, she started hauling him back towards the front door, the intent to throw him out written clear as day in the furious pink flush on her face.
Harry left the ratty collar of Fatty’s overcoat in her hand as he took the stairs two at a time, angry protests following behind him.
Fatty’s overcoat tangled around his ankles and Harry tripped over its trailing hem, momentum carrying him into the wall. Picture frames clattered to the ground around him as he struggled to his feet, shoulder beginning to throb unhappily.
“Look at what you’ve done!” howled Petunia, blonde wisps springing free from her immaculate hairstyle. She looked haggard and crazed, the thin hollows of her cheeks stark with fury.
Harry felt cool metal under his hand and twisted the doorknob. His room again, too small, too bright, too white; he crossed the room in three long strides he had no memory of taking and ripped the calendar from the wall, hands shaking bad enough that he almost dropped the damn thing.
1993, it read in large bold letters across the top. July 17th, 1993.
“Bullshit!” Harry bit out with a snarl.
There was an angry squawk from his doorway, but Harry ignored it.
Something unnameable welled up inside, something that was one part fury, one part panic, and one part a soundless, mindless roar screaming in his hind-brain to fightfightfightfightfight...
Dudley’s door opened with a tentative creak, the heavy sound of his footsteps muffled against the carpet.
Harry let go of the calendar, loose pages spilling over his boots in a whisper-fall of paper.
“What are you waiting for?” Petunia demanded. “Pack your things and go!”
His hands fell on the railing of the old bed frame and shifting his weight, Harry swung it around against the far wall, mattress, pillow, blankets, books and all, hitting the floor.
He swallowed past a lump in his throat, a curious sense of apprehension welling up inside his chest.
Maybe the prophecy was right. Maybe neither could live while the other survived – Voldemort half-dead and Harry half-mad.
The chair followed the bed across the room.
“Stop it, stop it! What are you doing?” Petunia shrieked from the doorway, her son peaking fearfully out from behind her.
Harry wrapped his hands around the smooth leg of the desk and whipped it around at the doorway, parchment and ink flying off in different directions.
Petunia screamed.
The desk splintered against the doorway, gouging a long scrape in the drywall. One of the legs flew off and hit the wall of pictures across from Harry’s doorway. Frames fell off the wall, the corner of one bouncing off Dudley's skull with a meaty thwock. Harry snatched the cracked inkwell from the floor, ink dripping from his hand and hurled it at Petunia just as the woman looked up.
Glass shattered against the wall.
Black ink spattered both Dudley and Petunia, glass shards littering the carpet by their feet.
Calm and damn near serene with it, Harry picked up one of the broken-off legs from the desk. Nodding to himself, he turned and with a perfect swing, began beating the shit out of the wardrobe.
The leg splintered on the eighth swing.
Harry dropped it on the floor, magic sparking under his fingers like static electricity; the edges of Fatty's coat beginning to smoke, cracks spider-webbing through the windowpanes and the plaster on the walls as the house groaned and swayed around them
“I'd like to be alone now, please,” he said, calmly staring Petunia in the eye.
“If you think – ” Petunia started, white-faced and shaking.
“Go away,” Harry said in a low growl, his words laced with the same dark power sparking through his veins as was screaming in his brain, murder humming under his skin. The ceiling above Petunia’s head cracked, powdery bits of plaster sprinkling down on her hair like dust.
Survival instincts must have kicked in, because his cousin turned and stumbled down the hallway towards the stairs. Petunia grabbed onto his arm, a strange little whimper caught in her mouth, her tidy blonde hair tumbling down from her hair-clip. Dudley didn't stop at the front door, dragging her easily outside and down the walk with his bulk.
The window behind him shattered, glass spraying everywhere. A strong wind came through the broken window and slammed the door shut hard enough to rattle the walls.
Harry floated on the edge of this manic high, desperately wanting to believe this was the prelude to some elaborate torture trap, that this was only the figment of a mind broken by stress and failed suicide. He'd declared his prospects dull and nil, stamped his passport out of the land of the living, thumbed his nose at his enemies, and flat-lined before the explosives finished going off.
There shouldn’t have even been enough of Harry Potter left over to piece together and perform psychic lobotomies on. He remembered that last, shuddering breath as his eyelids slid shut; the oncoming roar rushing in his ears before his parting gift shattered the surrounding mile.
But this was undeniably, unequivocally real.
Not a hallucination or dream or head game.
This was real and he had died. As in dead and fucking gone. Death was...
He couldn't remember.
Oh sure, he remember dying in all of its Technicolor horror, but death itself?
Drifting along, caught in the current of a deep, dark river, black water flowing around him as he bumped into other souls trapped in the same waterways...
Harry’s head throbbed, heavy pressure pulsing behind his eyes and buzzing about his skull.
How did he get here? How the fuck did he get here?
He scrubbed at his face with both hands. Caught in a numb loop of disbelief, Harry began to pick out all of the small details his subconscious had blocked out of recognition.
A pair of wire-rimmed spectacles lay near the window where the desk had stood, the lenses shattered, tape holding the nosepieces together. The end of a holly and phoenix feather wand stuck out from the wardrobe where it had rolled and one of the essays spread out across the glass and ink-spattered floor had his fucking name written across the top in the wide, sloppy handwriting from his youth.
Harry Potter, year 3, The Theory of Inanimate Transfiguration.
Harry couldn’t seem to catch his breath. Air whistled uselessly in and out of his lungs as an unfamiliar emotion wormed its way up through his chest.
He laughed, wheezing and gasping for breath, the wall of stubborn, wilful denial growing thin and shattering like the glass on the floor. He wasn't crying, not really. It was stupid, because he'd attended hundreds of funerals and buried half as many friends and for all of that he hadn't been able to make his body cry. Now though, now when the sorrow had grown old and scabbed over and with the looming probability of having to do it all over again, now the waterworks came. It was selfish and childish and Harry couldn't make himself stop. He stuffed a fist in his mouth to keep the mad howl of hysterical laughter from bubbling over, biting down on his knuckles until he tasted blood.
It made him wonder what would happen if he stuck the Berretta nine in his mouth and pulled the trigger. Go up and see how close he could stand to that ugly, empty edge of oblivion.
Would he hear the bang? Or would it be over with before he could feel his consciousness splatter against the walls?
The weapon was heavy and solid in his hands. It was even heavier in his mouth, bitter tang of gun oil bursting across his tongue, the steel skin-warm and growing warmer. He flipped the safety off, pressing his finger against the tension in the trigger.
If two killing curses and handful of sorcery-fuelled pocket bombs didn't work, why would a bullet be that much more effective? Maybe if he emptied the whole magazine into his brainpan, maybe he wouldn't have time to come back again after each one. Maybe he'd stay dead this time.
Harry pulled the trigger.
The gun clicked empty, the sound rattling through his teeth and into his skull.
Confused, Harry ejected the magazine and stared dumbstruck.
There were five rounds left in the magazine. And he was sure, that if he looked, he'd find another jammed in the Berretta nine.
The realization of what he’d done – what he’d almost done – hit him and a giggle slipped out sideways. Harry barely had time to lunge for the trash can next to the desk before his meagre meal of beef jerky crawled up the back of his throat. Knee-jerk reflex kept him gagging long past the point where his stomach was empty and bile was the only thing coming up, peppery acid burning the soft flesh of his mouth.
Harry wiped his face on Fatty's sleeve with a muttered, “Fuck!”
‘Please no. Please, please – don’t make me do this again. I may have been born a child of violence, but please, don’t do this to me. Don’t make me live this again. I can’t do this anymore –’
He cut that train of thought off before it could devolve into the mad gibbering whirling around in the back of his mind.
The taste of bile still sat thick and nauseating in his throat. Grabbing the corner of an oversized shirt crumpled on the floor, Harry wiped his face with it, smearing a mixture of blood, greasepaint, ink and mucus on the wrinkled cotton. Some people could cry and look strong and cool while doing it, single tears of manly pain trickling from their eyes.
Harry wasn't one of them. He just got blotchy with snot dripping everywhere.
Where do you go from here? Harry stared at the damage he’d wrought on his old room at Number Four, Privet Drive in Little Whinging, Surrey.
The cheap bed frame was cracked down the middle and when Harry flipped it right side, the damn thing came apart in four different pieces, raw edges bare and splintered.
Muttering blue-tinged curses under his breath, Harry dragged the mattress free of the wreckage and peeled off the glass-studded sheets. Using the sheets as a crude broom, he cleared the floor of most of the glass, kicking aside the rest of the mess. Hedwig’s cage, his trunk, and broomstick joined the mattress. The back of the chair had broken off, leaving a battered, but functional stool behind.
His old wand lay abandoned under the wardrobe. Harry crouched down to get a better look at it.
Holly and phoenix feather, eleven inches, nice and supple, the wand was a warm memory of yesteryear when magic was still newfound and wondrous. He picked up a thick shard of glass and used it to roll the wand towards him.
His original wand was destroyed early on in the war. He’d been seventeen and still blind to how many people had an eye on him. During a minor skirmish, he’d tried a tricky bit of dark magic meant to turn his opponent inside out; one badly parried curse later and Harry fudged the spell, his wand dissolving into a handful of singed splinters.
Its replacement was a weapon designed to channel pure, unadulterated destruction. The wand held no fancy titles; no grave warning; no dire prophecy. It was just a tool, simple and efficient, and it fit Harry’s hands like a dream.
The holly wand lay quietly on the floor in front of him. Harry wondered what it would feel like to hold it. Would it still feel hot in his palm, with its soft hum of power and the sense-memory of phoenix song vibrating in his ears?
Harry found himself reaching for the wand without realization and he jerked back, off-balance enough to land on his ass again.
He laughed. Once a fool, always a fool.
He didn’t know if he could even get the holly wand to spark anymore. Not after he’d wielded the other and Harry wasn’t dumb enough to try and find out, especially when there was a good chance the Trace was very much live and kicking.
Snagging the edge of an ugly old dress-shirt hanging out of the wardrobe, Harry dropped it over the wand. He wrapped the fabric around the length of wood and tossed it onto the mattress, sick of the memories the thing brought up.
The house was silent below him. Dudley and Petunia were long gone.
Fatty's overcoat was stiff with drying fluids and it smelled like the hobos Harry used to cross the street to avoid when he was younger. He peeled the coat off, wadding the thing up into a tight ball before tossing it onto the pile of broken glass. His t-shirt underneath was soaked with a pungent combination of sweat and blood and damn near glued to his skin. Removing his Berretta, he checked the safety and carefully set the weapon on the mattress, dropping his shoulder rig beside it.
Harry fumbled at the buckles of his armour for a moment; fingernails so caked with crud that it was a struggle to get a hold of the sturdy clasps, before finding the catch and shrugging out of the heavy dragonhide. Tiny runes winked in the light where they were stitched into the soft lining with silver-gilt thread. Unbuckling his sword belt, Harry placed the blades next to his shoulder holster and made a mental note to clean them later so the steel wouldn't rust. He propped his foot up on the chair and began working at the buckles on his leg armour on autopilot, shucking off the thick, double-layered dragonhide on his thighs; shin-guards and knee-bracers going onto the mattress next to the rest.
Everything was so loose on his frame that Harry dreaded finding out how much he'd shrunk in size, his feet swimming in boat-sized boots. Thirteen was a very fuzzy recollection in his memory. He remembered the some of the highlights, but the exact details were lost to time.
Kicking his boots off into the corner, Harry snagged a pair of sweats and a fresh shirt out of the trunk and wandered out of the room.
The hallway carpet was scratchy and ornate; a quasi-oriental design meant more for appearances than comfort to match the dark wood of the baseboards and the dusky rose-coloured walls. Pictures of a fat blond boy with an even fatter man dotted the hallway floor. Petunia's son favoured her colouring but definitely not her build.
He stopped in front of the large family portrait, the glass cracked across the face of the photograph.
If he remembered right, then this particular picture was from the summer before his third year.
Both Petunia and Vernon were seated in this photograph, Vernon's bulk comically out of proportion with his wife's frailty. Vernon wore a proud, self-important grin, eyes squinting in the fat, Buddha rolls of his face. Petunia, in contrast, had on a very thin, hard sort of smile, almost a smirk. Dudley stood in the middle of this picture with his hands placed on both of his parents’ shoulders, a wide, pasted-on grin matching his father's.
Harry had only ever been in one family picture. He'd been six and Mrs. Figg couldn't take him as she'd been off her feet with the flu.
Each year, the Dursleys got together for a family photo. Sometimes Marge and her favourite bulldogs were in it, sometimes not. Usually not. That year, six-year-old Harry had the dubious pleasure of being stuffed into the backseat with his far larger cousin for an hour and a half as Vernon drove in circles round the city, searching for a parking spot near the photographer's London studio.
Only the best would do for Petunia Dursley.
Harry patiently stuck out the ride next to his screaming cousin who had taken it upon himself to kick the back of the seat in his tantrum. Once there, Petunia dragged Harry out by the ear and deposited him next to the vehicle, choosing instead to fawn over her squalling brat of a child.
He hadn't minded too much. The less notice Petunia took of him, the less she would find to pick at.
The studio itself was a fascinating experience. Harry had never seen a camera before, save for stolen glimpses at the telly. And like most six-year-olds, he'd gotten distracted. He'd wandered off.
That was his first mistake.
His second was in asking one of the assistants: “Please help me find my family.”
'Don't draw attention to yourself' was the mantra Petunia Dursley had drilled into his head. 'I don't want to know you're even there' was the other.
Harry had defied both in a matter of minutes.
And while the photographer's pretty assistant was cooing over his 'lovely green eyes', a heavy hand had clamped down onto his arm and abruptly spun him around to face the furious visage of Vernon Dursley.
The man had been in such a towering rage that he hadn't said a word, but Harry didn't have to be a genius to know he was in serious shit. The photographer's assistant followed them back to the room where Petunia was rigidly perched on the edge of a stool holding a fussy Dudley on her lap.
“Such a sweet child,” she'd said to Petunia, “so quiet, too.”
“He was my sister's son,” Petunia had stiffly replied.
Was. He was my sister's son.
'But not now,' Harry had heard in those words at the early age of six. 'He doesn't belong to anyone anymore and he's certainly not mine.'
He hadn't any delusions about the Dursleys after that.
The Dursleys weren't family. They weren't ever going to be family. And it didn't matter how hard he tried to please them because they didn't want him. He was an orphan and like all orphans, he should be grateful for whatever charity people deigned to give him because everyone else had families of their own and couldn't be bothered to take on somebody else’s leftovers. There was no miracle family waiting in the wings for their lost son.
The finished photo had gone up on the wall; his Aunt and Uncle's smiles stilted and visibly fake, Dudley having passed out in Petunia's arms and looking like a snoozing beach ball dressed in a blazer and tie, Vernon's hand gripping Harry's shoulder a little too tight as he stood by his Uncle's chair.
Harry had spent a week in the cupboard under the stairs for that incident.
The picture came down three months later, Petunia claiming that the picture was blurry in the corner and wanted it redone.
Harry knew better now. Petunia had gotten sick of looking at his sad, lost expression because it made her feel something she normally didn't when it came to her sister's son.
Guilt.
In a pique of rage, Harry seized the picture frame and flung it down the stairs as hard as he could. The frame hit the front door with a musical shatter of glass. He couldn’t say it made him feel any better, but he felt a little less like he was going to crawl out of his own skin and run screaming down the street.
Harry ignored the other photos scattered on the floor as he made his way past the mess in the hallway.
The upstairs bathroom was painted in the same shade of rose as the hall, floral tile with a ridiculous pink blossom motif patterned across the floor. The tub was pink. The toilet was pink. The sink was pink. The shower curtain was pink. A basket of dried flowers sat to the side of the sink along with a pink razor and toothbrush. Fuchsia towels and a fuchsia floor mat and fuchsia soap – Harry wondered if he should snip his balls off and leave them by the door on the way in. Even the frosted light covers above the mirror were in the shape of drooping tulips.
“Goddamn,” Harry announced. “I’d forgotten how fuck-ugly this place was.”
He hadn’t noticed it on the busy design of the hallway carpet, but his socks were leaving little red footprints on the tile. For a moment, Harry thought he’d cut his foot on the glass strewn through the hall. Then, taking a closer look, he realized that his socks and the hems of his combats were still damp with blood and melted snow seeping down towards the pull of gravity.
The half-mad giggle tried to slip out again and Harry grit his teeth against the sound rising in his throat.
“Here and now, Potter,” he mumbled to himself. “Here and now.”
He twisted the water on all the way to hot, steam immediately fogging up the mirror. Harry stripped his stinking BDUs off and left them in a messy pile by the door. There was a pair of knives strapped to his ankles, his wand still holstered on his left forearm.
Harry dropped the knives by the edge of the tub, carrying his wand into the shower and setting it on the windowsill, foggy glass damp and dripping.
Rusty streaks of filth trailed down the drain, pale skin turning red under water too hot to be comfortable. He tried desperately not to look at his bony knees and skinny ankles, everything gone thin and boyish again where there had been lean, hard muscle before.
As a child, he’d been bird-boned and small, all baby face and big eyes like a porcelain doll. Delicate, Pomfrey had unthinkingly called him, which was total bullshit because he'd learned how to throw a proper punch at the age of eight, had one hell of a left hook by nine, and earned a spattering of ropey scars across his knuckles proving so by the time he was ten. Dudley may have been a bully, but Harry could give as good as he got twice over.
The two of them butted heads more often than not when they were younger, ‘Harry Hunting’ and fistfights tapering off sharply after Harry started Hogwarts. He hadn’t been around enough to keep up with the animosity between them. Not like his cousin could blame mysterious bruises on Harry after that and in Dudley’s typical lazy fashion, he and his posse moved on to easier prey.
He shut off the water before he could boil himself alive. Got dressed before he could get too good a look at his young body, that damn giggle trying to creep up on him.
Reaching up – up, fuck, he hadn’t had to reach up in years – Harry swiped his hand through the steam on the mirror, glass wet and ice cold on his palm.
There was a stranger in the mirror.
Oh sure, that was his nose, his chin, his mouth, his jaw line. Those were his eyes. Those were his cheekbones and eyebrows and ears. But he didn’t recognize the expression, not on this face at least. It was too flat, too remote; it was like looking at a marble statue and only the eyes glittered with life, the gleam of malice and the manic edge of rage in the acid-green shine of his irises.
He tried a smile in the mirror and a feral flash of teeth – a hyena’s grin – popped up instead.
Harry ran his hands over his features, trying to match the face of his not-quite-right doppelgänger in the mirror with the face of his hazy memories.
At twenty-seven, almost twenty-eight, he’d been a little over six feet and roughly twelve stone. Still on the wrong side of slim, but he’d carried a deceptive bulk of muscle that served him well in close quarters combat.
At thirteen, well, he’d looked like he was thirteen: thin and short. Harry had never been blessed with a face that could pass for older than it was. In fact, he’d always looked a year or two younger than his actual age.
He was different this time around, a little thicker through the neck, a little wider in the shoulders and a little taller than he remembered being around thirteen or fourteen years old. Harry consciously knew all of these features as bits and pieces of himself, but not as a single form he could put his finger on a chart and say, ‘This is how I was when I was this-many-years-old.’ It was like he was trying to play pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey, starring his face as the tail and his memories as the ass. Someone had put him back together like a puzzle – only they hadn't used all of the pieces from the same set, deciding instead to pick and choose from different scenes what they wanted and what they didn't. An eye from this set, a hand from that one, and an ankle from another.
A pale, hard line of scar tissue travelled the contour of his cheekbone and into his hair. That was from a flesh-eating hex when he was twenty-five. There was another trailing over his chin from eight months ago; he’d fallen from the crumbling edge of a building and been lucky not to break any more bones than he had then. The skin around the hand the necromancer had cut off was covered in purple scars, though the curse was long gone. He’d noticed another scar in the shower; the one where a rampaging dragon had nearly torn his leg off at the knee when he was twenty-two, ropey white scars trailing up and down his shin and thigh.
A dark curl of ink peeked up over his shirt collar on his back, the edge of a thestral’s wing and a stylised twist of ivy; the products of too much time spent moody and brooding when he was eighteen. The tail of a chimera poked out of his shirtsleeve and the lonely shadow of a hawk, wings flared against the wind, hovered over his elbow – twenty-three and damn near mad with grief, just wanting something to prove that there had been someone who cared where there was now only a corpse in the ground and cold sheets on her side of the bed. There was long trail of death dates written on the inside of his forearm, the latter ones scrawled there by Harper wielding a bit of guitar string, his dark head bent over Harry’s arm, the dank walls of the bunker closing in around them, generators lub-lub-lubbing in the wing next door, white noise filling his ears…
Harry wiped at his eyes, right hand braced on the counter like he was going to topple over otherwise. If he was truly thirteen then the scars, the ink - which looked really fucking stupid on this gangling child’s body, like those cheap lick-n-stick tattoos from vending machines – none of it should be there. Of all the things to follow him in the past, these were the last he wanted to be reminded of. No chance for him to start over with a blank slate, no chance for him to let time and hazy recollection take the rough edges off of his uglier memories.
Steam clogged up his lungs, his breathing gone short and tight. He swallowed past the lump in his throat, uselessly gasping for air around the laugh that kept choking him.
Somewhere amongst all of the misery over the last fifteen years, Harry had taught his heart to grow rocky and inhospitable; as if instead of flesh and blood, he was composed of the spiny backbones of mountain ranges, jagged peaks reaching into the sky where there’d dwelt warm things like hope and love before. It was scary how easily he’d learned to snarl instead of smile. He'd forged himself into something that was both beyond human and subhuman at the same time, and had very little in common with the rest of the world.
And he’d done this at an age where most people were still struggling to figure out who they were and where they fitted into life. Which seemed a silly thing to Harry because he'd never 'fit in'. Not at the Dursley's, not at Hogwarts, not in the midst of the Ministry's happy collection of murderers and rapists and thieves that made up Special Forces. Not even in the last days of the goddamned apocalypse had he fit in.
But humans were pack animals and Harry could no more be blamed for trying to find a pack of his own than a fish could be blamed for swimming.
He did not belong.
The irony inherent was that Harry was an abomination of his own making, carefully nurtured into a monster that could bare teeth as sharp as any other living, breathing nightmare that walked the earth.
It was one of those strange things in life where you wake up in the morning and realize you have no idea who’s staring back at you in the mirror. It went beyond the superficial layer of flesh and blood. It was the thing inside, the hungry thing where Harry could eat and eat until he was bloated and sick, but he’d never feel full.
July 17th, 1993
T: 1238 hours
The summer storms had moved in quickly that afternoon, blue skies turning sullen and wet.
Harry sat on the steps of the back garden and watched the sky rumble overhead, a cup of hot tea cradled in his hands. He flexed his bare toes in the green, green grass. It was cool and wet beneath his feet, the turned up cuffs of his sweats darkening as they absorbed the light mist falling on the garden. Carefully nurtured variegated flora crawled up the damp wood of the back fence, Petunia’s flowers beginning to bloom in the summer warmth.
He’d never had a sanctuary as a kid, like a tree house or maybe an attic hidey-hole. But the back garden with the tea roses and the bushes just big enough to disappear in? It was the closest he’d ever gotten.
The last he knew of Privet Drive, it’d been a burned out shell of a once pristine neighbourhood; a fleeting memory of childhood he hadn’t missed when it was gone. The residents had treated him much like the Dursleys with the same sort of absent-minded neglect that characterized most of his childhood. If you didn’t look at it, then you didn’t have to acknowledge it.
And maybe he’d used that excuse too many times in his own life – If he didn’t look at it, didn’t think about it, then it wasn’t a problem, wasn’t something that would affect him when he was at his lowest.
Harry was sorry he had threatened his aunt. Even on his worst days, he’d never loathed her. Too much sad and bad and ugly had happened since his childhood that he hadn’t a shred of hatred to spare for his past. Most of what was left over was just pity. Petunia seemed like such a ridiculous caricature now, this woman who would dress up in heels and pearls just to wash the fucking dishes because she thought herself better than her neighbour.
He hadn’t thought about these people in so long they might as well be strangers.
His hands shook bad enough that he could see the liquid ripple in the teacup. Harry set the cup down on the step beside him and folded his hands under his chin, elbows braced on his knees.
“I am fucked,” he said out loud. “I am fucked in ways I cannot even begin to quantify.”
Because, God, thirteen? Thirteen was a lifetime ago and it might as well have belonged to someone else. Where did he begin to fix things? Where could he begin?
Harry was beginning to feel like he was stuck in one of those Dali paintings with the dripping clocks.
Well, where had he gone wrong last time around?
He cracked up, ignoring the frenzied edge in his laugh.
Where hadn’t he gone wrong?
Spent too much time brooding over the morality of his actions, over the legality of his actions and not enough time actually getting shit done. Spent too much time mourning his friends as they fell and not enough time eradicating their murderers. Spent too much time wallowing eyeballs deep in self-pity and not enough time planning his next move in the war. Spent too much time thinking of himself as a singular entity and not as someone whom others depended on.
Spent too much time thinking he was still the scruffy kid from Number Four, Privet Drive that nobody paid attention to.
Big Brother’s watching you, Harry. And he’s been very displeased.
Murder was still a crime, no matter how justified it was. Special Forces had patted him on the back and in the same breath, condemned him for the very thing they refused to do: clean up the mess of a society that didn’t deserve salvation.
Avoid them at all costs.
What if he couldn’t?
“Cross that bridge when it comes to it,” Harry muttered out loud to the rainy garden. “I’ll wing it if I have to.”
There was no way he’d be able to avoid the oncoming war, too. It was too big, too old; Voldemort’s First Fall was only a lull in the storm and even then, Tom Riddle was only taking advantage of the situation. It would never matter who led what side: war was on the horizon and thousands were going to die.
Harry was just one man fighting an uphill battle. He wasn’t a miracle worker or some kind of prophesised saviour, Trelawney’s lunatic ramblings and all. It was madness to think otherwise.
“Only the dead have seen the end of war.” Harry said under his breath, feeling nothing but contempt as he poured the dregs of his tea out onto the plants beside the steps. “Plato was obviously not a wizard.”